The Sinking of the Angie Piper

by Chris Riley

  A tower of crab pots covered most of the Angie Piper’s deck. We had one hundred and eighty of them, stacked five high, from mid-ship all down the length of her stern. Weighing in at nearly a thousand pounds each, these rectangular pots were also called “seven-bys,” since they were seven feet long by seven feet wide. And they were by far the most harrowing pieces of equipment on the boat.

  All crabbers have a love/hate relationship with the pots. Most of the severe injuries incurred by fishermen come from dealing with those damn things. A thousand pounds of steel swinging carelessly on the end of a boom-crane wakes everyone up real quick. But they are also the one thing that can lift a crew’s spirits after weeks of turning gear. Once those pots come up on deck brimming with crab, and you know you’re in the money, that hatred for the pots disappears in a flash.

  “One of your jobs, Danny, will be to help push those bastards across the deck,” I said, watching for his reaction. That first day on the boat with Danny, I couldn’t be sure he understood what was expected of him. Re-stacking the first layer of pots on deck took a unique set of skills, such as timing. You had to be alert. It worked best if you used the pitch of the boat as an aid in moving the heavy cages. But it also helped to have real muscle. That was my friend’s secret weapon.

  I had read somewhere that people like him are known for their tremendous physical strength. When we were kids, we used to wrestle all the time, and try as I might, I never could overpower the guy. It was while pushing one of those crab pots across the deck, in fact, that I got the idea Danny would make a perfect deckhand. I knew that strength of his would come in handy—not to mention his work ethic. But I wasn’t so sure how his mind would hold up. Or his spirit, for that matter.

  For the next half-hour, I gave Danny a brief tour of the rest of the boat. I showed him how the pot launcher worked, explaining that it operated from hydraulic power to tilt a crab pot over the rail and into the sea. Then I pointed out all the buoys and the coiled rope, carefully describing how dangerous these things were when being pulled by a thousand-pound cage of steel that was plummeting to the bottom of the ocean. Death loitered on the decks of every commercial crabbing vessel.

  “Always remember to keep your feet planted firmly on the deck, Danny,” I told him, as we walked over to the large aluminum table we used for sorting crab. “You could be standing here for hours on end, picking out crab, and all that line’s gonna be snaking around you, just waiting to grab at your ankles.”

  Danny simply nodded and smiled, seemingly unconcerned. He placed his hands on the sorting table and smacked away at an imaginary crab.

  “But don’t worry yourself too much, Danny,” I added, sarcastically. “Most of the time you’ll be over here.”

  I walked him over to the other side of the deck, where we kept the baiting station. Danny’s primary job would be to prepare bait for the crab pots—a task that entailed a small list of mind-numbing duties. I showed him the freezer down below, where we stored the twenty-five pound boxes of herring he would have to carry topside, open up, and dump into the meat grinder. After making “fish pâté,” Danny would need to fill hundreds of bait jars. Then there was the rigging of whole cod and other bottom fish onto bait hooks. It was a miserable, full-time job getting the bait ready for crabbing. But as the greenhorn, Danny would be assigned that duty. And for him, it would be the best test to see how well he would do on board the Angie Piper, working as a crabber.

  After the tour, Danny and I at last met up with our captain, Fred Mooney, who was in the wheelhouse again. He greeted us with his customary jovial attitude and full-bearded smile. Fred reminded me of a Santa Claus reject, cast out of the North Pole for stinking of liquor and brine, despite his jolly demeanor.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Danny Wilson,” the captain said, holding a cup of coffee to his lips.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Danny.

  “Ed tells me you’re one heck of a strong man. Is that true?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m a strong man.”

  “Well, good! ’Cause we could certainly use some strength around here.” Fred winked at me. “How was your summer, Ed? We missed you down in Seattle.”

