It did surprise Kodama. For a moment his face actually softened. Then the eyes flashed. “Of course!”
“You understand that I’m the boss. Captain on an American boat is the boss.”
“Yes, Mr. Carford.”
That evening, as he had the previous spring, Director Tsurifune himself attended the farewell banquet. He and Hank sat in double seats of honor and filled each other’s sake cups. As before, a company photographer snapped the two together arm to shoulder while Mike, less easy in his father’s presence, stayed discreetly aside.
During the long flight home across the Pacific, Hank’s head ached from the toasts while his body hurt from the judo. They were realities of what otherwise still seemed a dream. Some of the dream he’d finished. What of it lay ahead?
10
THE SUITS
KODIAK AND ANCHORAGE, LATE AUGUST 1982
Within the cycles of nature, the seasonal runs of pink/humpie salmon around Kodiak Island reach a climax every mid-August. By then most of the red/sockeye salmon have completed their similar natural instructions. Both species (like all Pacific salmons) must swim in from the ocean where they have matured in order to spawn in their birth streams. They run a predator gauntlet, including fishermen and hungry bears. The survivors lay fertilized eggs in the gravel, then die. Water and land creatures then feed on their carcasses and fulfill different cycles.
By mid-August around Kodiak, others of the five Pacific salmons native to North America begin to appear in force to mix with pinks: first the larger chum/dogs and then the coho/silvers. A fisherman needs more and more of an eye to sort them since, say, chums bring a better price than pinks and cohos more than chums. By September the local runs usually diminish to spotty appearances that also include a few of the grand king/chinooks. Other parts of Alaska see salmon runs in different distributions.
The natural patterns repeat year after year with abundance or scarcity dictated by the health of the year-classes and the condition of the waters that sustain them. In the human pattern, at least in Alaska, state biologists count the migrating salmons as best they can and regulate in favor of the fish, to ensure that enough escape the gauntlet to breed future generations before man competes for the rest.
For Captain Jody of the Adele //and for other seiner skippers working the Kodiak bays, the movements of salmon led fishermen around the island and that was all that mattered. From Uganik Bay on the western side Jody followed the drift of the fleet south to Uyak Bay, then down past Karluk (once the site of the world’s largest sockeye runs but overfished to depletion by the early 1900s, before state controls) to Alitak and Dead-man Bay, then around up the east side into Kiliuda Bay and back to the town itself In the process Jody turned alert as never before when someone else held command.
Terry, as Jody’s deck boss, grew in stature with the responsibility. Big, obedient Ham remained Terry’s right hand so long as he received directions. Together they kept the two greenhorn crewmen from snagging the gear or hurting themselves, barked them, in fact, into being useful.
As for competition with the Hinda Bee, Gus Rosvic’s men now had new bets with Jody’s crew, although on a more modest scale—and sometimes more exotic. One bet hinged merely on the capture of the season’s first salmon over twenty pounds, with a buck a pound at stake. The two boats sometimes shared the same grounds. They did so less and less after skipper Gus decided that the woman wasn’t going to sink the boat of his former buddy and wouldn’t need his rescue. (Not that he condoned a female’s presence in the wheelhouse any more than before.) When the two boats fished within sight of each other, both crews remembered their wager and noisily worked nets as hard as they could, shouting appropriate insults across the water—even the greenhorns who had no stake in the settlement but had caught the spirit. When the boats were separated, Jody and her men often forgot the wagers in the drive to capture fish.
When Hank returned from Japan, Adele and the children met him at the airport. He looked around while holding Pete and hugging Dawn and Henny, glad for them but restless for Jody.
“Out fishing, of course, and doing quite well I’d say, from all reports,” declared Adele. “I can’t believe how it’s turning out. Now Hank, get your bags, we do expect to have dinner at six to keep the children on schedule, and the plane from Anchorage has already come in late.”
“Thought I’d take you all to dinner tonight, after I’ve showered.”
“With a roast in the oven? Hurry, children.”
