Raiders

by William B. McCloskey

  Kodama paced the length of the gear alley with hands behind his back like Captain Bligh himself. His eyebrows had acquired an upward twist that, along with a ramrod posture, made him seem taller than the largest of the others. His energy filled any space he occupied.

  “So. Captain!” Kodama exclaimed with gold teeth exposed. “Seeing all is good. Strong product, hold filling, workers happy because productive.” The hands remained clasped behind his back.

  Hank smiled. “All genki, right?”

  “Genki, hai!” Kodama’s face, smoother now than in office days, had developed a ruddy confidence in place of the old scratchy edge. His gaze retained its directed burn, but it now fitted the man’s package differently to include heavy-humored animation. “Freezers filling filling. Soon vessel so low in water that fishes swim aboard without hooks, thusly saving bait. Ha-ha. Therefore, fortunate that freezer cargo vessel comes tomorrow for collection of product.”

  Hank walked around. He paused by the baiting table. Kodama moved in at once to declare, “Tom. Must push bait further into circle.” The man nodded without looking up. They next went to the gutting station, and Kodama continued with, “Ham. Must scrape out intestines harder, harder. See how Arty scrapes.”

  Ham, whose face had been blank, glared as he held up a carcass and shook it. “You see any gut left in there?”

  Kodama studied it. “Good. That one good perhaps. Satisfactory.”

  “All of them fuckin’ good.” Ham’s glare settled on Hank. His wide face had reddened and his usual earnest, unquestioning expression had tightened at the mouth.

  “Looks fine to me,” said Hank, making his voice firm. “Looks very fine.”

  “Perhaps.” Kodama brushed it off with a hand. “Back to work, Ham, steady, steady.”

  “You guys are doing fine,” Hank declared, but felt lame as he said it. He continued down metal stairs to the lower deck and Kodama followed. The Japanese held open the hatch door to the packing room and beckoned Hank through first. Inside, two crewmen glanced up from the fish they were hosing at a long sink, greeted him with a casual “Yo Boss,” and continued to work at an easy pace. Then Kodama entered. Was it imagination, Hank wondered, or did those two sets of hands suddenly start to work their brushes harder?

  Hank enjoyed the sight of the sturdy black sablefish carcasses with their exposed thick white meat where the head had been lopped. It was indeed a handsome product he was delivering. The fins flicked on hides not yet stiffened, creatures still alive not an hour ago. He spot-checked tray weights. It all seemed right.

  Kodama’s hands returned behind his back. He watched the two men in silence. Without looking up they vigorously brushed inside the gutted fish, hosed and brushed further, then arranged the carcasses eight to a tray. They now worked with such animation that hose water splattered from their aprons and dripped from straggles of adolescent whisker on their chins. Both kids’ shaggy hair was tucked into white sanitary caps. It made their young faces look skinned.

  Kodama slowly drew a pair of white gloves from his pocket and slid in his fingers. He picked up one carcass after another, examined it, then returned it either atop the steel rollers where it waited for storage or to a tray if it had already been packed. At last, “Ha!” he said as he waved a fish.

  “Grade two in grade-one tray!”

  Both kids looked up warily.

  Kodama pointed to a nick in the tail. “Who has done this? Inferior product. Kenny? Slim? Which has failed to see? Very bad.”

  Hank drew a breath and faced it. “People don’t eat the tail. Doesn’t affect the meat and hardly noticed. Look. A cut the size of my little finger. Just something a hook snagged.”

  “Ha! In Tsukiji noticed of course, perhaps.”

  The two kids watched. Hank realized that he needed to take a stand. “This is still a grade-A fish. For somebody’s table, not to hang on a wall.”

  “Captain! In Tsukiji very high standard!”

  Hank firmed his voice. “I truly respect your careful eye, Kodama-san. But this is a keeper.” He tapped the tray from which Kodama had lifted the fish. Kodama paused, then with a frown returned it. Hank noted that the crewmen exchanged glances. Their mouths twitched in quick grins as they bent back to scrubbing fish.

