“Bet those engine boats have a power takeoff that helps turn their roller,” panted Buck Henry.
“Who needs it?” muttered Jones. He tried to shake sweat from his eyes without removing his grip on the web. If they stopped pulling it would require an extra yank to start again. A little engine boost wouldn’t hurt, he had to admit to himself. Jones surreptitiously glanced at his dad, who was kneading his right shoulder between pulls. Not what he liked to see in a man heretofore capable of any work. The man who had pulled dory oars in the days of cod in the Bering Sea, who only a few years back he’d watch lift a hundred-pound sack or piece of gear on his shoulder and carry it across a gangway.
The fat salmon squeezed in steady clusters over the roller. Each knot of the slippery silver bodies required an extra tug with arms and back while maintaining a rhythm. Heavy! The cork floats had already begun to absorb seawater, giving the nets even more added weight. But okay, I’m fit for this, Jones told himself, even when his breath ran short. This is my time, my place. He pulled harder, beyond an enjoyable stretch of muscles, to make it easier for the old man.
Jones soon came to remember the old landmarks of the Kvichak River, even though much of his earlier fishing had centered to the north in the Nushagak. The Deadman Sands lay south of Halfmoon Bay along the west bank, invisible until the tide fell, to appear first in warning ripples and finally in fingers of muddy ground. Keep them far to the west and row like hell if an easterly started to edge you toward them.
By mid week they had fished from flats off Copenhagen Creek on the west to Pederson Point on the east. To harvest the salmon that they’d grunted aboard, they settled cross-legged on opposite sides of the net that lay heaped on deck. They’d isolated each shackle or segment of net as best as possible.
“In case you don’t remember, Marine,” Buck explained. “This way, if we’re into fish, we just untie emptied shackles and set them back astern to start catching again.”
“Haven’t forgotten,” returned Jones comfortably.
Removing fish clotted in gillnets was a different kind of skill than to just shake them loose from a trolling hook. Jones had done it before the war, up here with the old man, but he had to admit to himself that that kind of patience and concentration took some relearning. His pick tool soon became even more bloody and slime-handled than Buck’s. It was easy enough to free a fish snagged just by the gills. All this took was a snap of the wrist. However, strands of web wrapped most of them tight, since they tended to start thrashing after finding themselves trapped. Some were so enmeshed in the net that their freed bodies bore blackening crisscross marks. Worst were those with tangles around their heads. Sometimes Jones had to cut a strand or two of the cotton web to free both snout and sharp-edged, flapping gills, but such cuts enlarged the mesh opening and formed an escape hole that could be used during future sets. Better in these cases to bloody the fish head, so long as the meat of the body stayed unharmed.
Many of the fish still gasped as he worked to free them. All part of being a fish, Jones knew, but he’d still smack them dead with his gaff when convenient. Within the tangle, Buck Henry grabbed and freed a salmon almost double the size of any other. He picked off the net around its head with care, so that it was not bloodied. The fish still flapped sluggishly.
“Oh, but you’re a beaut!” he exclaimed and threw it back into the water. The creature stayed inert for moments, then swam from sight.
“Thought we were catching them,” Jones growled.
“You ain’t so smart after all. Pay by the pound, you’ll see how fast that big fish goes into the hold. But pay by the fish like the canneries do, he takes up too much space. Got to change the rules. That’s one of the things that union they’re trying to organize is demanding—why people call ’em commies. Another’s to let a fisherman sell to canneries other than the one he’s signed to.”
“You don’t know how commies infiltrate everywhere, Dad. There’s talk of drafting me back to Korea because of them. Shouldn’t meddle with stuff that’s worked all along.”
“You’re young, but sometimes you sure talk old. Not like some other vets your age.”
