“You Japs get nothing from this man, even if you do pay well,” he muttered. “Not from Jones Henry you don’t.” A second incision sliced the fish belly’s membrane, and a following swipe of his hand left the carcass clean for the cannery. He laid the dressed fish atop ice until he had enough of a catch to bring it to the hold. A man who’d watched his buddies die with no more than a quiver couldn’t worry over the death of a fish. But it was just as good that the carcass, with its head still attached, didn’t twitch.
“No sir, Japs. You get nothing from this Jones Henry except mebbe the back of my boot.” The speech sounded good enough to his ears that he repeated it a couple of times. But by the time three other cohos had been gaffed aboard and he’d entered the day’s fishing rhythm, he was back to “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
The sun had barely risen high enough to gleam in his eyes when clouds obscured it and rain began to dump. The inverted lifeboat sheltered the trolling pit and kept the worst of it off him, although the diverted water sluiced on either side to rise around his boots faster than the scuppers drained it off. Like a curtain, it dimmed Nels Knutsen’s boat and obliterated all of the shore except only the nearest rocks. People said that soon there would be something for fishing boats that the navy had developed during the war, a gadget that gave a picture of the shoreline. Called it by a word like “radio.” Be handy if it worked.
As the rain increased it grayed out the rival boat and left Jones alone, as he had wanted to be. Answering to Jones Henry alone. Engine exhaust puffed in a slow-speed murmur from the pipe. Water lapped against the hull. Gulls spun slowly overhead, alert, whimpering for the next toss of guts. When fish struck, bells on the pole tips tinkled a virtual tune. Jones entered his rhythm. Now and then he spat red juice from the snoose he chewed like the old-style squareheads—including Nels Knutsen. With gurried rubber gloves, it was no use trying to keep a cigarette dry long enough to smoke it down. With his body in tune like the well-maintained machine it was, he cranked the hand gurdy to bring up fish weighted by the sinker, gaffed in his catch, rebaited hooks sometimes with different combinations of lures and herring, and then sent them back over. In between, he gutted the catch and iced it down. Now and then he drew up bucketfuls of seawater to clear the blood and slime. All in a rhythm, with mind focused and no need for any other thought.
Just the same, that girl Adele crossed his mind occasionally. And that Jap prisoner in the camp, the one who stared back at him like “fuck you,” even while he nearly passed out. Wonder how he made out? Didn’t matter. All Japs were the same underneath. Man was probably dead by now and so what? But just the same. . . .
After a few hours, begrudging the time wasted, he hosed enough gurry from his oilskins to reach into the galley for a can of baked beans he’d left open to warm on the edge of the stove. Down it went with bread for a spoon. Then the empty can went over the side with a snort at the gulls who thought at first it might be dinner, and back to the fish.
By day’s end around 10:00 p.m., Jones had caught, gutted, and iced down eighty-three cohos and seven kings. Not to mention a couple dozen undersized shakers that he needed to release carefully so they’d live and grow to keeper size. Lunch, when he gave himself time to grab it around 4:00 p.m., consisted of Spam and peanut butter, washed down with a Coke he’d crammed into the ice among the bait herrings. By now he’d sung and muttered to death the “Stars and Stripes” tune and had thought once or twice more about that lively girl named Adele. Even wondered, if he found the phone number she’d given him the second time he’d asked, whether she might care to see a movie some Saturday night after he’d tied his boat up for the weekend.
As his boat re-entered the cove for the night Jones spat the last mouthful of snoose and hung his dripping oilskin coat on a sheltered peg by the cabin door. Once inside the dry cabin, he lit the kerosene lamp (no need to tax the batteries just to run a bulb), then the diesel stove, and finally a cigarette. Rain drummed comfortably overhead. He cut open a package of hot dogs and dropped a half dozen into the pan along with a dab of lard, slapped slices of bread onto a paper plate, and took down the bottles of mustard and ketchup from the overhead rack. As he waited for the hot dogs to blister and sizzle, he relaxed with another cigarette while opening a can of pineapple rings. He ate them one by one, speared on the end of his knife. As confirmed by the tide tables, the main thing was to get to bed and be up again just before sunrise to intercept cohos at the start of the next flood in from the ocean.
