With the boat freed of its tow Hank was able to set a course and maneuver around other vessels. “Everybody off deck,” he commanded over the speaker as the boat heeled and entered a more violent pattern of motion. Jody called out that they’d better eat while they could so come get it, and brought him hamburgers in buns.
Hank chewed while he checked the chart, and tried to be casual. “What do you know. Puale Bay’s the closest shelter.”
“Not again!” she joked, and took his arm. But her grip was tight. The place reminded both of the decision they needed to face.
Hank broadcasted the destination to his partners and whoever else might be listening. “I’ve been in before. Follow me if anybody wants. Poor anchorage and maybe willies, unstable rocky bottom, but it’s what we can reach. I remember a shelter from northers. I’m heading now toward that headland, Cape Aklek. It’s covered with cloud where I sit, but you’ll see it’s a protrusion on radar.”
The course took him across the swells. They lifted the boat and thumped it down, causing cascades of spray across the starboard rail. In seconds the spray had turned to ice.
Hank had faced extreme icing only twice before but enough to remember crew fatigue, and he called up Terry. “Pair off in two separate shifts to chip ice. Relieve each other every twenty minutes. But those gaffs won’t do it. We’ve got axes in the engine room.”
“Already brought ’em up.”
“Tell Tom out there to hold on to something. He might not know.”
“He’s not the one worries me. It’s Jace crawled into his bunk and says he won’t come out till he sees dry land.”
Hank swore to himself, and wondered how far he could act without committing a crime. He hoped that words would do it, and hardened his voice for emphasis. “Tell him I’ll kick into his goddamn bones if I need to come down. I’ll see that he never gets another berth anywhere. And ashore, he goes to court for mutiny.”
Terry left slowly, impressed, trying to keep straight all parts of the message.
“Mutiny, that’ll be a good one to try,” said Jody, keeping it light. “Maybe I should talk to him.”
“Just stay here with me!” Suddenly he was afraid for her. What if harm came to Jody? Or if they both went down and left three children ashore? The anger and uncertainty over the Tsurifune contract passed through his mind and out again. A relief, at least, to have an excuse to forget it for a while. He returned to his main concern.
Ice had begun to glaze the water. As the bow pushed through it an ominous sound arose like the crackling of glass. He drove with full power but they moved with increasing slowness. The smaller boats made way with even greater difficulty. Many had headed for the mother ships and were nestled around them like birds.
They passed Gus Rosvic’s smaller Thunder. It had already begun to linger sluggishly to starboard on each roll while the crew beat on the ice with little effect. Hank stopped, backed the Jody Dawn into waves that pitched him high, and came alongside to windward. “Gus! Follow in my lee,” he radioed. “Too bad you’re driving that kiddie cart.”
“Well, Hank,” came the calm reply, “it’s nice to know that tub of yours is good for something. I guess we’ll take you up on that.”
Terry appeared. He was bundled in thermal coveralls and oilskins. “It’s funny, Boss. I didn’t need to tell Jace those things. Tom, he went in, and come out of the cabin holding Jace by the collar like a dog or cat. Jace blubberin’ he’s got rights and he don’t want to die, and Tom all quiet telling him to pull it together.”
Hank was relieved but kept his voice even. “Make sure he does his share. Time to start chopping.”
Terry waved his arm in good cheer. “Goin’ out.”
Their passage went slower and slower. Visibility closed down to a circle only a few feet around, and Hank needed to rely on radar. His lee was helping Gus Rosvic’s crew cope with their ice. A big sheet dislodged and slipped off of the side it had been keeping unbalanced, and Gus’s boat stabilized. They passed other boats in trouble. One joined the convoy in Gus’s lee.
Suddenly cries rose from Hank’s own boat. He tensed and looked back to see a prone figure on deck. At least not overboard. “Boss!” called Ham up the stairs. “Jace is hurt.”
“A fuckup besides everything else,” Hank muttered. Jody left to see what she could do. “Stay off deck,” he called after her.
Jace’s wails and curses echoed from the galley when they carried him in. “Big chunk of ice banged off on his leg,” Terry reported. “It’s already swelling or punched out or something. What do we do, Boss? I’ve sent Ham and Tom back out ahead of their time to keep chopping.”
