There was a net closure, and for a few days they trolled for silvers. They worked the rip at Point Gardner for a dozen modest fish; they dragged twenty-two fathoms off Admiralty Island for two dozen more. Paul learned to gaff fish behind the gills to avoid damaging the meat. Bob showed him how to work the gurdies and how to unsnap the leaders as they came up with their spoons and how to coil them neatly in the stern. Then came a twenty-four-hour gillnet opening. They fished a tight corner with the Port Protection fleet, the tide running hard, the boats close to one another, the evening westerly tossing spray across the pilothouses. In the dark, Paul picked his first net clean—sixty-five chums in a stiff night wind beneath the season’s first northern lights. The moon went down, and they fished the beach with the radar, running in tight and dropping the net light, then plowing out again and dropping net off the drum. They drifted through a kelp bed, with Paul tossing fish in the hold and kelp over the gunnels. He was definitely paying off—a good deckhand.
Paul, Bob said, spoke sometimes about high-school football and wrestling. He claimed he could play the guitar, but regretted his lack of seriousness about it. He wasn’t sure about college. He thought he might do something else—he didn’t know what. He confessed to confusion about his future and said that, so far, the worst thing about fishing was no women. He’d really liked women, Bob said.
In August, Paul confronted evil weather. They set the net in a heavy rain, a big wind driving seawater across both decks. A gale came up, the tide ebbed hard, and Bob decided to reel up and slip into a bight in the shoreline. But the high speed in the reel drive quit against the tide with the net still two-thirds in the water. In the storm, with the wind blowing the tops off of waves and the offshore rips boiling over in overfalls and combers, the Fearless towed her net beyond Cape Lynch, where the tide swept her out to open water. The clutch quit working inside of fifteen minutes, and Paul and Bob pulled net by hand. They took turns. They worked in their rain gear, with the sea coming from all directions. Darkness fell, and the sea steepened; the Fearless cupped deeply into westerly swells, and Bob had to get behind the wheel. Paul pulled net on his own for four hours. Afterward, when Bob complimented him for sticking it out solo, Paul answered that sticking it out was something his father had trained into him.
Weather prevented them from making the run south, and for three days they waited it out at Twin Coves, holed up and reading novels. Bob brought out his bag of marijuana. Paul recollected, aloud, high-school girls. He explained how he’d stolen, on a regular basis, cases of beer from delivery trucks. He said that after graduating from high school he’d gone into the mountains for two weeks with a guy from football. This was the guy he’d driven to Alaska with—now in California, pouring asphalt.
Paul said he was rethinking everything. Football, for example, and wrestling—he’d never liked either one. Why had he done those things? What was the point? And what would he do now? Where would he live? He wanted to go far away, he said. He wanted to go to South America. He wanted to learn to lay tile, too. He wanted to build a post-and-beam barn. He thought he might ride a bicycle across the country. He showed Bob some genuinely mystifying card tricks. He had an idea for a movie, he said, that would include optical illusions and levitation, and he believed it was possible to make Mars habitable. He was eager to learn how to scuba-dive.
“Now comes the hard part,” Bob said.
They lay at anchor at Twin Coves in sixty-knot winds and twelve-foot seas; the wipers froze solid, and ice formed in the rigging. In a lull, they made the run to Point Horton, but the radar locked up when they were less than midway, and they had to jog for twelve hours through a snowstorm. Finally, though, they made Ketchikan, where they paired up with the Wayfarer—another gillnetter—for the run across Dixon Entrance. The two boats lit south, running for home, but more ill weather blew down from the north, and they had to lay anchor in Customhouse Cove with snow freezing against the pilothouse windows. Once again, the rigging iced up; the radio reported steepening seas and a fifty-five-knot gale. Then, on the third day, the forecast called for clearing, and the skippers agreed to run for it at first light.
