Borealis(3)
There was no sign of the little girl. But, of course, no one had seen her come in with the man and therefore never knew to look for her.
Anyway, that was twelve years ago, and in a whole other part of the country.
2
After seven days of futility—
“So f*cking cold my goddamn lighter’s giving up the ghost,” Charlie Mears said, chasing the tip of his cigarette with a tarnished Zippo. His cold, gray eyes leveled out over the vast nothingness of charcoal waters and icy strata from over the bow of the trawler. The air was cold and sharp, only vaguely scented by the trawler’s diesel exhaust. Each inhalation burned his nostrils.
Beside him, hugging himself in his bright orange slicker with the hood up, “Dynamo” Joe Darling offered nothing but a grunt.
“What’s your vibe on el capitán?” Charlie said, exhaling smoke out over the bow. The trawler was at a crawl now yet the wind still stung his chapped face.
“Think he’s got a good eye for snailfish, is what I think,” muttered Joe. Charlie could tell he was shivering in his orange slicker without looking at his face.
“The rest of the guys are getting restless too,” Charlie said, though it didn’t need to be said. He was a big, broad-shouldered guy, square-jawed with a salt-and-pepper beard tinged with copper strands. Creases splayed from the corners of his black eyes: years spent wincing through the glare of the sun off the water. “Look at that,” he added, nodding toward the bleed-over pastels beyond the horizon as the sun dipped into the Bering Sea. “Something, eh?”
“I got bills to pay,” Joe went on, unimpressed. “I got two mortgages, Charlie.”
The crew hadn’t seen a single blue since disembarking from Saint Paul Island one week ago. The captain was Mike Fenty, fairly new to the red circuit, though he’d carved out a name for himself going after walleye and sablefish. Crabs, however, were a different story. While he wouldn’t say so to anyone on board, it was Charlie’s distinct impression that el capitán was in over his head.
“You think you’d get used to seeing the sun go down out here,” Charlie said. “But I never do. It’s fine in the daytime, but at night, it’s like God and the rest of the world forgets about you. Left behind, like some kid in a grocery store.”
“Got three kids at home, Charlie, countin’ on me.” There was no shaking Dynamo Joe. Anyway, he was right.
“Christ,” Charlie grunted, flipping his half-smoked cigarette over the bow. “We’ll give him two more days before suggesting we reassign coordinates.”
“There’s nothing out here,” Joe said. “There’s us and God and nothing else.”
“Not God, either. He’s somewhere else at the moment. Too damn cold for him.”
“The blues are laughin’ at us.”
“Two more days,” Charlie repeated, hugging himself now as night fell over frozen Arctic wastes.
3
But it wouldn’t take two days: early the next morning, while the sky was still black and the stars as bright as fireworks, the crew of the Borealis struck gold. What they called space-spiders. Moon-bugs.
During the night, Captain Fenty had wound the trawler through a section of black water alongside the Kula Plate, the wind so harsh and unforgiving the sea spray kicked up by the trawler would freeze in under a second. The giant steel pots were lowered by the great hydraulic arm, which seemingly grunted in protest, and a breakfast of warm oatmeal and watery coffee was served belowdecks. Each of them still half-asleep, they ate their oatmeal and sipped their coffee like zombies, undedicated to their roles, their broad and heavy bodies swaddled in long johns and flannel underwear. Pulling on their gear after breakfast, the sun still brightening some other part of the world, they climbed topside and sent the arm to work again, this time hoisting the pots, which were giant steel cages that weighed 800 pounds each. The first pot ascended from the black waters alive with bristling, clattering crabs, scores of them, nearly to the top of the cage. There sounded a united cheer from the deck. The pot was hoisted over the side and onto the deck where Billy McEwan and a young greenhorn named Sammy Walper each grabbed one side to stabilize it.
“Jesus Lord!” Joe shouted, clapping his rubberized gloves together. “Jesus in a propeller hat!”
Charlie shot a glance at the pilothouse windows, which were beaded with ice and grimy with diesel sludge. He raised one hand to Fenty, and Fenty raised one in return.
“They’re reds! All of ’em!” shouted McEwan. “A pretty f*cking penny better’n blues!”
Charlie and another deckhand, Bryan Falmouth, bent and grabbed the handles of the tank lid that was impressed into the trawler’s deck. Each of them grasping a wrought-iron ring, Charlie said, “Ready?”
Falmouth nodded. “Do it.”
“One…two…three!”
The lid was hoisted on angry, squealing joints.
“Ha, ha!” Joe was still stomping and clapping on the deck.
The pot was opened and the crabs were dumped across the deck. Immediately, the sound of the bone-thick, segmented legs chattering along the planking was like a wave of applause, their enormous, grotesque bodies clambering over one another, abbreviated pincers raised and snapping, biting at the freezing air and, more often, at one another.