Almost the first thing that happens when I walk in the front door is, Betty offers me sourdough pancakes and sausage. In the entryway, the skin of a beaver that her grandson hunted is stretched over and tacked to a board. On the coat rack above it two hats are hanging, the sort of funny kind with the big ear flaps, that you’ve seen Abercrombie and Fitch try to imitate. They’re beautiful, really, shiny seal skin and some kind of sleek animal fur and Betty handmade them from the leftovers of other hunting trips. It’s hard to image that the beaver hide, stiff and rough like the back of a carpet, will wind up looking like one of these hats. The sourdough starter, she made from scratch over thirty years ago.
Henry isn’t there ~ “He wants to know if you’re okay with going out on the boat with him,” she says, “he’s fishing.” Immediately, what comes to mind is the one page “Native Lessons” handout the locals gave me to read before I boarded the plane. White man will talk to you before he will go fishing with you; a native will fish with you before he will talk to you. As a matter of fact, several sayings from the handout echo throughout my head for most of the day, like White man talks too much and It’s okay to be silent. “Sure,” I say.
When we get to the river, Henry is already pulled up and waiting at the shore. As I step onto the small boat, the wind wraps around me and tugs at my parka and my hair with a sort of an attitude ~ heiffy, I think ~ and a raindrop lands directly in my eye. So I’m squinting as I shake his hand.
Almost immediately, I realize that he’s not going to tell me any of the kinds of stories I met with him to hear, and that I’m not particularly interested in asking him to. “I hope you don’t mind that we’re fishing,” he says, “I didn’t want to waste time just talking to you. I wanted to get something done.”
“I’m just happy to be out on the water,” I say.
I am, even as the darker clouds move in closer and the rain starts to drive into our faces more aggressively. Thunder storms are rare in the village, but about two minutes after we anchor and cast the nets the clouds begin growling. “I just saw lightning behind you,” he says.
Henry trains his eyes on a fixed point further away and sings me songs in his language. And I learn good things, like Unalakleet means two things, the South part of the river or where the East wind blows and Ouyemick, his own last name is “when you look out at the edge of the mountains, and it’s a really hot day, and you see that sort of a haze that is Ouyemick.”
Every few minutes, in between summaries of village history and analyses of Bible stories, he’ll say “Cheramie ~ that is your name, Cheramie? Cheramie, I’m not doing too well with my fishing. If you’re cold, just tell me and I’ll take you back.”
And I am cold. The rain slicker that Betty lent me was draped over my legs for awhile, but I eventually had to pull it up over my shoulders and my head so that my jeans are beginning to soak through. The sleeves of my parka were already wet when I put the slicker over them and I can feel the damp against my wrists. My hair is completely saturated, and rain is sliding off my face like I just pulled my head out of the water. I am cold.
But there’s something incredibly cozy and restful out here on the boat, as if the cold is just a dream that I’m having, snuggled down into a warm bed early in the morning, telling myself that I’ll get up in just a few minutes. Somehow I don’t want to break the spell; I don’t want to go in.
And that’s an illogical simile at best, and I’ve no excuse for it. There’s a warm dry bed in your house in the morning, and then there’s me and Henry, rocking all alone in the boat in the rain, not catching any fish.
From QIL | Soldotna, AK | June 2009 | 24 years old
