Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn

by Paul Watkins

  Pittsley laughed and repeated the word ‘eviscerated’.

  ‘Oh, Pittsley. Go someplace and grow your hair back on.’ Gil rattled the shotgun pellets in his hand and threw them, the way a person throws dice, all across the galley.

  At dinner time, Gil set a jar of jalapeno peppers down on the table. He said he’d picked them himself at his home in Virginia and he dared us to eat a whole one.

  I nipped a little piece, then followed it down with a mouthful of mashed potato. I didn’t want to spend the next watch with my tongue feeling as if it had been dragged down a cheese grater.

  ‘That’s no good!’ Gil slapped the table with the flat of his hand.

  I shrugged my shoulders. After swallowing the mouthful, I said they had a good taste to them.

  Gil leaned over and patted me on the head. ‘That’s what I wanted to hear!’

  Howard ate one, bit the pepper off right at the stem and chewed. Then he put his hand over his mouth and said ‘Fum uv uh bipf’, and left the table.

  Kelley ate a pepper and didn’t flinch.

  ‘Tough guy Kelley.’ Gil grinned and swallowed a pepper whole. Then he rubbed his stomach and made good-to-eat noises.

  Kelley ate another and gurgled a little in his throat but smiled when it was over.

  Then Kelley and Gil divided up the remaining peppers on their plates, leaving the jar half-filled with cloudy green juice.

  They stuck out their chins and leaned across the table towards each other, making fancy gestures with their fingers, like Italian chefs, as the peppers were crushed in their stubbly jaws.

  Tears dripped down Kelley’s cheeks.

  Gil puffed and aired out his mouth.

  When the peppers were gone, Franklin handed them each a glass of milk and said he hoped they could take the pain.

  Howard and I applauded and they bowed. Kelley’s thin hands clapping looked like two dead branches coming together.

  No sound. I woke and it was quiet. My ears pinged like a sonar.

  No light. It seemed as if everyone had left the boat. I waved my hand around in the dark beyond my bunk and slapped Franklin on the head.

  Franklin said the name of a girl and went back to sleep.

  It was pitch-black in the passageway, with no light in the galley either.

  Then I heard voices on deck. I stubbed my toe against the galley table trying to find the door.

  All the crew except Franklin stood on deck. They didn’t speak. As I watched, Gil and Nelson climbed down into the engine room. The bar of light from a flashlight waved out of the hole and then disappeared into the guts of the boat.

  ‘Engine’s out.’ Kelley looked spooked by the quiet. ‘Whole damn rig shut down. I never seen a Cat shut down this way. If you can’t trust a Cat, what the hell else can you trust in the world?’ He pointed to our dredge cables. They dangled straight down in the water.

  This meant we could have lost our dredges, since only the tension caused by the boat moving forward kept the hooks in the bull rings. Without dredges, there was nothing to do but go home.

  Kelley ordered me to follow him on to an outrigger.

  I was too tired to argue.

  I was annoyed at the thought of going home, since it meant being paid very little for the trip.

  ‘Pretty out here.’ Kelley hooked his legs around the rigger and hunted in his pockets for a cigarette.

  The moon made a mercury path on the water. It pooled at the horizon.

  ‘So what are we doing out here?’ I rubbed my eyes.

  ‘We figure out if the dredge is gone.’ He leaned down until he had a grip on the cable, pulled at it, grunted, pulled again. ‘Still there. Sure enough.’

  ‘You’re pulling on a couple of hundred pounds of steel cable even if the dredge is gone. You can’t know one way or the other just tugging at it like that.’

  Kelley twisted himself around on the rigger and looked at me. ‘Sometimes you look like a girl, Pfeif.’

  I couldn’t see his face, only the silhouette. The remains of his hair hung in dark threads around the block of his head.

  ‘I’ve been out here seven days with no shower. I haven’t brushed my hair. Haven’t shaved. And you think I look like a girl? What does a girl look like to you, Kelley?’ I spat.

  ‘I didn’t mean any harm.’

