The Last Run (18 page)

“You’re on the clock. Sit down.”

“This is make-work. Make-work for the crew. Hell. I just quit Phil Wiley. This is Phil crap all over again. Except when I was with
that
Phil, I made money. This is Phil Junior, and he don’t make money.”

“We’re all a part of this,” Mork said. He wagged a hook at him. “Let’s get something straight here. On this boat, if the skipper tells you to take a shit off the stern, then you drop your stinking sweats and do it. You got it?”

DeCapua’s face went as blank as a pie pan. “So what do I do if I ain’t had a meal?”

He laughed.

“You know something, Mike?” Mork said. “If we do make money, I’m going to fine you.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’ll take it out of your share.”

“If we ever get one.”

Just then, Morley came up the dock. He was carrying tubes of grease, tools and fittings.

“Hey, fellas,” he said. Nobody looked up. “How’s it going out here?”

T
he next day the sun broke through the clouds and there were no more rows. Everyone wanted to get the boat ready for fishing. Gig Mork borrowed some lube oil from a friend, Jim Lewis, who ran a parts store in town, and spent the rest of his morning tinkering with the generator. Mark Morley lubed the driveshaft, bled the fuel lines again and timed the engine. Around lunchtime the two of them looked for a backup generator to rent, but they had no money for a deposit. They also asked around for a six-man life raft. They were supposed to have one on board, according to the law, if they fished open waters. But there were no big trollers in dock and nobody along the quay had such a raft.

On the dock David Hanlon taught Bob Doyle how to better splice and add hooks to lines. They fixed up some of the old, tangled gear and thawed out more bait. Then Hanlon showed him how to salt down the chums in five-gallon buckets so they would not spoil. They repositioned the fifty-five-gallon fuel drum in the engine room, organized the galley and lashed and stowed all the gas jugs, tools, longline, buoys and bait crates. Mike DeCapua did not get up until ten that morning. But later on he chipped in, too, splicing line by himself on the foredeck. He even patched together enough of the frayed gear to build a string.

They also inspected the boat for leaks and hazards. In the lazarette they noted some seepage. But the leak, Morley decided, was not anything their bilge pumps could not handle. They moved the gas-powered bilge pump downstairs and bolted it to the floor beneath the ladder in case they started taking on a lot of water. There was a loose plank on the hull near the prop that had been lead-patched, but the patch did not look in great shape. Morley told them that if it started leaking badly, the bilge pumps would be able to handle it just fine.

The fo’c’sle was a mess. There were mooring lines, buckets, tarps, pallets and other odds and ends scattered about, and when they reorganized things they noticed that planking had buckled on the starboard side. There was water on the tarps. It might have come through surface cracks on the deck, though DeCapua pointed out that the hatches were not watertight either. No matter how they lashed it, he told the skipper, they were going to take on some water if any waves came over the bow. It was not an ideal situation, having leaking hatches. But nobody spoke up when Morley told them to towel the fo’c’sle down.

During the afternoon Mork went off into the mountains with Morley’s hunting rifle. The skipper stayed on the boat and tinkered with the stove and talked on the phone. Bob Doyle walked around the town and met a few people along Potter’s Quay. He wound up at the community hall where there was fresh coffee on. He smoked and read the Juneau papers. Hanlon called his brother in Hoonah, spoke with his nephew, Jimmy, and caught up on some family news. DeCapua visited a friend on his troller, and later visited his buddies at The Shop. It had a TV and a scanner that allowed you to listen to radio conversation between boats at sea. DeCapua listened to see if any longliners that regularly fished the Fairweather Grounds were headed out there. None were.

It was a nice day, sunny, in the low fifties, with high, fleecy clouds. By the time Mork returned from hunting, the clouds were streaked in hues of gold and pink and all of the mechanical repairs were done, the fuel topped off. Mork told them he had not even gotten a shot off.

The chill of the night returned and everyone was looking forward to a big hot meal and a good night’s sleep. It was hard to be upset about anything on a day like that.

