Raiders

by William B. McCloskey

  Next morning the men unmoored to the good-bye waves of Jody and the kids and to Adele’s admonitions to keep safe but bring back tons of fish. Other craft of all sizes were leaving also. By now Adele had marched herself to the rail of the Hinda Bee, called out to skipper Gus, and challenged him three hundred dollars on his crew’s catch against hers. She said it in such a loud voice that he could only pull at the hairs of his white sideburns, look around at other crews listening and at his own men’s expectant faces, and say, “All right, woman, you asked for it.” He glanced again at his crew. “Afraid to make it four hundred?”

  “Four? I’m not afraid to make it five!”

  “Five it is!” he said, echoed by Yo!s from his crew.

  Hank took ice at a further pier, where, thanks to Seth’s preparation, they went to a side bay instead of a queue behind other boats. Hank steered them through the buoys toward the open horizon, squinting into the sun. The water sparkled. Leaving harbor at last, the deck began to breathe and roll beneath their feet. After the turn west at Cape Chiniak they hit a thirty-knot southeaster nearly head-on. Sea gurgled through the scuppers. They joined a flotilla on the march, one of many boats bucking swells that raised bows and plunged them into spray.

  Kodama regarded the others’ whoops and loud jokes with curiosity. Even Odds swayed smiling to the vessel’s motion. Water splatted against the wheelhouse windows. It did feel like going into battle. His own mouth stretched wide in spite of himself.

  14

  SHAKEDOWN

  GULF OF ALASKA, MID-SEPTEMBER 1982

  It was a good thing they had radar. Visibility often fell to a few feet of rough water on every side. Hank could only keep track of boats around them, unseen in foggy rain, by their green electronic blips on the screen. Yet however he adjusted the gain, seafoam added phantom blips indistinguishable from boats that might have changed course and headed toward them. Worse, the wiper at the wheelhouse window by the helm had become too sluggish to cope with the volume of spray. He stationed Terry outside the windows at the bow, and Mo and Ham by the port and starboard rails. Nevertheless, he continued full throttle, since changing pace meant falling behind into the track of other vessels.

  Not since his navy days in convoy had he traveled in so much company at sea. Whenever they entered a gap in the fog he quickly checked the horizons. None of the swaying masts and bucking hulls around them had changed relative position. Without landmarks to show passage, they might all have been thrashing stationary in a vast tub.

  At first, lookout duty brought lusty yells from Terry, Mo, and Ham, charged to be back on the water. But the wet novelty soon ended. By the time Hank relieved them with Odds, and later with Seth and Kodama, each frowning at duty they considered menial, they stumbled to the galley glum and dripping. For a while, only the whoosh of water above the engine throb and the chatter of radio bands provided him company alone in the wheelhouse.

  Seth, returning drenched and testy from his watch on the bow, went to the chart table and tapped it. “I’m the one who figured out all these places we might fish, while you partied with your new buddy in Japan. You think I can’t steer in a fog? Or keep us safe on radar?”

  Hank considered. “You’re right. I’ll take the next bow watch and give you the con.”

  Indeed, he welcomed open air for a change, to stand looking into the water with his back against the outside of the wheelhouse. He held tight, and enjoyed even cold sea-slaps in the face when the bow plunged and fans of spray arched over him. The bulk of water hit his chest fistlike, and sluiced off the oilskins that insulated him while making him glisten like the anchor chain. But frigid water trickled inside his hood no matter how tight he drew it, while deck waves kicked against his boots and even crawled under the rubber bands that sealed the oilpants against his legs.

  Soon his feet turned icy, and he shivered even when flapping arms against his chest, but he made himself stand a longer watch than the others. Then he took Jody’s Fish and Game material on halibut to his cabin. It would be hours before they reached the grounds beyond Kodiak Island that were open to them, giving him time to decide how far west to venture before setting lines. Let Seth keep the wheelhouse if he wanted it so badly. He raised the rail on his bunk and braced in with cushions against the boat’s motion, turned on the lamp to read, and spiraled into sleep.

