Highiliners

by William B. McCloskey Jr.

  Sven threw a wet rag that hit him in the face. They all turned on him at once. “What kind of stupid bastard,” roared Big Steve, “whistles on a boat?” He swerved his arm in an arc that embraced the sky. “You want to whistle up a fuckin’ storm in this nice weather?” Hank stared up, startled. Steve’s anger was real. “You ever whistle on here again, I’ll throw you overboard. Got it?”

  “Yes, Steve.”

  Steve turned to the others. “Nobody ever told him, so forget it.”

  “Everybody got to learn,” said Ivan.

  Sven wagged a finger at Hank. “I just made a cake in the oven, to welcome you aboard. If it falls...”

  “Sure, Sven, I’m sorry, I just didn’t...”

  “Ja, ja, okay, Hank,” he concluded with gentle, singsong inflection.

  Hank, sobered, finished peeling the potatoes. The cannery was now far down the inlet, separated by waves of wake. White puffs of fog lingered around the mountaintops and clung to individual spruces and ravines. The skiff bobbed astern with Ivan, who was arranging gear. Jones Henry, oblivious of the rest, stood by his wheel on the open deck above the cabin that he called the bridge. Inside, Sven sang tunelessly to himself as he fixed dinner and merely nodded when Hank delivered the potatoes. Big Steve sat on the pile of corks, a section of net drawn across his lap. When he said, “You can give me a hand,” Hank hurried over.

  “Spread the web in your fingers so all the squares is open alike, then hold it tight and even.” Hank did as he was told. Steve’s thick fingers held a heavy white needle that he worked with flashing dexterity among the torn strands of netting. He payed out the cord inside the needle in a series of knots, twists, and open lengths that became new mesh, indistinguishable from the old except by its whiteness. When he had emptied the needle, he pointed to a ball of cord and told Hank to wind him a new one. Hank examined the foot-long needle and figured it out as quickly as he could, before Steve might grow impatient. As he held open the meshes again for Steve to finish the job, he asked what the difference was between net and web.

  “You’re holding web. Net’s the whole seine—cork, web, lead.” He pointed in turn to the three separate piles around them on the stem. Web formed the center pile, but also intermingled with the other two. “Now pay attention.” Steve picked up one of the flattened circular corks, and some attached line and web pulled up with it. His big hands barely reached around the perimeter. “Corks float, right? Your cork line here holds up the top of the web. Lead weights sink, right? Your lead line over there” (he pointed out of reach to a pile of snaky thick line that had weights attached) “she holds down the bottom of the web.” The snaky line was hooked at points every few feet to brass rings that were pushed one against the other on a horizontal bar. “Purse line draws through them rings, and if your rings ain’t stacked in sequence when the seine pays out, you’ve got two hours of snarls.” Hank nodded.

  “Now, one end of your seine’s attached to the boat and the other to your skiff. When the skiff casts off and draws out the seine, you’ve put a wall of web in the water. If your skipper’s smart enough to lay out the wall in front of the fish, they swim into it. Then you close the seine around in a circle by bringing the skiff back to the boat, and you’ve got the buggers trapped. Fast before they find a way out you start pursing. You pull your purse line through the rings—they’re with the leads at the bottom of the web—and it draws the bottom tighter and tighter like one of them drawstring bags. Purse seine, right? Then you start hauling one end of the net back aboard, and the more you pull in, the smaller you make the circle. Finally you’ve got the circle so tight that you’ve crowded all your fish in one place. That’s your moneybag if she’s full. You haul it aboard and empty it.”

  Steve wore a new flannel shirt cut off above the elbows, with dirty underwear hugging his arms beneath. Hank asked why so many fishermen he’d seen wore shirts that way. “Sleeves get caught in machinery. And when they rot and pick up gurry they rot and stink like hell.” “Any scissors around? I’d better cut mine.”

  “Where’s your knife?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Hooee, some fucking fisherman. Follow me.” Steve went to the cabin, pulled open his drawer beneath the bunks, and handed up a worn sheath knife, ignoring Hank’s expressions of gratitude.

