Thin Slice of Life

Chapter 07

Later that morning Charlie and Raul motored the Ramrod across the harbor to the processing plant and offloaded the shrimp that was still iced down in the hold. Afterwards, the two of them tried to busy themselves on the boat while they waited for news about Johnny. Raul mended holes in the nets and Charlie cleaned up the cabin. In the afternoon he checked in with the Coast Guard. There was no news so Charlie decided to walk around Fulton Harbor and visit with some of the skippers. Maybe Johnny had talked to some of them before leaving on his trip. Charlie was surprised at the changes the harbor had undergone in his absence. Johnny had reported that Vietnamese immigrants started moving into the area about four years ago. Most were resettled refugees from the war and he said they’d taken to shrimping and crabbing like, well, like fish to water. But Charlie did not expect to find that the majority of the vessels in the harbor now belonged to the Vietnamese. Since the bay—though not the Gulf—was closed for shrimping at present, almost every bay trawler was in port. Curious Vietnamese watched Charlie as he wandered among the slips searching for a familiar boat or face. Later he ran into Filly Martino, the captain of the Sundown. Martino explained that most of the boats had either CHAPTER 07 43 |07 been sold to the Vietnamese or, in the case of the remaining old-time captains, had moved to nearby harbors. He said he was thinking about selling too. The outriggers of Filly’s rust-stained trawler were raised high, parallel to the mast, as if they were surrendering along with the captain. “Hope your brother shows up soon,” he said in parting. Jack Waggoner, who owned a couple of aging crabbing boats, was even gloomier. “Can’t make a living crabbin’ anymore,” he said, adding that he was planning to retire as soon as the winter season ended. “No money in it. Too dangerous.” If the old-timers were taciturn about the pall that had settled over the Fulton docks, the Vietnamese fishermen that Charlie tried to chat up were almost mute. Not one of them wanted to talk to Charlie. “I’m starting to take this kind of personal,” he told Raul. The day ended with the sun exploding onto the horizon like an incendiary bomb, but Charlie and Raul didn’t notice. The two of them spent an uneasy night tossing and turning in their bunks, thinking about Johnny and trying to avoid the most obvious conclusion. — Charlie awoke the next day to the sound of conflict. He sat up in the top bunk of the Ramrod, untangled himself from the damp, rumpled sheet and then rolled over to his stomach to look out the open porthole . Two slips down the pier, a group of Vietnamese were standing on the back deck of one of the bay shrimpers yelling at each other. “Nice neighborhood, Johnny,” Charlie mumbled. He rubbed his eyes andsquintedatasunthatwasalreadyhighinthesky.He’dfinallyfallen asleep just before sunup and had slept halfway through the morning. Charlie hopped down off the bunk, slipped into his jeans and wandered outside. Raul had pulled down some of the trawling nets and had them strung out across the boat deck and onto part of the wharf. He was sitting on the pier mending some holes in a section of the heavy webbed netting. “Buenos días, Raul.” Raul raised his chin in response. The angry Asian voices registered as a sort of dull background noise. “Is there any coffee on this boat?” “Johnny keep some in the kitchen under the, oy….” Raul scrunched his face in concentration, “the gabinet.” 44 07| Charlie nodded. “Thanks.” TheneighborswerestillyellingateachotherandCharlieobserved them through the galley window as he filled a rusty pot with water and dumped in some ground coffee. Five people were involved and one of them, a thin, small-framed guy in a suit and wearing wirerimmed gasses, jabbed his finger at a man wearing the same scruffy clothes as the other Vietnamese fishermen. Two stocky Asians with humorless expressions stood over the shrimper. The fisherman’s wife cowered behind her husband. Charlie placed the coffee pot on the stove and watched the two big guys shove the little shrimper guy down to the deck. The woman started crying and the two big guys laughed and climbed off the boat...