The Darkest Joy (5 page)

I watch the fjords run parallel to me as I drive, rising up like ice kissed by the palest blue as the ocean shimmers at its feet. My eyes move to the road, then unerringly they float back to the view. I note the nutmeg-colored sand of the Homer Spit bisecting the sea as the sandbar extends its finger into the ocean depths. Fathomless . . . secret.

A sea I’ll be fishing in soon.

I swallow over the sudden dryness in my mouth. It had all seemed so easy a few months ago when none of it was real yet, when one hand gripped the solid brass key that eventually would lead me to Aunt Milli’s Alaskan homestead and the other searched through the want ads for work. I remember exactly when I hit upon just the right wording, its vagueness and ambiguity calling to me:

Looking for adventurous, hardworking male/female, age 18–25 for seasonal employment. Must be adaptable
.

Murder forces one to adapt.
Check
.

I’d answered the ad and gotten the job. Chance Taylor had asked for my résumé via our email correspondence and I’d lied through my teeth—alarmingly easy to do without face or voice and only the click of the keyboard for accountability. All those
summers that Joey stayed with Aunt Milli and I’d come up with every excuse under the sun not to, has come full circle. I feel like I owe it to my family to do what they would have done . . . had they been here. And it cultivates my desire for forgetting superseding my morality in a clean one-two punch. Motivation and evasion are a deadly combination.

Did I have deckhand experience?
Why, yes. Did it count that I’d watched people fish in Puget Sound from my family’s back deck? Probably not.

Did I get seasick?
Hell if I knew.

Did I have problems working in close quarters with others?
I didn’t used to.

Could I use a gun? A bat?
I thought of my family’s murders. Odd questions that had caused a low thrill to unfurl like a sail upon a mast.

Yes
, I was pretty certain I was up for that.

Mr. Taylor didn’t sound too friendly, didn’t want my picture, didn’t ask why I was moving from Seattle to Homer. Hell, my only truth in the whole thing had been that I was female and twenty-one.

Well, almost twenty-one.

I smile as I cruise up the spit. It looks so small from the top of East End . . . but it takes almost six minutes to drive to the other end. I make a large loop at the gas tank farm, condos standing at its tip like an afterthought, blocking the view of the beach.

The sand of the beach isn’t brown
, I think as it appears from a distance . . . it’s charcoal-colored, like pebbled smoke on the ground. I park the bus and step out, the wind this far out on the spit snapping the color to life on my cheekbones.

I need a hat
, I think, remembering the one that Tucker wore
when I met him. I understand better now. A wool hat in May. I shake my head in wonder. Summer’s almost here but Alaska’s bitter hold on winter can still be felt everywhere, the icy tentacles of the season loath to let go just yet.

I walk to the only wedge of beach I can see, the state ferry slapping against the pilings driven into the ground that hold it tight against its moorings. I take in the brutal beauty of the place, and I feel like I’m truly at the end of the earth. I feel the pull of the tide against my body, calling to that fragment of soul that still cries for life, that despair can’t snuff out. It’s the only part of me that still wants to live. The rest is just pretending. I walk down the gentle slope of beach pebbles, held in rough swaths of finely ground sand that is a mixture of many different shades of gray. Every color in that elusive spectrum emerges in the beach that looks like stormy salt. The sky is blue overhead as the seagulls swirl around their position as stewards over the big ferry. A horn sounds and I glance at my cell . . . noon. My stomach rumbles and I sigh, not wanting to leave the bosom of anonymity that this small stretch of beach has given me. But I feel my list of supplies crinkling in my hand and I trudge back to the bus, reminded of why I drove into town in the first place. I’m pacing myself. One trip for household and one trip for fishing gear. Baby steps. The heavy burden of my guilt-tinged grief makes even minor chores feel insurmountable. I read it for the fifth time, my eyes scanning the unfamiliar garments:

Slicker plus bibs

Xtratufs

Carhartts

Wool hat
(I smile at this.)

I start the bus, the heat kicking on as I drive back down the spit to Kachemak Gear Shed, the local catchall of hardware and, I guess . . . fishing apparel.

