Flotilla

by Daniel Haight

  My duffel was on the bed and I pushed it to the floor. As it landed, a plastic bag full of meds feel out and I picked them up. Mom had packed all of the stuff the doctor gave me into a freezer bag, along with typed dosage instructions. I couldn’t handle thinking about that right now. I sank back onto the bed, wrapped myself in blankets and fell asleep almost instantly.

  It felt like I had barely shut my eyes when Dad was shaking me awake again. It was still dark outside, what were we doing up? “Wakey-wakey…Eggs and bakey.” Didn’t I hear that line in a movie? I groaned and rolled over.

  Dad poked me hard in the ribs. “Get ‘em up. On your feet.”

  I groaned again, from the fatigue as well as the poke in my ribs. “Is it morning already?” I asked groggily to his departing profile.

  “Yes.” He was gone before I could say anything else.

  When I stumbled upstairs to the galley, Dad was leaning against the fridge while drinking coffee from an old enamel mug. Smoke from his cigarette curled upward and clung to the ceiling. Dad had changed into a wetsuit that stank of fish and cigarettes.

  As for me, I was shivering, half-asleep and barely aware of anything. When you’re fourteen, days don’t start this early. The boat was dark, cold and about as welcome as a pitcher of ice water dumped on your junk. I had finally changed out of my rehab clothes but I couldn’t find my jacket. Dad’s only nod to the cold weather was a cheap fleece jacket and an ancient Yankees cap so I thought (incorrectly) that it would be warm outside.

  “Are we going to have breakfast?” I asked.

  Dad shrugged and pointed toward a blue windbreaker hanging on a peg next to the bathroom door. “Food second, chores first. Put that on.”

  No breakfast? This was ridiculous! After that, Dad communicated in hand gestures and grunts. I took the cup of coffee he offered but it was too hot for me to drink. I blew on the hot coffee to cool it for several minutes but I still singed my tongue when I tried a sip. He finished his butt and dropped it in an overflowing tin bucket on the counter next to the sink.

  Over another cup of coffee, Dad started to explain the rules of Pen Patrol, one of the principal duties of mariculture. Mariculture, Dad explained, was about raising fish for sale while living on the ocean. They raised the fish by maintaining them in pens and his personal catch of fish lived in the nets he had connected to the Horner C. He had explained most of this in his emails over the last two years but somehow I couldn’t make the connection until I was standing here in the galley. Raising fish for sale. Raising them while living on the ocean. Living on the ocean to take care of the fish. I had to say it a few times in my head until it started to make sense.

  “It’s like this,” Dad said arranging his gear. “Mariculture is what they call raising fish on the open ocean, instead of raising them on a fish farm. Commercial fishing’s been in a nosedive over the past 50 years. Over fishing, pollution … catches get smaller and smaller. People can’t agree on solutions and meanwhile the problem just keeps getting worse. No end in sight.

  “Then different companies like our company, Pacific Fisheries, start to experiment with mariculture and sea-ranching. They’ve been doing it over in Japan for decades but nobody really gave it a shot over here until now. The fish grow in their natural habitat free from predators. They get big enough, they get transported back to shore for processing. Simple, right?”

  Dad continued with the brief history of “Pac Fish”, the different colonies on the California coastline and then he moved onto some Pen Patrol rules while he finished suiting up. Finally, we stepped out onto the deck. The Horner is connected with the rest of the Colony at the E-Ring docks. Like every other boat on the E-Ring, it’s moored so that the back of the boat faces the dock and the front faces outward. We have to exit to the rear and then walk between the Horner and the neighboring ship, the Key West Forever, to the 'fishing porch.' This would be our work area. The fishing porch was a leftover piece of vinyl deck was clumsily strapped to the cleats of the Horner and our pen system was strapped to that with zip-ties and heavy wire. A real piece of White Trash art, I thought. Since we were out on the ocean, the deck was never stable and I had to constantly balance myself to avoid going off into the water. The deck creaked quietly under our feet and Dad motioned at me to keep the noise down as some people were still asleep.

