The Fisher Queen Page 7

  “Hey, take it easy, you’ll get this crap all over yourself,” he said, and put his arm around my shoulders for a quick squeeze and a crooked smile. He was cavalier but I could see his pulse still pounding in his throat. “You did good. It’s that fucking alternator again. I’m gonna kill that guy in Hardy. He guaranteed it was fixed. But I think it’s okay now. I’ll work on it more when we get in, then we’ll get a shower.”

  Back in Bull Harbour, the camp manager watched me pull that flat little scrap of a fish out of the checkers and throw it on the scale and discreetly eyed my grease-covered clothes. He quietly marked it on my fish slip and paid me the few bucks it wasn’t really worth as if I had hauled out a whale. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it went to crab bait, as he hadn’t the heart to refuse it in front of my flat little scrap of a self.

  After a bit more banging and swearing in the engine room and a lot of commiserating with the Bull Harbour Boys, Dan appeared with a used alternator he kept as a spare that was compatible with our engine. He waved away the last few dollars from our money jar and said it was just a loan and he would catch us later for it. “We can’t have you and your sweetheart losing any more fishing time than you have to,” Dan said, in his soft drawl and kind smile. And it was his kindness that broke through my resolve and brought the tears that were never shed in danger.

  We sold our few fish that afternoon—$194 for four gruelling days—and topped up our fuel and ice to establish our right to use the camp’s laundry room and showers. In the cramped metal shower stall, under the steaming powerful jets, we made love like wildcats, oblivious to the rhythmic metallic banging that carried out over the camp through the open window. We were alive and proving it.

  But hell hath no fury like a fisherwoman skunked.

  And skunked we were the next day, as we bashed it out on the tacks ’til dinnertime and limped into Fisherman Bay to anchor for the night. The marine report said it would blow southeast the following day, so the north end would be somewhat sheltered and we could just troll back across the Yankee Spot to Bull Harbour. For now it was quiet, the hissy fit appeased. That was typical for a nor’wester: quiet mornings and nights, but screaming all day. Brilliant sun but icy-cold wind, like a glacier exhaling on you.

  We’d managed to pull in a couple of rats, what the salty dogs called skinny, barely regulation-length salmon, and a glorious red snapper that we wolfed down for dinner. And puttered around the cabin, cleared and cleaned and relished the silence.

  It doesn’t register how irritating the droning grind of the engine is until it shuts off and then you realize how much energy you use to ignore something, especially something as penetrating and enormous as boat machinery and weather noise. I guess our brains have to numb to it or we’d go berserk. Some people replace it with blasting music or radio telephone talk, but for us, then, silence was a mercy.

  As Paul dozed on the day bunk, I filled the tiny sink and dishpan with water heated on the oil stove and performed the art of dishwashing in less water than it took to run a cold glass of water at home—and that included rinsing. As I started the process, as careful and precise as a Japanese tea ceremony, my eyes lifted to the tiny window. I often wished the windows in the old tub were bigger; I also knew that showy windows were deadly when a freak wave slammed into your side. They popped out like contact lenses and the cabin filled up like a bucket.

  So I had to be satisfied with this sturdy little peephole. It was an odd view, slowly swinging in an arc, sweeping back and forth as the powerful tides swung the boat at the end of its tether. It was like seeing the world through a camera lens. I fancied that the gentle movement was Gaia herself, dozing and calm for once in the amber light of sunset. Sweep to the right—luminous sandy crescent trimmed in dense furry green. Sweep to the left—silvery mirror reflecting the pearls and violets of an abalone shell.

  Breathing in, breathing out, there was nowhere and nothing more than this. Breathing in, breathing out, water lapped and gurgled at our hull. Breathing in, breathing out, my hands moved like skilful fish in the soapy warm sea. There was nothing and nowhere more than this.

  A powerful whoosh filled the air and I wondered if Gaia was snorting in her sleep. Nothing seemed too outlandish anymore. We swung to the left and I saw tiny concentric rings moving outward from a circular depression in the water. Then all was still again. I wondered if I had just imagined it. We swung to the right and again the mighty whoosh. It was such a benign sound but somehow immense and mighty at the same time. I had nothing to compare it to and my curiosity demanded an explanation, no matter how odd or even frightening.

