The Last Run (19 page)

Lying there in his bunk, Bob Doyle remembered the last time he saw his father. His old man had been hospitalized with cancer. So he took a leave from the Coast Guard and visited him. They played cribbage. He beat his father over and over, razzing him, devilishly, as he always had. A few weeks later, after his ship had left port, he was handed a cablegram informing him of his father’s passing. For years he felt terrible that he had beaten his father and made fun of his cribbage game that way, and he was unable to blunt the guilt with anything but alcohol. It still bothered him, he supposed. He had never forgiven himself for it.

And what about that last day of seventh grade when he and Ronnie Hamilton and Dickie Keating decided to go skinny-dipping at Twin Falls? How they were laughing and walking along the country road, the dirt soft in the shade of the cottonwoods and pines, the smell of the hot sun in the trees, he and Ronnie and Dickie, a whole summer vacation ahead of them, each chewing cigars that Dickie had nicked from his dad’s box of Jamaicans, when a little blond girl, all wet and out of breath, jumped out of the bushes in front of them, tears hot and dripping off her chin.

Can you swim?

Why?

My brother is sleeping under the water.

He was never able to recall what became of his cigar. All that came back clearly was him slipping and sliding down the steep, rocky slope through the shadowy light of the pines and nearly skidding off a ledge in his haste, a ledge that jutted twenty feet above the prongs of gray rocks at the toes of the falls. He heard a man and woman shouting the name Carl and then spotted the couple in sopping underwear crawling along the rocky banks toward a pool of water at the bottom of the falls. And then, gazing straight down, horrified, he took a few steps back and then ran forward and leaped, arms and legs flailing, and hit the water with a heavy splash.

The water was very cold. He stayed under as long as he could without crying out. Reaching through the bubbles, he touched something clammy and opened his eyes and saw the white, white face and the open eyes and he realized that he had the hand and he started to pull and pull and pull until his lungs hurt and he let go and came up and took a breath and went down again. This time he grabbed under the armpits and pushed off the bottom with his feet and they were going up. His head broke the surface and he could see the banks and he thrashed and fought through the water and then dragged the boy ashore and laid him gently down on the rocks.

The boy’s face was swollen and pulpy, the hair black with bits of pine needles smeared over the eyes. He lifted the head and, brushing the hair back, saw the flat, shiny eyes and let go of the head. When it cracked on the rock it did not even jerk.

“You awake?”

“Sure.”

He opened his eyes and saw the silhouette of the bunk above him lit around the edges by the glow of the reading lamp. He turned his head. His children smiled at him from two pictures taped to the wall.

DeCapua said, “It looks like we’re going to go fishing those grounds again.”

“Think so?”

“That’s why he’s got us fixing all that shitty gear. We wouldn’t need it otherwise.” Bob Doyle was half listening. He was lying still, studying the pictures.

“It would be stupid to go all the way out there, seventy miles, just to pick up gear,” DeCapua went on. “He wants to fish, all right.”

“I guess so.”

“I’m turning off the light.”

“All right.”

When I die, Bob Doyle thought, I wonder how much of me my kids will carry around inside of them. Whatever they get from me, I hope it helps them. It’s too late to change things, anyhow. Or is it? He was going to sleep a little while. He was tired. Too tired.

B
ob Doyle woke before the others and ate a bowl of oatmeal alone in the galley. Then he fixed himself a coffee, black, and took it out on deck. The sun was behind the clouds and the wind was blowing. High on the tops of the mountains the big spruce trees were swaying. He turned an empty crate over and sat on it. As he was listening to the water on the rocks his hand trembled and the coffee began spilling on the deck. He put the cup down and opened and closed his fingers. Then he shook his hands, rubbed them together and drew a cigarette from a pack he kept in his shirt pocket. He lit it and, leaving the cigarette in his mouth, blew the smoke through his nose. It was all right like that.

