The Alitak Dispatch, Iss. 01
It’s been a moment since I’ve posted anything, here on Versuche. The reason is simple: I’ve been working on my novel, On the Arctic Glass. It’s a time consuming project because it requires that I do a lot of bizarre research, like reading through freezing and refrigeration storage at fishing canneries manuals. I didn’t grow up in the fishing industry; I’ve never even been to Alaska; so it’s been slow going.
Another thing that has been slowing me down (besides laziness) is that I’m writing the sixth draft by hand. While it makes the going slower, writing by hand absolutely makes for better prose. I thought I’d share something that I recently wrote (lightly edited) just so you know I’m not out of commission. It comes from the opening of chapter three.
Enjoy, dear void.
It was easy to believe at first sight that work at the Alitak Cannery took place as a hapless onslaught when salmon were plenty or that life were as arrested as the comings and goings of the graveyard when salmon were lacking, but an organizing principle maintained a perfectly regular and perfectly predictable pattern at the cannery, during salmon season, no matter the amount of work at hand. That principle was the human need for sustenance; and nothing embodied that principle in physical form better, and nothing actuated that principle more effectively, than the comings and goings of the mess hall. But what regulated the activity at the mess hall (workers simply referred to it as the “mess”) and the otherwise inscrutable motion of salmon and eggs, electricity and machines, labor and pains, was the punctual, high-pitched scream of a steam whistle, which signaled mealtime. How a steam whistle still operated at a facility that had converted to electricity the century prior was a well kept secret—one only Ralph, the head cook, and Janet, the head baker, knew. But no one failed to heed the whistle’s call, neither the feared superintendent, Mr. Spray, nor the lowly and reclusive cannery mechanic, Andrés. The steam whistle blew to announce mealtime at the exact same times, seven days a week, with little variation during the salmon season, save for the final meal of the day, a mug-up, which might be signaled at either eight or nine o’clock on the dot, depending on Ralph’s mood—which was seldom good. Otherwise, the whistle sounded at seven in the morning, for breakfast, twelve, for lunch, and seven in the evening, for dinner, two sharp blows; it sounded too at nine in the morning, at three, and at either eight or nine, as mentioned, to announce the Alitak Cannery’s industry-renowned mug-ups, which featured some of the best baked goods of all the discontiguous United States and territories combined—one sharp blow. So punctual was the mess hall steam whistle that if anyone happened to have a reliable watch on their person (Izik didn’t) and an atomic clock at their service (Izik most definitely didn’t), one would quickly realize that it in fact blew the moment the last relevant fifty-ninth second of the hour passed away to its timely death, to double zeros. . . .
