ALASKA V3 CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST

QUEEN OF THE HARBOR

Mei-Mei lived on a yellow sailboat in the harbor. It was a very small sailboat, low and dark and sometimes lonely in the water, but Mei-Mei didn’t mind.

Mei-Mei belonged to a very old fisherman who also lived on the sailboat. It had been many years since the fisherman had caught anything, but he continued to introduce himself as a fisherman, and that’s what people continued to call him.

In the evenings, Mei-Mei and the fisherman read children’s fiction, he with whiskey and she with milk. They liked children’s fiction because words were important to them, and after all, any good story is nothing more than anarchic bundles of words pretending to be knowledge.

The fisherman liked words because they were just as lovely as the fish had once been, but far more reliable. Mei-Mei liked words because of the sounds they made coming out of the mouths of humans.

The Constant Family came to town in the shell of a Chinese spaceship that had fallen back down to Earth. At that time, the most cutting-edge technology in the colonization of space included a state-of-the-art launch disposal system that sent all extraneous machinery back to Earth after takeoff. The Constant Family, as manual operators of the spaceship necessary only for its launch, were classified as “extraneous machinery.” They had operated the spaceship H.M.S. Prudence so that its primary passenger might continue on to Mars. They had been chosen for this role primarily because of their collective ability to receive instructions and push buttons.

The Constant Family had not expected to crash in Harborville, but upon inspection, they were quite pleased with their new home.

“Destiny,” cried Mr. Constant, “that we should land in such a productive and prolific land! This water, this earth—it will nourish our descendents for generations to come!”

Mrs. Constant, having immediately decamped to the nearest boutique, found that there would indeed be a suitable supply of small-town gossip, and wasted no time in helping to maintain the intricate infrastructure of rumours, grudges, and prejudice. “The best thing about small towns,” she told her husband, “is that it is truly impossible for anybody to be anything other than ridiculous!”

Even little Benny and Tommy Constant took to the new land. The old-growth forest was a playground for them, replete with waterslides and rope swings and balancing beams and swimming pools and treehouses, and even conveniently placed public snacks.

Only moody Sadie Constant felt upset by this development. Young people are always particularly sensitive to change, despite what they tell themselves. At seventeen, Sadie was the only member of the family old enough to remember, but not yet willing to forget.

After moving past their outrage at the recklessness of the Chinese Space Agency, the citizens of Harborville began to realize that the crash-landing might actually be a boon to the Economy. The travel agency immediately mobilized its top media consultants to organize a welcoming party, in order to photograph Mr. and Mrs. Constant shaking hands with the Mayor, and photographs were sent out to all the biggest news outlets in the world, the better to attract visitors and stimulate the tourism industry.

The biggest retailer in town, Lee’s Sporting Goods, gave each of the Constants a pair of boots and a raincoat emblazoned with the Lee’s logo. The Manager of Lee’s hoped that one of the new arrivals might accept a job at the store; he had been suffering from a dire shortage of employees, that was a result of the poor Economy.

The Constants were also given a home of their own. If there was one thing the City of Harborville did well, it was the making of homes and the eating of food. Yes, the Economy might be in the dumps and the city might be broke, but the people knew how to keep themselves alive! The houses seemed as though they’d been built explicitly from and for the conditions of a temperate rainforest; the structures were small and humble and beautiful, and exclusively constructed from local materials that blended subtly with the colors around them. The fireplaces were placed exclusively in the centers of the houses, the better to keep out the cold and damp, and the better to welcome multitudes of friends and neighbors in the cold and dark months. Root cellars and smokehouses and greenhouses and gardens extended out from each home, because no house was complete without a vast supply of food, and this, too, was a great success for Harborville. The pride of the town—the wild peach trees—grew abundantly down the street and up into the valley and all across the island, and the people of Harborville explained proudly and reverently that all who lived on the island were free to take the wild peaches as they pleased.

The Constants were given all these things; a home with a fireplace in the middle, and a freezer and a greenhouse and all the peaches they could eat.

“I’ll warn you, though,” said the Mayor to Mr. Constant after the photographers had left, “Harborville is in tough times. No jobs and no workers. Making a living doesn’t come easy these days.”

Neither Mei-Mei nor the fisherman felt that they belonged in Harborville anymore.

The fisherman didn’t belong because he was without work. He had money, plenty of money from the good years. But what he really wanted was work; good work; the kind that reminds you that you’re not too good to work with your hands, work that reminds you what you love and who you are.

Mei-Mei felt she didn’t belong because nobody noticed her anymore. Back in the good years, when the harbor was the center of the town and everyone important had a boat, people would see the cat on the sailboat and smile. “Look at that cat,” they’d say. “Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she just the queen of the harbor?” Mei-Mei felt that that had been her job—to look out from her perch on the boat, and greet the fishermen and visitors and townspeople. But no one came to the harbor anymore; no one saw the cat on the sailboat.

