The Big Both Ways (41 page)

“I must be in good standing.” Ellie slid her hand across the table. The dressings were crusted with black and smelled like rotten meat. A bloody smear pointed across the table at the man with the wire-rimmed glasses, who lit his cigarette and pushed back in his chair.

“I guess we’d have to ask Pierce, Conner, and Cobb about your standing.”

“Yeah, we could also ask Dave Kept.”

“True enough,” he said, and blew smoke down onto Ellie’s hand.

“There are Floodwater ops all over this town. Why haven’t they wrapped me up?”

“Ask them, Ellie.”

Ellie thought of her dream: dead people walking across the water, hundreds and thousands of them shoaling like fish. She rubbed her eyes, realizing that she hadn’t been really awake for a long, long time.

“Go ahead, ask them, Ellie.” The man with the glasses leaned across the table and blew a plume of smoke into her face.

“What do you want from me?” Ellie asked.

“We’ve got a favor to ask,” the man said. “You’ve got to make a speech.”

“Get me a doctor, will you?”

“Sure, Ellie. Just so you give a barn burner, something that gets them out of their chairs.”

“I can do that,” Ellie said, and she fell forward onto the card table, her eyes closed and the dressing on her left hand dripping blood onto the tips of her shoes.

Legions of the dead were walking up the river valleys, no one saying a word, each in lockstep with the other, each indistinguishable from the other. And their signs were blank.

Amos Tisher sat sulking in the wheelhouse of his father’s boat.

“I can make you come back with me, by God I can,” his father said.

“I got my own life,” the young man muttered.

Carl Tisher walked to the helm and started the engine. “You got everything you need?” He looked at Slip and Annabelle sitting at the chart table. “I wrapped up some jars of peaches for you. I put them in the dory.”

“That’s fine,” Slip said, and he stood up to take the last bit of Annabelle’s gear to the dory, which was tied off
The Shepherd
’s stern. The little girl carried the empty birdcage, which she had insisted on bringing into the wheelhouse. She still liked to fiddle with the silver bell hanging inside the cage.

Amos stood up and walked down to the forward berth.

“He’ll be all right. His time will come soon enough. Just not now. Not here,” Carl said to Slip, standing by the stern doorway. “Thank you for finding him.”

“That’s okay,” Slip said, nodding to the old man. “Thanks for the lift, and again I’m sorry about the lamb.”

“It all worked out.” Carl walked with him back to the stern and helped him and Annabelle into the dory.

As they pulled toward the wharf in Juneau, Annabelle watched
The Shepherd
pull anchor and motor away. She watched intently, one arm resting on top of the empty cage, not taking her eyes off the boat.

“What you looking at?” Slip asked.

“I’m waiting to see if Amos jumps off the boat.”

Slip shook his head as he stroked the oars. “No, I don’t think he has it in him.”

Slip looked at the girl in the stern. She was sitting in the spot where Ellie had sat. She was pointing toward where she wanted Slip to steer. She seemed older now. It was something in how she narrowed her eyes when looking forward. For the first time he could see just how much she looked like Ellie.

“I have something to tell you,” Slip said. The girl turned away from his voice and looked down into the water. A gull flew down beside the boat and plucked a silvery fish out of the sea.

“I don’t think we’re going to see Ellie no more,” Slip said. He took a long breath and started to say something more, but he couldn’t.

Annabelle picked up Buddy’s cage and dropped it into the water. She didn’t appear angry or impulsive. She just put it overboard. Slip stopped rowing and they both watched the cage drift down into the gloom until it disappeared completely.

“You don’t want that?” Slip asked.

“Don’t need it,” the girl said. “Where’s Ellie, then?”

“I don’t know. I guess some rough men in Ketchikan took her up into the woods and she killed them.”

“We better go find her,” Annabelle said, with the heft of certainty in her voice.

The Shepherd
was disappearing down the channel and two gulls wheeled above its stern. Whatever was in Slip’s heart to be hard against Ellie for his troubles, or against God for that matter, had dissolved into steam.

“We’ll find her then,” he said.

“Where are we going to sleep tonight?” she said, her eyes glittering with tears.

Sip stopped rowing and looked at the girl, her braids hanging down on her shoulders and her glasses tilted on the bridge of her nose. “I’ll think of something,” he said.

They found a rocky beach on the north side of the wharf and they pulled the dory above the high-tide mark. Slip lifted the girl out of the boat and sat her on a rock. He stowed their gear in the bottom of the boat and covered it as best he could with a tarp to keep it dry. Then he took her hand and they walked up the steep bank and into the woods.

They walked toward the sound of a truck and ended up going
down a steep ravine. Clouds moved past the sun and pools of light appeared on the forest floor, illuminating sometimes a single tree or the broad leaf of a devil’s club plant. Among old hemlock stumps fallen trees lay in a chaotic pattern. Soon they couldn’t hear a truck or the rumble of town. All they heard was the running water of a creek.

Soon they were disoriented and their bearing swirled around them so they couldn’t be sure where the boat or the beach was. They walked downhill until they met the creek and then followed the direction the water was flowing. They clambered down some steep pitches but soon enough they came to a footbridge. Just under the bridge a black bear was digging around the roots of some skunk cabbage plants, its red tongue curling around its teeth. It grunted and snuffled down the creek bed when it heard their footsteps on the rocks. They could look uphill and see houses with flagpoles and kids playing in the street.

“Let’s go back in the woods,” Annabelle said.

“Come on, don’t you want to get something to eat downtown?”

“No,” she said. “Let’s just go back into the woods.” Her jaw was quivering again and she began to cry.

They walked back into the woods and sat down on a dry log near the stream. They sat there until the sun moved down toward the mountains across the channel and the sky opened up with rain.

