Breakers

by William B. McCIoskey Jr.

  Hank’s mood had lifted. Full-gun across the water, he felt the push of the sea. Seth, in oilskins, stayed on deck. The invigoration of wind and spray brought him to life also. He stomped and danced. “Look at that bear,” said Terry from the dry wheelhouse. “Man who says all he wants is a kootchy-koo wife and hot blankets, and he don’t know himself he’s all boat. He’d blow like a teapot if they trapped him ashore.”

  Hank swiveled in his captain’s chair. “Funny thing to say.”

  “That’s if anybody even knew what you was talking about,” rumbled Mo. “If you didn’t always say things people don’t understand, I’d say when Ham kicked you that day it loosed a screw. But it was loose already, eh Boss?”

  Terry tick-tocked his head and rolled his eyes. “Doodle-doodle-doo.”

  “For a little guy you’re sure nuts.” Mo said it like a fond pat on the head. “Seth’s just havin’ a good time, and I think I’ll go out there too. Yeah.” He swung down the wheelhouse stairs holding the rail, to land below with a thud and “Ow!”

  “Now we got to patch a fuckin’ hole to the engine room,” called down Terry. To Hank: “He still hurts from that fight but he don’t want to admit it. Phony in the movies, you know? How guys bonk each other and don’t hardly bleed.”

  Hank watched the choppy water. They now rode a strengthening flood. Occasionally he circled against it to create a spray plume that doused Seth. Soon Mo had lumbered out in his oilskins. Seth found an object in the scuppers and threw it. Mo caught and returned it with a full slam into Seth’s chest. Hank enjoyed their play, wished he was there. “Suit up, Terry. Join ‘em.”

  “Naa. I get wet enough times. They’re the kids.”

  “And you, what? Twenty-five? Younger than either.”

  “Depending on how you count. I’m short, so I might look like a kid. And I like to kid about things.”

  “What made you say that about Seth? We’ve all got boat in us.” Terry stretched. “I could leave it tomorrow. Just put me ashore and push me towards town. Someday I will. No rush. And Mo, he’s nothin’ but passing through. Although he’ll prob’ly stay unless somebody pushes him. Your friend Tolly who lost his boat? Doesn’t sound like he’s so bad over it. Hear he got hitched.”

  “When you go, where to?”

  “Ohhh. Back home to Oregon. Work in the forest a while, maybe. Or the boatyard in town. Get me a hamburger franchise. There’s plenty of things.”

  “And have a family?”

  “That too. My first old lady’s left town, my mom writes. She married somebody else last year so I’m done with alimony which is good. This time I’ll marry only when I’m done fishing, I guess.” Pause. “Find some tall girl so our kids ain’t short like me. Tell ‘em stories about how I went to Alaska and worked for some shithead skipper.”

  “I didn’t think it bothered you to be short.”

  “Try it some time. You don’t mind that I called you a shithead?”

  “Try it some time yourself.” Hank veered the bow to spray white water across deck, and was rewarded by Seth’s fists and yells. Mo held up his arms and yodeled. To be out there! He slowed to clear a gillnetter’s corks. “Mind my asking what broke up your marriage?”

  Terry stared at the water a while. “Maybe it ain’t you and Seth’s the only ones has too much boat in him.”

  Hank understood, but: “Oh?”

  “Well. Seth, he don’t even know all the things he wants, though he sure wants ‘em. He’s like you that way but you control yourself. Seth don’t. He cooks over too fast. It’s bang, so angry so fast he forgets what’s important, even how things go. But what’s the same in both of you’s this: you’re more boat than house. Lucky you, got a wife understands. And, well . . . don’t take it wrong, Boss, it’s your life, but . . . any old lady of mine, I’d be pissed if she worked on the beach alone like that when I’m workin’ hard to pay the bills and her job is home. You and she sure have something special.”

  Hank shifted and swiveled the chair, trapped in its padded arms. Oh Jody.

  “O1’ Seth with his temper, he might keep losing. Like he did that girl he was engaged to. He says she just went with some other guy. But it was because he blew up at her one night then ran off to catch a boat, and when he come back she wouldn’t open the door.”

  “I thought I knew everything about Seth.”

