The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories (18 page)

The boat was growing smaller now. The black letters on the transom had faded, the bleached outrigger poles were hairlines over the water. In a little while the hollow exhaust and the low hum of the engine merged with the silence and the boat dwindled to a tiny point. All around the sea was quiet and the sun sank lower in the sky.

He could still feel the heavy beat of his heart and a slow throb in his head. He treaded water for awhile and rested. The haze was lifting and vague patches of blue came through. He looked away from the sun toward San Nicolas, around the long level stretch of horizon, searched the water close about him. But he could see nothing save the wide, empty ocean and the darkening sky above.

He thought of the boat heading out to sea with the night coming on. Out there under the stars with the running lights out and the long lines trailing. Moving along steadily in the same straight line. He wondered vaguely why he should think of the running lights and the lines as though he were still aboard.

A strange, uncertain feeling came over him that he was not in the water. That he was not himself. For a moment his mind split and a part of it seemed to stand away. He was on the dock in Santa Barbara telling the story, quietly telling all about it. And the story was real. It had come like a dream comes, out of the darkness, without reason, confused shadows holding no limits. Presently it would go back into the darkness. But the story was real, only the sea and the air were one. They were like nothing and he could feel nothing. Then slowly, like an easy waking he knew that he
was there in the water, his hands weaving gently to keep him afloat.

The water had deepened to steel blue and out toward the west the orange-red sun buried itself in the sea. For awhile a spectral line that was umber hued lay low along the ocean's rim and then the darkness hurried westward and spread a shroud across the sky. One by one he saw the stars break through the blackness overhead.

He reached out under the water in a slow breast stroke. Cascades of blue phosphorescence flamed up from his arms. From time to time he saw the fire trails of tiny fish streaking down into the deep or heard the splash of something bigger out in the darkness. Once he heard the even swashing of a shark's tail and saw the white, radium sprinkled water where it churned the surface.

He swam until his arms were tired, then he lay on his back moving his hands slowly. The haze had cleared now and he saw the black depths gleaming with the light of stars that swept across the heavens. The soft, sable blackness of the ocean rose to meet the roundness of the sky. Straight up he could see the seven stars of the Pleiades and north a ways the bowl of the dipper, the handle bent toward Polaris. Lower down in the west where the lesser stars faded he saw the unwinking eye of the planet Venus descending into the sea.

His eyes closed for a moment and when they opened he saw the sky like one great picture—star clouds of the Milky Way, dippers, squares and crosses, the pale twinkle of the Sporades and the infinite black depths of space.

A gentle weariness came over him and his hands moved slower in the half-warmth of the water. He was conscious of the slow, sullen breathing of the sea. The mild night air hung low. He felt it pressing down upon his face.

A water film veiled the brightness of the stars and the whole dome of heaven seemed drifting onward in the void. The night was growing darker with a deeper kind of darkness that reached far out beyond the stars. The night flowed down through time . . . a dark river of night that never ended.

Pete was a big fellow, not tall, but wide and thick as a bear, with hands that were big, too, and gnarled and weathered from years at sea. He smoked an old hod of a pipe that seemed built right into his rough, Greek-looking face which was seamed and brown as a block of mahogany. He didn't talk much but when you asked him anything about boats or fishing you could be sure of an answer that was backed up by plenty of experience in all weather and in every kind of boat from little, open double-enders along the Alaska coast to big tuna clippers out of San Diego. Around Sausalito, Pete was considered by the local fishermen not only the best source of reliable information on engine troubles, methods of rigging and handling gear, but a sort of inexhaustible encyclopedia of sea weather, currents and the habits of fish.

Some of the older men like Tom Olsen and Tony Landucci had worked with him on the halibut boats out of Seattle and on the purse seiners and drag boats out of Monterey and around Eureka. And Karl Swenson had been fishing salmon in Alaska the summer of the big storm when Pete had lost his boat and his partner was drowned. They all had stories they liked to tell about his courage, like the time when he jumped into the ocean with a line in his teeth to save a fellow fisherman from the sharks, or when he'd boarded a blazing albacore boat and gotten the crew off and many more, all of which, though Pete rarely talked of these himself, seemed to please him considerably.