The rain was soaking through their clothes when he talked her into walking out of the woods. At first he tried holding her hand but she tugged away so he let her go. He walked a few paces ahead of her and she lagged behind, trudging down the wooden steps of the steep trails into town.

Slip went into the new union hiring hall. It was crowded with men nervously standing around. They shifted from foot to foot as they waited, without looking anyone in the eye. A man with a broken arm sitting behind a desk gave Slip an application form
and asked him if he could read. Slip nodded and walked out the door. He turned the corner where he had left the girl, and there was Annabelle talking to two men in dark suits. One was a young man showing the girl a badge.

“Mr. Wilson,” George Hanson said, and reached out to shake the logger’s hand. “I was just telling the girl how sorry I was to hear that her bird flew off.” Then he knelt down so that his eyes were at Annabelle’s level and he spoke to her as he would to an adult. “I’m going to ask Officer Tillman here to take you over to the drugstore fountain for some ice cream. Would that be all right with you?”

“I don’t want ice cream,” she said solemnly.

“What would you like?” George knelt close to her.

“Hot chocolate,” she said, and then added, “if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.” George stood up and gestured to Tillman to take the girl.

“Will Slip come too?” the girl asked.

“Yes. After we have a talk, we’ll both come in for a cup.”

“I don’t have money,” the girl said.

“Officer Tillman will pay for it,” George said firmly, then nodded once again to the young policeman.

The girl walked around the corner with Walter Tillman. He put his hand out for her to take but she jammed her hands into her pants pockets. Slip watched her until she was around the corner and out of sight.

“Ellie Hobbes says you killed Ben Avery. What about it, Slip?”

Slip felt something collapse inside himself. He was tired and wanted to lie down.

“You have Ellie?” he asked the man in the blue suit.

“Ellie’s here in Juneau. She’s working for Floodwater. Did you know that?”

“Like fun she is.”

“No. It’s true, Slip.”

“They almost killed us at the hobo jungle,” Slip’s voice had gone up an octave.

“I didn’t say they were good people to work for,” George said without a smile.

Slip fell back against the wall of the Union Hall and rubbed his eyes as if he were trying to shake off a particularly disturbing hallucination. “Are you going to arrest me now?”

“I don’t think so. You’ve got no place to go. You’re not going to get back in that skiff and take off with the girl. Where would you go?”

“All I wanted was to buy a little place and raise a cow or two,” Slip said, still rubbing his eyes and starting to slide down the wall. George stepped over and held him up by the elbow.

“That’s not a bad thing to want.” George helped him to his feet.

“You think there’s any chance it could still happen?” His voice sounded thin to his own ears.

“Not if you’re hanged for killing a Floodwater op in Seattle.” George’s voice was growing harder.

“Why don’t you just arrest me?” Slip blustered.

“Because I don’t see why you would kill Ben Avery.”

“You ever meet him?” Slip’s eyes glazed with the effects of a bad memory.

“Yeah, and I’m not saying he wasn’t worth killing. I’m just saying that between the two of you, Ellie had the motive.”

“You say Ellie was working for Floodwater?”

“She was trying to beat them at their own game. She lost, but I guess that’s pretty obvious now. She’ll sell you out, Slip. You can come with me now and it’ll be her in jail and you can start finding that piece of land.”

A breeze blew some damp grit down the street, flopping the pages of a discarded newspaper over and over like a dying fish.

“I want you to think about it overnight.” George stood close to him and nudged Slip’s chest with his index finger. “Think about
how Ben died … exactly how he died. Then tomorrow I’m going to ask you what happened. You understand me?”

Slip nodded. He was too tired to run. His legs felt rubbery and his hands were shaking. George dug into his pocket and took some cash out of his billfold.

“There’s a place up the hill. The lady rents out rooms. It’s a nice spot and she’ll look after the girl. Get her off the street, Slip. You may be the only family she’s got.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tomorrow Ellie is going to break the strike deadlock. She’s going to lead the scabs up the hill.”

“What’s that to me?” Slip asked.

“I thought maybe you’d want to talk to her one more time before I came to lock you up.” Then George slapped Slip on the shoulder and turned him toward the corner. “Let’s get some hot cocoa.”

As they turned, two men shouldered past them on the sidewalk. One of the men was a thin man with steel-rimmed glasses and the other was Tom Delaney. The tall Floodwater chief didn’t acknowledge George as the front of his coat brushed up against the policeman’s chest. Delaney put his hand out to fend off the policeman, and as he did his tight Masonic ring glinted in the sunlight. Slip turned around and watched the men’s backs as they walked away.

“You know him?” George asked.

“The tall man. I saw him down in Washington before I got in the dory.”

“Where’d you see him, Mr. Wilson?” George asked.

“We made a stop.”

“You and Ellie?”

“That’s right.” Slippery was stopped now, staring at the shoulders of the tall man lumbering up the hill.

“At a farmhouse near Everett and that man was there?” George stood close, his voice excited now.

“The tall one with the big ring. He was there. He took some papers from her.” Slip said softly, digging into his memory.

“That’s good, Mr. Wilson. Let me buy you something hot to drink,” George said, and he slapped him once more on the back.

Slip didn’t accept the policeman’s generosity. He waited for the girl to come outside, and then he left the cops standing on the corner without saying good-bye. Annabelle started to thank the policemen but Slip took her hand and walked away before she could get the words out. They walked through town and over to the dory, which was still tied to the stump where they had left it. The little boat seemed as patient as an old horse standing in her stall. Slip thought of getting in and pushing away from the beach. He thought of rowing down the channel and putting the sail up for whatever wind would push them the farthest. He looked down the channel where the wind riffled on the surface. The tide was fair for them and there was enough daylight to get well away before all hell broke loose tomorrow.