Land Sharks

by S. L. Stoner

  The remoteness that had been wrapped around the other man like a repelling mist, momentarily dissolved, allowing a spark of warmth to kindle in Fong’s dark eyes. “I cannot tell you, Mr. Sage, why I must be gone. It has nothing to do with you or your lady mother. You both are kind and friendly. I am most sorry for trouble.”

  Fong’s words brought relief of a sort. Still, the mystery had endured long enough. Once again, Sage saw in his mind’s eye, Kindcaid’s desperate wife and little baby. Their lives depended on whether the three of them could find answers quickly enough. Not to mention Kincaid, himself. Sage spoke firmly, hoping to compel Fong’s assistance, even if he wouldn’t explain the reason for his changed behavior. “Nevertheless, I need you to go to Astoria with me. I’ve heard that a Chinese fisherman may have pulled Kincaid’s body from the ocean. He speaks no English. You must go with me. Help me talk to the man.”

  “It not possible for me to go away now. I am sorry.” Fong was emphatic, cutting off any argument. His eyes hardened to black obsidian in a face rigidly set against further entreaty.

  A hot flush of anger traveled up Sage’s neck and he snapped, “Your ‘sorry’ is cold comfort to that poor mother and her innocent baby. She is alone, with no means of support and full of unanswered questions about what happened to her husband.” Sage turned away to jerk open a dresser drawer. He was afraid to look at the other man’s face, afraid of what he’d see. “The sternwheeler’s leaving the Couch Street wharf at five in the morning. I hope you’ll try to make it,” he said, staring blindly into the drawer.

  The silence that greeted this declaration was so thick and heavy that it forced Sage to turn back around. A muscle twitched in Fong’s jaw, though he responded matter-of-factly, as if Sage hadn’t spoken, “I must go now. I ask permission to use room in attic.”

  Room in the attic? Sage mentally flailed at the odd request before saying with some exasperation, “Oh, of course, the room’s yours to use. You built it, after all. Why even ask?”

  Fong dipped his head and was gone, leaving Sage staring at the empty doorway. “Shit,” Sage said and slammed the drawer shut so hard that it bounced the silver brushes atop the dresser.

  Far into the night, Sage lay awake, listening to the slap of bare feet above him. Fong was exercising like a demon–a behavior contrary to the moderation he’d always preached to Sage. Until a few days ago, he considered Fong the nearest thing to a perfect man that he’d ever encountered. Given Fong’s strange behavior these last few days, Sage ruefully admitted that, if he looked into a mirror, he’d see the fool his mother warned him about. He jammed a pillow over his ears and drifted off into a few hours of restless sleep.

  Thick fog crawled across the predawn river, muffling the swish and mechanical thumps of the sternwheeler’s departure. Its moist weight was as dampening on the day as Sage’s spirits. Fong hadn’t shown up. Sage waited near the gangway, staring up the street until the boat pulled out into the river. Moving forward toward the bow, Sage leaned over the railing to stare into the sullen water mounding away from the hull. He pictured the impassive face of the man who’d been his daily companion. He admitted to himself that it hurt to feel cut off from that friendship, to see Fong transform into an unreliable and secretive stranger.

  Sage straightened, mentally casting his gloom into the river. His mother was right. He was certain of it. She believed Fong was in trouble and too proud to ask for help. Well, when he returned to Portland, he intended to reach the bottom of it, even if he had to tie the man down and sit on him. The vision triggered a laugh. He had a better chance of flipping a Brahma bull than of overpowering Fong.

  Hours later, the faint stench of rotting fish guts rolled upriver from Astoria’s canneries to meet the boat. The cannery where Stuart Franklin instructed him to start looking for the Chinese fisherman, Hong Ah Kay, stood on a wharf next to the sternwheeler’s docking pier. Within minutes after the paddlewheel stopped revolving, Sage was standing just outside the wide-open doorway of the cannery building.

