Hank had been tuning his speed to that of the line as it payed through the chute and into the water. He soon found that if he went too fast, hooks danced wildly and some of the bait flew off. The birds knew it at once. From one or two in the sky, suddenly screeching clouds of them converged to fight for dislodged bait. One bird swooped in and grabbed a hooked chunk of herring. The hook caught its mouth, and the weighted line dragged it beneath the water, squawking. One bird’s misfortune did not deter others from buzzing the hooks. When Hank slowed, fewer hooks lost their bait but more birds chanced a grab.
Seth calmly continued his lecture. “And while I’m gaffing in fish and everybody else is taking turns to coil and bait, another man needs to gut the fish. Scrape it clean, mind, or the meat turns sour. Not making that up. Swede Scorden himself told me that, back at the plant. Then somebody to shove the fish down into the hold, maybe the guy gutting. And somebody down in the hold with the ice, maybe two—one to shovel and one to stack the fish in layers of ice. I’ve lost count how many that is.”
“On my cousin’s boat we all took turns doing everything.”
“That makes sense. Except for roller man, which is the main responsibility.”
“I’ve done roller,” continued Odds. “I’ll bet Mr. Kodama has too.”
Seth folded his arms. “Anyway.”
The line had payed smoothly from one tub to the next. Suddenly a snag of coils big as a basketball jerked up from the tub and clogged the chute. Hank had settled on two knots for his best speed. He slowed too late. Some of the hooks locked to a side of the chute and the snag held fast. The line pulled taut from the water, stretched, and snapped.
Seth was in the wheelhouse at once. “Whadda you mean goin’ too fast?” he stormed.
The tone fueled Hank’s tension. “No damn problem if you hadn’t fucked up the coils!” Then he controlled himself. It had been his own fault, of course.
Seth waited, arms folded.
You might be wrong but keep charge, Hank told himself. “Trial and error,” he said evenly. “I’ll adjust speed. We’ll start a new set with another marker buoy. Later we’ll go back to the first buoy and pick up the broken line.” Seth still scowled. Throw him an ego project, Hank decided. “Here’s something. Why don’t you figure out a kind of scarecrow buoy to bounce astern and keep birds off the hooks?”
“Serves the fuckers right if they drown.”
“Every bird on a hook is one less fish. You’re smarter than the birds.”
“You can say that,” Seth declared, mollified.
“Let’s keep fishing.”
“Suits me. Any time.” Seth resumed his post on deck and they started to lay a new set. Carefully.
Soon Seth had slashed ribbons in an old pink buoy, tied it to a few feet of rope, and dropped it astern. For a while the thing bounced on the water and intimidated a few birds, but then propeller wake made it drift to the baited hooks and the buoy line wrapped around the fishing line. “Yo!” called Seth to the wheelhouse, but Hank had already shifted to neutral. They pulled back the scarecrow hand over hand to Seth’s steady profanity, kicked the slashed buoy across deck, and resumed setting the longline.
“What we need to do,” quipped Terry, “is tie Seth by the leg and bounce him overboard. He flaps his arms, cusses like that, it’s enough to scare any bird.”
Seth enjoyed it with the rest. “Don’t worry. You think I’m through figuring how to beat fuckin’ seagulls?”
Kodama’s voice cut in. “Tie rope high from wheelhouse, not from stern. Then buoy will bounce on water beyond where longline sinks.”
Seth stopped laughing.
Without a further glitch they laid two full strings of longline, then returned to the buoy marking the snapped line of three or four skates, which had soaked longer than the rest. It was time at last to see what was down there. “Flag aboard,” cried Hank, and blew his whistle.
Mo, at the starboard rail, threw out a grapple, and more hands than needed pulled aboard the marker buoy. Seth came alive. He grabbed the line before anyone else, leapt with it over the boards of the checkers, and spun it around the vertical wheel of the gurdy.
The gurdy turned with an oiled whirr, and the line it gripped began to come aboard. Nothing could be expected for the first several hundred feet of line, which, empty of hooks, had merely carried the baited line to the seafloor. Except for Odds who began to coil, however, they all watched by the inch. Seth stood tense at the rail, leaning over, the gaff in his hand raised like a pistol at the ready. When the boat rolled away from a wave the line drew taut and twanged off drops of water.
