Looking for Alaska (18 page)

Tina said it was time to drive the forty-six miles back to Craig. For the different world it was, it might as well be forty-six hundred miles. I don't know what I was expecting out of Hydaburg after all Tina had said coming over here, but as is often the case, that's not what I experienced. But then Hydaburg holds no part of my history, my heart; it's not the scene for any of my memories or nightmares. No one in Tina's family wanted her to leave. Her baby-sitter had been taking care of her girls all day and it was getting dark, she said. Time does not tick off at the same speed in Craig as in Hydaburg. Sometimes it seems that time does not pass at all in Hydaburg. It gets light and it gets dark, but the moment stays the same.

Tina was ready to leave, but first we stopped by Jody's house again to call the baby-sitter to let her know when we'd be there. Louise, sixteen, one of Jody's neighbors, was on the phone ordering school clothes from J. Crew. Finally, Tina got to use the phone. Someone she called before the baby-sitter mentioned that there was a house party tonight, at Laverne's mother and stepfather's house. Laverne's father had died years ago in one of Hydaburg's worst tragedies. It has cast an awful dark shadow over the people here for over fifteen years. There was no road then and five of Hydaburg's most handsome, athletic, and popular guys were partying. They decided they would get in one of their skiffs and run to Craig, forty dangerous miles in a large boat, much less a little skiff. No one knows what happened, but they all perished. This dark, cold death lay down a cloud of depression that will never completely leave. I could almost feel the wailing of the mothers and brothers and sisters and fathers and grandparents still.

“Peter, you want to go by this house party? I grew up with both these people; you met them at the Hill Bar. People are afraid to come to Hydaburg, there are very few whites that would ever go to a house party.” Tina winked at Jody. I had been dared. Of course I wanted to go, I said.

Jody had just gotten out one of Tina's paintings, a woman growing out of a killer whale, and asked Tina how it should be framed. Jody also showed us a print she'd recently bought of some Haida men traveling several hundred years ago in the open ocean in one of their renowned cedar canoes. The canoe had magnificent carvings on the high bow and sides; it was a living, floating totem.

“Jody, what do you think about taking him to a house party?” Tina wondered aloud, perhaps second-guessing her invitation.

“I think he can handle it. They liked him the other night, but you know how things can get.” Jody lifted her dark eyebrows, showing off a childlike quality to her personality.

The party was at the edge of town, where some of the newer houses are. They all looked to be about twelve hundred square feet, with three bedrooms, one bath, and no garage. Four or five young teenagers were standing outside; Tina said they were there to watch what went on; it was a local form of entertainment to see what adults did what, or to whom. Some early James Brown song was blasting out all the open windows and doors. Inside, the local people, about equally divided between men and women, sat and stood mainly in the kitchen. The host couple recognized me from the Hill Bar. After a half hour, six people were dancing in the living room, the rest were talking around the kitchen table or out on the steps. A half hour later I noticed I had to raise my voice to be heard. Outside, a woman about twenty was shouting to someone on the steps. She had gone home and changed clothes, changed into a dress. She said that her “boyfriend” was still talking to that other woman, he hadn't noticed she had changed clothes. She seemed ready to cross over into totally out of control. The teenagers in the yard were all ears. They certainly knew something about this young woman's past. She was yelling so loud at the person trying to calm her that she could be heard over the stereo playing “Lodi” by Creedence Clearwater Revival on about eight and everyone else talking as loud as they could.

Tina walked over to me. I half smiled and lifted my eyebrows. She said she thought it would be a good time to leave.

“There aren't many white people, or for that matter, any outsiders that can say they were at a house party in Hydaburg,” Tina said to compliment me.

“All that drama, that girl yelling, it brings back too much. It reminds me what a tiny little world it is over here in Hydaburg. I love it here and I hate it here. Why can't I find the right place for me? It doesn't seem to be in Craig, and it doesn't seem to be in Hydaburg.”

