South Pole Station

*

After Thanksgiving, the main meals reverted to the usual, but now people were talking openly about the superiority of the Midrats meal. Bonnie was only left with the two Moosewood books: Moosewood (MW) and Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd (MWC). Pearl continued to find it strange that she said nothing about the missing cookbooks. She’d watch the woman sitting on an upended crate in her tiny office off the galley, squinting at online recipes. From time to time, she’d shout out, “We got pistachios?” or “Any starfruit from Cheech?” Invariably, they were always a few ingredients short.

One morning, during the lull between breakfast and lunch prep, Pearl was crouched in the freshie shack, tearing up pages from Moosewood and shoving them into the pockets of her parka, when the door flew open. She clumsily shoved the cookbook onto one of the produce shelves, but it was too late. Bozer had seen.

“What do you want in here?” Pearl said.

“I gotta measure the shelves for the new freshie shack,” he said, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He brushed past Pearl and reached up to the shelf where she’d hidden the cookbook. When he pulled it out, several of the torn pages fluttered to the ground. He started laughing. “I knew it. Knew it from the minute Bonnie told me those books was missing.” His narrow, unknowable eyes traveled the length of Pearl’s body. He scratched the side of his face; the sound of his nails against the wiry hairs of his reddish beard sent a shiver of disgust down her spine.

“You planning on sticking around?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” she said, trying to sound tough.

Bozer placed Moosewood back on the shelf, next to a crate of Spanish onions. “If you’re going to run a lifer out of a job, you best be prepared to become a lifer yourself.” Pearl’s cheeks burned. “Now, I’m not saying the old girl is any great shakes in the kitchen. Maybe she done run her course here. I’m just saying that you oughta plan on making this a multiyear gig if you’re gonna go to that kind of trouble. Now, meantime, here’s what I need to see from here on out: barbecue once a week, make it ribs.”

“Or what, you tell everyone I forced Bonnie out?”

Bozer spun a level in his hands. “And make it come with cornbread and potato salad.”

“We don’t get cornmeal here.”

“Then use back channels.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Honey, if the Polies find out you double-crossed Bonnie, things won’t go well for you. My requests are small.”

Pearl was annoyed, but if this was the price of intrigue, it was cheap. She nodded at Bozer, and stepped aside so he could begin measuring the shelves. On her way to the door, she reached for Moosewood, but Bozer casually moved it beyond her reach.

That night, Pearl invited Birdie to her room for the first time. She wanted to show him the notebook—not the pages in which she’d documented her plan to take over the kitchen. Just the recipes. The book had been with her for eight years. It was hardbound, indestructible. Green leather, strong binding—pockets on the inner boards that bulged with scribblings, recipe cards, and other detritus from her various gigs. It was her book of tricks. It had every recipe that had ever worked, including the ones she’d written herself. She didn’t know why she was showing it to Birdie. She hadn’t shown it to anyone.

With the clean, pink nail of his index finger, Birdie pointed to a handwritten table written in the margins of the first page. “‘Oven, liquid, sugar’—what is this?”

“A chart of high-altitude adjustments. Baking at elevation.” She leaned closer to Birdie and placed her own finger next to his. “Take sugar, for example. Because the elevation is so high at Pole, I have to remove a tablespoon of sugar from every cup I use or else everyone’s teeth will fall out. Increased evaporation increases the concentration of sugar. It makes everything taste too sweet, plus it weakens the structure of whatever I’m baking.” Gingerly, she picked up Birdie’s hand and set it in his lap so she could begin turning the pages. She flipped until she got to the recipe she wanted.

“I made this one up when I was a set-net deckhand on a tender out of Nome.”

“Seawater Bread?” Birdie said.

“It’s really basic. Dry yeast, a little sugar, four cups of flour, and a cup and a half of warmed seawater. I got it right off the deck. Let it proof overnight, drop it in the oven around five a.m., and voilà, fresh bread in the middle of the Norton Sound.”

Birdie took Pearl’s hand and placed it on his chest. “You’re the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met,” he said.

“Why, because I can make bread from seawater? Anyone can do that.”

“No,” Birdie said. “Because you did.” Pearl didn’t know why she felt embarrassed; she tried to pull away, but Birdie held her fast. Maybe it was all the things he didn’t know. The things no one knew. She thought back to the day she walked onto that longliner docked at Cordova Boat Harbor on the Orca Inlet, a seventeen-year-old foster-home runaway. She’d just talked to Captain Whitty about crewing on his March halibut trip, and she was halfway down the dock before she remembered she couldn’t take no for an answer. Not without fighting for a yes, anyway. It’s what she’d been doing her whole life by that point: seventeen years spent fighting for a yes. The ones in Cordova who didn’t fight—the former highliners, the ones who collapsed along with the herring fishery after the oil spill in ’89—they walked around town like half-people. Pearl knew she was too young to be a half-person, so she’d turned around and marched back up toward Captain Whitty’s boat and pounded on the door with her fist. “Open the door, Captain,” she’d shouted. “I gotta say my piece.” She heard him curse, but the door eventually opened, and with it came the unmistakable odor of a ruined dinner.

“Well, say it, then,” the old man growled.

“I can work on no sleep and still have a smile on my face. I can splice line, I can cook, I got a strong back and a good head on my shoulders. And I make the best damn coffee in the state. And if you don’t like how I work, you can throw me overboard. I don’t care. But you’ll give me a chance.”

They’d stood facing each other for a minute, the only sounds the waters of Prince William Sound slapping against the side of the boat. That was when Pearl glanced over Whitty’s shoulder and saw the remains of his dinner smoking on the galley stove. “Plus, it doesn’t look like you know how to cook,” she said.

“I do okay,” Whitty grumbled, but he stepped aside to let her pass. She walked into the cramped cabin and glanced at the frying pan. A black lump of something emitted a thread of smoke.

“What was it?” Pearl asked.

“Spam and white bread,” Whitty replied, as though he were saying “filet mignon.”

Pearl grabbed the pan and tossed its contents out the galley window and into the harbor. “I’ll cook for you,” she said, “but I also want to fish.”

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