Bunker 01 - Slipknot

by Linda Greenlaw

  The next twelve hours crept along in three-hour epochs marked by a slowing of the main engine and growling of hydraulic power. I must have dozed a bit between tows.

  I knew the drill. Although we’d never come far enough s l i p k n o t

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  north to fish for cod, my mentor, father figure, and fishing captain had dragged me along on every boat he’d captained during my summer vacations for eight years. I had worked aboard a number of stern trawlers similar to the Sea Hunter.

  So although I was in the bilge, I was acutely aware of all activity above. I imagined the routine, timed the engine room checks, and knew within minutes when the hydraulics would again engage. My desire to climb out of the bilge grew with my hunger and the onset of hypothermia. My best bet was to emerge at night, just prior to the hydraulics signaling time for the fishing net to be hauled aboard. It was risky, but I had to make my move while I still had some wits about me.

  The thought of food bolstered my diminished strength and allowed me to push aside the deck plate. Stiff and sore, I struggled out and slid the steel plate back into position. As if I’d gone from refrigerator to oven, the temperature gradient between under and over the deck plate was extreme. The heat from the engines, even with the fumes of diesel and exhaust, was like a delightful injection.

  Desperate for food and a new hiding spot, I hurried up the ladder and into the galley. I counted on my past experience to know the crew was sound asleep. The deck light through the fo’c’sle door was adequate for me to find half a sleeve of Ritz crackers on the table and a partially eaten breast of fried chicken in the trash can. I couldn’t open the refrigerator for a drink, for fear of the interior light waking George or Alex. So I drank from the kitchen faucet. Rusty and stagnant-tasting, it was all I had to hydrate. I forced several gulps.

  Out through the fo’c’sle door with my stash, I scurried

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  like a rat to find a dark hole. The engine slowed suddenly.

  Opening a door ahead of the port winch, I stepped into a booth-shaped space and latched the door behind me just as the hydraulics engaged. Perfectly cozy, I thought, as I realized I had stumbled upon a storage locker through which ran the exhaust stack from the engine room. There was no room to lie down in my clandestine closet, but I could stand or sit, and ventilation grates in the door allowed a full view of the work deck. After my time in solitary confinement, this would be downright sociable. I was sure I could endure a day or two here until we were back ashore.

  “Haul back! Let’s go, boys,” Lincoln called through the open fo’c’sle door as I gnawed cartilage from the chicken breast. The captain engaged the main winches, released their brakes—port, then starboard—and hurried back topside, where I knew he manned engine and hydraulic controls at an outdoor station aft of the wheelhouse.

  The winches turned, winding two steel cables out of the ocean and onto their drums. As the wires rubbed against flanges, surface rust flaked and fell to the deck, forming small piles of brown scales and dust that lay under each winch, undisturbed in the absence of even the slightest sea breeze.

  The groaning of the winches as they strained to pull the wire and accompanying trawl, consisting of net and doors off the ocean’s bottom, was like spurs prompting the crew of two to hustle into oilskins. Both men squinted in the bright deck lights following the nap they had just been awakened from. George was ready first. He grabbed the five-foot steel steering bar from its resting place against the port rail and took a position facing s l i p k n o t

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  the port winch. The steering bar was to be used crowbar-fashion to help guide, or fairlead, the wire onto the winch evenly, keeping it from building up on one side or the other.

  Alex was seconds behind, taking his position with an identical piece of steel to guide the starboard wire.

  The lack of wind and apparent slack tide made the job of fairleading the cables nearly effortless. I watched as I ate crackers. The two men stood steadily on the deck, which moved predictably in the gentle swell. The men’s rapt attention moved back and forth from winches to the large single-sheaved bollards that hung high above each stern quarter and through which the cables traveled as they were slowly hauled from either side of the boat’s churning wake. Salt water trickled from the bollards back into the ocean in a steady stream. Bright orange spray-painted marks were loudly noted at twenty-five-fathom intervals by each man as the marks reached bollards.

