Killing Grounds

by Dana Stabenow

  He dodged out of the way as it whistled past, missed his footing and went over the side. There was a loud curse from the flying bridge, and Kate looked up to see a scowling man slam the throttle into neutral and slide down the ladder to the deck. He snatched up the stern line and tossed it to Kate. It looped neatly into her hands this time, so she made it fast and came forward to catch the bow line when he retrieved it to do the same. By the time they were done, the boy had hauled himself on board by way of one of the white foam bumpers hanging over the far side of the drifter, and the man went to stand over him. When he stood on the deck, dripping and shaky, the man backhanded him once, a blow that was deceptively effortless in execution and immensely effective in result, knocking the boy back into the water.

  “Hey!” Kate said a third time.

  Next to her Tim shook his head. “No, Kate,” he said in a low voice.

  Auntie Joy stood stony and immobile, all trace of laughter wiped from her face.

  The boy’s head broke the surface of the water.

  “That’s for fucking up the docking,” the man’s dispassionate voice said. He waited until the boy hauled himself back on board, knees visibly trembling this time, before backhanding him a second time, same hand to the same side of the face, same parabola over the side into the water.

  Tim grabbed Kate’s elbow and held on. “No.”

  It took longer for the boy to surface this time. Just about the time Kate was deciding to go in after him, he did. The man said, still without inflection, “And that’s for putting the fucking bumpers on the wrong side of the fucking boat.”

  “Hey,” Kate said, her torn voice coming out in a broken growl. “There’s no call for that.”

  The man turned his head to regard her out of cold eyes. “Mind your own fucking business,” he said without inflection.

  Kate clenched her hands. Tim grabbed her elbow again. “No, Kate,” he repeated.

  This time the boy had barely enough energy to pull for the side of the boat and wrap both arms around the bumper. He hung there, head burrowed-into his arms. He was trembling so badly that boy and bumper virtually vibrated against the hull of the drifter. The man spat into the water next to him and reached down one long arm to grasp the boy’s collar and haul him aboard. The boy collapsed on the deck in a wet, coughing heap.

  The wake of a boat passing by caught their hulls. The rocking motion rubbed together the sides of the Freya and the white-hulled drifter, which had no name, only an f/v number issued by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game stenciled on the bow. The man went down the side of his vessel, unfastening the white rubber cylindrical bumpers from the free side of his vessel and transferring them to the side scraping against the Freya. The boy was still hiccuping noisily in his puddle of salt water and salmon scales, and in passing the man hauled back his foot and kicked him almost casually in the side. “Get your gloves and start pitching fish.”

  Kate pulled against Tim’s grip, and he said again, more urgently this time, “Don’t, Kate. Really. Don’t. I know this guy. You’ll just make it ten times worse on the kid.”

  As they watched, the boy managed to fight his way to his feet, move to a locker and pull out a pair of rough-surfaced, reddish-brown rubber gloves—monkey gloves they were called, Kate didn’t know why. He looked across at the two of them, eyes narrowed and hostile, his right cheek swollen and beginning to bruise. “What are you looking at?”

  Tim said nothing. Neither did Kate, and the boy said, “You ready or what?”

  His voice was as flat and brusque as the man’s. Behind them the door to the galley opened and Old Sam’s stern voice called out, “Tim, get your butt in here, boy, you want your ticket.”

  Kate drew a deep breath, and matched her tone of voice to the boy’s. “Yeah,” she said, and bent to the controls. “We’re ready.”

  Tim faded from her side. Man and boy bent to their task, filling a brailer so that Kate could transfer their catch to the Freya’s hold. She had to admit the two of them worked well together, bending, snagging fish by their gills, pitching them up and over the rim of the brailer. Of course, from what Kate had seen it was in the boy’s best interests to work well. She cursed herself for not catching the damn rope the first time the boy had thrown it, and dodged back just in time to get out of the way of a fifty-pound king that sailed across the gunnel to hit the deck with a loud thud.

  Her eyes lingered on the figure of the skipper. His movements were nimble, his feet stepped light as a cat’s, his hands were deft and sure in the bulky monkey gloves, as they had been at the controls of the drifter.