  He woke to Mo’s thump on the door announcing dinner. Outside it was dark. The boat had run safely without him. Good crew. He rubbed his head. Hadn’t left orders. Slipshod. He hurried to the wheelhouse, holding rails against the motion, rehearsing what he’d banter with Seth to ease his desertion. There was cheerful Terry at the helm. The weather had cleared even though wind still rolled seas at them from the southeast. Lights of other boats shot into the air, swooped to blink out for moments close to the water, then swept high again. Overhead, stars raced across the sky as their own boat pitched.

  “This is some like it,” Terry declared. “On the water and all. The guys on the Hinda Bee? They’ve been calling on radio. That’s them to starboard. And Lady West’s to stern of us. And Lucky Sue ahead. All the guys me and Ham had that great fight with in Solly’s and the jail, and now we’re buddies. It’s like we’ve got a Kodiak bar out here, but without the booze.”

  By now the mass of Kodiak Island showed on radar only in the distance astern. Hank turned on the night-light and studied the chart. Time to commit on where to fish.

  “Poor ol’ Kodo. He’s puked until there’s nothing to come up. Not that he didn’t stand his watches until things cleared and Seth called it off, but I think now he’s dead in the sack. I thought he was supposed to be a fisherman.”

  “He’s used to ships, but he’s been ashore for years.” Hank said. “He’ll find his legs.”

  In the galley everything rattled in its racks. Mo’s steaks and spaghetti slid on plates anchored by a wetted tablecloth. The men had settled into sleepy good humor. “Fishing with hooks and bait,” said Mo. “Haven’t done that since I done it with bent nails and worms back in Iowa at the old farm pond, Sundays after chores and church.”

  “You miss that too?” asked Ham, his mouth full.

  “Didn’t say I missed it. Maybe miss the folks and my sisters. But all that pushing cow shit every day? From asshole to milk floor to field, over and over and over? And both Sunday school then church, and prayer meeting every Wednesday?” Mo shook his head. “Couldn’t wait to enlist for Vietnam. Then I did, seventeenth birthday. Papa couldn’t say no to serving my country, only way he’d give up his free man. But war ended before I got there, and I was marchin’ up and down in Texas where nothin’ grows. I guess then I did miss . . . Sure, okay, the folks. I’d sure miss it if I didn’t go back every Christmas. Haven’t skipped a year yet.” He thought about it. “Never will, I guess.”

  “And you go home,” snapped Seth, “and first thing anybody says is . . .” he altered his voice to a high wheedle, “When you going to marry some nice girl and settle down like your brothers and cousins?”

  “You too!” Ham turned to him. “You’re older than Mo and me, so I guess Vietnam didn’t shut down before you got there. We missed it all.”

  Seth, after a silence, muttered, “Burst eardrums.”

  Terry, having been relieved on watch by Odds, filled his plate at the stove, crowded in around the table, and reached for the steak sauce. “Me, I was on the pier in Tillimook, bumpin’ fish guts on a hook against the pilings, before I was big enough for my daddy to take me on his boat.” Balancing his plate, he shook the bottle. Suddenly the sauce gushed out in a puddle. “Whoa, shoot!” He held the plate to his lips and slurped the excess. “Fishing hook and line, all by yourself—I’ve done worse.”

  “And beer!” said Ham. “Back then on the farm.”

  “Not in my house, man,” said Mo. “We were Methodists.”

  “I was like, fourteen, maybe fifteen. Threshing all day. And hot? Then, before dinner, everybody in the icehouse taking turns at the pump? My pop hands me a beer a
long with everybody else, says, ‘you done a man’s work today so why not, but don’t tell your ma.’ Man, I took a sip and a second later it was slurp, never since drank anything so good. As if Ma didn’t know the second I walked into the kitchen.”

  They ate for a while in silence, each with his thoughts.

  Kodama did not appear. “I had some of that popcorn ready to go for him,” said Mo.

  “I guess in Japan the water’s not so rough,” observed Seth.

  “Make the popcorn anyhow,” said Ham.

  “Uh-uh. That’s special for him. To make him feel at home.”

  “You call popcorn Jap food?”

  “Not the way I mean it.”

  Hank finished, rinsed his plate, then climbed down to the bunk hold. Kodama lay curled with a T-shirt over his head.

