Boats were second nature to us. We learned to operate them starting with rowboats and skiffs and rafts. Older fishermen called us “skiff mice.” We hot-rodded them, sank them, crashed them, and bought and sold them. We could do to boats what we would never be allowed to do to cars. There were no laws on the water then. To run the outboard engines, we needed to sit on a bucket to see over the bow. People on shore could see only our heads over the gunwales. We looked like five little monkeys in yellow rain gear cruising along offshore. Later, as we graduated to more powerful outboard motors, we terrorized the Inlet. One time, we were racing kids in another skiff, and Andy turned sharply. The 25-horsepower Evinrude outboard engine flew off our boat and sank out of sight. The other boat came back and hit a wave so hard, their engine split the transom, and it too dropped to the bottom. We laughed our way in to port, paddling with an oar. Dad was not happy.
The intensity of our younger lives, with this hunger for the joy of living, inevitably reached a pinnacle that included a world of pain. Andy and I liked to jump cars and motorcycles. I do not know why. I do not know the why of most things I used to do. Once we jumped a car so high we would have landed on the front bumper if a friend named Phil, who weighed 300 pounds, had not provided ballast in the backseat. He hurt his back permanently, and that was the last time he jumped with us. It was also the last time that particular car jumped or did anything else.
Andy bought a Honda CR80 bike that he jumped going 60 mph. When he landed, the handlebars dropped around the gas tank, and by all rights his neck should have snapped. A full-face helmet—the only time I ever saw him wear it—saved him. A friend ran over to him lying on the ground and said, “Man! That’s the farthest I ever saw anyone jump in my life. Are you OK?” Andy was alive, but his spine was wrecked, and he could hardly walk. He had ruptured his spleen, hit his head, and broken ribs, and he was hallucinating when he picked himself off the ground. He could not breathe, and he said his life was flashing before his eyes. He saw sparks for days.
A few days later, I jumped off the Frieda K’s deck to the beach, which I thought was only five or so feet down from where I was standing. Maybe it was lower, but I was nineteen years old and thought of myself as immortal. Halfway down in midair I said to myself, “I should have landed by now.” I fell twenty-eight feet to the beach. When I hit, my chin thumped between my feet and rocks flew off my chin. I broke both my ankles and my wrist. Numb with pain, I drove myself to a party, got laid, and only then went home. I said, “Andy, man, I have to go to the hospital.” I do not know why I did not drive there myself, except I wanted to see how the pain went for a couple days on my own, like I did the time before, when my wrist was broken for a year, the bone became abscessed, and my body killed the bone. I just did not want to go to the hospital. Andy drove me to the emergency room. He was bent over like a little old man in pain and he dragged me along the corridor on my back by my one good arm. The nurses stared at us. “What the heck happened to you two?” they kept asking. They could not believe what they were seeing. The doctor told us, “You two just used up eight of your nine lives.”
When they released me from the hospital, I lived in a supermarket shopping cart for six weeks. My brothers cut a hole in the bottom so that I could go to the toilet, and they pushed me around. I could move the cart myself with a stick like an oar. It was a miserable time. We went to a Night Ranger rock concert, with me in the cart. I was in the mosh pit in the cart. The group’s guitarist, Brad Gillis, pointed at me from the stage and said, “Now there’s a fan.”
When I was twelve, our mother Joan called it quits with Dad. Their divorce might have contributed to our recklessness. But she had tolerated his ways long enough. He understood her point but was not willing to change. She told us, “He was something else, your father. He was a good fisherman though.”
We moved with her like gypsies at first to Binghamton, New York, back to Homer, and then to Anchorage, and when she fell in love with Bob Phillips, who soon became our stepfather, we moved to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in the winters. Andy did not take well to the marriage news. We were riding in the station wagon when Bob and Mom told us about their plans. Andy jumped out the back window and ran up into the woods on the side of the road. It took a while for us to find him. To tell the truth, none of us took well to the news, and we reacted differently. My brother Dave started stuttering. With Andy, I developed an unspoken communication, like with an identical twin brother. Neal made himself scarcer. Michael, my next youngest brother, went into his own private world. We had only ourselves to depend on. We stuck together as brothers like never before.
In Idaho, Mom was religious and Bob was gentle. In Alaska, Dad was not religious; he was profane and he was rough. At home in Idaho, Mom would serve us dinner at the table; during summers in Alaska with Dad, we cooked steaks in the bow of the boat with a blowtorch. Bob tried to understand what we were going through. We were split between a mother and father who lived in two separate places and indeed, inhabited two different worlds. We had two homes and two sets of new parents, and we were uncertain which one loved us. In his way, Bob taught us to be men with solid, dependable natures that our father had never known even for himself. Bob was awesome. He had three of his own sons from a previous marriage, which made us a gang of eight boys in one house. Bob built a bike rack for ten bikes and nine motorcycles. In the house, we lived in a dormitory of bunk beds and dressers. Neighbors looked fretfully out their windows, terrified of what we planned next. We strung rope pulleys between trees. I swung from branch to branch in the tall trees like Tarzan. When we were not outside playing, we turned big appliance boxes into imaginary boats. We used our imaginations to the fullest. We were never bored. One time, when Mom came into the laundry room, we scattered but watched as she opened the dryer door. She jumped back and nearly had a heart attack. She let out a scream. And we were howling with laughter. Andy was going around and around in the dryer trying to break the family record of fifty-two spins without throwing up when he came out.