  Or maybe not … I could look across the docks and see the lights on in the galleys of many other boats. “I guess you aren’t the only early bird here,” I said.

  “Hmm?” Dad was fooling with some of his hoses.

  “Nothing.”

  “Right.” He knelt to strap on his fins. He started to explain other aspects of Pen Patrol – watching the regulator for alarms and holding the signal cord. “One tug means are you okay?” Dad grunted while tugging on a fin. “One tug back means ‘everything’s cool’ or ‘okay.’ Two tugs going down means ‘come up’ or ‘help me’ and three tugs means ‘emergency’.” He paused and poked a hole in my shoulder. “If you feel three tugs, that means drop everything, got it?”

  I nodded since my teeth were chattering. I was wearing the windbreaker but no shoes. The dank morning air had started in on me when I came out and now Dad saw me shivering. “Try some shoes, if you want,” he suggested. I looked out at everyone else out there working and shook my head. They didn’t seem affected and I didn’t want to look like a wimp. Dad shrugged and got his stuff together ready while I slowly froze. He finished his prep, handed me his signal cord and took a giant step off of the dock and into the water.

  He hadn’t warned me. I was standing too close and his landing soaked my pants. Thanks, Dad.

  The fishing porch had an old potter’s bench that Dad had bolted to the deck as a work table. I leaned against it while holding his signal cord and watching it lazily pay out into the water. As the minutes passed Dad’s diver light grew dim and as he moved deeper into the pens. The breeze was blowing in from the water and my goose bumps were starting to develop goose bumps. I was wishing for a refill of that coffee but Dad said not to leave the line. Could I leave him for a minute? I felt a sharp tug on the signal line – just one. It made me smile … Dad was making sure that I was there and hadn’t gone to sleep. I gave a good yank back on the line. Yeah, I’m still here.

  The sky grew grey, then red – I found a plastic lawn chair to sit in and moved next to each of the pens he was working on. I kept nodding off – his sharp tugs would wake me long enough to pull back and then I’d nod off again. I started to get a headache and there were those meds I needed to take. Dad would occasionally surface and I’d hand a tool or a roll of nylon line that he pointed to. He took no breaks and so neither did I. Tending the signal line was so boring that you couldn’t help getting drowsy and yet you couldn’t leave. The second I even thought of leaving I’d get a sharp little tug or Dad would pop up. It felt like a torture designed by Buddhist monks: sit here, be uncomfortable and hold this piece of string … under no circumstances can you move.

  It felt like Dad was deliberately trying to drive me crazy. Maybe he wanted to start things off by getting back at me for being in rehab. The thought made me mad and that knot of anger helped me to stay awake.

  Two geological ages later Dad climbed out of the water, stiff and cold from his morning workout. He spat spitting his regulator into his hand. “Thanks for doing that,” he said, his sinuses were clogged with salt water. “Lemme dry off and we’ll get some breakfast.” He led me inside and stripped off his gear right there in the salon without a word of warning. I was a few seconds behind him closing the door and was shocked to see him suddenly buck naked and using a wet towel to quickly rinse all of the salt water off.

  He saw me standing there. “You mind?” he growled. I quickly moved past him and into the galley. He finished with the wet towel and then dried off with some dry old rag that looked like it belonged in a dumpster. Then he put on some dry clothes and started putting together something to eat. My first meal aboard the Horner was a breakfast of frozen w
affles and reconstituted eggs. I sat with him, drinking a cup of coffee that tasted much better to me than I thought it would. Coffee, if you’re having it for the first time, is disgusting. However, I was at a point of fatigue and cold where I wasn’t focused on the taste, just the heat. I never understood before why people were such freaks for it.

  “Dad, I have some pills I have to take,” I finally said as he was putting the finishing touches on our meal. I neglected to mention it last night or this morning but Mom said part of my responsibility was to take them every single day. Dad barely looked up from the frying pan he was stirring.

  “So take ‘em,” he said. “Want me to count them out for you?”

  “No.”

