Raiders

by William B. McCloskey

  The director interrupted sharply in Japanese.

  “Father tells me to add regrets, that you and wife were forced to move from your home. He knows this caused you surely pain and disruption.”

  Hank inclined his head gravely. It made less difference now that it was over, but he knew that he’d wanted the old man to be innocent.

  “Further, then, as regards your vessel, Jody Dawn—Father is shamed that his son refused negotiation which might have allowed repossession of your vessel, a concession which also might have been promised you. However, he accepts full guilt because he is director, and he failed to be alert to the affairs of his company.” Shoji had been speaking coolly, but now his voice faltered. “Therefore, on behalf of the company that bears my father’s name, and his father’s . . . and mine . . . we . . . beg forgiveness.”

  During Shoji’s speech the director’s eyes burned into Hank’s with a red-rimmed Kabuki intensity.

  Hank felt a stir of excitement. With Oddmund’s offer from the native corporation . . . “Then, sir, there’s a way for me to buy back my boat if I find the money?”

  Slowly the director shook his head. “Vessel has been sold.” He picked his words in a low voice. “I cannot to make return of your vessel.”

  “We’re a small company, Hank,” added Shoji, his self-control regained. “Not Taiyo or Marubini. Loss of Alaska fish is ruin unless we find ways. Thus the catch log. Thus taking profit on your boat when such procedure observed letter of original contract.”

  The director held up his hand. “Do not shame us further with excuse!”

  Hank prepared to make a small speech of forgiveness in the director’s formal Japanese style. All done was done, and from the old director’s appearance, Hank believed him. They’d made nothing of his own betrayal of them. Both had accepted their fault. It was honor of sorts. But first he said, “I accept what’s happened. But I want this of you.” He turned to Shoji, whose face had become nearly as masklike as his father’s. “Mr. Yukihiro Kodama has also been shamed by what you made him do. Promise that you’ll keep him fishing master on one of your vessels but that you’ll never again require him to cheat.”

  “Hank, the man’s a mere worker.”

  The old man spoke angrily in Japanese.

  Shoji sighed. “Agreed, Hank. So long as the company exists with fishing vessels.”

  Hank regarded him evenly. “Is this one I can trust you on?”

  Shoji’s voice chilled. “Yes, Hank.”

  The director spoke to his son again in Japanese. He rose with a determined expression but his appearance startled Hank. How frail his body appeared! Shoji began to argue urgently. He had lost his cool veneer. The director was clearly back in charge.

  Shoji turned to Hank and his tone became distant. “My father is now acting as if we are still in the wealthy days and I have continued to advise no. But I’ll obey him.” He went into another room and returned with a long picture mounted behind Plexiglass. “Father decides this to be yours.”

  The picture consisted of dimly-colored cross-hatches placed ingeniously at different intersecting angles.

  “From what you’ve told me, Hank, I don’t expect you’ll appreciate such a work. The artist is Jasper Johns, and the work has its price. Greater value with time, probably, so I suggest that you don’t run off and sell it right away. Its title is Usuyuki from a famous Kabuki drama, since Father remembered that you liked Kabuki screen print, thirty colors.”

  Where, thought Hank with wild humor, could you find Kabuki or anything else but pick-up sticks in such a picture? Yet, the work had a strange appeal. He bowed to the director. “I can’t accept it, sir. It’s nice. Interesting . . . Beautiful, I guess. But not my—”

  “It’s now settled,” Shoji continued. “Attorney Rider has already been told to draw up papers which transfer ownership. You own a property that I suggest you place in the hotel safe until you take it home.”

  “No. I really—”

  “Stop,” said the director in a voice suddenly strong. “You must take it as gift, Mr. Crawford.” He held out a hand that trembled. “Stay survived, Mr. Crawford. Now you must take artwork, please, and go. I am tired.”

  When Hank phoned Jody to tell her what had happened, she said with light gravity, “Oh, you boys and your honor. If you’d only think to do it right at the beginning, think of all the thrashing around you’d save yourselves. I hope you damn well put the thing in a safe?”

