The Crab Boat – Part 1: Deckhand

The boat was called the Mary Ellen, and she smelled of diesel, salt and bait.

Liam stood on the wharf in new oilskins that were far too clean. He was thirty, an accountant from Toronto, with soft hands and a sudden conviction that he had made a mistake. Two months earlier he'd quit his job after a panic attack in an elevator. His aunt knew the skipper. Here he was.

"You're the greenhorn," said a voice.

A man in a battered yellow slicker was coiling rope on the deck. He was thirty-three, dark-bearded, broad-shouldered, with grey eyes and a stillness Liam could not read. "Josh. First mate. You'll be on the pots."

"I've never done it."

"Nobody has, first time." Josh tossed him a pair of gloves. "Don't think. Just haul."

The first day, Liam was sick over the side twice and soaked to the skin. The pots came up heavy and dripping, clacking with crabs. His arms burned. His hands blistered. At noon, Josh handed him a mug of scalding tea and a sandwich without a word, and Liam ate it as if it were a feast.

"It gets easier," said Josh.

"Does it?"

"No. But you get stronger."

By the end of the week, Liam stopped being sick. By the end of the second, he was hauling without help. The sea was grey-green and vast, the light very long, the evenings gold. He watched Josh work: quiet, sure, never hurried. He watched him laugh, rarely, at the skipper's jokes.

"Can I ask you something?" said Liam, one night, sitting on a coil of rope while the sun refused to set.

"Yes."

"Why do you do this?"

"Because the sea doesn't ask me to be anyone else," said Josh.

Liam's chest tightened. "Green?" he said, softly.

"Green," said Josh, and almost smiled. "Very green. Pass the thermos."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Long Light.