by Todd Lewan
“This better be a good trip,” Morley said.
“It will be.”
“If it wasn’t for that bastard I’d be a lot calmer about everything. Every ten minutes that cell phone of mine rings. What the hell does he do that for?”
“You know owners.”
“But that goddamned phone rings all the time. Swear to God I’m going to toss the fucker overboard.”
“Take it easy,” Mork said.
“You believe he wouldn’t buy us any more bait? Who does he think I am? The fucking bank of Sitka? Christ. I had to use my own credit card at the cold storage for the last of it.”
“We’ll use the chums.”
“How’s that old gear?”
“We’ll get it into working shape on the way out.”
“Good.”
Later, while Bob Doyle was carrying line out on the foredeck, Morley called to him.
“Hey, Bob,” he said. “I want you to meet somebody. This here is David Hanlon. He’ll be fishing with us. David, this is Bob Doyle, my newest deckhand.”
Bob Doyle lifted a hand and the stranger took it, softly. A breeze hit the man’s face high up, lifting his fine, black hair around his ears. “Nice to meet you,” Bob Doyle said.
The man only nodded.
“You’ll be sharing the stateroom with Giggy. It’s a big old room,” Morley said. “Bob, take David here inside and show him around. Get him a coffee or something. You want some coffee?”
“All right.”
“Here, let me get your bag,” Bob Doyle said, bending over and grabbing the straps. “I got a pot on inside. Come on.”
Bob Doyle had known some Natives. He’d met them in the bars, along the waterfront. The younger ones drank a lot and tended to jabber. The older ones were more cryptic, gloomy. They’d look through you, not at you, and speak in the deep, somber tones of the vanquished. This Hanlon guy wasn’t like that, exactly. He was quiet as a tall glass of water, and when he did speak his voice was soft and dry, like the rustle of well-worn leather. The glasses make him look like some graduate student, Bob Doyle thought.
His eyes were deep-set eyes, black as a sparrow’s, untouchable. He had thick lips, a broad nose. He wore a tight, faded fleece jacket and Bob Doyle had seen the muscles of his shoulders twitch under it when he climbed over the gunwale. He’s strong, Bob Doyle thought. Don’t let that shy, timid stuff fool you. The man is a bull.
He showed Hanlon to his bunk, then took him to the galley and poured two cups of coffee. Mork, then DeCapua, came in. Mork had a half frown on his face. They all shook hands and then Morley called Hanlon down to the engine room.
When they had left Mork said, “That guy is a spy.”
“How’s that?” DeCapua said.
“A spy. The owner’s hired gun. He’s here to watch us and give the owner an earful.”
“Why?” Bob Doyle asked.
“He ain’t gonna sit on his ass and give orders, is he?” DeCapua asked.
“No,” Mork said. “He’ll be working all right.” He poured himself a coffee and gulped it. “I’ll find him plenty to do.”
“Is he any good?”
“Skipper says he knows how to fish and can put on a bait right quick. But that ain’t what bothers me.”
“What then?”
Mork lit another cigarette and went out and climbed up the steel ladder to the pilothouse. They could hear his boots going back and forth through the ceiling. Bob Doyle looked at DeCapua and shrugged his shoulders.
Morley waved at Mork to toss the stern line on board and then kicked the starter. The boat sprang off the wall. He throttled up the engine until it stopped grumbling and soon the fuel pier was behind them and they were cruising through the low-wake zone and on down the channel.
They fast-coiled the dock lines, stowed them in the lazarette, then lifted five fifty-pound boxes of iced bait from the forward hold, carried them astern and lashed them to the side of the bait shed. Mork told them to make sure every five-gallon gas jug and buoy ball was tight on the railing or they would pay for any lost gear. Then he turned and climbed up to the pilothouse. DeCapua and Hanlon went to their bunks. Bob Doyle stood alone on the stern.