Jones shrugged, annoyed and unsure why. They tossed the freed fish forward toward the hatch, then at intervals stopped to store them below. Now and then with a shrug, they’d throw other big ones back, if only to spite the cannery. As Jones gained his stride, he and the old man competed to stack the highest pile of fish, although neither called it such. By the end of each set they took turns sloshing each other with buckets of seawater. Fish blood and slime plopped from their oilskins in globs, and they happily insulted each other about who had left the biggest mess.
After fishing for eighteen hours straight, with the rain turned steady, Buck Henry declared, “Maybe take a little break for sack time. Okay, boy?”
By now, Jones was working on automatic, but offered: “If it suits you.” He removed the rubber gloves that had grown soggy with fish blood and slime, dried his hands on the flannel shirt under layers of wool and oilskin, and reached into the canopy space that was their only shelter. Groping about, he found the dollar clock they’d wound in a piece of rubber to keep off the salt water. The radium dials showed through the darkness that the time was just past midnight. Start of the third day. Jones made a pencil notation in the little notebook they had also wrapped up against the weather. They were about halfway through this opening before a tow back to the cannery and a dry bunk for at least a night. Hardly seemed worth stopping.
They eased stiffly, headfirst like parallel logs, under the canvas covering the bow. Then they pulled an old bearskin Buck had brought as high over their chins as they could while still covering the open tops of their boots, sticking into the weather. The long johns pressing against his skin warmed and began to dry. The boat rocked comfortably. Well, Jones decided, a little rest wont hurt.
“You know what, boy?”
“What, Dad?”
“I figured it out. It’s not but fifteen thousand fish we’d have to catch to make up seven thousand five hundred dollars.”
“No way. You added wrong.” Jones tried to calculate in his head. “That’s if we got fifty cents a fish, not forty. I think.”
“Oh. Well, still.”
“And then, if you spend it all on a boat, what’ll you live on? What’s left to buy the gas, much less chow and things?”
After a long pause, just as Jones started to drift off. “Boy? Don’t the government give discharged Marines what they call a GI loan? So you don’t have to pay everything at once?”
“Go to sleep, Dad.”
Jones woke after a short period to knots throbbing in his arms. He massaged them surreptitiously, as Dad had his shoulder during haul-ins over the roller, but since they were now lying hip to hip it was hard not to draw attention. Rain pattered on the canvas tented above them. Only one drip fell, from some little hole they hadn’t yet found and patched. Jones wore enough heavy clothing, sweated outward from long johns and screened inward by a wool shirt, that rain made no difference except on his face—which, naturally, is where the drip landed. Straight to the nose or the cheek depending on the way he shifted his head. He tried to alter position while still kneading his arm.
“Stay on your own side,” growled Buck Henry without heat. “What’s wrong? Tendons from rowing got you?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“Guess I might have just let the wind take us with the others toward the Copenhagen, instead of making you row us the other direction.”
“No complaints. But now, just give me two more inches over your way to duck this water, and stop bitching. Alarm set?”
“For three hours like I said.”
“Then shut up and good night, Dad.”
He woke only once more to the pain in his arms. Under the canvas, the smells of fish and wet wool, and whatever else had accumulated were as thick as taffy. He attempted another massage, holding each arm straight up to allay the pain, and then slept.
When the alarm jangled, he was glad to let Buck uncover first and start the primus under coffee water, before stretching out full and kneading his arms again. During their brief night, the drip had accumulated into a puddle beside his neck, where it did no harm.
“Good sleep, boy?”
“Finest.”
“Then shake it out of there and go check the net.”
The rain had stopped and the sun rising low on the horizon now shone straight through the dark overcast into his eyes. On impulse Jones removed his hip boots and socks and padded forward on bare feet. Dry socks waited in the little waterproof bag he’d been smart enough to pack. He wriggled his toes in the chilly puddles on the way, but balanced carefully in case they had missed some patch of slime during sloshdown. The net stretched behind in a line of corks. It was calm. Other boats bobbed nearby. Most also had their nets out, all aligned with the current. Jones took a leak over the side and breathed the fresh air. The ache in his arms had subsided. Sun beams caught sparkles and shadows all along the water. No sounds except low voices from other men also rising and the lap of water against their hull. Somebody’s tin pot gave a clang. But no engines. No rifle cracks or bombs. Nothing that threatened the peace.
