Sea Change

On the slow, rock-swaying return voyage Kenji Nozake overheard the two seasoned deckhands of the FV/Shindō casually discuss whether to drown or eviscerate him. Given his bungling over the past week, the young greenhorn, or aonisai, couldn’t blame them.

Among the ways to dispose of him, Kenji reflected, pitching him overboard would require the least effort. Hip checked as he squeezed past astern. Cold cocked by a gaffing pole. Lurched to starboard without warning as a rogue wave swept across the slippery deck. A frenzied scrabbling, shriek, and splash. Gone in seconds. They could pretend not to notice for a few hours.

Clinging to the bow as it rose and fell, Kenji gazed into the dark amoral Pacific, breath stinking of stale vomit. To calm his nerves and churning stomach, he focused on the horizon. As more swells passed it struck him how the crew needn’t pretend. They had no witnesses or camera to fear. No police. Stupidly, he never signed a manifest or contract. He felt for his iPhone before remembering it had sunk without a trace. No Wi-Fi or GPS out here anyway, to mark his existence. And the college break meant he wouldn’t be missed for days.

So, he reflected, an ‘accidental’ drowning might be preferable to the messier alternative. Days earlier he’d seen Akio behead, gut and filet five large rockfish in sixty seconds; in the same minute, Goto processed six. Kenji reflected on what their muscle memory and thin knives could do. He imagined his own intestines and gullet mixed in with a bucket of gutted fish. The dry heaves returned, shaking him from within.

Soggy, quivering with fatigue, he snuck side glances at the deckhands smoking hand-rolled cigarettes back near the main cabin. Cold eyes turned on him with proprietary disgust. Initially they’d whispered, but now spoke loud enough so he could hear while Captain Toru, distracted, worked the radio.

“The aonisai spilled so much bait,” muttered Akio through his small, angular mouth. “Can’t we just use parts of him instead?”

“Too mushy,” said Goto, shaking his head. “None him is firm enough to stay on hooks.”

“A soft brain and liver,” agreed Akio. “What about his heart, nose, fingers, or ears?”

Goto considered. “Might work as chum, dragging him alongside the hull. Gaff a shark or two that swims close enough.”

“Ha!” said Akio, tossing his cigarette butt into a roller. “Would you be lured toward something reeks as bad as him?”

“Thash ‘nuff,” said Captain Toru, a commanding voice slurred behind his bandaged jaw. He’d given up on the radio.

“You protect him,” said Goto, in disbelief. “After all he’s done to this boat? To your face?”

“To our time?” said Akio.

“Ish my boat,” said the captain, evenly. “My fasche. And onboard, your time belongsh me too.”

“He hurt the catch,” noted Goto. “Cost our share.”

“Told you. We schquare up in Onohama,” said the captain with finality.

“Hear that, aonisai?” said Akio. “Back in port, your time is ours.”

Goto concurred, pointing and mouthing the words: You owe us.

Captain Toru said nothing.

He had said almost nothing that first morning, March 4, when Kenji arrived seeking part-time work. Captain Toru silently took in his worn polished shoes, threadbare slacks, long clean fingernails, and pasty skin. This wasn't the first time a stranger showed up seeking to take the long way home, but he was certainly the tidiest.

“I can cook and wash dishes,” Kenji added, to no response. “I know first aid.”

Toru watched Kenji seek balance on the dock. Finally, “You attend University. Iryo Sosei.”

“Yes, sir. To graduate next year. Class of 2012. We’re on two-week break.”

“It’s ‘captain,’ not ‘sir’,” Toru said with out anger or emphasis. “You study what.”

“Medical engineering.”

“To become a doctor one day, you hope.”

“One day, I hope,” Kenji looked down, then added, on an impulse he could not explain, “to become an artist.”

Goto snorted, but the captain’s face softened. He waited. “But?”

“My father. He also has hopes,” said Kenji, quietly. “And pays tuition.”

“Ah,” the captain nodded. “So, you feel you must earn enough to…cut the rope, the mooring.” Then the dark and wiry man nodded and swung onto his vessel. “We depart 10 a.m., whether you’re onboard or not.”

That left no time to return and pack clothes and toiletries. But he couldn’t miss the chance for cash and for...something else. A last gasp. Freedom. Kenji prepared to text his dormmates his news while climbing aboard. At his step, the boat rocked down hard, he flailed for a railing, with a plonk his iPhone slipped into the water. Watching, Akio chortled.

That was bad. But looking ahead, Kenji could afford to upgrade. He’d heard that a good week on long-liners earned crew members $3,500 each. At the confluence of the warm Kuroshio and cold Oyashio currents, rich fishing grounds promised an upwelling of new life, offshore and on.

