Highiliners

by William B. McCloskey Jr.

  Darkness released the light of a full moon. It gleamed on the white mountains to make them appear even higher and more impersonal than during the day and glistened on the thin ice along his anchor and rigging. A moon path outlined Jones Henry’s boat, shining on the bars of the clumsy square crab pots stacked astern. Her little green starboard light and plain masthead light seemed incredibly precious amid the sinister dazzle of the wilderness.

  Around midnight the wind rose. Suddenly ice started to build on the anchor and chain that Hank was watching, from a shiny skin to a thick padding with a whiteness of its own. Hank could feel the change in handling the boat. Her quick roll turned sluggish. “All hands on deck to chop ice,” he yelled down the transom. “Jody, get up here and take the wheel so I can go too.”

  “Nestor, do you read me?” barked Jones on the radio.

  “Adele Three, what do you make of it?”

  “Run for shelter and chip like hell.”

  “Puale Bay, right?”

  “Western end’s all shoal. I’ll guide, been there before, but study your chart in case anything...”

  “Jody’s at the wheel, I’m going on deck.”

  “No, you’re skipper, she can’t handle, stay put.”

  During their brief exchange, the shrouds had expanded their diameters by an inch.

  “Nestor, this is Adele, turning now, hang on, turning into it, might be rough.”

  Hank shouted a warning to the others as he took the wheel to move from a southwest to a north heading. The difference brought leaps of spray, first across their beam, then over the starboard quarter so high that it shot diagonal arcs of water across the entire deck. Some of the water turned to ice in midair, and clattered like pebbles. The boat became a bull to handle—it barely responded, and the wheel kept kicking from his hands.

  Jody dressed for deck against his protestations. “Promise you’ll tie yourself to something. Please stay clear of the rail.” He reached to hug her but she slipped away, grave-faced, blowing a kiss. Went as casually as he would have gone. Is that how wives felt with their men at sea? he wondered in fear.

  The wind began pushing the weighted boat so that it paused at each portside roll before recovering. He strained to watch the shoreline on radar, watch the plunging lights of Jones’ boat ahead, watch the hunched figures under the deck lights, coordinating it all in his mind as he muttered prayers for Jody’s safety. How could he reverse course if she fell over? He remembered the way the water closed like lead.

  On deck, Andy quickly took charge. Thank God he assigned Jody the sheltered winches to pound. Her quick-moving figure was so small compared to the others. Spray kept arcing. It froze on their rain gear and crackled off like fine glass. When Dan beat the shrouds, tubes of ice splintered over his head and shoulders.

  On the radio, Jones was calling the Coast Guard to report their position and danger. Hank wondered if Adele back in Kodiak could hear any of it.

  Seth climbed the rope ladder, so coated with ice he had to kick footholds with his feet, and straddled the boom to hammer his way along it. His progress was marked by crashing chunks. Each time he paused, spray froze to weld his legs to the metal tube.

  The crab pots astern stacked three high gathered ice throughout their honeycombs of web, beyond the reach of hammers. As Hank watched, their mass solidified into a wall that reflected back the deck lights on its lumpy surface. With each portside roll their weight dipped the deck into the water.

  He grabbed the mike. “Jones, your pots, I’m dumping them.”

  A pause, then: “Okay on that, Hank. Be careful. I’m chancing it with mine, only a half mile before we get the lee.”

  He called instructions to Andy. They tried to reach the top pots for a hookhold and nearly slid into the water on the roll. Like climbing a glass mountain. Then Jody, the lightest of them, slid along the deck to the wall and started up. Hank shouted for them to stop and gunned desperately for shore.

  At last, abeam of Cape Aldek, land began to shelter them from the spray-bearing wind and the ice they chipped did not re-form.

  Hank, having read his Coast Pilot, could observe to Jones: “Not supposed to be good anchorage in here. Do you know any spots ?”

  “Negative on that, Hank. We’re safe from the icing, but not from the woolies. Not firm enough bottom for us to tie together and pass the time. Might drag. We’ll move closer to the western side and anchor with five hundred feet swing space between us. Suit you?”

  “Roger. We’ll drop our hook and sack out. See you in the morning.”

