by Todd Lewan
“They must have been happy to see those fishermen,” Bob Doyle said.
“Nobody got a freebie, if that’s what you mean,” Mork said. They all laughed. Hanlon returned with a bucket of hooks and sat down.
“You ever been to Rosie’s Bar and Grill?”
“Not yet,” Bob Doyle said.
At one time, Rosie’s was just a warehouse. Then somebody turned it into a bar. Then Rosie bought it. She decorated it real sweet, with fishing gear and antiques and big, old wood tables and iron lamps and a huge sign outside with the name carved into it by a few loggers. It was big and dark inside and smelled of stale beer and sawdust. There were bunks in a cabin out the back and Rosie let the miners crash there if they had nowhere else to stay. On real busy nights, she had guys sleeping on the pool tables and in the booths.
It was more than just a bar, he said. It was a radio hub for fishing vessels. A marine radio was set up at the bar so that skippers could call ahead to place a supper order, or to let Rosie know about an emergency, or a serious injury on a vessel. It was the place fishermen without families passed holidays. It was where they held their funerals, baptisms, weddings. Rosie’s youngest, Sassy, tied the knot right under the brass bell.
When Gig Mork was old enough, he tended bar at Rosie’s in the evenings. He wore a white shirt with pearly buttons and blue jeans, a red bow tie, red garters and a white apron. If there were more than five ladies in the bar Rosie would politely ask him if he would not mind giving the girls a little show, and he would have a few drinks, then a few more, to help him over his shyness, and before long he would be up on that bar flipping off one shoe, then the other, then one sock, then the other, and, gyrating his pelvis, peel off his shirt and jeans and let them fly.
“You’re kidding me,” Bob Doyle said.
“Hell, no.”
When he was in a groove, he would swing his hips and bump and grind and played peekaboo in such a way that a few of the really juiced ladies tried to pinch him. One time while he was dancing a woman snuck up behind him with a pair of scissors. Rosie grabbed the woman and restrained her just as she was about to pounce; apparently, the customer wanted to snip the strings holding up Mork’s apron.
“Hell,” DeCapua said, “why do women always screw up a good thing?”
Then DeCapua told them about some of his most colorful capers, including the time when he was fifteen and he hit Andy’s Foodtown in Hartford. His plan was to hide in the crawl space above the ceiling until the supermarket closed, then slither along the ceiling to the manager’s office and drop down on the safe —so as not to trigger the floor alarm.
“How’d you get the combination?”
“I watched him open the safe from the crawl space,” DeCapua told them. “I had binoculars.”
“How’d you get caught?”
Waiting for the employees to clear out for the night, he did a whack of heroin and, as he was nodding, leaned back and tumbled through the ceiling tiles. He landed smack in cold cuts.
“Worst part was I hate fucking baloney,” DeCapua said. Everyone laughed.
Then Mork told them a story about the night he drank himself to sleep while bartending at Rosie’s, only to wake up in a booth wearing nothing but a sheer, red baby-doll nightgown. At that, Bob Doyle commented that there was nothing quite like the feel of satin once you were shit-faced. DeCapua asked him how he could know of such things, being as he could not get his own wife to put out, to which Bob Doyle replied that at least he did not chase hookers away simply by removing his boots. DeCapua denied that was true, but added that if a whore had ever complained he would have told her, “You’re just smelling money, honey.”
“Money?” Bob Doyle said. “To me you smell like a monkey with no money.”
“Listen, shiny head,” DeCapua said, flapping his ponytail at him, “at least something’s growing on top of my head.”
“Fuck your ponytail.”
“Baldy here is mad,” DeCapua said to the others, “because cue balls don’t get pussy.”
“And you do?”