  “Where are they?”

  I pulled my luggage up from the stateroom and together, we went through the bag Mom had packed for me – it was really the first time I’d looked inside. My heart sank as I realized my laptop and my music were not in there. Just some clothes, a toothbrush, underwear and socks. This wasn’t like her at all, I thought. A clue about how mad she was, perhaps? I tossed the freezer bag full of pill containers to Dad. Inside was a hand-written note from Mom and he scanned it briefly.

  “You were supposed to take some last night,” he commented. “No biggie. We’ll start you off now and it’ll be your job to take them after this.” He showed me how to read the prescription and count out the pills. It was something of a learning experience to me; I just assumed after the stay in the treatment facility that all meds were dosed in those stupid paper cups.

  Dad returned to his cooking and we ate shortly afterward. I realized while eating that it was a frozen-dinner version of the one Mom had sent me off with. Weird. I wanted to go back to sleep after breakfast … I needed to sleep worse than I ever had before in my life. I told Dad that but he shook his head.

  “This is a working ship, son,” he said. “We sleep after the job is done.” I must have looked awful but he couldn’t let me sleep. On top of that, he was working me like a day laborer out of the Home Depot parking lot. What was this all about?

  After we cleared the dishes, we started cleaning the lower-half of the Horner. Dad gave me a lecture on the proper maintenance of a boat’s interior and how to clean it ‘stem to stern’. I think it was crap because it was obvious that the place hadn’t seen the wet side of a dishrag before I showed up but again, I wasn’t in a position to argue. “I’ll do the galley,” Dad said, “if you’ll take the head.” I agreed, feeling like Dad was being generous – he knew how much I hated doing dishes. I got cracking on the bathroom, which would also be my first chance to use it.

  When I opened the door, the stink just about blew me away. I sagged back against the door. Imagine your old uncle just unloading on the toilet and then leaving it unflushed for several days in the middle of summer. Fetid, stinking – it smelled like … like death. I felt my breakfast come up and thought I was going to puke right there.

  “Get that door shut!” Dad hollered from the galley distracting me from my nausea. “That thing will stink up the whole ship!” I slammed the door shut and leaned against it like I was afraid the stench might try to break through and kill us.

  “What happened in there?” I whined. “Did someone die?”

  “Shaddup,” Dad replied, moving quickly to open the salon door and let some fresh air in. “You said you’d clean the head, now get going.” He set the salon door it on some kind of built-in latch so it would neither slam open or closed in the constant breeze. Meanwhile, I was slow to move … I’m serious: this stink was bad. Dad turned around and saw that I was reluctant to carry out my orders. I had been aboard less than 24 hours and already we were doing the Battle of the Wills. Dad knew how to win, though.

  He took a single step toward me what appeared to be violence in his eyes. Choosing death by stink over death by Dad, I flung the door to the head open and locked myself in – I didn’t even get to take a deep breath. I was locked in with the worst smell I had ever smelled in my entire life. I started gagging immediately. Inside the head the smell wasn’t any worse but now there was no fresh air to find. A small window had been opened and I put my nose up to it, breathing big lung-filling gasps of fresh air. I spent about five minutes at that window like a dog trying to sniff under a door. Then I hiked the neck of my t-shirt up over my nose … it was better than nothing.

  I heard a fist thump against the door. “I don’t hear movement!” he called. “You won’t die. Get moving!” He punctuated this with another fist thump and I heard him move outside.

  Realizing that there was no way I’d get out of this without cleaning this horrible room, I looked around to see if I could locate the source of the stink. Maybe someone had taken a dump but missed? I gingerly checked the small space to see if I was right. The thought alone was nauseating but the head was so small that it took me no more than two seconds to dismiss the possibility. No major evidence of a poop crime scene … what had happened? I gave up and moved on to the rest of my chore.

  While taking time-outs to breathe in the fresh air and cleaning the bathroom down, I was able to at least make use of an important lesson Mom had taught me: the proper way to clean a bathroom. I didn’t want to have to do any of this over again if Dad didn’t like the first pass.