Back under the canvas he picked out his waterproof bag. Bilge water had seeped into the opening, and his spare socks were sopping wet. So what. He wrung them out and put them on. They were on to the fish. What else had they come for?
He didn’t want change! Let there be at least something that stayed the same—even if it was hard to do and sometimes hurt.
By Thursday morning around eight, with only a few more hours of sleep in between, they had picked the final net they’d left to soak. Not as many fish as the day before. Morning light filled the sky after a steady rain. Buck Henry looked down into the hold. Despite the taper in the quantity, there was still a satisfying mass of thick-bellied sockeyes. The silver of their scales had dulled, and dried blood clotted the black-rimmed mouths of some, but: “There’s a pretty sight, boy. Could stand looking all day.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“Hold’s about full. Some seasons she’d have been full a whole day earlier. Anyhow, time to make market.” Work had taken them a few miles from the tally scow. But, with some five hundred six-pound fish in the hold as ballast and their sail filled by a four to five knot easterly, they pushed a straight and steady line through the water. Behind them swirled a dovetail of water that proved it. Their net now lay heaped astern, powdered with salt to keep it from rotting. Jones peeled off his oilskin coat and the sweated woolens beneath, then his boots and socks. He stretched bare-chested, balancing atop the spongy net, and savored the easing of the muscles in his legs and arms. Other full sails could be spotted on the horizon—some within shouting distance. The air smelled fresh and good.
“Watch yourself, boy,” called his dad at the tiller. “Stand clear. Don’t cut my wind there.”
“Plenty of wind for both of us.” In answer, Buck touched the tiller just enough to alter its direction a few degrees. He laughed when the sprit bumped Jones’s leg. “Hop when I tell you! Can’t you see I’m racing Nick Sandstol’s boat off our starboard?”
“No. Didn’t.”
“That what the Marines taught you? To lollygag and smell the flowers?”
“Taught me to grab any little good thing when it comes!”
“We gonna let Nick grab a place ahead of us delivering, just because you help yourself to feeling good?”
“So what?”
“So that’s the hell kind of kid I raised?” With equal vigor Buck called to the boat now obviously racing them: “Loser foots a jug of best bootleg at the cannery this Saturday!”
“Pity to see you waste that kind of money, Buck. But that’s how she’s going to be!” Buck Henry tightened sail. So did Nick. Their two boats chopped across the water neck and neck.
The tally scow squatted in the water ahead of them. Its hundred-some-foot length and square wooden housing made it seem more a creature of the shore, a bump of land alongside the agile sail crafts that maneuvered around it to dock and make delivery. Three boats already bobbed against the scow’s rail, while another approached under oars.
“Current’s pulling four-five knots I judge,” muttered Buck Henry at the tiller. His right hand controlled the line of a choker on the boom. “Judge the breeze blowing against us to be about the same.” On the Sandstol boat, Luke the boat puller was setting up his oars while skipper Nick began to lower sail. Jones kicked one of the sixteen-foot oars lashed along their own rail. “Reckon you’ll need me at these buggers to get us in. Figure that’s what I’m along for, so I might as well—”
“Leave ’em be, boy. Quick, ready a line you’ll heave to starboard. When I slack the rings, you go ease the sail down halfway—no more. Then stand by and just do what I tell you. When I say it!”
“Yo, Captain!” Jones felt himself grinning in his hustle, remembering old times. He secured a line to one of their cleats and looped it for either heaving or letting out, then took his place by the sail. At Buck’s yell, Jones lowered the triangular canvas to half its span as the big wooden rings clattered in his hands.