  Out by the path of the moon, I saw the black arc of a whale cut the surface. Black like India ink in the night. It had come up for air. Now it was pushing itself down again into deep water.

  I’d heard they sometimes came up alongside boats because the squeaking of winches sounded like whalesong.

  I thought that if my mother could see just once the way it looked out here, could have seen the whale breaching, then she wouldn’t grudge me going out to sea.

  I realised that for her not to know first-hand how it was on the boats must in a way be worse than anything my father had lived through, since she could only guess from his mumblings and his nightmares and the faraway memory of her own father washed up on a Block Island beach.

  And the more I saw out here, the less I could understand why my father hated his job. I didn’t see the possibility that someone could become tired of it for long.

  I had heard all his stories and heard his nightmares and he seemed to me now little better than the wash-ups at Gunther’s, pretending to hate what he did, making himself noble through sacrifice and running over old lies day after day like a stuck record.

  *

  Nelson lay on his back in the engine room, trying to unscrew something from the yellow casing of the starboard engine.

  Gil shone the flashlight so he could see. Gil repeated over and over, ‘Fucking tit-for-ass engine.’

  I climbed down the ladder. ‘Need any help?’

  Gil looked up, thought for a minute, then shook his head. ‘Fucking tit-for-ass engine. Wake Franklin up at four and tell him to cook us breakfast. If he tries to tell you he can’t cook with no power, remind him we have a kerosene stove stored in the bow section. He can bring that out on deck and use it. I don’t need you for anything else.’

  I sat at the galley table thinking this was what it must feel like to be blind. Not even the redness of light through my closed eyelids. Now and then, I struck a match to see the time on the beer clock.

  At four, I shuffled into the bunk room, lit a match and knocked on Franklin’s head. ‘Gil says it’s time to make breakfast.’

  ‘I can’t cook with no power.’

  ‘He told me to remind you …’

  ‘About the kerosene stove.’ Franklin rolled out of bed and looked for his socks. He had been awake when I walked in and was hoping Gil would have forgotten about the spare stove so he could get more sleep.

  A match flared in my face.

  I had been dozing a while in my bunk. I swatted the fire out of the person’s hand. ‘Don’t wake me like that.’

  ‘Out on deck.’ It was Franklin. ‘Big trouble. Wake yourself.’

  ‘What the hell did I do wrong?’ I asked him as we moved along the passageway and through the galley. ‘What am I in trouble for?’ My stomach cramped. ‘It wasn’t my idea to go on the outrigger. If anything’s bust, you can’t say it’s my fault.’

  On deck, I figured out fast that the trouble wasn’t with me. I sat down on my whalebone seat and felt my stomach muscles loosen.

  ‘That thing hits us, we are fucked and dead. And there’s sharks around. I’ve been seeing them all night.’ Gil fumbled in a metal box and talked to us.

  ‘When what thing hits us?’ I turned from face to face, looking for an answer.

  Pittsley pointed at a large ship moving towards us on the horizon. He said if it was a tanker, it would need several miles to slow down and at least half a mile to change course. If it was a barge being towed by a tug, and we drifted on to its wing cable, the Grey Ghost would be torn in half. If the tanker hit us, we would be broken apart by the impact and they wouldn’t even feel it.

  We had no power, no running
lights and Gil couldn’t raise the ship on our radio.

  Gil found two flares in his metal box. He couldn’t decide whether to light them now and risk not being seen, or light them later and risk it being too late. He weighed the two flares, like sticks of dynamite, in his hands and muttered to himself.

  Pittsley and I stood on the bow, holding the flares over our heads. Ash crumbled down on to my hair and burned it. The flare crackled with a sound like bacon cooking. I waited for the flame to reach my hands, but the flare was meant for hand-holding and fizzled out before the fire touched my skin.

  We could see now that it was a tanker. Pittsley and I stood with the dead, smoking flares in our hands. We watched the ship come closer, pushing the blueness of its bow wave.

  I glanced at Pittsley and tried to think of something to say. He looked hollowed out and old in the half-light. I wished for a moment that I had known him before he went to Vietnam.