  He looked up and saw Kate looking at him, and straightened up slowly to return like for like. He took his time about it, his dark eyes moving slowly over the polished black helmet of her hair, the clear hazel eyes beneath lids folded to give her face an exotic Asian cast, the high, flat cheekbones, the smooth brown skin interrupted by the ropy scar that bisected her throat, the taut muscles and smooth curves of her body displayed to advantage in cut-off jeans and a cut-down T-shirt.

  At first astonished and then repulsed, she gave him look for look, insolent and derisive, letting her face show her revulsion. He was short and thickset, with long arms and a heavy jaw. His face looked as if it had been chipped out with a pickax, blunt-featured and brutal. His skin was clear, his eyes gleamed, and his hair, as dark as his eyes, was as thick and shining as a bear’s pelt.

  Her scrutiny didn’t bother him; he even smiled a little, a slight lifting of the corners of his mouth. Involuntarily she looked toward the bow. Mutt was there. Lying down, true, but watching, her chin on her paws, yellow eyes unblinkingly fixed on the stocky figure of the drift fisherman.

  He followed Kate’s gaze. The little smile widened. Even at this distance Kate could see the hair raise ever so slightly on the back of Mutt’s neck, and she was glad when the boy’s exhausted voice echoed up from the hold of the drifter, “That’s it, we’re empty,” and she was able to turn to the boom controls and bring the brailer back over the Freya’s hold.

  She caught a glimpse of Auntie Joy, who had either remained standing at the door to the galley during the drifter’s delivery or come out again. The old woman’s face was still, and there was something in her eyes that brought Kate to a standstill. “Auntie?” she whispered, without knowing why she was whispering. “Auntie, what’s wrong?”

  A bumper caught between two hulls squeaked in protest and Kate turned to see the drifter captain vault the Freya’s gunnel in one smooth, easy motion. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen skippers and deckhands do fifty times already that day, but he made it look natural, even graceful, like Mutt taking a fallen tree in one easy stride on a run through the Park. He made no move to come closer, but somehow he seemed to fill up the deck with his presence. Again Kate looked toward the bow. Mutt was sitting up now, looking at her, waiting for a signal.

  The man nodded. “Joyce.”

  Auntie Joy, her face stiff, nodded. “Mr. Neamy.”

  He grinned. His mouth was wide and overfilled with large white teeth. “Meany. But I told you to call me Cal.” His voice was a deep, soft purr of sound.

  He stripped the gloves from his hands and tossed them back to his boat. The boy made catching them into an act of personal survival, which it probably was. Cal Meany watched without expression as the boy snatched the gloves from the air with one hand, lost his balance and went down hard on one knee to avoid going into the water. “Wash the hold and the deck down,” his skipper said, and turned back to Kate, allowing his eyes to drop to her breasts. “Who are you?”

  “The deck boss,” she said shortly. “Sam!”

  A grizzled head poked out the door. “Yeah?”

  “Got another ticket to write.”

  “Call ‘em off.”

  She called off the numbers and he took them down. “Well, come on in then, Mr.—”

  “Meany,” the man said. “Calvin Meany.”

  “And don’t forget your goddam permit card like the
last three assholes pretending to be fishermen who came on board,” Old Sam growled.

  Meany walked aft to the galley door, reaching in his back pocket for his wallet. Auntie Joy was standing in front of the door. He paused, looking down at her. “Have you given any more thought to my proposition, Joyce? We could make a lot of money together, you and me.”

  Auntie Joy stepped to one side without answering. He shrugged. “Think it over. It’s the right thing to do, for both of us.” He opened the door and stepped inside.

  Kate looked from the closed door to her aunt. “What was all that about?”

  Auntie Joy looked at her and through her. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? What do you mean, nothing? What’s that guy talking about, the two of you making money together? How did you meet him? What does he want?”

  “Nothing,” Auntie Joy said again, her voice as stony as her face. She turned as if to go back in the galley, hesitated and then walked around Kate to climb up into the bow. Mutt watched her go by, and then padded after her, sitting down to lean her shoulder against Auntie Joy’s knee. A worn, gnarled hand came down to rest on the dog’s head.

