And She Was (8 page)

I loved coming home to my empty cabana at night after running that gauntlet of groping fishermen and cramming Little Liz into a cab half the nights. At least she hadn’t slapped me or shouted at me in Aleut again. My cabana was a sanctuary—at first. I’d check the heater, propane levels, turn off the generator, and revel in that fleeting feeling of self-sufficiency. But once all the tasks were done, the emptiness and the silence would begin their patient work. Like water that drip by drip hollows out a cave, the solitude eroded my pretense of adequacy. Reading helped. It gave me another mind to lose myself inside. I’d nestle in comforters while the wind skated over the roof, flick on my battery-powered book light, and listen to the voices on the page. I was smack in the middle of Stephen King’s
It,
which had just come out, but I kept putting it down and picking up the Aleutian book.

The Aleutians are the world’s longest archipelago, a thousand miles of volcanoes, pushing the detritus of two warring tectonic plates out from fissures in the crust, the final dumping ground for Pacific geological garbage. Two thousand years ago, at about the same time Vesuvius turned Pompeii into a treasure of relics, one of the world’s largest calderas, Okmok, just west of Unalaska, exploded, smothering the land in ash and lava. Eruptions upon eruptions, century upon century. And underneath these volcanoes, the earth quakes, giving birth to tsunamis. On April Fool’s Day in 1946, a 7.4 quake hit southwest of Unimak. A hundred-foot wave swept over the Scotch Cap lighthouse, killing five. The wave sped down the Pacific at more than five hundred miles an hour. In five hours it hit Hawaii, killing 159 people, then raced on to Chile, where thirteen hours later it struck, rebounded, and returned to hit the other side of Hawaii.

These are the seams of the world,
geologist Juergen Kienle wrote,
and it’s never going to calm down. That’s where things are happening.

The Aleuts didn’t want to come here. They were the last of three waves of migrations from Asia over Beringia at the end of the last big ice age. The interior Indians had already taken the best land; then the Eskimos took the coastal land. The Aleuts, when they finally made it across,
had no choice. They were pushed farther south, farther west, until they settled at this violent edge of the world nine thousand years ago.

At least that’s the popular theory. It’s the theory I believed at the time.

But they did okay. By five thousand years ago the Aleuts had developed a marine culture elegantly adapted to their environment. They were the finest small boatsmen in the world, exploiting one of the most desolate, unforgiving, beautiful, and biologically abundant places on earth. Then the Russians found them.

Within a hundred years, they were nearly extinct, suffering the longest and most brutal conquest history of any Alaskan people. I felt sorry for them as I read about what happened in those early years. The men who were lined up and shot just to see how many bodies a Russian bullet could penetrate. The young girls taken by a crew of Russians to an offshore island to pick berries and never seen again. The village women speared for sport. The men and women who watched their culture dying before them.

I climbed down from the loft to look at the prints Thad had hung. A Louis Choris 1816 drawing of Unalaska takes in a sweep of boiling sky, hinting at an infinite ocean beyond pinnacle mountains. A soft green horseshoe of land rings a pale gray ocean. From the grass rise the square boxes of the first Russian houses. Among them mound the soft lumps of Aleut homes, low and easily overlooked. In the foreground, a group of tiny Aleuts stand or lounge on what appears as manicured lawn.

I stepped to the left, to the second print, and read the caption. “Woman of Ounalashka. Drawn by John Webber, official artist for Capt. Cook’s Third Voyage on July 2, 1778.” She’s a young woman. Little round beads outline her left ear. Two tracks of dark tattoos curve from the lobe, across her cheeks to the flare of her nostrils. A pyramid of tattoos rises from her chin to her lower lip. And from the center of her nose hangs a loop of oblong beads. Her hair is cut blunt across her forehead and twisted at the back. I stared into her eyes. They peer slightly to her left through whatever lay before her. From her eyes, you’d believe she is worried, a little sad. Thirty-eight years passed between when she sat for this portrait and when another sketch artist drew a nearby village. And everything has changed. On her mouth plays something of a smile, something of a frown. It’s the expression of
a victim, measuring her actions, even the cast of her eyes, in hopes that she’ll survive. She’s lying down and pretending to enjoy it.

The wind scraped the branches of a salmonberry bush against the back window. I stared out at the roving brush shadows. When I turned back, I wasn’t so sure. I looked closer, blocking one feature then another. Something is off. Her lips don’t belong to her eyes.

An Aleut Mona Lisa. I stepped back, taking in the whole sketch again. My hand dropped suddenly when I realized I’m touching my own lips, tracing their expression.

