by Ronald Malfi
For the first time, Charlie noticed all the cupboard doors were standing open.
Grumbling, McEwan retrieved a bottle of vodka from one of the open cupboards then dropped his considerable bulk, in tandem with a piggish grunt, into the booth. “Go complain to Fenty,” he said, unscrewing the cap off the bottle. “It’s his piece of shit rig.”
Still glaring down at the petrol stove, Bryan said, “I don’t get it. Everything worked fine until now.”
“To the kid,” McEwan toasted, bringing the bottle of vodka to his lips.
“How the hell did he get down there?” Bryan asked, sliding into the booth beside McEwan. He grabbed the bottle from McEwan’s lips and took a swing himself. “What was he thinking?”
“Mike’s right,” Charlie said, folding his arms. “Hatch is too heavy for one man to lift. And Sammy, he weren’t no Superman.”
“Sounds to me,” McEwan said, “you’re accusing one of us of bein’ there when it happened.” Without expression, he snatched the bottle back from Bryan. “Maybe even insinuatin’ we had somethin’ to do with him dying.”
“I don’t know what I’m insinuating,” said Charlie.
“Why don’t you go ahead and say what’s on your mind, then?”
“I’d just like someone to explain to me how that kid got himself killed in the holding tank, that’s all. Kid’s dead. I’d like to know how it happened.”
In the overhead, the lights blinked in their fixtures. All three of them cast wary glances. The ship was keeling to one side, items slid out of the open cupboards and onto the floor. A bag of sugar spilled like beach sand across the counter.
“We’re turning around,” Bryan observed. “Mike’s taking us back.”
“What about the pots?” McEwan said.
“Pots ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Charlie said. He turned and rolled out of the galley, both hands planted on either wall for support as he made his way down the canting corridor. The bluish light from the head shone in the darkness. Joe was staring into the commode, his legs folded up under him, a dazed expression on his face. As Charlie approached, Joe turned his head slowly to address him, a silvery tightrope of spittle bowing from his lower lip to the rim of the toilet.
“Hey, Charlie.”
“What’s wrong, Joe?”
“Sick.” And indeed he looked like death. In the bluish light of the tiny latrine, his skin had adopted a translucence that was almost corpselike. Dark rings encircled his eyes and his lips quivered, vibrating the trail of saliva that held him to the toilet. “Never been seasick b’fore. All my time on boats, ain’t never been seasick. Funny, huh?”
Charlie leaned in and pulled the flush chain. The commode growled and, with a whoosh, devoured the whole mess.
“Mike taking us home?”
“Think so, yeah.”
“I’m still seein’ him, Charlie. Every time I close my eyes, man, I see him—or what was left of him—in that holding tank. The water all pink, the space-spiders creepin’ and crawlin’ all over him. His flesh all white and hanging off in chunks like bits of uncooked chuh-chuh-chicken—” He leaned over the commode and retched.
“Go lie down, Joe.”
“Those crabs,” Joe said, wiping a sleeve across his mouth. “I mean, we can’t use ’em, right? We gotta let ’em back out into the sea. Christ, Charlie, they fucking ate him.”
Uneasy, Charlie turned away and climbed the galley steps that led out into the milky haze of an overcast day. It felt like forty below, the wind practically searing the skin from his face. He chased the tip of a cigarette around with a lighter until he caught it. Sucked vehemently. It was all he could do not to stare at the hatch. How in the world had Sammy managed to open it on his own, let alone fall in there?
He glanced up at the pilothouse. Just barely did he make out the seemingly disembodied face of Mike Fenty, floating like a white moon behind the salt-streaked windows. Lungs tugging on the smoke, Charlie ascended the steps toward the control room, his muscles almost audibly creaking in the cold, running one numbing hand along the iron rail. Around them, the sea was growing rough. Behind a veil of cumuli, the sun had repositioned itself in the sky, burning silver threads through the clouds.
The control room door was locked.
“Hey, Mike.” Charlie knocked against the pane of glass. “Door’s locked.”
Mike did not turn to look at him; he merely stood behind the wheel facing straight out the windows.
