Breakers

by William B. McCIoskey Jr.

  “Last week,” said Jody drily. “Adele brought a cake. You gave him that toy truck over there.”

  “Hey, four-year-old!”

  “That’ll be next year, big daddy.”

  “Oh, sure, three. I meant three.” No way around it. He faced her. “I had a few drinks, like the old days. I’m sorry.”

  “In the old days we were free kids and you were just another fisherman. Now you’re a respected highliner and your children imitate you. It’s a question of behavior.”

  He felt a sudden emptiness. “You’ve changed.”

  “I’ve gone the next step in our lives. You’d better catch up.”

  “It was bad out there. Then it kept going wrong ashore. All I did—”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind a few drinks every day myself.” She stood holding a spatula, the new baby bulging beneath her apron. Her hair was tied with loose neatness. Everything she wore looked good. He glanced at the new candles in the wedding-gift silver holders and the good plates stacked unused at the end of the table. She’d prepared a special meal last night, as always when he returned from the sea, and he’d blown it. And all his boat clothes, soggy and ripe when they came to harbor, now lay clean and folded.

  Gently he disengaged Dawn who held his knee again, and Henny on the other side who had begun to crawl to his lap. He rose and put his arms around her. The baby bulge pressed his stomach. Rather than barrier it made him love her all the more. “I’m a slob. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, even a slob had better eat his breakfast.”

  “Not hungry. Hangover.”

  “Too bad.” Her voice had lightened. It would be all right. “Nourishment clears the system, buster, shovel it in, then finish packing. There’s work to do.” He kissed her, and controlled the wince when his jaw touched her face. Didn’t control it enough. She laughed, and imitated Henny. “Bop bop. Big fishermen take a long time to learn.” He laughed gladly.

  “Look, we’ll tell Swede to stuff it on Bristol Bay, it’s not too late. I want to hang around home a while before I go to Westward. While they fix the Jody 5, maybe I’ll stack seine a trip or two with Jones. . .

  She spread their accounts over the table. Insurance should cover the Jody S’s smashed windows so shrug that off. But money! Last season’s king crab might have generated enough cash to think of a bigger boat, the shrimp had pushed in a nice winter bonus, and tendering the Jody S for Swede in Chignik had brought another chunk. But, Jody pointed out: “That’s only a hundred five thousand less to borrow from the bank for a boat that costs one million six hundred thousand before pots and gear. We’ll sell Jody S for at least six hundred thousand of that after Jones’s twenty percent. Thank this new Capital Construction that keeps it from disappearing in taxes, the government did that one right for a change.” She added Swede’s new seven-thousand-dollar bribe. “And you know you can expect another ten thousand in Bristol Bay, at least. Since you’ve got to have your new crabber so you can bounce with the big guys . . .”

  “Hold on, we’re in this together.”

  “Your ego, Hank. I could live with ninety-foot Jody 5.”

  “But you approved.”

  “I didn’t interfere. Let’s not argue this, you’re getting your boat and I support it. Just forget this talk of freedom to lay around the house when Swede offers money. We’ll relax some other year.”

  “We didn’t have any time together last winter either.”

  She tapped her belly. “I think this happened on a warm January night in Hawaii.”

  “Okay, two weeks. Nice two weeks.”

  By early afternoon the fog had dispersed enough for the eleven-thirty flight to leave, resulting only in the kind of delay that Kodiak travelers took for granted. Jody gathered them in the station wagon—Seth and Mo from the boat with boots tied to their knapsacks, and John, who bunked ashore, in front of the laundromat with a bag of clean-smelling clothes that he folded and packed as they rode.

  Henny climbed around Hank’s lap as might have been expected. For some annoying reason, Dawn, the wiggleworm, settled on John’s lap. Hank watched from the comer of his eye, hoping that John would betray his nature by pushing her away, but instead the asshole talked to her gently, gave one of his seldom smiles, and worked his packing around her.

  Hank had tried in front of a mirror, but could do nothing to disguise the cut cheek and a chin discoloration where John’s fists had landed most effectively. John’s face bore no reciprocal satisfaction. At the airport they avoided each other and addressed only the others. Mo also said nothing, but from a sense of blissful peace. He’d upheld the honor of his shipmates, and a mapwork of purpling bruises on his face bore evidence.

