The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  The captain took everyone’s passports to customs and got them stamped. Then he went off to get drunk with the first mate and left the crew stranded on the ship.

  In the heat under the canvas tarp raised to shelter the crew from the sun, they ate lunch sitting on deck chests. Sarah’s back against the life-jacket storage, Livy’s against Sarah, skin to skin. Dixie cups of orange sugar water, the salty dirt taste on their hands and necks, balancing paper plates of potato salad made with iffy mayonnaise on their knees.

  When it cooled, Livy shoved Sarah’s phone in her bra band and laid aloft to the crosstrees. She took pictures of Puerta de Balboa, but they didn’t look like much. A white building with arched windows and a Spanish red tile roof, giant silver cylindrical tanks. A few high-rises against craggy hills in one direction and in the other, a ridge built of freight containers that blocked the lights of the city behind the port like a cloud over stars. She sent the pictures to Kirsten. Balboa! she wrote. Named for the conquistador. That Man who discovered the ocean. Kirsten texted back Balboa and the Man’s ocean with a laugh emoji. Livy tried to call but it went to voice mail.

  Are you okay? typed Livy.

  Fine, said the bubble. Just not anywhere I can talk.

  That night the captain and first mate came back so plastered they could only stand as a team. The crew heard crying in the night, the captain wailing in Russian, the mate trying to calm him. The next morning neither was at muster.

  “Does anybody know what’s going on?” asked a deckhand.

  “It’s just the fears,” said an Irish sailor who’d come on in Seattle.

  “The fears?” asked Sarah.

  “You know, that sense of terror, panic, and black despair you get the morning after a solid drunk when you think you’re going to die that instant because the hand of God is on you like a spider—don’t you get them in America?”

  “Never heard it called that,” she said.

  Second mate rebalanced the watches to compensate for an ordinary seaman who had jumped the last time they’d docked. For the first time, Livy and Sarah were on the same watch.

  They scrubbed the ship together. They coiled and hung all the lines. They brushed against each other when they worked but were speaking less and less. With only hours left together, or at most a few days, every subject of conversation felt loaded.

  After dinner they sat on deck by the spanker. The tiller was lashed and they were alone.

  “What’s going to happen?” asked Livy. “Are you going to burst into a meeting and drop a banner and shout about tax evasion? What’s your big plan down here? Why Panama?”

  “You don’t have to talk about it like that.” Sarah sighed and closed her eyes. “There’s an exploratory well. They want to drill down here. We’re going to stop it from producing but we have to get there first.”

  “You’ll end up in a Central American prison.”

  Sarah shot her an annoyed look. “As it happens, I’m not going to the well. We’re just helping to bring the crew to the boat that will.”

  The relief was so strong that Livy laughed. “You’ll be back then and I can wait for you here.”

  “It won’t be like that. When things happen they look for everybody.” Sarah touched Livy’s hand. “But you could still wait. Or come with me.”

  “And spend the rest of my life paying lawyers?” She shook her head. “I’m not going to risk jail for anyone.”

  Sarah flared but Livy reached for her waist.

  “Don’t be like that. We only have a little time.”

  The next day everyone got their passports back and Livy spent the afternoon with Sarah exploring Puerta de Balboa. She mailed the jade necklace to Cheyenne and tried again to get Kirsten on the phone. Just hearing her mother’s voice on the message calmed her. Livy sent a text. Waiting on money. Will call when I have ticket. Make sure Cheyenne has this number.

  65 What Hills Are Those

  CHEYENNE BOOKED the first flight to Seattle that she could, then called Kirsten. She wanted her mother to say it wasn’t true, that Margaret had exaggerated, but her mother was quiet.

  “Does Livy know?”

  “We’ve been in touch.”

  “And that means what? You said she doesn’t have a phone.”

  “I forgot, she put minutes on her old one,” said Kirsten. “I’ve been forgetting things.”

