Shrimp Boat Part 2 of 3

To read Part 1

I ate the one bag of miniature Snickers in our first three days on board. As our only supply of sugar and 27 days to go, this would become an issue.

Rigmaster: You know this time of the year is bad for sharks. Yep, one of the boats went out last month and had a man go overboard when the sharks were out, and by the time they got turned around there wasn’t even so much as a drop of blood in the water. Not a shred of him to be seen.

I thought his story was total bullshit meant to scare rookies and give the old timers a rise. I wasn’t here for any “Jaws” story. I just shrugged my shoulders and went back to sorting. He was probably just sore there wasn’t any more snickers.

After the morning haul, packing the shrimp and having breakfast Captain Joe would go to his private quarters and the rigmaster would come back to our bunk area and they’d go to sleep. I’d go out to the back deck, strip down to my shorts and start working out and shadow boxing. It was great the rhythm of the ocean the wind, the seagulls. To a 19 year old whose total experience of the finer things in life was eating caviar once this was like being paid to travel on a cruise ship. The food was paid for, and someone else was cooking it.

The rigmaster made sure we ate like kings but there was a rub to his cooking. Every meal we had and I mean every meal, from pancakes to steak we had beans. I thought it was peculiar, but after spending two weeks with him I thought everything he did was peculiar. From the facial ticks to the head snaps and the entire body jiggle. It was like there was no central command.

Captain Joe was having none of it. “ASSHOLE! When I said I liked beans I didn’t mean I wanted them with every Goddamned meal I was ever going to eat again in my fucking life.”

“I was just trying to do what you wanted. You said you liked beans.” The rigmaster replied meekly.

“Well you missed doing it by the size of your girlfriends coocher. I swear you suffer from terminal asshole-ism. I’ve been to two county fairs and goat fucking contest and if this don’t beat all.”

Captain Joe started going through the cabinets cursing and making oaths about what he would do if he had to eat another serving of beans. He found a can in the cupboard and promptly threw it out the window over the sink. The cursing continued, leveling personal insults at the rigmaster now, calling his manhood and his ability to perform into question. He found another can of beans and stepped out onto the back deck and heaved it into the deep. He was using compound refractor anatomical profanity now with phrases like ‘dicknose’. There was an endless list of synonyms and foreign term that I had not heard before nor since. If I had known this was going to be the greatest display of profanity in my life I would have taken notes instead of laughing.

The rigmaster sat there sullen faced on his bunk, resigned to the consequence of his best intentions. Captain Joe slowly lost steam and wound down after not finding any more of the illicit cans and went to his quarters. The rigmaster sat there for a minute taking it all in and then slowly made his way to the kitchen to straighten out the cupboards. As he did so he started to stand more erect, square his shoulder and puff his chest out. He pulled out three cans of beans and looked at me to say, “I’ll show him. Beans is the only thing I’m fixing tonight.”
-----
Two days later I was sorting shrimp in the middle of the night. The back deck is lit up like a football field. There wasn’t  the slightest breeze, and the gulf was as calm as a lake at dawn. The rigmaster was scuttling the remains of my sorting overboards. He leaned over the side and cried, “WE GOT SHARKS!”

I jumped and ran to the side of the boat looked  and didn’t see anything.  How disappointing. I thought he meant sharks. I slumped my shoulders and was turning around to go back to my box stool and sorting when the rigmaster tapped me on the shoulder and pointed aft to all the scuttled chum. Behind the boat the water was churning. Not just the normal wash from the prop or the wake from the hull. It was alive and boiling. It was a surreally familiar scene, like feeding time at a fish farm or an ornamental fish pond, but magnified. There were sharks everywhere, hundreds. They were so thick I thought I could climb out of the boat and walk across the top of them. As the rigmaster would scuttle more chum, the chaos would crescendo and a shark would break the surface and momentarily be suspended above the water before the mass would part and he’d return to the school.

The rig master looked at me with his goofy grin and said, “I told you we had sharks.”

