by Edward Lee
If you eat shrimp regularly, chances are they come from Southeast Asia, where they were most likely farmed in overcrowded mud ponds manned by poor subsistence workers barely able to eke out a living. These shrimp swim in a toxic cocktail of fertilizers and antibiotics, to ward off the host of diseases that infect these monoculture-breeding facilities. Still, chances are the shrimp don’t taste all that bad. Most farmed shrimp from Asia have no detectable flavor, good or bad. Once you dust them with paprika and cumin and blacken them in a cast-iron pan, or drown them in a spicy sweet-and-sour sauce, it matters little how flavorless they are. It is easy to overlook the chemical bath they were treated in before they arrived in frozen five-pound bricks. Shrimp are a cheap commodity, the equivalent of aquatic vermin.
I pull into a Vietnamese restaurant in Kemah. All along the Gulf Coast, from Seabrook to Galveston to Palacios, Vietnamese fishermen have settled into communities that started when thousands of refugees were relocated here after the Vietnam War. I sit down and order báhn xèo, a popular dish on the menu in every Vietnamese restaurant in America. It is a light, crispy crepe of turmeric and rice flour folded over shrimp, pork, and bean sprouts and served with a sweet dipping sauce. The place is bright and airy. The customers are white and working class and polite. On my table is the familiar plastic chopstick holder that opens up when you pull a knob on the lid. Bottles of Sriracha and soy sauce sit on a plastic tray. My waitress goes back and forth between taking orders and studying an oversize textbook.
When the crepe arrives, I can tell the shrimp is not from the Gulf. I ask the waitress, but she tells me she doesn’t know. I’m hungry, so I finish what’s on my plate, wondering as I eat if it is more authentic for a Vietnamese restaurant to use frozen shrimp farmed in Vietnam than Gulf shrimp. Then I wonder if any of the restaurants here use the local shrimp, or if the lure of cheap imports is just too tempting. The waitress tells me she is a college student studying for an exam. This is her uncle’s restaurant; her aunt is the cook. I tell her I’m here to interview Vietnamese shrimpers and could she ask her uncle if he knows any. She doesn’t hesitate to answer.
“They will not talk to you,” she says bluntly. “Mostly, they want to be left alone.”
“Is it because of all the racial stuff that happened here in the past?”
The relationship between the Vietnamese fishermen and the local Texas fishermen has long been punctuated by controversy; skirmishes have boiled over into fights and even murders. After the Vietnam War, when thousands of refugees were placed along the Texas Gulf, many did what they knew how to do best: fish. This was a time before stringent regulations, and the Vietnamese, desperate to make a living, broke many of the unwritten rules of the bay. They skirted laws, they ignored limits, they transformed an old Texas profession into a cutthroat business. This behavior coincided with the rage many Texans felt over unfair demonization of American Vietnam War veterans. Though the immigrants were on the same side of the fight in Vietnam as Americans, here in Texas, tensions between Vietnamese and white fishermen ran hot like a breezeless summer night. The strife was further complicated by a growing industry of cheap farmed shrimp from Southeast Asia flooding the American market, driving shrimp prices to all-time lows. Many of the Texas old-timers were pushed out of business. Many blamed the Vietnamese for eroding a way of life that, on the Gulf Coast, was more than just a profession; it was a tradition. Others argued that the shrimp industry was already in decline with or without the Vietnamese. Even so, the tensions ignited into violence. Vietnamese shrimp boats were burned, shots were fired, rallies were held, and at one point, the KKK got involved. A generation of mistrust and resentment ensued.
This was more than thirty years ago, and the hatred has subsided, I’m told. Still, the local industry has been steadily constrained by catch limits, overfishing, oil spills, and increasing environmental regulations, and all the while, the amount of imported shrimp continues to rise. The Vietnamese shrimpers fare no better today than anyone else suffering in an industry that is being choked from all sides. I’m told that nowadays everyone gets along because no one is doing any better than the next guy.
“That was a long time ago,” the waitress says. “I’m too young to remember all that.”
