“You got her.”
Hank remembered his instructions from Spitz. “What course, sir?” “Course? Just steer for those trees way down the inlet.”
Hank wrapped both hands around the chipped wheel and took control. He checked himself about to whistle, licked his lips instead. Rain blew into his face, even though ahead he saw blue sky through gaps in the clouds. The sweet smell of spruce gusted over him. Unfamiliar birds flew by, cawing above the engine noise, and dipped toward the water so close their wings splashed. Other birds, fat and black, seemed held so heavily by the water that all they could do to make way for the Rondelay was paddle like a riverboat and flap their wings. Was that the head of an otter that dipped from sight? Oh, the world was beautiful! Sven’s voice rose through the galley vent, singing tunelessly in Norwegian. All around were the trappings of a boat built for work, the wood patched with tin and covered by white paint chipping gray, the ingrained odors of oil and fish, the swabs and buoys and coils of line lashed in place, the weathered ropes that stretched mastward in complicated rigging. All tangible so he could touch it, all unbelievable. That lazy crowd on the beach back home, if they could see. He whistled several notes before he caught himself. Skiffbound Ivan, the only one on deck, lifted no outraged face from his mending. Saved by engine noise.
Hank peered ahead and rose, frightened. His clump of trees had drifted far to starboard. He turned the wheel sharply, then sharper yet until the bow responded. But when he straightened the wheel again as the bow pointed toward the trees, the bow continued a steady arc to port. The boat was heading straight to the nearby beach. He slammed the wheel in the other direction. With a shudder the boat arrested its port circle and started inexorably again in the opposite direction. This time he slacked the wheel before the bow reached the tree clump, but not enough to stop a swing almost as wide. Call for help? He glanced back at voices. Ivan, red-faced and shouting, clutched support as his skiff slammed and bumped sidewise against the stern. Their wake looked like a corkscrew. Back moved the bow with a steady swing and he spun the wheel to meet it.
Jones Henry bounded up the ladder, clutching the rail with one hand and supporting his trousers with the other. A roll of toilet paper trailed behind. His calming grip on the wheel steadied the boat almost instantly. Hank stepped away, panting and humiliated. “I’m sorry.”
“Finish your dinner,” said Jones without heat.
“Everything okay?” asked Big Steve behind them.
“Couldn’t be finer,” said Jones. “Here, take over while I finish wiping my ass.”
Hank remained standing, his back pressed against the rail, eyes on deck. Would they return him to shore?
“You, Hank,” said Steve. “Get back here and grab the wheel. Nothing worse than a dumb hand that can’t take over.”
Steve showed him how to compensate slightly, without the overreaction he had given. “On the Billy Two,” murmured Hank, “you had to turn the wheel hard each way to make her move.”
“Yeh, well, every boat’s different and you don’t play ’em the same. Watch your heading.” A touch of the wheel was all it needed. Hank’s steering became competent within a few minutes.
They rounded a gray gravel spit. One by one a line of tents and shacks came into view, erected on a plain of scrub grass in front of a sharp-sloping mountain. “Village way out here?”
“Summer beach net site. Bunch of hippie families.”
Some of the makeshift buildings were painted bright reds and blues. Wash flapped on a line beside a pink tent. Hank attended to his steering, but glanced enough to see men and women lounged around a smoking fire. They wore hip boots and held beer cans. Children and dogs played around them. Their smoke drifted in horizontal streaks, undeterred by the patchy rain.
Hank felt intruded on, possessive of his wilderness. “Damned place for hippies to camp. Why come here?”
“Catch the salmon, same as everybody. With the right tide, you’ll see them out there, holding one end of their net to the beach and the other out with a boat, and then pulling it in mostly by hand and sometimes working ass-deep in water. They work hard enough.” Steve said it with the calm of a man whom nothing threatened.
“At least they have the right idea between work. I could use a beer myself.”
Jones Henry had returned and stood beside them. “You’ll never have one on my boat at sea. Boozing’s for land and dockside, even beer.” He studied the water as he took back the controls. “Last year we made some good sets here, close into shore.”