Supper was excellent. The pot roast was browned and smothered in gravy outside, tender and juicy on the inside. They all sopped up the fatty juices and gravy from their plates with buttered biscuits. There was potato salad with lots of chopped-up boiled egg, mayonnaise and rough-ground black pepper in it, and they had carrots and cabbage, steamed and sliced, then cooked in butter and smothered in fried onions. Mark Morley and Gig Mork drank bottles of Coke. David Hanlon and Bob Doyle had milk. Mike DeCapua hated milk and did not care much for soda; he stuck with black coffee.

Everyone was hungry with the clear, chilly air and they all took second helpings. They were so hungry that nobody said anything when DeCapua remarked that it was foolish to return to the Triple Forties to pick up the gear.

“Anyone want more carrots?” Morley asked.

“Right here,” Bob Doyle said.

“I can heat up some of that leftover spaghetti and marinara sauce. What do you say, Bob?”

“Not for me.”

“Gig?”

“No, thanks.”

“Dave, here’s your roast.”

By the end of the meal there was very little pot roast or baked potatoes left. There was chocolate cake for dessert and pistachio ice cream to go with it, and Mark Morley put on a pot of fresh coffee. He cleared the table, scraped the plates and rinsed the cups and mugs in the sink, and finally started soaping the dishes with a sponge and wiping down the utensils.

“Good coffee,” Bob Doyle said.

“Thanks. I don’t drink the stuff myself, but I like the way it smells.”

“That roast was excellent.”

“Glad you liked it. When you move around a lot, you cook or you starve.”

“True,” DeCapua said.

Morley was drying a fistful of forks. “We’ll be heading back out in the morning, so make sure you all get a good night’s sleep.”

“What time you thinking of leaving?” Mork asked him.

“Late morning.”

“What’s the forecast?”

“Right now the radio is saying seas about five to ten feet, and winds about twenty knots outside. Just the window we’re looking for.”

DeCapua said, “On the TV they’re saying a blow is coming this way. A good one. It’s south and east of the Aleutians right now, moving fast toward us.”

Morley put the utensils in a drawer.

“Well, we got to get the gear.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise it’s lost gear.”

“Yeah,” DeCapua said, “but it’s not your gear, right?”

“No.”

“Well, then, what difference does it make? I mean we’re bringing the boat back. We’ve already not made money. So what if we lose the gear?”

Morley looked at him appraisingly. “I want to get the gear back.”

No one said anything.

“Besides, I’ve talked to the owner,” Morley said, “and he knows we’re going out to get the gear. Now, while we’re out on the grounds, maybe we can throw out a couple of quick fives and let them fish while we’re retrieving the gear.”

DeCapua sat back.

“Before we spot the gear, we can throw our shit out—maybe two sets of five skates —real quick. We let the new stuff fish while we get the gear we’ve lost—buoy balls, anchor and all. How many anchors are we down?”

“Two,” Mork said.

“Two?”
Morley scowled. “Those things are a hundred bucks apiece. Do we have enough for a fifteen-skater?”

“For that, we’d be short an anchor.”

“Christ.”

“We got an old car battery down below,” Mork said. “Maybe we could tie that off to hold a string.”

Mike DeCapua sniffed. “Say,” he said, “isn’t there any other place to fish along the coast?”

“Like where?”

“Like up past Graves Harbor. We could go pull our gear and do a bunch of smaller strings inside.”

“Well,” Mork said.

“A lot of people fish that area out of Yakutat. You ever fish up there, Giggy?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s Laykee Bay up off Yakutat.”

“I know it.”

“Okay, look. Say we get out to Fairweather, you know, we get our gear, we put, say, two strings out, we get nothing. Here’s another option that we can plan on doing.”

“It’s an idea,” Mork said, but he did not sound convinced.

“Why get knocked around out there if we can catch smaller, specialty rockfish in the inland waters? So we don’t get lots of big fish. We can get specialty rockfish. They’re worth more.”

“What kind of price you hear on yellow eye today?” Mork asked Morley.

“Owner said a buck thirty-five a pound,” Morley said. “That’s for number one product. More for the specialty rockfish.”

“How much more?”

“Maybe fifty cents a pound more.”

“See?” DeCapua said. “We get a bunch of the little guys, on the inland waters. And what about sand sharks? You guys told me when I came on this boat that we were going after sharks. Hell, we’ve thrown at least two hundred sharks back. Ten percent of that is keeper. What do you think, Dave?”

