Both looked around to make sure nobody watched, then did a few push-ups and stretches just in case.
The gravel road between fish plants was dark. “Those pricks on the Hinda,” muttered Ham as they hurried. “Some nerve after what we done for them. That Bud, I used to think he was okay. He better not try anything.” He stumbled in a pothole, cursed without venom, and did more push-ups before rising.
Same words as on my mind, thought Terry. But now he was deck boss. “We’ll see.” He tried to make it sound wise.
The pier space at the cannery where the Hinda Bee had delivered was empty. The shore gang stood ready to receive another boat—from a distance it looked like the Lucky Sue coming in—while a set of red and green running lights moving away toward the harbor could have been the Hinda. The crane operator wouldn’t tell them how many brailerloads the Hinda had delivered. “Go to the office for that,” he said. Terry looked up at the white fluorescent tubes on the ceiling of the second-floor office. A man with papers, wearing a necktie, moved near the window. Not a place to venture.
Lights stretched in a crescent from south cannery row, where they stood, through town to plants on the north facing the narrows. Boat lights glided from the narrows, dim through drizzle and fog. “Now they’re all coming in,” observed Ham. “But we beat that whole bunch to town, didn’t we?”
“You’ve already forgot the Hinda Bee?”
“Yeah. Shit.” Suddenly: “Only five minutes to town if we run. Maybe in time to grab those pricks’ lines, talk ’em over a little.”
Terry considered. A deck boss needed to keep his dignity. But a deck boss had to stand up to things. “Race you.”
6
THE BEER DIPLOMATS
KODIAK, EARLY AUGUST 1982
Adele Henry, new owner of the Adele H by inheritance, found herself an object of attention as never before when she’d been just another fisherman’s wife. Boat-to-shore radio with Jones had been, “Exactly what time are you coming to dinner, Daddy?”—gruff annoyed evasions, and then henpeckish clucks from other men on the frequency when they thought she’d signed off. Now she was talking business. She positively strutted to the stores with Jody’s order for groceries and specific new parts.
In just the week that her boat had left for Uganik Bay to scatter her husband’s ashes, then stayed to fish under her patronage, people had suddenly begun to solicit Adele’s opinions instead of glancing at their watches. Her opinions soared accordingly. “I’ll tell you this,” she soon started declaring, and followed with whatever crossed her mind, from the subject of Pastor Hall’s sermon to the unavailability of the proper shackles at Sutliff’s Hardware.
Her pantsuits, once lime green, then brown for as close to mourning as her wardrobe allowed, had become bright red by the time the Adele H came back to town. Red might not go with the long beige coat bought during the last trip to Paris France, but it didn’t matter since she knew who she was in Kodiak. Nevertheless, it hurt nothing to have her hair styled for the first time ever, and in the process to have the creeps of gray eased back to brown.
Adele’s new importance did not compromise her stewardship of the Crawford children. She loved them. Loved them more, she knew, than the adopted Russ and Mark, long gone from the nest and so estranged by Jones’s attitudes that the relationships would probably never recover. Her imagination still hugged close darling Amy, the only birth child God had ever permitted but then cruelly taken back after barely a year. Doctors did better with meningitis now, they said, for what little good it would ever do Adele Henry. On every April 19 she bought a cake, and added one more candle year by year as she pictured Amy the first grader, the graduate, the bride with full wedding preparation—finally, the mother producing grandchildren to gladden the house. Adele the realist would have denied it, but in her heart the children of Amy were Dawn, Henny, and Pete Crawford.
On the morning after the midnight return to port of the Adele H, Adele was awake before six for coffee by the window overlooking the harbor. There might have been a cigarette except that they now said smoke was bad for children, so of course the pack went out of sight under the linen whenever they stayed. Her boat was tied to its berth on the floats. Thank God she’d put her foot down long ago with poor Jones, and insisted that the boat’s papers include her name as co-owner. The way men thought a woman’s only role on a boat was her name on the bow! And now such plans that had opened! To move that coffee urn was the least of them. Jody would do things that people had never permitted Adele Johnson Henry even to think of doing, and she, Adele, now had the power to make it happen.
