Salt Story (13 page)

According to Salt, Grievous is the Dark Overlord of the Inlets. I don't really know when The Flathead Wars began. Possibly both their fathers barneyed over flathead too.

When working with Salt, my experiences with Grievous tend to be profoundly negative but if I branch away from Salt's company, I've always found him pretty much okay. Recently I asked Grievous if I could include him in this book. He knows I work for Salt and yet he grinned and said, ‘Yeah, sure Sarah.' He went on to tell me about his old man who sailed everywhere in his wooden carvel complete with grasstree-tarred sails, eschewing outboard motors. Grievous seemed happy that someone, even if it was the lowly deckie of his nemesis, was documenting the heritage.

Last year Salt and I rediscovered the spot near the channel heads where flathead gather for their mysterious conferences. We started netting there for the Sunday seafood markets. So did Grievous.

Salt played out nets from the pile on the deck and I kept the boat throttled into the wind, trying to keep her straight. I manoeuvred her from the channel marker and headed for the yellow hazard beacon. A few metres to the east waves sloshed over the little reef.

Salt had pulled over only the first length of net off the boat in his backyard to straighten out any tangles, so the rest of the net was a mess of sticks and weed. He fiddled about with all the knots and rolled up tangles, saying, ‘Stop. Stop.' The boat blew off course and towards the rocky headland. That didn't
bother Salt. ‘More fish over there anyway,' he said but I steered back for the marker, so that by the time we were done the net ran in big zigzags through the flathead patch. Digger sat on the thwart and watched us. Salt chucked the last buoy into the sea. I headed for calmer waters, somewhere out of the wind, to wait for sunset.

We watched Grievous roar across the harbour. He stood at the tiller, at the stern of the boat, holding a rope tied to the bow. Going with the wind, he churned towards the little reef where we'd thrown out the first buoy.

‘What's he doing?'

‘I dunno. Did he have some leatherie pots there?'

Grievous slowed down and then turned into the channel. He stopped. He was too far away for me to see much of what he was doing but I did see him throw something over.

‘He's doin' something. What the fuck is he doin'?'

Whenever Grievous is in the same waters, I get a running commentary from Salt. This knowledgeable rant is largely anticipation and changes direction as many times as Grievous does in his boat. ‘He's gonna put in some pots. Then he'll head over the south side and set some nets there. No. He'll put some pots in the south side...'

We drank some coffee, watching the figure of Grievous move about in his tinny and chuck things into the water. As it darkened the wind also stiffened and the tide started going out, creating strong currents near the channel. I set up the light and mucked about with the jump starter until I had the fluorescent light flickering above me. Then we motored back to the first buoy. Grievous had disappeared into the Sound.

It is a distinctive feel in the rope when another fisher sets nets over the top of the one being hauled. It grinds against the other net, a different feel to pulling up ancient grapple irons or thrashing stingrays. ‘Got an anchor there?' Salt said to me. I'd been doing the hauling lately because his shoulder was playing up. I didn't say anything. I knew it wasn't an old anchor. It was Grievous' net.

The night had set in but the light illuminated the bright green net running over the top of Salt's old brown one as it surfaced. Digger leaned over the gunwale, interested.

Salt started going postal. We had to pull Grievous' net over the top of the boat and then ours underneath. A big ask on a gathering wind. But it was the slight to his dignity, his territorialism and his fishy paternalism that bothered Salt the most. He pulled out his filleting knife. ‘If he's done it again, I'll cut the fucker up.'

Over the noise of the wind and the slop around the reef, I heard Grievous' outboard.

‘Come and get yer fucking net!' Salt pulled Grievous' net out of the water and started tearing holes in it.

A red flathead wriggled in the piece of Grievous' net that I held. I taxed it, laughing, and chucked it in the box. First fish for the night and it was Grievous'. Brilliant! Then I started pulling his net over the deck, over the outboard and the fluorescent light, over the bow where, of course, it caught on everything. Salt was so busy ripping holes in monofilament and glaring out to sea that he wasn't much help.

At the channel, Grievous started picking up, his motor running. He worked his way toward us quickly, chucking the net on the deck, fish and all. He was closer a few minutes later, then closer. I knew this meant our nets would cross again.

They did. The shouting intensified.

‘You're a fucking dickhead, Salt.'

‘What'd he say?'

‘Dunno,' I muttered. I pulled the second transgression out of the water.

‘Don't pull that one over the boat. Make him come and get it. COME AND GET YER FUCKING NET.'

‘You've got a short memory, Salt,' Grievous screamed into the wind, his voice pitched high. ‘You've got one buoy at the reef and the other over there,' he pointed to the marker. ‘So what the fuck is the middle of your net doin' all the way over here?'