Not bad altogether—eighty-three cohos and seven kings. He’d pushed especially, in case it came to a competition. But, during the course of the day, Nels Knutsen’s boat had trolled up the Strait out of sight, so good riddance. At one point Dad’s boat had fished close enough for them to exchange cheerful insults. And other boats had passed, all of them towing baited hooks through the Strait, using knowledge they’d learned the hard way and kept to themselves, so that whatever word the fishermen called to each other about their catches could be counted on to be lies—like his own. (If his old man had seriously wanted to know his catch and where best to get it, that would have been different, done in their private code.)
Damn right, good riddance that Nels went off to another cove for the night, probably with all the other boats. The dumb thing was, a little company might have been nice for a change. Shoulder to shoulder might not always be bad. That is, if you knew that next day you wouldn’t chance to find a piece of that shoulder in the mud by your feet—another buddy blasted to pulp. But who around here understood? If only Gus Rosvic had taken his discharge and come home, instead of hanging around Jap-land. Had used good sense, like Jones Henry here keeping himself company. Only Gus would understand some things.
Jones scrubbed his pan and galley table with seawater. Save the fresh water in the small tank for drinking. He’d hung his socks and sweated jersey over the stove to dry and was having a final scratch under his long johns, which he never removed during a trip, when a bump jolted his boat. Barefoot, with a yell, he reached the deck in seconds.
There alongside, buffered by two worn tires squeaking between their hulls, bobbed the rail of Nels Knutsen’s boat Gunvor. And Nels himself, old eyes bright under his boat’s deck light, his lined hound dog face poking from a watch cap. His oilskins glistened in the rain. The cousin, about Jones’s own age, stood behind him, frowning.
“Ja, Jones, you busy?” Nels asked in his mild singsong. “Come over visit for a little bit.”
“It’s rack time, man!”
“To meet my cousin here.”
Without considering the consequence Jones growled, “Already got my shoes off.”
“Ja, den, ve come over to you.”
Before Jones could object, the cousin grabbed a line and put a leg across the rails and onto Jones’s deck to moor it.
“Stop there! Just you throw it here.” Jones strode barefoot to catch the line and secure it.
Nels laughed his big Norwegian har har. “I forgot, Arnie. Nobody on Jones’s boat comes aboard except Jones and de fishes, except maybe if he invites.”
Jones wanted to be pissed at the intrusion so late at night. Instead, without admitting any pleasure at the company, he muttered, “For just a minute then, okay, I guess.” He tried to make it sound reluctant.
He led them inside, self-conscious for once of his galley’s helter-skelter. He stopped himself short of wiping a wet rag over the bench by the table. Ain’t like I’m some woman in her damn kitchen, he reminded himself. But he hoped they weren’t looking too hard. Nothing to admit out loud, but company with the right kind of people wasn’t too bad.
“Okay, Jones, you meet my cousin Arnie.” Jones shook the proffered hand cautiously. He hadn’t yet forgotten the fact learned during the war that if a stranger held one of your hands—making it inactive—his other hand might hold a grenade.
“Yo,” he said without warmth.
“People call me Swede,” said the man dryly, in good English. “You might as well call me
that.” His eyes appraised Jones coolly. He wore a billed cap pulled tight over straw-like hair. Square, serious face. It showed none of Nels’s easy but rough joviality. Had no more humor in it than that of Jones Henry himself.
“Svede, pah!” exclaimed Nels. “No fucking name for a good Norwegian, eh Jones? I tell Arnie to call himself Arnie again. Vat did the Swedes do when came Hitler? Said march through here, Hitler, here’s my ass you kiss it good but don’t hurt me since I’m neutral. Pah! Arnie here, he’s got a Swedish papa but a Norwegian mama, both good people. They live north from Goteborg, you see. Water close to Norway but in Sweden. So Arnie’s papers are Swede, yah? Arnie here, he can talk like a damn Swede so the Germans think he’s okay.”
“This is not necessary to say,” Swede muttered.
“Arnie here,” Nels continued, unperturbed. “His papa during war runs a little fish plant.”
