Breakers

by William B. McCIoskey Jr.

  The two shared information over beers, but obliquely. Rival yards were building their boats. Both yards provided the usual radar, loran, and depth sounder, as well as king crabbing gear considered basic—pot handler, pot launcher, line coiler—that Hank and Tolly each knew from well-studied catalogues. On the other hand, added horsepower and the latest in electronic color-display trackers could give each boat an edge that neither man cared to share. Grins and jokes answered pointed questions.

  Tolly’s crewman Ham Davis strutted in with a self-assurance of mission. He solemnly shook Hank’s hand before reporting to his boss and remained standing. Hank greeted him warmly. He’d known Ham a long time as part of the general scene, but now liked him especially for his gentleman’s boxing match a few weeks earlier when he avoided Mo’s injured arm.

  “Skipper Tolly. That big captain’s chair you had made special? It just came. Boatyard says it won’t fit in the wheelhouse without they put up a thicker stanchion to hold it, and then they’ve got to move the radar and other stuff. Said to tell you it adds four hundred fifty bucks extra to installation.”

  Tolly leaned back and fingered the gold nugget and chain around his neck. “Fuckin’ robbers,” he declared without heat. “Looks good that chair, don’t it?”

  Ham ticked his head and grinned. “Beaut! Guy could be in his own living room with TV. And a place for cups and all.”

  “Then we gotta have her. And don’t forget she’s got a vibrator.”

  “Nobody said!”

  “So you tell the boatyard for me. Just add it to the bill, no sweat.”

  “Yes sir, you got it!” Ham glanced toward a dark comer by a wall phone and became less confident. “Uh, Skipper? Okay if I take tomorrow off?”

  Tolly turned businesslike. “You just went home ten days to Idaho. I’m pushing to make the Bering on time.”

  “It’s these two girls Mo and me met last night at a dance hall? They work days except Wednesdays tomorrow. Want to take us on a boat and picnic to Lake Union and all.”

  “You getting in?”

  The natural rosiness of Ham’s cheeks deepened. “Maybe tonight, if they think we’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Better go then. Wet your dick while you can. Up in the Bering you’ll get only seawater wets it.”

  “Yessir! Thanks!”

  “Hold it there,” said Hank. He made his voice stem and annoyed although he was amused. “You’re planning to handle both girls yourself? Mo works for me. Not a boo to me about his taking off, and he’s got a shitload of jobs tomorrow.”

  “Well. . . Captain Crawford . . .” Ham’s face now matched the red on the “No Credit” sign over the bar. He glanced anxiously toward the dark comer. There stood Mo. Hank gestured him over.

  Both skippers knew their men needed slack before the hard crabbing drive, but Hank with grave reluctance enjoyed bargaining a messy bilge task for Mo’s freedom next day. He regarded the two big young crewmen impersonally. They were both escaped farm boys, twin tractors strong and steady, alert enough around heavy gear, sunny by nature, good to have aboard so long as others made the decisions. When they sauntered off, Hank watched half-wistful for his own old freedom.

  Ham hurried back. “I forgot. The boatyard guy says he needs it in writing if you want that extra stuff.”

  Tolly flourished his hand and Ham scurried to the bartender for pen and paper. Tolly bent over the paper, suddenly all frowns as he scrawled letters one by one into words. “Hsst, man,” he muttered to Hank. “Does ‘hereby’ have an e after the r or not?” Hank told him so discreetly that Ham and Mo joking quietly about their imminent conquest didn’t notice. “And ‘dessinate,’ that got one s or two?” Hank spelled it, adding the g.

  When Ham and Mo had left, Hank observed: “I don’t know what kind of whore’s chair you’re putting in your wheelhouse, old boy. But don’t make it so comfortable that you or your man on watch falls asleep.” Tolly winked and nodded wisely. “Ahh buddy, that’s where the fuckin’ vibrator comes in. You can set it to buzz every couple minutes for wakeup. I have come a long way.”

  “There’s talk around,” Hank ventured. “A future in pollack and groundfish for boats with enough extra horsepower to—besides pulling up crab pots—to drag a trawl.”

  Tolly held out his gold nugget. “See this, man? That’s where your extra bucks should go. And a Maui condo. And on your boat best captain’s chair money can buy, and don’t forget the Jap hot tub for you and your guys after freeze-ass on deck.”

