The whole setup struck me as really strange. The dock simply turned into a wooden walkway that squeezed between two ramshackle wooden buildings, then ended at a small parking lot next to the street. The closest thing to any sort of terminal was the beat-up wooden shed next to the walkway, which was padlocked closed.
There was no sign of any taxi, even though we were pretty much right on time. I tried calling the service’s phone number, but it went straight to voice mail. There were a couple of guys working on boat motors in the crappy wooden building to our right, so I went over and asked them how far it was to the Sitka Inn.
“Um, maybe a half mile that way?” one of the guys said, pointing south down the road.
“Nah, it ain’t that far,” the other guy said, wiping his hands with a shop rag. “No more’n a quarter mile. You can’t miss it. Just go down ’til you get to the castle park on the right, and it’ll be on the left.”
“It’s painted yellow,” the first guy added.
‘They have paint around here?’ was my immediate snide remark, but I kept it to myself. Just because all the buildings I could see in the immediate vicinity hadn’t had a coat of paint in decades didn’t mean that there were no painters in town… Just that people weren’t willing to pay for their services.
“Looks as if we’re walking,” I said to Emmy and Angela. I slung my duffel across my back again and picked up both of theirs, and we made our way south.
Once we got away from the commercial waterfront area and towards downtown the surroundings gave a much better impression. The ramshackle shacks next to the docks gave way to nicer shacks and metal canneries, then some buildings that I found sort of fascinating. They looked like big, three-story farmhouses, but the ground floors facing the streets were shops and offices. Judging by the looks, the upper floors were apartments. It seemed to me a very urban concept for such a rural-seeming small town.
Angela wanted some pictures by some totem poles outside the tribal office, but to her credit was sensitive enough to pop inside and ask permission first.
One of the people from inside the office followed Angela back out to tell her what the various carvings represent, but when Emmy walked up to join her and Angela, the woman suddenly came unglued.
“Oh, my gosh!” she blurted out. “Oh, my gosh! Emmy! Is it really you? I love your music! ‘Hold Me’ is my favorite song, ever! Nobody’s gonna believe it when I tell ‘em Emmy’s here in Sitka!”
“Yes, it is really me,” Emmy assured the woman.
“Can I- can I get a picture?” the woman asked, pulling out her phone.
“Of course!” Emmy said with a big smile.
Angela took the woman’s phone and had the two pose for a few shots with the harbor and fishing boats in the background, then handed the phone back. The native woman scrolled through the pictures and said they were perfect, and thank you so much, and on and on for a bit.
Somewhere in all that, somehow Emmy had done her Emmy magic and picked up the woman’s name.
“Mary,” Emmy said. “What can you tell us about these totem poles? That is what they are called, right?”
“In the Tlingit language we call them-” Mary said, using a word that I couldn’t possibly reproduce. “This pole represents the founding stories of the Shee Tika village, and that pole is a tribute to the local spirits,” she said, starting in on an obviously familiar talk. Emmy and Angela were very interested and attentive, and asked Mary questions that showed they were paying attention. She seemed to enjoy the attention and the respect that Emmy and Angela were showing, making her positively glow with pride.
“My uncle carved this one,” she said, resting her hand on the local spirits pole.
Eventually Angela got the photos that she wanted, including a few with Mary looking pleased at the attention she and her heritage were receiving.
Thanking Mary for her time, we continued south. The low clouds had begun a light drizzle by this time, and I was happy that Emmy had insisted we buy rain hats and not merely rely on our jackets’ hoods. The broad brim was excellent for keeping my face nice and dry, even if I did feel a bit self-conscious about looking like some sort of Patagonia catalog model.
As it turned out, the directions the outboard motor guys had given me were a bit wrong. The road we’d been following dead-ended into a cross street there at the park. Looking around, I saw the inn, just over on the right side of the street after making a left at the intersection. In any case, the guy was right about not missing it, and it was a pale, faded yellow, so at least those parts of the directions were correct.
The Sitka Inn wasn’t much to look at from the street. There were two typical storefront aluminum and glass doors, one leading into the lobby and the other into the Sitka Inn Grill, which looked as if it took up most of the building’s ground floor.
Checking in, the middle-aged woman behind the counter gave the three of us a skeptical look when she checked the reservation and saw it was for a single king bed room.
“It’s extra for a rollaway,” she said.
“We won’t be needing it,” I said, daring her to say something.
She looked as if she was about to, then meekly finished with, “Well, I’ve got to charge you for the third guest anyway.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” I said.
She handed me the room key, an old-school metal key on a big diamond-shaped plastic tag that said “Property of the Sitka Inn” and had the room number hot-stamped into it. Pure class.
We took the elevator to the third and top floor, then made our way to the last door on the right. I was a bit put off by the terribly dated and worn carpet in the hallway, but the room itself was nice and clean, if also a bit dated. The bed’s coverlet was probably decades old, but it wasn’t stained or anything nasty like that. The carpet was a bit worn, too, but clean, so I wasn’t going to complain.
