The Alley

Letter to my unborn child, summer, 1882

Three times now. Let me tell you how it was.

The captain would order the sails lowered a day out of Port Townsend, then rap his cane once across the ship’s bell. That was the signal for his crew, may God damn every one of them, to force we women to the rail along with the men who were about to die. They would try to be manly, to hide their terror, but they would fail. We could not help seeing it. For months they’d clung to the hope that they’d be returned to the homes from where they’d been stolen, maybe even paid a token for their work. And for months most of us had known their destiny and kept the secret for fear of sharing their fate. And so our lasting memories of the crimped men, one of them likely your father, became but screams and splashes, memories so terrible that they could only be bottled and stored along with the hate born of our own fates. We would try to shut our eyes, but the captain’s men put knives to us, made us watch.

We watched them drown—all of them.

By then we’d known most all the men—even the crew and captain—in every way imaginable. We’d been crimped ourselves for little other purpose. And we’d learned to squash any desperate inkling of affection. You don’t make a pet out of a lamb meant for slaughter. But know, sweet child, that I would have loved your father anyway—he and he alone—if only I could have known which night you came to be.

They had marked us with a tattoo, a circle with a number inside—I was number eight. The captain would choose just one of us to toss over with the men—choose and name her by her number. We were easy to replace, and the captain believed we would do our duties better, fear him more, I think, if we never doubted that only his pleasure kept us out of that cold ocean. “Watch well, wenches,” he would call out as our sister went over. “Your turn could come.”

They held our heads over the rail until there was no more death to see, until the only sane feeling left was that small, hidden joy at still being alive. And now, for me alone, the secret of you sleeping safe inside me.

I’ve survived these past three voyages because I made my skills more sought after than the other women. Any man would have wanted me. And now that you’ve come I try harder still, for I grow larger every day and I’m terrified that the captain will have no pity for a woman with child. I know that my own sins have led me, us, to where we are, but they belong to me alone. It is an abomination for you to also pay their price. I would do anything to keep the both of us from the ocean, but I see no way out. In my heart I know that I will never hold you, never be with you as a mother should. This letter means nothing, but it is the only way I can be with you, talk to you, at all. My hate burns stronger with every murder, hotter still with the thought of you sinking with me into the dark cold. 

This is the main thing I write to tell you, and I swear it under God’s eyes: I will have vengeance if we should end together. Vengeance on the captain, all his guilty crew, but especially on the one man who committed me to this purgatory, the one man and all his descendants—a generation for every time they held my head over that rail.

Hoodman Tavern, Port Townsend, 2015

“So you’re just fricking afraid of alleys,” she says. “Kind of strange for a hunk like you. Any old alley, or just this one?”

This quick-tongued but weirdly svelte woman, the one who calls herself Sassy and has been swallowing every word I spill like a high-priced liqueur, has got a lot going for her. Lots more than any woman I’d ever expected to meet in a tavern as old and sleazy as Hoodman’s. And most folk, I suspect, might guess by my own look that I’m a man who’s been here plenty often enough to know. Just like my father, so I hear, and his father, probably. And so on.

“Let me think on that one,” I say, not sure why she’s asking and a little peeved that she’s asked at all. Maybe because Sassy’s bordering on too odd even for me. She’s got this air about her, like she’s part and parcel of the place, even though I’ve never seen her here before. It’s more than the frilly, faux nineteenth-century dress. That might have fit the times when my ancestors built the tavern, but Hoodman’s twenty-first century owner would likely favor a black tee and heavy eye makeup. So maybe she just thought it’d be a cool getup given Hoodman’s history and all. She’d sat down across the table from me without invitation, but not before grabbing a feather duster from a rack of mostly-broken umbrellas, grabbing it like she owned the thing, and brushing the chair seat.

She’s also impatient. “Well?” she says. “You’re way too young for your brain to work that slow.”

But I’m still not ready to leave myself hanging in the wind any more than I already have. Certain women enjoy putting a man in a vulnerable spot, so I’ve learned to watch my ass. It’s beyond me why I mentioned that bedeviled roadway out back to start with. Without the beer, I probably wouldn’t have. Anyway, I don’t know for sure that Hoodman’s Alley is the one. Not the one. There’re at least a dozen other dark, snaky alleys winding along the waterfront.

