Envious Moon(11)

An hour later we were steaming out of the harbor. It would be weeks before I would see my home again and I stood on the deck and watched the land recede behind me. Carlos and I were on the deck. Big Al and Ronny were below, sleeping off whatever they had done to themselves the night before. Captain Alavares was in the wheelhouse. Carlos, a heavy-browed Portuguese of about forty, was already tying leaders. This was work we shared and he knew I was good for my end so he didn’t say anything when I hadn’t started yet. There was a bright blue sky and a few high cirrus clouds. The truth was that I wanted to see the island. I wanted to see the house.

We followed virtually the same path that Victor and I had, though now we were farther from shore and we were steaming much faster than we had in my skiff. The island came into view and then we were passing it. Carlos paid no attention but I stood against the rail and stared up at it. At its craggy bluffs and uneven coastline. And then at the turret of the great house and, coming around, the house itself. I saw a piece of green lawn in front of it and I was far away but I could have sworn I saw a figure standing on it. Was it the girl? And did she look down and see our boat chugging by and see me standing at the rail looking up at her again?

Past the island all that was in front of us was blue ocean. This was when I needed the work, the busy work that went with the ride out. For without it, I missed the certainty of land too much. You couldn’t think about it because if you did it would drive you crazy. You needed to focus on the tasks in front of you, on the cleverness of your fingers.

Among the swordfish fleet, the Lorrie Anne was considered a good gig. As a boat it had never had any problems and Captain Alavares had a nose for fish. He didn’t tolerate any bullshit, no drinking or drugs, and he hired good people and we made money.

I know that before I came on, some of the other men thought I was a Jonah, someone who was cursed. They never said it to my face, but I saw it in their eyes, and in the way conversation stopped when I came below. This was on account of my father drowning at sea. Though Captain Alavares had known my father, and knew he had been a good and able fisherman. And after a number of trips, Carlos and Ronny, the butcher, and Big Al, the cook, knew me too and I was no longer a greenhorn and we got along just fine.

It took five days to get to the swordfish grounds. Once the lines were readied, there was nothing to do but wait. During the days we sat in the galley and chain-smoked and watched movies. We watched the same ones over and over. Like Scarface, which we all knew by heart. We took turns saying the lines out loud. Sometimes I lay in my bunk and read. The other guys made fun of me for it for they never read books. Big Al fed us twice a day and we looked forward to the meals as much for relief from the boredom as for the sustenance. Big Al was a pretty good cook. And we had all his best meals on the way out, the flank steak and the chicken parmesan and the stuffed haddock. Once we were working it was all spaghetti and salad. Not that it mattered then for we were working eighteen hour days, and none of us knew whether it was night or day, whether it was raining or clear, let alone what we shoveled into our mouths.

Until then, though, the only other responsibility we had was to take a turn at watch during the night. We divided the night into two-hour shifts and as the youngest, I got the worst time, two to four, smack in the middle and perfectly designed to make sure I could not string together too many consecutive hours of sleep. Our job was to sit in the wheelhouse and monitor the instruments. Every half hour we checked the engine room. And we only woke the captain if we saw another ship on the radar, which didn’t happen too often. The North Atlantic was pretty much empty on the way out.

Sitting in the captain’s chair that first night, with the only light coming from the instruments, looking to the sea of ocean stars above, I could not help but feel suddenly small, and alone, and afraid. The boat moved in a gentle swell and there was nothing but black ocean in all directions. I tried to think of other things, of home, but the fear kept moving through me. I kept seeing the man falling over the railing. And while that night it happened so fast and it was dark and I had sensed him falling, had heard him falling, rather than seeing him, in my mind when I was on watch, I saw it clear as water. His arms and legs outstretched like he was flying. His face down. All of him moving quickly to the hard floor.

I tried to put it out of my head and think of other things. I looked out to the black ocean. It was so endless in the dark. You might think that after what happened to my father, and the age I was when it happened, that I would be scared to death of the open ocean. But I wasn’t. To be honest, I was never afraid of dying. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I was afraid of being afraid. A few times we had been in weather so bad that the waves were smacking with fury against the windows of the wheelhouse. We sat huddled in the galley smoking and none of us said a word and we did not have to. We knew that all it would take would be one rogue wave and we’d be beam-to, on our side. It had happened to many boats and when it happened there was nothing you could do but hope the ocean picked you up and laid you back down the right way. Otherwise, you were going down. Trapped in a steel cage with men you knew but could not say you loved.

And that’s what scared me. Thinking about those moments of complete self-awareness, when we knew the boat was sinking, when we saw it on each other’s faces. What would that fear be like? Would it be raw, like a punch to the face? Or would it be more quiet, the kind that would take us to our knees?

I never told anyone this, but that’s why I think the dying would be the easy part. Just close your eyes and go to sleep.