by Chris Riley
“So what’s up with all these damn questions, Danny?” the captain eventually asked. “You plan on running this boat when I’m dead?”
Danny was lucky. Some captains wouldn’t let greenhorns spend more than five minutes in the wheelhouse. Fred indulged Danny. And in those hours of waiting, I was reminded of our youth, watching Danny stand there, listening, nodding his head, asking all sorts of questions. He’d acted this way after we saw that movie, Navy SEALs. Poor old Ted, our former-Marine neighbor. The man couldn’t walk outside his house without Danny hounding him. What was it like? Tell me all about it. The intrigue of being a warrior, and the excitement of the battle; the camaraderie found within a team of soldiers who had spent numerous hours crawling through mud and jungle, through blood and sweat. And the years of training. I knew Danny would never experience the Navy SEAL life, but he didn’t know that, and so the dream persisted.
Standing in the wheelhouse, listening to Fred and Danny talk, Fred reminiscing, I felt sorry for my friend. I’d never told Danny that I pitied him, of course, and I’m not sure he would have understood even if I tried to explain. After his mother had passed, my own parents jumped right in and helped Danny’s father in whatever way they could. Because of my mother’s daycare business, it wasn’t long before Danny was right there among the rest of us, playing, shouting, making a mess—your typical kid. Sure, he was difficult at times, considering his stubborn nature. But for the most part, Danny was fun to be around. He’d laugh at just about anything, which made me feel like a true comedian. And unlike most kids, he never complained much. He was a good sport, when it came right down to it.
But ever since we were kids, the part of Danny that had me so twisted up with emotion, so distraught and sorry for him, was the pure sorrow my friend conveyed whenever he was upset. Danny didn’t cry much, but when he did, it was so damn genuine and heartbreaking that I figured he must be crying for his mother.
I felt sorry for Danny when I thought of him missing his mom. I felt sorry when I imagined him finally understanding that his dream of one day becoming a Navy SEAL was outright ridiculous. And I felt sorry for Danny when he got picked on at school, beaten up, thrown into trash cans—while I just stood there like a fool, watching, not doing a damn thing about it.
Those forty hours had passed, and now the Angie Piper was riding through a bleak surface under a grim horizon. We pushed onward toward the first pot, its orange buoys staggering against the tide and the wind. The night loomed high above our stern, bringing with it the shadows of a cold winter. And with the flip of a switch, the yellow deck lights shone down on our anxious faces. At last, we were ready to bring aboard the crab—or so we hoped.
Loni stood at the rail with the grappling hook in his hand. Our first toss of the season was just minutes away. Each of us prayed that the Polynesian didn’t miss. Make sure you’re quick on the hook, Loni, I thought, or we’ll have us a bad omen. Dave stood next to him, and Salazar waited at the hydro controls. The moment stretched out until finally Loni let loose, sending the hook line a good thirty feet past the buoys. There could be no better throw.
“Yeah!” we all yelled in unison. Danny and I pushed forward the sorting table—a metal platform on wheels that we used to receive and sort the catch. Loni’s arms swung in quick motions as he pulled the buoys in and then ran the pot line through the hydraulic winch. Seconds later, the squeal of the winch sang across the deck as the seven-foot wide, seven-foot high steel cage ascended through the bitter sea at three hundred feet per minute.
The straining winch squealed like a teakettle, a welcome sound to the veterans on the boat. Although Danny had no idea what it meant, he would learn soon enough. That sound indicated a heavy pot. And heavy pots usually meant pots stuffed with crab. I caught Loni’s grin as he began to coil the retracting rope into the barrel at his side.
“Sounds like money, boys!” Fred said over the loudspeaker. He had been listening also, his head poking out the starboard window just above us.
And then it was on. The pot rose from the ocean with a dramatic pause, almost in slow motion, as thin foam and seawater fell away as if a dozen faucets had been cranked open. The cage was bulging with crab. Thousands of spiny legs, the colors of orange, brown, and white, delivered an awesome contrast to the boat, the creatures flexing en masse against their collective bulk. The sight drew a scream of joy from Loni as he and Dave manhandled the pot over the rail and into position against the pot launcher.