  *

  With the flares gone, there was nothing left to do but wait on deck with the survival rafts, named Givens Buoys, ready to go.

  Kelley found himself an old life-jacket in the lazarette and put it on. All the stuffing had come out of one side.

  Gil edged over to me and whispered, ‘Go into my cabin and fetch my survival suit. It’s under the bed. Get it and bring it down.’

  ‘Why don’t you do it?’ I whispered back.

  ‘Because I’m telling you to is why!’ Gil yelled and jabbed his finger at his cabin in the wheelhouse.

  The bunk room smelled of concentrated Gil. His bed looked like a nest. A picture of his wife and kids hung on the wall. There was an enamelled plaque with a poem on it, which talked about true love and friendship, the kind which could be bought in any gift store, for people who couldn’t figure out how to say it themselves.

  I pulled the survival suit from under his bed. It was tied with string, which I bit through. The rubber suit flopped out across the floor.

  It had the same feel as a diver’s wet suit. The rubber was signal orange with fluorescent silver stripes running down each side. It also had a whistle attached to the zipper. Flotation pads were built into the suit, one big one at the back and two smaller ones in front across the chest. It covered the whole body except the face. Written on the front in bright yellow letters I read:

  Wear Minimal Clothing Under Survival Suit.

  Do Not Wear Shoes.

  Put On Survival Suit Before Leaving Vessel.

  Once in Water – Breathe Regularly.

  Blow Whistle To Attract Attention.

  Relax! Remember – You Cannot Sink.

  *

  I put on the suit.

  All the time I pulled and stretched the rubber over me, leaving my clothes in a pile on the floor, I was mumbling, ‘See how you like this, Gil. If you’re too much of a coward to come fetch your own suit, then I’ll just borrow it for a while. If that’s all right with you, Gil. Of course it’s all right. Just you try and get this thing off me once I’m wearing it. Teach you. Wasn’t my engines that died on us.’

  I walked out on to the bridge and stood looking down at the crew. The suit made me walk duck-footed. I could see the tanker close now, the chisel of its bow high in the air. As if it had been built specially to sink us. Designed for the job. A hundred foot high shark fin bearing down on our boat. Close now. Close. The noise of its engines was loud.

  ‘Get out of my suit!’ Gil bellowed from the deck. ‘I didn’t tell you to put it on. I told you to bring it here!’

  Pittsley and Howard turned to look at me. They had a Givens Buoy ready to push over the side.

  I wanted to tell them it was no use.

  ‘Why’d you send the boy? You should have gone yourself!’

  Kelley slapped Gil in the belly with the back of his hand.

  The tanker had filled up the sky. The howl of its engines was louder than thunder. Bright cubes of light shone up on its tiny bridge, far behind the bow.

  Gil grabbed a fish pick and started to climb the ladder. ‘Do we abandon ship?’ Pittsley braced his legs, ready to heave the Givens over.

  But Gil wasn’t listening. ‘You take that damn suit off! It’s mine and I paid for it and you take it off right now!’ He climbed the ladder like a pirate, the fish pick held in his teeth.

  I duck-walked to the bow. ‘Oh, shit,’ I was yelling, barely able to hear myself over the drone of the tanker’s engines. Its hull passed in front of the moon as if it was a cloud. ‘Oh, shit. Gil, please don’t hit me with the pick!’

  The Grey Ghost shuddered with the force of the tanker’s approach.

  I wobbled up to the bow, waving my arms to keep balance.

  Gil followed.

  I stood at the tip of the bow and had no place else to go.

  The tanker had become the sky.

  ‘It’s too late, Gil! Don’t hit me with the pick!’ I held my rubber-gloved hands out in front of me, trying to make fists.

  Gil threw himself down on the coiled bow line. Then he began hammering the deck with the fish pick and shouting ‘Give me my suit!’

  And the tanker that had become the sky moved past, its deck far above us speckled with lights and the faces of people looking down.

  A cigarette butt sparked as it landed on top of our wheelhouse.

  Gil covered his head with his hands, as if taking cover from artillery.