  The dim light inside came from the door where he stood, a few filthy window panes and the chinks in the cedar shingles overhead. A calliope of clanking leather drive belts, engine chugs, whistle toots, and valve releases blasted around the space. Wiry Chinese men, each wearing a black rubber apron, stood in the slime of discarded fish bits. Standing at butchering tables, they grabbed fish from a conveyor belt, cutting off their heads and gutting them, their knives silver blurs in the gloom. Not a single man glanced in his direction. Sage hesitated. Should he approach one? And if so, which? Not a one would meet his eyes.

  “You done worked up a liking for the stink of fish?” came a raspy American voice at his shoulder.

  Sage twisted around. A big man stood there. A few days beard growth stubbled his pale face. His heavy forearms were crossed atop a rounded belly encased in a slick black rubber apron. His grin was gap-toothed and engaging.

  “Guess I gave you a bit of a start.” The man’s laughter was a gasping wheeze.

  “That’s all right. My name’s John Miner,” Sage said as he held out a hand to shake.

  The other man didn’t reciprocate. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Miner. Unless you want to stink of fish the rest of the day, we best not shake mitts. That what you’re looking for–a nice fish for your dinner table?”

  “No. Actually, I’m trying to find a fisherman called Hong Ah Kay. I heard he might work out of this cannery.” Sage shrugged. “‘Course, I can’t speak Chinese so I wasn’t sure how to go about asking.”

  The other man grinned again, acknowledging the difficulty. He nodded in the general direction of the Chinese. “Wouldn’t make no difference. Ain’t a one of them Hong. He sells to us, all right. Right now, he’s out on his fishing boat. Don’t know what day he’ll be back. The fish are running pretty good and he’s a hard worker. Won’t come back in until his catch threatens to swamp him. Meanwhile, those men ain’t going to tell you a thing.”

  Sage’s heart sank. He’d been hoping that Hong was a day fisherman or that he was ashore. Evidently neither was the case. That meant the body probably lay for days on the fishing boat’s deck. No wonder the face was unrecognizable. And just how many days had elapsed before the fellow returned to land with his grisly find?

  “Do you think some of the men here might know Hong Ah Kay?” Sage asked, nodding his head toward the dark interior. Maybe Hong told someone something about the dead man, something that would indicate whether the body was Kincaid’s or not.

  “It’s for certain they all do. China folks are thick as thieves here in Astoria. Ain’t that many of them.”

  “Would you mind if I tried to find one of them who’ll talk to me about Hong Ah Kay?” Sage was going to make the effort since there was no knowing when Hong would return to shore. All he needed to know was whether or not Astoria was a dead end. Time was passing. Mrs. Kincaid’s anxiety was undoubtedly growing by leaps and bounds. He couldn’t hang around on the off chance Hong would return in the next day or so.

  The man set meaty hands on his hips, irritation suffusing his face, his words clipped as he said, “Well, mister, like I said, they’re not going to talk to you. The China crew don’t speak to white men. They only speak to the China boss and through the China boss, and he ain’t here right now.” The man began turning to go, all affability gone.

  Damn. If Fong were here, there wouldn’t be this problem. Fong would walk right up to that line of closed-mouth fish gutters and receive answers in no time. And, Sage wouldn’t need to cajole this gatekeeper into cooperating. “Quit whining, Sage,” he told himself. “Deal with reality. Fong isn’t here.” He tried again, saying to the man, “Well, maybe if I let them know who I’m looking for, offered to pay . . . if you’d help me, I will pay . . .”

  The man interrupted, waving his large scarred hand, “Oh, I’m not stopping you, just warning you what’s gonna happen. Go ahead on, try to talk to them. More power to you. I can’t help because they won’t talk to me neither unless it’s s
trictly necessary. See that you watch where you step, though. Them wood floorboards are slick as snot.” That said, the man waved a hand at Sage before lumbering away down the wharf toward dry land.

  Sage peered inside the cannery. The straightforward, friendly approach would be best. It usually was–honey rather than vinegar. He stepped across the threshold into the gloom. To one side, a line of men gutted and sliced fish. On the other side, a big boiler oven hissed steam out the small valves dotting its metal dome. Next to that stood a towering stack of large wooden boxes, the word “Salmon” on their sides in heavy black lettering.