  “Maybe you like to think it, but you’re not a deck ape no more. You’re Boss. It’s a lot nobody tells you.” Terry’s glance was mild but monkey-playful. “Don’t worry. You’re no shithead. Guys ask us all the time how did we get so lucky, and is there maybe a site aboard for them.”

  The water that should have been clustered with gillnet boats was only dotted. Unlike the little Mafias that fished together and cared for each other like those from Monterey, Anacortes, and Native villages, the few boats now strikebreaking kept whole horizons between them. Hank saw the Esther N through binoculars and approached slowly. Her net was coming aboard. About two-thirds of its nine hundred feet remained in the water to judge by the ride of white corks. The end of the corks bowed with the tide as Jack Simmons steered crosstide to intercept fish. Hank maneuvered to the net’s lee, kicking his engine against the increasing current.

  Jack and his crewman stood on opposite sides of the roller, pulling in web over the stem. Their backs were into it. Fish and net entangled them to the knees. Web continued over the roller. Lumps of entangled fish squeaked from the strain against the moving cylinder. The part of the net that stretched between water and stem was clustered with fish. Seth and Mo on deck clutched the rail and leaned toward the sight.

  “Ah. Ah,” breathed Terry. “Ah, Boss. Why ain’t we out there like that?”

  Hank’s mouth had gone dry with the desire to be pulling fish. He collected himself. “Jody Dawn’s three times legal length for this fishery, for starters.”

  As they watched, Jack and his man stopped the roller to grip both sides of the net-fish mass on deck and drag it forward. The weight was such that they struggled.

  “Go rail to rail,” cried Seth. “We’ll help!”

  Hank could feel the twist of Seth’s body, the craving to grip such web, because he felt it himself. “Give you a hand?” he called from the wing.

  Jack, without looking up: “Stay off.” He and his man grimaced, and with a grunt together slid the mass of net over the battened aft hatches. “Go. Go ‘way. Mind your own business.” They returned to the roller, walking so stiffly their backs must have hurt. Jack throttled controls by his rail to adjust the boat’s heading, and the two began again to pull lumped fish and web over the roller.

  Hank left slowly, feasting on the sight as long as possible while space cleared between the vessels. Down in the water pale bullets of fish swam in ranks. Fish seemed even to brush and thump against his hull. Seth and Mo had run for a hand brailer. With Seth gripping his pants Mo leaned far enough over the side to lower the rim. The press of fish into the small net strained the long aluminum handle. Mo gripped tight and his body inched further over the rail. Terry rushed down to hold Mo also. Hank slipped into neutral so the boat floated with the current, and this eased the brailer. Mo brought it up packed with half a dozen fish.

  Seth waved a thrashing sockeye. Mo and Terry grabbed others. It was like a tribal dance, complete with whoops and yells. Hank watched enviously. When they started to ready the brailer for another dip he sighed and called down: “Can’t do it, guys, sorry. Breaking the law. We don’t have licenses or gear for here. You’ve even got to throw those fellows overboard.” To groans: “Keep one for dinner. The rest over the side before they die. Do it.” The flicking fish went back one by one like toys relinquished.

  Instead of enlivening the day, the incident left them gloomier than before.

  At the processor ship, Captain Dave, full-bearded even for Alaska, his eyes sleepy from too much sleep, asked for news of the strike as if Hank knew more than he did. Young men and women, clean college types in sloppy clothes, pulled slowly i
nto oilskins and headed for the gutting table on deck. “No use building a fire under them for so few fish,” said Dave. “I’ll kick ass when I need to.” A faintly sweet odor of marijuana drifted through the corridors. On the now-emptied mess deck, where a kid in an apron aimlessly cleared cards, crusts, and full ashtrays from the long tables, Hank and his men picked at steaks larger than they wanted. A Japanese in neat brown coveralls marked with Japanese characters came in crisply, received a pot of tea from the galley, looked around with a frown, and left.

  “Message for you, Skipper.” It was Swede on the scrambled radio band. Amid electronic squeaks and whirs he instructed Hank to return to the cannery before the tide lowered.

  Entering the river close to midnight they passed colonies of gillnet boats moored together, still on strike. Light beams flashed and dark figures swarmed. The anger in voices carried across the water.