  “Hey. Doing all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Come up to dinner.”

  “No. If time to catch fish, I will come.”

  Hank wanted to pat his head, refrained. “Take it easy. You’ll be fine.”

  “Of course.”

  Hank pondered charts for the grounds he should try. The Fish and Game papers said that halibut schooled on shelves at 30 to 225 fathoms. In another hour they’d reach a ridge of continental shelf that dropped from 150 fathoms to the depths. They could set lines along it. By now fewer boats moved in company. Some had already chosen their grounds and halted.

  How simple it had been through the seventies, he mused. Then only the grand old wooden schooners went for scarce halibut, going out for three weeks at a time on such traditional grounds as Portlock or Albatross Banks, while other boats prospered elsewhere on crab and shrimp and left them alone. He traced the contours of Albatross with his finger. He’d helped fish there as a greenhorn and thus knew it at least slightly, although Norwegians with lifetime experience had done the thinking on where to set. Now that halibut stocks had risen and even salmon seiners like the one he rode trooped out to catch the big fish, so many boats were pressuring halibut that the openings had been cut from weeks to days. And this restrictive opening didn’t even include Portlock or Albatross but only waters to the west of them. New grounds, some of it, but with no time provided for novice trial and error.

  In his own brief time nature had changed it all, turning the cycle of abundance from crustaceans to finfish, with crabs and shrimp vanished but flounder everywhere. The biologists talked about weak year classes and hedged on altered water temperatures that may have changed feed migrations, but they hadn’t proved a thing. The greenies naturally harped on overfishing, which would make sense if shrimp hadn’t also disappeared in bays not fished. As for crabs . . . Like a dream, he remembered, those great years when pots came up choked with crabs. And how many thousands of rejected female and undersized crabs had they carelessly thrown back busted? Probably they had grabbed too much of the stock. Swede had it right. Since crabs were predators of baby fish, when their numbers diminished, the fish flourished enough to turn the tables. Now fish appeared to be gobbling a critical share of baby crabs.

  Halibut, though, had to be a different story. They matured slowly and, according to the Fish and Game material, could live to forty years, so the big fish now reported in the water must have grown up somewhere away from predatory crabs and human hooks. They hadn’t just turned big in the year since crabs disappeared. No single answer covered it all.

  By early morning the men were lined aft baiting hooks. Hank reached the fathom curve he wanted, and shifted the engine to neutral. Seth appeared at once. “Couple of hours yet is where I have us to set lines.” He pointed on the chart. “We want to hug that two hundred-fathom drop where I’m pointing.”

  Hank watched the lights of other boats moving beyond him, and fingered the edge of the chart. His own logic was as good as Seth’s, and Seth was beginning to override his authority. “We’ll fish here.” He braced for a showdown.

  After a pause Seth’s outraged glare weakened and he looked away. “You’re boss.” Hank watched with equal portions of relief and regret. His old friend needed to be stronger for his own good. Nevertheless, Hank took the opportunity to add, “Kodama’s not going to take your place, but he’s under my wing. Lay off him, Seth.”

  “Shit, Hank. Tell him to lay off me. ”

  “I’ll see to that.”

  “No, you won’t. You can’t.” The voice was almost tearful. “It’s all changed.”

  “Look. We’ll fish first sets on my grounds here. If we don’t like it, we’ll steam to yours.”

  “If somebody hasn’t grabbed the place I marked out.”

  By two hours before the noon opening Seth no longer grumbled. He held the work deck in control, gravely setting a pace. Under his direction they pulled tarps off the tubs of baited line and set them in rows by the chute astern. Then he slipped back up to the wheelhouse. “Who’s going to see it,” he said quietly, “if we put a few lines in the water early? We can use the practice. And don’t think plenty boats don’t do it.”

  Hank found it tempting but shook his head. Bend the rules once, he reminded himself, and it doesn’t stop. An hour later a Coast Guard patrol plane swept overhead, dipping low at each boat to check for gear placed illegally in the water ahead of time. Seth acknowledged his near mistake with a hand passed across his brow.