David Hanlon had been listening intently but had not said a word throughout dinner.

There was a long pause.

“I’d rather not get knocked around any more than I need to.” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Maybe it’s not a good idea to go out.”

A stone silence followed.

“Well,” Morley said softly, “we’re here to fish.” Hanlon looked down at his glass. Morley went on: “Anyone else got something they want to say about this?” He paused. “Everyone’s tired. I’m tired, too. But we got a chance to make money here. Let’s hump and get our pounds and get the hell home.”

Nobody said anything.

“Hey, Bob,” Morley said.

“Yeah?”

“You call your kids?”

Bob Doyle nodded. “Sure. Sure did. They’re good. I spoke with my baby girl, Katie, tonight.”

“Oh yeah? What did she say?”

“She said she wanted to hear another Barbie-as-Fisherwoman story. I always call and tell her a story about Barbie’s adventures. It’s a little thing we do.”

Bob Doyle felt his face reddening.

DeCapua laughed. “You don’t want to tell her anything about the Barbie I once knew.”

It was late now and Bob Doyle had been unable to sleep. Once he had gone out on deck and looked up at the sky. It had cleared and the wind was high up and the moonlight lay on the branches of the snow-heavy spruce. He lit a cigarette, looked for a place to dispose of the match and finally tossed it overboard. A deer was picking its way along a trail. He watched it for a minute and then got bored with the deer and went back to his room.

Mike DeCapua was still up. He had found a paperback after dinner on the borrower shelf of the community hall,
Civil War Chronicles.
He hadn’t put the book down since. He’s some reader, Bob Doyle thought. How is it that Mike has no patience for certain things and yet won’t put down a novel as thick as a phone book until he’s read the last page? He thinks he knows everything and he does know quite a bit about a lot of things. But he’s also got that streak in him. I don’t know where he gets it but I’ve seen that streak in other people before and it never did them any good.

Mother had that streak, he thought. Deep down she had a good heart but she had that thing in her, too. Dorothy May Harlow. She was a direct descendant of the first people to come to America on the
Mayflower.
It made for a cherished fable. Truly, he thought, how many people could claim to be a
Mayflower
child? But she was. And she had that streak. She had it and he supposed he had a little of it, too. Those kinds of qualities were passed on. Certain things you carry around inside of you from your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. No matter whether you want them or not, you carry them.

So he had things from Dot Harlow. Some dancer, she was. When she was young she danced every Saturday night at the Elks Club. That’s how she’d met Dad. That’s how she’d met Uncle Jim. Dancing at the Elks. She wound up marrying Ed Doyle, of course, and they had his older brother, Jim, before he went into the navy. Then his father had come back from the war and they had another boy, Dick. Then Dot decided to divorce his father and marry Uncle Jim.

Must have been hell on his dad, he thought. But he just moved back to the Doyles’ home place across the river in Walpole, New Hampshire. And then Mother and Uncle Jim bought a bright yellow house with ten rooms in Bellows Falls. They tried to have a baby. They tried and tried. After a while they did not try as often. Uncle Jim drank a lot. It must have bothered him something awful to see his brother, Ed, moping alone under the maple tree out front of their parents’ old clapboard house. Uncle Jim would return home drunk and holler at Dot and break things in their big, new house. Dot would clean the mess up, always without a word.

One year Dot went to a missionary priest who was visiting the St. Charles Church and cried and told him she loved Uncle Jim, not Ed. “Go back to Ed,” the priest said. “The Lord will smile on you if you tell him you want him back.” So Ed and Uncle Jim switched houses.

Right away, Dot and Ed had a third son—himself—and afterward his sister, Sally. Uncle Jim soon died from cancer. Then his mother and father divorced for good. So he and his younger sister, Sally, got raised in the bright yellow house in Bellows Falls. Later, his mother married a man named Fred Perry and stayed married to him for twenty-eight years. They became members of the Bellows Falls Moose Lodge and danced often at parties and went bowling and made each other quite happy.

All that time his father laid track for the B&M railroad, sorted mail at the post office, wrote poems about sunsets, drank heavily and sat alone at mass on Sundays in the back pew of the St. Charles Church.