Along Halibut Point Road he saw two spokes of yellow light, probably those of a truck, and heard the tearing hiss of tires on wet pavement. He looked up. Dipping and slicing through the air, a seagull was following them. It kept its distance, eyeing their wake. He lit a cigarette. Opportunists, he thought. They were passing the jetty now. He felt the smooth chug of the engine, opened up to two knots. Soon they would be at Salisbury Sound. Then they would head outside, steam a mile west of the Sisters, and then, near Calves Head, crank the boat up to six knots and run a slot north and west. There was plenty of water between them and the Fairweather Grounds. With luck, they’d be there in eighteen hours —ten o’clock that night. Mark had said they would stand four-hour watches on the way out.
Bob Doyle was thinking that three months was a long time to go without a payday. What did they call it? Being in hock. That was it. He was in hock, all right. The Sitka fishing fleet was in hock, too. The whole damned country was in hock, come to think of it. Everybody was a member of the Hock Club. But three months was too long to go without a check. His monthly retirement check. What a crock. Work your whole life thinking you’ll get a pension and then everyone else takes a bite out of it. Maybe Mike was right about pensions. Fuck pensions. The city of Sitka was taking out of his pension for the jail time he did and for court costs. The Coast Guard was taking out for those checks he’d bounced at the Eagle’s Nest and for renovating the house they’d kicked him out of. His ex-wife was taking out for child support. Once everybody else got done with his check, there wasn’t enough left over to stuff a clam.
He wondered if the weather would hold. If they caught their limit he might even get a few bucks, once they had covered the cost of the groceries, bait and fuel. If he didn’t fuck up, Mark might even take him along tendering in February. He could count on a hundred bucks a day doing that. Guaranteed. No worrying about the size of the catch or the weather or the price of fish when they reached port. One hundred bucks a day. That was decent money. Do that for thirty days and you might be able to rent a place of your own, he said to himself. Some small, quiet place, out the road. The kids could sleep in his bed. He’d stay on the couch. Wouldn’t that be something.
They were coming up on the Old Sitka Rocks now. There was a sudden knot of lights on the shore. He picked out one, a faint yellow circle. That’s where his Brendan and Katie were. Right there, at that light. It was a streetlamp out front of a duplex with brown siding. Real quaint. He’d seen it once from the street and then another time, New Year’s Day it was, while sailing out on the Min E. The boat was slipping along the shore and he’d hurried to get the binoculars and had even spotted Brendan and Katie playing in the front yard. He had wanted to shout to them. But he had not been able to get his jaw to move.
They wouldn’t have heard him anyway.
Standing there, his gaze frozen, blank, as though he were staring at a burning house, he pictured his children sleeping. Katie liked to sleep on her side, Brendan on his stomach. He wondered if sleeping children could sense when their parents were thinking of them—have an unconscious thought, a sixth-sense sort of feeling that would wake them and make them say, Hey, Dad was just in my dreams.
Oh, cut the crap, he said to himself. You drink and carry on and spend half your kids’ lives away from home on icebreakers and you lie and lie and lie and you nick stuff from your employer and then you lose your wife and you want to get all soppy about it now? Get some sleep. You’re going to need it. You won’t sleep again for two days.
They were passing the ferry terminal. The tops of the spruce picked off the moonlight. Gulls called and waves broke on the rocks. He felt on the edge of something. He blew on his hands and turned to go inside.
“Please look over my kids,” he said out loud, to no one in particular.
T
HIRTEEN
No one was up before ten. The seas were flat and there was only a light breeze. They ate hot oatmeal and scrambled-egg sandwiches on toasted bagels with ketchup and cream cheese and everyone had several cups of coffee. Bob Doyle took his time eating. He felt sleepy and he felt good. The mountains had dropped below the horizon behind them and the gulf was rippling out ahead in sharp, minute splashes. The water had deepened in color but the breeze and the sun spackled the wave tops white. The crew seemed upbeat. Everywhere they went on ship there was the close, soothing hum of the engine, the sharp, dry air of morning. And they were back on open sea. They were on it and they were a part of it, and as the bow smoothly parted the chop it felt as though a world of impossible changes was peeling open before them.