  The small space of the cabin combined engine, galley, and bunks. A plyboard cover over the engine served as the table. The triple-tiered bunks were little more than slots against the side, with one end tapering in the contour of the bow. Steve patted a top bunk that practically met the ceiling and kicked a bottom one on the other side that was stuffed with gear. “Take your pick.”

  Sven was crowded in the space between sink, stove, and engine cover, cursing with a cheerful lack of venom over the contents of a pot. As Hank cleared the lower bunk and stowed his gear, he asked Sven if he could help. “Oh, ven I finish making the mess you clean it up. Ja?”

  “Sure. Right now I need the toilet, but I don’t see it.”

  Sven called out to Steve, who had returned to deck. “This fellow vants to see the toilet, har har har!”

  Steve, equally amused, showed Hank the ledge where they kept paper and the rail they gripped to hang over the side. Hanks face must have shown his shock, because even Jones Henry above him grinned down. “Wind’s coming portside, so you’d best shit to starboard today.” Hank returned the paper to the cabin. “I’ll wait awhile.”

  “Suit yourself.” Steve squeezed into his bunk with booted feet sticking out and was snoring within a minute.

  Hank wandered aft to where Ivan still worked in the skiff. A heavy chain secured the skiffs bow tight against the stern of the Rondelay. Hank balanced on the pile of web and started to enter the skiff. A sudden flicker in Ivan’s eyes cautioned him. “Okay if I come help you?” Ivan’s high cheekbones rippled as he chewed his pipe stem. “I’m fine,” he shouted over the noise of the engine.

  Still angry over the whistling? Hank watched with hands in pockets as Ivan payed a small length of cork and web from one stack to another, inspecting it as he went. The pipe between his teeth seemed as much a part of him as his black pea-soup hair or his camelback nose (earned from too many fists in the puss, according to Steve that night in the Kodiak jail). His arms stretched from thick shoulders to grab even the farthest object, so that he seemed to occupy the skiff completely.

  The boat turned a bend and passed along a shore of gray beach. Smoke puffed from a cabin on the inshore flats. Behind rose a high green mountain, placing the building’s smallness exactly within the size of the universe. Hank wondered at the loneliness of such a place. Who lived there? He asked Ivan but received only a shake of the head.

  The engine slowed and quieted. Up by the wheel, Jones Henry leaned over the side to call down to someone hidden from Hank’s view as he maneuvered the boat around a single spot. Hank went to look. A skiff with two people in yellow oilskins bobbed alongside. A section of web was pulled inside the skiff, and one of the people (whose gray hair beneath a slicker cap resembled a woman’s) was twisting free a salmon. The muted engine still drowned the conversation. “Runs not much” came through, and “Penny more a fish,” and “Bursitis not so bad in the heat.” After a while they all nodded to each other, and the Rondelay resumed speed. As the skiff passed close Hank recognized Dan and Mrs. Hatcher. He called and waved, excited to be seen at last as a fisherman. They peered at his figure and waved back vaguely, but they were already absorbed in pulling other fish from the web.

  Hank climbed the ladder to Jones Henry at the wheel. “I know them! Nice folks. Is that their cabin?”

  “That’s it.” Jones’ voice had an assured, reedlike quality that made Hank feel at home. He was a wiry man, with big hands like the rest, and a chin that pointed at the horizon. His eyes had a permanent squint. “As you say, nice folks. They’ve set-netted off this point for all the years I’ve fished here, since before the war, and I expect they will until they die. See if there’s coffee down
in the pot. I take it black.”

  When Hank returned he sat on the end of a long storage box that also served as a seat for the helmsman, and resumed the conversation. “The war was nearly twenty years ago. You started fishing young.”

  “I’ve fished longer than that, and I’m older than you think. Kids never get ages straight.”

  “How old are you?”

  Pause. “Not much past forty.”

  “Wow,” said Hank sympathetically.

  “What the hell’s that mean? Stand up here and punch me in the gut, hard as you can.”

  “Come on, you’re my boss.”

  “Your boss says punch him in the gut.”

  Hank hit Jones’ stomach gingerly. Beneath the loose flannel cloth was rock hardness.

  “Can’t you hit harder than that?”

  Hank grinned, impressed. “Don’t want to break my hand.”