  Hank shifted, suddenly restless. Tolly fished hard and knew his stuff. Maybe he himself was steering wrong.

  “You’re only young once,” Tolly continued. “Even if you’ve maybe dropped the ol’ anchor with Jody. But megabucks to catch shitty little pollack that gets you three cents a pound, versus crabs that bring, what, sometime two bucks a pound? Jody must hit you over the head. Pollack’s Jap-style Russia-style fish, let ‘em have it.” He leaned back and worked a gold toothpick drawn from his shirt pocket. “My boatyard tried to sell me on that goods. Raise your horses from eight hundred fifty to one thousand one hundred fuckin’ fifty just for pollack? Man . . . Not that I wouldn’t mind to run past everything else on the water. But sometimes you have to get smart enough to invest in what’ll do you good. Make some boatyard richer by four hundred thousand bucks? No wonder they tried. But even a bank wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “Sure wouldn’t,” said Hank, and dropped the subject. He ordered another round, and gave the waiter a fifty-dollar bill with: “Round for those three guys over there too, and keep the change.” It was the crew of a rival crabber on the Bering Sea grounds. They gave him a whoop and a wave, and he waved back with appropriate insults.

  But advice from Swede was never idle. Big fish did eat the runts. Whatever he’d said to Swede’s face, what good was owning two hundred miles of ocean if you still let foreigners sweep it dry? Besides greater horsepower, the naval architect at his own boatyard had sketched and priced for him the other parts of a trawl conversion: stem ramp covered by deck plates until needed, heavy net reel, special davits to support the weight of doors and full net.

  “I’ll just crab harder and take one more year to pay it off,” he’d told Jody over the phone.

  “Oh God, Hank. Can’t you ever be satisfied?” Long silence except for Dawn and Henny squabbling in the background, then: “Anyhow, no bank would lend you that much more.”

  “Talked to them today. They think it’s the idea of the future.”

  “Hank, stop spending! We had a good living with the Jody S, and barely payments compared to what you’re doing.”

  It was a thought he avoided even in his mind. “Just think about it. I’ll be calling again tomorrow.”

  “We even spend too much on these damned long distance calls.”

  “Come on, honey. Not with the money I’m making on the crabs. This is our time!” The bold Jody of fishing boat days, who’d called hundred-dollar rounds in Dutch Harbor as casually as the men, had certainly changed. But eventually he’d persuaded her.

  So, while Tolly rattled on about gold and condos and the high cost of keeping his latest squeeze Jennifer happy, Hank smiled to himself. The davits and reel were to be shipped to Dutch Harbor, stored there, and assembled aboard when needed using a crane. Don’t tell. Then someday at sea, throttle full speed (first make it a bet!), and take old buddy by surprise. When they left a half hour later he tucked another twenty for tip beside Tolly’s twenty under the ashtray.

  Hank monitored as his wife sold the Jody S without his presence and at a better price than he’d hoped for, coolly negotiating the paperwork herself. It pained him to relinquish any boat. They were both glad that the new owner, free of old-timer superstition, changed the boat’s name (although Plunderbird sounded a wrong note). Jody also settled the new boat’s name without fuss when he approached her cautiously. “Your family has two women, hasn’t it?” He painted jody dawn on the bow and stem himself, so full of the occasion that he needed to fli
ck water from his cheeks before anyone noticed.

  Time began to squeeze. Jody would come due around Labor Day, and the Bering Sea king crab season opened September 10. Bad way to start paying the bank, to miss a single day on the grounds. The new boat stood in virtual completion. He watched restlessly the final touches of painters and electricians, hoping against delay. The workmen might have seemed unconcerned, but two days ahead of schedule the Jody Dawnsplashed into water. Seth and Mo joined him after visiting their folks respectively in California and Iowa. (Seth announced expansively that he was maybe engaged, maybe.) With near-reverence they sailed their new home to Fishermen’s Terminal to take aboard new crab pots and lines.

