The Last Run (9 page)

Just after midnight on Tuesday, five days after it had departed, the
La Conte
limped into Sitka Sound. Morley hadn’t paid his harbor dues, so they tied the boat up along the breaker wall between the last cold storage and the fuel pier, just outside of Old Thompsen Harbor.

Morley wanted to leave the following night. The catch had not covered half the cost of groceries and fuel, and they had lost a lot of their good herring bait. But Gig Mork could not go right away—family business, he said. So they stayed in port and untangled a mile of main line, thawed out two blocks of iced herring and busied themselves with little things like cleaning the bilge pumps and filing hooks.

Bob Doyle and Mike DeCapua slept on the boat. It was cold, but there were a few sixes of Bud in the refrigerator to help them shake off the dampness. They watched a video,
The Godfather,
and smoked a joint and lay in bed reading. DeCapua liked reading crime novels. The poetry of violence, he said, was a kick. Bob Doyle read the papers and drank and sometimes went outside to piss over the railing.

Mark Morley slept at his girlfriend’s apartment. Gig Mork went on the town. He said he was going out for smokes and that meant he was heading either to Ernie’s or the P-Bar or a buddy’s house —anywhere he could drink without being hounded. When he was away at sea he did not drink. Otherwise, he was at it all the time. Several people who knew Mork said he’d lost control of his drinking after his older brother, J.R., shot himself to death one night on a cabin cruiser. Other people said that wasn’t true. Still, when Mork went out for smokes, he usually didn’t get back until he was flat.

“Christ, that Giggy can drink,” Mike DeCapua said. He was lying in his bunk, reading. “He’s a hell of a deckhand, though. Not many deckhands in his league. And I mean anywhere. That fucker knows what he’s doing on a boat.”

Bob Doyle said nothing.

“But,
man,
can he drink,” DeCapua went on. “He can do that good. He’s just a little guy. But he’ll drink you right under the goddamned table if you let him.”

Bob Doyle sipped his beer.

“I’m having my doubts about the skipper,” DeCapua said. “He don’t know shit about rockfishing. Maybe he knows about crabbing or pollock fishing. He done most of his fishing out west, right? But he don’t know much about rockfishing. I ain’t going to quit the guy, though.”

“No?”

“Not yet.”

“What are you reading up there?”

“I’ve got a copy of Guy
Claudius.
Ever read it?”

“No.”

“I don’t do that,” DeCapua said. “I don’t go quitting a skipper just ’cause he’s had a bad trip. I might quit a guy after
three
bad trips. But not after just one.”

Bob Doyle said nothing. Having lived years on Coast Guard cutters where privacy and quiet came at a premium, he had learned to let the talkers talk. He would not say a word and after a while the gabbers would gab themselves dry. He stood up. He felt like he needed another beer.

“You hear what I just said?”

“Sure,” Bob Doyle said. “Say, are you coming out with us to Whale Park tomorrow? Mark said he might take his girlfriend and her daughter. I’m taking Brendan.” That was his nine-year-old boy. Bob Doyle had named his son after the patron saint of sailors. He also had a four-year-old daughter, Katie. But her mother wouldn’t allow the girl to go out on the boat. Too dangerous, she had said.

“No, thanks,” DeCapua said. He laughed. “You and me and the kiddies watching whales.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll pass.”

“It’ll be fun.”

It was, too. They were good kids and they loved being out on the water. After breakfast the wind was light and only a few clouds had piled up and the sound was pretty with brassy glints jumping along it. Bob Doyle looked astern, where the wake ran crisply in the calm water. Sometimes Brendan came running up to the railing and pointed out a rising fish. They would watch it drop back in with no splash and the water close smoothly around it. They also watched humpbacks breaching. As one of them came thrusting out of the water a memory flashed through Bob Doyle’s mind about the first time he took his family whale watching. Katie had squealed and clapped and her blond pigtails had bounced in such a way that had almost caused Bob Doyle to weep.

Brendan was a dynamo. He reminded Bob Doyle of an otter. At first, he was shy around Mark Morley and his fiancée, Tamara. Perhaps the shyness came from being around Tamara’s teenage daughter, Kyla. At one point Morley noticed the boy eyeing the steering wheel. He motioned to him.

“Come on, Captain, get on over here and steer us.”