  Kodama started to lead him back to the main deck. “While I’m here,” Hank said, “might as well check the freezers.” It was a chore he seldom performed.

  The muscles around Kodama’s eyes flickered. “Very cold in freezer.” He waved toward the trays. “Only trays like thus, frozen cold cold.”

  A fleece-lined jacket hung by a hook alongside the freezer entrance. Hank slipped it on. “Let’s go.”

  Kodama seemed to hesitate, then declared with his usual vigor, “Of course.”

  When Kodama pulled open the heavy insulated door the frigid air blasted over them. Inside, seen through their breaths, the white-glazed metal racks held trays and trays. Hank dutifully raised the lid of one to touch black shapes inside for hardness. “Good show, Kodama-san. Nice product.”

  “Of course.”

  Hank began to count the full trays in one of the high racks. He lost count, then started again.

  “Cold, cold,” said Kodama. He sounded anxious, even uneasy. “Bad dangerous to stay here long. Let us go.”

  Hank saw that he had no coat. “Go. I’ll join you in a minute.” Kodama remained. Hank totaled the trays in one rack, then counted the racks and multiplied in his head. “Funny. This comes to more than on the manifest you gave me, Kodama-san. By a couple of thousand pounds at least.”

  “Of course!” Kodama asserted. He hesitated, rare for him, before adding, “Many spaces missing trays.”

  “Not the ones I see here.”

  “Trays behind trays, many missing.”

  Hank accepted. The cold had begun to penetrate his jacket and his fingers were stiffening painfully. He was glad to leave.

  Next morning Kodama, in his cabin, slowly changed from coveralls to a clean shirt, filling the time before he would join Captain Carford to board the freezer vessel Torafune Maru. More important, he prepared his mind. Nothing in him had changed outwardly. He remained fierce in his devotion to a quality product because this alone now defined him. Only when the Torafune came monthly to collect their frozen sablefish and transport them to Japan did the immensity of what he’d done shorten his breath and sicken him. For criminals, it was said, the fifth or sixth crime didn’t shatter one like the first. If such were only so.

  He stared at the gray metal walls of his cabin. They had become his prison. The air was stuffy despite the ship’s ventilating system, since he chose never to hook the door ajar as did most of the others aboard, but this gave him precious privacy. With every object folded or secured, it was a room of bare simplicity. The only object of disorder he allowed was the little paper ship that his older son had given him on departure nearly a year ago. All the red and blue had faded, and a careless tea spill during rough weather had removed the stiffness from one side of the hull so that he needed to prop up the model with a matchbox. Faded also was the Japanese script on the side of the collapsed hull that enjoined him to be brave and honorable.

  The contents of the terrible sealed envelope from Shoji Tsurifune had remained unread and virtually forgotten until five months ago during the May delivery to the freezer ship, when agent Muneo Watanabe riding aboard handed him a second envelope. Said the agent in private, with stiff formality, “Combine this with the other instructions, and now please perform them.”

  Kodama had turned wary at once, but spoke strongly. “I’ve been delivering a grade-one sablefish product. For the other, I’m a fisherman, not a spy.”

  “This has nothing to do with your reports on vessel and personnel. Yes, Subdirector Shoji Tsurifune is still disappointed with those. You’d better remember that some day soon he’ll become director. But that’s for another time. You’re instructed now to stop catching so much sablefish.”

  “Why are we here then? Captain
Carford’s a good fisherman. I can do nothing about success.” Kodama suppressed saying that it was often he himself who drove the crew hardest.

  “You control the catch log before he sees it. What you deliver to us must at least show as less on the papers.”

  Kodama had tried to remain calm despite his feeling of outrage. “That would cheat the fishermen who work for shares, not salary.”

  “Don’t worry. The subdirector can make it up to the captain in other ways.”

  “And the crew?”

  “Common crew’s not your concern. American fishermen have become greedy greedy. If they succeed there’s nothing left for Japanese vessels. Remember that.”

  “I’m not a cheater.”

