The Last Run (11 page)

That was just three months away, now. He wouldn’t miss those two. But the kids. They were going to take his kids. Brendan and Katie. Unless he made money soon, enough to get himself off the streets, the state of Alaska was going to wink and nod and let them get away with it.

The boat did not rock as much as it had earlier and gradually Bob Doyle stopped thinking about his ex-wife. Thinking about her won’t do you any good, he said to himself. God, I hope we have a good trip and make money. It would be wonderful if I could stand up and do something right for a change. Maybe I will, he thought. And then he was asleep.

W
hen he woke Bob Doyle noticed two, big feet dangling off the edge of the top bunk. The toes were black and blistered, the heels scaly and scabby and puckered. They smelled like rotting cabbage. Bob Doyle tried not to breathe through his nose while he dressed. He pulled on a pair of sweats, a hooded jacket, a wool sweater, socks, rubber boots and a cap, and then stood for moment, contemplating the big, gnarled feet. He was going to have to do something about Mike DeCapua’s feet. Maybe boric acid and a wire brush would help. He stumbled into the galley.

Pouring a cup of coffee, black, he heard voices on the dock. He pulled the Dutch door open, went out to the starboard railing and looked at the channel. It had rained and there was a mist. He loosened his sweats and pissed off the railing, watching his urine make a long, steaming arc, then shook himself and, wiping his right hand on his sweatpants, walked around to the foredeck. Mark Morley and Gig Mork were bringing aboard the last of the groceries. Morley tossed a duffel bag on the deck along with a small, vinyl suitcase. Mork had a bulging, plastic trash bag over one shoulder.

“What’s in the bag?” Bob Doyle asked him.

“Smokes.”

“Hey, Bob,” Morley said, “give Giggy here a hand. Let’s get all of his shit in the fridge and cupboards quick. I don’t want to fart around here any longer. Where’s your buddy?”

“Sleeping.”

“Well, get his ass up. We got a trip to make.”

“Right.”

After he and Mork began packing up the refrigerator and freezer and stowing the tins, Mike DeCapua came out. He was in his boots and rain jacket and powder blue pajama bottoms with squiggly circle designs. From his cracked lower lip balanced a bent cigarette, as though it had been glued there.

“Hey, Giggy,” he said, the cigarette jiggling like a doll on a coiled spring. “Give me a light.”

Mork threw him a lighter.

“Lot of food.”

“Give us a hand, Mike.”

“In a minute.”

He went out on deck and smoked while they packed the groceries away. There was maybe two weeks’ worth of food, Bob Doyle thought, and it took them an hour to squeeze it all in. In a little while they heard the cough and grunt of an engine turning over, and then the throbbing through the deck planks, and everything had that sooty, diesel smell. Morley had grabbed DeCapua and together they were testing the motors, bilges, deck lights, winch, RSW lines, fuel tanks, condenser, fuel filters, injectors, air intakes and batteries. In the meantime Mork showed Bob Doyle the gear in the bait shed, the totes in the holds and the grungy, snarled line in buckets on the roof of the pilothouse. They were going to have to clean and sharpen all of the big hooks and splice line and check all of the leaders and swivels.

He started off in the bait shed, rearranging the blocks of iced herring and chum bait and tidying up gear. Then he heard the skipper and Mork talking out on the dock.

“This better be a good trip,” Morley said.

“It will be.”

“If it wasn’t for that bastard I’d be a lot calmer about everything. Every ten minutes that cell phone of mine rings. What the hell does he do that for?”

“You know owners.”

“But that goddamned phone rings all the time. Swear to God I’m going to toss the fucker overboard.”

“Take it easy,” Mork said.

“You believe he wouldn’t buy us any more bait? Who does he think I am? The fucking bank of Sitka? Christ. I had to use my own credit card at the cold storage for the last of it.”

“We’ll use the chums.”

“How’s that old gear?”

“We’ll get it into working shape on the way out.”

“Good.”

Later, while Bob Doyle was carrying line out on the foredeck, Morley called to him.

“Hey, Bob,” he said. “I want you to meet somebody. This here is David Hanlon. He’ll be fishing with us. David, this is Bob Doyle, my newest deckhand.”

Bob Doyle lifted a hand and the stranger took it, softly. A breeze hit the man’s face high up, lifting his fine, black hair around his ears. “Nice to meet you,” Bob Doyle said.

The man only nodded.