  When Cheyenne got off she texted her sister again: Mom has stomach cancer. Come home. Now. Fast. Please.

  * * *

  —

  The judge advocate had said her request for Essex to travel was denied and to override the denial he needed permission from an officer above the one who denied him, but when she called his office his secretary said he was at Disney World with his family. Call him, Cheyenne said, yank him out of Magic Mountain. But for that, the secretary needed permission from another officer and that officer’s secretary said the officer would be gone all day.

  Pacing the sterile hotel room, Cheyenne looked at the polished mirror behind the TV and the unstainable rug and bleached sheets. She took a bright white complimentary robe from a hanger in the closet and tore into a sealed hygienic plastic bag that contained a pair of disposable slippers. In the absence of another direction to go, she decided to do laundry. Stripping to the skin, she made a pile of her clothes, dumped out her backpack, which smelled of sweat and peanut butter sandwiches, emptied pens and paperwork from the pockets, and threw it into the pile too. Balling it all up into her arms, she walked the halls past wet children, fresh from the overheated pool, chlorine eyes, skin tightening as it dried, mothers carrying goggles, also in bright white robes.

  The laundry room was empty. She fed dollars into the change machine, bought a box of detergent, and threw everything in. In the glass circle of the washer, she watched her denim halter dress, her two pairs of jeans and three shirts, her four pairs of underwear and white sports bra, light brown at the underarm, spin itself into a torrent of gray froth. She’d clearly put too much detergent in. She didn’t care. It wasn’t the kind of thing that washed out. She was thirty-four and all she had to show for it couldn’t fill a coin-op dryer. She’d been wrong. There were no points for boldness. When she got back to her room, the red message light on the phone was blinking. It was a voice mail from the JA asking her to call.

  The order had come from the office of the battalion commander. Essex had seventy-two hours for travel. The JA waited for tears of gratitude, but she’d lost her manners and with it her sense of obligation to strangers and gatekeepers. An etheric rage took her.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the JA.

  “You mean you’ve never seen it for a nobody like Essex,” she said and hung up.

  * * *

  —

  They hadn’t been able to get on the same flight so Cheyenne had spent the last three hours waiting for Essex in the Seattle airport, looking up alternative cancer treatments on her phone and reading testimonials. A Vitamix. A diet of organic raw vegetables. Ayurveda. Lots of turmeric root. Move away from power lines. No microwaves. Keep cell phones and computers powered down. Throw out all cleaning supplies and check for hidden toxins in furniture, the curtains, the carpet.

  Essex walked off the plane carrying a camouflage pack but wearing civilian clothes. His eyes seemed to her like bluebirds darting, looking for a branch to land on. Find your own way, she thought. I can’t do this.

  They drove toward the city in a rented hybrid. Essex randomly pressed buttons until he found the wipers. It was winter rain, heavy enough to last for months, marathon rain, which would slow but not stop. Vectors of cars and trucks appeared and disappeared on the windshield. Cheyenne rolled her window down to feel the rain on her face and the scent of earth was everywhere. The concrete and steel couldn’t even start to bury it.

  “It’s not a done deal,” she said rolling t
he window back up. “People get misdiagnosed. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that other ways work. Clinical trials too.”

  “I think we should be married for real,” he said.

  “We are.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said.

  “You promised you wouldn’t.”

  He turned on his signal and slowly floated into the left lane like he was back driving a cab, owning the road in a Crown Victoria. He tried to see the city as he had nine months ago but could not.

  They came to a dead stop in the traffic.

  “I’m not jealous, you know. If you think marriage to me is some kind of permanent sexual obligation, it doesn’t have to be,” he said.

  “You promised you wouldn’t do this. You swore,” she said.

  “I don’t know how much time we have.”

  Their lane started moving and the car behind them honked. Essex ignored it. He turned to her. Behind him, drivers gave them dirty looks, cartoonish faces and gestures.