  Subtracting twenty-five from the total set overboard three hours ago, the men kept a running tally of the length of wire remaining to be hauled before the doors and net would break the surface.

  The minute or so between sets of marks was filled with George’s words of caution to his nephew as the cables snapped with increasing tension on each rotation of the drums. They needed to watch themselves and each other, he warned. He told a gory tale of a crewman who had somehow been pulled into the winch while his shipmate was fetching coffee or using the head. By the time the horror was discovered, the body had been around the winch several times, each wrap of wire severing another piece of the man. Alex appeared to have

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  heard the warnings and stories before, but he still winced when his uncle described removing the body from the winch.

  “One-fifty!” called George loudly as an orange mark entered the port bollard.

  “One-fifty!” echoed Alex as the mark on the starboard side ran through the massive block. They counted down in seg-ments of twenty-five until a white mark appeared, indicating the final sections of wire were on their way to the winches.

  “Last mark!” both men barked simultaneously. They stowed the steering bars on the deck between winches and gunwales and hurried to the stern, each man in his own far corner with the net drum between them. George leaned heavily on the port rail and peered down into the water, looking for the six-hundred-kilogram steel oval trawl door, as the last few fathoms of wire strained through the bollard over his head. Alex scanned the water where the wake flattened out behind the boat, I imagined looking for the cod end to pop up and float on the surface. If the catch was good, the end of the funnel-shaped trawl where the fish were eventually trapped would float with fish bellies bloated with air, a result of being pulled from the depths.

  Bang! The port door was up and resting against the steel hull. Bang! Up came the starboard door. The back straps, or chain bridles connecting doors to the net, made steep angles with the surface of the water. The links worked hard against one another, with the weight of the gear remaining overboard.

  A smaller-diameter chain, the idler, dangled freely from each door. The slack in the idlers allowed the crew to detach them s l i p k n o t

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  from the respective doors and connect them to large links hanging from either side of the net drum. When both idlers were hooked up, Alex and George stepped back into the far corners of the stern and gave the captain okay signs to engage the net drum. A few rotations of the huge drum between them took the tension off the back straps, allowing the men to disconnect the trawl doors from the net. The doors hung loosely from the bollards, the full weight of the net supported by the drum. Not a damn thing had changed in the years since I had worked the deck of a dragger.

  Although I couldn’t see him, I knew Lincoln was carefully working the valve controlling the net drum. Soon the mouth of the net broke the surface. The lower lip of the mouth was constructed of a series of ten-inch black plastic disks connected by chain through their centers. This rig, or roller frame, allowed the leading edge of the trawl to roll along the ocean floor, up and over ledges and other obstructions on the bottom. The upper lip of the funnel-shaped net’s mouth was rigged with brightly colored plastic floats, or cans, that kept the mouth open vertically as the trawl doors stretched it hori-zontally while being towed through the water.

  The net drum, controlled by the captain a
bove, slowly and methodically wound out of the wake the orange and green webbing of panels and sections of twine formed by tens of thousands of stitches and knots sewn into diamond-shaped mesh. George examined the port side of the trawl for damage as it passed by him on its way to the drum, noting any holes or tears that may have needed mending. Alex absentmindedly gazed out over the stern and into the ocean under a flock of

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  herring gulls diving after small creatures that had escaped the net. The cod end still hadn’t popped to the surface. In fact, the twine stretched tight onto the net drum, which I knew was not a good sign. “Long tear in the port wing,” George informed the captain. The net continued to come aboard. “Three or four holes in the belly,” George called out as the narrowest section of the funnel was pulled up and onto the drum. “Looks like a bag of rocks. It’s wicked heavy,” George said in reference to the cod end, which now hung straight down under the surface at the Sea Hunter’s stern. The six-inch diamond mesh collapsed into vertical bars with the weight of whatever had been caught in the cod end.

