Under Nushagak Bluff
a novel
Mia C. Heavener
Under Nushagak Bluff
Copyright © 2019 by Mia C. Heavener
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Book Design by Mark E. Cull
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heavener, Mia, 1978– author.
Title: Under Nushagak bluff : a novel / Mia Heavener.
Description: First edition. | [Pasadena, CA] : Boreal Books, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019024653 (print) | LCCN 2019024654 (ebook) | ISBN 9781597098090 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781597097970 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Yupik Eskimos—Alaska—Fiction. | Nushagak (Alaska)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.E28377 U53 2019 (print) | LCC PS3608.E28377 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024653
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Allergan Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.
First Edition
Published by Boreal Books
An imprint of Red Hen Press
For my parents, Nina and Bob Heavener and Ilona Karmel
One
The tide is still going out, so we may have a while on this sandbar. Not much we can do now but sit and wait, because there isn’t a fishing boat for miles. I don’t see one, do you? Well, don’t blame me. You’re the one who needed to get off shore, who wanted to run from the village. Now here we are—in the middle of the channel with our kicker prop run aground and our hull sucked to the silt. It’s not good to have your stern anchored, but you already knew that. Let’s worry about capsizing when the tide shifts. It will probably happen. I don’t mean to scare you, but it will. You know how it goes when waves hit you from both angles. And all it takes is that one rogue wave. Happened to a crew out in Kvichak Bay last year. Remember?
My girl, I’m sorry. I’ll start with that. One, for maybe cutting your life short. But if we get off this bar there will be a time when you’ll want to know your father. And you will look for him in the eyes of strangers and cannery men to see if they match your own. And you’ll ask and beg me to tell you where he is. You might even want to hit me. But I’ll have to tell you, I don’t know. The story that you are really searching for doesn’t sleep with me. Your story is different, one that could be told by the shape of the beach we just left. It is years before me. And it begins with a storm—one of those kind that everyone remembers.
Yet, few outside the Bristol Bay region in Alaska knew about this rare summer storm that gutted the beach of Nushagak Village during the height of the red salmon season. The rising tide could have washed away the dock and all the homes along the shore, and the reports in Anchorage would have still been about the new air navigation silo that recently opened in King Salmon. The Japanese and the Russians had been seen scouting out the islands farther down the chain, and territory lawmakers were anxious to announce Alaska as the first line of defense.
But all the talk of self-defense and the war coming to the territory matters little to our story. As you know, the war came and went, but on that day it was the storm that brought Anne Girl out of her house. Very few things caused Anne Girl to panic, especially a few droplets of rain. Not even the crossways wind made her shudder. But on that day, in that storm, Anne Girl felt a change coming her way. Perhaps it was the seagulls climbing and diving that made her think of her future. I know it’s hard to understand what I am getting at, but one day you will understand why I am telling you. You will want to know.
Coastal storms bring gifts. For Anne Girl, the sharp smell of salt and bloated salmon brought in from the storm would be forever linked to John Nelson’s stringy, yellow hair. Before she had even met him, she felt his arrival and blamed him for all the scattered driftwood, the knotted net, and her mother’s blunt tap on her shoulder, telling her that it was time to inspect their skiff.
Although downpours and floods were common in the bay, they rarely occurred in the summer when the coast was littered with double-enders and drift nets, when the fish were so thick you could walk across the bay on their dorsal fins. But when the swells curled into themselves and the sky rattled with lightning that only God could have sparked, all the fishermen in the bay, including Anne Girl and her mother, Marulia, pulled up their boats to wait it out.
Around the same time that Anne Girl and her mother were tying an anchor to their coiled net so that it wouldn’t float away, John Nelson grounded his sailboat several miles down the beach. Anne Girl felt the bottom hit and clutched her stomach as the boat skidded onto the gravel, grinding her abdomen into a knot. Her mother nudged her, and said that now wasn’t the time to rest. The water was rising.
Two days after, when the clouds parted and the mountains across the bay could be seen rising out of the silty green water, Anne Girl and Marulia returned to their skiff. Marulia could hardly wait until the whitecaps no longer frothed before gathering her boots and gloves. She poked Anne Girl with a bent finger that was stiff from years of sewing fur parkas. “We have to see if we still have a skiff left. The ghosts from the Aleut wars might have sailed off with it. Or maybe they drowned on the way. Better yet, huh.”
Anne Girl peered out the window and saw only grayness beyond the waving grasses. Although the beating wind had paused for the moment, the rain still raced towards them like shooting pebbles. There seemed to be a lot more weather coming with the promise of more wind. Even the gulls squawking above agreed with her, but Anne Girl wasn’t about to say anything. Her mother already had her gloves on and a hood wrapped around her face like a tight bonnet. She tapped her finger impatiently on the door frame as she waited for Anne Girl to get ready.
Outside, the air was damp with hints of an early winter—the fire-weeds were bent low and their tips had begun to seed. Anne Girl followed her mother down the grassy path toward the beach. The grass stalks were wet, and she felt the cold rise in little bumps on her legs, numbing her skin. But Marulia walked as if she didn’t notice, as if she were floating across the grasses to the beach.
Marulia’s home was exactly in the middle of the village, in the lower section