Chapter 1
When Kay's mother lay dying of childbed fever she asked Sam to raise the baby Catholic and he agreed. But two hours later Sam shook his fist at the gray sky and yelled, "Up yours!"
Kay spent her first twelve years aboard a floating cannery, climbing in and out of every fisherman's boat up and down the Alaskan coast, learning to sweat with the best of them. Then one day old Sam caught a fisherman looking at her in a certain way.
Kay couldn't figure it out. Sam would never leave her alone. He would always be around and if he wasn't around, he would be following her everywhere!
And the way he kept looking at her! It didn't make sense to a twelve-year-old girl who had always been able to take care of herself.
Kay peeled off her oilskins and hung them inside the doorway. Sheddding sweaters and overalls, she was down to her ankles-to-chin underwear by the time she reached her room. She shucked off the thermal underwear and stepped into the shower.
At twelve, Kay had already reached her full height. She was a scrawny five and a half feet tall with long straight legs and matching hair that reached a pinched-in waist that would never get much thicker. On her chest two tiny bee-sting bumps promised to be interesting before long. Some of the fishermen found them interesting already, though she couldn't imagine why. To her, they seemed to be a painful nuisance.
She reveled in the feel of the hot, almost scalding water pouring over her shoulders, temporarily assuaging the ache in her tender young breasts. The water felt good between her thighs, too-where old Sam had explained that from now on she had to put up with cramps and wear a bandage between her legs as if she were some kind of an invalid. It didn't seem fair to her!
She wondered if there was anything fair about being a girl. Every time she wanted to take a leak, she had to spend fifteen minutes undressing. She had envied boys since she had seen Tommy Taskoosh take out his coffee-colored nozzle and blithely urinate over the side of his father's boat. She wondered why she couldn't be built like Indian boys. Maybe it was because she was white. Then she wondered if white boys were built the same way. She had seen old Sam let fly off the dock when he thought nobody was looking. His was bigger and whiter than little Tommy's, but there wasn't all that much difference.
She continued musing in the shower, enjoying the warm feel of water trickling between her thighs. She would have to start supper pretty soon. There was a full-length mirror on the other side of the bathroom door. Kay stood naked before it, trying to understand what was happening to her body. Are my little breast buds going to grow and grow until I droop like the squaws who work in the cannery? she wondered, and my hips are just beginning to round out. What will I look like in a dress?
The door opened and old Sam stumbled in. "For Christ's sake, put something on!" he growled. "You'll catch cold."
Kay began climbing into clean long underwear. Old Sam stared sadly, unbelievingly at the wispy dark-brown hair that was sprouting between her thighs. "This ain't no goddamn place to raise a girl," he finally said. "You've got to go outside."
Outside, for Kay, was a place where men spent the winter months getting drunk and getting the clap. "Why do I have to go?" she asked.
Sam scowled. "If I don't get you outa here soon, some goddamn gill-netter'll get you knocked up."
"What's knocked up?"
Sam sighed. "Goddamn cannery's broke down, and I have to to Anchorage and see why Veely hasn't come up with money for parts anyhow. I'll put you on a plane for Seattle and maybe the goddamn nuns can do something with you."
"But I don't want to go!" Kay wailed.
Old Sam's face was lined with despair. "Be lonesome here in the winter," he muttered.
And somehow Kay knew better than to argue.
In the convent she learned to love God. She also learned about sex. Since she learned, not from the sisters but from other girls in the convent, her information was not totally wrong. Only ninety-eight percent.
On her sixteenth birthday the Mother Superior called Kay into her bleak office. "I hope you've enjoyed your stay with us," the old woman said.
Kay didn't know how to answer. God wanted girls always to be truthful, but the truth had put Kay on her knees reciting Acts of Contrition so many times that she had learned a certain Jesuit flexibility in the art of veracity...." ticket's ready. Sister Mary will drive you to the airport at noon."
Kay woke up from her mental deliberations abruptly. "Noon! That's only an hour from now!"
"I know," the Mother Superior said. "Your father was very insistent that you come home this summer. I'm sorry you won't be able to go to Switzerland with the other girls."
Kay almost said, "I'm not." She caught herself and put on a properly sorrowful expression. Two hours later she was flying back to Alaska.
Old Sam was grayer and his granite-hard face had new wrinkles. The floating cannery seemed smaller and shabbier than she had remembered. But it was nice to be home. She scrounged about the company store and found some thermal underwear that was a reasonable fit over her slight sixteen-year-old body. She found some overalls and a flannel shirt. Then she put on a couple of old sweaters before she covered herself with oilskins. Ready for the day, she went out onto the dock just as the first boat was pulling in.
The fishermen were awed by the girl standing at the scales. "You Kay?" one finally asked.
"Yes."
"Goddamn! Did you ever grow up!"
Kay winced. She had heard that kind of talk all her life-until she went off to the convent. Now she knew it wasn't nice to talk that way. The fishermen continued staring. She wondered if she had forgotten to button something. They were undressing her, gawking as if they had never seen another woman. Probably they hadn't for three or four months, Kay realized.
Finally they began using one-tined pitchforks to toss sockeye salmon up toward Kay. One fish missed the bucket and splashed irretrievably into the chill gray water. "Goddamn it!" a man roared, "Why didn't you catch that?"
"Why can't you hit a hole as big as that bucket?" Kay retorted.
There was a moment's silence. Another fisherman started to say something, then changed his mind as he saw old Sam coming. Both fishermen suddenly became very busy.
