Raiders

by William B. McCloskey

  “Would you talk to them?” Hank smiled.

  Tom returned the smile. “Huh.”

  “Sounds like a good life anyhow.”

  “All scarcer now, everything different. Oysters got diseases we never heard of before, whole beds closed down. That’s what the ol’ man don’t understand. He thinks the gov’ment should stop the outsiders, not regulate him.” Tom frowned ahead. “It’s not enough left for everybody. That’s bottom line. I guess Alaska’s different. That’s why sometimes I wish . . .” He changed the subject abruptly. “Also got two sisters, one of them’s married a waterman. Other one, Sarah, works to an office in Salisbury and ain’t married.” Careful smile. “Like me, independent, I guess—so far. Started late. Neither girl around here but was hooked when I come back.”

  “Vietnam service? That interrupted things for a lot of us. I know. Navy, myself, over there. What about you?”

  It closed the conversation.

  The early sun was casting long yellow-orange rays by the time they reached a place where Tom slowed the engine. At the diminished sound Captain Bart emerged from the cabin. He peered around. “Further in, Tom.”

  I see it.

  “Just easy, easy.”

  “Yes, sir.” To Hank, in an undertone: “I know it good as him but let him do it.”

  Captain Bart examined the land on both sides of the bow moving slowly toward shore. He waved to port, then to starboard, then put his arm down and said, “That’ll do it now.” Tom idled the engine and walked forward to the bow.

  Bart looked around him and drew a long deep breath. “Now ain’t this good life, sir?” he said quietly. “Be on the water and watch the sun rise? Never tires me, all these years.”

  “It is good, sir.” They savored the moment together.

  “Found the reef square-on,” called Tom. He splashed over an iron bar for anchor. It broke the mood.

  “Nice reckoning, Cap’n Bart,” said Hank. “What points ashore did you triangulate on?”

  “Come back?” After Hank clarified: “Ohhh. Look, sir. Big dead tree yonder, just line ‘im with the port scupper.”

  Hank peered, but saw only a whole woods of low pine.

  “Now to starboard . . .” Captain Bart grinned up at Hank and patted his back. “You think maybe a mermaid that side?”

  Hank laughed with him. “I didn’t want your secret, Captain.”

  “Neither did you get it, sir.” Bart pulled a rubber apron from a hook and tied it around his waist. “Eighteen-foot shafts do it this tide, Tom,” he declared over his shoulder.

  Tom had already selected a set of the poles. “Shaft tongs,” he explained to Hank. “Got different lengths for how deep. Stand clear when I swing ’em.” Each pole had metal teeth attached to the ends. The double poles were hinged like scissors so that pulling the tops apart spread the bottoms, and the bottoms with the teeth would then close when the tops were pushed together.

  The shafts clattered as Tom balanced them at their fulcrum and stepped up to the wide rail. He swung them teeth down into the water. It looked easy to Hank. The shafts slid through Tom’s hands until they bumped the seafloor. He then pulled them open, jiggled and pushed, then closed the shafts, and pulled them up rhythmically hand over hand. His whole body entered the motion while his feet kept balance in a dancelike shift and shuffle.

  The teeth that emerged were a steel cage of dripping black mud. Tom swung them across the rail to the table by the cabin, and scissored them open. Out tumbled a few muddy oysters clotted together. Captain Bart’s gloved hands began at once to sort them, while Tom splashed the tongs back into the water.

  The hinged shells of only three oysters were clamped tight. The others lay open with pearly white insides. “Now see here, sir, all the dead arster? Used to be every one was a keeper, firm and solid. You tell me what’s happened.” The captain pushed the keepers through a hole in the table, then scratched through the mud with a tool that combined hammer and pick. He found one more whole oyster. It was not large. He considered. “Hank, is it? Hank, come yere then. Show you to cull.” He maneuvered the shell against a ruler until he found a thin point that barely reached the three-inch mark. “Don’t matter how close she gets, long as you get her there.”

  “That little spit of shell’s like paper. Anything could break it off.”

  “Then treat it gentle.” Bart plopped the oyster through the keeper hole, then swept the open shells overboard.

