Raiders Read online

  RAIDERS

  Also by William B. McCloskey Jr.

  Fiction:

  Warriors

  Breakers

  Highliners

  The Mallore Affair

  Nonfiction:

  Their Fathers’ Work: Casting Nets with the World’s Fishermen

  Fish Decks: Seafarers of the North Atlantic

  RAIDERS

  A NOVEL

  William B. McCloskey Jr.

  Skyhorse Publishing

  Copyright © 2004, 2013 by William B. McCloskey Jr.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-62636-062-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my wife Ann

  to whom all the Highliners books

  are dedicated with love.

  CONTENTS

  PART I THE SALMON TRADITION July-August 1982, Kodiak, Alaska

  1 Jones’s Shadow

  2 Jumper’s Song

  3 The Race

  4 Whale Passage

  5 Kodiak Talk

  6 The Beer Diplomats

  PART II RULES OF THE NEW GAME Mid-August to September 1982, Japan, Alaska

  7 Rising Sun

  8 “A Ruvrey Highriner”

  9 Bushido

  10 The Suits

  11 Halibut Buzz

  12 Kodama

  13 The Great Game Continues

  14 Shakedown

  15 Soakers

  PART III THE WIDE WORLD October-December 1983, Alaska, Maryland, Alaska

  16 Unfree

  17 Moonjog

  18 City Lights

  19 Shaftsmanship

  20 Honor

  21 Splash

  PART IV THE COLD WORLD January-September 1984, Kodiak, Alaska

  22 Shelikof

  23 Overload

  24 Ice

  25 Fish Hold

  26 Daylight

  27 Epilogue: Sons

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To set a novel in recent time and place, and thus to answer to those who were there, requires more than notebooks and personal recollection. I’m grateful to friends old and new, who shared their memories and insights while confirming or nixing my own. Others went out of their way to pull old reportage from basement files. While holding myself alone responsible for anything of questionable accuracy or focus, my deepest thanks to the following:

  Thorvold Olsen, captain of the limit seiner Viking Star, who once tolerated me as a king crab crewman and on subsequent passenger rides has kept me alert with wheelhouse quizzes. (Thor, after answering pages of questions, even shipped me charts along with a piloting ruler and calipers to make sure I got things right by figuring them for myself.)

  Alvin Burch, founder of the Alaska Draggers Association and a frequent negotiator on international fishery matters, who along with his late brother, Oral, set an early Kodiak standard for trawling aboard their twin vessels Dawn and Dusk.

  Dave Milholland, engine guru and veteran of the Bristol Bay gilnetter fleet (he still fishes there each season, since, as he says, “I’m only eighty-three”), who in Anacortes with his wife, Dorothy, maintains a museum of working marine engines.

  Robert Alverson, director of the Seattle-based Fishing Vessel Owners Association, who for decades has been a leader in charting a sane course to harvest the Alaska sea resources caught by longline.

  Per Odegaard, captain of the traditional longline schooner Vansee, carried me aboard in 2001 during a run for black cod and halibut. Thanks also to his hospitable crewmen Carl Sebastian, Shawn McManus, Peter Erikson, Steve Thorkildsen, and Dewey Maletha.

  Fishing captains Rudy Peterson, Kevin O’Leary, Dave Densmore, Leiv Loklingholm, and Mike Fitzgerald, as well as former fisherman and now-editor John van Amerongen, and the late respected Cap’n Lester of Chesapeake Bay, who took me shaft-tonging, were all willing to endure long taped interviews about their work and careers.

  Tom Casey, advisor to Bering Sea crabbers, former fisherman, and long-term enthusiastic supporter of the Flank Crawford saga.

  Alan MacNow and Jay Hastings, spokesmen for Japanese fishing interests, whose efforts to have me hosted in Japan fostered my appreciation of Japanese culture and the Japanese viewpoint. The isolated dark event narrated at the end of this book came not from their sphere but from official reports and media coverage.

