Gone Alaska

by Dave Barrett

  Overwhelmed, I returned the wheel. I felt fairly certain Swanson hadn’t seen me standing there all google-eyed in the doorway. I would pretend not to have noticed because of the clamor of the motor and the music. I cranked the volume on the stereo; then, thinking better of it, plugged in the headphones and covered my ears with them. My shaky fingers were placing a fresh pinch of the green in my pipe when Swanson came barreling in like the world’s biggest-Asshole parent, shouting,

  “Get your ass out there and get them fish in the cooler! Now, damn it!”

  He slapped the pipe out of my hands and ripped the headphones from my ears, then dropped below to the hull without another word.

  I raced out back to salvage what remained of the catch.

  The deck was smeared with blood and scales. The half-dozen remaining salmon were flinching and flopping all around me, gasping. I fell to my knees beside the carcass of the sixty-pound King just in time to get a clumsy hold of another fair-sized King attempting to flop the sluice railing. I half-carried, half-juggled the still kicking salmon to the cooler and dropped it in. The plug piece for the orange and white cooler had been knocked overboard during the scuffle and the little water left in it quickly dribbled out when I righted it.

  Swanson emerged from the wheelhouse with an answer to the plug problem: shoving a hacked-off piece of carrot into the drain hole.

  “Never mind,” Swanson said, referring to the difficulty I was having gathering the catch. “Never mind! I’ll take care of the catch. Grab a bucket. Start filling the cooler.”

  I grabbed the only bucket on deck: the same one we used as a toilet. I had the bucket, but hesitated whether I should use it for the catch.

  “Look,” Swanson said, grabbing the bucket out of my hands. “From over the side! See!”

  Swanson scooped a bucketful from over the side, then poured it back out on the running waves.

  “Is that too fucking much to ask?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought I was supposed to use a clean bucket?”

  “Wash it out!” interrupted Swanson. “And don’t suppose. Don’t be sorry. Just do it right the first time, dumb ass!”

  It took everything I had not to answer back.

  After refilling the 20-gallon cooler and giving the deck a quick swamping, I joined Swanson in the cockpit of the Western World.

  The cockpit, sometimes referred to as “the turret” because of all the “flak” a puller gets back here, was a four by three by two foot sunken box at the extreme rear of the trawler. It was here, in this four by three by two foot wooden box I would spend fourteen hours a day for the next seven days hauling in the catch.

  “Speed’s the key out here!” Swanson began. “We want those lines in the water as much of the time as possible. Simple percentages. Each line here is capable of snagging four fish in one out... which means... including the second line... as max of eight fish at once! You follow me?”

  I nodded.

  “Think of this in dollars, kid. Eight twenty-pound Kings at $4 a pound adds up to $640 on a single out! Think of this when your arms are so tired you couldn’t raise ‘em if Miss America was shaking her tits in front of your face! Let alone wheel in another 200 pound load of fish! Think of the dollars then and all the time and it’ll be all right. Even when it begins to sound like bullshit and, in fact, you know damn right it’s bullshit—think about it anyway. In and out, kid! In and out! As soon as you get that soaker on board, you want the gear back in the water. Simple percentages.”

  Swanson had me stand back now and watch. He explained how the two trolling poles were hooked up to blocks and pulleys hanging from the gurdie’s steel hayrack. He showed me how to set and release the brake when reeling in and reeling out the trolling lines with the gurdy crank. He showed me how to unclip the four tag-lines from the main trolling line by their steel clothespins and how to be sure to thread the tag-line in with my fingertips only:

  “None of this wrapping the line round your palm shit. A one-handed puller won’t do me no good.”

  Swanson made a gesture of a hand sliced by the blade-thin nylon line.

  After each tag-line was secured, I was instructed to neatly lay the coiled-up line along the fender of the trawler. Then, after I’d brought all four tag-lines in, I could quickly rebait the hooks (with the salted herrings in the bucket beside me), clip the tag-lines back onto the main trolling line, run it back out, and side-step it over to the other trolling line.

  “Remember,” Swanson said. “Speed’s the key! In and out. And don’t ever forget—when it gets tough out here—it’s the dollars you’re back here for. The dollars when it’s tough!”

