Borealis(16)

Charlie tousled the boy’s hair and kissed the top of his head. He too was up early, it being the first day of a new season. Down at the shore, the trawlers would be lined like soldiers along the seal rookeries, dressed and ready for a trek across the Imarpik. He grabbed a bowl for himself and, in sleepy silence, sat opposite his son at the small table, pouring his own bowl of cereal and milk. They ate without talking, content merely with their proximity, for the boy loved his father and the father loved the boy, and in the pauses between their crunching, Charlie could hear Johanna’s light snoring emanating from the back bedroom.

When he’d finished eating, Charlie stood, raking the legs of the chair across the linoleum, and paused to grip the boy’s chin. Pinched him gently.

“You do good in school,” he told the boy.

“I know, I know.”

“I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”

“You do good too,” the boy said.

“I know, I know,” he said, mimicking his son’s tone.

Yet two weeks later, Charlie Mears returned from the great salt seas to an empty home—empty, it seemed, for so long that the smells representative of his wife and child no longer haunted the empty rooms…

“Where you goin’?” Joe practically croaked from the cot. The sound of his voice dragged Charlie back from his reverie.

“Finish talkin’ with our no-name little guest in the next room,” he said and left.





8


Unable to prepare any warm food without the use of the petrol stove, he entered Mike’s cabin carrying a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk. The girl stood beside the dresser, holding one of Mike’s framed photographs in her hands. It was a glamour shot of Mike’s wife, one of those airbrushed, angelic portraits you can get at K-mart or some such place, her hair a nest of springy platinum curls, too much makeup on her face.

“She’s pretty,” the girl said, setting the picture back atop the dresser as Charlie came in.

“Brought you some food.” He set the bowl of cereal and glass of milk on the dresser. “I wanted to pick up where we left off before.”

“About your friend who died?”

“About who you are,” said Charlie. He sat on Mike’s footlocker, folding his hands between his knees, and motioned with his chin for the girl to sit on the cot. She sat without protest, her eyes never leaving his. “Who are you?” he said after a few moments of uninterrupted silence fell between them.

“I’m your catch,” she said. “I’m your find.”

“That makes no sense.”

“You found me, didn’t you?”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one.” Again—that timid head cocking. “You can give me a name, if you like.”

“Forget names,” he said. “Tell me how you got out here.”

“You picked me up,” she told him. “You brought me on the boat.”

“No. Not how you got on the boat,” he clarified, growing increasingly irritated at her evasiveness. “How did you wind up out here in the sea? On the iceberg?”

She held him in his gaze for several seconds, unspeaking. A cold, marrow-freezing chill overtook him and settled deep within his soul. He had to break her stare, to look away from her.

“You’re one of the hard ones,” she commented after a while.

“What does that mean?”

“It means some people are easy to reach. Most people, actually. But not all. You’re one of the hard ones to reach. I think… I think it’s because you’re overtaken by something else.” Wrinkling her nose and creasing her brow, she was trying to read something in him, something deep below the surface. “There is something keeping you shielded.” She added, suddenly brightening, “It is a little boy.”

This statement, for whatever reason, did not jar him. “My son, yes. Gabriel. He’s been on my mind a lot lately. You can tell that?”

“You’re a hard one,” she said again, “but you’re not difficult to read.”

He sighed and leaned away from her, sitting straighter on the footlocker. “You did that to Sammy, didn’t you?”

“Sammy did what he did to himself.”

“He couldn’t have opened that hatch by himself. Someone had to have helped him.”

“There are a lot of big, strong men on this boat,” she offered.

“None of them would have done anything to him. Let’s stop playing games. Tell me how you got out here.”

At first, he did not think she was going to answer. The only sound was their intermingled breathing and the ticking of Mike’s wristwatch on the nightstand. Then, surprisingly, and with evident surrender, the girl said, “I was brought out here by a man. His name was Calvert Tackler. We came out on a boat, much like this boat, and he left me out here, presumably to die.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because,” she said, “he was thinking the same thoughts about me that you’re thinking right now.”

This startled him. He began bouncing one leg up and down, up and down, up and down. “How long ago did he leave you here?”

“A very long time ago,” she said. “I don’t know exactly.”