‘What's that bastard sayin'?'

Digger saw Grievous' boat coming towards his perch on the bow. It must have seemed like a shouting white light to the dog. He started up a panicked barking, slipped on the wet aluminium and fell overboard into the sea.

Great – black water, the night getting blacker and a bullmastiff floundering through two fishing nets. I gave both cork lines to Salt and started hunting around for a torch.

‘You're a fucking dickhead,' Grievous shouted again. ‘Don't you remember the last meeting about this shit? If you zigzag yer nets, put a buoy on the
outside.
'

I couldn't see the dog anywhere.

‘What'd he say? I'M NOT LISTENIN' TO A PIECE O' SHIT LIKE YOU.'

Digger swam into the circle of light and struggled towards the gunwale. I hauled him over the side by the scruff of his neck.

Then Grievous got to our boat, his wet-weather gear shiny with spray, a lean man, wizened for his age. ‘If you zigzag yer nets, put a buoy on the outside. That's what we worked out last year.'

‘What
outside?
What's the
outside
of a net?'

‘You're not a fisherman if you don't know that.'

‘
You're
not a fucking fisherman.'

The two fishermen glared at each other.

The gunwales of both boats began to clang against each other. Grievous' propeller was heading for Salt's net.

‘Don't you run over my net,' Salt warned him.

‘Whaddya gonna do about it?' Grievous fronted him, leaving the motor in forward gear.

‘Just drop the net, Salt,' I said. I knew it would then sink and go under. Salt was hanging on to his net so tight it was pulling the two fishermen together. Grievous was doing the same with his. As soon as both men dropped their nets we were able to go our separate ways, the dog shaking the sea off himself.

We continued picking up, and Grievous' fluorescent light and his chugging outboard retreated into the night.

Salt said, ‘At least we're talking again.'

Grievous and Salt's next conversation was twelve months later in exactly the same place and over the same crossed nets. This time Grievous had his own deckie, who sat quietly in the boat when Salt pulled out his filleting knife. I was so shocked by the open display of knives and oars that I shut up too. So both us deckies sat like slapped kewpie dolls while the two fishermen raged and spat at each other.

This season, we arrived late one night to the reef to find Grievous' buoys in the water and him nowhere to be seen.

‘We'll set here anyway,' Salt began pulling the tarp off the nets.

‘Don't. We could just head outside and set for whiting. Too much trouble.' There was no way I wanted to be in the wrong at that time of night. Being vaguely in the right was bad enough.

‘Fuck it. Let him get a taste.'

With control of the tiller, I was able to keep the net away from Grievous', hoping he hadn't set in a zigzag. Salt nagged at me to get closer. It was all rather stressful. Under harassment from me, we picked up early and got out of there before Grievous returned.

One flathead.

I hoped that result would signify the end of the affair but it doesn't seem to work like that with fishermen. Salt keeps worrying at the issue like a bit player in a Greek drama. Grievous maintains a wily silence.

And so on they go. The Flathead Wars.

Salt and I went out to throw crab pots into the shallows of the harbour on a Thursday. I baited them with trumpeters caught from the previous night's flathead shot. We drifted about, looking for patches of sand and healthy seagrass. Over the past decade the seagrass has been struggling against the march of an invasive algae that Salt calls ‘carpet', ‘snotweed' or ‘shit'.

On the Friday we went around, rebaiting the pots and checking the catch, leaving the crabs in the pots so they would be alive for the markets. At this time of year, the females are ‘berried', their bellies laden with a mass of eggs that looks like dirty foam rubber. It's always a joy for me to throw back those expectant mothers, to participate in maintaining the abundance.

Grievous set his pots that night in the Gilgie Holes, a section of the harbour divided from the rest by a massive sandbar. We often see him out there at dawn, unmeshing skippy, cobbler and salmon trout, bending over the gunwales with a swarm of pelicans around him.

On Saturday we moved around the shallows between the buoys, pulling pots. Every single crab was gone. The pots were turned over or moved from their sandy spot to the ‘carpet'. Bait, elastic – gone. Even a whole pot was missing.

It happens often but usually in a more haphazard manner. Some opportunists just can't help themselves. Salt is generous then – more so than I. ‘Well, at least someone had a good feed,' he says. This day was different. Every pot pulled was met with
his silence that grew more ominous, the pots sitting dripping on the rails of the boat as we stared at the emptiness, and then came a series of appalled expletives.

