Next morning, calmly: “As the lawyers explained, Hank, we co-sign with you, assign you fifty-one percent ownership. We’ll need your house signed over for security, of course, you understand that. Just formality.”
“My home?”’
“Formality, Hank. Business. In two years you’ll be buying your own Rothkos or whatever your taste.”
The man’s confidence relaxed him. “It won’t be squares and dribbles, count on that. Maybe a Hawaii condo.”
“Don’t knock the squares and dribbles. My dad loves them, I think. He loves anything American. For me they’re money. Everybody else over here’s paying too much for Dutch sunflowers. Our agent in the States insists that in five years the jump will be to the abstract expressionists we’re collecting. And American all the way. Give it a thought whether you like the stuff or not.”
“Likely. Jody’d kill me.”
“There you go again, letting the ladies lead. Our Kabuki seems to be your taste. Your Jasper Johns had a whole period based on Kabuki play Usuyuki. If it’s not too late when your money starts rolling in, you might consider at least a print from those before the price hits the sky.”
“Does the thing look like a person?”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
Step by step it happened. Hank alternated between wonder, fright, exhilaration, and disbelief as the process unfolded. During the remaining days in Japan he managed to elude further banquets except for a planned farewell evening.
There was a wistful, unsatisfactory ending with Helene, safely midday over lunch. He was ashamed not to have faced it earlier, and he regretted it even more because she took it so gracefully. “All the woolly bears seem to be firmly locked in their trees,” she sighed in good humor, and took his face in her hands to turn it to her. He closed his eyes. Perfume working and the itch started. Three times no worse than two? He made himself picture Jody, kissed Helene lightly, and walked away.
At the fishery agency he now moved as a creature of great importance, greeted with a rush to the door by the once-too-busy Mr. Matsunaga, only cautiously greeted by old companions Hayashi and some of the others who now evidently perceived themselves his inferiors. He gave Hayashi politeness but no more. The little guy’s snub at the Tsurifune meeting might have been intended to save his ass if Hank’s war-frankness had gone wrong, but it had been real.
That evening, old Mr. Tsurifune himself attended the farewell banquet. He and Hank sat in double seats of honor and filled each other’s sake cups. No interpreter was needed. The company photographer took the two together arm to shoulder while Mike, less easy in his father’s presence, stayed discreetly aside. With a flourish Mr. Tsurifune presented a velvet box. Inside was a pearl necklace.
“I can’t take this.”
“For your wife, Mr. Crawford.”
“I can’t. It’s too much.”
“Bad manners to give it back, Hank-san,” said Mike. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing. Done all the time, for special guests.”
During the long flight home across the Pacific his head ached from the toasts. The hangover was reality in what otherwise seemed a dream.
17
ANGERS
KODIAK, EARLY JUNE 1982
Hank. Dear. It’s all right, dear.” She said it gently, but she was firm. “You can’t hold me all day. Get our bags. And you’d better hug Pete again before he falls apart.”
“Daddy Daddy Daddy.”
Hank released her with one more brush of his mouth against her hair, then swooped Pete into the air and hugged him close.
“Don’t you have at least one little kiss for your mother?”
“Mrs. Sedwick. Hi.” He kissed her as quickly as he could, avoiding the wrinkled lipstick mouth that sought his own. Stale tobacco. (Why wasn’t smoke in a barroom as intrusive as in open air?) Tell Jody first thing that he’d not call the woman his mother, that she’d earned nothing from either of them. It didn’t help that, halfway during the drive to the house, after commenting “My God, kids, don’t you know you left all civilization thirty minutes ago?” she said: “I hope to God this trip doesn’t take much longer. I’m dying for a cig. Jody darling, surely one little ciggie while we’re driving won’t hurt anything. I could even roll down the window.”
“You know my terms,” said Jody coolly.
So much he had to tell Jody, and the wagon held a stranger. The woman sat behind them blocking him even from Pete who had quickly crawled into the rear. A drizzle kept the wipers clacking slowly.