Her aunt comes out of the kitchen, and I awkwardly thank her for a delicious meal. She doesn’t speak much English, and my waitress, eager to get back to her studies, does not volunteer to interpret. I pack up my notebook, but then, just as I am about to leave, the young waitress turns to me suddenly and says, “During the war, everyone came to Vietnam and burned it down, so they had no choice but to leave. They came here to work, not to fight.”
San Leon is a quiet coastal town a bit farther down from Kemah. It occupies a peninsula that juts out like the tip of an oyster knife piercing Galveston Bay. It is a town of mobile home parks and modest houses built on stilts, a backwater resort where one can get away from the noise of everyday life. On the Bayshore side are restaurants and a few nautical-themed bars, such as Gilhooley’s, a perfect place to waste an afternoon drinking tequila and slurping down Gulf oysters. The other side of the peninsula is where the commercial fishing boats dock. I drive along the edge of the water looking for people to talk to. Near an oyster processing plant, I see a few Mexican workers wrapping up for the day. The crying of the seagulls drowns out any other noise as they circle and dart menacingly. As I approach, the men rise to their feet. I ask them where I can find Vietnamese shrimpers. They tell me if I want to catch up with them, I have to go to Twenty-Second Street an hour before dawn. I pencil that into my notebook. The men don’t sit down again until I’m back in my car.
I drive down the coast another thirty minutes, to Galveston. I’m meeting up with Kenny from Katie’s Seafood Market on Pier 19, a small storefront operation that is actually one of the largest fish purveyors in the Gulf. Katie’s is a proud family-owned business made famous by Buddy Guindon, a larger-than-life figure and an outspoken proponent of the Gulf. “Kenny” is the brother who works behind the scenes. He is thoughtful and generous with his time. He looks like he hasn’t combed his hair in weeks. His hands are black from working a forklift all day.
Kenny tells me that the real money in the Gulf is in snapper and big-game fish farther offshore; the shrimp business is a lost cause. We walk around his shop looking at all the varieties of shrimp he has displayed on mountains of crushed ice. White shrimp from the bay, brown shrimp from deep waters, small bait shrimp, and Royal Reds from Louisiana. I taste the ones from the bay. They are small, white, and delicate. I prefer them to the larger varieties. Most of the bay shrimp goes straight to bait shops, where they are used to fish for larger game. This is a shame. These little guys are special, nothing like the spongy, flavorless curls of flesh that went into my báhn xèo. Kenny tells me the shrimpers can’t make enough money selling these shrimp to wholesalers. In an industry flooded with cheap imports, there is no demand for these tasty bay shrimp. There may come a day, he laments, when they close the bay to commercial fishing altogether.
It is easy to get discouraged. In my experience, people in the fishing industry are a depressing lot. Their world is always on the brink of Armageddon and has been that way for as long as Kenny can remember. Kenny is quick to share with me a world of problems, but he has a shine in his eyes. He gets it from the water. He tells me he will pass along my order to his brother, Buddy. Right now, he has to get back to work. The forklift has been acting up all day. He winces at the sound of a truck backing up to his property. He’s got to load up a large order of tilefish for a customer in Houston. As he walks away, I see he has a slight limp, but something in his eyes tells me he’ll outlive the rest of us who lose our minds every time our wireless Internet goes awry.
The next day, I drive back to San Leon at 5:00 a.m. I arrive at the docks while the Vietnamese shrimpers are preparing their boats. It is still night. The winds are invisible in the dark, but I can feel them building strength above
my head. There are about twenty shrimp boats docked in a makeshift marina of crooked pilings and rotting wooden planks. A squat cinder-block building provides the only light. The shrimp boats are rocking back and forth in the wind. All these boats are small single-engine trawlers no more than forty feet long with a boom and a net. They are in varying degrees of disarray. Only a few boats have turned on their work lights, which are perched high above the cabin. I can see a few men working on nets or drinking coffee. They’re listening to the weather report on their radios. No one is willing to talk to me. I pace the docks trying to look as unsuspicious and trustworthy as I know how. I get to the end of one side of the dock and watch a boat go out, sputtering smoke as it slowly grinds through the choppy waters. I can hear flags whipping in the wind somewhere behind me. There are distant lights on the other side of the bay, and they seem like a planet away. I want to get out on the water, though I know my chances are slim. I turn around to make another pass around the docks. Just then, a man jumps off his boat to have a cigarette. I offer him one of mine. It’s hard to light the cigarette in this wind, so I huddle in close. His face is worn and wrinkled. I can’t tell how old he might be because the sea seems to have aged him beyond his years. His cheeks are brown and shapeless, his eyes emotionless. I can see tufts of graying hair under the brim of his Texans baseball cap. He is wearing a windbreaker, polyester slacks, and sandals on his feet—not exactly the uniform of an experienced sailor. His name is Mr. Ton. He tells me he works the entire boat himself, which is dangerous. Seagulls alight on the boats as if wakened by the motors around us.