  I glided out onto the deck just in time to see a towering V-shape slide vertically back into the water, not more than 20 feet from me. My mind leapt to explain this stunning sight and came up with one option: whale. From the size of his flukes he must have been unimaginably huge, and I was acutely aware of how tiny and isolated we were. I flailed through my memory file for reports of whale attacks and found nothing. I prayed that the benign tales of these gentle giants were true.

  There was an odd bulging in the water, as if there just wasn’t enough room down there for whatever it was and the water too. The bulge became a dark grey mound rolling on and on just above the surface. Suddenly, a rubbery hole, like a giant belly button, appeared, dilated and sent up a fountain of fine spray. It may not have been Gaia exhaling, but it was something just as miraculous.

  The whale must have been preparing to dive, because miles later his tail slowly lifted from the water and paused before sliding back down in perfect and graceful slow motion. It towered over us like Atlantis sinking, with hardly a ripple or sound to mark its path. I wondered if experiences like this were what helped to fuel that legend. He may have known that a few good swipes with that tail would shatter us. He may have chosen not to. He may have been too evolved to indulge in destruction just because he could.

  Turned out this fellow was a regular fisherman too, coming into this bay with the incoming tide most nights to catch his supper. I was amused that the whale’s cuisine was miniscule brine shrimp and krill when humans killed any old damn thing they could—the bigger the better. Made me wonder who the true monarch was, who really invented noblesse oblige. My bet was on the humpback. I filled myself up with the thrill of that rolling mountain and towering tail a few more times, wished him good fishing and then went back inside to finish the dishes.

  Every time we were in this bay at sunset when the tide was moved in, I watched for him. I told him how beautiful and wonderful he was and apologized for all the awful things people have done to his relatives. I thanked him for his gentleness and asked him to be patient with us a while longer. We were still a foolish and juvenile species, I believed, though with lots of potential; he and his kind were the sighing grandparents who still loved us, no matter how naughty we were.

  Maybe that’s why the whales returned to the sea so many millennia ago. Maybe they just wanted to leave town before the kids moved in—kind of like retiring to Florida.

  Davy Jones’s Locker

  If the most beautiful sound in this world is a dead diesel engine growling back to life while your boat is hurtling down a narrow channel in a ripping tide, then the most horrific sound is steel lines snapping and the whir of them whipping through the air. Things seem to sneak up on you out here, often when you least expect them, when you let your hyper-vigilance slip for just a moment. If you didn’t start in this business with all six senses at full-on radar, you honed them quickly and efficiently, often the hard way. Those who didn’t slipped away.

  After three weeks, I had finally proved myself capable of setting and pulling gear on my own, gradually building up to several sets a day, and was powerfully proud to have claimed the starboard side of the cockpit as mine. My Viking heart sang as I worked silently alongside my mate in the wind and rain and rough seas, completely present, completely focused and aware—like in meditation, like in the Be Here Now mantra of the Eastern religions I read about at nig
ht or when I had to steer. Was it a coincidence I had found the Three Ways of Asian Wisdom in the Campbell River bookstore? Somehow I didn’t think so. Sometimes anchored at night I would share the occasional line or paragraph while Paul puttered, and I’d get a rare glimpse into his kaleidoscopic inner world: his world travels, wickedly funny mimicry, fractured childhood, art school degree, two estranged children in California only a decade younger than me.

  I was just thanking the sea gods for our first relatively calm but drizzly day when the boat suddenly heaved to starboard. My immediate thought was that a queer wave had shoved us over, but we continued to list and started to veer. I froze in the few seconds of silence before Paul’s mighty “Fuuuuuck!” signalled the maelstrom.

  “Jesus, Paul, what’s happening?” I knew enough to slam my gurdy lever to the OFF position to stop the line I was setting from spooling out. I had no idea what to do and watched, horrified, as we heeled over further. The entire boat seemed to be straining and I felt like I’d been flung into a nightmare.