At three in the morning, Bob flicked on the radar and stared for a long time at the empty scope while Paul slept in the fo’c’sle. A rough squall passed through Customhouse Cove, and, in his rain gear, reluctantly, Bob went out to let slip more anchor chain. At dawn, they pushed off for Foggy Bay with the Wayfarer to port and in radio contact; they cleared Mary Island and plowed into the vast just as the Coast Guard broadcast a gale warning for the length of the northern coast. Bob radioed the Wayfarer, but since the seas in front of them were apparently calm, she radioed back to say she would run for Foggy Bay at least. There was time, her skipper said, before the wind came up.
The Fearless followed, quartering to stern, but the wind, a northerly, came in at seven-thirty. The water darkened. The tops of the swells blew off all around, so that shreds of foam flew past. The seas grew tall, and the two boats jogged in tandem to put their trolling poles down. The last of the flood came at eight-fifteen, and as the tide turned back against the wind, the sea rolled even higher. It rolled over both decks of the Fearless so deeply that Bob had to send Paul down to clear the bilges while he, at the wheel, negotiated swells, first from the west and then from the south, with the southwest chop and the tide pushing on top. The waves pressed so hard against the windows the glass sagged with their weight. Water poured in over the stern, filled the cockpit, and drained as the boat throttled uphill. Once, to port, Bob caught a glimpse of the Wayfarer, a third of her keel visible as she rode the waves. When he turned to look starboard, Paul stood beside him with a strand of vomit hanging from his mouth. “Taking a quick break,” he explained.
Bob had passed storms at the bilges himself, clearing the strainers of wet cardboard and caked oil, wedged in tight alongside the engine, listening to its scream, and breathing the putrid odor of diesel fumes, old salmon, and musty wood. It was not long before a person might have to vomit in that unlit and windowless hellhole. A storm would shake the entire length of the boat, and as you lay on your belly, her hull shuddered under you; you prayed with your face to the ribbing that she wouldn’t go under while you were down there alone beside that slamming engine.
“You better get back down,” Bob said. “I need you pumping bilge.”
Paul went. Darkness came. The seas steepened. Water buried the bow to the cabin; they lost radio contact with the Wayfarer, but Bob could see her running lights as she mounted into a nearby wave. He kept the Fearless diving deep into troughs and throttled hard up the steepest hills of white water, listening to the engine change pitch. Then, in the dark, the mast and the radio antenna toppled. There was a crash and a shudder, and the Fearless listed to starboard, her mast hanging on by its rigging.
Paul came topside; anyone would have done that. Bob didn’t blame him for abandoning his post. But as soon as Paul slid the pilothouse door open, Bob waved him off and said, “Get back out there! Cut the damn thing loose! Cut that mast loose now!”
Paul went out with a flashlight and a hatchet. It was the last time Bob saw him, alive or dead. He wore his rain gear. He went without a question. There was vomit hanging from his lip.
They were swamped by three big ones in succession. They rode low, and the engine died. The Fearless turned broadside and, helpless now, did a half-roll into the ocean. It seemed to Bob both sudden and inevitable; he had just enough time to drag back the pilothouse door and make a grab before the water hit him.
He stayed with the boat, clinging to a gunnel, and screamed Paul’s name repeatedly. He called for a minute, and then he stopped. He adjusted his grip and hung on, silent. The lights of the Wayfarer cut through the sleet. She came near, her skipper made some minor adjustments—tricky and deft, given the boiling of the waves—and then her deckhand tossed out a life ring. He missed for six or seven tries before the Wayfarer quartered in closer. Bob hung on; he was getting numb, though. His hands no longer fel
t anything. The life ring came his way again. After ten or twelve more tries, he grabbed it. He let go of the gunnel and held on to the life ring. Then he was under. He came up again. The deckhand pulled him to within ten feet of the pilothouse before a wave pitched Bob onto the Wayfarer’s afterdeck, where he broke his nose against the net winch.
After Bob left the house that night, Hutchinson’s daughter wept uncontrollably, and Hutchinson’s wife consoled her. They sat together in a paralyzed embrace beside the dining-room table. Hutchinson sat with a hand on his head. They stayed like that for at least five minutes with the cold food still on the table. Then his wife and daughter rose and, limbs tangled, left the dining room together.
