Breakers

by William B. McCIoskey Jr.

  Eventually Chris made spaghetti and they ate. After the net had soaked about two hours Vito yawned. “See what we got.” Chris and Hank pulled into wet-gear as Vito tooted to tell his brother they were hauling. On deck Chris waited for the engine to go into neutral, hit the power takeoff button, and started the roller drum that held the net. Vito bustled from the wheelhouse buttoning his oilskin jacket. He stepped beside Chris, grabbed a hand hook from beneath the rail, and eased Hank aside.

  “Hank can do it, Dad.”

  “Man’s inexperienced.”

  “For horsing in web? Come on.”

  “Let him watch.”

  Chris laughed. “You don’t need to be a Wop to haul web.”

  “I’ve tol’ you don’t use that word. Used to mean things.”

  “Hank, see that spare hook under the rail? No, not the wood handle, that’s mine. You good at picking fish?”

  “Finest,” muttered Hank, both amused and insulted. Now he’d have to be good, while in truth he’d never picked fish from a gillnet.

  The first meshes slipped over the roller empty and dripping. Vito and Chris pulled the incoming net forward on deck and continued guiding it in. “Whoa,” said Chris automatically as the first two salmon came aboard trapped in mesh. One hung only by its jaw. Chris flicked it free, and the five-pound flapping creature thumped by their boots. Web encased the other sockeye. A deft twist of Vito’s hook dislodged it.

  Three fish came next, tangled about a foot apart. Hank stepped in, held one firmly, and tried to loop it free. The body slipped against his glove and stayed trapped—indeed, became more enmeshed. Without comment Vito snatched the fish, hooked out a wad of strands under its gills, and sent the creature flying to deck.

  At the coupling between the second and third shackles Vito stopped the roller. Automatically he and Chris began tossing loose fish forward into the canvas bags, then shaking free those lightly tangled. Hank followed. They cleared the boards of about thirty fish, then pulled in the rest of the net and heaped it on deck, fish and all.

  “Good enough,” said Vito. He hosed himself, and from the wheel-house radioed, “Fuckin’ Fanciulla, I don’ know, guess we’ll drop the hook a while, wait for flood.” He gunned the boat free of others around them. Chris at his dad’s toot released the anchor.

  Hank kneeled determinedly into the netted fish. He freed a few easily, but to his chagrin Chris glanced over just as he struggled with a carcass, now dead and bloody, that entangled further with each yank of the hook. Chris tapped his shoulder, and in a few seconds had slipped head and gills through one web and the stiffening body through another. “Easy does it, man. You’ll learn. Right now hose down. We ain’t squareheads that don’t eat till it’s over. You like your eggs fried or boiled?”

  In the cabin Vito asked Hank if he’d ever seen anything like this kind of fishing and received the appreciative reply he wanted. It turned him expansive. He began to tell how soft all this was compared to the old days under sail with no hydraulic roller to help with the pulling. “You think there wasn’t hernias?” By the time they had finished spaghetti and eggs washed down with Chianti, the Rosa and another cousin’s boat had tied alongside. The two other crews came over for coffee, crowding against bunks and seats. The air filled with smoke. Everyone treated Hank courteously—they all had delivered to the Orion and knew he was the fellow replacing the dopeheads—but ignored him.

  Their talk rambled through engines and nets and bilge pumps, then settled into baseball. Chris’s Little League team back home for Sacred Heart, he’d better tighten up his third base and outfield the minute he got home. Blessed Ascension always had that advantage, its coach not going to Bristol Bay and all, and you never saw worse cutthroats.

  “Dodgers and Orioles,” said Vito. “They’ll do World Series. Take my word.”

  “L.A., maybe, you got Tommy Lasorda, he’s manager, o.k? But Boston, Boston for the American. Don’t forget the Red Sox got Lynn and Rice.”

  “Naah, Yankees, Yankees for the American,” said one of the cousins. “You think Joey DiMagg’s old team is gonna let us down?”

  Vito reached under his mattress for a wallet and slapped down a hundred-dollar bill. “This says L.A.-Baltimore.”

