If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name Part 4

Song, Lee, and Jesse were cold, exhausted, and numb with shock, and they'd never tried this before. The wind screamed, spray stung their eyes, and the waves were taller than their three-story house. The Coast Guard crew had taped some glow sticks to the supports and the cable holding the basket, so it would be visible in the darkness. Later, Song said they should have had one of those lighted signs, like in an airport or on a big scoreboard, telling them what to do.

Song went first, diving for the basket, which was sliding sideways down a wave like a runaway toboggan on a snowy hill. He grabbed it but was flung back into the sea as it whipped up. It was lowered again, and this time Song held on tight and pulled himself in, because his life depended on it. After watching Song struggle, Jesse knew Lee didn't have the strength left to make it to the helicopter on his own. So he swam to the basket with Lee, heaved him in and jumped on top, crossways, to keep him there. They spun up to safety together. The Coast Guard rescue team continued to look for Olen until their fuel ran low, then took the boys to the clinic in Yakutat.

WE DIDN'T KNOW all that when Kathy urged me over the phone, "Pray hard." I did, and then went in the kitchen to make cinnamon rolls to bring over to the Nashes. It was mostly men during the predawn hours because Becky was in Sweden, Olen's older sister, Yongee, was in Anchorage, and his little sister, Corrie, was on an exchange program in Australia. A fourth brother, Aaron, had stayed behind at the last minute with Olen's girlfriend, at the Nashes' sportfis.h.i.+ng lodge in Elfin Cove, where the Becca Dawn was based. It's hard to imagine a man with a wife and six children facing this without any immediate family near, but that's how it was. Women bearing ca.s.seroles and cookies would come later. Before Becky returned, they would clean the house and stock her cupboards.

The Nash home is rarely empty, and this night was no exception. Don's two hunting dogs slept on the couch, a cousin was staying in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and so was Jay, a guy who had hitched a ride with Don to the mainland from Elfin Cove. No one knew his last name or how long he planned to be there-but he was helpful, silently doing the dishes and taking out the trash as a steady stream of friends gathered around the woodstove in the kitchen.

Dwight, a friend of Don's who spends the better part of the year out on his own boat, the sister s.h.i.+p to the Becca Dawn, fis.h.i.+ng with his wife and two young sons, pinned a map to the wall and traced the trail of the emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB). When activated, the floating emergency beacon sends a radio signal up to a satellite and relays its coordinates to the Coast Guard. This was how they knew the Becca Dawn was in trouble, how they found the crew, and how they hoped to find Olen. The Coast Guard figured the boat would drift in the same direction that a survivor or lifeboat would. Dwight didn't say much. Like everyone in the room, he hoped for a miracle. The Coast Guard searched the fis.h.i.+ng grounds for two days, covering a thousand square miles, before they declared Olen lost at sea.

The next Sunday the bell in front of the Presbyterian church tolled twenty times, once for each year of Olen's life. Inside, slides projected on the wall showed baby Olen in his father's arms, Olen as a toddler on the boardwalk, and then all grown up-a handsome young man smiling in the rain, holding a tub of freshly filleted halibut. We all saw Olen s...o...b..arding in the mountains above town, and holding a wounded kestrel falcon he'd rescued and fed with ducks he shot down by the river. The last slide, of the Becca Dawn trolling poles out in front of the setting sun, broke any hearts that weren't already cracked. Sure, everyone knows fis.h.i.+ng is dangerous, and the perils of the Alaskan seas enormous, but a brave young fisherman is still a fine thing, a son any mother would be proud of.

After the church service, we walked through fresh snow to the fishermen's memorial, overlooking the boat harbor. Dr. Jones read a letter from the governor expressing his sympathy and praising Olen's courage. As he spoke, a crabber pulled into the harbor, gulls calling and diving in its wake. One of the wilder Nash cousins from Juneau walked out on the rocks. He turned his back on us and faced the sea, hitting a skin drum with his hand, in the same rhythm as heartbeats. It was too windy to light the candles Becky wanted us to hold, but we sang the Navy Hymn, a little wobbly at first, but clear and strong by the final verse:

Our brethen s.h.i.+eld in danger's hour;

From rock and tempest, fire and foe,

Protect them wheresoe'er they go;

Thus evermore shall rise to Thee,

Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Afterward the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall was packed for a community potluck. The food was like that at a wedding: the best fishermen could offer, crab and shrimp. Becky thanked everyone for coming and invited us up to the microphone to share memories of the youngest and quietest of her sons. As did many people, I looked away. It was just too hard.

But Becky wouldn't give up. She asked us to please celebrate Olen's life, not mourn his death. "Olen died in a minute," she said, "but he lived for twenty years." Kathy made the first move. She marched up next to Becky and told us how Olen used to rearrange her Christmas decorations. It took her two tries to finish her story, to tell us how she has blocks that spell NOEL and Becky's son always made them spell OLEN.