Six-year-old Dawn was first up as always. She bounced in to hug Auntie Adele and meant it. (Not like reticent Henny, a year older and already guarding his male behavior: it was ominous to watch how even the youngest of them geared to call the shots. Thank goodness little Pete’s mind was still uncluttered by more than his approaching fourth birthday party, still a month away.) “You can get out the bacon, sweetie. We’ll need more than two slices each this morning, so we’ll use the big pan.”
She plaited Dawn’s pigtails, while the child arranged bacon strips like soldiers in the cold pan and chattered about the things she’d tell Mommy as soon as she came.
By the time Hank and Jody arrived—at seven fifty, hardly on the dot! and looking more tired than necessary after a night’s sleep—Dawn had put on her party dress for the occasion and Henny had at least wriggled into jeans. Sleepyhead Pete remained in pajamas, the last to wake. His engine would start soon enough.
Hank kissed her heartily and joked in his fine deep voice. Adele wanted to focus on Jody, even ignore this man to keep him in place. But Hank’s presence filled the room whenever he entered. Tall, confident, hips lean as a bottle, shoulders muscled against a black sweater, face weathered like a man’s should be but not hard. Jones had stood like that in the early days, an erect Marine just back from defeating the Japs, back when his opinions had vigorous charm and had not yet become slaps in the face.
“The eggs have dried in the pan I’m afraid, ready a half hour ago, but sit, sit.” It didn’t seem to bother them. Lucky Jody, hair pulled back without a thought to how she looked and thus beautiful even in an old shirt and no makeup. “Well my dear, we’ve got a world of business ahead, so eat up and then we’ll talk.”
Hank gladly escaped from Adele’s house with his children to let the women make their plans, but he couldn’t help thinking that they’d have profited from his advice had they asked. Pete held tight to his hand while Dawn skipped ahead and Henny walked at his side. The pickup truck waited by Fisherman’s Hall where he’d left it two weeks before, expecting to be back within a day. That’s how things happened.
He drove to the boatyard to check on his Jody Dawn. There she stood, still on the ways facing the harbor. A patch was welded smoothly where the boat had struck an object during the rescue of Jones Henry, and it appeared that the metal needed only paint to finish the job. Out of water his boat became less his own, a creature of land. Its bow loomed above him like a skyscraper and its hull spread beneath as wide as a house. Office locked, only a Sunday watchman, no one to consult. He wanted to climb over the scaffolding and check inside the boat, but not with young children in tow.
“Petey,” chirped Dawn. “That’s Daddy’s boat. See Daddy’s boat?”
“He can’t help but see it,” observed Henny. His voice was deep for a child’s, and solemn. “You always act like a schoolteacher.”
Dawn ignored her older brother. “Petey. Say ‘Daddy’s boat!’ Say ‘Jody Dawn!” Jody and Dawn, that’s Mommy and me. Nobody names boats after boys. Ask Daddy. Isn’t that right, Daddy?”
“Seems so.” He bent to pick her up with a hug. A quick intense return hug and she squirmed away. Pete, released from Hank’s grip, ran up and down the slope leading to the water. Dawn followed, telling him to be careful.
“Girls sure try to run things,” said Henny. “Girls are a pain in the . . . ass.”
Hank wanted to
laugh but said, “Hey, watch your language.”
“Everybody else says things like that.”
“Not at your age, fellah.” He loved the clear-eyed look of his son, smooth towhead face turned up to him. Without thinking further: “Tell you what. I won’t say it anymore if you don’t.”
“All the bad words, Dad?”
“Oh boy.” The kids were going to pick up his easy tongue if he didn’t watch. How the hell would he keep such a bargain? Keep it! At least till the kids were older. (At least in their presence, he amended to himself. Be realistic.) “You’re on. Shake.” The small hand in his big one was soft, but it squeezed firmly. (No, he amended again. At least try to honor a son’s bargain all the way.)
Next Hank drove to the floats, built to rise and fall with the tide. The seiner fleet was in. Seen from the road above, their masts crowded against each other like wireworks. Skiffs, piled atop web and corks, were reflected in the strips of water separating arms of the boardwalk. The walks were deserted. He’d have been sleeping in too, back late night from a week or two on the grounds and it not yet ten on a Sunday morning. With Jody’s new commitment, Adele Henry was proving to be a package, however grand a gal.
