Highiliners

by William B. McCloskey Jr.

  At length Ivan stopped. His brown-leather face became peaceful as he uncorked the second bottle, sniffed it, took a long slug, and passed it to Hank.

  “That kid’s sure on your shit list,” said Steve, returning to his bunk.

  Ivan shrugged. “Kid works hard enough when he ain’t talking.”

  And it was over. Later they were all asleep as usual, with Steve and Ivan snoring loudly, and Ivan’s feet dangling comfortably not far from Hank’s face.

  The Rondelay slept that night, and other Saturday nights at the cannery, tied deck to deck within a visible community. The community, while remaining nests of individuals the like of which the clock-punching world has never seen, was no less bound to each other while scattered on the grounds. Every man in it was as eager to make his winter stake as those on the Rondelay, and he grabbed what he could. But within the apparent anarchy of the fish business he followed the rules. Rule one, of course, was to render assistance to a boat in trouble, friend or enemy. Twice, to Hank’s impatience until he understood, they had stopped fishing, once to hoist the stern of the Teddy Ann’s skiff so that the two men aboard could laboriously free a fouled net from their screw, once to tow the Fraser Bay several miles to a cannery in another inlet. One day, however, when he was in the skiff with Ivan, their engine died and a strong northwesterly started gusting them toward a rock. Ivan set Hank to rowing and fending off with an oar while he frantically tore into the engine. Hank could smell the kelp churning on the rocks a few feet away, could hear the roar as if he were a rock in the surf himself.

  “Want a line?” called Sonny from the skiff of the Olaf as he appeared alongside.

  “Wouldn’t mind,” said Ivan.

  The community had other rules. Once, tied deck to deck at the cannery floats, Hank grabbed a bucket to wash the remains of a silver he had just cleaned and, in his hurry to get ashore where he saw Elsie waiting, he left the bucket in the middle of the deck. The others had gone visiting. Men were already walking from boat to boat to get ashore, and the Rondelay had taken its place as a piece of the boardwalk. Hours later, in the black, foggy morning, Hank stood on the pier above the floats, turning the machine-shop key in his pocket and giving his last thought to Elsie for another week. The boats below were mostly silent, although sounds of an accordion and raw Norwegian singing came from one. A man staggered a slow course over the decks, across the Rondelay. Suddenly he fell with a clatter and roared in pain. By the time Hank arrived, jumping from cabintop to cabintop to make better time, Jones and Steve in their underwear were pulling the bucket from the man’s foot as he writhed, cursed, and spat blood. Angry rough voices followed Hank’s wake, one demanding a fight for having his head stomped overhead. The victim was Oslo Johnny from the Helga. He had sprained his ankle and cut his mouth on the hatch cover as he fell. Steve and Jones helped him to his boat, then returned to lay it on Hank. Did he need a map for every way he could fuck up? When you tied boat to boat you kept clear decks. And, in case he didn’t know, you never jumped onto cabintops—it was noisy enough to have people stomping across your deck at night, let alone the boards over your head.

  As for Oslo Johnny, whom Hank agonized that he had deprived of a livelihood for the season, he limped glumly across the decks next afternoon carrying a box of groceries. His lip was scabbed and swollen. Letcher John from the Goodluck commented on it, and Oslo answered vaguely, “Must have been some fellow hooked me, damn if I remember.”

  A fisherman might have his obligations to the community, but they did not include sharing his fish. A few of the skippers worked together—men who in the winter lived side by side in Kodiak or in places below like Anacortes and Bellingham—and these would exchange discreet prearranged signals if they fell on a good run. But either as pairs or individuals, the boats hid their fortunes as best they could. Hank had learned early never to point if he saw a jumper. When boats visited alongside, Jones lied cheerfully about the fish in their hold, increasing the number on a bad day and drastically diminishing them on a good one. (The numbers might become common property for anyone lounging around the Billy II during the nightly delivery and tally, but each day was its own affair.)

  Jones, on the other hand, spent considerable energy trying to figure the catches of others. If they were fishing a poor run and another boat appeared to be hauling them in, he was no better than others in the way he raced to lay out his seine before the lucky boat could claim the next set. The danger of sharing a good run was apparent enough. If several boats converged on the same territory, they had to take turns, since simultaneous sets would only snag all the seines together.

