Raiders

by William B. McCloskey

  “You’re relieved,” said Hank firmly. “Good job.”

  Odds moved in to the roller before Terry or Mo could race from Seth’s side.

  Birds by now had become a presence. They rode the water, rising and dipping on the swells, and surrounded each toss of offal to peck until it sank. After Odds had served two hours at the roller he declared, “My arm don’t mind a rest.” He relinquished his spot to Mo, and took it upon himself to name the birds for Kodama. “The white ones, they’re gulls. And those gray ones? Fulmars. Those little ones that skit but don’t settle? Kittiwakes, you see ’em all over the cliffs in places back home.” Several placid brown birds larger than the rest rode the water among the others, seldom competing for food. “You call them gooneybirds.”

  Seth listened with growing impatience. “They’re albatross. If you’d asked me I could have told you all the rest too, and even given you their fancy names. From a book I have on the birds.” He turned directly to Kodama. “Glad to lend it to you. If you’d want to look.” It was the first time he had addressed Kodama in more than monosyllables.

  Both men paused, surprised. “Yes? Thank you,” said Kodama.

  Rubber bands now secured a wrap of waterproof plastic around Seth’s bandage. He had accepted the need to share in the less glamorous baiting and gutting, swayed by Terry’s soothing praise for his performance at the roller, although he dismissed with a glare any attempt at instruction from Kodama. In truth, the muscles in his gaffing arm had begun to pop and complain long before the lodged barb gave him an excuse to quit.

  “Like I said,” Seth continued, “the big ones are albatrosses. And they’re the black-footed albatrosses, one of three kinds around here but the kind most common. Still deep shit if you kill one. I don’t just mean bad luck.” A white mass splatted on his shoulder from above. He flicked it off his oilskin jacket and in good humor called to the birds overhead. “I don’t begrudge you fuckers our garbage, but lay off my head! You hear?”

  They heard a watery snort. “Hey!” yelled Mo, now at the roller. “You bugger! You bugger!” He leaned far over, banging his gaff. “You see that? Some seal or sea lion here by the line. Bugger’s got one of our halibut in his mouth. Just up and chewed it off the hook.”

  Hank had been watching the sleek sea lion head for minutes, debating what to do. Only a few years before he’d have shot it without compunction. Now the greenies were raising a fuss and Congress might already have passed a law that he’d heard they were debating. But he said nothing as Seth, with an oath, returned from below with a rifle and fired directly at the creature’s head. Blood left a pool as the head disappeared.

  “And tell your buddies,” called Seth.

  “Nice shot,” said Mo. “Guess he learned.”

  Odds shook his head. “Hadn’t ought to’ve done that. He’d come to the Lord’s table. He’s one of God’s creatures.”

  Seth turned, exasperated. “So’s a fuckin’ halibut a God’s whatever. But I see you zapping them after they come to eat your bait.”

  “That’s only a fish.”

  “Not one of God’s creatures?”

  “It’s different.” But Odds looked away from Seth’s challenging grin. “Also maybe there’s a law same as for gooneybirds not to shoot other things like a sea lion.”

  Terry wagged his head. “Give the greenies all of their way and we’ll get a law not to kill any fish besides. Free to hook ’em and eat ’em so long as they don’t die.”

  “You ever heard,” continued Seth, “of sea lions bringing anything but trouble? Albatross are good luck so that law’s good. But one to protect fuckin’ marauding sea lions? Only some bureaucrat who’s never fished would be that stupid.”

  “It is different,” said Terry quietly to Odds. “Birds are nice even if they sometimes steal our bait. They don’t steal halibut that people need to eat. I mean, the halibut’s why we’re here. So let the sea lions go catch their own fish, not steal ours.”

  Odds, normally sure of himself, glanced uncertainly from the dispersing blood on the water to the blood that streamed from the gutting table.

  They returned to work. A steady run of halibut, interspersed with less-welcome cod and the roundly cursed spiny redfish, wiped moralities from the conversation, although both Odds and Terry continued to think of it.