One of her cassettes was playing, but it was turned down so low I couldn't make it out. She turned it up; it was Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross singing “Endless Love.” The road and everything surrounding it was the blackest dark. Something ran across the road, far in front of us. Was it a black bear or a wolf or one of the many dogs running free?

“When our mother got on the ferry and didn't come back, I went to live with Jerry's family. That's how I met my present husband, Jimmy. I told you we're separated, right?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well, my grandmother Helen, the teacher, who got me reading everything, she raised this man Foo, Alvin Young. He was orphaned. He married Jerry's mother, Margie. I was a good student, I loved to learn. My grandmother asked Margie and Foo if I could live with them and go to high school in Craig. They had four sons, some of the best-looking guys on the island. Jimmy was four and a half years older than I was, and Jerry was four or five years younger. I was young and impressionable when I first went to live with them. Man, Jimmy was good-looking.

“There wasn't any TV on the island then at all,” Tina continued. “Margie's house is right across the street from the Hill Bar. Jerry and I, we would open the second-floor window and just watch people come and go. We knew just about everyone, and they didn't know us kids were watching them. It was better than any soap opera. Every weekend it was something different. And it got funny too. On real icy nights in the winter, people would come out, set foot on the street, and slip and slide, usually on their butts, all the way down the hill towards old town. We liked the fights the best. You could always tell when one was going to start. The people, guys and girls, would walk puffed up, usually around closing time. Some of the fights would be huge, twenty people. Some woman would say something to someone else's old lady. There were the rowdy ones, one family we called the James Gang. If we saw them there, we were almost positive there would be a fight. It was better than watching WWF. Foo would go down the next morning, pour Pine-Sol all over, and the place would be ready for another night.”

We passed the place where Lori had run off the road and died. Someone had placed some flowers there since we'd passed.

“After Jimmy and I got married, I thought I was right where I wanted to be. Maybe my life would be happy, like I saw in California, just without the sun and the blondes. I became the Martha Stewart of Prince of Wales Island. All my Christmas ornaments matched. I changed my theme for Christmas every year.” Tina now spoke in a different cadence; her words were coming out faster.

“I saw something in the Spiegel catalog, I ordered it. I had a J. Crew card, Nordstrom's card, Alaska Airlines card, Visa. I wore Lancôme makeup. Last thing I wanted was the smell of the life that I grew up with. We used to say my grandmother's perfume was the smell of salmon. I didn't want to smell like the smoke from the smokehouse or, for that matter, even smell it at all. I didn't want to smell stink eggs or kneel on the beach, gather driftwood and seaweed. I became a gourmet cook, cooking Martha Stewart recipes instead of my own people's foods.”

Tina put the bright lights on, finally, something I had wanted to do for miles. I couldn't see the road because her low beams were incorrectly adjusted, and I'd wondered how she could.

“I thought if I lived more the white man's way with a man that wasn't so Native, I would have a better life. I married into this island's version of the Ewings, you know, from that TV show
Dallas.
I found that I could not only adapt but also excel doing their things. Jimmy's part Native, but really the white side is much stronger in him. I had so much more than I did growing up. We certainly didn't have to haul water like my father did. But, I lost myself with all those things. My heart almost died, like it was covered with a black blanket.”

There was silence in the car for quite some time until we almost ran into a doe, blinded by the bright lights, frozen in the middle of the road.

“You know, Peter, the Haidas believe our spirits are from people that were here before. I wish I knew who mine came from. I feel pulled in so many directions. My life has been like the experience of giving birth: there is this lust involved, then this pain, then joy comes, and it goes on and on like that.”

We made it to the end of the Hydaburg road, took a left, and had another twenty-something miles more of almost no streetlights. The headlights caught the glowing eyes of several deer feeding on the grass that grew on the side of the road. Driving down these roads on this part of the island, I felt as if Tina and I were the only ones in the world. When she spoke again, it startled me a little bit.

