“It is with permission that I come on the deck, then?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just stay out of the way.” Kiyoshi tried not to sound overly grateful. He thanked the captain only twice while maintaining his dignity.
By the next morning, when the sun had risen on the horizon in a vivid red ball and disappeared for the day behind low gray clouds, Kiyoshi had settled in.
“Long as you don’t touch any handles or levers,” explained Vic. Kiyoshi stood with him in the cramped bay above deck. From here Vic operated the controls that seated the cargo boom after it had lifted crates of supplies from another scow. An overhang from the wheelhouse sheltered them partially from the rain.
Kiyoshi licked refreshing raindrops from his lips and acknowledged, “Yes!” From his vantage point above the main deck, he could watch the fishing vessels that moved alongside by sail or tow. The vigorous fishermen aboard them had faces unseen beneath caps and hoods, but he could see clearly the sockeye salmon that they pitched from their holds. The glistening fish tumbled and slapped against each other onto the pile below. Splendid creatures! Meat from such fish, cut properly, would make a glowing presentation on a platter amidst various greens and thin-sliced radish.
Kiyoshi followed gladly when Vic traded positions with Spike, the hostile crewman. They moved down on deck to count the fish coming aboard. By now he’d been loaned rubber boots. When fish inevitably slid against the housing rather than into the hold, “Just kick her in,” Jimmy kept telling him. But the size and fatness of the salmon impressed Kiyoshi too much for that. With an apologetic shrug, he picked each one up and carried it to the hold in the crook of his arms, enjoying its weight and clean brassy odor. Slime soon covered his oilskin coat and even crept under his sleeves. In Japan, it would have embarrassed him, now the head of a fishing boat company, to be seen acting like a worker. Here it made no difference. And the banter!
“Look sharp there, boy. You pew like an old lady,” said a gray haired fisherman who had come aboard from his boat to check the count.
“Get your ass down here then and show me, hotshot.” The younger man in the fishing vessel speared two fish together and sent them flying straight into the chest of the man addressing him aboard the scow. Both laughed, as did Vic, who didn’t break from counting, as one of the fish skidded far from the hold.
“See that? Kid of mine there. Never was much use. Went off and joined the Marines first chance he got. Hope he shot a gun better than that.” More laughs. Father and son? Kiyoshi wondered. How inappropriate such a relationship would be with his own father. Yet here in Alaska it seemed natural. Feeling lighthearted himself, Kiyoshi smiled as he went to retrieve the fish.
The carcass he lifted had been pronged in the body. Instead of a bleeding head, which made no difference, the cut left the sleek body torn through the skin and into the meat. Such a fish had been ruined for the Japanese market! He brought the fish in his arms to Vic.
“No good. I cannot purchase such a fish for Japan.”
“Hey,” called Vic to the fisherman beside him. “My friend here says your boy down there’s fucking up his fish. Looka there.”
“After you slap ’em into a can, what’s the difference?”
“Just telling you, man. The Jap market’s different.”
“Hey, Jones, boy. Keep your hook out of the body, okay? We’re getting particular up here.”
“Who says?”
“Man up here who’s buying.”
“Yeah? Tell him when he buys by the pound instead of the fish we’ll take notice.” And suddenly: “Oh, shit now! You see how head-spearing goes!” One of the fish had slipped off the prong and splashed into the water. On the scow Jimmy and gray haired man each grabbed a net and leaned over the rail. By the time they did it, the current had carried the fish down the line of other boats waiting to deliver. A fisherman two boats away dipped it aboard and called the news. Vic laughed. When the gray haired man joined him, Kiyoshi laughed also. Whoever now owned the creature was irrelevant, and Americans were so prosperous they could joke about the waste. But, “shit!” again declared the man responsible for losing the fish. Kiyoshi looked up from the rail and the two men’s gazes met. Kiyoshi attempted a friendly smile.
“What the hell you grinnin’ at?”
Kiyoshi straightened and turned away, startled. Familiar hostility! Familiar face, even? No, too much coincidence. Just another American who hated Japanese—not the one he couldn’t forget, who had faced him outside the Tokyo train station so many years ago, while American baseball played on the loudspeakers.
