by Chris Riley
“Dave!” the captain shouted, laughing, his eyes sparkling with relief. “Thank God you’re here, man!” He reached out and squeezed Dave’s shoulder.
“I think we lost a few pots when that wave hit us,” Dave replied stoically. “We’re gonna need to get out there and take a look. But she’s running strong down below—just had a generator flood on us, that’s all.” He looked over at Danny and me standing near the starboard exit, then at the window we had just covered. “Grab some floorboards from the engine room and cover those other windows,” he said. “Then gear up—might need you outside.”
I could have stepped right through the starboard door and jumped over the rail. This man was fucking nuts! “Gear up,” he’d said. Why don’t we launch a few pots while we’re out there? I thought.
Dave was correct, though. The deck of our boat was a disaster waiting to happen. Loose pots dangling over the side could be enough to bring the Angie Piper right over with even the smallest of rogue waves.
My face must have given me away. “That’s right, Ed—gear up,” Dave said. “But you can leave Danny here. I don’t want anything stupid happening out there.”
Even now, I thought. My legs shook violently. I stood near the starboard door, tightly grasping the captain’s chair. I tasted bile in my mouth, and my ears rang from the mounting pressure of blood pulsing in my head. I wanted nothing, nothing else at all, other than to punch Dave right in his smug face.
Looking back on everything—our fateful voyage, my life growing up with Danny—I know that at that moment, right there in the wheelhouse, I had reached a crossroads. That moment was my “left turn,” as I finally began the process of cutting loose from a life of cowardice.
Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. I simply kept my mouth shut, hunched my shoulders, and ignored Dave. And I headed back down those fucking stairs. “Come on, Danny,” I said, releasing a heavy sigh. “Looks like we’re going to the engine room.”
We ran across Loni at the engine-room hatch. He was in the ready-room fighting with his raingear, trying to suit up—not easy considering the brutal pitch of the boat.
“Might have some loose pots out there, boys,” he said. Then Loni stumbled with his pants, falling face down onto the floor. Danny and I reached out to help him up, and he laughed, and cursed, and said, “Sure hope I don’t fall down out there.”
“Don’t worry, Loni,” I replied. “I’ll be out to help, as soon as I cover the porthole on the bridge.”
“Where you going, then?” he asked, cinching up his pants.
“Getting floorboards from the engine room. Then I’ll suit up and head out. Be sure to save some work for me.” I chuckled, albeit vaguely, the breath in my chest gone weak as vapor.
“Oh, you bet for sure, Eddy-boy!” Loni replied. “I gonna save you and Danny all the hard work.”
We were struggling men, and we knew it. Loni knew it. I knew it. Probably even Danny knew it. Inside the Angie Piper, the sound of the waves crashing against us brought a deafening roar. This storm was the worst any of us had ever seen, and there were too many questions looming. Even though our boat appeared to be running solid, the fear that hung over our heads cast the blackest of shadows. And our voices did little to conceal this fear.
“Danny ain’t coming out, though,” I said, lifting the hatch door leading down into the engine room.
“Why not?” asked Loni. “We gonna need his strength.”
“Dave doesn’t want him to,” I replied. “Says he might do something stupid.”
“Bullshit!” cried Loni. “You put your gear on when you’re done, Danny-boy. Understand? Don’t go listening to that asshole anymore. He ain’t our captain.”
Danny climbed down into the engine room after me, but then turned and shouted back up to Loni, “Aye aye, sir!”
As with the rest of the boat, there was stuff everywhere. Tools, buckets, and rags littered the floor of the engine room. The noise was so loud down there, between the engines and the storm outside, that I wanted to cover my ears. But I needed my hands free for balance. Danny and I made our way to the back, where we could find and retrieve some floorboards.
Halfway there I paused. My mouth began to water, and then I turned and puked again, my stomach reeling and lurching.
“You okay?” Danny asked, reaching for my arm.
“I’m fine, Danny,” I replied. I threw up one last time, spit, wiped my face with my sleeve, and then stood. “But he’s right, buddy. Loni’s right. We ain’t listening to that asshole anymore.”
