It’s a misty spring morning off the coast of Vancouver Island, and the water is so still that the glistening head of a curious seal sends ripples across the surface as it disappears back into safety. A weighted line slips into the dark water behind the chugging mass of an aging trawler, dragging a seine net into the depths with it. Ten minutes prior, the ship’s barometer read ‘FAIR’. Now, the brass gauge inches imperceptibly toward ‘CHANGE’.
On the deck of the vessel is a boy of seventeen, wearing holey coveralls and a torn windbreaker.
“Dad. Shouldn’t we head back?” he asks, peering up at the sky. It is his final year of high school.
His father, a man practically born at sea, snorts. “What? We’re only getting started.”
Alan is burly in a beer-bellied sort of way, bearded and wrinkled from years of sun. If he drinks enough, he might take off his shirt, revealing a faded tattoo of a winking mermaid on his shoulder. Sober or otherwise, he is always sure to wear a badged skipper hat on the boat, a novelty gift he had bought for himself years ago. Under his navy raincoat, tucked into the inside pocket of his blazer, sits a thin volume wrapped in brown paper: his weathered copy of Twice-Told Tales, a graduation gift for Sam.
When the Dauntless IV returns to the buoy, the circle of netting is made complete. The herring, treasured for their roe, are trapped inside. The dead-calm water of moments prior already begins to stir, now lapping gently against the hull of the boat.
“Your grandfather never turned back, you know,” Alan shouts over the whine of the electric winch, shaking his finger at Sam. “not once.”
More out of habit than need, he guides the dripping line into the pulley. Soon enough, the end of the net arrives at the surface, revealing a great pile of writhing herring. They dump the fish in aluminum bins where they slap together in glinting heaps, gasping until their movements slow, then stop. Could he do this alone?
When it is quiet again, Sam presses him a little.
“And you never wanted to?”
“What?”
“Turn back.”
“‘Course.” says his father, stroking his beard. “But it wasn’t always a matter of what I wanted.” He slaps his son heartily across the back. “Puts hair on your chest.”
With a puff of black smoke, the Dauntless IV surges on, aimed towards the next buoy. On the surface, the very tips of the waves brush white where the wind slicks them over. Far below, old things begin to stir in the silt.
#
Every year, the boat feels smaller to Sam. Dim and cluttered, the cabin reeks of mold and unfiltered diesel exhaust; worse than that is his father’s quiet judgement. Still, the cabin is more tolerable than the wind-stricken bow outside.
“So?” comes the inevitable question. “What’re you going to do? -- When you’re outta class and all that.”
Sam always dreads this question, one that he often faces at family gatherings. Coming from his father, it is odd to hear it phrased like a choice. The unspoken assumption had always been that he was to stay on as a deckhand.
“I dunno.” Sam ventures. “Maybe go to university, or college or something.”
“For?”
“English, maybe. I dunno, I like to read.”
After a particularly deep swell, his father responds. His gaze never leaves the horizon.
“Liking something doesn’t put food on the table, now does it.”
Sam hesitates, and then says it anyway: “Well I’d like to use my brains.”
Alan responds quickly, sensing the implication of his son’s words.
“Nothing wrong with a little manual labour, you know. Puts meat on your bones and food on the table. I worked real hard, you know, my dad and his dad too. And his dad before that, come to think of it.” He scratches his head.
Fat raindrops begin to pelt the little windows of the cabin, an irregular pattern betraying their fierce battle with the wind above. Sam feels the hair on the back of his neck rise as they enter unfamiliar territory.
“I could stay out here for my whole life, dad. But I want to do something different, you know. Didn’t you?”
Alan turns. “Salt runs in our blood. You can leave, but the ocean always brings this family back. Always.” There is something in his voice that is less than anger, but more than disappointment.
By this time, small whitecaps have grown to heavy waves, now breaking on the bow in salty blasts. The waves are big enough that they cannot alter their course; if a swell were to hit the Dauntless IV broadside now, she would surely capsize. At the wheel, Alan Sloan stares dead ahead, jaw set under a sprawling beard.
#
The boy watches the wake from the cabin door, a roiling gash quickly swallowed by following waves. Rain pelts down upon the bodies of the herring, which slide back and forth in the bins with the motion of the boat. With a slight tremble in his hands, Sam tries to tie the broken straps of a mottled life jacket and fails. He does not offer one to his father, knowing he would refuse. Somewhere behind them, Sam glimpses a shape in the trough of a wave: an abandoned dinghy maybe, or a wayward clump of seaweed. The wave surges and falls. This time, a bloated grey face appears, shrouded by a veil of clinging kelp. It is only a flash in time, but Sam is certain of what he saw: The unmistakable tattoo of a winking mermaid on a rotting body, beckoning him with a bony hand. His grandfather.
“Boy!” comes the command, shaking Sam from his vision. “The bowline!” It had come loose and now drags dangerously close to the prop far below.
Despite countless summers of experience, Sam’s steps on the slick deck are as unsteady as a newborn calf. His stomach betrays him next, sending him headfirst over the stern where he expels his mother’s egg salad sandwich partially overboard, partially on himself. He is left clutching the starboard rail with something else welling up inside of him, something he is not old enough to understand. Slowly, he pulls himself upright and stumbles up the deck, inclined as it rides a wave. On the other side of the swell, Sam skids down to the prow, spinning backwards as he falls to his rear. With a salty blast, the ship dips violently into the cold water, taking Sam with it. Then, it is the howling wind again, an opportunity to feel around for the untied line. In his peripheral vision, Sam feels a large presence before him. It is impossible for him to not look up, fighting for vision through strands of wet hair.
A deafening roar heralds the gargantuan beast rising above the little fishing boat, a rogue wave summoned from the depths of the dark, angry sea. With an aching slowness, the Dauntless IV rides up the base of the leviathan, running on momentum until they slow to a standstill. At the behest of a thought that had been growing inside of him over the course of the day, Sam hauls himself up to the now vertical railing on the tip of the fishing boat, faces the storm, and jumps.
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