Alaska (117 page)

Tom was twenty-one now and amazingly poised for his age, so without embarrassment he suggested: 'Couldn't I take Monday's ship north and meet the men at the cannery?'

'Why would you do that?'

'Because I'd very much like to see Lydia again.'

A hush fell over the room, broken by Mrs. Ross, who said brightly: 'That's a sensible idea, Malcolm. I'm sure Lydia would like to see Tom again.' And without further words the decision was reached, with Mr. Ross showing no irritation at having been overruled; he liked Tom Venn and appreciated the young man's forthrightness.

The second weekend was more serious than the first, because all the Rosses, especially Lydia, were aware that Tom

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had stayed on for the express purpose of exploring further their friendship. She told him frankly, when they were alone, that she had broken two other engagements so that they could spend time together, and when he protested that she should not have done that, she said frankly: 'Oh, but I wanted to. So many of the young men I meet are clods.'

'They won't be when they're four years older,' he said, and she replied: 'They're already four years older and they're confirmed clods.'

Twice they walked on the hill, seeing Seattle and its environs in its varying moods, and they talked incessantly of school and Mr. Hoxey's political plans and the future of Ross & Raglan, and on Monday morning when Lydia again left for school, she stood in the hallway in the presence of both her father and her mother and kissed Tom goodbye.

She did not want there to be any misunderstanding as to how she felt.

WHEN THE TIN-CAN MACHINES WERE INSTALLED AT Totem Cannery, Tom Venn and Sam Bigears, who had reluctantly agreed to serve as winter watchman over the vacant buildings, began to prepare for the arrival of the Filipino and Chinese workmen. Huge quantities of rice were brought in from Seattle, because both these groups would become difficult if the cannery tried to feed them potatoes, and additional bunks were built for the extra Chinese who would be coming. When Tom paddled across the estuary one day to visit with Sam, whose friendship he wanted to retain, he unwisely told him: 'This may be the last year we use Chinese.'

Sam, who could never bear a grudge, even though he had been disgusted after Tom's last visit, asked: 'Who else you gonna get? Tlingits never work no factory.”

Sensing potential trouble, Tom said no more, but on several later occasions Sam wanted to know who would be taking the place of the Chinese: 'We don't want no Japanese, no Eskimos brought into our territory. Be damned much better if Chinese and Filipinos both get out.'

'Maybe they will, someday,' Tom said, but in late April a big Canadian ship, the Star of Montreal,

hove to off the mouth of the Pleiades River to deposit ninety-three Chinese workers, and as they began to stream down the gangplank, Tom saw what he had expected: Ah Ting was once more in command, his long pigtail trailing, his eyes more challenging than before, if that was possible. This year only one of his co-workers spoke English, and as Tom moved among the gang he suspected that more than half were recent arrivals 712

from China, for they had no concept of what work they would be doing.

'I want two of your best men,' Tom told Ah Ting.

'What for?' the leader asked, implying, as usual, that he, Ah Ting, would decide who would work where.

'They're to work a new machine,' Tom said, and Ah Ting replied: 'I work the new machine,'

but Tom said firmly: 'No, you're needed in here. To keep order.'

'That's right,' Ah Ting said with no animosity. He was the top man, and it was prudent that he work where he could supervise the largest number of workers. So he designated two good workmen, but when Tom led them away, Ah Ting insisted upon trailing along, for he considered it essential that he know what was going on in every part of the cannery; in fact, he acted as if it were his cannery, an assumption which irritated Tom, as it had Mr. Ross during the rioting last year.

As soon as Ah Ting saw the stacks of flattened cans and the machines which would expand them into usable form, he appreciated the threat this new system posed for his Chinese. Contemptuously he spurned the machines, saying: 'No good. No more Chinese working here.'

'We'll need two good men on the machines,' Tom assured him. 'Maybe two more to move the cans around.'

Ah Ting would have none of this. Last year he had supervised sixteen of his men in this section; this year there were to be four at most, and he was pretty sure that Mr. Venn would quickly cut that back to three or even two as the men became familiar with the operation of the new system. But what could he do other than sulk? And this he did, with every sign of becoming increasingly difficult as the season progressed.

