Breakers

by William B. McCIoskey Jr.

  “No more for us,” Jody declared.

  Hank, scowling, purposefully drained and refilled his glass. He’d begun to feel it and didn’t care. Cagey prick. Competing against his own men but holding them to the rules! And Jody, she knew and didn’t tell him. Hell with staying sober. Nothing he could do with her today required temperance. He rose to the window and glanced over masts, gray choppy water, and the low spruces of Near Island. Couldn’t the sun ever shine in Kodiak? And the smashed Jody S moored below. Ought to be down there on deck where he belonged. A brailerload of dripping salmon swung from the hold and rose to the pier, where a kid in oversized yellow cannery oilskins emptied it onto a conveyor belt. The fish thumped out stiffly, oozing blood and gurry, reds that had sparkled silver in the nets a day or two ago. Sorry stuff. And the boards across Jody S’s windows looked sorry, battered, irresponsible. Jones Henry, still in oilskins from his own boat’s delivery, emerged from the Jody S wheelhouse checking damage. As a partner, Jones had the right, even at only twenty percent remaining, but he, Hank, should be there in control. He took one more swallow as he headed toward the door and his boat.

  “Hold it, Crawford, I’m not through,” barked Swede sharply enough to stop him. “Jody, make him sit. Listen, Hank. All hell’s loose in Bristol Bay. Reds are plugging the nets. I just fired my tender crew up there on the Orion, and you’re beached till we fix your boat. Now you take a rest tonight, let Jody be nice to you. Then, nine-thirty flight tomorrow, you and your boys fly to Naknek and take over the Orion.”

  Hank laughed roughly, annoyed. “My boat needs fixing. I’ll be here to see it’s done right.”

  “Jody can supervise your repairs here, you know that.” Swede’s voice smoothed. “You worked to kick the Japs off our fish. Don’t you want to see its success? We’ve backed them off the Aleutians, they’ve stopped intercepting our reds headed to the Bering, and the reds are plugging our nets in Bristol Bay. It makes hauling reds in Chignik look like dollhouse.”

  Jody deftly appropriated the glass, then held his arm. “I’ll take this one home. Seth can bring the boat around.”

  Hank pulled away. She should understand! Tendering was shit, hauling other boats’ dead catches like a mule, never hands on fish that still thrashed. Not what a fisherman did. “We’re not for hire anymore.”

  “Tell him what he knows, Jody. You need money for your big Marco one-oh-eight. Whether you need a new monster boat or not. The thing is, Crawford, I can trust you and your boys because you’re too dumb to cheat me.”

  “Swede you old fucker, hear this. Bristol Bay is not my turf. Little gill-netters? I’d as soon pick potatoes. I’ve never fished there, I don’t plan to.” “Fish, Hank, fish! Big reds, sockeyes. Money! All you do is collect and take ‘em in to the cannery.”

  “No.”

  “Then listen. Three thousand, cash, under the table. Then two-fifty a day for you, a hundred and sixty for each of your men. End of season adjustment for a good captain.” Hank guided Jody through the door too firmly for her to pull away. “Jody, I need the idiot.”

  “I think we have to take a walk,” said Jody quietly. “We’ll let you know.” “Four thousand,” Swede snapped, “My donation to the new boat and we settle it right now.”

  Jody looked at Hank and her eyes narrowed. “We’ll take a walk, Swede, and let you know.” They descended the metal stairs to a forklift area by the gutting lines. Hank started toward the quay and his boat. Jody guided him firmly the opposite way to the managers’ parking lot. They stopped by their station wagon and she squared in front of him. “Unless that storm really threw you, Hank . . .”

  “I’m fine!” He wanted time with her, and his injured boat needed him, and he knew that he was going to be persuaded.

  “Every thousand we put toward the new boat is one less to pay the bank at interest.” The Scotch had spread its warm fingers. He shrugged. Back at the office they shook hands with Swede, but Hank bargained to leave on a later plane that would still let him catch the tide, and that any later adjustment would include his men.

  With the decision made, his anger subsided. But he insisted on going to his boat. Jones Henry had left, and they could see his Adele H nearing the harbor breakwater a mile away. Seth virtually strutted when told to take the Jody S around after they unloaded and hosed.

