Highiliners

by William B. McCloskey Jr.

  “Couldn’t pull back against this wind,” said Hank.

  “Goddam it, Boss would sure know what to do!”

  The wind carried a man’s cry. They looked to see a boat—the Linda J, with Joe Eberhardt on deck—drifting in their direction, toward the rocks. Joe had a coiled line that he tried to throw to them, but the wind blew it back in his face.

  “Must have slipped his chain,” Steve exclaimed, suddenly turning decisive. He unlashed a coil of line and heaved it. The line traveled with the wind, but just as it was about to hit Joe’s deck a counter gust dropped it in the water. Steve had already freed another coil and sent it flying. Joe caught it, and scrambled falling on deck to secure it.

  The Linda J had now blown past them. The line between them drew taut. Joe had only managed to pull in a foot or two of slack, not enough to tie, and he held the weights of the boat and wind in his own hands. Steve threw their own line off the bitt—they only had a few feet themselves—and the three of them with Jody, who had appeared, gripped the end and dug their feet into the stern rail for support. For a moment Joe had slack, but the motion of the boats pulled it from him before he could use it. Spurts of blood shot from his hands as his end of the line whipped free and fell into the water.

  The Linda J glided into the rocks with a crash they heard above the wind. Splinters of wood shot in the air and blew away. She quickly broached. Joe had grabbed a pole and desperately tried to push from the rocks. The boat smashed, eased off, smashed again. His pole snapped and he found another. Hank watched his smallness, seen from the Rondelay against the horizon of spray swirls each as big as the boat, and knew the fight had a foregone conclusion. A violent broadside threw Joe from his boat onto the rocks. He clutched the gunwale and pulled himself back aboard, then groped along the tilted deck to switch futile fenders to the inboard side. Finally the boat began to sink lower as he fended off again with a pole. He threw some gear onto the rocks and, with a box under his arm that Steve said was his radar, abandoned her. As he staggered down the breakwater toward shore, leaning into the wind, the smoky spray closed around to hide him from view.

  The wind gusted and the Rondelay’s anchor scraped again, jumping them closer to the rocks.

  “We better do something!” Ivan exclaimed.

  “Jesus Christ,” cried Steve in anguish, “what would the Boss do?”

  “Look,” said Hank. “Stay at anchor and kick the engine forward to take the strain off. Just keep doing it until the blow stops. Anything wrong with that?”

  Steve considered it for a second, then began to pound his back. “That’s it!” His face relaxed. Soon he stood by the wheel inside, kicking the engine.

  Hank stayed on deck longer than the others, as if by watching the battered Linda J he might salvage her. Sometimes the wind seemed to slack, but then it would scream to a higher pitch than before. The storm around him was frightening; so was the whole fishing business. Good his life was not committed to it. He found it hard to picture the calm and green-budding world back in Maryland. A few days and he’d be there again. Except for Jody...

  Before going inside, he struggled back to the bow against the wind to inspect the anchor. Suddenly he felt like the skipper of the Rondelay, removed from the others by the responsibility of decisions. Was this how Jones Henry felt? Steve’s relaxed face grinned up from the window by the wheel, at the level of his legs, as he gave an extra engine spurt which made the chain droop slack with a clank. It was a gesture to prove how well the plan worked. Hank nodded his comprehension gravely, then left the miserable weather for the warmth of the cabin.

  Part 3: 1970 WINTER TO PALL

  CHAPTER 14

  Shrimp Boats

  FORMER Lieutenant Henry Crawford of the U.S. Navy, recently returned from Vietnam waters and more recently discharged with honor, stepped from the plane at the Kodiak airport. Snow covered the mountains more thickly than he had seen in his summer and spring trips to the island six years before, and snow lay on the ground. It was a sunny February day, no colder than back east. The glare hurt his eyes as keenly as it might on a ski slope in Stowe. He waited for his bags to appear, trying to remain detached and dignified as he consumed every detail.

  Jones Henry, his hair grayer and his glasses thicker, advanced smiling with arms open and bear-hugged him. Adele Henry, heavier, with her hair now bleached, followed with her own big embrace. Hank forgot his lieutenants reserve, shouldered his new seabag exuberantly, and followed them to the pickup truck.

