The Forbidden Shore

I stopped showing the new greenhorn how to grind the fish bait and walked over to Mike.

Not making eye contact, I looked out to the horizon and asked quietly, "You okay, Hig?"

Mike was silent for a long moment and then said, "No worries, Pete. But I may as well tell you - this'll be my last turn on the Anna."

"What happened?"

"Worthless motherfucker kicked me out of bed. Kicked me. Kicked ME," he said again, color starting to rise in his cheeks. "Nobody does that to Dolly Higgenbotham's boy," he whispered hoarsely. "No fucking body."

"Try to relax, Hig," I said, putting a hand on his arm. "Don't give him the satisfaction."

Then, throwing caution to the wind, I confessed, "Don't tell anybody, Mike, but this is my last cruise as well. After this, I'm done too. I've reached my limit."

"Have you told him yet?" Hig asked out of the side of his mouth, coiling a line as he spoke.

"I'm waiting till we're back in Dutch," I replied. "God knows what Dad would do if he knew now. So, anyway, keep your damn nose clean and remember, he can't stop the clock," I advised with a nod towards the bridge. "For God's sake keep your fuckin' head down. We'll get through this."

Nodding, Mike visibly gathered himself and flashed me a grin and gave me a thumb's up. "We watch each other's back, Pete."

"You got it, Mike. Low and slow from here on out."

Looking over the deck, everything seemed to be stowed well. The only question was when we were going to start dropping pots. That meant I would have to talk with Dad, so I could anticipate when we needed to start prepping them.

Squaring my shoulders, I climbed up the outside ladder to the wheelhouse. Poking my head reluctantly into my father's sanctum, I asked, "What's the plan for our first stop?"

At first, I thought he was just being surly and usually antisocial when he ignored me, and I was about to ask him again, when I noticed his clenched jaw and fixed stare. He was pissed, pissed in a major way. I knew then that any additional questions might set off an explosion, so I simply waited. After several minutes, he seemed to settle a bit and then he grunted, still not looking at me.

"Heading for Bower's Bank, then maybe over to Rude Canyon. We'll set a few test pots and wait. If that doesn't work, then St. Georges."

I nodded once and went back down to the deck. Looking around for Mike, I saw him near the stern, binoculars in hand. When I joined him, he said nothing just handing me the binoculars, gesturing back towards the port. We weren't much more than a mile gone, so the powerful Nikons gave me a good view. I counted at least three police vehicles at our berth, lights flashing. A half dozen State Troopers were milling around on the jetty.

"Ya think they'll sic the Coasties on your Dad?" Mike asked.

I thought for a bit, recalling the few times we had crew with outstanding warrants on board.

"Depends on how bad they want to talk to him," I decided. "Lot of work to send a boat after us. Got nowhere to go once the pots are full. I'd have worried more if it was still King season. If that were the case, Dad could offload on St. Paul and go just about anywhere once the hold was empty."

"No, he's pretty much stuck going back to Dutch," I concluded. "Pack ice is too chancy to plan on offloading at St. Paul this time of year. I think they'll wait, try to talk to him when we offload. Anyway, I think the CG would want to stay ready for SAR, rather than commit resources to chasing Dad down. It'll sort itself out soon enough."

"I almost wish they'd come out after his sorry ass," Mike said quietly.

"Not sure that it's a good idea, Mike," I said seriously. "Gunnar seems pissed even more than usual right now. I don't know how he would react to being boarded. Any road, you'd be out a pretty decent payday if they hauled him off the boat. Best if we just keep going in the usual way," I said.

I left Hig at the railing and made my way back amidships. We had a few more hours before I'd have to start getting the pots teed up, so I wanted to take some time going over safety procedures with the greenhorn and to make sure that he was going to be able to get into his survival suit properly, God forbid.

After I finished, I noticed our engineer, Sean. He was standing in an open hatchway in the superstructure, taking care to stay out of the line of sight of the bridge. Usually a man of few words, he caught my eye and jerked his head, indicating me to come inside.

Normally, Sean keeps to himself and does his job. He's the best paid of the lot of us, Dad grudgingly awarding him market value for his skills. Dad may grind his crew to fish meal every time out, but he has always babied the Anna. I know for damn sure that he cares more about the boat than he does about his family, so it's actually not too much of a surprise that he's actually willing to part with some scratch to keep her running properly.