  “Right,” I said, already reaching over the water for my first tag-line.

  “Oh, yeah” Swanson said, as though an afterthought. “Watch them swells. Don’t have yourself leaning too far out on top of one. Let it pass first. When I’m sitting up there at the wheel I sometimes don’t look back for a half-hour at a time. By that time I’m afraid—“

  “Right,” I said, grabbing onto the hayrack as one of those swells passed. “Guess that water’s colder than it looks.”

  “She’s a cold bitch, all right,” Swanson replied, flashing a rare smile. “Now you’re getting it!”

  And for the next three hours I ran the trolling lines in and out at a furious clip. Swanson sat at the wheel with his ever-present pipe and Hustler magazine in his lap and gave me a thumb’s up progress report from time to time.

  Not once did he let me in on the fact that most of the salmon were bedded down for their noon siesta and that it was highly unlikely I’d snag even one...

  At $4 dollars a pound...

  Chapter Eight

  Miss Sue Ann Bonnet

  I was packing the catch in the ice holds below deck when Old Judge Peterson and his half-crazy, half-Tlingit Indian daughter-in-law, Miss Sue Ann Bonnet, sidled up to the Western World in their purple, plastic skiff. I’d poked my head above deck just in time to see Swanson greet our dinner guests: down on a knee with one hand bracing the shaky skiff alongside the trawler and the other extended to give our guests something to climb aboard with.

  “Thank you, Philip,” said Miss Sue Ann Bonnet, climbing aboard with the measured grace of a true lady boarding a yacht.

  Old Judge Peterson’s boarding was more difficult. He was a large man with a bum-leg that fell asleep on him when bent-up in one position for too long. Such was the case now as I watched Swanson and Miss Sue Ann Bonnet drag him out of the skiff.

  “Keerist, almighty!” Old Judge Peterson bellowed, once they’d flopped his six-foot seven carcass onto the damp deck.

  The old man staggered to his feet, spanking the flat of his dead leg’s foot on the deck in goose-step fashion to get the circulation going again. “Keerist! Where’s that big greenhorn I thought I saw working the lines for you the other day? Did he up and scare off on you already, Phil?”

  At this mention of me, I quickly ducked back below to my chores.

  We were anchored in a quiet little cove five miles north of Pelican, Alaska. With our engine shut down, poles stacked up, and lines drawn in, we, and the thirty-odd trawlers assembled here, resembled a congregation of rented rowboats on the first day of fishing season back home. Fragments of conversations from our lamp-lit wheelhouses skipped and scattered across the dark, still water of the cove. Bald eagles lined the tops of dark green Cedars along shore, waiting to see what surprises we slopped out on the waters from a day’s worth of garbage tonight. Black, molecular-like clouds of mosquitoes drifted from trawler to trawler: seeking out boats that had neglected to spray the outer wall of its wheelhouse with insect repellant. The weather and the fishing had been so good we’d anchored in this cove for three nights running—putting off our stopover in Pelican for the time being.

  “Naw,” I heard Swanson say. “I ain’t figured this one out yet. It’s like he should have run off days ago... yet... somehow... he’s still around. Been almost a week! Got him down packing
the catch right now.”

  “Well, just goes to show,” Old Judge Peterson said, still stamping his leg about. “A fella just can’t tell with these kids nowadays. Flighty as a young gal with too many suitors! Don’t got that stick-to-iveness my generation had—or yours, I suppose. Just never can tell. Ain’t that so, Miss Sue Ann Bonnet? Sue Ann?”

  Miss Sue Ann Bonnet was standing directly above me: but to that side of the hatch so I could only see her shadow cast by the deck lights overhead. From her shadow, I could see that she was absently twirling a long lock of her hair with a forefinger.

  “Oh, Miss Sue Ann Bonnet?” I heard Old Judge Peterson say as his shadow put a gentle arm around Sue Ann’s shoulders. “Won’t you come join us for dinner? Let the boy finish his chores so he can join us when he’s done.”

  And without protest, I watched Sue Ann’s shadow move off with Old Judge Peterson’s as their footsteps followed Swanson’s down to the hull.