  “Strongly suggest, Captain, you keep an anchor watch.”

  Hank learned the truth of it quickly. The wind, blowing through low passes, gained momentum as through a tunnel. Twice it struck in williwaws of more than hundred-mile velocity, and the anchor bounced on its groaning chain.

  “This is fishing vessel Delta” declared a stolid voice over the radio. Hank recognized at once his old enemy, Nels Hanson. “All boats and Coast Guard, please read, please relay, possible Mayday.”

  Hank leaped up and turned it loud.

  “This is Delta, Delta, icing heavy and fast. Possible Mayday. I’m located ten mile due north of Marmot Island, Sealion Rocks to port quarter, running for shelter Tonki Bay. Heading into wind, icing heavy and fast. Bad bow list to starboard. Possible Mayday. Request Coast Guard assistance. Fishing vessel Delta. Mayday.” The distress call was delivered in a voice that showed no more emotion than his old orders to Hank and Seth to hop to, when they had been slaves on the deck of his shrimper three years before.

  The radio bands became tensely busy with relays. The others aboard the Nestor had gone to bed, but one by one they appeared in the pilothouse to listen. The event was taking place to the north of Kodiak, miles away, but it shared with them the same wind.

  “He can’t buck into that,” said Jones on the sideband. “Nels should know better. He’s too far from land to make a run for it; he’d better put his stern to the wind and ride it.”

  “This is Delta. I’ve reversed course to slow icing. Boat has little control. Got a strong set toward Sealion Rocks. Icing has slowed, but sixty-knot wind still piling it on. Inflatable raft standing by. Request assistance. Mayday.”

  The Coast Guard station near Kodiak started talking. A helicopter had just taken to the air, and the cutter Storis was steaming from Womens Bay en route.

  “That Coast Guard chopper,” said Jones Henry, “he’s committing suicide to fly night rescue in this weather.”

  “At least he’s got the moonlight,” said Hank.

  Nels’ emotionless voice spoke again. “We’re hammering the ice, but she’s pulled us below the starboard rail, flooded part of the engine room. Men not holding out good, not my best crew. I’m signing off to go hammer, make ’em hop to it. Not going to abandon.”

  “Can’t even stop now shitting on his guys,” muttered Seth in a husky voice.

  “What’s he got the life raft for?” said Hank.

  Andy cleared his throat. His voice was husky also. “Ever been on a raft with icing in that kind of blow?”

  An hour later the Coast Guard said that the helicopter had begun icing at search altitude and was forced to abandon the search until morning. ETA of the cutter Storis was another two hours.

  No further communication from the Delta. Outside in their own bay the wind howled and moaned, and the moonlight continued to bum on the snow mountains.

  “I reckon,” said Jones, “he was chasing that one last deckload before the season closed. Poor Nels was a fisherman through and through, he pushed to the limit.”

  “Poor fuckin’ crew,” said Seth.

  Both their voices were hushed.

  At 4:00 A.M. the Coast Guard announced that the cutter Storis had taken aboard two survivors of the fishing vessel Delta and that their search continued for the third. No names, pending notification of next of kin.

  Jody started to cry. Hank was choked himself as he held her. His feeling against Nels had long ceased
to matter, whether as a survivor or the missing. He didn’t know the others. Collectively they were his own blood and body.

  His arms held Jody tightly as he stared at the terrible glistening ice that made a monolith sculpture of his pots and rigging, that weighted his stem to sluggish incapacity. “Marry me,” he murmured. “We might have died tonight. Life’s as tricky as that.”

  “Hank, darling,” she said quietly, “we’ve got it all without the preacher bullshit. What difference?”

  “To me, if not to you. I want it declared and known.”

  “Then you’ll want kids.”

  He knew she was right, that some day he might try to force it, but: “Only when you do.”

  “What if I don’t, ever, want to be tied like that?”

  “Your choice, Jody.” In the years ahead, something would happen to make it work out.

  The wind exploded in a williwaw that shook the boat. He kicked the bow into it to ease the anchor strain, then returned to the subject.

  “You know I have a past, Hank. From time to time you’ll come up against talk.”

  “But your present and future’s with me.”