  “Stay down in the cockpit. We’re caught on something and I have to stop the engine or the lines will snap and we’ll lose our gear.”

  While he wrestled with the engine’s stern controls, the steel lines snapped one after the other and whipped through the air from the tremendous force of their release underwater. We could do nothing but crouch in the cockpit until the devastation was over and the broken lines lay sprawled on the deck. Thank God we were still moving and Paul’s side seemed to be okay; he was already striding around the deck beside himself.

  “I’ve trolled over this area a million times and never had this happen. We’ve lost half our fucking gear. Maybe if you’d been in the wheelhouse steering instead of depending on this lousy pilot and watching the sonar this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe we went off course.”

  I strode into the cabin, trembling from shock and adrenaline and the growing realization of how much money we’d just lost, and checked the pilot and sonar.

  “We’re still on tack and there is nothing on the sonar. What do we do now?” I felt my resolve to be calm and supportive weaken as he flung a chart to the cabin floor and barked “Move” as he stormed back out to the deck. I took a couple of deep, trembly breaths to calm my pounding heart and followed him out. I was not a yeller and did not want to start now. I had to live with this man on this boat and knew if I let things slide, it could get intolerable, yet I wasn’t going to give up. I still clung to my lifelong habit of going quiet or getting weepy in a fight. What would happen when I didn’t? I had an incredibly long Nordic fuse, but under these surreal circumstances, one of these days it might just get lit, and that scared me just about as much as his tirades.

  “We’re almost at Nahwitti, so what the hell, we might as well keep trolling with the one side until we get there. Can’t afford the fuel to run and who knows? We may even catch a fish,” Paul sniped, and kicked the wash-down bucket on his way to the cockpit. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going to check to see if we have enough line left on the gurdies to limp along with the two spare cannonballs I’ve got in the hold. Won’t make much difference using only five lines; there’s no goddamn fish anyway.”

  “Okay, I’ll make lunch. How about that little coho that came in dead? I’ve already got it baking in the oven and I can make up sandwiches.”

  “I don’t care,” he barked, and started to yank on the loose ends of the wire on the deck.

  My concession to bad temper was a hard pull on the cabin door and the satisfying slam behind me that punctuated my return to the cabin. I stood in the wheelhouse and slowly scanned the misty shore and long swells that rolled toward it. I breathed and breathed until my heart slowed and my hunched shoulders sank. I went to reach for a cigarette but remembered we’d smoked our last yesterday. Well, that certainly didn’t help our twangy nerves.

  After my requisite self-pep talk, I gave myself up to the comforting and primitive simplicity of making food and tending to the cave, which included the critically important House Rule Number One: No Rain Gear or Boots In the House. I cringed every time I saw fishermen schlep in and out of their cabin in full regalia. Those were the true salty dogs. The inside of their cabins was barely distinguishable from the deck or the engine room, or in extreme cases, the fish hold. Sometimes it looked like all three. I had been politely invited by these kind-hearted fellas to sit where slime-covered gear was just pushed aside; graciously offered coffee from cups plucked from piles of engine parts on galley counters black with grease and engine oil. And I would just as graciously refuse, even if psychotic from caffeine withdrawal. Fortunately, these were the exceptions, not the rule, and one of the reasons female deckhands were so highly prized. Only the most feral of women would tolerate living in a bacterial science experiment.

  But even with the House Rule and a natural inclination to the clean and tidy, I had never been so dirty . . . and wet. I’d almost forgotten what dry and clean felt like. In my damp shelf of a bunk I was acutely aware from the wave sounds that the only thing separating me from total submersion was the wooden plank wall. Once that very wood was damp and breathing and permeable itself, so why would it be dry now? Even on those rare sunny days, I was either wet with sweat from physical labour on a fishing day, or I baked in the sheltered ovens of tiny bays and inlets, where the frigid northwest wind that brought the sun couldn’t find you.