  “What do you want? Honestly truly want?” he said.

  “Drive!”

  “For real. Tell me.”

  She threw her head back and glared at the gray fabric ceiling of the car. “What do I want? Let’s see,” she said in a choked voice, “I want to live in a public utility building, fall in love over and over until I die, have a job that doesn’t suck, and see things change in a good way not a bad way. I want to go to sleep at dawn and wake up in the afternoon. I want to spend the first half of my day naked, wrapped in a sheet and drinking coffee, and the second half hanging out with people who only want to talk about shit that matters. Then I want to walk home after midnight, confess to mystical ideas, have sex, and go to sleep at sunrise. Every day. That’s what I want to do every single day and none of it is going to happen. Now drive.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “That’s a lousy ambition.”

  They drove another mile bumper to bumper.

  “You know how in Little Women everyone knows Jo should have married Laurie?” Essex said.

  “You’ve read Little Women?”

  “Kirsten made me.”

  Cheyenne laughed. “Of course she did.” She yanked off her shoes and pressed her feet against the glove box. “You’re not Laurie. You’re one of the sisters. You might even be Beth. I don’t know why I find it so disturbing that you’ve read Little Women.”

  “For real. A solid yes or a solid no. I don’t want to go back wondering,” he said.

  Cheyenne nodded. They turned off by the university.

  “I want to stop at a store,” she said. “We should bring food.”

  They parked in the underground lot of an expensive hippie grocery. Essex opened his door but Cheyenne didn’t move. She could feel the heat from his body on her arm but always bending to her physical attraction had messed up her life. It had burned through everything. Her relationship with Essex was not one she wanted to risk. Still, she felt herself wavering.

  “Okay, what’s the grand offer? I go live on some army base?”

  “Marine base,” he said.

  “They send you to jail and I get to wait to see if they ever let you out?”

  “It’s what I’ve got to offer.”

  “Well I don’t have anything to offer.”

  66 The Great Canal

  ALTHOUGH THEY HAD FREE REIN to wander Balboa, Livy and Sarah stayed on or near the Neva. That space was theirs, separate and apart, and neither wanted to breach it and let the rest of the world in. Realizing it was useless, Sarah had stopped trying to talk Livy into coming with her. There were some kinds of risks that were simply not in Livy’s nature. Just as there were some kinds of caution that were not in Sarah’s. A line was drawn upon which they built a fence between them and hooked their fingers through, coming as close as they could with it there, as if it were a real thing and not something that could be brought down.

  Livy could feel Sarah pulling away slightly. She spent more time with Marne and became distant in infinitesimal ways Livy could not name. Marne and Sarah were waiting on a meeting to take place in Panama City. After that, things would move. But until Livy had her money, she couldn’t get a ticket home, and she didn’t have to think about leaving Sarah. On the Neva with no sails to set, no show to put on for tourists, time expanded. She was a ruler of herself in a way she’d never known. There is the ship; there is the sea. A sail is a fine winding sheet. May I never live to see the day when people cease to call me Queen.

  As long as she didn’t look ahead.

  * * *

  —

  A few days after getting their passports back, two deckhands jumped. It meant nothing to Livy but upset Sarah and Marne because one was supposed to be in the PRAJNA action. Gone without a word, a coal-mine canary.

  “Why does it matter?” Livy asked.

  “We need enough crew to sail this thing,” said Marne.

  “How far?” Livy asked.

  “Into the bay of one of the islands. That’s where we meet the other boat.”

  Livy looked aloft. “Well you might have enough to sail. The weather’s decent.”

  Marne laughed and shook her head. “Maybe.”

  Sarah glared at the dock.

  The third mate called the portside watch to muster.

  Portside watch! Roll out all the hammocks and repair any fraying lines!

  Roll out the hammocks and repair the lines!

  Not like watching you bastards hit the ground in your sleep isn’t funny…

  Say again?