Boy howdy did we. After seeing “Jaws” and hearing about 25-30 foot sharks, a story about an 8-10

Hoss

foot shark just doesn’t impress me, but as the rig master made his remark a shark left the pack and swam up to the side of the boat where we were standing. He was enormous, he could rip my leg off with one bite, he was deadly. He was 10 feet long. My curiosity satisfied, the railing on the ship felt suddenly very low. I immediately sat down and crab crawled back to mid deck.

Shrimp Boat Part 1 of 3

The boat was rocking. Not violently, just three to four foot swells enough to let you know you we’re in open water. The rigmaster was working the winch, trying to lower the swollen net on the captain's command. The pulley holding the net was 30 feet in the air and the 3,000 pound net was swinging four feet above the deck. First the net would swing port several feet over the railing and then starboard. While Captain Joe was shouting instruction and batting at the net like it was a pinata. I reached out and grabbed the net to wrestle it into the middle of the deck. I was lucky it didn’t catapult me overboard or break my legs on the knee high rail. It just dragged me around the deck like a kid clinging to his dad’s leg.

Captain Joe yelled at me from the other side of the net, “Hoss, what the hell are you doing? I know you’re tough but it’s going to thrash your ass!”

I let go.

A few moments later Captain yelled, “Now!”

The rig master dropped the net and it landed dead center of the deck. Captain pulled the line that held the net shut, and the rig master hoisted it back up to release the haul. It covered the entire deck almost 3 feet deep in shrimp, fish of every kind, crabs, lobsters, stingrays and the occasional dead shark. I started separating.

The Captain stood by and watched me start the messy job. The shrimp would go into a laundry basket and everything else was pushed to the side to be scuttled overboard. The rig master had left the winch and was standing on the other side of the deck looking at the pile and fiddling with the crabs.

“ASSHOLE!” I looked up.

Captain: Not you, Hoss. I wanted Asshole.

Calling me Hoss was like calling a fat man Slim or Tiny. At 5’11” and 140 pounds there was hardly enough to me keep from being washed away.

Captain: Asshole, are you going to drop the net or am I going to have to come over there and do your job, too?

Asshole/Rigmaster was waving his gangly arms around his head like the persecuted fool he was, trying to deflect the criticism.

“Sheez, I’m gonna drop the nets. I was just checking the last haul,” The Rigmaster said.

Captain Joe turned back to me, “You don’t say much do you, Hoss?”

I shook my head no.

“Well a man’s got a right to keep to himself.”

This was two weeks into the tour. Long enough for everyone to settle into their roles and be irritable. I had been in Port Aransas, Texas for a year and a half as an aspiring kick boxer. I hired onto a shrimp boat because international waters looked inviting compared to the inside of a cell and by the time I got back I’d be able to clear up any legal misunderstandings .
-----
The rigmaster had the unenviable moniker of “Asshole.” Unfortunately, it was the only name I knew. Rigmaster is the most labor intensive job on the boat. His job was everything the Captain didn’t want to and everything I didn’t know how to do. From buying all the supplies, cooking, dropping & pulling the nets, piloting when the captain felt like sleeping, shoveling ice and packing shrimp below deck, he was the boats girl Friday. He had led a hard life, with a map of the world in the lines of his face. Officially I was listed as the boats sole rig master and deck hand. Asshole couldn’t pass the physical. He was skinny as a rail, but he’d had a heart attack last year and hadn’t been able to get back on a boat until Captain Joe took him on this tour.

Captain Joe hired me despite my lack of experience so he could get Asshole on the boat. When he said he’d take me he set a few ground rules.