I move through the doors. My eyes scan the interior where hanging dead animals line the walls. Their glass eyes follow me as I peruse shelves filled with gear for fishing and every other outdoor recreational activity I can imagine, and some that I can’t.

Hardy group, Alaskans
, I think. My hand runs over the folded stacks of bright orange plastic slickers, suspenders sold separately.

A guy around my age with wild hair and hip-hugging jeans walks up and gives me a quick head-to-toe. “Help ya?”

I nod, handing over my list and he looks at it. Then his eyes meet mine again, a friendly moss green, his errant shock of dark blond hair stuffed underneath a Monster Energy Drink cap parked backward atop his mane. “Deckhand?”

I nod. “Yes . . . How do you know?”

He smiles and chuckles. “It’s like the pat uniform for ’but fishing.”

“ ’
But
fishing?” I ask.

He glances over his shoulder with a critical eye, gauging my size even as he responds. “Halibut fishing . . .” he says with a raised brow, already deep into sizing me up. He stacks a set of bibs, size small . . . unisex, on top of a pair of the ugliest brown boots I’ve ever seen.

“Are those the . . .”

“Xtratufs? Yeah,” he replies, kicking up a foot, and I see he’s wearing a lovely pair himself.

“Do you fish?” I ask, confused as to why anyone would ever wear them. Voluntarily.

“Nah . . . but they’re great all-round footwear.”

I look at them again, unconvinced.

He gives a low chuckle and sticks out his hand, shifting my pile. “Evan.”

I smile. “Brooke.”

“You’re not from around here, are ya?”

I cast my eyes down, feeling sort of exposed. “No . . . Seattle.”

He gets a thoughtful look, palming his chin, his other arm holding my gear load. “Brooke from Outside . . .”

I laugh. “Outside?”

Evan smiles. “Yeah, people who aren’t from Alaska.” Then his eyes take in my Seattle mix of jeans with bling, so skinny they’re more like leggings, my almost black hair piled up in a messy bun on my head, and a slow grin spreads across his face. “How long have you been in Homer, Brooke?” Evan asks over his shoulder as he walks my gear to the cash register.

“About half a week,” I say.

His eyes sweep to mine then shift to the pile of purchases he thumbs through, mentally ticking things off my list. “Size six on the Tufs?” I look at the boot critically, then kick off my ballet flat and jam my foot into the sucking vinyl ugliness. I move my toes.

“Feels big,” I reply. Evan squats down, his face close to my feet and I blush. Awkward.

He presses his finger between my toe and the end of the boot.

A sudden swelling grief grips my throat and my chest tightens.

My mom used to do that
.

Evan stands, giving my boot-encased foot a contemplative stare. “Looks about right . . . With a wool sock it will feel snug but not tight . . .” He looks up and sees my face.

“What is it?” he asks sharply, his eyes scanning my face.

The pocket of grief rips open, the vulnerable stitching torn. This is the nature of grief. A small, seemingly insignificant comment or memory comes to the surface in an unguarded moment. You’re helpless against it. Like the tide, it washes over you and however much you cling to the rocks, the ocean breaks you down with its tireless cycle, until the bits of you are carried away on the current.

“Hey,” Evan says in a low voice, dumping the rest of my purchases onto the counter.

I can’t breathe
.

He sees it. “It’s okay, Brooke . . . whatever it is, it’s okay.” He grips my shoulders, staring into my eyes, and I notice his have flakes of brown like sprinkled sugar, swimming in the forest green of the irises.

I take a great swooping breath. Then another. He breathes with me like we’re in a Lamaze class or something.

I regain control then give a shaky laugh.

Evan releases my shoulders, his eyes searching mine. “Did I flip some kind of switch . . . trigger?”

My eyes snap to his. I silently nod. Then blurt out, “My mom used to”—I swallow—“measure my feet like that.”

She hadn’t done so since I was ten. It’s been a decade, but the memory had risen until it burst like a bubble seeking oxygen.