He talked to Jody by radio. Indeed she sounded happy and vigorous. Glad he was home safe, but: “Ham’s bringing in the skiff, I just waved him in, talk to you later. Hank, you wouldn’t believe the fish! We’re practically roundhauling in a patch all to ourselves so I have to pay attention. I miss you too, dear, but . . .” Suddenly her voice raised and sharpened. “Joel! Get your ass moving there, plunge! Don’t you goddamn see those fish slipping out?” Back in regular voice: “Damn dreamer kid, you were right, never should have hired him. Got to go, Hank.’Bye.”
She didn’t even ask for advice. Settled in, with tongue turned salty as any skipper on the fish. Out there doing what he wanted to do, and he the expert.
Next day he took over the children, hearing first a lecture from Adele on food they should eat and books they should be reading. “And make sure you give them little jobs, it builds character. And be sure they wear socks and that their shoes don’t get wet. Make them change underclothes at least every second day.” She handed him a bag of clean clothes. “After a while you’ll need to start washing them yourself. Leave time for them to dry if you wash way out in the country instead of in town at a laundromat. Children can catch cold in damp underwear. Men don’t understand these things. And, now, let me see . . .” She handed him a list.
The house echoed bleak without Jody, lonesome even when Pete crawled over him or when Dawn noisily made them all Jell-O. He read to them but nobody really paid attention. They picked at meals from cans. There was always plenty of repair or construction waiting around the house that he’d half built himself, and dead trees to cut for firewood. Henny waited by tools since it was his job to hand them to his dad, but Hank had no urge for hammer or saw. Even the view of town lights over the water from the picture window had lost its pleasure, as had drinking a scotch in the armchair by the window after the children were asleep. All of it lacked the seasoning of Jody’s presence. Instead of the solitude he treasured by living an hour’s drive from town, he wanted friends—Jody more than any—to talk out his feared growing dependence on the Japanese—or to talk over it.
“Daddy, when are we going to town?” demanded Dawn. Younger than her brother but by nature the forward one, she stood in front of Henny and Pete and presumably spoke for them all. “Melissa, my very best friend in all the world, is in town. And poor little Petey misses Aunt Adele, and Henny. . .”
“I like it here with you, Dad,” said Henny, trying to make his voice deep.
“Well, you can just say that,” snapped Dawn. “But you know you miss all kinds of things we have at Auntie Adele’s. We didn’t even bring ice cream.”
Adele over the phone laughed, but to Hank it wasn’t nice. “I could have told you. Of course, come back if you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa. I have the children so packed into their own little rooms that it would be cruel to move them.”
Hank instead slept aboard his Jody Dawn, now back in the water at the shipyard awaiting orders. His men had flown home in his absence, Seth to California and Mo to the Midwest. Neither seemed refreshed by the experience. Both had returned to Kodiak sooner than planned.
Seth had encountered the Marion he’d almost married, and she appeared to be the better without him, even cheerful. There she was wheeling a grocery cart with one child in the basket straddling juice cartons and a smaller one in the seat waving its little arms. Hell of a lot prettier woman three years ago, he consoled himself. Now she had messy hair. And weight. He wouldn’t have minded holding the kids, but she didn’t
offer.
Mo’s mom and sisters let no hour go by without some hint that he ought to call up Alice, who still wasn’t married either, or how sad it was for a man already twenty-seven not to have a family. Although he pitched in, both his younger brother (maybe stuck at home because he’d left) and his dad, implied that he’d deserted responsibility for the easy life. “Catching things that don’t need to be plowed, planted, or mucked,” his father put it. “You know Sundays right here at the pond, you can catch all the fish you want. After milking and church and dinner. All afternoon to your heart’s content.”
They reunited over fried halibut at Solly’s that evening. The place was nearly deserted. “Everybody’s off fishing somewhere but us,” muttered Seth. “So the Japs treated you nice as usual. The Jody Dawns good in the water again, but nothing’s happening. When do we fish?”