  “Yes. Yes...”

  Their watch continued in the pilothouse to sunrise. Hank sat in the upholstered skipper’s chair with Jody on his lap. The radio sputtered intermittently with voices but no news. At eight, with the snowtops glowing pink and the wind continuing to blow, the announcement came: Nels and a crewman rescued, one crewman presumed dead but the search for the body continuing.

  “The dead are dead,” said Hank. “Were alive. Marry me today.” She studied his face, then nodded.

  When Hank approached Jones Henry by radio: “Adele ain’t going to like missing this.”

  “Well get her to stand by on somebody’s boat radio.”

  “That’s right, and you can get a preacher the same way.”

  “No, Jones, we like the idea of you doing it. Somebody from Kodiak can dictate you the words. You’re a commanding officer, aren’t you?” Despite the shadow of the Delta he started to laugh, he was so happy. “You’re official as any captain on the Queen Mary.”

  Jody, now that she had consented, thoroughly entered into the spirit. She took the microphone. “Do it for both of us, Jones.” She said it in a voice so persuasive that it settled everything but the time.

  They were married that afternoon in the wilderness bay, as the northwester roared through the mountain clefts and the snow steamed around the tops. The Nestor and the Adele III tugged at their frail anchors. Seth stood as best man, Andy and Dan as bemused witnesses. They could hear the conventional emotion in Adele’s voice as she spoke for matron of honor a hundred air miles away from a Kodiak radio. Within sight, Jones aboard the Adele III read the ceremony and waved to them from his pilothouse window. Ivan and Steve stood stiffly in the cold wind, grinning toward Hank’s boat. When Jones made the final pronouncement and gunned his whistle, they fired their hunting rifles over and over. Then they pounded each other on the back as they danced and slipped around the icy deck. All it lacked was booze.

  The honeymoon in Puale Bay lasted two days. Finally the wind changed direction, allowing them to hammer free and proceed safely to Dutch Harbor.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Bering Sea

  MARCH in the Bering Sea was a miserable business of northerlies and of floating ice that blew down from the arctic packs. Life ashore in Dutch Harbor and Unalaska was little better. Foggy wind howled through the mountains without pause, and snow clung with wet heaviness to everything. The climate and time of year separated the natives from the outside cannery workers even more than usual, even though they worked shoulder to shoulder on the lines. When a boatload of crab came in and a cannery turned on its revolving light to summon employees, the natives appeared from their little frame houses, donned slickers and aprons with the rest, did the tedious work for the long hours required, and then returned home with barely a word. Most of the out-side people had come to Dutch Harbor to save money away from it all, before realizing how far they had come. They spent their spare time mumbling to each other about being trapped. Drinking was endemic in both the native houses and the dormitories. The Elbow Room, the only common meeting ground, remained principally the province of fishermen in from a trip. The jukebox pumped the same old rock, but it had become a din for grim boozers whose winter had lasted too long rather than an accompaniment for spontaneous dancing and an occasional recreational fight. A disagreement at this time of year was more likely to end in drawn knives than in a few fist thumps followed by drinks all around.

  Life on the boats was a simple case of endurance at sea—a package bought in advance by any but novice fishermen—of pitching decks, freezing water, the crunching danger of small icebergs, and bull work made more exhausting by the cold. Only the Norwegians seemed content, although the radio bands were filled with their complaints to one another. They worked their pots during gales that sent other boats to harbor and spoke of it with gloomy satisfaction. “Well, shit, no Squarehead’s completely happy,” said Tolly, “unless he’s got a wind blowing at least sixty and ice up to his ass.”

  Hank and Jones Henry fished with the rest of the fleet off Cape Sarichef. One night they anchored close ashore to catch a complete night’s rest, then consumed three hours in the morning breaking the windlass free of ice to raise the hook.

  Jody stayed aboard the Nestor, against Jones’ advice about all women on fishing boats. She cooked, baited, and stood wheel watches, all of which made life easier. Moreover, her acid realism, delivered in language as free as theirs, kept them in good humor even during hard periods.