  Odds, taking his turn in the hold, snapped the oilskin hood tight under his chin, climbed down the slick ladder, and jumped into the mass of gutted halibut. He slipped through them up to his knees before grounding on solid ice chips. His head touched the low overhead and his breath frosted at once. The chill of the fish bodies reached his skin before he sucked each leg free. Sliding himself over to a bin already stacked halfway up with carcasses layered in ice, he began to pull over the new ones. It was necessary to stow the halibuts with their dark side down and the white side up, so the blood left inside would seep down into the dark skin and not stay in the meat. He did it carefully, and shoveled ice from another bin between each fish.

  It was confusing, he pondered. All God’s creatures had a right to the fruits of the earth. But everybody knew He’d put man at the top. And He’d given man the need to eat things in order to live. Father Petroff would have the answer, so no use thinking about it any more before he could get to church and ask.

  Kodama’s head appeared in the hatch opening against the sky. “White side top. White side top.”

  “I know that.”

  “Ah.”

  “So does everybody else.”

  “Ah.” The head disappeared.

  The Japanese man was getting to be a pain, Odds decided. And a disappointment. Not the companion he’d expected for talking about the white man’s injustice. He’d maneuvered to be side by side with him at the gutting table, but the man now only grunted at a conversation attempt, or pointed out something wrong with the way he’d cut into the poke. Had it been only booze that afternoon at the airport that had made them seem like brothers? The deception again of booze. Well. With all this fish he was making good money and some of it could go to God’s work along with the rest for family. And it was nice to be with old shipmates working hour by hour, not having to make decisions. No worry about how to spend corporation money, maybe feeling important but also scared he’d make wrong decisions and see everybody’s eyes turn accusing. This way he’d sleep when he had the chance, because nothing on Hank’s boat would make him need to answer to his people. He thrust the shovel hard into the bin’s high mound of ice to loosen chips frozen together. Answer to nothing except working for a white man. The thought made him shovel harder.

  On deck, Terry grabbed squares of herring and punched them securely over the barb to the hook, then tucked the hook to hang inside the coiled line. If you didn’t have to kill things to get along, he mused, that would be great. But nobody except maybe hippies were going to settle for eating only vegetables. And what would you do without a reason to go to sea? His legs liked that shift of weight to weight as the boat rolled. Land was okay, missed after a while, and the women, of course, but not for all the time. His hands continued baiting but he looked over the water, glad for its busy chops and whitecaps always in motion. Suddenly he cried, “Lookit!” pointing beyond the boat.

  “Oh man, gotta get my camera!” Ham doused hosewater against the blood on his oilskins and hurried inside.

  A plume shot from the water, followed by a blocky black shape that rose and fell. Farther off, another plume spouted.

  Kodama became excited. “Iro! Iro!”

  All work halted while they watched two sperm whales. When the boxlike heads dipped to a distant huff sound, the bodies, sleek as submarines, skimmed up along the surface. Moments later the heads disappeared. Then, in perfect symmetry, two fluked tails rose dripping and glided down into the water, and the ocean rolled empty again except for birds riding the chops.

  Kodama had begun to breathe heavily. “Special fortune,” he declared. “Whale special good fortune.”

  Ham arrived back on deck
with his camera. “Where? Where?”

  “Better not be that late for your wedding!” Terry laughed.

  “Whose wedding?”

  “You’re right, you turkey. Who’d ever marry you?”

  “Shut up and wait,” muttered Seth. “Maybe they’ll come back.” But the ocean remained empty, and finally Hank returned them to work.

  Odds had brought two pairs of the waterproof wrist protectors. When he saw his shipmates at dinner soaking their shirtsleeves in disinfectant he observed gravely, “I guess nobody bothered to think ahead.” He pulled the second set of wristers from his seabag and laid them on the galley table for the rest to share. “I always think it’s good to think ahead.”

  “Mighty nice of you,” said Hank for them all.

  By the end of the first day’s final set, everyone had served at least one brief turn at the roller and each other job, and all except Kodama had snagged a line or lost a fish at least once. They hosed off, and had turned in by midnight. Not until six would Hank rouse them to work again. Go easy, he decided, since they were pushing muscles unused for a while. Tendons in his right arm spasmed now and then from a single gaffing shift. Around 3 AM he woke to glance from his cabin door and saw Seth pacing the galley, massaging his arm also.