  “Damn good, Captain.” I had taken the last several weeks of the summer off to enjoy some sightseeing throughout Alaska. Normally, I would have stayed in Seattle to help work on the boat, but I justified my trip by saying I had never taken a personal vacation. In truth, I wanted to see how Danny had been doing with his first real job. Earlier in the year, I had secured him a summer position at the processing plant up in Naknek, where I used to work. It was a grueling job, to say the least, but nothing like crabbing. Danny was given the task of separating salmon roe from salmon guts, sixteen hours a day, every day for six weeks. That’s what Danny did for the better part of his summer. As it turned out, he managed the job exactly how I’d hoped he would.

  I flew up there in July, just before the end of the fishing season, and found Danny happy as ever. When the season was over, the plant manager just smiled and asked if he could keep my friend for the winter. I took that as a passing grade for the test I’d originally planned for Danny.

  “So how’d he do up in Naknek?” the captain asked.

  I smiled. “Shit, they wouldn’t let him go. Had to fight to get him back!”

  The captain chuckled, and then walked over to his seat where some maps had been laid out. “Well, that’s good to hear.” He turned and looked at Danny. “But cleaning fish ain’t nothing like hauling crab, son.”

  “Yes, sir,” Danny replied.

  “Things get real dangerous out there on the open seas,” Fred said, sobering. His face fell, and his eyes and mouth drooped as well. He gave me a brief look before staring out the window. “I suppose you heard about what happened last week, Ed. The accident?”

  “No, sir. What accident?”

  “The Polar Betty … she went down somewhere outside Chignik Bay. They were fishing for cod.” Fred caught my stare. Though he endeavored to keep his face cool and composed, his lips were unsteady. “No survivors,” he muttered, as he took another sip from his cup.

  I swallowed hard at the words, “No survivors.” I felt my pulse quicken and my eyes well with tears. I knew everyone aboard the Polar Betty—the entire crew. We used to hang out together at McCrawley’s, and then down in Seattle, sharing our fishing tales of woe and grandeur. The captain was a giant man named Molly McDowell, and he and Fred seemed thick as thieves whenever they got together. There was a ton of history between those two men, as well as our crews, and so Fred’s news—that the boat had gone down and taken everybody with it—broke my heart.

  I stared out the portside window then, observing the lonely ocean in the distant horizon, its gray body a cold grave for so many men. I shook my head and sighed.

  Alaska …. She is a bitch. And she seemed inclined to stay that way.

  Chapter 3

  On that sad note, Danny and I left Fred and the Angie Piper and headed back into town to buy gear. We had agreed to meet Salazar at the general store in two hours, which gave us plenty of time to sightsee and get lunch. It was our first day in town. Already I was feeling a stab of regret. It was the old wound, I would later realize—the scar from my past scratching below the surface of my everyday life. I felt its burning as I stepped off the Angie Piper and thrust my hand out, making sure Danny got across safely. Maybe this was my subconscious trying to speak to Danny, reaching out to let him know he could trust me. That this time, yes, he really could.

  As we walked along the pier, I didn’t say anything for quite a while. I observed the dozens of moored boats, thinking about the Polar Betty and the poor deckhands who went down with her. Was it just rotten luck that had crossed her planks and boarded the boat? Or was it an act of fate? Had her time, as well as that of the entire crew, simply come to an end? Another cruel play from God’s hand.

  I stared at the fishing vessels we passed, picking out particular details—details that would have likely escaped my
attention on any other day. Flecks of paint chipped off hulls now lay somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf of Alaska. Frayed hawser lines were on the verge of snapping. Hundreds of thousands of gull droppings were scattered across the entire fleet of crabbers, dinghies, tugboats, and trawlers, all tied up there in Kodiak’s harbor. I was reminded of how insignificant a single boat—and its entire crew—were to the oceans of Alaska. And a particular memory rang in my head like a fire alarm at three in the morning: something my dad had said long ago that sprang to mind at that moment.

  Mr. Edward Thurman Senior, otherwise known as Big Ed, once told me that children were like vessels waiting in a harbor: not yet ready to sail, but most eager to do so. Ironically enough, he told me this after I had witnessed something deathly eerie in our own backyard.

  I grew up on the outskirts of Anchorage, in a three-story house with four bedrooms and an attached, two-car garage. I knew I was a lucky kid. Our house was quite large by the standards of my youth. Except that my mother ran a daycare, so most days there never seemed to be enough room to breathe.