He was smoking his second cigarette when he heard someone stirring in the galley. David Hanlon came out. He smiled and went to the bait shed. Bob Doyle picked up his mug and went inside. He heard Gig Mork and Mark Morley talking in the pilothouse. He also heard the radio. The forecaster was saying a low-pressure system had spun off from an enormous Aleutian low and was tracking north and east. It would be in the eastern gulf within forty-eight hours. Seas were expected to build to thirty feet, and a gale warning was in effect for late Friday night.

“Hey, Bob,” Mork called down to him. “Do me a favor and make sure there’s enough gas in the generator. After that come out on deck and help me fix the last of that snap gear.”

“Sure.”

Morley came down the stairs and told him to be ready to shove off at noon.

“That’s fine by me,” Bob Doyle said. “Looks like we’ve got a great day ahead of us.”

“You eat?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m making some eggs and sausage, if you want some.”

“No, thanks.”

“Where’s that DeCapua?”

“Sleeping.”

“Well, get him up.”

After Morley had his breakfast and went back upstairs, Mike DeCapua came out. He had a bad morning hack. His eyes were red and the skin around the eyes was swollen. He shot Bob Doyle a sharp glare.

“Why the fuck you look so happy?”

“I don’t know,” Bob Doyle said. “The nice weather, I guess.”

“Oh, is it?”

Mike DeCapua went to the door and frowned.

“It’s too fucking nice,” he said.

Just before six that evening Gig Mork came down from the pilothouse and tapped Mike DeCapua on the shoulder. They had been running a straight slot to the westward with the seas to port. There was no wind to speak of and the
La Conte
was making eleven knots with little effort.

“Your watch,” Mork told him.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Cut the crap.”

It was dark now and the boat was steaming through heavy fog. There was maybe two hundred yards of visibility —no more, even when they turned on the searchlight atop the wheelhouse.

DeCapua took his seat behind the wheel and glanced at the smoky mist curling and clouding the windows. Behind, in the small cabin, he heard Mark Morley rolling in his bunk and groaning.

“So,” DeCapua said, and he cleared his throat. “What’s with the chums, skipper?”

“What?”

“The bait. Why are we using chums for bait?”

“Well,” Morley said, “we got them for a good price.”

“I guess you must know that it takes a lot longer to bait with this stuff,” DeCapua said. “Everything to do with this bait is harder. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Bait is bait.”

The bilge alarm sounded and flashed. Morley said, “Turn that damn thing off. It’s been doing that ever since we left Elfin Cove. Turn it off.”

DeCapua flipped a switch near the ceiling and the light went out. Then he sat down and made a cigarette, wetting the rolling paper with the tip of his tongue. Then he lit it.

The engines were running smoothly and water was racing past the hull of the boat.

“So you been to the joint?” he asked Morley.

“Uh-huh.”

“Me, too,” DeCapua said.

“How long you been on parole?”

“Long as I can remember.”

Morley said, “I was wondering, you know, if you think we’re violating parole right now—being on this boat together and all?”

“No,” DeCapua said. “I fished with a guy who was on parole once, and it didn’t matter. The PO said we were on the job, so it was okay. If we’d been hanging out together drinking and shit, there’d be a problem. But when we’re on the boat doing boat stuff, that’s not hanging out.”

“Oh.”

“When we get in town, we can’t socialize.”

“No.”

“Say, skipper?”

“Yeah?”

“What you say we just get this gear and turn around and go back inside? I mean, I know you want to fish out here and all, but we could do just as good, say, up near Yakutat or Graves.”

He turned and saw Morley lying in his bunk, face to the wall. The skipper did not move.

“Let’s do the math for a minute,” DeCapua said.

“Math?”

“Yeah, let’s figure out what we can catch and what we’ll make and you’ll see what I mean.”

The skipper was still looking at the wall.

“This isn’t about math,” Morley said.

G
ig Mork handed the binoculars to Bob Doyle and whistled.

“You give it a look.”

Bob Doyle swept the ocean with the big glasses. It was drizzling and a pall of fog hung all around them. The back of his neck felt like a piece of ice.

He shivered.

“Well?”

“Nothing.”

They were standing on the raised platform around the wheelhouse looking off to port where the spotlight pried into the blackness. The engine was almost at an idle. For a half hour they had been crawling back and forth across the patch of the Triple Forties, where, according to the video plotter, they had set the two lines of gear.

