Like an ocean swell that wasn�t there this morning, the growing sea overtakes an otherwise calm ocean. It can be heard in the creak of timbers, slap of sails, and splash against the hull. It can be felt underfoot and in the tightening of legs against the deck�s slow roll. It is a sign of storms some days ago, a thousand miles away. Human thoughts also arrive like this for better or for worse.
There was a time for Moosemeat John when life was more than cold unrelenting rain. Maybe it was the change in the weather that spurred the throbbing dull ache in his knees and shoulders. Perhaps it had always been there, just not noticed by a younger mind more tuned to the world beyond himself. Moosemeat couldn't be sure.
Moosemeat John had lived beyond anybodys expectation, and now was deep into the long shadows. His spring of vitality had drained, leaving pain in his joints and the lead weight of sadness in his heart. The grayness was there in the mornings and lay down with him at night. For thirty years, like sand in an hour glass, he was increasingly burdened by waning strength and clouded vision, and at eighty it was no longer possible to fool anyone. Outliving your friends is what strong young men strive for, but nobody says what kind of fate it really is that awaits all old men of the sea.
He sat, hunched, in the light drizzle at the end of the cannery pier. It was nearly dark. The sky would be in twilight for another hour, what with darkness not coming until near eleven in southeast Alaska. The chill wormed its way through his threadbare wool shirt and stiffened his back. The wooden box he sat on inched sideways as a gust of wind off of the water rocked the old wooden seiner Kookeena tied to the dock about ten feet away. Kookeenaï's mooring line unsnaked itself, challenging the pull of the boat, tugging at the dock, and moved the battered planks under Moosemeat just enough for him to feel the sea building in the darkness. He held a green handled hunting knife and whittled at what looked like the head of a bird.
He had seen the boat arrive early that morning when the sun was breaking through the gray and silver. Beads speckled the old wood jewels of a princess, he thought. She came closer. He had not seen her in many years, so his memories tried hard to fit the sight before him. The old queen was scarred and tired.
He guessed the Kookeenaï's crew must be making the rounds in town. They would probably go to The Sextant, be out all night, and if lucky get three hours sleep before a trip out for halibut in the morning.
Furrows and ridges of memory stirred within him. He recalled the sounds and smells of The Sextant he'd known when he was younger. He endured the life of a fisher on the sea and in the bar as the seasons came and went and his circle of friends got smaller. Hard work, danger, and pain prodded away at them all. First the college kids and adventurers, then the new boat owners, and last the seasoned old-timers that stuck like barnacles until life events scraped them off. None of the old-timers went willingly. In his nighttime visions Moosemeat saw familiar weathered bronzed faces contorted in anguish, gnarled hands clawing at the sky, muscled shoulders thrusting iron hard arms toward the heavens. None of them could do any less.
Now, whenever he went into The Sextant he didn't know the place anymore. Surrounded by the smells of fisher bodies, beer, cigarette smoke, and the shadows of bent figures too long at the wobbly tables, he was a stranger. The part that was alive had wilted then faded, piece by piece, taking him with it. In his memories of untarnished friendships, he grieved the loss. There was a boundary between him and the remaining, unfamiliar faces that turned to the door when it squeaked and admitted shafts of outside light.
Booted feet stopped at the open door before the next step into the darkened bar. They halted there, filling the doorway, the salt air fighting to come in behind them. After days at sea, the beer- and smoke-saturated air inside The Sextant could hit you like a solid wall. The timbers under the door were worn smooth to the curve of a dinner plate. There the boots pivoted one way toward the mirrored bar, or the other toward the dim, stained green card tables at the rear, surrounded with captain's chairs polished by use. In the soft light of the bar, a back wall shimmered with black and white photos of fishers and their boats. Framed and neatly hung, two hundred photographs surrounded another larger, yellowed photo with a slightly larger space around the frame. On the foredeck, two fishers slung their arms across each others shoulders, teeth gleaming in wide smiles, next to two laughing, open-mouthed women. At the nearest end of the four was the larger of the men, light skinned, scarred and weathered. The smaller woman was raven haired, fine featured and even doused by the spray and pitched by the wind and sea, she was dignified and beautiful. Chips of sky came through her windblown curls. Both trim and athletic appearing, she and the smaller man wore fishers' outfits of Levis, plaid wool shirts, and rolled down hip boots. The other lady seemed comfortable and more relaxed than the others. She was dressed in coveralls and short black boots, same as the big man. It was hard to tell what he looked like.