“I remember,” said Steve. “Thousand-fish jag.”
There were at least a dozen other boats around in the wide mountain-hemmed inlet to which the bay had narrowed. Jones and Steve discussed where they might best set at the tide change without being crowded, as Jones cruised the shoreline squinting at the water.
A humpie jumped in an arc straight ahead. Another followed. Jones bore hard on the throttle to maneuver into position as the others leaped to deck. By the time his hand came down a moment later they were all in position. Steve’s mallet hit the release, the pelican hook clattered back as the line separated and the painter sprang free, and the skiff moved off with Ivan paying out his leed. The boat gunned ahead while the skiff pulled the opposite way. Sven guided the purse line so that it ran through the rings without snagging. The seine on the fantail started slipping overboard a layer at a time, the leads clanking and the corks thumping, the web between moving with a hiss. One by one the rings clattered off the bar. Within a minute Ivan was far distant, practically on shore, while hundreds of beadlike corks filled the growing distance between them. On the bridge, Jones pointed the direction he wanted Ivan to steer the skiff, using wide gestures.
Before long the seine was fully in the water, its cork line curving as the boat and skiff each pushed their ends against the current with engines running. Ivan had the skiff nosed practically into the beach. It was the first time Hank had seen the fantail empty. Seaweed and small dead fish covered the deck. Without prompting he found a bucket on a rope, drew seawater from over the side and started sloshing down.
“Plunge!” yelled Jones. “Them buggers are working around.”
Steve pulled from against the housing a long pole with a metal cup attached to one end. He rammed the cup into the water between the seine and the boat. It made a loud pop and spewed foam and bubbles as it went down. He kept repeating the process until Hank had finished cleaning, then called him over. “Here’s the plunger and you’re the plunge man. Take over.” On the first try Hank nearly lost the pole as the water in motion pulled it from his hand. He gripped more tightly and put all his energy to the job. He thought he was doing well when Steve said, “You ain’t rocking the fish to sleep,” and showed him how to pop the cup into the water with a sound like a gunshot. “The idea’s to scare them back so they don’t swim out in that gap between the seine and the boat. Ivan’s plunging on the other end, too.”
The taut cork line stretched from the water up over the stern and back to the winch where it was secured. It made a cablelike division down the longitudinal center of the deck. When Jones shifted direction, the line swept across deck with the force of a closing wall. Before Hank learned to watch, it almost eased him overboard as he worked the plunger.
Slowly, during a half-hour period, Jones began nosing the boat toward shore, so that the seine as delineated by the corks formed more and more of a circle. At a signal from Jones, Ivan headed his skiff straight toward the boat with the seine in tow, closing the corks into a circle. He stopped long enough to detach his leed, then delivered a mass of lines joined together by a grouping of shackles. Steve and Sven deftly separated the lines as Steve said on the run: “This here’s called a Canadian release that holds ’em together, important as hell. Show you later.” It all happened too fast for Hank to follow, but soon Steve and Sven were pulling aboard opposite ends of the purse line, having wrapped them around the winch’s revolving drums that Steve called niggerheads. The lines came dripping
with jellyfish tentacles.
Jones appeared on deck and took charge, darting like a mosquito from job to job as he operated the winch and shouted directions. They all worked on the run, with Hank helping where they told him. As the unseen purse tightened, the orderly circle of corks disintegrated into a jumble around the bow and stern. Jones showed Hank how to pull the back ones and pile them astern to keep from fouling the screw. Under Jones’ direction, Ivan in the skiff held the Rondelay off the beach and slowly pulled it clear of the cork jumble. When both ends of the purse line had been winched aboard except for the center bight, the rings all hung together. They brought the rings aboard, and then by means of a messenger line drew the end of the seine up through the wide sheave of the power block suspended above deck.
The seine traveled up through the power block as a thick, dripping snake of web, cork, and lead line. Each cork screeched as it passed over the sheave. Steve and Sven took positions on opposite sides of the fantail and placed Hank between them. Steve drew off the corks and began to stack them in a neat horseshoe pattern, while Sven pulled the lead line free and tossed each ring in turn onto a long bar with the line snaked beneath it. Hank’s job was to ensure that the mass of web falling between was distributed evenly back and forth. Steve showed him how to stiffen his hands and bear-paw the web from side to side for speed.
