Free The Last Run by Todd Lewan Page B

But he was a son of a bitch.” The white cornea showed all around the tobacco-colored iris of his eyes. “A real son of a bitch.”
    “How so?”
    Morley gave Bob Doyle a dark glare.
    “The guy sabotaged the wires to the bilge alarm because it was going off all the time. Drove him crazy, he said. Fuck him. You don’t go cutting wires like that. Not without talking to me first.”
    “No,” Bob Doyle said.
    “So I told him to walk.”
    “I see.”
    “So,” Morley said, “are you guys in or not?”
    “Can we let you know in the morning?” DeCapua asked.
    “What time?”
    “Nine o’clock. We’re on the clock at eight and we already got a skipper, you know.”
    “Well,” Morley said, “call me in the morning, then. I need to know either way.”
    “That’s a ten percent share for each of us?”
    “Ten percent.”
    They went up the pier and under the awning along the entrance ramp and out across the gravel parking lot. They looked back. The schooner looked small now in repose.
    “You know,” DeCapua said, “that guy ain’t done a whole lot of cod fishing.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Let’s just say I’ve fished with guys who ain’t done a whole lot of cod fishing.”
    They kept walking.
    “I guess we’ll stick with Phil, then,” Bob Doyle said.
    “Like hell we will,” said DeCapua.
    As it turned out, Coronation was a bust. All they managed was three hundred pounds of gray cod. And gray cod was cheap fish. Their catch limit was six thousand pounds of yellow eye with up to 10 percent bycatch. But they couldn’t find the yellow eye. They couldn’t find anything. Morley started setting gear west of Cape Decision, then off Nation Point, and finally he steamed farther west out to the Hazy Islands. They weren’t much, as islands went. There were just three outcroppings of rock ringed by a fifty-fathom shelf. On the gulf side, the shelf dropped off hundreds of fathoms in a few miles. For two days they dumped and hauled back longline gear off the Hazy Islands. It did no good. The yellow eye were not biting.
    It was pretty snotty out, though. Gales blew every day and riled the seas. For three days, they set in twenty-foot breakers. It was unpleasant. The boat kept getting caught between high, pointy crests. She went weightless a few times. Some of their lines snarled. Nobody was happy with the sets. They hauled the gear in twisted, the hooks empty and tangled in the line. The wind was bad even in the lee of the islands. Rain cut at their faces like flying carpet tacks. Their eyes burned from all the spray. On deck it was hard to keep their footing, even with a two-inch layer of no-skid padding. With all the seawater and sleet slopping around, it felt as though they were walking on an iron girder wearing skates.
    Then the generator acted up. It was on and off like a lightning bug. They also lost the stove near Coronation. Morley had a roast on when the stack caught fire. He said grease and soot had probably built up in the stack and ignited. Everybody was out on deck hauling and nobody noticed the smoke until the burners were gone. For three days they ate cold ham-and-cheese sandwiches and crackers and bananas. There was no coffee, either. The fire had melted the drip maker. They were able to heat up soup in the microwave. But chicken noodle soup every day, three times a day, drove them nuts.
    On the way out they had taken their time, stopping for a hot tub at Baranof Springs. But no one was in the mood for stopping on the way back. It was a bumpy ride. The swells were running at fifteen feet. The
La Conte
rode the swells like a cork in a baby pool, with a lot a babies in it. But nobody got sick.
    Just after midnight on Tuesday, five days after it had departed, the
La Conte
limped into Sitka Sound. Morley hadn’t paid his harbor dues, so they tied the boat up along the breaker wall between the last cold storage and the fuel pier, just outside of Old Thompsen Harbor.
    Morley wanted to leave the