Farthest South & Other Stories

by Ethan Rutherford

  I must’ve looked sick, because when he saw me my dad asked what was wrong. I said I just needed to lie down, and that’s what I did. From the cabin, I could hear my dad joking with the processing guys. The engine alarm sounded, and then the engine turned and shook the boat to life, and we were heading back out into the bay.

  That night we anchored, which was rare. While I stayed in the cabin, my dad and the rest of the crew celebrated how well the summer was going; they dug into the cooler, found some seventies rock on the radio, and drank late into the night. I listened to them talk and laugh, and that ambient sound—the warmth of listening in on a gathering of men talking to one another—took me away from the memory of the fish. I fell asleep without even knowing I was tired.

  Later in the night, much later, I think, because everything was so quiet, I woke to a scratching sound from the box under my bed. It took me a while to figure out where I was. My dad was asleep across from me, snoring. I was in my sleeping bag. The boat was rocking on her anchor line. I heard the scratching sound again, and then I was fully awake.

  I didn’t want to wake my father, so I shook the box once to quiet the figurines. Then I untied the twine and opened the lid. They were intact. They didn’t move, but they watched me closely as if they were afraid of what I might do. I shut the box, double knotted the twine, and stowed it back under my bunk with an extra blanket to muffle the sound. Then I realized I still felt a little sick from the fish, my stomach was weightless, and so after making sure no more sound came from the box, I tiptoed out of our cabin, walked past the other sleeping guys, and went topsides to get some air.

  The night was black. There was no moon. I could see some distant stars, and I watched as a few came unstuck and frizzled across the sky. The only sound I heard was the waves gently lapping at our hull as we bobbed on our anchor. It’s hard to overstate the beauty of a summer night in Alaska.

  But then I heard another sound, a soft grunting and splashing, and when I looked to the stern, I saw that some sort of creature was swimming toward the Josephine in the perfect dark. I tried to convince myself it was a large otter or a fish, but I knew in my heart it was the Seal Lady. Her stroke was elegant, and with each kick she set off a small constellation of phosphorescence in the water around her. I’d never been so scared in my life. I wanted to wake up my dad, but somehow I knew that would be a bad idea. She made it to the Josephine, and then I saw two huge and dripping paws flop over the side and she hoisted herself up and soon stood on deck.

  SOREN SUDDENLY STOPPED his story. “May I have a sip of your water?” he asked his son.

  “Sure,” his son said, and handed him the glass.

  “What happened?” the younger boy said. “Did she try to bite you?”

  Soren sighed, and set the now-empty glass of water on the bedside table. “No,” he said. “Worse.”

  “Worse?” the older one said.

  “She pointed below deck, to where my father was sleeping,” Soren said softly, “and told me that the next time she came back, it would be for him.”

  “And then what happened?” the older one said.

  “She just jumped overboard,” Soren said. “And sank into the dark water.”

  “What did you do?” the younger one asked.

  “Well,” said Soren, “I certainly ate every golden fish I saw. I choked them all down. I’ve never eaten such wretched food in my life. I couldn’t tell anyone. I felt so trapped. It was awful.” Soren sighed. “I kept all the figurines in the box under my bed,” he said. “By the end of the summer I had six of them.”

  “Did they all move like the first one?”

  “No,” Soren said. “That sort of stopped happening.”

  “Oh,” the younger one said. Soren could tell he was disappointed. He didn’t know if he wanted to tell this next part or not. “There’s one more thing,” Soren said. “I forgot to tell you the scary part.”

  NEAR THE END OF OUR TRIP, we anchored again, and I saw the Seal Lady one more time. Everyone was exceedingly happy about how the catch had gone—this had been a record summer for the Josephine, and everyone aboard would be making quite a bit of money. This was not the case with the other fishing boats in the area—in fact, most had turned up almost nothing for their weeks of effort—and so we felt doubly lucky. On our final night on the water, the radio picked up a country station, and we took turns doing Johnny Cash impressions. Then there was a Willie Nelson back-to-back, and when “Whiskey River” came on, my dad let me take a few sips of his beer. Eventually everyone turned in. When I woke up, I knew the Seal Lady was aboard. I looked over at my dad, who was sleeping soundly. His face was so relaxed he appeared about twenty years younger, flush and unwrinkled and as though he had never smoked. For some reason, I reached out and put my hand on his cheek. I didn’t want to wake him up, I just wanted to touch him. I realized I’d never touched him, or anyone, like that before.

  The Seal Lady was sitting on the stern of the Josephine. She wore an elegant blue robe and was singing in a high, lilting voice. In each hand she held a golden fish, and in her dark eyes somehow I could see the carcasses of many others. Someone on this boat is very sad, she said. Yes, yes, maybe it’s you. Maybe we’re the same. She held up one of the golden fish, slowly lowered it into her mouth, and swallowed it whole. Then she let loose a satisfied belch. No, she said. Nobody wants you. That’s your secret. She stood and opened her arms; her robe hung open; she motioned for me to come to her. I was petrified. I couldn’t move. Smart, she said, and threw the other fish into the bay. Then, as I watched, she began to rock back and forth, and started to scratch at her long arms as if she had bugs crawling under her skin. At first, she appeared perplexed. Then it seemed as if a ferocious energy was gathering around her. She brought one arm to her mouth and began to gnaw angrily at the flesh at her wrist. I wanted to ask if she was all right, but I didn’t; I couldn’t make myself talk. Then, with a sharp cry, she unhinged her jaw and bit her hand completely off and swallowed it in one choking gulp.