Kodama remained apart, standing as stiff as the new yellow oilskins that encased him. Come on, guy, thought Hank, look alive. Don’t make me sorry I brought you from Japan.
Odds filled his tub with the plain line, and disconnected it from the line with hooks that was starting to surface. “Me next,” said Terry. He slid up an empty tub, overturned another to sit on, and prepared.
“I’ve had the experience,” said Odds. “If you take back this tub I’ve just filled, I’ll—”
“Go ‘way. In ten minutes I’ll be experienced too.”
“Fish! First fish!” announced Seth. He leaned so far over the rail that only his buttocks showed.
“Don’t fall over!” cried Hank from above.
“Ahh, we’d fish him back out,” said Terry. “Good practice.”
“Ha!” Seth’s gaff struck down out of sight. He brought up a little pound-weight cod, its spotted coppery back arching sluggishly. They all booed. In disgust Seth flicked it back into the water.
“Big fish killer there,” called Terry. “Start shoveling. Ice! Ice!” Mo and Ham took up the call.
“You wait,” growled Seth. He banged each hook after it passed through the wheel. It made them bounce out on their gangions, and bait that still clung flew off. The action helped absorb his energy. Seabirds converged in the water wherever the bait fell.
The line continued to come aboard. Soon Terry fell silent as he concentrated on nesting the hooks. Suddenly Kodama squatted beside him, snatched the line, and began to coil with a precision that placed each hook in exact alignment with the others inside the coil. “Thus!”
Terry started to take offense, then saw the perfection and murmured, “Okay, thus.” He took back the line and bent to it with increased attention.
“Now. Now!” exclaimed Seth. His arms disappeared over the rail again. “Hah!” Up flapping on his gaff came a halibut. Mo and Ham cheered. Seth, his legs and back swaying to the motion, passed the line over the gurdy wheel while holding free the hook and fish. “Eeee-asy does it!” he crooned. “Into the boat, baby!”
“Thirty pounds at least!”
“Forty!”
The fish slapped down inside the checkers and continued to thrash. Mo and Ham bumped shoulders converging on it. The creature slipped from their hands and thumped against their legs. Laughing, they managed to lift it to the hatch top.
“Hold him down,” cried Mo. “Just give me time to . . .” He quickly honed a knife against the steel hanging from his belt. “Got to cut him here where they call it the poke.”
“Seems almost a shame,” murmured Ham as he held the halibut. “Fighter like that and all.”
“It’s a fish.”
“That’s true.” Odds moved in. “The Lord made all fishes for the food of mankind, so don’t feel bad about it. I know how to do this. I’11 show you.”
Kodama brushed them aside. With a knife already in hand he made deft incisions near the fish’s head, sawed out gills and entrails in a piece that he tossed over the side, and began to clean the hole. “Must scraping scraping,” he declared.
“Next one!” called Seth. “Coming in smooooth as hotcakes.” He leaned over the rail. “Bigger. He’s big! I got him.” The fish that rose was nearly double the size of the first. It stayed passive. Seth hit the controls with his knee to stop the gurdy, and grunted to lift the fish over the rail. Suddenly it
twisted from white belly side to brown green upper, thrashed free of the hook, and splashed back into the water with Seth’s gaff still in its head.
“Pole, pole! Grab him!” Seth leapt madly back over the checkers while Mo and Ham struggled to dislodge a dip net. By the time the net reached overboard the halibut had shaken off the gaff, and its brown shape had flickered and merged into the dark water. “Shit. Shit!” cried Seth.
“Never mind,” called Hank from the wheelhouse. With anyone but Seth he’d have made it a joke.
They retrieved the gaff. Seth returned to the roller and started the gurdy again.
“I will show,” said Kodama, advancing.
“You stay the fuck away,” Seth snarled.
Halibut began to come aboard one by one, and the men slowly developed a rhythm. From above, Hank watched over Seth at the roller, his gaze fixed on the spot where hooks emerged from the water. Sunlight glossed the surface, but fingers of shadow from the boat’s side allowed glimpses into the depth. A green-white shape would appear far down. Slowly it would undulate upward, twisting on a hook. Difficult to tell the size until it broke the surface.
