Looking for Alaska (67 page)

After these hysterics Hobo gets all of us to sing Bob Dylan's “Knocking on Heaven's Door” and masterfully slows the place down. People slow-dance, including Rita and me. The bell goes off—it was actually rung by the owner. The whole place gets a free drink. To end the night, Hobo does “Hava Nagila.” Tonight Hobo had given an Israeli hitchhiker a ride into town and brought him along, and he jumped up and danced alone.

In many ways, this night with Hobo illustrates Alaska. Songs about mushers were sung by children in a bar, songs about cannery workers were sung by cannery workers with dreadlocks, songs about a Native shaman were sung by a native shaman; songs were sung by some of the most handsome guys in town wearing fake rotten teeth and tie-dyed Afros making fun of themselves. There was Bach and Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, “Mustang Sally” and songs about gold miners and the Alaska railroad. The federal government was trashed, the whole place yodeled. Hobo did some Hank Sr., some Johnny Cash, a song about a Spanish stallion, and my favorite, “Wild and Free.” I never knew there was so much of both left in the world until I got to Alaska. Thanks, Hobo.

20

XtraTuf

After spending her spring break in Deering, Rebekah was ready to take off on her own, create her own spot in a universe where people are the planets. She wanted to spend the summer in Alaska. A couple months ago, I'd gone to Kodiak Island, stayed with my friends Captain Jimmy and Joy Ng at the Coast Guard base there. I'd lectured a couple times at Kodiak College for Professor Leslie Fields. Leslie had mentioned something to me about trying to find someone to help her with her children and the house this summer out on their island. She and her husband, Duncan, a lawyer specializing in fishing issues, and his extended family are set-net salmon fishermen. I told her that Rebekah had worked with children, as a nanny and at a day-care center. I mentioned she had been to Deering for spring break; that kind of thing impresses Alaskans. I gave Leslie Rebekah's number in Tennessee. She called Rebekah, and they hit if off over the phone.

Now, today, I was driving her to Anchorage so she could catch her flight to Kodiak Island to spend the summer working for them. I hugged her, she hugged me, I told her I loved her, she told me she loved me, and we both knew that to be so. I remember thinking as I walked back to the car that being a parent is tough in so many ways; you never really want to leave your child but you must. Sometimes you must even encourage the leaving.

FROM REBEKAH

July 18: One thing has been accomplished thanks to my travels in Alaska: I have overcome my fatalistic fear of flying. I'm even at the point now where the smaller the plane, the better. The more creaks and grunts it makes, the better. Flying has now turned into an adventure. It certainly was adventurous when, sitting next to a cigar-smelling fat man, a sports fisherman up from Florida gator country, I flew over Kodiak Island in a small, old nine-passenger plane. The destination was Larsen Bay, a scarcely populated, much talked about cannery town in bush Alaska. From there, my southern-flying buddy was headed out to a remote lodge where he would spend his days catching some of the finest salmon in the world. I was headed to Harvester Island and the Fields family.

Riding in the plane, on this mellow northern July day, I could barely breathe. The things I saw, the majesty! Everything I could see was a brilliant green, and the waterfalls, there were so many. The rivers—oh, how they curved as if they were made for me. As we were forcing our way through the tumultuous, rocky air, I thought, this is it. This is the most beautiful place I've ever been. Yes, there's rain, as you might have heard, but it only adds to what this place is. There are mountains with snow, mountains without. Some are a fresh and water-fed green, a luscious, luscious green. Some are bare and a grayish brown, only with slanted rock. Some are hidden, some are small. And of course, there's the water, everywhere I look, surrounding me.

As I climbed out of the toy plane in Larsen Bay, I looked around trying to discern who Leslie or Duncan Fields might be. My dad had told me that Leslie was a petite woman with short dark hair and that she had an intense, dramatic look to her. Looking under one of the plane's wings, I found her, not far off my father's description. She was walking toward me in a long, red raincoat and she was wearing makeup, a surprise to me. I hadn't expected an Alaskan bush woman and mother of four to be wearing blush and lipstick, to look so pretty.

“Leslie?” I asked.

“Yes. Rebekah? I thought you would have darker hair.”

“Yeah, it's got some color on it.”

I liked her immediately. I turned to my bags, and together we carried them over to what looked like a broken-down, abandoned pickup truck. Except it couldn't be because there were kids in its bed and more climbing up. All of their eyes were on me, checking me out trying to see if their new nanny was cool, if I was the kind of nanny who would sneak chocolate to them when Mom and Dad weren't around. Duncan, Leslie's husband and the father of all these bush-eyed children, was looking through a large, blue dry-bag sorting out letters and packages, their mail.

“Rebekah, it's good to have you here.” That was all he said, but it was enough to make me feel welcome. In a sweet, gentle voice I introduced myself to the children.

Duncan and Leslie Fields on Uyak Bay.
P
HOTO BY
R
EBEKAH
J
ENKINS

“Hi. I'm Rebekah.” I looked toward the oldest-looking boy, who had blond hair and big, pleasing eyes. “What's your name?”

“Noah.”

Another, younger boy standing beside him said he was Elisha. He was little and cute and brown-haired.

I asked another child, “And your name?”

“I'm Naphtali.”

She was the oldest and the only girl, the queen with a capital Q. She had beautiful amber-green eyes and olive skin with long limbs and sandy blond hair.

