Raiders
Page 47
The children liked the game especially. Young Pete caught the spirit and started laughing with such noisy glee that Jody needed to calm him down. “I see a princess in it,” announced Dawn. “Then you’re even nuttier than I thought,” said Henny. “It’s just a lot of little lines.”
Yet, thought Hank as the blaze from logs in the fireplace flickered a remarkable life into the picture, he liked it more and more. Maybe it did have some of the orderly slam-bang of Kabuki. He wished that the thing wasn’t valuable.
The phone rang and Jody answered it, then soberly touched Hank’s arm and told him to take the call in their bedroom.
It was Swede Scorden. His dry voice was level and quiet. “I just thought you might want to know. The old director went back home to Japan and shot himself.”
“Why would he do that?” gasped Hank, knowing why even as he hoped he was wrong.
“Old-fashioned Japanese honor, I’d expect. The word is, he did it with some ceremony.” Hank struggled for words. He felt that he himself was responsible. Swede must have sensed it. “You only reported facts, Crawford. Like Harry Truman’s ‘buck stops here.’ Whether the old man knew what was happening in his company or not, he took responsibility. The kind of honor you don’t find around much anymore, in Japan or anywhere else.”
“What of Shoji? Did you hear anything about him?”
“I wouldn’t speculate. The old man may now be the ancestor he’ll need to answer to.”
Hank, drained of party spirit, returned to the living room. The Japanese picture seemed to flash at him reproachfully with the flickers from the fireplace. He held up his hand to make an announcement. Jody took his arm and said quietly, “Don’t. Nobody else here would understand.” On impulse, Hank returned to the bedroom and phoned Baltimore.
“Dear!” said his mother. “It’s two in the morning. Is somebody sick?”
“Nothing. Just wondered how you and Dad were.”
On another line the elder Crawford declared heartily, “Just fine and asleep until you called. Hi. What’s up?”
Hank made a joke of it. “Just wanted to hear your voices, honorable parents.”
But, after he’d put down the phone . . . The old director, vital Mr. T
Next morning, as Hank and his crew readied to go fishing, the air was clean and cold. Hank laid out charts. He and Terry studied them. It would be new fishing for both, starting almost from scratch to find their grounds. Although storms and ice would remain as threatening as ever, they’d seldom need to go beyond the sight of Kodiak Island’s mountains, never into such far wilds as the Bering Sea. (And, staying local, he could leave all the Anchorage fish politicking behind!) Hank felt a stir of adventure. He was reentering the turf where he’d started under Jones Henry, exploring for species not abundant in Jones’s time but covering the same grounds. Maybe, he thought, to acknowledge the new start, he’d rename the Adele H something like “Sea Raider” when he could get to it.
Hank’s family saw them off. He held Jody, smelled her scent, and lingered. “You’re not going to the Bering Sea this time,” she said gently. “I’ll see you for dinner Saturday.”
Henny and Dawn vied with each other to cast off the boat’s lines. He needed to intervene to direct one forward and the other aft. Each handled the rope well. Both had the feel. Eventually he’d take them to sea with him, in summer calm. Soon! Would Pete follow suit? So far he’d shown no interest. But Henny and Dawn were becoming sea-babies, both teaching themselves the names of gear and arguing over relative merits of nets and lines. Suddenly he realized. He didn’t have the option to abandon fish politics and merely fish. He’d need to do all he could to ensure that the water retained abundant life for his children to harvest.
The children waved, Pete jumping up and down, Henny with the solemnity of the departure as his eyes already followed the boat wistfully, Dawn calling him a last instruction to please bring her back a shell from the ocean for show-and-tell. And Jody. As lithe and sassy-postured as the day they’d met. Hair back in the same ponytail, mouth wide in that smile that stretched to the cheeks.
He headed for the narrows toward Marmot Bay, squinting into the sun. Terry, Mo, and Ham crowded gaily into the wheelhouse to watch and visit as in former days before the big longliner. When Tom came up the stairs they quieted and nudged each other. Tom swung a pair of his socks tightly knotted. Hank watched, interested. It was their way of initiating him into full crew status, but would Tom understand?
He turned back to the harbor once more to see his family. There moored nearby was his former Jody Dawn. He watched it all grow smaller with distance, then forced himself to look ahead.