The beginning of this tale can be found in the archives under "My Novel In Progress". Scroll back, readers.
Warning: the following installment contains language that some readers may find offensive.
Black Cod. April 3, 10:00 p.m. I had never been so cold or miserable in my life. Somehow, I guess, I must have thought that Thelma was exaggerating or joking when she'd described the work conditions to me over the phone. She wasn’t. This was hour twelve, hour twelve of work, but hour fourteen since we’d come to work. We didn’t get paid for our one- hour lunches and dinners. There seemed to be no end in sight.
The big sliding doors of the Fish House remained open as truck after truck ( which I later found out could hold 1000 pounds of fish) filled up with the slimy, oily, black, big-headed fish. And the concrete floor of the massive Fish House filled up with truck after truck. Boats were still being unloaded at one of the doors.
Some of the workers who seemed more seasoned kept glancing at the clock grimly, and then working even harder. Fatigue caused me to sway and blink, as though I might fall asleep where I stood.
“Hey there now, don’t conk out yet,” the young man across my station from me said, with a warm, tired smile. Tim. Oh, yeah, I thought, this one is Tim.
“Sorry,” I replied. “I’m getting a little rummy.”
“You doing ok?” Tim asked.
“Christ. Does it ever end?”
Tim smiled again. “Yeah, when they catch the quota. Could be one week, maybe six or eight. Don’t blink or it’ll be tomorrow already.”
“Not funny,” I said. “I sense truth in that remark.”
“Oh, yeah,” he grinned. “You’ll see.” The grin ceased. “You will see, won’t you? You’re not going to catch a plane out of here, are you?”
My turn to grin. “I don’t suppose there’s one here at this hour, is there?” Tim shook his head. “Well, I’m tempted, but I’m a masochist. Guess I’ll stay for awhile.”
Just then something nudged me and I head “slap-plop, slap-plop” and brown, bloody juice splashed my face. Shit. And I said it, “Shit.”
Tim looked up again. “Oh, Christ. Push ‘em up the belt!” he yelled. The headers wanted to go home. We all did. But now the conveyer belt was over-flowing with fish and they were beginning to fall from the belt and bounce off of the platforms to the concrete floor below. Grouchy, hostile pandemonium ensued.
“Hey, you fuckers!” someone yelled at the heading table, “come back here and help! There are more slime sticks!” Other expletives were both shouted and muttered.
“Oh, crap,” I muttered to myself, after surveying both my shoulders and failing to find a clean spot to wipe my dripping face.
“Here,” Tim said, inching his way around our workstation to my side. “Wipe your face on my shoulder. It’s fairly clean.”
“Are you sure?” I asked doubtfully.
“Of course,” he said. “No big deal, you’ll see.” I rinsed the blood and guts off the front of my orange raingear ( my orange uglies), then gratefully wiped first one cheek and then the other across Tim’s flannel-clad shoulder.
“Enrico, you shit!” Tim said to the guy standing directly behind me. “Why don’t you leave her alone?”
“Hey, man!” said the ugly smart-ass, “just having some fun!”
“Yeah, Enrico, you’re real cool. Why don’t you run off all the women with your sixth grade charm.”
“Are you saying I’m stupid, man?!” Enrico asked heatedly.
“What’s going on here? Back to work!” Our woman foreman, Thelma, prowled silently and sharply. She was in her mid-thirties, tall and thin, a little plain, but quite commanding. Every now and then I caught a vicious twinkle in her eye and thought I’d probably really like her if I didn’t work for her. I sensed a mildly sadistic sense of humor and a few vulnerable spots she kept well-shielded.
“Enrico!” Thelma raised her voice impatiently. “I’ve about had it with you. If you don’t leave people alone I will make you work by yourself and I’ll find the worse job I can think of for you!”
“Ooh, bring it on, Mama, bring it on!”
Thelma’s face reflected utter disgust. “Go help in the freezer.” She turned to Tim. “Will you help her?”
I was bewildered and Tim was still at my side.
“Turn around,” he said. “Now I’m not getting fresh.”
“What’s going on?” I asked nervously.