  “I need to stretch. Leave the car here. Let’s see some Fourth of July before you nail me in.” They walked hand in hand along the potholed road that connected the canneries and town. It was as deserted as a Sunday offseason except for parked vehicles leading to town past the docks, net loft, and hardware store. A band still played. They could feel the thump of drums and brass before they distinguished a tune. “The kids need to see this. Where are they?”

  “They’re in town. Adele gave me the day off to comfort the shipwrecked fisherman.”

  The words made Hank lighthearted. The right wife, okay kids whom he’d soon see, friends, a sound boat soon ready to fish again. He slid around to face and hold her, and stomp-danced in time to the band. She laughed in the throaty way he never tired of hearing, and followed his lead.

  People clogged the roads around the square, many of them strangers. Not many years past, before the town started growing, such a percentage of unfamiliar faces would have been remarkable. The parade had just finished, and the tag end of a marching band, trailed by horsemen in cowboy hats, dispersed by the ferry pier where a Japanese research ship lay moored. Nearby, the Coast Guard cutter Confidence was open for holiday inspection. The local politicians, ministers, and Coast Guard brass who had formed the reviewing party stood handshaking each other. The crowd drifted toward the cutter and the boxing ring in front of the American Legion Hall.

  Hank had no desire to discuss his accident, but it had become the day’s news in the fishing community. People stopped to ask questions, commiserate, offer advice, reminisce about their own close calls. He listened and answered, trying to be polite while he kicked one foot against the other. When Jones Henry—up from his boat and changed into shore clothes—joked wryly about the damage he changed the subject. The massive dose of Swede’s Scotch had left him logy. He needed to run, play thumping basketball, anything but talk.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Henny raced to claim him, bouncing on sturdy fat legs. Hank swept him up, twirled him with mock growling sounds as the child squealed, then hugged him tight. Dawn, barely toddling, called and he grabbed her in his other arm. The minute he smooched her wonderfully soft cheek she demanded release and squirmed back to the ground, independent as a cat. Henny pummeled him and called for another swing overhead. “Hey, kumquat, go easy,” shouted Hank, increasing the roughhouse. He loved the easy power with which he could handle his boy, and the feel of the kicking little body.

  “I hope that poor child survives to reach adulthood,” said Adele Henry. She wore the expensive fur-trimmed brown suede coat Jones had bought her in Paris, over a sweater and puffy slacks. Women her age should stick to dresses, Hank thought mildly.

  “Come on, Mother,” growled Jones beside her. “You’d put him in lace pants if you had the chance. He’ll be pulling nets with us in five, six years, he’d better learn to bounce.”

  “Oh yes, pull nets. That’s what you thought with your own boys, daddy, and with that talk you drove one straight into being a computer salesman, and poor Russ never settled to anything. Jody, don’t you think Hank’s being too rough?”

  “I think he knows when to stop.” Jody said it with cheerful offhandedness, but with an edge that made Hank glance over. The wide mouth was smiling, but the eyes narrowed just enough to send a signal. He gave Henny a final bear hug and set him down. The boy began to cry—no whimper, Hank noted, but a good, lusty yowl. “I told you so,” said Adele, and bent to pick him up. Henny pushed her away, his face red and woebegone, and wrapped his arm around Hank’s leg. Hank tried to keep his grin in check as he lifted the boy high, with enough gentleness to keep Jody appeased, then draped him over his shoulder like a sack and patted
his bottom.

  “Me too,” said Dawn. He cradled her up to his other shoulder, then maneuvered her back down as she started to squirm, stealing a peck on the cheek in the process.

  Hank finally told Jones the details of the Shelikof Strait accident, and listened politely to his former skipper’s advice on what he should have done. Jones might still own twenty percent of the boat, but it made Hank restless to be instructed. Traffic drifted around them. Hank held back until Adele complained that the line to visit the Coast Guard ship was getting longer and longer, and they’d already had to wait as long as it took to get into the Louvre in Paris, France. “He wants to make sure Seth brings his boat over safely,” said Jody. He liked the way she understood without needing diagrams. Adele was a grand person, but she had never tuned so to Jones. He kept Henny draped over his shoulder as the women left to save them places.

  “You’re lucky,” said Jones. “That Jody.”

  “You’re lucky too, don’t groan at me. How many dames would have put up with you all these years?”

