Her instincts were good, while her alert mind absorbed facts that she needed to cram. She became confident. Too confident, he felt. “Wrong water here,” he observed once. “You ought to be closer to shore, especially with the tide going out.”
“This still looks good to me,” she declared, and shouted Ho! astern for the skiff to go. It turned out to be the best haul of the day. All but he and Seth exclaimed and congratulated. Her bounce and grin didn’t help. During the next set Hank saw clearly that the net was going to encircle short of the fish, but said nothing. An hour’s tow brought in three fish. He shrugged and felt justified, but also ashamed.
By now Ham occupied the skiff full-time since he would be Jody’s skiff man, with Mo and Terry alternating second position. Jody rode as his second once or twice daily, working the plunger, then leaping back to the main deck after the seine had encircled the catch. Seth watched her restlessly. One day as they readied a new set, he entered the skiff. “This trip’s mine,” he told Ham. “Go back on deck.” Ham, used to obeying, obeyed.
Jody had already taken position. Seth appeared to ignored her. Terry hit the release hook and the skiff pulled free of the boat dragging out the seine. “What you want,” Seth began impersonally, his gaze straight ahead, “is to fix in your mind the way the fish act.” Step by step he instructed, gradually warming. While he accepted command signals from Hank on the bridge, he maneuvered on his own and explained each move, then explained why Hank had given the signal from the boat’s viewpoint. “You got to leave some initiative to your skiff man if he knows what he’s doing. But with Ham, you got to take charge more than with me. See that tide rip? Worth going a little wider to suck in what may be riding it. Now you plunge—not there, out as far as you can while I’m trying to pull toward ’em. Hit it! Think of herding cows—maybe there’s one going to get away if you don’t scare him back. Plunge!”
Jody plunged, and listened, and strove to absorb. Her ignorance was increasing! When Ham ran the skiff they had followed Hank’s signals from the boat. This was different—a fisherman’s mind at work creatively.
Seth became impersonal again. When the set was completed and they returned to the boat, she thanked him. “You got it,” he said abruptly, and started off. Then he stopped and faced her. “Everything you do, it’s got ways to do it. Not just skiff. All kinds of stuff you can’t learn in two days.”
“I hear you.” It increased her unease.
Fish and Game extended the opening day by day into the second week. By now Hank had moved into the skipper’s cabin with Jody. One morning Jody rose unrested from the narrow bunk below Hank’s. She had lain awake in the dark trying to picture the flow of hydraulic lines from Terry’s sketches. Suddenly the steady hum of the generator had changed. What’s wrong? If wrong, what to do? The hum returned. So much not understood, that in the old boat days others had simply handled while she thought she knew it all. Not ready. July had passed to August and the days were peeling off. Soon they’d be back in town, Hank and his men to return to their own boat and then he to Japan for his mysterious deal, she for supplies and for extra crew if she chose. Then, back to Uganik Bay or elsewhere around the island. If she chose. On her own.
Decision: time to call it off. Announce with firm, good-natured cheer. She dressed with elbow-tight movements in the close quarters, quietly to not wake Hank. Take coffee before facing anybody.
Hank coughed to show he was awake, but remained in his bunk. “Boat’s all yours today, captain,” he said quietly. “Get out there and fish.”
Good. Face it. “Since you’re awake I’ve got something to admit, Hank. I’m not—”
“Can’t hear you.” Hank rolled over and covered his head. “Wake me for lunch.”
“It’s not working.”
“Shut the door when you leave.”
It was so final that she started out. Coffee first. But damn his arrogance!
As she left, Hank declared evenly, “You’ve come this far, Jody, and you’re doing fine. Run the whole show today before you decide. I love you. Go!”
She shivered despite his words—they blocked an easy escape, however grateful she was for them—shivered despite the heat in the galley. The place was deserted, and quiet except for the puff of the propane stove left on low during the night. She turned up the burner and readied the coffeepot, then straightened cups on the hooks, wiped the condiments in the rack, shuffled fish delivery tickets that had already been sorted and logged. Each mechanical step postponed serious thought.
