Even though they are as varied as a group of people can be, I can tell they are the same, all of these sailors. Something was missing in their lives on land, and they went seeking the answer. Whatever it was, I don’t doubt for a second that they each found it. They are migrants of land, and they love it out here on an ocean that offered them a different way of life, they love this boat, and, as much as they may bicker and fight, they love each other.
In their own private ways they are all grieving the end of this life, knowing it must come to an end, not knowing how they’ll survive that.
I can no longer ignore my seasickness. The smells and sounds of the engine room have done me over. Léa snorts as I head to the toilet to heave my guts up. The growing swell knocks me sideways into the wall of the cubicle and I have to grab onto the toilet bowl. Throughout the night the waves grow crueler and I find myself fighting Dae for the toilet, much to the crew’s hilarity. Everything inside me is painfully expelled over and over again; vomiting is a singular hell. I guess Ennis was right about the approaching storm after all.
Samuel takes pity on me with a motion sickness tablet that knocks me out for a few hours, and when I wake it’s still night but the sea is calmer. I find my way up onto the deck. Anik is standing in the prow but I don’t think he’d welcome my presence.
“He doesn’t like coming south,” Basil says, and I notice him sitting in the dark, rolling a joint. “He never does.”
I’m not in the mood for Basil, but I never am, and maybe irritation will do to keep me company. I sit beside him and we listen to the ocean. “Why?”
“The north’s his home.”
Basil offers me the spliff and I take a drag. The warmth touches me quickly, blurring me.
“So why does he leave, then?” I ask.
“Dunno, really, except it’s something with him and Ennis. They have some deal or pact that goes way back, and it’s why Anik sails with the skipper no matter what.”
Curious.
“Did I sleep through the storm?” I ask, smelling the air for rain, but it still just smells of salt and grease.
“Hasn’t even started yet,” Basil says.
I gaze up into the clear sky. Stars abound.
“It’s getting ready,” Basil adds, recognizing my skepticism.
“Should I be worried?”
“Have another toke instead.” After a while, he says, “My family’s Irish. Way back.”
“Convicts?”
He grins. “Couple of generations after that. They were just people looking for a better life.”
“Than what?”
“Than poverty. Isn’t that the way of all migrations? Poverty or war. Which half of you is Australian?” he asks.
“My dad’s side.”
“How’d your parents meet?”
“No idea.”
“You never asked?”
I shake my head.
“But your mum, she’s Irish, right?” Basil presses.
“Aye.”
I watch him exhale a heavy plume of smoke. He sounds very stoned. “I knew a woman who lived and died by the slate-gray stones of County Clare. You could have carted her body across the ocean but you’d never be able to take her soul from that stretch of coast.” Basil looks at his hands, tracing the lifelines as though searching for something. “I’ve never felt that. I love Australia and it’s my home, but I’ve never felt like I could die for the place, you know?”
“That’s because it’s not yours.”
He frowns, affronted by that.
“It’s not mine, either,” I add. “We don’t belong there—we came from someplace else and we put our ugly flag in the ground and we slaughtered and stole and called it ours.”
“Christ, we got another bleeding heart right here, folks,” he says with a sigh. “So then how come I didn’t feel at home in Ireland, either?” he asks me as though it’s my fault. “I went there when I was eighteen thinking I’d find that homeplace.” He shrugs, takes another drag. “Can’t find it anywhere.”
I can no longer hold in the question. “How long are you gonna keep doing this, Basil?”
He looks at me and smoke billows from his mouth into my face. “I dunno,” he admits. “Samuel’s so sure of it all. He says God will provide for us, the fish’ll come back. That man’s been fishing as long as we’ve been breathing. I used to listen to him. But there’s too much talk now about sanctions.”
“Do you think that’s likely?”
“Who knows.”
“Don’t you … Why don’t any of you seem to care about what you’re doing?”
“’Course we care. It used to be such a good way to make money.” He folds his arms, lets that sink in, and then he tops it off by saying, “And it’s not us, you know. Global warming’s killing the fish.”
I stare at him. “Aside from also fishing to excess and contaminating the waters with toxins, who do you think caused global warming?”
“Come on, Franny, this is boring. Let’s not talk politics.”
I can’t believe him, I really can’t, and then it’s like standing at the bottom of a mountain I have no way to scale, and I’m exhausted, I’m exhausted by Basil and his small selfish world, and I’m exhausted by my own hypocrisy because I’m just as human and just as responsible as he is, and so in the end I slump back in my seat and close my mouth.
You decided this. You decided the destination was worth spending the trip on a fishing vessel. So suck it up.
“How ’bout you, then?” he asks.
“How ’bout me what?”
“Where’s your place?”
If I have a place, I think, it was left behind long ago.
Basil hands me the spliff and our fingers touch. Oh, I remember you. Skin. A pained thing inside me rears up. The rushing sound of the ocean rises.
“Where’s your place, Franny?” Basil asks me again, and I think, Why would I ever tell you, and then I kiss him. Because I don’t like him even a little and it feels destructive. He tastes of tobacco and marijuana and smoke, but I must taste of the same, and maybe worse after all my vomiting. His free hand grabs at my arm, a fumbling surprised motion that seems to reflect a great need inside him, one maybe he didn’t know he harbored.
I end the kiss and sit back. “Sorry.”
He swallows, running the hand over his long hair. “No worries.”
“Night.”
“Night, Franny.”
* * *
My sleep is interrupted again, first by nightmares of my mother and second by the warm liquid sliding down my wrist. I sit up blearily, disoriented. I’m moving and there’s pain, and the wetness is familiar, its rusty smell like a memory in the night.
I take a breath and let my head calm. You’re not in prison. You’re on the boat.
The swaying has grown much worse. Back and forth the boat rolls, in great woozy lunges, pulling my wrist so hard against its rope binding that blood has trickled wetly down my arm.
With one hand I untie the slipped constrictor knot. I’m quite proud of this knot because it wasn’t easy to learn. I’ve decided to start binding myself to the bed at night, because there’s obviously a version of me that wants to escape this cabin and find the ocean, and the least I can do is make it hard for her.