Breakers

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by William B. McCIoskey Jr.


  He turned to Jody hoping she could intervene. But she shrugged. “Come on. Meet the crew.”

  It ended as a sociable hour with handshakes and sips of home brew, first from door to door and then in a larger cabin with an iron coal-burning stove. Someone popped a few leftover firecrackers for the occasion. Marvin the pilot joined them. Hank knew most of the faces, but casually from the town world beyond the boats: teachers and storekeepers with the men normally shaved and the women in dresses. Everyone asked for news like long-isolated castaways, as if he knew of more than the end of the strike. (One of the women even wanted to know how Congress was voting on the Equal Rights Amendment.) The fish run had tapered—on that everyone could agree. The next run should start any day.

  All too soon his family waved him good-bye with more firecrackers thrown, and the chopper rose to head into the expanse of water. Boats now streamed everywhere on the bay, leaving white trails.

  22

  JONES

  BRISTOL BAY, MID-JULY 1982

  A few sockeyes from the initial run lingered in eddies before their programmed journey up rivers to spawn and die. Lucky boats caught them—or those skippered by men able to figure the habits of fish. When the shortage became an acknowledged reality more and more boats delivered for cash to cut losses. By mid-July Swede had raised his cash price to one dollar. It kept Hank and his crew busy. Everyone waited for the second run.

  A rare sun had shone all day. It reduced night to an hour of twilight between reddened final glow on one horizon and pastel wash ninety degrees to the east. When Hank furled his price banners and slipped his disguised boat to the factory ship to deliver, he found Swede’s legitimate Orion tied alongside despite their agreement to come at separate times. The factory’s boom raised a glistening brailerload from Orion’s hold. Lights of sunset and dawn etched it on opposite sides. Hank tied to the tender’s outboard rail to wait his turn.

  “Come over, man,” said Jeff, the Orion’s skipper. “So little fish out there it was no point coming our regular delivery in the morning. Sorry. Stake you to coffee and a little something else? I guess you know the way.”

  In the galley Hank saw Doke the fat old engineer. He occupied the same comer of table that he had defended from Hank four years before. “Ehhh,” muttered Jeff. “Hoped that shithead would be down in his hole. Come on to my cabin.”

  Instead: “Doke, good sir,” said Hank, and walked over to offer his hand. He remembered the lonely old man at close of season, faced with winter in a Seattle rooming house and the wait, until another spring, for renewed life aboard the Orion that he’d helped build. But the man who looked up slowly was the sour Doke of summer authority.

  “You.” The puffy hand came up grudgingly, for a limp shake that left a smudge and odor of oil on Hank’s hand.

  “Hear you’re as much an old pisser as ever.”

  “You’d be too, putting up the way I do.” Bags under accusing eyes, cheeks weighted into jowls. Mess of a man, thought Hank, but not his problem. “You and your boys was bad enough—except Johnny Gains, he didn’t belong and proved it soon enough. But that lady of yours. She made it a good year and I wish she was back. Left you by now, I’d imagine. Gone to somebody who deserves her.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Well then, you give her my regards. She’s one lady.” Pause and seeming struggle, then: “Have a cup of my special tea?” Hank refused gracefully.

  Seth came in, trailed by Mo and Terry. He took Hank’s arm and drew him aside. “Maybe you’ll want to go out that other door. You wouldn’t believe. One of the little gillnetters come to deliver since it couldn’t find Orion on the water, ties to our rail. Guy walks across our deck to Orion, stops, looks me over, walks our deck, leans over the bow and flaps up the board with our phony name. Says: ‘I might have fuckin’ known.’ It’s Jones Henry.”

  Instead of leaving, Hank poured himself coffee from the urn and moved into the bank of seats around the table. Face it out.

  Jones strode in, hands at the ready like a gunslinger. His man Ham followed. They both looked around, Jones sharply, Ham guarded. Ham and Mo locked eyes and nodded warily. Jones turned his back to Hank and addressed Jeff. “Chased you over the ocean, Skipper. Not that we’ve got a holdful worth the trip, but you’re supposed to be there so it don’t rot. Now, you want me to deliver to you or direct to this ship?”

  “Sorry, Jones. I broke schedule. When I’m done why don’t you just brail it over direct?”