Charlie knocked again, this time with more urgency. Through the pane, he could see that the control panel was unlit: still no power.
“Mike?”
Snapped from his daze, Mike craned his neck to stare at Charlie. With the dedication of a death-row inmate, Mike leaned over and flipped the latch on the door. Charlie stepped inside, expecting the usual blast of heat from the floor vents, but it was almost as cold in the pilothouse as it was out on the foredeck.
“You takin’ us back to Saint Paul?”
“Sure,” Mike said.
“Guess we’ll come back for the pots another time.”
“Sure will.”
“Figure we might not want to touch the reds in the holding tank,” he suggested. “In case, you know, Sheriff Lapatu wants to have first look. Scene of the crime and all that, I’m guessing.”
“What crime is that?” Mike said. He continued to stare out the grime-streaked, salted windows.
“I guess not a crime, per se, but…well, you know, we prob’ly shouldn’t go messin’ in that tank, is all.” He put a hand on Mike’s shoulder. Still, the captain would not look at him. “You all right?”
“Sure am.”
“Couldn’t get the power up?”
“Don’t need it. Been navigating these waters since I was a teenager.”
“Lights are blinking and the petrol stove is cold.” Charlie tapped one of the floor vents with his boot. “Feels like the heat ain’t makin’ it up through the vents anymore, either. Like she’s givin’ up on us.”
Mike swung his head around to face him, his eyes haunted and nearly fearful. “What do you mean ‘she’?”
“The boat. She. Listen, Mike, why don’t you head down, get something in your stomach. You’re burning yourself out, man.”
He returned his gaze to the sea. “Not hungry.”
“Then take a nap.”
“Not tired.”
Defeated, Charlie bent and rummaged through the underside of the console for the first-aid kit. Once he located it he stood, his spine cracking, and cast one final glance at Mike Fenty before taking the first aid back below the deck.
Joe was curled in a fetal position on his cot when Charlie entered the cabin. His eyes were closed but he spoke Charlie’s name when he entered. Charlie sat on his own cot and opened the kit in his lap. Bandages, adhesive strips, a needle and thread, a syringe, even a flare gun and two flare cartridges. Eventually he located some Dramamine. Joe dry swallowed two tablets without opening his eyes.
Charlie slid the first-aid kit beneath his cot and stood, unsure if the creaking sound he heard was from the cot’s struts or his own tired bones. He suddenly felt a million years old. For whatever reason, he thought once again of Gabriel. The last time he’d seen the kid had been six months ago, back at the trailer in Saint Paul Village. He’d been sitting on a telephone book at the kitchen table, shoveling spoonfuls of some sugary cereal into his mouth. Through the kitchen windows, the tawny lights of an Alaskan predawn bled up into the sky behind the black serration of distant firs. The boy was up early for school, dressed in oversized corduroys and a Batman sweatshirt. Though seated at the table, he already had his matching Batman backpack strapped to his back.
Charlie tousled the boy’s hair and kissed the top of his head. He too was up early, it being the first day of a new season. Down at the shore, the trawlers would be lined like soldiers along the seal rookeries, dressed and ready for a trek across the Imarpik. He grabbed a bowl for himself and, in sleepy silence, sat opposite his son at the small
table, pouring his own bowl of cereal and milk. They ate without talking, content merely with their proximity, for the boy loved his father and the father loved the boy, and in the pauses between their crunching, Charlie could hear Johanna’s light snoring emanating from the back bedroom.
When he’d finished eating, Charlie stood, raking the legs of the chair across the linoleum, and paused to grip the boy’s chin. Pinched him gently.
“You do good in school,” he told the boy.
“I know, I know.”
“I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
“You do good too,” the boy said.
“I know, I know,” he said, mimicking his son’s tone.
Yet two weeks later, Charlie Mears returned from the great salt seas to an empty home—empty, it seemed, for so long that the smells representative of his wife and child no longer haunted the empty rooms…
“Where you goin’?” Joe practically croaked from the cot. The sound of his voice dragged Charlie back from his reverie.