  He sat between them straddling the gear shift as they joggled along the rough-paved road to town.

  “So they made you an officer? I ain’t surprised. Wait’ll you see my new boat. She’s got plumbing.”

  “You’ve been to Vietnam,” said Adele. “Hank, was it terrible over there? Are all those college students justified in the ruckus they’ve made?”

  He claimed the right he had seen many take in order to avoid admitting to the boredom, the dissatisfactions of such a war, and his own general doubts. “Rather not talk about it. Sorry.”

  Adele put a hand to her mouth, completely cooperative. “I shouldn’t have asked. Tell me, were you on any of those Navy ships that picked up the astronauts when they came back from the moon?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “And I promise you won’t recognize the boat harbor. She’s a regular marina. As for the town, you get a buck from me for every building you can recognize from the old days before the earthquake.”

  “I find it hard to remember the old town,” said Adele. “We still don’t have an opera house, Hank, but we’ve got some decent buildings. And of course Jones and I’ve flown down to Seattle and San Francisco a couple of times, and even to Honolulu last Christmas, so I’ve had a look at a few of the world’s glories. But you—you’ve been all the way to the Orient.”

  “Remember Gibson’s Cove down there? The National Marine Fishery boys, they go out with the Coast Guard now to board the Japs and Russians. Every now and then they seize one of the bastards and bring him in, since we’ve finally got a law or two and the foreigners can’t fish closer than twelve miles. Don’t have the sight of ’em from this hill any more, taking our catch from under our noses. You know, it wasn’t more than three weeks after the earthquake—you’d left by then— that a whole Russian factory fleet moved in sight of the harbor and looted our king crabs. Figured our boats was too smashed to compete. Bastards even used tangle nets, the kind that tear up the throwback crabs so half don’t live, the kind there’s a law against Americans using.” Jones’ face flushed and his voice rose. “If I’d live to be three hundred I’d never forget or forgive—”

  “Now, Daddy,” Adele interrupted. “Does you no good, so let’s change the subject. Hank, did you like the Navy?”

  “Ships were so big I hardly knew I was at sea. I’m spoiling to be on a proper fish boat again.”

  Jones stopped the truck on top of the ridge overlooking the harbor and town and waited for his reaction.

  “It hasn’t changed!” Hank exclaimed. He had feared to see a metropolis of hamburger joints and skyscrapers and factories, and here it was the town of his memory, slightly enlarged. Cannery row on the shoreline below them had a longer line of the ugly steaming sheds on pilings, the boat harbor was larger and more crowded, some brighter buildings bordered a new square facing the waterfront, and the hills leading back along the narrows had more houses where trees had been —but changed? There remained even the little twin domes of the Russian church, painted a bright fresh blue. He could have kissed the ground.

  “You just haven’t had a chance to see,” said Adele.

  “Not changed?” Jones was annoyed. “Look at all them boats. Whole new shrimp fleet’s been added. We’ve got three times the dock space! Look down there, straight below. Ever seen so many canneries in one line? And look at the new town square, you recognize a thing in that from the shanties on old Main Street?”

  Hank laughed happily. “You’re right, Jones, it sure has chan
ged.” “I should hope so.” They resumed their drive.

  As they entered town, Hank saw without question that there were more homes on the hills. Jones turned at a filling station and parked in a wide square where a row of waterfront stores and houses once had stretched. Boxing the square on three sides were new buildings, none higher than two stories, all of them sheltered sensibly from the weather by a continuous roofed walkway. The fourth side opened on the harbor several hundred feet distant, guarded by a high little harbormaster’s building and fronted by a sturdy wharf.

  “Daddy, Hank’s traveled for twenty hours, he wants to go home and clean up, not stop in town.”

  “What do you want, Hank, take a bath or see my Adele H?” “Excuse me, Adele, I really would...”

  “Well, I’ll go shopping, and you can pick me up in the dress store when you’re done looking at boats.”

  “You bought three new dresses in Honolulu.”