  Sometimes a boat jumped his turn, and the boat whose turn had been usurped felt honor-bound to cork him: set in the current ahead of his net to block off any flow of fish. This happened especially as the season progressed with thin results.

  One day on the Rondelay Jones discovered a run of chums after two hours of patient cruising. They were heaving a good jag as Jones maneuvered the Rondelay to block the view to other boats. Over started the Linda J just as they sneaked up a brail load. Quickly they rushed up a second brail, then stowed the brailer out of sight as they kicked the fish into the hold and strapped up the rest. The play failed to deceive Joe Eberhardt, who circled them once, his ruddy face beaming behind his frizzled hair, and then laid out his seine exactly where they hoped he would not. Joe’s fishing partner, Chip Hansen of the Olaf, started across the bay toward them.

  Cursing and sweating, the Rondelay crew readied their gear again. Jones throttled to the one remaining spot. It was a race with the Olaf, and both boats were kicking spray to make it first. The Rondelay made it by twenty seconds. But the Olaf started setting before she arrived, reversing the usual procedure by leaving her skiff stationary and laying the seine toward the beach with the more powerful main boat.

  Jones Henry was furious. To make it worse, three jumpers leapt in quick succession. Hank watched with the others, his head pounding with their shared outrage. There was his old cannery friend, Tolly Smith, the bastard, his gold earring glinting from the deck as he grinned while plunging Rondelay fish into the Olaf s net.

  “Goddam it, stand by to cork that son of a bitch!” cried Jones, and no crew of John Paul Jones ever hustled to battle stations with greater will.

  They set exactly along the enemy net, no more than five yards away, to include the jumpers, and then roundhauled—brought the seine full circle immediately. Hank had never seen Ivan handle the skiff with such speed and delicacy. Nor had he ever seen Ivan more animated, laughing and cursing, with Hank included in all of it. Their skiff practically sideswiped the Olaf. The Olaf crew on the deck above shouted vituperations and flung out their fists. Tolly’s face was so dark with anger that his cut scars glowed.

  The Rondelay did indeed grab the fish. Their haul required the brailer and produced the best catch in many days. The Olaf waited a half hour to purse, and then, as the Rondelay crew watched through binoculars from a distance, brought in virtually nothing.

  “Ha, that fuckin’ Chip Hansen,” crowed Ivan hoarsely as he danced like a boxer, “you shoulda seen the popeyes on that halfbreed bastard’s face when we corked, wasn’t it, Hank?”

  “You’re breed yourself,” said Jones easily.

  Ivan turned serious. “Some Aleut and plenty Russian and American, sure, but who ever heard of Aleut and Norwegian and ten other things besides? Chip, he don’t even go to Orthodox church no more.”

  That afternoon they delivered early to the Billy II, treating themselves to a rest instead of scratching in heavy tide. Spitz called down from the controls that it was the best haul any boat had brought all week. To celebrate, Steve and Sven decided to take midweek showers. Jones, after entering the tally in his record book, sauntered to the tender’s wheelhouse, where the captain and his girlfriend held continuous open house for skippers alone.

  Hank joined his friend Pete. They laughed over the corking as they sat with their backs against the boards of the fish bin, stroking
their beards and smoking the pipes they had both adopted. Fine drizzle softened the mountains, and puffs of vapor lingered on the tops, while birds made black ripples that moved lazily across the calm water.

  “Made your winter stake?” asked Pete.

  “Not by half. What about you?”

  “Shee-it. For living high in Seattle? I’ll probably end up back in the woods near Spokane, busting my ass setting chokers where my old man works.”

  Hank glanced at the rich clumps of spruce trees along the mountains. “Logging doesn’t sound like a bad life.”

  “Hank, buddy, you talk like a jerk. You’ve got college, and then the rest of your life in some office, so all this dirty-hands stuff one summer tastes like candy.”

  Hank pondered the truth of it, and the desires he could barely trust which might make it not true.

  An outboard skiff came alongside with two men and a girl. Hank recognized them from the beach net camp, especially the older man by his red flannel shirt and battered felt hat. They looked scruffy even by his own present standards, with hip boots torn at the top and holes in everything they wore, including their raincoats. The lusterless salmon around their feet sloshed like logs in the bilgewater.

