“I didn’t tell on you,” said Audrey. “Mr. Cutch, he come asked for you. I said you run to the toilet.”
Hank rushed off and trailed Cutch’s elbow from the Iron Chinks to the retorts before catching his attention. “Did you have a new job for me, maybe?”
“No, you’re doing fine where you are. That booze on your breath?”
“Could you give me a different job?”
“What’s that?” Hank repeated the question. Whether Cutch heard was uncertain, because a machine clanked strangely and he dashed away.
Saturday night had the air of a party because of the boats, despite cannery tum-to on Sunday morning. The shift ended at nine, earlier than usual. The Filipino workers, who bunked and ate separately from the rest, had already started an outdoor fire to grill marinated salmon, apparently a regular Saturday rite. Beside the time clock was a fresh notice with Spanish translation: Cannery employees are reminded that possession of alcohol is absolutely forbidden. C. L. S.
“In other words, you got to drink it fast,” said Tolly behind him. “Come on, if you like, time to wet our throats and maybe our cocks.” Hank followed willingly. First Tolly took a shower, as he did every night after work, no matter how late, then doused himself with heavy-smelling lotion and brushed his teeth. He examined his gold earring in the mirror and polished it with his fingertips. Finally he changed to newer, tight dungarees and slipped a black woven vest over a clean flowered shirt.
Hank, also freshly clean on a less grand scale, followed down the stairs of the bunkhouse and down the walkways to the boats. It was about ten in the evening. The sun had gone behind the mountains, although the sky was still blue and the inlet was filled with black and purple shadows. Tolly walked with a happy swagger, beaming at people as he passed and calling comments. Most reacted with a grin. His scarred face might have been sinister but for the good will it radiated. He was his own person all the way, and Hank was pleased to be seen alongside him. Just that afternoon, Swede Scorden had strode into the coffee room with a minute left of the break, and everyone but Tolly had scattered back to their jobs. From the floats they jumped to a deck that Hank had visited that afternoon and walked over several others on boats tied gunwale to gunwale. Tolly hailed and joked with everyone he passed, and they all knew him.
“Well, I figured you’d show,” declared a huge man with frizzled hair who was turning slabs of salmon over a charcoal grill placed on his hatch cover, “so I dressed an extra one.” A woman with a pleasant face appeared from the cabin door to announce that she had a potful of carrots and potatoes on the stove. “I brought the rest,” said Tolly, producing two flat pints of whiskey from inside pockets of his vest.
“Hank, meet the crew of the Linda J. That’s the skipper in there, Miss Linda, and out here’s her poor husband, Joe Eberhardt. I don’t see Spiff or Luke around. Hank’s got a last name, but I don’t know it. I seen him smelling around these boats like a dog in heat, so I figured I’d bring him along.”
“Tup, he asked me for a job today,” said Joe, and offered a hand so big it covered Hank’s. “Any luck?”
“Not much.”
“Stick at it.” Joe’s voice was a low, mature growl, even though he could not have been older than his late twenties. “One of these apes is bound to break his head open some Saturday.”
Hank could not have said what he hoped to find by following Tolly, except for company and a possible sexual adventure, but he was surprised and grateful to be included in the dinner that followed. He had never tasted such fish. Joe said they were small sockeyes. The meat was flaky in the manner of the salmon he knew from cans, the color more red for what difference it made, but the flavor of fresh salmon had a depth and richness so beyond that of canned salmon that they could hardly be called by the same name. A thin, succulent layer of fat surrounded the meat. There was such abundance that he ate his fill and more, stuffing piece after piece with ferocious enjoyment.
The cabin was cramped. For Linda to move around the stove, Hank and Tolly had to crowd by a small snapdown table while Joe, in good humor, hunched on a top bunk against a rumpled sleeping bag, a plate on his knees. Linda was a mild, vivacious, lovely woman. It bothered Hank that Joe and Tolly used the same language around her that they would by themselves, and it startled him when she herself said casually, “Tol, have you had enough of the cannery shit?”
