That Foul Smell on the Waterfront
a short story by Wolf Larsen
(I worked as a longshoreman for 10 years. This story is based on an actual experience. There is one big difference between this story and reality: in reality the dialogue would contain four letter words in nearly every sentence.)
It was a pretty normal day. We were working a 12 hour shift in a 10° below zero F (25° below zero C) freezer hold in a cargo ship in the port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. We were grabbing 40 pound boxes of frozen fish off the pallets and stacking them in rows up to the ceiling over our heads. It was 3 ton per hour per man minimum. The shipping company wanted the ships stored by hand to get a tighter stow, to get more cargo in the ships and make more money.
It was a normal day except something didn’t smell right.
“What’s with this smell?” asked the new guy.
“Wolf, did you fart again?” asked a fat guy laughing.
“No,” said the new guy, “this ain’t no fart. It’s the fish we’re loading. It doesn’t smell right!”
“Oh that,” responded the fat guy. “Yeah, smells like the fish has gone bad. Probably got defrosted one way or another.”
There were about half-a-dozen of us working together on that hatch gang. We could talk as we worked because it didn’t matter what we did above the neck as long as our bodies kept working.
“BUT AREN’T PEOPLE GOING TO GET SICK?!” blurted out the new guy.
“Yeah, probably…” said the fat guy sadly.
“WELL WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT THEN!” practically yelled the new guy.
A co-worker nicknamed “Scotty” (who was actually from Wales) laughed at the new guy. His laughter seem to say “boy are you naïve!”
“I worked on fishing boats before this, I know when something’s wrong with the fish. The people who eat this fish are gonna get sick!” exclaimed new guy.
Another coworker, who was from south-central LA, said: “Okay. The fish is bad. People are going to get sick. But what can we do about it?”
There was silence for a little bit as everybody kept putting the boxes of frozen fish one on top of the other row after row. It was the kind of job you never got used to. It was the kind of job that was so physically hard you felt 20 years older than your actual age while working. It was the kind of job where in the early part of the shift you weren’t quite sure if you could make it to the end of the shift. It was the kind of job where you wished you are dead. But you knew eventually the shift would end… I did it for 10 years.
Then the pallet was empty. A new load of frozen fish was brought by the “winches” (a type of crane) into the hold. The new load stank as bad as the last load. Something was definitely very wrong.
“HEY!” yelled out the new guy to the foreman who was standing up there on the deck two stories above us watching us work and not really doing anything except giving us the same old mean ugly expression he always did, but that’s what he was paid to do.
The foreman ignored the new guy, but maybe it wasn’t deliberate, maybe behind the mask of the same old miserable mean expression, he may not have been really paying attention, and may have been having a sexual fantasy at that moment, and thus may not have heard the greenhorn say “HEY!”.
As we landed the 2 ton load of “frozen” fish on a huge roller and began trying to push the #@^%#@% roller (it got a little easier when it started rolling) the greenhorn began yelling up at the foreman.
“HEY, THIS FISH IS BAD. I WORKED ON FISHING BOATS I KNOW. THIS FISH IS NOT FROZEN. IT THAWED OUT A LONG TIME AGO. IT SMELLS! IT DOESN’T SMELL RIGHT! PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET SICK WHEN THEY EAT THIS!”
As he yelled up at the foreman most of the other coworkers (except Wolf and a few others) had amused expressions on their faces. They pushed & pushed & pushed until the roller began moving and they began pushing the 2 ton load towards the stack of fish. They would repeat this process over and over until the giant hold of the ship was filled.
“WORK AS DIRECTED!” yelled back the foreman.
The greenhorn turned us and asked, “What does that mean?”
“It means get your butt over here and help us unload this smelly fish!” said the fat guy.
“But the people who eat this fish are going to get sick! I worked with fish before – ”
“Dude,” said Scotty interrupting him. “Nobody here wants to unload this fish. We all know something’s wrong. But there’s nothing we can do about it!”
The greenhorn joined us and began stacking the boxes of frozen fish. As he worked he asked, “But what about the union? If we refuse to offload this rancid fish won’t the union back us up?”
“Nope!” said the fat guy.
“Isn’t there some kind of government agency that we could call?”
The others greeted this with laughter, except Wolf.
Wolf said, “I’ve tried the government. It’s useless. If you go to the government about anything management will punish you.”
The greenhorn said, “But isn’t that against the law? Aren’t there laws to protect whistleblowers?”
The others laughed again.
Wolf answered, “It doesn’t matter. Management will punish you if you go to the government. One way or another management will get revenge. And when management punishes you the government won’t back you up.”
“How do you know?” Asked the greenhorn.
“I went to the NLRB about something. You know, the National Labor Relations Board? They might as well call it the national bosses relations board, because they’re the ones running it. Trust me greenhorn, going to the government is a mistake.”
The fat guy said, “I told you not to go the NLRB, Wolf. But you didn’t listen to me.”
“If the fish didn’t open up their mouths they wouldn’t get caught,” said Scotty.
“What if I called the boss? What if I got his number and called the boss of the stevedoring company we’re working for?”
“Forget about it,” said Arturo a Mexican immigrant. “It’s 2 AM. He’s sleeping. You wake him up he’ll take you to disciplinary committee.”
“Disciplinary committee? What’s that?!” asked the greenhorn.
“That’s when you assume the position! All the management representatives get a turn!” blurted out the fat guy laughing.
“I’m going to call the union then!” proclaimed the greenhorn.
Scotty, Arturo, and the fat guy shook their heads. Some of the others laughed.
“The union will just tell you to work as directed,” said the fat guy. “The union is not going to back you up.”
“Don’t you guys have any friends out here?” Asked the greenhorn.
“Nope,” said the fat guy. “Nobody besides each other.”
Arturo agreed, “We have each other, and that’s all we got.”
The fat guy said, “It’s good to have the union, don’t get me wrong. But it’s run by a bunch of sellouts who are always kissing management’s ass. But you’re lucky there’s a union. Because if there wasn’t one you’d be out of a job soon enough, just for complaining to the foreman about the fish. They’d find some excuse to fire you. But you’re okay. You can complain sometimes and get away with it because it’s a union job”
“Doesn’t do any good to complain,” said the guy from south-central LA. “It’s just like Scotty said, ‘If the fish didn’t open up their mouths they’d never get caught in the first place.”
“Fuck this job! This is my last shift!” said the new guy.
Nobody joked about anything for the rest of the shift, which was very unusual. For the rest of the shift not a single word was spoken. Everyone had miserable expressions on their faces for the rest of the 12 hour shift. Not a single man in that hold wanted to offload that rancid fish. But what could we do?
Copyright 2011 by Wolf Larsen. Advance permission is given to anyone wishing to publish and/or distribute this work to do so as long as no alterations are made to the work, credit is given to the author, and the intent of such publication and/or distribution is not hostile.