Hank had to work directly under the web. As it descended it covered him with cold seawater and with globs of jellyfish that stung his wrists. He transferred the sting to his face as he wiped sweat from his eyes. “One of the webman’s jobs,” said Steve smoothly as they worked. “He watches for rips and other shit. Like this.” He reached over and pulled a large stone from the web. “Hole!” he called, and Jones stopped the block. He and Jones converged with a needle and in a minute had rewoven several meshes. It went on and on. Hank began to glance at the water, because it seemed certain they should have finished, yet more corks still floated. During a pause to pull loose a small branch, he asked and Jones told him that the seine was 1200 feet long and 250 meshes deep. Up came a thrashing silver fish, its gills hooked in the web. Hank grabbed it out, and felt with sudden excitement its slippery strength.
“Ha, over there!” said Jones. The water was splashing within a circle of corks, and several of the corks bobbed. Sven chuckled unexpectedly. Other single fish began to come in by the gills. The ones Steve identified as humpies were splendid enough, but Hank gave a yell when a dog salmon—twice as big—rose flapping over the block. Agitated dark shapes flitted in the water. As the ragged circle of corks diminished and came closer to the side, the surface of the enclosure started to boil with shapes.
“I judge well have to brail,” Jones said, grinning.
Steve pounded Hank on the back. “First time this year. Must be the greenhorn.”
Ivan now had his skiff alongside the remaining enclosure. He calmly lifted out a dozen huge red-veined jellyfish with his bare hands, indifferent to tentacles that plastered themselves along his thick wrists.
Jones sent Hank to fetch the brailer, a hand net nearly four feet in diameter. He said to Ivan, “I’m sending Hank to help you.”
“He ain’t ready.”
“Teach him.”
Ivan chewed on his pipe. “He better not whistle in my skiff.” Hank assured him he would not. Ivan held out his hand, scowling. “Don’t slip.” Despite the precaution, Hank’s foot touched slime on the railing and shot out as he jumped. He grabbed Ivan’s arm, which budged as little as a tree limb, and swung aboard.
The others attached the brailer s rim and long handle to support lines, then sent it over. Hank grabbed the rim and helped Ivan push it down through the resisting fish bodies. They churned the water and leaped at his face. As the brailer lifted, its net bulged with the silver fish.
They made four loads and were preparing to take a final one when Jones muttered, “Sven, stow the brailer. Hank, get back aboard. Here comes the Linda J and the Olaf. Quick!”
Hank had little time to think of the pleasure of having friends discover him aboard before he was bending over the boat side with the others. While Ivan, still in the skiff, gathered remaining corks to keep the fish from leaping out, they dug their fingers into the web and, with a grunt in unison, pulled. The full net below rose slightly. After each heave, they pressed their knees against the web to belay it, then leaned over again. No matter what strength Hank gave, it seemed to require more to raise his share. His long johns had become a soggy mat of sweat beneath his oilskins. Each inch gained was painful. At last, the salmon started slipping over the side against their legs. It happened faster and faster, an avalanche of fish as they gripped the bottom of the bag and heaved it in. Fish slapped around Hank’s feet. Their slime covered him, its odor clean and astringent compared to the smells of old fish at the cannery. Silver and gray glints caught in the light as they arched their backs. Some even leaped from the deck. He could feel their force through his boots. “My God, they’re beautiful!” he cried.
The others grabbed the salmon by the tails and tossed them through the hatch. It needed a tight grip or the fish would kick and slither away. At one point Jones exclaimed and pointed close to Hank’s feet, where a salmon was flapping to freedom through the scupper. Nice try, thought Hank, and slung him grandly in the air and down the opening. He looked up and there was the Linda J close by, with Joe Eberhardt and Linda standing together at the wheel. “You sure meet strange people out here.”