Sassy drinks her Miller’s with a straw. Noisily. Insistently.

“Ok already.” What the hell. She doesn’t seem mean or anything, and I wouldn’t have been jawing with her this last quarter hour if I wasn’t interested. Anyway, anything to make her stop slurping. “Maybe just that alley. Maybe not. But here’s a thing I know for sure. I think you’ve got the most attractive bob anyone’s ever brought in here.”

She rolls her hazel eyes. “You know, I been out in that alley. Coulda got laid back there once if I’d wanted to.” At that she cracks this weird half-smile, then hides it just as quick. “Wanna go face your fears? No promises, but, you know, even with your cheesy compliments, I kind of like you.”

“Don’t think so. How about I get you another beer instead?” I’ll confess that I’ve had near zero experience with ladies as aggressive as this one, so my answer is automatic—probably would have been even without the alley added to theequation. I’m not sure “aggressive” is the kind of woman I ought necessarily to avoid, but then I probably couldn’t tell you exactly what kind I am looking for—other than the proverbial right one. I couldn’t even tell you why I keep looking at all after what happened with the last one.

Sassy doesn’t react to my turndown except to turn her eyes away, down toward our table’s tiny candle flame. I feel an unmistakable relief at this, for Sassy has awfully intense eyes. And I’m not sure what else to say about aborted alley sex. The flame begins an erratic sputtering, like her eyes have got it pinned, and shoots a drop of wax down into its fake cut-glass cup. I gaze into the candle with her, like maybe I’ll see some clue there to explain why this bombshell has bothered to approach me in the first place.

I might have known better. A dark night, talk of the alley, and not ten feet away the tavern’s ancient and battered door leading out to it. All that and the sputtering flame—there’s no way I can keep Grandma and her own damnable candle out of my head.

Grandma meant well. I know that. But her midnight visits weren’t easy. She’d come down the narrow hallway to our bedroom holding her beeswax taper straight out in front of her. Our house was older than sin, ragged, and huge, and our tiny room had been tacked on to its backside as an afterthought. Grandma was old and slow, so my brother Henry and I always saw the candle’s yellow light sliding down the wall long before she reached our door. She’d sit on the edge of our bed, take a moment to catch her breath, then stare into her candle’s flame and see things, tell us things, most of which hadn’t happened yet. She told us because she loved us, because she wanted us to be ready. Trouble is, after the telling we had to live with it—whatever it was. No telling how long. 

So we’d learned to dread those visits. On that night, though, in the memory that Sassy had somehow dredged forth, she’d come down the hallway as if she could barely manage the effort. By the time she reached our bed we’d already hidden under our scratchy wool blankets. We always did that. For that flame might hold danger—foreboding and prediction at the very least. Usually a downright warning. The blankets were the only protection we had.

But they never helped.

On that night, though, Grandma brought not a warning but news—heart-shattering news. 

 I was eight, Henry ten, and neither of us could have survived without Grandma. This had been close to true for a long time, but after this night there’d been no one else. Grandma spoke as kindly as anyone could have: our parents had vanished. The both of them, together, in a single night. She took a long, tearful time in the telling, even though she had almost nothing more to tell. We cried and crawled deeper under the blankets while she hugged us through the heavy wool. 

She did everything she could to comfort us—everything except tell us the whole truth of what had happened. Maybe she had no truth to tell. No one else seemed to, either. For the rest of our entire lives, Henry and I never heard a single damn word from anybody. 

So we loved Grandma—we had to. Even when she came drifting down that hall like an aged ghost with her damned candle of doom. Even if it meant we’d have to live under the weight of one more terrifying prediction, each one as likely as not to come true. But none of her visits, before or after, none of them, would come close to matching the pain of this one, of being left to forever wonder how and why our parents had disappeared.

I look up from the candle to find Sassy studying my face. 

“You were going to buy me another beer?” she says.

I rise to grab her a draft of Miller’s, glad for the time to let my memory fade a little. The bottle’s icy cold, and even that’s a welcome distraction as I hand it to her. As she reaches out I glimpse a dark tattoo beneath her sleeve. “What’s that?” I ask.

“Got that in prison.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Yeah, but you deserve it. For getting me liquored up.”