"I'll take over," Sam said. "Go get some breakfast."
Kay nodded and trotted toward the far end of the floating cannery. Dock, cannery and living quarters heaved gently with the ocean swells. She had never noticed it before, but now she was aware of the motion. Coming on top of the odor of fish and diesel, it wasn't giving her much appetite for breakfast. She hoped coming home this summer hadn't been a mistake.
The grocery boat had been around that morning and she had splurged an extra five dollars for a head of lettuce and some tomatoes. She looked longingly at them but resisted temptation. The salad was for supper, when she and old Sam might find a few moments to sit down together. She scrambled an egg into the potatoes he had left in the skillet and poured coffee. And then she wondered. Old Sam ... Was it normal for a man his age to be so gray? Not just his hair. His skin too.
Tonight she would have to lead up to it somehow. She also had to see if there was anybody else she remembered from four years ago. Some of the old Tlingit women on the cannery line seemed familiar. She wondered about little Tommy Taskoosh whom she had once envied for having a handy brown nozzle that saved him the trouble of undressing every time he ... She almost said "took a piss" when four years of discipline muzzled her mouth.
Sipping coffee, she felt her underwear chafe her tender breasts. In the last six months they had suddenly started growing again. She wished the convent hadn't considered brassieres part of the Devil's work. A bra, she knew, would protect her sore nipples from the scratchy underwear. She felt a prickle of sweat, then she glanced irritably at the stove. She wondered if it was worth the trouble of taking off her clothes just for another shower.
She was unfastening the collar of her oilskins when she heard a boat whistle. To her amazement, Kay thought she recognized it. She stepped outside and saw old Sam pumping diesel oil into a gallon can.
"Goddamn Indian ain't got a brain in his head!" he growled. "Leaves his boat go to hell all winter, then when the fish come, he's always breaking down. One of these days he's going to disappear."
"George Taskoosh?"
"George's dead. That goddamn useless Tommy's running the boat now. Watch 'im," Sam added. "Goddamn lying sea lawyer!"
There was a sudden cessation of noise as the cannery machinery stopped. "Now what the goddamn hell?" Sam thrust the can at Kay. "Take that stupid bastard some fuel before he goes aground."
Kay took the can and got into the outboard. Tommy was drifting a mile down the inlet. From the trim, Kay figured he must have about half a load. She studied wind and tide. She got the skiff planning down the inlet.
Tommy looked down into the outboard and smiled. He was not at all like she remembered. He was a handsome young Indian now. Watching his toothy smile, Kay suspected he knew it. "Who're you?" he asked. "Old Sam add something new?" Then he hesitated and did an exaggerated double-take. "Jesus!" he exclaimed, "It's Kay. Goddamn! Take off some of them clothes and I bet there's a woman inside there!"
Kay felt awkward, out of place. She handed him the can of diesel oil.
"Come aboard," Tommy invited. Before she could refuse, he grabbed her hand and helped her over the rail. She gulped at the realization that he was helping her with one hand while he juggled the can of fuel with the other.
"What's wrong with your boat?" she asked.
"Come inside and you'll see."
Kay stepped past him, expecting the usual tangle of stinking blankets beside a raised floorboard. She stopped in surprise. The engine wasn't uncovered. Tommy's cabin was clean, blankets neatly stretched over his bunk. On the table a plastic rose nodded in an empty whiskey bottle. Beside it stood two empty glasses and a large bottle of champagne.
"What's going on?"
"Welcome to your engagement party."
Kay studied his brown face. Tommy was a handsome young Indian. After much ponderment Kay finally decided this was his offhand way of proposing marriage. "But you didn't even know I was here!" she protested.
Tommy grinned. "Old Sam's had a new picture of you on his desk every year. I been keepin' track."
"But how did you know I was here?"
Tommy gestured at the microphone in the pilothouse. "Radio's a great invention," he said. "But it's not much good for keeping secrets." He began peeling off his slicker.
Kay panicked. Tommy was blocking the doorway. "I've got to go." she gasped. "Old Sam'll be out here with a shotgun in a minute."
Tommy grinned and continued shedding his oilskins. "In what?" he asked. "Old Sam gonna swim?"
Kay suddenly felt faint. There were other boats around the cannery, but it would take time to dig one out and get it running. And old Sam was up to his neck in a breakdown. It might be hours before he remembered her.
She wondered what Tommy intended to do. The convent sisters had warned her about evil men, but they had obstinately refused to explain what evil men actually did.
Tommy had his oilskins off. He was unbuttoning his shirt.
"You'd better let me go," she said in a quavering voice, "I have work to do."
Tommy grinned and began removing his pants. Underneath he wore the same two-piece thermal underwear that everyone else wore. She wanted to get through the doorway and back to her outboard before he took any more clothing off. Nibbling at the back of her mind was the temptation to wait just a moment longer-to see what was inside his pants before she fled. Sudden shame welled up in her at how quickly she was forgetting the good sisters' teachings.
There would be awkward moments as he struggled to free his legs of pants and underwear but, braced in the doorway, he could grab her before she could get clear. Kay decided her best chance would be while he was peeling his undershirt off over his head. She waited, then she saw that he was waiting too.
Kay had a sudden inspiration. The sisters would never approve of it, but then, they never approved of anything. She smiled timidly, doing her best not to show how scared she was. When Tommy grinned back at her, she began removing her oilskins.