“Give him a damn rag to chew on. Wait. Take the helm.” He fetched the boat’s emergency kit from a locked drawer in his cabin. Indeed, when he hurried down to look, the man’s leg beneath clothes and oilskins had a protrusion like a bone. Jody had propped his head with a pillow. She looked up anxiously. “Hang in there,” Hank muttered, now concerned.
“Oh Jesus, Jesus! Do something! I’m gonna die!”
Hank opened the morphine container, glanced through the directions and cautions, called for water, and put one of the pills in the man’s mouth. “Swallow now, you’ll be okay.” He decided to leave Jace on the galley deck rather than carry him to a bunk and risk his falling out if the boat rolled. (Better access to escape if ice sank them; don’t think about it.)
Jody pulled blankets from bunks in the nearest cabin and wrapped them around Jace, then braced the leg with pillows, while Hank pondered what to do next. “Jody. You’ve got to steer us in, while I go on deck with Terry in this guy’s place.” She nodded.
“Don’t leave me!” screamed Jace when they left.
It was already past time for Ham and Tom to come in for relief, but they remained on deck chopping ice. In the wheelhouse Hank checked radar and showed Jody the course. At least three miles farther before they could hope for shelter, and their speed had become a crawl. He pulled out thermals from his cabin and put them on. “Just keep that course, honey,” he said, trying to be casual.
She gripped his arms and looked up into his face. “Be careful out there. I love you. And everything’s going to be all right even if we leave the Japanese, however we do it.”
He hugged her, then left quickly. Below in the galley he stepped around Jace—who watched him accusingly and whimpered as the drug took effect—and, with Terry, opened the door to the open deck.
Water hit his face like needles. He gasped at the cold after wheelhouse warmth, started toward the bundled figures of Ham and Tom, slipped, and fell. The tread on his boots gripped nothing. When he grabbed for support his gloves slicked on every handhold. Pull it together, he told himself, and prepared to joke about the fall if anybody had seen.
The ice was building highest to starboard where the wind and water hit broadside. Uneven weight had begun to slant the deck toward the water, so that a careless move could slide a man overboard. By the time Hank reached the others, shuffling now with bent knees to lower his center of gravity, he felt already winded. Ham and Tom both sweated with faces flushed and eyes watering. Ice drops hung from their eyebrows. He could see their fatigue after only minutes, already worse than that caused by normal rough hours on deck.
When Hank reached for the ax in Tom’s hand, Tom insisted, “I’m still good out here, Boss—Hank. I’m good.”
“No. It’s a long haul. Take your rest.”
“Been thinking, Boss,” panted Ham. “Drive short big-head nails in our soles to grip this ice.”
“Good idea. Go do it. Both of you.” Ham asked about Jace. “We’ll make shelter, then call Coast Guard. Leave him where he is. Save your energy for this. Go.”
Ice had smoothed but enlarged every object. The coated metal glowed darkly under deck lights. Terry and he agreed on separate places to chop. Alone, he hadn’t expected to feel at once so vulnerable. Bulky shapes enclosed him as never before when he was looking down from a heated wheel-house. A strange cott
ony wet in the air penetrated his nostrils and mouth with the substance of smoke. The slick underfoot required uncertain balances. A sea crashed over the rail against his back. It sent a shatter of pellets that clung everywhere, dripped for an instant, then froze, adding new ice.
He wrapped one leg around a support rail and pounded on one of the drumheads where ice had accumulated like a frozen waterfall. Down went the ax edge but it glanced off, nearly cutting him. Ice already firm. He drove harder and penetrated to metal, then drove into another point inches away and twisted. Off fell a chunk. It tried to bond to the slick deck even as he kicked it overboard. New ice had meanwhile formed on the flat ax head and the top of his gloves.
Drops pinged against his oilskins and attached. The sleeves had turned so stiff that they crackled when he swung. A few more strokes, and he was short of breath while sweat poured over his face and froze.