To most of the young fellows around the docks who enjoyed boating, or who had boats of their own, or were
building boats themselves, or who just hung around the yards because it was good to be there with the smell of pilings and cedar shavings and copper bottom paint, Pete was a kind of hero.

Pete was just the most perfect kind of guy I could have ever met up with, and I hoped sometime to be able to talk him into going outside with me in my boat. Maybe by him being along with me, I thought, I could get over the crazy fear I'd had of the ocean ever since I was a little kid, a real strange feeling I'd probably gotten from all the stories I'd heard about storms and undertows and ships going down and drownings in the surf and all that, but that at the same time had made the ocean seem so fascinating and exciting. I used to dream of getting out there, scared or not, if that makes any sense. Besides, I knew he could teach me more in one trip than I'd be able to learn in a year by myself. Yet, although I had asked him any number of times, he didn't seem interested in going out. Several of the other fellows had asked him, too, but he never would go. “I go out,” he'd say, “when I get boat for myself.”

And this was apparently what he had in mind. He worked in a brewery up the road and was probably saving his money and looking. He knew every boat on the Bay. But there wasn't one that suited him. Either it was under-powered or overpowered, had too little or too much deck space, or, and this was his most usual comment, “She's not strong.” What he was looking for, he said, was a boat “that fits me.”

Though he hadn't been out for some time, he always wore black dungarees, a big silver buckle on his belt, a hickory shirt, all nice and clean, and a blue watch cap. His heavy peajacket was usually slung over one big shoulder as he walked about the docks on his days off and talked to the
fellows working on their boats. He was sure-footed as a goat and just seemed to float right up a ladder with his jacket hanging on his shoulder and, big as he was, he could jump from one boat to another as light as a feather. Once in a while someone would rib him about the peajacket and watchcap saying, “You look a bit salty there, Pete.” But he'd just smile at them good-naturedly behind his short-stemmed pipe. Of course there wasn't a one of us who wouldn't have dressed the same way except we knew we couldn't get away with it.

Every Sunday morning he'd put on his pin-striped suit that always looked too tight on his big muscular body and with his black Fedora hat, a white handkerchief in his lapel pocket, his orange-tan tie, he'd take the ferry over to the city where he went to his Greek Orthodox church to attend the early service.

Since my boat had a fairly roomy cabin with a little potbellied stove to keep it warm, quite often of an evening some of the fishermen would row in from their moorings for coffee and some yarn swapping. One night along about the end of summer, Pete and some of the other men dropped by. Tony Landucci had come in earlier with some fish and a couple of crabs and we had cooked up a big cioppino. We'd finished eating and were drinking coffee when Tom Olson asked me when I was going to get started fishing.

“Probably in the spring,” I said, “but the fact is, if you want to know the truth of it, I'm kind of scared of that ocean.”

“An honest statement if I ever heard one,” Tom said, “it's something to be afraid of.”

I looked over at Pete who was just sitting there listening but looking like he hadn't heard anything.

“I tell you something,” Karl Swenson said, “I been fishing all my life, and I still have plenty respect for the ocean. Some times after bad storm I say to myself, what the hell you want to be fisherman for. I keep going though, like dumb animal. But that storm in the Gulf of Alaska was the worst I ever see. I almost stop fishing then for good.”

