Hank gave a yell and pounded his back. “I left you in Seattle more than a year ago, you sweet fucker. Hair cut like a convict, ass tied to a lathe or something. They finally run you out?”
“Couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand it. Jody! Hug me again, baby, whether the old man sees it or not!” She threw her arms around him with a laugh. He lifted her by the waist and spun her. “Oh man, you’re just my people. Down at Seattle terminal every day with my tail drug near off, every day I’d look through the shop window and see my old boat gone back to the bank, lyin’ dead like she was saying, ‘You asshole, you deserted me.’ You were so ahead of it, man, gearing your new engine for more than crabbing when I built cheap.”
“Yeah, well . . . hard to predict.”
“Not all bad for me, though,” Tolly continued. “Jennie and I got married, you know. Tired of living in sin like the good old days and yah yah. Never would’ve happened if I hadn’t sobered up from losing my boat. And Jennie’s part Alaska, too.” Tolly stopped and swept his arm grandly around the scene. “Oh, man. You and me bunked in that dorm on the hill, remember? And slimed fish under that tin roof down there. And made out nights right in that shed where I’m pointing, still there—remember? Yours was named Audrey; no, Elsie, right? Uh-oh; excuse me, Jody, but way, way before your time.”
Hank turned anxious. Wrong time to be joking about his affairs, even the old ones. But Jody shrugged it off with, “Nice you boys weren’t lonesome.”
“You wouldn’t believe! Well. So all of a sudden, last April in Seattle I bumped into Swede Scorden on the docks, and before we knew it I’d signed back here, me as assistant engineer. And Jennie runs the egg line with some little Jap yappin’ down her neck—but he’d better keep his hands off her. We’re back, man! Even if it’s not on a boat.” He became serious. “You don’t know any boat needs a skipper? Our contracts with the cannery end next month. Neither of us wants to go back to Seattle.”
“We’ll keep an eye out,” Hank assured. A truck beeped behind them without warning. He dodged, jarred his shoulder in the cast, and gasped at a shaft of pain. Jody began to knead around the cast.
Tolly patted the cast. “Don’t think everybody hasn’t heard what happened in Bristol Bay. They say you risked your skin to save Jones Henry.”
“Not now. Some other time.”
“Understood. Understood. But what’s this they say about you and the Japs, man? They say you’re now their big—”
“Save that too.”
Tolly sighed. “Wouldn’t mind the Japs come to me like that. But hey!” He grabbed their arms. “You’ve got to say hi to Jennie. Then chow tonight. Cook’ll find us steaks; he’s my buddy since I fixed his big fan. We’ll party like old times, never mind that everybody’s workin’ double shifts to keep up—we’ve got a big occasion here.”
Hank suddenly wanted to get away. “Party some other time. But let’s see Jennie, sure.”
They had started toward the roe shed when somebody shouted for Tolly because the iron chink was clogged. “Stay for chow at least,” Tolly called back on the run.
“We’re fishing and headed back out. Soon. Soon!”
After lunch Hank hurried with Jody back to the boat, relieved that her “Elsie, eh?” was only amused. Nostalgia had stopped overwhelming him. Had she forgotten what he’d done in Japan last spring? At least forgiven.
Back on the boat, Jody’s shakedown continued.
The opening lasted more than a week and they fished all of it. Since they had come from Kodiak merely to scatter Jones Henry’s ashes, no one had packed chow for more than overnight. The cannery had steaks enough for workers but only basic food to sell to boats. Seth hung strips of salmon to dry, and the leathery odor joined the odors of fresh fish and engines. Mo alternated salmon boiled in seawater with salmon fried in bacon grease until Ham and Terry groaned. The previous crew on Jones’s boat had left cans of baked beans and tuna, which helped, while the tender to which they delivered sold them coffee, bread, cheese, macaroni, and onions. The men yearned for meat.
“This chow seems good enough to me,” declared Jody with hands on hips. “What more do you need to stay fishing?”
Hank glanced at the anxious faces of her two designated crewmen and laughed. “Maybe salt beef and hardtack’s the great tradition, but not when you’re close to town and making money. When you’re skipper you’d better keep Terry and Ham happier than that. And whoever else you pick up.”