  It remained to bring the boat north with a four-man crew half green. Hank had already hired two new crewmen in Kodiak, cold-bloodedly rejecting any applicant over twenty-two so that he could drive them to the furthest limit of young endurance, but a car accident beached one in a cast only days before he was to fly south. The Terminal docks teemed with healthy young guys seeking a site. Word got around. The supposed widow of Odysseus had fewer suitors. Hank had Seth mug-up the hopefuls while he looked them over. He prodded each verbally; never again would he hire a fastidious John. On deck the hopefuls vied to help stow the seven-hundred-pound pots lowered from the wharf. Would insurance cover a non-crew injury? Hank trusted to luck as he speeded up the crane to test them.

  In the end he hired Terry Bricks, a kid not true to type in size but self-assured on deck and merry at the table. Inches shorter than Seth or Mo, Terry still dove like an ape at each pot swinging down and mastered it into position with thick shoulders, showing no fatigue. Hank shooed off the others. He wished them luck kindly, recognizing in some the greenhorn’s longing to be part of a fishing crew he’d once felt himself. He now had the godlike capacity among men to choose and reject. During quiet moments he reflected on it and wondered how far in this direction his life would go.

  Oddmund “Odds” Anderson, the crewman hired in Kodiak, was a quiet, careful man of half-Norwegian, half-Aleut descent, older-seeming than his actual age. He had worked five years full-time aboard his father’s boat in town, and summers before that from age thirteen. His wife gutted salmon and picked crab in season in Swede’s cannery. At twenty-one he already had two children, reason enough to work hard. Odds knew boats, albeit smaller ones than the Jody Dawn, and wanted to expand his horizon. Hank sympathized and also felt an obligation to include the local-born community in his own rising fortunes.

  Hank now phoned Jody every night despite her concern at the cost. She insisted he not fly home. “Then you’ll hold it back, won’t you, till I get there? I don’t want to be away like I was for Henny and Dawn.” Her curt answer puzzled him.

  The trip north with the sparkling new Jody Dawn took nearly a week. They made it in company with Tolly Smith’s new Star Wars Two with CB banter between wheelhouses. After a pleasant run through Puget Sound, Hank first judged his new lady’s responses in the unsheltered swells of Queen Charlotte Sound. Her wide hull took motion solidly. The departed Jody S had livelier action—not a desired feature for winter crabbing. It bothered him to have abandoned a boat once of his heart, and at that after smashing her windows on their last run together. But, when the rest were at chow, he roamed the wide new deck patting gear and savoring the fresh-minted smells. A glance astern over the water showed that Tolly was doing the same. With a grin he gunned the new engine within the limits of break-in speed. But for this restraint on both their engines, he and Tolly would have raced all the way to Kodiak.

  Through Hecate Strait the low hills of spruce wafted the best of land odors. At Dixon Entrance, Tolly wanted to continue north through the Inside Passage for a midtrip party in Ketchikan or Sitka. “Count me out,” said Hank; Jody was waiting. Tolly followed into the rough open Gulf of Alaska with appropriate remarks about the apron-string bonds of a once free corker. They hit a storm, not unusual in the Gulf, and for a day thudded into waves. The tightly lashed hill of pots on deck held, the squared steel frames grinding and clacking. Despite their unbalancing height the boat recentered briskly after each roll.

  The Gulf seas were subsiding when a blip appeared on the radar, followed by a dark hull on the horizon. During the Seattle stay Hank had visited the National Marine Fisheries office to map, and thus avoid, the areas where foreigners could still fish. He examined charts as they approached the ship, while his crew peered through binoculars. The ship’s bay at main deck level opened to the sea. They drew closer and made out a line hung with large fish that moved steadily into the bay. “They’re longlining,” Hank told Tolly. “Jap, Korean, or Taiwan. Oriental letters on the stem.” Loran coordinates put the vessel outside any permitted foreign zone.

  Seth pounded Mo’s back. “Caught us an Oriental fucker!”

  Their sideband radio reached the Coast Guard in Juneau. Headquarters dispatched a cutter with a Fisheries agent aboard, on patrol miles away in the legal foreign area. An officer on the cutter radioed Hank and Tolly to approach the ship close enough to observe its fishing but: “Don’t scare him off before we get there. They’re longlining? That would be for sablefish—black cod you call them. Stuff the rest of the Koreans and Japanese are fishing legally.”

  “Yahoo,” said Tolly, “My girlfriend just gave me a camera. Let’s get evidence.” They had the advantage of seas high enough to partly conceal their boats as they approached. Tolly edged closer and closer. “But this camera viewfinder, it makes the ship no bigger than a shithouse in a cornfield.”