Chapter 22
“I thought I said to keep him here!” Dave rushed down the hall, his features contorted in various knots, from his eyes to his mouth. Even his ears seemed to change appearance. He looked so large and menacing that I thought of a stampeding bull.
Danny and I had just finished battening down the remaining windows in the wheelhouse, leaving Dave with the captain to discuss the damage on the bridge. Then we headed back downstairs. Now, accompanied by Loni, the three of us stood in the ready-room. We had our raingear on and were preparing to open the door to the deck when Dave came screaming at us.
“There’s been a change of plans!” I replied. I could hardly believe my own words.
“That’s right Dave-man,” Loni added. “We gonna do this as a team!”
“Hooyah!” Danny said, summing up our mood.
Apparently Dave didn’t feel like arguing, as he just slipped angrily between us without saying a word. Yet for me, it was the smallest of victories in a lifetime of battles against fear. Which brought refreshing relief from all the bitterness hanging in the air.
I grinned, and then I almost fainted when Dave opened the door. All my thoughts of victory vanished when I saw what loomed over the brightly lit deck of the Angie Piper.
Yes, Alaska is a bitch … and here she was. She screamed her williwaw across the deck like a banshee cursing in the night. The noise was so loud I covered my ears, and then I pressed my body into a corner of the ready-room. The wind nearly flung the door off its hinges. The wind, in fact, was so strong, so powerful, and so vicious that I swear it was a visible entity. You could see it streaking past the rails and the crab pots, which themselves were a dangling nightmare of chaos. Dave had just opened the door to insanity—a laughing, hysterical, hair-pulling insanity.
“Remember … nothing stupid!” Dave shouted against the wind. Then he lurched out onto the deck, the three of us trailing behind.
A tempest of wind and rain cuffed our bodies, ripping through our raingear. Everyone reached out, grabbing elbows, arms, and sleeves. I splayed my legs wide, trying to stay upright as the boat pitched and rocked and damn near threw me right over the rail. How the hell we were going to accomplish anything in this deadly squall was beyond me.
Pots were hanging from both sides of the ship. A few had already been lost to the sea. But the ones that were still there, hanging haphazardly, banging against the bulwark, were a threat to our survival. Somehow, we had to cut them loose. And depending on the situation, we had to consider cutting loose all our pots—a decision that would cost us almost two hundred thousand dollars. But, this storm being what it was, we were dangerously top-heavy. It had been a miracle that that first rogue wave hadn’t ruined us, considering all the gear we had on deck. Perhaps the loss of a few pots had actually helped right the Angie Piper. Maybe it was all the crab in our holding tanks. Or the sea had done it on her own.
Looking at the mountain of steel not twenty feet away, I thought about how to deal with the situation. Those pots that hung from the main-stack and over the side were wrapped in coils of twisted chain.
“We’re gonna need some bolt-cutters!” I shouted.
“Go get them,” Dave replied. “Loni, you fire up the hydros. Let’s see if the picking crane works.”
Turning back into the ready-room, I shivered intensely, understanding exactly what we had to do now—what we were going to do.
We kept the bolt cutters in a cabinet
just inside the ready-room. I grabbed them, steadied myself after the boat pitched hard to port from a massive wave, and then stepped back outside onto a deck suddenly submerged in seawater. A bolt of icy shock rushed up my legs, sucking the breath out of me. I held tight onto the door jam and then watched in helpless horror as several tons of water drained itself right into the belly of the Angie Piper.
“Shut that fucking door, goddammit!” Dave screamed.
But I couldn’t. The force of the water was too strong. I heard bilge alarms go off, as I fought frantically to close the door with one hand while holding the bolt cutters with the other. Briefly, I pictured the captain’s face up in the wheelhouse, his focus sharpening at the sound of those alarms. And I pictured Salazar’s face, deathly white as he lay in the bunk nursing his broken ankle. Undoubtedly, they would think the worst: a crack in the hull.