  Hank was happy. He loved Jody and she returned it. When they stood side by side in his skipper’s cabin, which she shared, or in Tolly’s house ashore, he saw in the mirror the woman he knew of gay mischief and energy, her hair tied back for action, but her eyes were now alive with a warmth even greater than before whenever she looked at him.

  His own reflection in the mirror was that of a dark-bearded barbarian, teeth white against wind-swarthy skin. He felt more and more self-confident. When he declared a course of action, both his boat and his crew responded. He began to plot the movements of the crab like a hunter stalking prey. When the pots emerged with keepers, he no longer needed a cheer from deck. He glanced toward Jody, and she sent back approval by a wink or a flicker of smile.

  Now that he had a wife, he began to think even more of owning a boat. He dreamed with Jody over brochures, plotting what he could afford with the thirty-five thousand he had saved for a down payment, and how much he could risk in debts and mortgage. “Look—this design has jumped since 1971 from three hundred fifty to four hundred thousand. I can’t even put down ten percent any more. Got to save more and commit myself before it gets worse.”

  “I’ve saved eight thousand we can put toward it.”

  “You?” It was a dimension of being together that had never occurred to him. “Better hold your money, dear.”

  “What the hell for?”

  He laughed. “Think what a bigger pain Jones would have if Adele thought she owned his damned boat.”

  Seth, Andy, and Dan disappeared fast, leaving him alone to take what he had brought on himself. The force of her assault pinned him to the seat. The lively eyes turned flashing cold, and the wide, smiling mouth that he had romanced became a trapdoor for curt words. Not that she raised her voice: she merely used it with the thudding efficiency of a marlinspike. At first he tried to counter angrily, but each time he spoke she sliced him further. When it was over, she had made it clear that she expected equality in all his enterprises. He sat at the table, absently fingering his beard. Not much barbarian left. The funny part was, as he thought about it, she was probably right. Have to be damned strong to stay atop this woman he’d landed.

  When they first arrived on Bering Sea grounds and began exploring for crab in the known places, they encountered some Russian trawlers. Whenever Jones Henry spied one of their dark shapes he
growled into the sideband: “Set out pots here and they’re as good as gone. This is why we need a two-hundred-mile limit.”

  Hank, perhaps reflecting his general contentment, eyed the big vessels with more interest than hostility. It had been a decade since the incident outside Kodiak harbor when the Russian ship had tried to run down the Rondelay. Since then a twelve-mile U.S. fisheries zone had been declared, and the Coast Guard every year had seized some foreign ships caught in violation, so he judged the situation to be at least under limited control. He studied the Russian ships with their high H-beams and lopped sterns through binoculars. One day he maneuvered the Nestor close to one as it pulled its trawl, and they all gathered in the pilothouse to watch. The best view came from directly astern, since they could see up the ramp. The filled net moved slowly from the water. It resembled a fat snake oozing mud, attended by hundreds of screaming gulls. But only when they saw it on deck, an oval tube as high as the crewmen and long enough for a dozen men to flank it shoulder to shoulder, could they comprehend the quantity that had been brought from the ocean in a single haul. The catch overflowed into bins—millions of fish that men waded through up to their hips.

  The Russians themselves were faceless from a distance, dark figures in bulky coats and fur hats with long earflaps.

  “Bunch of thieves,” Seth declared. “Those fish belong to us.”

  Hank knew he would be unpopular, but: “We’d never fish that pollock with salmon and halibut around. Wouldn’t bring a cent a pound. Americans wouldn’t eat it. Why be dogs in the manger?”

  “I might not be a skipper,” said Seth, “but I read National Fisherman. You know what American fish sticks are made of? Fuckin’ foreign-caught pollock that they sell back to us.”

  “Look, look!” Jody grabbed Hank’s binoculars. “What they’re piling on deck along with that fish nobody else wants. The objects were king crabs, by the hundreds. And the Russians were tossing them into containers, not returning them to the sea.

  Hank continued to spend part of his boat’s energies on prospecting new grounds, often leaving Jones behind with the main fleet on the usual fathom curves. One night Andy challenged him. “I don’t mind no amount of work so long as it makes sense. But what’s anybody going to get from a pot here and a pot there where everybody else knows not to bother? You follow behind the highline skippers. They know where the crab is.”