  The engines grew louder as the ship swept past. When its stern came into view, I saw the word MAGNATE in letters bigger than me, and under that the word LISBOA.

  I stood watching, my arms sticking out a little to the sides from the way the rubber held me. Then I stepped over Gil, who was still flat on his face, and climbed as fast as I could down on deck. ‘Don’t let him get me!’ I tried to untangle myself from the suit, hopping on one leg until I fell over. It isn’t so bad being locked up in the lazarette, I was thinking. It won’t be bad at all.

  When Gil walked on to the bridge, he no longer carried the fish pick.

  The tanker’s engines hummed in the distance.

  ‘Last time I ever tell you to get something for me.’ He was embarrassed in front of his crew to have sent me for something he should have fetched himself.

  Kelley and Pittsley began making fun of Gil, saying he wouldn’t have fit into the suit anyway.

  Gil smiled and did not answer. Instead, he pointed at the fading bulk of the tanker and shouted ‘Lisboa! Lisbon! They were Portuguese! Probably the only reason they missed our boat was because they were aiming to hit us.’ Then he told Franklin to bring out the kerosene stove and cook us all bacon and eggs. Franklin put the eggs and bacon in English muffins and called them McBoat.

  Gil and Nelson fixed the engine by dawn.

  We hauled in the cables and found both dredges still attached.

  Gil gathered us on deck and said he didn’t want to risk the engines breaking down again and maybe losing a dredge next time, so we’d be going in.

  ‘But only’ – he raised one finger and shook it at us – ‘only for as long as it takes to make sure the engine’s running right. Then we’ll be coming straight back out to make some money.’

  Then came the time I looked forward to, of sitting on the bow with my legs dangling over the side.

  After several hours, small boats came into view.

  We passed the khaki cliffs of Block Island. I saw white houses built up on the bluffs.

  Kelley sat next to me, combing his hair first one way and then another, his armpits a froth of anti-perspirant. The smell of after shave reached me in gusts from his face.

  ‘Have you ever seen Gil’s family?’ I waited until he stopped combing and had patted his hair into the shape he wanted.

  ‘Once they came up from Virginia. Only once I saw them.’

  ‘Why does he fish up here and have his family in the South?’

  ‘Maybe the fishing’s better here. Maybe he can only get a fishing licence in Rhode Island. I don’t know. He goes down to see his family around twice a month. Takes a plane
from Providence. I hear he owns what used to be a tobacco plantation. A lot of land. Our captain is a wealthy man.’

  ‘But he doesn’t want them living up here?’

  ‘All he wants from up here is the scallops, which bring him the money to take down there. Nothing wrong with that. He hardly ever sees his family, but he wouldn’t see them anyway, being out to sea all the time.’

  ‘My father doesn’t spend much time home either.’

  ‘Can’t have it both ways.’

  ‘He says he hates his job.’

  Kelley scratched at his chin. ‘I doubt he can hate it that much.’

  ‘He’s had some bad times.’

  ‘If you want to live out here’ – he waved his hand across the pale horizon – ‘then you can’t live on land. Unless you fish close to shore and come home every day.’

  I looked at him and opened my mouth to tell about my plans for a lobster-boat. Then I remembered what he said about the way wash-ups talked, and shut my mouth again.

  I breathed in the smell of land, surprised at the greenness of everything after days of grey and blue. I smiled at sailboats cutting by, spinnakers arched in the wind. And I waved to little motorboats as they crossed and recrossed our wake on our way into the clutter of Newport Harbour.

  Ten

  A strange man hung around the dock.

  He always wore a raincoat and brown suit, the trousers of which were known as flood pants because they stopped just above the ankles.

  He moved stiff-legged across the dockyard, lugging a plastic briefcase, his face shot red from drinking and the sun.

  He told people he was an insurance agent, but I never once saw him sell any insurance. Never saw him sell anything to a fisherman or a dock boy or even open his briefcase. I thought perhaps he was only a bum who pretended to be an insurance agent, like a man in the courthouse park who wore an Army trench coat and smoked a corncob pipe, telling everyone he was General MacArthur and believing it himself.