  Dad knocked on the door about fifteen minutes after I had closed it, I was nearly done. “You still alive in there?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. I finished wiping down the shower and mirrors with ammonia (which helped cut the smell) and then stepped outside. Dad was quick to shut the door behind me. “Phew!” I exclaimed melodramatically like I a coal miner suffocating from dangerous gases. “Is this what I get for drinking at parties?” I was trying to be funny, but it was the wrong thing to say.

  It turned out to be poor timing on my part. Dad had turned from the door he was about to open and gave me a smart crack on the crown of my head with his knuckles before I was even aware it was happening.

  “No,” he said. “That is what you get when you drink at parties.” He pinned me to the wall with his stare. My stomach clenched involuntarily … I’ve never seen this side of Dad before. The tension in the room went from about a 3 to a 10 in the space of a second. “Don’t ever joke about that to me. Not even a little bit.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My brain just disengaged and hung there in Neutral while my face got hot and itchy. No … it definitely was not going to be fun and games out here. Dad didn’t wait for me to respond. He pulled open the door to the head, gave a cursory glance and slammed the door shut. “Very good,” he pronounced. “Now do that to the rest of this boat. I’m going to give you” – he glanced at his watch – “four hours. This boat had better be clean by then.” He disappeared through the salon door without another word.

  I was still in shock from the smack he gave me. After a few moments, I sat down on the couch to consider my situation. It’s like I was suddenly put into boot camp or prison. Just arrived, no sleep, bad food and I’m getting worked me like a slave. Was this guy really my Dad? Where was the guy who chatted with me over email and helped me with my homework?

  After about twenty minutes, I looked up at the clock and realized that I was losing time. I got up and started cleaning. It felt good to be focused on something besides my own fear and uncertainty. I spent a lot of time thinking about everything I knew about him. For those ten seconds it was like he was going to kill me. Was I really in trouble or was he just trying to fake me out? Reconnecting with him had given me an impression of him that he was going out of his way to destroy … Why would he do that? The email conversations we had left no indication that things would be like this when I visited.

  I felt like I had gone crazy or that my Dad had been replaced by aliens. Was this some kind of a prank? Everything I knew about him, every conversation we had over the past two years and everything he told me about living out here. Nothing … nothing was like what I expected.

  Mom had built up a picture in my mind about him: sma
rt, funny and a screw-up. “Like you, kiddo,” she’d laugh. She showed me the pictures she had of him – the one where he was smiling through a scuba mask on a beach somewhere in Mexico was my favorite.

  She’d talk about his jail time, the failed businesses and the times she’d caught him cheating more often than anything else about him. He disappeared from our lives three months before Madison was born. For ten years, it was just the three of us and my grandparents and then Marty came along. During that time, Mom didn’t find anyone permanent in her life and the thought of Dad just made her angry more than anything else. She barely said anything about him but if she did it wasn’t nice. It usually something like, “I’m not saying I don’t love him. I’m saying he’s a hard man to love.” I think she thought I was supposed to be satisfied with that. It still doesn’t make sense to me.

  Dad’s personality came up a lot after I got into trouble. Mom, Marty, my probation officer and my counselor … everyone was very certain that I was ‘acting out’ because he left. My whole point was ‘why did I wait twelve years to act out?’ but nobody was really listening.

  During one of the family sessions, Mom and I had a really bad argument. She came very close to saying that she was sorry she met my Dad. It was one of those moments where you’re yelling at each other and then other person is about to say something. They almost say it and you know it’s going to be really mean, but then they just clam up. They stop short and in the moment they’re staring into your eyes, you know exactly what they’re about to say. Not saying it doesn’t change anything. There was that whole thing about not meeting Dad and therefore not having me – I think that’s where she was going with it.

  We stood there, eyeball to eyeball, knowing that she was about to say something really ugly. The counselor ended that session early but a cloud of funk hung over every other time he and I talked. Mom and I didn’t talk again until she handed me that email printout telling me that I was coming here.