“I would never…”

Sassy reaches over and socks me lightly on the arm. My brother used to do that, only hard.

“Still kidding, Mr. Sensitive.” She takes a heavy swig and pulls her sleeve further down. “I guess you thought I was coming on to you before. Maybe. Maybe not. The thing about sex, though—and I’m assuming that a kid as young as you doesn’t know it yet—is that you can’t let it matter.”

“Not what I imagine my parents would have taught me, if I had any. Sex makes babies, if a girl as young as you doesn’t know it yet. So it matters big time. Got to.”

A flash of something transforms her face. It might have been sorrow, or even anger, or a lot of things. I couldn’t tell—but it’s too weird not to have noticed. Anyway, now she turns almost flippant.

“Can’t let them matter either,” she says.

 That calls for a topic change. “So, the guy in the alley didn’t work out, I’m guessing?”

“Disappeared. It was a long time ago—he wasn’t much of a find anyway.”

“‘Disappeared’ is a word folks hear a lot around this place. You know Hoodman’s history?”

“The shanghaiing crap, you mean? Haven’t gotten myself shanghaied in quite a while, actually.”

“So you do know it.”

“You kidding? I live a block from here, just like my ma did. And probably a half dozen generations before her.”

“Me too. I’m surprised we’ve never met.”

“I know about you, though, Mr. Hoodman. Jon. Jonny. Like, I know you still live in that beat-up, hardly-any-plumbing mansion across the alley that used to be the sailors’ boardinghouse. I know you had parents just like anybody else. And I know that they left you high and dry.”

What the f—? If I felt lost before, she’s just tossed me into a deep forest.

“Ah,” she says. “Got your tongue stuck, didn’t you?”

“And the boardinghouse? How come you know about that?”

She leans back, puts her hands behind her neck. “I know practically everything. Just ask. Any story you want—pick a category: paper forging, knock-out drops, seductions. Sailors knocked cold and loaded onto ships in the dead of night. Soulless captains throwing them overboard so they wouldn’t have to pay them or even explain what they were doing on the ship when it came back to port. Old history now. Just ugly local history.” 

“You can see all that in the exhibits over at City Hall.”

“Not the stuff too awful to tell.”

I lean in, my elbows on the table, and arch my eyebrows.

“Oh, you got to earn those story. How about first you tell me—what’s the big deal with the alley?” 

I take a deep breath and tell her some of it. About Grandma’s spooky visits, about her premonitions coming true, about Henry—almost everything. 

“Yeah, I can believe it. I’ve heard the old folk talk about people like your grandma. There are things about this town that just plain shouldn’t be. Evil stuff. But good stuff, too. Who knows where it all comes from? Sounds like your grandma hailed from the good side. But what about the alley?”

Shit. Why not?

First, I go to the bar for a refill. When I return she’s resting her elbows on the table, mimicking me, her eyebrows arched even higher than mine had been.

“It was a long time ago. Grandma was staring straight into that damn candle flame when suddenly she blows it out and takes our hands in hers. It’s pitch dark, and her voice sounds frightened like I’ve never heard it. ‘Stay out of the alley,’ she says, ‘the both of you. She’s only biding her time. She’ll finish you if you give her the chance, just like your mom and dad. Just like David.’”

“And David is?”

“My grandfather. I have no idea who ‘she’ is, but apparently she got granddad, mom and dad. And I guess you could say the alley got Henry. Sent a truck to take him out. He was only twelve, on his bike. If he’d listened to Grandma he’d still be here.”

Sassy’s gazing into the distance, into nothingness. There’s no use trying to read her thoughts, so I wait.

“It’s just an alley, for Christ’s sake,” she finally says, “and you’re a big boy now. I’d rethink the whole mess of it and move on. Let’s move on. I’ll help you.”

“I’m listening. Apprehensively, but listening.”

“It’s dark. It’s quiet. No trucks in the alley. Everyone else in here is liquored up. Let’s just go on out there. No one will see or care. We’ll find a quiet spot and settle in, behind some steps maybe—and just wait. Wait to see if it’s got anything up its sleeve." She pauses. “Last chance.”

“I gotta tell you—I’m thinking that you’re not really the sex-in-the-alley sort.” 