He stopped panting to look for the next place to attack, and felt the silence. Ice coating the shrouds had dampened even the sound of the wind, which now blew at a steady shriek that sounded distant. Even the smash of his ax was muffled. Out over the dark water, inside the circle of visibility, white birds swooped, carelessly at home. He shuddered. Only he intruded and, washed overboard, the silence would suck him in. Suddenly it hit him. My life is short and threatened, he thought. But whatever I decide makes no difference here: all this continues on. In twenty years who’s going to care what I do about a few catch reports? I need to chip ice here to survive Nature, but then I need to survive in my own world of men.
He called for Terry to help with ice on the hatch, and gladly watched the solidly real yellow-oilskinned figure duck-walk toward him. With action he’d no need to think. “You at one side, me at the other, maybe we can cut loose a big one.” They chopped energetically and dislodged a long heavy slab. Upended over the rail, it hit the water with a splash that sent up new spray to freeze on their faces.
When the relief shift reappeared after the agreed-upon twenty minutes, Hank took a few more swipes to prove he was okay, then gladly handed Tom the ax. He was panting and dizzy.
Back in the warm galley he slumped, a man once easy with multihour shifts horsing thousand-pound crab pots, now with hands shaking. Despite the heat close to the stove he still felt the ice in his lungs. And by his own decree he’d soon be back out in it. With an effort he picked up the nails and hammer left by Ham on the table, and raised one of his boots.
Jace, blanketed on deck, watched him with glassy, sullen eyes. “You don’t care nothing for a fellow human being. Leave me to die is all you care. Think I don’t hurt? Goin’ to tell the newspapers.” He began to whimper. Hank gave him another morphine pill and offered him a candy bar, but said nothing. He himself chewed candy, hoping for energy, then climbed to the wheelhouse for a quick check on Jody and a forced joke to reassure her, before going back into the ice.
At last they reached the safety of Puale Bay. It had already turned a black dark at four in the afternoon so that only radar told Hank where they were. Gus thanked him with a barrage of insults, and Hank, holding tight to support his shaking fatigue, bantered back. Then he picked his way, referring to charts, Coast Pilot, and memory, to the uneasy shelter against northwesterlies that he remembered from a decade before.
By now he had radioed the Coast Guard Air Station to report his injured man. “Is life in danger?” was the first question.
“A compound fracture, I think. The guy’s in real pain.”
“We can’t risk a chopper in this kind of storm unless it’s life-threat. Our vessels are on site in your vicinity but we’ve got boats sinking. Maybe later you can rendezvous with one. Meanwhile, connect you with a doc for advice.”
Hank had planned to reach shelter and anchor, but the anchor windlass on the bow had become a solid sculpture. Ludicrously, gutted fish were embedded in the glaze. It would take pounding to free it to the gears, energy none of them had left, so he decided to set watches for the night. Jody said without hesitation, “You guys sleep. I’ve got it.” Gus Rosvic’s boat hovered nearby, kept underway also with a frozen anchor.
First, Hank splinted Jace’s leg, coached by radio from the Kodiak hospital. Jody tried to soothe Jace with his head in her lap, while Jace let them know, moving in and out of his pain, that none of them cared a fuck what happened to a shipmate. The fatigued Tom chose to sit with him all night.
At two in the morning with the storm still roaring, they left sleep and shelter to meet a Coast Guard cutter back at the mouth of the bay. On the way, a gusting williwaw tore at the boat and heeled it thirty degrees. At least the sudden maverick wind knocked loose some ice. They transferred Jace, who cursed them and screamed at each jiggle of the stretcher.
Jody stood with Hank on deck. The wind wailed across mountaintops above them. She took his arm. “Our biggest decisions seem to come in this wild place. Are you ready to face it?”
“We could let it ride for a few more days,” he ventured.
“The more you do that the more you’re part of it.”
“I know. I know.” He knew that pretending it didn’t exist cheated the entire fishing community that he’d made his own. My dad with his talk of honor, he wondered. Had he ever faced such a decision? “We may be hurt.”
“I’ll live with you either way, Hank.”
Without pondering it further Hank climbed aboard the Coast Guard ship, asked for the officer in charge of fishing boat inspection, and reported possible logging irregularities aboard the Japanese black cod fleet, including his own jointly held longliner in the gulf. When he returned, he and Jody hugged each other silently.
“Poor Jace,” said Ham while they returned to shelter. “He don’t have many friends, he once told me.”