A neighbor talked about the time Olen jumped off the house with homemade wings. When he didn't fly, he and his brothers went to the cruise-s.h.i.+p dock, which at low tide stands some forty feet tall, and he flapped off the end. He landed in the water, but he always insisted that he could have flown, if the dock were just a little higher.

After the funeral, after Olen's room was cleaned, after his graduation picture was framed and put on the wall in the kitchen, Becky found solace in her quilting studio above Don's wood shop, patching colorful fabric together into a wall hanging. She worked by eye, sorting colors and snipping shapes. She didn't let anyone see what she was working on for a long time. The finished quilt is wall-hanging size. The sea is all rough-blue and green triangles pieced together like in a crazy quilt. The Becca Dawn, its familiar shape and colors, lies askew in the fabric waves, with a heart tethered to it. Then up in the stormy sky on one side of the quilt are a Coast Guard helicopter and three orange survival-suited figures being hauled on board. In the other half of the sky, the same size as the helicopter, are a couple of angels, serene and white, holding another survival-suited figure. In Becky's telling of this story, all the boys were rescued, three by the Coast Guard, one by the angels.

NOW, STANDING ON the porch, I watch my own littlest angel, my son, Christian, casting his lure out into the water, and I listen to the laughter of my brand-new fisherman daughters in the kitchen. Salmon swim up this river every year to make more salmon and then die. Right now I want to stop time, to keep my son small and my daughters safe. I want to change the inevitable end to all of our stories. I want go down to the sh.o.r.e and yell at those stupid fish, swimming so strongly to their deaths: "Turn around, don't do this-you'll all be rotting on the beach in a week." But I don't, because it wouldn't make any difference and because then there wouldn't be any more salmon, or any more fisherman, or any more angels watching over them.

Instead, after breakfast I'll help the girls take their fishy rain gear off the clothesline and throw it in the back of their captain's truck. Then they'll head out to the harbor again and to the boat that will take them out to sea. I'll tell them, and especially their skipper, to take good care of each other, and above all be safe. The girls will roll their eyes; after half a season deckhanding they're now old pros. But the young captain will look at me with all the gravity of a boy who is doing man's work and promise to take good care of my daughters and bring them home safely. Then he'll crack his boyish smile and say, "With any luck we'll all get rich." And I'll know by looking at him that he isn't afraid of the water at all.

Later, I'll look up the rest of the line from the fishermen's memorial-the one about going down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps. The whole verse is part of Psalm 107: "They that go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep."

DULY NOTED

Frank and Karen Wallace are back for the summer. Frank is working at John Schnabel's Porcupine gold mine. Karen is waiting tables at the Lighthouse Restaurant. This will be the seventh summer that the former mayor and his wife have returned to their hometown from their retirement home in Arizona. "The Alaska Highway gets better every year," Karen said.

More than one hundred people turned out for a taste of the Chilkat Valley's top potato salads and coleslaws in an Independence Day contest sponsored by the Elks Lodge. Marge Conzatti whipped up the winning coleslaw entry and Barbara Woods made the top potato salad. Each won a gift certificate for a steak dinner for two at the lodge.

Erwin Hertz and daughter Mary Hertz-Ake of Bend, Oregon, partic.i.p.ated in the twelfth annual Gold Rush Days in Juneau last weekend. Mary took first place in the spike-pounding and hand-mucking compet.i.tions in the mining division and was named best all-around female miner. In the logging compet.i.tion she took first in choker setting, log rolling, and hand bucking, second place in speed climbing, and was named "Babe of the Woods." Erwin competed in the spike-driving, hand-mucking, ax-throwing, and hand-bucking compet.i.tions.

Gretchen Folk finally went over the top this month, conquering Mount Ripinsky from the seven-mile saddle to elevation 3,920 across the north and south peaks of the mountain before descending into town. Gretchen trained for the arduous trek by hiking on Mount Riley daily.

Domestic G.o.ddesses

I AM NOT SURE my friend Gail and I would have gotten to know each other if we hadn't lived on the same road and if I wasn't in a new place, with a new baby. It was our first summer in Haines. Chip and I had rented an apartment up at Fort Seward from Ted and Mimi Gregg. Their daughter-in-law Gail lived two doors down and had a baby boy the same age as my first child, Eliza. We were both a little lonely. While the two babies played, we got to know each other. Gail's house was full of paintings in progress, wood carvings, and costumes. Her husband was an artist, and she was a seamstress. Both were active in Lynn Ca.n.a.l Community Players and starred in that summer's melodrama about the Gold Rush, l.u.s.t for Dust, two nights a week at the Chilkat Center for the Arts. Gail played a Klondike-era madam named Lotta LaRue, as she was "a lotta" woman. The script was full of puns.

