Borealis(5)

“Jesus, Charlie, what are you talking about?”

“I can’t keep doin’ this.”

“You’re just talkin’ foolish.”

“Been thinkin’ about tryin’ to find ’em. Go out lookin’ for ’em.”

“But you said it yourself, Charlie—they could be anywhere in the country. How you gonna find them? Ain’t got a chance in hell.”

“Better chance than bein’ out here.”

“And even if you did find them, it won’t change nothing. She still won’t let you see him.”

“She might. If I took a job nearby, something that kept me grounded without disappearing on the water for weeks or months at a time…”

“Bah,” Mike groaned, turning away and looking out over the port side. “That’s just happy talk. You know it.”

“Still gotta try.”

“And what the hell will you do for a job, anyway? Teach goddamn physics at Harvard? This shit out here—” Mike Fenty opened his arms as if to embrace the world. “This shit is all you know, Charlie. She was wrong to want you to change and you’d be wrong changing.”

He sucked hard at the cigar and said through a mouthful of smoke, “Nothing wrong about goin’ after my son, Mike. Nothing wrong with that at all.”

Finally, Mike Fenty sighed. He relit his cigar and, after a few moments of silence between the two of them, said, “Yeah, I guess there ain’t a damn thing in this world wrong with that.”

They remained topside for several minutes more, burning the life from their cigars at equal speed, until Mike Fenty clapped Charlie and on the back and told him he was freezing his ass off and wanted to get some supper before Walper the greenhorn hit the sack.

“Don’t stay out here too late, Charlie.”

But Charlie hardly heard him. Blindly, without taking his eyes off the passing island of ice, he groped for Mike’s coat, catching the captain around the forearm and tugging him back toward the rail.

“Charlie—”

“Jesus Christ,” Charlie whispered. The cigar fell from his lips and silently dropped into the sea. “Holy mother of God…”

“Charlie, what—”

He jabbed a gloved finger at the ice floe. The trawler had sidled up alongside it in the encroaching night, so close Charlie could see the individual fissures in the ice, the moonlight casting a palette of shadows along the bluish ridge. They’d passed the seal rookeries some time ago, leaving their ghostly barking far off in the distance now. Still, there was movement out on the ice, movement—

“What the hell are you—” Mike began, peering through the darkness. The sun had fully set and there was nothing more to go on than the moonlight refracting off the snow.

“You see it?” Charlie said, his voice not rising above a whisper. “Holy f*ck, man, you see it?”

“Can’t be…”

“Holy—”

“Can’t—”

A figure, most definitely human, darted along the nearest ridge of the iceberg. Legs pumping, arms like pistons, the black shape ran along the cusp of the snowy ridge until it climbed to the top, briefly silhouetting itself against the three-quarter moon. A second later the figure descended down the opposite side, vanishing from view. The trawler was close enough and the moonlight bright enough for Charlie to identify with little doubt actual footprints in the snow.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie, did you see that?” Mike’s voice was no louder than a croak. He was leaning over the ship’s rail, gaping up at the ridge where the mysterious figure, only seconds ago, had been standing.

“It was a woman,” Charlie said. “Did you see?”

“Charlie—”

Snapping from his daze, Charlie grabbed two fistfuls of Mike Fenty’s coat and pried him away from the rail. “Get up behind the wheel and spin this boat around. She went down around the other side of the ridge.”

Mike’s eyes were as wide as hubcaps. “Christ, Charlie…” A crooked half-grin broke across his face. “How do you suppose…?”

“Go!” he barked, shoving Mike across the deck. Mike staggered for a couple of feet until he regained authority of his legs and began running for the pilothouse.

Charlie rushed to the port side of the trawler and nearly became entangled in a coil of line left haphazardly unspoiled on the decking. He kicked the line off his boot and peered over the side of the ship, his heart beating heavy in his chest now. In the pilothouse, Mike Fenty had taken the wheel and was already bringing the Borealis around the side of the iceberg. As the ship navigated around a tongue of ice and dipped back close to the iceberg, Charlie was immediately overwhelmed by the enormity of the floe. From this side, beneath the bleeding moonlight, he could see the entire length of the iceberg. It nearly glowed with phosphoresce, the sloping ridges frozen into icefalls that bled directly into the sea. The ocean opened up—a blanket of tar whose surface glittered with jewels—and the Borealis chugged around the perimeter of the floe.

Charlie looked down. The port side of the trawler was cutting through a crust of ice. Any closer to the ice floe would put the boat at risk. He glanced up at the pilothouse, a triptych of paneled glass illuminated from within by smeary, tallow light. Mike’s slender silhouette was clearly visible through the glass. Charlie held up one hand and Mike prodded the air horn—maaaawh—in acknowledgement.