Tolly slugged from the bottle and passed it on. “You can tell Chip two more weeks, if you see him on the grounds.” Hank learned that a crab pot had crushed Tolly’s arm last February, and the cast had not long been removed. On his regular boat with Chip, as the season began, merely pulling the nets from storage had been so painful that the doctor told him to wait. So Chip hired a temporary man. And Tolly, in need of money for all the bills, signed on to do cannery time. Since he had too much self-respect to be seen on a cannery line in Kodiak, here he was, one of Swede Scorden’s boys.
“Don’t you hurt your arm working here?” asked Hank.
“Son, you’ve never pulled web in a blow.”
Much later, Tolly sauntered back over the decks with Hank in tow. Up on the pier he whistled, and a girl who had been sitting on a stack of boxes hurried over. “Stick around, Hank, but just wander off for a minute.” The girl put her head on Tolly’s chest. He murmured something, then eased her away with a pat on the buttock. “She’ll get a friend for you. Come on, have a brew.” Where the girl had been sitting stood a bag of cold cans. Tolly led the way to a padlocked door and opened it with a key. Inside was a dark room that smelled of heavy oils. “Machinist is a good man to know, Hank.” There were several flattened cardboard boxes of the kind Hank opened with Audrey, and under Tolly’s direction they spread them on the floor. Shortly, two girls slipped in.
Hank was apprehensive. There had been only the one experience, on the beach. What if he failed? Tolly would probably laugh and forget him in the future. As it turned out, he managed. Considered honestly, there was more tension than pleasure in it. He was ready to finish sooner than the girl, who kept roving her tongue in his mouth and placing his hands in areas to continue fondling. But when it was over he felt relieved and happy.
The Sunday workday started at seven, as long as any other. Hank attacked the miserable boxes by rote, whistling at the memory of the night before. He had never seen the girl’s face, although her name was Elsie. Which of them was she on the lines? He moved as straight and nonchalantly as possible in case she might be watching. With only three hours’ sleep, he was just as glad to have a job that required nothing of him.
That all changed when Cutch appeared and grabbed Hank by the arm without further announcement. He propelled him to a room where an elderly woman kept the rain gear mended and washed. “Issue him hip boots, Sally. Get you a suit of skins, report up to Sam, that Filipino with the pole.” One of the sorting belts had broken. Soon Hank stood knee-deep in dead salmon that were encased in green slime, surrounded in the depths of a big fish bin by an unimaginable stench. He wore gloves the consistency of rough sandpaper that gave some grip on the fish. “You hold tail,” shouted Sam on top. “One each hand, boy. Go faster.” Before long he sweated to keep up with a relentless conveyor belt that carried away the fish he tossed. They grew heavier and heavier. When a new load poured from the elevator, the salmon flopped against his back like sandbags.
By three-thirty he had tossed the final salmon and hosed the bins. A hot shower, then beautiful bed. The rest of the cannery would be working various later hours as the fish progressed through the lines. He hosed himself to pry the worst of the gurry from his rain gear, then wearily peeled down and punched out. Tolly breezed past and delivered a playful punch.
“Hey,” called Hank, “that was okay last night.”
“Do it again tonight. Machine shop at eleven.”
“Great!” He should have been more elated. Maybe after some sleep. Swede Scorden strode along the boardwalk, hunched in a checked wool coat, the yellow visor cap pulled tight. Hank nodded automa
tically without expecting a return. He had come to realize how little he mattered within the cannery apparatus.
“Crawford.”
“Sir?” Remembered his name besides.
“Making out all right?”
Flattered, he volunteered, “I’m loading fish now, enjoying it pretty much. Not like—”
“I’ve seen you keeping bad company, and Mr. Cutch reported booze on your breath. Read your rules if you expect to stay.” And he was off.
Bastard! Hank hurried straight to the boats. His inquiries were almost desperate, but many who had been easy before now answered him curtly as they prepared to leave for the Monday opening. He handed boxes of groceries from deck to deck and pitched in wherever he could. Joe Eberhardt was tightening lines, while his two crewmen arranged boards in the cramped hold and Linda pumped the bilge. “Here, put your weight on this while I tie her off,” growled Joe. Hank grabbed the line and pulled with all his strength. He stayed, helping with other jobs, so reluctant to leave that he rode aboard as they traveled to get fuel at the far end of the cannery. Finally Joe placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Well, old man, we’re off. Cast our lines, will you?”