I pretend to complain about the weather. He is not going out, he says. Too windy. His pickup truck is parked nearby, and he disappears into it for a while, talking loudly into his cell phone. Then he returns, and before he can get back on his boat, I grab his arm and ask him if he’ll take me out on his boat. I offer him money. He shakes his head to tell me it is a preposterous idea. His work light is flickering, so he gets on his boat to fix it. Two more boats go out, and my chances of getting on one are dwindling. There is a small window to go out and catch shrimp while they are motionless, in the dark hours before dawn. The wind brings to shore a gust of low-pressure air that fills my lungs with salt. Mr. Ton ignores me, but I wait by his boat drinking tepid coffee and looking like a lost pet.
Suddenly, he looks up at me and waves me onto his boat. He will make one pass, that’s it. He tells me to stay out of his way. He starts the engine, and we head out behind another boat that is spitting diesel smoke into the air. Mr. Ton tells me to wait in a small area of the boat next to the winch and the engine room. The sky is still dark. I can hear the sloshing of water, but otherwise, I’m blind to what is around me. I can see only what is happening on the boat.
Mr. Ton is agile for a man his age, whatever that may be. He runs back and forth between the captain’s chair and the back of the boat as he lowers the outriggers. The mechanisms on these boats are very simple, not like those for the large commercial boats that go offshore deep into the Gulf. We drive slowly to a spot not far from the docks. Mr. Ton guides heavy metal doors, each one weighing about four hundred pounds, out over the black water. The nylon shrimp net goes out over the sides, and he lowers the doors into the bay. The net will unfurl into a conical shape and drag across the bottom of the bay. The doors keep the trawl net spread open. A tickler chain runs ahead of the net to stir up the floor and kick the shrimp out of the mud.
Mr. Ton moves the boat slowly over the water. He looks into the choppy waves as though he can see what is happening underneath. He is calm now, smoking a cigarette. He tells me he bought this boat for forty thousand dollars over twenty years ago. It has been a good living, he tells me, but not so much anymore. His kids are grown up, and he fishes only when the catch is good, which is not often. On a day like this, everyone loses money. He points to the corks floating on the water, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. He looks out over the water and shakes his head repeatedly.
A small sliver of dawn is pushing up from the horizon. Mr. Ton pushes me aside to start the winch. It has been only thirty minutes, but he has decided to pull up his net. The gulls go crazy as the net emerges from the water. Mr. Ton guides the net over the holding box. He releases the slipknots tied to the bottom of the net. A small catch of shrimp falls into the box. It isn’t much. Maybe twenty pounds. Mr. Ton is disappointed but shrugs as if to say he knew as much. The winds are picking up. He is eager to get back. He points to the other boats and gestures to tell me they are wasting their time. He reties the rope around the net and sets it aside.
Knots serve many functions. The obvious one is to connect two things. Most of the knots we use in our day-to-day lives have some origin in nautical history. Before mechanization, a sailor’s life depended on knots. The trick of a good knot is making a pattern you can control. Anyone can tie a knot that binds. Anyone can use friction to create tension. The real skill is tying a knot that doesn’t move but will easily release when you need it to. In an age of steel and motors, knot making is a dying art. On a boat like this, you probably need to know only a few knots to perform all the tasks needed. Mr. Ton uses a clove hitch to tie the boat up to the piling. It is a remarkably simple knot that clamps under its own loop. I’m sure he doesn’t know the name of this knot that he has tied countless times in his life, at least not in English.
