After a winter of meaningless covid misery I went back to Alaska to work on a different boat. I’d never seen the boat or met anybody I was going to work with on it.
Bill had told me to try calling the union if I wanted to go with another boat.
So one day it was the middle of the day and it was my birthday and I was all drunk and stoned and lonely and feeling really hopeless about my life and prospects and I gave the union a call. I told them I had some longlining experience and was wondering if they knew of any boats looking for guys.
They told me this guy Dewey Yorgerson who ran a boat called the Republic was looking for a deckhand and they gave me his number. I stared at the number all afternoon. I smoked more pot and drank more beers and sat on my couch and looked at that number until it was almost dinner time. Then I said fuck it and I called.
He picked up and said yeah he was looking for a guy. He asked me about my experience. He said he knew my uncle. He offered me the job.
I said okay.
He told me to be in Sitka in three or four weeks.
I said okay.
The call probably lasted five minutes.
So three or four weeks later I flew up from Seattle to Sitka with a great big duffel bag. I flew in the morning and I had a seven hour layover in Juneau before the half-hour connection to Sitka took off.
When I got to Juneau I took a cab down into the town. It’s about a twenty minute ride from the airport into town. This old native cabby didn’t want to talk to me, and we drove down along the Gastineau Channel in the rain with clouds choking the mountains and I thought this must be the dreariest place in the world.
I got into town and it was like eleven in the morning. Maybe noon. It started to snow and I’d left my jacket in my duffel so I was fucked. The clouds were so thick you could hardly even see the clock tower.
I walked into a shop and I bought a sandwich. Then I walked into another shop and bought some weed and then I walked into another shop and bought some cigarettes. I went down the boardwalk and sat by the water and ate my sandwich and smoked a spliff and I was colder than hell. I thought, this is terrible, I gotta get inside.
But the problem with being alone in Alaska with no place of your own is that there aren’t many places to go. Coffee shop or bar. I picked bar.
I found this spot called the Triangle Club that looked good and divey and pretty empty. There were like four or five people in there and a couple of them were talking to the bartender about kids or school or something like that. They only sold hot dogs and bags of chips for food and there was nice old oak wainscotting on the walls and the bar had a big cushion you could lean your elbows on. I thought this was the place where you could get a beer and be left alone for a while.
So I went in and got a beer and picked a good spot in the corner to go get comfortable for a few hours.
There was this old guy with a big bushy beard and those eyebrows that droop down over the corners of your eyes sitting at the bar and he was talking to a big native guy. The way they were talking it seemed like they were old friends.
I probably sat there five minutes before the bushy bearded old guy turned and looked at me and said, “hey, nice boots. You up here doin’ a charter?”
I looked at my boots, I was wearing my big brown rubber Xtra Tuff’s from last season because they were too big to pack. I looked at the old guy’s feet and he was wearing the same boots except his were way more fucked up than mine were.
“No, I’m up here longlining. I’m going to Sitka.”
“Oh, alright,” he said. “Alright, longlining.
I went back to being quiet with my beer.
Then he said, “hey, guy over there, yeah, come over here lemme tell ya something about longlinin.”
I went over and sat down next to him reluctantly.
He held out a massive hand at me. He had these huge knobby knuckles and big lumpy knots in the middles of his palms.
“I’m Jim,” he said. “Soooo, you wanna be a longliner, eh?”
He looked me up and down and I didn’t say anything. He had this thick marbly tongue so all the words he said were all mushed up like he’d just been to the dentist or taken too much Benadryl or something like that.
“I done every fuckin’ fishery in this whole fuckin’ state,” he took an inch deep swallow from his glass. “I done crabbin, fuckin’ halibut, fuckin’ every kind of salmon, black coddin’.”
He took another drink.
“Let me tell you about longlining though because that’s some serious shit, you know, and I gotta tell you, you don’t look like you probably know what you’re doing out there. When you’re out there longlining you gotta always be doing something, always, ya know, there should never not be something in your hands if you’re not sleepin. If you’re ever not doing anything you gotta go find yourself something to do and get your hands on.
I was listening carefully and nodding along like, “yes sir.” He motioned for another drink and then pointed at me so I thought it went on my tab.