  Seth carried the conversation as they waited. “I had a buddy fished Bristol Bay once. He said anything goes out there, you name it.”

  Hank knew the reputation. The place had its legends from generations now too old to fish, as had Chignik Lagoon, Karluk, and the Copper River Flats. He might have graduated to fishing for species not considered by the old-timers, in bigger boats than they knew, but salmon remained the great basic. Now that he’d committed he felt anticipation. But he kept a glum face in front of Jody, and gave her repeated unnecessary instructions on supervising the Jody S’s repaired windows. Jody, in turn, offered no tart reply as she might have in private, respecting his position in front of the crew.

  As they started to board, a truck drove up and Swede strode out trailed by a cannery kid with his bags. His signature red tractor cap, worn at an aggressive tilt in the old days, was now planted squarely like a businessman’s fedora. “Can’t see the last of you!” said Hank in good humor.

  “Time I got up there to run things.” To Jody he confided: “It’s my summer vacation. You needn’t tell Mary that. The old rules apply in Bristol Bay, that’s what I like. Kodiak’s gotten to be a goddamn teacup city.” Inside the twelve-passenger plane both Swede and Hank headed for the cockpit seat by the pilot. “Well, you take it, Crawford. I’m being nice today.”

  “Swede’s going soft,” said the pilot. “You must have something he wants, Hank.”

  The ride took them first over the interior mountains of Kodiak Island, snowed on the peaks even in July. Hank could see the island’s bays laid out as if on a map. The plane passed over fingered Uganik Bay. The roofs and pier of the cannery complex where he had once worked as a greenhorn passed below, a cluster of toy squares surrounded by forest wilderness. Seiners at anchor hugged the inlets awaiting the next opening. At a word from Fish and Game skiffs would roar, corks would encircle stray finners, dripping nets would creak up through power blocks to spread aloft like sails. Hustle of lines and rings, salmon thrashing aboard around your legs. Jones Henry would be steaming there even now. Hank closed his eyes. Bright had been every touch and smell. So grand, fishing on the little deck of the Rondelay with Jones, cuffed into eager shape by Steve and Ivan.

  If he hadn’t pushed himself to be such a balls-driving skipper, Steve and Ivan might still be alive. When he looked out again he saw the Shelikof Strait that had smashed out his windows two days before. The water now sparkled calmly. What? said the water. Me, attack you? Impossible. Your dream.

  They left the innocent water behind and began crossing the mainland’s range of snowy volcanic cones. Mountains at least retained their sinister beauty without changing the way water did. Hank’s malaise in the face of nature’s cold immensity ran its course. He pulled at his beard and called merry answers to the pilot’s shouts. At length the peaks and cones gave way to flat brown marshland pocked with dark pools. The pools reflected blue from the sky as they passed over them one by one: they mirrored even the clouds.

  The pilot swooped low to buzz a bear and send it lumbering, then scattered a handful of caribou. The acrobatics sparked whoops from Seth and Mo. Hank grinned back at them. Swede slept, a man who had seen it all. John soberly watched through his window as did the four other passengers. Seth and Mo, twin bears themselves in jeans and shaggy checked shirts, b
ounced across the narrow aisle from window to window to watch the animals below. “Seatbelts, guys, sorry!” yelled the pilot. When they obeyed he strafed the caribou again on their side of the plane.

  The little airport at King Salmon was as busy as a freight depot. A flight from Anchorage had just landed and others had preceded it. People shouted and called. There were swarthy, taciturn Aleuts—the men wiry and the women round—and driven bearded whites of all ages with red scarred hands. All walked with purpose. Outside, the sun beat hot and dust swirled. Tractors pulled loads of baggage straight from the plane’s bays to a bare lot. Truck drivers jockeyed to back against piles of crates, boxes, machine parts, and rolled nets. Others with clipboards checked over the piles. A dusty knot of young people in clean denims stood apart, gripping knapsacks unscuffed by use. They seemed collectively unsure.