Hank watched their wake in the calm and darkening water. “Look us up next week,” called Linda.
He ran from the fuel pier back to the main concentration of boats, still hoping for something lucky. Even a rowboat to escape the slavery of Swede Scorden. The tension of departure grew by the minute. No more singing or music, but shouts, instructions, the thump of blocks and the squeak of winches. Men scampered up masts, braced over the side, and clamored into skiffs as they tightened lines and checked equipment. Exhaust filled the air as engines started with putts and roars. Dominating it all was the sight of nets and corks being readied for action. Take me with you, he wanted to cry. One by one the boats left, steaming up the inlet and disappearing around the mountain bends, en route to the wonderful and mysterious fishing grounds beyond. Would he ever see them? By the time the cannery whistle sounded for dinner, the docks were empty except for the tender Billy II.
At chow, Hank shoveled his food without taste and forgot to return for pie. He watched the others dully, feeling his body would explode if he didn’t find a way out of the place. There was Audrey, talking to an Indian boy with a smiling animation he had thought beyond her. All different, every bit of what he had figured. Couldn’t afford to be fired: hadn’t even paid yet for his airfare. There sat Tolly with two girls. The rare sun through the window gleamed on his gold earring.
He wandered the cannery complex from the dump at one end to the fuel pier at the other. From the laundry shed came the empty noise of somebody’s rock music. He avoided people. Down where the boats had left, heavy offal lapped around the pilings. It was too much even for the seagulls, who dove by the hundreds without diminishing it. Water from the washdown poured from a dozen scuppers and tore holes in the scum. The stench at low tide was dreary. Beyond the boardwalks was coarse grass laced with painfully stinging nettles. He climbed up through it to gain a better vista of the water. Below, the last processing steam spouted from the cannery stacks as the crews shut down, and the odor of cooked fish permeated even the air where he stood. Out far beyond the green mountain spits, toothpicks of seiner masts still remained etched by the lowering sun.
A cold wind blew on his back. Rainclouds were coming over the mountains behind him, their swirls snagging on the peaks. The grayness engulfed the cannery and traveled toward the boats, blotting the gold sunstreaks as it went. The water kicked into waves, the rain began, and the boats disappeared in roiling gray. People below, caught without raincoats, ran the ramps from building to building. The gulls diving for offal and he were the only ones oblivious of the weather. The rain rattled a din on the tin roofs. He let it take its fill of his shirt and pants. No way to do it, no way but to stand by himself.
“AY-EEEE!” he shouted, and began to beat his chest. “AY-EEEE! FUCK YOU ALL!” He waited for the sound to carry over the roofs, then drew his largest breath. “FUCK EVEN YOU, SWEDE SCORDEN.” Then, hands in pockets, whistling, he slogged back down to the bunkhouse to find Tolly.
CHAPTER 5
Rondelay
HANK had come to Alaska in mid-June. By early August he was a scruffy Alaskan type, living in his boots, shaving only now and then, taking the world as it came. At the cannery dump he had been knocked down once in a fight but had not disgraced himself. On weekend nights he could count on a regular girlfriend in Elsie, and he had inherited the key to the machine shop. He worked by rote, putting in the hours. He had spent days on end beside set-faced Filipinos sorting salmon, had spent equal periods feeding tops into the can-making machine, minding the cookers they called retorts, and clearing jams on the can line. Once, when the indexer broke, he sawed salmon heads with a big knife for several sixteen-hour shifts, his oilskins running with fish blood that found its way even into his hair, his tendons so popped that his right arm twitched for a week. Most of the jobs had their tricks (a salmon head can be cut in a neat crescent that follows the bone and saves the meat, for example, or can be clumsily butchered), but every one followed a pattern of dull repetition.