What could any Japanese have done back then but obey his Emperor when arrogant Westerners tried to destroy their nation? Yet, if we had won, would we have been so generous to you? He turned away. There was no way to explain. Why risk confrontation?
Kiyoshi left the deck and returned to his corner in the wheelhouse. Perhaps best he should dress again in the dark suit and necktie hung in the safety of Mr. Scorden’s office.
A Jap! Jones narrowed his eyes and glared at the man’s retreating figure. Yeah just keep walking. Better for you never to come back. Was it the one who had come in the car all dressed up a few days ago? Or was this another? What kind of game was Swede Scorden pulling at the cannery?
Before Jones had time to think any further: “Just keep ’em coming, Jones boy!” Nick Sandstol called from one of the two boats behind them still waiting to deliver. Nick held up a gaff with Jones’s lost fish swinging from it.
“Shit!” Jones muttered, while his dad bantered merrily with Nick over the way some men needed to make their catch. He returned to pronging only two fish at a time, and the bigger ones just one by one. Most times in the head, but not when inconvenient, until he had time to worry about it further. At least, up on the scow’s deck, the nosey Jap had disappeared.
By the time he had pewed fish number one hundred and ninety, he was sweating heavily but his body had entered a satisfying rhythm. However, These fish should fucking-A be paid for by the pound! Again he thought of Swede at the cannery. That guy wasn’t the shydeck hand just over from Norway any more. No longer the one he’d set up with the Creek Street whores and who’d later danced at his wedding with his own Adele. The guy had become management, sucking around with Japs, screwing the fishermen wherever he could.
In the end, with sweat now running into his eyes and thoughts of satisfaction long passed, Jones needed to drop into the tight hold to collect the few final fish. One creature still wriggled when he gripped its firm body, although its skin had already begun to slime. Jones considered, then picked up a gaff secured on the bulkhead and whacked the fish’s head with the wooden handle until it lay still. Only a dumb fish. But just the same. The action calmed him. Out on the water he called the shots.
After delivery and wash down with the power hose provided, they moored on the scow’s opposite side and climbed aboard. Jones stretched and stretched after the cramp of the boat. Hot soup, as well as coffee and donuts, waited in the scow’s galley. They took turns on a toilet enclosed in the housing aft. By the time they had used up all excuses to linger, with other boats crowding the rail, Nick Sandstol and young Luke had joined them.
“Kept lookin’ for more gifts from you, Jones,” said Nick easily, clapping him on the back. “But you got stingy.”
As Jones tried to think of a suitably light reply, his dad said, “Well, we asked each fish as it came pewed from the hold, and they all said they liked our boat better. Fish got better judgment than you’d think.”
Luke the boat puller faced Buck respectfully. “You’re some pisser with that sail, sir.” He was a husky kid in his late teens. Buck shrugged, pleased. “That’s nothing but a thick head and strong arms,” joked Nick.
Jones was glad for the chance to speak for his dad. “Comes from dory-hooking cod under sail in the Bering Sea before you were born. Almost before I was born.” Buck shrugged again.
At the ladder back down to their boat came a, “Heeey man!” Jones turned to fac
e Gus Rosvic, just arrived with his dad in their engine boat. “Still got that canvas, I see. Looks like the Middle Ages,” Gus continued. “When’re you guys going to enter the twentieth century?”
“Doing good like we are,” Jones retorted. He couldn’t help noticing how clean Gus’s clothes were. Able to carry dry spares on the engine boat, apparently.
“Well, we were fishing way down near Egegik when we heard the fish were runnin’ better up here. Wind was against us of course, but we just throttled the engine and scooted up to have a look.” Gus turned serious. “Need to talk back at the cannery, man. Private.” He lowered his voice. “About this strike.”
Jones suddenly didn’t want to banter anymore. He glanced at where his dad was talking to John Rosvic. The old man seemed equally restless. Little more than an hour after tying to the scow’s rail they were back on the water, with other boats claiming their place. All the other craft around the tally scow had either rowed in or motored into position rather than scooting in under canvas, Jones noted with pride. But, long after the Rosvic boat had delivered and then disappeared by sputtering engine back to the grounds, he was again pushing oars against the wind toward the same location.
