A thousand suns

Sean watched Danny go before turning back to the body. He wasn’t that keen to touch it any more than he had to, but he knew it was the right thing to do. The man had a name, and no doubt a mom and a dad, and a missus who needed to be told where he’d ended up.

Sean knew the body would have something with a name on it… a dog tag, or a name-badge on the chest or something. He knew all the fly-boys had some way to identify them.

With one hand only and a barely concealed look of distaste on his face he slowly peeled back the lapel of the leather flying jacket and prepared to slide his fingers under the wet tunic and hunt for some tags. Sean was fully aware that he might just make contact with the dead man’s cold flesh, and his bottom lip drew back with disgust at the thought.

But he needed to probe no further.

His eyes widened when he saw the object lying under the lapel of the flying jacket and upon the man’s still chest.

‘Oh boy,’ said Sean.

Three Miles off the Coast of Rhode Island

Present day

The sea was as flat as a tabletop. The failing light of an overcast evening sky painted it a dull, featureless marble grey.

Jeff sat on the aft deck smoking and looking back over the stern gunwale at the pale wake of suds trailing behind the trawler as she made a steady six knots south. Undisturbed by the calm sea, the wake extended off towards the horizon, where one drab grey merged seamlessly into another.

When it was like this, so calm, so quiet, he found it hard to believe that they were on the open sea, and not in some sheltered lagoon or inland lake. The North Atlantic wasn’t often like this. He was used to the sea off Rhode Island and Connecticut being choppy along the Sound at the very least, and the salt spray from broken waves stinging his skin. But this evening it was subdued, unnaturally calm, like a scolded child sulking. If it wasn’t for the rhythmic thud and sputter of the trawler’s diesel engine, he knew it would be utterly silent, except for the lapping of water against the hull.

No way for the Atlantic to be.

It wasn’t right. It felt like the calm between two pressure fronts, the sort of calm that had you hauling in your nets and securing down every loose thing on deck. But there was nothing to get excited about, no major weather heading their way; just the ocean having an unsettlingly quiet day.

The net lines stretched from thirty-foot outriggers either side of the trawler’s pilothouse into the water. He could tell by the limp way the lines hung and the reduced drag on the boat that there was precious little catch in the voluminous net beneath the surface, trailing several hundred yards behind them.

It had been a poor day.

All in all it had been a pretty shitty week. By a rough reckoning of the last five days’ haul he had maybe broken even on the diesel they had burned cruising up and down this stretch of the banks off the New England coastline. Then there was the cost of the food for the three lads he had aboard.

Maybe he’d break even, if they could pull in something decent. Four tons of catch, be it mackerel, cod, herring, tuna, swordfish, whatever… was break-even point roughly. If it were mostly tuna, you could say three tons. It would be impossible to weigh the haul until they returned and offloaded it, but Jeff could guess the weight from the space taken in the ice lockers. They needed another ton before they could start thinking about turning a profit.

One last run this evening and then I’m taking her home.

He hoped this last roll of the dice would end his week-long run of bad luck. It would be a good way to draw a line under their profitless trip, to pull out a full net tonight and end on a good note. Even if all it did was cover his costs instead of leaving him hundreds down on the whole trip.

It wasn’t exactly the easiest way to make a living.

He took a final pull on his cigarette, watching it glow brightly in the gathering dark, and then tossed it out into their churning wake.

It wasn’t the easiest way to make a living for his lads either, that much was for sure, but then it had to be better than wearing a stupid paper hat, a plastic name tag and serving fries.

The boys on his boat were young. All three of them were under twenty. Jeff took them on instead of the more experienced crew because they were happy to work for a percentage only, instead of a retainer and a percentage. Young fellas, not one of them had properly finished school, leaving them all with few options to choose from. Round here it was either catching fish or stacking shelves. And catching fish paid better.

He remembered when he was twenty: no bills to pay, no family to provide for and little to lose. Percentage-only worked just fine. A good trip and his boys saw good money, far more than is decent for a kid without a high-school diploma. A good trip, three to five days away from home, could bring in up to 2000 dollars each after Jeff had subtracted overheads.