  Hurriedly, I stuffed chopped ice into the slit bellies of the last half-dozen salmon, simply using what would lie in the open palms of my numb hands. Whereas I usually stacked the salmon neatly like cords of wood along the bulwark, I carelessly chucked these last half-dozen any which way atop the current pile, intending to straighten them later. This much done, I scurried up the ladder leading out of the shadowy holds, wondering what I’d already missed.

  “I’ve a feeling you’ll get a kick out of these two... ” Swanson had informed me that afternoon during a lull out back.

  “Old Judge Peterson’s been here as long as any of these old Scandies. Didn’t come up from the old country though. Came up from a little one-horse town of Jackfork, Oklahoma! Or—excuse me—the little one mule town of Jackass, Okie-homa—as Peterson puts it! Came up during the early 30’s... was up in ’36 when they set the all-time record salmon catch of 126 million fish! This was before technology, kid! Before depth gauges, CB radios, hydraulic power blocks! Hell, yes! I’d give me left nut to be in on something like that. No closure dates. No regulatory commissions. No Indians whining about treaty rights. None of these enviro-fascists from California telling us Alaskans what we can do with our fish! Just pure fishing, kid... pure fishing…”

  “… and wait’ll you get hold of Miss Sue Ann Bonnet! Little crazy, but a real looker. That ain’t her real name—Sue Ann Bonnet. That’s the name Old Judge Peterson’s son, George, gave her when they wed. Father was some kind of chief—Old Crazy Eyes—something. Mother a Swedish whore. Claims she’s some kind of witch-shaman—something. Goes on and on about Mother Earth and Father Sky—about the end of the white man’s world and new dawn of the Indian’s—that sorta shit. Real looker though! And a good sport. Did a little dancing up in Dutch Harbor before her and George Peterson wed... if you know what I mean.”

  The halibut was rolled in a thick yellow dough that tasted like donut. The warm white meat inside had a strange, sweet flavor that was surprisingly not fishy. After five days of eating salmon smoked, baked, fried and reheated as leftovers, the halibut tasted like the most marvelous dish in the world. I scraped my paper plate clean as I watched Miss Sue Ann Bonnet pour fresh brewed coffee into three styro-foam cups.

  Sue Ann handed a steaming cup to me. I was sitting on the floor next to the stove with my back braced against the baseboard of the Western World’s sleeping birth.

  “It’s cowboy coffee!” Sue Ann said, apologizing for the coffee grinds swirling around the top and clinging to the inside of the cup. “You’re supposed to use the grinds like tabacca. See!”

  She tucked her tongue under the corner of her bottom lip so it looked like a plug of tobacco was underneath.

  “Worked my first summer on a purse seiner out of Ketchikan!” Judge Peterson continued. “These here modern boats are luxury-liners compared to what we worked on in those days. We had to haul our own anchor, chop our own wood for the stove. Didn’t have no hydraulic power blocks bringing the nets right up to the boat! Had to haul the catch every inch of the way! Our hands would be so balled-shut in the morning from gripping and pulling and twisting on them raw Manila nets we’d have to soak ‘em in bowls of whiskey just to get ‘em moving again. Then we’d chug-a-lug what was left in the bowls to make us dumb enough to go out and do it all over again! One of these fellas had a still hooked-up to his stove, see... ”

  Miss Sue Ann Bonnet was staring at me with a dark thoughtful expression on her face. When I smiled at her, she did not smile back. I looked away, trying me best to concentrate on Old Judge Peterson’s words, the whiskey already taking effect.

  “Yes, siree, Adam, my boy! We were an all-around different breed of man back then. Tougher, maybe. Not so much ‘cuz we was born tougher... as we became tougher by just surviving the world we was living in then. Do you follow me, Adam?”

  I nodded, refilling my own cup this time.

  “We was coming out of the Depression then... ”

  When I motioned Sue Ann with the bottle for more whiskey, she again showed no sign of recognition... just this far-away staring.

  “... those of us who came up—and lasted—weren’t necessarily looking to get rich. A little food in our bellies... some clothes on our backs... and we was happy as a lark! If there was anything left over... well... that was allotted to what you might refer to as the ‘candy fund’.”