Outside in the winters, we picked the steepest hills to sled down and went skiing nearly every weekend.
One time, I told Bob, “Dad, I found a new trail. Follow me.”
He asked, “Am I going to get killed?”
I told him, “No, there’s just a little jump.”
He followed me, and at the jump he went up in the air past the ski lift coming up the hill and almost landed in the lift chair. He told me he thought I was crazy.
Mom kept us busy. At her insistence, we took turns cleaning up the bathrooms and our bedrooms. We had a big house, with four bathrooms, but eight teenage boys would have made a crowd in a barracks. With Mom’s approval, we raced soapbox cars that we made with our own hands. With Bob’s encouragement, we skied with skill and daring. One winter we built an ice skating rink. We water skied in the late spring and early fall, raced motorcycles on ten acres of woodland, and on rainy days, played foosball in the basement. Sometimes, we framed houses with Bob to keep us busy with hammers and nails. Bob let us have guns and taught us to shoot pheasants with bows and arrows, and for practice he threw Frisbees in the air as targets. After we became somewhat proficient with the bows, he took us hunting. I would not allow my brothers to kill the birds, even if they could hit them with their arrows. I brought along a cage and a net, like I was fishing for pheasants. To be honest, I never liked killing. Once I shot a seagull that died a terrible death. I felt real bad. It was sick of me to do that.
I do not hunt anymore. I figure the equation like this: A seagull bites, kicks, and scratches to get by on the Bering Sea, and some guy like me comes along with a gun and blam! target practice. That seagull had a right to live. Even killing machines like sharks have a right, although I am not sensitive to ants. I cannot kill an octopus. It looks at you with those pleading eyes. I feel bad about killing herring. They are looking at you, man. Like 500,000 herrings in a net mean a million eyeballs looking at me, begging me to let them go free. I feel guilty. Maybe my morta
lity is whispering to me. The closer I get to dying, the more respect I have for life.
Andy was smart and a faster reader. Mom never had to tell him to do his homework; I did mine in school. Somehow, in spite of my plans and my temperament, I got my diploma. At graduation, when I went up to receive my parchment, the whole class cheered, I guess because they were amazed.
We kept secrets from Mom and Bob, like that we jumped off a railroad bridge into a lake, until one day, Neal took pictures of us. Mom saw the photos and was shocked by the height of the bridge compared to us in midair between the span and the water. The biggest secret we kept was what we did, and did not do, at school. I learned that I needed to write the first excuse note of the year in my own handwriting; every succeeding note I could then write myself when I wanted to play hooky. The counterfeit notes passed muster with the school principal, who compared the handwriting. I learned math by recalculating the number of days of school I could miss without being expelled. I was playing hooky in my senior year the day of our class picture; my classmates put a mannequin where I would have sat in the bleachers. It was not that I hated classes. I did not see the point. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Each summer living with Dad proved in dollars and cents that fishing could be my living. Those teenage summer earnings ruined any thought of education beyond high school. At seventeen, I spent ten months on the ocean and made $128,000 back in the early 1980s. I bought three pickup trucks—and quickly totaled two of them. I did not invest or save. I did not pay taxes. I bought no land. I blew the money in one year without a sigh. With more money to be earned the next season, riches would never run out. As teenagers my brothers and I earned $12,000 in one summer working for Dad on his boat Bold Ruler—and $8,000 was a normal earning for us in the summers in the 1970s. I bought motorcycles, stereos, four-wheelers, cars, skis, clothes, and every one of our hearts’ desires. I earned more than our teachers. I learned that money does not bring you happiness, but it buys you a new wet bike, and try not to smile when you are driving your wet bike! I had no sense of responsibility. I was going to fish my whole life. Why would I want a college education?
As for girlfriends, I was jaded before I knew the meaning of the word. I had chicks all over me because I was a new boy in Homer each summer, and I went back to Coeur d’Alene in the fall with my pockets bulging with cash. And in girls’ minds I lived for adventure. We were like honey to bears. I dated several—girls, not bears—at once but kept them in the dark, as much as I was able. Strictly speaking, I did not date the type of girls who went to the proms or sat on the honor society. But in my senior year I decided to attend the prom. When I picked up my date, she walked down the stairs to greet me wearing a ball gown and high heels; she tripped on the hem and down came her strapless top, exposing a glorious view of her tits. At that moment, her mom and dad were preoccupied with the view out their front window of the Winnebago camper I had parked at the curb. Making matters much worse, and leaving nothing to their Christian imaginations, in front of the Winnebago on the lawn by the sidewalk two dogs were fucking like survival of their species depended on it. My prom night was over. Her father said no way. I did not argue.
