Alaska (118 page)

But he had already proved himself to be a determined fish, and now in an instinctive, brain-clouded way he dodged the first attack of the trout, then dropped into protective weeds from which the larger fish could not dislodge him, and in this quivering manner evaded the hungry attacks of the trout.

Of the four thousand salmon born in Nerka's group in Lake Pleiades in 1901, how many now survived? That is, how many swam down the Pleiades River to fulfill their destiny in the ocean? The constant depletion had been so frightful and so constant that three thousand, nine hundred and sixty-eight had perished, leaving only thirty-two alive and ready for the adventure in the ocean. But upon those pitiful few the great salmon industry of Alaska would be built, and it would be Nerka and the other fighting, cautious, self-protective fish like him who would keep canneries like Totem on Taku Inlet so richly profitable.

At last, one morning Nerka, having fended off long-legged heron and diving mergansers, approached the most critical moment of his life so far: this fresh-water fish was about to plunge himself into the briny waters of the sea, not inch by inch or slowly over a period of weeks, but with one sweep of his tail and the activation of his fins. True, the change from

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lake water to sea had been in gradations, but even so, the leap from all-fresh to all-sea was momentous. It was as if a human being who had lived in benevolent, oxygen were told: 'A week from now it's to be only methane gas.' No human could survive unless he could make his metabolism and physiological structure take a quantum leap, and that is what Nerka did.

Even so, when he entered the new medium it was an almost lethal shock. For several days he staggered about, recoiling from the salt, and in this comatose condition he faced a terrible danger. An immense flock of voracious white gulls and black ravens hovered low in a sullen sky, eager to dive upon the foundering smolts, catch them in their beaks and carry them aloft for feeding. The devastation wreaked by these screaming scavengers was awesome: thousands of would-be salmon perished in their sharp claws, and those that miraculously survived did so only by pure luck.

Nerka, slow to adjust to the salt water, was especially vulnerable, because from time to time he drifted listlessly on his side, an easy target for the diving birds, but sheer chance, not his own efforts, saved him, and after one near-miss he revived enough to send himself down deep toward the darkness he loved, and there, away from the predators, he worked his gills, forcing the unfamiliar seawater through his system.

Most of that summer Nerka and his fellows lingered in Taku Inlet, gorging themselves on the rich plankton blooms and accommodating to the salt water. They began to grow.

Their senses quickened. Surprisingly, they were no longer afraid to battle larger fish. They were now salmon, and gradually they worked their way toward the mouth of the inlet as their appetite made them hunger for the squid, shrimp and small fish that flourished there. And as they matured, they felt an urge to move out into the open ocean to their adventures in its great swirling waters.

Of his thirty-one companions who made it to the mouth of Taku Inlet, about a half perished before they reached the ocean, but Nerka survived, and he swam forward eagerly, scraping past the protruding rock of the Walrus, leaving Taku Inlet, and heading westward to the Pacific.

WHILE NERKA HEADED TOWARD THE PACIFIC OCEAN, Tom Venn was making his first serious mistake in managing Totem Cannery. The Chinese workmen whom Ah Ting had nominated to run the new machines that turned flat slabs of tin into finished cans were not doing a good job. Through either ineptitude or malice they were causing the machines 718

to malfunction, and Tom, convinced that it was a case of sabotage, dismissed them from the section in which they had been working and had the machines moved to the Filipino area, where four young men were instructed how to make cans.

When Ah Ting learned that the tin shop, which used to employ sixteen Chinese, now had jobs for none, he fell into a rage. His customary smile gone, he stormed into Tom's office, demanding that the machines be returned to the Chinese section and that six, not four, of his helpers be assigned to operate them. Such an intrusion into his prerogatives as manager Tom could not allow, and after listening to only the first sentences of Ah Ting's complaint, he said: 'I will say who works where.

Now get back to the gutting shed.' But as Ah Ting retreated, Tom had a premonition that his curt rejection of the man's just complaint might cause trouble, and he started after him to explain more carefully the grounds for his decision. However, he was interrupted by the arrival of one of the Filipinos assigned to the canning operation, so he was unable to placate Ah Ting.