  The rumble of steel wheels across the uneven floorboards caused him to turn. A Chinese man was pushing a wheeled tray loaded with tin cans in the direction of the boiler, his back bent at a nearly 90-degree angle by the effort. Sage stepped forward, close to the man’s path, a tentative smile on his face.

  “Excuse me, I was wondering . . .” The man neither paused nor acknowledged Sage’s presence, just rolled right past him. Reaching the boiler, the man swung open a metal door. He used his heavy gloves to extract a tray, slide it onto the cart and insert a new tray in its place. Slamming the door shut, the man began trundling the cart back toward Sage. Again, Sage stepped forward and again the man acted blind and deaf to Sage’s presence.

  Great. So much for his Black Irish charm. It might turn the trick at Mozart’s but this fellow was definitely impervious to its effect. Unwilling to accept defeat, Sage swiveled, looking around for somebody else to approach. His eye settled on an old man tucked away in the far corner of the work area. He was perched on an upturned wooden box, a stack of labels and a paste pot at his side. With repetitive precision, he was affixing labels onto the soldered cans that surrounded him in shiny stacks. Maybe it was better to approach someone stationary.

  “Excuse me, sir. I’m looking for someone who knows the fisherman Hong Ah Kay.”

  The old man’s yellowed eyes cut to him before snapping back to his work without ever pausing in his rhythm: brush into paste pot, paste onto label, label onto can, and can onto finished stack.

  Maybe the combined din of steam hiss, knife whack and conveyor belt rattle had deafened everyone working in the cannery. Sage had seen that happen to men in the rolling mill attached to the mine and that mill was only a bit noisier than this place. Or, maybe, these men were simply an unfriendly wall erected against “sharp noses” like himself. Sage studied the others, searching for a single friendly face.

  Behind him, the old man began hollering at the men working on the fish line. Sage thought he heard Hong Ah Kay’s name somewhere in the stream of sounds. His gaze returned to the labeler, uncertain whether to try again. Despite that steady gaze, the old man remained stolidly unwilling to acknowledge Sage’s presence.

  A stringy white man in bib overalls and cap entered the scene from out of an adjacent room and began attending to the hissing boiler. Sage headed over to him. The man saw him approach, but he checked the boiler’s gauges and made notations on a pad in his hand before turning to Sage.

  “Sorry,” he said, “have to keep close track of the heat in this here retort, otherwise the fish’ll cook too fast. Makes them dry and mealy.” He tucked the pad into an overall pocket. “Anyway, somethin’ I can do for you, mister?”

  “Well, maybe. I’m having a little bit of trouble getting even one of these men to talk to me. I wonder if you will kindly direct me to one of them who speaks English.”

  The man glanced at the Chinese workers before saying, “You’ll be wanting their China boss and I don’t see him.”

  “The big man on the wharf told me the China boss wasn’t here right now.”

  “Well, mister, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

  “Surely, one of these men speaks a little English?”

  “Aye, some of them speak it pretty well outside the cannery. Here, in the cannery though, these men won’t speak to a white man. You’ll just have to wait for the China boss, I’m afraid.” He gave Sage a friendly nod before disappearing through an archway into a room where the conveyor belt’s steam engine roared at full throttle.

  Sage huffed in exasperation. He wandered over to watch the lines of men standing on either side of the moving belt, their knives flashing as they gutted, scaled, and sliced the silver fish in quick, economic strokes. From the light pink of the meat, Sage realized this was the beginning of the Chinook salmon’s fall run. Life as a restaurateur delivered its own little lessons–like how to distinguish one salmon species from another. At the end of the line, other men packed salmon into tin cans, their fingers nimble as those of a seamstress. Sage clenched his jaw, frustration lengthening his stride as he moved closer to the line’s end. Dammit, one of them is going to talk, China boss or no! That frustration was his downfall. Literally.

  Suddenly, his feet were skidding across the plank floor as his arms flailed for balance. He landed with a resounding thud on his backside, pain his first sensation, chilly wet his second. Both in the same location. He’d stepped onto a section of the floor slick with entrails and water. He quickly tried to regain his footing, only to have his hand slip in the slime and send him down onto his shoulder. Deciding that dignity must give way, Sage gingerly raised onto his hands and knees so he could slowly lever himself onto his feet. Fully erect, he caught more than one pair of amused dark eyes looking in his direction before they immediately flicked away. He was about to become invisible again.