That exciting promise receded with the land. Hours after the first rollers Kenji began to feel queasy and by noon threw up so suddenly that he didn’t think to turn downwind. A spray of half-digested ramen soon clung warm to his only shirt, a collared button-down. Other bits spattered boots of the two crew members, who dragged him to the bulwark and pointed down. Goto hissed, “Just ask if you also need to learn how to pee, aonisai.”

The next day, Akio demonstrated how to bait longline clips, jabbing each sardine head through the eye with a sharp hook. Kenji repeatedly snagged his rubber gloves on the hook barbs and, upon removing these impediments, bloodied his fingers. He thrice wrapped the line around his wrist, twice around his ankle. The series of mistakes ate up two hours. As the captain’s patience ran out, Goto shoved Kenji aside and took over. They had only enough daylight left to set two lines, landing a catch that, if sold, wouldn’t cover fuel costs.

Deeper, farther offshore, the days became a blur of wretchedness and failure. Kenji had to carve up sardine heads and tails into a bait bucket, then cook the body with rice or noodles. The tiny galley, situated aft of the smokestalk, left Kenji to prepare meals in the acrid swirl of diesel exhaust. He ducked, leaned, and dodged the fumes until, one morning, looking away from the pan, his cooking oil spilled into the burner. Flames quickly flared up. Kenji panicked, scooped a panful of seawater, and tossed it on the grease fire, which spilled across the counter and spread onto the deck. Akio grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the fire, but not before it melted wires feeding the engine.  Cursing, and silencing Kenji’s apologies by slapping the deck, Captain Toru fixed the damage. But time spent on repairs ate up another half day, further reducing their catch.

To reach more promising fishing grounds in the northeast, they had to motor all night. With the rudder locked on autopilot, each took turns scanning the horizon. Halfway through his watch in the early hours of the third day, Kenji, exhausted and ashamed, slumped against the wheelhouse to rest. Within a half hour he slipped back asleep and for the next one hundred fifty minutes left the FV/Shindō to sail itself across the Pacific’s busiest shipping channel. When the captain relieved Kenji, it took immense self-restraint not to slap Kenji awake and then knock him unconscious again. Days four and five were filled with foul weather, poor visibility, and, at least for Kenji, occasional projectile vomiting over the side of the boat.

Their luck appeared to change on day six, rounding back toward Japan. Despite dropping a bucket, Kenji cut more bait than he spilled. Seething with resentment, Goto and Akio loaded the hooks. Captain Toru combined his electronics and memory to set the longline down neatly along ridges. The first sets came up heavy, and they at last began to fill the hold. Kenji learned to shovel ice over layers of still-gasping fish. By late afternoon, though, winds gradually rose from the West. The crew had to stick it out, trying in vain to make up the lost time, but in the process somehow managed to either load every hook with a monster, or simply snag the line.

“There’s too much weight,” shouted Akio above the wind. “Spool won’t turn.” Goto joined his efforts to turn the winch.

Captain Toru idled the engine to loosen tension on the line. To assess the situation, he leaned out of the wheelhouse, but his vision was still blocked. 

“Take this,” he said to Kenji, indicating the wheel. “Hold her steady. Wait for my direction. Understood?”

Kenji nodded, heart beating faster. The simple request a chance to regain trust. Captain Toru traversed the stern deck as the line tensed and released. He leaned over one side and watched the line vanish into the water. “Let’s turn back in on it,” he shouted to Kenji. “Ease over to port!”

Kenji recalled the rule about ‘port.’ Four letters: just like ‘left.’ Watching over on his shoulder, his body twisting to follow their progress, he turned the wheel toward his left.

“Port, baka!” screamed the captain. “Port!”

Kenji turned harder, then realized that looking backward he’d reversed orientation. To correct, he overcompensated, but too late. The line pulled taut, snapped, and hurtled back toward the stern at ninety kilometers per hour. The deckhands ducked down. Captain Toru bent back but not fast enough. The line’s frayed wire leader glanced off his right cheek, carving out a thin gash of flesh deep enough to expose molars through the blood.

Goto gaped. Akio grabbed the wheel. Captain seized Kenji’s neck in one hand, the First Aid kit in the other, and dragged both into the cabin where he silenced the aonisai’s stammering explanation. “Don’t you dare apologishe,” he said, clamping his right shoulder hard against his jaw and slapping Kenji with his left hand. “Jush fixsh it.”

In the rush Kenji snapped back into training mode. He pressed a wad of gauze until the bleeding slowed, then sterilized the wound taking care to keep iodine away from the mouth. Then he wove eight neat stitches pulling the thick skin together, tied off a knot at the end, liberally applied triple antibiotic ointment, and applied a square bandage. The captain looked in the mirror and touched the wound gingerly. Both men exhaled. Seconds later Toru again grew enraged, cursing the loss of expensive gear, and banished Kenji to the bow.