The Adele H lay in her slip, brought over safely from the cannery by either Terry or Seth. The rival Hinda Bee lay only two boat slips away. Would Gus Rosvic really be the supreme asshole (don’t voice the word) and let his men collect their bets? He debated banging on the Hinda’s door to find out, decided not with the kids. Let it happen by itself.
At the far end of the floats, by the breakwater, lay the halibut fleet moored apart from the seiners and crabbers. The boats now longlined also for black cod, they said. He’d soon be competing with them, and on behalf of the Japanese at that—something unthinkable only months ago. Best not go over. The sight of the wooden schooners, ultimate fishing craft older than any other boats around, solid and graceful, with their venerable sharp white bows lined in a row as orderly as the old Norwegians aboard, still stirred him as they had since his greenhorn days. There among the familiar names were Vansee, Grant, Republic, Thor, Northern, Polaris, and the Lincoln, aboard which a halibut had broken his arm. How long ago? Dozen years. Since Jones’s death, time’s passage and its changes dogged him everywhere.
He clattered down the ramp with his army of children. At the bottom Pete suddenly broke into a run toward the far end of the walk. Hank started after, ready to jump in the water if Pete veered and fell, although it seemed unlikely since the child ran a straight line on such fine sturdy legs. When Pete saw he was being pursued his voice rose high and gleeful and he ran faster. By the time Hank caught up they had reached the end arm of the floats by the breakwater. Pete flopped down laughing, and held up his arms to be carried.
Hank tousled him. “Say it, you buzzard. What do you want?”
“He still won’t talk much, Daddy,” said Dawn. “Go on, Petey, say what you want. Say ‘Carry me, Daddy.’”
The arms remained outstretched and the happy laugh continued, but Pete said nothing. Hank lifted him. The weight pained his shoulder under the cast, but he controlled a grimace and straddled the kicking legs around his head. These would be the last little legs until grandchildren, probably. Enjoy ’em. A clean soap-and-child smell went with the burden. Madam Adele might be a pain, but she cared for those she loved.
“He’ll never talk if you do what he wants all the time without it, Daddy. That’s what Auntie Adele says. And he never minds.”
“He talks all right if you leave him alone,” said Henny. “It’s just girls he won’t talk to and mind. People who try and make him.”
They now stood among the high wooden bows of the halibut fleet, right by the Lincoln herself. Hank stared. Yes, he remembered: broken arm at the start of a second three-week trip as an apprentice Norwegian style, excited by every breath of the fishing game (especially here). The very boat still smelled of sweat and traditional ways. In presence he felt like the kid inbreaker again, yes to anything they barked him to do but nearly choked with pride at having been accepted aboard. He’d barely seen the men afterward, since they seldom tarried in town. Other fisheries of his involvement followed different cycles, but those old Norwegian shipmates’ names remained vivid. Whatever the circumstance, it would be good to handle fish on long baited lines again, gaffing them aboard nose to nose.
The cabin door opened, and a lean leathery man in city clothes came on deck with a valise. He climbed carefully over the rail to the float, and stopped at the sight of Hank.
“Trygve!” Hank wondered if he’d be recognized. “Trygve Jensen.”
“Ja.” The voice was slow and mild. “You come back to inbreak again, or you bring kids to do it for you?”
“Either way. Either way. Henny, Dawn, Pete, shake hands with a great fisherman who hired Daddy once.”
“Oh, it ver Igvar who hired, he is captain. So, inbreaker, you don’t fish no more I guess.”
Hank started to correct, then shrugged. They really kept to themselves, these guys. Not only didn’t remember his name . . . He himself could still enjoy the memory. Trygve’s face was older by only a little. Straw-yellow hair that had poked from a work cap seemed dimmer slicked into shape beneath a wool traveling cap, and his manner was even soberer (if that was possible), but he still could have been patiently teaching greenhorn Hank to coil and bait to the boat’s exact standard. “How’s halibut fishing these days?”
“Too many boats, only.”
“And black cod now too?”
