Hank quickly grabbed paper towels and handed them to Mo. “Go down and put ice on it.”
“I’ll get him ice.” Terry slipped away.
“Be damned,” said Seth. “Terry’s always fun, like a kid. You all right, Mo?”
“Sure. I just done wrong, forget it. Terry’s okay.”
“Good,” said Hank, relieved again. Crew fighting was a quick way down, and he liked each too much to get rid of either.
Terry hurried back with the ice wrapped in a towel. He gave it to Mo with one hand and lightly punched his arm with the other.
“It’s okay, man,” said Mo. “Thanks.” He alone faced aft. Suddenly “Hey! Star Wars’ deck lights just clicked off. He’s unmoored, Boss, he’s after us.”
They crowded by the after window. Indeed, Tolly was in pursuit. As soon as Hank left the cannery zone he increased speed. They whooped as the boat thudded into heading waves. Water fanned from the bow to crash against the front windows. Mo tentatively patted Terry’s shoulder. “Oh man, don’t you call this the life?” Terry pounded Mo’s back.
The Star Wars Two’s running lights began to swoop as Tolly also left harbor and gunned ahead. After a few miles, on the VHF: “Pretty sly, baby. But Tolly’s on to you.” Hank bit his lip, and despite his men’s expectant looks did not reply. Within an hour Tolly’s boat had grown smaller. Star Wars Two was underpowered. Hank at last picked up his microphone. “See you in a few days, babe. By the way, don’t bother with any coordinates your spies might have picked up around the campfire.” Tolly answered with cheerful obscenities.
By morning twilight Tolly was a speck on the horizon. When at last they had opened the distance beyond even radar range Hank adjusted course approximately toward Hank’s Hole, and went below for Mo’s traditional pre-crabbing steak dinner.
Sixty miles out, radar blips announced vessels ahead. By the time lights began to blink and enlarge against the overcast horizon, the head wind’s clean briny odors bore the taint of fish under steam. “Only gook factory ships stink like that,” observed Seth. “You mean we haven’t kicked them all back home yet?”
“Guess not,” said Hank. He scanned through binoculars as they closed. Several boats had the same cut as their own, with running lights that rose and disappeared in the swells. Only one cluster of lights, higher and more numerous than the others, blinked steadily from the large outline of a ship. “I think it’s one of those things they’re calling joint ventures. Americans catch the fish and sell to the foreigners who can’t catch them anymore themselves.”
“Americans, catch those crappy whatchamacallits? Pollack?” Seth pulled off his cap—it advertised a local marine supplier—scratched his tumble of straw-blond hair, and replaced it. A bald spot had begun to open on the back of his head. “Two, three cents a pound for mushy little slime-fish, not even big ones, when crabs bring a buck and more, things you know you’ve got fuckin’ food in your hand when you catch ‘em? Don’t make sense. People say you gotta grow with the times, but some kind of growing that is. Glad nobody’s hoodwinked us on that one.”
“Well. . . more like nine cents these days,” said Hank. “High volume, all those little fish, there could be money in it.”
“Drag through the mud when you got nice big crabs,” laughed Mo. “Count us out, eh Boss?”
Pause. “Yup.”
Jimmy Seegar, on the Sea Challenger out of Kodiak, raised him on the CB. “You joining our JV, Hank?”
“Not a chance. How’re you doing?”
“Worst decision I ever made. It’s all scratch. Who said there was goddamn pollack here for the taking? Bureaucrats, that’s who. They lied. We can barely keep this hungry Korean sonofabitch fed, this factory, and they’re gettin’ restless. I’d of switched to pots gear three weeks ago and be goin’ for crab, but we signed a contract.”
“That’s rough,” said Hank, but thought: Fd find fish. You need the guts to search.
“Ever targeted pollack before, Hank?”
“Never. Never groundfish. I take it you’re scanning through the whole water column, not just the bottom?”
An accented voice interrupted. “American fisher-boat? New fisher-boat? You have fish for us?” Hank answered in the negative. “How about girlie-magazine? You have new girlie-magazine?”
“Oh, Mr. Sun, your boys are in luck,” said Jimmy. His voice was not friendly, although he made it seem so. “This new boat, no fish, but three big, big whore-girlie from Kodiak want to come on board and play kissie-kissie. You put down ladder?”