Hank explained the change of plans and the forthcoming new ship specifically adapted for longlining. “My contract with the Japanese saves the Jody Dawn as long as we can keep her productive.” He gulped beer without savor. “You guys have an option. As long as I can keep the Jody Dawn, you run her if that’s your choice. Seth stays skipper, you’ve got her all to yourselves. There are possibilities. They say there’s still king crab around Adak.”
“Weather there’s even more shitty than the Bering,” said Seth. “Not that it matters.”
“Or, maybe . . At his tone both Seth and Mo frowned, and listened. “Or . . . I could bring in somebody else to run the Jody Dawn—Tolly Smith’s without a boat just now—and well hang together on this new longliner. New kind of fishing. Different for any of us. Bigger crew.” Mo groaned. “Seth as mate. Then you, Mo, and Terry after Jody’s salmon ends, as deck bosses spelling each other, two shifts clockaround.” Hank decided to make it a challenge. “That is, assuming everybody can learn the gear.”
“Since when can’t we learn new gear?” snapped Seth. It brought him to life. “And since when have you and me been separate?”
“Yeah, Boss,” echoed Mo. “But I don’t know about in charge of crew. You just let me work under Seth like before.”
“We’ll figure something.” At last he could drain his glass and enjoy it. They were with him. He waved for another round. Next hurdle: “A catcher-freezer ship’s a different game. The processing line’s separate. I . . . have a Japanese who’s going to be boss there. His name’s Kodama, and he might be scratchy. But what he says below decks goes. You’ve got to know that. Topside, of course, Seth’s in authority. But you’ll be sharing some apes between deck and factory depending on workload. You’ll have to get along.”
In the silence John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang from the jukebox. “What are you doing to us, Hank?” said Seth softly. “A Jap?”
Hurdle passed. No fury. “Kodama’s our kind. You’ll see.”
But Seth looked away. His face was no longer the boyish open one of a dozen years before, when he and Hank had buddied and crewed together. Scratchy as Kodama, each with hang-ups. What have I bought for myself? Hank wondered. And, worse than crew disruption, what of this new long-line regimen with factory at sea? He’d never done it himself at any level, and now to be in charge?
They slathered tartar sauce across the halibut steaks and ate in glum silence.
The bartender called Hank to the phone. It was Jody from Alitak on the south end of Kodiak Island. Her voice was brisk and concise. “Adele guessed you’d be there. Boozing it up? Now listen. We just brought in a good load, waiting to deliver. A few days’ closure coming up. Leaving Terry and Ham to mind the boat. I’ll fly in tomorrow morning.”
“Hey. No. Send home Terry and Ham. I’ll fly down there instead. Then it’ll be just you and me.”
“You’re forgetting our children. I miss them too.” Her voice lightened. “But if you pick me up at the airport all by yourself. . . No need to tell anybody for a few hours.”
“I’ll be there!”
Hank had barely returned to the table when the bartender called him again. It was John Gains at the cannery, his asshole manner as perfunctory as usual. “Why does it always take a day to find you? Now there’s no time. Pack your bags tonight. Black cod quotas suddenly coming to a head at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Anchorage. Shoji Tsurifune’s flying in. Pack for several days. We might need to go on to D.C. Our driver can pick you up tomorrow morning at nine fifteen if you don’t want to park at the airport.”
“Can’t do it, John. Made other commitments. Since you seem to be talking to Tsurifune, tell him sorry and wish him luck.”
“I don’t think you understand your commitments.”
“They bought my boat, not me.”
“Shoji wants you there. You’d better read the contracts you’ve signed.”
In the end, controlling anger as best he could, Hank stood in the airport next morning dressed in a suit, able to see the arriving Jody only minutes before his own plane took off. He watched her bounce from the small plane, the image of her old self, hair tied back in a ponytail, wool shirttails flapping against jeans, and ran to greet her as she sashayed across the tarmac.
Her arms went around him, and they held each other. She smelled of fish and other boat odors with barely a scent left of Jody herself, but still he was stimulated at once.
“Hank wearing a suit? Who’s died?”
He explained. She turned indignant at his giving in, until she saw his own frustration.
