Читать книгу Under Nushagak Bluff - Mia Heavener - Страница 7

Despite the storm, the salmon quickly returned to the bay as they always do, and in the next high tide, Anne Girl found her net loaded to the gills. Her skiff was still trapped under the weight of the sailboat, and in order to pick out the salmon, Anne Girl had to pull the net onto the beach. She cursed the tide and John the entire time. That morning, Marulia had woken up ill and her skin was hot to touch, but she pushed Anne Girl out the door so she could make medicine teas. So Anne Girl picked alone, thankful, because she knew that today she would see John Nelson.

Although she was ready to meet him, had him traced out in her mind of how they would look standing next together or lying side by side, she didn’t hear his quiet approach. The salmon had her complete attention. She bent over each one and pulled and yanked them out until silver was flying all around her, raining silver dollars. She would ask him how he came this far north. No, she would tell him that she was going to burn his boat for firewood. No, she would tell him to go home, because they already had too many fishermen in this bay.

“You have quite the load there,” John said as he approached. He stopped in front of the snaking wooden corks with his hands jammed in his pockets.

“You get your boat off my skiff?” Anne Girl said without looking up. She continued picking out the salmon and throwing them around her, narrowly missing John.

John laughed nervously. “That was your skiff? I haven’t yet, but I’m sure there’s a way we can do it. Frederik was telling me that the cannery has some rollers we can put it on . . .”

Anne Girl stood up slowly and stretched her back. She nodded toward John, barely taking him in, and picked up the cork end of the net where a salmon was entangled and handed it to him. And then she returned to where she had crouched before and continued to pull out salmon after salmon.

John took the salmon and turned it in his hands. But when he tugged on the line, it slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, coating itself in a layer of gravel.

Anne Girl glanced up and saw John redden as if caught in a lie. His cheeks and forehead flushed until it seemed that his blond hair would catch fire too. Watching him, she saw his story in those colors. She knew before he said anything that he had left Seattle, telling everyone that he was going to Alaska to fish the deep waters for salmon or crab or anything that lived beneath the waves. Of course he had read about Bristol Bay and how it was swimming with heads and tails and millions of dollars. Or maybe he thought, because he looked like a Norwegian, that fishing was in his blood. Her stomach sank, because she knew she was stuck with him and that it was going to be a while before she would get her skiff back.

“Don’t say nothing,” she said, and took the salmon by the gills. She yanked it twice and the fish dropped freely to the ground. She handed him a different section of net.

John took another salmon and mimicked her hands. He pulled hard until the web was securely lodged in the gills. He pulled again and ripped the gills clean off. He held the bloody salmon by its tail fin in front of Anne Girl and smiled.

Once again, Anne Girl stopped and stared at him, her eyes dark and peering as if she were trying to make a decision about this large white man before her. She didn’t have a pretty face, and when she was thinking, her broad forehead became one horizontal crease in the middle. But no one would disagree that she was hard and sturdy. Her skin was light tan, like that of most of the residents in the village, but seemed almost gray against the color of her black hair.

“You here to fish?” she asked. Her voice carried over the crash of the waves. “’Cause you don’t know nothing about fish.” She took the salmon from him and showed him how to pull a salmon from a net without getting its gills further caught or ripped off. “Fish are food, uh.”

“I thought about fishing, but maybe I’ll work for the cannery.” John nodded toward the little town on stilts and winked at her.

“You don’t want to work for them,” she said. “See these hands.” She took off her gloves and held up her hands. The knuckles were swollen, and the fingers were scarred white where they had been repeatedly nicked and burned.

“Oh, you’ve worked then in a cannery, I see. Which one?”

“No, I never. I still got all my fingers, and they work too.” She laughed. “You like your fingers? You shouldn’t work in the cannery.” She wiped her forehead, leaving a string of slime gleaming on her skin.

Anne Girl saw John’s pale skin become whiter, as if the moon had risen inside of him, making his eyes lighter. He was weak-blooded too, she thought. She laughed again and pointed toward another caught salmon. “I jokes. Maybe you can fish. Here, fish with me.” She picked up a flounder and traced its white underside with her finger. “You know the Killweathers, then?” she asked.

“Well, not really. We’re accidental friends,” John said.

As John recounted his arrival to Nushagak Village, of how he left at high tide from Dillingham and ended up on the beach, Anne Girl kicked the gravel to the rhythm of his speech, enjoying the fact that she was correct about him. Right down to the length of his legs. She almost believed that she had made him appear before her. She partially listened to his story about tea with Frederik and Nora and how their daughter, Kristen, was teething. It was too much detail for Anne Girl. His voice was getting in the way of her thinking. Her foot continued to tap, and her head nodded as a smile played out on her face.

Tap, tap, tap. And here he was.