He rubbed his forehead and looked like he was thinking hard for a second.
“Oh yeah, hey, when you’re setting out the gear don’t ever lift up your boots. Remember that. You always gotta be draggin your boots, don’t ever lift em up. I got my foot caught up in the fuckin bight one time setting out the gear. Fuckin’ four of the other guys holdin me down under the rail so I didn’t get dragged overboard before they cut the line. Broke my fuckin leg. Now I got a bum leg.”
“Jesus,” I said. “It broke your leg?”
“Hell yeah, it broke my leg. You know how hard that line’s pulling when you set out the gear? I’m just glad it's still connected to the rest my body.”
“Damn,” I said.
He turned to the big native guy next to him, “hey Brian, check it out this guy says he’s up here going longlining.”
They looked at me like I was an exhibit.
Brian thumbed my way, “him?”
Jim nodded.
Brian nodded. He looked at me, “you ever fished up here before?”
“Yeah I fished last season on a different boat?”
“What boat?” Jim hardly let me finish speaking.
I sipped my beer, and I started feeling like I was getting a little bit of recognition. I could have been greener.
“The Alrita,” I said.
“Don’t know that one,” Jim said. “How bout this year?”
“The Republic.”
He looked like he near spit his drink out of his mouth. “The Republic?” he said. “You mean the old schooner?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You ever fished on a schooner?”
“No but maaan, those used to be fuckin most bad ass jobs in the whole state. Used to be somebody had to die for a new guy to get on one of those boats. How the hell’d you get on the Republic?”
“I called the union,” I said.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said and covered his eyes.
Brian leaned over and hung his beer arm around Jim so he could see me. His eyes were all red at the rims and he talked real slow. “Hey, I don’t know a fuckin thing about fishin but I logged my whole fuckin life all around here in South East and I know a thing or two about workin hard and I just wanna say, I got a lot of respect for what you guys do out there.”
Jim pushed him back. “But you gotta look out for the fuckin bight,” he said.
He leaned real close to me. “I ain’t kiddin, you don’t wanna get caught in the fuckin bight.”
I nodded very seriously.
Brian said, “hey man, he doesn’t want you lecturing him all day, he’s just minding his own business getting a beer.”
Jim turned away from me so he could like at Brian, he took a big sip out of his beer. I finished mine and asked for another one. “I just don’t want him to get hurt out there is all. Its serious shit out there, man.”
He turned back to me
“I just don’t want you to get hurt out there man, I care about you.” He put his hand on my back.
He looked at me for a long while. “You wanna get a shot?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Hey, Brian! He’s buying us shots!” Jim said.
“Alright,” Brian said and asked the bartender for three duck farts.
“What’s a duck fart?” I said.
“You’ll see,” Brian said.
The bartender brought three shots of this foul blackness that looked like oil and vinegar with some milk in it.
“What the hell is this,” I said.
“Just drink it,” Jim said.
We drank the shots. It was good.
“What is this?” I said.
“You’ve really never had a duck fart before? It’s Jameson, Bailey’s, and Kahlua. Good right?”
“Yeah it’s alright,” I said.
“Man,” Jim said, “longlining on the Republic, that’s pretty sweet man, I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks Jim,” I said.
I was feeling pretty good and I thought I should probably smoke some pot. “Hey guys,” I said. “I got some weed, you wanna go smoke some weed?”
Jim smiled a big smile and slapped his hand across my back again, “hey man, if you wanna share I’ll take anything you got.”
We went right out front of the bar and they smoked cigarettes and I rolled up a big old spliff for us. All the sudden there were other people around us. And Jim and Brian knew them all. They just kept walking up the street and appearing. There was toothless Frank, who had no front teeth and Moochie, who kept laughing this weird little nervous laugh like something was wrong with him. Brian said Moochie was his brother. And there was Roy, who I really didn’t like and who had this big scar right across his forehead and talked real slow. They said there’d been some kind of accident.
Jim had the spliff and he asked if he could share it with his friends.
I said sure and he passed it all around.
That creepy guy with the scar Roy kept asking me for a cigarette. I gave him one. And then I gave him another. But he kept poking my shoulder and holding out his hand and saying all slow, “can I have a cigarette?”
