WARRIORS

by Warriors (retail) (epub)

  No one seemed completely in charge. A calm, businesslike man named Bill Blackford was captain, but the man named Lowell sometimes examined charts and would issue commands. And two others would speak up as if they also had a say. Sometimes they argued among themselves. Most were guys about his own age—none over thirty-five. All of them full of energy. But they talked as if they’d been to college. It placed them apart, even though they were friendly enough whenever he ventured questions. All in all, he didn’t feel at home on the bridge, even though its gadgets drew him in and Captain Blackford was nice enough to explain some of them when he asked.

  The processing lines belowdecks were closer to his expertise, even though he’d never, of course, tied on an apron and fingered little pieces of fish and crab along some conveyor belt. Women’s work. But here on the ship, men did it all. Most of them were the Indians called Aleuts, somebody told him, rather than the Tlingit Indians that had a village and totem poles on the outskirts of Ketchikan. He’d never looked at Natives hard enough to tell the difference. Some in Ketchikan had stumbled along the road around the harbor in a state of perpetual drunkenness. But others he encountered on the water were good fishermen, even though they kept their boats in poor shape—to judge how they were in constant need of paint. The Indians here were friendly enough, despite how they kept to themselves. With Swede having broken the ice, several nodded whenever he encountered them. They didn’t mind working, he had to admit. Kept at it as long as crab parts bounced along their conveyor lines. Nothing like those drunk Indians who stumbled around the Ketchikan harbor.

  The crab legs they handled were like the big ones he’d hustled live in Kodiak, waving sluggishly from their central body. The workers boiled the legs until the shells turned red, then packed them in trays that were sent down to a freezer. He soon grew bored of watching the process over and over. Why the hell had he stuck himself aboard this ship?

  And then there was Swede—watching, taking notes, asking questions of the foreman. He even crawled below into the freezer spaces. He pulled out crab legs just boiled and packed, and long-frozen crab, to taste and compare the meat. Then he’d be on the bridge talking. Always busy. Next, down in the cabins with some of the fishermen who worked on deck, talking to them in Norwegian or Swedish with their arms in the air and big laughs at whatever they said to each other. So busy he barely had a word for Jones, even when they sat together for dinner just a few hours after leaving Sand Point.

  By next morning the ship was pitching in open sea. And Jones, immune to seasickness aboard small fishing boats, felt the slow gyrations of the ship before he even rolled from his bunk. This is bullshit!, he told himself. The door to the room flew open.

  “You on this watch? Wake up call.”

  He’d been mistaken for a crewman, but what the hell. He responded without further thought, pulling on the boots and oilskins he’d carried aboard. Keeping balance along the pitching corridor, he avoided the smell of food coming from the galley and found his way to a hatch that opened onto deck. Waves outside rose high and black beyond deck lights that shone against a gray morning sky. A sea crashed against the starboard rail and bubbled into three men leaning over a net full of crabs. The men bent to the slap of water without losing their rhythm. Something metal clacked on the winch. Jones was glad enough for any noise, because in spite of himself he vomited. No one saw. He wiped his mouth quickly.

  A strap on the trawl bag blew loose and skittered across deck. Jones walked out and grabbed it. He took it to the men at the net just as another wave cascaded over the rail and pushed him into one of them.

  “Whoa there, who let you on deck?”

  Jones stepped back, tensed to argue—even fight if necessary. Beneath the dripping watch cap and oilskin hood, the face frowning at him with half a grin was that of a man he’d last seen on the bridge discussing maneuvers with the captain. One of those who talked like he’d been to college.

  “Ja, har har,” bellowed another of the men. “Dot’s de fellow come here with Svede. Come out here look us over, eh?”

  At that, the three ignored Jones. They leaned in to pull crabs one by one from the heap dumped by the trawl bag and tossed them into a checkers hemmed by boards. Jones braced against another slap of water and kept his balance. He’d seen seas enough, but those beyond the rail swelled higher than most he’d ever witnessed. The wind blew foam off the waves and tore drops from the heavy mesh of the net on deck. Not so bad. For a marine who’d been through everything.