“Meat and fresh stuff,” said Terry confidently when asked what should be ordered. “Green stuff and, like, carrots and apples. Oh. Don’t forget peanut butter. And candy bars, things with nuts. But mainly steak.”
From Ham: “Just give me meat. And ice cream. And bug juice? Raspberry bug juice is best. Best in ice cream’s chocolate fudge. Meat, well. . . you know . . .” He grinned, unsure how far he could go. “Prime rib?”
There were also deck and engine supplies. Adele Henry, in Kodiak, copied the list by radio, with only an occasional gasp at its extent. “You’d think the boat was left untended for years instead of a few weeks since Daddy left for Bristol Bay. However! Shackles? Does Sutliff’s have them?” Hank advised her on stores and establishing credit, and offered himself as reference in case there was a question. “You mean poor Daddy’s name isn’t enough after all these years?” Before Hank could answer diplomatically, she continued, “My God, I’m busier than when Daddy was alive! But don’t worry, the children are fine. Dawn makes friends everywhere and Henny tags along like a little man. Pete’s my baby, he still keeps me company. Now Jody? Are you there? Jody, listen to me. Don’t let those men get so full of themselves that—wait. Somebody’s banging on the door with no consideration. I’m coming! Oh. It’s one of Dawn’s little friends. What was I saying? Never mind. Jody, you take care, and remember— Pete! That’s not clean, honey. I’m going. Yes, of course I’ve got the list. Good-bye.”
“Are we putting too much on her?” Hank wondered. “She’s only a . . .” he checked himself.
“A poor widow? You wait.”
Hank, in teaching Jody, found his wisdom challenged. “Why do you always work nets to starboard?” she demanded. “Why not be flexible?”
“Everybody does it that way.”
“That’s a big man’s answer.”
Hank remained patient. “The gear and controls are set that way, by the starboard rail. Look, you wanted to learn. I’m telling you how everybody sets their seines. If you want to do it backward, go ahead—find out the hard way.”
“Find out what? That another way might work better?”
“Look! These things have been worked out with experience.”
He said it with such exasperation that she patted his cheek. “You’re so serious, it’s fun to tease you.” A splash and they both turned to watch a choppy stretch of water. A minute later a fish leapt dark against the light.
“Now, Captain,” said Hank, back to business, “that a humpie or a chum?”
“Straight up and then down in the same place? That’s a humpie. Straight out of the water and down again.”
“Good. How would you tell a chum? Remember, he’s worth more than a humpie.”
“Bigger. Jumps not as high. Wiggles his tail, that’s important. And maybe he’ll just fin instead of jump.”
“You could have a humpie finner too.”
“Well then, I’ll just set on either and catch ’em all.”
In the wheelhouse, with voices crackling on separate frequencies left open, Hank checked her out on radios. “The CB there monitors boats close by, the ones fishing around us.”
“I know that, Hank.”
“Anyhow—then the VHF over there covers us within about thirty miles. We keep that on emergency frequency at all times. Then the single sideband, that’s for farther away—for weather reports, all that. We did sideband in Puale Bay when Adele stood by as your matron of honor over radio from Kodiak, remember? But we had CB for Jones Henry’s boat alongside us. On that good day.” Th
e memory sent his arm around her, of riding out a storm while Jones as captain read the ceremony that married them. His hands started to move further.
She kissed his cheek but gently pushed him away. “We’re working, mister.” She unrolled a chart of the bay. “Get to your schoolmarm pitch on this if you have to. But I’ve read charts before, you know.”
“Well. Yes. Always check first to see if soundings are in feet or fathoms. You know a fathom’s six feet?” Her look told him she knew. He drew a breath, annoyed at her self-assurance. “Each degree of latitude on the chart divides into sixty minutes, each minute a mile—a nautical mile, longer than a land mile—but never mind that.”
She took up calipers to show that she knew, and began to measure spaces along the bottom of the chart.
“No. He stayed patient while glad he’d found her mistake. “You measure that along the sides.”
“Oh. Yes.” She worked correctly, and announced Uganik Bay to be five miles wide and about fifteen miles into the arms.
He had started to explain magnetic deviation when a voice on the CB radio said, “Boats fishing South Arm or East Arm, this is Sleepthief Two off Mink Point. Little engine problem here. We think it’s a faulty fuel injector if anybody’s got a standard Jimmy-engine spare.”