Gail met all the cruise s.h.i.+ps dressed in Lotta's revealing cancan girl costume. She'd sewed her outfit from brown velvet, satin, and lace. She wore black fishnet stockings with spike heels. Her long black hair was wound up on top of her head, and her ample cleavage dusted with glittery powder. We made a funny pair-I am tall and a little stiff. My hair is short, and the only time I have had any cleavage at all was when I was pregnant or nursing babies.

Gail baked cheesecakes, fed dozens of people on her wide front porch, and taught me how to smoke the salmon Chip caught. We brined it overnight in Gail's downstairs bathtub, mixing water with brown sugar and salt until a raw egg floated, then slid in whole slabs of fish. In the morning, we pulled aside the wild-jungle-motif shower curtain, drained the tub, and Gail showered the slime off the fillets before laying them out to dry all over her big old house. We covered every flat surface with fish; some were draped on newspaper across the back of the couch. Gail hooked up electric fans to make the fillets dry quicker. She listened to George Strait and Randy Travis sing country-and-western tunes on the radio while the salmon smoked on her front porch in a row of Little Chief tin smokers borrowed from her neighboring relatives. We took turns dumping store-bought hickory chips into the hot plates in the bottom. When it was done Gail gave half of it away, served more to partying friends, and we froze the rest.

One night, a few summers later, Gail left Haines. She put her sewing machine in her Suburban and drove across the border into Canada with the new program director from the radio station, leaving her husband, two young sons, in-laws, a one-eyed cat named Precious, and big windows full of thriving houseplants. It could have been a country song. It was months before she called to say she was okay and living in Portland. She's still there. I had no idea she was so unhappy. I guess I just wasn't looking for signs of trouble. I know I wasn't the friend I should have been.

I STILL SPEND summer days and nights smoking fish, but with another friend now, in a much different setting. My neighbor Linnus and I share a smokehouse in my backyard that Linnus mostly built while I watched. She didn't need my help, but I like being with her, and figured I would provide moral support. Also, since Linnus never cooks, I fed her. Linnus and I usually brine our salmon together. In my kitchen, we cut the fillets in pint- and half-pint-jar-sized chunks and soak all of it in a mixture of water, kosher noniodized salt, and brown sugar in clean plastic pails. I like to doctor it up some, adding white wine and spices, but Linnus is a traditionalist. She isn't sure that adding anything extra is a good idea. We mix up a couple of different brines. Neither of us likes it too salty, so we don't let it soak more than a few hours. If the weather is cool and breezy, the salmon dries in the smokehouse, covered in cheesecloth until there's a s.h.i.+ny skin. It may take an afternoon or overnight. On hot days, we make room in our refrigerators.

Once the smoking begins, Linnus and I tend the fire almost every hour. We peel and saw up green alder branches for fuel. (The bark makes the smoke, and thus the fish, bitter.) We hang out around the smokehouse, sitting on upside-down five-gallon pails, talking about our husbands and children. Her younger daughter is in the Peace Corps in Mauritania. I know she worries about her, but usually she doesn't mention it. Now, because we have time, and because no one else is around, she does. "The life expectancy there is thirty-nine," she says. I'm forty; Linnus is ten years older. She is small and strong and moves like a boy. "Can you imagine?" she says. "We'd either be dead or very old there."

Linnus is a third-generation Alaskan, and she knows how to smoke fish. Our little operation is a model of efficiency and, because Linnus is an art teacher, aesthetically pleasing. The smokehouse sits next to the sh.o.r.e on the edge of a meadow of wild roses, fireweed, and bluebells. There's a board table on a stump, with a pail hanging underneath it that keeps our tools and matches dry. Light cedar-and-chicken-wire racks rest on finish nails so we can move them easily. In the base of the smokehouse, which is tall and thin, with a plank door and shed roof, there's a concrete slab with sh.e.l.ls in it. I made it with the children, using a cardboard box as a mold. On top of that is a legless round barbecue grill Linnus found at a garage sale. The lid keeps the flames from burning down the smokehouse and lets enough air reach the coals to keep them smoking. A carved salmon above the door was made by Gail's artist husband-the one she eventually left. Gail gave it to me on my first Christmas in Haines.

