by Will Hobbs
I took my coffee and cookies with me, dropped into the cockpit, set the treats aside, and began to put the gear down. Before I got a chance to take another slug of coffee, the poles started rattling, and they never quit. Five hours later, I stumbled into the wheelhouse for breakfast.
“Now, that was some fishing,” Torsen said over bacon and eggs and home fries.
“You’re keeping the count, right?”
“Since we got here, it’s a hundred and forty-three kings and seventy-seven cohos.”
“Is the mountain out? I forgot to look.”
“It’s in the cirrus clouds.”
“How’s the barometer?”
“Showing high pressure. Steady at thirty and a half.”
“How about the forecast?”
“Yakutat to Cape Spencer, winds white to terrible.”
It took me a couple of seconds to be startled. “What did you say?”
“Easy, sailor. It’s a joke, an old fisherman’s joke. I’m surprised you don’t know it. They’re saying ‘Winds light to variable.’ The guy in the nice warm office can’t always be believed, but that’s what he’s saying. We’ll keep checking the other signs.”
“Good. I’ll fish, you steer and keep an eye on the weather.”
Suddenly the tinkling of bells from the tattletales started up again. I grabbed my rubber gloves. “Starboard tip and port heavy,” Torsen said.
It got crazy again. All day it rained salmon onto the bloody deck of the Storm Petrel. In my wildest dreams I had never imagined it could be like this. I didn’t get to bed until midnight.
I’d have accomplished everything I’d set out to do, if only I made it off that boat and back to Port Protection.
15
I WOKE TO THE POSSIBILITY that king season might be called to a close any time now. Torsen, before he fell asleep, had heard the rumors on the VHF. All the fishermen were talking about it.
“What about the weather forecast?” I asked.
“Winds light to variable, with patches of sunshine. The wind shouldn’t blow more than ten or fifteen knots. There’s a couple of low pressure centers spinning around in the gulf. For the time being, they aren’t moving this way.”
The morning bite was hot and heavy. Then, mercifully, it shut off. I got the opportunity to catch up with the cleaning and put another forty-two salmon on ice.
As I stumbled into the wheelhouse, Torsen glanced in my direction. He had a big wad of steel wool in his right hand; he’d been rubbing something with it. The plaque we’d found, I realized as I came a little closer. Number 11. There were shiny places where he’d been polishing. Individual feathers were showing up in the eagle’s wings, as well as some major features that had been unrecognizable before.
I didn’t say anything. I went to the galley sink and got to work with the soap and water. I raked my forearms with my fingernails, stripping off scales. “I’ll get up and make us some breakfast,” I heard Tor say. “You take a breather.”
“Good deal,” I said. He must have been feeling better, though he didn’t say so.
I sat where Tor had been sitting, with my back to the galley, so I could look over the bow and cross quickly to the wheel in case of a close encounter with one of the oncoming trollers. There were eight within sight.
Tor had left the plaque right there on the table. “You can see a lot more detail now,” I remarked.
“Quite the craftsmanship.”
“What kind of metal?”
“Bronze or brass, maybe? It’s got copper in it, I’m sure of that.”
As the bacon began to pop and sizzle behind me, I had the feeling that this was a good thing, him wanting to talk. “What’s with the double-headed eagle?” I asked. “You said the Tlingits got it from the Russians. Where did the Russians get it?”
“From the Romans, strangely enough. The legions of the Roman Empire marched behind an eagle symbol on a staff. In the later centuries, there was one emperor in Rome and another in Byzantium. The double-headed eagle was the symbol of the eastern emperor.”
“Each of these eagle heads has a crown on it.”
“The head looking west, that’s Rome; the one looking east, that’s Byzantium. After Rome fell, there was only the eastern empire, only the one emperor. Byzantium, eventually renamed Constantinople, finally fell in the mid-fourteen-hundreds. A couple decades later, the ruler of Moscow, Ivan, married the niece of the last eastern emperor. Now, you tell me why he did that.”