  “You got it,” declared his brother. “Mark the books. Who’s dumb enough to cover me? I got a hundred says L.A.-Boston.”

  “Covered!”

  Chris took a ledger from the rack beside the Tide Tables and registered the bets. One of the cousins fetched a similar book from the Rosa and wrote in it. Vito replaced the bill in his wallet. They began to wonder what the canneries would pay by the end of the season. “Hundred bucks says it breaks one-fifty,” declared Vito.

  “Naah, you crazy? Hundred bucks says under one-ten, raise you fifty.”

  Suddenly they fell silent and looked at Hank. He laughed. “I’m not management. You really think the price will go that high? From fifty-eight cents last year?”

  After a while they all went back out to pick the remaining fish from the nets while they talked across the rails, continuing the points of baseball. Chris leaned to Hank over the fish and muttered: “You want the whole treatment, ought to hear ‘em in the Club back home, those old men, betting the nags.”

  Hank picked and listened comfortably. The little grove of stunted evergreens they called Banana Tree, the single growth on a brown hill that fixed the location, faded and disappeared in foggy drizzle along with the hill itself. Occasionally another boat cruised by from the Italian fleet and stopped to banter, and other engines could be heard just out of sight, but the three boats stayed a pocket to themselves. More bets entered the books. Hank made one himself, and Chris banged him on the back as the others called their approval.

  “Now,” Chris announced as they wound the clean-hosed net back on the roller. “This next set, flood soon, we’re going close in to the bars.”

  “Non mi piace,” said Vito firmly. “What if it starts to blow, blows up swells, what if that engine breaks down? Where are you? Back in sail days is where.”

  “Just the same, Papa, we’re goin’ in.” Chris’s cousin on the Rosadeclared that they were going in too. Vito and his brother grumbled further but acquiesced.

  The two boats eased toward humps of sand where gulls strutted, but separated to allow distance between them. Both crews paid out their nets. The Monterey Babe grounded with a soft scrape and the water’s gentle rock stopped. As the tide lowered further, exposed sand rose around them. The nets became kite-tails that floated until they too snaked dry. Soon land surrounded them on all sides.

  “Shut the engine, Papa. I got a belt I oughta change.”

  “Do it on the water.”

  “Papa. Nothin’s going to happen here.”

  Vito turned off the engine. In the sudden quiet, rivulets of water gurgled and the gulls squawked like petulant children. Hank watched two gulls attack a salmon stranded in a puddle. They went for the eyes. When Hank realized what was happening he searched for things to throw. After a while the fish stopped flapping. Two other sockeyes emerged as a puddle drained and a collective noise rose from the gulls. Hank jumped over the rail, gripped tight until he knew the sand held him, then ran over and rescued the fish.

  “Hey!” declared Chris heartily. “Our new man here, he can’t stop fishing.”

  Hank grinned, feeling self-conscious. “Let ‘em die in dignity at least.” He threw the two fish by their tails up to deck, then retrieved another.

  “Get back aboard,” fretted Vito. “You never know what’ll happen, gone dry on the sands.”

  Aboard the Rosa, beached a few hundred feet away, Joey and his brother stood on the stem and shot gulls. “Naaa,” said Chris mildly. “I kill enough what I hafta.” He changed the belt, then the oil. Vito started the engine again at once. Chris shrugged, and heated more coffee.

  The steady withdrawal of water stopped, then virtually on the minute started to rise again around the far edge of sand. It bubbled progressively up the tail o
f net, covering it an inch at a time. The white corks floated one by one, rigid until the web they supported cleared bottom, then undulating with the flow of current. Chris watched through binoculars, muttering, “Come on, baby, don’ let me down.” A splash against the submerged net. “Whoa. Cornin’ in.” Splashes consumed a cork, then another. Suddenly spray whitened the water along the length of the corks, and fishtails thrashed above the surface. Chris whooped, and even Vito grunted.

  The thrashes progressed in a line toward them as water reclaimed the sand. “Smokin’ man, smokin’,” declared Chris reverently. “Didn’t I say? In ten years it’s never been like this year since we stopped the Japs’ intercept.”