“You’ll be sharing the stateroom with Giggy. It’s a big old room,” Morley said. “Bob, take David here inside and show him around. Get him a coffee or something. You want some coffee?”

“All right.”

“Here, let me get your bag,” Bob Doyle said, bending over and grabbing the straps. “I got a pot on inside. Come on.”

Bob Doyle had known some Natives. He’d met them in the bars, along the waterfront. The younger ones drank a lot and tended to jabber. The older ones were more cryptic, gloomy. They’d look through you, not at you, and speak in the deep, somber tones of the vanquished. This Hanlon guy wasn’t like that, exactly. He was quiet as a tall glass of water, and when he did speak his voice was soft and dry, like the rustle of well-worn leather. The glasses make him look like some graduate student, Bob Doyle thought.

His eyes were deep-set eyes, black as a sparrow’s, untouchable. He had thick lips, a broad nose. He wore a tight, faded fleece jacket and Bob Doyle had seen the muscles of his shoulders twitch under it when he climbed over the gunwale. He’s strong, Bob Doyle thought. Don’t let that shy, timid stuff fool you. The man is a bull.

He showed Hanlon to his bunk, then took him to the galley and poured two cups of coffee. Mork, then DeCapua, came in. Mork had a half frown on his face. They all shook hands and then Morley called Hanlon down to the engine room.

When they had left Mork said, “That guy is a spy.”

“How’s that?” DeCapua said.

“A spy. The owner’s hired gun. He’s here to watch us and give the owner an earful.”

“Why?” Bob Doyle asked.

“He ain’t gonna sit on his ass and give orders, is he?” DeCapua asked.

“No,” Mork said. “He’ll be working all right.” He poured himself a coffee and gulped it. “I’ll find him plenty to do.”

“Is he any good?”

“Skipper says he knows how to fish and can put on a bait right quick. But that ain’t what bothers me.”

“What then?”

Mork lit another cigarette and went out and climbed up the steel ladder to the pilothouse. They could hear his boots going back and forth through the ceiling. Bob Doyle looked at DeCapua and shrugged his shoulders.

Morley waved at Mork to toss the stern line on board and then kicked the starter. The boat sprang off the wall. He throttled up the engine until it stopped grumbling and soon the fuel pier was behind them and they were cruising through the low-wake zone and on down the channel.

They fast-coiled the dock lines, stowed them in the lazarette, then lifted five fifty-pound boxes of iced bait from the forward hold, carried them astern and lashed them to the side of the bait shed. Mork told them to make sure every five-gallon gas jug and buoy ball was tight on the railing or they would pay for any lost gear. Then he turned and climbed up to the pilothouse. DeCapua and Hanlon went to their bunks. Bob Doyle stood alone on the stern.

Along Halibut Point Road he saw two spokes of yellow light, probably those of a truck, and heard the tearing hiss of tires on wet pavement. He looked up. Dipping and slicing through the air, a seagull was following them. It kept its distance, eyeing their wake. He lit a cigarette. Opportunists, he thought. They were passing the jetty now. He felt the smooth chug of the engine, opened up to two knots. Soon they would be at Salisbury Sound. Then they would head outside, steam a mile west of the Sisters, and then, near Calves Head, crank the boat up to six knots and run a slot north and west. There was plenty of water between them and the Fairweather Grounds. With luck, they’d be there in eighteen hours —ten o’clock that night. Mark had said they would stand four-hour watches on the way out.

Bob Doyle was thinking that three months was a long time to go without a payday. What did they call it? Being in hock. That was it. He was in hock, all right. The Sitka fishing fleet was in hock, too. The whole damned country was in hock, come to think of it. Everybody was a member of the Hock Club. But three months was too long to go without a check. His monthly retirement check. What a crock. Work your whole life thinking you’ll get a pension and then everyone else takes a bite out of it. Maybe Mike was right about pensions. Fuck pensions. The city of Sitka was taking out of his pension for the jail time he did and for court costs. The Coast Guard was taking out for those checks he’d bounced at the Eagle’s Nest and for renovating the house they’d kicked him out of. His ex-wife was taking out for child support. Once everybody else got done with his check, there wasn’t enough left over to stuff a clam.