“Because she was a babe?”
I didn’t look over my shoulder to see the scowl. Torsen just kept going: “It was so he could proclaim himself heir to the Byzantine throne. He took on all the trappings and symbols, including the double-headed eagle. Even named himself czar, which came from the word Caesar.”
“What about the shield in the middle of the eagle’s body? I can’t quite make it out, but it looks kind of like St. George slaying the dragon.”
“That’s exactly what it is. St. George was the patron saint of Moscow and Russia in general. In the eagle’s talons on one side, that sword represents royal power, and on the other here, the orb with the cross on top, that represents the divine right of kings.”
“This Number 11, at Cape Cross, it must have been buried before Rezanov went to San Francisco.”
“That’s right. Back in 1787, the Russian governor in the Siberian far east ordered a pair of navigators to bury the first five. In 1790, Baranof was given some more to bury as he expanded the colony around the shores of Alaska. How many, we don’t know exactly. On his first recon of Sitka Sound, in 1795, was probably when he buried the one found at St. Michael’s Redoubt. The Russians kept burying plaques along the coast until 1811, as they explored south from Sitka.”
“So, this Number 11 we’re looking at was probably buried by Baranof in 1795, on the same expedition when he planted Number 12?”
“That’s what Rezanov says in his journal, and I have no reason to doubt him.”
“On that journey to San Francisco, did Rezanov bury any more?”
“Of course. He was an expansionist. He was just as eager to plant possession plaques as he was to scout sites for new Russian outposts and to bring food back to Sitka.”
“And nobody in the world knows about Rezanov’s journal but you?”
“My buyer, he knows I’ve got it. And you do, Robbie Daniels. You do,” he repeated as he took the plaque from the table and placed it under the mattress, at the foot of his bunk, next to Number 13.
His emphasis on those last two words was followed by silence, except for the whine of the wind outside.
Torsen returned with a platterful of breakfast and set it in the center of the table. “Orange juice?” he barked.
“Yes, please.”
When he’d set out the plates, silverware, and juice, and replenished the coffee, he sat down across from me, stared at me, right in the eye, and said, “What am I going to do with you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked as innocently as I could.
“You should never have come aboard my boat without permission.”
He was agitated again, just like at the first, at the dock in Craig. “I know,” I said. “I thought I told you I was sorry about that.”
“Sorry? This is my whole retirement we’re talking about here, what I can make from these plaques. Fishing, I can’t do that anymore.”
“Because of your back?”
He waved his fork at me. “That’s just part of it. My whole livelihood is being destroyed right before my eyes! As if all the logging and the dams weren’t bad enough. This salmon farming, it’s got us fishermen on the short road to oblivion.”
“I know,” I said. “My parents are really worried, too. Our cash economy comes from the salmon runs in the Sumner Strait, pinks and sockeyes and cohos. Those salmon farms in British Columbia and Washington State, some of ’em have half a million salmon in one row of pens.”
“Right, and salmon farming is supposed to double in the next five ye
ars. Think what that’ll do to the price of our wild salmon. The ocean is being strip-mined of crabs and small fish to feed all these farmed Atlantic salmon, and the feed pellets are laced with antibiotics, hormones, and red dye. Raising salmon in confinement, like they were pigs or chickens, bioengineering them to grow faster than nature intended—it’s an unnatural scheme driven by greed, and it disgusts me.”
“Most people don’t know what’s going on, Tor. When people eat Atlantic salmon, they don’t even know that it’s farmed. My dad says they’re eating a drug-addicted couch potato instead of a healthy marathon runner, only they don’t realize it. There’s even health warnings about how many you should eat—on account of the toxins, can you believe that? People don’t have any idea that huge numbers of farmed fish escape—how much of a dent that puts in the wild salmon’s feed and habitat. And then there’s the problem with the salmon lice. They multiply like crazy in the sewage around the fish farms. Those lice are killing the wild salmon before they get any bigger than your little finger.”