“Finish talkin’ with our no-name little guest in the next room,” he said and left.
8
Unable to prepare any warm food without the use of the petrol stove, he entered Mike’s cabin carrying a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk. The girl stood beside the dresser, holding one of Mike’s framed photographs in her hands. It was a glamour shot of Mike’s wife, one of those airbrushed, angelic portraits you can get at K-mart or some such place, her hair a nest of springy platinum curls, too much makeup on her face.
“She’s pretty,” the girl said, setting the picture back atop the dresser as Charlie came in.
“Brought you some food.” He set the bowl of cereal and glass of milk on the dresser. “I wanted to pick up where we left off before.”
“About your friend who died?”
“About who you are,” said Charlie. He sat on Mike’s footlocker, folding his hands between his knees, and motioned with his chin for the girl to sit on the cot. She sat without protest, her eyes never leaving his. “Who are you?” he said after a few moments of uninterrupted silence fell between them.
“I’m your catch,” she said. “I’m your find.”
“That makes no sense.”
“You found me, didn’t you?”
“What’s your name?”
“I don’t have one.” Again—that timid head cocking. “You can give me a name, if you like.”
“Forget names,” he said. “Tell me how you got out here.”
“You picked me up,” she told him. “You brought me on the boat.”
“No. Not how you got on the boat,” he clarified, growing increasingly irritated at her evasiveness. “How did you wind up out here in the sea? On the iceberg?”
She held him in his gaze for several seconds, unspeaking. A cold, marrow-freezing chill overtook him and settled deep within his soul. He had to break her stare, to look away from her.
“You’re one of the hard ones,” she commented after a while.
“What does that mean?”
“It means some people are easy to reach. Most people, actually. But not all. You’re one of the hard ones to reach. I think… I think it’s because you’re overtaken by something else.” Wrinkling her nose and creasing her brow, she was trying to read something in him, something deep below the surface. “There is something keeping you shielded.” She added, suddenly brightening, “It is a little boy.”
This statement, for whatever reason, did not jar him. “My son, yes. Gabriel. He’s been on my mind a lot lately. You can tell that?”
“You’re a hard one,” she said again, “but you’re not difficult to read.”
He sighed and leaned away from her, sitting straighter on the footlocker. “You did that to Sammy, didn’t you?”
“Sammy did what he did to himself.”
“He couldn’t have opened that hatch by himself. Someone had to have helped him.”
“There are a lot of big, strong men on this boat,” she offered.
“None of them would have done anything to him. Let’s stop playing games. Tell me how you got out here.”
At first, he did not think she was going to answer. The only sound was their intermingled breathing and the ticking of Mike’s wristwatch on the nightstand. Then, surprisingly, and with evident surrender, the girl said, “I was brought out here by a man. His name was Calvert Tackler. We came out on a boat, much like this boat, and he left me out here, presumably to die.”
“Why did he do that?”
“Because,” she said, “he was thinking the same thoughts about me that you’re thinking right now.”
This startled him. He began bouncing one leg up and down, up and down, up and down. “How long ago did he leave you here?”
“A very long time ago,” she said. “I don’t know exactly.”
“Who was he? This Calvert Tackler?”
“Just a man.”
“How did you know him?”
“We came to meet. He thought he loved me, or was in the process of falling in love with me, but that was not why he brought me out here. He brought me out here because he couldn’t bring himself to kill me. Maybe it was because he loved me or maybe it because he simply did not have it in him to kill a person—”
“But why would he want to kill you?”
“Not just him.”
“What do you mean?”
“There have been others,” she said. “My whole life, there have been people who’ve tried to kill me. I can remember their names, all these people, and what each one looked like. I can remember the first one, a man named Frank Bodine, who nearly managed to kill me in a motel room outside Las Vegas. But in the end, I eventually got to him. I eventually got to them all, even the strongest ones. Strong ones like you, Charlie Mears. Ones who put up a mental wall, put up a fight. Strong ones like you.”