  Before I was born, my dad had painted our house eggshell white with teal trim, and in the dead of winter, it glowed amid the layers of snow, a ghostly presence. But in the springtime, when the last ton of snow had finally melted off the roof and through the gutters, our house gleamed like a piece of lost jewelry found on the forest floor. And this was the time of year when that eerie event occurred.

  “Get in the house!” my mother had screamed, in a voice that was both loud and horrifying, driven by panic. I was maybe five or six years old at the time, and knew by her tone that she was deadly serious.

  My mother’s name was Cynthia Thurman. She was short and plump, and kept her baby face and red hair for life. Unlike any other redhead I’ve come to know, she had a calm disposition; however, under certain conditions, or under pressure, the woman could explode, like she did on that morning. The catalyst? An eight-hundred-pound grizzly bear was standing thirty feet away from me and the rest of the kids out in the yard.

  We later learned that the grizzly was a full-grown male fresh out of hibernation and looking to put on weight. He was munching on the berries strewn across the chain-link fence that ran along the perimeter of our house. This wasn’t a particularly uncommon sight in the streets and neighborhoods of Anchorage; bears frequently raided trash cans or created havoc in the occasional open garage, in search of pet food. The bears are as familiar in that city as the moose are, standing in the drive-thru of a fast-food restaurant. But to be so close to a bunch of children ….

  She busted through the metal storm door, broom swinging over her head, yelling for us kids to get into the house. This was one of those moments when everything went by as fast as a terrified heartbeat—but also in slow motion. I remember my mother’s foot stomping down on the head of a toy army man I had planted behind a coil of gray, plastic barbed wire. I also remember, in vivid detail, catching a whiff of the distinct odor that clung to her as she breezed past on her way down the steps: cinnamon and spice with hints of sage, stale grease, and dish soap. That was my mother.

  “Everybody, get in the house!” Once I realized she wasn’t after me, I stood up the rest of the way and looked around the yard. A dozen kids scattered across the lawn like overgrown rats, some screaming and waving their hands, others silent, expressions stony. They were determined toddlers running from the madwoman swinging a broom—that was what I thought, up until the moment I spotted Danny.

  Danny Wilson: the little blond-haired kid with almond-shaped eyes. Sporting a winning smile, he stood by the fence with his hands cupped together through the chain-linked gaps. He was holding clumps of green grass for the bear on the other side.

  Calm, almost couth, the bear seemed to wear an inquisitive expression as it stared down into Danny’s hands. It was as if the creature were considering the various culinary components offered. Hmm … “Nugget” bluegrass, with a bit of clover.

  The bear came unglued when it spotted my mother, though. It let out a loud grunt, then stood on its hind legs, towering over the fence … and Danny.

  Danny pulled his hands away, but aside from that he didn’t move a muscle. I saw the side of his face from where I stood on the steps. He was staring up at the grizzly with a smile that never once faltered. Even when the bear slapped his front paws onto the top of the fence—as if to say to my mother, Bring it on, Little Red Riding Hood—Danny hardly blinked.

  My mother threw the broom at the grizzly, grabbed Danny by the arm, and yanked the boy across the lawn and into the house. Seconds later, all of us kids watched from behind the kitchen window as the bear made a few swipes at a blackberry bush then ambled back into the forest. While my mother was on the phone with the police department, she patted a few of us on the shoulders. Five minutes hadn’t gone by before a couple of officers were roaming our backyard, shotguns in hand. They didn’t find the bear, and shortly after they left, it was as if nothing had happened. The entire incident slipped away from the majority of those kids, as most events do, once they re-engaged themselves in the world of play. For Danny, this was certainly the case.

  As for myself, I couldn’t take my eyes off the kid. I sat on the couch in our living room and stared at Danny for quite a while as he played on the floor with his Legos. This was a long time ago, and even though I was comparatively the same age as Danny, I’ll never forget what I thought about him at that moment. I’ll never forget what I felt.