  Swede’s eyes darted. He snapped his fingers and a man hurried over to take his bags. “I parked outside this mess, Swede, follow me,” said the man. He gestured toward the knot of youngsters. “That wet-looking bunch is bodies for the slime line. I have the van. We can take them, or they can bounce on top the parts shipment in Joe’s pickup if he has room, or I’ll come back if you want privacy.”

  “They’re no good to me out here. Pile ‘em in, but leave legroom for my four men.”

  The dusty knot, male and female, crowded in back of the van with their bags, some forced to sit or even lie on each other’s laps, but the driver firmly kept the ordered legroom for Hank’s crew. Swede sat in front, with Hank between him and the driver. The kids in back joked uncertainly, a cross between swagger and vulnerability that Hank recognized with amused nostalgia: students come for an Alaskan adventure to work in a cannery. Seth and Mo, enjoying their status, kept aloof silence, but John began questioning them. He was soon comparing colleges and advising them about mosquito repellant and clean socks.

  “Got your Orion all stocked and waiting, Swede,” said the driver. “Those crew we fired, they camped the night at the airport since you didn’t want them around, and I booked them out first flight to Anchorage this morning. They’re gone.” Swede did not bother to reply.

  The road traversed flat scrubland, dreary without the mountains that framed the Alaska Hank knew best. A half hour later, without passing a single house, they turned onto an unmarked dirt road that led through wiry brush. “You kids listen up,” called out the driver. “Don’t you wander outside the compound, especially at night. There’s bears. Understand?” Several voices assured him soberly.

  The compound consisted of weathered but painted frame buildings interconnected by boardwalks. It was a larger version of the remote canneries on Kodiak Island: a village here compared to a settlement. Long structures with sheltered porches had roughly painted signs that labeled them “Henhouse” and “Stud Bam.” Other signs identified “Laundry,” “Raingear,” “Bathhouse,” “Galley Keep Out,” and “Store.” Down a hill, where sheds the size of warehouses puffed steam, corrugated roofs blocked a full view of the water. Beyond flowed a quarter-mile width of river empty of traffic. Gulls circled around islands of tide-bared mud.

  The van stopped in front of a house on the highest rise labeled “Office.” Its porch faced a wide causeway leading down directly to the wharf a city block away. People and forklift trucks crowded the wharf and lower causeway. Swede, without comment or instruction to the others, jumped out and pulled Hank with him to a red golf cart that waited by the office steps. He motioned Hank to stand beside him in the cart, turned the key left in the ignition, and headed downhill toward the wharf so quickly that Hank grabbed for balance. Swede drove in a straight line. Everyone opened a path for him. The causeway led past buildings labeled “Flash Freeze,” “Blacksmith,” “Machine Shop,” “Net Loft,” and others.

  The wharf, which stretched out of sight around all the sheds, was noisy and crowded. They looked down on dozens of boats more than twenty feet below. In rows they resembled toy models, all made nearly alike with a small cabin forward, an open deck aft, and a roller at the stem. “The basic Bay gillnetter,” said Swede.

  “Bathtubs with stovepipes for masts,” joked Hank.

  “No longer than 32 feet by law, but able work machines.” The boats rested on bare mud, supporting each other rail to rail. Beneath their exposed keels fanned a lacework of dry gulleys. Water lapped at only the outermost boat. Men stood on the wharf lowering boxes of groceries. Far below on the small decks others received them.

  “Tides here like no other,” said Swede. “Give it an hour, and you’ll see all those little gillnetters bouncing against each other.” He led Hank along the wharf to a long clumsy vessel. Three metal tanks higher than a man’s head, connected by pipes and valves, filled most of the deck. The monstrosity intruded among the graceful small boats like an ox among calves. “There’s your tender, Orion.”

  Any pleasure Hank had anticipated vanished. “That’s a fuckin’ scow, not a boat.”

  “You know it. Floating box, chilled seawater worth its weight and don’t forget. She holds four hundred thousand pounds if you distribute right, that’s seventy to eighty thousand Bristol Bay sockeye reds a haul. All you have to do is horse her back and forth with the tides from the grounds to the cannery. Easy money.”