Mom “saved” us in church. Or she tried to. We were raised religious. But I saw only hypocrisy. For a while, my brothers and I attended a Christian school in Coeur d’Alene, and those Christian girls, who talked the talk but did not walk the walk, had trouble keeping their panties on. The Christian schoolboys were as bad, smoking weed. I came out of my religious training, with apologies to Mom, being who I am. I made my own peace with God and do not push my beliefs on anyone. I do not care what people choose to believe: Seventy-two virgins in Heaven are fine with me if that is what Muslims hope for. All I ask of anyone: Please do not judge me.
Up or Down, Broke or Flush
Johnathan
Earlier, before Dido sang her mournful “down with this ship,” I was laughing with myself, naturally, about last season red salmon fishing on a day when I was scouting the water for jumpers, and I swerved Fishing Fever to avoid a huge log floating with the current. I slowed the boat to take a closer look. The log was posted. A metal sign with bullet holes nailed to its trunk warned, “No Trespassing. No Hunting. No Fishing.”
Another year in the red salmon season, up near the Kenai River—there was no wind and the thermometer read about 80 degrees Fahrenheit—a million big black biting flies descended and blacked out the sun. I am talking biblical. I could not fish. They were Single White Black Flies Looking for Mates; they mistook my face for a mate. A fly swatter was not big enough. I needed a gun. I hid from them in the wheelhouse with the doors and windows shut. They tried to get in. I could not see through the glass. A forest fire apparently had forced them out of the woods, or the devil himself had shooed them over the water. I threw Clorox around the deck and shot the hose in the air. I told the crew, “I cannot work under these conditions,” let go of my net, and hauled out about a mile to get free. When I came back my net was black with flies.
Not long afterward, I was salmon fishing near where I am drifting now. I was off Kodiak coming home from Sitka when I heard “MAYDAY! MAYDAY!” on the single sideband radio. The voice was weak. I thought the caller was using a handheld VHF radio. I asked what was their problem. “A man shot himself,” I was told. “He shot himself in the hand.” An hysterical woman’s voice on the other end said, “He’s in pain. He was fooling around with his gun.”
The radio signal was weakening. I relayed her call to the Coast Guard in Kodiak. The injured man had blown his hand off intending to prove a wild theory about the safety of the gun’s hammer. He did not think the gun would fire if he pressed the muzzle against his hand. He was bear hunting with his wife near Bear Mountain. Through my relay, the Coast Guard asked the woman about her husband’s pain. On a scale of 1 to 10, what would she say it was? She said 15. The Coast Guard did not evacuate him from the beach. They used a helicopter and harness and plucked him out of the woods. With him flying to the Kodiak hospital, I started toward Homer, still twelve hours away. The Williwaws were whipping up the worst seas I had seen around Kodiak up to that time. The weather kicked my butt. The temperature turned bitter cold. The deck iced down. I was in forty-foot seas in icy conditions. I limped into Homer glad to be alive.
I wonder if I can repair the batteries just enough to get power off them to call on VHF. For the second time, I wedge myself down in the engine housing on the port side against the wall. I have no reserve power. This effort only serves to stain my clothes and hands and arms with grease. The reduction gear is junk, and the boat will not move under its own power. I crawl back out of the compartment and look to the north and west. The weather continues to deteriorate with a low from the north. I look for other boats, but other captains must be staying in harbor until this blow moves through. I ration my Winstons. I search for survival gear, just in case, and mirabile dictu! Rolled in a life jacket—I do not carry a survival suit on this boat—is a sealed bottle of Crown Royal for medicinal use. My getting drunk now is not going to help me into port. I light a cigarette and my stomach moans. I go out on the deck to the hold and reach down for the salmon I filleted for the barbecue. I place the filets on a cutting table on deck, and with a knife I slice into the salmon’s thick red flanks. I eat the strips one by one, like sashimi. The Japanese, to whom most of the sockeye are shipped this time of year, would probably pay me for a place on Fishing Fever. I taste the wild goodness of the fresh salmon and smoke a cigarette and worry.
This drifting is not relaxing me. The quiet slap of waves makes me lonely. The sound helps me to sleep when I am safe, but it makes me jittery now. I am accustomed to the crash and boom of crabbing on the Bering Sea. An odd thought occurs to me: This is getting hairy. While I am fishing for either salmon or crabs I am always moving and reacting. I am thinking about crabs with barely a moment for reflection. Now I have nothing else to occupy me. Here, I just wait, passively, for someone to come along. I am alone, and I hate being alone. When
alone, I think too much and for me that is dangerous. Survival is not at stake here, I tell myself. My eventual recovery is only a matter of time.
For a moment, I try to calculate the cost of this interruption. As a fisherman, in the best of times, I let the bills pile up on my desk. I pay my creditors at last, and the money is gone, until I start fishing again. Up and down, broke and flush. With this busted reduction gear, I will be in the hole $10,000 for repairs. I have $2,000 in fresh sockeye salmon in my tank. The season is only starting. If I can fix the engine and stay out for five weeks and can clear $10,000, the season will be a success despite this hiccup. In most seasons I make $20,000 off red salmon before I pay the IRS and fix the boat. That is not going to happen this year.
Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea, and One of the World's Deadliest Jobs Page 7