The father only grunted, but the son said brightly, “Smokin’, man, smokin’. If we had time to go ashore I’d find me an extra hand.” The crane raised a dripping bag from the Babe’s hold. “Stand aside, sir.” Hank complied. The bag bulged triple the thickness of the son’s waist. Two fish flopped from the top. Hank’s hands wanted to grab even these stiff, net-bloodied sockeyes. The bag passed two feet from his face. Brassy smell of harvest.
When the loading finished, the son leapt over the rails to Orion’s deck and finished the paperwork with John. He called back: “Take a shit, Dad?”
“Who needs fancy toilets out here? Come fish!”
“Well I do. Only take a minute.” The son winked at Hank, and sprinted around the housing to the facility. The father began hosing their deck and holds.
Hank scratched his increased waist. Even handling a pressure hose would feel good. On clear days light never left the sky, but now in drizzly rain both sky and water beyond the boats had turned black. Millions of sockeyes waited and milled in that black. Behind him his crew had hosed the trail of gurry and wandered back inside until the next delivery. They’d be anchored, collecting like this, through at least another full day.
“So it’s smoking out there?” he ventured to the father, a thick man of about fifty with a leathery face that sagged in pouches.
“Best in my thirty years here.”
“Come from where? Monterey?”
“Monterey, California, sir.”
“Guess you have radio VHS?”
“Ain’t we talked to you on it?”
“Enough out there to keep three men busy, eh?”
“Better believe it.”
“So you’ll expect to plug your boat every few hours and be delivering back here?”
“That’s how it’s going, sir.”
By the time the son returned, Hank had convinced himself. The tender was anchored safely, the crew self-sufficient without him. Radio contact in case of emergency. Wasn’t it to Swede’s advantage if he, Hank, understood more of Bristol Bay fishing than just the delivery? He tried to sound casual, not like the eager juvenile he felt inside, as he proposed crewing for a trip.
“You ever fished before?” demanded the father, with no thought now of adding “sir.” Like any job applicant, Hank outlined his qualifications.
The son picked up on the offer at once. He turned to his father who said something in what Hank assumed to be Italian. Rather than embarrassed, Hank felt lighthearted even as they discussed him. The son declared heartily in English: “We can always dump his ass back aboard here if he don’t work out. Come on, Dad. We don’t need that extra bunk. All the crap we got stored there? Push it in the forepeak.”
“The man ain’t coming to sleep. He’ll slow us down, Chris. Might of fished, but I don’t hear he’s picked gillnets. E non parla Italiano, lui. E straniero.”
“Va ben’, Papa. Possiamo parlare, e non capisce niente, eh?’ The father pivoted up his palms, shrugged, and went inside. “My old man,” said Chris, “He takes a minute for any new idea. Hurry get your gear.”
On the mess deck Hank hastily justified his temporary departure. “I’m riding out for a trip to learn more about the fishery. Seth, you’re relief skipper.” Doke, in his comer slot on the mess deck, maneuvered a toothpick and scowled.
Seth shook his head. “Here I was thinkin’ of asking Chris myself to do a trip. Those guys are fishing. Sets my ass crazy just taking their dead fish, Mo and me doing half a man’s work between us.”
“Me too, Boss,” echoed Mo. “Lucky you. Go ahead, we can handle stuff here.”
John looked up from logging neatly clipped invoices. “Ride that tub when you have this? You can smell that younger Speccio fellow above his fish every time they deliver. I’ll never understand you people.”
“No, you won’t,” said Hank.
Doke began to clean his nails with a toothpick. “Swede ain’t going to like this. He put you here to buy fish. I helped design this boat, I been here that long. And you never seen me on one of them little gillnetters.”
“That’s why I feel good about going for a few hours,” said Hank smoothly. “Look at all the experience I leave behind at your table there.” The Monterey Babe’s whistle tooted impatiently. Hank bounded up the ladder to his cabin, stuffed an armful of sweats and socks into a bag, and on the way to the main deck grabbed boots and oilskins. Another boat was just coming alongside to deliver. “Delivery ahoy!” he called gaily into the mess deck. “Shake it!” He tossed his gear to Chris in the boat, released the painter, and leapt over the rails to the deck of the Babe.Seconds later he watched the Orion from the distance of water as Doke climbed ponderously to his place in the control bay and the others came from the housing.