  Churlishness took hold as Sage studied the slime on his hands, coat and pants. How entertaining for them, seeing a white man land on his butt in a mess of fish guts. Probably these men wouldn’t come to my aid if I broke my leg falling down right in front of them.

  As if rebuking these unspoken thoughts, a man with one wandering eye stepped away from the line and silently handed him a dingy rag. Sage took it, smiling ruefully. “Thank you,” he said. He wiped muck from his hands, knees, shoulder and tail end before returning the rag and quickly asking, “Do you know Hong Ah Kay?”

  The man’s wide smile showed sparse teeth black at their roots. He shook his head. “No speak English me. Talk to China boss. He come back sometime soon.”

  ELEVEN

  SAGE WAITED, SITTING WITH HIS boots dangling over the edge of the wharf. Eventually, he found himself watching the sun sink into the ocean beyond the river bar. He tried to ignore the fishy stench wafting to his nose from his damp trousers. The water slapping the timbers beneath him hit with no discernable rhythm, serving to underscore the disjointed and glum train of thought that had ahold of him.

  What if the China boss never came back? What if he proved as uncooperative as the rest of them? After traveling all this way, wasting all this time, was Sage going to discover nothing to tell Joseph Kincaid’s wife? Was it a waste of time to wait for the China boss? Sage clenched his jaw. If so, the fault lay at Fong’s door. In Fong’s presence, the strange cadence of the Chinese words would have flowed. Already, Sage would be aboard the Hassalo as it chugged upriver with the evening tide. And, he’d know for sure whether or not the drowned man was Kincaid.

  Fong’s absence pressed down on Sage so heavily that he felt as if the sinking sun were tugging his spirit down with it. Just as the bottom of that glowing disk touched the horizon and sent a pathway of light flowing toward him up the river, Sage saw a Chinese man approaching. This man wore a dark suit, a natty brocade vest, a high-collared shirt and a somewhat battered top hat. While all the men in the cannery wore their black hair in ropey queues, this man was westernized. His coarse black hair was evenly short, as if someone had upended a porridge bowl on his head and traced around it with scissors.

  Sage scrambled to his feet. “Hello, sir. Are you the China boss here at the cannery?”

  “I am.” The man said nothing more, just looked at Sage, his face an expressionless mask.

  “I wanted to talk to the men here about Hong Ah Kay.”

  “Why you police are still after poor Hong Ah Kay?” The man’s voice rose an octave.


  “No, I’m not the police. They want to talk to Hong Ah Kay?”

  “Police ask Hong Ah Kay many, many questions about body he found outside river mouth. Police think he kept body too many days or something. They not understand fisherman can not go all the way out on ocean and come right back. Hong Ah Kay did nothing wrong with white man’s body. No belongings with body, not even shoes.”

  This outburst made Sage pause. Apparently, the dead man had caused problems between the Chinese and Astoria’s police. No wonder he’d met stiff resistance from the cannery workers. “No, no. I have no reason to think that Hong Ah Kay did anything wrong. I’m just trying to see if the body is that of a man I’m trying to find.”

  “He your friend, this man?” The China boss was still wary, though Sage thought he detected a slight relaxing of the man’s stance.

  “If the body is that of the man I seek, his wife is my friend.”

  “I not see the body. Hong Ah Kay is now out on boat. Body brought to shore late at night. Most everybody sleeping.”

  “If Hong Ah Kay is still out on his boat, did anyone else at the cannery see the body?”

  “Maybe Loke Tung. He help Hong Ah Kay unload body and talk to police.”

  Sage felt hope rising. This might be it.

  “May I please speak to Loke Tung?” Sage asked.

  “Not now. Wait until after eight o’clock tonight when work over. Come back at that time to China house, over there.” He pointed toward a weathered building that looked similar to the bunkhouses Sage lived in when he worked in the woods. Except this building had a tidy vegetable garden and a chicken coop in its side yard.