You know, there’s projects for the dead, and there’s projects for the living,

Though sometimes I must confess….I get confused by that distinction

-So I just throw myself into the arms of that which would betray me.

Jim White, Still Waters

Janice Called D and asked her for antibiotics.

They weren’t for her, they were for Dockboy2 who it turns out had been ambu-vaced earlier in the day after having almost severed several of his fingers in some sort of “tool accident”. This new incarnation of Dockboy is living aboard a derelict Buccaneer 26 with two dogs and zero employment at Pelicans Point nee Anchor Marina.

I couldn’t help but wonder to myself about this latest incident.

I have seen the same scene repeated over and over throughout my years on the water, many Dockboys, in many different forms. It is the same dance, and only the faces change. This latest incarnation of Dockboy is no exception. Content with sitting under a moldering tarp in the filthy cockpit of his boat, drinking tall boys and smoking pot, he rarely has funds for extravagant things like slip rent, transportation, human and dog food. I have thought of being benevolent and suggesting that he eat his dogs, even further cutting down on expenses. Then he could afford more tall boys and pot…

I have no trouble with Dockboys as long as they do not impinge on my personal space. Unfortunately and by design that is exactly what they do.

Take for example the case of Junkie Joe.

Many years ago, in another life (and seemingly on another planet), I had escaped to Kodiak Alaska to lick my wounds. I had every intention on working, but because of a fisherman’s strike, we were tied up in town. Hell, I couldn’t even get on a boat for awhile. Fortunately I got the chance to babysit a forty foot salmon seiner, the Shane.  It was a cold winter, and commodities were at a premium. No work in the canneries, no work at sea, no work anywhere, and everybody was hungry.

Right after Thanksgiving, I ran out of diesel fuel, having no money to replenish the tank, and the diesel fed stove / heater went cold. To top it off I got a case of flu which turned into some kind of pneumonia, and for weeks on end I just lay hacking and coughing, bundled up in my mummy bag, watching my breath freeze in beautiful patterns on the portlight next to my bunk. Fortunately, I was not alone in the community and friends periodically checked on me to make sure that I had not died.

As I remember the strike lasted a long time, and as I got well I visited boat to boat, imposing on their kindness for a bit of food, which for everybody was at a premium. To this day the smell of a pot of spaghetti evokes memories of good friendship, games and most of all, music.

Having been a musician most of my life, it was the least I could contribute to these hard times, and more than one night would find me in the wheelhouse of some big old crabber, playing a borrowed guitar or banjo, jamming with the handful of other musicians intent on making their livings from the sea.

Junkie Joe lived somewhere in the bowels of the harbor,  probably wherever he could find a place to pass out. He was the local cocaine addict, and I have the impression of him showing up one night aboard the Shane, which was crowded with other fishermen and musicians. I had gotten a little money in the mail and promptly bought some diesel, firing up the stove and brewing a magical pot of boat coffee… He just stood there, blood streaming down both arms as he stared around the crevices of the little seiner. It gave me the creeps, but he left without a word, and later the party broke up and I went to sleep in a warm and cozy nest, wind howling a full gale outside, the boat pitching and rolling at the dock on her side tie.

Not long afterward, the guitar and banjo that I had borrowed went missing from the unlocked Shane. Nobody thought about locking boats in those days in that harbor. We all knew each other, and we all knew that all we had to do was ask to come aboard. Trust was implicit. It had to be, you had to trust your life to these folks when the ocean piped up and started playing hard ball.

I knew who had stolen those precious instruments.

I circulated the word among my friends aboard the other boats, the big high-liners and the dirty scows. It soon became evident that a rash of thefts had been occurring, and fingers were collectively  pointed at Junkie Joe.

The harbor takes care of its own, but even so, the local constabulary was alerted, and they made their compulsory investigation. No hard evidence was found. Sometime after that though, Junkie Joe was seen leaving a local boat in the middle of the night, a boat that was not occupied, so that was all the  confirmation the harbor needed.

In typical fishermen’s justice, everybody in the harbor got together and pitched in what they could (I had maybe a dollar and some change, which I gladly contributed), and we bought Junkie Joe a one way ticket on Wien Air to Seattle. Two of the biggest baddest Mankato boys escorted the guy to the Kodiak airport and left him waiting there for his flight out.

It was almost immediately afterward that the strike broke and the season opened up. I went to work aboard the Express, and the first several trips I made went to pay off the stolen instruments. Hell yes I thought about it out there. Every time a big boiling wave washed over the rail as I stood aching, coiling line, doused in ice cold, mind numbing water I cursed Junkie Joe and myself for not locking the Shane, for tolerating a malignant Dockboy, for allowing him aboard in the first place.

When we returned from the Shelikof Straights, from the Semidi Islands, Kodiak Harbor was abuzz. It seems that Junkie Joe had cashed in his ticket and decided to return to the harbor.

Toots Laraway told me how Junkie Joe had been found floating face down in a slip on the first finger, having apparently tripped and fallen in the freezing water. An unfortunate accident.

End of problem.