David Vann - Caribou Island

The inspectors two more women, similar age but not in college, at the end of the trough. They were supposed to give a quick check and sort the fish. Any with gashes or broken spines thrown into a side bin. Any other species of salmon in another bin, because they were packing sockeye only. But they’d pull a membrane or push out a blood spot or pluck a bit of gill if the fish wasn’t clean, and they didn’t seem to care that they had to do this with every one of this other woman’s fish and none of Carl’s. They chatted the whole time, locals, having to shout over the Metallica. They’d worked here for years, and they had a low opinion of the place.

Dude, you can’t get fired from a cannery, one said to the other, especially this cannery. This is as low as it gets.

They chatted about men and money, and they’d had this job so long they didn’t have to pay it any attention. But Carl struggled with every fish. First the membrane, trying to find an edge somewhere down by the asshole, then looking for two blood pockets up near where the head had been removed. He had to push hard with a thumb to get this blood to pop out. Then checking for any leftover pieces of gill and trying to scrape the extra blood from the backbone. Impossible to get all of it, and he had no tool. Just a rough cotton glove over a plastic glove over another cotton glove. Because theoretically, everything had already been removed by a person with a gutting spoon on the conveyor belt. So that was the person Carl resented most.

Carl resented everyone upstream of him, though. They were all skilled, all higher paid, and all had easier jobs. One stood with a shovel and helped move fish from enormous slush tanks. This guy spent a lot of time just standing there watching the fish go by. Then someone lined up the fish so their heads faced the same way. This is the job Carl would have liked. Then a guy made one quick slit from asshole to gullet. One flick of the knife for each fish. Then the beheader. He moved the fish only a few inches, lining up the head for a heavy set of blades. A guillotine, and dangerous. But he wore a lanyard that was attached to the table and kept his hand from scooting too far forward. And he moved the fish hardly at all.

Only men at the head of the stream, until the next station, ripping out the guts. A woman did that. The guts traveled on a small conveyor belt to another woman who sorted the roe, the red sack of eggs, into a small plastic basket. Like a diviner, reading futures from each plop of guts onto her table. Then she’d scrape it clean with a quick swoop before the next plop came.

After that, knives and men again, one quick slit to open the blood along the spine. Then a woman with a spoon to scoop out all the blood and a man with a spray nozzle to wash it down. All of this on a wide conveyor belt, light blue plastic, and the fish exited with a flop into the wash table trough. Every flop spattered the guy standing to the left of Carl, and the guy flinched every time. Worst position in the plant, and though Carl had to pee like a madman, he wouldn’t leave, because he knew the guy would step to the side and Carl would get stuck there.

So the problem was either the woman with the gutting spoon or the man with the spray nozzle. One of them was supposed to be getting the membrane and the last of the blood, but they just sent the fish on as quickly as possible. The salmon kept piling up at the wash table until they were in danger of spilling over the sides and the conveyor was backing up, and there was no water within reach for washing. A mountain of carcasses and no way to wash, and Carl thought he might scream.

Sean, the manager, appeared at the clean aluminum table beyond the inspectors and barked for fish to be sent his way. So the inspectors grabbed fish from the wash table quick and scooted about fifty. Sean glanced inside each one then passed it along to where it was boxed in ice, ready to be shipped. Another sign that Carl’s job was entirely pointless. The boss sending all these fish along in a bypass, after Carl had endured over an hour of rubbish, at five a.m., about quality control in the plant. There was a bucket of hot chlorinated hand wash behind Carl that he could dip his hands into, for instance, and this would help keep the fish cleaner and increase shelf life, but he could never risk walking over to this bucket to warm his hands, because then the guy next to him would step to the side and Carl would be splatted by every arriving salmon. A roving inspector checked temperatures and made sure everyone was doing their jobs, but he stood by the woman across from Carl and seemed to think that her nothing peek into the carcass was sufficient.

To Carl, all of life’s lessons were apparent here. Everything he should have learned already in college. Everything he needed to understand about his future. He made the list in his head as he pushed at blood and scraped for membranes:

1. Don’t work with other people.

2. Don’t work a manual job.

3. Be glad you don’t have to work as a woman.

4. There’s no such thing as quality control. All the other terms of business are bullshit also. The business world is where thoughts and language go to die.

5. Work means nothing except money. So find a job that means more than this, something ideally that doesn’t feel like work.

But the most important lesson was that Carl needed to leave immediately. There were no prizes for sticking around in a shitty situation. He would call his mother tonight and beg for a ticket home. He didn’t care what it would cost him in the end. He was not going to spend even one more day in this place.

Everyone went on break, finally, fifteen minutes after four hours of salmon. It took Carl five minutes to take off his raingear bibs and pee, then he stood outside, by the campfire. A metal pit in the dirt, no flames but a few coals and lots of smoke. The smoke coming Carl’s direction most of the time, dousing him. He and his fellow fish processors stood in a circle staring at the coals, one of the guys talking about his bar fight and brief jail stay. He’d been released this morning just in time for work.

My ex comes in with this known crack dealer, and that means this guy is spending time with my kid. I know who he is, and he knows who I am. He comes right over, and I don’t do anything. I just sit there as he rants.

Carl had trouble making sense of this story, because the guy looked so mild-mannered. Same age as Carl, a bit thicker and stronger, light red beard, but he didn’t look like someone with an ex who was with a crack dealer.

He yells up in my face for maybe half an hour, some incredible length of time. I thought he would stop, but he didn’t, so I finally said, Let’s take it outside.

Let’s take it outside, Carl repeated aloud. What a cliché, he was thinking, grinning a bit, but no one shared this moment with him. Odd looks from the teller and others, only a brief pause in the story. Carl an outsider, as usual.

I slip my beer bottle in my pocket, something he doesn’t see, and when we’re outside, I break the end against the railing and tell him I’m ready.

The group was impressed, Carl could tell. Carl was not impressed. He couldn’t believe he was hanging out with these knuckleheads.

So he doesn’t fuck with me when he sees the bottle. We just circle around and he doesn’t dare get close. And then the cops come, and it’s my friend Bill. I’m just like, do you want me to put the handcuffs on myself? He’s already had to do this a couple times, and he’s like dude, how do you get into this shit? So it was cool. I spent the night at the station, and they let me out in time for work.

Everyone looked at the coals another minute or so, no comments about the story, then it was time to go in, the break over. Back to the guts.