Orcas Island
(Written for a nonfiction course)
“Welcome to Orcas Island,” said the ferry captain over a muffled intercom. I was thirteen at the time and happily leaning over the ferry railing, watching the water below churned by massive motors. The small, forested island we approached looked like something out of a Thomas Kinkade painting, with only one building visible from shore. On our drive across the island we only passed through one tiny town. There were buildings simply marked as “convenience store” and “toy shop.” Beyond this one modest town there was an absence of any human life as we continued on. Large sprawling fields with cows grazing surrounded us. Only the road we drove on and an occasional crooked, rotting fence gave testament to civilization. Spoiled by years of vacations to theme parks and tourist destinations, my sister and I were less than ecstatic about this stop on our trip and equally ungrateful for the beauty that flashed through our windows. After twenty minutes or so of driving we saw the sign we were looking for hidden behind an overgrown bush: my grandma’s maiden name, “Nordstrom.” We turned down the long dirt road and headed towards the one house at the end of the stretch. The house belonged to my great aunt and uncle, Peg and Gene, whom I had never met. They lived on this small island off the coast of Washington for their entire lives and never knew any different than their country lifestyle.
We climbed a set of deteriorating stairs, seemingly ready to collapse at any moment, to reach their front door. My mom rang the doorbell. No response. She rang it again. No response. I was getting excited by the prospect that they would never answer their door. I would have been more than happy to spend the evening in the hotel pool. She rang it a third time. This time we heard some sounds from inside the house; footsteps towards the door. Finally the door was opened by Peg, wearing a collared blouse, jeans, and orthopedic shoes. I was taken aback by how much she looked like my grandmother, yet acted so differently. “Have you been waiting here long?” she asked apologetically. Her voice sounded like it was a badly dubbed cassette, only segments of words actually audible. “I couldn’t hear the bell over the TV, Gene’s watchin’ wrasslin.”
As Peg led us into the house I choked on the thick smoke in the air. My parents had warned me that my relatives smoked, but entering the house I would have guessed they were barbequing indoors. We made our way past walls covered in hundreds of framed photos to a small family room. Three elderly men were huddled around a television watching wrestling, never taking their eyes off of the screen until the match was over. They occupied two small maroon couches covered with a variety of different sized cigarette burns. On the coffee table was an ashtray that was already overflowing. Peg pointed out the balding man with a large beer belly on the left and introduced us: “This is your uncle Gene, my husband.” He wore a pair of paint covered jeans, a long sleeved thermal shirt, and a snow vest. When we greeted him with a cheerful hello we were only responded to with a mumble that resembled “hey.” He was a quiet man, rarely speaking the entire evening, and mumbling almost incoherently when he did. Peg continued, “Next to him is his friend Phil. He just dropped by to deliver some cartons of cigarettes he bought for us at the Indian Reservation. They’re a lot cheaper there you know.” Phil was a slender old man with gray hair wearing a stained and tattered leisure suit. Finally Peg introduced us to a short old man wearing a yellow polo shirt and brown corduroy pants. “This is your great uncle Carl, my brother.” Carl asked Peg who we were and she explained it to him slowly. My grandmother had told me that Carl was not the sharpest man and that his memory was fading.
Sluggishly an overweight dog waddled into the room. “Oh, look. Here comes Carl’s dog.” The dog came to a slow stop in front of us and lazily wagged its tail. I asked Carl what the dog’s name was but his response was a few “ums” followed by a blank faced silence. “Blue!” Peg exclaimed, “His dog’s name is Blue.” I began to pet the dog and noticed that the hairs on its back were a strange reddish brown color, like the tanbark under a jungle gym, and were in stiff clumps. When I inquired about this oddity, Peg chuckled as she explained what had happened a few weeks prior: “Carl was painting his deck and Blue was lying on it next to him. He didn’t even notice that Blue was there and just painted him like the rest of the deck. You believe that? Carl let this dog get fat in the same way. He forgets whether he fed the damn thing or not so feeds it five or six times a day.”