The Constant family declined to work at Lee’s Sporting Goods. “I don’t see why I need to work when we get so much from the city,” explained Mrs. Constant to the Manager. “At a certain point, you can pay a person as much as you like, but if the work doesn’t make them happy, you’ve got a problem. I’d rather work in the kitchen.”

Of course, this meant that the family had no money. This worked just fine, for a while—Mrs. Constant’s homemade spiced peaches could buy just about anything that money could. But Mr. Constant soon began to feel restless. He felt like a bum without work! Though, he admitted, it wasn’t that he had no work—he had more work than ever, really, what with chopping wood and plowing the land and helping the neighbors. He just didn’t have a job; a job came with respect, with security, with status!

Mr. Constant saw his wife’s spiced peaches flying out of the kitchen, and an idea sprouted in his mind.

“Martha, quit giving away your peaches,” he said one morning at the breakfast table.

Mrs. Constant did not like this. “The only reason Sally invited me to play bridge on Sunday was for my spiced peaches,” she said. “People like my peaches, so they like me.” And, as an afterthought she added: “Those peaches make people happy. It’s a public service.”

“Well, don’t stop making them,” said Mr. Constant. “We’re going to sell them. This town needs some entrepreneurial initiative. Call that a public service!”

So the three Constant children were sent out to the valley on their bikes to pack as many peaches as they could into their baskets and trailers, and Mrs. Constant used the last of the money to buy an industrial pressure canner, and Mr. Constant contacted the manager at Lee’s Sporting Goods and said no, I don’t want to work for you, but how would you like to start selling the tastiest wild spiced peaches in town? And the Manager said why, yes that sounds just wonderful and congratulations, sir, on bringing some entrepreneurial initiative to Harborville!

The spiced peaches were a hit, as Mr. Constant knew they would be. They flew off the shelves at Lee’s Sporting Goods, $12 a jar. As Director of Operations, Mr. Constant felt quite proud of his achievement, and hired his daughter, Sadie, and two other high schoolers to work in the kitchen with Mrs. Constant. They couldn’t cook fast enough to keep up with demand.

Soon, however, the meek and finite reserves of cash in town began to run out. Or rather, they began to accumulate under the bedsprings of Mr. and Mrs. Constant. The neighbors who once traded their vegetables and meat could no longer afford the $12 peaches.

Sally Goodwin offered daily bridge sessions for Mrs. Constant, if only she could have just a few jars of those spiced peaches for free! Others offered their vegetables, their wild game, their labor. But there was only one thing Mr. Constant wanted.

“I’d like to buy some land,” he told the mayor.

The mayor’s eyes popped out of his head. Cash? For the city to use? The city had stopped selling private plots years ago, when the population had stopped growing, and as a result no land sales had occurred in the past thirty years.

“Land out in the valley,” insisted Mr. Constant. “Land with peach trees. The Constant Spiced Peach Corporation would like to own that land.”

So for the second time in a year, Mr. Constant and the Mayor shook hands, and for the second time in a year, the Mayor thanked his lucky stars for the Constants.

Back on the yellow sailboat, Mei-Mei and the fisherman agreed that the Constant Spiced Peaches were just about the tastiest thing that happened in the harbor for many years. At least, not since the fish had disappeared. “They say Constant will own the whole town soon,” said the fisherman. “He’s gonna put every single person to work makin’ peaches, and givin’ em’ the money to buy what they make. Whatcha think of that, cat?”

Mei-Mei just looked out the window. She could see the Constants’ house, up in town on the hill, and she could see moody Sadie Constant sitting in the window and reading. Mei-Mei looked at Sadie Constant and smiled.

One evening, after their shift at the Constant Spiced Peach Corporation, the three Constant children went walking down by the docks. The evening twilight stretched out across the sky, with broken clouds letting in late light off in the distance, and sheets of rain off to either side. Though it was late, Sadie wasn’t tired; she brought along her two little brothers at her mother’s request, to keep them out of the way of the pressure canner. The little boys didn’t care one way or the other, because they didn’t know any better.

Sadie still missed her old life. She didn’t care for picking peaches, and thought the family business was silly. The evenings were the most acceptable time of day to her; evenings were a between-time; a time of safe and gentle change, with all the reliability of the daily setting sun.

Sadie saw things on her evening walks that other people didn’t see. That evening while she walked through the harbor with her little brothers, Sadie saw an old cat on the deck of a painted yellow sailboat. The cat and the sailboat looked old and dilapidated, but Sadie liked old and broken things. She pointed out the cat to her brothers, who waved at the cat.

The cat winked, and then spoke.

The boys were not surprised, because they were young and they saw the magic in the land, and they didn’t know any better, anyways. Sadie was surprised, but she was also wise enough to keep quiet and listen. Here is what the cat said:

ALASKA V3 CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST

“THE FISHERMAN AND I WOULD LIKE TO START A LIBRARY. BUT THE FISHERMAN IS OLD, AND I AM JUST A CAT.”