They had fifty skates of gear to get ready. That was roughly ten miles of three-quarter-inch monofilament line. With the new line they had, they could make thirty skates. With the fairly decent gear, they could make another ten. Then there was the old stuff. This line was frayed from rubbing on sea rocks. The hooks that went with it were rusty, the tips crusted with rotted herring. It was snarled and tangled and twisted up, and most other skippers might have just chucked it and bought new gear. But Mark Morley thought it could be retooled. With a little patience, a little sweat, maybe some of it could be made useful again. Maybe all of it.
Bob Doyle crawled up the side ladder and lowered the buckets to Mork from the wheelhouse roof. They lugged the buckets down the gangways to the bait shed.
Mike DeCapua barked, “What’s all that?” Bob Doyle had just set down a bucket of the snarled line on the shed floor.
“Gear.”
“Wrong,” DeCapua told him. “It’s shit gear.” He reached into a bucket. “Oh, fuck. Look at this.”
The line had been used to fish halibut. The hooks were eighteen feet apart. For yellow eye they would have to tie on new gangions and hooks and space them apart every eighteen inches. It was pretty frazzled line.
“Who told you to get this?”
“Mark.”
“He still up in the house?”
“Yup.”
DeCapua stomped out. Bob Doyle found a pair of rubber gloves, turned over a five-gallon bucket and sat down on it. He glanced over at David Hanlon. Hanlon was sitting hunched over and quiet, altogether within himself, not breaking eye contact with what he had in his big hands. Bob Doyle watched those hands. They were making clover-shaped loops in the line. They were tying gangions, setting snaps, impaling herring on hooks, smoothly, and then salting each strip of bait. The fingers moved lightly, slipping up and down the line, gliding in and out, as if they were playing harp strings. The fingers opened and closed, opened and closed, moving as they must have moved thousands of times before now, in a blur, in a rhythm, in their own time. Loop, herring, salt. Loop, herring, salt. Loop, herring, salt.
“That’s good baiting,” Mork said to Hanlon. Mork had just come down from the pilothouse. Hanlon did not look up.
“How about I give you guys a hand,” Mork said.
“Sure,” Bob Doyle said.
The three of them built skates. The herring they had was not fresh. Fresh herring was easier to impale on the hook. Maybe that’s why it’s more expensive, Bob Doyle thought. This bait had been frozen and thawed, probably more than a few times. But it was all right. A yellow eye would snap at it if a hook came down and smacked the fish on the snout. The boat swayed back and forth, and they kept on working. Every so often Bob Doyle would jab his finger on a hook or catch his rubber glove in a stainless-steel snap. Hanlon worked without saying anything. The tips of his fingers went white as snow. But they kept gliding along on the gear.
“What’s the matter?” Mork asked Bob Doyle.
“Ah, it’s my hands. I’m cutting them up good.”
Mork went on baiting. “Tonight, after we’re done, go out on deck and take a nice, long piss on them.”
“What?”
“That’s right,” Mork said. “Fish are full of bacteria and shit. You got any cuts, they’ll get infected. Poisoned. So make sure to piss on your hands later on. Cleans ‘em out good.”
“I will,” Bob Doyle said.
Outside it was getting cold. They turned on a light and could see their breath in it. Bob Doyle worked awhile, baiting, until the sweat on his forehead began to chill. The wind whipped at the corners of the shed. A draft was coming under the door and down the walls.
The door swung open and an icy wind rushed in, followed by the skipper’s head. Bob Doyle saw it shadowed against the dark. “How about some sound, fellas?” Morley asked.
“How about some heat?” Mork said.
“Got no heat.”
He drilled three small holes through the aluminum walls behind the door, poked some copper wire through them and twisted the wire around the contacts of two speakers. Then he hung the speakers from nails.
“You guys like the Stones?”
“They’re all right.”
Morley went back out and a few moments later Mike DeCapua returned. He pulled up a bucket, plopped himself down and took up a line. The album Let It Bleed was playing. The speakers sounded a little tinny, but the sound was coming through clear enough. DeCapua started whistling. He liked to whistle. He whistled louder when “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” came on. Before long he was crooning the refrains, humming the lyrics he didn’t know and keeping time with the drums by bobbing his head and tapping a steel hook on the side of the bucket.