The Babe’s deck beneath him bounced alive as the hull played in and out of sea chop. From the Orion’s deck Seth shouted, “Plug her, Hank, plug the fucker.” Hank contained the whoop he felt like returning. The air, the very woodwork, smelled of fish. He could have been the green excited kid of sixteen years ago just berthed on Jones Henry’s Rondelay for his first trip as a fisherman. A shower of spray slapped him. Salty taste. Cold. The water that looked nearly flat from the Orion’s stolid platform had swells and ripples, perhaps unseen currents, a literature of vitalities that only a small boat could elicit.
“Hey, man,” said Chris. “Get inside. The old man likes to bang through the water. This’ll be Niagara Falls in a minute.” Another shower caught Hank’s back as he bent in the low doorway to enter the cabin. Chris behind him, wetter than he, cursed cheerfully and shoved to hurry him.
The boat’s pleasant wave-bounce from deck in fresh air became enclosed motion in the cramped, dark wheelhouse. Hank gasped at the stew of fish odors that combined with ripe clothes and diesel, all intensified by heat at least thirty degrees higher than outside. It triggered a bubble of nausea. His own boat was so much larger and cleaner that he’d forgotten. Don’t get seasick, he told himself. He breathed deeply. Each breath seemed less toxic until, like a diver accustoming himself to pressure, he reached an equilibrium. Good smells. Part of the game.
The father stood on a platform behind the wheel, leaning into the window to peer through spray that peppered the glass. Wet-rippled lights from other boats spun past in the dark. “Yeah, I don’ know,” he said into a microphone cupped between his neck and shoulder. “You fishing right on the line? You doin’ okay there?”
“I don’ know, I don’ know,” said a voice roughened by transmission over the speaker. “If you can call it okay a Mimi-Rodolfo. Anyways, I guess we’ll set here through the flood. I don’ know. Goin’ back to the net now, I guess. Over and out.”
“Fuckin’ Mimi-Rodolfo, he says,” announced the father after replacing the microphone. “Don’ know, he says!” He laughed and pushed the throttle. The boat leapt high in the water and thudded back, then steadied at an increased speed.
“My dad’s name is Vito,” said Chris. “He’ll talk enough after we’ve set, but don’t disturb him now. For your info, a Mimi-Rodolfo among our guys means plugged nets. It’s our radio band but any slob can listen. We change codes about every two weeks. Right now only a Tosca’s better, sometimes they call it a Scarpia, get it? A so-so run, we’re calling it a Fanciulla. But if somebody says it’s a Madam Butterfly forget it, just anchor and go to sleep. Later we’ll switch to Rossini, confuse these squareheads and oley Joes and bohunks that don’t know Barber of Seville from the Green Bay Packers.” He led Hank to an inner cabin where the heat and odors deepened. A dim light sheltered with red plastic showed a tier of three bunks against one bulkhead and a narrow table against the other, with a two-bumer stove between. Utensils and plates clicked in racks that held them tightly, but smudged clothing hung and swayed everywhere. “Here, this top bunk’s yours, help me clear it. Just stuff the junk I hand you up forward there.”
They needed to sway and balance as the boat pitched. Chris handed him a greasy box from the bunk, then another. Han
k’s nausea returned. He clamped his mouth, started to breathe deeply, then dared not. At last he rushed back through the wheelhouse to open deck, grabbed the lee rail, and vomited. Cold water drenched him. The boat slowed with a surge.
“Want to go back?” said Chris quietly. “I made him slow down. I can make him turn back.”
“Shit no! Thanks. Tell him pick up speed again.”
“What’s that, Dad?” said Chris into the cabin. The boat suddenly turned with a roll and reversed course. “Hank, Dad says he’s taking you back.”
“No! No!” Hank wiped his mouth with a wet sleeve and staggered inside. “Hey Captain! Vito! Turn around, man. I’m a fisherman like you. Just getting sea legs. I’m okay.”
Vito continued to peer ahead. “You see, buddy,” he said soberly, without changing course, “I got a living to make, no salary like you on that big tender. Got no time to break in a greenhorn when the fish is smoking. This is a little boat, just papa and son. Other boats, we all fish together like family, everybody’s friends back in Monterey. You’re a big captain, don’ know about these things.”