19
THE OUTSIDER
At week’s end, Jones Henry and his dad were glad enough to tie up anywhere on the tow for a ride back along the river to the cannery. A hard easterly blew. The scow, rather than expecting them to sail or row to a central point, came around to pick them up like little ducklings. In the boats, men bailed water from around their boots while spray slapped them thickly and rain pelted from above. Though rain washed over the nine hundred feet of gillnet piled aft, Buck and Jones opted to hold off on salting the net in favor a few hours of rest. But as soon as they were finally tied rail to rail at the company pier, with the tide already far enough ebbed that their keels scraped the mud, their first job was to horse the net deck over deck and up the ladder into the tub of stuff people called “bluestone.” Each boat did the same. If the nets were not leached of seawater by the copper sulphate solution the cannery provided, the linen strings of the net would rot away before the season ended.
“Hear the latest about the Japs?” asked one of the dock gang. Jones grew alert at once.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Bitched about how we pew our fish. Jap who’s probably never pitched a fish in his life.”
“Worse, man! Bigger!”
“What? Joined the fuckin’ North Koreans against us? That’s their style of treachery.”
“You wish. We could handle that. Just bomb them to hell again. No. Weaseling with Washington bureaucrats to get back onto our fishing grounds. Right as we speak. Damn if some high Jap didn’t pass through here on his way, I guess, to a US Congress man or Truman himself, talking about exactly that.”
“President Truman ain’t that stupid!” Jones forced a laugh to hide his outrage.
At the wooden vats containing the bluestone, others were pulling their linen nets from the solution and draping them in racks to dry. Jones and his dad, still waiting for their turn, had not yet shucked their oilskins. Gus Rosvic and his dad walked by in clean shore clothes, trailed by another crew of equally clean men.
“Jones my man! Engine sure gets us in ahead of the line. And with our new nylon net, that bluestone shit’s history. They developed nylon during the war. At least it gave us something good. Might as well take advantage.”
“Can’t argue with that, Gus. By next year, if the cannery don’t supply it, we ought to find the money to change ourselves.”
“Cannery spend money if they don’t have to? Fat day in Hell! All my new stuff is on a GI loan. The cannery don’t own my boat or my net. Government does until I pay it off. You see, I’m still delivering to the cannery anyhow.” Gus lowered his voice, “Yo now, Jones. New union’s having their meeting tonight at the Vet’s. You know where that is? Up the road toward town a mile. All the canneries here in Naknek say they won’t pay more than forty cents a fish—that’s about seven cents a fuckin’ pound. Everywhere else in Alaska’s getting more. Sixty-six a fish offered in Cook Inlet. And just past in Kodiak they paid sixty-four to company boats. Independents get twenty more, they say. We’re demanding sixty. Maybe going to strike for it.”
“I don’t quite know, Gus . . . you strike and don’t catch fish, who pays for that new boat and net?”
Beside Jones, Buck Henry growled just as quietly, “Everywhere in Alaska’s not here. Out here they’ve got to supply you with food and gear. Stuff you can’t just go out and buy that they’ve got to ship in. And where you going to sleep on days off-season? In that open boat? Your dad beside you knows that, even if you don’t! Be careful how you challenge the canneries when here’s the fish and nobody else to buy them.”
“Things gotta change, sir. We didn’t go fight Japs and Krauts for four years to come back and let the cannery bosses in Seattle run over us like in the past.”
“You strike and you’ll let the big run here go by. These Bristol Bay reds peak and then disappear in two-three weeks tops. Then its scratch and nobody wins. Then how you going to pay for that engine boat?”
The senior Rosvic leaned over to mutter, “Buck, I don’t know. I just hope it ain’t the commies behind all this union stuff, like the canneries keep saying it is.”
“Jones man! See you inside later, eh?” said Gus, and he sauntered off with the fishermen his own age from the new engine boats.
By Saturday evening Jones and his dad had staked out beds in the cannery bunkhouse and had showered and changed into the clean clothes stored in their locker ashore. They joined Nick and the others queued in the rain outside the mess building for a proper dinner. The very smell of meat frying in the galley had Jones salivating long before they entered the big warm hall.
