The Alaskan Laundry by Brendan Jones

for the day. Hey,” he said, trying to catch her eye. “Hey, Molasses. You okay? You hanging in there?”
    She fit a screw into the drill. “I’m good. Thanks.”

9
    BUT SHE WASN’T.
    As the days contracted further, the sun barely clearing the mountains to the south, the island seemed to fold in on itself, caught in a bubble of October twilight. Her bones ached despite layering undershirts, thermals, and sweatshirts to keep out the damp. At the end of the day she wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and float, semiconscious, waiting for the sun to return. When the clouds finally did part, the sun was halfhearted, low-angled, slicing at the buildings, sparking raindrops that dangled from spruce tips.
    At odd moments a wave of sadness enveloped her, and she could hardly move. She remembered her mother’s casket being lowered into the ground in the plot overlooking the Schuylkill. Standing on the green felt, wanting desperately to sink into the earth with her.
    She often thought about Connor, sometimes blaming him for the wedge of his letter, at other times for sleeping with her when she was so open, so needy. But most often now there was just the steady beat of missing him, wanting to feel his warm breath on her neck.
    In the evenings after work she went to the docks and walked among the boats, listening to the now-familiar squeak of the buoy balls. Sailboats, fishing vessels, and skiffs crowded the stalls, bouncing in the swell. Men on the docks who before had given her quick, sidelong glances as she approached now acknowledged her with short nods.
    Newt had tried to explain to her the differences between the fishing boats—trollers with their folded poles, seiners with the elevated wheelhouses and broad decks, and longliners with the aluminum chute extending off the stern. But they all just looked like tough, tired horses in their stables.
    She liked catching snippets of conversation among the fishermen, who stood with their brown-booted feet propped up on the side of a boat, smoking cigarettes and speaking in low tones. A foreign language of drags and tides and fathoms. Or who dipped stiff-bristled brushes into buckets and scrubbed down the deck, or sent wheels of orange sparks into the water from grinders. The docks, limbs extending into the water off the central work float, were alive.
    As she walked she thought about how quickly the house on Wolf Street changed after her mother died. No longer the lingering smell of garlic and meat, the basil plant in the window, the electricity in the air when her mother laughed. Homesick? What home was there to be sick for?
    When the ache set in, she reminded herself that she was here, on this island, safe. Then the tugboat came to mind, dark-windowed, floating there at the end of the docks. Waiting.

10
    SHE ARRIVED AT the hatchery at 7:50 to set up the egg treatments, check the temperature of the water in the incubator trays, fill the magazine on Betsy. With care, she hung antibiotics, piercing plastic bags with a twist of the nozzle, taking note of the survival rate in the sliding trays, recording it in the speckled journal.
    Fritz had done an inspection of the warehouse, where she had labeled each compartment, grouped widths of wood together, and scrubbed the planked floor with degreaser. “You sure took your sweet time with it,” he grumbled, looking around. “And I guess now you’re the only one here who knows where anything is.”
    He was such a grim bastard. Newt flashed her a don’t-you-dare-open-your-mouth look. And she didn’t.
    She fed the fry, swept the cement floor of the workroom.
Be the first with a broom in your hand, the last with a beer
—this was written on the blackboard above Fritz’s desk. She had made a vow to follow the dictum.
    At night she went back to her efficiency apartment, closed her eyes, and tried to think of one thing she had done since first arriving on the island that was