Читать книгу First Wilderness, Revised Edition - Sam Keith - Страница 14

CHAPTER 4

Taking Hold

The days wore on.

I progressed from sore hands to blisters, from blisters that rose in hard bubbles across my palms, to blisters that broke and burned like fire and peeled away, to stinging slits that healed into calluses. Jackhammer, “muck-stick,” pickax, and sledge were my insensitive taskmasters.

Unloading cement sacks from piled-high flatbeds, staggering with heavy vats of mess hall slop, muscling up heaped rubbish barrels to be emptied into a truck—all contributed to my shrinking waistline and the return of the old firmness to my arms and shoulders. I found myself reflecting on those Parris Island boot-camp days when we drilled in the sand, when I kept myself going by glaring at the Drill Instructor who drove us to exhaustion, when I blew at the sweat running down over my face and kept repeating under my breath, “I can take anything you can, you son-of-a-bitch.”

What boosted my morale more than anything else here was getting a room to myself. The physical punishment of the job was as nothing compared to the aggravation I felt returning to a roommate whose habits were the complete opposite of mine. He either had a cigarette bobbing on his lips or a bulge of tobacco in his cheek. Draining sinuses caused him to snort and sniffle almost continuously. Long after midnight, he kept a light burning, and the large can beneath his bunk was not only the target, often missed, for his cigarette butts, lungers, and jets of tobacco juice, but also a convenience for his urine. One evening he came in glassy-eyed from town and vomited all over his blanket.

He draped things anywhere that would hold them and piled his laundry into a neglected heap in the corner. Continually, he bragged of his sexual conquests. All conversation soon deteriorated into either lewd, detailed descriptions of his successes, or the agony, complete with facial grimaces, of some potent venereal disease he had contracted south of the border. When it seemed that I could stand his presence no longer, he happily announced the evening before my first day off that he was all through. To hell with this prison camp. He needed a woman, and was going back to civilization. With a suitcase jammed with dirty clothes, he left with my blessings the next morning.

I lost no time moving his bunk into the barracks storage area. Other men had private rooms, and I was going to have mine. The fishing could wait. Right now the room had top priority. I declared a field day, and transported everything into the hallway. I opened the window wide, swept out the place, scrubbed down the walls, and then with a clean swab and hot, pine-scented soapy water, I sloshed suds all over the floor. After going through several rinse waters, I felt I had purged the place.

When I stood back from the open door after mopping the floor dry, I knew the contentment of a thorough housewife. The window glistened. The floor gleamed. The air smelled fresh and clean and free again. I tried to picture how it would look with the red print curtains I’d seen in the Montgomery Ward’s catalog. Surely they would provide a finishing touch.

Heavy rain discouraged my fishing plans for the afternoon, but I was jubilant just the same. I had redeemed something that seemed hopelessly lost. Privacy was beyond all price. I lay on my bunk, hands folded behind my head, and listened to the onslaught of the rain. I dreamed of streams and mountains, but most of all I just stretched out in an atmosphere filled with the sounds and scents of my own.

Friday evening

Oct. 10, 1952

Dear Dad, Molly, & Mrs. Millet:

Your last letter was handed to me on the job. I started to read it, and the rain drops made the ink run, and I had to put it in my hunting coat. About an hour later when the asphalt trucks stopped coming, I got a chance to read it …

I get time and a half for all over 40 hours, but do not get double time for Sunday. The government takes out such a big slice that it is foolish to work too many hours. I made $140 last week. The withholding tax amounted to $25. Since I have been up here, I have saved $365 besides paying the $85 I owed Wards and another $30 I spent for logger boots and other accessories. If I watch my step I should have at least $2,000 by next August.

I bought some red print curtains for my room. They really made it look as “homey” as a farm kitchen. After I do my washing and hang up the clothes to dry, how fresh and clean smelling is the air in my little home! And, Molly, I change my underwear every day as I do my socks. I have a big wash every week, but find it easier to get clothes clean if they are not too dirty to begin with.