  Hank at last found Swede outside a meeting room where testimony was droning on. He approached him boldly. “Still afraid to be seen with me?”

  “Who wouldn’t be, Crawford?” said Swede in surprising good humor. “How’s it feel to have your tail trimmed back?”

  “Some of it I’ll never forgive, but I’m getting over it. In part, thanks to you, I believe. And now you’ve been shafted.”

  “I’ll manage.” Swede gestured toward the meeting room. “They’re held up in there on habitat, and everybody’s got to have his say. A Coast Guard friend whispered to me that later today there might be a surprise topic to interest you and me both, so we’ll stay close. But I’m dry.”

  Swede’s returned to booze? Hank worried, but exclaimed that he’d buy, glad that they were talking again. They went to an open café area within sight of the corridor that led to the meeting room’s doors. He was relieved when Swede ordered lemonade, and did the same.

  Swede sipped his drink. “Can’t forgive when all’s fair in war?” His hair, now nearly white but still full, was less shaggy than usual, probably from a rare pre-Council barber visit. “Some small and mid-sized Japanese fishing companies are going under. They couldn’t all diversify like the giants. The Tsurifunes are survivors, though.”

  Suddenly the doors of the meeting room banged open and people streamed out to form knots in the corridor. One group of several Japanese, Shoji Tsurifune among them, circled Justin Rider. All their expressions were intense. A group of Americans clustered near a reporter who scribbled notes while he talked to a Coast Guard officer.

  “I expect that we missed it after all,” said Swede.

  Nels Tormulsen of the Seattle halibut schooner fleet strode past and stopped, his lean face suppressing a grin. “Finally! We’ve caught ’em!” He circled his arm toward the bartender for drinks. “You men missed what they’ll talk about for the rest of the year.”

  Three scotches arrived. Swede pushed away the glassful placed in front of him and asked what had happened.

  “The Japs are finally caught is what!” Nels waved a printed statement. “Read this!” He waved it again toward a group of fellow halibut fishermen from Seattle who cheered, then handed it to Hank.

  The statement, signed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, informed the Council of documents proving a conspiracy among certain Japanese fishing organizations since at least 1980. The documents had been seized from the Japanese stern trawler Hamazen Maru Number 35 in November 1982 and subsequently also from the Japanese longliner Eikyu Maru Number 82 in March 1983.

  Hank skimmed the statement. It declared in part:

  The documents appear to include instructions, plans, and policies which outline, implement, and direct organized schemes aimed at manipulating observer coverage and the “best blend” determination of catch. The documents also reveal an effort by Japanese vessels to evade and thereby defeat our at-sea enforcement . . . According to the translated documents, tactics included purposeful reductions in catch . . .

  Another fisherman came up, and Nels eased the statement from Hank’s hands to show it to him. Usually a deliberate drinker who took his time over a glass, Nels finished his scotch in rapid gulps. “The chairman’s called a half-hour recess to clear the air. Too many of us started talking at once. Everybody says, cut all Jap allocations, not just black cod, zap, now! Everybody!” He toyed with Swede’s rejected glass of scotch, then pushed it toward Hank. “Going back in. This is too good to miss a minute. The question I want answered is, why’d it take the dam
n bureaucrats two years to speak up from when they caught the first cheater?”

  “I expect,” said Swede in his calm, dry voice, “that they first needed to translate, and then to decide how to handle it. After all, Japan’s a military ally. Fish isn’t the world’s only priority.”

  “While for two years they stole our fish from under us and we didn’t have to let them?” Nels voice hardened. “I forgot. You work for them.”

  “Swede watches the whole picture,” Hank interjected quickly. “None of it’s simple. Thanks for the drink.”

  Nels joined his buddies, and Hank watched again the knot of Japanese. They seemed smaller than ever—vulnerable even: short men, all dressed like funeral directors. Shoji’s head rose above the others. His face was tense and pale.

  “What’s going to happen now, Swede?”

  “Small companies could go under. Tsurifune? Middle-sized. Nobody turned them in except you. The documents that prove they scammed are safe somewhere in Japan, except for a few slipped from a box that there’s now no reason to show anybody.”

