“Doing okay, I guess,” I said, swallowing, glad that I had taken that anti-motion sickness pill that morning with a slug of orange juice. “How… how long before you get to where you’ll do your fishing?”
“Oh, about an hour or so. Just an hour of steady cruising, about north-northeast, up to the Gulf of Maine.”
I looked around the small cabin and something struck me. I hesitated, for a moment, for I didn’t want to act too scared or too childish, but as one of my professors had once said, there are no stupid questions. Just stupid reporters, afraid to ask them.
So I asked away.
“Um, I’m sorry, but I’m not much of a swimmer. Where are the lifejackets?”
Jack laughed and his first mate Bert grinned at me, and Jack said, “Sorry, don’t mean to make light of it. Lifejackets are necessary but we don’t wear them. They’re bulky and they get in the way. Bert, show our guest where the lifejackets are.”
Bert grinned and got up from the padded bench, lifted the seat and underneath were a handful of bright orange lifejackets. Jack said, “There’s a couple of life rings out on the deck, but don’t worry. I’ve been fishing for nearly twenty years, and haven’t gotten my feet wet yet!”
His first mate let the seat lid fall with a thump. “Always a first time, Jack. Always a first time.”
Jack laughed and I decided, in the dim light of the wheelhouse, that this was a good as time to start the interview, which is what I did as we motored out into the Atlantic. So I got the basics of Jack and his life. Grew up in Tyler. Local schools. Dad was a lobsterman. Worked summers for dad. Dad had big plans for him, so off he went to college. Got a degree in oceanography, and then his master’s. Was working to his doctorate one year when his brain froze. Couldn’t think much anymore. Came back to Tyler, borrowed a boat, spent the day on the ocean. Decided a day on the water was better than any days in a classroom. Married Helen, his college sweetheart. No kids, not yet. Scrimped and saved and mortgaged a lot, now had his own boat, a 44-foot stern trawler. Bert was a neighbor friend, worked lots of odd jobs, not one for settling down. Sometimes Jack’s dad, now retired from lobstering, came aboard to help out. Fished cod and flounder in the spring and fall, shrimp in the winter.
My hand was cramped for writing so fast and furious. I looked up and said, “Enough to make a living?”
That earned me a laugh from the both of them. And then Jack went into a long lecture about state and federal fishing regulations, about how some fishing grounds were off limits one year, and how they were opened in another, and how regulations determining what you could catch and how much you could catch sometimes didn’t correlate to the actual behavior of the species, so if you had a permit to catch a certain species when they weren’t even there. And how fishing grounds you knew were plentiful were off limits, forcing you to go further and further out into the Gulf, and how the cost of fuel, and insurance, and fuel, and more insurance, kept on rising and rising, and how each year, more and more fishermen would just give up and sell their boats.
Then he took a breath, and I took my chance.
“So why do you put up with it?” I asked.
He motioned to the front windscreen. “Where else would I get to see this, day after day?”
And I looked to where he was pointing, to sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. It was the damndest thing. For the past while, I was interviewing Jack, I had looked out every now and then and saw darkness. Towards the stern of the boat, I could make out the lights of Tyler Beach, and then, the further out we went, the lights of the New Hampshire seacoast. But it had felt like we had been hurtling out into darkness, bouncing up and down.
But now… the sun was rising, and the morning light was starting to make its way. There was a hint of deep red and orange out there in the horizon, which grew brighter and brighter, as the sun finally rose. Then everything came into view, as the red and orange become a ruddy gold and yellow, and I could make out the gentle swells of the ocean, a few seagulls, weaving and bobbing overhead, and the wide, wonderful and wild ocean about us.
I nodded. “I see what you mean.”
Now the engine was in neutral, idling, as Jack and Bert went out to the rear deck. On either side of the derrick-like structure that was holding the large bale of twine – which I now recognized was a fishing net, stored in a large roll – where flat pieces of wood that looked to be the size of barn doors. Working with just a few grunts and “okay, now, okay?” the slabs of wood were unlocked and dropped over the sides with large splashes of water. By then I had my digital camera out and stared taking a series of photos. Jack then sprinted back to the cabin and in a manner of seconds, came the whining noise of a winch engine letting loose. Cables attached to the slabs of wood started running out, and then, so did the net, made of green mesh. As the net was unrolled over the stern, a fresh smell of dead things struck at my face, and I saw why: bits and pieces of dried fish were still stuck in the net.
Bert kept his eye on the unrolling net, and then I almost jumped, as Jack stood next to me. “Ready for a quick lesson?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.”
He said, “Those two pieces of wood, they act like wings down there, under the water, helping the net stay open. The net drops back and those pieces of wood keep everything open as we move forward; it’s like a large balloon down there.”
“Okay.”
“We trawl and the fish swim into the net, and when we’re ready, we slowly bring everything up. The net gradually closes and then, boom!, everything’s brought aboard.”
“Then what?” I asked.
He grinned. “Then you’ll see the real work begin.”
“I see.” I took a couple of more photos, and then looked back to Jack. “How long do you trawl, then?”
“Oh, not long,” he said, making his way back to the cabin. “Two hours.”
Two hours!
And how many trawls do you do?”
“Today? We’ll do three.”
And with that, he was back in the main cabin.
I looked behind us, to the straining cables, seeing the sun rise higher up in the sky.
Two hours per trawl. Total of six hours. Not to mention the time to open up the net, clean and sort the fish, and –
Christ, I thought. Any way you looked at it, it was going to be a very long day.
I went forward, to join Jack in the cabin.