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Sex doesn’t matter anyhow, right?”

“Can’t let it matter, is what I said.” She reaches out to hold both my hands in hers. “A moment ago—when you were talking about babies—there was something else you didn’t say, wasn’t there?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I’m guessing it kind of does.” 

So I tell her. “For what it’s worth, even I once had what I thought was a good woman. Liked sex, too, but just didn’t like me so much. At least that’s what I realized in the end. She got pregnant and then just left.”

“And your child?”

“I could never find her. Them. I’m afraid to think.”

Sassy’s eyes turn moist—I’m almost certain—and I wonder if she’s got more sensitivity than I’ve so far given her credit for. She releases my hands and puts hers in her lap. “Look. Maybe we should talk about something else. Let’s see. How do you like this place? Do you come here a lot? What’s your sign?”

I stare into my beer, figuring my best answer. In the end, I say it soft. Soft to show that I’m not entirely sure, but I also say it firm—to show that my gut knows what it’s doing. 

“We’d best stay out of that alley.”

“Okay, then.”

I wait, expecting more alley talk. Instead she points over my shoulder toward a poorly done portrait over the bar. I don’t need to look, because I’ve studied it a hundred times—he’s my ancestor, after all. I suspect that most people take one look at Jacob Hoodman’s dark eyes and are glad never to have met him.

“That’s the bastard right there,” she says. “Without that son of a bitch there wouldn’t be any stories.”

I still don’t bother to look, and I don’t argue the point. She’s probably right.

Hoodman’s Tavern, 1881

“Not this one, Jacob. Please.”

“The captain’s sailing for Shanghai tomorrow,” says Jacob Hoodman. He’s a tall, sallow-faced man, a man with eyes dark enough to startle the devil. “He needs crew, and he needs ’em now.”

“Please, Jacob. Give me this one. Haven’t I been good to you?”

“You’re good to every sailor who comes in here, woman. What’s the matter? Afraid of losing the pittance he gives you? He don’t pay any more than the rest. And don’t I always pay you good once you get ’em ready?” 

The woman only stares at the floor. 

An evil grin, a grin of recognition, changes Jacob’s face from one most would avoid to one they’d likely fear instead. “So that’s it. He don’t pay you anything at all, does he? You do him for free.”

“I’ve been good to you, too, Jacob. I’ll be even better. I’ll do everything you want.”

“You do everything I want anyway.” He kicks a chair, sending it skidding into the tavern’s darkest corner, the one where the girls would take the shyest sailors to beguile them out of whatever coin they still had. The corner where, in the dark, no one would notice a small cloud of powder added to a brew.

“You’d best go upstairs,” he says. “Before I set my temper loose. Go and consider what this silliness tells me about your meager intelligence.”

As the woman runs up the staircase, Jacob summons his barkeeper. “When they come for her man tonight,” he says, “make sure they take Sassy along with him. The Captain will be appreciative, and I can find a replacement soon enough.”

“But Jacob, she’s your favorite.”

Hoodman laughs long and loud. “But find a different ship for her sailor. I can give her that. She’ll come to understand how generous I can be once she learns why none of her sailors ever come back again for a visit.”

“You still wanna hear the stories they don’t put in City Hall?”

“I can hardly wait.”

“The alley could have been a just a friendly walk, you know.”

“You know what? Why don’t we try something more traditional? Dinner would be nice. A walk in the park. Ice cream cones on the sidewalk. That kind of thing.”

“Why? You already know I like you.”

What do you do when a woman says what you want to hear, maybe even what you need to hear, but alarm bells still keep clanging? Where do they come from? “Moving on,” as she had put it, would be good. Maybe even terrific, in Sassy’s case. Leaving my goddamn caution in control feels like losing a chance at freedom, like crawling back into a cage and locking the door behind me.

“I like you, too. But why don’t you tell me your stories first, the ones not at City Hall.” In my head, I hear the latch slide shut.

“Your choice. Well . . . maybe you think I act like a wannabe whore, but that doesn’t mean I am one. These walls have seen their share of wanton behavior, though. It wasn’t just Jacob Hoodman and his cronies who shanghaied the sailors. There were lady hangers-on who would mellow them out before the men carted them down the alley. And those ladies took a righteous cut for their efforts.”