These letters are not very interesting, I’m sure. But neither is asphalt paving, and that is what my life has been lately—shoveling that steaming stuff and watching the black path stretch in the wake of the tireless machine….

We were paving the other day. Off in the distance the scary, purple clouds began to swell and hide the mountain ranges. You could see the valley begin to haze in the distance and you knew that rain was on the march. The roller operator, who is built surprisingly like a roller with his great, round body, squinted at the sky.

“Pull on your slickers, boys,” he said. “In just about two minutes, it’s going to rain like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock.”

It did, too.…

So long, love to all,

Sam

I HAD EXPECTED THE “NEW MAN” treatment. I was assigned the Sunday garbage runs and the heavy work that others craftily dodged. I was being tested. I was the unknown gunslinger drifting into town, and the top guns had to find out how fast I was, constantly watching and listening for some weakness or flaw.

Although my fingers sometimes cramped on a jackhammer handle, my stomach rolled from the stench of maggot-writhing slop, my back stabbed as if the pick I was swinging was driving its point into me instead of the shale, I hid my feelings behind a smile. They played their little games, and I played mine.

I was determined to live up to my idea of what an Alaskan was. He faced things head on and didn’t whimper. He did the job that had to be done. If he couldn’t, then he didn’t belong. He wasn’t worthy of the name.

The civilian workforce came from all over. Some merely passed through like storm fronts, raised hell, and moved on. Others stayed in spite of their griping. They had set goals for themselves. A fellow called “Rogue River” was going to buy a logging truck and be his own man in the big timber country. “California” planned to save a bundle and set himself up in a landscaping and nursery business. “Arkansas” dreamed for a bottomland farm, free and clear of any bank. “Illinois” was going to drive home down the Alcan in a brand-new station wagon with Alaska plates.

“Big Time” had other notions. “Ten thousand be about right,” he said, a wistful smile spreading over his dark face. “First get me a Cadillac, long and low like them cigar-smokin’ fat cats drive. Here I go to Chicago or Detroit, and watch me spend a thousand a week. Different women every day. Hoo-wheeee! When it’s all gone … I’m gone, and all them women would say, ‘I wonder where that rascal’s at?’”

What struck me was that nobody planned to stay in Alaska. They were here for a stake. The gold rush was still on.

There were others in the barracks, too many of them, whose dreams went only as far as the weekends. They were the lost ones. They would stay as long as they could hold their jobs. On Fridays, the cabs waited for them. The cabbies brought them, smiling and prosperous, into town, then hours later delivered them as defeated hulks that slobbered up the barracks stairs. They sprawled in the corridors. When aroused from their stupors, they hurled curses, struggled to their feet like huge, sluggish turtles righting themselves, and weaved grim-faced and groping along the walls, only to fall against their doors. On Sundays, they pleaded for drinks and fell prey to the loan shark demands of “Oasis,” a man who accepted IOUs, payable the next check, for tapping his plentiful supply. Miraculously, they reported for work on Monday to build up the payday thirst and start the cycle all over again.

Oasis fascinated me. He was a Syrian man who always wore a suit coat and a soft gray Stetson. He kept his shirt buttoned up to the collar. His eyes were brown and sad with dark circles under them. A wart on his forehead was almost as prominent as the diamond that flashed on his finger. He smelled of incense and spoke with an accent out of the Middle East. When he talked in his soft way, I could picture him dealing cards on a Yukon steamer, or spilling dust from a moose-hide poke onto a scale.

In some barracks rooms, wild-eyed, sweating men talked to dice, shook them in their fists, and rattled them off the walls to decide the fate of their paychecks. There were the card games, draw poker and seven-card stud and Black Jack, that attracted players like night creatures to a beacon. They were consumed by a fever. They not only risked what they had, but even what they hadn’t earned yet.

Winning big drove them on. Winning was the smiling siren, always retreating from them. A winner one moment was beckoned to become a loser the next. The next pot was more important than the present gain. I wondered who finally pocketed most of the cash. Were professional gamblers shearing the sheep? I wasn’t about to find out. I didn’t have the kind of courage to throw away hours in minutes.