“There’s a sight to see!” the captain shouted. And then he laughed.
What followed was a graceful dance between Loni and Dave, including Salazar at the controls. With a heavy clang that reverberated across the deck, the pot was forced onto the rack, lowered, and then clamped down by two hydraulic hooks known as “dogs.” Loni and Dave unhooked the pot bridle from the crane and then untied the door while Salazar worked the controls, lifting the rack. Gravity took over at that point. Exactly six hundred and thirty-one legal tanners, snow crab destined for hungry markets, plunged down onto the sorting table.
“Get in there, boys!” Loni shouted. “That’s money on that table! That’s a fucking treasure, I’m telling you!”
A feast of crawling legs and carapaces undulating before us, I motioned for Danny to follow my lead. I had to teach him how to sort the crab, which is something a person can’t really learn until they are waist deep in it. Danny needed to figure out how to find the winners and spot the losers—the dirty ones, the dead ones. He had to learn how to measure a crab using a ruler known as a “stick,” and eventually, his naked eye. And most of all, he had to learn how to quickly clear the sorting table before our boat hauled in the next set of buoys.
“You’re gonna pitch them in one of two places, Danny,” I said, pulling a mound of crab from the middle of the table. “You either slide them down here,” I continued, sliding half the mound down an aluminum chute that led to a hole in our deck, dropping the crab deep into our live tanks below, “or chuck them over there.” I flung a reject crab over the rail.
After securing the empty pot for re-baiting, Dave and Loni joined in, sorting the crab. Their excitement was obvious, which felt real nice; finally, the entire crew was in good spirits, and it was beautiful not to be waiting off the shores of Tugidak Island any longer. And there was no more uncertainty and anxiety about where to find the crab. No more storms—the weather had cleared, and the sky looked down on us with a pale-blue radiance. Even though Dave still seemed apprehensive about Danny, it was nice to hear him laugh, which he did just after Loni shouted the number of our catch up to the captain.
I laughed. So did Salazar, because hell, we all knew what we were tasting just then. Full pots meant a ton of crab, a ton of cash, and a shorter season. If this kept up, we would all be going home real soon, and we would be going home rich. Even Danny, our greenhorn.
“Get her back in!” Fred suddenly shouted. He knew right away that we were “on the crab,” and he ordered us to re-dump the pot once we’d cleared it. As long as a catch was clean—without too many females or young crab, and not infested with fleas or barnacles, which this one wasn’t—it was not uncommon to re-bait the pot and drop it back over the side.
“Go get a bait setup,” I told Danny, nearing the last few crab on the table. Time was of the essence. If we wanted to keep Dave off our backs, Danny would have to be quick with his job of re-baiting the pot currently on the rack. Fortunately, he noticed the excitement and gravity of the situation without Dave’s yelling. Before long, Danny was at the rail with a bait jar and two bloody cod. In no time at all, he had the bait secured, and we dumped the pot back into the ocean. A communal cheer from the crew was followed by Loni’s primordial howl into the sky as he tossed the line buoys far and wide.
The subculture that exists on the deck of a fishing vessel has its own language, which is only ever heard, or seen, or spoken between the steel rails that crown the bulwark of any working ship. That language brims with thrill and chaos, as it witnesses vi
ctory over the sea. It is a language of sorrow when it succumbs to absolute dread, and then ultimate dismay. It is an ancient language, a song from the mariners of past, and with it comes the notion that yes, there is something great and mighty at work within our universe, and though it fashions our fates, it does so with neither favoritism nor malice. It has no concern for the individual.
When we cleared that first pot of the season, and Loni’s cry—a cry born from the depths of a man who had wrestled with Mother Nature since the day he could walk—rang true and loud, I couldn’t help but shed a few tears.
What moved me at that moment was something much deeper than the language of the fisherman. It was the validation of watching my friend Danny succeed. It was that full pot of tanner crab, telling everyone on deck that I was right, and that no, “Danny the Beluga Boy” was not a bad omen to have on board. And it was the knowledge that maybe, just maybe, Justice does have a voice of its own, in this grand universe of ours. A voice that can be heard somewhere between the howling winds of Alaska’s breath, the dull crash of untiring waves against steel, and the pinch and growl of a hydraulic winch, pulling Hope and Destiny up from the bottom of a cold and bitter sea.