  “You seem pretty understanding. No grudges?”

  “For saving their own skins? I found them honest except for this. The Harvard boy learned the American way too well, then pushed it where he could. Maybe not again. As best I can tell, and I’ve watched from inside, they weren’t part of the conspiracy your happy friend’s jumping over. Shoji was merely picking off a dumb American who didn’t read his contract.”

  “Thanks for that. But they dumped you. What’ll you do?”

  “I was getting tired of little Japs looking over my shoulder. Mary and I get along best when I’m away, but I’ll find something in Seattle to keep me out of the house.”

  Before the Council members ended their session, they voted unanimously to recommend “that the Department of State not allocate any more fish to Japan to catch off Alaska.”

  Hank flew back to Kodiak holding the picture wrapped in newspapers. He had never owned anything valuable that was smaller than a boat. What was he to do with it? he wondered. Rent some kind of big safe to keep it in?

  “All right to sit with you, Hank?” It was Oddmund. His native causes at Council had kept him in different hearings than Hank so they had only nodded in passing. Odds offered to make more room by taking Hank’s bulky flat package to a luggage compartment, but Hank refused; Odds then asked about his one-trip shipmate, Kodama.

  “Back in Japan with his family, doing fine,” said Hank, and elaborated no further. He wondered what Kodama would say now about the white man’s oppression that the two had so belabored.

  Odds gravely reiterated his debt to Hank for saving his life. By now Hank accepted that this would happen again and again, and he’d developed a gentle rejoinder to keep it as brief as possible. “But Hank,” Odds continued earnestly, “if you ever need—”

  “Still lend me the money to buy back my Jody Dawn?” said Hank, half teasing.

  “We’d find a way.”

  The response gave Hank a surge of excitement. Maybe not over yet, after all! But he followed with a more immediate idea. During his time slinging fish at the new native plant only months before, which had enabled him to pull himself together, the place had been managed loosely. “Tell you what to do for me, Odds.” Before the flight landed, Hank had brokered the job of plant manager for Swede Scorden if Swede wanted it, and had made Odds eager to have a man of such caliber.

  When he stepped off the plane in late afternoon it was already dark. A cold, clear wind hit his face. Summer had ended, along with its fogs and occasional warm, calm days at sea. The time of steady storms and long nights was moving back in. By taking over the Adele Has his own, he’d be back on a boat of modest size, almost back where he’d started.

  Jody and the children met him. They crowded Odds into the station wagon also and drove him home, waved to his wife at the door, then headed along the flats to their own home. The children each had things to tell him. Pete had learned a song that he sang twice. Henny had become eligible for junior basketball, and Dawn had a new favorite horse.

  Jody shook her head when she saw the picture. “Which end’s supposed to be up? Well, it’s interesting. Has a kind of glow. I suppose we could hang it on a wall somewhere. But vertical or horizontal?”

  With Jody in charge of the art and taking its possession casually, Hank was able to forget his worry. He needed to rig the Adele H for a winter fishery and earn a living for his crew and himself. Halibut and black cod were through for the season, but the big steel-framed pots formerly used to catch king crabs were being rigged to catch newly abundant true cod around the island. It was a fishery with a fraction of king crab’s drive and income, although it would provide a living on the water.

  “If I should buy Jones Henry’s boat from Adele,” he asked Jody cautiously, “do you think she’d be offended if I changed its name?” Jody agreed to ask.

  Seth had flown to California after quietly passing to Swede the single incriminating document he’d salvaged from the Puale Bay. “Wish me luck,” he said expansively to Mo and Terry, covering his unease. Meeting him, he hoped, was the divorced Marion who had once jilted him. “At least he’s got a maybe there,” said Terry wistfully, waving him off.

  While waiting around to fish again, Mo and Ham reveled in idleness. Since they had no boat on which to sleep, each moved in with his girlfriend. At nights after the girls finished work at the supermarket, they became a noisy foursome in town. Terry and Tom Harris took over Seth’s rooms while he was away. Although their restless natures came from different causes, they both found work and welcomed it to keep busy, even in the barnlike, unheated shed where they loudly welded and netted cod traps with other fishermen on the beach. For Tom it was one more Alaskan adventure.