On deck she breathed the wet morning air and shivered again despite a thick hot mug of coffee she held in both hands. She felt so numb and alone! Mist rolled among the nearby boats at anchor, showing some with a full spread of nets and corks heaped on deck and skiff bobbing astern, hiding others except for a tip of mast or top half of suspended power block. Anchor lights reflected on patches of water, and dimmed or glowed through curtains of fog. The sight soothed, then suddenly panicked her. Barge into this intact society of boats and fishermen? Men who answered to the water and had adapted to its conditions while she lived ashore and raised children?
Not yet 4 AM by the galley clock. All crews still slept except for a kid on one stern relieving himself. He noticed her, and quickly turned away although she tried to act as if she hadn’t seen him. The trouble with a woman in the fleet. The poor men needed to think before they even pissed, no matter how like a guy the woman made herself to be. There was no way around some things. Who’d want to see a woman squat on deck just to prove equality? It remained a brotherhood. If she failed, any husky teenage boy with two weeks on the plunger could echo Seth’s inevitable “Could’a told you.”
A gust of wind swirled the mist while it jerked the boat at anchor and rattled the rigging. She enjoyed the sound, rocked comfortably with the feel. “But I damn well am part of this,” she muttered. Entered it at scrub level all those years ago, broken free from Army brathood and come to Alaska for the hell of it. Survived. “No man’s squeeze unless I chose.” She smiled. How to tell your kids that one? Worked ashore at canneries and that diner destroyed in the earthquake. Cooked chow on boats and helped on deck, salty-tongued and untouchable. “Unless I chose. I’m as much a damn part of this as any man!”
Independence had been her pride and reputation. Now the mirror, when she used it, reflected a tamer face. The very fact that she now needed a mirror to put on lipstick or brush her hair proved the taming. In the old days such things fell in place or not. Giving in step by step. Give in on this with the Adele H, and farewell altogether to the old image of Jody.
She’d probably loved Hank from the time they’d met. No, not when he was that drip-eared college boy nursing pennies over diner coffee while he tried to find a boat job, and she was the waitress who poured it impatiently. Only a year or so later during the cleanup after the ‘64 earthquake had she begun to feel interest despite her conscious detachment. His eyes trailing her—she might have acknowledged sooner except that her growing attraction to him might have endangered independence. It had been her own decision, finally, to crawl together into the same sleeping bag after a rough day cleaning earthquake debris, that night on Jones Henry’s boat where by then he crewed. It didn’t mean marriage. But he always returned after she’d reluctantly shaken him free. Even later when they lived together, she hadn’t meant it to be marriage.
Then she married him in spite of it. By then enough years had passed that he skippered his own boat. She loved him deeply, and he’d forced her to admit it. Bearded, earnest Hank, grown from green kid into able and intelligent man, insistent and decent. All of it now settled years ago and three children to prove the settlement.
Until his trick with that woman in Japan last spring. Would she have known if he hadn’t confessed? Damn right! He wasn’t a good deceiver. She’d let her hurt run its course in anger, but she’d meant it when she’d kicked him out of the house. Be true or go. She’d seen enough of mate-swapping in Kodiak, and slimy excuses from both sexes of lo
ng separation on boats. She could go alone again if need be, even with the children. But thank God he’d faced it honestly, and convinced her it had been the only time, never to happen again. In the wake of reconciliation she’d buried her resentment over his letting the Japanese take their house as security on his boat. But damn Japan! They’d had troubles before that, but never betrayal.
A stomp, and Terry appeared yawning from the galley, unzipping his fly. He stopped when he saw her, and his hands automatically covered himself. “Oh. Hey—sorry. Didn’t know—”
“Don’t worry, I’m turning my back.”
“I’ll go inside or something.”
“No need. Just don’t expect me to go in either. I’m busy looking at the water. We’re on this boat together.”