“One, don’t get sea sick on me. If you get sick when your sorry, never-been-to-sea ass hits the open water, I’m turning right around and dropping your ass off. You’re as useless as a bible in a whorehouse if you’re going to be sick the whole time. Two, put ALL the shrimp in the basket. Not just the big ones and think it’s good enough. Cause it ain’t. I don’t need no half-ass, whiny bullshit. We get paid by the pound, so the shrimp go in the basket. Three, don’t ask me what type each little fishy is, or I’ll throw your ass overboard. There are only two fish you need to know about, and I’ll show you both of them. The scorpion fish will paralyze half your body and make you puke and die if you end of having some kind of allergic reaction. You ain’t allergic to anything are you?”

I shook my head no.

“Good. Don’t need you dying on me, neither. We need the ice to pack the shrimp, not your dead ass. Can you handle the detail?”

“I can.” those would be the last two words I spoke for over two months. He never did tell me about the second fish.

Gun Point

The Mighty Mazda GLC (Good Little Car)

Around 92 or 93 Joe was back in Arkansas on leave from the Navy as a SEAL. Joe didn’t know it but he wouldn’t be returning to active service; Clinton was ‘right sizing’ the military for a peace dividend. Joe and I were leaving our job at the furniture refinishing shop at 8pm. We were excited to leave and were drifting the little Mazda GLC sideways through the gravel parking lot.  

As we came sliding out of the parking lot a 4 door F-250 cut us off and another car blocked us in from behind. Five or six guys got out of the vehicles holding guns with one guy doing the classic 80’s action movie one handed shotgun pump. They told us to freeze. We were well ahead of them; not moving with both of our hands on the dash.

The guy doing the one handed Rambo shotgun pump was the leader. He walked up to the passenger door where I was sitting and stuck the barrel through the window, “What are y’all doing here?”

Me: Leaving work.
Asshole with Gun: Leaving kinda fast ain’t cha?
Me: Heard there was a pack of Rambo movie rejects on the loose. Didn’t want to want to get any of their loser stink on us.
AWG: You think your funny?
Me: Only if you’re smart enough to get it.
AWG: I’m tired of your shit.
Me: Great. We will be on our way. Y’all take care.
AWG: You ain’t going anywhere. We own the shop over there and someone has been breaking in and stealing our plating equipment. Now what are you doing here?
Me: Leaving work.
AWG poking me with the barrel: Where’s the stuff you stole.
Me: Listen mouth breather. We don’t have your shit. And you better be damn sure before you poke me with that street sweeper again.
AWG: We are searching your car.
Me: Knock yourself out.

They shone lights in the back seat and then gathered around the trunk.

Me: Why do they always let the asshole do the talking?
Joe: I was just wondering the same thing.

We sat in silence for a moment.

Me: You didn’t mean that the way I did, did you?
Joe: Nope.
Me: Asshole.
Joe: Yep.

Asshole With Gun comes back to my door: We can’t get the trunk open.
Me: Nope. You sure can’t. Locks broke. You gotta jimmy it.
AWG yells back to his guys behind the car: YOU GOTTA JIMMY IT!
Me: Well I coulda done that.
AWG: What’d you say?
Me: Nothing.

It was an inside joke. Dad: Go get your brother. Me: ADAM COME HERE! Dad with look of disgust: Well I could have done that.

AWG: We can’t get it open.
Me: Fine. I’ll do it.

I grabbed the enormous flat head screw driver we used to open the trunk from between the seats. As I opened the door I was marking their positions mentally. Joe grabbed my forearm and shook his head no. “Be cool man. Just open the trunk. We don’t have their shit.”

I stood and pivoted out of the car quicker than AWG was expecting. He jumped back as he realized I was armed and he was within arms reach. I smiled. He spit.

At the back of the car the yahoos formed a semicircle around me as I popped the trunk and stepped back so they could see NOT A DAMN THING. The trunk was empty.

AWG: So you didn’t rob us yet?
Me: Listen Rambo. We fucking work next door. We are going to be here every day looking at you real hard. How about I stick this screw driver in your noggin and we wait for the Five Oh to show up and sort this whole thing out.

With this everyone points their guns toward the ground. AWG: Well you don’t have to get violent about it.
Me: I’m not the one who showed up with the bad news bears posse.
AWG: Well I guess you fellas can go.
Me: Can we now. Thank you so much. That’s where you work? Right there? I’m sure we will be seeing you real soon.  