For that reason, Sean is the only crew member he doesn't fuck with. Taciturn doesn't begin to describe Sean. He likes his work and he likes not being bothered. If he's said more than a dozen words to me in the past two trips out, I'd be surprised. He knows full well what Dad is like and how he treats us, but he pretty much stays in the engine room and out of the fray. I'd say about two times out of three, he'll grab his meal and take it back into the hold with him, rather than sit with any of us.

So it was surprising to see him come up to the deck and even more surprising that he would seek me out for a conversation. Somewhat apprehensively, I followed him inside. Sean dogged the hatch and looked at me guardedly, as if he was undergoing some kind of internal struggle. After a moment, he sighed and spoke without preamble.

"Something's not right, Pete."

"Not right?"

"Yeah, not right. I mean, with your Dad. Something's wrong with him. I don't know what, but it's not good."

"How so?" I asked, my voice carefully neutral.

"When he came on board this morning, first thing he did was tell me to run the Anna flat out till we got to Bower's Bank. I reminded him that we were a couple hundred hours from needing a refit on the starboard drive shaft, but he said to follow his damn orders or I'd find myself on shore with a broken leg."

"No shit."

"Yeah, no shit, Pete. Never had a captain threaten me for doin' my job, y'know. Pretty damn disturbing. Do you know what's up with him? Can't say as though I like what's happenin' here. Makes me worry. I don't like worrying."

I was dumbfounded. I couldn't have been more surprised if Sean had started spouting off Hamlet's soliloquy. Shaking my head to clear the mental fog I found myself in, I chose my words cautiously.

"There are some rumors about trouble a couple days ago over at the Grand Aleutian, but I'm not sure if there's any truth to them."

"I ain't stupid, Pete. I saw those po-lice on the dock just like you did. Something's up and the rumors, whatever they are, well they're likely true based on what I saw."

"What about that starboard shaft?" I asked. "Will it hold up?"

Sean allowed himself a slight smile. "If we really were goin' at max revs, I'd say we'd be in trouble inside a day and a half. But we're only running at about 85%. I figure the shaft'll hold up indefinitely at that output."

"He'll see the revs from the bridge gauges, Sean. What will you do when he figures out you're holding back?"

"Well, if the gauges on the bridge were, uhm, accurate, that might be so, but I took the liberty of doin' a little bit of recalibration, so that shouldn't be a problem."

Sean put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me intently. "Like I said, somethin's not right, what with your dad willing to drive the Anna to breakdown. I haven't figured it out, but I'm going to do my damn best to make sure that crazy sumbitch doesn't do anything stupid. "

"But there's one more thing, Pete. I heard him mutterin' to himself after he chewed on my ass. I couldn't make all of it out, but I reckon that he's mostly mad at you for some reason. Don't know why, but that's what I figure."

"You be real careful, you hear?" he said forcefully, eyes boring into me. "Don't need another Art Swenson on this boat."

"Art Swenson? Never heard about him."

"Oh you probably did, Pete, just not by name. Right now, I don't have any more time to talk. Come see me after supper and I'll tell you about it. In the meantime, watch your step, son. Watch your step."

I went back out to the deck, my thoughts whirling. I knew that rationally, there was no way Dad could possibly know about Mom and me, but I was sure that he was always thinking the worst about the both of us separately. Would it be that much of a paranoid, delusional leap for him to just decide that something was amiss?

I felt sure that I had given nothing away, but now I was developing my own paranoia. As I thought it through, it seemed to me that if Sean observed this behavior of Dad's, it must have been when he boarded the Anna, since it looked as though Sean was the first person Dad sought out when he got on board.

So, whatever it was that was on Dad's mind, he brought it with him. I felt sure that it wasn't anything I gave away myself. On one hand, that relieved me slightly, but my more rational self knew that it didn't matter a damn.

Whatever Dad was thinking, it was something I couldn't control. He'd act on his own thoughts and that was the problem. What he believed was his reality. It didn't matter if his suspicions were on the mark or not. What mattered was that he would likely do something about them.

The rest of the day absolutely dragged. I had to bring all of my concentration to bear, keeping things running properly. At supper, I didn't taste a bite of my food. Dad took his meal in the wheelhouse, delegating the greenhorn to bring him his meal. I went to my cabin after the meal and waited for about twenty minutes, then I quietly made my way to the engine room.