  “I never hear the end of them two weeks in Europe.”

  “Best investment you ever made.”

  “I saw enough of Frenchies during the war. This time they fed us snails. Figure the rest for yourself.”

  They watched critically as the Jody S left the cannery pier and glided through the breakwater to its mooring at the floats. Seth stood on the bridge, erect and grave, with Mo and John behind him practically at attention. Hank frowned. They actually enjoyed his absence! Shouldn’t have jumped into Swede’s Scotch that way, and then let Jody bully him, should have brought in his own boat. The mooring accomplished, Seth sauntered among the other boats with John and Mo still a pace to the rear. His stocky body had an easy, powerhouse sway that might have amused Hank at another time. Was that why Seth wanted to keep John, to have a sycophant who followed behind and kissed his ass?

  As Seth ascended the gangway from the floats and saw Hank watching, he drew a breath that pulled his shirt against the buttons. “All delivered,” he announced expansively, without bothering to append the word “Boss” that Hank often denied to Jody he desired of his men. (At least, Hank told himself, I’m honest enough to recognize the contradiction. After all, though Seth was younger, he and Seth had once crewed together as equals, so why shouldn’t the guy avoid that word?) Hank shifted his boy to a piggyback position, using the activity to cover any reservations that his face might have shown, and complimented Seth.

  It helped none that John declared in a studiously serious voice: “That was the smoothest docking I’ve ever seen.”

  “Glad you’ve got enough reflexes left to tell,” said Hank curtly, and felt petty at once as John averted his eyes and fell behind. He felt more foolish still as Seth observed to Jones that there was nobody like “ol’ Boss” for bringing any boat alongside in any kind of shitty weather.

  What did he have against John, after all? The kid was a little bit refined, not comfortably rough. He shaved and combed, and even now wore a clean yellow stay-press shirt instead of plaid flannel with sawed sleeves like the others. The campus still clung to him. The boats had removed all traces of Seth’s single year at Berkeley. He himself, a Johns Hopkins bachelor and former Navy JG, could turn his background off or on to suit the circumstance. The hands that held his son’s legs were thick, strong fisherman’s hands. A kid from Kansas like John should have big hands and hail from the wheat fields if he wanted to make it on a fishing boat, not from some accounting school. Was that all he had against the guy?

  John might have been subdued, but he kept rubbing his sideburns as he glanced about restlessly. His black hair, plastered like a mold when wet, blew soft and long in the breeze, and he kept adjusting his cap over it. Hank felt compelled to make amends. “That Cindy you keep mentioning, she’s somewhere around the comer? Take off and find her, man.”

  “I guess she got tired of waiting. I told her we’d be in yesterday like every other boat, or at least by early this morning.”

  “Earlier might have found you dead,” Hank snapped. Henny on his shoulders began to aim playful slaps on his forehead. “Stop that!” he said too loudly, then took the child’s hands and swung them lightly to soften it. He told his crewmen, didn’t ask them, “By the way, get your fun now. We’re going to fly tomorrow to Bristol Bay at eleven-thirty, to take over one of Swede’s tenders.” Seth said he’d always heard about those Naknek sockeyes, so, great! If Seth thought that, so did Mo. John pulled a long face. “We can do without you,” said Hank.

  John considered. He probably guessed the threat to his berth on the Jody S if he stayed behind. “I’ll come.”

  “Well,” Mo declared, “I better go over and sign for the boxing. Two or three of us from the other boats, we plan to mix it up together, make it like—see whose boat’s best, you know? Ham Davis from the Star Wars, Smeltzer from the Lynn D, Butch from the Joe and Edna. Ham especially, eh Boss? With you and his skipper’s always giving each other a hard time?”

  “Hell yes,” said Hank. “I’ll put fifty bucks on that one, and I’ll flush out Tolly besides.”

  “You mean you’ll fight Tolly Smith, skipper to skipper, after Ham and me’s had it out?”

  “No, no, we’ll drink and cheer.”

  Jones looked around. “I’ve got another fifty says you’ll take Ham, but don’t tell the old lady. Mebbe you won’t mind knocking down the Star Wars candidate for both Jody S and Adele H together, since my boys ain’t so young?”

  Mo swelled visibly. “Honored, skipper, honored.” He slapped Seth on the shoulder. “You taking on anybody?”