They recognized him. Linda gave a shriek, and they both started laughing and exclaiming. No moment had ever been pleasanter. Close by on the Olaf stood his old friend Tolly, grinning in equal disbelief. Hank bent to stowing the rest of the salmon in the most businesslike way he could muster.
“Say you pulled a decent jag,” said Joe.
“Middling,” drawled Jones Henry. “You folks been doing good?” “Oh, can’t complain. Looks like they’re running close in. You plan to set here again?”
“Pretty soon.”
Indeed, as Hank glanced around, he saw that Ivan was already zooming to retrieve the leed, while the others scurried to ready the gear again.
“Guess you pulled two-three hundred pinks in that set,” said Joe.
“Mebbe,” said Jones vaguely. “Looks is deceiving.”
“But, hell,” Hank volunteered, full of the pleasure of it, “we brailed four loads before you came.”
His crewmates stopped and turned toward him in silence. On Big Steve’s pirate face a flash of black anger softened to open-mouthed wonderment. Aboard the Linda J, Joe Eberhardt began to guffaw, and on the Olaf Tolly gave a whoop that his skipper echoed. Linda’s voice rose above it, saying “He didn’t know. Now, come on!”
At length Jones Henry said “Oh shit” and began to laugh himself. Neither Sven nor Steve joined him.
Joe Eberhardt varoomed his engine and announced cheerfully, “I’ll just lay out downstream from you. See you later, Hank.” Off they went, Linda waving. The Olaf was already preparing to set just in front of the Rondelay.
“Well,” said Hank, to get it over. “I fucked up.”
“That is correct, my friend,” said Jones, still smiling but without humor. “When a fisherman’s on to a big haul he don’t broadcast it. Why’d you think we hid the brailer? Now we have to wait our turn with that goddam Olaf or find ourselves a new place.”
“Ja,” burst Sven. “Maybe you come fishing to have good time and go back home ven season’s over, but we come here to feed our families.”
Jones sighed. “Okay, Hank, we’ve got all the fish stowed, so put the hatch cover down.” Hank, trembling, grabbed the cover and was about to replace it when Jones’ hand blocked the way. “Now, call it superstition or not. But a fisherman never puts his hatch cover upside down, unless he wants the rest of the boat to follow.”
“You’d better put me ashore before I really screw something,” Hank murmured.
“Not that simple this far from any place. We’re stuck with you, and vice versa. So you�
�d better learn, and blubbering about it won’t help.” Jones then softened it by saying, “You’re doing all right. Just pay attention.” It lifted the weight.
Hank drew a breath, and looked around for work. He grabbed a bucket and sloshed the gurry from deck. When he glanced at Steve and Sven, they had no anger left on their faces. Soon they made another set, and he was plunging again, a job he knew. He rubbed his wrists. The sting at least made him feel he’d pulled his own with the web. Around him the mountains throbbed with green. Purple shadows flickered along the water, and birds dipped past. They said he’d brought them luck. All those salmon flapping over his legs, going to happen over and over. He’d make it. If that play crowd back on the beach could see him! He started to whistle exuberantly.
It happened fast. Steve tossed a line around his leg and threw him overboard, lifting him as effortlessly as a single fish. The water was so cold that he could feel his testicles crawl. The weight of his filled boots and clothes under oilskins was startling—his legs dragged down, and all he could do was flail. Steve hauled in the line, grabbed his leg, and pulled him back to deck like a crab, sprawling and dripping, then patted his head.
“If you don’t have extra boots or nothing, take the extras by my bunk. Move your ass, we got a set to finish.” And he and Sven jumped to the business of receiving Ivan’s skiff.
No more was said, and Hank took it in stride. They made three more sets, the final one in the dark. Ivan never left his skiff. The minute they secured its bow, Jones headed back to the beach and gave the signal to set again. No haul repeated the abundance of the first, but each time the fish poured over them after putting their backs to the final heave, Hank experienced the same thrill. On the final set the web pulled up lightly. At first Hank thought his muscles had settled in. The bag lifted with nothing but seaweed and jellyfish. “Fuckin’ waterhaul,” muttered Jones. “We’ll call it a day.”
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