Tolly had rejoined his boat, the Olaf, and left the scene. The Rondelay had been fishing Alitak in the southern part of the island and had then moved around to the western bays and started delivering to Swede. It was great to see Big Steve and Ivan and Jones Henry. But each weekend passed, and no boat needed a green hand. It was a poor season. A few men quit, but their boat crews chose to work shorthanded rather than replace them, so that each individual’s share of the small take could be larger. Hank even flew to Kodiak one Monday to scout the harbor. He had a fine visit with some friends at the barracks (although Pete had disappeared and even Jody was gone from the beanery), but he found a dozen guys his own age wandering the docks looking for a berth.
As for Swede Scorden and Cutch the foreman: you did your work dependably, disobeying the rules only in the dark, and you got along. Merely doing your work stood you out from the rest.
Ozone and Jordan, for example, made a cult of idleness, and their laughter gained momentum whenever they bested Scorden of an hour’s wages. Hank followed Tolly’s example. When he had earned a break, he took his right and fixed a cool stare at anyone who tried to hustle him back to work.
Suddenly, one Wednesday midday as he was minding the rows of cans and joking with the girls on either side of him, in hurried Big Steve with the announcement: “Get your gear and come fishing.” Jack, of the Rondelay crew, had fallen down the hold and broken his leg. A plane was just coming to evacuate him to Kodiak.
In his excitement Hank hardly knew where to start. He swept the girl closest to him off her feet and twirled her around, then found Cutch, and—pounding gleefully on his shoulder—quit. Cutch smiled with his mouth as he said: “If you can’t finish the day and the washdown, don’t come back.” Hank became serious for a moment. “Guess I won’t, then. The boat needs me now. No hard feelings.” He held out his hand and Cutch, with the same peculiar smile, shook it loosely. “Punch out and take your card to the office if you want to get paid.”
He stuffed his clothes into his duffel bag without order, dirty and clean intermixed, and started at a trot toward the office, then paused to return to the cannery. Elsie was working on the patcher line. He touched her shoulder. “Hey, Else, I’m going out on a boat.” She looked up at him, and her big eyes were full of tears. “I know.”
He had not expected her emotion. “Well, look, it’s okay, I’ll probably see you on weekends...”
“Goodbye, Hank,” she said sadly.
She had actually cried over him! The notion gave a new bounce to his step as he hurried to the office with his time card, although he quickly forgot Elsie herself. The clerk gave him a termination form. Swede Scorden’s voice came from the inner office, talking by radio to the Billy II as he asked for the size of their load and told them the time to be at the cannery. As Hank filled out the form he debated,
and when the transaction was finished he unlatched the gate and walked through the office to the hidden room.
“Mr. Scorden, excuse me, I just wanted to say—”
Scorden, the yellow tractor cap perched on his head, sat in a swivel chair at a desk full of papers, facing a window that overlooked the cannery and docks. Without turning he snapped, “You’ll get into all kinds of scraps with that hopheaded crew of Jones Henry’s.”
“News sure travels fast, sir. I just wanted—”
“I’ve seen you nosing around the boats. Okay, Crawford. You worked harder than some, and you broke more rules than most. Good luck. Don’t come back.” By the way Scorden resumed scribbling notes, he had ended the interview. Without ever looking up. Hank left with less confidence.
But there waited the Rondelay. The paint on her white hull and blue gunwale was chipped, the cabin boards were worn to the gray bare wood, the anchor was rusty, a jumble of boxes and broken gear littered the cabin roof where Jones Henry stood at the wheel, and she was fabulously beautiful. Sven the cook had hailed him as he passed the store and loaded him with boxes of groceries. At the boatside he passed the boxes to Ivan, who caught them without spilling an ash from his pipe. “Let’s get fishing,” said Jones. Big Steve unmoored one line and Hank the other. They leaped aboard, and with a roaring cloud of blue smoke the Rondelay chugged into open water.
Hank remained on deck, watching the nest of low clapboard buildings recede. As the distance increased, snow-streaked mountains rose above the lower green ones like targets on a shooting range. He licked his lips, trying to contain the wild grin and shouts inside him. Whenever Ivan or Big Steve or Sven went to coil a line or tighten a turnbuckle, Hank raced to help. Not enough work. He feared they might ignore him, do all the work themselves. Finally Sven sat him on the hatch cover with a bag of potatoes to peel and told him not to get up until they were finished. Hank peeled avidly, and started to whistle.
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