  The entire ocean seemed to still. One day, she finally said, everything you love will be gone from you. And then, just like that, she disappeared.

  The next morning, we woke to find that one of the crew members was no longer aboard. We couldn’t find him anywhere. We did a quick inventory—he hadn’t taken anything—and anyway, where was he going to go? It seemed as though he’d evaporated into thin air. We radioed it into the coast guard, but there wasn’t much they could do. No one had seen him fall into the water. He hadn’t taken the skiff. We searched for two days. Then we went home.

  Later, we heard that when they found his body it was covered with bite marks. He’d washed up on the other side of the bay and been pulled in by a set netter. They said he’d been chewed up pretty badly by a propeller and had probably been hit by at least one or two boats, in addition to being nibbled on by fish.

  “AND TO THIS DAY,” Soren said, “I can’t figure out why she would’ve attacked him.”

  “Was he the sad one?” the younger boy asked.

  Soren thought for a second and put his fingers to his chin. “Perhaps,” he finally said. “But I can’t even remember his name.”

  He’d lost the thread to his own story, and the boys knew it. At this point in the night they were just asking questions to see how much longer they could stay up.

  “Anyway,” he said. “As soon as we pulled back into the marina, I hopped off the boat and took the figurines to that old strange house. No one was home, so I left them in their box on the front porch and ran away as fast as I could. And I never saw the Seal Lady again.”

  Soren stood up and cracked his knuckles. His left foot was asleep from the position it had been in for so long. “Good night,” he said, and tucked one boy in, and then the other.

  “Good night,” they said back.

  “I hope you’re not too frightened,” Soren said when he got to the door.

  “No,” said the older one.

  “Well,” said Soren. �
�You should be more helpful to your mother when you can be, just the same.”

  “What?” the younger boy said, but Soren had turned out the lights and was already walking down the hall.

  HANA HADN’T RETURNED from her swimming, which was strange. Soren checked the time. The story had taken him just over an hour. He’d have to get it down a little better if the Seal Lady was going to be a story he told over and over. He poured himself a drink and sat on the couch facing the window. Across the street in one of the neighboring apartment buildings he saw a man, roughly his age, working out on a treadmill. Why wouldn’t you run outside? thought Soren, but then he realized he didn’t care at all what this man did.

  He hadn’t told the whole story about what happened with the Seal Lady. To his deep shame, he had never delivered the figurines. He’d tried, but when he’d gone into the woods, he couldn’t find the Seal Lady’s house, and became very lost. He’d been too afraid to try again, and at the end of the summer, when it came time to return to Vancouver, he took the figurines with him. It was true that they no longer moved when he pulled them from the box, but he found that they had a special meaning for him, just the same. And that strange night on the boat wasn’t, in fact, the last time he saw the Seal Lady. When he turned fourteen, she began appearing in his dreams as a younger and more seductive version of herself. The dreams were highly sexual, and embarrassed him a great deal, but he could not control them. Eventually, around the time he went to college, they stopped.

  It was during his third year of college that the Josephine sank, and his father drowned. At that point in Soren’s life, he and his father hadn’t spoken in years because of something his father had said to his mother when he announced he was getting remarried. At the funeral, his father’s wife wore a long black dress, and would not speak to him. At her side was a young child everyone assumed was hers, but no one knew for sure. Gone for good, his sister had said after the service. She’d hated their father since the day he’d left.

  It all felt like a lifetime ago, thought Soren. But he was back there now. He’d kept the box of figurines for a while, but then, as he and Hana moved from apartment to apartment, the box had gone missing. They’d lost a lot of things in their moves, but never noticed until the missing things were long gone.

  EVENTUALLY, HANA CAME BACK from the pool. She found Soren sitting on the couch in the exact same position he’d been in for an hour. “Why are you crying?” she asked. She’d wrapped her long, wet hair in a towel and was now drying it vigorously.

  Soren was surprised. “I have no idea,” he said. “Really, I didn’t know I was.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”

  What he’d been thinking about was how horrible those fish had tasted. He’d received his last one the day before his wedding to Hana. The fish had been delivered to his work by the office courier, wrapped in a business envelope, no big deal apparently. He’d shut the door and killed and eaten it as quickly as he could. No one at work noticed, which was a small miracle. There was nothing in the fish’s stomach, though, and despite being shaken by the unexpected appearance of this fish, Soren was almost disappointed that this was the case. There were no more deliveries. The wedding had gone off without a hitch.

  What have I missed? he thought. But no answer came to him.

  “Did they like the story?” Hana asked.

  “I think it might have been confusing,” said Soren. They were in bed now, just looking at the ceiling. “One of these days,” he said, “that ceiling tile is going to come loose and fall on my face.”