I thought to myself, how am I ever going to be able to pronounce that name? I must think of something else to call her, or only talk to her so I didn't have to call her by name.

I looked into the remaining child's eyes. He'd stood there all the while behind the others and stared, sizing me up.

“And what's your name?”

He stared at me bashfully and in a quiet, almost voiceless sound said, “Isaac.”

So there we were, all together, in the back of this worn, golden-colored pickup headed for who knows where. We stopped only minutes down the gravel road and parked next to the strangest-looking vehicle I have ever seen, a yellow-and-black-tiger-striped, two-door whatever. I wondered what kind of place I was in. Out of the ol' pickup truck we all climbed. I was only following everyone else. I had no idea what was going on. Leslie appeared from the cab of the truck and spoke to me while unloading all-different-size bags and duct-taped boxes.

“We're not going straight to Harvester Island. There's this picnic every summer for all of us who fish out of Larsen Bay. So that's where we're headed, as soon as we get the skiff loaded up. We should be there several hours. It's a rain-or-shine kind of thing. Oh, do you have any other shoes?”

I was in flip-flops, which are definitely not the right kind of footwear for bush Alaska.

“I've got these!”

I fished around in my bag for my standard brown XtraTuf rain boots that Dad had bought me in Seward. Leslie watched me curiously, not knowing what I was looking for.

“Those will be perfect! They'll be great for fishing,” she said.

It sounded good to me. I was ready with my knee-high plastic boots, waiting to be shown what this fishing family's life was about. We loaded the aluminum skiff that was anchored down past the wooden sidewalk between the one store that the people of Larsen Bay have to shop in and the red-roofed buildings of the cannery.

I hadn't really noticed much due to all of the excitement in the fifteen minutes since my arrival. As we were walking over the rocks to the water and the anchored skiff and up onto the wooden boardwalk of Larsen Bay, I did begin to notice some things. A lot of young people my age were walking around in bright orange rain/fishing gear. Some were talking on the few pay phones. Some were sitting on the benches in front of the old buildings and windows of the Larsen Bay boardwalk. I assumed they were mostly college kids up for the summer to work. I assumed that they were somewhat like me—that, thanks to good fortune, they had ventured to the wilds of Alaska to find something.

And then there I was at the annual Larsen Bay picnic in the midst of real live fishermen and fisherwomen. Everywhere I turned were young men with beards. Otis Redding was playing on a small CD player. All the young men were congregated around it. It was still raining, but no one cared or even seemed to notice. Instead, everyone was standing in the food line clothed in bright orange and yellow or lime green, talking to fellow rough and tough fishing friends. Leslie and Duncan were who knows where. At first I immediately latched on to the kids, Naphtali especially. I asked her who these people were and what usually happened at this sort of gathering. She didn't have too many answers. She was more interested in playing with her friends and her cousin Rachel, who lived right across Uyak Bay on the mainland of Kodiak, about seven hundred or so yards from Harvester Island.

Eventually, I made myself talk to the men and women who were holding the babies, because babies are one thing I know. All the bearded, attractive, weathered, and wet young men were a different story. I've got no brave heart there. Nope, I stuck with the babies. I googled and goggled with them and more than occasionally snuck a glance in Otis's direction. Overall I liked being there, although I felt both at home and lost at sea in this crowded, colorful land of XtraTuf Alaskans.

Before I knew it, we were headed out the bay to their island where I would live. I put on some borrowed bright orange overalls and was thrown and bumped around by the waves and slapped by the wind, all the while feeling the hard raindrops freckle my traveling face. Harvester Island is a 380-acre island that rises up from the fin-whale-populated waters of Uyak Bay. It is covered with raspberries and simple meadow flowers (later I would come to pick them so that we could look at something pretty at mealtime). There are horses, one named Rocket, the other named Winddancer. They have been brought out for the summer so the Fields children can learn how to ride. Duncan had to ship the horses out to the island by boat. There are trees with eagles nesting, a white-planked house that sits a hundred upward yards from my new abode, the dock house that Leslie and Duncan built over twenty years ago when they first made Harvester their summer and fishing home. They are the only houses on the island.

One of the first books I read on Harvester Island was a small book of Leslie's poems. She is a writer like I want to be. I often sat on the dock and read her words.

MONDAYS ON THIS ISLAND

by Leslie Leyland Fields

Mondays on this island are like any other day or hour.

Choose the century.

It could all be the same scatter of gravel on the beach,

The same shatter of the sea into foam,

The hiss as it gathers for the next.

The summer sun is no clock

And the birds only hint at the seasons,

Their flights mostly circular,

Following the currents that move in giant spirals

Arcing from this shore into the gulf and back again, again,

Neither hot nor cold, only temperate, moderate,

The climate of any island, at any time.

I am told the grass here is brown in winter,

That the darkness settles like a bear against the sun,

The mountains sink white into sleep.

Summers they say are brilliant.

The mountains burn and always the sun, the sun.

I have not seen this.

Right across Uyak Bay, I can see boys, lots of bearded boys who look like they are straight off the cover of GQ. They are young and stout and from all across North America. They are the crew members. They work for the Fieldses and reside all summer on Bear Island, the ten-acre candy store of an island just two miles beyond my boatless reach.

And, oh, the family, the Fieldses, these people I have come to know so quickly. Right away they became family to me. I have come to serve them, to be their nanny/cook/maid/friend/daughter. I have come to learn this island kind of life.