He wondered if the weather would hold. If they caught their limit he might even get a few bucks, once they had covered the cost of the groceries, bait and fuel. If he didn’t fuck up, Mark might even take him along tendering in February. He could count on a hundred bucks a day doing that. Guaranteed. No worrying about the size of the catch or the weather or the price of fish when they reached port. One hundred bucks a day. That was decent money. Do that for thirty days and you might be able to rent a place of your own, he said to himself. Some small, quiet place, out the road. The kids could sleep in his bed. He’d stay on the couch. Wouldn’t that be something.

They were coming up on the Old Sitka Rocks now. There was a sudden knot of lights on the shore. He picked out one, a faint yellow circle. That’s where his Brendan and Katie were. Right there, at that light. It was a streetlamp out front of a duplex with brown siding. Real quaint. He’d seen it once from the street and then another time, New Year’s Day it was, while sailing out on the
Min E.
The boat was slipping along the shore and he’d hurried to get the binoculars and had even spotted Brendan and Katie playing in the front yard. He had wanted to shout to them. But he had not been able to get his jaw to move.

They wouldn’t have heard him anyway.

Standing there, his gaze frozen, blank, as though he were staring at a burning house, he pictured his children sleeping. Katie liked to sleep on her side, Brendan on his stomach. He wondered if sleeping children could sense when their parents were thinking of them—have an unconscious thought, a sixth-sense sort of feeling that would wake them and make them say, Hey,
Dad was just in my dreams.

Oh, cut the crap, he said to himself. You drink and carry on and spend half your kids’ lives away from home on icebreakers and you lie and lie and lie and you nick stuff from your employer and then you lose your wife and you want to get all soppy about it now? Get some sleep. You’re going to need it. You won’t sleep again for two days.

They were passing the ferry terminal. The tops of the spruce picked off the moonlight. Gulls called and waves broke on the rocks. He felt on the edge of something. He blew on his hands and turned to go inside.

“Please look over my kids,” he said out loud, to no one in particular.

N
o one was up before ten. The seas were flat and there was only a light breeze. They ate hot oatmeal and scrambled-egg sandwiches on toasted bagels with ketchup and cream cheese and everyone had several cups of coffee. Bob Doyle took his time eating. He felt sleepy and he felt good. The mountains had dropped below the horizon behind them and the gulf was rippling out ahead in sharp, minute splashes. The water had deepened in color but the breeze and the sun spackled the wave tops white. The crew seemed upbeat. Everywhere they went on ship there was the close, soothing hum of the engine, the sharp, dry air of morning. And they were back on open sea. They were on it and they were a part of it, and as the bow smoothly parted the chop it felt as though a world of impossible changes was peeling open before them.

They had fifty skates of gear to get ready. That was roughly ten miles of three-quarter-inch monofilament line. With the new line they had, they could make thirty skates. With the fairly decent gear, they could make another ten. Then there was the old stuff. This line was frayed from rubbing on sea rocks. The hooks that went with it were rusty, the tips crusted with rotted herring. It was snarled and tangled and twisted up, and most other skippers might have just chucked it and bought new gear. But Mark Morley thought it could be retooled. With a little patience, a little sweat, maybe some of it could be made useful again. Maybe all of it.

Bob Doyle crawled up the side ladder and lowered the buckets to Mork from the wheelhouse roof. They lugged the buckets down the gangways to the bait shed.

Mike DeCapua barked, “What’s all that?” Bob Doyle had just set down a bucket of the snarled line on the shed floor.

“Gear.”

“Wrong,” DeCapua told him. “It’s shit gear.” He reached into a bucket. “Oh, fuck. Look at this.”

The line had been used to fish halibut. The hooks were eighteen feet apart. For yellow eye they would have to tie on new gangions and hooks and space them apart every eighteen inches. It was pretty frazzled line.

“Who told you to get this?”

“Mark.”

“He still up in the house?”

“Yup.”

DeCapua stomped out. Bob Doyle found a pair of rubber gloves, turned over a five-gallon bucket and sat down on it. He glanced over at David Hanlon. Hanlon was sitting hunched over and quiet, altogether within himself, not breaking eye contact with what he had in his big hands. Bob Doyle watched those hands. They were making clover-shaped loops in the line. They were tying gangions, setting snaps, impaling herring on hooks, smoothly, and then salting each strip of bait. The fingers moved lightly, slipping up and down the line, gliding in and out, as if they were playing harp strings. The fingers opened and closed, opened and closed, moving as they must have moved thousands of times before now, in a blur, in a rhythm, in their own time. Loop, herring, salt. Loop, herring, salt. Loop, herring, salt.