  Life on a boat in the water means you are always wet. It ranges from moist to sodden. Even when you’re in bed, you’re not dry. And why should you be? In this climate, the elements of air and water are more related than usual. Even when it’s numbingly cold, you sweat under your layers and rubber. And if you aren’t wearing cotton or wool and you haven’t bathed for a week or two, the aroma that wafts from some of those salty dogs is deadlier than mustard gas.

  Here was the irony: while we wallowed in more water than we ever wanted to see and were damper than anyone was meant to be, there was no water to wash in. Every drop of fresh water was precious. We had one water tank in the hold that was filled at the fish camp and that had to last us for days . . . and days. As we grew mouldy with wet, we lived in drought conditions. Water water everywhere but ne’re a drop to drink. We were soaked to the skin and dehydrated at the same time.

  Being female presented an even greater challenge, feminine hygiene not to be confused with salty dog hygiene. A bath became a quart of water. A tub or shower became a metal hand basin the size of a salad bowl, set aside carefully so it wouldn’t be used for anything else, like a salad bowl. If I could have reached, I swear I would have licked myself clean like a cat. But since I couldn’t, I took a birdbath every night by the measly heat of the miserly oil stove and slipped into my comforting flannelette nightie and woolly socks. Paul said it made me look like a granny. I said I didn’t care, but it hurt me, just a little.

  Hair was a particular challenge. Not only was my hair oily, but crusty too. Salt water became my gel and hairspray and highlighter kit. Either you have little-boy hair that becomes a Mohawk in three days or you bind and gag longer hair in braids welded to your head. Don’t even think about the windblown sex-kitten look. At the very least you will look like Popeye’s Sea Hag, and at the worst, airborne hooks and gear will catch in it, or it will tangle in whirring machinery and rip your damned scalp off.

  When it came to personal hygiene at sea, torrential rain was my best friend. As it poured off the roof I collected it in every cook pot and basin we had (buckets were reserved for guts and sea water). The trick was to keep the water in them until the sun came out—nature’s blow-dryer. Timing was everything. Housekeeping tip: shampooing your hair on deck also helps wash the slime away! Take note, Martha Stewart. Unfortunately, this method required a second set of hands to slowly pour the rainwater over my head. If the sun was coming out any time soon and extra hands weren’t available, I knelt just inside the cabin and draped myself over the raised doorway—waist height was just right for balancing. Then I poured cups o
f water over my dangling head with one hand as I worked the suds out with the other. Since there was mostly no sun, I had to remember to crank up the heater before the procedure (if we weren’t low on fuel) so I could thaw my frozen scalp and not die of pneumonia. Things dried very slowly, if at all, especially hair. Some people opted out of all this and just put up with crusty, smelly hair ’til they got to a fish camp and a hot shower.

  The fish camp shower was one of God’s tender mercies. There seemed no end to this bounty of fresh water. Scalding and powerful, the torrent kneaded my knots and soothed my twangy nerves ’til I was stuporous. If there was only one stall at whatever camp we were in and I had to follow after one of the salty dogs, I just bleached and scrubbed my way in. Centuries later, after losing five pounds of skin and grime, I’d stagger out limp and blessedly dry, pink and rubbery as a kewpie doll, except for my fisherman’s tan, my hair dancing about my head and shoulders, a shade lighter than the last time.

  While I was being laundered, so (usually) were our clothes in the camp coin machines, normally beside the shower. And when I and the laundry were done, I’d scrub and clean the cabin while Paul scrubbed and cleaned the hold.

  On this day, I dragged the carpets off the linoleum, slung them over the boom and beat them to within an inch of their lives with a gaffing club, not only in my relentless efforts to remain hygienically civilized, but to blow off some steam. When I glanced over at Paul hunched over the gurdies and wire, I saw his wry half-smile.

  “Something funny?” I flung over my shoulder, swinging for all I was worth.

  “I’m just glad that’s not me on the receiving end of that gaff.”

  “Humph.”

  “Hey look, I’m sorry.” He clambered over the wire he was attaching to the cannonballs. “I was being a real asshole taking my frustrations out on you. It wasn’t your fault and God knows you’re hard enough on yourself trying to get everything right. Jesus, it’ll probably be me that drives you nuts, not the fishing.”