This post was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on www.alaskawaypoints.com, on June 29,2011. This ver­sion has been slight­ly changed from the orig­i­nal. My apolo­gies for the length; the man him­self used a lot of words in his own sto­ry­telling, and I could­n’t do any less.

Our last trip’s hal­ibut suc­cess­ful­ly unloaded, the Sadaqa pulled away from the fish plant and qui­et­ly cruised down Sit­ka Chan­nel toward the fuel dock. Ross and I were putting the deck back togeth­er when Marlin’s aston­ished excla­ma­tions burst from the cabin.

“Holy shit – get in here, Sis!”

Mar­lin has a strict no-hal­ibut-slime-in-the-cab­in rule. I called back, “I’m in my rainpants!”

“I don’t care; come look at this boat right now!”

He ges­tured at an oncom­ing ves­sel. “Tell me what boat that is.”

I squint­ed. It was a seri­ous hulk of boat – steel bow poles speared the sky, a cov­ered deck pro­vid­ed all-weath­er pro­tec­tion, and the pris­tine white hull was blind­ing in the mid­day sun. Iden­ti­fy­ing boats from afar is a point of pride to both Mar­lin and I, but I was stumped.

“Uh…”

“You know that boat bet­ter than you think,” Mar­lin said. “That’s the god­damn Aquila.”

My breath sucked in, and we stared at the pass­ing boat as if it was a ghost ship. It may as well have been.

Beau­ti­ful day, beau­ti­ful boat

****

Joel and I were Down South when he got the call. We’d tied the Ner­ka up in Belling­ham two days ear­li­er, after run­ning south with the Aquila. I watched as Joel’s face drained slack.  “Oh my god, oh my god,” he repeat­ed into the phone. “We just made the trip down with him.”  Thoughts that were cohe­sive sud­den­ly slid against the walls of my skull, as sol­id ground gives way under our feet after weeks at sea.  Steve Meier had died, and noth­ing was right in the world anymore.

We were in a code group with Steve for 5 years, lucky enough to spend our salmon sea­sons trolling along­side the Aquila. Every group has an undis­put­ed high­lin­er, and Steve was ours.  If there was one fish in the ocean, he’d catch three.  Salmon, hal­ibut, ling cod, dun­gies; the fish­ery didn’t mat­ter.  Steve was a dri­ver, out there to har­vest, and that’s just what he did.

Unlike some high­lin­ers, Steve was hum­ble.  When one part­ner asked if any­one was catch­ing, Steve report­ed what he had. The part­ner joked, “Oh, you don’t count!”  Steve came back all offend­ed, “Whad­daya mean?”  The rest of us knew exact­ly what was meant: if any of us used Steve as the bar that we mea­sured our day’s suc­cess against, we might as well go find land jobs.

There’s an entry in our 2007 log, “We beat Aquila Steve today!!!”  Three excla­ma­tion points; it was that big of a deal.  He con­grat­u­lat­ed us that day — “Yeah, you had a good day” — then came back with a vengeance, thor­ough­ly whup­ping up on us the next.  We shook our heads, know­ing that was the nat­ur­al order of our group’s uni­verse, and imag­ined him chuck­ling to him­self.  “Heh heh heh.”

Lots of trollers get stuck in a geo­graph­ic groove, a men­tal force-field block­ing them from ven­tur­ing too far west, nos­ing too far south.  Not Steve.  He would go any­where, try any­thing, if there were fish to be caught.  He made us all bold­er, bet­ter, than we would’ve been with­out him.  We’d have fol­lowed him to the ends of the ocean, just for the plea­sure of going there with him.

Steve was hon­est in a way few peo­ple are.  He liked you, or he didn’t; he agreed with you, or he didn’t. Either way, he’d let you know. We count­ed on hear­ing at least one good “Steve rant” over the radio every sea­son, and man, there were some doozies. With the unin­ter­rupt­ible pow­er of a keyed mic in his fist, Steve was a gale that couldn’t be stopped. So many can dom­i­nate a con­ver­sa­tion with their views, but few can step back and poke fun at them­selves after­wards.  When Steve final­ly wore him­self out, his tem­po slow­ing down and vol­ume mel­low­ing, he’d pause with a self-con­scious chuck­le.  “And that’s enough out of me for today.  Heh heh heh.”

Here’s the thing about Steve: he found deep­er val­ue in peo­ple than their dif­fer­ences, focused on the com­mon ground he had with folks whose beliefs he was worlds opposed to.  He told one of our group’s more con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers, “You’re way over there on the right, and I’m way over here on the left, so we should just talk about fish­ing.”  And that’s what they did, with mutu­al respect for each oth­er as fish­er­men and friends.  “He tried to save me when we first met.  That didn’t go too well,” Steve remem­bered with his dead­pan deliv­ery, fol­lowed with a sig­na­ture smirk. “I did find myself say­ing ‘fuck’ about every oth­er word around him after that.”

Fero­cious as he was, Steve was strong enough to admit his wrongs.  When Joel crewed for him out of Cres­cent City, he and the oth­er deck­hand were pack­ing crab pots from the stor­age barn to go down to the boat.  They decid­ed to work togeth­er, each on either side of a pot.  Steve showed up, took one look, and laid into them.  “What the hell is this?  You’re gonna take all god­damn day doing it that way!  Every man to a pot!”  He ran over to the barn, grabbed a pot, and rushed it over to the trail­er to make his point.  Slam­ming it down, he slow­ly stood up, hands imme­di­ate­ly going to the small of his back as he sur­veyed the scene.  “Jesus, these are heavy.  You guys must be fuck­ing tired,” he said.  “Keep doing it the way you’re doing.”  He went gin­ger­ly back to the truck, nurs­ing a tweaked back that would give him trou­ble for the upcom­ing days.

There was no one like Steve Meier.  That was evi­dent at his memo­r­i­al, where fish­er­men from all up and down the Coast crowd­ed a North Seat­tle back­yard. One after anoth­er, we told sto­ries of this extra­or­di­nary man. He’d inspired many there to face their bat­tles with alco­hol; every­one agreed, “If Steve could get sober, any­one could.” He’d bailed deck­hands out of jail, tried to help young men whose strug­gles he sure­ly saw his own young self reflect­ed in. One fel­low crab­ber, a moun­tain of a man, curled his fists and wept open­ly before the crowd. “At least the sea didn’t get him.”

As dev­as­tat­ing as his sud­den death was, the thought of ill­ness weak­en­ing his body and spir­it was worse.  Joel said it best: “Death would have to sneak attack Steve, there’s no way it’d be able to take him head-on.”  Head-on… How Steve lived every moment of his life.

****

The Aquila glid­ed past, her new cap­tain lift­ing a hand in acknowl­edge­ment of our stares.  An unex­pect­ed relief swelled through me. “That’s not Steve’s boat any­more.” A beau­ti­ful boat, one he’d be impressed by, but not one that wield­ed the pow­er to gut-stab me when we pass it on the drag.

It’s hard to believe this is our sec­ond sea­son with­out Steve. He’s always with us – smirk­ing from a pho­to at the helm, con­stant­ly memo­ri­al­ized in dock con­ver­sa­tion. I walk by the Aquila and can’t take my eyes off of her. Turns out her new own­ers are a real nice cou­ple. That helps. See­ing the care they’ve poured into mak­ing her their own, that helps, too. The raw edge of loss shifts into a qui­eter, gen­tler pain.

But Christ on toast, we miss you, Steve. We’ll conk some kings for you, old friend.