Part 12 (1/2)
”I didnt know her outside of the book club, but what I saw I liked a great deal.
Betsy smiled. ”Were getting that a lot.
The Tompkinses had always been a clannish bunch, not given to a.s.sociating much with outsiders, but Bill had been a member of Lydias book club, the Literary Ladies. It had been a going concern for almost thirteen years, and theyd stuck together through births, deaths, marriages and divorces. There was Bill and Lydia and Alta Peterson the innkeeper and Mamie Hagemeister the police clerk and Charlene Taylor the fish-and-game trooper and Sharon Ilutsik the hairdresser and Lola Gamechuk the cannery worker. They ranged in age from twenty-three to seventy-four. Some of them were married; some werent. Some of them were mothers; some werent. For one Sat.u.r.day evening every month, they met to eat and talk about the book they had all read the month before, and the one thing they all had in common was the love of reading. ”I know youre going to miss her, Bill said out loud.
Betsy nodded again, maintaining her dignity, and they climbed into her Toyota 4Runner and drove off.
”That is the weirdest d.a.m.n bunch Ive ever met, and thats saying some, Bill said.
”She was a beauty, Moses said. ”It didnt translate into her kids, though. Even that Karen, little and cute as she is. Shes just too d.a.m.n hungry, and it shows.
”Who was a beauty?
”Lydia. In high school, she was the girl everybody most wanted to.
”You, too?
”Me, one, he said, and gave her a blatant pinch on the a.s.s. ”Lets go back to the bar.
”I have to; I have to get ready to open up.
”Ill go with you.
”No hanky-panky, she said sternly. ”I have to work.
He grinned, the grin that from one angle fitted him with a halo and from another with horns and a tail. ”Who, me? But when they got back to the bar, he disappeared into the office and let her go to work, pulling the stools off the bar and the chairs off the tables, firing up the grill, emptying out the dishwasher. It was Dotties half day, and Bill would be serving the lunch hour alone. She didnt begrudge Laura Na.n.a.looks new start in Anchorage, but shed been looking for a decent barmaid to replace her ever since. A few had come and almost immediately gone again. In the meantime, she picked up the slack. It was getting so she positively liked putting on that d.a.m.n black robe and sitting in judgment of her fellow Newenhammers.
She gave the bar a last swipe and stood back, admiring its gleam. The tables in the booth and on the floor were spotless, the ketchup and mustard and A.1. bottles full, the salt and pepper shakers topped off. She had enough clean cutlery and dishes to feed an army.
It had been a rocky start, all those years ago. She had gotten on one plane after another until she had run out of cash. The bar had had a Help Wanted sign in the window, and she went to work that night. Two years later it was hers, along with a big, fat mortgage shed paid off early. Newenham had been a boomtown in those days, boats so thick on the water you could walk across the bay and never get your feet wet. Hundreds of boats and billions of fish and no end of buyers from j.a.pan, a country hungry for fresh fish. And in her bar hundreds of fishermen, ready to step up with a fistful of twenties and ring the bell behind the bar. Those had been some wild and very profitable years.
Now there were fish farms from Scotland to British Columbia to Chile, and the North Pacific was being systematically fished out by processors with nets a mile, two miles long, ripping up the bottom of the ocean and every living thing with it, regardless of size or s.e.x. The king crab had been the first casualty, then the herring, then the salmon. Now the fishermen were fighting over rights to fish the pollock, whose own population was already so low the Steller sea lion herds that fed on them were starving themselves out of existence. The fishermens a.s.sociations vowed and declared that the pollock population had nothing to do with the sea lions, but h.e.l.l, it was perfectly clear to anybody whose livelihood wasnt on the line.
She wondered what was going to happen next. Alaska existed because of the exploitation of her natural resources: fish, oil, gas. What if she ran out? What happened then? And what happened to towns like Newenham, Togiak, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, built on fish, whose continued existence depended wholly on the fis.h.i.+ng industry?
Stan Tompkins was a fishermanLydias son, or one of them. Jerry was pretty much a waste of time, sad when you thought how far hed fallen from the start he had been given, but Stanley Jr. was a capable and prosperous man. She wondered what he thought of what was happening in the bay.