  As soon as lines were secured a dock foreman hurried Hank by electric cart to the office. “Strike breaking up?” Hank asked en route. “We wish.” John Gains and Swede waited. A bottle stood on the table along with water, a can of cola, and glasses. Gains’s signature neat hair was rumpled and he wore coveralls, but the starch in the cloth along with a tie maintained his image. Swede’s rumpled coveralls and red tractor cap had seen their usual service.

  Gains smiled: a suspicious act for him. “Hank. We haven’t talked since Japan since you didn’t drop by the other day.” Hank offered no excuse. “Pour you a drink?”

  Hank looked at Swede. “You having?”

  “One. Yes.”

  “I don’t need it if you don’t.”

  For answer Swede filled three shot glasses. John mixed his in another glass with the cola. Hank would have preferred diluting with water, but to show disdain for the cola he clinked shot glasses with Swede. The two old friends gulped neat.

  Gains only sipped his drink, but held out the bottle. Hank shoved away his glass, and contrived to shove Swede’s along with it. “You didn’t call me in to booze. I see activity on the boats. Strike about to settle?”

  Swede looked up with the old weariness. “Some are going to break it on this tide, say my people. Impasse otherwise. The processors can’t find the market to offer more.” He cleared his throat. “The union doesn’t understand. All that TV and newspaper crap about botulism, and the British embargo. People are still afraid to buy salmon.” It sounded rehearsed. At least spoken before.

  “Even frozen? Even the Japanese?”

  “We’ll get to that,” said John Gains calmly. He leaned back in his swivel chair and locked arms overhead with studied casualness.”You see, Hank, it’s the canning market that needs to recover. But we’ve got to keep some parity with prices paid for the frozen sockeye market.”

  “Then just freeze it all for a while.”

  “Look around you. Thousands of tin cans waiting to be filled, a few hundred workers waiting to do it. And freezer warehouses have limits. So does their shelf life.”

  “So? You called in my boat when it could be collecting and delivering fish for whatever.”

  “My Orion’s still there.” Swede shuffled papers without looking up. “You see, on record we have to pay the price we’ve offered the union.”

  “We have an assignment for you, Hank.”

  Panels had been painted to cover “Jody Dawn” on the bow and stem with “Arctic Lion”, and canvas mounts painted with “60” along with other numbers to affix if needed. They had a locked metal box for him with bundles of fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills. The Jody Dawn was to move to a different location, take a different radio call signal, and serve as a cash buyer advertising more than the price offered the strikers ashore. The code for his prices was locked in the box.

  “Not me! Let Orion play sneak.”

  “Orion’s too recognizable.”

  “You can go to fucking hell!”

  Hank’s hand was already on the doorknob when John Gains said: “Kiyoshi Tsurifune paid cash for your boat. He owns it until you pay him back. This is how you pay.”

  “Sorry, Hank,” Swede muttered. “You signed.”

  Hank continued out and slammed the door. He started toward the dock breathing heavily. Take Jody Dawn back down the river before the tide changed, straight south through False Pass and home. No words. No discussion. Never return. Safe in Kodiak let them try to grab his boat! How could he pick up Jody and the kids on the way? Would she come? He stopped with hands in pockets to stare at his beloved Jody Dawn. Her bow was high enough above the pier to show her name. Obscene, obscene to change it. Fucking, fucking Japs. Done it to himself. He wanted to pound something, stepped in the shadow of a building to control his rage.

  There was still tide left for the getaway. He walked the pier to calm himself and think, toward the clustered gillnet boats. They could have been found by sound alone since the rest of the cannery was quiet except for generator hums. Some boats were maneuvering free. Sounds as angry as those he felt himself came from down among bows caught by flashlight beams: “Cornin’ the fuck through, release the fuckin’ line or I’ll chop the fucker, I mean it!” “Fuckin’ try it you’ll fuckin’ see!” “Don’t let him through.” “Let him through, let the fucker through, fuck him!”

  Hank crouched by a wall behind an idled forklift truck. The dock foreman walked past calling his name. Silently he remained in limbo out of sight. Time to think. But his thoughts merely rounded to the same wrong conclusions.

  Familiar rasping voice: “You’re going wet! I knew you for a scab since you defended that Jap-kisser.”