  He didn’t have gloves. But without further thought he joined the others. He’d pulled enough of the big crabs by now to know where to grip them free of the sluggish claws. The thick shells encasing their legs were cold and slippery. Solid critters. From deep below. But solid.

  “Didn’t see you at breakfast. You eaten?” called the college man over the wind.

  “Just got up and came out.”

  “Well, glad to have you. Looks like you know what you’re doing. Expect to stay? Long time before the next chow. Better go in and eat something.”

  “I’m okay. You just started?”

  “Yeah, the watch is still fresh. Wait till the watch changes eleven-some hours from now. But I mean it. Fortify up if you plan to stick it out here. Or are you just sniffing the lilies?”

  Jones snorted and glared at the others. Two bearded fellows, big and able-looking. He’d seen them joking with Swede in Norwegian. They watched dispassionately. Judging? “Expect me back here!”

  On the messdeck, a man at the galley stove eyed him.

  “Haven’t seen you before. Breakfast or dinner?”

  From a table that Jones hadn’t noticed when he came in, Swede called him over. He was sitting with the Captain. Jones joined them, carrying a plateful of scrambled eggs and sausage.

  “Got to get back on deck quick,” he muttered. The food swam in grease. He mopped it up with bread, hoping it would stay down.

  “So, Jones,” said Swede. “Crabs here to fill a plate, eh? Got to create a market. Great future for such crabs,”

  The captain looked Jones over. “If you’re just pitching in for a bit that’s fine. Swede tells me you know your way around a deck. But we lost a guy back in Sand Point who’d had enough, if you want to stay. Couple of our Native pickers too, they get restless and go. If you’ve joined the shift out there, I should sign you in. Not like the processing line where we pay ’em wages. Deck crew gets a share in the profits. But I warn you. Not much profit so far.” Jones considered as he ate. Ketchikan and Adele both crowded him. Even Bristol Bay, under his dad. And that driving asshole Hoss. Out here were big crabs, big waves, and open ocean as far as you could see. Gave him space to grab breath. Before settling back at home. “What the hell?” he answered. “Sign me on if it suits you.

  Back on deck they’d found him gloves. The salt from the seawater the wind blew into his mouth helped the greasy breakfast stay down. Jones relished the salty taste in his mouth, the hard work for his hands. Nothing to think about or decide on. Guiding cable from the winch, they lowered the otter boards of the side trawl followed by the trawl net itself. Then, while the net dragged the bottom and caught the next haul, they gripped their catch crab by crab, snapped off the thick legs with clinging meat (a wrist-puller on the tendons that surely killed the critters), and with a shout tossed the legs down a chute to the processor guys. With the butchering over, they hosed each other of any crap and gurry not washed from their oilskins by the seas, then kicked the remaining mess over the side. By then it was time to bring aboard the next haul. Cold and numb after a while. And his wrists burned, when he had time to notice.

  After it became clear that Jones knew his job, the college guy left. A while later Jones saw him looking down from the bridge. But at next chow time, he and two other of the college guys came on deck to relieve them long enough that they could eat and have a smoke. On the messdeck, Jones nodded to Swede, who sat again with the captain, but instead slumped beside the two Norwegians who now spoke in English to
include him. No question that the plateful of hamburger, peas, and noodles stayed down. He plugged it with bread still hot from the oven, with some kind of orange bug juice drink, and finally with steaming apple pie. Soon, feeling much warmer, Jones was back dodging spray and hauling big crabs as a member of the deck crew. His wrists throbbed. But he felt good.

  Temporary. Jones knew that well enough. His real world waited back in Ketchikan, or maybe over in Kodiak, with a boat he alone could handle and command, and ashore with Adele and whatever family they might be able to raise. Time spent aboard the crabber ship Deep Sea was only a breather from everything else. He rolled with it, or more truthfully, just let it roll over him. It suited him, the high waves under dark skies, seas frothing around his legs like hungry animals. For a while he was content being part of this new thing rather than separate and fighting against it all the time.

