Читать книгу Perfect Bait - Michael Douglas Fowlkes - Страница 9

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

Chapter 1

Seattle, Washington

The storm slammed into the coast just before dawn, exactly as the late night news predicted. It whipped down the inside passages east of Vancouver Island, providing a taste of what life was going to be like for the next six months—cold, wet and miserable.

Every year around the autumnal equinox, the weather in the Northwest turns. It’s a part of life. Locals know it’s coming, and there’s no reason to complain about it, but they always do, as they have since the beginning of time.

Preparing for another Seattle winter, Karyn and I were winterizing the boat when old man Wilson shuffled by, the splintering wooden docks creaking under his weight. He stopped and eyeballed what we were doing. Being neighborly, Karyn asked if he needed any help with his boat.

“Don’t need no help. Can take care of her myself,” he snapped back defiantly, nodding toward his floating pile of crap a couple of slips down from ours. “Been taking care of her my whole life. Certainly don’t need no help from the likes of you.”

“Just offering was all,” Karyn answered softly.

He grunted in return. I’d ducked behind the opposite side of the wheelhouse as I saw him approaching, and was watching them through the salon windows. There was a glimmer of a smile in Karyn’s eyes as she assured him she didn’t mean any offense. How she had the patience to deal with him the way she did was beyond me. I couldn’t stand the crotchety old prick.

“Yeah, well, you’d better be sure and do that right,” Wilson said, looking at the braided mooring line Karyn was holding. “It’s going to be a bitch of a winter, and I don’t want to deal with your boat breaking loose, banging up against my lady there,” he added, jerking his stiff neck and cap-covered head toward his boat. “A real bitch of a winter,” he mumbled to himself, turning and continuing down the dock. “I can feel it in my bones.”

No doubt he could, I thought to myself as Karyn turned, flashing that incredible smile of hers. She knew full well how the old man would respond before she even asked if he needed help. He was as cantankerous as they come. Older than dirt and mean as hell. Couldn’t blame him for being so pissed off, though. He’d been living on the water since the day he was born, one of a dying breed being forced out by the nouveau riche who had recently discovered houseboat living along Seattle’s ancient waterfront. Didn’t matter to Wilson that I’d been born right here, on board this very boat. As far as he was concerned, anyone under one hundred was scum.

What used to be a shantytown of makeshift craft, most of which, like Wilson’s, were seemingly kept afloat by only their dock lines, were being run off by multilevel, built-to-the-hilt, wall-to-wall floating condos. They were nothing more than tasteless pieces of architecture that wouldn’t last an hour outside the protected waters of the harbor. With deck-to-ceiling glass, tile roofs, recessed lighting and spiral staircases, master suites and fake fireplaces, the condos boasted heads with built-in Jacuzzis, heated floors and tanning beds. Seattle’s new houseboats were anything but boats; the new generations of occupants were anything but boat people. But together they were the new floating armada of Seattle’s waterfront. Karyn and I resented them as much as the old man did.

Like old man Wilson, my dad was born and raised on the waterfront. Married to the eldest daughter of one of the most successful seafood processors on the coast, he’d spent his life fishing a deep-water trawler, working the Bering Sea until an Arctic storm took his life.

After he died, Mom and I moved off the boat and went to live with Grandpa and Grandma in the big house up on the hill overlooking the harbor. Mom never set foot on the boat again. The following day, Grandpa picked me up after school in the old truck and drove me down to the plant. He put me to work cleaning up the guts behind the cutters at the cannery.

“You earn your keep, boy,” Grandpa said. “There ain’t no free lunches in this world. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” I didn‘t have a clue what he was talking about.

The cutters went through the fish like butter, knives flying faster than the eye could keep up. But after a few days, I began to hate the smell of dead fish and dreaded when school let out. All the other kids took off to play, while I had to go slop fish guts into the barf barge. “I’m only thirteen,” I’d mumble to myself, shoveling another pile of guts onto the barge. “This sucks. It isn’t fair.”

But every day after school and all day Saturday, I’d slop wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of fish guts and carcasses from under the cutters’ tables to the barge.

The only good part about the whole ordeal was riding out with Augie Santos to dump the barf barge when it got full. Augie had been driving the barge for my grandpa since the beginning of time. An ancient Portuguese fisherman, Augie been working fishing boats his whole life. He knew more about fish than any man I ever met and taught me just about everything I know about fishing. Every day when the barge got loaded up and we’d head off, he’d drop back a hand line. At first, I thought he was nuts.

“You aren’t going to catch anything in here,” I pronounced, nodding towards the busy harbor.

He glanced up at me, but didn’t say a word.

No sooner than that he got bit. I couldn’t believe it. “What d’ya got?” I yelled excitedly.

Holding firmly onto the line with one hand, he reached down and pulled the old Union diesel out of gear. Looking back up at me, his words were soft. “Why don’t you come on back here,” he said, offering me the line. “Pull him in and see for yourself.”

I about tripped over myself, scrambling along the edge of the barge. “Really? Can I?”

“If you can keep from falling overboard or into the guts,” he said, a gentle laugh accompanying his words. “Here you go,” he said, handing me the line as I reached the stern. “Hold tight, or it’ll rip you up.”