“Well. . . here goes, but it won’t feel right.” A light splash ran its course. “I might have known you was up since coffee’s made and Mo’s still snoring. Want more coffee? I’ll bring it.”
“I can get my own, thanks. You don’t need to treat me like a woman.”
“You think Boss gets his own coffee if he’s studying the water?”
She started to insist that she was no skipper yet, but instead changed the subject. “The generator. Does it sometimes skip? Last night I thought. .. ?”
“Shifted, maybe. Nothin’ to worry ‘bout.”
“But our engine. Does it need some kind of overhaul?”
“Naah. Engine’s good. Good. These Jimmy engines, some young guys call ’em old-fashioned and got to have the latest Cat or Volvo, but they hold up good. Ol’ Jones Henry never let anything go bad on his boat. He was professional.”
“Terry . . . I asked you this once before, but what do you . . . what does Ham think about working for a woman?
If I should take over the boat?” “If? I thought you was.” A pause. “Ham’s okay with it. Don’t worry. And don’t let Seth scare you. What you don’t know is, he’s been driving Ham and me crazy with instructions about what we’d better be sure to do after he’s gone. To not fuck—not screw—not make dumb mistakes. You know?”
“You mean Seth assumes I’m taking over?”
“Sure. We all do.”
A fish jumped. Another leapt from the water, wriggled its tail for the instant it remained suspended, then splashed back. “Chum jumpers,” said Jody, not bothering to ask for Terry’s confirmation. Suddenly she felt able. “Get the others up. Let’s fish!”
“You got it!”
As Terry hurried off, she added with a grin, “But let Hank sleep. Old bosses need their rest.”
Terry looked at her, startled, then laughed.
3
THE RACE
UGANIK BAY, EARLY AUGUST 1982
“Hit it!” called Jody. Her voice had sharpened in the space of hours after taking command the day before.
“Ya-hoo!” cried Ham, and entered the skiff so heartily his big frame bounced the craft. Mo followed with a yell and equal leap.
Terry led it all with running jokes that Jody didn’t seem to mind about working for a dame. When Charlie of Fish and Game glided up in his motor dinghy, and with a wink handed Jody an envelope with her license, Terry entered a new round of speculation on how they’d all escaped being jailbirds.
Hank watched, glad enough for their spirits but wary of the sudden festive atmosphere among all but Seth. His men never frolicked like that under him. Making a game of it? Why not, so long as they did their jobs. He himself, having declared he’d stay apart and having already pushed his injured shoulder too hard so that it ached, now wandered idle unless he chose to stack rings, wash dishes, or do some other light job. Does you good, he told himself.
His own concern needed to be the Japanese and how they planned to convert his Jody Dawn to longline. He certainly wasn’t in their pocket as Gus Rosvic had disturbed him by hinting, but did he yet grasp all he’d committed to? It was going to require new tricks of him and new grounds—that would be good, exciting. But what of all the new fish politics that until now he’d scorned and dodged?
During the past few days of happy old-style fishing, he’d managed to forget for hours at a time that somebody else, and Japanese at that, controlled the boat of his heart. Director Tsurifune and his son Shoji of Tsu rifune Suisan Ltd. seemed honorable. But what good was the 51 percent of Jody Dawn that they’d let him keep officially when they held her papers as security, along with those for his house? Jody was being understanding about the house after her initial explosion, and given the wide-open abundance of black cod he’d catch for the Japanese he’d soon bail them out— but a lien on their home?
They’d already jerked him around once by forcing him to tender his Jody Dawn for salmon in Bristol Bay under an altered boat name that, to his embarrassment (humiliation!), enabled secret deals with strikebreakers; they’d forced him, however velvet the glove. At night, his loss of freedom kept him awake. How could he have let it happen?