  The shaftloads from Tom continued to yield more shell than whole oyster. Captain Bart’s hands flew over the mass, sorting easily before the next load arrived. He allowed Hank to sweep the open shells overboard after he had cleared them.

  “Arster gone to hell, sir.” Captain Bart pulled apart a hinged shell that looked whole but had an open gap at its point. The creature inside was dark and shriveled. “Do neither good to theirselves nor us. Got that thing called MSX says the bureaucrat scientists. Didn’t use to be MSX. Now you tell me what’s happened, Hank. You tell me it ain’t something their science boats leaked overboard. Or come from all them new houses with strangers, come to run their fun boats and dump shit into the water. Good healthy arsters used to be everywhere, and no twenty-five bushel limit. Now, see, even the grasses gone scarce.”

  “Grasses?”

  “Seaweeds. All along the shores. Used to get in your propeller and we’d cuss it, but there’s where all the baby fish and crabs growed, used to. Now you don’t hardly see grasses where they used to be. No wonder it ain’t much of a living no more to follow the water. Bought my first boat age nine or ten, eighteen-foot skiff. I been captain of a boat ever since I was eleven or twelve. And the way we’d pull in arster! No more.”

  Hank spoke sympathetically, and thought of king crab gone in Alaska. But Alaskan waters still had other abundance.

  The sun shone clearly and warmed them despite a chilly breeze. It was turning into too nice a day for steady gloom. Captain Bart continued to talk when he found that Hank was interested. “Watermen don’t have no whole lot of money, that’s a fact. But, I don’t know, one good reason they don’t have none, they get paid every day, they spend it.”

  Hank laughed. “Sounds like fishermen everywhere.”

  “That so?” Hank asked whether he felt he was getting fair price for his catch, and the captain exclaimed, with a new burst of energy, “No way! It ain’t no money into arster business. It takes so much to operate with. ‘Fore you leave the dock you got ten or fifteen gallon of gasoline, that’s eight or ten dollar right there. Then you got your drinks, sandwiches, your coal oil . . . Takes at least twenty dollar before you untie your boat. Little better money in crab business, sometimes.” He threw up his hands. “But ain’t no use to complain. What else does a man want to do?”

  After Tom had maneuvered his shafts the length of the boat’s rail and worked out the portion of the reef under the boat, he went forward to let out the anchor line and drift to a different stretch of the reef. The cull table emptied. Hank waited to follow Captain Bart into the heat of the cabin. His feet had chilled from standing in one place and so had his fingers despite their motion. Yet the captain merely stretched out his neck like a turtle and peered around.

  A half dozen other boats lay scattered along the horizon, but only one other worked close by. The man aboard it stood alone. Shells and mud were piled high on his table, waiting to be culled. Hank didn’t recognize him from the breakfast diner until Captain Bart shouted over merrily, “Bible says love thy neighbor, Billy. You reckon that means me and you?”

  “Jest keep to your side, Bart.”

  “If I decide to move your way, tell you what.” Captain Bart slapped his leg and winked at Hank. “I’ll take my pants down and let you scratch my tay-ul.”

  Captain Billy bent over his shafts without replying.

  Captain Bart nudged Hank. “Now listen to this next.” He raised his voice again. “You there, Mr. Billy?”

  “Leave him alone, Daddy.”

  Tom said it with enou
gh authority that his father shrugged, muttered, “Need to get warm,” and entered the cabin.

  Tom turned to Hank. “Daddy and Captain Bill both think they discovered this bar and own it. Don’t get me started on that one. They used to be buddies. Used to enjoy complainin’ together all night long. Bill’s even my godfather.” He motioned for them to go inside. “I’ve got some questions.”

  The cabin’s heat was welcome despite the close odor of kerosene. Hank crowded with Tom on one of the short benches since the captain had spread himself comfortably on the other. They unpacked lunches and soft drinks.

  Captain Bart cut his sandwich into small pieces. “Don’t never let no dentist at your teeth, Hank. Lest you want to lose ’em every one.”

  “Alaska now.” Tom’s eyes traveled over Hank’s shoulders and face. “Hard fishing up there? Anything hard like here?”

  “Ohh . . . at times.” Hank decided not to embellish beyond a brief description of a Bering Sea winter. When Tom pressed for more, he summarized, “I’ve seined for salmon, worked pots for crabs, once trawled for bottomfish. Now I’m longlining for halibut and black cod. One thing you have up there’s variety.”