He had arrived back in Kodiak five days before to a town suddenly less his own. Jones Henry and his seiner crew were off fishing the reds at Igvak before Jones left for his new venture in Bristol Bay. It postponed reaction to Hank’s Japan agreement, but emptied the piers of seiners and bustle. He wandered apart, wondering when he’d net another jag of salmon and feel them thumping around his legs. The house was bleak without Jody. (Did she find it bleak when he was off fishing? Not with three kids to keep her busy.) Even the precious view over miles of water to town lights had become lonely. Stains on the counter previously unnoticed (Jody probably kept it cleaner, he decided) appeared whenever he laid down a cup or dish.
Since Dawn and Henny attended school in town they remained with Adele, and he dined there nightly. He met his children outside school and walked them slowly to Adele’s, buying treats and wine for dinner on the way. Henny, sturdy at seven, had no intention of holding his father’s hand, but Dawn did it possessively. Henny, now in second grade, proudly displayed his homework while Dawn in mere first watched with envy. After homework, Hank lay with them on the floor with The Wizard of Oz. They took turns reading and spelling the words. Adele left them alone while she busied in the kitchen, but by dinner she had taken over with questions of Japan and her own opinions of how it compared (unfavorably) with France.
The shadow of Helene hovered over him like a malaise. Why had he done it? Did restoring faith mean confession, or keeping guilt to himself? After all was it that bad, when everybody shacked around? He knew the answer. Jody was the love of his life. The decision of whether to tell came down to what it would mean between them if she learned, and that he feared.
At last they drove from the potholed road into the leveled space before their house. “Home. Thank goodness,” said Jody. She left the car and stood for a moment in the mossy quiet beneath the tall trees. “Never thought I’d get tired of endless sun. I’ll say this for Kodiak rain. It brings out the pine smell.”
Hank listened gladly. She’d grown to accept the place. He grabbed Pete out in his arms and snuggled him, answering “Daddy Daddy Daddy” with “Petey Petey Petey.”
“My God, it’s Hansel and Gretel, witch’s house in the dark, how do you stand it?” exclaimed Mrs. Sedwick. “I need my cig, but is it safe? What about bats and things?”
“Stand close to a tree,” said Jody drily. “Maybe the bats won’t see you. And make sure you stamp out any ash when you’re through.”
“In this wet? What would bum?”
He had washed all dishes, hung up his clothes, pulled kinks from the rugs, bought flowers, and raised the heat to welcome Jody back, but: “I can see you’ve been baching it,” she observed cheerfully.
He resisted an injured retort, gently disengaged Pete, and held her in a long kiss. “Boy, how I’ve missed you.” The strength of her returned embrace reassured him.
Wouldn’t she forgive?
“Ohh. Lovebirds. I’ll just shiver outside a while longer and give you your privacy.”
Jody drew apart and sighed. “Come in, Mother. I’ll get your room ready.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble. My God, out there in that wilderness at night, what do you do when you .. . need a cig?”
“Where’s she sleeping?” Hank muttered.
“Pete’s room. He’ll take Henny and Dawn’s room while they’re at Adele’s. When school finishes . . . he’ll have to come in with us.” She put a hand over his mouth and shook her head. “By then you�
�ll probably be on your big boat.”
He had bummed a sockeye from one of the cannery hoppers. Outside he filleted it angrily. When Pete followed to watch he calmed. “Hey Petey, what’s this?” He pointed to the fish.
“Daddy.”
“No. Fish.”
“Daddy.”
“Fish
Pete giggled. “Daddy.”
Hank tried also with tree, knife, and house. Same answer. Like a game, but with the child calling the shots. One more try. “Mommy, Pete. Mommy”
“Daddy.”
Hank gripped the child face to face. “Mah-me. Mah-me.” Pete began to cry. Hank released him, looked away upset and uncertain, then hugged him.
Suddenly: “Mommy.”
They danced with the word, said it over and over, then rushed inside to show it off.
Jody was cutting potatoes. Pete declared his word triumphantly. She slowly put aside the knife and pot, kneeled down, and held the child’s shoulders.
“Mommy.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Hank had seen it seldom.