Joe: Jake.
Me: WHAT?
Joe: Get in the car.
Me: Fine.
Looking at AWG: You take care now.

Never saw him again while we worked there.

The Great BB Gun War of 1984

Like all great wars it was named after it was over. And like all great wars the name wasn’t entirely true. The Great BB Gun War of 1984 really started in the fall of ‘83. And for all it’s “Greatness” there were only 4 participants. My brother Adam age 10, Chuck age 10, Reuben age 12 and me age 12. Every war has a purpose. Something to be gained. Something to be won. In the end it appeared are only hope was to inflict the maximum amount of casualties while not taking any yourself.

It began when Adam shot me right beneath the butt in the hamstring. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible to put someone down with one BB. But it is. A sniper shot like that will not only put you down but make you scream out in pain for your mommy. And make you do the sideways floor run/shuffle like Curly from the three stooges. On the ground writhing in pain a plan is formed. A plan of revenge. These three laughing hyenas must pay and pay dearly. It was also the first of 283 purple hearts I would award myself over the course of being deployed for a year. War takes a terrible toll on the men involved at the front lines.  

It built up slowly over the fall and winter with each of us taking pot shots at the other from a ‘safe’ distance. By spring it was a full on assault. Safety goggles were acquired and worn. Riding your bike to the pool? Why yes I will wear my googles and 3 T-shirts. Yes I know it’s 95 degrees. I need my gear. One of these BMX mounted dragoons could be behind any tree or house along the way.

Alliances were formed, broken and formed again. Machiavelli would have been ashamed at our lack of principles. One Saturday morning it was every man for himself. An hour later all four powers had  joined forces against a Red Breasted Robin committing genocide against the local fishing worm populace. War changes a man and after the summary execution of Robin none of us were the same or could remain allies. Again it was every man for himself; Chuck was the loser and had to bury Robin while Reuben hummed taps. We would have had a 21 gun salute but dad was stingy with quartermastering  BBs and the amount of times we had to pump the guns dimmed the luster and prestige of the salute.  

One morning Reuben had hidden himself in the huge Sycamore tree in our back yard waiting to ambush Adam and I as we came out the back porch. Fortunately Adam spotted him and we shot him from our second story bedroom window.  He fell out of the tree and ran home gasping he couldn’t breath. I guess he could breath by the time he got home because his mom never called our mom.

The war came to a brutal and decisive close when Adam shot a non-combatant (our little brother Ben, age 4). Ben took a shot right to the butt wearing only tighty whities and cowboy boots. The high stepping circular dance to follow was hilarious. Sadly Adam shot him in the basement less than 5 feet from dad.   It would be generous to call the War Crimes trial that followed a kangaroo court. We were convicted of Crimes against Humanity and of failing to meet the Arming Accord of Christmas ‘82 we were required to sign before receiving our initial  munitions. We were sentenced to the Hot Box (our room) and prison rations (white navy beans) for the remainder of the summer and stripped of our weapons indefinitely.

We had learned a valuable lesson. Don’t be a big dummy right in front of your dad. At least have some plausible deniability.

If You Don't Stay in School You're Going to End up With a Crap Job

Two years earlier, the Principal explained to my dad he couldn’t do anything until there was an actual fight. My broken spirit and glasses didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do. On the ride home Dad never looked away from the road. He said he had taught me what to do my entire life and it was time to do it. You don’t always know what you are going to get when you let the dog off the chain.  

---

Early Thursday morning, Dad dropped me off. He wouldn’t be back until Monday night. I wouldn’t go back to school until Tuesday. This is great, I thought. Old Man Billy’s farm was all the fun a teenage boy could create. Would I drive the tractor? Cut up trees with a chainsaw? Work in the wood shop? Ride horses along the fence line? See how stocked the feed pond was and do some fishing?