  “Variety here, too,” said Captain Bart at once. “Only what you see now is arster. But springtimes we run eel traps, sell some for expenses, keep some for bait. Gill net for rockfish. Summers put up a pound net and use that bait. Then go for the crab. It’s busy here all times, whatever you make it.”

  Tom snorted. “Not the same.”

  His dad quickly changed the subject. “You ain’t said how you catch your arsters, Hank. Same as here?”

  Hank shook his head. “No oysters, far as I know. Clams now. I’ve dug clams at low tide sometimes, for fun.”

  Captain Bart threw up his hands, then slapped them on the table. “That does it for Alaska!” He nodded significantly to his son. “Be grateful the Good Lord put us yere in Maryland on Chesapeake Bay where there’s arster.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tom shut his eyes and drew a breath, then turned back to Hank. His naturally flat voice remained quiet, but his questions increased in detail and persistence. He wanted to know all manner of sizes—boats, crews, fish, crabs, nets—as well as matters like the fight you’d expect from a salmon, what came up inside a bottom trawl, the single girls in Alaska, the new color electronics. As Hank answered, Tom’s hands crept over each other while his tongue explored his upper lip. “Make good money up there too, I bet.”

  Hank sensed the direction of Tom’s drive and chose his words carefully. “Fair money, sometimes. Plenty of nice people, sure. But not cheap to live. Everything’s expensive. And most good boats have crews that hang on, so—”

  “But a fisherman that’s experienced? Not afraid of cold water? Bound to be somebody’d hire him.”

  “It does happen.”

  “Now our boat,” said Captain Bart. “She’s strong. Lot of these boats around yere ain’t nothin’ like good as this boat.” His look toward his son was anxious. “Don’t leak neither drop. And own it every bit, motor and all.”

  “Owned it for years and years, Daddy. Nothing’s changed except that everything gets scarcer.”

  Captain Bart shook his head. They ate in silence for a while. Hank drew a breath and broached an immediate subject on his mind. Father and son looked at each other, back as a team again, and joined in a chuckle. “You want to do the shafts, Hank?” Tom’s uncertain manner changed to confidence. “Well then, maybe you could try.”

  Captain Bart slapped his leg. “But Hank, listen yere. You fall in, son, do us a favor. Fall close to the boat, make it easier to fish you out.” Hank shared their laugh.

  Back on deck, Tom turned over the eighteen-foot shafts to Hank and took up the next longest for himself. They stationed him on the port side while Tom continued on the starboard. “So’s neither of us bangs the other,” said Tom diplomatically.

  Hank gripped the shafts with a sense of ceremony. They were heavy, but when he found their fulcrum the weight evened out. He brushed a hand over the gunwale to make sure it wasn’t iced, then stepped up to it with knees bent for control as he would on a storm-pitched boat. Suddenly the shafts swept around on their own and nearly twisted from his grasp. When he leaned forward to right them he nearly lost his balance. Only the spring of his knees kept him from falling overboard.

  “Steady there, Hank,” said Tom with a grin.

  His feet explored the few inches of flat surface. Enough to hold him although tight for maneuvering. No stepping forward or back, just sideways. He was glad for calm water. And glad he’d bought boots with heavy treads.

  The shafts were both graceful and clumsy. As soon as he dipped the tong end toward the water and his hands left their fulcrum, the weight pulled him outward again, but now he knew to compensate by leaning back. The poles eased through his hands. He liked their solid feel, and the scrape that passed through his arms of open tongs on hard seafloor.

  “Push into it, Hank. Got to dig.”

  Hank pictured claw machines in old amusement parks. Only if the claws raked down while their teeth closed did they grasp anything. He gripped the poles in open position, jiggled them, and pushed down. It unbalanced him again. In rough seas the boat might have slid from under his feet to leave him swaying on the poles. He shifted quickly to weight himself back on the rail, and hoped those watching hadn’t noticed.

  “Wish I had a camera now,” drawled Captain Bart. He was already culling Tom’s first load. “Keep at it, son.”