The question was a minor one: 'Mr. Venn, how do we get the finished cans to the packing line?' Ah Ting would never have allowed one of his men to ask such a silly question; he would have devised three or four ways to move the cans, tried each, and then reported to Mr. Venn which one was most efficient. But the Filipinos have to learn, Tom told himself, and when the problem was solved in exactly the way Ah Ting would have elected, he returned to his office. He had signed only a few shipping papers when he heard a wild commotion.

Dashing out to the sheds, Tom found that when two of the Filipino workers bringing finished cans to the line trespassed on what had always been Chinese terrain, Ah Ting's men had gone for them with knives.

The Filipinos were an able pair who had often tangled with Chinese in their homeland, where the two races maintained an uneasy truce, and they did not intend to let these Chinese oppress them. Grabbing whatever weaponry lay at hand, including a heavy hammer, the two men held off their attackers, screaming in Tagalog for reinforcements, and in less than a minute some dozen Filipinos had stormed into the building.

This could not be tolerated, for the Chinese considered their work area inviolate, and by the time Tom Venn reached the fray, he found men slamming each other across tables against the walls and slashing perilously close at one another's throats with their knives. Without regard to the danger he was inviting, he grabbed Ah Ting by the arm and shouted: 'We've got to stop this!' and in time, due largely to 719

the effectiveness of his Chinese helper, he quieted the screaming and reduced the riot to snarling threats. Fortunately, neither side could understand the vilest charges made by the other, and the Filipinos retreated to their domain, satisfied that they had won a victory.

They had not, because in a carefully controlled meeting between Venn, Ah Ting and the leader of the Filipinos, a sensible man who, like many Manila citizens, spoke both English and Chinese, a truce was worked out whereby the Filipinos would continue to fabricate the cans but leave the transportation of them to the packing line to the Chinese who had been deposed from the tinwork area. In this way, Ah Ting recovered the four jobs he had lost, and when Tom next saw him the big toothy smile had returned.

However, the armistice did not long prevail, because the Filipinos working the two machines jammed first one and then the other, and no one in their section knew how to fix them. When Tom was summoned, he confidently approached the damaged machines but found himself unequal to the task, so with considerable embarrassment he had to call for Ah Ting, the inveterate fixer, to rescue him so that the work of the cannery could proceed.

With an insolent air, as if to tell both Venn and the Filipinos 'You can't run anything around here without my help,' this master of machines and people went to work, and within two minutes he had identified what needed to be done and within fifteen minutes he had both machines running like new; in fact, he had them working better than they had in their original condition, for he had corrected a design weakness.

Unfortunately, when he finished he said in Chinese, forgetting that the leader of the Filipinos understood that language: 'Now maybe even the stupid Filipinos can work the machines without wrecking them.'

When the Filipino foreman translated this slur to his companions, four of them leaped at Ah Ting, who defended himself with his tools, but had Tom not jumped forward to assist him, Ah Ting would have crumpled beneath the assault. That evening Tom drafted a letter to Mr. Ross in Seattle: So I have decided once and for all that we cannot work anymore with these impossible Chinese. I would fire them all tomorrow if there was some way to operate the cannery without them. How is that Iron Chink coming along? Can we rely on it for next year?

I certainly hope so.

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When Ross received the query he hurried over to Dr. Whitman's laboratory, whereupon Whitman sent for his colleague Professor Starling, who had installed the very successful trap at the Totem Cannery. When the three stood before the latest model of their Iron Chink, Ross asked bluntly: 'Can we risk it for next year?' and to his delight, the two men agreed that the former difficulties had been eliminated.

'This thing works!' Dr. Whitman said in a way that allowed no doubt, but Ross said: 'I'd like to see for myself,' so a batch of fish about the size of salmon was brought in, and when the steam-driven flywheel had the various leather belts operating the knives, Whitman began feeding the fish, some long, some short, into the machine, and unerringly the first knives cut off the heads and tails, while the device measuring the body of the fish adjusted faultlessly, enabling the third knife to gut the fish cleanly and send it on its way.

'It's wonderful!' Ross shouted, and after elbowing Whitman aside, he began feeding the assorted fish into the hopper, and for several minutes the Iron Chink made not a single mistake. 'When can we have this in Alaska?'

