Breakers

by William B. McCIoskey Jr.

  When at last the Anchorage plane arrived bearing Hank, Jody, and the children, Adele greeted her family. Her spirits lightened and she became efficient again though a widow still in grief.

  She postponed the funeral service on the first Friday when a predicted three-day storm moved in to ground all flights. Peggy Dyson relayed the message to the seiner fleet in the bays around Kodiak Island during her scheduled weather broadcast.

  Hank’s crew arrived midweek by sea aboard the damaged Jody Dawn. Jody drove Hank to the cannery pier. He watched without leaving the truck, despite her urging. It could have been someone else’s boat. Life, after all, flowed along whatever he did. Things that needed to be done got done. Daylight, night, tides, they came in predicted sequence, whatever. Even storms. He dreamed back with curiosity on the things he’d cared about. Like watching a movie. When the lights came up you just went home.

  Seth, in the wheelhouse, did appear more confident. He’d shaved his beard to reveal a stubborn chin, and he stood at the controls clear-eyed and solemn. Mo and Terry jumped smartly to his commands. After they secured mooring lines, they hurried to the truck. Seth sauntered over more slowly. They all were solicitous.

  The repairs could be handled at a local boatyard. Hank’s detachment continued as he surveyed the damaged bow. The boat, his possession, seemed now less his pride and soul. He’d allowed her name to be changed and desecrated her in the process, just as he’d desecrated by signing over control to the Japanese. He was so tired! Legs ached without pause—not like the shoulder pain accepted as part of fishing now and then—but rather like a snake in his system. When Jody drove him home he limped straight to bed.

  By the second weekend the weather had run full cycle from storm to sun to squalls, but planes were flying. Swede Scorden and John Gains chartered a flight direct from Naknek and brought along Ham. Adele and Jody waited as the three descended to the rain-slick runway.

  In the small airport waiting/baggage room, Adele clutched Swede and cried while he patted her shoulder, then hugged John and thanked him for coming. She broke down briefly at the sight of Jones’s old seabag. Ham had not entered. Despite the rain he remained close against the plane with his gaze on the ground. When Adele had composed herself: “Oh for pity’s sake,” she exclaimed, and strode out in the rain to bring him in with an arm around his waist.

  Ham, like Hank, had lost his spirit. His slumped shoulders seemed particularly forlorn for a man so large. Adele studied his sand-scuffed duffle bag with tom hip boots strapped to the side, sighed, and declared with her old officiousness: “You’ll stay at the house until you decide what to do, of course. Daddy would have wanted it.” Jody saw Ham’s alarm, and cheerfully said that Hank needed him to help on the Jody Dawn so he’d better just bunk there too. Ham’s humble look thanked her.

  On the day of Jones’s service the men of the salmon fleet—most from boats come to port for the weekend but some who flew in from as far away on the island as Uganik Bay and even Alitak—filled the pews at St. James the Fisherman. The service was thoughtful, delivered under the shadow shared by the congregation that Jones Henry’s fate could be their own. Ham listened from a dark alcove. Neither Mo nor Ham’s recent girlfriend could persuade him to sit.

  Many strong voices turned husky while singing:

  Eternal Father strong to save

  Whose arm has bound the restless wave

  Who bids the mighty ocean deep

  Its own appointed limits keep.

  Oh hear us when we cry to Thee,

  For those in peril on the sea.

  At the end of the service Adele rose to announce what she had already told those who had spoken to her. A wake would follow, down on the docks aboard the Adele H. “It won’t be at the house. That wasn’t really where Daddy lived, much as I loved the man. You give Daddy a proper send-off, and I don’t mean a tea party.” She herself chose to embrace people at the church, then stay at the house where some of the women joined her. Henny, Dawn, and Pete went with her to stay overnight. ‘They’re even more precious to me now, the children I didn’t have,” said Adele as a matter of fact.

  Jody had arranged a bar in the Adele H’s galley out of the rain—bottles, cans, ice, jerky, and other snacks, and plastic cups—and Hank’s crew under Seth had prepared a salmon grill on the dock under a flapping lean-to. Ham stayed in the shadows filleting fish, and refused to drink.