  “Better believe it,” said Jones with satisfaction. He adjusted the brown canvas hunting cap he always wore so that the brim shaded his eyes. It gave him a jaunty look.

  “Guess you were born in Kodiak, to fish here all that time.”

  “No, Ketchikan, down in southeastern Alaska. Ever been there? Not like Kodiak. Place has a little class, big houses on the hill, a real downtown. A shame the way their salmon s petered out. Adele—that’s the old lady—wishes we were still there. But Kodiak’s where the fishing is. See that eagle’s nest in the dead tree yonder?” He handed Hank his binoculars. “No, to the right of the mountain. You can see their white heads sticking from the mess of twigs.”

  “Yes! They’re beautiful!”

  “Garbage-eaters. Go out to the cannery dump if you want to see eagles at work. No, my daddy trolled for salmon all the years down in Ketchikan, took me out with him from when I was ten. Had my own troller by the time I was eighteen. That was the late thirties. Trolling, now, that’s a good life if the woolies don’t blow you to pieces. Just yourself, mebbe your dog for company, and four lines of baited hooks to drag through the water. You’d be surprised how sly you have to be with them cohos and kings, adjusting depth, changing lures and baits until you’ve figured what they want that day. But I’ll tell you why I launched in Kodiak. I like the action of the nets, and when you can fish king crab the rest of the year you’ve got a living. Mebbe I like having a crew, too, because I don’t mind hearing talk around me.”

  “I think Kodiak’s pretty nice.”

  “How long were you there—three weeks in the summer? Long days, and the sun shines now and then. Days are short in the winter; she only stops blowing forty when she gusts to ninety, and the only time it don’t rain’s when it snows. Want to get in the pickup and take a drive? About twenty miles of road, mostly potholes, and it don’t lead to much but the Navy Base with a guard at the gate. Not that I need to go in. I was Marines all through the war, and don’t ever show me a uniform again.” Hank asked where he had served. “Guadalcanal to Iwo, all he’ll and gone, and never tell me to be nice to a fuckin’ Jap. The way we let ’em fish off our shores now? Shit!”

  Hank listened in awe. His own life was trivial. All the opportunities for such adventure had happened in the past.

  Jones began to talk about his father. “He was a fisherman! In bad salmon years, or when he figured it was time to free himself for a while, he’d sign on with the cod fleet from Seattle that went to the Bering Sea. I went down with him once as a kid; guess Ma wanted to wave him off, since the trip lasted a few months. Three-master called the Wawona, in about nineteen-thirty. Oh, I wished I could go. A sailing ship has a creak to its timbers that’s hard to describe if you don’t know it. Whenever I smell creosote and coal oil it still brings back them old schooners. They dory-fished. Don’t see that on the West Coast any more, and that’s a few less fishermen dead. Each man got issued his dory, drew lots for the best at the beginning of the trip. Rough bunch of buggers. Fellows drifted from logging to fishing and back again by season. That was the Alaska fisherman back then, a drifter. They’d kid people like my old man who’d finally tie himself to one place and raise a family. I missed out on some adventures back then. Lot of tales he told, and I expect some he didn’t.”

  “What happened to your dad?”

  “How do you mean?”

  Hank had been thinking of loss at sea or some such dramatic event, but was reluctant to say it. “I mean, how’s he doing now?”

  “Well, if he was living he’d be eighty-something—I came late— and he’d still expect his half-dozen snorts a day. He went down on his troller three-four years ago in Clarence Strait near Ketchikan. Must have caught a woolie near some rocks. Well, he didn’t mind going that way, and I didn’t mind for him. Out fishing by himself, except for his dog.”

  They both remained silent for a while, watching the calm wilderness around them. Birds flew past. The sky was patched with gray and open blue. Pieces of fog clung to the mountain heights despite the intermittent sun, moving in strips from one tree clump to another. Once Jones pointed out two sea otters in the water, but despite Hank’s interest the best he could see was a black ripple.

  “What’s a woolie, Jones?”

  “If it ever got in a book they’d call it williwaw, but nobody says it that way. Wind builds on the opposite side of a mountain and crashes down, sometimes a hundred knots—no warning, no direction you can figure in advance. Can tear a boat apart. You stay around here long enough and you’ll feel a woolie.”