  Among those who searched out old documents or culled for arcane information: Gail Bendixen, staffer of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Anchorage; Peter Max and Judy Young of NERA in Washington, D.C.; and the always willing phone researchers at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. For medical information when I chose to injure a character, my daughter Dr. Karin McCloskey, therapist Bill Rhodes, and Dr. Richard Berg. And, for their guidance through the mysteries of contemporary art, J. Woodford (“Woody”) Howard, collector, and professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University.

  Enrica Gadler, my editor at The Lyons Press, who has provided steady encouragement along with patience and insightful professional skill in guiding me through Breakers and now Raiders. Thanks also to publishers Nick Lyons and his son Tony Lyons, for supporting the “Highliners Trilogy” to its completion.

  Final thanks to my family for their support and encouragement: my wife, Ann, always there for me, to whom this book is dedicated; my late parents, Bill and Evelyn, for the standards they once implanted; my children, Karin and Wynn, generous with advice in their areas of expertise; and now also my four-year-old grandson, Will, window into the future, who—stuffed into a lifejacket up to his ears—has already become a boat buddy.

  PART I

  The Salmon Tradition

  JULY-AUGUST 1982

  KODIAK, ALASKA

  1

  JONES’S SHADOW

  ALASKA, KODIAK ISLAND, UGANIK BAY, LATE JULY 1982

  Jones Henry was dead and that closed the book. Whether his ashes, soaked in scotch, had lured the humpies into the Adele H’s seine, or whether nature on its own had packed Uganik Bay with a greater storm of salmon than predicted, glistening silver fish thrashed the water to a boil inside the net.

  It was “Yow!” all afternoon. And “Oh maa-an.” No one aboard considered whether their shouts at the abundance covered grief for the recent past or came whole cloth from the present.

  Hank Crawford, at the controls despite the cast on his shoulder, assumed the calm of command although his spirit whooped with the others. He guided brailer loads raised on the boom from water to hold. Fish bodies quivered against the tight meshes. When the big dip net opened, fish slurped out and thudded into the hold. Briny smells filled the air. Glassy wet covered metal and oilskins. Hank breathed the very heart of fishing again, at last. When it came time to harden the net and bring the remaining catch aboard, he leapt to grip web at the rail alongside his crew. They pulled arms-to-back as in the oldest times of fishermen, Hank as best he could. The b
ag of net upended to pour twisting fish around their legs.

  “Yaa-hoo!”

  So it went for set after set on the day they consigned Jones Henry’s ashes to the water aboard Jones’s own Adele H.

  It was the culmination of two terrible weeks that had started for all of them, except Hank’s wife Jody, within the salmon gill net fleet of Bristol Bay. Hank and his crew aboard his large Jody Dawn had been tendering fish received from smaller gill net boats, including Jones Henry’s. During a storm, Jones’s boat had lost power. When Hank didn’t concentrate enough on present fishing, he could still see those waves smashing Jones’s boat onto the mudflats that had been the graveyard for boats over the years. A helicopter from the cannery managed to lift Jones’s single crewman Ham to safety. But during the hour before the chopper could return after refueling, the boat, with Jones aboard, began to break up. Thank God I went no matter how it turned out, Hank could tell himself now. He had risked his own life to launch a dinghy and row in to rescue Jones, and did indeed in the process smash part of his own Jody Dawn, but Jones had been his mentor and beloved friend. The shoulder he’d dislocated pulling Jones from the water was small price.

  Then he’d done all he could to warm Jones under the frigid spray while he himself turned nearly too numb to function. Nobody’s fault, the outcome. The helicopter had returned as soon as it could, and managed to tow the dinghy to safety, but even so Jones, a man in his sixties, had died of exposure.

