Moorings

Chapter 1 – Present

The Columbia slides through the icy gray waters of Prince William Sound. Towering snow-covered mountains dwarf the ferry as the boat passes steep foothills, shrouded in fog. A wake of foamy water sluices out from the Columbia’s stern. The old engine rattles, and a blast of steam blows from the stack.

Inside the main cabin, Anne Holloway shifts inside her old goosedown bag like larvae in a cocoon. Her body is sore from sleeping on a thermal pad and her head aches from the constant clattering of the ferry. She rolls over and stares at the rust spots on the ceiling. For so long she’s loved the majesty of the Columbia, named after the sweeping tidewater glacier that is the centerpiece of the Sound. And at the start of her trip, she thought she’d have a chance to see the great glacier. But now, after a week of watching nothing but clouds draped over what she can only assume from pictures is the glory of the Alaskan ranges, Anne could care less about seeing the glacier. All she wants to do is arrive in Snug Harbor. She stretches her arms above her head. Not once in the past seven nights has she slept all the way through.

The other passengers, people like her too poor to afford a private berth, are all crammed together in the enclosed common area of the ferry. Heat blasts from the vent on the ceiling, cutting warmth through the damp air. In the corner, the bear biologist with the long beard reads a paperback book. Nearby, two Russian women who never seem to stop talking chatter as they pull bread and jam from their canvas bag. The sky outside lightens, the engine prattles louder. Anne sits up, takes a deep breath, and unzips her bag. Cabin fever, she wrote yesterday in her journal. She stands, dressed in the same polypropylene long johns she’s been wearing for days, and pulls on her same thick sweater and pair of wool army pants. She sniffs and realizes her clothes stink.

As she has every morning since she left, Anne wonders if she did the right thing by leaving. The umbilical cord is never really cut, Katherine, her mother, used to say. In a hundred other ways, Katherine often told Anne she could never get away, not really. That wherever she went, she’d still be who she was, so there was no sense in going. And besides, Katherine would say, what will I do without you? But Anne’s known for some time she would have to go.

She puts on her raincoat, grabs her knapsack and tiptoes around the few other sleeping bodies. She even musters a smile at the Russian women though they turn their heads and continue talking. Outside, the ferry passes a glacier, the aqua and black-lined face of which dips into the water below a layer of fog. Cold sprays of mist hit Anne’s skin, not so much rain or sleet, but more like traveling through a cloud. Coming north is like going backward in seasons, the weather up here far more wintry than in Bellingham. A wave of remorse rises to her throat. She feels icy mist on her skin and allows the water to run over her cheeks as tears well in her eyes. Maybe there is no right thing, she thinks.

In the distance, huge sapphire tips of two icebergs bob in the water; they tilt, lean and then roll over to expose another side. A chill creeps into Anne’s chest. From her daypack, she pulls out her journal, opens the front cover and reads a yellowed piece of paper, which she shelters with her coat from the rain. The paper is her birth certificate: State of Washington. Certificate of Live Birth. Child’s name: Anne Holloway. Date of Birth: October 21, 1989. Mother’s maiden name: Katherine Holloway. Father’s name: Ray Cramshaw.

Four years ago, when it became clear Anne needed work to support both herself and her mother, she had to get a social security card to get hired anywhere. Katherine finally admitted, having lied to Anne for years that the certificate was lost in a fire when she was a baby, that her birth certificate was actually hidden in a box in the crawlspace above the kitchen. Anne found the paper and questioned her mother about her dad. Katherine told Anne she was conceived in Alaska, in a town called Snug Harbor, and that her father, a boat captain, might still even live there, but she didn’t know for sure. Katherine also told Anne that trying to find her father would be of no use; she left because she had to. Anne pressed her mother to elaborate, to tell her more. But Katherine only walked up to her daughter and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. People don’t change, honey, Katherine said, not ever.

Anne folds her birth certificate inside the journal and leans against the bowrail of the boat. The ferry’s steamer stack billows white smoke, which blends in wavering ribbons into the low-slung clouds. The stack is painted with a midnight blue backdrop behind bright yellow stars. The Big Dipper and the North Star, the depiction of the Alaska state flag. How many times did she stare at that flag from her house on the hill in Bellingham? How many times has she dreamed of going North to find her father? How long has she wanted to find the other half of where she comes from?

Anne sighs and stares at the scenery: clouds, fogged-in mountains, silver-gray water. She wipes tears and mist away from her face; her cheeks are numb now from the cold. The ferry turns to starboard and Anne’s foot slips under her but she doesn’t lose her balance. She looks up to see they have entered a long thin inlet of the Sound. In the distance, fog lifts and the snowy side of a mountain reveals itself. A break of blue sky opens overhead. This, Anne realizes, is the final portion of her trip. This is Deception Bay. Today the ferry will arrive in Snug Harbor. From her pack, she pulls out her binoculars, a good pair she bought her first year working at the diner. She lifts the lenses to her eyes and focuses in.

Chapter 2

At seven in the morning, Ray Cramshaw stands at the stern of the F/V Legacy and watches the sky. Heavy clusters of clouds drift above him. To the east, the sky has lightened. A few stars remain and he spots the bright star of Polaris low at the horizon. When he squints at the stars, the crow’s feet around his eyes crease into deep lines, the wrinkles formed over the years not so much from smiling but from wincing. In Foul Strait, he can see remnants of the storm still blowing, the whitecaps flicker as they crest off the waves. The air is cool and cleansed. The storm has finally subsided from yesterday, when the winds blew at thirty knots and the swells stood sixteen feet. Maybe they can finally leave. They’ve been waiting two days in this little cove – so small it doesn’t even have a name – and the wait is getting to him.

