Читать книгу Spawn of the North - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 12

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Sockeye swung up Front Street whistling blithely on his way to the Turlon house.

He moved along the narrow thoroughfare lined on both sides with stores and curio-shops and fishermen's supply houses. He hailed everyone he passed: the chubby editor of the daily paper who was rolling along in a bright blue roadster, no coat on and his hat on the back of his head; tall young fishermen, blond, tanned, and picturesque in plaid mackinaws and wide-topped hip rubber boots; Indian fishermen lounging at the edge of sidewalks; laughing white girls putting in time on the streets until the canneries should open to give them work; plump, fashionably dressed wives of packers, waiting in their cars for shopkeepers to bring their purchases out to them.

The street ran level for two blocks, then made an astonishing leap up a hundred-foot cliff by means of steps ascending through salmon-berry bushes, wild roses, bluebells and columbine stirring in the breeze. When Sockeye reached the top, he stopped for a moment to puff and fan himself vigorously with his hat. Then he trotted along the winding road that skirted the edge of Tyee Hill.

On either side rose the fine residences of salmon packers. Laved in warm winds and flooded with sunshine, each house stood surrounded by a tiny lawn, hedges of crimson lilies, gardens of forget-me-nots and delphinium. Even Sockeye, with his mind full of fish, was not insensible to the profusion of Northern flowers and the beauty of the sun-silvered channels that stretched away between the green seaward islands below.

He made directly for the Turlon home, a great house of weathered-grey shingles half-hidden among aspen trees and smothered in climbing roses. The long sun-porch at the back hung like a balcony over the edge of the cliff, high above the docks and canneries on the beach. Turning in between two low concrete pillars in which the name Turlon was set in clamshells, he followed the flagged path to the wide front door.

It stood open.

When his knocking failed to elicit any response, he entered, as was his custom, and swung across the long, luxuriously furnished living-room toward the kitchen where deaf Suey Woo presided.

Outside the threshold he halted, transfixed by the sight that met his eyes.

Sitting by the window looking up at the old cook was a strange girl in profile, very small in lounging pyjamas of vermilion and gold. Her little bare feet in vermilion satin mules were placed sedately together. From a low forehead, sleek blue-black hair swept back, outlining her head and curling snugly into her neck just above the shoulders. One tiny hand with red-lacquered nails was reaching up to take a highball from the tray Suey Woo was obsequiously extending.

'I know this is going to cure my headache, Woo,' she was saying in a voice singularly deep for such a small person.

'Oh, yessum, missy. Headache he fly out window!' assured the old Chinaman sympathetically.

'Smoking hips!' ejaculated Sockeye under his breath, as the girl with avid daintiness drained her glass. With his gaze still on her, he removed his devil-may-care hat, tucked it under his arm, and tentatively stepped forward. 'Hello, Suey Woo!' he called out as he crossed the threshold into the kitchen.

The girl turned a vivid, heart-shaped face to him: under the black hair, eyes of blank cornflower blue surrounded by heavily darkened lashes; magnolia-white skin, and a small mouth painted geranium red. She handed her empty glass to the cook and with a slow smile acknowledged the introduction Suey Woo managed.

'Sockeye—he named all same one kind salmon,' explained the Chinaman, grinning.

'That's okay!' asserted that gentleman, uneasily hooking his thumbs into his belt. 'They call me Sockeye, Miss Galliard, after the finest fish that swims.'

The girl allowed her gaze to rest upon him with flattering attention. 'Of course,' she said in her deep, slow voice, 'I can see why they would name you after the very finest fish—Woo!' she turned abruptly. 'Get me another highball and mix one for Mr. Sockeye—You do take a drink, don't you?' she looked up at the foreman from under beaded lashes.

'Do—I—take—a—drink!' Sockeye did a fancy step as he apostrophized the world in tones of joyful assurance. 'Well, lady—by exercising superhuman control, I know I could manage to keep a little something down.'

With indolent grace the girl came to her feet, raised and lowered her little shoulders in a relaxing way, and exclaimed with a sigh, 'What that first drink did for my poor nerves!' She stepped over to the table, seated herself on the edge of it and crossed her knees. One bare foot in its satin mule swung free. 'Now, how about a cigarette?' she prompted Sockeye with a smile.

She took one from his hastily extended package, tapped it against her thumbnail, and put it into her mouth.

'Aren't you going to light it for me?' she asked, leaning close and raising her face with the cigarette held loosely between her painted lips.

'Surest thing you know!' Gallant, but curious, the foreman applied the flame. Then, growing bolder, he lighted his own from hers while looking deep into her eyes.

Suey Woo came with two highballs on a tray. They each took one and solemnly clinked glasses. 'Another sorority buddy of Dian's?' questioned the foreman, watching in amazement as Eve downed her drink.

The girl nodded.

They set the empty glasses back on the tray. 'Well, well,' he went on, with growing expansiveness. 'You sure have come to the right country. We Alaskans like a splash of color in wine, women, and'—he eyed her bright pyjamas in frank admiration—'er—underwear. And I can see now that you'll be an ornament to the fish business!' He winked jocularly over the top of her head at Suey Woo. 'You'll find it a great game, girlie. We had one of those writer women up here last summer and I gave her a load of it, believe me. Of course,' he added, with an air of vast literary wisdom that had its source in the highball, 'I had to tell her that the salmon really don't have much of a love motif in actual life.'

'Love motif?' Eve lowered her long-lashed lids, then with effective deliberation raised them to give Sockeye a limpid blue look. 'Love motif?' she repeated. 'Tell me about it.'

'Well,' responded Sockeye with a vague wave of his arm, 'this thing of laying an egg on a sandbar and covering it up with your tail—you can see yourself that it ain't exactly what you'd call emotional interest, or anything that'd make Hollywood rare back and discard its brassière. But it's just as I told that writer woman—if you bring along your plot and your love interest, I says, why, fish is the most interesting darned thing in the——Why, what's this, Suey Woo? More drinks?' The cook had appeared again with the tray.

Eve smiled. 'I just nodded to him to bring them,' she said. 'We'll have one more and then quit.' She settled back on the table and Sockeye, with a low bow, presented her with one of the highballs. As they drank, they grew friendlier. Between compliments, Sockeye told her just who he was and how long he had been in the fish business. They became confidential. Finally Eve admitted, with one of her slow, provocative looks: 'You know, Sockeye, I can't help but admire men like you. Out in the world doing big things. If I'd been born a man, I'd be doing exactly what you're doing now. But look at me——' She held up her hands and thrust both trousered legs out in front, her little mules dangling from bare pink heels—'I'm so small ... so useless ... just ... a toy ...'

Sockeye rose to the bait: 'You're cute as a bug's ear!' he murmured tenderly. 'If I were only twenty years younger——' He finished the sentence with a deep, significant look and drained his glass.

'What a nice person you are ... I really believe you do like me a little.' She took hold of his sleeve and shook it gently. 'Come, Sockeye,' she continued with her melting, blue look, 'tell me more about this love motif in Alaska.'