  He squeezed Sue Ann Bonnet’s leg good-naturedly.

  “Those of us who stuck around generally broke ties with our kin. We were sorta cut off up here, see. No phones. No jet planes. As for mail service then... ” He grunted and made a waving gesture with one of his big arms. “Might as well stick your letter in a bottle! If any of the fellas received a ‘Dear John’ letter... chances were he wouldn’t find out about it till he’d plum forgotten what that little farm gal that had him in such a whirl looked like in the first place!”

  At this time, Swanson’s crooked figure came clambering back down the 5-step ladder. He had that strange half-smile, half-grimace on his face. There was a Philip’s screwdriver in his hand.

  “Sorry to cut in on the soap box, old man,” Swanson said. “But I need an extra pair of hands on a busted exhaust hose... and since my new puller here’s off-duty—“

  “At your service, Captain!” Peterson bellowed, leaping off his upended bucket so fast I was amazed he hadn’t cracked his head on the low ceiling.

  “That’s all right, Judge,” I said. “I’ll help with the hose. You and Sue Ann just relax while I—“

  “No,” Judge Peterson said, holding me back with one of his giant hands. “Rest up, Adam. It’s good for an old dog to be of service!”

  While Swanson and Judge Peterson fussed over the exhaust hose at the other end of the hull, Sue Ann and I watched. Some of the sparkle had returned to her eye, but I was still curious to know what she had been thinking about during Peterson’s monologue. When she accepted my second offer of more whiskey, I noticed that alongside the diamond wedding ring on her finger she wore a thin, gold band. It was one of those cheap promise rings I’d seen on a few girls back home at high school. I wondered why she still wore it. From my limited savvy on these matters, I’d always thought the woman took off the promise ring when she got the wedding band.

  “Why don’t you two go up for some air,” Swanson suggested, “Better than sitting there like a couple of kids on a blind date!”

  I helped Sue Ann clean up the paper plates, cups and utensils. Then I followed her above deck.

  A big yellow moon was hanging over the cove as we came out on deck. Sue Ann made her way to rear of the trawler, standing beside the galvanized pipes of the steel hayrack. I sat on the lidded picnic cooler and lit the joint I’d been carrying in the back pocket of my jeans since that morning. The joint was damp and it took a few flicks from my lighter before I got it going O.K.

  Sue Ann removed her bandana now, letting her raven-colored hair fall to the middle of her back. The midnight breeze coming off the open channel loosened and played with individual strands of her hair so they moved like th
in, electric shadows across the side of her face. She did not push them back from her face. She was staring towards the wooded shore. I noticed that that same dark, melancholy look had returned to her eye and seeing this made me shiver. I took one more toke, then passed it on to Sue Ann Bonnet.

  I became aware of the Western World slowly rotating on its anchor. Our deck lights had been turned off. Only a few trawlers anchored here still had any lights on. From a trawler in towards shore, I could hear the faint, electric twang of a country-western song. Outside of this, the only other sounds I heard were the plastic skiff bumping up against the rib of the Western World and Judge Peterson and Philip Swanson joking and cussing from the hull.

  “Listen!” Miss Sue Ann Bonnet said, in a hushed whisper. “Along shore!”

  Spooked from my reverie, I straightened on the cooler. Sue Ann had moved past the hayrack to the edge of the boat, one foot on the sluice railing and an arm around a steel cable.

  “Listen to what?” I said, after a pause. I expected to hear a bear or deer breaking through the brush along shore; or maybe a pod of Orcas blowing somewhere out on the channel. But I heard none of these sounds. Just the same ones from before.

  “Sssh!” Sue Ann answered, still leaning over the side of the boat. “The trees, Adam! You can hear them crying!”

  Looking towards shore, I could just discern the subtle swaying of great trunks in the blue light.

  “Yeah... ” I said, holding in a long toke. “I hear the trees creak. Their creaking sounds nice.”

  “No, Adam!” Sue Ann said—the urgency in her voice making me cough a little as smoke escaped my lungs. “Listen with you heart, not your ears. Listen closer.”