  “You’re a worker for Tsurifune Suisan. You were approved for this position with the understanding that you’d convey information, and that you’d do what you were told.”

  It turned out that his own reports had helped bring about the subdirector’s instructions. To avoid spying on the habits of the captain and the others, Kodama had filled the reports with tabulations of other vessels, even those distant ones counted on radar during wheelhouse visits. The number of vessels kept increasing. It proved that Americans were now banding together to capture more and more sablefish. Said agent Watanabe, “Your own vessel’s deliveries using the American quota thus add to the total they’ll use against us, to prove that they can catch all sablefish in Alaska and throw us out. Your old envelope contains basic procedures for underlogging and concealing it. Add to that these codes for reporting to us the actual catch. You’ll now give us two manifests at each delivery: the one in English where you’ll reduce the numbers of what you’ve caught, and the hidden one in Japanese with coded true figures.”

  Kodama had accepted the second envelope, read the contents of both with growing disgust, and two nights later had torn them into small pieces that he scattered into the water. During the next month he’d worked his men even harder to achieve quality. This is what will speak for me, he reasoned. At the June delivery agent Watanabe had examined the manifest, then looked up through thin-rimmed glasses. “You’ve changed nothing.”

  “First-quality product!”

  “No one questions that. Yet you’ve reported too much as before.”

  “I’m just a fisherman. The instructions are too complicated to understand.”

  “Don’t talk like an animal! You worked for years in the fishery office. We’ll have your replacement on the cargo run next month, ready to take over unless there’s full compliance. Then don’t expect to stay with the Tsurifune company, or to creep back like a poor dog to the fishery office after the subdirector talks to them.” Agent Watanabe returned his glare, and handed him an envelope with new codes for the month.

  And thus had Yukihiro Kodama, offspring of samurai, decided that his family needed him to survive, and had taken to dishonor even though he had kept it to the barest minimum.

  Now the summer had passed, the Americans had failed to harvest the entire sablefish quota despite their efforts, and just in this month, October, the Japanese fleet had been allowed to reenter Alaskan waters to share the quota’s remaining sablefish.

  Now, as in the fourth week of each month since they had started fishing, Kodama waited beside Captain Henry Carford for the arrival of the cargo ship. It slid into view, this image of his homeland, so large it barely rocked in the water that made the Puale Bay heave and pitch. Its scupper holes, looking like whale eyes, gushed water, and its heavy engine drummed within the steel depths. He watched as the captain skillfully eased their own vessel alongside while both crews adjusted fenders. The rail of the smaller vessel he rode swooped up and down at least four meters against the high black hull with familiar Japanese characters.

  A ladder rattled down from above. Captain Carford, impulsive always, went first. He waited for the highest rise of the deck where he stood, leapt clutching the ladder’s rope sides, then quickly scrambled up several rungs to avoid the Puale Bays rail that could possibly surge higher on the next wave and crush his legs. Kodama followed with the waterproof bag of papers bouncing on his back.

  On the wide deck of the Torafune Maru Kodama exchanged curt bows with the crewmen, a nod and deeper bow with Hoshi Tamukai, who was now only a crewman but had once been a fishing master, and then, in the wheelhouse where he followed Captain Carford, traded deep bows with the freezer ship captain and with company agent Watanabe.

  The two Japanese officers spoke enough English for pleasantries and shook hands western style. Then in the wardroom Kodama translated business exchanges as they examined the manifest and signed papers. A white-coated steward placed Japanese tidbits on the table. Captain Carford began eating them at once with his near-impolite American energy. Kodama sampled a few, but without the pleasure they had once given him during the earliest visits.

  The agent addressed Captain Carford in English. “The product of fishing vessel Puale Bay is always good quality. We find it is not necessary to check it.”

  Carford-san nodded toward Kodama. “That’s because I have such a quality fishing master.”

  Kodama acknowledged with a slight bow while the generosity stabbed his heart.