  Within a minute, half the exposed corks had disappeared. Others became centers of frenzy as big silver fish tangled in meshes near the surface. Shouts from the Rosa proved that their net was filling too. They drank in the sight as they waited for rising water to refloat the boats. Hank restrained a dance and shout. It could have been again his first time at the net. His hands itched to grip the twisting fish. Like seeing the Lord’s table laid open in all its bounty.

  At last they floated. The current at once pulled them into its line, almost violently. The net weighted with fish steadied them as firmly as any anchor, but the pressure made the net so taut against the drum that they could roll it in only by backing engine cautiously to create slack. “Dangerous, I don’ know,” muttered Vito at the remote controls astern. He continued to worry as he throttled and neutraled expertly to keep web from the propeller.

  Netted fish rose in lumps over the roller. The drum slipped without moving them as the soft bodies squeaked beneath. Hank grabbed web with Chris to ease them. Like pulling rocks! The concentration continued. Soon it turned grunt work just to drag the laden net over the drum and heft it astern. Except for the occasional snagged fish loosened with a shake, the tangled sockeyes became a hill around them on deck, then a mountain. First Hank’s feet slipped on fish, then became so engulfed in the soup of web and fish that he needed to grip his boot tops to suck free. He laughed and pulled dizzily as the creatures thrashed against his legs, panting to echo Chris’s excited “Whoa!”

  The Rosa nearby also hauled in. Hank glanced through sweat to see their net in profile against the stem. It rose taut between water and roller with fish hung from the web like grapes on a vine.

  It took two hours to bring aboard the nine hundred feet of web. As soon as the last of the net trailed safely free of the propeller, Vito hurried them to deeper water. They moved sluggishly compared to their usual bounce since the weight of fish had lowered their freeboard. Water rippled only inches below the rail.

  “We oughta throw some fish back. What if a storm?”

  “Papal”

  When they dropped anchor the increasing flood current snapped them quickly bow-on against the flow and pulled the anchor line taut. “Fuckin’ Tosca,” radioed Vito, keeping his face as long as his voice. “I don’ know, maybe better next tide, guess we’ll drop the hook a while, hope for better.”

  The Rosa came alongside, riding similarly low. For safety each boat used its own anchor rather than tying together. The men on the Rosa faced a similar mountain of harvest. Both crews started picking around darkfall. Each cleared a space to sit, with web and fish over legs and lap, and called back and forth. Bets, recorded by messy hands on streaked paper for later transfer, centered on fish count both in each hold and throughout the Bay. Hank now had his own page in the bets ledger.

  They picked throughout the dark and into a grudging dawn while rain dumped from above and the sea splashed from below. Deck lights glistened on wet metal, oilskins, slime-covered deck and canvas, salmon with red crisscross net marks, everything. The chilly dead fish as they aged emitted increasing coppery odors. Occasionally someone stretched and made coffee. The bets and jokes lagged for a while, but then another of the Monterey boats anchored nearby with plugged nets and it all started fresh. Hank bantered contentedly with the rest.

  About three a.m. in dim light, with only the first of the shackles cleared and rewound on the drum, all hands hosed and went inside. Chris fried fresh salmon with spaghetti for all three crews. Nobody hurried, even though the radio crackled with news of the continued run they might have pushed to tap again.

  Work resumed. The dead sockeyes had lost all sheen and turned soapy. Hank was now facile with the pick, although some tangles stayed so thick that he’d mangle a fish to renewed kidding. It bothered nobody. Cutting a leg of web to widen the hole through which to draw the fish would have made sense but he saw none of the others doing it, and it was their gear. Cold sank through his oilskins to his thermals. His fingers burned from yanking the thin monofilament webbing that cut like wire, his legs started to cramp, and pains stabbed down his wrists.

  Not that he was unhappy in good boat company, but any euphoria over live salmon abundance had long passed. All fishing had monotony, but extracting these net-bloodied creatures was more like sorting garbage. He’d wallowed enough in dead salmon delivered from seiners, crawling into holds up to his waist in fish to pitch them into a brailer. But the fish had first poured free from the net, thumping into the hold in flashes of silver. Well, that distinction represented the sensibilities of Henry Crawford—it made no difference to the salmon. Both seines and gillnets interrupted the salmon’s drive home so that they died with a five-minute gasp, cheated of their duty-spawn for the next generation and a bedraggled fadeout. Did salmon care? he wondered pleasantly without caring himself, and called over an embellishment to one of the cousins’ jokes.