It is as spooky as a graveyard out here, Bob Doyle thought. Maybe it’s just the calm. This sea acted so wickedly just a few days ago and now she’s so gentle, so kind. It’s as if she’s saying that she’s sorry for what she did the last time and that the wickedness is gone and we will be friends again. But I don’t believe any of it.

He tried to scan the ocean through the fog but there was no sign of the buoy. Perhaps it snapped off the main line and floated away, he thought. Or maybe the coordinates on the GPS are wrong. If the coordinates are far off it is going to take us hours to locate that lousy buoy marker. And who knows how much line is still attached to it?

Just then the searchlight caught a speck of orange no bigger than a pin-head. Bob Doyle focused the glasses.

“I see something,” he said.

They swung the boat around and motored over through the light chop. It was the marker, all right. Morley cut the motors down to an idle and they coasted alongside of it.

Mork leaned over the railing and hooked the buoy with the gaff. Morley came down from the pilothouse.

“Is it still hooked on?”

“Shit yeah.”

“Well, let’s get it up.”

They set up on deck as they had before — Morley at the winch, DeCapua on a crate in the middle of the foredeck, Bob Doyle near the hold hatch standing by with his knife. The main line started coming out of the water.

“Jesus,” Morley said.

Only skeletons dangled from the hooks. There was not a shred of skin, not even cartilage. They did pull in one fish with some flesh on it, a four-foot halibut. It was pecked to pieces, though. Rotting. The eyes were gone.

Morley knocked the skeletons off with the gaff. They made a little crack when he hit them, like a bird’s neck snapping.

The bones that fell on the deck Bob Doyle tossed over the side. DeCapua coiled up the line. He did not say anything or look up. David Hanlon took the coils to the bait shed.

When all the line was in, Morley tossed the gaff down and yanked off his gloves.

“At least we got the gear back,” he said.

In the heavy calm before the wind rose they set out the two strings of old gear they had been able to retool in Elfin Cove. Each string had five skates, not quite a mile of longline. Morley told them he wanted to put out short strings so that they could haul them in quickly, just in case the storm came faster than expected. They were short an anchor. Mork went below to the engine room and came back with the old car battery and tied it off to the middle of the line.

By one in the morning the strings they had hauled back had been rebaited; they also had two other skates ready to go, a box of bait thawing in the shed, the bilges pumped and the generator topped off with gas. The ice was waiting in the holds.

They all filed into the galley, peeled off their raingear and sat down around the table. Bob Doyle peeled and ate a banana. Mork put on a pot of coffee. DeCapua rolled his cigarettes. Hanlon drummed his fingers on the table, looked out the glass door.

They were afraid to jinx the sets. Nobody dared say a word until Mork broke the silence.

“Hope they’re fishing good.”

“Really.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Think we set them in the right spot?”

“Hard to say.”

They all went quiet again.

“What time is it?”

“Almost three.”

“Anyone want more coffee?”

“No.”

“No, thanks.”

“Bob?”

“No, no.”

“We must be getting close to where we set them.”

“What do you think?”

“I say we get out there and get them.”

“Okay.”

They all stood up and tightened their raingear. Mork put his coffee cup back in the sink.

“Hell,” he said. “Those goddamned lines better be fishing good.”

Actually, they could not have fished better. Not a single hook was empty. They caught yellow eye, tigers, calico, lingcod, halibut and the occasional sand shark, too. Morley had to slow the winch—sometimes almost to a stop —there were so many. He would reach down and sink the gaff hook into a fish and lift it up and back over his shoulder and then turn and see five more lifting out of the sea. They were no small fries, either; Morley had to use two hands on the bull hook to tug the fifty-pounders in. The yellow eye came up, gills flashing, their lean, orange bodies bright in the glow of deck lights.

“Here they are, boys!”

DeCapua, coiling now like a machine, yelled back: “Well, it’s about fucking time!”

“Hell, yes!”

Morley was rapping the gaff on the hull he was so excited.

“Oh, Mama! Lookie here! We got a tiger!”