  By the next day he was bunked in a proper cabin with others of the deck men, a signed-on member of the crew. They worked twelve-hour shifts. By each day’s end he was tired enough to shovel in food and then sleep soundly. The others were all Scandinavian, and when Swede visited they talked in their lingo. At other times, like the shipmates they were, they spoke in English so as not to exclude him. They liked trying their English on him. Most expected America to be their home, although they lived in Ballard near Seattle where everybody still spoke like in the old country.

  One, Thor, who had at first laughed at Jones on deck, had a wife and child in Ballard, and he declared himself frustrated that he wasn’t getting enough money. Going to leave next time they went for fuel, unless the money improved, he declared. Others said they were there to be ready for the future when the big crabs started fetching high prices.

  “They call it here ‘ground floor,’ Jones,” Leif intoned. “Get in on the ground floor, ja? Get rich. Then invest. Buy houses, eh? That’s what you should do.”

  When they inevitably quarreled on deck it was with shouts that had no heat or continuity, resolved often by wrestling or by lobbing crab shells at each other: buddy stuff. Jones had not felt so in tune since leaving the Marines.

  He saw less and less of Swede, who stayed on the bridge most days but sometimes strapped on an apron and worked with the Natives on the processing line. It appeared that the ship’s owners had learned to catch the king crabs that only the Japanese and Russians had thought to harvest in the Bering Sea before and had learned by trial and error how to freeze them without losing the crab’s texture or flavor. They had not yet, though, figured how to market large crabs to Americans in the quantities they caught. Bills remained unpaid. The deck men on shares earned little for their hard work—a definite problem if they had obligations. And salaried Native workers on the processing lines grew homesick for villages where barter replaced much of what money could buy. But for the adventure—or more realistically, for profits not too far in the future—the ship might not have carried enough manpower to continue fishing.

  On the water one day in early September, a cargo ship pulled alongside them to transship their frozen product to a land-based facility in Bellingham. By now Jones had found his sea legs. A pitching deck suited him. He leapt into the Deep Seas reefer hold and strapped up cartons for transfer. Then as the boom raised the load he rode back up standing atop them.

  “That guy you brought with you sure is a pistol,” he’d heard the captain say to Swede.

  “Yes,” Swede laughed. “Big gun all right!” From the bridge, Swede called, “Be careful there, Jones,”

  Jones might have sneered if he’d been watching someone else ride the net, but the remark caught his pride. He glanced where the net was headed, to the cargo ship grinding against bumpers at their rail. A man over there was eating an orange. Jones gripped web and called to Lars at the boom controls, “Just lift me over with the stuff. Go inspect, mebbe.”

  “You vant to be bird, Jones? Ja, har har, okay, hang on.”

  On the brief trip between boats, the sea between them licked up spray that washed around his boots. Sea right there, waiting. Jones looked down and enjoyed the sight.

  When, twenty minutes later, Jones returned in the limp, emptied cargo net, he braced one foot on a crate popping with oranges. He himself bit into an orange, skin and all as if it were an apple and casually spat out rind and seeds. Everybody watching from his own deck cheered. They had run out of all fresh food, let alone fruit, ten days before, and here this new man Jones had saved them.

  “Those oranges are part of what we’d ordered,” the captain said to Swede. “But if he wants to take the credit, fine.”

  “Ja, yes, good, let him,” said Swede. “Jones doesn’t much like to smile, and just look at him now.”

  “Glad to have a man like that on deck. Think he’ll stay when you leave?”

  “I don’t know. I think that his wife wishes him home. My wife and his wife are friends, and this is what my wife says. Months ago, their baby died. Jones doesn’t speak of it. But his wife . . . well . . .”