Terry shrugged. “Wonder why.”
Tom laughed with uncharacteristic harsh energy. “There’s always one like him. Chesapeake Bay, anywhere’s, even . . .” He paused, then said it. “Even ‘Nam especially. Fellow who works real hard when it suits him. Maybe even knows things, but not how much as he thinks. And the world’s always against him.”
“Then why’d you lose your sleep over him?” asked Terry.
“Because I was the one kicked him back on deck where he got hurt. But I’ve seen ’em before. Even how they’s the ones always gets hurt.”
By the time they returned to shelter their fatigue had lifted. Even though it was now three in the morning they decided to free the anchor windlass. Jody cheered them on from the wheelhouse window. Walking firmly in nailed boots they all slipped around to the bow together, Hank among them, and with shouts almost gleeful pounded the ice until piece by piece it broke apart.
The anchor rattled down. Hank flipped on the anchor lights, then hailed the watch on Gus Rosvic’s boat. Gus woke, and brought the Thunder to tie alongside. Both crews gathered in the Jody Dawns galley. They were all sleepy but too charged and bonded by their experience to disperse.
Hank, with action taken, felt both relaxed and numb. The decision had passed to others. He put his arm around Jody’s waist and she squeezed his hand.
“Too bad we didn’t each give ol’ Jace a good-bye kiss and drink his breath,” sighed Terry. “I could sure use one.”
Ham went into the cabin left by Jace and came back grinning with a pint of whiskey. “When I packed together his things, this fell out. Must’ve forgot he had it.”
“Yaaay!” cried Terry. “You old thief.”
“No. He’d’ve drunk it if I’d told him. And with that pain stuff Boss gave him, it might have made him sick.”
After a silence Tom ventured, “Wouldn’t hurt us now.”
“Sure wouldn’t,” said Zack of the Thunder,:
Jody laughed as both crews turned to their skippers. The two had strict rules against booze on board. Hank and Gus exchanged looks. Gus’s lined face remained set, but his eyebrow flicked and he made no objection. “Well,” Hank reasoned aloud, keeping it serious, “A pint among this bunch . . .” He turned to Ham. “You found i
t. Take your swig, then pass it around.”
The whiskey wasn’t best quality, but it warmed and comforted. An hour later, with the bottle emptied, both crews were back in their bunks asleep.
25
FISH HOLD
SHELIKOF STRAIT, FEBRUARY 1984
“Well, now,” bantered Gus Rosvic next afternoon by radio. “I can’t say much about a man needs to bring his wife along to teach him how to fish.” The two boats had separated after Gus’s men freed their windlass, and now both crews knocked off the remaining ice from the storm.
“Too bad,” Hank replied. “Jody here says you’d know twice as much today if you’d ever brought your lady along.” Jody beside him in the wheel-house raised an eyebrow and handed him a piece of an apple she was slicing.
Outside the wind still blew, and occasionally it screamed down the mountains in sudden williwaws. Several other boats had also entered the bay. With erratic winds, and a rocky bottom an anchor could slip on, each needed to maintain a wide swinging circle from the others, but they were safe at anchor as long as their watches stayed alert.
All radio talk had been sober on the morning after the Coast Guard reported three boats rolled over, top-heavy with ice, and two men lost on one of them. More vessels would probably have gone down if they had not crowded into the lees of the large mother ships, as did Hank’s fishing partners Joe and Lars. When Hank and Gus received news of the disasters they gave it the gravity it deserved, but hours had now passed; it might be days before fishing could safely resume, and their CB talk had turned casual.
“Well, Hank,” Gus continued, “I’ve got no problem with all your lady teaches you. Hello, Jody, if you’re listening. But I never did get straight who else gives you the word. Jody! Tell the old man maybe he’d better look over his buddies in Tokyo and figure where their knives is hid. I’ve got sources in some back-door places and they ain’t always accurate, but . . . Seems two years ago—that’s how long it takes the bureaucrats in Washington to get their minds together—two years ago the Coast Guard boarded a Jap trawler in the Bering and found some papers they’d hid. All of it written in Jap, if you know what I mean. I guess that way they figured nobody would notice.”
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