Nope, apparently getting kicked out of school for the third time was not cause for a vacation. Billy walked me out to the chicken coop. This was a commercial coop and it was 66’ X 600.’ The top had been taken off and there was about 4” of chicken poop covering the entire slab. He handed me a flat headed shovel and told me to grab a wheelbarrow from the other barn. After I got back, he pointed up the hill about 75 yards to his “garden,” an area about one and a half times bigger than the chicken coop. Fill the wheelbarrow and spread it evenly across the entire patch. Too much in one area burns the plants, he said.

-

Mike and I didn't get along. No particular reason, we just didn’t. Generally, after a fight, respect is earned and friendships are formed. Not with Mike and me. We had fought four times and the tension was always there. Always simmering and ready to boil over at the slightest provocation. So far he had beaten the snot out of me three times. I had won once. Neither of us would back down.

-

I shoveled shit and pushed it up the hill. I learned to turn my feet sideways up the hill or I’d slip and fall between the handles of the wheelbarrow, dumping it backwards and its contents down the back of my shirt. After two or three hours of being bathed in crap, you barely notice the smell any more. I learned not to over fill the wheelbarrow. It made everything a hot mess.

When the sun got low, Billy came and inspected my work. He stuck his thumbs in his overalls and nodded his head at my progress. “Ma made us supper. I guess you can knock off for the day. Before you come in you gotta hose off.”

Me: “Like take a shower?”

Billy wrinkling up his face. “Naw. You can’t come in the house like that. Hose off with an actual hose.”

-----

Me: “I wouldn’t call me that again.”

Mike: “Why? You’re a pizza face.”

Me: “That’s two.”

Mike: “What are you going to do about it, pizza face?”

Me: “That’s three. I don’t have to warn you again.”

Mike, making a song: “Pizza, pizza, pizzzzzza, pizzaface.”

-----

Billy’s & Margaret seven children had grown and left the farm years ago. But Margaret still cooked for nine. Billy might have worked me like a slave, but as a growing 13 year old I was about to even the score. I could eat. Billy nodded his head again after dinner, “Well Ma, I think it’s the first time in years we won’t be eating leftovers tomorrow. Boy, you better clean that slab off as clean as the plate.”

They didn’t watch TV. I don’t think they owned a TV. My entertainment options after supper were bed or bed. I chose to go to bed.

----

Me: “OK. I’m kicking your ass.”

I said it with the same enthusiasm I felt when I was told by Mom that I had to stop watching TV to do the dishes.

I slid my chair back and walked back three desks quickly.

I’m sure he thought nothing would happen and I was going to challenge him to a fight after school. But Mr. Stahlman had left the class unattended.

I took my glasses off and put them on the desk behind me and told him to stand up.  

--

Sunrise Friday. Shovel, push uphill, spread. Repeat.  

Try to eat every last bit of food in their house.

After dinner I boasted I was going to eat all their food.

Billy took me out to the carport. It had three chest freezers. He showed me the first one. It was basically full of pork to the top. The second one contained beef to the brim. The third one had chicken and everything else that needed to be frozen.

I, in fact, had no chance of eating all his food. But I was going to try.

-----

He laughed and said “Pizza Face” again.

I pushed him out of his desk. As he stood up we started throwing punches with the desk between us.

-----

Sunrise Saturday & Sunday.

Shovel, push uphill, spread. Repeat.

Eat all the food.

-----

Our other fights involved some sort of strategy. Not today. We both just stood there in the middle of class winging punches. He fell backwards and I jumped over the desk to finish.

-----

Finally, Monday I finished clearing off the slab. We spent the afternoon walking around the farm and exploring the barns, looking at all his antique equipment, cars, and motorcycles.

I asked him what he does when he turns over a brood of chickens and I’m not here to clean off the slab.

Billy: “Well, we fire up the bobcat over there and scrape it off and put it in a trailer. Takes about 15 minutes.”

-----

Five days of shoveling shit put the chain back on the dog and convinced me that getting kicked out of school again was not an option for years.