Brendan jumped into Morley’s lap, gripped the wheel as though it was about to fly off.

Morley chuckled.

“Relax your grip. Easy now. Okay. That’s a little better.”

They cut the motors and drifted in the bay. The breeze took away the smell of the whales and lifted the thinly latticed water. The water was dark blue and yet they could see every ridge and wrinkle and sometimes a white, crystalline plume. Brendan and Morley stayed up at the house and Bob Doyle sat on the bow with Tamara and Kyla, drinking coffee and eating tuna-and-onion sandwiches.

They asked him the routine questions, about the Coast Guard, about his divorce. He answered them all as vaguely as possible without being impolite. To steer them off the topic of his marriage he asked Tamara how she had met Mark.

The corners of her mouth went up.

“At the P-Bar”—she laughed —“of all places.”

When the clouds had gone a rusty color Mark Morley cranked the engine and headed them back slow across the sound. There was a light breeze and gulls followed them. The water stopped being blue and the mountains went dark except the caps and the town lights shown like a necklace along shore. Near the fuel pier he cut the motors and let her drift up to the break wall. Gig Mork was waiting.

Bob Doyle tossed him the bowline. Mork made her fast to a ladder on the wall. Then he hopped aboard and fixed some buoy floats along her sides. Bob Doyle hugged Tamara and Kyla, and Brendan hugged Mark Morley close and hard, and then they each went up the ladder and stood on the platform.

Brendan said, “Bye, Dad. Thanks for a really, really cool day. Can we do it again soon?”

Bob Doyle hugged the boy and, looking up, saw a car with its lights off and a face through the pane of the car window. He walked with his hand on the boy’s shoulder until they reached the car. Then the passenger door opened.

Without looking in, he said, “I’m going to show Katie the boat now, if that’s okay.”

“Make it quick.”

His daughter hopped into his arms, all warm and soapy smelling, and he held her tight and stroked her hair. Then he lifted her up, sat her on his shoulders, took her tiny hands in his and strode off down the slope toward the boat.

He got Katie a soda from the galley refrigerator, put a sailor’s cap on her head and showed her around the boat. In the wheelhouse he let her play with the steering wheel. He told her about the boat’s engine and its cooling unit and fish holds, and then he put her back on his shoulders and carried her back up the pier to the car.

As he was putting his daughter in the backseat, Morley and Mork walked up. The car door opened and a woman in a jeans jacket stepped out. She had her blond hair tied up in a ponytail and the skin around her eyes was a little swollen.

“Laurie,” Bob Doyle said, sweeping a glance past his ex-wife and pointing to the men, “this here is Gig Mork. And this here is my skipper, Mark Morley.” She reached for Morley’s hand and shook it.

“Nice to meet you,” Morley said.

“Likewise.”

“Your Katie here is just a darling.”

Laurie nodded.

“We have to go,” Laurie said. The way she said it made Bob Doyle’s throat tighten.

“Something wrong?”

“No.”

“So,” Bob Doyle asked Laurie, “what do you think of her?”

Morley and Mork looked at each other, then turned and headed back down to the boat.

“You mean that rust bucket?”

“Well,” Bob Doyle said, looking off at the harbor, “I suppose she looks worse than she is.”

Laurie shook her head. “That thing gives me the creeps.”

“We’re fixing her up.”

“I have to go.”

“Give hugs to Brennie for me tonight?”

She opened the car door, got in and started the motor. The headlights came on.

“Thanks for letting him come today,” Bob Doyle said. “And for bringing Katie. I’ll call you when we reach port.”

She was gone.

T
hat night when Mike DeCapua returned to the boat Bob Doyle was lying facedown on the bottom bunk and looking at the cabin wall. It was dark and the only sound was the lazy creak of the hull in the high tide.

“Sleeping?” DeCapua asked him.

“No.”

“Want a beer?”

“I don’t think so. Thanks.”

DeCapua climbed up in his rack and clicked on the reading lamp.

“How were the whales?”

“Fine.”

“Everything all right?”

“I’m just feeling a little low.”

“I asked the skipper tonight when we were leaving.”

“What did he say?”

“Tomorrow.” DeCapua lit a cigarette. “You know what I said to him? I said: ‘Why don’t we head out on Saturday? We could leave right after midnight.’ So he asks me why. And I go: ‘It’s bad luck to start a fishing trip on a Friday. Don’t you know that?’”