“Ohhh.” The Asian voice caressed the sound from high in the throat. Then, barked orders over the speaker.
“Oh shit,” laughed Jimmy. “First fun I’ve had in a month.” A Jacob’s ladder clattered down the rusty side of the ship, and faces in hardhats peered from above. “One of your apes wouldn’t have a dress to put on, Hank?”
Hank throttled to speed. His opinion would only make an enemy on the Kodiak docks. “Got to go, Jimmy. Making a rendezvous. Good luck.”
“New boat wish to come port-side instead starboard-side?” said the Asian voice anxiously. “No problem, you come.”
“Pull out of it, Mr. Sun,” said Jimmy, annoyed. “No fish, no girlie-girlie. Just my friend. Hang up. Good-bye.”
“Hell,” said Seth as they left the fleet astern. “I bet we’d have got Terry to go along if we’d had a dress. Anything to trick a gook, eh?”
Hank remained silent.
Throughout the day, and the night that followed, he called the crew occasionally to set prospector pots, and marked their location on the chart. At ten the following morning he folded the chart, and declared to the four lounging in the wheelhouse: “It’s time, guys. Scoot.” Mo, Terry, and Odds tumbled below obediently. Only Seth lingered, and frowned back. “Maybe I’ll tell you next year,” Hank soothed as he closed the wheelhouse door behind them and locked it. He brought out the specially marked chart from his padlocked bunk drawer, and adjusted course toward his Hole.
They all knew the routine. Mo left lunch on a tray at the door. Without prompting they readied the deck, emptied frozen herring into the tub, and began to fill bait cans. The loran coordinates closed. The depth sounder showed his Hole just where it had always been, some ten fathoms deeper than the rest of the seafloor around it, no more than a hundred fifty feet wide. On deck under Seth’s careful direction, they lowered nine of the heavy pots slowly, one by one—easing them down attached to the hauler block rather than heaving them over the side as usual. Hank sang under his breath. Wind and chop did their best to drive him off course, but the Jody Dawn answered each twitch of his throttle like a mistress. He hovered her where he chose.
After filling the Hole he cruised the area setting prospector pots in other locations and marked them on the secret chart. One of the prospects, checked after soaking only an hour, came up with twelve keeper males. On the strength of it he set the rest of his deck load, some hundred pots, into a string. He’d milk the Hole and graze besides.
He could picture his prey a mile of fathoms below, in murk that barely brightened under rare full sun. Piles of sluggish giants awakened. They sidled toward the scent of food, claws quivering in expectation. They crawled through the funneled entrance, barely squeezed through the opening at the end perhaps trampling others in their greed. But when they reached the perforated bait can, ah—betrayal. It oozed savory oils but held the food tight. (Hell, even condemned prisoners got a last meal.) Only the luckiest crab figured its way back out through the tunnel. Greed had changed the destiny of Big John Crab—no, be fair, nature’s drive to eat and survive—from predator of the deep, snatching his pleasure with deadly claws, to lumps in a salad. “If you eat-a me then I’ll eat-a you,” Hank sang. All creatures lived off each other. His luck to be top of the food chain, head species. Even if he turned holy and vegetarian, Nature wouldn’t change.
Three hours later they raised pots from the Hole. King crabs packed each of the big cages so tight that soon some might have suffo
cated. Claws protruded from the mesh, sluggishly gripping at space. Each load tumbled to deck, all males, their spiny purple carapaces grand as alarm clocks. No cull necessary.
“Done it again, Boss,” called Terry. “We are hotl”
Back down went the pots. Like picking apples from a tree so full it needed only a shake. A half dozen more such hauls from the Hole, along with any luck from the string he’d set, would fill their hold, send them to Dutch with the debutante load of the new season, first price, while other boats were still days from delivering. Two seasons of this would pay the rest of the Jody Dawn, a third and he’d own the new house with mortgage kissed into smoke. Wouldn’t hurt to buy a condo in Hawaii instead of renting on their winter break.
“Boss! Look to port.”