Faced by this insubordination, Tom was tempted to fire Ah Ting on the spot, but he knew that no replacement could manage the scores of Chinese who would still be required to keep the cutting tables and the cooking ovens functioning. So against his better judgment, Tom bided his time, accepted Ah Ting's protests, and made small concessions on food and bunkhouse space to keep his tenacious manager happy.

And when this was accomplished, more or less successfully, he faced the wrath of the fishermen, for when Professor Starling and his crew came on the scene to erect their trap, and the local men saw the long jiggers stretching nearly across the inlet, they realized that their days of domination were ended, and they began to make trouble.

Some of the rougher white men threatened to demolish the weir and cut the jiggers, while others said they would prevent the supply ships from landing at the dock or hauling away the cases of

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canned salmon. There were other threats too from the Tlingits, but in the end the great trap was built and the jiggers installed, and then the fishermen were both superfluous and powerless to oppose the swift changes that were sweeping their industry.

When the mature salmon began to flood into Taku Inlet, all hands watched carefully to determine whether the trap would collect enough fish to keep the gutting tables filled, and by the end of the first week it was apparent that the weir and its two jiggers were going to succeed even beyond the hopes of the men who had installed it. In fact, when Professor Starling reviewed the operation he spotted a problem which not even he had anticipated: 'It's working so well, Mr. Venn, that the holding pen is receiving more fish than it can handle. Your men are not taking the salmon out fast enough.'

'We can't handle any more in the gutting shed than we are right now.'

'When Dr. Whitman gets his Iron Chink perfected,' Starling said, 'we can speed up the chain. But what shall we do now?'

Even as he spoke, the efficient jiggers, blocking the movement of the salmon as they fought to reach their natal lakes, kept throwing so many big fish into the trap and from there into the holding area that there was only one solution: 'We'll have to let the weaker fish at the bottom die and let their bodies drift downstream with the current.'

This was done, and all that summer the trap at the Pleiades caught so many big sockeye that an appalling number of weaker ones were wasted. Now bald eagles from miles around gathered in the skies over Taku Inlet to feast upon the decaying fish, and thousands of fish which could have provided delectable sustenance to hungry people everywhere were allowed to rot and contaminate the lower waters of the Taku.

Even more ominous so far as the future of the industry was concerned, the trap was so effective that knowing fishermen began to wonder whether enough mature salmon were getting past the barrier to ensure perpetuation of the breed. 'We do open it up over the weekend,' Professor Starling assured the skeptics as he stopped in Juneau on his way back to Seattle, 'and if you saw the hordes offish that get through on those two days . . .'

'A day and a half,' someone corrected, and he nodded: 'If you saw the hordes of salmon that escape in that period, you'd know their future was secure.'

'What about the fish you allow to die in the holding area?' another man asked, and Starling replied: 'There's a little 714

wastage in any big operation. Unavoidable, and in the long run it does no substantial damage.' And back he sailed to lay plans for six more huge traps to be installed at future Ross & Raglan canneries.

Some concerned men in Juneau took Professor Starling's advice and sailed to the Pleiades River to inspect the operation of the trap, but when their little boat started to dock, Tom Venn appeared on the wharf to warn them that they were approaching private property on which they were not permitted to intrude. 'But your Professor Starling invited us to come out and see how the trap works,' and Tom said: 'He had no authority to do that,' but the hardened fishermen of Juneau were not to be so easily turned back.

'We're coming ashore, Venn, and you'll be asking for trouble if you try to stop us.'

Such confrontation was avoided, since inspection of the weir and jiggers could be accomplished without trespassing on Totem property. Tom directed the fishermen to take their boat downstream from the trap, from where they could watch the behavior of the salmon, and a stranger to Alaskan fishing would have been astounded at what they saw. The mature salmon swam in from the gyre not in dozens or hundreds but in thousands, three hundred in one solid block, six hundred resting with their noses all pointed against the current. At times the clear water in which the boat rested was solidly packed with salmon, ten or fifteen thousand crowding past, their sleek bodies shining in sunlight a few inches below the surface. It did seem, in such moments of abundance, that the supply was inexhaustible and indestructible.