  Swede and John Gains both paid their respects. They’d planned to return at once to Naknek, but fog closed the airstrip. People learned of their role in the helicopter, and hand after hand slapped their backs. After a token drink at the pier, however, they chose to take a quiet dinner at the inn where they stayed overlooking the harbor.

  “All those people for just a guy who fishes,” mused Gains. “A man who always seemed to me ill-tempered.”

  “He did the work.”

  “For once I wouldn’t mind being part of all that.”

  “You’ve earned a place. Go on back down.”

  Gains considered as he read the menu. “You more than me, and I don’t see you moving. Is the steak good here?”

  The section of floating boardwalk that berthed the Adele H and other seiners throbbed with voices and milled with glistening yellow and orange oilskins under blowing rain. Jones’s virtues were discussed along with the pittance paid for pink salmon by the thieving canneries. Hank walked among them out of duty, but watched and listened outside himself, answering questions only with reticence. Everyone knew the generalities of the disaster since it had been reported at length in the Anchorage papers and the Kodiak Mirror. Hank had submitted to interviews, but some details remained his alone. Let reporters conjecture. Fellow-fishermen sensed most of it without asking: understood keeping the fish your net had caught; needed no reminder of the lonely doubt and fear in the face of the sea.

  Jody stayed at his side most of the time. Occasionally her sharp or hearty laugh alerted him that she’d moved off on her own. None of the other wives had come to the boat, but she fitted in without apology. How precious she is, he thought. His luck in having Jody comforted him. He thought of it in a wave of gratitude, but then it drifted into the stuff of dreams.

  “I’ll tell you what probably happened,” said a skipper who had taken instruction in treating hypothermia. “Anybody’s got only a few minutes in that cold water if he’s immersed. The blood in your arms and legs chills down. Your big danger is your heart can’t take blood that’s too cold. So you’ve got to warm a patient gradually. So you start with the torso, not what they call the extremities. Now if Jones started to freeze, and his body shut down—I don’t understand all that but it’s what’s supposed to happen—but then if, say, he started doing something vigorous instead of resting to keep his circulation slow, then it could have pumped sudden cold blood from his arms and legs to his heart, and maybe his heart couldn’t take it. It might have looked like Jones was okay. But then bang. Jones being older, that probably didn’t help.” Others with experience nodded.

  Hank listened, and wondered dully whether Jones would still be alive if he hadn’t been goaded into grabbing the helicopter basket. Could there have been some other way? The thought became too heavy. He wandered inside to sit at the galley table.

  The urn with Jones’s ashes—a blue Greek imitation with handles—had been placed discreetly by the porthole. “Hey, shit,” somebody declared. “Ol’ Jones needs a snort same as the rest of us!” He banged down the urn among the bottles. Someone else carried it further: lifted the stopper and dribbled in Scotch while others cheered. Hank started to object, then relaxed with the rightness of it and poured in a few drops himself.

  He remained detached, skirting questions with “Oh, yeah, pretty bad.” At length he slipped down the ladder and crawled into a bunk. The party droned and became louder with successive drinks, but now stayed for him at an easeful distance. Close to his ear against the skin of the bow, water lapped an inch away. So it had been on his first excited night aboard a fishing
boat, hired indeed by Jones Henry aboard the dear old Rondelay. Green cannery kid exploding with desire to be a fisherman. Oh Jones. And it was the Rondelay that had delivered him from cannery drudgery under who but Swede Scorden. So young, and so full of it. Full of joy. His sadness of memory came in waves, interspersed with sleep. Shoulder ached, sign of healing. Feet and legs had a bum that throbbed and expanded. The survival suit would have protected him from frozen legs. Jones died anyhow. But thank God he hadn’t weakened to grab back the suit.

  He woke shivering to continued noise and pulled a musty sleeping bag around him for warmth. He next woke to Jody’s voice: “There you are! For a while we thought you’d wandered off. Are you okay, honey?”

  “Just kiss me.” She did. Abovedeck the noise came and went in waves. Someone started the “Jolly Good Fellow” song. Nice, thought Hank. “Toasting Jones, better not knock over his ashes.”