  During the days that followed, although they fished only some sixty miles offshore in the northernmost Pacific, land became more a memory than real dirt and stone. Often it showed only as a volcano’s smoke plume meandering above clouds on the horizon. Occasionally, it appeared through parted clouds in glimmers of snow sheet on a volcanic cone. That is, if any of them bothered to raise their eyes from deck to look, aside from Hank who checked his bearings when visibility allowed. They all watched the other boats around them, however. The Hinda Bee remained a few miles off port, too far away for shouts but within prime range for CB banter.

  The weather varied from storming to glassy. Hank recorded it in his log along with the position and yield of each set, all of it information that blended into a continuum of bait, hooks, fish, guts, and ice. Each man had his own catalog of sores and aches. None of them could have said with certainty anymore whether the hooking of Seth’s arm occurred in the afternoon of day one or two, or whether the maddening run of useless little spiny redfish happened in the morning or in the afternoon of this day or that, or when a snag and parted line had cost wasted hours while Gus Rosvic offered his crew’s cheerful sympathies over the CB. On that latter night, whichever one it was, they’d decided to make up for the loss by laying an extra set which in practice left them only a wink of sleep. On any given day, except by checking his log, Hank could barely remember when exactly, only some few hours before, say, a steady run of hundred-pound halibut had boosted their luck, except maybe hadn’t it coincided with, say, a shift from calm to seas bubbling foot-high across deck?

  Under Kodama’s direction they had adjusted the scarecrow buoy. It bounced far enough beyond the point where the line sank astern that it shooed off most birds. Only an occasional mess of soaked feathers came up later on a hook. They could find nothing similar to discourage sea lions. Seth kept his rifle handy. Even Odds accepted the killing, although he’d rush first to throw some object at the obliviously gobbling creature and yell, “Get away before it’s too late!”

  One stormy afternoon, as they worked their routines while waves pushed across deck around their feet and smacked Hank’s face at the roller, Terry exclaimed “Oh, phew!” The others yelled agreement.

  “All” from Kodama.

  Hank stopped the gurdy with his knee and stepped back. A dark house of a whale reared from the water mere feet off the starboard rail. A big eye on the side of the head facing them, calm and distant, looked them over. Water sluiced from barnacles that clung to the whale’s wrinkled skin. Spray spouted from the small round blowhole atop the head and blew across deck. It smelled like rotten fish cooked and rotted further.

  “Phew, phew,” cried Mo and Ham in unison.

  “Hey, stinky,” called Terry, and ran to the rail looking up. “Come closer and let me pet you.”

  “No, no,” cried Kodama. “Do not touch.”

  “Yes. Better not,” said Hank. He kept his voice calm. “Mo and Ham, don’t jerk or run, but fast as you can get all survival suits from the wheel-house.” He reached for Seth’s rifle stacked in the lee of the housing, not sure what he’d do. Moby Dick, he thought. Capsized boat.

  Odds dropped to his knees. None of the others noticed.

  Seth stood with legs apart. “Nobody shoot, nobody yell.” His voice was firm but his grin, usually sardonic, had spread in wonder and pleasure. “He’s just lookin’ us over to say hi, stink and all. Hey, fellah, how’s it going?”

  As quickly as he had come, the whale slipped again beneath the surface. The water around him splattered high and slurped into a hole, then settled back into orderly waves.

  Kodama continued to stare, his whole body leaning toward the spot. “Special lucky,” he repeated.

  Ham appeared with an armful of big orange rubber bags. “Take ’em quick so’s I can get my camera.”

  “You doodle,” said Terry. “You’ll never make your wedding on time.” His gaze returned to the empty water. “Oh, man. Did you catch his eye checking us out? Like a person. That was something, to be here, and see that.”

  Odds had regained his feet. “I think, maybe . . .” His voice slowed further with each word. “Maybe that’s what. . . facing God is like. Maybe we . . .just now . . .”

  “Bull. Bull!” Seth snapped. “Smell like that? All we just saw was Nature. Down our throats.”

  “God’s Nature. His very eye.”

  “Knock it off.” Pause. “Give us a break.”

  Suddenly none of them felt like saying more. They returned to the work of catching halibut.