  Tom remained unsure of his course. Oyster season had begun again in Chesapeake Bay. Part of him missed it. But he feared that if he went back, even calling it a mere visit, he’d end up committed to shaft tongs with his dad and be stuck again. A phone call home left him relieved and sad. Captain Bart, deaf enough to use the phone seldom, shouted “That you, Tom? Time for arster and I bet you miss it, son.” His mother took over the conversation with her calm practicality. “If you’re content for once, you stay there, Tom. He’ll be all right.” The captain still went most mornings to Miss Ruby’s, and now even rode out occasionally with Captain Billy. “Those two old goats,” said his mother. “They’ve decided they can stand each other again. Gets him out from under my feet some days, thank goodness. There’s a man still don’t belong in a house.” Tom was grateful to end the call with a laugh.

  Seth phoned Hank from San Diego. He had decided to stay south for the winter. “Now that I’ve grandfathered myself into fishing black cod, I need a break from shitty weather.”

  “At least one of us has sense,” Hank joked. He asked about the elusive Marion.

  “Things not going bad, not bad,” was all Seth would say.

  Fishing with pots required less crew than longlining, and Seth’s withdrawal made it feasible for Hank to keep Tom aboard. The others gathered at the boat and began converting gear from longline to pot-launch. Jones Henry’s old king crab pots stood in a high square stack among others on open ground. Weather had faded the pink plastic buoys inside each but they remained firm. The straps and lines needed to be tested and some renewed. It was a week’s steady work.

  One day Hank, working over the stack with the rest, looked across the harbor. There into port glided his Jody Dawn. The hated letters for American Victory were now cleanly spelled out, with no trace beneath of the boat’s christened name. Dark-brown rust spots pocked her black hull and white superstructure, and honey-brown rust streaked the mast. Black exhaust astern showed that the engine was burning oil. The sight gave him a wave of sick anger.

  His malaise stayed for the rest of the day. “Watch the fuck there, line’s expensive!” he barked when Tom inadvertently cut a strap too short and needed to toss it. The dark mood followed him home where h
e growled at Pete for pummeling him too hard in play, and then at Dawn for talking too much.

  “Snap out of this,” said Jody after the children had gone to bed.

  He told her what he had seen. “The boat I put together myself, and now some careless asshole is killing her!”

  “Oh, fishermen and their damn boat mistresses! Since you can’t change this, Hank, get over it.” He acknowledged gloomily, and apologized. “Speaking of boats and their lady names,” Jody continued, “Adele phoned today and I asked her. She laughed and said, ‘Sure, tell him to put some other floozy’s name there in place of mine.’ She went on to say that ‘Poor Daddy, rest his soul’ would be so pleased you’re taking over his boat he’d forgive you. Make of that what you want. But Hank, I’m tired of being a name on a boat myself, so no more Jody-boats, please. Keep your wife and boat separate.”

  “Then what about Dawn? Or Danielle? She’d like that.”

  “Why not the ‘Henny-Pete’? Or the ‘Jones Henry’? Or maybe just the ‘Hank’?” she asked wickedly.

  “Be serious.”

  On the night before departure, Jody prepared a big steak dinner for them all. There was plenty of beer, and red wine for those who wanted it. Terry and Tom brought sleeping bags and planned to stay over. Mo and Ham arrived with their girlfriends, and lustily declared their intentions back in town on this big final night, while the girls held their men’s muscular arms and giggled. It became a noisy, happy occasion, in the house they all once thought had been lost.

  Jokes were many about the long Japanese picture on the wall. Jody had decided to hang it vertically. Everybody had an opinion. Word had passed around that it was valuable although nobody knew the degree. Terry declared he could do the same job with a box of dry macaroni for three bucks. Mo said he could do it even better running his toes through mud. It became a contest to see who could duplicate the picture best with what.