  “Only apes punch it out,” said Seth cheerfully.

  “I used to box a little,” said John. The others glanced at him, then continued with their plans.

  First Hank and Jones were obliged to join the women for a tour of the cutter Confidence. When the route took them past the Japanese research ship Jones halted, as Hank feared he might. “What are those cursed buggers doing here on an American Holiday?”

  “Just good will.” Hank kept it light.

  “Gals are waiting. Come on.”

  “Never trust a Jap alive. Treacherous from Pearl Harbor to the end, to this very minute. On the Canal they’d surrender with a hand grenade in their shirt, blow us up with them.

  “Guadalcanal, you’ve told me. Terrible. I know. But the gals are waiting.”

  “Believe it!”

  The queue at the gangway moved aboard at last. The Coast Guard ship was enough a piece of the seafaring scene that the two had visited her on business and knew some of the men. Jones grumbled: “We never had to shuffle through some line just to bump against a crowd of old hens and landlubbers who don’t know the difference between a winch and a fiddly.” (“Be quiet, daddy,” snapped Adele. “You’ve never taken this old hen to the Coast Guard before, so be a gentleman about it. And I’m sure Jody knows a fiddly when she sees one.”) On the other hand Henny, who still rode Hank’s shoulder, struck such a romance with the 20mm guns mounted on the bow—he ack-acked exuberantly while his feet thumped a tattoo—that Hank relaxed and laughed as he cushioned his chest against the hard little heels.

  Swede’s whiskey still kept him dizzy but had no effect on his ability to cradle Dawn and let her down again whenever he chose, while steadying Henny. He joked with the gunner’s mate on duty by the 20mm. The kid, scrubbed for the occasion, kept trying to explain his charge in more detail than anyone around wanted to hear. Hank let the words pass over him, interjecting a knowledgeable question now and then, as Henny took his fill of the guns. Ever since his first ride with the Coast Guard years before, a kid himself from Jones Henry’s boat searching for bodies after the old Whale Pass disaster, the cleanliness and order of military ships had both attracted and repelled him. Navy service had made him part of the community, but duty in its fleet still seemed sterile—at least impersonal—compared to fishing boats. The men aboard were seafarers of a different sort, regulated not by the feeding habits of f
ish but by commands over a speaker. Could this gun-struck kid tie even a bowline?

  He remembered well: That wardroom coffee so long on the burner its acrid odor scorched the room; wet heat from the marshy Vietnam jungles that no amount of air conditioning dispelled; orders given and orders taken. He glanced up at the long array of windows on the Connie’s bridge, located higher than any mere ten-foot sea could reach. On watch aboard one Navy ship of his duty he’d borne responsibility for nearly a hundred men. He’d handled a ship that could have swallowed a fishing boat in its hold without listing. It had been exhilarating. The kid who fretted his hours over a 20mm gun probably got to fire it now and then, to taste the smoke and feel the force he had unleashed. What a small, grubby command he himself had settled for, after all—to shepherd boatfuls of fish into a cannery dock, when he might by now be maneuvering a great gray warship into Hong Kong or Naples or Rio to the accompaniment of jets spouting from harbor tugs. He squeezed Henny’s legs, firm and smooth and vulnerable, to reassure himself.

  An officer in dress blues and braided cap strode over. His face, still young, had creases at the mouth as he smiled. “Tommy!” growled Jones warmly. He and Hank were greeted in turn by name. “Now here’s a man,” Jones continued, placing a hand on the officer’s shoulder. “We’re going to lose him to Washington, D.C., and I expect he’ll set them politicians straight. Commander Tom Hill, he’s captain aboard here and he’s one man the foreign buggers watch out for.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Adele, impressed. “And you know Jones?”

  “We need support from men like Jones and Hank, Mrs. Henry. And they give it. Hi Jody.”

  “Tell her,” said Jones. “Tell her how you caught a Jap just last winter in the dead of night, sneaked up on him fishing our fish in our water. Hank sent us the article. If it wasn’t for fellows like this, the foreign buggers would keep raping our fish even worse than they do. Now you tell me, Tommy. Our boys Ted Stevens and Don Young in D.C., they worked all those years for the two-hundred-mile law they passed last year, but the foreigners still fish right under our noses.”