By the weekend Jones had returned from fishing Igvak sockeyes. “And he’s simply impossible around here now,” Adele told Jody over the phone. “There’s this time every year when he’s caught the fishing fever, of course. But he would buy that gillnetter, and now he’s got to fly up to Bristol Bay and get it ready. So naturally all of a sudden he’s not so sure he should leave his seiner and crew down here with somebody else. Exactly what’ll happen, I told him last spring. I know the man better than he does himself. We were doing fine until those porpoise huggers, as Jones calls them, drove the tuna fleet out of San Pedro and Daddy’s welding business fell apart.”
“Hank’s going to Bristol Bay too, you know. Of course the Jody Dawn’s too big to fish, so he’s tendering whether he likes it or not.”
“I hope he’ll be able to look after Daddy, then.” Lowered voice. “I wouldn’t say this if you-know-who was listening, Jody, but Daddy looks worried to me. God knows we hadn’t expected the salmon price to drop this year. Of course he’s going to do well in Bristol Bay, and we won’t have this second mortgage for long. But you know the boys out at Igvak didn’t get nearly the price they’d expected for their reds, and what if it happens up there too? People say the price dropped because of the botulism scare. But that was way last winter for one little can of salmon and these fish go for frozen. They say pink salmon around Kodiak won’t bring more than five cents a pound this year, and that’s a scandal. I’m awake nights worrying, like in the old days. And I thought we were free of that.”
“Jones is uptight already, so don’t start anything,” Jody told Hank as they drove to the Henrys for dinner.
“He’s got to hear it eventually.”
“I know.”
“It’s nice that you have friends who bring you into civilization once in a while,” observed Mrs. Sedwick sitting between the front seat and the children crowded away from her in the back of the wagon. By now no one listened or bothered to reply. Pete in particular, from longer acquaintance with his grandmother, avoided her.
Jones opened the door. His expression, while often half a scowl, was indeed more tense than usual. “Well, you come back brainwashed?”
Hank chose to answer with a hearty: “Not likely.”
Jones’s crew, near-strangers to Hank except for big Ham Davis, late of Tolly’s crew, kept Adele’s Sunday dinner tradition by her summons as in years before. Hank’s crew had also been invited, although only Mo was there. Seth and Terry, also just back from a discouraging tanner crab season in the Bering Sea, had flown home for a break. Adele’s hostessing recalled the way poor Steve and Ivan had squirmed under her benevolence, funny at the time. (Still not real after all the years, those deaths, thought Hank.) And even more like old times when Adele stood over the crewmen, kids with fingernails scrubbed for the occasion, to announce ominously: “We’re informal here, boys, so I want you to make yourselves at home.”
“In other words,” Jones muttered when she had returned to the kitchen, “no cussing and don’t pick your noses.”
“We got it, Jones,” said Ham Davis respectfully. Tolly’s former crewman winked secretly at Mo, his one-time boxing opponent. Hank had seen the two hanging out together with their girlfriends when their boats were in port. He asked Ham for news of Tolly. “Only, Captain, that he and Jennie’s got married, and he’s still at that machine shop in Seattle.”
As the men discussed the plight of Tolly, losing his boat, their voices dropped. Jody put her hand on Hank’s. She understood what it meant. Ever since she’d returned from burying her dad she’d been more accepting. Hank squeezed her hand gratefully. But then he thought of Helene and it poisoned the moment.
“How do you stand this weather?” declared Mrs. Sedwick, returning from outside, trailing the odor of smoke. “Now, how can I help?”
“You can set the table,” said Adele agreeably.
Jody’s mother did her chore, then remained in the kitchen. Her cigarette-husky voice, lowered to a stage whisper, drifted out in snatches. “My late husband, the Colonel, of course, always insisted on . . . Who do you think you’re talking to? I said . . . like I don’t exist, so lonely I could scream . . . absolute end of the earth . . .”
Jody rolled her eyes. “I should go rescue Adele.”
But Adele’s voice, raised with no pretense of hush: “I went simply berserk until I dragged Jones out of here winters, and to France of course. After the children grow you’ve got no life here unless you work, run for office, or . . . Florence, why don’t you volunteer for something? What can you do?”