  Hana laughed. “Then you shouldn’t sleep with your mouth so open,” she said.

  Soren and his wife intertwined as they normally did when the day was over and they were inviting sleep into the house—she turned her back to him and scooted in close, and he draped his arm over hers. She would leave her reading light on until the last possible minute; he would be asleep well before then. He felt her small warm body close to his and saw them, suddenly, as animals in some timeless old forest.

  “Hey, did you hear that?” he said.

  “Hear what?” said Hana. Her eyes were shut and she was halfway to wherever she was going.

  “Never mind,” said Soren. But the sound continued—it was a sort of white noise, at first like the drone of a distant engine, then like the shush of whispering, low, not unlike a refrigerator’s hum. His sons were tucked in down the hall, safe, safe … in the morning perhaps he would touch their sleeping faces, but for now he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what he was hearing. Finally, he recognized the sound as it crossed the bedroom; it was the radio from the Josephine, tuned to the weather station. Swell from the south, it said. There was laughter, and then the slap of fish on the deck. Then he smelled his father’s cigarettes and tasted the aluminum tang of beer from a cold can. There, the ocean and their close sleeping quarters, the old mildewed cushions. He felt the bed roll slightly. And then, finally, clear as a bell, saying Hold the net, don’t lose them, that’s it, that’s it, that’s it, he could hear his father’s voice.

  “One more thing,” Hana said, sleepily. “Before you got home, the boys were drawing together. One was telling the other what colors to use and what to draw, and then they’d switch.” She pulled Soren’s arm more tightly over hers. “The pool tonight was empty. There was no one else. It was perfect. And when I was underwater, with my eyes closed, I kept hearing one say to the other: ‘Green, now yellow, now blue.’” She coughed. “They were being patient. They were listening to each other. They were drawing us a new apartment. It was the sweetest thing,” she said, and then she turned off the light.

  THE BABY

  THE WEATHER OUTSIDE is feral and snow-clotted. And when the doctor says hold the baby, they do.

  They’re in the emergency room. The baby has thrown a fever, he seems to be changing, and that’s why they’ve brought him in, through the Oregon winter, at this time of night.

  Now everyone is worried.

  Did he have these before? These slits? the doctor says. He points to the side of the baby’s neck with the ballpoint pen that usually lives in his breast pocket.

  No, Clare says. Those are new.

  Hold him so he sits up, the doctor says. He is on one side of the hospital bed, and they, Sean and Clare, are on the other.

  The baby is between them, crinkling the hospital paper.

  THE BABY IS FIVE WEEKS OLD and has almost no hair at all. Earlier he’d been lethargic, ashen. They could barely recognize him. But now he seems fine. A male nurse has given him sugar water from a plastic capsule, and this has perked him up. He is alert and chirping now, moving his arms straight up and down as if practicing a swim-stroke or signaling a truck on the road.

  He seems okay, Sean says.

  This is just a precaution, the doctor says. Sometimes you get a baby who breathes out of those slits. That’s fine. That’s within normal. We’re worried about the things we can’t see.

  The room is curtained, and large, impassive machines, pushed against the wall, bulk into the patient area like sleeping watchmen powered down. He, Sean, assumes they are life-giving, used in emergency situations, but their screens are blank, so he doesn’t really know.

  Ready? the doctor says. He had warned them about the needle, but still it is a surprise to see it. It looks obscene.

  They nod and prop the baby up so his back is to the doctor, coo to distract him. They see the pain flash across his face and it registers as their pain before he cries out. But the squall passes quickly, and as soon as the doctor’s face relaxes, they take him into their arms and bounce him around.

  He is their first, and hadn’t come easily.

  Is that hard to do? Sean asks the doctor. He means threading a large needle into the back of his child and finding the fluid that will give them the information they require.

  Not really, the doctor says. But he is sweating.

  When he leaves, a young woman parts the curtains and stands at the foo
t of the bed. She’s holding a clipboard.

  Would you say the care you received today has been satisfactory, unsatisfactory, or exceptional? she asks.

  Exceptional, Sean says.

  Did this baby come from your vagina, the young woman asks, or from a kit?

  Who are you? Clare says. She’s holding the baby, gently stuffing his arms back into his pajamas.

  The woman checks her clipboard and makes a quick apology. Wrong room. She disappears.

  THE BABY FALLS ASLEEP on Clare. He’s changing, she says.

  How? Sean asks.

  He’s getting heavier, she says.

  His little slits are quietly clapping open and shut.

  They wait and wait for someone to tell them what will happen next. Eventually the male nurse from earlier comes in.

  Angels when they sleep, he says.

  Do you have kids? Sean asks.

  Oh, no, he says. Not me. He tells them to grab their stuff and follow him to the NICU.

  What stuff? Clare says.

  The male nurse seems confused. He looks around and sees no stuff. He checks his clipboard. Yup, his head seems to say.

  Well, he says, follow me anyway.

  The new room has a television, a small crib, and more sleeping machines. On the walls there are comforting paintings, fat ships in calm seas. In one corner is a large chair. With a flourish, the male nurse shows them how it folds out into a bed.