Lydia hadnt talked much about her children, although they had had some pretty raunchy discussions about s.e.x, the seven of them. Sharon Ilutsik had blushed a lot on those occasions, Bill remembered, and Lydia would be inspired to more and better stories on the strength of those blushes. ”Youre a dirty old woman, Bill had told her once.
”And you arent? Lydia had retorted. ”You and Moses kind of set the bar pretty high. Which, of course, had made Sharon blush more and the rest of them laugh harder.
The clock ticked up to ten and she unlocked the front door. The usual suspects were hanging around outside, waiting, and she stood back out of the way. Never get in between anyone and their first drink of the day. She could have opened up at eight and the same people would have been waiting. She got Chris Coursey a Miller without being asked, and took orders for a Salty Dog, a screwdriver, and a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, this last for Jim Earl, who looked like he needed it badly.
Eric Mollberg shuffled in and sat down on his usual stool. She brought him a bottle of Oly, and he shocked her by refusing it and asking for a diet c.o.ke instead. She poured it for him, making a heroic effort to keep the inevitable commentary to herself. She remembered the arm flying out of the bag, the hand opening, the finger extending, the tip of it almost touching Erics nose, Erics eyes bulging with horror, and felt a laugh bubbling up inside her. To hide it, she went in the back to check on Moses.
He was sitting in front of her computer, frowning at the screen, and from the glow cast on his face he might actually be operating it. She couldnt believe he even knew where the on b.u.t.ton was. When she went around to see what he was doing, she suffered another shock. He was on the Internet, and had by some miracle known only to the angels managed to get on Google. ”What, she said faintly, ”are you doing?
”Doing a Net search, whats it look like? he said, raising his head to look through the half gla.s.ses perched on his nose.
Her half gla.s.ses, she saw, which happened to be fluorescent pink with white tiger stripes and rhinestones winking from the corners. ”I always want to rip your clothes off when you wear those things, she said.
He grinned. ”I know the feeling. He tapped the gold coin, sitting on the desk next to the keyboard. ”This thing might be valuable.
”How valuable?
”Well, now, that depends. This coin is a double eagle, a twenty-dollar gold piece.
”So its worth at least, I dont know, twenty dollars?
Moses gave her a disapproving look and she subsided, for the moment. Those gla.s.ses did make him look awfully cute.
”They were the largest regular-issue gold coins ever made by the United States.
”Whats a regular-issue coin?
”I dont know, exactly. I think it means like nickels and dimes and quarters are today.
”Not commemorative.
”I think so. Anyway, there were two basic designs. The first one was the Liberty Head, with Lady Liberty facing left on one side with the date and an eagle with sun rays and stars on the other side. The reverse, he said, sitting up with an expectant look.
Knowing her duty, she looked suitably impressed.
”It was made from 1849 to 1907.
She looked at their coin. ”Did we figure out what the date was on this coin?
”Nineteen twenty-one.
”So not a Liberty Head.
”The other design is called the St. Gaudens type, named after the guy who designed it. Lady Liberty is back, only shes in full figure and standing, again on the dated side, and a flying eagle on the reverse.
”And it was made ”From 1907 to 1933. And theres something called a mint mark that is supposed to be right below the date.
Bill squinted, but Moses had her gla.s.ses and she couldnt see anything more than some indecipherable squiggles. ”Ill take your word for it.
”Twenty-dollar gold pieces, Moses went on in a professorial tone, ”are the most commonly found gold coins today because people h.o.a.rded them when they were made. Each coin contains about an ounce of gold, and the price of the coin depends on the price of gold bullion. Gold is soft, so the coins that actually saw the inside of somebodys pocket are pretty beat up. They can be worth anywhere between three hundred and four hundred dollars. He sat back and said proudly, ”This ones in pretty good shape, so far as I can tell, so I figure its high-end.
”Wow. Bill looked at the coin with more respect. ”I wonder whose it was?
”Who belonged on the other end of that arm, you mean?
”Yeah.
He shrugged and pulled off her gla.s.ses. ”Youd be amazed the kinds of things people haul around in their pants. I know a guy carries a big blue gla.s.s marble aroundI mean its two inches in diameter. Says its his good-luck piece. Every time I see it Im glad for him that it hasnt broken. Ouch. He winced at the thought of what kind of damage a broken marble in the pocket might do. ”I know a woman carries an ivory carving of a sea otter everywhere she goes, changes pockets only when she changes her pants. Its her, I dont know, totem, I guess.