  “Out of my way buddy.” The shadow of Chris Speccio with a load in his arms, outlined by a single dock light, moved around the crouching shadow of Jones Henry. When Jones moved forward and planted himself again: “I’m telling you, fellah, mind your own business.”

  “We all fish,” said Jones, “or nobody.”

  “Lot of nobodies out there grabbing the fish I came for. Strike two years ago didn’t get us nothing. What the fuck, you’re here just this season think you run it? And you smell like booze besides. So I’m telling you, fellah, out of my way.”

  “Hear me. We all fish or nobody. Put down that box.”

  “You’re nuts and drunk.”

  “Ham!” Jones shouted. “Come here help me.” The big crewman appeared from somewhere. “At least one Jap-kisser ain’t going to make this tide. Ham, take that box from this man.”

  “Skipper . ..” Ham didn’t move.

  “Don’t you hear me?”

  A heavy older figure joined them. “Chris, that you? Got the bananas? Let’s go.”

  “Minuto, Papa.” Chris spoke something in Italian.

  “Why don’t you talk like an American? Ham. You going to take that box?”

  “Skipper. . .”

  Vito Speccio’s voice lowered to a growl. “I don’ know who the hell you are, mister. But leave my kid and me to our boat and mind your own fuckin’ business.”

  “Ham, you going to take that box?”

  Something clicked in the older Speccio’s hand. It sounded like a switchblade.

  Hank rushed to face Jones. “Chris and your dad, go.” They left. Jones swung. Hank sidestepped, then caught Jones from falling. “Come on, let’s find you some coffee.”

  “Do Jap-kissers just drop out of the sky? Get away from me. No. Wait.” Jones threw another punch that missed. “Ham! You going to take care of this Jap-lover for me or not?”

  “Skipper. . .”

  Hank gripped one of Jones’s arms and told Ham to take the other. The crewman obeyed without question. “Where’s your boat? Let’s go.”

  “Middle of that mess of boats, Captain.”

  Hank considered. The trip over rails could exacerbate the nightmare. “My boat’s at the far pier. Help me.”

  Hank called for his crew and Mo appeared. They brought Jones aboard alternately struggling and passive. In the galley Jones smashed a mug and plate from the table before they cleared things and hemmed him in. Mo br
ought him coffee, and handed a mug to Ham also. Jones would not be pacified. He demanded to be taken anywhere else.

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  It was Swede. “Sure your money’s safe in the office without you?” Hank snapped.

  “Nice job of stalling. You went dry about fifteen minutes ago.” Swede squeezed around the table to Jones and his voice softened. “You’re a good man. Take your coffee, then come up to the bunkhouse and sleep it off. I’ll make sure you’re afloat when the strike’s settled.”

  Jones quieted, turned slowly like a hunched turtle, and studied Swede. “You working for the Japs or not?”

  “Whatever, I’m your friend. Listen. The old days are all yesterday. Change or go under.”

  “Nothing’s changed of Iwo or the Canal.”

  “Even there, except in your memory.”

  Jones groped for some way to express himself, slammed his own cap against the wall, then grabbed Swede’s and did the same. Hank had never seen Swede without his cap, Jones seldom. The exposure revealed them both to be gray, balding, older—old under their strain.

  “I have D-Day tales, Jones. We all fought. It was the thing we did. We had to. The thing of our time. But forty years ago. Make your peace. You can’t do it all alone, that’s why you’ve got that fellow there. Expect these men around you to understand?”

  “I do,” said Hank. “I do” Swede ignored him.

  Ham hesitated, then turned to Mo and pointed to Mo’s skull-decorated knuckle. “That from me?” Mo nodded. Ham touched a tape on his chin. “Nice hit.”

  “You okay?”

  “Good as you.”

  Seth appeared from deck, trailed by Terry. “They’re doing something screwy to our bow. D’you know about it?”

  Hank leapt up. “Son of a bitch!”

  Swede had retrieved his cap and become Swede again. “Accept it, Hank. You’ve got no choice. It happens when you sign papers. My apes are making the change as discreetly as possible. If you hadn’t disappeared we’d have had you out in the dark.” To Ham: “Help me get your boss to my quarters.”