Around them in line were fishermen paired off in groups, talking and gesturing in their various Italian, Norwegian, or whatever, lingos. Buck Henry slipped back to a bunch from Monterey to exchange greetings and a hearty joke, almost as if he were a wop himself.
In the hall Gus Rosvic was already seated and eating with his new friends. By his elbow were men his and Jones’s own age, with whom Gus laughed buddy-style, slapping their backs. Guys who had chugged past in their engine boats without even a nod to the fishermen under sail. Probably veterans like himself and Gus. Was Jones Henry the only one against change?
As they waited, Swede Scorden strode past the fishermen’s line with that same Jap: the one on the scow who’d complained about American-style delivery, who’d been spying atop the pier a few days before while the men launched their boats. That Jap still looked somehow familiar. He might have tried to blend in with his dungarees, but anybody could see that they were so stiff and new they hadn’t seen a lick of work. Fooled nobody. At least fooled nobody who’d ever seen a Jap’s slanty eyes staring, concentrated, from behind a gun.
Swede nodded absently to Jones, but he didn’t stop. The Jap himself paused a moment to glance at Jones and nodded with a half-assed grin. Without lining up, the pair continued past the long mess hall tables to a round table set for the managers. They glanced at menus and a woman jotted their orders on a notepad, just as if they were in a fancy restaurant.
“That’s the boss all right,” muttered Nick. “You’d think he was King Boss the way he’s been strutting around this year. Just last year he wasn’t half that important. But back then already a hard ticket if you had to get something off him.”
“Way I see it,” muttered Jones, “What’s new about him is what he’s sucking up to.”
“Well, if the Japs want to buy our fish that’s good. Raise the price to fishermen!”
“Don’t count on it. They have more ways than you can imagine to screw you over anything that suits ’em.” The chow line finally reached the food tables. At the sight, Jones forgot his burn for the moment. Besides all kinds of peas and string beans and baked beans in big pots, there was fried chicken, hamburgers smothered in onions, pork chops in a thick brown gravy,
and fish in some kind of tomato glop with rice and peppers. It all looked good.
“Some of each?” ventured Jones, expecting to be told he could have a single choice. Without question, the serving woman piled his dish so high that the gravies pooled together on his tray.
At the end of the line waited cupcakes with thick white icing, along with blocks of harlequin ice cream in a container of smoking dry ice. Jones glanced at the long line behind him, decided he’d better not risk coming back, and piled both cake and ice cream on the edge of his tray.
“Your boy’s got some kind of appetite,” observed Nick.
“Not surprising,” said Buck Henry loud enough for others to hear. “Marine all through the Pacific War, guess he knows how to pack it in.” Jones felt their approving eyes on him. He was stuffed by the time he’d eaten all but the dessert and would have gladly stopped, but now he had a reputation to uphold. He spooned the last of the ice cream—now melted—and forced it down, then muttered loud enough to be heard, “That all?”
“Go get back in line, boy. Ain’t nobody going to skimp you around here.”
“Guess I’ll leave a little for somebody else.”
“That’s the Marines for you. Always look after your buddy. That’s their rule, you know.” Jones shrugged, finally restless at so much attention. Time to move on. He glanced around. Along with the old-timers like his dad and Pete, there were plenty of younger guys. Probably also vets still putting it back together. In the rush to ready the boat and then to fish, he’d only talked to a couple of them. All of them, including himself, were wary of letting down their defenses. Were they the ones that pushed the government to allow engines on Bristol Bay so that anybody could fish here, not just skilled sailors? Guys should have thought it through better.
Buck Henry had been carrying a copy of Pacific Fisherman. “Look at this ad now, boy. Seattle Boatyard.” He read from the paper, “Boatyard says: ‘Economy, Durability, Dependability, and Safety.’ Their new thirty-two-foot Bristol Bay Gillnetter they call it. Has a 95-hp engine with two to one reduction gear. Look at this picture. Hydraulic roller, even has a little cabin. Down at the bottom says capacity for 4,500 red salmon. Price $7,500. Think the government would give you a GI loan for that?”
WARRIORS Page 23