Silhouettes lined the horizon, vessels bigger than the Jody Dawn. They were spaced evenly, moving in his direction from the area of his prospect string—eleven radar blips, one larger than the others. His song stopped. He gunned the boat toward them, not sure what he planned to do. Binoculars picked out Asian characters on one rusty housing. The ships advanced on him like an army. By shortwave he raised Coast Guard operations in Kodiak. “There’s a whole fleet of Orientals, Jap or Korean, trawlers I guess, dragging the hell where I’ve laid my crab pots. In American waters—I’m not outside two hundred miles.” Reluctantly he gave his position.
“They probably have a GIFA,” said the duty lieutenant. “Wait one I’ll check.”
“Giffa? Giffa? What the hell?”
“Governing International Fishery Agreement, sir. Wait one. Yeah, here. Kashima Maru, that’s the name of the mothership. Japanese. You’re a registered crabber, right? You should be receiving directives from the Commerce Department that show where Japan can fish its GIFAs. Looks like you’re not in one of the regular crabbing zones that’s protected.”
“I’m in the waters of my own fucking country! And what was the fight to get the foreigners off our fish if they’re still here?” He knew the answer, bitterly. State Department was trading fish for Sonys, as Jones Henry and others called it. He riffled through a packet of government announcements still in their envelopes. Jody had scribbled “Read this” across one of them. A Japanese factory fleet, goddamnit, fishing his very grounds with permission!
The announcement included the mothership’s radio frequency. He called it. “Kashima Maru, Kashima Maru. This is Jody Dawn, American crab boat. You are fishing in an area where I have laid my gear, my crab pots. Orange buoys, orange buoys. Do you hear?” Only static in reply, and the faint sound of voices speaking what sounded to Hank like Japanese on their boat-to-boat frequency. The ships advanced in formation like an army of reapers, fishing grids with Japanese efficiency. Their nets would be spread across the bottom, dragging every inch of the seafloor along the total swath of their line.
The Jody Dawn reached one of the prospector pots just as a high rusty bow brushed it aside and then traveled over it. The ships had already overrun part of the string. Hank blew his siren, shouted over the deck speaker and the radio simultaneously “Stop! You’re riding my gear, orange buoys, stop!”
The closest ship blasted its whistle. A man on the bridge waved him away urgently. Others appeared on the bow, shouting and gesturing. Hank nosed his boat away from the advancing hull. His men on deck shouted up curses and waved their fists. Mo grabbed a rotten sea object from the scupper, and threw it skillfully to arc over the high bow. At this, the Japanese began throwing dead fish. One turned a pressure hose on them.
“Do something to ‘em, Boss!” cried Mo.
Seth turned wild. He disappeared into the cabin and came out with his rifle. Before the others could obey Hank’s cry to stop him, he fired up at the Japanese who screamed and scattered. Hank’s only course was to throttle ahead and run Seth out of range.
He went to the last of his string. “Bring them aboard,” he shouted, his voice now hoarse. “Stack, don’t take time to empty, save what we can.” In rough sea with water foaming across deck, they needed to lash each pot to the rail. It took precious time. The heavy steel cages, weighing now some two thousand pounds each with crab inside, suddenly shifted. Seth cried out, his hand mashed. A Japanese voice barked over the radio, “American pirate, American pirate, murder-man, I report you to State Department, go home!” They managed thirteen pots before the trawlers bore down too close.
Hank raced ahead to his Hole. Seth, his hand dripping blood, stayed with the work even though Hank told him to go inside. They pulled up six of their pots, already half full, but needed to abandon the other three. Seth was crying from pain and frustration. Hank set course away from the ships and hove to only when miles separated them.
When the fleet had become distant silhouettes—although the stench of rendered fish blew back obscenely—Hank returned to his Hole. It had disappeared, filled by the trawls plowed over it. Hundreds of creatures lay caged and buried. Would others uncaught struggle their way up through silt to open seafloor, or die coffined like their mates?
All in all they lost over a hundred crab pots, each worth about three-hundred dollars, let alone the harvest gone. Saved were two pots whose straps and buoys had survived the trawlers’ drag over the string. By the time they were raised, the pots contained some fifty large males each. Discovered and lost in a day were grounds of wondrous productivity. All the lost pots now lay dead on the seafloor with lines snapped and no way to recover them, traps to hold crabs prisoner until they starved.