As soon as I showed up, Sean dogged the hatch. He began without a pause, speaking in low tones.

"What I'm going to tell you, I've never told anyone else. I'm the only one on the boat who knows this. Everybody else who sailed with us on that trip is either out of the business or on other boats now. I can't actually prove anything about what happened and it's been well on towards twenty years since Art died."

"This fellow, Swenson, he died on the Anna?"

"That's correct as a statement of fact, but doesn't cover what really happened."

Sean paused, looking at me closely before he spoke again.

"Art Swenson was a friend, a good one. He was a good crab man and he ended up working with your Dad through no fault of his own."

Sean took in a deep breath and shook my world. "Art was murdered. Your Dad was responsible."

"Dad killed him?" I asked incredulously. "How?"

"Very cleverly, Pete, very cleverly. It looked like an accident, but it wasn't."

"How?" I asked again, numbed by the thought.

"Gunnar sent him up on the stack during a storm, said a pot was coming loose. Then he steered the boat into a trough between two waves. We nearly pitch poled and Art was thrown overboard. We never found his body."

"Why would he do that, Sean?"

Sean sat on the edge of an access ladder, head down, with his hands folded in his lap. His voice dropped even further.

"Well, you see, Art was a natural lady's man. Not a player, mind you. Just one of those lucky SOBs who have that combination of looks, charm and confidence that makes any woman wet and willing, y'know? He never lacked for feminine company and to my knowledge, he never failed to bed a gal he set his sights on, single or married."

"You're probably too young to remember, but back in those days, your Mom (a lovely, true lady, by the way, just a wonderful person) still was taking her duties as the Captain's wife seriously. She made it a point to know all of your Dad's crew and would come down to Dutch and give them a send-off dinner before the Red Crab season started."

"Now, Art was a footloose and devil-may-care sort of fella, but he was nobody's fool. He was quite taken with your beautiful mother, but knew that even so much as a glance in her direction would have Gunnar on his neck like a guillotine. So, he kept his infatuation to himself. By the by, as near as I could see, your Mom was never anything but correct and proper in how she behaved. None of us ever saw Art getting any special attention from her. None at all."

"Don't ask me how, but for some crazy reason, Gunnar took it into his head that Art had managed to have his way with your mom. There was an ugly scene at the end of the dinner, but the rest of the crew broke it up. Being as we were set to sail in less than eight hours, there was no way that Gunnar could find a replacement for Art. Say what you like, but Art maybe was the best deckhand your Dad ever had."

"I guess in the end, it seemed like dollar signs overrode jealousy and Gunnar seemed to make up his mind to tolerate Art for this one last trip and that's where things stood when we went out."

"Gunnar didn't raise his voice once or even look sideways at Art for the first two weeks of the trip. Of course, Art kept a low profile, eating in his cabin and staying there pretty much the whole time he wasn't on deck. We all assumed that business was business and that was the end of things."

Sean paused for a moment, looking at me in a searching fashion. He seemed to be debating how much more to tell me.

"When we got caught up in that storm, there was no question that someone had to secure that loose pot. If that had torn loose, God knows how much damage it might have caused, let alone hurting or killing someone on the deck."

"Nobody was more surefooted or comfortable on the stack than Art. Nobody else could have done it better or safer than he could, so we didn't think twice when Gunnar sent him up."

"But - I'll tell you this. When we got caught in that trough, I've never seen such ham fisted piloting. Gunnar claimed that there was some following sea that may have affected the rudder, but I'm not so sure. And there's one other thing."

Sean got up stiffly and walked over to his toolbox. He fished around in the bottom for a moment and brought out a small object wrapped in an old, greasy bandana. He handed to me to unwrap, saying, "I went up on the stack later that night and retrieved this from the pot that was loose."

I gingerly opened the parcel. It felt heavy in my hand, out of proportion to its size. Inside was a short length of old chain. I recognized it as the same type we used to secure our pots. I ran the links through my fingers, inspecting them. What I saw chilled me to the bone.

It wasn't subtle. It wasn't equivocal. A link was disrupted, with the unmistakable signs of the use of a bolt cutter. Although the chain was distorted by the beating it took when the pot came undone, the cut marks were clear.