“I do. I respect that. I respect it.” The lights of the Orion were nearing. Its silhouette in the gray dawn loomed above two bouncing gillnetters tied alongside, delivering. Through the water-streaked window Hank could see the figure of John coolly standing with his clipboard. “Turn back. Don’t do this to me. Please! Look, no crew share for me this trip. I don’t care, I’ll even pay you.”
“Dad,” said Chris firmly. “Voltarla.”
“Non mi piace quest’.”
“Voltarla, Papa!”
“Eh, va ben’, va ben’ “ Vito shrugged, slowed the boat, and turned. The boat bucked a swell, then leveled into it. “Losing time, all this!” He pushed the throttle and they sped back in their original direction.
Hank felt himself breathing heavily. “Thanks, Chris,” he said, trying to keep what dignity remained him.
“Got puke on your whiskers, buddy. Here’s a rag. Take your time.” How low will this week take me? Hank wondered as he wiped his beard on deck, taking spray indifferently. A refreshing salty wind swept ripples over the water. By now the dim early light showed black outlines of gillnetter housings when they popped above the swells. They looked lonesome, vulnerable, gay, inviting. He shivered, wet. To start the week, his own boat three times the size of these took a sea that nearly drowned his crew. Then his lowest crewman boxed his ass to the mat. Jody got pissed. Swede bullied him into minding a scow. Now this, down to puking and begging all in a week, when he’d thought he owned the world. He returned to the cabin to help Chris clear the bunk. His wet clothes soon dried on him in the heat. Lie down? Chris suggested. Hank refused and followed to the wheelhouse. The two leaned against the bulkhead by a window. Chris took a light from his father’s cigarette.
The number of boats increased. Vito veered the boat around a cluster while they all peered at nets coming up astern. The collective glow of deck lights showed that some nets had entrapped a fish every foot or two. Hank exclaimed. But their own boat kept going. “Those are all bohunks from Anacortes,” said Chris. “Yugoslavia, whatever the hell. You don’t want to fish with them, they got different ways, don’t deliver to our cannery anyhow. And up ahead’s a bunch of squarehead boats from Ballard near Seattle, not even American some of them, cousins and uncles come straight from Norway then go back, forget it. You like spaghetti? We don’t bother with much else out here so you’d better. My wife, she puts her sauce in jars for us, my mom puts hers in jars for us, we alternate and don’t take sides, you know? ‘Sure,’ I say, ‘yours is best, honey,’ when I get home. ‘You don’t tell Mama.’ Then whisper to Mama, ‘Sure, yours is best. Don’t tell Angela.’ Hell, you got to keep ‘em happy. Eh Papa?”
“Get me the Tide.”
Chris pulled a copy of Tide Tables from the rack, its paper cover tom and thumbed limp. He held a flashlight in his mouth and started to run his finger down a marked page.
Hank glanced at the clock. “You’ve got one hour and twenty-three minutes before ebb starts.”
Father and son exchanged a glance. “You carry that shit in your head?” asked Vito.
“I checked the Tables before we left.”
“The man’s on the nail, Papa,” Chris chuckled from the book. “Where you headed, Dogleg or Banana Tree?”
“Banana,” said Vito after a pause. Chris noted to Hank without heat that the old man liked to keep his secrets.
An hour later they slowed into a small enclave of wooden gillnetters like their own. A light drizzle turned boat lights into beads and halos through the window. Vito eased alongside the scuffed rail of an anchored boat named Miss Rosa, turned the wheel over to Chris, and stomped to deck. A man his own age came from the other cabin simultaneously. The two talked in Italian, with gestures.
“That’s my Uncle Tony,” said Chris. “They’re brothers. Always talk strategy strategy before a set. Far as I ever saw it don’t make a difference to the fish. But it makes them feel good, you know? Old-timers? They’ve been there. They fished the open double-enders under sail until 1952.”
“Under sail with these tides? You mean at least with an engine kicker.”