There was frontier-like recklessness in the air, a “don’t give a damn” attitude that surfaced in checkered woolen shirts, swagger, and bravado. Perhaps it could be traced to the special flavor emanating from the word Territory, as opposed to State. Men talked of going “Outside” or to the “South Forty-Eight.”

It was not only in the language. It was in the Northern Cross in the night sky, on the Big Dipper shoulder patches of the town police, and in the daylight which stretched far into the evening. I was caught up in it. As proud as I once felt of the Marines’ globe and anchor I’d worn, I now felt a similar pride in working to become an Alaskan.

I LEARNED I COULDN’T BE TOO trusting. I’d read too much about the trapper’s code and the unwritten laws of the North. You didn’t have to lock doors—that was only done in cities. Stealing was out of the question.

My first wash jarred me back to reality.

After scrubbing my clothes in the community sink (which I later discovered was also used as a urine can rinse, a mop bucket, a fish cleaner, and a king-sized ash tray), I hung my laundry on the lines in the drying room. When I returned to check it, I noticed that a set of lightweight long johns, a large thirsty towel, and two pairs of socks were missing. That wouldn’t happen again. Back in my room, I strung up a clothesline of my own. I bought a washtub, too. Evidently, cleanliness was a virtue some of the inhabitants enjoyed at the expense of someone else’s efforts. “It’s easy to be dirty,” my mother used to say, “but it’s work to keep clean.”

I didn’t lend any money, either. When I first arrived, I had some Traveler’s Cheques left. I played as broke to whoever approached me for a loan. If men wanted to blow their paychecks, then let them suffer for it. I didn’t intend to bail them out, nor did I expect them to come to my rescue either. I was going to steer my own ship. I certainly didn’t intend to go under because of the indiscretions of men I hardly knew.

The food in the cafeteria was plain, and there was plenty of it. I had the choice of sitting at a long counter off to one side of the serving line and ordering pretty much what I wanted, but the price reflected that luxury. I was working hard. Fancy food didn’t appeal that much to me. Quantity was more essential than quality. Anything hot was good. I listened to the old, familiar complaints that came loud and often: “All them cooks know about seasoning is salt and pepper, and they leave that up to you.” “That’d gag a maggot!” “That goddamn grease is pluggin’ up my drain.”

FOR ALL OF THE FISH TALES I’d heard in Harry Mae’s café, I limited myself to the role of a spectator. The bay resounded with the splashing of salmon. Sailors lined the ramps and piers casting hardware into the clear salt water that swirled and flashed with fish. I enjoyed the action, the frustration of tangled lines, the hopeless backlashes, and the sight of many salmon in the air at one time. As tempted as I was, I left my gear in the room. I wasn’t going to let the salt corrode the innards of my reels. Besides, it really wasn’t my kind of fishing. Crowds weren’t for me.

Fishing was a private affair, or something you shared with a companion who loved it as much as you did. A few of the streams we had crossed during the garbage run to the dump were more to my liking. They were worth more than a few hours after supper. A man could lose himself walking their banks toward the mountains where they began.

To make up for working Sunday, I had a day off in the middle of the week. That suited me just fine. At last, it was time to get out of here and wet a line on the Buskin River. I bought a frying pan at the commissary to go with the tea pail, tin plate, and enamel cup I had brought with me. I also picked up a few supplies that included a small piece of bacon, some bread, a package of tea, salt, flour, and cornmeal. The game pockets of my canvas coat bulged when I left the barracks with an unstrung fly rod swinging on the end of my arm.

Although it had rained during the night, passing vehicles swirled up a faint dust. The green slopes that rose to one side of me blushed with the blooms of fireweed. Now and then I followed the flight of a magpie that blurred black and white and iridescent out of the alders to float over a tall growth that displayed giant white umbrels like Queen Anne’s lace. I passed beneath tall cottonwoods that lathered the road edges with a froth of catkins. Through the quivering leaves, I saw the high peaks, and I could hear the salmon splashing before I came to the bridge.

