Читать книгу Spawn of the North - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 9

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On the outskirts of the town beyond the last cannery, Spruce Point thrust its fish-hook curve into the channel. Its grove of trees formed a sylvan setting for Ketchikan's most famous roadhouse, the Floating Trap, built half on land and half on an immense scow that rose and fell with the tide. The floating section contained the Poker Room, a favorite resort of packers who met afternoons for a discreet highball, a game of solo, or to talk over contemplated fish mergers and determine the destiny of canneries. The land half was devoted to a spacious dance-floor and many small tables, where Ketchikan, regardless of social position, reveled at night. Here also were the kitchen and the living-quarters of the owners, Briny and Blossom Dow.

The place was deserted at this early hour, except for those two at breakfast in the kitchen. Since the cook didn't come on duty until noon, Blossom herself stood before the range puffing on a cigarette and favoring Briny with a view of her broad back as she poured batter onto a hotcake griddle.

Blossom was short, plump, swarthy, with straight black bobbed hair that would never lie flat behind. Her fat little arms were bare to the shoulder, her dress a shrill pink, and as she energetically flipped hotcakes, she switched in a way that made her brief skirt waggle like a bird's tail, the movement exposing a back view of much pudgy leg and pink silk bloomers above the bend of the knee.

Briny, seated at the table, was a wiry little man, straw-brown of hair and face. His pale eyes were gazing out over his adenoidal nose with a look of comic melancholy.

'Gor'struth, Blossom! I tells you wen Eagle Turlon comes 'ome from Siberier, 'e's going to raise particular 'ell wiv us about Ivor.' Briny's plaintive voice issued from a wide mouth busy with mastication. 'Our name is mud wen 'e finds we give 'is only son a job playing the pianner in the Floating Trap.'

This, evidently the end of a long monologue, was received by Blossom in ominous silence. She punctuated the air with a jet of tobacco smoke and continued to turn hotcakes.

'And specially tonight wen the big party's coming off wiv all the 'igh collars in the fish business down 'ere seeing 'im doin' of it. Mind wot Eagle does to Noel Thomas, that poor barmy coot of a superintendent of 'is who goes off on Miss Dian's camping party and gets stuck. I'm telling you, square and all, Blossom, I knows 'ow Eagle——'

'Hell's bells!' roared Blossom, whirling upon him, pancake-turner upheld as if she were about to prophesy. 'Will—you—shut—up!' With a glare of exasperation she advanced step by step, jousting with the turner to emphasize her remarks.'I gave Ivor that job! I've known that young one ever since he wore rubber pants, and he's going to live right here with me as long as he wants. Somebody's got to stand by him, now that his paw has gone off leaving him without a dime, just because the kid won't go on studying fish! As for Eagle Turlon'—she made a jab across the table—'you leave that old pirate to me. I'll handle him, being as you're scared of——'

'Me! Scared!' Briny's thin voice rose to a squeak of indignation. He came half out of his chair and shot his neck like a bantam rooster on the defensive. 'Me scared o' the likes o' 'im! Wy, I could——'

'You—could, you squirrel-mouthed Limey! Why, you'd have about as much chance against Eagle Turlon as a gutted snowbird! I——'

'Wot do you know?' shrilled Briny, addressing some invisible third person. 'That's wot she thinks o' me, 'er lorful 'usband! That's the thanks I gets for picking 'er up outta the gutter and making a lidy outta her! Me, wot 'ad a dozen other dames that crazy about me they——'

'Make a lady out of me! Gawd, listen to him!' With fat arms upraised, Blossom apostrophized the ceiling in a mighty voice that drowned out Briny's, though it failed to silence him. They swung into a vociferous duet, Blossom predominating: 'A lady! And me once the belle of the Barbary Coast! Me, with the bartender of the swellest house on the row for a sweetie! A guy that never bought anything but wine when he was off shift, and wore a diamond as big as a binnacle lamp in the middle of his silk shirt-front. A swell fellow that——'

'—and me wiv the prettiest barmaid at the Sailor Lad on Dock Street, Liverpool,' Briny's piping emerged as Blossom was forced to pause for breath. 'A tidy bit o' all right too, and wild about me. She says to me, "Briny, old thing——"'

'—and he never went on shift 'less he had a coat starched so stiff it could stand alone,' Blossom cut in fortissimo. 'Every parlor house dame on the Coast was trying to make him, too. But my Alfred wouldn't fall for none of their high society plays. Alf was true to me. Alffy loved me. He——'

'—this 'ere Blossom, she still thinks 'erself a swell bit of skirt. A thrill a man'd fall for, and she forty-five and broad a-beam as a fish scow——'

'—and me fool enough to throw myself away on this Limehouse rat, this shrimp of a Briny! Gawd, if I'd only known then what I know now! Me, with a father the foreman of a vineyard down in Santa Clara County. Oh, what would my folks say if they could see me now living here in a fishtown in a siwash country with a poor squirt who couldn't even have done the porter work at the joint Alf tended bar in! Oh, oh, oh! Why did I ever——'

'Oh, bli'me!' Briny pawed air impotently. 'Oh, 'ell! I give up. I quit.' He fell into his chair and began eating furiously.

But Blossom was only just starting. She stood over him, and with swipes of the pancake-turner bemoaned that unlucky day when she, a Barbary Coast butterfly of twenty, had gone down to the San Francisco Embarcadero to watch the Star of Alaska set sail with cannery crews for Bering Sea.

Eagle Turlon, arrogant and young then, had dominated that Bacchanalian scene, rounding up his men and putting them aboard: drunken fishermen, opium-dazed Chinamen, cannery hands imprisoned in the embraces of red-light women who had an eye out for their return in the fall with the season's wages.

On that day of departure spring and the aftermath of a champagne party were in Blossom's blood. Responding to a dare, she had managed to elude Turlon's eye and stow herself away in one of the Star's lifeboats.

She went to sleep, and woke to find the ocean heaving all about her. She dared not emerge until the packet was two days out. Then she was discovered by Briny, a shrewd, rather graceless whelp of the seven seas. He was substituting as cook for the officers' mess, the regular chef having been too drunk to make connections with his ship.

Despite Briny's physical shortcomings, he won Blossom on that trip. He was keeper of the food, and the little stowaway had come upon a time when food was of greater value than either money or clothes. Between them there developed the fighting affection which had kept them together for a quarter of a century. Blossom, it is true, had gone off once with a trapper who took her to Fairbanks in the interior of Alaska. But there, to her indignant surprise, no one knew or cared anything about ships or tides or the salmon run. And so Blossom speedily returned to Briny—with a black eye and a splendid collection of furs.