At a point just ahead of the scow—the wind and tide shooting them forward, so that they would pass the larger vessel within seconds—Buck turned the tiller hard to port and barked, “Drop sail all the way!”
With the strength of his whole body, Jones bunched the remaining canvas and rings straight down. Under Buck’s coolheaded control, their boat made a 180-degree turn that lodged them exactly to the portside rail of the scow. Just barely bumped the last boat tied to deliver. Jones leaned out with his looped rope, ready to grab the end boat’s rail or to jump aboard her, but a crewman on the scow shouted out and caught the line Jones quickly heaved. With a soft bump the current drifted them into the string of boats waiting to deliver.
Nick Sandstol’s boat, working in more slowly under oars instead of sail, was forced to tie astern of them.
“And oh my, how I’m a-sudden thirsty!” called Buck.
When their turn came to deliver, Buck jumped to a ladder against the scow and called back heartily to his son, “Skipper does the counts. Don’t need to tell you what the boat puller does.”
“Then it’s skipper’s ass if he screws the tally!” returned Jones in equal humor. He grabbed one of their pronged poles, pulled his hip boots to the top, and waded in among their fish. The catch of three days had an odor now less like silver and more like brass. He drove the prong into the head of a fish and swung its carcass over the boat’s rail. With a flick of his pole, the fish thumped free onto the scow’s deck.
18
DELIVERY BY PEW
It turned out that the captain of the Evelyn K had expected Kiyoshi to stand in the corner only while in the wheelhouse. Inside the rest of the vessel, he was free to wander as he pleased. Although that was soon amended: “Just don’t interfere with the work. Stay off deck.”
The bed that Vic the bearded crewman had taken him to was a top bunk in the dark, stuffy room where the crewmen slept. Several boxes, one of them slippery with grease, were piled atop the bunk. Vic handed them off without ceremony and directed Kiyoshi to stack them in the corner. “Didn’t send a sleeping bag with you, eh? I’ll find you a blanket. Lot of times we just sack out in our clothes since we’re up and down all night out here. Okay?”
“Hai. Yes.” It was a doubtful reassurance. How long before he could return to the bed ashore? It suddenly seemed a luxury.
“Now this bunk right below you—Spike sleeps there. Mind you don’t kick him in the nose or step on him when you climb up, eh? That’ll just start things all over again. Understand?”
“Very careful. Yes.”
For the next few hours, Kiyoshi looked on at the men below from his corner in the wheelhouse. The cold rain, after all, came down hard outside. He watched it glisten down the waterproof coats of the workers. Preferable, of course, to stay dry—as befitted the owner o
f a Japanese company who had come to inspect and buy product. From the window he could see the open fishing vessels move in, but they disappeared beneath the scow’s rail so that whatever the fishermen did to deliver their catch remained hidden to him. Nor could he see the full deck without moving from his assigned corner to the front windows of the wheelhouse, where the captain had not given him permission to go.
The sky remained dark all day and outside lights illuminated both the vessel and the nearby water, yet daylight never seemed to end. No one objected when he left the corner to wander to the galley and spread more peanut butter on bread. Nor when he climbed into the bunk assigned him to take a nap. By true nightfall, when the sky turned black at last, Kiyoshi had grown restless with boredom. Finally, risking the embarrassment of a reprimand (a bold risk that would be unthinkable back home) he ventured out to the open deck, but stayed in the shadows close to the bulkhead. Even in the half-shelter, the cold rain seeped into his clothes. Suddenly the captain, in passing, slapped him on the shoulder with American familiarity.
“You’re wet. Didn’t you bring foul weather gear?” He called to the dark figures working under the deck lights. “One of you guys get our friend here some oilskins.” When no one turned: “Ahh never mind, follow me.” The captain led the way to the small cabin where he slept, opened a drawer beneath his bunk, and pulled out a folded suit of green oilskin clothing. “Here, pull into these. Little wide for you, maybe, but they’ll do.”
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