“I don't know what it is about you, but I feel like I could drive around this island for a week with you and never run out of things to talk about.” I have noticed during my decades of traveling that people from every walk of life seem to trust me with their stories. I told Tina I knew how difficult it is to speak about yourself, your pains and joys, when you're in the midst of such change. I was honored she felt free to talk.

She spoke the next few sentences in almost a chant. “Someday I will, someday I really will be strong enough, someday. I can't believe I am already forty. I will … I will become an artist.… I will do what I need to do. I really will.”

Then when it seemed that we would never see our surroundings again, we passed a couple of streetlights; it seemed bizarre to have light coming from something other than the car. We were back in Klawock. It was as if we had been flying around in outer space and were returning to the mother ship. Tina turned up a hill, and halfway up she slowed way down. On the right side of the road was a trailer with a light on the front porch and a small house next to it, with another light shining from the corner eave. The weak light couldn't overpower the night, but it did shine into the field across the street. Dimly lit by the feeble light, there were maybe twenty totems rising up from the ground, their faces barely discernible, eerie. Tina didn't say anything about why she had taken this detour but just drove on.

In another ten minutes or so, we were back to several streetlights; to Craig; the Burger King; Margie's main grocery store, Thompson House Grocery. Jimmy worked at this store. She pulled in to buy some diapers. Jimmy saw her and me, and she introduced us. Jimmy managed the store and was living somewhere else right now, but took care of the girls often. Tina had mentioned he was an excellent father, a really good friend. Jimmy was small, very fit; Tina said he worked out to stay in shape. There was a pained bubble around them, filled with history and conflict. I understood and felt awkward.

We left. The bookstore light went out as we drove by. We pulled into Tina and Jimmy's house. Tina walked into the house, paid the baby-sitter, and stood looking out the picture window. It should have been a big, black, shiny rectangle, but it wasn't. From every corner of it, from every part of the black ocean and the black sky, came twinkling lights, white lights mostly. Tina lingered, looking, and I walked over to her and looked too. The lights were moving, ever so slowly. At first I thought the lights were stars, but they were not. Tina, who had changed into the harried-mother mood the moment we walked inside, changed her mood again, radically. She spoke with intense excitement.

“You see those lights, those are the seine boats. They are all coming to Craig, coming to port, coming to off-load their catches. They have had an opener [a few days of legal fishing] and now it is ending. Do you realize there are seven men on each one of those boats? You watch, soon my girlfriends will be calling me, watch. Those fishermen are from all over the Northwest—Seattle, Oregon, all over Alaska, who cares where they're from, they're not from this island. Many of them will soon be at the Hill Bar. Even the married couples like to go out when all these new men are in. They like the energy, everyone laughing, loving, and fighting too. It's one time when I don't feel like I need to get off this rock.”

As if she'd summoned it, the phone rang once, twice. Tina asked the babysitter if she could spend the night; after all, it was summer, she could make some more money. Tina and some of her friends were going to go to the Hill Bar. One of the best-selling drinks at the Hill Bar that night was a drink in a shot glass with vodka and lemon juice, the rim dipped in sugar. It's called the Panty Dropper. They wanted me to go with them, but I didn't. I thanked her for her time and told her I hoped she was able to sort through all her confusion, pain, and sense of responsibility to locate the way that would be best for her and her family.

*   *   *

Sam and Bill were still up, watching ESPN on the satellite TV, when I arrived back at the lodge. I felt that I had lived a part of an entire life today. I was exhausted, though I had done nothing physically.

“How was your trip to Hydaburg, Pete?” Bill asked. Sam looked up.

“It was something. It will probably take some time to figure out what I saw and heard,” I answered. They didn't ask for details, they said nothing else about it.

I took home enough salmon and halibut to fill up a third of a chest freezer. I had not expected to take any fish home; I figured my fish would go to feed Al's “village.” Sam, Bill, Al, and Jerry had other ideas. It seemed that I had been accepted into their world, and I was honored.

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