“You got a good boat,” Pete said, “you ride out anything.” It was the first time I had ever heard him sound annoyed. “Sure she blow up in the Gulf. But you keep your hand on the tiller, you don't drown. I tell my partner this. But he don't listen. He go below, and put on life jacket and get ready to die. Sure it bad, blow maybe one hundred mile wind. No cloud and full moon. Then we see big rocks. Water break maybe two-three hundred feet up. Oh, sure, she look bad. But there is big hole in rocks with beach in back. My partner get scared then and start to jump. I yell him stay with boat. Goddam storm, I say, but we make it. You watch. But either he don't hear me or he don't believe me. So over he go, and that the last anyone ever see of him. Just about then, big breaker come bustin' in high as mountain and makin' plenty noise too. She pick up that boat like toothpick and away we go. Goddam bastard storm, I say, she bad one. But I don't let loose the tiller, just keep her head up. Then right through the rocks, maybe forty-fifty knots, so fast, I tell you I hardly see nothing except that foam and spray. I nearly bust both arms, but I don't let loose that tiller. Pretty soon she hit sand. Oh, sure, she take out bottom, bust up everything. But I get out alive. Two days I climb rocks, look all over beach. Don't find nothin'. I cry like baby, yell Goddam you devil bastard storm. But I get out alive, I tell you. I do it again too. I get new boat, go back same place, I show not scared of ocean.”

Pete was breathing kind of hard when he finished his story. It was pretty clear by then he wasn't really amazed at Karl for his talk of giving up and all but just plain angry at the ocean for wrecking his boat and drowning his partner, the kind of anger you get when your pride has been hurt. So I knew it wouldn't be long now before he'd be back on that same coast proving to himself he could beat his old enemy. And then I got to thinking that it was guys like him that must have been responsible for building up this whole area in the old days, big illiterate guys, but darn smart though, who looked at the mountains and the ocean like they were enemies that had to be beaten down with their bare fists, guys you don't see the likes of much these days because there's not much need for them anymore.

“Why you don't get that big Greek to take you out,” Tony said. “He's too dumb to be scared of anythin'.”

“Maybe I do just that,” Pete said. “Maybe I show this boy you don't know damn thing what you talk about.”

Ever since I'd known Pete he'd always seemed a little absentminded, as though he had something else he was thinking about, something more important than whatever it was he was talking about at the time. Now, maybe because he was annoyed, he seemed to be right there. He lit his pipe and really made the smoke go. But pretty soon he was chuckling like something had struck him very funny. Then he began ribbing Karl and Tony about a lot of crazy things that must have happened in the past. And he was laughing like I'd never heard him laugh before.

I didn't really believe he was serious when he said he'd go out with me, but the following Saturday he came down to the boat and began getting things ready. He went through the engine first, changed the points, cleaned the plugs and adjusted the carburetor so the old mill idled down nice
and even, and just seemed to purr. Then he went over the steering, tightened up some loose bolts in the quadrant, greased the sheaves and adjusted the tension on the cables. “Steering gear need work,” he said, “but she O.K. for good weather. After trip we fix right.” When everything seemed in good shape, I got out the salmon gear. The rest of the day and most of Sunday we spent getting all the jigs and weights and lines in order. Then he told me to be ready the following Saturday around about two in the morning, and we'd head up toward Point Reyes and try our luck.

All that week I was as excited as a little kid thinking of how good it would be to quit my job and earn my living fishing. I ran the boat over to the gas dock, and filled the tanks. I washed down the decks and got everything cleared away below. I even cleaned out the bilges and polished what little brass there was in the wheelhouse. It was a great week and full of great feelings. But now and then I'd get to thinking about things that happened when I was a child, like the time when the
Lyman Stewart
went aground in the Gate and my father took me out one gray morning to see how the storm had broken her clean in half with her bow on the beach and her high stern pounding in the waves way out by Mile Rock Light. Then I'd remember the story my mother told me about the wreck of the old
Steamer Bear
on Cape Flattery when she was a young girl and how this woman was thrown up on a rock and nobody could get to her and how she'd sung “Nearer My God to Thee” in the stormy night before she was washed away into the black water. And I'd remember the awful feeling it had given me and how I used to dream about it and wake up at night with the whole dark picture of it in my mind. But right in the middle of it I'd think about Pete and those big hands of his and of how crazy they looked hanging out of the
sleeves of his pin-striped suit when he was going to church on Sunday mornings and his big Greek face with that dumb hod of a pipe sticking out of it and right away I'd forget about the other things and feel happy all over again.