“Do! Once you’ve earned retirement, the Colonel always said—I suppose I could teach bridge. Or lecture wives on military etiquette, since there’s supposed to be a military base around here. I would like to be useful.”
“Well. . . I suppose that’s a start. But you’ve lived so many interesting places, close to France even. Germany, you said? Jones and I don’t approve of Germans, of course, after what they did, but. . .”
“Let the hens go at each other,” said Jones drily. He waved toward the bottle. “Help yourself as long as she’s in the kitchen. Just keep it looking like it’s your first.” He winked at Jody, who responded with a grin from early days.
Hank realized how much of the old Jody he missed, and ached with the memory. He gulped part of his drink. In those days, hadn’t they all slept around, selectively? Different now and he knew it.
Jones gulped also, and faced Hank. “I reckon it’s no secret what your Jap friends paid us at Igvak this year. Prime red sockeye salmon firm as this glass, and they give seventy cents, fish that went last year for buck sixty-eighty. You think they’re not bandits? Because one foreigner dies from what’s-that-they-call-it? In one eight-ounce tall?”
“That one can had botulism, Skipper,” said Ham. “It’s bad stuff.”
“Scary,” echoed Mo.
“The way foreigners kill each other all the time, and one dies from a can of salmon that has botulism, in Europe at that, Belgium or someplace—if you ask me, a few Frenchmen could go and except for my wife everybody’d be happier.”
“Don’t think I didn’t hear that crack,” called Adele from the kitchen. “I’m sure a Frenchman would have known a can of bad salmon before he ate it. They’re civilized beyond our understanding.”
“So civilized they eat worms.”
“Snails, Daddy. Phoo.” Adele bustled in staunchly with a platterful of halibut steaks. Florence Sedwick trailed carrying the baked potatoes, her wrinkled lipstick-mouth stretched in an uncertain smile. “You know once you’re in France you enjoy yourself. And what about those French fishermen you met down on the Seine below the bookstalls, who showed you their nets?”
“The ones who couldn’t talk English?”
“You had a lovely time with their wine and cheese and you know it. You went back often enough.”
“That or museums and perfume stores.” Jones turned back to Han
k. “Like I was saying. One can of fish gone bad in Europe, and over in Japan the Japs cut the price.”
“Not good, Jones.” Hank became cautious, although he too suspected the Japanese of taking advantage. He was glad when Ham and Mo changed the subject by quietly jibing each other on points scored in a basketball game they had just played together in the high school gym.
“Captain Hank?” asked Ham politely. “They got a gym up there in Bristol Bay?”
“Nothing you’ll have time for,” snapped Jones.
“So,” said Hank. “New adventure for us all. The famous Jones Henry back in Bristol Bay after thirty years. Guess you remember those killer tides?”
“That I do. And I ain’t forgot the screwing that cannery management used to give us.”
“Daddy’s mailed off his dues to the union the fishermen have up there now. He’s doing it all the way.”
Hank thought he was steering Jones safely. “Guess you’ll deliver to Swede then, and keep the old tyrant in line?” Jones nodded. “Well, you’ll be on the fish and into the action. I envy you. I’m stuck again tendering. This time at least with my own Jody Dawn instead of Swede’s Orion boxcar. At any rate, Jones, since you’re fishing for Swede you can deliver to me. I’ll see you get the best price I can manage.”
“I assume that means you’ve got a direct line now to the Japs.” Everyone fell silent. Jones eyed Hank directly. “You sell out to the Japs?”
“Noo . . .” Adele flashed a warning, but Jody shrugged and nodded him on. The two men drank, not shifting gaze. At length Hank: “I came back with expectations, maybe.”
“Mebbe? Then it figures like I expected.”
Get it over. Hank kept his voice light. “They’ve paid off the Jody Dawn. As part of the deal I’ll tender this summer. Then gear for longline and go for black cod in the Gulf.” Jones studied him without speaking. “Look, it’s a hell of a break. Black cod’s a guaranteed market for one thing. And Japan’s the market. You ought to see how they take care of their seafood over there.” Jones continued to stare. Hank leaned forward urgently. “You’re either in the world or you’re left behind. Why else are you starting something new with that gillnetter in Bristol Bay?”
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