Charlie stood. “I get it. You’re out of your mind. Either that or you just like to play games. Well, I don’t like games. I don’t have time for them. You’ve got three seconds to start talking sense—”
“Don’t yell, Charlie.”
“—or you’re gonna spend the rest of the trip back to Alaska locked in this room. Do you understand?”
“Don’t be angry with me.” She smiled.
“One,” he said.
“Poor, poor Charlie. Misses his boy.”
“Two.” Grinding his teeth.
“You’ll never see him again. You know it’s true.”
“Three,” he said, simultaneously swiping the bowl of cereal and glass of milk from the top of the dresser and onto the floor.
“Look at the mess you’ve made.” She cast her eyes to the cornflakes and broken shards of bowl in the puddle of milk. “Very messy, Charlie.”
“You can talk to the cops when we reach land.” He stormed out into the corridor, slamming the cabin door. In the darkness of the corridor, he nearly ran right into Joe, who was leaning against one wall, shrouded in darkness.
“She tell you anything?” Joe asked. Charlie couldn’t see his face in the dark but it sounded as if he had something in his mouth.
“She’ll tell Lapatu when we get back to Saint Paul,” he promised Joe. “You should be in bed.”
“You need to push her more, Charlie. You need to get her to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“What she’s doing to me.”
“You’re just seasick.”
“Ain’t never been seasick in my life, Charlie.”
He pressed a hand to Joe’s forehead then quickly withdrew it, disgusted by the moist clamminess of Dynamo Joe’s flesh. A skein of perspiration came away with his hand, cool like menthol.
“Fuck, Joe. You’re burning up, man.”
Joe took a lumbering step forward, his face suddenly illuminated by the red emergency lights recessed in the overhead. A living skeleton, his skin looked like latex stretched taut over a large stone. Charlie could smell him too, and it was a sick-sweet, organic smell that reminded him of the b
reweries down in Anchorage. Though he didn’t want to touch Joe again, he placed a hand on one of the man’s shoulders and directed him back toward their cabin. Inside the room, Joe winced and recoiled from the lamplight. Joe growled for him to turn it off. Charlie flipped the switch and assisted Joe as he climbed back onto his cot.
“Fucking fuh-freezing,” Joe stuttered.
“I know.” Charlie grabbed the blanket off his own coat and draped it over Joe’s quaking body. Even as he left the room, he could hear Joe’s teeth chattering in his skull—could hear them as he walked all the way down the corridor.
In the galley, Bryan was looking down forlornly at the petrol stove. Billy McEwan was at the table, getting drunk. Charlie paused in the doorway and McEwan’s eyelids fluttered. He waved a hand at Charlie. “C’mon, Mears. Drink with me.”
“Damn thing,” Bryan muttered, seemingly oblivious to Charlie’s arrival.
“Is Mike still topside?” Charlie asked. When no one responded, he reached out and touched Bryan’s elbow. As if shocked, Bryan jerked his arm away and practically threw himself back against the bulkhead. He stared at Charlie with wide eyes.
“Mike,” expounded McEwan, drawing Charlie’s attention to him, “is a damn fool. He got lucky yesterday with the catch, Mears, but there ain’t no luck left out here. Not for us.” Again that sloppy wave of the hand. “So come on over and let’s you and me kill this bottle, eh?”
Charlie stepped down into the galley and, with two hands, ripped one of the cupboard doors off its hinges. Bryan’s jaw dropped, still pressed against the wall as far away from Charlie as the cramped little room would permit. McEwan, even in his stupor, watched with speechless detachment.
Tucking the cupboard door under one arm, Charlie plucked the flashlight off the countertop. “I’m going down to the engine room for some tools. You two keep an eye on Mike’s cabin, make sure that girl doesn’t come out.”
“What’re you doing?” boomed McEwan, but Charlie was already gone.
9
Despite the pump of the generators and the grind of the diesel engine, it was freezing in the bowels of the trawler. Wagging his flashlight around the network of pipes, it didn’t take Charlie long to locate a suitcase-sized metal toolbox, already open on the floor. Charlie crouched over it and fished around for a handful of carpenter nails and a recoilless hammer.