  “I would if a scab boat wasn’t blocking my way.”

  Mo rose and Ham stiffened. The two buddies of other times studied each other reluctantly.

  Jeff looked puzzled. “Tide’s slack and no wind, Jones. The other side’s safe. Just move around to their starboard. I’ll get Dave to take you right away.”

  “It beats me why I’d have to move my ass one inch to accommodate a scab boat.”

  Jeff glanced from Jones to Hank, uncertain. “Fish still running thin, Jones?”

  “You could say that. If I’d stayed with my seiner in Kodiak, the pinks mebbe no price to ‘em but I’d be catching fish. And keeping better company than Jap-kissers.”

  Mo stepped forward. “Captain Henry, sir. Like I told you a few days ago, we don’t like shit dumped on our skipper.” Ham sighed and advanced on Mo.

  “Back down,” said Hank calmly. “Jones, sound off in this direction if that’s what you need. Leave others out of it.”

  Jones turned slowly. “Now here’s a great sight I must have missed. A man playing tap dance on top his buddies.”

  Hank kept his expression neutral but didn’t trust his hand to take a drink from the mug. He felt withered. “You’ve got an audience. State your case.”

  “‘State your case?’ What kind of college-boy shit is that?” Jones pointed. “This man, if you want to call him that, one time he learned to fish from me and once we were partners and once we nearly died together. But now what’s he done? Ask him! Sold out is what. Not to foreigners from China or Korea that don’t matter, even Russia, but to the very Japs! The same Japs that called him over for patty-cake and he played so well his lips stuck to their ass.” Jones’s scowl swept the room like a beacon. “Anything I’ve missed that this man hasn’t sold?”

  “Jones,” said Hank, forcing his voice to remain steady. “Japanese are people. They shit and they bleed. They work hard, love to eat fish, know how they want it, and pay. We’re in the business of catching fish for sale.”

  “There’s a politician talking.” Jones pointed at Hank. “I don’t care what you do, all you strangers. It’s this man breaks my heart, that I took for my own. Taught him. Brought him to my very house. He’s the one I’d expected to know better.”

  Jeff cleared his throat. “ But Hank’s right. Not one of us here but he’s working for the Japs.” Jones gestured angrily. Jeff continued: “Whose money, Jones, do you think it is runs the cannery, and the factory ship, and my Orion that collects your fish?”

  “And what do you know of the rest, any one of you babies? Know what you kiss for that?” Jones’ eyes slitted. “One time there was a war the Japs started, and I’ll tell you about the Japs. Starts with me and buddies I trained with, First Marines, landed from boot camp to a shithole Guadalcanal you’ve never heard of.”

  “You done the Canal?” exclaimed Doke, coming to life. “I was Seabees out there later, buddy. Don’t say You’ve forgotten.”

  Jones was too involved to acknowledge. He continued to scowl the room, unshaved chin jutting from wiry neck. “Here’s my paddy-cake with the Japs. Patrol with buddies one night. Ambush. All of us hit.” Each word dropped precisely. “I saw their shadows coming, shot to the last, then knew to play dead. Chewed a strap not to yell from the pain, never mind that. Gripped mud and let the spiders and lizards do what they liked. Japs laughed when they stuck a bayonet into each of my buddies that groaned. Not to kill outright. To make ‘em scream as long as they could.” Glare from face to face. “Now which of you say
s they’ve turned different?”

  Seth and the Orion skipper looked away. The locked gaze of Mo and Ham guarding their sides loosened uncertainly. Only Terry held Jones’ look, interested and sympathetic. “You tell it for us, buddy,” muttered Doke.

  When Hank rose to start toward him Jones signaled Ham to follow and left. Hank called his name although uncertain what to say if Jones stopped. But Jones went straight across decks to his boat, barked at Ham to throw off the lines, and disappeared into the little cabin. Spurt of engine and the boat left.

  The encounter drained Hank’s spirits. Surrounded by his men’s voiced awe at Jones’s tale and sturdy conclusions in their boss’s favor, all he craved was Jody and the dark of covers over his head. He stayed in his bunk when he could.