“Ah,” DeCapua said, “who the hell wants pussy, anyway? Pussy. Let me tell you something about pussy. It’s totally overrated.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Overrated. Who in hell needs to fuck? All that does is get you child-support bills. I’ll attest to that. Kissing, too. It’s all shit. Love. You know, World War Two was when they started in with all that love crap. Prior to that, in the movies, if you married a guy you were stuck with a guy. The good guy in the flick had to kill the bad guy to get the wife from him. You know? But then after World War Two they started telling everyone in America, ’You gotta be in love. You shouldn’t stay married to him if you don’t love him.’ So now they get married for love. And then what happens in a month? They realize they ain’t gonna change the beer-drinking son of a bitch. Then they say: ‘I don’t love him anymore. So I’m going to move out and take the kids.’ And the kids suffer. We got this idea that I must be in love all the time. Well, sorry, baby. I don’t care how much you think you love him. There’s going to be mornings you’re going to wake up and not even like him. And nowadays when that happens, what do women do? They get a divorce.”
He had a captive audience now and he knew it.
“Marriages overseas are still arranged,” he said. “Both parents have to give a blessing or it’s over. Here, we got Jerry Springer and Oprah telling everybody how to stay married. What a joke. Now, let’s say you go to have sex with your wife, and she acts with reluctance. Okay? Well, if you’re a man, the way you handle that in Europe is, you quietly go off and get somebody on the side. You work a few more hours in the office for the money to pay for a mistress. And you don’t bring it home and you don’t rub it in her face. And your old lady goes out and gets a little on her own, and she don’t bring it home and make an issue of it. See? There’s ways to get around the love thing. Ways that have been working for hundreds of years.”
“You done?”
“None of this honey this or honey that for sex. Fuck that. I’d rather pay for it and get what I want.” He paused for a breath. “And quit giving me shit about my feet.”
“They could use some soap and water.”
“Fuck that. The only thing I need cleaned is my knob. And bitches are going to take care of that, anyway. They ain’t gonna be sucking on my toes. Which leads me to my final point. You know what the two best things in life are?”
“No.”
“Blow jobs and beer —in that order.”
“Oh hell.”
DeCapua stood up.
“Where you going?” Mork asked him.
“I’m sick of this shit. I’m going into town. This is busywork. I ain’t here to do busywork. We got plenty of gear. I’m a fisherman. I’m here to fish.”
Mork glared at him. “Sit down.”
“I’ll work when I’m on the boat but I ain’t on the boat right now.”
“You’re on the clock. Sit down.”
“This is make-work. Make-work for the crew. Hell. I just quit Phil Wiley. This is Phil crap all over again. Except when I was with that Phil, I made money. This is Phil Junior, and he don’t make money.”
“We’re all a part of this,” Mork said. He wagged a hook at him. “Let’s get something straight here. On this boat, if the skipper tells you to take a shit off the stern, then you drop your stinking sweats and do it. You got it?”
DeCapua’s face went as blank as a pie pan. “So what do I do if I ain’t had a meal?”
He laughed.
“You know something, Mike?” Mork said. “If we do make money, I’m going to fine you.”
“Oh, right.”
“I’ll take it out of your share.”
“If we ever get one.”
Just then, Morley came up the dock. He was carrying tubes of grease, tools and fittings.
“Hey, fellas,” he said. Nobody looked up. “How’s it going out here?”
TWENTY-ONE
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sp; The next day the sun broke through the clouds and there were no more rows. Everyone wanted to get the boat ready for fishing. Gig Mork borrowed some lube oil from a friend, Jim Lewis, who ran a parts store in town, and spent the rest of his morning tinkering with the generator. Mark Morley lubed the driveshaft, bled the fuel lines again and timed the engine. Around lunchtime the two of them looked for a backup generator to rent, but they had no money for a deposit. They also asked around for a six-man life raft. They were supposed to have one on board, according to the law, if they fished open waters. But there were no big trollers in dock and nobody along the quay had such a raft.
On the dock David Hanlon taught Bob Doyle how to better splice and add hooks to lines. They fixed up some of the old, tangled gear and thawed out more bait. Then Hanlon showed him how to salt down the chums in five-gallon buckets so they would not spoil. They repositioned the fifty-five-gallon fuel drum in the engine room, organized the galley and lashed and stowed all the gas jugs, tools, longline, buoys and bait crates. Mike DeCapua did not get up until ten that morning. But later on he chipped in, too, splicing line by himself on the foredeck. He even patched together enough of the frayed gear to build a string.