Two hours. Jack kept the boat at a steady speed and course, keeping an eye on the performance of the engines, while his first mate Bert either bustled around or sometimes stretched out for little catnaps. I interviewed Jack for another twenty minutes or so, and then stopped bothering the man. I couldn’t think of any more questions to ask him.
Perhaps taking pity on me, he explained some of the gear in the crowded cabin. There was a radio, a radar set, and an odd piece of equipment that was called a fish finder. It had a square screen that displayed a lot of squiggling green lines, and Jack claimed that he could tell where schools if fish were located, the depth they were at, and the direction in which they were swimming. I nodded in all the right places and promptly forgot everything he told me. Up above the fishfinder were a couple of photographs, taped to the wall. The photos showed a busty blonde with a wide, easy grin. In one photo she was wearing a bikini, and in the other, she looked to be at a pool party, in a black cocktail dress, a bottle of beer and a cigarette in her hand.
Jack noticed me eyeing the pictures. “That’s my better half, Helen.”
I nodded. “Boat named after her?”
“Of course,” he said. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I looked through my notebook and went outside for some fresh air, and found Bert sitting up forward, leaning against a hatch on the bulkhead, stretching his legs out.
Maybe time for a change. I started to ask him questions, and then found that he was pretty good at deflecting them. Grew up in Tyler. Local schools. Knocked around a bit. What does mean? Oh, the usual. Here and there. Loved motorcycles. Did you see my Harley, parked there on the dock? Did you? Good. Always liked to fish. Worked a number of boats. Ended up here with Jack. Nice to be on a little boat without a big crew to get in the way. And…
“Excuse me?” I asked.
Bert grinned. “You heard what I said.”
I paused. “Well… I thought maybe you were making it up. Couldn’t believe you asked me if I was seeing anyone, and what I was doing this Saturday night. Are you putting the moves on me?”
He shrugged his thick shoulders. “Whatever you call it. You’re good lookin’, I’m reasonably lookin’. Not many attachments on my part. Fast bike, little apartment, fast women… that’s the kind of life I like. No harm in asking, is there?”
A little shudder raced through me. It came to me just how vulnerable I was, out here on this boat with these two men. Who knew I was out here? Rollie, my editor… and I wasn’t sure how on the ball he was when it came to my presence. Anything could happen to me out here with these two… and how much did I know about them? Even with all the interviews and such, the both of them were pretty much a blank slate. They could… well, do anything, and what would I say? What could I tell? It’d be my word against theirs… and if push came to shove, it was a pretty wide and deep ocean out here.
I shuddered again. “I need to go see Jack again.”
Bert smirked. “Does that mean no?”
“Yes, very much so.”
But I didn’t have to into the cabin, for Jack was coming out, slipping on a pair of heavy work gloves. “Come along, Bert,” he said. “It’s time.”
Jack went to the rear of the cabin, to a set of controls, and there came the sound of the winch turning, its noise loud and whining. The cables grew taut as they started coming up the drum, saltwater dripping off them as they rose up from the ocean. He and Bert kept eye on the cables, and I watched out at the ocean, another chill coming over me. It seemed… spooky, in a way, that scores of feet beneath us, a giant net was closing in on schools of fish, and that in a manner of minutes, many of these fish would be dead. Oh, I’m no vegetarian, not by a long shot, but it still gave me the creeps, that all these things alive down there would shortly be dead because of these two men.
As the cables came up on the rotating drum, I took photographs of Bert and Jack at work, and once Bert winked at me, so I resigned myself to thinking that he’d put the moves on me again before the day was out. But that was many, many hours away.
Jack called out to me. “Ready to see something strange?”
“Sure,” I said.
“See any seagulls around?”
I looked around at the sky. “Not a one.”
Jack smiled, hands still on the winch controls. “Just you wait.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but pretty soon, one seagull showed up, hovering over the stern of the boat, and then there was another, and another, and within five to ten minutes, there was a squadron of seagulls over the stern of the boat, wheeling and crying and squawking. I looked to Jack and he threw up his hands and laughed. “Nobody knows how they do that. It’s like their psychic or something. They leave us alone and when it comes time to bring up the net, it’s like they come out of no where.”
Bert called out, “Here she comes!” and I kept on taking photographs, as there was a boiling in the water, as the full net came up at the stern. The winch seemed to whine even more as the bulging net broke water, and stopped taking photographs for just a moment, watching how Jack and Bert worked together, like members of some sports team. They went to the full net, alive with things flopping and flipping, and pulled it in close to the boat, so it was now hanging over the empty rear deck. I went back to my picture taking. Then, some work with wrenches from an open toolbox and –
Plop
!
The bottom of the net popped open and Bert and Jack were up to their knees in fish, flopping and skittering and bouncing around on the deck. They reached up and pulled off some fish that were caught in the netting, and in a few more minutes, the net was rolled up and out of the way. Then the two of them bent down and got to work, tossing over chunks of seaweed and other debris, sorting the fish, putting some into one plastic container, others in a different container. Then the long knives came out, and without saying anything at all, they went to work, cutting off the heads of what I recognized as cod, flushing out the guts with hoses, working in tandem. The cleaned fish were then placed into neat piles in large tubs with ice. They worked quickly, and Bert looked up at me and said, “Here, catch!”
And he tossed something at me, which I caught. It was cool and small and gray and pulsed in my hand. Bert smirked and said, “Heart from a cod. Still beating.”
I swallowed. “Cool.” And I tossed it back at him, and he laughed and caught it one-handed, and then tossed it over the side.
More work on their part, more photographs on their part, and then Jack and Bert went back to the net, closed up the opening, and then Jack went to the wheelhouse. “Well?” I asked. “How was it?”
“Not bad,” he said. “But we’re going to head off to the east for a bit, try our luck somewhere else.”