A WHILE BACK, I hosted a dinner for a group of benefactors of our new library. We didn't know they were coming to Haines until a friend traveling with them called her friend here on a cell phone from the corporate jet they were on, just before we heard it fly over. Chip had been fis.h.i.+ng, so we had plenty of sockeye. He uses a skiff with an outboard and a net about seventy-five feet long and four fathoms deep. Individual families are permitted to catch salmon this way, for personal use but not for sale. When you hear about "subsistence" issues in Alaska, this activity is part of what it means-our net is called a subsistence net. The greenhouse was full of tomatoes, and the brewery had fresh beer. I called a friend, who promised to make pies for dessert. Another said she could bake the bread. There were about thirty of us, so we ate with plates on our laps. One man didn't drink beer. He asked if I had any gin. I didn't but Linnus did, so we walked over to her house and she poured him a gla.s.s. When he indicated for her to fill it up, she suggested some ice, tonic, and lime. "No thanks," he said. "Gin will be fine." Linnus raised her eyebrows and I shrugged and we went back to the party.

Chip cooked the fish outside, but the rain kept the company indoors. One of the guests was the head of a large Native corporation in Anchorage. His was the only name I had recognized in the group. When he complimented me on the smoked salmon he was eating and asked where I'd gotten it, I told him I'd made it, and he asked to see my smokehouse. He stood in the rain and looked at it wistfully. He must be a millionaire now, and he has a fancy home that has been featured in several Alaska house publications, all logs and gla.s.s, overlooking Anchorage. He said he missed smoking fish the way he had done when he was a boy living in a rural village.

Village smokehouses are usually big enough to stand in and have barrel stoves on the outside that hold large pieces of alder or cottonwood. The pipe sends the smoke inside all day and night. Once the stove is going, it hardly needs tending. The larger operation still takes as long, but it smokes more fish with less work. I don't want a bigger smokehouse. Then I might not hear Linnus talk about Mauritania-they still have slaves there, she says, and it's 120 degrees. I tell Linnus about an obituary I just finished. The man had cancer and was in a lot of pain. His wife ended up telling me that she had let her nephew make her husband more comfortable with pot. They are a well-known Haines family, so she shared this with a stern "this is not for publication" warning. I get that a lot. At least half of what I learn writing an obituary is never published. I haven't told anyone this particular revelation, but I know Linnus will keep my confidence. The woman said her nephew made a bong-style pot pipe to blow the smoke into his uncle's lungs. "Did it work?" Linnus asks.

"Yeah," I say, "it did." It eased his pain and helped his appet.i.te. We agree to remember about the pot if we ever get that sick.

Linnus and I smoke this batch of salmon for a day and a half before preserving it. We don't get the sterilized jars in the canners until after ten. We're tired and smell like wood smoke and fish. Everyone else has gone to bed. Instead of talking, we sit on the couch in companionable silence, drinking cold beer and half-watching a video-Good Will Hunting-that makes us both laugh and cry, while checking on the three pressure cookers hissing gently on the stove.

It was after one by the time we had the jars cooling on dish towels on the counter. The midsummer sky was already starting to lighten again when Linnus left to get some sleep. I stood and stared at those perfect pints, all s.h.i.+ny gla.s.s, bra.s.s-colored tops, and deep-orange fish, amazed and thrilled that I could make anything this good. I tapped the lids to know they were sealed properly and felt like a pioneer, a good mother and provident wife. Every single time I smoke salmon I feel the same way-as if it's some kind of a miracle.

When Linnus, who was born to all this, not a convert like me, notices my fish-filled jars lined up proudly on an open shelf rather than tucked inside a dark cupboard, she shakes her head. This is all as easy for her as walking. For me, it is like learning to speak a foreign language.

NEXT TO MY salmon are jars of jam, made from berries I picked with friends. In the fall, when our summer ch.o.r.es are done and when Linnus goes back to teaching art and the kids are all in school, I get a feeling that is the same as being homesick. My mother was a teacher, and I think she hoped I would be a professional woman of some kind. Instead, I got married, drove to Alaska, and had a big family, which I take care of. I can salmon, make jam, bake bread, and raise hens. I am able to prepare dinner for thirty in a hurry and serve it in a way that makes it look like no trouble at all. While my mother had her morning coffee in the faculty room, I have mine with friends at Mountain Market. She spent the first day of school selecting textbooks. This year I spent the first day of school picking blueberries.

Our aim was to gather berries for pies, jam, syrup, smoothies, pancakes, scones, m.u.f.fins, and special cheesecake toppings. It takes an hour to drive out the winding logging roads up into the old clear-cuts on Suns.h.i.+ne Mountain. The berry patch looks a little like the one in the children's book Blueberries for Sal-all open, with stumps and bushes-except for the background. The panoramic view is full of snowcapped mountains and deep river valleys. The distant slopes are all green, brown, and white. There are no people, houses, or even cars as far as you can see or hear. We have gallon pails on strings around our necks or on belts attached to our waists, so that we can pick with both hands.

To let the bears know we're here, too, one of the gals sets a boom box blaring show tunes high on a central stump. It is something my old friend Gail would have done. (Linnus picks berries with sleigh bells jingling from her belt.)