We’re alone here, she and I, sharing a cabana, separated only by time. The men are gone—dead, fighting, fishing, fleeing. And we’re alone; we’re left to exist, victims of all the propane appliances and the solitude and the Russian brutes and a world undone.

JULY 16, 1986

I
fell to sleep in the loft with my cheek pressed against a picture of several Aleut kayaks approaching a Russian sailing ship. It must have been a couple hours before dawn, the darkest part of the night, when I awoke with a jolt of fear that shot to my toes. I heard the high, cracked ending of an eagle’s scream. And something else. Someone was pounding on the door. I flung myself down the ladder, grabbed an ax by the stove, and slid into the arctic entry, stepping over the perpetual oily spot by the generator.

“Who is it?”

A small voice carried through the planks, just barely. Enough to know it was a woman. I unlatched the door.

She was Aleut, nearly naked, and badly beaten.

I opened the door wide and led her to a kitchen chair. She sat down. The question-and-answer part of my brain backed off, leaving room for the basics like getting light, warmth, and tea made. I cranked the generator to get the lights on, turned up the heater, and started a pot of water on the stove.

Both of us were inhabiting that shut-down space, aware that it was temporary, that more would be coming, but that right now, certain steps had to be taken.

She wore only socks and pants. I pulled down a comforter from the loft, and she wrapped it around her shoulders. Her left eye had closed. A jagged rip tore across her cheekbone. Crisp blood ringed her nostrils. A doorknob-size bump pushed through the bangs on her forehead. She had bitten nearly through her lip. From the way she hunched, I guessed her solar plexus was bruised, and she cradled several fingers on her right hand as if they were broken.

I gave her a mug of tea, which she held in her left hand and sipped, wincing as the cup touched her lip. She drank in silence for several minutes.

“I’m your neighbor.” The woman stared into her tea. “Nick…Nicholas, my husband, just got back.”

It was one of those comments that tells it all. In those few words, a series of days and years revealed, a relationship sketched and understood. I wondered what I should do with her. Normally, I would have picked up the telephone and called someone more equipped. But, of course, there wasn’t a telephone or anyone more equipped nearby. She needed to get to the clinic, but I had no car. I tried to think of a way to get out of this. Then I realized a part of her story was missing. A vital part.

“Where is he now?”

She shrugged. “He was gone when I came to.”

A steel arrow sliced down my spine. I had been around these kind of men before. My former roommate Kathy had only been one in a succession of women I’d known who’d gone in for fists-of-fury men. I’ve never understood this dynamic in women, never wanted to understand it. It was enough to know that I was not susceptible. That I wasn’t weak. I did understand the dynamic for men a bit though. They were just feeling ineffectual, helpless, and therefore angry. And a hopeless, angry man is astoundingly predictable.

I picked up a flashlight, went to the front door, and slid the locking latch closed. I shone the light along the door frame. The lock screws were maybe a quarter-inch long; I could rip them out myself with a few good shoves. The interior door didn’t have a latch, let alone a lock.

She looked up at me as I came back in. Panic bounced between us. I turned to refill her tea in an effort to stop the cycle. I brought out a
bag of peas from the freezer for the swelling and dug out a long-sleeve T-shirt, sweater, and a pair of rubber boots that slipped off her feet if she didn’t keep them pressed to the floor. I pulled on a pair of jeans. The actions helped me stay in the false calm of emergency mode.

“I’m Brandy,” I said when we’d dressed.

She looked at me from under the peas. “Mary Sivtsov.”

The wind rattled the outer door. We both jumped.

“Will he look here?”

She shrugged.

“We should get you to the clinic.”

“I’m okay.”

“I think your fingers are broken.”

She tucked her swelling hand into her lap.

I peered out the window. “Which place is yours?”

“Right below you. I saw you the day you moved in.”

I looked through the window at her cabana, a dark outline on the hill below. Another jolt of fear shot to my toes. I jumped up and turned off the lights. I wanted to panic. Nothing is worse than knowing you can’t because somebody else is even less able to figure out what the hell to do than you. Not three minutes later I saw light brighten the window below us. He had probably been on the path when I’d turned off the lights. I had two options. I could kick Mary out of the house, leaving her to deal with him on her own, or I could try to get her on my bike and into town. The first option looked good—end of problem. But this time there was no Nan to pick up my slack; no choice that didn’t leave me culpable for the consequences. And something about having hauled propane tanks, started generators, and ridden a stubborn motorcycle conspired to make me feel more, well, surly and capable. I didn’t want to be such a pansy right then. She had come to my house. And we were alone.