They also inspected the boat for leaks and hazards. In the lazarette they noted some seepage. But the leak, Morley decided, was not anything their bilge pumps could not handle. They moved the gas-powered bilge pump downstairs and bolted it to the floor beneath the ladder in case they started taking on a lot of water. There was a loose plank on the hull near the prop that had been lead-patched, but the patch did not look in great shape. Morley told them that if it started leaking badly, the bilge pumps would be able to handle it just fine.
The fo’c’sle was a mess. There were mooring lines, buckets, tarps, pallets and other odds and ends scattered about, and when they reorganized things they noticed that planking had buckled on the starboard side. There was water on the tarps. It might have come through surface cracks on the deck, though DeCapua pointed out that the hatches were not watertight either. No matter how they lashed it, he told the skipper, they were going to take on some water if any waves came over the bow. It was not an ideal situation, having leaking hatches. But nobody spoke up when Morley told them to towel the fo’c’sle down.
During the afternoon Mork went off into the mountains with Morley’s hunting rifle. The skipper stayed on the boat and tinkered with the stove and talked on the phone. Bob Doyle walked around the town and met a few people along Potter’s Quay. He wound up at the community hall where there was fresh coffee on. He smoked and read the Juneau papers. Hanlon called his brother in Hoonah, spoke with his nephew, Jimmy, and caught up on some family news. DeCapua visited a friend on his troller, and later visited his buddies at The Shop. It had a TV and a scanner that allowed you to listen to radio conversation between boats at sea. DeCapua listened to see if any longliners that regularly fished the Fairweather Grounds were headed out there. None were.
It was a nice day, sunny, in the low fifties, with high, fleecy clouds. By the time Mork returned from hunting, the clouds were streaked in hues of gold and pink and all of the mechanical repairs were done, the fuel topped off. Mork told them he had not even gotten a shot off.
The chill of the night returned and everyone was looking forward to a big hot meal and a good night’s sleep. It was hard to be upset about anything on a day like that.
Supper was excellent. The pot roast was browned and smothered in gravy outside, tender and juicy on the inside. They all sopped up the fatty juices and gravy from their plates with buttered biscuits. There was potato salad with lots of chopped-up boiled egg, mayonnaise and rough-ground black pepper in it, and they had carrots and cabbage, steamed and sliced, then cooked in butter and smothered in fried onions. Mark Morley and Gig Mork drank bottles of Coke. David Hanlon and Bob Doyle had milk. Mike DeCapua hated milk and did not care much for soda; he stuck with black coffee.
Everyone was hungry with the clear, chilly air and they all took second helpings. They were so hungry that nobody said anything when DeCapua remarked that it was foolish to return to the Triple Forties to pick up the gear.
“Anyone want more carrots?” Morley asked.
“Right here,” Bob Doyle said.
“I can heat up some of that leftover spaghetti and marinara sauce. What do you say, Bob?”
“Not for me.”
“Gig?”
“No, thanks.”
“Dave, here’s your roast.”
By the end of the meal there was very little pot roast or baked potatoes left. There was chocolate cake for dessert and pistachio ice cream to go with it, and Mark Morley put on a pot of fresh coffee. He cleared the table, scraped the plates and rinsed the cups and mugs in the sink, and finally started soaping the dishes with a sponge and wiping down the utensils.
“Good coffee,” Bob Doyle said.
“Thanks. I don’t drink the stuff myself, but I like the way it smells.”
“That roast was excellent.”
“Glad you liked it. When you move around a lot, you cook or you starve.”
“True,” DeCapua said.
Morley was drying a fistful of forks. “We’ll be heading back out in the morning, so make sure you all get a good night’s sleep.”
“What time you thinking of leaving?” Mork asked him.
“Late morning.”
“What’s the forecast?”