Emmy looked around, then focused on the big window that looked out over the harbor to the south. It was evening by this time, and the dusk was very picturesque, with the lights of the boats and the businesses and houses along the waterfront.
“Thank you for all of this,” Emmy said. “I am already enjoying our trip, and we have not even seen the ship yet.”
Angela had set her camera bag down and joined Emmy at the window, wrapping her arm around Emmy’s waist. “This town- it’s exactly how I imagined,” she said. “The boats, the old wooden buildings, all of it.”
I joined the two, gazing out across the water. “Alaska, here we are,” I said.
“What time do we board the boat tomorrow?” Angela asked. “Do we have time for sightseeing?”
“We have some time, but not a lot,” I said. “The cruise company is supposed to pick us up here at the hotel at eleven.”
“Then we must go out and see what we can tonight,” Emmy announced.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It wasn’t really night yet, but with the low, dark clouds it felt that way when Angela and I followed Emmy back out onto what must have been the small town’s main street. It was still lightly drizzling, but with all our rain gear that really didn’t matter. There were a surprising number of people walking around, shopping, going in and out of the handful of restaurants, or simply out for a stroll- and every single one was dressed the way we were, with waterproof gear from head to toe.
The only real way we stood out was that almost all of the locals seemed to be wearing actual rubber boots, and not hikers like us, but other than that, it was Gore-Tex or slickers everywhere you looked.
I had no agenda for us, so therefore no objection to Emmy and Angela leading us to wherever their whims dictated.
The two seemed intent on helping out the local economy, too, and soon enough I was carrying around even more shopping bags. Emmy and Angela got themselves some of the same brown rubber boots that were so popular, and some heavy wool sweaters knit by women from one of the area’s tribes. They wanted to buy me a sweater, too, but none actually fit me. I made a big deal about being disappointed, but honestly, it was a bit of a relief, since I didn’t actually want one.
In a little art gallery Emmy bought a Tlingit print she really liked, and Angela bought a couple of photos, one of a pod of Orcas breaking the surface in a very calm inlet and the other of a fishing boat in the misty morning light. We paid to have them shipped home, since there was no way we could take them with us. Angela bought a couple of books of local lore in the bookstore just two doors down from the hotel, and then we were back at the inn for dinner.
People had reacted to Emmy everywhere we’d gone that evening. Most were like Mary at the tribal office, awed that a famous rock star was visiting middle-of-nowhere Sitka, but a few merely gave dirty looks.
While we were eating our unexpectedly good dinners from the inn’s surprisingly sophisticated menu, a middle-aged man approached the table. Somewhat awkwardly, he waited until we turned our attention to him, then introducing himself as ‘Slim Jim’ Harris. He said he managed the local rock radio station, and when he’d heard that Emmy De Lascaux was in town, he just had to come say hello.
Of course Emmy treated the man graciously, as she always did with everybody, and when he asked if she could maybe do an in-studio while we were in town, she said that she would be happy to do that, but it would have to be that evening since we’d be leaving the next morning.
Slim Jim was overjoyed to hear it, promising to wait until we were finished with dinner so he could drive her to the station’s studio.
There was no way I was going to send Emmy off with some guy all by herself, so after dinner all three of us piled into Slim Jim’s Subaru wagon for the trip to the radio station.
I had really nothing to do except wait around while Emmy and the evening DJ chatted on-air for a bit, but Angela had brought her camera and took a bunch of photos. She promised Slim Jim that she’d email the best of them, but he took a few with his phone anyway. He’d set up a video camera to record the whole session, but the stills would be nice for the station’s website.
After the initial twenty minutes of talk about The Downfall’s influences, how Emmy had started learning the guitar at the age of four, and other related topics, Emmy began to play. The DJ had asked her for five of his favorite Downfall songs, starting with Killer In The Dark.
Instead of the recorded version’s strange, animalistic scream, Emmy howled gently, sounding like a wolf somewhere in the distance. She played the song slower, too, but with a sort of restrained intensity that sent chills up my spine. When she sang the final line, it was easy to believe that she would, in fact, cut your heart out.
“Wow, that was amazing,” the DJ said when Emmy finished. “I’ve heard that song a hundred times, but never like that. Emmy, can you tell us a little bit about your inspiration for that one?”
“Lar, if I were to tell you what that song means to me, then it will take away some of the mystery, would it not? Now, the song can mean anything you think it means. If I tell the world that it means this or that, then it becomes limited, confined. So no, I will leave it up to the listener to find their own meaning in it.”
“I guess that makes sense,” the DJ admitted.
Emmy’s next couple of songs went similarly, with Emmy gently fending off the DJ’s attempts to get her to explain what they meant.
