Heartbroke Bay (9 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
An improvement in the weather allows the passengers to emerge into the brisk air on deck. At fifty-eight degrees north, the days of early winter are short, and the captain of the lumber boat finds good anchorage during the dark hours in small bights and bays along the way. By the harsh light of a gas pressure lantern shining through a galley porthole, Hannah sits sideways on the bulwark every evening, writing in blue ink on the pages of her diary:
Voyaging seems endless, dear diary. So many miles by ship, trains, and boats have passed since England. I never imagined the world to be so large and I have a great deal of leisure to make my entries here, for time and miles pass slowly “under our keel,” as the sailors say. Already the weather is less inclement as we make west toward the benign influence of the open sea, or so it has been explained to me. The captain spoke of a current that runs along this sea coast as far as the islands of Japan and brings with it warmer airs and waters from distant California. What a remarkable thought! I presume it is my English blood that contents me so to be aboard ships, which mode of transport I find particularly enriching in my current surrounds. Always there are beautiful peaks, cliffs, and islands as far as the eye can see in all directions along these waterways, which carry the most frightening names—Peril Straits, Murder Cove, and such. We have passed beyond the zone of icebergs and glaciers, which apparently approach the sea only from the fjords of the mainland. There are numerous whales and dolphins in these waters, and a crewman fishing a hand-line from the stern brought aboard a flatfish so immense that its delicate white flesh fed all aboard to bursting, and there remained yet half the carcass. Hans estimates the weight of the fish to be better than 200 pounds! There is something in this Alaska territory that makes one feel
rich
, for want of a better word, as if one has already struck gold or inevitably will, in spite of our troubles. Perhaps it is the sheer abundance of life—the whales, the great flocks of seabirds, the immense and copious fish—or the distances involved. Perhaps it is but a Romantic illusion inspired by the abundance of rugged and natural beauty, but I cannot help but be hopeful that my husband and I shall do well here.
On a wager, Harky pulls the anchor without assistance on the last morning before reaching Sitka, a task usually reserved for three crewmen. As Hannah and Hans watch, the Texan’s coat stretches tight across the muscles of his back and shoulders as he swings the dripping iron flukes aboard. When Hannah claps and hurrahs, an unreserved grin splits his face, exposing stubbed teeth, spaced like fence posts across shrunken gums, and she is taken by the innocence of his delight in pleasing her. Harky holds the anchor out to her by the stock, as if presenting her with a steel flower, and makes a small, embarrassed bow.
Sitka presents a fine contrast to the gangster-led riot of the gold rush in Skagway. Neatly painted vessels, lined two and three abreast, fill the small harbor; and the finely shaped onion dome of an Orthodox church, rising white above the town, reminds Hannah of paintings she has seen of trim Baltic ports. There is a bustle along the waterfront as the lumber ship comes alongside the quay, with mooring lines being thrown to waiting hands, but none of the threatening disorder that introduced their arrival at Skagway. Hannah breathes deeply, feeling a relaxation of the concerns that bind her. There is hope and reassurance in the orderly discharge of the ship. The stevedores and longshoremen are roughly polite, and there is little cursing or spitting.
The promise of ease proves true. A room is available in a hotel near the harbor, with a bed, sheets, and space for their goods in a storeroom off the back. Harky offers to lend a hand as a porter before going off to find his own lodging. When Hans questions the security of the unlocked storeroom, the hotel clerk, looking serious as an owl in a large bow tie and thick glasses, stammers that “thieving ain’t allowed in this hotel.”
After settling in, Hans insists on treating Harky to dinner and drinks as thanks for his intervention with the knife-wielding lunatic. A café nearby offers a dinner of venison, clams from a tide flat south of town, and peas grown in the loamy garden of a local family. The café’s flatware looks absurdly small in Harky’s paw, as he makes slow, clumsy attempts to imitate Hannah’s English style of holding her cutlery. Hans laughs and exaggerates the American style of attack, chewing and exclaiming simultaneously. Fearing he will starve, Hannah encourages Harky to abandon his attempt at decorum and resort to a more effective shoveling.
