The Big Both Ways (A Cold Storage Novel Book 1)

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. In this gripping tale of survival, betrayal and murder set in the Pacific Northwest in 1935 from Straley ( Cold Water Burning ), Slip Wilson is just trying to find work, food and a little justice when he hooks up with a bottle-blonde, Ellie Hobbes, who drags him into her edgy, ragtag life. At the last minute, Ellie, a notorious red union organizer who faces mounting problems with antiunion forces, and her young niece hop aboard the same rickety boat Slip is escaping on that's traveling from Seattle to Juneau. The odd trio barely catches a breath as weather, hunger, a Seattle homicide detective and a revenge-seeking gang of thugs hound them all the way up the Inside Passage. Ellie isn't big on explanations, so Slip isn't sure until nearly the end of their journey if she's a heroine or a scoundrel. Straley's beautifully understated narrative, vivid sense of place and unapologetic, unadorned characters make this a riveting, unpredictable ride. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. ONE Even though she had never traded sex for money, she was nothing now but a whore with a bloody nose. It was a hard fact to accept…but there it was. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0She looked at the man curled in the trunk of the car, blood oiling over his white shirt. She had his broken watch in her hand, its intricate guts at a standstill, the second hand trembling between two painted tick marks on the face. It was only then that she started to cry. Her sobs leaked between her bloody fingers as she tried to stifle the sound. A mile to the west a car hissed over the pavement, and somewhere in the woods a screen door slammed. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0She stepped toward him then. Tears flecked off her chin as she lifted the cold arm to place the watch back around his wrist. She was thinking that he might as well keep it, for however stupid it seemed, even in a world gone mad a broken watch could still be right twice a day. xa0xa0 xa0 xa0xa0It was May 1935. In April, Amelia Earhart had set a speed record on a solo flight from Los Angeles to Mexico City, and when she took off again she set another from Mexico City to New York. In the American southwest, a blizzard of dust scoured the tired farmland and the Roosevelt administration began relocating dust bowlers to a communal farming community in the Territory of Alaska. In August, Will Rogers and Wiley Post were to set off in their Lockheed Orion for Point Barrow, and on June 24, the miners of the Alaska-Juneau gold mine would riot when scabs started marching up the street to the hiring hall. All of these things would take on a new meaning to Slippery Wilson in the months to come but just then he was looking halfway up a big-butted Douglas fir tree listening to his bull buck tell him something through a wad of chew. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0His given name was Jack, but his parents had called him Slippery.xa0 Like many people during the Depression he wanted to be hopeful.xa0 Others had told him that life was hard but he had not seen it that way.xa0 He had always been stubborn in his optimism. But now he was beginning to wonder. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Well, I guess you better scamper up there and cut him down,” the bull buck said as he spit out a stream of tobacco juice onto the duff. They were standing in the northern woods of the Skagit River drainage, in Washington State.xa0 The wind was sour with the smell of pitch.xa0 Ninety feet up in a broken tree,xa0 Jud White was slumped dead from his climbing rope, where a partially rotten limb from the fir he was topping had hit him square in the chest. High up in the silent tree, Jud’s torso was at a sickening angle to his waist, his axe swinging from its lanyard attached to his belt. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“You better get up there and cut him down,” the bull buck repeated.xa0 xa0 xa0xa0It was just after sunrise and the tired men around him had stopped rattling through the brush. Gray jays flitted in the slash of tangled branches.xa0 The hook tenders, who had already oiled up their bones with the first hard half hour of clambering down the cut, stood watching him to see what he was going to do.xa0 “No, I’m sorry,” he said to the bull buck, who was standing flat-footed amongst a tangle of rigging cable, “I’m going to draw my pay.” And he started walking out of the woods. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0It had been three years since Slip had left the failing ranch in eastern Washington.xa0 Roosevelt had promised reclamation and electrification.xa0 The high desert country east of the Cascades would be a new Eden. Slip had watched the men hitchhiking with cardboard suitcases to the dam sites.xa0 He had picked apples, put up hay, and milked his family’s cows for his entire life, but when his father died and the bank took it all, he decided to follow those men up the river. As if to show him the rightness of his choice, the old cow kicked him one last time while he loaded her into the buyer’s truck, and even then he thought only of the thick, sweet milk she had given.xa0 xa0xa0 xa0 xa0xa0He sold his logging boots for five bucks to a cowhand with a cleft pallet who had been killing himself working on the rigging crew in his slick leather boots.xa0 Slip rolled his two changes of work clothes and a black suit he had used for funerals into a burlap bag that he tied off with a hank of rope.xa0 He pulled on his red mackinaw, grabbed his cap, and slung his bindle of clothes around his back. The last thing he did before walking out to the highway was to pull up the loose floorboard near his bunk. Tucked between the joists, Slip had hidden his tool kit.xa0 It was a long, open box with a few of the tools he had gotten from the farm before the men from the bank had come for their inventory.xa0 There was a fine Swedish handsaw, a brace, an assortment of bits, and a set of chisels that had never been abused.xa0 He had a square and a plumb line, a long-handled framing hammer, and a smaller claw hammer for finer work.xa0 He had a trim saw and a folding rule. There was an assortment of punches and nail sets and a carpenter’s level.xa0 He had a hand-made knife with his initials stamped into the leather sheath. The box had a strong leather sling and a canvas cover so he could travel easily without fear of spilling his tools on the ground.