“Yo, Terry,” Hank called. “Check if Jones kept an extra.”
Jody frowned. “What if we need one ourselves? That’s why we’d carry it.” Hank brushed her off.
Other voices on the CB began to give advice in case the trouble was something different. By the time Terry called up with the part and Hank started to offer it, two other boats had logged in and the Lady West was en route to deliver one.
Jody laughed. “Wasn’t it the skippers of Lady West and Sleepthief who had that fight in Tony’s last spring and landed in jail? Something about their wives?”
“That’s different. You’d better learn the difference.”
Jody alternated wheelhouse observation with crew jobs, even those a skipper traditionally did not perform. Terry showed her how to troubleshoot in the noisy engine room, to check RPM’s, battery water, and oil and water temperatures, while assuring her he’d do it all. But, methodically, she wanted to know what to expect. When it came time to pitch fish at delivery, she pulled on oversized hip boots left by a previous crewman and climbed into the hold with the others while Mo fixed dinner.
The sight made Seth snort. “Hey,” said Hank diplomatically, “Why don’t you stay topside and check scale on the tender? Three in the hold’s enough.”
Seth continued to descend the ladder. “Without me it’d be more like two and a half today.”
To Jody in the hold, the brassy smell of salmon dead no more than a day evoked memories of independent bachelor days when she had worked on boats, usually as cook in the galley, never called on to pitch fish except in an emergency. Not a bad smell down here, she decided. Terry quickly made a joke of how he and Jody were so short they sometimes got too buried in fish to move anything but arms. Cold fish carcasses soon chilled her legs through the boots. Indeed, in the low space where they needed to crouch, the rigid, slimy fish held her fast. When the loaded brailer rose over their heads bulging with a few hundred pounds of fish, it was hard work to back under the deck boards and avoid the dripping slime.
After they had pitched some thousand fish into the brailer for loads that Hank lowered and raised from the controls above them (which earlier she herself had handled beside him), she could move more freely. She found sorting by type of salmon easy since the smallest, the humpies, dominated the catch. Only occasional chums had appeared in the seine, and they were larger, to be set aside for separate delivery. Her hands soon worked automatically, and her main concern was to keep up with the others.
Each person, counting silently, was to throw fifty fish into the brailer to make a load whose weight could be approximated. Her hands gripped slippery tails, but often fish slipped free of her slickened gloves to bounce short of the brailer rim and back into the pile. The air of the hold, at first frosty enough to show their breaths, soon turned steamy. Sweat trickled into her eyes; she had nothing not fishy to wipe them with. Try as she would, Seth, Terry, and Ham reached their fifty fish before she had tossed thirty—Seth at a deliberate pace, the other two competing. Seth waited with hands on hips, but Terry would say gaily, “Ten each more, Ham, race you buddy,” to catch her up.
Seth, standing opposite her, broke his pace and leaned into the brailer to pull out a fish she had thrown in.
“Baby chum?” asked Jody.
“Early coho. You better learn those things.” Without further explanation, he intercepted others.
When they had climbed from the hold and hosed down, Terry drew her aside. He had laid out three salmon on a board. “Now, here you got a humpie—people also call it a pink—about a two-pounder. It’s the littlest salmon, and he’s got that sort of a hump on his back, which is why we call him humpie, so he’s easy to tell, mostly. The middle one’s a chum—also call him a dog salmon, four- or five-pounder. It’s easy to sort when there’s only those two kinds. But. . .”
Terry paused for emphasis, then held up the fish on the end. “This here’s a silver, also call him coho; maybe this one’s only three pounds, which is why you confused it with a hump, but they get a lot bigger. Look at their tails first. Humpie tails is spotted and the others have stripes. Chum’s stripes are milkylike, cohos more clear. See? And chum has a thinner tail. Now, we don’t get silvers generally for another month, but that’s nothin’ to count on, like Seth showed, and silvers bring a better price than chums, which of course are worth more than humpies, so you want to keep them sorted. Now, see the chum—he’s got no spots up here on his body. A silver now, he’s got these little spots, see? Whereas a humpie has bigger ones even though he’s a littler fish. And a thicker tail.” He looked at her earnestly. “It’s easy once you get to know it. Couple of years since I’ve salmon fished. But once you get it. . .”