“Oh, it’s just stupid. Because it’s Enrico. You have about a million ribbons, the gut strings that is, plastered across your butt and a few across the back of your head. I’d just hose you off, but he must have been doing it for the past couple hours—most are dried on.”
I said nothing, but stood there feeling like a mannequin, or maybe dummy would be more accurate, while Tim pulled gross crap off my butt that looked like dead worms.
“Don’t judge us all by Enrico,” Tim said.
“Have you met Matt and Dan or Peggy and Jaimie yet?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t judge everyone based on them either,” he said. “Matt and Dan are a couple of brainless losers who got hired because one of them is the cousin of the Crab Plant foreman and the other had a very large quantity of coke that the asshole foreman loves.”
“Yeah, I had the dubious pleasure of making their acquaintance,” I said. “What about the women?”
“We-ell,” Tim hedged. “I don’t know if you noticed, but you’re one of only three new women hired, and they’re the other two.”
“So, have you met them and what do you think?”
Tim hesitated, then decided to give. “Anything I say after 10:00 I won’t be held accountable for. So Peggy’s a pig, but likes to think she’s some kind of goddess since she has so little competition. And Jaimie is a total space cadet, stoned-out-of-her-mind brat.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” Tim replied, “ and I really mean, don’t mention it. If I ever get the chance to get laid by either one I would deny this conversation.”
“Well, of course,” I grinned. “That is understood.”
I looked up and squinted at the clock—10:30 p.m.
“I think I hate these little fish,” I muttered under my breath.
Tim gave me a tired smile. “They are by far the worst. Totally lacking charm, interest, or challenge.”
I worked silently, head down. I was so cold, I could think of nothing but my own misery, but I sure didn’t want to whine about it. Concrete floor, running water, blood and guts everywhere, and I mean everywhere. My feet were buried in a pile of blood and gut string, and below my platform were more thick mounds of yuk! Cold darkness lay outside the one wall of windows and the unloading doors. Wind wound its way through the openings to torture us further. I wanted nothing more than hot water and my bed.
My hand was beginning to feel like a stiff, arthritic claw. I kept pausing, tried to switch hands, which was futile, but at least I looked busy while flexing my aching paw. I’d gathered that looking busy (as opposed to actually being busy) was very important around here.
I sensed a change of energy and activity in the Fish House and looked up from my fish belly to see why. “Oh, thank God!” Tim whispered fervently as we watched three orange-clad bodies with trucks of ice, scoop ice into buckets and begin to cover up each truck of black cod.
“Last truck!” Thelma shouted as the hopper went up one last time. “We’re putting the rest to bed!” She walked up and down the line, looking fatigued, but dedicated and talking to each little work station as she went.
“How are you holding up?” she asked me with a smile lurking behind her eyes. I couldn’t tell if hers was a friendly, sympathetic smile or a mildly malicious and amused smile. I decided that it was a bit of both.
“Oh, just great,” I lied. It was a good lie, but I knew she knew it was a lie by the way her grin grew.
“Great!” Thelma said, “we’ll have to find a couple different jobs for you tomorrow to keep you happy. In between you’ll be up here trying to learn how to make your hands move as much as, and at the same time as your mouth.” She gave me a tired, evil grin and sauntered away.
“She’s really not that bad,” Tim told me. “Thelma has a real perverse sense of humor, but she’s probably going to like you a lot . I could see that it just amused the hell out of her to watch all the guys tripping all over themselves to stand next to you or help you.”
“What?” I started to protest.
“Oh, give it up,” Tim mocked, but I only smiled in acknowledgement.
That last truck of fish took about half the time of all the other trucks. The energy level became charged and frantic in our eagerness to go home.
Most of the headers jumped up at the work stations and began to demand fish to clean. We ended up with five people at our little table and I gratefully did little more than pass fish.
“You going out tonight?” One of my new companions asked me.
“Going out where?” I asked incredulously.
“To the bars,” he said impatiently. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t know that there are two bars.”
I knew that there were two bars. I’d never considered that someone might go to a bar at this hour, on a work night, when we were all so exhausted. I pondered.
“Hmmm.” I said.