“Shit,” I said. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

Another shrug. “I’m not going to the clinic.”

“I don’t give a fuck, but I’m not waiting for him to figure out where you went.”

I don’t like being depended upon. I don’t like helping people. Don’t confuse my actions with anything heroic. I was scared. Guys who hit their wives don’t like other women to interfere, and the distinction be
tween wife and interferer isn’t always clear to them. They’ll smack anyone who gets in the way. Besides, I couldn’t sit still with all this panic breaking loose in my body.

The path was straight enough to follow in the dark. Mary moved slow but kept coming. I wanted to run and fought to keep pace with her, consciously controlling my muscles. I thought about the bike as we walked. It was loud, and if it didn’t start quickly, Nicholas would have plenty of time. I talked to it by telepathy, trying to get to stage two at least before we reached it.

It didn’t work. I had to go through the entire process—the soft encouragement, the serious threats, the swearing, and the falling. A green truck was parked at the pullout. Mary sat down on a tuft of grass. I tried to swear quietly, but the machine would have none of it. When I saw a beam of light shining toward us from Mary’s place, I gave up.

“Mother-fuckin, ass-licking, crap-taking, slimy, sadist crap,” I screamed as I stomped on the starter, scraping my calf on something sharp and metal. The engine caught. I grabbed for the gas grip, missed, and lost my chance. The beam of light swung toward us. It was too far to illuminate, but it began to move.

“Shit!” I glanced at Mary. She was up and staring at the light. I nodded toward the truck. “Do you have keys?”

“Fucking bitch. I know that’s you.” The wind caught Nicholas’s voice and brought it directly at us. I glanced toward him. He was farther away than he seemed.

Mary shook her head.

“Shit!” I stomped on the starter again. It caught. I massaged the gas grip. A rough idle took hold. “Get on!”

Mary grimaced as she raised her leg to straddle the gas-abdomen and slide behind me. I had never attempted to ride with a passenger. I had no idea how it was done. Mary’s left hand clutched my shirt, and her right elbow crooked around my chest. Her damaged fingers couldn’t grip.

“Fucking bitch. I’m gonna kill you.”

I saw the flashlight bobbing wildly. He was running now, he’d be at the road in seconds.

I pulled the clutch tight to the handlebar, flicked the gear with my toes, and goosed the gas. It was too much. With the extra weight in back, I popped the front wheel. We both lurched forward to stay on just as a flashlight hit my shoulder. He’d made it within throwing distance, but not soon enough. I went faster than I ever had before—in the dark, with a passenger who couldn’t hold on, let alone cling. I expected to see headlights behind us any second, but he didn’t follow.

She wouldn’t let me take her to the clinic, which was dark and deserted anyway. We settled for her sister’s place. I parked the bike under an eave on the side of the house. It would be hard to see until the sun rose. Mary’s sister came to the door wearing a robe but wide awake. She took a look at Mary and yelled for someone inside. She guided Mary to a chair.

“I don’t know what got into him. He had a hard time fishing. They didn’t catch much. I think he forgot about getting the kids back. If it weren’t for those social workers, he wouldn’t be like this.” Mary’s barrage of explanation all pointed one way—toward excusing her man.

Her sister had heard it before. “You’re crazy. If you left him, you’d get the kids back. You know that.”

“The kids are his. They have no right…”

Mary’s words stopped. The oldest woman I have ever seen moved from the darkened back hall. She wore a flannel housecoat and beaded leather slippers. She walked with the gait of a tired bull rider. Her face was a puzzle of folded skin, too deep to be called wrinkles. She sat in a chair next to Mary and lifted the great burden of her lids to meet Mary’s eyes.

Mary crumpled. She fell onto her knees, her head finding the old woman’s lap. “I’m sorry,” she moaned between sobs. Hands, as gnarled and dry as driftwood, moved across Mary’s tangled hair, sweeping again and again. And then the old woman began to moan. A low, quiet moan I’d never heard before. It filled the small house with an ageless sadness, burdened the air with mourning.

I moved backward to the door, leaving them there. I could feel the rhythmic moan as I started my bike. The engine seemed to pulse with it, the air seemed to hold it. The sun was creeping up below the horizon, and I had no place to go where I wouldn’t be alone.

Except Bellie’s. Even the thought of sleeping on her couch with that horrid cage of flowers dangling over me was better than being alone tonight. Sure, I was a little worried about Nicholas, but he’d be more angry with Mary than with me, once he sobered up. I was more afraid of myself, of this sudden blunder of a rescue I’d actually accomplished. I needed someone who was chatty and had coke.