Jody nodded with tightened mouth. Did I ever know all this? she wondered. Suddenly she lost confidence. What am I trying to do? she thought.
“Later, in September,” Terry continued, “maybe you’ll see a king or two, people also call them chinooks. Best way to remember, they’re usually bigger than the others and they got black inside their mouths. Now reds, sockeyes, the fifth kind of salmon—you know them from Bristol Bay, little reddish inside the gills sometimes? Silvery tail stripes? Stuff like that? Sockeye runs hit Kodiak Island on the Shelikof side—but they’re over for the year. Anyhow, skippers don’t have to sort. You see how Boss just runs the brailer? Don’t worry, Ham and me are good at sorting. All you got to remember when you’re skipper is, that each kind of salmon brings a different price. Silvers bring higher than chums and chums is higher than humps.”
“Thank you, Terry.”
“Sure. Me and Ham, we’ll see you through. Don’t you worry.”
Worry she did. Memory of days spent carefree on boats had deceived her. She’d steered boats and felt their reaction against currents, but with somebody else in ultimate charge to help or take over. And every boat had a different feel. What if somebody fell overboard in rough water where it was hard to maneuver? Steering in open water was easy—but what of docking with everybody watching to see if she’d bang the pier just like a woman? Radio bands: which for calling ashore and which for the Coast Guard if trouble hit? The life raft tied over the cabin—did anybody know how it worked? The fish ticket the tender gave after delivery—what if they’d cheated on weights when she wasn’t looking? My God, she should be home making sure her children didn’t come to harm! Not too late to call it off. Make it a joke. They’d kid, everybody would, then all would be forgotten. Adele might be disappointed, but then she’d just sell the boat, take the money, and go on back to San Diego or whatever. Or find a man to run the boat.
While she worried, Jody continued to press and make herself learn. She compiled lists of questions, more than she wanted to admit she nee
ded to know. She asked Terry some of the questions first, casually in other forms since he needed little prompting, so that Hank wouldn’t realize the extent of her ignorance. Questions even of Mo and Ham. As for Seth . . . he belonged to Hank and would soon be off the boat. Her boat. She smiled. Then the big sour grumbler would need her permission to come aboard.
Hank, once committed, watched his men to make sure they did right by his wife. Asking Terry and Ham to crew for her had been easier than expected, so easy that he jealously wondered for a moment. But, as Terry said without being asked, “She’s our family too, Boss. Don’t you worry.” It wasn’t going to be easy for two strutting men to crew for a woman. He knew they’d be teased ashore, even tormented. Nice guys.
As for Seth, deck boss and relief skipper of the Jody Dawn, his biggest problem beyond resistance to any new idea was losing his best deck man, Terry. Loss of the newcomer Ham mattered less but was still an annoyance. Hank soon realized that “consulting” Seth had been only pro forma since Terry had already said yes. Wrong strategy, Hank concluded, except that negative Seth might have changed Terry’s mind, while Jody needed a good engine man above all else for safety. Seth was becoming as scratchy as Jones Henry at only half Jones’s age, and his temper blew increasingly. On deck he couldn’t be bettered for knowledge and reflexes. Their careers had run together for too many years to consider parting. He’d saved Seth’s life at least once, and Seth probably his by solving problems before they became emergencies. But what of Seth’s reaction two weeks ago, when Hank stepped into the life raft to rescue Jones and Seth, trying to stop him, had cried: “You’re all I got!” It troubled Hank whenever he remembered. Seth’s dependency had become a burden.
Hank watched Jody take hold with reluctant admiration. Part of him kept hoping that she’d give it a try for a few days, then change her mind, and they’d conclude the thing as casually as it began. She had their children to raise! And once she hired crew it would be all the harder to back out. But he didn’t want to see her fail. In the wheelhouse, after two days, he let her scout and decide where to set with only an occasional comment. She took the controls, maneuvered, and directed the sets with driving energy. Hank watched with a mixture of concern, even irritation, but also pride and love as she ran from wheelhouse to deck shouting, sometimes laughing, the ponytail tucked inside her shirt to avoid machinery tangle, a baseball cap squared on her head, all business. (And all business at night after he’d followed behind for hours, his wife too keyed up and too weary for more than a good-night peck on the cheek.)
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