But when this multitude approached the outreaching jiggers, they faced a situation unlike any they had encountered before. These weirs, these high fences were not like the waterfalls up which their ancestors had leaped for countless generations; these new devices were effective barriers, and after trying to circumvent them, the bewildered fish began taking the course of least resistance. Aimlessly they drifted toward the central trap, and there they slipped into that maze which was so easy to enter, so impossible to escape. Step by step they moved more deeply into the maze, until at last they passed into the relative freedom of the big holding pen.

But now the crowding in the pen became so threatening that the weaker fish began to gasp for water to pass through their gills, and with astonishing rapidity the smaller salmon began to die off, their bodies sinking to the bottom of the pen while Tom Venn's workmen hoisted the survivors onto the track to carry them to the cutting shed, where Ah Ting's men prepared them for the ovens.

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The Juneau fishermen who witnessed the magnitude of this revolutionary approach to salmon fishing could see at once that it involved a dreadful wastage which their older process would never have caused. Said one older man: 'They have no respect for the salmon. If they keep this up, I don't know what'll happen.'

But one of the boats stayed overnight to see what would happen on the weekend, and on Saturday afternoon when the trap was shut down and the jiggers raised, these men watched as the horde of fish came up the Taku, passed the trap, and swam on to their various home lakes along the Taku system. 'There's enough fish getting through to populate all Alaska and most of Canada,' one of the men said, and thus reassured, they viewed the situation differently.

'It's the modern way,' one of the fishermen conceded, and they agreed that despite the regrettable wastage of salmon, enough sockeye probably escaped during the free weekends to maintain the stocks.

IN 1904, AFTER THE FISHERMEN OF JUNEAU HAD REACHED

this erroneous conclusion about the safety of the salmon, Nerka, now three years old, had settled into a routine in fresh-water Lake Pleiades that looked as if it would continue throughout his lifetime. But one morning, after a week of agitation, he sprang into unprecedented action, as if a bell had summoned all the sockeye of his generation to the performance of some grand, significant task.

And then, for reasons he could not identify/ his nerves jangled as if an electric shock had coursed through his body, leaving him agitated and restless. Driven by impulses he did not understand, he found himself repelled by the once-nurturing fresh water of his natal lake and for some days he thrashed about. Suddenly one night, Nerka, followed by thousands of his generation, began to swim toward the exit of his lake and plunged into the swiftly rushing waters of the Pleiades River. But even as he departed, he had a premonition that he must one day, in years far distant, return to this congenial water in which he had been bred. He was now a smolt,

on the verge of becoming a mature salmon. His skin had assumed the silvery sheen of an adult, and although he was still but a few inches long, he looked like a salmon.

With powerful strokes of his growing tail he sped down the Pleiades, and when he was confronted by rapids tumbling over exposed rocks he knew instinctively the safest way to descend, but when waterfalls of more ominous height threatened his progress he hesitated, judged alternatives, then 716

sprang into vigorous activity, leaping almost joyously into the spray, thrashing his way down, and landing with a thump at the bottom, where he rested for a moment before resuming his journey.

Did he, through some complex biological mechanism, record these waterfalls as he descended them, storing knowledge against that fateful day, two years hence, when he would be impelled to climb them in the opposite direction in order to enable some equally determined female sockeye to spawn? His return trip would be one of the most remarkable feats in the animal world.

But now as he approached the lower reaches of the river he faced a major peril, because at a relatively inconsequential waterfall which he could normally have handled with ease, he was either'so tired or so careless that he allowed himself to be thrown against a rock protruding from the downward current, so that he landed with an awkward splash at the foot of the falls, where, awaiting just such mishaps, a group of voracious Dolly Vardon trout, each bigger than the salmon smolts, prowled the waters. With swift, darting motions the trout leaped at the stunned smolts, devouring them in startling numbers, and it seemed likely that Nerka, totally disoriented by slamming against the rock, would be an easy prey and disappear before he ever reached the salt water which was luring him.