“Well?” The four guys waited for my answer.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“I’ll go if you go,” Tim said.
I looked up at the clock, ten minutes to eleven. Thelma was about ten feet away pretending to not be listening, but her ears appeared to be turned backward.
“What time do you think we’ll have to start tomorrow?” I asked, hesitating to commit.
“Early,” Tim said grimly and then shouted at the boss, “Hey, Thelma!” She turned. “What time do we come in tomorrow?”
Oooh, a truly evil grin. “My unloaders! You start at 6:00 a.m. Kristy, on scales at 6:30. Everyone else, 7:00 a.m. sharp. And for all you new people, that means you are standing up there in your spot, slime stick in hand at 7:00 a.m. sharp, not just coming through the door.”
I blinked several times as though I’d just been punched and sent reeling. The horror of it.
I looked to see my four stupid companions still waiting for an answer.
“Oh, come on!” I said impatiently. “There is no way in hell I’m going to a bar and then getting up that early!” Four little faces sagged with disappointment.
“You wait,” one said to me, “you’ll change your mind one of these nights.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “but tonight my empty little bed has never seemed so inviting.”
“It doesn’t have to be empty,” one of my companions leered at me, just for the sake of leering.
“Oh, but it does,” I said emphatically. “It does.”
“More fish,” Tim requested, then to my immense relief, “hey! That’s it!”
I did a ¾ turn to look at the now-empty belt, brown, bloody juice streaming to the floor.
“Come on, Petra, let’s go wash up,” Tim said, helping me down from the platform so I wouldn’t slip and fall on the black oil into the mounds of guts.
“Everyone help out at the wash tank!” Thelma shouted as she walked by. “Dave, Mike, you and you,” Thelma pointed, “go help in the freezers. Enrico, stop. You and Jaimie and Dan and Matt, put everything under six on the blast trays.” The four looked pissed and sullen. They had been on their way out the door, having completely bypassed the wash tank.
“Follow me,” Tim said. “We’ll get you a quick brownie point then get out of here so you can get a shower before the hot water runs out.”
I couldn’t contemplate standing in cold water, but there was no way I could go to bed in my current state—blood splattered on my face, sticky bits of gut drying in my hair, a general sense of foulness.
I realized that Tim had taken me under his wing, but his wing felt like a comforting, safe haven and I was grateful. There were so many different activities going on at the same time, so many different people about that I couldn’t tell what was what yet and how everyone and everything tied together. I hate being the new kid in any situation. And I’m always afraid of doing something stupid and screwing up and making an ass out of myself. Tim was helping me to avoid any mishaps.
I followed him to the wash tank. It was overflowing with the slimy, headless black cod and now the slimers were all crowding in and beginning to bicker with the wash tank crew. In our eagerness to get out of there for the night, the wash tank got slammed and then over-eager slimers screwed everything up by tossing the wrong sized dirty fish into the wrong freezer trucks. Fatigue caused tempers to flare and I hung back hesitantly.
“Oh, no,” Tim said, “we’re not getting involved in this mess. Grab that freezer truck and follow that guy,” he pointed, “to the scale. I’ll be right behind you. Fish House etiquette demands that you replace the truck you take. Remember that, but I’ll do it this time. If you don’t, you’ll piss off the wash tank and be branded a Fenugie.”
“A what?” I asked, baffled.
“Fenugie—a fucking new guy.”
“Sorry I asked,” I replied. I watched the guy in front of me, feeling like a robot who’d been programmed for the task and mimicked his actions. I set the truck on the scale, waited for a curt nod from the scale person, then lifted the truck again and followed my predecessor around the Fish House floor, parking our freezer trucks in a tight row in front of the freezer doors.
Again, I hung back, waiting for Tim to join me, uncertain of protocol.
The sound of the freezer doors sliding open caught my attention. Fog came billowing out and from behind the fog came a wiry fellow and a tall, lanky man. Ice hung off their mustaches and frost clung to their thick, brown, Carhart freezer suits.
“Hey, Ron,” the smaller man was saying, “smoke break on the dock and then we’ll grab these and that should finish tunnel four.”