“But, now,” he said. “This flight to Anchorage is full, I checked. But I’ve got you reserved on the afternoon one.”
She laughed. “My God you men. I’m filthy, I’ll need ten hot baths and all kinds of laundry before I’d feel right for the city. And, I haven’t seen our children in two weeks.” John called urgently to board the Anchorage plane. She kissed him again. “I’ll come tomorrow.”
Hank hurried off in better spirits knowing he’d hold her soon again. It was a blue-sky day for the flight up Cook Inlet. Hank could now relax. He spoke more easily than before to John Gains beside him, and watched the water catching sparkles. By the time the plane swept up the tidal mudflats that led to the scatter of high square buildings that was the city, he’d managed to be agreeable.
At the big Anchorage hotel there were the usual serious faces that now peopled Council meetings. Hank had grown to recognize most of them. They bustled between sessions or conferred in knots with their heads bent inward. The men wore suits, the women business costume close to suits. Only a single halibut crew’s shoulders bulged from plaid shirts. Standing apart from the rest, short Asians huddled in bunches.
Council meetings had changed greatly in the five years since they had been established under the national act that claimed for Americans the fish within two hundred miles of their coasts. At first, fishermen came in clean boat clothes to state their cases, and the few lawyers and many fishery bureaucrats who listened all tried to dress like fishermen. Now the lawyers had multiplied enough to dominate the scene, so that the bureaucrats dressed like lawyers, and fishermen felt they needed to dress the same to be heard.
The elevator closed to carry Hank and John Gains up to floors with windows overlooking mountains snow streaked even in late August. Before they parted to their separate rooms, Gains reminded him: “We’re having lunch with Tsurifune in his suite. You might want to make notes.”
“Gotcha,” he said in good humor. Play the game today, he’d decided. Then to hell with anything but Jody tomorrow.
At the Tsurifune suite, a Japanese Hank didn’t know admitted them. Shoji Tsurifune, impeccably trim, strode over to greet them smoothly. He merely nodded to Gains, but shook Hank’s hand. “Glad you could make it,” he said, as earnestly as if he himself had not ordered it.
Other Japanese stood around in the room, and hotel employees bustled about, laying platters at a long table. Hank gestured pointedly toward the mountains through a window. “Welcome to my country, Michael.”
Shoji became for a moment the easy, westernized Mike. “After four
years at Harvard I call it second home myself.” He reverted to his role as company heir and introduced Hank to several Japanese all in the same dark suits. Hank remembered meeting some of them in Japan. Each man bowed and presented his card. Hank had brought only five, packed in haste. It made for mild apologies and pleasantries. John Gains pressed in to meet them also, but plainly Mike did not give him the same priority as Hank. John held exactly enough cards to exchange. He produced more when others arrived.
Hank drew Mike aside: “We’ve got to talk about this business of making me—”
“Later, later. Good news. We’ve found you a ship with western headroom. It arrived in Kushiro two days ago and went straight into shipyard for refit. Talk about it later.” Mike eased quickly into a conversation in Japanese.
John Gains came over. “You should be learning some Japanese, more than just the little courtesies. I started by attending classes.”
“Impressive, John.”
Two senior Japanese arrived with younger ones in tow. All in the room treated them with deference. One was old and paper-frail. The other Hank remembered—oh boy, the thick gruff fellow with the red face, who’d been so insulting in a meeting last May that Hank had been triggered into telling off the assembled group. The guy’s thick glasses caught the light. Name? The man greeted him with curt good humor and Hank returned it.
“You remember Mr. Satoh, Hank. Say back konichi-wa and bow a little.”
Hank complied. At least John was good for something.
Everything remained informal until a door opened, and in strode Director Kiyoshi Tsurifune. He exchanged bows with the older men, then accepted deeper bows from the others. His look darted, and fixed on Hank. “Ah. Mr. Crawford, famous American fisherman.” Apparently he said the same phrase in Japanese since several of the others turned to Hank with new interest.
When the director spoke to his son, Shoji answered in English. “The other American’s not here yet, Father. Or the lawyer.”
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