  Hank looked over the water at sights that had been a part of his friend. Oh Jones, he thought, picturing the man with all his stubble and spit. Back in Kodiak we gave you a proper church funeral, followed by an open bar aboard your beloved seiner that we’re now riding in your honor. Even your new widow, Adele, agreed we did it right. But, Hank thought, somewhere now, Jones’s caustic tongue must be summoning all the devils at the sight of Jody working on the deck where Jones had never allowed even Adele to set foot. And what would Jones say to Adele’s calling the unbelievable from the pier as they left to bring Jones’s ashes to his favorite fishing ground, inviting Jody to be the Adele FTs new skipper? It was just a joke, of course—Adele’s jibe at all the men who held Jones’s same superstition—but Hank doubted Jones would laugh. He stroked his beard. Admit it was funny, though, Jones: those startled male faces.

  At least, thought Hank, Jones would have appreciated the way we gave his ashes to the water. All those boats in sight that stopped fishing to blow their whistles. And, then, Jones, you’d certainly understand that, since we’d traveled clear around Kodiak Island and the fishing was hot, we all then voted to stay and fish ourselves. Call that our own way to recover.

  Hank looked around to ensure that nobody was watching, and pulled himself back into the present.

  He cruised, looking for signs in the water. A breeze kicked along the surface. In the bright sun a glint could be fish-ripple or gust. His to figure, a hide-and-seek game reading the signs, requiring him to think like a predator half fish. Down swooped seabirds, looking also for their dinner. Their white wings merely quivered as they glided. This was the kind of fishing he wanted to do, in a boat big enough to keep elbows free of shipmates’ ribs but small enough, at 58 feet, to allow him to smell the water. It didn’t satisfy the power urge of his 108-foot Jody Dawn but . . . He glanced along a neat wooden panel, cleanly varnished except for the scuffs where binoculars dangling from a holder had bumped. Nice boat. She handled to his touch. Jones Henry’s boat would have been no other way: Jones had kept her fit and had honed her performance. The creaks of her wooden hull were almost the voice of Jones.

  Suppose he fished her the rest of the season while they repaired his Jody Dawn? It would give him some fresh air before resuming the hassle with the Japanese company he’d contracted to, back in the real world.

  Around ten, however, with time before sunset for at least one more long set or a couple of roundhauls, Hank called halt. He joked about tender greenhorns and endured Seth’s jibes, but in truth he himself had suddenly lost his juice. He wasn’t that long out of the Anchorage hospital, and his shoulder ached in the cast. When they delivered to a cannery tender, he watched with rare detachment as his guys in the hold, waist-deep in dead fish, competed boisterously to see who could toss his quota into the brailer fastest. Jody, fatigued also at last, merely watched and egged them on. They anchored, hosed down, crammed in Mo’s quick-fried hamburgers, draped wet socks above the galley stove, and slept within seconds of hitting the rack.

  Hank declared he’d sleep on the wheelhouse couch to not disturb his wife in the narrow skipper’s cabin. Jody understood. He still needed space and time. He woke around 2 AM and walked to deck. Jones had been laughing in his dream, not dryly as he had in life, but comfortably. Jones, you dear pisser, he’d told the dream, you never should have bought that extra boat you didn’t need and gone to fish in places you didn’t know Jones laughed again, this time with a Jones-like crackle: for once, Crawford, mebbe you got something right.

  Hank stretched on deck with the satisfying ache of idled muscles bent again to purpose. Calm water reflected the lights of other sleeping seiners whose generators hummed. A piney odor drifted from shore. The pale sky of the new day silhouetted points of spruce atop low hills. Two nights before (or was it one?), under way from Kodiak with Jones’s ashes, while fogs drifted and he lay on deck where now he stood, he’d dreamed of shipmates lost to the water. Now, even though this was Jones’s beloved boat that the man had nursed and petted, Jones slipped into shadow with the others.

  Dawn slowly invested the trees and boats with detail. Only weeks ago (or was it years?), he himself, gasping in spray and rising tide to save Jones, had escaped the same death by frigid water. And now clear light etched masts and branches in water that rippled smiling with: Me? Eat you? Never.