I looked down into the clear water sweeping beneath me. The pool was restless with shapes and shadows and flashes that hurried over the rounded, flat stones of the bottom. Salmon arced in playful rolls. Everywhere the plunging and thrashing of them, the flirting of their tails, and the ringing slaps of their mingling sides. I was alone with them, thrilled.

I slid down the banking of loose shale. I strung the fly rod and tied on one of the Colorado spinners that Seattle chef Harry Mae had given me. My hands were shaking. The lure dropped with a tinkling into midstream, and I watched the tiny blade twirl into the throng. I felt it nudge one fish, then another. Suddenly the line hissed tight and sliced into the current. My reel screeched. Out he came, scattering the water white. I kept a steady pressure on him, following him along the bank as if he were a spirited dog on a long, fragile leash.

My heart raced as I worked him into the shallows and up on the stones. He gasped with a metallic glitter of gill covers. His upper jaw overhung his lower, and his back rose into a narrow-bladed hump. Viewed from above, his snout tapered like a shark’s. He was not quite as bright as the fish in the bay. Olive green, flecked with black, irregular ovals, shaded the upper half of his body, while through his midsection gleamed a silver and lavender streak to his spotted tail. The inside of the lower jaw and tongue were black. I had caught my first humpback, pink, or black-mouthed salmon. He would weigh perhaps five pounds, much more fish than I needed. I watched him revive in the shallows, then feebly wag back to where he had come from.

I caught several more. Their frenzied splashes mingled with my whoops of delight. The females were beautifully streamlined, smaller-headed, and reminded me of large rainbow trout. My wrist ached from the fish I had landed as well as those I had lost. Not all had struck the lure. Some had been accidentally snagged in the fin or the tail. I had been introduced to salmon. Now I wanted to meet the Dolly Vardens.

As I followed the curving of the creek bank, I noticed definite changes in the salmon. The farther I moved upstream, the more aged they became. They were losing their glitter. The males were developing hooked beaks and grotesque humps. Dorsal fins masting out of the current were margined with a white fungus.

I came to a small, abandoned bridge. My attention was drawn to what I thought was a phoebe or some other kind of flycatcher, flittering about and disappearing into the shadows of the girders. Suddenly this foolish bird dropped into the current, swam like a field mouse, and popped into full view once more atop a moss-covered rock. He bobbed as if doing calisthenics. His upright stub of a tail gave him the appearance of a large, gray wren. Fascinated, I watched him submerge and forage along the bottom. He surfaced powder dry, his bill full of wriggling things, and flew up beneath the bridge to silence the shrilling of the nestlings there.

“Son of a gun,” I muttered. “That’s got to be a water ouzel.”

Along the hillsides grew large-butted alders, their trunks sheathed in moss for several feet before giving way to a bleached, scaly growth sprinkled with reddish caps. These thickets were dappled in gloom. The hoarse yelps of ravens, the complaining gulls sliding their shadows over the black sand before me, and the thrashes of spawning salmon provided fitting background music for a dramatic entrance. I looked about apprehensively. It wasn’t hard to imagine a shaggy Kodiak shouldering out of the tangle and towering on his hind legs to look me over.

I stopped at a glassy run where many salmon hovered and flirted above their gravel territories. Holding positions below them were the barely visible, sleek, gray shapes … the Dolly Varden waiting for the eggs to flow.

I cast the small spinner and fly across the current, letting it swing downstream, twitching my rod tip to make the lure twinkle. A gluttonous flash … WHOP … that abrupt downward swipe of the tip and the telegraphing into my wrist of squirming life. The trout writhed on the surface like a bright grub doubling itself to get out of the light. He tumbled and thrashed until he ran out of water. I studied his fifteen-inch length and wished I had a camera. Although he resembled a brook trout, he was more slender, and his tail was slightly forked.

I had read that the name “Dolly Varden” came from either a pattern of cloth or a Charles Dickens character who wore brightly colored petticoats, but the present silvery sheen of the fish from a sojourn in the sea had all but erased his red spots and mottled shades of green.

“So you’re the salmon-egg pirate that used to have a bounty on your tail,” I mused. I released him and grinned at my reflection. “Really something … letting a fish go because he’s too big for the pan.”