After I gave him two, and he still asked me for another, Jim poked him hard in the chest and said “hey, I got a cigarette for you. Yeah. You want a cigarette? I got one for you.” He pulled out a cigarette and put it in Roy’s hand.
The other guys Brian and toothless Frank and Moochie were all laughing.
“Damn, that’s fucked up,” Moochie laughed.
Then Jim pulled this plastic nip of vodka out of his coat pocket and passed it to me. I thanked him and took a big drink to show him I could. He took a big drink too and then the weed came back to me. It was almost gone so I rolled another.
We smoked another spliff all six of us and passed around the nip until it was gone. Then Jim was like “hey there’s a liquor store right there. And I was like “cool.” So we walked down the street and went in the liquor store me and Jim and that creepy dude Roy.
They picked out these gigantic cans of ten percent something that were like two bucks and picked out a couple of those little airliner shots.I realized I didn’t want anything from the liquor store. I had a flight soon. It was at that point that I realized that these were all homeless street people who I was with. I was horrified that it had taken me so long.
Jim was at the cash register with Roy and he was like “ahhh man, I’m out of cash. I spent my last dollar on that beer in the bar. Hey man, can you buy these for us?”
I hesitated.
“Please,” he looked at me with his pickled old watery eyes with the brows falling over the corners and I saw the sadness and brokenness of his life all wash out before me like a big tide. I saw a young guy like me who was all excited to be a fisherman like these tough old guys and who worked hard and drank himself into a problem and fished away his life and drank up all his money and ended up a broken lonely old soak living on the streets in Alaska asking guys like me to buy him five dollar drunks.
I bought their drinks.
And then I went back into the bar and felt disgusted with myself for having accidentally befriended and become entangled with a group of street people. I went back in and sat down at the dark bar and some people were talking about all the crazy people outside and I was so embarrassed.
One guy turned to me and said, “hey are those homeless guys your friends? I saw you out there with them.”
I explained to him my stupid mistake.
He thought it was pretty funny so he bought me a drink and we got to talking.
“Duck farts with homeless guys,” he shook his head. He said his name was Glen. I told him I was headed to Sitka to go fishing and I had to head back to the airport soon. I asked him where I could call a cab.
“Hell you're not calling a cab. I live up by the airport and I gotta head back up there soon anyways. My wife’s coming to pick me up pretty soon here. You can come with us.”
“Alright,” I said. “Thank you.”
His wife came by and interrogated him about how many drinks he’d had. He’d had seven. He told her six. She thought that was acceptable. We walked down the street to their minivan and I got in the back. On the drive up to the airport they showed me some of the Juneau sights and Glen talked and talked the whole time.
“Hey man I get some time off from time to time, it’d be great to know somebody over in Sitka. I could come over and hang out for a few days. How long you gonna be over there?”
I told him I didn’t have any idea. I told him I was gonna meet my captain in a few hours.
He gave me his number just in case.
They dropped me off at the airport and I smoked the last of my pot and went and sat down and waited for my flight. An hour later I walked out of the airport and this white pickup pulled up and a guy yelled at me and said “hey! I’m Dewey. Throw your sack in the bed.”
I was still drunk. “Hey man, thanks for picking me up.”
“No sweat,” he said. “You hungry?”
“Yeah I could eat. You don’t have a family or anything you gotta get back to?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “No I don’t have a family.”
We went to this pub kind of place to get burgers and beers.
Part way through my burger and my second beer I had to go to the bathroom to puke. I went in and puked hard in the stall toilet with both hands gripping the rim. I puked up liquor and beer and duck farts and the sandwich I ate for lunch. I puked. And out came everything that was inside me. Out came everything, out came all these things I had kept inside me I didn’t even know were in there but were now all soaked up in liquor and poisoned to death. The puke didn’t even smell like puke, it just smelled like liquor and beer stink. A tiny fish popped up in the bowl and started swimming around in my puke, swimming around in all these little tiny parts of me I hadn’t known about until I’d killed them and puked them up.
I thought, that’s a fish in my puke. And then I flushed it all away.