  Hank thought of his own Jody S with its trim bow that sliced through water with the bounce of the men who rode her. He should be back supervising her repair rather than pissing like this for money to replace her. All Henny’s and Dawn’s eager daddy-touches, all the press of Jody and her mystic burden, lay wasted back in Kodiak and inexorably running their course without him. “Shit, Swede . . .”

  A bald man whose stomach pushed against greasy coveralls sauntered onto deck from the Orion’s housing, picking his teeth. “That’s your engineer,” said Swede. “Doke Stutz. Don’t underestimate. He knows the river and he knows the bay. Done it season after season. He’ll keep you clued.”

  “I thought it was just me and my crew.”

  “Wrong thought, Crawford. You and your apes don’t know fuck-all about an old power plant like Orion’s. And you’re not to crash my barge trying to learn Bay currents.” He called down and Doke looked up.

  “Where’s my new meat?” Doke demanded. “We got to go on the ebb in two hours.” Swede introduced them. “Well, get down here then, skipper. Where’s your boys? They got scrubbing to do.”

  Hank remained silent.

  Swede turned uncharacteristically smooth. “It’s no different than tendering for me at Chignik except for the tides, Hank. All right, you had your own boat there, I know you fishermen want to make love to your own little tubs. My sympathies. Don’t smash your windows next time. Just after high slack here you’ll ride out the ebb. The next opening’s at six, and by midnight you can expect deliveries, so let your apes sleep once you anchor. Plan always to do the river at high slack.” Swede swept his arm toward the water broken by sandbars and the flat terrain beyond. “You’re looking at the Naknek River. Around the bend’s the village of Naknek, you can see it all in three minutes some time. A runt tide here’s twenty feet, it increases from there, so ebb or flood current can peak at over two knots and sand bars rise while you watch. Pay attention to the tables. One flood tide each day is about four feet higher than the other. That’s the best to ride. Head out from the river mouth to where Doke shows you among the other tenders. Drop your hook. Fly the company flag where my boats can see from all sides. Expect to leave on one slack flood and return loaded on another. Like candy from a baby, Crawford.”

  “Scorden, when I get my new crabber paid for, you’ll never shaft me like this again.”

  Swede laughed, more harshly than necessary. “You break my heart. I’ve been rich and gone bust twice, and now I sometimes lick ass like you young pissheads never think you will. Jap ass this time. Say never as much as you like, Hank. Just don’t let the reality break you.” He walked toward his golf cart. “You’ll enjoy it out there.”

  Hank dug hands into his pockets, and looked aw
ay from the scow to avoid any exchange with the fat engineer (who had, in fact, continued forward without paying him further attention). Men in boots and deck shoes leapt with purpose from deck to deck of the small gillnetters, shouting, pitched for action. He knew that excitement. Fish waited out there. Nets alive. They were going fishing while he’d merely collect their harvest after it had died and turned to slime.

  The van pulled alongside, now empty of cannery kids, and his crewmen unloaded their bags. “Yours here, Boss,” said Mo, keeping it shouldered along with his own. “Where we headed?” Hank pointed to the Orion.“That thing?” said Seth, and whistled ruefully.

  “It looks stable for once,” said John. “I guess we won’t have to worry about breaking windows and capsizing.”

  Hank chose to ignore it. At his direction Mo scampered down a slippery metal ladder, received their bags lowered by rope to the scow’s deck, and stowed them in the wheelhouse. A steam whistle blew from somewhere that echoed against the corrugated building fronts like a train in fog. “Mug-up time, fellows,” called the van driver. Men from the boats were climbing up other ladders to form a line by a closed door at one of the sheds. Other people in hairnets and paper caps, men and women both, streamed from every opening of the long buildings and headed along the boardwalks toward another destination. They wore stiff landlubber boots which gave them a lumpy walk unlike the foot-to-deck roll of the men from the boats.

  The van driver told them to pile in. “Swede said take the skipper to the office for signups, but first to ride you all to the exec hall and mug you down.”

  “Is that where the fishermen are headed?” asked Hank.

  “No, they get their own place with a few doughnuts over there by that line. You don’t want to bother with that when Swede throws you the red carpet and real food.”

  “We’ll mug-up with the fishermen,” Hank declared. Seth and Mo agreed at once.