  “Don’t spook him,” Hank warned. Suddenly the fish-hung line dropped from the bay into the water, followed by a large object. Hank swore. “You’ve scared them. Looks like they’ve cut their longline and sunk it with a weight. And you never got close enough for a good photo, did you?” Tolly swore even harder. As they watched, the ship started to move away.

  Hank gunned the Jody Dawn to close on the ship. He put Seth at the helm and tabulated underway hours to figure the speed he could safely push the new engine. He radioed the cutter and with loran coordinates confirmed their position. “She’s headed north, course about three-four-five or seven, doing I judge twelve knots. We still can’t read her name, but it doesn’t seem to have Maru at the end so it’s not Jap I guess.”

  “Read you. That course heads for the main Korean fleet. They’ll try to get lost in it. I won’t give you our position on open frequency, but you’d be interested. Stick with her.”

  “Look, Boss,” cried Mo, “she’s dumping fish overboard.”

  Hank told Mo and the two newcomers to get into survival suits, tie themselves to the rail, and retrieve some of the fish. “One of you lean over with the dip net, the other two hold his legs. Remember we’re going fast, the water could tear it out of your hands. Let it go, Chrissake don’t go with it.”

  “Right, Boss. Sure! Fuckin’ evidence, right?”

  Hank watched tensely with his own hand now on the control—nothing was worth a man overboard. An umbrella of spray cascaded over them from the bow. He slowed just as they passed some of the fish. Mo netted two black cod, about four pounds each. “That’s enough,” he shouted down. “Good work!”

  “Plenty more, Boss,” called Mo expansively.

  “No!

  Back dry in the wheelhouse, Mo and the new man Terry whooped like children as spray arched from the bow at each thud into a wave. Hank controlled his own excitement, and noticed that Seth, a whooper in the past, also remained tensely cool. The man was growing up. (Engaged? Was that it?) The Korean gained distance, but barely. At 7 P.M. at least three hours of light remained. Tolly’s boat fell farther astern. (First use of my extra power, thought Hank, and no time to bet Tolly first. But “Hey man, hey, what am I seeing!” from Tolly rewarded him.) Every quarter hour he radioed the Coast Guard their position.

  Late sun turned horizon clouds golden and gilded the continuous beads of spray. A dot appeared on the radar and grew as they approached. “White hull, Boss,” exclaimed Mo from h
is binoculars. “It’s the Coast Guard! The gooks have been running straight towards them!” The white cutter sped like cavalry to the rescue. The foreign ship slowed while Jody Dawn continued to close the gap. “We’ve boxed him in,” laughed Hank.

  Suddenly the ship reversed course toward the Jody Dawn. Water shot from both sides of its bow. Seth cried out hoarsely. Hank, in sudden horror, pictured the ship that once bore down on the life raft where he, Seth, Jones, Steve, and Ivan lay close to death looking up, when they’d thought rescue had come and found too late they’d not been seen. (A Jap, rushing mindlessly between grounds without a proper watch. Always Asians.) “You son of a bitch fucker!” he yelled. “Seth! Rifle by my bunk!” Then he remembered that the hunting guns lay at home in Kodiak, taken from the old Jody S. The ship bore steadily. Hank veered from course in time. The high rusty hull, its home port Seoul now clear on the bow, continued straight. Asian faces stared down. Seth, now on deck, shook his fist and screamed vituperations. He continued even after the ship had passed.

  Hank reduced to mere headway speed. “Mo, take the wheel. Steady as she goes.” He hurried down to deck. Seth continued to scream. Hank took his arm and led him inside. “Easy man, easy. It’s okay, okay.”

  Seth clutched him and sobbed. “Man, it’s like I seen it again just now, old Steve jump at the anchor to stave us off, then into the water and gone. Just like happening again. Them bastards never stop for you. And I was there like potatoes, given up. Only for you, saving me, I’d be down there now with Steve and Ivan.”

  “It’s okay, okay.” Hank hugged him, then tousled his hair. “We came out okay together, both of us. With old Jones mean as ever. Steve and Ivan’s time had come. Nothing you could have done. Or me . . .” He wanted to sob himself, because it wasn’t so. Not the time now for guilt. A minute later he led Seth into joking about it roughly.