Hutchinson wondered if he should leave the house now. The flashlight, the hatchet, the rain gear, the vomit—he knew it was better not to imagine that. It was too real to be imagined.
He was about to leave—he’d just stood up—when Laura came in with a photo album and showed him a portrait he’d taken of Paul, seven years ago, holding a duck by its neck. Then she removed it from its plastic sleeve and passed it into his keeping. “That’s yours,” she said. “You take it.”
“It’s ours,” replied Hutchinson.
He left, taking the photograph with him. A friend of his who was a trucking consolidator had an in-law apartment over his garage, and that was where Hutchinson was staying right now, but he didn’t go there yet. He drove, instead, to a parking lot at a mall, found a lonely spot there, pushed his seat back, shut his eyes, and leaned his head against the window. Twelve, he thought—Paul had been twelve. He opened his eyes and looked at the photograph. Paul had on not only his checked coat but, under it, two wool sweaters.
He knew the spot where this photograph was taken. You drove under power lines beside a little feeder stream that sometimes had mallards in it. When he went there with Paul, everything was frozen over. They’d had to break ice in order to set out the decoys.
He remembered what happened. It was snowing that day. They were back in the reeds. Snow landed on the shoulders of their coats and settled on their caps and on the decoys. The wind blew it, stinging, into their faces. Flights of ducks would suddenly appear in it, the whistling of their wings and their cries long preceding them. It was fast shooting, and Paul missed his shots. Then a single greenhead came low across a point of sedge, and Paul fired straight on, then going-over, and then a long going-away that caused the duck to arc steeply to the ice, where it flopped for a while before settling.
The dog picked it up. Enough was enough. It was late in the day; it was starting to get dark. They walked back to the truck, where Hutchinson got his camera. Paul held the duck by the neck for this picture. “Smile,” Hutchinson had said, from behind the viewfinder. He remembered that Paul had tried to smile—his face contorting, searching for the right shape. “Come on,” urged Hutchinson, “smile a little.” But it hadn’t happened—it was not a real smile—and Hutchinson had been forced to snap the picture with his son’s face arranged in this false way.
Hush
“Lou Calhoun?” she said into her phone.
“Who wants to know?”
“Eastside Pet Care.”
“Joker,” the guy answered.
“I walk dogs. Your friend gave me your number.”
“You walk dogs.”
“Professionally.”
“My friend? Which friend?”
“Jim and Joan Jarvis. They said you wanted me to call.”
“I’m being worked here.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You have a business license?”
“No.”
“Who are you?”
“Vivian Lee.”
“What’s the accent?”
Vivian said, “Mississippi. Long time ago.”
There was a pause. “Ma-sippi,” said Lou Calhoun. “A Mississippi dog walker. Mississippi dog walker—never heard of that before.”
“Shit happens,” answered Vivian. Because it had.
There was a laugh at the other end that turned into a cough. “Three references,” said Lou Calhoun. “I’ll call back, depending. Got my pencil ready, so shoot.”
He called two days later. He said, “Sounds good, except you charge a lot.”
“No.”
“I called around,” said Lou. “You charge a lot.”
“Okay.”
“You got any questions?”
“What kind of dog?”
“I got a Rottweiler, old. Walks like a champ, though.”
His house was hard to find. A cemetery interfered with the continuity of addresses. She had to snake around the back of it, contending with speed bumps, on streets cracked and buckled by hoary roots and littered with dropped catkins. Lou’s house turned out to be conspicuously new, given the mossy neighborhood. He had a no-maintenance yard, all gravel and beauty bark, and some bonsai trees in pots that either needed water or were dead already. She went up the walk, but before she could ring the doorbell, Lou’s voice came out of an intercom. “I know you’re there,” it said.
She waited. The Rottweiler started barking at her from inside the door. It sounded incorrigible. Then, from the intercom, “I’m buzzing you in now.” The latch hummed next, but instead of going in, Vivian pushed the intercom’s speaker button and yelled, “I’m not walking in on that dog.”