“Jaaa. Except the fucking Japs and Koreans t’ink dey own it.” Each answer came slowly. Hank asked of the others by name. Igvar was still captain, sure, and Olaf still was cook. (Olaf of the lean horse face, possessive of his stove, Hank remembered.) Sverre and Ralph, ja. Only Sven no longer fished. “Has apartment houses in Ballard, doing good. Sven’s boy is now half-share man. Veil, got to catch plane to Seattle. Got to go.”
Hank asked if the others were around, learned that they’d already gone to the airport and that Trygve had just locked the boat. He offered to drive Trygve.
“Taxicab is vaiting.” Trygve walked off, friendly but detached as ever, then stopped and turned. “Nice kids you got, Hank. You treat them good, maybe they’ll be fishermen.”
“I will. I will, Trygve. Thanks.” The recognition after all left him smiling.
He walked his brood back along the boats to the Adele H among the seiners. Mo sat in the galley alone. He rose anxiously. “Whew! Seth found you, I guess. That’s sure a relief. Are Terry and Ham okay, Boss?”
“What do you mean?”
On the night before, Terry and Ham, having stretched and flexed just in case, trotted down the gravel road from the canneries to the floating piers. By the time they had located their target among the seiners moving in to moor for the weekend, the Hinda Bee was locked and deserted.
“I guess we don’t need a map to figure where they’ve gone,” said Terry. “It’s just do they like the noisy bars or the quiet ones? Old Gus, figure him for one with cobwebs.”
“Bud, now,” said Ham. “He hangs out—I think I’ve seen him either at Tony’s or Solly’s, one or the other.”
The amplified thrum of rock at Tony’s drew them from across the square. Inside, surrounded by familiar noise, smoke, and the pleasant smell of beer, they waited for their eyes to adjust. None of the faces etched by neon around the square center bar was Hinda Bee. Maybe in the dark corners.
“I’ll buy first,” said Terry. Guys they knew made room for them at the bar.
Their bottles had barely arrived over the counter when Rob from the Lucky Sue leaned across Ham as if he didn’t exist, and called to Terry above the noise: “Caught Jody fishing without a license, they say.”
“Nothing to speak of. Little mistake was all.”
“Ho ho, yeah. A woman, and being she’s Hank Crawford’s old lady didn’t hurt. Like to see me caught without a license, like to see what happens.”
“That ain’t your busine
ss, fellah,” growled Ham.
Terry stopped Ham with a hand on his shoulder. “Shit, Robbie, you’re so fuckin’ ugly I’d do it myself—throw a bag over your head and dump your ass in jail.”
“What say? Talk louder, man.”
Terry’s face crinkled into its monkey grin. He leaned over nose to nose and repeated.
Rob studied him, then laughed. “That’s what would happen, man. Just that.” He returned unperturbed to his drink.
“You sure get away with jokes,” muttered Ham.
Terry shrugged. “I know him. He’s just talk. Short guys like me need to rely on their mouths.”
Joe Pone from the Lady West leaned in from Terry’s elbow and called across: “Robbie! You don’t know the half! Jody’s now skipper, and you’re looking at her new crew. First thing she done, she run down our skiff man, Nick.” He needed to repeat at a shout above the music. Suddenly the music stopped between numbers, and, loud throughout the room: “Jody, she run down Nick in the skiff!”
Faces all around the bar, and both bartenders themselves, turned. “Hey, lay off it,” called a voice in good humor from the bar opposite. It was Nick himself. “Nobody got hurt. Give Jody a break.”
“Sure, sure if you say, man,” Pone continued, and faced Terry and Ham with boozy, half-closed eyes. “How about it, you two? What’s it like, orders from a woman?” Ham started up in his seat, but Terry raised his arm in an elaborate yawn and eased him back. Pone edged closer. “She got you yet to put doilies on the winch and perfume in the hold?”
Terry drank from the bottle, keeping his grip on the neck, and cleared his throat. “Don’t forget we wind daisies through the web.”
A few Heyyys, and some bottles waved in their direction. The music started to blast again, and Pone returned to his drink.
Terry sent a beer over to Nick, and paid up. “Hinda Bee ain’t here. Let’s cruise.”
But the bartender banged two wet-beaded bottles in front of them. “Compliments of your buddies over there.” Some hands waved to them in the dim light. Terry acknowledged with a “Yo,” and Ham followed suit, although neither recognized the faces through the smoke.
Raiders Page 9