  “As a matter of fact they’re toasting your friend John Gains. Some of the boys started talking about the rescue, missed Swede and John, and went up to the inn to fetch them. Swede wouldn’t come. John did. Want to go home?”

  He left the bunk stiffly. Putting weight on the legs felt like jabbing them with boards. Up the ladder slowly. There at the galley table encircled by fishermen stood John Gains, holding a cup and smiling uncertainly. No question but that he was enjoying himself. Top it off, thought Hank. He walked through to John and held out his hand. “Thanks, John.”

  The handshake back had a tight grip. “Wasn’t that much, Hank.”

  Six hours after the church service, the last well-wisher had patted Jones’s ashes for the final time. The salmon grill had long since been extinguished by accumulated water gushing from the canopy, but people agreed that Jones had been given a good send-off. By midnight Seth and his men, with Ham, had carried all the cans and empty bottles up the ramp to the trash bins and had scrubbed the galley of the Adele H. One more job was left them, by Adele’s wishes conveyed through Jody. “Somebody else can do it,” said Seth. Ham shrank away, and “Spooky,” said Mo backing off. Terry shmgged, gingerly took the um with Jones’s ashes, and propped it with pillows in the wheelhouse captain’s chair. “Hope you’re comfortable,” he said, and hurried to rejoin the others.

  Seth padlocked the door, and they trudged through puddles along cannery row toward the Jody Dawn. A wind had begun to blow wildly. It made the night sinister. Ham trailed. Mo stayed alongside him, cajoling. At last Seth marched back although Terry kept moving. “Look,” Seth shouted above the wind. “You ain’t the only one who walks around feeling guilty about something. What good’s all that sorry-shit going to do you?”

  “If only I’d remembered my survival suit,” Ham moaned. “If only he hadn’t given me his.”

  “He made you take it. We heard it.”

  “I was scared. I let him. He’d be alive now.”

  “And you dead!”

  “Wish I was!”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Man, man, it’s over,” shouted Mo. “Ain’t nothing you can do.”

  Seth clapped Ham’s back and pushed. “Move! We’re gettin’ wet and we don’t need to.” Ham hung his head and obeyed.

  Aboard the Jody Dawn Terry had fired the stove, so that the pot was puffing steam when they arrived dripping. They sat around the table with mugs of instant cocoa. In the warmth of the galley Ham became calmer. “Could maybe give all my money to Mrs. Henry.”

  “What money? What money?”

  “Anything I ever make. Like what I’d ever spend again on boozing.” He breathed heavily. “Or on having a family someday.”

  “Wow,” breathed Mo at the enormity of it.

  They all pondered until Terry declared: “She’s a brave lady. She wouldn’t take nothing like that.” It seemed to settle the matter.

  Ham sighed, relieved. He gulped his cocoa and nursed the cup. “Sure wish I could crew with you guys. It’s no way though, I guess. Even if there was a site. No way after how I talked tough to Captain Hank and all, because of Skipper Jones . . . Even once almost had to throw him off the boat. . . No way.”

  “That would sure be great,” declared Mo. “I wonder?”

  Seth shrugged and glanced at Terry, who nodded. “Maybe we have influence. Beats having Mo got to risk his knuckles all the time because you answer to somebody else.”

  Next morning Jody drove Hank to town with his seabag. The rain had stopped, but fog drifted among houses on the hills and around masts in the harbor. They called on Adele at the house to report that the party had been one Jones would have enjoyed.

  Hank roused enough from lethargy to wrap his free arm around Adele and kiss her, and to explain that the kiss fulfilled Jones’s last words. She gripped his arms. “Are you making that up?” He assured her he was not. She rested on his chest and hugged him. Then, shaking her head, she walked away.