  Another grabbed visit to Jody’s setnet site helped little since she was busy with the nets. Now that his appearance had become routine, Dawn barely stopped her playhouse with Melissa for more than hello. Pete held his hand for a moment, then skittered away with Henny in chase. Hank stood watching Jody boisterously at work with the others. She looked so happy! They all were free of him and happy. He began to face it: Probably in future Julys, wherever he was, she’d be here. And his children, needing him less and less.

  His thoughts didn’t help the heartsickness over Jones Henry, or his uncertainty over the right and wrong of his course. He needed Jody’s touch and her presence to talk and explore. But, like himself away on his boat, she was busy being herself. Soon after the middle of the month it became clear that the second sockeye run had failed to materialize. A few fish wandered in but the grand predicted run, if it existed, remained at sea. (In the end thirteen million anticipated salmon failed to appear.) Fish and Game wondered and searched for reasons. Their embarrassment could not match the emptiness of strikers’ nets.

  Tides ran a course that man could predict exactly, moving from high to low to high again in approximate thirteen-hour cycles. The Tidal Current Tables told it for the year, to the minute. Weather was another matter. Fog settled for hours or days, so thick that deck and running lights ghosted without the shapes of their vessels. Then in minutes a wind might blow the horizon clean. Calm water could chum into whitecaps during the course of a haul-in. The same calm sometimes produced mirages: spooky shimmers of nonexistent shapes. Winds often blew independent of flood or ebb, hitting the current head-on so that the two forces caught boats in the middle. Anchor chains needed wide scope so that, as the forces changed, a boat could pivot with enough distance from other boats for a full swing of the compass. It was a place to stay alert.

  “We are scratch,” said Dave on the factory ship. “Orion’s bringing us practically nothing.” His eyes were red. He had just come from a belowdecks argument with the Japanese inspector over grading fish and his beard was flecked with gurry. It turned out that some of his own money was invested in the factory ship although the Japanese owned controlling share.

  Swede from shore was specific. “Get those people fish. Add a nickel to your price for anybody who delivers regular and make it clear that’s why. Under the table after you’ve settled, no tax reporting.” Hank had fallen far enough into the game that he did it with a shrug.

  Just finish the commitment, Hank told himself, and make it out of here. Inaction left him with hours for thought. Too much of it became brooding. Without the cloud of Jones Henry’s judgment he might simply have rejoiced in his marriage and family restored, and have spent the days maneuvering his schedule to visit the setnet camp.

  Here he stood aboard the boat he’d yearned to own and had sold himself for—no, bargained for—and instead of racing the seas in pursuit of crabs (or anything!) he waited for the catch of others. Waited under the humiliation of subterfuge that had even robbed his boat of its name. Robbed him of his deepest rooted friend.

  During one afternoon of calm water he glumly watched a mirage that could have been hills or buildings—watched it collect, shimmer, dissipate. With a drink or two under his belt he’d have begun to compare it to life itself.

  The trip to Japan had cracked the shell. Broken the coconut. He played with nonsense similes, substitute for thought. Busted the pinata. Before Japan, his way had been logical progression, boat to bigger boat, taking on that which befell. Now the way had exploded open. Money scarce and money promised brought out the bedfellows. A lowering sun sneaked briefly into view between layers of gray cloud and gray sea. Its blazing orange swept the mirage clean and showered light on the world. Reason enough to blank the mind and relax in the sight. If a world could be so transformed, wouldn’t all things turn right?

  Soberly, where was he headed? Not Jones’s way fenced by the past, that was baggage not his own no matter how he empathized. Even with friendship at stake, his future needed to be tied to the realities of his own time and place. Be wary, that’s for certain. Wish otherwise, but know it as business, the geisha parties past and future.

  Then there was Kabuki and Helene, wistfully. Now that he was safely removed, and Jody restored, he could indulge it a little. Scarf and apple scent. He breathed a memory-whiff since it no longer threatened. A woman with style. But Jody fear not. Helene had brushed a part of Henry Crawford now tucked back like a scrapbook photo, safely bygone. He wished her well. For him, the precious things were Jody’s wide smile and tart sense, her firm touch, clean smell . . . Pete’s hop-skitch . . . Dawn’s spiky alertness . . . Henny’s grave admiration. Precious realities, all of it gifted with promise.