Finally, Emmy said, “This is a song that we have never recorded in the studio, but we enjoy playing it live. This song was written by June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash’s second wife, about the all-consuming feeling of being madly in love with another.” With that, she strummed the first chord of Ring Of Fire.
When Emmy finished, the DJ thanked her for coming in to the studio that night, saying that they’ve been receiving non-stop phone calls with request after request.
“What do most of the callers want to hear? I will play one more song, whatever it is that was the most requested,” Emmy said.
“Um, let me get our people on that,” Lar said, waving through the window at his producer to get moving. After a minute or so of chat between Emmy and the DJ, the producer came back and held up a piece of paper to the window into the sound booth.
“Well, it seems that the top choice tonight was Baby, I was Born To Die, off your most recent album,” Lar announced.
“Alright, I will play it,” Emmy agreed.
I glanced over at Angela, then, seeing the expression on her face, I took her into my arms and her her tightly as Emmy sang, “I was born to make you cry.”
We stayed like that for the length of the song, me holding Angela tightly while I felt her body shake with silent sobs. Simply holding Angela was the best way I could communicate that I understood perfectly. Although it had never really been said explicitly, I think we both knew that when Emmy was gone it was going to just be the two of us, living with Emmy’s memory.
Slim Jim thanked Emmy over and over again as he drove us back to the inn, and Emmy reminded him several times that according to the contract she’d had him sign the station can play the songs as much as they want, but one hundred per cent of any revenues from any other distribution must go to the Tlingit and Haida scholarship fund.
“Not just the profits, but all revenue,” she reminded him. “Every penny.”
“Yeah, I understand,” he said, and I could see that he was thinking about how to make this work for the station, which was fine. I made a mental note to have my lawyers contact the station in a couple of weeks to look over the books and make sure they were toeing the line.
If Slim Jim was smart about it, he could spin it into a good PR coup for the station at the same time as increasing their footprint. I hoped he was smart about it.
Walking into the inn’s lobby, the young woman behind the desk stood up straight when she saw Emmy.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” she said. When Emmy acknowledged her, she said, “I just heard you on the radio,” she said, pointing to one of the small speakers set into the ceiling, which were playing the radio station we’d just left. “I just want to thank you for giving a shout out to the Tlingit scholarship fund. That fund is helping my little brother go to college in Seattle right now.”
“It was my pleasure,” Emmy said, her smile bright.
“I know it’s really unprofessional of me, and please don’t tell my manager, but can I get a selfie with you?” she asked, looking hopeful.
“Of course,” Emmy replied. “Here, let Angela take the photo. She is a professional.”
Angela posed the two of them and snapped a handful of pictures using the woman’s phone, before handing it back so the clerk could check the photos.
“These are perfect! Thanks so much!” she said, scanning though the images.
“It was my pleasure,” Emmy said, and I’m sure she meant it.
Later, in bed, Angela said, “Em, I love you so much, and your music is… I mean, it’s your self-expression, I understand that, but it hurts my heart so much when you sing that song.”
“I know, and I am sorry, ma chere,” Emmy replied. “I do not enjoy causing you pain.”
“I know you don’t, Em, and that’s why I’m never gonna ask you to not play it. It’s your…” Angela said, searching for the right word.
“It’s your art, Em,” I said. “You need to express your art, regardless of what Ange and I think.”
“Yes, exactly,” Angela agreed. “Your art is powerful, because it makes people feel things. And that’s why you must never stop.”
“Thank you, baby,” Emmy said, stroking Angela’s cheek. “That means very much to me.”
We got up early the next morning and had breakfast at the little cafe across the street, then made our way through the drizzle to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. It had been built back in the middle of the Nineteenth Century when Sitka was the capital of the Russian territory of Alaska, before they sold it to the US.
After that, a walk down the street and up some stairs saw us at the site of the Russian fort that protected the harbor, now just a flat spot on a little hill with a great view of Crescent Bay and the string of small islands than ran to the south.
The low, gray clouds emphasized the cool light of the morning, giving the view an ethereal feeling. Emmy stood there for a long time, looking out over the placid water without saying a word while Angela and I wandered around and read all the historical marker signs.
“This is very beautiful,” Emmy said when we joined her again. “It feels mysterious, and wild.”
“You are mysterious and wild,” I said, leaning in for a kiss, but our hat brims collided, turning the moment ridiculous.
Emmy laughed, and so did I, before taking her hand and turning her to head back down and to the inn.
The Alaska Expeditions van came right at eleven to collect us and several other inn guests to take us to the cruise ship. We all loaded in, and after a short drive to a dock just past the seaplane landing we unloaded again. Deckhands piled the bags on a trolley, and we all trooped down the walkway and onto the dock behind them.
“Is that our ship?” Angela asked, pointing to the pretty white and varnished wood boat tied to the dock.
Seeing the name on the side, I said, “Yep- that’s the one.”
“I thought it was going to be a big cruise ship,” Angela said. “I’m happy that we won’t be on one of those gigantic floating hotels.”