“Shut it, Ed!” Dave repeated. “Shut that damn door already!”
Anger swelled deep inside me, heavy as an anchor. I turned and gave Dave a nasty look, and then threw the bolt cutters at him. “I’m fucking trying!”
Dave caught the bolt cutters in one hand and glared at me.
Out of nowhere, Danny was at my side. With the two of us pulling and yanking, we forced the door shut. It battened with a cold, muffled thump, like the final closing of a casket, and I felt a sickening shiver course through my body.
From behind me came the squeal and moan of the hydros. Loni had fired up the system and was testing the picking crane. “We’ve got power on this baby!”
“Great!” replied Dave. “Keep her running—just hold on!” Dave positioned himself next to Loni and stared at the main-stack of pots, apparently studying the situation further. “We’re gonna need to cut those ones first,” he shouted, pointing to the starboard side. Two pots were lying on end at the corner of the stack, with a third dangling low over the side.
“Maybe we should rig one of us onto the picker?” I suggested, screaming at the top of my lungs to override the horrendous wind. “We could hoist ourselves up over there.” I didn’t even want to think about climbing around on the main-stack at this point. The job is dangerous enough on its own, never mind in this weather we were up against. That would have been sure suicide.
“Brilliant idea, Einstein!” Dave replied sarcastically. All the same, he tossed the bolt cutters back to me and then gathered some stray line bundled under the rail. With a pocketknife, he cut the rope, then proceeded to make an improvised climbing harness. Stupidly, I realized that my idea was his all along.
Before Dave could finish, there was a sudden shift in the boat. The Angie Piper rode high into the seas, climbing the height of another great wave. “Hold on!” Loni shouted. Each of us scrambled for a handhold, anticipating the dreadful descent we all knew was near.
Securing the bolt cutters between my legs, I grabbed a handle near the door with both hands, and waited. But before the Angie Piper dropped down into the trough, she dragged heavy along the crest of the wave, and then the entire deck flooded once again.
A waist-deep torrent of frigid seawater whooshed across the deck, knocking my feet out from under me. I clenched the handle with one hand while reaching down to grab the slipping bolt cutters with the other. My entire body was now submerged in the ocean. Icy cords of water rushed through my raingear, my boots, my mouth. I shook violently from the cold.
The Angie Piper began her descent into the trough, and I struggled to gain my footing once more and catch my breath. This was a big wave with a long fall and a heavy punch at the end. When we reached bottom, my footing was swiftly torn away again. With all that water, I slipped onto my back and across the deck, heading straight toward the rail. And for a split second, or maybe longer, much longer, my world fell into a pool of darkness.
The bolt cutters washed clean away. I felt a powerful tug on the back of my raincoat. Two feet from going over the rail, Danny saved me. He had his iron grip on me now, while his other hand clung to a piece of steel rigging. He dragged my trembling body midship, then reached under my armpits and hoisted me up onto my feet, all in one quick motion.
Like a dog, I shook water from my head, then reached out and grabbed hold of the picking crane for balance. My raincoat had been torn at the neck and was all but useless, since every inch of my body was now drenched. Yet I was still on the boat. I was alive, and I owed it all to Danny.
“You almost went over, Ed!” Danny shouted. His hands gripped the picking crane next to mine. “Gotta be more careful, remember? And don’t you smile; it’s known to happen.” Danny’s eyes twinkled as he repeated the advice I’d given him that first day on the Angie Piper.
“Thanks, Danny,” I replied. “I guess I owe you one.”
“Don’t worry, Ed. You don’t owe me anything.”
A vicious wind howled past the boat, whistling, screaming, moaning through crab pots and rigging. I looked around and spotted Loni pressed up against the superstructure. I saw Dave hunched down near the railing I’d almost gone over. The remaining tons of that hulking wave flushed down through the scuppers and back into the godforsaken sea.
“Nothing stupid!” Dave bellowed, as he stood, lifting the bolt cutters at the level of his head. The tool I’d lost had gotten pinned between the pot launcher and the rail.