Hank called the Coast Guard in Kodiak. “We’ve had an incident.”
“So we’ve been informed.” The speaker was now the base commander, and his tone was stiff.
“They destroyed our gear. One of our men’s injured. Did the Jap . .. the Japanese . . . claim any . . . ?”
“Urge give no details over open frequency. Return to Dutch Harbor. Give your ETA. People from Washington are leaving tonight to meet you there.”
Hank became equally formal in the style of his Navy days. “Read you. Twenty hours ETA depending on weather.” He glanced at Seth who was in the wheelhouse with the others. Seth’s hand was wrapped in ice, yet he was oiling his shotgun. “Got a man here with hand crushed. Request medical help meet us at the pier.”
“I’ll so relay.”
When the messages had ended, Seth looked up and said evenly: “I didn’t mean but to scare them. But those fuckers had it coming if I hit one.
“I hope they see it that way.”
It was only after Hank had set return course, with seas thrashing the hull and night wrapped around them, that he realized he was trembling.
9
THE GREAT GAME
DUTCH HARBOR, SEPTEMBER 1980
Seth’s scattershot had nicked the arm of the man with the deck hose, and had driven a leak into the hose itself. Since both vessels were pitching, he could not have placed the bullets deliberately. But then, with different luck a man might be dead.
“You think you’re a cowboy?” the lawyer sent by the State Department coldly demanded. “We’re charging attempted murder.” A delegate from the Japanese Embassy, who had accompanied him from Washington, nodded vigorously, his eyes aflame like a warrior in a samurai movie. There was no way to keep John Gains, the Asshole, out of it. He gravely attached himself to the Japanese, and offered translations.
The conference of officials, behind closed doors, took four hours. It scared the waiting Seth sufficiently that he wrote an apology with oriental flourishes added by the lawyer and Gains. After their urgent private coaching (with a muttered “do it!” from Hank), Seth even exchanged bows with the Japanese delegate, offered to pay for the hose and any medical bills, and requested that his apologies be conveyed to the man he’d shot. His bruised hand had one finger broken, now splinted.
The Japanese Embassy man turned cordial at once. The Kashima Maru deeply regretted the unintentional destruction of American gear, he announced, and its company wished to compensate the captain fully for the loss. More bows.
Han
k did not escape that easily. Before it was over, State forced him to go to Anchorage to settle the matter, and saw to a fifteen-thousand-dollar fine. And while months later a bank draft in yen reached Kodiak for the cost of the lost gear, it helped not at all in Dutch Harbor during the frenzy of a September opening. He had indeed delivered a partial holdful of king crabs before any other boat, and received a good price for it—thank heaven Swede Scorden now ran the front office and quickly produced a bottle from his desk drawer. But Swede put it straight: “Ask me for any advance or loan. But there’s no damn pots for love or sale.”
The Jody Dawn was impounded until settlement—Seth might have skippered it for a run—so that the hearing and red tape cost him an entire precious nine days off the grounds in a season that lasted little more than a month. His ace, Hank’s Hole, had been destroyed, and he now faced fishing common grounds with fewer pots than any other boat.
“Well, chalk it up to being as secretive and greedy as the foreigners,” snapped Jody over the phone. He had expected her to be indignant for him. Surely the old Jody on deck would have plotted secret grounds and yelled insults at foreigners with the rest. But then she turned soothing, told him they’d manage, and made him promise to stay cool.
His desire to hold her was overwhelming. “I’m catching tomorrow’s flight home for a couple of days.”
“The hell you are. We can’t afford it. Go catch some crabs.” But as the Anchorage stay became protracted, she left the children with Adele and flew up for the weekend. They watched expenses carefully—he’d rented the cheapest room despite its shabbiness—but she had not been so tender and reassuring since the birth of Pete.
In Dutch Harbor the authorities permitted the crew to load what pots they had still stored. Seth then moored the Jody Dawn out of the way at a far end of the cannery pier. He stayed on board, refusing invitations to drink at the Elbow Room. After the enforced apology he paced the empty wheelhouse muttering to himself.
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