  He relieved himself in a neat arc over the side. The splash broke the stillness. Then he washed his hands with dew from the rail. Something stung. A red blister bulged between softening callouses. Hands gone soft. And he still felt tired. Should go inside and sleep some more while nobody watched. He enjoyed an eagle’s swoop as he stretched again. Muscles stiffer than they should be after a mere day of work that had been routine not long ago. Hurt shoulder, good excuse for a while. Jones Henry at more than sixty had pulled any weight he chose until his final few minutes, so his own age—thirty-five or whatever—wasn’t old. (Nearly thirty-eight!)

  Of course he was no longer that smooth-skinned kid from Baltimore who showed up on the Kodiak docks a few years ago, panting to get on a fishing boat (nineteen years ago!). Hired by Jones Henry, he’d been a kid jumping to please on his first boat, in the very Uganik Bay that now received his piss afresh. Now he was a highline skipper with his own boat, one bigger than any that Jones ever sailed (or wanted to—another story). And with his Jody, his three kids, a house overlooking the bay. All.

  He leaned down to check current, looking into brown-green water smooth enough to reflect in the boat’s lee. A face looked back, all beard, cheekbones firm, man in charge. The friendly water detailed none of the creases—not wrinkles—around the eyes that stared close-up from a mirror: creases from squinting into rain and sun. Seasoning. Badge of life on the water. Jones had been wiry, tough, acerbic, strong. How did Hank Crawford compare, now that he stood alone with his mentor dead? If he had ever pictured himself as he would become, he’d wanted it to be as a man strong and straight. Not acerbic. Anger, yes, real and large at times, although sometimes feigned to make a point. Not wiry. When he walked ashore his chest led the way and he felt muscles against the shirt. Bearded presence that filled a room. Gaze that firmed equally on man or woman. Jones hadn’t laughed much. He himself laughed, whenever he felt like it, a rumble that his ear told him had deepened with time and authority. Everyone knew him to be a high-line skipper, no need to show it off any more than Jones had. A man at home in his time and place, able to handle anything on the water. Jody could bring him to earth, he could admit that, but it didn’t happen often. />
  And this fatigue: just temporary.

  A splash. He peered toward the sound. Suddenly a salmon leapt straight, silver against dark water. Hank strode inside and started the engine, then shouted below, “Mo or Ham. Anchor!” Seth appeared in the wheelhouse buttoning his pants.

  Outside, a figure slighter than his solid crewmen climbed around to the bow. It wore short Terry’s hooded jumper. “Honey,” Hank called out, “let one of the guys do it.”

  Jody turned with mock gravity. “Your guys are still waking up. Do you want to fish or not?”

  He started to ask if she was sure she could handle it, thought better and waved her on. She undogged the chain and kicked it loose as confidently as any man, but he at the controls still brought in the anchor as slowly as he could. Yet she had once worked on deck like a man, almost.

  “You’ve got crew to do that,” muttered Seth.

  “Jody can handle it.”

  “Not the point.”

  The chain-in had barely begun before big Mo and bigger Ham hurried around the cabin. “Miz . . . Better let me . . .” said Mo.

  Jody calmly cradled the shank of the anchor, flicked black mud from one of the flukes, and turned to give them her wide-mouthed smile. “Morning, boys.”

  “Morning, Miz . . . You didn’t ought to . . .”

  Hank ignored their discomfort but avoided looking at Seth beside him. “Keep it down out there,” he muttered through the window. “Need to tell the fleet we’re ready to buzz?”

  Jody continued. She dogged the chain with a kick to finish the job, then grinned at Mo and Ham. “Who’s making coffee?”

  Hank in the wheelhouse caught Seth’s sleeve. “Jumper off the starboard beam.” As they watched, another fish splashed from the water.

  “I’m on it.” Seth headed below.