The fish almost pulled the line out of my hand, burning my palms as the line seared over my skin. His hands were like leather. Mine turned white where the line burned through before starting to bleed, but I didn’t let go.

“Jesus!” I screamed.

He nodded, knowing how much it hurt, but liking the fact I didn’t drop the line. “If he runs again, let him go. Don’t try and stop him. Keep just enough tension on the line so you have some control, but there’s no way to stop him when he’s this hot.”

It was the biggest fish I’d ever caught, or at least fought. My dad had taken me fishing a few times off the docks, but the only things we’d ever caught were some scrawny bottom grabbers. But this fish was something else. “What do you think it is?” I asked Augie.

“Not sure. What do you think?”

Visions of giant halibut raced through my brain. Or maybe even a King. “I don’t know, maybe a Chinook.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but who knows?”

It felt like the fish was beginning to tire. But then he made another long run after I’d gotten most of the line back, again burning my hands.

“Even pressure this time,” Augie coached me. “Steady even pressure. You got him coming your way. No need to piss him off any more than he already is.”

The fish circled under the boat a few times. Each time he came out from under the boat, I was able to gain a full arm’s length of line.

“That’s it,” Augie said as I gained on the fish. “Slow and easy. Keep his head up, and just guide him toward the surface.”

“Holy shit!” I screamed as the big flattie broke the surface, shaking his head violently and rocking me to my bones. Holding on with both hands as tightly as I could, he wasn’t able to pull out any line, but he about jerked my arms out of their sockets.

“He’s a beauty,” Augie said, reaching over the rail, grabbing the line.

Immediately my body quit shaking. My arms were numb and my hands were on fire, but none of that mattered. This was the biggest fish I’d ever caught.

Augie started talking out loud, not taking his eyes off the fish. “Now take it easy, big guy, everything’s going to be all right.”

He was talking to the fish as if it were a person, and the weirdest thing was, I swear to God that damn fish was listening. It immediately quit thrashing around and let Augie pull him right up next to the boat.

“That a boy,” he said softly, reaching down and pulling the barbless hook out of his mouth in one easy motion. The fish hesitated for a split second before diving for the bottom, leaving a huge boil in his wake.

I was speechless.

“Nice job,” Augie said, leaning back up and extending his hand.

Taking it, I shook my head in shock, “Why did you let him go?”

Augie pushed the shift level forward, putting the barge back in gear, before asking, “How are your hands?”

“Fine!” I snapped back, slowly turning my palms up and looking down at them. I was pissed. My hands were bleeding and starting to really hurt. “That was my fish. Why did you let him go?”

“Look around you,” Augie instructed calmly.

“At what?” You crazy old coot.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing. We’re in the middle of the bay surrounded by water.”

“Not exactly. Look closer.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. He waited, watching me. When he saw me look down at the load of fish carcasses and guts we were hulling, his eyes flashed.

“What are you talking about? You want me look at the guts?”

He nodded.

“I don’t get it.”

Then he asked me, “Are you hungry?”

“What?”

“Hungry? Are you hungry?”

“No. I’m pissed off you let my fish go.”

“Your fish?” he asked.

“Yeah. I caught him.”

“You certainly did. And you did a damn fine job,” he added. “I thought he was about going tear your hands off on that first run.”

Looking down at my throbbing hands again, I nodded, shrugging my shoulders. “He just about did.”

“I know.” Augie said. “You showed a lot of heart hanging on the way you did.”

I lowered my head, my anger draining with the fading adrenalin rush. “Thanks.” He didn’t say anything else for a while until I asked, “Why’d you want to know if I was hungry?”

“Because that’s the only reason to ever kill anything. If you’re going to eat it, take it. If not, let it go.”

His eyes bore into my young soul, holding me there until he saw that I understood what he was saying. I nodded. The corners of his eyes creased into the beginnings of a smile as he slowly nodded back. We understood each other. “Chances are,” he added, “we might even fool him into doing battle with us again one of these fine days.”

And that was it. That was all he said. But from that moment on, I was hooked. After that, I couldn’t wait to fill the barge so we could ride out together. Augie continued teaching me everything he knew about fishing. I soaked it up like a dry sponge.

Born in San Diego, Augie had fished tuna and albacore his entire life—at first from a small converted WWII jig boat, where he spent hours standing in a little area of the stern, hand lining fish, tossing them in over his shoulder before grabbing another line off the spreaders. Jig boat fishing was one tough way to make a living. But he loved it. From there he’d moved on to working the clippers, running as far south as the Galapagos, being away for months at a time making bait, and having to get fresh water from waterfalls cascading over lush islands and into the sea. He explained to me how they’d row the bait skiff in under the waterfall, fill it with fresh water, then row it back to the clipper “full to the gunnels,” he’d say, before transferring the fresh water back on board the clipper with wooden buckets. I was mesmerized. The places they fished sounded more like Fantasy Island than real life. He’d bring out some old frayed black and white photos of tuna as big as a man, and I knew he was telling the truth.