  I looked at his face, and for the first time I contemplated just how different it was from other children’s: the weird angle of his eyelids, the overly large mouth fixed in a perpetual, dumb grin. I thought about his “stocky” build and wondered if he was strong, or just fat. And I wondered what kind of dimwitted fool would walk up to a grizzly bear and offer it a handful of grass to eat. These were my shameful thoughts at that moment, and unbeknownst to me, they would cultivate harsh feelings of disparity from then on.

  Over the years, fate would take Danny and me far beyond the confines of my childhood backyard. It took us together through grade school and high school and then onto that dock in Kodiak. Fate waltzed us into McCrawley’s, where Danny showed off his awesome strength to some of the strongest men and women in the world. And finally, fate swept me and Danny into the tragic events that would unfold a few days later. In light of all that, those mean-spirited thoughts I had as a child are nothing when you consider what would come to pass between Danny and me.

  When my dad came home later that day—the day of the grizzly—and we were all sitting at the dinner table, my mom told him all about the bear and Danny. He laughed aloud. Then, with a smile, he made the comment that kids were vessels in the harbor—ships just waiting to set sail.

  Now, as I recalled those words, Danny and I stood quietly on the dock, taking in the cold, salty air, staring at all those boats. Danny remained silent while he waited for me to snap out of my reverie, even after I heard his stomach growl.

  “Come on, buddy,” I finally said with a laugh. “Let’s go find you something to eat.”

  Chapter 4

  Our stroll up Shelikof Avenue took us north of the docks to a favorite diner of mine in town. Just like the whole of Kodiak, the restaurant was packed with busy fishermen, processors, otherwise known as “cannery rats,” and locals feeding off the energy generated from an impending season of crab fishing. Danny and I had to wait thirty minutes just to get a seat, so I took the time to explain to him some of the unwritten rules of crabbing, such as how fishermen rarely associated with cannery rats. Or how there were always certain “totem poles” one had to climb to secure a well-paying job in the fishing community. Danny was our incoming greenhorn, and on board the Angie Piper, as with most all other crabbing vessels, he would have to earn his full share. That meant he wouldn’t be paid the same as the other crewmen. Some captains had their greenhorns work an entire season without pay, just to prove their worth. But I knew that if Danny worked hard and got his job done without screwing thin
gs up, Fred would give him half a share. Not bad, when you consider that amount could easily add up to several thousand dollars.

  “What would I do with all that money?” Danny had asked, weeks before, after I proposed he work with me on the boat. His curiosity was genuine, and testified to the simplicity of his character. Danny had never been in want. All he needed was the basics. I told him not to worry about the money. His father would help him spend it—in a good way, of course.

  I had known Stephen Wilson, one hell of a man, my whole life. He had raised Danny in the house next door to where I lived. Of average height, with thin white hair kept military short, Mr. Wilson had an odd characteristic: despite his normal size, he had humongous hands. He worked as a firefighter for the city of Anchorage, and on his days off, he worked around his house doing a variety of jobs. I don’t think I ever saw him sitting around. I only remember him chopping wood, or cutting away berries along the fence out back, or tending to his garden. Mr. Wilson also dabbled in woodworking, and sometimes Danny and I were fortunate enough to help him with these projects. Mostly we found ourselves cleaning up the garage—which earned us an ice cream cone from the local drug store. It wasn’t until I got older that I began to earn money from Mr. Wilson, doing specific jobs such as organizing his tool shed or stacking wood out back.

  I had been stacking wood for Mr. Wilson on a Sunday afternoon, as I recall, when I had an emotional epiphany, and I started to wonder about certain things. How had Danny’s father done it all those years? How had he managed his household without a wife? Danny’s mother, Marlene Wilson, died from breast cancer when I was in the first grade. I’ll never forget the night Mr. Wilson came over to tell my parents his wife had passed. Staring out from the crack in my bedroom door, I saw my mother in tears. My dad seemed confused, not knowing how to react. But Mr. Wilson never cried, not so much as a single tear. He just sat on our couch like a cold, somber statue.