“Good evening, children. Do you know why you’re here? No? I’ve been waiting for you. I saw you arrive, but I’ve been waiting long since then. Waiting for thirty years with my fisherman, ever since the fish went away.” The cat was Mei-Mei, of course, and she really had been waiting.

“I can see you miss your home, child,” said Mei-Mei to Sadie. “As you should. We must never stop looking back.” The fisherman in his bed heard Mei-Mei speaking, and he nodded along.

“Now, the only thing that is really wrong with Harborville is that there is no library.” Mei-Mei stood, and got to the point: “The fisherman and I would like to start a library. But the fisherman is old, and I am just a cat. What we really need,” she said, “is a librarian.” She looked at Sadie here, for Benny and Tommy really weren’t old enough to be librarians just yet.

Sadie knew that Mei-Mei was talking to her, and she was pleased. It didn’t give her back her old home, or her old life, and it didn’t bring back the fish, not really. But like Mei-Mei and the fisherman, Sadie liked stories. And what’s more, she was lonely, and didn’t like working at the Constant Spiced Peach Corporation.

Benny and Tommy giggled and pointed at the sun as it disappeared beneath the water, on its way to rise again.

At the request of his daughter, Mr. Constant (of the Constant Spiced Peach Corporation) donated a parcel of land (bare of peach trees) to the new Harborville Library. He had wanted to make it the Constant Corporation Bookstore, but Sadie had been firm; they would have a library.

Mrs. Constant approved; she knew libraries were perfect petri dishes of gossip—perhaps because they aroused so much emotion in the puny little human minds?

Sadie liked working at the library, even though the pay was truly horrible. If she hadn’t been the daughter of the Constant Spiced Peach Corporation proprietors, she’d have had no way at all to acquire spiced peaches. She met plenty of new people, and she felt that people respected her.

Mei-Mei and the fisherman, too, were pleased. They remained in the dark recesses of the sailboat, because cats and artists prefer solitude, but Mei-Mei could see the town from her perch, and she could see the people reading. The fisherman checked out The Old Man and the Sea, even though it wasn’t strictly children’s fiction.

Mr. Constant remained skeptical. More and more workers were requesting time off, to read, of all things! For the first time since the spiced peach craze, production was down; it was down horribly. The Mayor, the Manager, and Mr. Constant called an emergency meeting.

“We’ve simply got to put an end to all this reading!” fumed Mr. Constant. “I can’t find a single employee to hold down the Sunday evening shift! I built this town, you know, but sometimes I swear to God I wish the Chinese hadn’t accidentally crash landed me within hundred miles of Harborville!”

The Manager was sympathetic; business had been wonderful thanks to the spiced peaches. But the Mayor wasn’t so sure. He’d recently discovered that a certain Sally Goodwin was a fervent fan of Shakespeare, and that reciting certain verses had a rather good chance of making her smile.

“Why don’t you think on it, Constant,” said the Mayor. “You never know, maybe this library business will come to something.”

So Mr. Constant went down the next morning to the harbor; he wasn’t one for walking, but he liked the mornings; mornings were a time full of promise, a time for thinking about the future, and all the splendid and staggering and astounding things he might accomplish in it. Mr. Constant was deep into his dreams for the future of the Constant Spiced Peach Corporation when a small yellow sailboat caught his eye. But no; not the sailboat, the cat sitting on top of it.

The cat was not remarkable; it was old and tired-looking. But goodness, how that cat looked out over the harbor! Almost regal in the morning light, Mr. Constant thought. And perhaps because of the strangeness of the morning air, he nodded to the cat as he passed, and the cat nodded back.

Mei-Mei saw Mr. Constant come through the harbor, and smiled to herself. She nodded to Mr. Constant, and then stood, and stepped onto the dock, and moved her body in such a way so as to tell him that he might follow her, if he liked.

Mr. Constant, confused with himself, followed the old cat to the end of the harbor. Mei-Mei sat down on the dock, and Mr. Constant stood, and together they watched the sun rise. It came up slowly from the water; from the water that had once so much promise, and shone on the town, on the people who continued to live. The lapping water reflected a million tiny suns onto Mr. Constant, so that his whole body shimmered, as though a school of fish were painted across his chest.

Mr. Constant sighed and looked back up toward town, where the light fell on the peach trees and on the library. He stooped to stroke the cat, and then straightened in the dawn. Then he strode back down the dock, and Mei-Mei stayed and sat and watched him leave, walking with purpose back towards his Corporation.

But as he passed the yellow sailboat, he stopped, and removed from his bag a jar of peaches, and set them down on the bow of the sailboat—freely. ■

This story was inspired by Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut; One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; and Holes by Louis Sachar.