  Lincoln gently stopped the drum as the thicker-diameter twine of the net’s chaffing gear reached the spool. “Alex, honey, grab the sewing basket from up in the gear locker,”

  Lincoln called down, referring to a container of tools and twine needed to repair the net. If I had been in the gear locker, the jig would have been up. Alex obediently traveled the length of the deck in long, graceful strides and disappeared into the black hole contained within the steel frame of the fo’c’sle door. I let out a quiet sigh of relief.

  George retrieved the spliced loop of braided line used to strap, choker-style, the net just above the cod end. He pulled his hood on over his cap and moved quickly under the drum to a position where he could place the strap. As George hugged the section of twine that hung between the drum and the water, Alex emerged with the milk crate overflowing with tools, placing it on the deck against the starboard gunwale.

  George tucked one end of the strap through the opposite s l i p k n o t

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  end, cinching the rope loop around the twine with a sharp jerk. Lincoln slacked the wire of a cargo winch mounted at the base of the boom and hinged to the mast. The wire ran through a block at the end of the boom and down to a cleat welded to the base of the net drum. The slack in the wire allowed Alex to remove the blunt hook shackled to its bitter end from the cleat and hand it to his uncle, who crouched under the drum raining salt water. George placed the hook in the free loop of the strap and moved out from under the drum and back to the port rail, removing his hood. “Just like Christmas morning, isn’t it?” George said cheerily.

  “Bah humbug,” Alex replied while staring down at the toe of his boot. He and George leaned on opposite rails while Lincoln worked hydraulics to pull the cod end out of the water, up the stern ramp, and onto the deck. Lincoln skillfully pulled up on the cargo winch while backing off the net drum.

  As the bulged end of the net was dragged through the U-shaped ramp in the Sea Hunter’s stern, the grinding of rock on rock was heard over the crying of the gulls still diving into the distant wake. The cod end slid forward and came to rest with a crunch in the middle of the workspace. George grabbed the tail-like line leading from the bottom of the cod end, wrapped it around the cleat at the base of the drum, and signaled Lincoln with a thumbs-up. Lincoln once again cracked open the valve operating the cargo winch, putting enough tension on the tail rope to pop open the clip that secured the purse line sealing the cod end. The distinct pop of the release of the brass clip cued George to free the end of the tail rope from the cleat. The purse line cinching the cod

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  end relaxed, immediately dumping the net’s contents noisily onto the steel deck.

  Two dozen rocks—boulders ranging from substantial girth to grapefruit-sized—spilled onto the deck with a smattering of scalers, fish whose usually shiny scales were chafed up or missing as a result of their ride in the cod end with objects other than fish. “A handful of scrod and market, Linc,”

  George said to his brother as he and Alex worked to clear the deck of rocks. The larger boulders were rolled aft and pushed out the stern ramp, while smaller, more manageable rocks were picked up and tossed over the sides. Alex flipped the codfish into two orange baskets.

  Lincoln joined his crew on deck to help mend the net as the Sea Hunter drifted west with the remains of a moon. Alex gutted, gilled, and washed the meager catch and disappeared into the fish hold, where I knew he would bury the cleaned fish in ice. Once the fish were put to bed, Alex reappeared and assisted with the net repairs. He refilled plastic needles with mending twine as his uncle and father emptied them into holes and tears, snapping knots tight with needles in their right hand and twine knives held in their clenched jaws.

  The sun had risen before the net was declared back together, and Alex yawned loudly as he examined a small cut on his index finger.

  George and Alex sat and waited quietly under bright lights flooding the deck as Lincoln steamed the Sea Hunter; I assumed he was getting the boat back to towable bottom.

  The rumbling of the diesel engine hushed to an idle. “Here s l i p k n o t

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  we go again.” Alex exhaled with mixed fatigue and discouragement.

  “Cheer up. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. We have plenty of time yet,” George said as he patted his nephew’s back fondly.