“Big damn fish plant!” Swede exclaimed, then added less aggressively, “If you are going to tell it.”
“Ja, ja okay, big fish plant. And papa, he vas on committee the German bastards started, to make sure they get most of the fish. So Arnie here, he finds a way to hide half of de fish ven it come delivered. Svede fishermen, not like other Svedes, they deliver to secret places half their catch, and dis fish goes a lot across the border to feed Norwegians, like my family that the German bastards try to keep hungry. Eh? Stupid Germans think the water gives up yust little bit of fish. Eh? Eh? Ha!”
“All this now finished, Nels. This man cares for important . . . matters of his own.”
Jones made a deprecating gesture, but he listened with more attention than he gave most people these days.
“And the German bastards took his papa, and—”
“Finished!” exclaimed Swede.
“Yes, okay, Arnie. So! My cousin here gets also Norge freedom fighters safe across the border and off into England. Onto fishing boats that go to England. Finally the German bastards get suspicious and Arnie got to escape himself. To England. Den over to Seattle, here in de States. Joined de Quartermasters to help fight those German butchers. So Arnie, you don’t need to call yourself Svede no more I think.”
Arnie—or should he say Swede?—turned to Jones. “Do you make us welcome on your ship, sir?”
“I’ll put on coffee.” Jones quickly wiped a half-clean towel inside the coffee pot to clean out old grounds and started fresh water boiling.
Nels settled with his big puffy hands clasped on the galley table. “Arnie. Tell how you smuggled out de fish past the German bastards.”
Swede ignored his cousin. He surveyed the galley from stove to cup rack to bilge hatch. “You fish alone, yes?”
“You fuck up, it’s nobody to blame but yourself,” said Jones, half defensive. “Then payday you don’t split nothing.”
“Understood. How also I should do, if I fished only. I now work a little bit with Cousin Nels until there is a fish processing factory that gives me work. Fish processing is my business, you understand.” He considered, then added, “It is not wise to push what you call the gaff into the body of a fish, as I see sometimes here. Pardon me, but at home we would not buy fish pushed that way, making a hole in the side.”
“Okay then, Arnie,” Nels persisted. “Yust tell Jones how in England after you escaped, with the Resistance fellows from Norge—all of dem fishermen, Jones—they pull so strong on oars—training, you see, for boats they need to sneak ashore quiet in de night. Ha, they split dose oars in half! Need to cut big holes in de oars so they don’t break, eh? Dot’s how Norge fishermen grow up, Jones. From kids. Pulling de oars!”
Swede continued to ignore Nels’s running narrative. To Jones, he said, “You catch the coho salmon here, like Nels. I have watched through the glasses. However, then, sometimes you take your ship close to shore near the rocks, where we don’t go. I think you are taking risk for bigger fishes?” Jones laughed but said nothing. He liked this man. Swede’s square face gave its first hint of a smile. “Not that I ask for answer to your secret, sir. Only observe.”
“Not that I’m telling.” Jones tossed ground coffee into the boiling water. He let it steep, then held out the pot. “Steady your mug. Sorry I’ve got nothing stronger.”
“Then you come on to our boat, Jones,” said Nels. “Little bigger anyhow. Ve have some hjemmebrent.”
So my boat’s not good enough, thought Jones. He started to refuse. Swede spoke before Jones could start. “I shall bring here the hjemmebrent. If you will drink some Norge viskey with us, sir.”
Jones relaxed. “I’ve scorched my throat with worse, now and then.”
9
ARNIE SKOVKUS
AUGUST 1946
Arnie Skovkus had his share of bad dreams. They were his own, nothing to share with Nels or Helga, safe in Ketchikan now. He had nodded in grave good humor when Nels mentioned—with fumbling apologies—after the first week of his stay, that he cried out so much in his sleep that it kept the kids awake at night and left them groggy all the next day at school. It had meant that they needed to move his sleeping quarters from the cozy warm house to the outbuilding where Nels kept his gear. Fortunately, the shed had a small wood-burning stove for heat. And they had moved Nels’s grinder aside to make room for a padded chair in front of the tool bench. Helga had done her best to make up a bed with unnecessary ruffles around the base. She even sewed a small lace curtain to put across a square window in the shack. It blocked half the light but did give more of a vestige of home.