  “Go play with your boat.”

  From the wharf, the distant mountains gleamed majestic and white in the sun, the water was blue, and the assembled masts formed a community of snowcovered rigging. Birds dipped everywhere. A high, sturdy breakwater enclosed the boats as before. Hank followed Jones, creeping sideways down a ramp with treads iced smooth, and along the slushy boardwalk floats.

  “There she is,” said Jones grandly, and swept his arm toward a chipped white boat with ADELE H painted across the stem. The Rondelay had been forty-two feet long, and here was a boat of seventy feet with a fully enclosed wheelhouse above the cabin.

  Hank walked up and patted the rail. Snow tumbled over him from a stay. “Hey, Jones, she’s a honey.” He climbed aboard, slipped and fell on deck, and rose brushing snow from his overcoat. “Just a honey.”

  “I figured you’d appreciate her.”

  Hank went astern to examine a long drum wound with heavy net. “So this is shrimp gear? Really different than the old seine. You sure you’re willing to take on a green hand? I’ve gone pretty soft.”

  “Be a pleasure to have you,” Jones said seriously. “But I doubt the fishing life’s going to suit you any more, with all your learning and being an officer. And, like I wrote, with Steve and Ivan being my regular crew all these years on a three-man shrimper, I can’t even pay a part share, just your feed. You’re always welcome in my house for however long, that goes without saying.”

  “Every bit of that’s fair enough, Jones. After college I worked for a stockbroker, then did the Navy thing when my draft board closed in. The only thing I’ve ever done that stays in my mind was fishing on the Rondelay.”

  “You’ll find that changed too. When you go out in the winter, there ain’t much fun left in fishing. You do it to meet the payments.”

  The cabin door flew open, and there was big Steve in boots and long underwear. The black pirate’s beard had strands of gray, and the face was weathered, far older, but who could have mistaken him? Steve’s huge hand engulfed Hank’s as they pounded each other’s backs.

  The cabin of the new boat was luxurious compared to that of the Rondelay as he remembered it. The extra twenty-eight feet made possible a galley with table and seats, a wide counter, and a four-burner stove; bunks in a separate compartment forward; the enclosed wheelhouse above; and an engine room below.

  Steve kicked one of the lower bunks. “Hey, you drunk Aleut, shake your ass and see what’s come.”

  The low, Ivan-type groan started new memories in Hank’s mind. He had seen men in the Navy made punchy by booze, so that as the feet in dirty socks began to twitch, he waited apprehensively. Ivan’s swarthy, high-cheeked face looked up at him with eyes clearer than ever before, as he grunted, scratched his chest, and grinned. “Son of a bitch, the highline kid.” He leaned over and slapped Hank’s leg affectionately. “You going to catch some shrimp with us? Good. Bring us luck.”

  On the way back to Jones Henry’s house they stopped to buy him boots, thermals, foul weather gear, and lined waterproof gloves. By the time they had finished a long lunch with a bottle of wine (Adele’s idea), and he had talked alternately about fishing with Jones and the larger world with Adele, it was three in the afternoon but already turning dark outside. He watched the town and harbor through the picture window in the living room as a blue glow settled over the snowy masts and roofs and lights began to flicker.

  So many people to ask about. Some, like Sven the Rondelay cook, had drifted their ways to other boats and places, while others like Steve and Ivan remained. Some of the skippers and crews had died by the sea, some had new boats, others fished as before. Tolly Smith was now his own skipper: the Juggernaut. Joe Eberhardt, following the destruction of the Linda J, took a government disaster loan and bought a boat big enough for king crabbing: the Nordic Rose. Somewhere along the line he had separated from Linda (or the other way around, as Adele interrupted to tell it). Swede Scorden was meaner than ever: he now ran three canneries, including the one Hank had known, for a company headquartered in Seattle.