  “Hi yo!” Hank countered, but suddenly he felt like a child given a toy tool to keep him busy. He mustered his forces, drove down the shafts, and pushed them together. When he pulled up, ha! They had extra weight. He gripped the shafts and started to raise them hand over hand. Weight indeed! And now there was true unbalance. Holding his back stiff didn’t help. He tried to copy Tom’s dancelike sway with hips in an easy pivot. The weight and the drag both seemed to increase foot by foot as the poles rose above his head.

  At last the tongs broke water. His grip was too close down to swing them over to the culling table. With bent knees he shifted hands on the poles to gain back their length. It was clumsy. They swayed, the tongs dipped back into the water, and the weight twisted his wrists.

  Panting now, he brought the closed tongs to the table and pulled them open. Out dropped a single open shell, followed by a dribble of mud. Tom deposited his next delivery on the other side of the table. It tumbled into a high heap. Worst of all, neither Tom nor Captain Bart joked or commented. He was now being judged.

  The day progressed. Hank shrugged off pride, developed a rhythm, and with perseverance finally produced loads large enough to make a clatter on the table. There was never one to equal a third of those Tom delivered. His back soon ached, then his shoulders and arms, then his wrists, but he continued to enjoy himself. Out of the question to give up.

  The afternoon sun began to cast long shadows. Winter daylight would last no more than another two hours. The piles of keeper oysters had risen although Captain Bart grumbled that if it was thirty bushels he’d dance a jig. The law allowed them twenty-five bushels apiece a day, caught sunup to sundown. When it came time to move again, Captain Bart gestured toward the boat of Captain Billy. “Jest ease over longside of him, Tom, and we’ll dip some there.” He nudged Hank. “Fourth of July might be over by the calendar, but might be you’ll see some Christmas fireworks.”

  “No, Daddy. That’s his side.”

  “What? When I found this whole reef myself?”

  Tom’s face tightened. “You both found it same day,” he snapped. “Let it be.”

  While Tom went forward to pull his makeshift anchor, Bart muttered, “Boy gets itchy sometimes, Hank. Ever since Marines and Vietnam. He was hurt, you see. Now, except for the limp, he’s got over that. But Tom’s off by hisself, just a rented room and kitchen. Single like he is, there’s room for him at the house and his mother be glad. Hardly ever goes out, sometimes drinks heavy. Now does that seem right to
you? I come back from Army against the Krauts, and seen some bad things. But I went right back to the boat and raised my family. Where’s the sense of remembering?”

  Hank kept his reply neutral. Tom could be like Jones Henry who never forgave the Japanese. He himself had seen bad enough in Vietnam from the deck of a river craft, but knew of horrors on land that might never heal.

  They left the grounds for another. Captain Bart steered. Tom, long over his anger, briskly shoveled and kicked overboard the random rejects that had fallen from the cull table. Hank joined him. Tom glanced back at his father, then lowered his voice. “Hank. Tell me for sure. There’s boats and good catch up in Alaska?”

  “No guarantee. But maybe.” Hank didn’t want to encourage Tom and open a floodgate, yet he knew that as captain of a multicrew longliner he could find a berth for a hard-working fisherman. He surveyed the scuffed little Aggie and the tools of grunt labor that scratched up passive oysters from seashore water, and at the scrub shoreline. Was his problem so bad after all? Free from the worst of demons that Vietnam had left with others, and captain-owner of a ship that harvested vigorous fish from the sea surrounded by the great mountain country that he loved?

  Tom’s face was young, but lined with a strain beyond youth. The contrast showed especially in his narrowed eyes, alive and searching, but guarded. “It’s nice country here, Hank.” He seemed to consider. “And on the water like this you feel good. But I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know?” Hank slapped his shoulder, and made it as hearty and noncommittal as he could. “Join the crowd, buddy.”

  By the time to quit for the day and deliver, the sun was orange on the horizon and a chilly breeze blew, but their spirits had turned high. Father and son exchanged banter with other boats heading in, some of it gleefully obscene. Mud caked Hank’s coveralls from neck to boots, his hands were blistered even through gloves, and he felt the enormous contentment of a day worked at sea in good company. The only job left at dock was to fill buckets with oysters for the crane to raise. He gaily started to compete with Tom at the shovel, filling a separate bucket and tamping it down.