Sometimes the hooked creature was a mere fat bullet of cod or sculpin, limp at once in the air. (Hank remembered Swede’s admonition, stopped Seth from tossing cod back, and designated a small checker to hold them.) But the halibut, flat as shovels, would hit the air and seem to consider, then explode with energy. Seth needed to lodge his gaff in their heads before the thrash began, or lose them. Two of them tore from the hook and escaped before he realized how soon he needed to act. With gaff lodged, Seth’s arm might have been slammed by an actual shovel for the beating it took as he shared weight with the gurdy to bring the fish aboard.
“Let Odds or Kodama take roller for a while,” Hank called.
In answer Seth stopped long enough to peel off his oilskin jacket and wipe a ragged sleeve over his face.
Hank’s arms ached to hold the gaff and feel the struggle. As captain he’d turned superfluous since the drag of the longline itself kept the boat in position, while at any time he could shift the boat’s engine controls to the panel alongside the roller where Seth reigned.
By the time the first set had come aboard—and the broken line was no more than a third of a full set—the deck beneath the checkers had disappeared under a dozen big flat halibut. Terry, Mo, and Ham had each coiled and rebaited a skate—Terry twice—and the latter two had climbed into the hold to stack dressed halibut in layers of ice. Seth’s pace had become measured, and only two more fish escaped him. Hank closely watched Odds and Kodama, who held post shoulder to shoulder by the gutting table. Intestines flew from under their knives and blood streaked their yellow oilskins. Odds’s incisions into the leathery halibut skin were businesslike and detached. Kodama’s became sweeps from the judo floor: ferocious though precise, the work of his entire body. Both men appeared too absorbed to discuss the world’s wrongs.
While Hank cruised to the next marker buoy, the men hosed away blood and entrails and took turns washing off one another. Seth paced, massaging his right arm. Terry, his coiling done for the moment, stretched elaborately. Mo beckoned Kodama closer. “Come on, your turn; I’ll spray you down.” “I shall waiting to clean myself.”
“No, you don’t, buddy. We’re all a team. Turn around, let me hose your back. Then you do mine.”
Kodama frowned his frown but complied, suppressing a smile.
“Adele H, tune in if you hear me,” came a gravelly, even voice over the CB radio. “Hinda Bee calling.”
Hank dislodged the mike from its overhead bracket. “Sounds like Gus Rosvic.”
“Right here, Hank. Watching you through binoculars about three miles off your port beam. That’s us you see. Now that I’ve taken to making dock-side bets with widows who can’t stop talking, I’ve got to keep my eye on you. Looks like you’ve stopped hauling. Given up already?”
Hank chose not to admit to a snapped line. “Deck’s so full we took a breather.”
“That’s nice. Shouldn’t work too hard and tire out if you’re not in shape. Now, I’d say we have five thousand pounds of dressed halibut iced away, and the buggers keep coming. How does that reach you?”
Hank calculated quickly. They were only some four hours into the opening, and that could be eighty to a hundred some fish depending on size. Maybe bluff. Their own good catch wasn’t close to this. Lost time, of course, with the broken line. “Makes me feel sleepy, Gus, sleepy. If that’s all you’ve got I guess we can grab some bunk time while you catch up. Maybe even go ashore and hunt a little.”
“You do that, you do that. Now, my boys are working too hard to come to the phone, but Zack down at the roller asked me to tell your Terry he’s willing to double their little bet. Naturally I don’t approve of gambling. But to buy into a sure thing don’t count as gambling.”
“I’ll tell him, Gus. He’s so up to his elbows in fish right now I couldn’t pry him loose.”
“So I see.”
Hank had forgotten the binoculars. Before he could think of an answer, Gus said, “‘Course, it ain’t nice to take money from widows and orphans, but sometimes you can’t help it.”
Hank laughed. “Hang in there, Gus. Maybe you’ll have better luck later on.”
At least one thing was certain. This ridge of seafloor had enough action to keep them both busy.
