Thompsen’s Bay

by Rosemary McGuire

Jay and I dated for a few weeks back in high school. I remember one day we skipped class together and drove out the highway to the junkyard, looking for parts for his truck. It was early spring. Dandelions were just starting to bloom, bright yellow against the brown margins of the road. Ten miles out of town, we turned left and bumped over washed-out gravel roads, the secret back entrance to the junkyard. As we got out of the truck, we heard gunfire.

“Hey, guys, don’t shoot, it’s us,” Jay called. Eight or ten kids from junior high appeared on the crest of the hill, each carrying a .22. They’d been target practicing on tin cans. When they recognized us, they ran downhill, shouting hello.

“Watch out, guys, there’s shit everywhere. Septic overflowed!”

“How’n the hell’d’ya find us?”

“Looking for parts?”

They walked with us around the hill to the dump. Scores of crushed vehicles were piled into teetering heaps, some flattened like tin foil, others still almost whole. Fanning out, the boys scrambled over the piles, smashing glass, kicking in doors, throwing rocks. One kid picked up a length of pipe and started banging on a hood. I climbed on top of a stack of crushed cars and picked my way over abandoned ATCO units, their tops lacy with rust.

Off to one side, Jay moved alone among the broken vehicles, looking for usable parts. He lifted hoods, peered inside. Reached to touch where he could not see, feeling with his long fingers for residues of oil or hidden wear.

“Let me know if you see any Ford pickups, Anna Rose,” he called. For a moment, his voice hung in the air, perfectly happy.

When I was 30, I came back to Thompsen’s Bay to work as a secretary at the high school, because my last job—and the one before that—hadn’t worked out. On my first day home, I walked down the harbor road, looking at all that had happened in the twelve years I’d been gone. The hills across from town had been logged off, and the fishing boats were shabbier than ever. I’d heard that fishing was dying off, maybe because of the logging, or maybe the logging had happened because the fishing was already bad and people were going broke.

Then Jay pulled up behind me, leaned out the window-less window of his junker truck, and said hi.

“Anna Rose. We never thought you’d come back.” His face was vividly mobile, just as I remembered it, but I could see the puffiness under his eyes, and his hair looked dirty. It was a long time since high school.

“It’s only for the winter,” I said. “I needed a job, and the high school would hire me. How’ve you been, Jay?”

“O.K. Just been living here in the Bay. I tried college up in Fairbanks for a while, but...”
I nodded, unsurprised.

“I’ve been doing some work for Billy Evans, on the Christmas Star,” Jay went on. “You need a ride anywhere?”

I shook my head. He shifted gears and drifted off down the road, calling, “Welcome back, sucker,” over his shoulder.

When Jay drank, he’d go down to the Alaskan Hotel & Bar and ask people to buy his truck. It was a ’77 Ford given to him by his skipper the last year that fishing was any good. The price Jay asked was a beer. “It was given to me,” he would say, “but it sure as hell wasn’t free. Know what F-O-R-D stands for? Fucking Owner’s Really Dumb. So…you wanna buy a truck?”
No one ever took him up on his offer. I think he would have been furious if they had. The fact that that truck still ran was one of the proudest things in his life, a visible symbol that he could do something right.

The night before school started, Jay came by about 9:30 and asked if I would come for a walk with him.

“I’ll go for a short one,” I said, surprised. We hadn’t seen each other since the first day I was back. We walked down the hill onto Main Street.

“What’s up?”

“It’s all changing so fast,” Jay said. “Summer houses going up. Whole islands logged off.” He shrugged. “It seems like I just can’t bear it. You’ve got your degree and stuff, but for me it’s always just been Thompsen’s Bay.”

We were passing under the bank clock, its numbers shiny through a thin mist of rain. 10:00. As I watched, they changed with an audible clunk. 10:01. “I should go home,” I said. “First day of class in the morning.”

“Sure? I thought maybe we could go somewhere and just talk.” He showed me a bottle of wine under his jacket.

“Some other time.” I didn’t like the look in his eyes. It was too desperate, and, after all, I hardly knew him now. We walked back up Front Street. I said good night outside the Fisherman’s Camp.

“Good night, Anna Rose.” The motion-sensor light came on as he walked off down the sidewalk, catching him as though he were on stage. The shoulders of his coat were hunched and dark with rain.

When I heard about Jay three days later, I was standing in line at the bank.

“Too bad about that Allen kid,” the teller said to the woman she was helping.

“What happened?” The woman looked up. She had a bad leg and was trying to balance her cane against the teller’s window.

“You didn’t hear? Ran his truck off the ferry dock. They found him this morning—those low tides we’ve been having. Been there a couple of days, anyway. Firefighters got him out. They said it was horrible. Crabs musta got him.”

“Inside the truck?”

“Window was busted out. He musta been pretty drunk not to have gotten out. But he was always a drinker.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “I tell my boys if they drink and drive I won’t wait for them to kill themselves, I’ll kill them myself.”

The teller looked up and saw me watching. “Sorry,” she said. “I just get caught up. Jay was like a son to me once. He and my son were best friends in third grade. It’s terrible what happens to kids around here.”

“Yes.” The woman snapped her purse shut and began to move off. “I’ll keep him in my prayers.”
“You do that. I’ll see you, Edie.”

I moved up to the window and completed my transaction.

Rosemary McGuire is a commercial fisherman in Cordova, AK. This is her first fiction in print. E-mail: rosemarymcguire@alaska.net