  Hank resumed his position at the roller. No reason to think it, but the whale had seemed to look through him. He felt shaken loose even though his hand was steady. He’d been closest and the whale had exploded at him, that explained it. And he’d already pulled in big fish for nearly two hours. He was tired.

  As the days passed, the muscles of Hank’s gaffing arm strengthened, although the ache increased after each turn at the roller. Everything about him hurt. And, since he held off using Odds’s precious donated wristers (which any responsible halibut skipper should have remembered to stock), cold seawater trickled in to soak the insulation of his rubber gloves and hold his fingers in chill. Fingers became frozen claws halfway through a roller hitch. There was something to be said for skippers staying in the wheelhouse. Old Gus on the Hinda Bee did, to judge from binocular scans. But Gus was decades older, older even than Jones Henry would have been. He himself was still young at thirty-six. Well, dammit, thirty-eight.

  Hank at the rail found himself daydreaming of sleep while he stared down at the incoming line. At least the line sometimes vibrated to cause little eddies at the surface before a fish of any size appeared. But nothing could be counted on. He began to tense in spite of himself at any white shape that flapped as it rose from the dark, then to feel ashamed at his relief for each hook that came up bare. (It appeared that the new circle hooks held the fish more securely and less deep in the throat than the traditional J hooks, but he’d allowed the guys to be casual in alternating them on the line so he couldn’t be sure.) Hoisting big fish pulled at his mostly healed shoulder, that was the problem. And there was no way to relax between pulls. Sometimes a mere cod showing its belly flashed as bright as a halibut soaker. And sometimes a fifty pounder came up with its brown-green side so blended with the water that it appeared to be nothing until the instant when a gaff in the head meant the difference between catch and escape.

  Thus, no sign or signal promised relief from staying as alert as a coiled spring. A good skipper made his own rules and kept them. So it was even more important that he, after jumping into the work cycle like a green kid, let nobody catch him slacking.

  A sudden wave would slap him and jerk the line
loose at the roller. A flying hook would catch his gaff and pull him back before he could free it. He absorbed all into his pace while cold water trickled inside his hood. At least he’d soon struck a rhythm at the roller, swinging up fish, then with gaff banging old bait from hooks, while his eyes stayed fixed on the water.

  Flying hooks had ripped into his oilskin sleeves. All the crew’s sleeves (except for Odds’s and Kodama’s) soon bore telltale patch tapes, although the hooking of Seth’s arm had cautioned them against the worst. Hank’s only game there was to keep his own rips fewer than the others’. He even once squeezed two into the same patch so that it appeared as only one. He might be fooling only himself, but still. . .

  One day he braced his left hand on the rail, leaned down so close to the water that spray salted his lips, and drove the gaff smartly into a halibut just emerging. Let it be a nice small one, he thought. Instead, it thrashed heavily enough to strain his muscles from arm to back as, with a false show of ease, he neatly swung it over the rail and thudded it into the checkers. The angry creature gave a final flap just at the chute that twisted his wrist. Almost at once, since the gurdy kept pulling line, there came the next halibut, and it was already partly out of the water, dangling in air and big enough to thrash free. He needed to set an example of steady pacing, so he leaned down quickly and drove in his gaff, despite the pain.

  But, suddenly: in truth this was where he was meant to be! He controlled a gleeful shout.

  “Need more to be training training.” Kodama stood beside him with the strong judo frown unlike the frowns of recent days. His face bore the same gleam as back on the Tokyo judo mat when his manner changed from office flunky to warrior. “Go, Captain. My work here now. You go be captain.”

  “Not time yet. Two and a half hours each of us. I’m okay, thanks.”

  “Ha. But radio calling captain, and only number two man is now talking.” He firmly took the gaff. “Go. Go.”

  Seth, in the wheelhouse, was bantering with Gus Rosvic on the Hinda Bee like skipper to skipper. “Right, right, I hear you. Things are tough. Women and foreigners, like you say, good old days forgotten, I don’t know.” He saw Hank and his voice lightened. “Up the bets, eh? Well, sure, if you’re so anxious to lose your money. I’ll ask the others. Hey, here’s Mr. Hank himself.”