Chapter 14
It was a tremendous day—an overwhelming day. Our first pots of the season came with a day that seemed to last forever, made more brutal by an icy wind from the south and an ever-increasing rush of angry waves slapping at the rail, over the rail, and onto the deck. Throughout a cold and wet chill, we turned all our gear, harvesting the crab. The Angie Piper careened over the sea surrounding Tugidak Island while we picked up pots, worked the table to sort the crab, stuffed the hold, and set more pots. We worked tirelessly, a joking crew, knowing that we were hot on the crab. Only one of our four pot strings had come up empty. This was a good haul.
Hours stretched into the horizon. One day became two, pushing against three, and reality dimmed and blurred: it was the haze from working over forty straight hours. Our mealtimes were lost at sea. Sleep became a distant memory. And coffee became our best friend. We plowed through our jobs. That timeless fog in the Gulf of Alaska. Finally, for a brief period, it was over.
Those first forty hours of turning gear left me in a shadow, bereft of memories. This was a common side effect of being a deckhand on board a crabbing vessel. Everything seemed to mesh together, like a gill net used for catching salmon. I do remember, however, waking up sometime later, lying in the booth in the galley, my stomach growling fiercely. I still had on my raingear, and the clothes underneath were damp, clinging to my skin. I was cold and shivering, and hungrier than I had ever been in my life.
Danny was lying next to me, on the opposite side of the dining table, snoring like a bear. His raingear was off, so I presumed he had changed his clothes once we all came back inside the boat. After we had finished setting our last string of pots, Fred gave us the signal to secure the deck, and he steered the Angie Piper back to our anchor point off Tugidak Island. Back to the land of mind-numbing boredom. Only this time, nobody would complain. Everyone would get much-needed rest while our gear soaked right on the crab.
Climbing out of the booth, I noticed Danny’s hands were beat to hell. Quarter-sized bruises blotted his knuckles, and two of his fingernails were black. Dried blood was caked around three of his fingers. Even his face appeared swollen, his forehead and eyebrows bulging like a Neanderthal’s.
My body had been punished in its own right, and I noticed it as I hobbled over to the kitchen. My right ankle and both shoulders screamed in their stiffness, and they woke with cold fire. My back protested my efforts to stand erect. I was suffering from the other common side effect of working a crab boat: injuries. No matter how smart, athletic, or downright lucky a person might be, they couldn’t escape the damage that came with stepping on board a fishing vessel in Alaska.
I paced the galley until the pain of my injuries faded. Then I realized just how cold I was, shivering at the galley door, looking for the other crewmembers. Everyone seemed to be asleep, so I headed for my stateroom. Before I cooked dinner, I would need to get dry clothes on; the risk of becoming sick while out at sea was simply too great. At the very least, being sick meant enduring a misery you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. It’s not like you can rest in bed and heal while everyone else picks up your slack. Being sick on a fishing vessel means puking over the side between sorting crabs. It means ignoring your migraine while steel pots clang repeatedly, endlessly, against the steel launcher. It means enduring the chills while you rough out hours of laborious work. Becoming sick, even with an initially minor ailment, can also lead to death.
Roughly thirty minutes later, warm and dry, I stood in the kitchen again, and began the challenging task of cooking a multi-dish meal while my entire world bobbed up and down and side to side. After a brief check-in up at the wheelhouse, I learned that everyone was asleep, with Salazar watching the helm. We were about an hour south of Tugidak Island, which meant that I had only slept for a few hours myself. No wonder I was dragging. Nobody had eaten much more than sandwiches, so I sought to remedy that by cooking as much of a hot feast as one man could manage.
I started with a pot of coffee, unconcerned that the caffeine would prevent me from sleeping after I ate. I was that tired. The percolating sounds and sweet aroma were comforting, and they eased my weariness for the time it took me to cook dinner.