As we got ready to leave for the airport the preceding morning, Mom made one more effort to convince me to stay home with her. Because I felt responsible for the crew, I didn't want to be the cause of them missing a big payday. Now, holding the cut chain in my hand, I had the sickening feeling that I had zigged when I should have zagged.

Now, instead of simply worrying about keeping to myself and away from Dad in the usual way of trips past, I had a knot of anxiety in my gut that wouldn't go away. Alarm bells were going off in my head and I suddenly had the premonition that I might not make it back to port.

The hairs on my arms stood up and an icy finger ran down my spine. There was real danger here. My blood ties to my father were like as not to be of no protective value at all.

If there were any blood ties? The germ of a most disquieting thought began to grow and for the first time in my life, I asked myself, "Who is my father?" Was this Mom's terrible secret? Was this the deception at the heart of my twisted family, the lurking black shadow that threatened to consume all of us?

I had never considered even remotely the possibility that Mom had been unfaithful to my father, but when I looked at it objectively, I had to admit to myself that Mom was only human, a lonely, unappreciated woman of considerable beauty who had been left to die on the vine by a beastly husband - a man who might not even like women to begin with. It was as though I had opened the door to my house and instead of finding a room filled with expected furniture and the mundane artifacts of middle class life, I had stumbled into a steaming pit, crawling with rot, disease and disgusting vermin.

For a moment, it seemed that my entire life was built on a foundation of shifting sand, everything a lie. Nothing was what it seemed and nobody, even my beloved mother, was who they appeared to be. Hell, I didn't even know who I was. Those feelings rose up in me like choking black smoke and for a moment, they nearly strangled my sanity. My hands clutched the chain I was holding convulsively.

Then I thought of Mom and the past few days we spent together as lovers. I clung to that like a drowning man clutching at the flotsam of a shipwreck. If I knew nothing else, I knew that was real. I knew what I felt in my heart and what Mom felt for me. There was where truth lay. Everything else that led up to us being together was of no importance, background noise arising from the disintegration of our dysfunctional family. I had questions for Mom, but I felt that we would work things out, no matter what the answers were.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, I handed the chain back to Sean. Our engineer continued to watch me, measuring and assessing my reaction. Once he saw I was holding it together, he gave me wintry smile and clapped my shoulder.

"We'll be keeping an eye on you, son. We have your back. Just don't be alone with him. I'm serious, okay?"

"Thanks, Sean," I said somewhat embarrassed by his concern. "But I figure I can look after myself. I'll steer clear of him as best I can."

Sean's eyes narrowed and he spoke sternly. "Don't be an idiot, boy. You father is nobody to play games with. He's off his nut now for some reason, which makes him ten times more dangerous. If it were up to me, I'd turn around and put you on shore right this minute."

"Any road," he sighed, "You can't stop us from keeping an eye on you. You may not realize this Pete, but you're well liked and respected. You're probably not the best deck boss in the fleet, but nobody looks after his shipmates better. Working with Captain Bligh up there," he said, nodding towards the bridge, "We tend to notice stuff like that. If you were master of this boat, there'd be folks lining up to work with you."

"So just relax," he finished. "We'll all get through this trip together, okay?"

I nodded, "Thanks Sean. Appreciate it. Guess we all better get back to work."

Chapter 13

As I made my way back to the deck, I noticed everyone except the greenhorn made a point to make eye contact and give me a nod. Interesting, I thought to myself. Clearly Sean had planned our little chat out rather carefully. I wasn't sure how all this was going to be affecting how I ran the deck, but I reasoned what was done was done so I'd just have to ride things out.

I found my thoughts drifting back to Mom and had to ruthlessly suppress them. My gut was now telling me that I was in no-shit danger and I had to devote all of my energy to making it back into port in one piece.

People who watch That Show see a bunch of roughneck, redneck types doing heavy physical labor under really shitty working conditions, more often than not with some bastard in the wheelhouse breathing down their necks for thirty or forty hours at a stretch. It's a hard life that requires a hard attitude, but for their part, the captains are mostly showing tough love. Some are "nicer" than others and some are middlin' SOB's in real life, but in the end, everyone pulls together to get the job done. It's about feeding families and making mortgages.