  When they broke again to eat, this time on the Rosa, one entire shackle remained to be picked. The canvas bags now bulged in six holds, and the remaining fish swilled in a red gurry that only regular hosing thinned.

  Hank watched the clock. Still a while before the high slack on which Orion should return to the cannery, assuming it had a load, but the scow needed to start ahead of the tide to reach the river mouth. Ought to radio them. But on radio he’d risk a pointed question from John that the fleet could misinterpret, or gee-whizzing from Seth that might be worse. He was out learning the fishery, of course, but . . . (Would Jody call it that? Once she’d have understood.) He explained his concern to Chris who conveyed it to everyone else. Nobody seemed unhappy. Within minutes black smoke spouted from the three boats’ stacks as engines turned and anchors rose.

  A chilly hour and a half later—all but the skippers at the wheel remained on deck picking fish and taking spray—the misted lights of the tender fleet approached like a wall. Beneath the Orion’s high rail Hank grinned up, dripping, surrounded by his hill of fish. Seth and Mo cheered. Camera flash as John silently recorded the event. The Babe and the others tied in a line behind the Orion while they picked the last of their fish. Vito turned jovial. By the time Hank climbed back aboard his own command to receive the salmon he had helped catch, Vito was joking to everybody about the high-class crewman he’d trained to pick fish.

  In raining dark the Orion started for the cannery. The fat engineer settled in the galley at his place, drinking tea he had brewed himself. He’d not spoken since Hank came back aboard. “I see you enjoyed yourself,” said John, who, his duties finished, then showered and went to bed. Seth and Mo trooped to the wheelhouse to hear about the fishing. Hank at the controls drank black coffee to keep alert—he’d worked nearly clockaround for two days—as he steered through an increased maze of lights approaching the Naknek River mouth. It became difficult to match his men’s high spirits, and harder yet to keep from yawning.

  Lights ahead seemed to float, and passing tufts of fog made them blink. “Seth . . .” He kept it casual. “Think that’s a red flasher ahead or a running light?”

  “Hell, that’s somebody’s port side. Gillnetter maybe, probably you saw it dip in a wave.”

  He had studied the river mouth over and over. Their radar position was slightly off, but within the leeway he could allow. Uneasily, however, he slowed.

  The O
rion thudded to a halt that threw them to deck. Dishes shattered in the galley below. They had grounded.

  5

  RECKONINGS

  NAKNEK, JULY 1978

  Bristol Bay groundings are common enough. The bottom is sand or mud. It took Hank a tense half hour to reverse engines and move free on the still-rising tide. A falling tide might have left him dry a dozen hours for all to see. His luck held, and he knew it.

  When they docked at 2 A.M., Swede stood in the rain while his men received their lines. He motioned Hank into his cart, gunned up the hill, and ushered him to a room in one of the barracks, all without speaking. Finally: “Sleep it off. I’ll send your things in the morning.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “When I hire a skipper I hire him full-time. Your boys can stay or not.”

  Hank wondered angrily how Swede knew, and whether it would have made a difference without the grounding. He started a defensive reply, then suddenly felt ashamed. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I know it won’t. See ‘em at the office for a flight back to Kodiak.” He tossed Hank a key. “Turn this in when you go.”

  Hank followed down the hallway, unbelieving. “You don’t have anybody to take over.”

  “You underestimate Doke Stutz.”

  Swede had already reached the porch and started down the steps. Hank kept his voice low by the windows of nearby rooms. “Come back out of the rain where we can talk.” Swede only turned where he stood. “Look. I don’t like to be fired. Who made me come up here? What did that Doke fart tell you? I went on a trip with fishermen to get a feel for the place, then hit sand in shitty weather, that’s all. Now I appreciate things in Bristol Bay I didn’t before.” Swede hesitated. “Get back here, man. We’ve got a long way to go in this business together.”