  Suddenly Jones stiffened, grabbed the throttle, and slowed the engine as his eyes squinted into slits. The engine noise dropped from a steady roar to a pock-pock. Big Steve, whom Hank had left sleeping, appeared on deck almost instantly. Sven followed, wiping his hands. Ivan stood at attention in his skiff with the engine sputtering a white cloud. Within seconds they had pulled on their rainpants. Steve stood by the taut line that connected the skiff to the boat, a mallet in his hands, looking up at Jones.

  Hank felt the tension, feared they would forget him. He tumbled below, barely touching the ladder, tried to leap into his oilskins in a single motion as Steve had done, and struggled with a foot in the wrong leg. “Keep clear of the pelican,” growled Steve, and Sven motioned him to a comer.

  Ready in position, the crewmen squinted over the water in the same manner as Jones. Hank watched as best he could without being sure what he should see. A splash, accompanied by others. “Fish!” he exclaimed, and pointed.

  “Only feed fish. Keep looking.”

  They peered and peered. At length Jones announced, “Certain I saw a jumper, a humpie, but he don’t seem to have brothers. Place I’d planned to lay out with the tide’s still a half hour away, so let’s eat. Hank, don’t get in the habit of pointing. Just shows other boats what you’ve found.”

  Steve motioned Hank over to show him some mnning gear. A pelican hook connected to the winch the line called the painter that held the skiff’s bow snubbed against the boat’s stem. When the hook was opened with a mallet blow, it released the skiff and snapped the heavy hook across the deck. “So always stand clear,” said Steve. “Now, as soon as the skiff goes, it starts paying out that few feet of net on board that Ivan’s always working over. You call that the leed; it’s a shallow net so the skiff can maneuver close to shore without catching snags. The leed’s attached to the seine, so as soon as it’s out, the skiffs pulling the seine over the fantail, and all kinds of lines are mnning on deck. Watch your feet, never catch them in a bight, or you’ll get pulled overboard. Right?”

  Next, Sven summoned him to the galley to show how the dishes and condiments were packed in the cabinets against heavy weather. He pointed to the mugs hanging from hooks. “And I tell you this before you make some crazy mistake. All cups face outboard. You put ’em which-ways and a storm kicks up.”

  Hank wanted to laugh, but he said gravely, “I’m trying hard to remember all these superstitions.”

  “No superstition,” said Sven crossly. “It’s what happens, so don’t forget if you want to be fisherman, ja?” />
  Sven heaped a plate of food for Ivan and sent Hank to call him. “Skiffman always eats first, since he might be off in water any time.” Ivan glanced from the confines of his skiff and told Hank just to bring it and set it on the bow.

  “Skipper next,” said Sven. “Take it to him on bridge.”

  “Guess I eat last.”

  “Nooo. Cook eats last. Get your plate.” When Hank said he thought that screwed the cook, Sven said mildly, “Ja, but cook don’t have to pitch the fish at night to the tender.”

  Hank took his plate to sit beside Jones at the wheel, since Jones seemed glad to continue talking. He asked what Jones had seen in the water to stop the boat.

  “You got the humpie salmon this time of year, about four-pounders, and the dog salmon starting their runs, about seven-eight-pound fish. With both kinds, when they’re running in schools, one or two are going to jump out of the water and then you see where they all are. So what you look for is jumpers. Sometimes humpies just rise halfway and show a fin, but finners are hard to see in open water with any kind of ripple blowing. Now, a humpie leaps straight from the water and back in a clean circle, but a dog salmon jumps out at an angle and skitters along the surface for a bounce or two. That’s how you tell them apart. And it ain’t just that he jumps. You want to see which way he’s jumping, and, if he comes up again, which way he travels. Does no good to lay out your seine where they’ve been, you’ve got to get ahead of ’em so they swim into you. Then, of course, you’ve got to keep your seine set so they don’t back out on you or escape around the edges. And you’ve got to figure it all with the way the tide’s running.” He winked. “There’s tricks to every part of it. Here, I need to take a crap. Can you steer?” “I had the wheel most of one night on the Billy Two.”