Then, in daylight, either gradually or in a burst, the project’s opportunities and adventures took over. Japan rode the wave, and they’d pulled him up to share the crest. Prosperities as vivid as that Kabuki he’d enjoyed in Tokyo lay ahead. If the world insisted on sweeping along, you either watched and lost out, or joined. Jones Henry hadn’t understood, and the pain of that would grind forever. Nor did old Gus understand—but looking ahead wasn’t for the old. Or the dead.
The Tsurifune deal made sense and hurt nobody. They needed him to supply them the black cod they called sablefish, and he needed them to relieve his debt. He would deliver the fish, frozen, directly to a Japanese cargo ship, having caught it as an American with access to a virtually unlimited quota, that eroded nothing from the Japanese’s tight and diminishing quota negotiated annually with the U.S. State Department. The Tsurifunes thus ensured that they’d receive a steady supply of sable-fish no matter what happened within international fish politics.
Nature had changed things by making the crabs disappear and leaving him vulnerable and in debt. His move now was to change and thwart Nature—no, to follow where Nature led. If the little yellow men, as Jones would have called them (or worse) wanted to bail him out, why lose his boat like Tolly and so many others? For a price, of course, the way of the world, but not a permanent price if he kept his head.
In truth, he could reassure himself, he was merely taking steps for the future and the good of his family, and was lucky to have the chance. Shoji/Mike Tsurifune and his dad, the old director, had hinted of future boats in his name if this first arrangement panned out. Potentially, the deal could start him on a path to greater possession than he’d ever dreamed. Riding on top of that Japanese crest could offer a mighty view.
Thus Hank pondered midday in the stuffy skipper’s cabin, self-sequestered to let Jody test her authority without his presence. He tilted back in the single chair with his feet propped on the bunk rail, making notes and lists for the forthcoming trip to Japan. When the others bounced into the galley on the other side of the metal bulkhead, banging objects and laughing, he tried to ignore their lively talk. It included him not at all. Behind a closed door he was out-of-mind. Even Seth forgot him, calculating in gruff good humor the number of chums in the catch and the price they’d bring. Smell of bacon, crack of eggs, signs of comfort between sets, and he was not even missed. Jody’s talk, though clipped and authoritative, had a buoyancy to it that she seldom used around him anymore. Reverting to her freedom days before they married. Nice to see, but who was going to be home for the final wash and iron when he left for Japan, much less the good-bye hug, kiss, and wave?
Seth offered to show Jody something on the wheelhouse charts. “I guess you know I’ve been reading charts for a lot of years,” he said expansively.
“I know, I know,” Jody declared with vixen warmth as their voices receded.
“Shucks,” from Mo, presumably to Ham and Terry after the others had left. “Wish I could crew aboard here, too. You guys are going to have a ball.”
Hank started to throw op
en the door and declare that nobody had better go slack working for his wife when Terry said: “We’re makin’ a ball of this, but you think there ain’t problems? Things about the boat she don’t know and hasn’t learned? Even Seth—everybody knows what he thinks of a lady skipper—even he watches and tells us things we’d better remember to make things go smooth, since Boss is pretending to look the other way. Our Jody’s going to highline because we’ll bust ass to make sure of just that. We’ve made what you call a pack on that, Ham and me.”
“That’s it,” said Mo. “That’s what I mean. And those two-hundred-buck bets. I ought to put down money somewhere too.” He lowered his voice, as ineffective as damping a kettledrum. “Two guys ashore? I don’t know from what boat, but loud enough I could hear. They were saying Boss lost it after Jones Henry died, to let his old lady run Jones’s boat. I turned and got ready to take ’em on. They got embarrassed and walked away like little babies.”
Terry laughed. “We’ve got us a situation. But no reason we can’t have some fun with it.”
“Like I said, man.” Mo’s voice turned wistful again. “Wish I was with you.
Hank brushed sweat from his eyes in the stuffy room. Always take care of these guys in future. Might have known. No way out of it now but straight ahead, while training Jody to the utmost. Give her Mo with the others? But the Jody Dawn should be repaired by now, ready for conversion and facing what the Japanese expected. Seth needed at least one deck ape he could trust.
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