I tied on a small, orange wet fly. This proved to be more selective, and I began taking trout in the nine- and ten-inch class. I could have filled a bushel basket. I kept three, dressed them out, and wiped them clean and dry with moss.

A pond-like offshoot of the stream glimmered an invitation to camp. There were trails mashed through the grass and slides down the banking and heaps of dung that gleamed with fish scales. Otter sign reminded me of my trapping days in the marshes back home, but I had never seen such a profusion of it. I startled a sheldrake family. A brood of ten surfboarded wildly in the hen’s wake. Aspen limbs gnawed clean of bark betrayed the shadowed tunnel of a bank beaver just beneath the surface.

A made-to-order spring issued a frosty trickle out of some stones. Here I half-filled my tea pail. Then I snapped some dead limbs from the spruce that grew out of the fireweed and lupines, and soon I had a fire crackling. The mosquitoes gathered and whined, so I slopped more repellent on my face, neck, and hands, and dribbled some of it all over my red felt timber cruiser’s hat. I cut a green stick for a crane, jabbed one end of it into the banking, and propped it with stones.

I hung my tea pail over the flames from the notch on its other end. When the water boiled, I swung the pail away from the fire, dropped in several pinches of tea, and let it steep. Next I cut my bacon piece into slices that soon made music in the pan set on the coals. In my plastic bag of flour and cornmeal mix, I shook the trout until they were coated. Then I laid the bacon slices on a shelf of moss to drain and crisp.

The trout dropped with sizzling sounds into the fat. When they were browned, I transferred them to the tin plate, draped the bacon over them, and fried up two slices of bread. I sat by my fire, cross-legged, munching pink-meated trout, bacon, and fried bread, sipping tea, and waving at mosquitoes.

I watched crowds of fingerlings pouncing on larvae that wriggled on the surface film. They moved in close, like curious children, peering up at me with big eyes. I broke up my extra bread slice and tossed in some pieces. The minnows scattered in panic, then regrouped to tear at the bits, punching them about until they disappeared. Salmon cruised in, some of them wagging into the beaver’s entrance and drifting out again. I watched an eagle perched on a cottonwood snag working on his feathers.

“Boy!” I muttered through a mouthful. “Perfect … just perfect.”

I wiped at some mosquitoes around my neck. “Almost, anyway.”

I cut a few green alder branches and tossed them on the coals to make a smudge. The acrid smoke smarted my eyes and drifted wherever I sat.

I scoured my gear in the black sand and rinsed it. As I doused my fire, a wind came up, blowing cool from the mountains, and did a better job on the mosquitoes than the repellent or the smoke.

I wandered upstream to where salmon were dead and dying. Gulls and ravens picked at the carcasses. I saw one eyeless salmon, his hump rotting away, still moving upstream. It must be true that gulls straddled them and picked out their eyes….

I felt I had walked through a generation. I had seen surging youth, savage courtship, the splashing, darting abandon of getting the job done, and finally death. It sobered me. Salmon returned to fresh water to die, but there was a purpose in their pilgrimage. They left precious seeds in their passing. There had to be a purpose in everything. What was mine?

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN I arrived back at the barracks.

“Where’s the fish?” greeted an old man sitting on the outside stairs and squinting at me.

“Still in the creek,” I grinned.

He wrung his hands slowly, looking down at them. There was a trembling about his chin. Strangely, he made me think of the eyeless salmon. “Wish I liked to fish and could get around more,” he said. “Then I could enjoy this country. It’s the spare time that kills me. Them damn days off. Wish I worked every day.”

Days off, I thought. I wish I had more of them. Where did the roads lead from the naval base? What was behind the wall of mountains? I wasn’t going to just sit and look at the scenery. I wasn’t going to see it from the roads either. The smell of the wood smoke in my canvas coat hinted of things to come. Kodiak was spread before me like a great banquet table.

Author’s journal, July 30, 1952

Guys who don’t like the outdoors have no business up in this country. To them, there is nothing to do. To me there is more to do than I seem to have time for.