  “How many you got today, Sut?” asked Pete as he rose and took their line.

  “Hundred seventy-three dogs, forty-eight pinks, three reds, and a silver,” said the older man in a deep, comfortable voice as he stepped from the skiff. “Load ’em up, kids.”

  “Right, Sut.”

  Hank had never met him, but Sut said, “Corked the Olaf, eh?” “We got there first.”

  “So you did, and served ’em right.” The statement relieved Hank. He introduced himself, and learned that Sut lived all year at the site, in the largest of the seemingly makeshift structures back near the mountain. Half his workers were married in one way or another and came back year after year. Others were just kids who drifted from places like Frisco. If they got themselves as far as Kodiak, Sut staked them to the flight over against wages. “Only the regulars get shares, but she’s a good life, requires hard work now and then, plenty of nature in between. Drop in. Always a bottle open.”

  Behind Sut’s skiff arrived another with Hank’s friends Dan and Mrs. Hatcher. He hurried to catch their line, then to give his hand to Mrs. Hatcher, who, despite her rain gear and fishy boots, could step from a bouncing skiff with dignified agility. He had now chatted with them several times as Jones pulled alongside their site in passing. “Good day, Dan?”

  “Running slow, Hank, I don’t know. Wish these chums’d look sharper.”

  Hank slipped into the skiff to help Dan unload, although Dan insisted he was doing fine. Hank’s admiration for the Hatchers had grown steadily. After the Elsies had come and gone, he wondered if he himself would be lucky enough to find a partner as true to his own life.

  “Corked the Olaf, did you? Rough bunch.”

  “News travels.” Hank remembered Tolly’s dark anger. He tried to be casual. “When boats cork, do crews ever fight?”

  “Oh ... Young fellows like to stretch their muscles. But fishermen don’t like to bust their hands during the season, so you don’t have no rule.”

  The rigging of a fish boat glided up on the other side of the tender. It was the Olaf. The whole crew stared grimly at the Rondelay. Hank caught Tolly’s eye and nodded, but received no acknowledgment. He went up to the wheelhouse, where Jones, Sut, and the Hatchers were sharing a bottle with the captain and his girl.

  “Want something?” asked the captain.

  “Just to tell my skipper the Olaf s in.”

  “That so?” said Jones calmly. “Wait for me.”

  Hank paced in the galley and watched below. The Rondelay and Olaf were tied on opposite sides of the central fish bin. All the Olaf crew stood on their deck together. Ivan on the Rondelay deck smoked his pipe as he absently hit his fist into his big hand. Steve and Sven were just coming aboard from their shower, wearing their same heavy gray undershirts. The muscles of their arms and shoulders bulged beneath. Should he sneak somewhere and do exercises, to be in better shape for whatever came?

  Jones left the wheelhouse and started below. Hank fell in behind. “Where you think you’re going?”

  “I’m part of the crew.”

  “You stay here, and that’s an order.”

  Hank returned to the galley, humiliated. He might have been afraid to fight, but now he wanted to desperately. There from the Rondelay sauntered his crewmates, following Jones around the fish bin to the Olaf.

  Both crews stood with arms folded, apart from their skippers. Chip Hansen, florid and beefy, stepped to the tender alongside the wiry Jones. The tenders brailing operation had stopped, and Pete stood watching. It started with angry gestures from Hansen. Jones, his cap pulled close as usual and the week’s gray stubble outlining the rest of his face, barely moved. The Rondelay had one man less than the Olaf. Hank decided that when it started he would join, whatever Jones had said.

  Nothing further happened. Jones and Hansen, their faces hard, returned to their own boats. The Olaf crew climbed into their hold, and soon a brailer full of salmon swayed up under Pete’s direction to be emptied on top those of the Hatchers, Sut, and the Rondelay.

  Next evening, as the Rondelay delivered a puny load after a day of virtual waterhauls with tons of kelp and stingers, Peter said to Hank: “You’ve got a cool skipper, man. He took no shit.”