“OK,” the taller man replied. “I’ll meet you out there. Got to piss and get out of this freezer suit. I’m sweating my fucking ass off.” And he dumped the empty freezer truck next to the still-frantic wash tank.
“Hey,” Tim said from behind me, “let’s get out of here. Follow Ron. You can share my locker with me.”
“Hey, Tim!” shouted the shorter freezer guy, whose name I learned was John, one of about ten Johns. “Got a smoke?” Silently Tim fished a cigarette out from a pocket inside his raingear and tossed it to John, who turned and walked out onto the dock, passing under a sign which read “Absolutely No Smoking On The Dock!”
“Won’t he get in trouble?” I asked Tim, pointing to the sign.
Tim smiled wryly and shook his head. “Everyone smokes on the dock. The big boss can’t seem to be out there unless he’s got a cigarette. But I guess not everyone, especially new people shouldn’t. But the fishermen all do, and the forklift drivers and the freezer crew. Basically, the freezer crew does their own thing . Their breaks and meals are different from ours. They get to take a 10-minute break every hour because it’s 40 below in the tunnels.”
“That other guy said he was taking his freezer suit off because he was sweating his ass off. Was he just kidding?”
“Oh, no! I’m sure he was. You’ll have to take a detour some day and watch them for a few minutes. They’re something else, the arrogant bastards. Now turn around and I’ll scrub your butt and then you can scrub mine.”
Tim and I grinned at each other and I turned around and obliged. The heat of the hot, soapy water made me want to climb into the shallow wash tank.
Once clean, I followed Tim through another door I hadn’t noticed earlier. As he opened the door, hot air blasted us and damn, it felt good! The nicest thing I could say about the smell, though, was that it smelled fishy.
“It’ll stink a lot worse in a couple of days,” Tim said, having noticed my nose wrinkling in distaste. “There’s always some asshole that just leaves a slimy sweatshirt hanging around or doesn’t bother to wash off, then that shit ages and we all get to enjoy the reek.”
He led me past a bench to a second row of large, chicken wire lockers. “Here it is, home sweet home. Have a couple of clothes pins. Notice all the handy, dandy nails I put in two days ago. You’ll thank me for it. You should bring extra socks, liners, and a couple of shirts, maybe an extra hat in a plastic bag and just leave them hanging in here. Believe me, you will use them.”
“I could go to sleep right here,” I whispered fervently.
Tim gave me his easy grin and threw an arm around my shoulder. “Come on, little one, Uncle Tim will walk you home and put you to bed—figuratively speaking.”
“Do you know,” I said as I slid my time card into the machine and back to its holder, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many sexual innuendos , not to mention out-right propositions in my entire life.”
“That I don’t doubt,” Tim replied. “The every-day banter around here would get a guy fired anywhere else.”
“Good night. Good job. See you in the morning,” Thelma told each of her crew as we left.
“We should hurry,” Tim said softly. “The savage hordes will soon be upon us and you seem like the kind of woman who likes a long, hot shower.”
“You got that right, buddy, but I don’t know if these aching feet can go any faster.”
Behind us, the freezer crew was back in action, shouting, running with trucks into the dense fog. While out on the dock, two boats were still being unloaded, the unloading crew exhausted, but resigned.
Moonlight hit the blackness of water, waves lapped against pilings and something large swam near, surfaced blowing water, then swam on.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “Was that a whale?”
“I think it was either a sea lion or a seal.”
“That was so cool!”
“Have a good shower, Petra. See you at breakfast?”
“Maybe. I’ll try.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, Tim. And thanks for being so nice.”
“Oh, well I have an ulterior motive, you know.”
“Good night!” I said firmly, and slipped into the welcoming dinginess of the old bunkhouse.
Hot water coursed over my aching body and being clean had never felt quite this good before. I was just closing the door to my room when I head the other women come in and some of the men upstairs.
As I crawled into my clean, fluffy, warm bed, feeling grateful for sheets and blankets, I realized that the discontent of my adjustment period or transitional phase was already coming to a close. Nothing like standing across from a person for twelve hours and sharing life stories out of sheer boredom to create a bond.
I curled up into an aching, clean, happy, little ball and was instantly asleep.
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