“Nicely done, aonisai,” said Akio as Kenji passed, wiping his stained fingers on his khakis. “Anything else left to ruin? The hull’s still intact. Maybe take a clawhammer to that?”  

“Maybe we take a clawhammer to him,” said Goto. “Save the boat.”

“Save ourselves,” Akio concurred. “He’s better off dead.”

“Keep it for back at da docksh,” interrupted the captain, adjusting to his stitched-up mouth. “We can schettle up dere.” Turning to the radio, he twisted the knobs and dial, but found only static. In frustration he slammed the handle into its cradle. “Whas wrong wif dish machine! Where ish everyone?”

“Back home, selling their catch,” said Akio, glaring at Kenji. “Like we’d be, without his fuckups.”

“We should divvy up his share,” said Goto. “Right after we divvy up him.”

Through the night churned the engine, nudging them back toward home. On his shift Kenji felt too spent, too terrified, for sleep. Hearing the captain’s snore, he wondered if the crew would dispose of him quietly, how hard he’d resist, how long he’d float, how deep he’d sink.

Dawn of day eight found Kenji still contemplating the manner and time of his death at their hands, when the early morning fog lifted. Aiko pointed. Turning, he could make out the dim and distant outline of Mount Dainichi rising above the Iide Range. Hope. Still, the silence felt eerie. Neither crew nor captain could pick up any signal from shore. Goto’s sneers and gestures suggested that the broken radio had somehow also been the fault of Kenji, who conceded the possibility.

Just before eleven a.m. the boat bumped into floating debris, a loose gyre of wooden pallets. Captain sent all three deckhands to bow and eased the throttle. Minutes later they pointed out and steered around a shipping crate. That was odd because winds had been too weak to jolt a massive container vessel, and these floated from shore, the wrong direction.

“Telephone poles!” shouted Aiko. Captain Toru cut the engine and as hull scraped over wires that would have tangled his propeller. None spoke, save to alert the captain of debris and, eventually, of bodies.

Near shore they came across the first corpses. A man, two women, a child. Still dressed in coat and tie, stockings. School uniforms. Each floated facing the seafloor. Working together wordlessly, each body they lifted diminished the crew’s sense of outrage and injustice. All that now felt petty. Their resentment dissipated with the shocks that grew closer to shore.

Where Onohama should be the FV/Shindō crew saw the entire coastline peeled back, with no wharf, vessel, or structure left intact.

Minutes later the radio came alive, transmissions restored. They didn’t interrupt the urgent voices, just listened. Recurring words filled in blanks. Jishin. Earthquake. Offshore. Richter scale. 9.0 magnitude. Tsunami. 2:46 P.M. Forty meters high. Thousands missing. TEPCO’s Daichi reactors. Evacuation. Casualties.

Akio looked at his watch. The timing sank in deep. Each knew without saying how the cataclysm had struck the previous day, right when the boat was scheduled to land and offload their catch. The FV/Shindō would have been tethered fast to a dock cleat. Trapped. Had that original timetable not been delayed by Kenji’s serial incompetence.

Under the crushing weight of this, Goto sagged. Akio grew pale. Neither met his eyes and both gave Kenji a wide berth of respect. After whispering, they stood, turned, and offered a slight bow.

“We were…too rude,” said Akio. “Our apologies.”

They asked his name. He answered.

“We owe you, Nozake-san,” said Goto. Kenji looked down, knees buckling in relief and awe at the random forces that alter life’s trajectories.  

Later, in the wheelhouse, the captain handed him the first aid kit. “On schore they need help. Care. Art musht wait.” Kenji nodded.

Captain Toru gestured at the coastline. “Here as closch as we can get.” He eased the throttle and idled beyond the breakers. “To make this last schresh on your own, you can schwim?”

Kenji nodded again and tucked the kit into his pants. The captain faced him and shook hands. “So, aonisai,” he said. “No pay, nor debt.” A tiny smile played at corners of his lips, making him wince. “Schtill, maybe you’ve earned enough to – to cut your mooring.”

Kenji involuntarily shivered. The boat rocked quietly amidst the horror and misery of such utter annihilation. Yet a strange warm lightness spread within. The source of nausea gave way to elation. To compose himself, to repress a grossly improper outburst of laughter or tears, he clumsily stepped off the bulwark and leaped. He floundered through waves, swimming with his head above the water until reaching the shallows where he could stand up on the grievously shaken land.

Then he waded out of the sea, grown steady on his feet.