rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Also by Tyler Keevil
The end of this story is pretty well known, since people wound up getting killed and the trials were in the news. My brother Jake was portrayed in a lot of different ways. Some said he was just a patsy who had gotten caught up in the scheme of these upstart gangsters. Others said he did it for the money. Then there were the ones who actually believed he was an activist of some sort, or a gentleman robber, and I suppose it was easy to sympathize with that on account of what happened to him. But none of those versions is true, or entirely true. I intend to tell it straight and lay out how it all happened, and how I became involved.
It started when Jake showed up at the Westco plant and boatyard, the day we got back from herring season. That was the end of February, last year. A Monday. I was standing at the stern of the Western Lady across from Sugar, this giant Haida guy who shares the licence with Albert, the skipper. Sugar and I were the ones working the hold, but we had to wait around in the drizzling cold for the plant workers to get the hose and Transvac pump in place and line up the sorting bins. They were union guys and on the clock and in no hurry. Albert was up top, directing them from the wheelhouse.
‘Holy Mary,’ he yelled at them, which is about as close to swearing as he gets. ‘You fellows gonna move that thing or just hope it wanders down here by itself?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ they said.
But they moved a little faster. Albert has that effect on people.
I rubbed my bad hand with my good one. The hand that got crushed hurts something fierce in the cold, even now, years after the accident. Sugar held the water hose with the steel nozzle cradled against his hip, casual as a gunfighter. While we waited, he directed it into the hold and let out a jet-blast of water, churning the fish. The herring, all belly-wet and slickly silver, were packed together in a soupy mix of blood and brine, still flecked with flakes of ice. It was a perfect-looking hold (Albert doesn’t over-fish and only ever takes his quota) but it still made me sad as hell to see. The herring had been in there for forty-eight hours and a lot of them were still half alive, still twitching. They gazed up from the depths of the hull with dull and desperate eyes that had no real understanding of their place or fate. Some of them were so ready to spawn they were already leaking roe: little yellow globules that glistened like fool’s gold.
I heard a vehicle pulling into the lot across the water from where we were moored. I looked over and saw Jake’s truck: a beat-up orange Toyota, twenty years old, with a muffler all shot to hell. I hadn’t seen my brother since Christmas. That hadn’t gone so well. We’d gotten in a fight – first with each other, then with some other guys – and he’d taken off for a while because one of them had been hurt pretty bad. Jake had a record and was worried that the guy might report it, maybe lay an assault charge on him. But nothing ever came of it. I’d talked to Jake on the phone before I headed out for herring season, and he’d gotten some new job that he claimed was legitimate. A cleaning job, was what he’d said.
Jake climbed out of the truck. He was wearing torn jeans and a bomber jacket and his red bandana. He came to the fence that separates the lot from the docks and leaned on it, his fingers hooked like talons between the chain-links. He spotted me and deliberately rattled the fence, like an ape in a cage. He was grinning like an ape, too.
Sugar asked, ‘He your friend?’
‘My brother.’
By then the union guys had manoeuvred the Transvac along our port side, but were still fiddling with the controls. I waved to get Albert’s attention.
‘Give me a minute, Albert?’
‘A minute is all you got.’
I vaulted the gunnel and landed clumsily on the dock, turning my right ankle but not badly. I made my way around the boatyard and up the gangway that connects the docks to the wharf. The water beneath reflected the cannery, but the image was all broken up by the dribbles of rain riddling the surface.
Jake waited for me at his truck, leaning back against the side, smoking a cigarette. As I came up he smiled. He’d lost one tooth when he was in jail, and still hadn’t bothered to get a cap. His hair was long and greasy and held back by the bandana. The bandana was faded and tatty as hell but it was the one Sandy had given him, years ago, so he would never replace it.
‘You look like a real fisherman, Poncho,’ he said.
‘And you look like an ex-con, Lefty.’
I removed my left work glove and we clasped hands, pulling each other into a hug. Jake and I always shake hands like that – with our left – because he’s left-handed and my right hand is the bad one. Two of the fingers are gone and the other three are all mangled, like the legs of a crab crushed under a rock. Whenever I shake hands with anyone else it’s always awkward, because even left-handed guys have learned to shake with their right.
‘You forgiven me for sucker punching you?’ he asked.
‘Let’s forget it.’
‘Close enough for me.’
‘How’d you know to come?’
‘Stopped by the cannery last week. They said your boat was due back this morning.’
I looked over at the boat. Albert was watching us from the wheelhouse, arms folded over his chest like a sentry. The union guys were passing the Transvac hose to Sugar.
‘We’re just about to empty the holds,’ I said.
‘What time do you get off tonight?’
‘We don’t get shore leave until the weekend.’
‘I need to talk to you before then.’
‘About what?’
He flicked his cigarette to the ground, between us, and twisted it out with his boot. ‘I just need to talk to you is all. Can’t you get away tonight?’
‘It’s boat policy. Nobody leaves till the boat’s stripped down. If Albert lets me go, the other guys will be choked.’
‘So sneak away.’
‘I share a cabin with the other deckhands.’
‘Ah, shit.’ He exhaled his last drag, which he’d been holding in. ‘Well, damn – I’ll be gone by this weekend.’
‘Where you going?’
‘That’s what I want to talk to you about.’
From the boat, Albert hollered to me across the water: ‘Timothy!’
He held out his hands, palm up, as if to ask what was going on. I waved.
‘Timothy?’ Jake said. ‘What is he, your dad?’
‘I