Dave stepped forward and handed the bolt cutters my way, but then he pulled them back and scowled. “Shit. Maybe I should give them to the retard instead.”
“Fuck you, Dave!” I shouted, snapping at last, for once in my life. “Fuck you! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck you!” I got up in Dave’s face. “I’m sick and tired of your shit, you asshole!”
In a screaming rush, Loni was between us. “Whoa, brothers!” he shouted, pushing me to the side. “We gotta keep things cool, man. Or we all gonna die out here.”
“Get in my face again, Ed,” Dave replied smoothly, “and I’ll cut your fucking balls off.” He raised the bolt cutters in a threatening manner, opening and closing them.
Something strange happened after that, alarming, yet ultimately exhilarating. It was a moment I had never witnessed but always wondered about. Ever since childhood.
“Hurt my friend, and I’m going to hit you!” Danny’s voice seemed louder than the williwaw winds. Both Loni and I glanced at each other, our thoughts likely the same: did we just hear what we think we heard?
It seemed as if Mother Nature had heard it also, taking a pause from her tantrum, giving Danny the platform for one brief moment. A calm silence broke over the rail, bringing a refreshing lull from the maddening chaos of the night. During that crucial moment, Danny’s words echoed in my head.
Dave was angry—but also hesitant. Glaring at Danny, he said, “Maybe you should just try that, Danny-boy.”
Things went sort of white after that. I felt a rage boil through my veins, instantly warming my frigid body. I felt it pound from behind my ears, banging for a way out. I felt it in my hands, as I clenched them into white-hot fists. It seemed I’d had enough.
“Fuck you, Dave,” I said, evenly, danger lingering in my tone. I wasn’t sure what the man would do then, but I was ready for him, and I think he knew it. Maybe there was also something in my eyes, or perhaps the way I stood on deck.
Dave backed off. “All right,” he said, “maybe I had that coming.” He grumbled something else as he turned away, and then, awkwardly, the four of us went back into work mode.
“Let’s all get back in, check on the captain,” Loni said, much to my relief.
Dave nodded, his attention on the bundle of line in his hands. “I’ll finish this harness. Then we’ll cut those fucking pots loose.” He turned and strode toward the door. I was amazed. So is this how it is when you stand up to someone? I wondered. I wasn’t so sure. It all seemed too easy, sort of anti-climactic. The incident left me energized, but oddly, also depressed.
“Well, how about that,” Loni said, as soon as Dave had left. Loni was smiling, and then he added, “Looks like Ed’s got him some iron balls!”
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br /> Our short break from the storm was over. Mother Nature caterwauled across the rail once again, bringing a torrent of rain, pelting my face with a barrage of needles. I felt Danny at my side. He placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Thanks, Ed.” But I didn’t reply. I tried a smile, but I didn’t feel like saying anything. Not to him or to Loni. And certainly not to Dave.
Another poop-sweeper crashed over the rail and onto my back, sobering me with an icy push forward. I used this sudden momentum and stumbled toward the door. It seemed as if an eerie coldness had gripped me somewhere deep inside, sharp and malevolent, like a clutch from the hand of Death. I bit my lip and reached for the door handle, knowing that the only thing I felt like doing at that moment was getting the hell inside.
Chapter 23
It took thirty minutes for Dave to make a harness, and in that time I thought I was going to die. At one point, my shivering got so bad, I couldn’t stand anymore. I sat in a corner inside the galley and braced my feet against a cabinet for stability.
Danny sat at my side, shivering as well, and he kept glancing at me, a concerned look on his face. “Should we change our clothes, Ed?” he asked.
“We should,” I said, my teeth chattering violently, “but it’d be pointless, Danny. We’re gonna be out there again pretty soon.”
“Maybe we should do some jumping jacks then. That’s what the Navy SEALs do when they get cold, Ed. They do jumping jacks on the beach and stay warm, because jumping jacks do that for you. Jumping jacks make you warm.”
I laughed, picturing the captain’s bemused expression if he came in and saw Danny and me doing jumping jacks in the galley.