Something About Valdez

Maren Holt arrived at the Valdez summer festival grounds with one borrowed wagon, three coils of silver ribbon, and the firm belief that nothing could go wrong before nine-thirty.

At nine-twenty-two, a papier-mâché salmon sailed past her face.

It smacked into the side of the community-center shed with a damp, heroic thud. One painted eye rolled loose and bounced into a crate of paper cups.

Maren stopped so abruptly that the wagon bumped her ankles.

“Good morning,” called a man from somewhere behind the salmon. “That was mostly intentional.”

She turned toward the voice.

The staging area had been transformed overnight into a cheerful disaster. Booth tents snapped in the bright Prince William Sound breeze. Volunteers hurried between stacks of folding tables, coolers, bunting, and boxes marked with increasingly desperate labels: PIE, NOT PIE, MAYBE COSTUMES, and WHO ORDERED SIX HUNDRED PICKLES?

Beyond the tents, the mountains rose green and sharp beneath a startlingly blue sky. Sunlight glittered on the water. The air smelled of coffee, seaweed, and hot dogs waiting for their buns.

Maren tightened her grip on the wagon handle.

She had volunteered for the Little Harbor Heritage Booth because the booth chair, Mrs. Kessler, had said, “You’re organized, dear,” in the tone people used when they meant, You are available and unlikely to flee.

Maren had accepted the compliment anyway. She needed one uncomplicated morning. One useful task. One chance to be known in Valdez for something other than the woman who had once returned a borrowed kayak with a gull nesting in it.

“Are you Maren?” the man asked.

He stepped around the shed carrying the salmon’s detached tail under one arm. He was tall, sun-browned, and wearing a faded blue T-shirt with a whale printed across the chest. His dark hair had been pushed back by the wind and had immediately escaped again. A smear of silver glitter crossed one cheek.

Maren looked at the tail. Then at him.

“That depends,” she said. “Are you here to accuse me of something?”

His mouth tilted. “Not yet.”

It was an irritatingly good smile. Open at one corner, as if he had already found the joke and was generously allowing her to catch up.

“Theo Mercer,” he said. “Float wrangler. Occasional fisherman. Full-time victim of other people’s craft supplies.”

“Maren Holt. Booth volunteer. Temporary owner of these supplies and, apparently, this wagon.”

“Excellent. We can be introduced properly after we stop the salmon from becoming a traffic hazard.”

A gust caught the loose tail. Theo lunged. Maren dropped the wagon handle and grabbed the other end just before it swept into a stack of lemonade dispensers.

The tail was lighter than it looked, but awkward and floppy, its cardboard ribs poking through the glittered fabric. Theo’s fingers closed over Maren’s a few inches from hers.

“On three,” he said.

“Why do people always say that when they have no plan?”

“Because ‘on one’ sounds panicked.”

“It is panicked.”

“Good. We’re aligned.”

They hauled the tail toward a flatbed trailer. Maren’s boots skidded on the grass, and Theo caught her elbow before she went down. His hand was warm through her sleeve.

For one brief, inconvenient second, she noticed everything: the clean scent of soap beneath the sawdust, the faint roughness of his palm, the fact that his eyelashes were darker than his hair.

Then the tail collapsed between them.

Theo looked down at it. “That’s not ideal.”

“That is a phrase people use when they are about to make a bad situation worse.”

“Then I’m using it correctly.”

Maren retrieved the wagon and scanned the chaos for Mrs. Kessler. The booth supplies were supposed to be stacked beside the blue tent, but beside the blue tent sat two crates of fake gold nuggets, a hand-painted sign reading VALDEZ: WHERE THE MOUNTAINS MEET THE PICKLES, and a woman in a feathered hat arguing with a man dressed as a crab.

Her wagon, meanwhile, was missing half its contents.

“The bunting,” Maren said.

Theo followed her gaze. A strand of silver ribbon stretched from the salmon’s head to a nearby float shaped like a giant coffee mug.

“That’s not ours.”

“It absolutely is ours.”

“Then why is it on the coffee?”

“Because someone moved it.”

“Who?”

Maren looked at the crowd. “That is the question I was hoping not to answer before breakfast.”

A whistle shrieked near the parade route. The first floats were due to line up in twenty minutes. Her borrowed supplies - three folding display boards, a box of historical postcards, the booth banner, and a dozen jars of Mrs. Kessler’s famous blueberry relish - were scattered through the staging area like evidence.

Theo set down the salmon tail and rubbed glitter from his cheek, only spreading it farther.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll retrieve your things.”

“We?”

“You have a wagon. I have local knowledge.”

“You have a fish tail.”

“I contain multitudes.”

They moved through the crowd together....