Today though, I keep the beer to one. We go to our usual bar in Kristiansand, a run-down place with all the charm of a stray dog. Everyone in there is a fisherman, we all stink like the sea, with calloused hands and salt-crusted skin. The lighting casts dark shadows, the walls a sticky green, the air filled with the smell of spilled beer and the sound of the slot machines in the corner, where too many men are wasting their earnings. Everyone here is harder than month-old bread.
Texts keep coming in from my sister, Astrid. Normally I spend a night at the hotel here next to the bar before driving home. But she’s back home, in the remote village town of Todalen, where I live when I’m not on the boat, along with one of my other sisters, Lise. They’re visiting for May 1st, our labor day, which is in a few days. Astrid lives in Paris, so I rarely get to see her.
Also, if I’m being honest here, being for weeks without mobile phone reception has me aching to catch up on a few things and I don’t want to spend my time at the bar, with Epsen, on the phone. He might have to revoke my manhood card after all.
After the beer, we say our goodbyes and I know Espen will be at the bar all night, maybe into tomorrow, before he finally crawls back to his wife and kids down the coast. I walk over to my car, patting it affectionately on the hood, always happy to see her. She’s a ‘74 Datsun, 260Z, red like spring cherries. She’s purring like a kitten now, but it took years of work on her to get her in optimal condition. I bought her after the first voyage out at sea, with my first paycheck. Everything else went to my uncle.
When I inherited the vessel after my father’s death, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. It had been years since I’d been out fishing, and I’d only gone out once with my father, when I was sixteen. That was two weeks of hell that was supposed to bring us together—or so he hoped—but it only drove us further apart and me to America. So even though I needed to take over my father’s legacy, mostly out of guilt, mostly out of need, I brought on my father’s first mate, Dag, who took command for a year and taught me the ropes. It was a hellish year but I learned a lot, and even though I still question if I should be captain, I’m the man with the ship, and that trumps everything.
The drive from Kristiansand to Todalen takes under two hours, through numerous tunnels, past the ever-present fjords and small towns, and one ferry crossing. At the moment, the temperamental spring weather is being held at bay, with shafts of sunlight coming through the high clouds, and I pull over to a touristy look-out point to snack on an apple and try to get my head in the right place.
There’s always a big shift between my life at sea and my life in Todalen. In my village, there is constraint. As gorgeous and scenically inspiring as the town is, it’s also the place I grew up, the place where my life fell apart, the place I tried to escape. No matter what I did, where I went, who I became, it brought me back, shortening that leash. It’s where everyone knows your name, and knows you—or, at least they think they do.
Out at sea, you’re alone. Yes, there’s your first mate, like Epsen, and deckhands, but as the captain you’re alone a lot of the time, with only fuzz on the radio for company. There’s no constraints that you can see or feel, just the dark grey rolling swells, the familiar pitch of the boat, the horizon that’s always moving, always beckoning you to keep going. But the sea is a dangerous place. It took the life of my father. It promises you freedom, but that freedom only leads toward death.
I live two lives.
I wish I could live a third.
Even though I’ve been doing this for years now, I always need a moment to adjust before I get back home. Especially now with Astrid and Lise on the farm. I’m just glad Lise’s twin, Tove, isn’t there. Sounds awful to say of your sister, but she’s a total mess and the queen of passive aggression. To say the relationships in our family are complicated is a complete understatement.
The ferry chugs along and I lean on the hood of the car and watch as dark clouds come billowing over the mountains to the north. My mind spins on a poem. I haven’t written in a long time and I’ve been okay with that. Maybe I should let that part of me go, like a bird into the wind. But these clouds are coming in from Trondheim and they rolling with the promise of her.
The clouds roll with impunity
Full, round, curves
Lips, hips, legs
Sliding smoothly over the crest of a mountain
That was once a man.
Or maybe it’s the man
Who was once a mountain.
Unmoveable.
Impenetrable
Stuck.
And here she comes
Not to set him free
But to move on past.
Without ever looking back.
Fuck. I think. Complete shit, as usual. If I could crumble up the paper in my brain, I would.
But the fact still remains.
Shay will be in Trondheim tomorrow.
I shouldn’t have downloaded Instagram last month. It was a mistake. I was bored and waiting for Epsen to arrive on the docks, hours to kill, faint sunlight on my back.
Everly Madison added