  Carford-san continued to drink green tea from a cup the steward refilled at once, and to attack vigorously the sashimi laid before him. He gobbled even the sliced radish arranged like blossoms that was meant only for decoration. For a man of such authority, Kodama thought, embarrassed for him, Captain lost dignity in the presence of food. Eventually the captain’s friend Tolly Smith joined him after making a delivery from his small vessel. His enthusiasm for the food was even more childish.

  Agent Watanabe turned to Kodama without changing his bland expression, and spoke in Japanese. “You still under-report just enough to keep us from replacing you, even though the subdirector’s going to be disappointed again. Don’t you understand that it’s now more important than ever to keep the American catch looking small, with your countrymen back on these grounds trying to prove Americans can’t catch it all?”

  Kodama’s stare remained on the agent’s face. There was nothing he could say, but to look away would be worse.

  “Boy, but I like this raw sea urchin, this umi, ” declared Carford-san heartily. “You don’t get it over here, so I look forward to your coming.”

  The agent told the steward in Japanese to bring more umi for the guests, then said in English, “Enjoy all on the platter, please. More will come.”

  Another steward brought in carafes of warm sake and cups. The captain of the ship immediately poured some of the liquid into the Americans’ cups. Carford-san knew enough to reciprocate. They all drank toasts to Japanese-American friendship.

  Agent Watanabe continued casually in Japanese to Kodama, “You don’t seem yet to understand duty to your countrymen. It would be easier than you might think to replace you.”

  “I can’t do more than this. The captain’s beginning to suspect. He’s not stupid.”

  “Then it’s you who haven’t done it properly.”

  Kodama closed his eyes and turned away. If only life were like the fight of equal adversaries on the judo mat.

  When the meeting ended Kodama picked up a letter from his wife in the ship’s office, then climbed down into the freezer hold to watch the proper storage of the product over which he had expended his energies and reputation. The workers moved as gray shapes in the frosty air. There in rubber clothing and a thick jacket was former fishing master Tamukai, lifting heavy boxes from the pallet and carrying them with bent knees to the storage lockers. If Tamukai had not been working they’d have talked, but this sometimes embarrassed them both so that Kodama was glad enough merely to nod. With so few Japanese vessels able to fish anymore in Alaskan waters where they once were the kings, even a fishing master was lucky to have work back on the sea.

  Tamukai came from the locker. He studied Kodama with teeth clenched in a smile that was not friendly. Suddenly Kodama realized: This man is the replacement
they have waiting if I fail them!

  Jody’s day ran its course. The unidentified-caller message from the morning came from a woman who wanted to turn her husband in as a drug addict. Jody explained that the man himself needed to request treatment or it wouldn’t work. Later a drunk staggered into the office claiming that big worms were waiting outside to eat him, followed just at lunchtime by a native whom she knew to be a hard worker when sober, whose knees simply buckled by her desk. Both needed attention and all the consequent paperwork. By the time she was able to join her fisher-wife friends to plan out their newest civic challenge on behalf of the boats, they had all finished eating and needed to return to their jobs. “But we’ve picked you to speak last at city council and sum it up,” said Madge Farley. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” Waiting when Jody returned to the office were two earnest young men in black, performing their year of Mormon missionary work, who tried to convert her while phones rang and she tried to be polite, until she lost patience and ordered them out despite their hurt expressions.

  At two the kindergarten called to say that Pete was sneezing and had a runny nose, so would Mommy please come get him right away before he infected the others. By the time she collected him the sky was so dark that lights reflected in squiggles on the rain-slick roads. She might have returned with Pete to the office, but drunks and addicts weren’t child’s fare. She could have knocked on Adele’s door, but that would probably have led to a prolonged dinner with yet another rerun of Adele’s latest trip to Paris France, and inadequate time left for the kids’ homework. Instead she and Pete nursed soft drinks in the car with the wipers flicking and the engine turned on occasionally for heat, until she could pick up Dawn and Henny for the ride home.

  The hour-long trip through darkness started with children’s chatter and bickering. Rain drove against the windshield and the glass steamed as the temperature dropped. Jody leaned over the wheel to concentrate. They might have been traversing a walled corridor for all that was visible beyond the headlight beams on the road.