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0He dug into his toolbox for a tobacco tin. He opened the tin and put two twenty dollar bills inside.xa0 This forty dollars represented his pay for the last two weeks, minus the money the company took out for their trouble. With that forty dollars he had well over two thousand dollars saved, and two thousand dollars could buy a future, with any extra going toward happiness.xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Jud White had loved logging and was eager for Slip to love it too.xa0 Jud believed in it, he loved the bunkhouse and the tools. He loved the sweat and the smell of it.xa0 The rest of the boys worked for their wages and to build something somewhere else.xa0 Jud had been right square in the middle of his life. He woke up each morning exactly where he was supposed to be.xa0 He had been fully alive cutting trees, right up until the second that one killed him.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Slip shouldered his way past the men crowding toward the foreman’s shed.xa0 Already word had gotten round about two jobs that might open up.xa0 The skinny men drifted out of the brush like scarecrows come to life.xa0 They had been tenting off in the woods or in dry sections of culvert waiting for just this: someone to die or someone to quit.xa0 They didn’t care.xa0 They needed the work.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0He grabbed some letters for friends in the bunkhouse, promising to post them when he got to a mailbox.xa0 He shook hands with the Filipino cooks and bent down to shake the hands of the truck mechanics in the grease pit.xa0 He wished them all good luck, then he walked south and stuck out his thumb.xa0 The saws on the landing were rattling in the cut as a crew lowered Jud White’s body down from the tree. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Dew was still on the grass alongside the road. The morning wrens and sparrows were calling to each other in the shade. Just under the whine of the saws, he could hear the white noise of the Skagit River roiling down the valley.xa0 xa0 xa0xa0He got a ride with a kid from Sedro Woolley, who talked about his girlfriend and asked him for gas money.xa0 He got another ride from a salesman whose car was burning oil at an alarming rate, so Slip asked to be dropped off by the river, preferring to walk a while rather than be stuck with the salesman when the car broke down.xa0 As the salesman drove away, a cloud of exhaust hung like a storm squall moving in.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0He walked along the river, thinking of the dough in his toolbox and about a piece of ground he might be able to buy. Every time the thought of Jud White’s body welled up from the sickness in his stomach, he choked it back down and would think instead of the place he would build, maybe along a river with a few fruit trees and a loyal cow of his own. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Slip had been an active baby, always trying to wriggle out of his grandma’s arms.xa0 He arched his back, twisting and kicking at the cradling bath towel or the pair of strong arms reaching out for him. “This boy’s slippery,” the old woman had said, and the name stuck.xa0 Teachers heard his name and assumed he would try to get out of his studies.xa0 Girls chased him at church picnics instead of the greased pig. When he started working on the big dam project up the Columbia River at Grand Coulee, other workers assumed he was going to drop his rivet gun off the scaffolding.xa0 But he never did.xa0xa0 In some ways his name was the anvil his personality had been forged against.xa0 If anything was true about Slippery Wilson, it was that he wanted to stick. xa0xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Near a bend in the river road, a new Lincoln was pulled over with its left front tire hooked down into the ditch.xa0 The Lincoln had wire wheels and fine chrome headlamps mounted outboard of the grill. The rear wheels had scuffed two ditches in the soft dirt of the road’s shoulder. A blonde woman in a housedress and a cardigan walked around the back of the car, looking under the bumper and running her hands along the edge of the chrome.xa0 The wind riffled her short hair, and as she knelt down Slip could see the thick muscles of her thighs pressing against the fabric. When she stood up and turned, he saw the blush of rising bruises under her eyes and some redness under her nose as if maybe she were getting over a cold.xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“You wreck your car?” he called out to her.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0She turned quickly and almost jumped away from the trunk. “What?” she said, shielding her eyes to look at him.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Oh, I’m sorry,” Slip said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“No… no…” the girl said.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0It was then he noticed that her hands were shaking and her skin seemed sickly pale. “Are you all right?xa0 Would you like some help?” He waved at the front of the car and took off his wool cap with a short brim, aware now of how shabby he must look to this girl.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Yes,” she said, and he set down his tools. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0It would take weeks for him to understand what he was feeling as he walked toward the blonde woman. There would be storms and killings to come, there would be beatings and long hours of recrimination, but still he would try to hold on to his original impulse: the sound of the river with a beautiful woman standing under a tree. All he wanted to do was help her in a way that he hadn’t been able to help Jud, or his parents for that matter--or even himself.xa0 He wanted to make something right, on this fine morning when he was headed out for his fresh start.xa0 But, of course, by the time he recognized his mistake it would be too late.xa0 The future, like a breaking wave, would have washed over him. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Somebody run you off the road?” he asked.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0She looked up from where she was still running her hand along the edge of the rear bumper.xa0 She looked at her fingers and then up at Slip. “I hit a dog back a ways and I was just looking to see if there was any damage.”xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Must have scared you.” Slip said.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“What?” she asked, not taking her eyes off his. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Hitting the dog. It must have scared you.” xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Oh that, yes, it was frightening.”xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Slip walked to the front of the big Lincoln and bent down to look at the front bumper. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Don’t bother with that,” she said, putting her fingers lightly on his shoulders. “Let’s just get the car out of the ditch.” xa0 xa0 xa0xa0In ten minutes the Lincoln was back out in the road, engine idling and a thin haze of exhaust slithering along the road.xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Slip was panting and gathering up his things when she walked over to him with a paper cup of river water for him. “Thank you,” he said, “that’s nice of you.” Then he folded his kerchief and gestured down the road. “Can you give me a lift?”xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Oh… sure. Where are you heading?” She nervously wiped her hands on her dress and walked around to the passenger’s side, and then seeing she was in the wrong place, walked back around the car with Slip following her.xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“I’m headed to Seattle for a bit.xa0 I’ve got a friend who runs a barbershop,” Slip said. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“You need a shave?” she said, still wiping her hands. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“I suppose I do,” Slip said, and he doubled back toward the trunk to open it. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“I didn’t mean it,” she said, looking down at her feet. “You look fine.” xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Slip smiled at her, and he too looked down at her feet as if the answer to what was to happen next was down there somewhere. xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“Here,” she said, suddenly waking up. “Just put your things in the back here.xa0 I...I don’t have the key for the trunk.” xa0 xa0 xa0xa0“All right.” He smiled and opened the passenger door.xa0xa0 xa0 xa0 xa0xa0Slip settled into the front seat and she got behind the wheel. In reality the car smelled of cigarettes and whiskey, but Slip could only smell the cedar trees along the river.xa0 Her hair was dyed blonde and was showing dark roots. Her eyes were the cobalt blue of a medicine bottle. xa0The steering wheel was about as wide as her shoulders and she gripped it as if it were the wheel of a ship. She looked around for the starter button down on the floor and before she remembered that it was already running, she pressed the starter, and it shrieked in distress. She jammed the gears then with a grinding lurch wheeled out onto the road. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist *Starred Review* Straley, author of the Cecil Younger series, starring a contemporary Alaskan private investigator, turns here to Pacific Northwest history, with a rich tale of labor strife in the 1930s. After quitting his logging job, Slip Wilson sets off for Seattle, hitching a ride with a bleached blond in a big car. Trouble? Of course, especially given the body in the car’s trunk. Soon enough, there’s another body, and Slip, Ellie (the blond), her niece, and a yellow bird are on the lam, sailing a dory up Puget Sound’s Inside Passage, from Seattle to Alaska. What follows is part mystery and part action-adventure tale, as the neophyte sailors battle weather, tides, and unfriendly locals, all the while pursued by a determined Seattle cop on his own kind of lam from a troubled life. Straley hits all the right notes here: vividly detailed scenes evoking the clash between emerging trade unions and more radical advocates of revolution, as well as almost Dickensian vignettes of the working conditions in the canneries and on the waterfronts of the Northwest, meld perfectly with a Jack London–like, man-versus-nature story in which two adults, one child, and one bird, huddled together in a very small boat, attempt to stay afloat and move ever northward. Labor fiction only works if the characters don’t come across as stick figures, singing the union-label song on cue, and Straley nails that, too. Ellie spouts the party line, but she’d rather be Amelia Earhart, and Slip is uncertain about almost everything. If you want to read one novel about the Northwest in the grip of labor unrest, read this one. --Bill Ott --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. "Fortunately for those of us who love a tall tale, well told, with just enough mystery and local flora, fauna and history to catch our eye, Straley takes his own advice [write what you know]." -- Ron Judd "Seattle Times" --This text refers to the paperback edition. John Straley is a criminal investigator for the state of Alaska and lives in Sitka with his son and wife, a marine biologist who studies whales. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of The Woman Who Married a Bear, The Curious Eat Themselves, and The Music of What Happens. --This text refers to the paperback edition. Read more