  The following day was equally as bad. At last Jones managed to encircle what appeared to be a smart jag of chums, and all their moods improved. Suddenly a dark shape rose within the purse, and a tan snout emerged holding a salmon. “Fuckin’ sea lions!” roared Ivan. Jones rushed inside to pull a rifle from over his bunk and came out loading cartridges. The tan snout had already tossed the first fish in the air with a halfmoon bite taken from it and held another as it dove. The sleek brown body seemed as huge as a submarine. To Hank the sea lion appeared a joyful creature as he tossed the salmon. He asked Steve if Jones really meant to shoot it, or just scare it away. The answer was garbled with anger.

  Jones held aim and waited until the sea lion’s head appeared. The first shot kicked the water, the second hit. The heavy lumbering motion continued, and another bitten salmon sailed into the air. Jones shot again and reloaded quickly. The creature reared, then struggled toward the far edge of the corks. The men fell silent. “Jump the corks, you bastard,” muttered Jones, and fired. Instead, the sea lion disappeared, and the corks began to bounce and pull under violently. Sven and Steve groaned, and Ivan shouted a steady stream of curses. Jones stood erect with the spot in his sights. When the sea lion rose it received another round. It sounded in a new area and the corks went wild. Jones’ face flushed dark red.

  When it was over, all the salmon that were not floating mutilated had escaped through the holes the sea lion had ripped through the seine, while the sea lion carcass remained for them to disentangle. It took more than an hour. The bristly warmth of the freshly dead creature bothered Hank. But when he saw their net ripped like fisted cobwebs, and as he sat with the others at anchor, taking turns for the next thirty hours mending web while other boats fished around them, he freely joined the others in their hatred.

  The fishing grew worse rather than better. When boats pulled alongside each other and skippers chatted back and forth, they talked glumly of nothing else. Some of the boats left to try other bays but drifted back to report the fishing uniformly slow. Many boats hosed their nets, stowed them in the scrubbed fish hold, and headed home.

  Jones Henry intended to fish king crab later in the year, and he began to talk of calling the salmon quits and going to Kodiak to ready his pots and crab block. Hank listened with trepidation. It would be the end of the season for him, since crab boats operated with four, including the skipper. He wasn’t ready to go. He began to wander the Rondelay and, when no one watched, to pat its boards and rigging. When he left he’d be forgotten, and the fishing cycles would continue as in the years past.


  With the scarcity, other tenders than the Billy II appeared in the bay, flying the green pennant that proclaimed them in the market for fish. “Cash buyers,” Jones called them, and his eye wandered to them more and more. One had a canvas sideband with the message in block letters: PINKS 80$ apiece—DOGS $1.20: a price nearly double that Jones had contracted to receive from Swede Scorden. The whole crew became restless when another cash buyer appeared and the rumor passed from boat to boat that he was paying 83 and 1.30 and throwing in free beer and beef roasts besides.

  On the final morning of the week, Jones laid their slack-tide set in deep black water near a rock bluff that had yielded them nothing so far but which he remembered for late-season luck in years past. One netload brought up some five hundred dogs and a few pinks, and the next load another three hundred. After that the run stopped, although they set twice again.

  The new cash buyer on the scene had selected a cove well shielded from view of the main bay and any eyes on the Billy II. Jones took two hours to meander to the site. The man who was cool in facing down a fistfight suddenly became nervous. They made an unnecessary set in sight of the Billy II, one that yielded them only kelp. Then, while Ivan ran the skiff slowly to gather the leed, they ducked at full speed into the cash buyer s cove as Steve and Hank leaped into the hold to make ready. Under Steve’s direction they threw a few dogs and pinks into a separate bin for the Billy II, then bent their backs to filling the brailer when it lowered. Hank had no time to see the faces of the men aboard the cash buyer until they were headed away again, dumping buckets of water over each other to remove the telltale gurry.

  “Hank!” called a woman’s voice.

  He looked up to see Jody, the waitress from the Kodiak beanery, waving from the cash buyer’s deck. All her sour reserve was gone. She was snuggled against one of the men he remembered from the Kodiak bars—a big, mustached guy with sleepy eyes—and she was smiling. He waved back cautiously, not sure whether in some way he might be betraying their position, but flattered that she remembered him, and in sight of his crewmates at that.