“His name’s Bill. Bill’s all talk. Walk in and say hi to him.”
“No.”
After a while, Lou’s garage door rose. Then she heard him, again, on the intercom. “On-tray,” he said. “You’re safe.”
There was a station wagon in Lou’s garage, which otherwise looked like the site of a junk sale—tables of clothing, dishware, knickknacks, paperback books, a corner full of lamps, a lot of videocassettes, a collection of old phones and answering machines in a nest of snarled cord and wire. A door opened, and there was Lou, leaning on an aluminum walker. He looked like Kirk Douglas—the liver spots, the sunburn, the helmet of gray hair, the long earlobes, the puffy eyelids, the hole in his chin. “Holy moly,” he said.
Vivian didn’t answer.
“I didn’t know they were going to send a looker. Bill’s harmless,” he added.
“Right,” said Vivian, who was forty-three.
“There’s a leash over there,” said Lou. “Will you get it?”
She got the leash. Bill was still barking, somewhere in the house. “I locked him up,” said Lou. “Come in for just a minute. I got a muzzle he has to wear in public. My hip,” he added, and began a deliberate rotation, slow to the point of painful to watch, on the points of his walker. “You go ahead of me,” he ordered.
Vivian did. Lou made struggling noises. “Turn right,” he gasped. “Bill! Pipe down!”
They made it to the living room. Lou had a large television. His floor made a din under his walker that mingled with the din from Bill. “Tell me your name again,” Lou said.
“Vivian Lee.”
“How’d you end up walking dogs?”
“I’m a country song.”
“Which?”
“All of them.”
“Drunk, broke, driftin’, divorced, half dead, just outa jail, hungover, beat up, cheated on, and—a cheater yourself.”
“Fifty percent of that. Approximately.” She meant, though, broke at the moment and cheated on repeatedly.
“Which fifty?”
“Doin’ menial for folks.”
“Ha,” said Lou. “You can’t get no respect.” He shrugged and wiped his sweaty forehead with his wrist. “All right,” he said. “So what’s our agreement?”
“I walk your dog.”
“I’m not going to sit,” Lou said. “Up and down’s too much. What’s our agreement?”
“Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”
“The rate?”
She told him.
“Pipe down!” Lou yelled again. “Hey, Bill! Shut up!”
Bill stopped. He made a whine that sounded like the air going out of hi
m. This was followed by low, menacing noises—attenuated growls, chippy barks, clawing at a door. “Muzzle,” said Lou. “Let me get it.”
“Muzzle?” she answered. “Do I really want to walk your dog?”
“At your rate, absolutely. Like I said, he’s a cream puff.” Lou made an effort to sweep-groom his hair, but what he really needed was two hands on his walker. “Muzzle,” he said. “I gotta find his muzzle.” Again he made a tedious rotation. “Where is it?” asked Vivian. “I’ll get it.”
They made a foray toward the kitchen. “Slim possibility,” Lou said. “Things collect there.” She went ahead of him down a hall, and he called, “Just a minute, hold up, hold on, slow down, wait,” and, when they arrived—referring to empty containers—“I have to do Meals on Wheels right now, that’s their stuff.” From the sink windowsill, a tiny radio emitted talk; the subject was government spending; someone was calling in. There was an issue of Forbes and a squeezable honey bear on the table, but no muzzle.
“Maybe you can walk him without it,” said Lou. “He doesn’t always need it. Just, if you see another dog, cross the street. Muzzle isn’t necessary.”
“Forbes,” Vivian said.
“You keep up with finance?”
“Not really,” said Vivian. “Despite my exorbitant dogwalking rates.”
Lou grinned. “Put your money in CDs,” he said. “FDIC-insured. You know FDIC rules?” With his chin, he indicated his chattering radio. There were plastic flowers beside it in a vase. “Listen to these jerks,” he said. “Yay-hoos.”
Problems With People: Stories Page 12