  The blazing orange etched rigging and cloud stumps. It burned over the caps of sudden little waves kicked by a fresh wind. He’d gear for long-line and take on the new. The thought made him weary, all the work ahead, but he felt a bubble of excitement waiting to explode and knew the energy was there. Drive. Make money. Buy back his boat’s possession. Play into the great game where combat waited and reward glimmered. Become chess piece to nobody.

  23

  SAND

  BRISTOL BAY, LATE JULY 1982

  Lean Jack Simmons and some of the other strikebreakers pulled their boats for the season and flew home. They thus avoided witness to their shame and left what fish remained for others. They also escaped with the money.

  Hank followed the fortunes of Jones aboard the Robin J as best he could, through information relayed by sympathetic Jeff of the Orion to Dave on the factory ship. Jones’s fishing luck was as poor as the rest. But he had his teeth into the quest for fish, enough so that his man Ham confided to an Orion crewman that they hardly ever slept. Easygoing Ham had turned jumpy by report, and almost as irritable as Jones. Since Jones traveled without buddy boats or community, Hank had little chance to eavesdrop on his radio conversations, but one night the unmistakable voice started talking curtly to another man from Kodiak. “You’re scratch too, eh? There’s only one place they’re left and that’s the pockets close in to shore.”

  “Don’t let the wrong wind and tide catch you.”

  “Who said you didn’t keep alert? Ham! You turned moron? In that shackle double-speed, it’s empty, use your eyes! We got other places to set. Signing off. Work to do.”

  Most deliveries to Hank’s shadowy Arctic Lion came from the remaining original strikebreakers, who had distanced themselves from the union agreement with the canneries. “Here’s how we worked it out, my cousins and uncles,” said Chris Speccio lightly as he and his dad sneaked a cash delivery. “Fish tickets, they’re all going into one big envelope. Then back home everybody who’s family divides it, strike and strikebreak equal.”

  “Including this cash payment?”

  Chris laughed. “We ain’t saints, Hank.”

  Chris had tied alongside under the anonymity of fog, but while he delivered, the visibility cleared to reveal a vista of masts. “Whoa, get out of here,” he declared only half in jest. Hank freed his stem line, then at Chris’s “yo” the painter, and nodded to Vito through the wheelhouse window. The father had chosen to remain inside after strapping the brails. Since breaking strike he had said little
.

  On open radio the voice of Jones Henry told his Kodiak friend, “Go Channel Blue.” Hank guessed the frequency Jones had used for years, and switched in time to hear Jones’s rapid-fire: “Saying this fast and once. Head toward Banana Tree. I’ll code you my loran coordinates another channel when you’re close. Found a hole close-in to sands. Pocket of reds trapped on ebb. I figure enough for both of us since the strike shitted you too. Any scab boats hears this, stay away.”

  “Read you buddy. I’m down south line off Johnston waiting to set on flood. Looks like most other boats too. Miles from you so we’ll stay here see what happens. Then I’ll come hope not too late. You off by Deadman Sands? Don’t have to answer. Just be careful if you’re close in. Tide tables predict this one’s a real strong flood coming in.”

  “In control, in control. Repeat. Any scab boats hears this, not welcome. Out.”

  Oh Jones, thought Hank. Pull it back together.

  Seth yawned. “That pisser won’t let go.”

  “Belay that talk!”

  “He might be your friend, and he sure had it bad with the Japs, but I’ve been enough with Jones Henry to call him what I like. Admit it. The guy’s turned the comer.”

  “And I tell you politely to belay it.” Seth looked away, resentful, but said no more. Hank’s gloom deepened. He’d begun to fear for Jones.

  “The way he’s talked to you is no good, Boss,” said Mo. “But I hope Captain Henry’s found some fish’ll make him happy. I hope so too for my buddy Ham.”

  “The hell he’s still your buddy!” Seth snapped it to cover his backing off. “Go fix dinner.”

  “Ham’s just done his job last month, our fight.”

  Hank turned spontaneously. “You’re a good man, Mo.”

  “I now pronounce the combatters deck ape and deck ape,” said Terry. Mo, aglow from his skipper’s compliment, reached around and pulled Terry’s cap over his eyes.

 

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