“Us and the wild salmon, we’re both dying breeds, kid, and let me tell you something: people don’t care. After a lifetime of putting food on people’s tables, we fishermen will disappear without so much as a thank-you. How is a man supposed to make a living, ever have a chance to retire? ‘Isn’t that quaint,’ that’s all people will say. ‘Another vanishing way of life.’”
“You sound so bitter, Tor.”
“Well, I am bitter!” he stormed. “My whole life, I’ve risked myself in the most dangerous profession in the world. If I need a back operation, who’s going to pay for that? With the prices being driven so low, I’m not even going to get the chance to keep fishing. Anytime now, my costs will be more than I can make, no matter how good a fisherman I am. Guys are already being forced out in droves.”
“Maybe something can still be done.”
“It’s already too late! It’s terminal! What chance would I have to maintain my independence if that trunk hadn’t come along, the Russian trunk, and Rezanov’s journal, and these plaques? None!”
Torsen’s eyes were wild, and trained right on me. I couldn’t tell which way to turn, only that I had to convince him I was his ally. “It’s lucky for you about the treasure laws,” I said.
“What?” Torsen snapped.
“I mean, like when treasure hunters find Spanish galleons that went down in the Caribbean, like you said a while back. They get to keep the gold.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Well, sure,” I said as convincingly as I could.
“But when you get back home, and start asking questions, you’ll find it’s not so simple.”
“Really, Tor, I don’t know anything about it.”
Tor slammed his knife on the table. “They’ll tell you the plaques don’t belong to me. But I deserve a break in life. I didn’t ruin the fishing. I didn’t drive the prices down.”
“Sure, Tor, I understand.”
“Do you?” he spat. “I suppose your parents will, too.” His stare was loaded with menace. I felt my temperature rising.
“I won’t tell a soul about the plaques,” I said. “Look, you don’t have to worry about me.”
“You never should have come aboard without permission,” he said, shaking his head. He said it gravely, like a judge pronouncing sentence.
Outside, the wind had been picking up. The sea was a stampede of white horses. My emotions were running just as wild. Tor was threatening me, no doubt about it. He’d made up his mind.
I got up without saying a word. I didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want him to smell my fear.
“Where you going?” he growled.
“Fishing,” I called over my shoulder.
“It’s too windy.”
I reached for my rubber gloves. “The gauge is reading twenty-five knots. You said twenty-five was fishable.”
My heart was still thundering when I reached the open air. I took some deep breaths, feeling like I’d been stunned by a gaff club. I reeled across the rolling deck and dropped into the cockpit. Working, that was the only way I was going to be able to handle this.
16
IN THE WIND, THE LEADERS were quick to fly off the stern, where I arranged them as I took them off the trolling wire. They’d get tangled and I would lose time. Whenever I managed to get the gear down, though, I pulled kings, lots and lots of kings.
The afternoon brought flurries of rain. Tor, standing at the wheel, had taken us off autopilot. Trolling north, before the wind, it was impossible to steer a straight drag. The Storm Petrel would crab one way, then the other, going up and down with the seas like a yo-yo. Tor had to attend to the throttle as much as the wheel. If the lures and flashers aren’t traveling the right speed, you won’t catch fish. At the stern, the following seas would roll up on me like they might break over the rail and into the cockpit. They nearly did.
When Tor would swing around and tack against that southeasterly wind, he had an easier time of it keeping the speed constant. I landed twice as many fish.
In a mindless sort of mechanical frenzy, I brought in phenomenal numbers, a couple hundred kings. When I had to work on deck to remove the salmon from the rinse tub, drop them into the hold, and refill the tubs with rinse water, it was all I could do to keep from being swept into the ocean. My knees ached from all the bracing. Tor, at the wheel, wasn’t looking out for me, not that anyone could, from inside. He would never know if I went overboard.
Let the sea take him, is that what he was thinking? “The kid worked hard, but he had no judgment,” that’s what he would say.