This was a concentrated hit, an operation. Even the berried females were gone. The sinking feeling I got looking at those empty pots made the redneck in me shuffle from her porch (the creak of the floorboards and that sure snap of the bolt going home on the rifle). I wanted to write on some plastic tags and attach them to the pots: ‘Look behind you, ARSEHOLE'. Of course it was all too late by then.

As Salt and Grievous don't talk to each other unless they are brawling, Mrs Grievous approached me at the Sunday markets.

‘Did Salt get his pots done over on Friday night?'

The Oyster Boys overheard. ‘Ahh yes, they were lovely crabs, thanks,' giggled Kilpatrick.

‘Grievous and his brother had their pots ratted too,' she said.

‘Mmm. Those ones were tasty too,' said Gawain.

Seventy-five pots was a busy night for the crab thief and would have made a quick grand or two in Perth. The Oyster Boys were pragmatic. Gawain sets leatherjacket pots in the Sound and they get regularly vandalised and pilfered. ‘You just gotta get them up,' he told me. ‘You can't leave crabs or fish in there, it's open slather.'

Grievous got into the habit of writing down plate numbers of cars at the boat ramp late at night. Salt rang Fisheries. Mrs Grievous wanted to call the police. I just wanted to catch the crab thief in the act and ask them to explain the loaded shotgun in my hands. Prick.

I was quite excited about getting the Fisheries involved to catch the crab thief, seeing as yours truly harbours a guilty lust for Fisheries officers. Guilty, because the Department of Fisheries and commercial fishers are the Montague and Capulet families of the ocean. Lust, because Fisheries officers are such a damn sexy bunch that every time they appear in uniform at the boat ramp, something strange happens to me. I get flustered, forget things, like how to speak, and deeply regret my choice of attire. The fact that the tinny workplace requires a raincoat and plastic pants has no bearing on my desire to be wearing something more attractive when these strapping lads come calling.

Salt: ‘Sarah, have you met Brad?'

Brad is tall, impossibly handsome and lucky enough to have a job that requires a really cool uniform. No plastic pants for him. He wears silver cargo pants and a silver padded vest with strategic quilting seams to create an impressive sixpack. Uniform designers were thinking Superhero of the Sea when they stitched up this contract for the Fisheries Department. Brad has that fit, outdoorsy look of someone who spends plenty of sea time that does not involve unmeshing flathead, thumping cobbler on the head or picking rotten starfish from nets. If he was American, Brad would have a name like Chuck or Hank. He even smells okay. Far out.

Me, waving flies from my fish gut–encrusted raincoat: ‘Hi Brad.'

We were launching the dinghy one evening when a whole boatload of Fisheries came in. These guys were not the inspectors of the fisheries world but its special investigators. They were knocking off for the day and we were just going out.

‘You after whiting tonight?'

Salt reversed the trailer down the ramp. I stood at the winch, a happy girl.

‘No, flathead. What have you guys been up to today?'

One of them leaned out of his immaculately clean boat and gave me a blue-eyed smile. ‘Gonad counts on herring.'

Phwoar ... ‘Really? Gonad counts? Amazing.' (Giggle.)

‘Have you seen any around lately?'

Gonads?

‘No, haven't seen much herring.' Probably because they weren't really running at the time, but I didn't say that.

I wasn't really focussing on my job. I let the ratchet off the winch, forgetting that Salt had greased the roller the previous day. So the boat rolled straight off the trailer and into the sea, the cable still hooked to the bow, winch handle spinning wildly. Something you must never do – and usually do anyway in the heat of the moment – is attempt to stop a spinning winch handle with your own flesh and bone. The handle has the weight of a whole boat behind it. Don't do it.

I'm pretty sure I knocked a chip out of my thumb bone. My hand swelled into a rather useless appendage and I was left in a world of pain which intensified my confused feelings of embarrassment and grumpiness.

‘I've never done that before,' I explained to Gonad Man, who was watching. My dog jumped into his boat.

‘No, really, I haven't!'

This kind of protesting twice always makes things look worse. To compound it all, Digger refused to get out of the Department vessel. Gonads and all.

Recently Brad introduced his new colleague to us. They'd been out pulling Salt's crab pots so that Brad could show the
newbie how they worked. Although this act was dressed up as altruism on behalf of the Department, it may have been an exercise in catching out Salt, not the crab thief. Of course I made this observation later, once my hormones had settled down.

Salt patted my shoulder with a slapping on plastic sound. ‘Just as well my deckie didn't see you blokes pulling those pots,' he said. ‘She can see them from her house. She's cleared all the trees from around her kitchen window and is holed up there all night with an arsenal: crossbows, shotguns. She's a pretty good shot too. She'd kill ya as soon as look at ya!'