“Right now the radio is saying seas about five to ten feet, and winds about twenty knots outside. Just the window we’re looking for.”
DeCapua said, “On the TV they’re saying a blow is coming this way. A good one. It’s south and east of the Aleutians right now, moving fast toward us.”
Morley put the utensils in a drawer.
“Well, we got to get the gear.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise it’s lost gear.”
“Yeah,” DeCapua said, “but it’s not your gear, right?”
“No.”
“Well, then, what difference does it make? I mean we’re bringing the boat back. We’ve already not made money. So what if we lose the gear?”
Morley looked at him appraisingly. “I want to get the gear back.”
No one said anything.
“Besides, I’ve talked to the owner,” Morley said, “and he knows we’re going out to get the gear. Now, while we’re out on the grounds, maybe we can throw out a couple of quick fives and let them fish while we’re retrieving the gear.”
DeCapua sat back.
“Before we spot the gear, we can throw our shit out—maybe two sets of five skates —real quick. We let the new stuff fish while we get the gear we’ve lost—buoy balls, anchor and all. How many anchors are we down?”
“Two,” Mork said.
“Two?” Morley scowled. “Those things are a hundred bucks apiece. Do we have enough for a fifteen-skater?”
“For that, we’d be short an anchor.”
“Christ.”
“We got an old car battery down below,” Mork said. “Maybe we could tie that off to hold a string.”
Mike DeCapua sniffed. “Say,” he said, “isn’t there any other place to fish along the coast?”
“Like where?”
“Like up past Graves Harbor. We could go pull our gear and do a bunch of smaller strings inside.”
“Well,” Mork said.
“A lot of people fish that area out of Yakutat. You ever fish up there, Giggy?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s Laykee Bay up off Yakutat.”
“I know it.”
“Okay, look. Say we get out to Fairweather, you know, we get our gear, we put, say, two strings out, we get nothing. Here’s another option that we can plan on doing.”
“It’s an idea,” Mork said, but he did not sound convinced.
“Why get knocked around out there if we can catch smaller, specialty rockfish in the inland waters? So we don’t get lots of big fish. We can get specialty rockfish. They’
re worth more.”
“What kind of price you hear on yellow eye today?” Mork asked Morley.
“Owner said a buck thirty-five a pound,” Morley said. “That’s for number one product. More for the specialty rockfish.”
“How much more?”
“Maybe fifty cents a pound more.”
“See?” DeCapua said. “We get a bunch of the little guys, on the inland waters. And what about sand sharks? You guys told me when I came on this boat that we were going after sharks. Hell, we’ve thrown at least two hundred sharks back. Ten percent of that is keeper. What do you think, Dave?”
David Hanlon had been listening intently but had not said a word throughout dinner.
There was a long pause.
“I’d rather not get knocked around any more than I need to.” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Maybe it’s not a good idea to go out.”
A stone silence followed.
“Well,” Morley said softly, “we’re here to fish.” Hanlon looked down at his glass. Morley went on: “Anyone else got something they want to say about this?” He paused. “Everyone’s tired. I’m tired, too. But we got a chance to make money here. Let’s hump and get our pounds and get the hell home.”
Nobody said anything.
“Hey, Bob,” Morley said.
“Yeah?”
“You call your kids?”
Bob Doyle nodded. “Sure. Sure did. They’re good. I spoke with my baby girl, Katie, tonight.”
“Oh yeah? What did she say?”
“She said she wanted to hear another Barbie-as-Fisherwoman story. I always call and tell her a story about Barbie’s adventures. It’s a little thing we do.”
Bob Doyle felt his face reddening.
DeCapua laughed. “You don’t want to tell her anything about the Barbie I once knew.”
It was late now and Bob Doyle had been unable to sleep. Once he had gone out on deck and looked up at the sky. It had cleared and the wind was high up and the moonlight lay on the branches of the snow-heavy spruce. He lit a cigarette, looked for a place to dispose of the match and finally tossed it overboard. A deer was picking its way along a trail. He watched it for a minute and then got bored with the deer and went back to his room.