15
SOAKERS
GULF OF ALASKA, MID-SEPTEMBER 1982
The sky darkened around eight, but on this first day they still had a mile of longline hooks to work from the final set. By now the sight of halibut thrashing in the checkers raised no more grins.
Hank had long since entered the system. He did it responsibly, accepting himself as an inbreaker again after a dozen years at other fishing jobs. He cut chunks of frozen herring, then coiled a skate, then baited it. He submitted in good humor to Kodamas tutelage at the gutting table, although after the first slice through a halibut’s springy hide his hands remembered the steps to slice out gills and entrails as the Norwegians had once taught him so exactly.
But, “Ha, no no,” corrected Kodama.
It appeared that the Japanese observed a different order of incisions, even though the result remained the same. And, had the old Norwegians scraped the poke—the cavity left after evisceration—so repeatedly? All he remembered was a vigorous pass with a curved tool. “Then scraping scraping it is, Kodama-san.” His greater concern was lack of an essential piece of clothing made for steady gutting. How could he have forgotten wristers, the waterproof sleeves with elastic at both ends that locked against elbows and down around rubber gloves? Only Odds had brought a pair. Blood and gurry soon splatted far above the gloves to soak the sleeves of his plaid shirt. A day or two of this would rot the cloth.
Seth continued to grunt aside anyone who tried to relieve him at the roller. Clearly he thought he possessed the job, and just as clearly everyone else wanted his turn. Hank tried to cajole him away but made it no issue. Seth had indeed become adept. His performance turned dancelike in its rhythm. Now and then, when a halibut beyond fifty or sixty pounds nosed the surface, he’d mutter, “Some help here.” In the rush to grab gaffs and reach the rail, the others (except Kodama) crowded so tightly that Hank stepped aside. He would watch a flapping creature rise lightly under the multiple prongs in its head while his own arm itched to share the kick of the big fish.
At last a halibut worthy of all the gaffs broke the surface and Seth cried “Everybody! Everybody!” Its weight stretched Hank’s muscles across his back. The creature filled one of the checker bins. Two hundred pounds at least. It lay quiet and they clustered to admire it. Ham ran for his camera, “To show my mom.”
“What we call a soaker, those big ones,” said Odds.
Hank remembered the soaker that had once exploded into motion and broken his arm. “Stand clear. Treat him with respect.”
Terry moved to Seth at the roller. “Nice going, man. I’ll take over now.”
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“No, me, I can,” said Mo.
“It needs a certain touch,” said Seth smoothly, and eased them aside.
Suddenly the soaker arched its back with such energy that the whole flat body rose from deck, then thudded down. The tail thumped the boards in drumbeats, and smacked one board from its grooves. Kodama, without ceremony, picked up a club that had been provided as part of the gear, and pounded the fish’s head. At last the creature subsided.
“That’s what you’ve got to do,” said Odds. “But it’s a shame. Like the white man beating back the Indian people. All these years.”
“Eh?” Kodama looked from Odds to the club, and lowered it.
“Let’s keep that line coming in,” said Hank quickly.
Some time in the early afternoon Mo left work long enough to slap together bologna-onion sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise and mustard. He passed them around on paper napkins, with a wet towel for hands. Kodama stepped back from the one offered him, and the side of his upper lip rose. “Go on, try it,” said Mo. “It’s good.” Kodama slowly wiped his hands, and bit a piece near the crust as he might a cockroach. The frown remained as he started to put the rest aside, then tried another small bite, and continued.
Seth insisted on eating his sandwich with one hand while he continued to gaff at the roller. Suddenly he shouted, “Fuck!” A hook had sprung up on its gangion and lodged in his arm. The others clustered around him.
Hank brought his medical kit and examined it. The barb was embedded deep enough, and merely in flesh, that he decided to push it through by the shank rather than pull it out. “Somebody get me the wire cutter.”
“Eahhhh!” Seth yelled and yanked. The barb pulled free with a small patch of skin, and blood dripped to deck. Hank shrugged, and swabbed the wound with peroxide.
“Just wrap your bandage around it quick,” Seth snapped. “There’s a big one almost at the surface, I need to get back.”
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