“And did he?”

“He does now.”

“Then what?”

“So then he goes: ‘Cut the superstition crap, Mike.’ You believe that? We’ve been corking off in port all week and now he’s worried about one fucking day.”

“Well,” Bob Doyle said, “he is the skipper.”

DeCapua smoked his cigarette.

“So what time are we leaving?” Bob Doyle asked him.

“Four o’clock.”

“That’s in six hours,” Bob Doyle said. “Where did he say we were going?”

“Fairweather Grounds.”

The Fairweather Grounds were a cluster of shoals out in the open gulf, about 150 miles northwest of Sitka. The grounds were great fishing, but it took at least eighteen hours just to get out to them.

“What does he want to catch?” Bob Doyle asked.

“Rockfish.”

“What’s our limit?”

“We’re allowed twelve thousand pounds a week, plus another ten percent bycatch,” DeCapua said. “I guess that ain’t bad. But you know why they extend the season out there, don’t you? Because nobody’s nuts enough to fish the grounds in the winter. There’s fish, all right. But it’s hell getting them. Hell. I’ve fished the grounds. I know. In January, the only things that belong on the grounds are things with fins and gills.”

Bob Doyle lay still, listening to the hull creaking around him.

“You ever get spooked at sea, Mike?”

“No.”

“Lonely?”

“I been on my own a lot. I figure being alone is the normal course of events. Anything else?”

“You got the one kid, right?”

“No. I got three.”

“Three?”

DeCapua coughed. “I got two girls from my first marriage. Haven’t seen them for a while.”

“How long?”

“Nineteen years.”

“That must be rough.”

“You got to know how to be alone,” DeCapua told him. “It’s like knowing how to wipe your ass. No one’s going to show you how to do it.” He puffed on his cigarette and then said, “What scares you?”

“Oblivion.”

Mike DeCapua grunted.

“I don’t know. It’s just that everything always seems to start off good and turn out bad,” Bob Doyle said. “Nothing ever gets any better. And then that’s it. You’re dead. Know what I mean?”

“No.”

“There’s nothing that makes you afraid?”

“Sure there is.”

“What?”

“Dying with a hundred-dollar bill in my pocket.”

“Come on.”

“No kidding. Scares the shit out of me. Want to hear a bedtime story? All right. My old man worked his whole life for Pratt Whitney, the airplane-parts company, in Hartford.”

“My older brother worked for Pratt Whitney.”

“Yeah, well, my old man was a machinist for those fuckers. He went in right out of high school thinking that one day, when he’s good and old, he’ll have a little something for when he retires. And he worked there for forty years. Forty fucking years. Finally, he retires. Gets a volunteer job with the Boy Scouts. Two months later, he goes on one of them summer camping trips. Cooks for the kids. So now it’s Sunday, the trip is over, and he’s driving back on Route 5 just south of the Massachusetts line when his heart blows up. Massive coronary. His car rides off the highway. By the time the cops found his old sedan in the ditch, all the salad and hot dogs and shit in the backseat were all stinking and rotting.”

“Oh.”

“Sleep tight,” said Mike DeCapua.

In the night Bob Doyle woke and saw the light in the bunk above him was out and heard the steady breathing and knew that Mike DeCapua was sleeping. He was apparently sleeping well now and not stirring.

Bob Doyle was glad to have his own dry, warm bunk and he was also happy to have some company. He did not want to think about all the times he had neither of those things, and he tried not to think at all. Thinking the night before a trip usually got him in trouble. So as soon as he started picturing somebody doing something he shut his eyes and in his mind froze the person he was giving life to, and then waited for the image he had created to fade.

But after a while he got tired of doing this and his mind began to jump around. Gradually he began to think about Seattle and all of the fiascos, like the time he had gotten so drunk he collapsed in the backyard after he had found out that Laurie had gone to bed with a good friend of his. Then he thought about some of his own infidelities, in particular that leave in Valparaiso, when he and the officers on the icebreaker
Polar Star
had blown a month’s pay in three nights at that brothel. That was foolish. But he had done so many foolish things when he was away from home for long stretches that he almost did not take them as seriously as he should have. There was no excuse for his stupidities but the time away from family had not done any good. It hadn’t done the kids any good, either.