Part Twenty Six

All of this can be documented, except for the wholly fabricated conversations.

"Haywood!” Darby yelled.

A muscular young man straightened from the group of men loading trucks and began walking toward them

“You owe me, Gus,” Darby said to the man next to him.

Gus Avery nodded. “’Preciate it.”

“Well, you married my sister. The least I can do is toss you a spitrat every now and then.”

Haywood reached them.

“Haywood, this is Gus Avery. He captains the Bristol Bay. Gus, Preacher Haywood. The only spitrat worth a damn when there’s work to be done.”

Preacher shook the other man’s hand. Avery was tall, thin, with long hair and a patchy beard. “Mr. Avery.”

“Haywood,” Gus said. “You ever do any fishing?”

“Nope.”

“Ever been on a boat?”

“Yep.”

Avery looked at his brother-in-law. “Well, that’s half the battle. Look, my opening comes up in two days and I’ve lost half my crew. No offense, but I’ve never been desperate enough to hire a spitrat before, and you need to know how important this is. Nowadays we only get two openings during the season. Two 48-hour periods to haul as much fish as humanly possible. My first opening was a bust. That’s part of why I’m desperate. We fish shares, here, which means that you get a percentage of the net. A small percentage, as the juniormost, but if we have a good haul you still can make more in two days than you can make in two weeks at the cannery.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t know that you do. I was a college kid like you when I first came up here. This is pocket money for you. The men you’ll be sailing with – this is an important part of their income for the year. When we hit our spot we’re going to be running long lines and working 48 hours straight through. You let a 200 pound drop in the water, it’s like taking food from their children, understand? We work hard, and fast, and if you get tangled up in a skate we will drag your ass across the ocean rather than stop to haul you back in.”

“I understand. Bust my ass, two days straight.”

Avery looked at his brother-in-law. “He understands.”

Darby shrugged and said nothing.

“OK, like I said, I’m desperate. Come on, I’m going to give you a crash course in how to not drown.”

They walked down to the dock where the Bristol was being provisioned. Avery told him about the change from a few years ago; before, they’d be out a couple weeks at a time, but now -- “balls to the wall. Ten times as dangerous for the fisherman, too. And risky – if we don’t set in the right spot, we come back with the hold empty and that’s it for the year. We barely caught enough last time to cover the expenses.”

On the deck he showed the kid how to set lines, showed him where things were, showed him how to stay out of the way when necessary. “I’ve only been a captain for two seasons,” Avery said. “And everybody knows me as the outsider. And everybody’s waiting for me to fall on my ass. Last year we set records for hauls. But this year… shit. I don’t set where the others do. I have my own ideas about where to find fish. When I’m right, they love me. But when I’m wrong…”

“Shit,” Preacher repeated.

“Exactly.”

When the ship was in position it would set long lines called skates, up to 100 fathoms each. A hundred or so hooks were spaced along it, baited with frozen herring – except that one of Avery’s quirks was that he used fresher fish, which was harder to put on a hook but drew better. The lines were strung between buoys and covered miles. After they set for a few hours, a hydraulic winch on the ship started pulling them back in. A halibut could weight as much as 400 pounds. The work setting the lines was fast and you risked getting your arm caught in a hook or in the line itself and pulled overboard. The work pulling them back in was slower but harder, grappling with the huge, struggling flatfish and pulling them on board to be gaffed and tossed into a refrigerated locker.

Years later Avery would have the following observations about Haywood’s performance on his maiden voyage: first, that he saw through every practical joke the other crewmembers set for him; second, that he always had a smile on his face (they nicknamed him “Twinkle,” in fact,) and third, that he could work them all to death. He was slow setting lines at first but mastered the knack of it very quickly, and once he got it down he was like a machine. And when they started hauling in he threw his back into every fish, and didn’t once slow down or complain for two days straight.

And the haul filled the locker almost to the top. Avery would later reflect that he caught more fish in that 48-hour period than in any two-week span before or since. He caught enough that it made up for the bad catch earlier in the summer. Because his crew was short, the shares were going to be big, too.

They got back to Homer and Preacher staggered down to the Spit and stood in the public shower for a long time, trying in vain to get the smell of fish out. Then dragged himself to his tent and slept for twelve hours straight. Got up and took another shower, which seemed to do a better job. Put on the one pair of jeans and the one shirt that had never been on the boat or in the cannery, and went to the Iceberg Inn to rejoin his crewmates and find out how much they’d earned.

When he got there – the last one to arrive – Avery told him that the rest of the crew had decided to let him take a full share, not the half-share usually given to first-timers. “Hell, Twinkles, you worked it like you’d been doing it all your life,” the mate said. He didn’t add what they all were thinking – you worked it like your livelihood depended on it. Like one of us.

They were thrilled with the take; they drank all night; Haywood ended up sweet-talking the half-Inuit barmaid who had sworn never to go home with a fisherman; everything was going fine until one of the Bristol’s crewmen threw a punch at a crewman from another, less fortunate ship called the Russian Lark, and the bar dissolved into a free-for-all.

Avery swore, later, that Haywood tried to avoid getting involved. He took the barmaid by the hand and started edging for the door. But the Lark’s second mate, a beefy man named Roger, blocked his escape and threw a roundhouse punch that knocked Preacher into a table; Roger took another step toward Haywood with his fist raised and Preacher threw a left-right-left just as the police came through the door. The Lark’s mate dropped like a sack of potatoes right at the feet of the cops.

Preacher got to spend the night in a cell with the rest of the crew; he even made up with the man he’d punched, complaining that his hands hurt far worse than Roger’s head. Avery bailed them out. And he had his doubts; Preacher didn’t seem to favor his hands at all, but Roger’s eye was swollen shut for a week.

The magistrate was used to fishermen getting in drunken brawls, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He suggested that Haywood just get out of the county.

“What the hell,” Preacher said, “the season’s over anyway.”

He caught a ride to Anchorage and then a ferry south and arrived in Seattle on September 23, 1989.

Years later Haywood wrote: "There was an allure to that life. No stress. Didn't take your work home with you. Just good, honest, back-breaking work. You didn't even notice the smell after awhile. Mostly. But in that jail cell I had a sudden vision of myself 30 years down the road, doing the exact same thing -- busting my ass to keep food on the table, and getting locked up after a beer brawl to celebrate another voyage without drowning, freezing, or both. I decided I had better leave before it became a habit."