  With all the activity, Jones barely gave a thought to Adele back at home. When he’d left for Bristol Bay the woman had said she might go south for a while to visit her parents in San Diego. He hoped so. Time she stopped crying at every little thing. Started dressing again in clothes that fit her, rather than that floppy housecoat that had begun even to stink. After the first weeks, when he’d held her and tried to give comfort, he’d sought his boat more and more. Dreaded going to the house and opening the door to that red swollen face. Lost the will to hold her for every little thing.

  Little thing. The phrase started him on the baby, when he’d put it from his mind for days—weeks, even. Little bits of a kid, tiny pink toes one-two-three, toddling one stiff leg then the other. So proud to be on those little feet after a year of crawling. Happy enough to let out delighted squeals. Like a chirpy bird. Toddling across the room to his open urging arms, then her own warm, twiggy arms around his neck. So soft. Preferred him to anybody else—even Mommy. Wore that stiff little dress when she toddled to him, flower pattern smudged with baby food. A dress Adele had embroidered herself. The one they buried her in after the meningitis. Little dead bloodless face framed by light brown baby curls on that white silk. He’d bent to kiss Amy one last time, anticipating the sweet, light-soap smells and warm soft cheek when her arms had grabbed him. Instead, her skin was stiff and dry, cold as a fish. She had a hard, wrong odor something between vinegar and heavy perfume. He’d kissed the little cheek anyhow. Then held his blubbering until he’d found a tree outside to duck behind.

  30

  AKUTAN

  OCTOBER 1951

  Six weeks later, the Deep Sea had stopped once in Cold Bay for fuel. The crew had caught and packed king crab until the meaty legs waved in their minds, sleeping and waking. They had eaten crab legs so many times at mess that the sight of them in a steam tray elicited a delegation to the captain to give them good old hamburger. Movies played between shifts had been repeated so often that most everyone knew the lines by heart, and it was only the parts showing crashes or explosions that rated attention any more.

  Jones had long ago settled into routine. A fist scuffle now and then broke the monotony. There was natural rivalry between the two deck shifts over both endurance of shitty weather and who caught the most crab. Removed from this, the Aleut crew who did the steaming and freezing were like people on a different ship a mile away. They sat apart at chow and at off-hours during movies and endless card games. Jones could tell only one of them from the rest—the lean-faced fellow named Vladimir—because sometimes at Swede’s friendly call he’d join them for coffee.

  Swede himself was hard to pin down. The man showed up everywhere—from the bridge, wearing a baseball cap, to the processing lines with a paper hat netted to contain his hair. Even a couple of times he’d come—in a wool cap—from the deck with one of the college types to help pick crabs from the net. One day, for once alone at coffee with Jones, Swede considered, then ventured: “Well, it’s no secret. I’ve
invested personal savings in this company. I am a shareholder in Deep Sea Trawlers Incorporated. These king crabs have a great future. Only three thousand shares available altogether, if you are interested. And we here, when we’ve paid our debts and finally made good the sales connections, we shall slowly become rich. This is the great American opportunity, Jones—right here in Alaska!”

  “Any money of mine goes to a better boat. After I settle whether I move me and the ol’ lady from Ketchikan to Kodiak. First find the money for that.”

  Swede considered some more. “I’m not rich, Jones. But I could perhaps lend you up to two thousand dollars. To buy a share in this company. In friendship. For your good future.” He paused. “For not too long term, of course.”

  Jones flared automatically. “You think if I wanted, I’d need to borrow?” He curbed his resentment when Swede drew back startled. The man was a foreigner, however much he worked at being American. Didn’t understand independence. Didn’t understand that a man shouldn’t go into debt—except maybe a man who’d served his country and could expect his government to lend money if he needed it for his business. “Well, thanks anyhow.”

  “Wise investment, Jones.”

  “You Norwegians ever think of anything but investment?” It suddenly seemed funny, probably because Swede never stopped being serious. “Like them squareheads I work with on deck. Good shipmates, I don’t mean that. But, give us a couple minutes break between sets, there they are with paper and pencil—even if the paper’s floppy wet from their pocket, talking how they should invest.”