Just as we were sitting down Phil began to explain who he was and why he was there and how he knew my family and every other aspect of his life. “When I first met Gene in the military,” he told us, “he was in a full body cast, face and everything, from an injury on the base. For the first month of our friendship I didn’t know what an ugly bastard he was!” The whole room laughed at his story except for Carl. Phil began hacking and coughing from laughing so hard at the story he had surely told hundreds of times before. He lit another cigarette; a reward for his fine joke. Half the cigarette was turned to ash after only one inhalation. This guy was a pro. He took out one of his newly acquired cartons from the reservation and admired the art on the box: a drawing of a scantily clad young vixen. “I buy these cigarettes because of the box,” Phil giggled, “Sometimes I bring them into bed and end up burning a hole in my sheets.” In case old Phil decided to in any way elaborate on his most recent anecdote I asked my sister if she would like to join me to explore the large backyard. She eagerly accepted.
Peg gave us some bread and instructed us to throw it into the pond in their backyard, so we naturally assumed we would encounter some sort of water foul. We approached the pond, bread in hand, and tried to think of any reason why we would throw bread into the serene body of water. No ducks or geese were in sight. Finally I tossed a slice into the pond. It floated on the surface, slowly beginning to sink as it absorbed water and became a soggy, crumbling sponge. Suddenly, like a scene from Jaws, the bread was dragged under by an invisible force in the water, only waves, ripples and a few drifting morsels left behind. Rhythmically sending slices into the water, birthing one feeding frenzy after another, I briefly considered what a dramatic change my grandmother submitted herself to. This was her life. Yet at eighteen she said good bye to it all and moved to San Francisco alone. We continued this process of tossing bread until Peg joined us and explained the school of fish in the water that loved bread. Without hesitation she threw an entire loaf into the pond and cackled gleefully as it was devoured just as quickly. “Yeah we gots lotsa wildlife round here,” Peg continued, a broad smile still across her face, “There’s a family of coons that live in these trees. I feed ‘em cat food.” She continued on about the “coons” for a few minutes until she finally remembered why she had come outside: “Oh yeah, dinner’s ready.”
We were served pre-cooked chicken from the only grocery store in town, corn cooked so long that the colonels had grown pale and shriveled, and the same bread we threw at the fish. Peg asked if we would like milk with dinner, and after saying yes I silently prayed that it would be cow milk. In the corner of the cluttered kitchen Carl was filling his plate with pieces of bread, neatly stacking them like flapjacks. Phil was still in the kitchen as well, picking chicken off the bones, eating it, licking all the flavor off his fingers, and then proceeding to pick at the chicken some more. As I was about to take my first sip of milk I noticed a lipstick stain on the side of the glass. I didn’t drink anything the rest of the night.
The stiff, dry brownies we had for dessert had large clumps of powder where the batter had not been stirred. I glanced over into the kitchen and saw Gene eating his brownie over the sink, crumbs tumbling down his ski vest onto the dirty dishes below. He still had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he ate and a beer in his other hand. After getting his fill, Phil stood up and announced he had to be on his way with a grand announcement to the room. “Well, it’s my wife Lucy’s birthday today so I guess I should get home and spend some time with her. I got it pretty covered though; I bought a stuffed deer for five bucks on the reservation and put a bow on it.” We walked out to the porch and bid farewell to Phil. He got into his darkened car and lit a cigarette in his mouth, illuminating the interior, before heading down the long dirt road. After our own good byes we followed suit.
The next morning we were leaving the island and heading up to Canada to finish our vacation in a destination I found infinitely more exciting than the small town life we had endured: Vancouver. In my adolescent brain the visit with relatives had felt like going on errands with your mom before a final trip to the toy store. We stopped by Peg and Gene’s to say our final good byes, but found no one there. The only other place they would possibly be was Carl’s, so we traveled a few miles east until we found another long dirt road that led to Carl’s house. I noticed that the haphazardly applied reddish brown paint looked much better on the porch than on the dog. Sure enough Peg and Gene were there having breakfast. Peg was ecstatic to see us again. Carl didn’t remember who we were. After spending a few minutes chatting we began to say our good byes and Peg promised that they would come to visit us some time soon. “I can’t wait,” I sighed. And I actually meant it.