Evan smiles tentatively and his teeth are white; blond stubble covers the square jaw of his friendly face

“Listen . . . you’re new here,” he begins in a soft voice. Then his eyes move to my face, looking for some small reaction as my breathing settles back into an acceptable rhythm. “Why don’t you meet me and a few friends for a bonfire tonight?”

No relationships, no people
 . . . escape. But in my heart, I know these people don’t know me. I did escape. And Evan saw the sadness in me and he didn’t bolt. Nor did he push.

Points were stacking up in his favor.

“Okay,” I say after mulling it over briefly, and his face lights up. His hand sweeps through his curly blond hair, impossibly long lashes touching his eyebrows.

Evan rings up my purchases, then looks at my face and I blush a little at his scrutiny. He grins back, ignoring my discomfort or choosing to not notice. “Do you have wool socks?”

I nod. There were some universal things that I picked up before moving to Alaska.

He gives me the damage and my jaw drops. “It hurts, right?”

“Hell, yes,” I say with a laugh.

“Let me help you,” Evan says.

We troop out to the bus and Evan turns suddenly, my packages stacked in his long arms. He barks out a laugh. “Tucker, right?”

I stop, following his gaze as it moves over the bus. “Yeah,” I say slowly.

“Looks like his work.” Evan opens the hatchback to the bus and puts the packages into the back.

“Does everyone know everyone here?” I ask incredulously. No one knows anyone in Seattle.

Evan nods, slamming the back. “Yeah, population swells in summer for the wharf rats . . .” He gives me an apologetic look. “I mean, migrant workers.”

“Wharf rats,” I say, putting my hands on my hips.

“Not you!” he says, laughing as he backpedals. “I meant . . . y’know, people that live on the beach and work.”

“Like homeless people?” I ask, trying for clarity.

He scrubs his face, the skin warming slightly underneath his palm. “You don’t live at the beach, do ya?”

I let him sweat it. Then finally I let Evan off the hook. “I inherited my great-aunt’s place.”

Evan breathes out a sigh of relief. “Who?”

I tell him.

Evan snaps his fingers. “East End . . .” Then laughs. “The very end.” His brows rise to that curly hairline.

“Yeah.” I laugh.

We stand there awkwardly for a minute. Then Evan’s eyes flick to mine. “So . . . why don’t you meet us at the Dawg and we’ll go from there.”

I give him a blank look.

“Right,” he says, then shifts his weight. “The Salty Dawg Saloon?”

I think quickly. Then an image of a lighthouse pops up in my mind. “Is it that lighthouse building?”

He nods. “One of the oldest original buildings.”

“Rowdy?” I ask in a drawl, suddenly feeling the need to spend a night out, away from my dingy cabin, away from . . . myself. My self-imposed solitude. I recognize it’s a chance I’m willing to take.

“Definitely. We know how to party here in the Land of the Midnight Sun.”

“Does the sun never set?” I ask, slipping into the bus and closing the door. I crank the window open and he leans in, smelling like pine and soap. Clean.

I swallow uncomfortably at his nearness and he smiles. The concept of personal bubbles is clearly nonexistent up north.

“We get a twilight of sorts, but the sky just . . .” He pauses, his face turning to the brightness of the sky. It’s colored the vacant blue of spring, not the deep cerulean it’ll be when autumn comes calling.

He finishes his thought, “It just gets kinda dim.”

“The light?”

“The night.”

“I guess it’s tough on stargazing . . .”

“Nah, we have the aurora borealis.”

I’ve heard of it.

He slaps the window rim lightly with a palm. “So . . . seven at the Dawg?”

I nod, feeling simultaneously hopeful and desolate . . . my emotions wrapping me in a package of uncertainty. But that’s the tenor of my life these days—uncertain.

I put the bus in gear, my new fishing gear and a tentative date with an Alaskan stranger set for tonight.

Two days until fishing
.

I catch Evan’s eyes in my rearview mirror and he gives a single wave as I pull away.

It doesn’t stop my sadness, but affords a temporary abatement.

The guilt is always there.