I help Mr. Ton transfer his catch into a plastic bucket, which he loads onto the back of his pickup truck. This will go straight to a bait shop. I offer him money for his time. He smiles at me for the first time and refuses. I give him the rest of my cigarettes. He says good-bye unceremoniously and drives off, his tires kicking dust onto my jeans. It is just getting light. A lot of the other boats start to come back, with little to show for their efforts. The wind has whipped up into a circular motion. The palm tree leaves are clapping violently. Seagulls cackle in protest.
Hurricane Ike still haunts this region like a nightmare. In 2008, a tropical cyclone swelled into a Category 4 storm that made landfall in Galveston on September 13. The storm winds ripped away trees. They leveled everything. Dozens of people lost their lives, and the storm left billions of dollars in damage. People here refer to time as before Ike or after Ike. After Ike, everything had to be rebuilt, so everything here looks almost new. But there are still remnants of empty plots of land where houses once stood. And then there are these battle-scarred shrimp boats. Some survived the storm intact; others were repaired or rebuilt. To the Vietnamese immigrants here, this was their livelihood, and they would patch it and get back to work. They were the first ones back on the water after the storm. Their boats look tattered, but they work. They creak and they cough. In the light of the new morning, they look like ghost ships kept afloat against their will.
The fishermen hurry to their cars and drive off. For a moment, I think about following them in my car. But what would I do if I caught up to one of them? I can offer nothing they want. And what I want from them—their privacy, their trust—is as elusive as darting fish in an oil-black sea.
I can’t find any Vietnamese restaurants in San Leon, so I stop at a Mexican restaurant for breakfast. I see migas on the menu and order it. Crispy corn tortillas mixed with eggs, pico de gallo served with refried beans and soft warm tortillas—it is a filling breakfast. At another table, a couple is eating breakfast with their small child playing at their feet. On the wall over the kitchen pass is a picture of Pancho Villa decorated like a shrine. The cook hands me a bottle of Cholula hot sauce, and the familiarity of it makes me happy. The restaurant is filling up with what seem like workers whose day has been cut short by the restless winds. The cook is also taking orders, and he’s getting in the weeds. His father, seated at a table next to the TV, is watching CNN. He turns to look helplessly at his son, who’s trying to write down the orders as fast as he can. I bus my own dirty plates and wipe down my table so a group of men in work boots can sit down.
I take a long nap in my
car and wake to the shrill cries of seagulls. It is lunchtime, so I head to a restaurant called Topwater Grill, at the end of Ninth Street, looking out over the bay. It looks like your typical fun-loving wharf eatery, complete with fishing tackle decorations and the Zach Brown Band blaring from the speakers. The building sits on a piece of dock historically known as April Fool Point. It was one of the points of entry for slave ships from Africa. Just past the entrance is a display of T-shirts, hats, and beer koozies for sale. Places like this are typically not where you go for great seafood, but Topwater Grill has a stellar reputation, and I want to check the place out. Behind the restaurant is a small loading dock, mostly for small sport-fishing boats. The owner of the restaurant is Captain Wally, and everyone in San Leon knows him. You can find him here, but no one knows exactly when. You just have to catch him on his rounds. He doesn’t like to stay in one place very long, the manager tells me.
I leave my name and number with the hostess so she can call me when Captain Wally arrives. I sit down for lunch. I start with Gulf oysters roasted with garlic and oil. Then I devour a basket of steamed Royal Red shrimp with drawn butter and a little Texas Pete hot sauce. The menu runs the gamut from Camerones Rancheros to Boudin Balls. The redfish with Ponchartrain sauce is delicious. As I am finishing up, a waitress comes by to tell me there has been a Captain Wally sighting. I wait for a long time to see if he’ll come by my table. He finally does. He is wearing a clean outfit of shorts and a sport windbreaker. He is a kind-looking man with wrinkled sea skin and a thick Polish accent. He asks if I’m Edward. I tell him yes, and he stares at me with some suspicion. What is it exactly I’m looking for, he asks. I tell him about my book, and he reluctantly sits with me. He starts by telling me he doesn’t have a lot of time. He has to meet with some contractors about a new development.