  Kate looked from them to the drifter. The boy was hauling buckets of water up over the side and splashing them over the deck of the drifter. He raised his head to find Kate watching him. His mouth set in a thin line. “What are you looking at?”

  The Joanna C. pulled up to the Freya’s starboard side and Kate was spared the necessity of a reply.

  *

  The fishing period was over at six sharp that evening. They took their last delivery at seven-thirty, the rest of the boats hauling their last loads into Cordova themselves. The Freya’s galley menu offered up deep-fried beer-batter halibut cheeks at ten o’clock that night. The heart of the great fish was still beating on the railing, a dull red, humping lump of flesh in the slanting rays of the sun, single-minded, single-purposed, inexorable, as the four old women clambered down into their dory and set off for the mouth of Amartuq Creek.

  They weighed anchor and were in Cordova by one a.m. Kate and Sam donned boots and rain gear to climb into the hold with three members of the cannery’s beach gang, there to fill the brailer lowered by boom from the cannery dock. One brailer at a time, they emptied the hold, and when the last fish had gone and the hold had been hosed down and the hatch covers replaced and the Freya had been refueled and moved to her slip in the small boat harbor, the heart beat on beneath the rays of the rising sun. Fishermen and beach gang and fuelers alike were awed by it, by the sheer force of nature it personified. They moved around it, careful not to touch it, speaking in whispers.

  Kate carried the sight of it with her to the chart room bunk, which probably accounted for the jangled state of her dreams.

  Although even that was better than lying awake worrying about the boy on boat, or the expression on Auntie Joy’s face as she looked at Meany, to which Kate could still put no name.

  Three

  SHE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING to sunshine and the smell of coffee. Old Sam was gone, but he’d left the pot on the stove. Mutt was stretched out on the focsle, basking in the morning sun, the remains of what looked like the knee joint of a humpback whale lying next to her. With some trepidation, Kate sidled up to the starboard galley door and eased it open a crack to peek around the jamb. No halibut heart, and the gunnel was scoured clean. Old Sam must have taken it uptown with him for show-and-tell over the bar. Immensely relieved, Kate closed the galley door firmly behind her.

  It was a long, narrow room the width of the beam of the ship, less the deck space between bulkhead and gunnel on both sides. A bench ran along the forward bulkhead, with a table bolted to the deck in front of it. The opposite bulkhead was lined with sink, cupboards, stove and refrigerator, this last a modern-day concession to the finicky habits of Old Sam’s sissy deckhands (this said with a choleric eye rolled in Kate’s direction). He still grumped about missing the cooler that had hung next to the starboard-side door, the one he had used for thirty years, and the cupboard and counter space usurped by the refrigerator. Rectangular windows lined the forward bulkhead sill to sill, letting in a lot of light and satisfying Old Sam’s inquisitive eye with a 180-degree view of his surroundings.

  The immaculate room was trimmed with wood varnished to a deep chestnut glow. An old oil stove, polished to a dull black shine, put out a steady wave of heat and caused the kettle sitting on top to give a low, comforting whistle. Kate poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down with her feet up on the seat to take advantage of Old Sam’s view.

  The harbor was still and quiet in the early-morning hours, the fishermen sleeping off the last period. Boats were rafted two and three together, leaving barely a skiff’s width of water between the slips. Transient parking was, as usual, empty of so much as a kayak, nine hundred feet of vacant slip space. This while the rest of the harbor was jammed to the breakwater and the fishing fleet jostled for moorage.

  Kate detected the fell hand of Shitting Seagull.

  She looked up. The harbormaster’s office, a small, neat house sitting on the edge of the fill just before the dock and ramp that led down to the harbor, seemed deserted.

  But then maybe Gull was only luring potential offenders into a self-incriminating complacency.