“Let me guess. Your grandmother took a turn at that?”

“Maybe. And maybe her grandmother, too.”

“I’ll take another guess. She didn’t think much of men, did she.”

“I never said I didn’t like men. What, you think there’s a man-hating gene in my family or something?”

“No, of course not. It’s just that… I’d just like things to matter, is all. If we should ever get that far.” 

“We got off on the wrong foot. Maybe I was just trying to be cute.” She slides the candle dish to a position dead center between us. “I suppose things might matter.” Then her voice hardens. “If you should ever get so lucky.”

Maybe it’s me who’s inherited a bad gene, one that makes me pick the one wrong thing to say when there’re so many good ones to choose from.

“How she felt about men probably didn’t matter much anyway,” she says. “Sometimes the local ladies, even the ones who never worked in the tavern or boardinghouse, went missing too—just like the sailors.”

Our candle’s flickering again, like it’s cuing me to say something. Sassy’s staring over the flame into my eyes, but I’m coming up blank.

“Getting the drift, I see. But there’s things a lot worse than getting kidnapped. If those ladies didn’t at least pretend to like their duties, well . . . you know the other stories. You can imagine.”

My words haven’t been working out so well, so I slide the candle aside and lean over to plant a chaste kiss on her cheek. The move doesn’t fit my character at all—it doesn’t even make sense—it just seems called for. “Would you like to go somewhere nicer?” I say. “It’d be a start.”

 “So we could start letting things matter?” 

“That’s a yes?”

“Lead the way.”

I stand. “Let me stop by the men’s room. You’ll be here when I get back. Right?”

Sassy clasps her hands primly on the table top, straightens her back, and smiles.

“Sassy?” I scan the room. It’s empty except for the barkeep.

“Went out back,” he says, scowling, as he blots up a mug-load of beer dripping down Jacob’s portrait. “You must have really pissed her off. What she’s got against old Mr. Hoodman here I couldn’t tell you.” He nods toward the table. “Left a note.” 

“Double bourbon,” I say weakly. He takes his time pouring it, but it doesn’t bother me. It delays having to read the note. When I do reach our table, I’m thinking that I shouldn’t read it at all. There can be nothing good in it. But I can’t help myself.

You ain’t gonna change me, nice boy, and I’ll never deserve it anyway. Stay out of alleys.

She hasn’t signed her name. Instead, she’s scrawled a circle with the number eight inside. Just below the number, inside the circle and filled in red, lies a small heart. Beneath the circle, in tiny but shaky letters, she’s printed “Whore Number Eight.”

I sink into my chair, staring at the door to the alley. It’s not drawn completely shut—there’s a crack between the door’s planks and its frame, and it’s big enough that I can feel a cold draft wafting though, drifting across me, our table, the chair that Sassy had so carefully feather-dusted.

I drink in small, careful sips, thinking, reconsidering, remembering, wondering about everything. Especially the number and inscription. Even more than that—the baby-sized heart. After a long while I have no more understanding than I did before. The bourbon’s long gone, but I haven’t moved. My thighs ache and both legs have gone to sleep. I imagine the small crack at the door growing larger, degree by degree. And, finally, I have no doubt of it. It’s creaking back and forth in a small but growing arc. The draft grows stronger, colder.

If it’s an invitation, there will be no dinner, no ice cream. 

I cannot help myself. I rise, stumbling on my leaden legs, and step toward the door.

“I wouldn’t go out there, son,” the barkeep says, his voice quick. “Dangerous place, that alley. Always has been.”

Grandma’s been dead a long time now. But I don’t need to see her coming toward me with her candle to feel her presence. I walk no farther. “Another double, then,” I say instead, facing things square on. Her premonition has yet to complete itself. That’s inarguable. Maybe fate just expects me to wait it out. But where is the end of the waiting? And every man is meant to search out the things that really matter. Isn’t he?

I sit back down, shaking a little, and the barkeep brings the drink. On the way back, he slams the alley door tight. The draft’s still there, though, and the room’s no warmer. Soon enough the crack will widen again, I expect. Outside, danger may still be lurking. “She” may lurk. What’s inside, what’s always with me, may be worse.

Nothing changes.