The rest of the day, we didn’t exchange more than a couple syllables. I watched my back and kept working. If it came to grappling with him, if he tried to throw me over the side, I was going to be ready. It was still difficult for him to move. He wouldn’t be able to muster near his usual leverage.
Sometimes the squalls came hard, and the rain found my skin. If it weren’t for my thermal clothing and the heat that came from battling the salmon, I would have frozen. My fingers were painfully cold. Every so often, despite the excellent fishing, one of the other trollers would break ranks and run toward land. “We’ll leave the grounds to you highliners,” they seemed to be saying. “More power to you.”
Tor heard the announcement when I was working late, in the hold. King season would close at midnight on July 16. Two more days, that’s what was left of this marathon. Tor intended to fish it down to the wire, that much was obvious.
Our kings, on average, were a little heavier than the ones we sold to the Angie. Tor was making about fourteen dollars a fish.
And I was making two bucks and change. That was good money, astounding money for a kid from Protection, if I lived to collect it.
The morning of day fifteen found the wind blowing out of the southwest instead of the southeast, and not nearly as hard. The sky was streaked with high cirrus; the rain was gone. The only problem was, the barometer was falling. I pictured one of those storms out in the gulf spinning in our direction. “What do you think about the barometer?” I asked. “It’s below thirty.”
I heard the alarm in my voice, and so did Torsen. “Sure is,” he said, staring at me like I was the unsolvable puzzle, when it was the other way around.
“Okay, I’m jumpy, I admit it. I’ve never been so far from land. What are the weather guys in the warm office saying?”
“Same old, same old, through tomorrow: ‘Winds light to variable, Yakutat to Cape Spencer.’”
“If the barometer’s falling, how could the forecast be the same for tomorrow?”
“Don’t be such a nervous Nellie, kid. Grab your coffee and some cookies. Let’s get the gear down. You might break eight hundred today.”
“Eight hundred what?” I asked dully.
“Kings, just since we got here. How is space holding out below?”
“Still got some, but we’re filling up. You figure we’ll fish all the way through to dark tomorrow nigh
t?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” the highliner barked. “Aren’t you making money? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Sure,” I said. “I guess that’s what it’s all about.”
“You make money, I make money, we’re both happy.”
If only he believed it was that simple.
That fifteenth day, the salmon ran in rivers out of the sea and onto the decks of the Storm Petrel. I was in such a killing frenzy, I was able to conk, gaff, and land them virtually in one motion. With the winds light, Torsen had us on autopilot and didn’t need to stay behind the wheel. Instead he hung on the hayrack above me, his face a tight mask of pain, and watched me fish.
When I had to climb out of the cockpit to work on deck, to grab salmon from the rinse tubs and drop them in the hold, coming close to him was unavoidable. At all times, I tried to stay just out of reach. I was wary as a deer dropped in a pen with a lion. If he rushed me, I planned to sidestep and sweep him into the ocean. If it was going to be me or him, I was going to make sure it was him.
I kept clubbing my way through the kings. I thought there wasn’t a salmon in the Gulf of Alaska that could match my fury, but I was wrong. Midafternoon, I was bringing up one of the lines when a fish all out of proportion to the rest I had caught appeared from the dark green depths. “You see the second one down?” I hollered over my shoulder. Tor was still hanging on the hayrack.
“Sure do,” Tor replied.
“Can that be a king?” I yelled as I brought in the one above, whacked it, gaffed it, and swung it into the cleaning bin.
“Sure is,” Torsen said. “You’re going to have a battle on your hands. We don’t want to lose that puppy.”
“I don’t aim to.”
“It might run eighty or ninety pounds. They don’t hardly get any bigger.”
I took a deep breath and reached for the gurdy lever. I brought the steel line up, unsnapped the nylon leader, then slammed it onto the catch in the gear tray as fast as I could. I looked up as the enormous king, a tyee in the true sense of the word, leaped clean out of the ocean.