  Adele and the children drove with them to the Adele H. On the way she mentioned that Jody’s mother and Hank’s parents had both sent their sympathies and invited her to come visit. “I was so touched, because I think both meant it. Of course when will I ever get to do anything like that? I have so many decisions. Thank God for insurance on the wrecked boat. That leaves the licence. Would you believe that somebody offered to buy it for one fifth what poor Jones paid? Yesterday Mr. Scorden and John Gains advised me not to sell it until the botulism scare’s over and prices go up, and their company’s found a way to lend me something against it. Means I’ll probably come out even on the debt Jones made to buy the cursed boat and licence. Oh Jody, why do the kind of men we love have to prove themselves over and over like that? But now, the boat of his heart, the boat that bears my very name. I’ll have to sell it and that breaks my heart. A whole life that was built around the two of us, without my ever thinking. Sometimes I gave the poor dear man such a hard time, and now . . .”

  “When he deserved it,” declared Jody from the driver’s seat. “And not often enough at that.” Hank, beside her, woke enough to frown disapproval. Her frosty glance warned him not to challenge.

  “I can’t explain, but—” continued Adele. “In a way he’s still with me. It’s a comfort. But Daddy was always in charge, and now I’ll have to . . .” She reached to grip Jody’s shoulder. “Treasure your man while you have him.” Jody patted her hand.

  Seiners all along the docks were leaving. One by one, boats weighted astern with net, corks, and skiff backed from their slips and slowly headed down the corridor of moored stems toward the breakwater. Their circular wakes reflected masts. Crews of other boats hustled last-minute supplies aboard for the week ahead. Hank’s crew, with Ham, were waiting aboard the Adele H, and Seth had started the engine.

  Swede and John Gains arrived from the hill, their manner suitably grave. Hank surveyed John. The man’s hair was uncombed. “Feeling good?”

  “Hangover. Lousy.”

  “Glad to hear you’ve joined the human race.”

  “Maybe so.”

  Hank shook Swede’s hand. His old cannery boss’s face had accumulated massed wrinkles from forehead to mouth, but the eyes that for a while had turned bleary now glared clear and direct. “Give it all my regards,” Swede growled. The two studied each other, then embraced.

  Hank climbed over the rail and Jody started to follow. He stopped her with a friendly hand. “Jones’s boat, remember? At sea or any time just before sailing?”

  Adele followed to touch her arm. “Just this one last time, dear. Daddy hated a woman on his boat. He never let me aboard if he could help it. Let’s leave the man his peace.”

  Jody shrugged and returned to the pier, then paused and frowned. “When did our Jones Henry ever want his peace?” Her smile widened for the first time in days, wickedly. “I was only going aboard to make sure the boys had cleaned up last night’s mess, but I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll go with them. If you claim Jones is still alive with you, isn’t it time to help the man grow up?”

  “Oh, Jody ..

  “Not wit
hout your permission.” Her eyes narrowed. “You own the boat.”

  Adele’s hand went to her mouth and the fleshy lines drew down. “I do, don’t I?” Sudden resolution: “The children are fine at my house. Yes. You go. For both of us!”

  Aboard the Adele H, Hank stood on deck directing Terry above him on the flying bridge. The blue urn with Jones’s ashes needed to be secured and displayed prominently. Jody paused at the boat rail to watch before crossing the great line. Hank usually made decisions without backtrack, but with the urn he vacillated like a housewife arranging furniture. Just the fatigue. Gladly she’d have hugged him. For two days, ever since finding his farewell note while straightening the Jody Dawn’s wheelhouse, she’d turned unexpectedly tearful. Not her way. But the note had not left her pocket, and now and then her hand reached to feel it. He’s my love, she thought. Strong, with the bullheaded part open to change. Thank goodness he worked to win me back, because I won’t be his dishrag.

  She swung her legs over the rail and stood on deck. Ham was the first to notice. He dropped the line he was coiling. “Miz Crawford, hi m’am.” When she greeted him and started forward he followed, disturbed and uncertain. “If you stay right there, m’am, I’ll really like to get you whatever—” Jody continued to deck center, then looked up at him pleasantly, a small creature about half his size. Ham’s face grew red. “Captain Crawford, here’s your wife,” he stammered.

  Hank turned. “Party’s cleaned up, Honey. You don’t need to come aboard.” She remained. Hank hurried across deck, and gave Ham an assignment to send him away. “Hey . . . You know poor ol’ Jones never had a woman aboard underway or even on the day he sailed. It nearly killed him when Adele wandered aboard in port, you know that. We’re just trying to honor Jones.”