Journal Entry October 17 continued

Some Notes on Steve Hamilton

His boat tied up in Juneau on Stephen’s Passage just in front of where the cruise ships dock, down the gangway protected from the light rain. Arrive at 7:54 pm – long dark, the sulfur lights coloring everything purple.

There are two tugboats tied up, his the one on the right, made of wood. He greets me at the door. A thick man dressed in navy blue work pants and a stained green flannel, blue eyes, clear skin, flecks of dirt on his fingernails. He invites me in, and introduces me to his wife Cherry. She has a hunched back and thin legs.

“A short cherry tree,” he says. “A stump.”

He was 21 and she 16 when they married.

She offers me juice and serves it in a wine glass. A small dog fuzzy and white somehow not precious smells my shoes, which I remove, to Cherry’s admonishment.

“Oh the stuff that goes over these floors,” she says. But they are wood and quite beautiful and well-maintained. I am given a tall-backed dining room chair closest to the woodburning stove. A 25 Hp outboard, its cap removed, is propped up beside me.

He opens the door to the fireplace and pours in liquid from a metal container.

“Our fry oil,” he says. “Burns hot and long.”

Cherry brings me back my shoes.
“I feel bad,” she says. “The floor so cold…”

Steve takes a seat across from me.

“Anyways…”

Adak built in 1944, a Fairbanks-Morse direct-drive engine from the 1920s put into her.

In 1956 Tony Van Bussel renamed her “Pacific Chief.”

Steve bought it thereafter, then sold it to Paul, who ran her without oil.

Steve when he ran out of starts as he docked busted through Gig Harbor, Washington.

“Well, you got 200 tons at a hundred feet moving forward, that’s a lot of mass.”

He destroyed a few boats.

Steve said the back main seal leaks oil.

“You’ll need to run the engine out and bleed the injectors.”

Six pounds of oil pressure should be maintained.

“You’ve got seven starts before she dies.”

Cherry disappears and comes back with a photo album. A photo of the Adak under power with 52 deer hanging off the stern. Photo of the Adak cutting through the Narrows.

Fishemen take their boats upriver to kill the bugs in the freshwater. The wood gets pickled and the bugs jump ship, as it were. But they do like the new tropical hardwoods used to replace planking

Steve continues to give advice on operating the boat. Oil should hold at around six pounds. Make sure to pump it constantly. Open the sea chest for raw water. Fill the day tank and shut off the valve. Adjust the injectors as needed. The bilge motor is seized up – but it can be unseized and it’s worth doing so. He can’t recall if there is a shaft-break in the direct-reversible engine.

He suggests rigging a tarp beneath the boat to protect the sides of it  – this will kill the bugs and save the paint. Grime on the underside of the boat will drag it down, holding it back to four knots instead of eight. Steve looking for a place to rest his legs. Cherry pulls over a chair for him.

“His back’s about given out,” she explains.

A warm light here in the stern of this tugboat, which they had closed in, much as I imagine where the officers would eat in a Spanish galleon.

“I’ll come down to Sitka and give you a hand learning to run it,” he offers, looking out the window into the dark. “Take her out to the floating dock and just come in over and over, over and over…”

A kettle of hot water stays on the stove. Placed on the hotplate it comes to a boil in a couple seconds.

I get up to leave. Cherry tells Steve to stand up, walk him to the door. As I slip on my shoes Steve gives warning about the bear at the top of the ramp. I shake his hand.

“He shouldn’t be up there, otherwise I’d go with you.”

Juneau. Staring out the port side of Alaska Airlines Flight 72. Drops of water on the window. The inside of the neighboring plane visible, people moving about, or in their seats, staring straight forward, checking cell phones, or reading.

A golden light in the cabin I remember seeing once before, coming back from England, or maybe Switzerland, after getting routed through Montreal. Flying into New York, the lights of the cabin casting the most luscious glow on passengers.

The trajectory of the words in the journal moves upwards. Psychologists say this is a sign of optimism.

Part of me feels that a chapter of my life is closing, another beginning. I don’t really want to go back to Philadephia, truth-be-known. The deepest sadness at times felt in Sitka, the wet asphalt and hollow streetlights of town, the feeling that the winter cloudcover could break your back. But it is life lived.. Each one of us has a right to a story, a story of our own making.

I want B – to be part of the next chapter. I want to make that happen. Sometimes it feels like we’ve already lost hope, although I’m trying. I know we both have to try, we will need momentum if we go into something like this boat together. A leap of faith.

We pass over Western New Jersey, or who the hell knows where. Cornrows of butterscotch lights. Perfect circles of oil reservoirs. Opaque light of a sports stadium. Steam rises from the cooling tanks at the refineries. Unloaders, stacks of truck boxes. Like the opening scene of Bladerunner. What do they call it? Going off-planet?

I sometimes think back to when we first danced, writing to Justin “I just met the woman I will marry.” Then rewriting, just before sending, “I just met the woman who will change my life.” Sending that.