The stories he’d tell of being in the rack, four Calcutta poles tied to one hook, lifting two hundred and fifty pound yellowfin as they streaked towards the surface, inhaling the squid, filled my nights with dreams of fish so big they could swallow a man whole.

“If you didn’t time it just right, and they got their heads pointed away, man oh man, were you in for a world of hurt. Nothin’ like liftin’ fish,” he’d say, the memories dancing behind his eyes.

He taught me how to wrap white chicken feathers and cow hide into perfect squid baits. He taught me how to tie the right kind of knots for whatever we were doing. He taught me how to read the water. How to look for signs. What initially had been nothing but liquid surrounding us on our daily runs, slowly turned into a virtual landscape—overflowing with information. Rich in texture. Teaming with life. Radiating like neon street signs pointing which direction to go. He showed me how to recognize temperature breaks, currents back eddies and wind rips. He even taught me how to smell the oil that herring leave on the surface after having been balled up and worked over by a school of salmon. He taught me to watch the birds. “What’s going on above the water is a mirror image, reflecting what’s going on below it.”

And sure enough, we’d pull up on a big bird school, diving and working a bait ball, and you could see the fish flashing under the bait, scales rippling down. “Just like an hourglass,” he’d say.

He taught me to respect the sea—to listen to her rhythms—and most importantly, to heed her warnings. “For when she unbridles her fury, no man, beast or ship is safe.” He taught me an appreciation for the cycles of life, showing me how everything is connected. “We’re all just guests here on this big blue beautiful orb, ” he said, holding his arms out, eyes smiling, his face pointing to the sky, “… bobbin’ around in our own little lifeboats. Treat her well, and she’ll do you the same.”

Three years later, Mom died. The morning we scattered her ashes from the boat, there wasn’t a wisp of wind.

The only sound was the low, steady hum of the diesel. Hanging like a shroud around us, the fog was so thick you could hardly see the bow, but Grandpa navigated through the harbor like it was the back of his hand. Few words were spoken. Grandma held me tight by her side the whole way out. I was doing all right until I felt her shiver. I looked up and watched a tear drop down her cheek. Seeing her crying made me start balling like a little girl. Men didn’t cry in Grandpa’s world. I knew it, but couldn’t stop. He glanced over at us without saying anything.

After awhile, he pulled the boat out of gear and shut off the main. The instant silence was overwhelming after the comforting, steady drone of big iron. It took a hundred yards for us to stop gliding across the sheet glass water. When we did, the priest, a long time family friend, spoke in quiet tones about what a wonderful woman my mom had been. We joined him in The Lord’s Prayer. Then, without any fanfare, Grandpa scattered Mom’s ashes overboard. They ever so slowly filtered down towards the water spreading out like a giant cumulus cloud. A cloud with wings, I thought to myself, tossing a bundle of hand-picked flowers onto the disappearing ashes. Grandpa gave Grandma a squeeze, thanked the priest, fired the main back up, put the boat in gear and spun us around for home.

When we got back to the dock and got the boat secured, Grandpa looked me in the eye. “You still hankering to move back onto this ol’ boat?” he asked.

I was shocked. “Yes, sir,” I managed to say. “You know I am.”

“Then go ahead,” he said. “You’ve been doing a good job tending to her all these years. She’s old, but she’s solid. You two take care of each other.”

I didn’t know what to say. I threw my arms around him and squeezed for all I was worth. No one ever hugged Grandpa. I felt his spine stiffen, but he let me hold on for a couple of heartbeats. Then he patted me on the back like a dog and took hold of my shoulders. His stare could have bored holes through granite. He was one of the most respected and powerful men on the waterfront—a big, tough Swede who had fish in his blood. The few who challenged him did so only once. He ran his domain with an iron fist and, in my case, a well-cured leather strap that made its acquaintance with my young ass on more than one occasion. In his world, there were no excuses, no second chances. His motto was: Do it right or pay the price. Just like the sea.

He nodded slowly before continuing. “Go ahead. Get your things and move back here. But if I hear so much as a rumor about you missing a day of school or causing any problems, it’ll be your ass. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.” There I was, sixteen and being told I could move back on board. I loved my grandparents, but living on the boat alone …

“Thank you,” I said, offering my hand. His grip was uncompromising. “I won’t let you down.”

Grandpa nodded and reached into his pocket, pulling out the keys to the old '51 Ford pickup I’d been driving around the cannery for the past three years. “You earned this,” he said with a satisfied nod, handing me the keys. “You worked hard. Never asked for anything and never complained. I’m proud of you, son.”

I didn’t know what to say. Tears started to well up, and my chin started quivering. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying again.

“Work hard. Be true to yourself,” he told me. “Everything else’ll take care of itself.” He paused, looking out across the harbor into the fog. “Moving back onto the boat, you’ll be on your own. You got work at the cannery if you want it, but I’m not going make you come in. If you find something better after school, or you want to play ball—fine. If not, you’ve been working deck and cutting fish now long enough. You know good grade the instant you see it. If you want, you can start running one of the boats. Up to you.”

“No shit, Grandpa?” I blurted out, without thinking.

He frowned at my language, but a smile managed to crease his lips. “Like I said, son, you’ve earned it.”