  * * *

  —

  The captain, still drunk from another night ashore, slept on. Just before 3:00 p.m. the third mate, weighing his desperation to find work against the likelihood of getting paid, grabbed his seabag and left too. Another sailor followed. The first mate shook the captain at 5:00 p.m. Once alert and apprised of the situation, the captain and first mate went off to drink.

  Livy joined Sarah on watch. The sun went down and yellow light from the oil lamp pooled on their hands and on the sea chest full of twine and rope. Underlit, Sarah’s sharp bone structure painted strange shadows on her face, turning her eyes into dark sockets deeper than black ponds. Livy felt for a second like she didn’t know her at all. Then recognition flooded back. This was her Sarah. She touched her cheek, lamplight along her forearm, she kissed her, lamplight on her ear and neck.

  Over the next twenty-four hours, with the dwindling crew and the captain and first mate hiding in bars, the ship grew bigger and sometimes seemed all theirs. Livy knew she was lying to herself, knew it for a faerie mound, but as long as Sarah was waiting for the meeting and the captain held Livy’s money, no one had to wake up.

  With so many abandoning ship and no structure to their days, the sailors who remained on the Neva clung to discipline, largely enforced by Marne’s moods and personality. They were foreigners, indigent without their pay and bound to the ship. Those with money from other sources gone, they waited. Livy didn’t mind. Let this go on and on. Here, here, here.

  As the day of the meeting with the PRAJNA coalition got closer, Livy tried to wear away the dangers of the future. At some point we can meet again. You can hide for a bit then come back. I don’t mind waiting. But Sarah would not join her in this.

  “These might be our last real days together,” she said.

  “You don’t know,” said Livy.

  Sarah looked toward the bay. “Things don’t always go as planned.”

  The morning before the PRAJNA coalition meeting, the captain called Livy to his quarters and handed her a check. She’d never felt so miserable getting paid. Crossing the deck, she saw Sarah standing by the mains’l in a stained white cotton long-sleeved shirt and straw hat, coiling down a line that someone had tripped over and tangled, probably herself. Livy held up the check. Sarah saw i
t and kept on coiling.

  * * *

  —

  Livy decided to go to Panama City the next day to cash the check and get a ticket. Mostly so she could ride with Sarah and Marne who were meeting with the coalition to coordinate the PRAJNA action. Livy knew the rough shape of the plan—get the activist crew to the boat that would take them to the exploratory well, monkey-wrench it, show that they can be shut down, document the job with proof of international violations, upload planned location sites, and dox the hell out of everyone involved—but saw no way that it would change a thing. Her chance to change Sarah’s mind was down to nearly nothing, and she felt like they were speeding toward a wall that would break them all apart.

  On the bus to Panama City, Livy sat by the window. Sarah hung her head, motion sick, beside her. As downtown came into view, she laughed.

  Livy smiled. “What?”

  “It’s such a—the whole downtown is like, I don’t even know what to call it,” said Sarah.

  Marne popped up over the seat back in front of them.

  “Oh yes you do,” she said, “Try…h-a-r-d-e-r.”

  Sarah looked at the skyline. “Mirror dick garden?”

  Marne applauded.

  “I didn’t think it would be so obvious,” said Sarah.

  The laughing died off. Everything was threadbare. None of this was funny.

  When they arrived at the station, Livy held Sarah for a long time. Even though they would meet up in a few hours, everything would be different, Sarah’s attention elsewhere.

  A few blocks from where they separated, the foreign city moved around Livy, populated with foreign humans. She turned to see which way Sarah and Marne had gone, but they were nowhere.

  Livy found the bank and waited in line pressed between business suits, breathing in cologne. Her own dirtiness became more acute. She started to shrink, then her mother’s voice echoed so loud in her skull it seemed everyone could hear. They get off too easily. They destroy everything! They, the dominant culture. They, the rich, the power brokers. It was Kirsten’s view of the world.