  “Then you mean there’s still salmon fishing of the old Rondelay kind?” asked Hank. Jones’ affirmative answer brought him great pleasure, especially the information that the Rondelay itself still pursed the salmon. When he had run through all the other names he remembered, he asked about Jody, the one foremost on his mind. “Guess she’s married.” “Jody?” Adele shook her head with satisfaction. “The girl’s still free as a man. Hope she stays that way and doesn’t panic. I saw her in town the other day, just back from six months in San Francisco. Said she missed the shrimp fleet in the winter, She had two carts full of groceries, buying for a boat, I forget which.”

  “Shalimar,” said Jones. “Mike Stimson’s boat.”

  “Did you, uh .. . tell her I was coming back?” asked Hank.

  “I mentioned it,” said Adele. “She thought she remembered you, but she wasn’t sure. Looks like no girl’s got you on the leash.” Hank shrugged. “Well, sometimes I think fishermen marry their boats, no mat ter what girl they take to the preacher. Maybe nobody up here should marry, just live around and not get stuck.”

  “Sometimes you talk like a commie,” Jones growled.

  “Daddy, I raised three children for you. I scraped and struggled with it all alone while you scraped and struggled out fishing to pay for it. Now all three kids live somewhere else, and we get letters from them now and then. You still fish, and it’s your whole life, you’ve lost nothing. I’m left home holding the bag.”

  “With all the bills paid, and no more worries. I even added a sewing room to the house.”

  “Trapped in man’s country, you mean. Why, even when I bullied you into trips outside, you thought of nothing but how your boat was doing.” She slapped her hand on the chair arm. “I’m going to run for the Council next election.”

  Jones studied her for a minute, then slapped his own chair arm. “What the hell, I’ll vote for you. Council couldn’t be any worse than it is now, and it’ll mebbe get you off my back.”

  By four in the afternoon it was night. Hank excused himself to walk into town, promising to return for dinner at seven, when Steve and Ivan were invited. The cold penetrated at once. He had been in the tropics too long; it would take getting used to. Lights glimmered in town and reflected on snowcovered rigging and cannery steam. Often he stepped to the roadside for cars, a problem he had not remembered from before. Downtown had indeed changed its configuration. It had to be approached as a new place instead of an old friend revisited. He looked hopefully at each face. They were the same types, but he recognized no one.

  The excitement of returning to Kodiak had carried him through the pressures of disengagement back east, but now he felt his doubts with dizzying force. The town was lonely, sufficient without him, and he came to it as an adult stranger without a kid’s options of washing dishes and bunking in a barracks or town jail. His parents, for what they mattered, had challenged him to define what on earth he thought he wanted, to go backward to the life of a fisherman. His answers had been a jumble
of illogic within the East Coast context. To waste the precious time when young men laid the groundwork of their careers? Said his father: “Take responsibility in business or some other affair that matters, and you’ll find plenty of adventure and satisfaction. Fishing’s honest work, naturally, if you haven’t trained for anything.”

  He went into Tony’s, noisy with hard-beat music and shouts as ever, sat on a barstool beside two shaggy fisherman types, and gulped down a double Scotch. It had begun to take effect, and he had ordered another, when he recognized Jody. She sat on a wall bench, surrounded by burly, ruddy men, and they were all laughing. Her hair style had changed, but not the wonderously wide mouth and the lively eyes. She looked no older. How would he have appeared to her standing straight in lieutenant’s uniform? Often she had returned to his mind over the years, as a gauge for other women, and no one had ever duplicated for him the night in the sleeping bag.

  “Hi, Jody, remember me?”

  The smile that had been there already stayed as she looked him over. Then, cheerfully, “Bring up a chair, Hank,” as if she had last seen him a week before.

  She introduced him to the others by first names alone, and they shook with the big, water-softened hands of fishermen. He ordered a round.

  “So, where have you been all these years? Someplace where they give haircuts, I see.”

  Hoping to impress her, he said, “Vietnam, Navy.”

  “I thought you’d have had the brains to talk your way out of that one.”

  “Shrimp’s the big thing up here now, apparently,” he said to change the subject. “I don’t hear a word about salmon and crab any more.”

  “This is shrimp season, Hank. Come in May for salmon talk, and start the king crab talk in August. What brings you to Kodiak—curiosity? Or does some college have you writing a book on how the fishermen take their booze?”