  As noon approached, Hank increased gain on the official sideband channel to make sure he heard the signal. On deck the men assembled in boots and oilskins. Mo, Ham, and Terry danced foot to foot, keyed for action. Seth himself attached the first of the tubs’ lines to the flag buoy and then paced, waiting for Hank’s signal. Odds stood calmly among them. Kodama kept his distance, frowning but as tensed as the rest.

  Under a clear sky the sun had begun to burn off low patches of fog that alternately hid and revealed other boats on the horizon. A chilly southeasterly kicked water an inch or two across deck when the boat rolled. It was easy weather for September in the rough North Pacific, thought Hank. He cruised with the current, hugging the contour of the fathom curve as best he could while watching the chart and Fathometer readings.

  “This is Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The seven-day opening for halibut has now commenced in Area Four-B exclusively, from due west of Kodiak Island to Unimak Pass. This opening will close at noon next Friday.”

  Hank’s whistle echoed against others across the water. Seth threw over the marker. The line snaked over the chute astern, coil by coil from the tub, drawn into the water by the boat’s forward motion. As Hank kicked the boat ahead, the line slipped out faster with hooks clacking merrily against the chute.

  Seth had already directed Mo to place another tub by the first, and he himself attached the end line of the first tub to the start line of the second. “That’s how you do it,” he announced. “Each tubful of line they call a skate. It’s one hundred twenty fathoms, which is seven hundred feet, no, seven hundred twenty feet, six feet to a fathom. We’ll set ten skates this first crack. That’s a longline of say seven thousand some feet, which is more than a mile. All of you follow?”

  “I’ve set longline before,” said Odds. “If the skipper knows how long, it don’t matter who else does.”

  “Maybe you think so.” Seth looked at the others, and settled on Kodama. “I guess you know this too, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Come on, man,” said Terry gently to Seth. “We seen you studying this stuff all week, and buying drinks for guys so they’d tell you stuff. And this ain’t your first lecture, but we’re still listening. We respect what you’ve learned.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Seth tried not to show his pleasure. “When we start bringing this line back aboard, and there’s fish on the hooks, we won’t stand around long. Man at the roller to gaff the fish over the rail, that’ll be me, maybe an assistant if they’re big. Then somebody to coil the line back into the tubs. Each man fills one tub, that’s one skate. Then he carries it back, chops new bait, knocks off any old bait, and puts new b
ait on each hook. Each bait, put it on carefully so it don’t fall off. But there’s about one hundred fifty hooks on a skate, so you can’t drag your ass. And you’ve got to coil line and hooks back into the tub so there’s no snags when it pays overboard next time.” Seth looked at each of his men in turn but ignored Kodama. “Now. These new circle hooks, like the kind just going out, they take the bait in a different way than the old style; you have to slide it around further. We’ve got half of each, and after three skates of the new circles we’re putting out three skates of the old-style J hooks. That’s what we call a scientific method.”

  “Fuckin’ science,” said Mo. “That’s good.”

  “We’ve all of us coiled tons of line from crab pots,” said Ham. “That’s the one thing’s no problem.”

  “Not with hooks you haven’t. Or with line that has little lead weights every few feet to help it sink. This is new.” Seth chewed his lip, then turned to Kodama who watched with legs spread and hands behind his back. “Since you’re the expert, I guess you know all about how to coil with the hooks laid just right. And about how to bait the different kinds of hooks. Yes? Hai, is that how you say it over there?”

  Kodama glared at the tone. Finally, without moving: “Of course.”

  “Then, Kodo, why don’t you stand beside each man while he coils, and make sure he’s right.” Seth’s lips stretched. “So any mistakes, I guess we just blame you.”

  Odds raised his hand like a kid in school. “Come on, Seth, I spent a whole week last year doing longline with my cousins. Nobody needs to stand over me.”

  “We don’t need but one expert. And that’ll be Mr. Kodo, since he’s the best.”

  Hank, watching from the wheelhouse above, caught the thin, threatening smile that was becoming a disagreeable part of Seth. The man was now so involved in his lecture that the second tub had half emptied its line. Hank was about to call down (and make his voice sharp to put Seth on notice that the captain watched and stayed in charge) when Odds, at Seth’s gesture, slid in another tub and connected the lines.