LITMIR.BIZ

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mess hall, the net loft, the small clinic with a front porch painted white, to the heart of the cannery with the boat house and mechanical rooms. It was here where the rumble of the cannery generators grinded their wheels. It was here where all the fishermen stored their equipment and spent hours painting and repairing their boats before the season began.

      Anne Girl walked to the side of the boat house and began tapping the sheet-metal until one panel rattled louder than the others. She pulled the tin sheet from the wall, revealing a narrow, black hole, and grinned.

      “Kind of small. You fit through there?” John asked.

      “Used to. Had to hold my breath to get by the metal edges or they would cut deep.”

      “What did you do in there?”

      “Play. The cannery men always left good things to play with. Once they left tools, so I took them home.” A smiled spread on her face. “Do you want to play now?”

      John reached for Anne Girl’s waist. “When are you going to let me meet your mother?”

      Anne Girl pulled away and let go of the tin flap. She stared at him. Of all the things he could say to her now, he had to ask about her mother! But as he stood waiting for her answer, Anne Girl realized that she could neither lie nor tell the truth. She wanted to tell him that he would never meet her mom, that Marulia cringed every time Anne Girl mentioned his name, and that she asked out loud whether John could hunt or fish. “Is he good for anything?” Marulia wanted to know.

      “Maybe soon,” Anne Girl said, and she pulled at the flap again. She looked up into John’s eyes and felt the unexpected urge to pull him down on her so that his long, narrow figure would suffocate her loss. And when her body was mashed up against his, she would enter a space where the restlessness would finally subside. Where she could find quiet and breathe again. Anne Girl traced his waistline with her finger. “The net loft is warm year round. I know another way to get in there. But keep your arms close to you, so you don’t get cut. ”

      Afterwards, they lay side by side on top of stacked nets, exhausted and breathing hard. Anne Girl rolled over and smelled the mixture of fish and sweat. John’s hair was frosted with scales that glimmered in the darkness, and she picked them off one by one. “Frederik will wonder what you’ve been up to,” she said, and began to giggle. “Make sure you tell him that you were working hard.”

      Five

      My Girl, how did we get here? What the hell did I just do?

      Anne Girl agreed to marry John the following summer, only after her mother’s death, after she burned Marulia’s clothes in a great fire on the beach that made all the village women come down and watch. They circled the flames, telling spirit and ghost stories until the driftwood burned down to glowing chunks. It seemed as if every woman on the bluff—young and old—crawled out of their homes to join the fire on the beach. Anne Girl’s closest friend, Alicia, stood next to her and made sure that nothing of Marulia’s remained intact.

      When the bottles of booze began to be passed around, some of the women wanted to keep the flames high and made a move for the skiff, which lay on its side at the grassy edge. It still needed work to float again, but at least it was no longer suffocating under John’s double ender.

      “Not the skiff!” Anne Girl yelled. She positioned herself between the woman and the boat. “It’s all I got left.”

      “Com’on, it’s nothing but dry wood.”

      “Burn your own damn boat.” Anne Girl patted the bowed ribs. “This one’s still good—once my Norwegian learns how to wood work.”

      The women laughed and muttered among themselves that Anne Girl was probably drunk to think John would fix that heap of wood.

      Anne Girl could breathe easy standing on the shore with the women who had known her mother better than she did, but didn’t really know it would be alright until she saw a raven perched on the ridge of her mom’s roof with berries tucked in her beak. She then saw her mother fly toward Dillingham with a sleek black coat and wings clipped at the edges. Her largeness eased Anne Girl’s worries. Her mom was already eating good.

      Somehow word about John’s inability to pick a net or handle a tiller must have traveled to the cannery, because that summer he couldn’t find anyone interested in hiring him on. Often during low tides, he would go down to the docks and talk to fishermen who were waiting for the tide to change. The fishermen would laugh a little and become guarded as soon as they learned his name. “I see now,” they said, while grinning. “You’ve had a little experience with sailboats, huh? Whatever happened to it?”

      Sometimes Anne Girl joined John at the dock, hoping that maybe her presence would convince the thick-skinned fishermen that John was worth at least one high tide, maybe two if she could talk fast enough. Most of the time, she and John sat on the dock with their legs swinging over the side as they shared leftovers from the mess hall or smoked fish with the fishermen. It was a rough season, the fishermen said, when they saw Anne Girl. Or some would hint that John looked a little skinny to be pulling a sailboat. Once she almost convinced a stocky Norwegian to take John. “He is your cousin,” Anne Girl said. “Looks just like you only with thinner fingers.” The fisherman laughed as he crawled down the ladder to his boat. “Next tide, huh?”

      Anne Girl couldn’t tell, but perhaps the Norwegian felt sorry for them, because when he reached his boat he jumped over the bunched up cloth, rummaged through a wooden crate, and tossed a bottle to John. He nodded at them both before bending down to his net pile.

      “Ooh, good times,” John whispered, and held the tan bottle before them. “I haven’t had this brand in a long while.”

      Anne Girl took the bottle from John and saw that it was wine. She licked her lips slowly. “We aren’t sharing this with nobody,” she said. She stood up and brushed the wooden splinter from her slacks. “Maybe we should just come down here and beg for food. We’ll be like seagulls.”

      Yet without work, Anne Girl wondered how they were going to pay for the next food order that was to arrive on the barge. He insisted on certain foods from the barge, like cheeses and jellies, yet he didn’t seem to think about how much it cost. She smoked extra fish and gathered berries until the pads of her fingers felt sticky and hot. At least they would have fish, she figured. And when she returned home, she watched John haul water and gather driftwood, as if that’s all they needed to get through the winter. And he would stack the wood ever so neatly against the house, laying the sticks against one another in perfect order. It made her want to spit. She shook her head and wondered if she could teach him to shoot a caribou, or if she would have to do that herself.

      “Where you going?” he asked, when Anne Girl picked up her berry bucket as soon as he walked through the door.

      “Up past the bluff, the berries are ripe,” Anne Girl answered, and she continued putting on her boots. She wore a qaspeq that hung down to her knees. “Going berry picking with Alicia.”

      John stared at her mouth.

      Anne Girl looked up. “What?”

      “You picked yesterday. Why do we need this many berries all the time? For just the two of us?”

      “Ahh, you want to come?” Anne Girl smirked. She picked up her berry buckets and her naivaa cup, still grinning. She ran her tongue across her lips, teasing him.

      John bit his lower lip, but his face was beginning to redden. “I think you should sew.”

      “Sew? What does that have to do with berries? I don’t have enough berries. And we need a lot in the winter. You’ll crave them just like you itch for coffee.”

      “Why don’t you sew more? We could bring your furs to the trading post in Dillingham.”

      Anne Girl stared at him and rattled the buckets against her legs. She was thinking, placing his statement about the furs against his strong frame that was good for nothing but water and rotten wood. Once her mom had

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