I pan-fried the ten-pound halibut we’d found in one of our pots, earlier in the day. It had taken Loni all of three minutes to fillet and bag the fish and then stuff it in the fridge for later. I also fried some chicken legs and stirred up three boxes of scalloped potatoes. Two cans of French-cut green beans mixed with two cans of sliced carrots went into a steamer basket, and then I warmed my hands over the rising heat, smiling, looking over at Danny as my friend began to stir. He would wake soon, the smell of hot food whetting his appetite.
I reached into the pantry and brought out a few cans of creamed corn, because hell, I love creamed corn, and I was the cook that night. Nobody would argue, of course, in light of everything else I’d cooked. If there was one perk every crab boat in Alaska shared, it was the bounty of food available to the crew. Hot meals were an irregular event, especially when we were working the crab. But when we had those meals, they were an all-you-can-eat affair fit for a king. Therefore, I was having creamed corn.
On the Angie Piper, the captain usually did most of the cooking. His brother ran the kitchen in a fancy restaurant in Vancouver, and during crabbing’s off-season, Fred made at least one trip up north to see him. Back on the boat, the captain would occasionally show off by indulging us with his own versions of fine dining. But mostly, he just cooked us comfort food, knowing that what our bodies needed above all else were good old wholesome calories.
And that’s what I was cooking on this night—comfort food. For dessert, I opened a box of Danish rolls and laid them out on a plate, snatching one up and eating it in the process.
“What’s for dinner?” Danny finally asked. My friend stood, found his feet, and stumbled toward me, his bruised knuckles rubbing his eyes.
“Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” I replied. From the microwave, I pulled out a cup of hot chocolate and passed it to Danny. I knew he preferred it over coffee, which he rarely drank. He had an unrelenting sweet tooth, and by way of example, he polished off two of those Danish pastries within a minute. But who could blame him? My friend had worked damn hard. I still held on to the hope that Dave would turn the corner and accept Danny as one of us. The captain had said that he would have a talk with Dave, so at least I could count on that.
“Well, the food’s pretty much ready. You don’t have to keep eating Danishes.” I handed Danny a plate and stepped aside as he served himself a small mountain of food. “We’re just waiting on the chicken. Don’t want anybody getting sick out here.”
“But when do we go back to the crab?” Danny asked.
An involuntary chuckle escaped me before I looked at
him and said, “What, no break for you?”
Danny kept his eyes on his plate, turned and shuffled back to the table. “I like this job, Ed,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I like it a lot. So thank you. I owe you something for this.”
Again, I couldn’t help but chuckle. This was so much like Danny. Give him a job shoveling shit, and eventually he would find the sweet-smelling side of it.
“Forget about it, buddy.” I piled a plate of food for myself and walked to the table, joining him. “You don’t owe me anything. Just make sure to get some rest, okay? You need to heal your body, ’cause don’t worry, we’ve got a lot more work ahead of us. A lot more crab.”
A few wordless minutes passed as we plowed through our dinners, the droning of a determined diesel engine below keeping us company. It was a peaceful moment in an otherwise chaotic environment. Finally, Danny said, “I think my dad would like this job. What about you, Ed? Do you think he would like it?”
“Yeah, he probably would,” I replied. “I bet he would, in fact.”
“Except …” Danny continued, “he might be too old for it.” My friend looked at me, his swollen forehead wrinkled in thought. “Do you think it would be too hard for him, Ed?”
“I don’t know, Danny. Maybe.” Shrugging my shoulders, I forked a wedge of halibut off my plate. “Your dad is pretty tough, though. You know that. He’d probably do fine crabbing.”
Danny hesitated, shoveled down more food, and then abruptly asked, “When do you think my dad will die, Ed?”
It hit me with the weight of a fully loaded crab pot. Here was one of the fears that ran through the head of Danny Wilson. I had never truly understood until that moment. Shit, I thought I understood, observing how so many things simply rolled off my friend, as if nothing in this world could ever put the worry on him. We were both mentally tired, physically sore, and when a man gets to that point, certain things tend to boil over and find the surface of a conscious mind. Ever since I was a kid, I had an intimate knowledge of my fears. But as I got older, I guess I never worried about what would become of me once my parents passed away.