Migrations(27)

In their own private ways they are all grieving the end of this life, knowing it must come to an end, not knowing how they’ll survive that.

I can no longer ignore my seasickness. The smells and sounds of the engine room have done me over. Léa snorts as I head to the toilet to heave my guts up. The growing swell knocks me sideways into the wall of the cubicle and I have to grab onto the toilet bowl. Throughout the night the waves grow crueler and I find myself fighting Dae for the toilet, much to the crew’s hilarity. Everything inside me is painfully expelled over and over again; vomiting is a singular hell. I guess Ennis was right about the approaching storm after all.

Samuel takes pity on me with a motion sickness tablet that knocks me out for a few hours, and when I wake it’s still night but the sea is calmer. I find my way up onto the deck. Anik is standing in the prow but I don’t think he’d welcome my presence.

“He doesn’t like coming south,” Basil says, and I notice him sitting in the dark, rolling a joint. “He never does.”

I’m not in the mood for Basil, but I never am, and maybe irritation will do to keep me company. I sit beside him and we listen to the ocean. “Why?”

“The north’s his home.”

Basil offers me the spliff and I take a drag. The warmth touches me quickly, blurring me.

“So why does he leave, then?” I ask.

“Dunno, really, except it’s something with him and Ennis. They have some deal or pact that goes way back, and it’s why Anik sails with the skipper no matter what.”

Curious.

“Did I sleep through the storm?” I ask, smelling the air for rain, but it still just smells of salt and grease.

“Hasn’t even started yet,” Basil says.

I gaze up into the clear sky. Stars abound.

“It’s getting ready,” Basil adds, recognizing my skepticism.

“Should I be worried?”

“Have another toke instead.” After a while, he says, “My family’s Irish. Way back.”

“Convicts?”

He grins. “Couple of generations after that. They were just people looking for a better life.”

“Than what?”

“Than poverty. Isn’t that the way of all migrations? Poverty or war. Which half of you is Australian?” he asks.

“My dad’s side.”

“How’d your parents meet?”

“No idea.”

“You never asked?”

I shake my head.

“But your mum, she’s Irish, right?” Basil presses.

“Aye.”

I watch him exhale a heavy plume of smoke. He sounds very stoned. “I knew a woman who lived and died by the slate-gray stones of County Clare. You could have carted her body across the ocean but you’d never be able to take her soul from that stretch of coast.” Basil looks at his hands, tracing the lifelines as though searching for something. “I’ve never felt that. I love Australia and it’s my home, but I’ve never felt like I could die for the place, you know?”

“That’s because it’s not yours.”

He frowns, affronted by that.

“It’s not mine, either,” I add. “We don’t belong there—we came from someplace else and we put our ugly flag in the ground and we slaughtered and stole and called it ours.”

“Christ, we got another bleeding heart right here, folks,” he says with a sigh. “So then how come I didn’t feel at home in Ireland, either?” he asks me as though it’s my fault. “I went there when I was eighteen thinking I’d find that homeplace.” He shrugs, takes another drag. “Can’t find it anywhere.”

I can no longer hold in the question. “How long are you gonna keep doing this, Basil?”

He looks at me and smoke billows from his mouth into my face. “I dunno,” he admits. “Samuel’s so sure of it all. He says God will provide for us, the fish’ll come back. That man’s been fishing as long as we’ve been breathing. I used to listen to him. But there’s too much talk now about sanctions.”

“Do you think that’s likely?”

“Who knows.”

“Don’t you … Why don’t any of you seem to care about what you’re doing?”

“’Course we care. It used to be such a good way to make money.” He folds his arms, lets that sink in, and then he tops it off by saying, “And it’s not us, you know. Global warming’s killing the fish.”

I stare at him. “Aside from also fishing to excess and contaminating the waters with toxins, who do you think caused global warming?”

“Come on, Franny, this is boring. Let’s not talk politics.”

I can’t believe him, I really can’t, and then it’s like standing at the bottom of a mountain I have no way to scale, and I’m exhausted, I’m exhausted by Basil and his small selfish world, and I’m exhausted by my own hypocrisy because I’m just as human and just as responsible as he is, and so in the end I slump back in my seat and close my mouth.

You decided this. You decided the destination was worth spending the trip on a fishing vessel. So suck it up.

“How ’bout you, then?” he asks.

“How ’bout me what?”