Dr. Whitman evaded that question: 'I want you to study the way we have it now. Half as many moving parts. Half as many things to go wrong. And look how sturdy the parts are that we do use.' Grabbing a small hammer, he beat upon the critical joints, demonstrating how they could withstand the considerable punishment they would receive when unskilled workmen used them in the field.

'That's good. That's all to the good,' Ross said impatiently. 'But how soon can we have them?' And Professor Starling said: 'I think we ought to move this prototype into position right now. See if it works in Alaska, which I'm sure it will. Make any adjustments by October first, and we can have your entire cannery using nothing but these machines by April first next year.'

'Agreed!' Ross said. 'How many machines do you think we'll need at Totem?' and Starling, who knew the installation well, said: 'Six will do the job as the plant now stands,'

and Ross said: 'Perfect this one on the spot, and then build me eight. We're enlarging Totem.'

So in July the R&R steamer Queen of the North docked in Taku Inlet with three mysterious long boxes, and when they were hauled to a new shed which had been hastily built to accommodate the miracle machine, Tom refrained from informing Ah Ting what the equipment was intended to do. But as soon as the parts were unpacked, with boards nailed over the windows to prevent spying, Ah Ting was determined to find ways to penetrate the mystery, and what he saw 721

disturbed him. Furtively inspecting all parts of the new machine, he deduced what its functions must be, and cleverly he identified how it would work. One night, when it was completely assembled, he sneaked into the new shed, and with the aid of matches stolen from the kitchen, he traced each step of the process, figuring out how the moving parts would operate. In the end he had almost as good an understanding of the whole as its inventors.

There in the darkness, his matches gone, he understood the reason for Tom's secrecy: No more Chinese. Tin cans gone to the Filipinos. Pretty soon salmon gone to this damned thing. He reflected on this sad state of affairs for several mournful minutes, then voiced the conclusion which concerned him most directly: 'Pretty soon no more Ah Ting.'

At nine next morning agitated Chinese stormed into Tom Venn's office, making gestures which he was able to interpret, to the effect that in their shed there was great trouble. Assuming that another Chinese-Filipino brawl had erupted, he grabbed a heavy length of wood much like a baseball bat and hurried to the gutting shed, where no work was being done, and there he learned the cause of the commotion.

Ah Ting was gone. His men were sure that he had not slept in the Chinese bunkhouse last night, and a thorough search of the cannery grounds, a considerable area now, had revealed no trace of him. And the rumor had started that during the night the Filipinos had murdered him.

This accusation Tom refused to accept, and calling for the other Chinese man who understood English, he warned: 'Tell your men not to say that. We'll have another riot on our hands. Ah Ting is around here somewhere.' He then hurried to the Filipino quarters, where he quickly satisfied himself that there had been no planned attack on Ah Ting. He liked the Filipinos and saw reassuring possibilities for them once the disturbing effect of the Chinese had been removed, and he told their leaders: 'No more work today. And do not any of you go near the Chinese sections.'

He then turned his attention to Ah Ting, and the more he investigated, the more frustrated he became. The man was not on cannery property, and if he had been murdered, Tom supposed Ah Ting's body could have been weighted and dumped in Taku Inlet, where it would remain hidden forever. By three in the afternoon he ordered everyone back to work, but posted white guards to see that the two Oriental crews remained apart.

Ah Ting was gone, and there was no sense speculating any further as to what had happened.

Venn himself took charge of the Chinese, and at night, after having tried vainly to settle the endless disputes that erupted within 722

that work force, he sneaked over to the new shed, inspected the miraculous machine housed there, and muttered with grim satisfaction: 'We aren't going to get rid of them one day too soon,' and he went to bed convinced that 1905 would be a much better year than 1904.

WHEN AH TING DECODED THE MYSTERY OF THE NEW machine hidden away in the new building, and realized that it signaled the end of his days at Totem Cannery, he spent about fifteen minutes considering what to do, and his principal decision was one he had never contemplated before: I want to stay here. Upon brief reflection he concluded that he liked Alaska, respected the people like Tom Venn that he had encountered, and had high regard for the few Indians he had known about the cannery. Most significant of all, he loathed the prospect of being sent back to China and his memories of San Francisco were deplorable.