Indeed, under a thick quilt and with rain often tapping or thumping on the tin roof overhead, Arnie did not always need to be a polite guest. With such privacy there was no cause to worry about crying out in his sleep, if that actually happened. Or then, lying awake, tensed and shaking, even though he knew he was safe. Anguished, even though he knew the past was past. He could reason out loud to himself without disturbing anyone.
No question that he was always welcome at the table. And Helga prepared good filling meals. She and Nels had settled in America before the war. They knew what their countrymen had endured, even though they could never have understood all of it without being there. But Helga, despite her good intentions, was rigid and judgmental. Church played too great a part in her life, especially when it came to looking him over, as well as Nels, if they came home late from town. Nels took any scolding in submissive good humor. It was probably good to have a woman care about you. But devil to it all the time. It was Helga who first told him outright to stop using the nickname Swede. It was, then, probably out of stubbornness that he continued to use his Resistance code-name.
“Those Swedes stayed neutral,” Helga had declared in Norwegian, her hands planted against the tucks of her apron. “Traded with Hitler. They didn’t suffer like we did.”
“Gave our men an escape route if they couldn’t make it by sea to Scotland,” he countered. “Hid and protected us.”
“But they didn’t suffer like you did. So Arnie, you should stop calling yourself ‘Swede.’ Even the ladies at my church tell me this.”
What argument could have been better for keeping the name! While big Nels retreated to a corner, he’d settled to argue it to her logically. “Swedes saved many of us. Their country mobilized its army. That’s why the German bastards left them alone and occupied only Norway and Denmark—the ones that didn’t wake up in time, started only to make a strong army as soon as they saw Hitler take over Poland in . . . when? Half a year before they invaded Norway! No, Sweden started more than a year earlier, when Hitler went into Austria. What did we do?”
Helga shook her head. “Oh Arnie, for shame.” But she said it without conviction.
“Helga, even our Norwegian language is no more than a bastard combination of village dialects and Swedish, you know? Coded for us by the Hanseatic League so that thickheaded village fishermen could do business with other places.”
“Arnie! What your mother would say?”
It was getting too serious. He had forced a smile but couldn�
��t stop arguing. “Father sometimes traded fish across the Baltic with Gdynia in Poland. He’d send me to learn the business. I dealt over there with a big, laughing Paz, Kosiki his name was. Suddenly, one day it was a German named Herr Schmidt, who never smiled. When I asked about Kosiki he shrugged with something in German like ‘Bad man, he’s gone.’ That was half a year before they captured us in Norway. Most of us were out skiing for fun while the Swedes were marching with guns.”
Helga shook her head, although she sturdily gave no ground. “Just the same,” she concluded. “I will call you only Arnie.” She glanced sharply at her husband. “And so will Nels!”
Nevertheless, he repaid their hospitality as best he could by working hard on the boat. Jumped to relieve Nels of any task he could. Said nothing of a possible crew share, just thanks for whatever Nels paid him. Sometimes he did choose to sleep the night on the boat’s hard little galley bench, relieved from all the lace, and free to wander the town without explaining himself—although mostly he just watched others through open bar doors. This also left him able to maintain his welcome by firing up the stove, so that when Nels arrived in the cold dawn the icy cabin had warmed.
The dreams at night weren’t bad when they merely had him crossing four hundred miles of sea to Scotland in that fishing boat, jammed with others escaping the German bastards. Rough seas, wet, cold, and harsh, joking about their odds of survival. But sometimes a nightmare took him rowing in with padded oarlocks from that leaky offshore boat, back to Norwegian shores under cover of black night and rain. Betrayed from somewhere and with German bastards in wait. Torstein shot and quietly begging to be killed rather than captured and tortured with methods unknown. Others scattered, never seen again. Frozen, hiding, alone. He’d hurdle awake sweating and short of breath. Kill them before they—. Whatever was needed. Would he have broken under their electric fire or other tortures?
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