staring at him.
Culann turned around and vomited on the deck. Then he went back to work.
“Attaboy,” shouted Frank with a pat on the back.
Culann threw up again. He was convinced he’d made a terrible mistake. It wasn’t just the seasickness. His rubbery arms could barely lift the nets, torn skin hung from his soft palms, and his soggy boots were full of blisters.
And then there was Gus.
“My fifteen-year-old daughter is tougher than you,” Gus shouted with a slap to the back of the head. “If I see you nurse those delicate, little fingers of yours one more time, I’m chopping ‘em off.”
Culann wiped his oozing palms on his shirt and reached up for the net. When it slipped through Culann’s wet, raw hands, Gus pounced. He grabbed Culann by the shoulders and kicked his feet out from underneath him. Culann crashed to his stomach on the deck, and Gus pressed the greenhorn’s face into the net, slimy and foul-smelling as it was from the thousands of loads of fish it had hauled from the sea.
“This is the net,” Gus said. “Take a good look at it.”
The net was all Culann could see.
“We use the net to catch the fish,” Gus continued. “Without the net, we don’t catch any fish. The purpose of this little pleasure cruise is to catch fish, right?”
“Right,” Culann said.
“Very good, greenhorn. Now, if we don’t take good care of the net, we won’t catch any fish, will we?”
“No.”
“That’s right. Now, are we taking good care of the net when we drop it?”
“No.”
“Three in a row. I knew you were smart. Okay, genius, now I want you to pick up that fucking net and hang onto it like your life depended on it. Because it does. You got it?”
“Yes,” Culann replied.
He pushed himself up off the deck and started to rise to his feet. A wave smashed into the side of the ship, causing him to topple back over.
“I thought I told you to get up,” Gus shouted with a cuff across Culann’s cheek.
Culann pushed himself up again. The boat swayed under him, but he managed to keep his footing. He bent at the waist to snatch up the net. Gus kicked him in the backside, and Culann pitched face forward back into the net.
Culann saw how arbitrary this last act had been. It would not be sufficient to become a competent seaman, however unlikely that may be. He was not one of these men. He did not belong among them. Gus degraded him for the sheer joy of it. It seemed clear to Culann that he’d have fared better with Vic DeLuca.
2
Since he didn’t really know how to do anything else, Culann’s main duty was to sort the catch. They were licensed to catch halibut, large, flat fish with both eyes on the same side of their bodies, but the nets also indiscriminately pulled in other, out-of-season bottomfish. The enormous nets pulled in hundreds of pounds of fish and dumped them into the bay, which looked like a giant pickup truck bed in the middle of the stern. The catch was so large that fish overflowed out of the bay and onto the deck.
“Start sorting,” Gus bellowed before kicking Culann in the back.
The greenhorn dropped to his hands and knees and searched for any fish that weren’t halibut, which amounted to almost a third of the catch. The ones that he sorted out were nearly impossible to hold on to. He wrapped his arms around a twenty-pound, rust-colored cod and stood up. He tiptoed through the writhing mass of aquatic life to toss the fish over the railing when the cod whipped out of his grasp. He chased after it, slipping on the wet deck before tripping over a pile of fish. He landed on another cod, which he clamped onto. He worked his way back up to his feet and over to the railing, and was just about to throw the fish over the side when he caught a glimpse of McGillicuddy out the corner of his eye. McGillicuddy swung a flounder like a baseball bat right into the back of Culann’s head. He dropped to his knees, and the cod squirted from his hands. All work on the vessel stopped as the crew laughed at Culann.
“Get back to work,” Gus shouted. “Captain’s coming. You don’t want him catching you with your thumbs up your asses, do you?”
Culann pulled himself up to his feet just as the Captain came into view. He was the only man on board the ship who did not reside in Pyrite, so Culann hadn’t met him at the bar. The Captain looked more like an aviator than a seaman in a brown bomber jacket and reflective sunglasses. He was about sixty years old with salt-and-pepper hair and a firm jaw set in an authoritative scowl. He strolled about the deck with a stogie clamped between his teeth. He nodded at his crew as he walked by, but didn’t say anything.
Culann resumed sorting. He pounced on the flounder McGillicuddy had whacked him with and wrestled it over the side. It splashed against the waves before slipping under the surface.
“Good job, kid,” Worner said. “Let me give you some advice. Start here at the edge and work your way to the middle. That way, you’ll have cleared some space out for yourself, and you’ll have less to trip over.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Worner replied with a pat on the shoulder.
An hour later, the catch was sorted and flash-frozen, and the crew was mercifully sent below deck for dinner. Culann was hungrier than he’d ever been in his life and not entirely confident that he had enough strength left in his arms to raise a fork to his lips.
The men filed into the mess, and Culann found himself wedged in between McGillicuddy and Worner.
“Sorry about the fish-slap,” McGillicuddy said with a grin, “it’s just part of being a greenhorn.”
“I gathered that,” Culann replied. “No hard feelings.”
“That’s the attitude,” Worner said. “If you can handle this jerkoff’s tomfoolery, you’ll do just fine.”
“I don’t have a problem with tomfoolery,” Culann said. “I’m more worried that Gus is going to kill me.”
“Just think of it like this,” Worner said. “Nothing could be worse than today, right? Ergo, tomorrow will be better.”
As they moved towards the grill, a shaggy-haired sailor named Watkins walked down the line with a large pitcher and a spoon. He fed each man one bite and then moved on.
“What’s that?” Culann asked.
“We’re taking communion,” McGillicuddly said, genuflecting.
“It’s concentrated orange juice,” Worner explained. “Everybody takes one spoonful a day so we don’t get scurvy.”
This was not an ailment Culann had ever before had reason to fear. When he reached the end of the line, the cook handed him a plate with four deep-fried cod filets on it and nothing else.
“Is this all there is to eat?” he asked.
“We eat what we catch, kid,” Worner replied. “There’s a whole ocean of seafood just below our feet. Why would we bother packing provisions?”
“I’m not sure I can eat fish after handling them all day.”
“Only other option is to starve.”
Frank waved them over to a table smack dab in the middle of the mess. Culann eased onto the bench next to him, and Worner and McGillicuddy sat on the other side.
“You’re looking good out there, cuz,” Frank said.
“Really?”
“No,” Frank replied, causing the other two to guffaw and slap the table.
“We’re just jerking you around,” Frank said. “You’ll do better tomorrow. By the end of the voyage, you’ll be a pro.”
“Thanks for the encouragement.”
Worner pulled a leather haversack from under his seat and rested it on the table.
