I heard a vehicle pulling into the lot across the water from where we were moored. I looked over and saw Jake’s truck: a beat-up orange Toyota, twenty years old, with a muffler all shot to hell. I hadn’t seen my brother since Christmas. That hadn’t gone so well. We’d gotten in a fight – first with each other, then with some other guys – and he’d taken off for a while because one of them had been hurt pretty bad. Jake had a record and was worried that the guy might report it, maybe lay an assault charge on him. But nothing ever came of it. I’d talked to Jake on the phone before I headed out for herring season, and he’d gotten some new job that he claimed was legitimate. A cleaning job, was what he’d said.
Jake climbed out of the truck. He was wearing torn jeans and a bomber jacket and his red bandana. He came to the fence that separates the lot from the docks and leaned on it, his fingers hooked like talons between the chain-links. He spotted me and deliberately rattled the fence, like an ape in a cage. He was grinning like an ape, too.
Sugar asked, ‘He your friend?’
‘My brother.’
By then the union guys had manoeuvred the Transvac along our port side, but were still fiddling with the controls. I waved to get Albert’s attention.
‘Give me a minute, Albert?’
‘A minute is all you got.’
I vaulted the gunnel and landed clumsily on the dock, turning my right ankle but not badly. I made my way around the boatyard and up the gangway that connects the docks to the wharf. The water beneath reflected the cannery, but the image was all broken up by the dribbles of rain riddling the surface.
Jake waited for me at his truck, leaning back against the side, smoking a cigarette. As I came up he smiled. He’d lost one tooth when he was in jail, and still hadn’t bothered to get a cap. His hair was long and greasy and held back by the bandana. The bandana was faded and tatty as hell but it was the one Sandy had given him, years ago, so he would never replace it.
‘You look like a real fisherman, Poncho,’ he said.
‘And you look like an ex-con, Lefty.’
I removed my left work glove and we clasped hands, pulling each other into a hug. Jake and I always shake hands like that – with our left – because he’s left-handed and my right hand is the bad one. Two of the fingers are gone and the other three are all mangled, like the legs of a crab crushed under a rock. Whenever I shake hands with anyone else it’s always awkward, because even left-handed guys have learned to shake with their right.
‘You forgiven me for sucker punching you?’ he asked.
‘Let’s forget it.’
‘Close enough for me.’
‘How’d you know to come?’
‘Stopped by the cannery last week. They said your boat was due back this morning.’
I looked over at the boat. Albert was watching us from the wheelhouse, arms folded over his chest like a sentry. The union guys were passing the Transvac hose to Sugar.
‘We’re just about to empty the holds,’ I said.
‘What time do you get off tonight?’
‘We don’t get shore leave until the weekend.’
‘I need to talk to you before then.’
‘About what?’
He flicked his cigarette to the ground, between us, and twisted it out with his boot. ‘I just need to talk to you is all. Can’t you get away tonight?’
‘It’s boat policy. Nobody leaves till the boat’s stripped down. If Albert lets me go, the other guys will be choked.’
‘So sneak away.’
‘I share a cabin with the other deckhands.’
‘Ah, shit.’ He exhaled his last drag, which he’d been holding in. ‘Well, damn – I’ll be gone by this weekend.’
‘Where you going?’
‘That’s what I want to talk to you about.’
From the boat, Albert hollered to me across the water: ‘Timothy!’
He held out his hands, palm up, as if to ask what was going on. I waved.
‘Timothy?’ Jake said. ‘What is he, your dad?’
‘I got to go, man.’
‘Ask him. Tell him it’s important. You got wheels?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Walk down to the Firehall and meet me there, then.’
‘What the hell for?’
Jake just looked at me. He looked at me for a long time.
‘Oh,’ is all I said.
‘You forgot.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘Goddamn liar.’
I started backing away. ‘Look, I’ll try to come, okay?’
‘Whatever. I’ll be there tonight, with or without you.’
He opened the door to his truck, and slid back behind the wheel.
I said, ‘If I can’t make it, I’ll call you.’
‘If you can’t make it, don’t bother.’
He slammed the door and gunned the engine. As I turned back towards the gangway I heard him peeling out, spinning his wheels as he left the lot.
On the Western Lady, Albert had come down from the wheelhouse and was helping Sugar lower the Transvac hose into the hold. I hopped onto a bollard and used that as a stepladder to clamber back over the gunnel of the Lady.
‘I got this, Albert,’ I said.
‘You sure? Because I can take over if you want to play with your friend.’
‘No, no – it’s all good.’
He grunted and stepped aside. The hose was about a foot in diameter and made of ribbed plastic. I positioned it so that the mouth dipped six inches into the soup of herring, then nodded at Sugar. He began blasting away with the water and we signalled for the dock workers to fire up the pump. The hose started to buck in my arms, wiggling amid the herring and snorting them up like the long nose of an anteater. The dark bodies flashed through the funnel, on their way to the sorter and the bins and a better place.
At around five we clocked off. Sugar went to clean himself up in the cannery washrooms, but I needed to talk to Albert. I took off my slicker and gloves and moseyed on into the galley. Evelyn, Albert’s wife, was standing at the stove, stirring something in a steel pot. She was a big lady, low-built and wide-hipped, and when we set our nets she directed us on deck while Albert navigated. She was pretty much the second-in-command on the Lady. Albert, he liked to joke that she was actually the head honcho, the big chief.
‘Smells good, Evelyn.’
‘You don’t.’
‘I know it.’ Even without the slicker, I still stank of herring. ‘What you got on there?’
‘Beef stew, and an apple pie.’
‘Hot damn.’
‘You mean hot darn.’ She pointed at me with her spoon. ‘Tracy’s coming for dinner.’
Tracy was their youngest daughter. She’d worked on the boat when I first started but had taken this season off to train for her sea captain’s certificate.
I said, ‘She mentioned something about that.’
‘She say anything else?’
‘What