“I’m sure it requires efficient stoking to feed such a great boiler, Mr. Harky,” she says. She laughs and mimics him by spooning a mound of peas into her mouth.
The Texan gives a small, unwieldy smile, embarrassed at his clumsiness, and says, “Harky, ma’am. Just Harky. I’d ruther you don’t call me mister.”
He has found lodging in a jury-rigged bunkhouse, where after a season of processing salmon along the waterfront, the manager of a cannery has laid off the factory’s crew of Chinamen and foreigners and hired a bull-cook and housekeeper to convert the workers’ quarters into a hostel to accommodate the town’s swelling crowd of single men.
Hannah and Hans make love slowly that night, leery of squeaking springs and thin walls. For the first time since leaving Seattle, they sleep deeply and long.
FOUR
4 OCTOBER 1897
Our fortune has changed since arriving in Sitka. Thanks to Mr. Harky, Hans has found work as machinist in a mill sawing timber. My husband returns each night smelling of the pungent resin of spruce and cedar trees, and the wages paid are fine, too, enough to keep us in bed and board as well as contribute a bit to our “grubstake.” Now it is mine to find employment as well, and I search each day. Hans objects, but not strenuously, as it is apparent it will require the efforts of both of us to finance another try for the goldfields.This is a most pleasant settlement, with friendly inhabitants (Americans in general are more open to the inquiries and demands of strangers), and shows considerable influence of architecture and culture by its Russian founders. The Indians are greatly swayed by the advanced culture of whites, and many worship under the dominion of the Orthodox priests, who are much in evidence about the community in their long skirts and fierce beards.
After the snow and iron-hard winds of Skagway, the climate of Sitka feels soft. Day after day, rain drizzles in from the south, obliterating the view of the sea. In such weather, everything seems somehow more private, and as Hannah wanders the muddy streets inquiring after work, she notes the curtains of the settlement are often drawn. Newcomers to the rainforest community distinguish themselves by pulling hats and hoods low across their eyes and navigating by landmarks at their feet, chins bent to their chests, while locals have the ability to ignore the rain and raise their faces as Hannah passes.
As she walks, groups of idling men watch her with the intensity of those who have not touched anyone they love for many years. Among the population of Sitka there are twenty men for every woman, and a number are prostitutes. She finds occasional company among mothers and wives, but for the most part she is alone, surrounded by men. After being propositioned by a drunk, she becomes reluctant to move about unaccompanied, particularly along the waterfront, where there are saloons and sad, painted hussies who wear too much perfume.
The winter-bound miners gather around these painted women the way cattle gather at a salt lick, drawn by urges and cravings that must substitute for the faraway arms and homes of those they have left behind. At night, transformed by the magic of alcohol into objects of affection, the tarts cause inebriated men to fight over the attentions of women whose names they do not know. Others brawl from frustration, with the bitter worms of jealousy that crawl through their skulls whispering that they, the forgotten and the luckless, are “sucking hind teat,” while those already in the goldfields grow fabulously wealthy . . .
On the first of November, Hannah meets a Jewish shopkeeper who offers her employment. Uliah Witt is an elderly, bookish man, who came to Alaska with the intention of teaching music. He has little patience for the requirements of a merchant’s ledgers and inventories, but is good at selling dry goods directly to Sitka’s residents, all of whom had previously been accustomed to ordering from catalogs. He first sold his goods—wool shirts, heavy boots, tools, and cordage—from a tent erected on a platform of raw planks, but in an insight of genius, Uliah understood the rough Alaskans hungered as much for the fine things they had left behind as for practical metal and cloth. Business boomed when he began stocking and selling yard goods for window curtains, magazines and novels, sheet music, fine shoes, and furniture decorated with inlays and carvings. Soon he owned a large shed with shelves, which in time became a proper, painted store decorated with a false front, storerooms, a bay window peopled with mannequins, and a sign hanging from the eaves. His bookkeeping, however, remained a hodgepodge of scribblings on various tablets, unruly boxes of bills, and receipts pigeonholed into a rolltop desk. Instead of spending the time needed for proper accounting, Uliah Witt preferred teaching a handful of Indian children the intricacies of the violin.
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