“No, man, fuckin’ under sail all the way. Two other of the old man’s brothers, they drownded back then when a rip tide broached them against Deadman Sands near Honey Hole and no way they could back off. Never mind, you’ll hear. When the old man and Uncle Tony loosen up to you—you’re new ears so they will, don’t worry—you’ll wish for some escape road back to your tender.” A pair of younger men with black mustaches came out and stood with thumbs hitched at the top of their oil pants. “My cousins. Joey there, he’s married to my sister. Here, take the wheel a minute, just keep her steady while I tie us alongside and bum some eggs since we got a new man aboard.”
When Vito returned he frowned at the sight of Hank at his wheel, even though they were now tied alongside the Rosa and he’d come to shut off the engine. Without ceremony he and Chris removed boots and coveralls though nothing else, and crawled into their tight-layered bunks. “Couple hours’ shut-eye,” Chris explained. Their snores began at once. Hank followed suit, although it took a long time for him to fall asleep. Four hours later he woke to the starting engine and, like a good crewman, dressed quickly and appeared on deck. Chris had just untied them from the Rosa and water was widening between the two boats.
Hank helped Chris open two small hatches and adjust canvas receiving bags in each. Then they peered from the rails for signs of fish. So did the cousins on the Rosa. The net, its meshes made of wiry green monofilament, lay fluffed in layers around a thick drum astern. Far away, near a low rise of gray sand, a glinting silver shape wriggled halfway into the air and splashed back. “Jumper way off portside,” muttered Hank, not pointing, unsure of their protocol with other boats nearby. Chris called to his father and waved the news to his cousins.
“Yeah Vito, we seen that jumper,” said Tony over the radio. “Joey here, he wants to go closer into the bar, way shallow, you know Joey. Me, I don’ know, looks good out here.”
“We share,” said Chris. “And Joey and me, sometimes they listen to us, sometimes they don’t. In there’s the fuckin’ fish, not way out here.” Vito tooted a whistle. Chris shrugged and threw over a buoy attached to the net. The net paid out slowly astern over the big roller. The water’s friction helped pull it as the boat advanced. The net disappeared, then surfaced to become a line of white corks regular as beads.
Vito communicated with whistle toots and Chris called back one-word shouts, all of it code to Hank. During a pause, Chris gestured toward a section of net still on deck where ends had been joined. “That’s a shackle, what’s left. Fifty fathoms of web. Three hundred feet. The law says nine hundred feet only, that’s three shackles for us. Some guys put together more shackles with less web on each. Nine hundred feet’s enough, man, when they come smokin’. Whoa!” He pointed, and shouted to his dad. A beaded cork a hundred yards aste
rn dipped from sight. “Maybe we’re lucky today anyhow.” Vito tooted. Chris undogged the roller and the boat zoomed ahead, laying the rest without further signals. The Rosa cruised leeward along the Babe’s corks as Uncle Tony peered from the wheelhouse window. Then the Rosa roared quickly away and the cousins started laying their own net in the water.
The two boats towed with a comfortable distance between them, but close enough for shouts back and forth. After a few calls, Chris stretched, then lay back on the hatch. The water was gray and calm. It lapped against the hull. Hank settled beside Chris, looking up at peaceful gray-and-white patterns of sky while a light drizzle picked at his face.
Chris chuckled. “My cousins got the same problem with their dads—my uncles you know—all the old-time guys. We learned from them, we respect them. But now they’re gettin’ older they play everything cautious. They just like to ride the net, like now. Papa never wants to fish in around the sandbars, especially to slip in, go dry, wait for the flood. Don’t tell me they never did it before in those famous old days. But now Papa says, like: ‘I seen too much of those wood double-enders lose centerboard, get blown, swamp, guys drown.’ And I says ‘Sure, back in sail days you got no engine. Now it’s different. Sneak in shallow on Gravel Spit, say, and you got fish.’ And Papa or Uncle Tony ends it with, like: ‘You’re young is what’s wrong. Got no sense.’ But my cousins and me? Fish outside like this all the time? Come on. That ain’t the action. What do you think?”
“I think I’ll be smart and stay out of it.”
“Ahhh . . .” Chris slapped Hank’s shoulder in good humor. “Well, it don’t matter. But my cousins and me? We’re not even sure we need this union anymore, you know? But for Papa and Uncle Tony you say ‘Association’, you might as well be saying Holy Mother Church. So my cousins and me we lay off that one. But. . . we get restless, sometimes throw our weight. I think since you’re here I’ll take us in close next tide.”
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