  “Yeah. That’s what worries me,” Alex said out of the side of his mouth, avoiding eye contact with his uncle as they took their respective places in the far corners of the stern.

  The trawl was backed off the drum and into the wake of the Sea Hunter as she jogged into the growing daylight. The net, streaming at its full eighty-foot length behind them, was connected to the doors and disconnected from the drum. The heavy oblong steel trawl doors were lowered into the water as Lincoln backed the tow wire off the winches. The doors sub-merged, dragging the net down with them. The throttle increased to a good steam as Lincoln released the winches, allowing the wire to free-spool over the stern while the trawl dove to bottom.

  “Twenty-five,” sang George as the first mark ran through the port bollard.

  “Yep,” mumbled his shipmate as the starboard wire reached the same mark.

  And so it went for the next nine hours. The crew napped at three-hour intervals while their captain tried in vain to put them on the fish. I worried constantly about someone opening the door to my closet, but it seemed I had chosen a little-used space. I sneaked out once more for water from the tap and whatever scraps of food were lying around, and I prayed

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  for the end of this trip. The Vickersons would be worried to death. I would have a hard time explaining my absence. I was so exhausted that I no longer had the urge to open the package I hoped held the evidence to convict Dow’s murderer. It could wait.

  “Haul back!” Lincoln’s voice jolted me from near-sleep. I stood and watched the routine through the ventilation grate.

  Alex’s mood appeared to have brightened as he and George took steering bars in their hands for what I supposed would be the final haul back. According to my count, we had been fishing a full twenty-four hours, and unless this tow produced a miracle, the Sea Hunter would return to Green Haven with fewer fish than what I imagined would be needed to cover the expenses of fuel, mending twine, and groceries. But Alex would be cut loose from what he apparently considered torture, and so would I. I caught myself humming Carly Simon’s “Anticipation.” The end was in sight.

  “Seventy-five!” Alex called out loudly and was echoed by George. “Hey, Unc! What time do you think we’ll hit the dock?”

  “I don’t know. Alex, honey, pay attention to the wire now,” George said. “Watch out for that splice. It’ll—”

  “I know, I know,” Alex interrupted. “It�
��ll catch my sleeve and pull me into the winch, and if it doesn’t kill me, I’ll wish it had.” He mimicked his uncle’s deliberate speech. “At the very least, I’d lose an arm. Wouldn’t do much for my basketball game, would it?” He smiled for the first time I had noticed. “Fifty fathoms!”

  “Roger, fifty!”

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  Alex dropped his steering bar in the middle of the deck as soon as the white mark broke the surface, then he hustled back to the stern in anticipation of the final bang of doors against hull. George methodically stowed his steering bar in its usual spot and walked purposefully toward the stern, arriving well ahead of the doors.

  Starboard then port doors climbed from the water, up the sides of the hull, and came to rest hanging comfortably from the bollards. Alex quickly ran the end of a short rope through a shackle on his door, pulled tight, and wrapped a few figure eights around a cleat on the gallows frame, securing the starboard door for the steam home. George was in the process of securing the port door when Lincoln stopped him. “Hey, boys. Not so fast. We’ve got fuel enough for a couple more tows.” My heart gained ten pounds.

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” George answered as he removed the tie-down line from the port door.

  Alex, clearly as unhappy as I was with this news, whipped the line from his door and slatted it against the rail. He complained through his clenched teeth, loudly enough for me to hear. “What the fuck.” Idlers were hooked up. “Has he lost his mind?” Back straps were disconnected. “We’ve caught every rock on Schoodic Shoals.” Thumbs-ups were sent to the captain. “Two more tows. Give me a break.” The men stepped away from the drum as it turned, retrieving the trawl.

  Alex continued to mutter obscenities to no one in particular as the usual entourage of swooping and soaring gulls went into a frenzy. Stoic birds left their flank positions from the Sea Hunter’s beams and joined the tight cluster diving and