When the song ended DeCapua jumped up and threw a handful of herring on the floor.
“Fuck this.”
“Where you think you’re going?” Mork asked him.
“Coffee.”
The door banged shut. Bob Doyle looked at Hanlon. He had not missed a beat. His hands were still playing that invisible harp.
By two-thirty they had thirty skates done. The herring had run out and they were baiting now with chums. They had a lot of it. Every so often Mork would go up to the pilothouse to update Morley and check their position on the charts while the rest of them baited. Mike DeCapua was telling stories of coke parties, his days as a train hobo, how he camped in the “jungles” near the rail stops and made friends with brakemen by sneaking them dope, and how he and the rest of the “Bad, Bad Boys from Dog Patch” at the ANB Harbor once pooled fifty bucks and bought a 1948 aircraft hangar and converted it into a floating no-tell motel. Bob Doyle kept sticking his fingers with hooks. When he cursed the gear he got a rise out of everybody, even a faint smile from Hanlon. Mork would offer the others cigarettes and bring back mugs of coffee. It felt good to hold a warm mug.
At one point Mike DeCapua said, “Hey, Giggy, what’s with the chums?”
“What?”
“Ain’t there any more herring?”
“No.”
“Beautiful.”
Mork scraped a hook with a file.
“Fucking hands,” DeCapua said. Mork looked at him and went on scraping. DeCapua opened and closed his fingers, slowly. “My hands are fucking numb.”
“Want me to piss on them for you?”
The others snickered.
“How many skates we got left?” DeCapua asked.
“Well,” Mork said, “there’s all this here and that old stuff in the buckets.”
“I ain’t doing that.”
“Hell you ain’t.”
“Hell I am.”
Mork jabbed the hook through the chum’s mouth and out its gills.
“Hell you ain’t,” he said quietly.
DeCapua looked down into a bucket. “Who the fuck would do this to longline?”
Mork pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket.
“Have a cig, Mike?”
“What’s that?”
“A cigarette. Want one?”
“Yeah, I’ll take one.”
Mork drew a cigarette from the pack.
“Need a light?”
“Sure. Gee, thanks, Giggy.”
Mork he
ld out his lighter, flicked it and waited until DeCapua took a puff.
“Now,” Mork said, “shut your fucking yap.”
They smoked and baited. Mork offered Hanlon a cigarette, but he said no thanks. He used to smoke, he said, but not anymore. He used to drink, too. For a long time he was a rummy. A whiskey rummy, a beer rummy, a rum rummy, a pretty much anything rummy. But he did not drink anymore, he said. Not for six months. Going on seven.
“How did you stop?” Bob Doyle asked him.
Hanlon looked up from his gear. “I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged his big shoulders. “I just stopped.”
“Did you go somewhere?”
“A place in Sitka,” Hanlon said.
“And how was it?”
“Not bad.”
“But how did you stop?”
“I don’t know,” Hanlon said. “I wanted to, I guess.”
Mork asked him where he had fished and Hanlon told him pretty much everywhere. He was from Hoonah. His father was a Tlingit leader there, of the Shark Clan. He was also an established commercial fisherman, with several large vessels. One of them was the Claudia H, a fifty-eight-foot seiner. His father was a proud man. He took him out to fish for the first time when he was thirteen. His older brothers had been fishing since they were six.
“Why did he wait till you were thirteen to take you out?” Mork asked him.
“I was sick a lot,” Hanlon said.
“What did you have?”
“Anemia.”
He told them his father and brothers had fished everywhere around Glacier Bay. Up and down Chicagof Island, the Icy Strait, all the way up to Yakutat and the Fairweather Grounds.
“He was a great fisherman,” Hanlon said. “He knew the tides. That’s what it’s all about. Knowing the tides. You know the tides you catch the fish.” He looked up. “That’s what my father always said.”
Bob Doyle said, “Where’s your father now?”
“Dead.”
They went on working.
“So how’d you meet the owner?” Mork asked him. Hanlon stuck a hook through a bait.
“In Sitka.”
“Yeah?”
“During my rehab.”