Change Your Shirt

Adam and I were lying on the floor watching GI Joe after getting home from middle school.

There was a knock at the door and Mom answered, “Yes, he’s here.”

“Oh really.”

“OK.”

“Jake you need to go change your shirt.”

“How come?” I asked.

And Mom replied, “Some kid wants to fight.”

-----

There were probably eight of us playing baseball at the park. I was playing shortstop and had let at least two balls skip right past me. And by skip right past me, I mean, I threw my arms over my head and turned around like I was scared of being hit by the ball. I did it because...I was scared of being hit by the ball. I never learned to catch.

Adam was at bat for the last debacle. And he let me know.

Adam: “What are you, a girl? No, you can’t be a girl. Girls can actually catch. Do we have any ladies in the park? We need a sub who can play.”

Little brothers don’t get to talk trash to big brothers. I charged the plate. When I got close he swung the bat at me. Not a little swing -- a full powered, only one hand left on the bat swing. He missed and started to run around the ball field, randomly swinging the bat as I stalked after him.

In a last ditch effort, Adam threw the bat. I turned slightly to let it bounce off my shoulder. Now I could charge.

Reaching out, I almost had my fingertips on him and some kid came flying out of nowhere with a movie style flying karate kick and leveled me. I came up swinging at the air out of instinct. We moved around, with neither of us hitting the other. He finally walked off and said he was going home to get his big brother.

I said, “Great. Go get your big brother. When I’m done with him I’m coming back after you.”

He ran home and I grabbed my bike and went the opposite direction to my house.

-----

Well, what do you know. The big brother showed up. And at my house. Strong move.

I came outside in my changed shirt. The older brother, David, was there with about ten of his buddies and his little brother. They were all standing around laughing. David was in the 8th grade. Technically one grade my senior. But he had been held back at least once. I was basically a bag of bones and he was a young man.

My dad came out in his three piece suit and sat down on the porch with his newspaper. All the kids stopped laughing and joking. He looked at them and said, “I’m just here to watch a fight,” and tilted his head back to look down his bifocals to read the paper.

David: “Are we going to do this?”

Me: “You came all this way. And you brought an audience.”

David: “Your parents aren't going to stop us?”

I slowly shook my head.

I guess he was planning a show of force without actually having to fight. Oops.

Me: “You ready?”

David: “Yeah. I guess.”

Me: “OK. You gonna pick your hands up?”

I was only allowed to fight under three circumstances:

1. My dad required three clear warnings of impending violence.
2. To protect someone else, no warning was required.
3. I was told to fight.

My dad looked up from his paper and quietly gave the command, “Fight.”

I lunged forward twice with my hands up. David flinched. I giggled. He took a big haymaker of a swing. The arrogance of size. He thought I was just going to stand there and let him hit me. Nope. I slipped back and then came forward at the same speed of his arm as it passed me. I hit him, taptaptaptap, four times. The punches were as quick as a woodpecker’s tap and about as powerful, but my hands were bony and the blows still sting.

David jumped back. He came forward with another big looping haymaker. In the end, habits are fate and no one adjusts under pressure. I followed the punch and, taptaptaptap, four more crisp punches.

I was following Dad’s number one rule of fighting: Don’t get hit.

David looked angrier. His friends weren’t laughing anymore.

Haymaker, taptaptaptap.

Haymaker, taptaptaptap.

His friends were now silent. My dad had picked the newspaper back up. He would be able to tell if anything changed by the sound of footwork.

David: “You had enough.”

Me: “I got all day.”

David: “I think you’ve learned your lesson.”

Me: “I did?”

Turning to his friends, he said, “OK guys, I think he’s had enough.”

Me: “Sure. I’ve had enough. Psych.”

He turned around with new anger.

Me: “I won’t stop the next time you swing.”

He walked back to his friends and they left.

Dad: “Well I guess that didn’t go according to plan.”

Me: “Almost never does.”