  Behind the small boat harbor was the town of Cordova. Perched at about one o’clock on the curve where Prince William Sound met the Alaska coastline, it was a stair-step settlement built of wooden clapboard houses, many of them on pilings pounded into the sheer side of the steep coastline. Cordova had once been the southern terminus of the Kanuyaq River & Northwestern Railroad, a hundred-mile track that carried copper ore from the fabulous Strike It Rich lode in the Teglliq Foothills from 1911 until 1936, and many of the buildings looked like they dated from that time.

  The town’s tiers culminated in the twenty-two-hundred-foot peak of Mount Eyak, a sharp point that contrasted with the rounded peak of Mount Eccles, a whole hundred feet higher. Between them the peaks guarded a narrow strip of land linking Orca Inlet, Cordova’s access to Prince William Sound, and Eyak Lake, a glacier-fed body of water whose opaque, gray-blue tint changed only when it froze a hard, unforgiving white. East of Eyak Lake began the thirty-mile-wide Kanuyaq River delta, a vast expanse of rushing, silty water interrupted by migrant sandbars the size of Manhattan. Between the rapid current and the glacial silt, a bow-picker averaged one impeller per summer. Kate wondered sometimes if it was worth it. She would have bet most fishermen did, too.

  It was a big town, as far as Alaskan towns went, supporting a population of three thousand. Access was by boat or plane; the only road out had been under construction when the 1964 Alaskan earthquake hit. The project was abandoned, although a recent governor had made a stab at restarting it from the other end, only to have his Cats halted in their tracks by the Environmental Protection Agency— but not before the Cats had gleefully bulldozed the spawning grounds of entire schools of red salmon.

  The town was half-asleep in winter and wide awake in summer when Outsiders from Anacortes and Bellingham and Seattle flooded Cordova in drifters and seiners. A few married locally and took their brides south for the winter. Fewer still stayed the winter to fish for king crab, to build homes and raise families and become sourdoughs instead of lowly cheechakos, a distinction they took smug pride in pointing out to their fair-weather colleagues. The competition to be high boat was fierce and enthusiastic, and pitched battles were fought at sea and refought on shore, fights over corking and short counts by tenders—something the fishermen were always accusing the tendermen of doing and the tendermen were always denying in duels of honor at local bars.

  North of Cordova many glaciers funneled around the peaks of the Chugach Mountains; from the south the Mother of Storms took her best shots. In spite of both, the area had a temperate climate, which meant it rained a lot.

  But not today.

  An insistent growl made itself evident low down in Kate’s belly. She drained the last of her coffee, ro
used Mutt and went out in search of breakfast.

  The Coho Cafe was a shoebox-shaped room with booths down one side, kitchen and counter down the other, and half a dozen tables jammed between. A grimy bank of windows stretched across the far wall, overlooking the harbor, from this angle nothing but a forest of masts. Other than a signed, matted and framed picture of Susan Butcher and Granite on the wall behind the cash register, the decor was utilitarian, Early American Greasy Spoon—bleached-out tan Formica on the counter and tabletops, faded blue linoleum underfoot, the latest coat of white enamel paint on walls and ceiling already yellowing beneath an accumulating layer of yellow grease. There wasn’t a matching set of chairs at any table, and the counter stools were flaking chrome from their legs. Coffee the color and consistency of diesel fuel was served in thick white porcelain mugs, food on thick white porcelain plates, and the silverware was plain stainless steel worn so thin you could cut your tongue if you were unwise enough to lick your spoon.

  The cafe was packed, people rafted at tables the way boats were rafted to slips in the harbor. The swinging doors between kitchen and counter were constantly in motion and the jeans-and-T-shirt-clad waitresses rattled around the room like pinballs, lighting up one table of raucous, raunchy men after another. “Order up!” blared through the pass-through every thirty seconds.

  A heaping plate of eggs scrambled soft with ham and home fries whisked beneath Kate’s nose, followed by what had to be the world’s largest cinnamon roll, and her stomach growled again. There wasn’t an empty chair in the place, and she was debating whether to wait for a stool at the counter or to move on down the street to try her chances at The Empty Mug, when she heard her name called. Looking around, she saw an arm waving at her from a corner booth next to the windows. “Kate! Kate! Over here!”