For hours already, Ray’s been awake in his stateroom, fretting about the crabs in the hold and the condition of the few pots they left soaking near Foul Bay. Was it Nick who insisted on staying one day longer to set the last pots? The rest of the skippers managed to get underway before the storm hit; only the Legacy got caught. They’ll be lucky if they get half price for the crab now; their quality dying off a little more each hour they’re stuck. When he and Nick get back to Snug Harbor, they’ll hear a raft of crap from the other fishermen about having to wait out the storm.

Ray grabs his Lucky Strikes from inside his pocket. He taps the top of the box against his hand and uses the capstan as a shield while he strikes a match on the metal and lights his cigarette. He straightens his body and looks out to the sky. He inhales a long draw. The small sharp light of Venus still blinks far out above the stern. He blows out the smoke and pulls a piece of tobacco off his lip.

Ray walks the deck, checks the bolts on the davit, just to make sure they’re tight, and they are, they’re rusted tight. Rust forms out of absolutely nowhere, clamping down bolts, seizing levers, streaking into red pools that erode the deck boards. He smokes and walks to the bow, noticing the metal flaking off the anchor hawse, worse this year than last. But the chain still holds fast in the water, which is all one can really ask. Ray kicks at the hawse as he takes a long drag from his cigarette. He’s never quite gotten used to how fast things change, the constant progression of decay, especially in Alaska.

He leans forward against the bow rail, takes a final long draw from his cigarette, then with his thumb and forefinger pinches out the butt end before flicking it into the water. Ray always extinguishes the cigarette first – though he could easily throw it overboard to watch it sizzle in the water – because a sudden wind might blow a lit cigarette back on board and ignite a spilled streak of fuel, setting the whole boat ablaze. What would be worse than to burn alive and sink to your death at the same time?

Ray ducks inside the galley. Next to the sink is the bottle of bourbon he and Nick shared last night. By the second night, they had to break out the bottle for they could hardly stand each other. The bottle is half-empty and Ray tilts it toward the window to look at the amber light filtering through. It was good to just sit and drink, the two of them waiting out the storm. Ray sighs and pours himself a shot. He can’t quite fathom what made him agree to fish another day. What kind of skipper takes orders from his crew?

The forty-two foot purse seiner used to be called the Brenda Anne, his mother’s name, the boat inherited from his father. But when he met Katherine, everything changed.

I can’t be with a man whose boat is named after his mother, Katherine said, giggling. But he knew she was serious by the curved rise of her eyebrows over her bright blue eyes.

No, Ray said, It’s bad luck to change the name of a boat.

What’s in a name? And besides, in this case, it’ll be bad luck for you not to. She touched the side of his cheek, then leaned in and kissed him like a warm, misty breeze against his lips. She patted his cheek and leaned away. She won that battle, and she chose the name Legacy. He never should have given in; his luck got worse. He throws the shot of whiskey down his throat.

Down in the bunkroom, Nick is waking up. He stretches and yawns, scratches his thick straw-colored hair. He looks at his watch, then up at the porthole where muted light filters in. His head thrums a little and he rubs his temples as he listens to the sound of his father’s footsteps above him in the galley, the creaks map out the exact coordinates of where he moves – past the sink, at the stove, sitting down on the wooden bench. Nick’s not looking forward to facing him. He rolls off his bunk, pulls on his jeans and folded-over rubber Xtra-Toughs. His father’s only fifty-three years old, but Nick swears the man is turning to stone.

Perhaps because he drank too much, last night Nick suggested yet another possible solution to their fiscal and fishing woes: to leave Alaska and try for squid on the California coast.

Come on, Pop, Nick said, pouring a shot for each of them, we’ve been pulling up pot after pot and they’re not even full. We have to work twice as hard for half of what we used to get. It’s not worth it. And this shitty weather all the time. It’s killing me.

I’m not going to Half Moon Bay, Ray said, smacking the glass on the table. Those culls down there don’t know what fishing is. Fishing’s tough all over and if you think the weather here is bad, try fishing all day in solid fog. Besides, I don’t want the hassle of competing in a new market.

There’s competition because there is a market. In this fishery, you’re just up against the odds. Tri-Ocean owns half our fleet, plus most of the buyers. We’re the only independent, we’re little fish trying to take on big guns.

You want out, get out. But she’s still my boat. I’ll fish her how I please.

That’s always how Ray ends their arguments – she’s his. Nick listens as Ray steps down the companionway into the engine room, to check the bilge again, which he checked at least twice last night during the storm, even though they’re sheltered just fine in the cove.

Nick pinches the skin between his eyebrows, closes his eyes and presses hard. His head is pounding now. He focuses on the pain, picturing the ball of tension rising from the back of his neck, up to his forehead, getting smaller, tighter. It doesn’t take long, looking into the dark behind his eyes, before she comes to him, her long brown hair falling toward him, her face clear and calm. This image is the only vivid thing he can remember of his mother; the way she’d soothe him as a little boy when he had a bad headache like this. She’d lean over his bed, touch his face, and sing in her soft voice, Sail baby sail, out upon the sea, only don’t forget to sail back again to me. The memory comes often, especially after he’s had a hard night. He feels her presence and for a moment he longs for her. But she’s gone. Gone for, what, twenty-two or, he thinks, is it twenty-three, years now. Either way, he pulls his hand away from his face and opens his eyes.

In the engine room, two bare bulbs hang from black wires. The V8, 250 horsepower engine, an old Northern Lights, gets up to nine knots and is centered in the room like a trophy prize. Still in good condition, the engine’s pale yellow paint is clean and smooth. As he walks past, Ray pulls a rag out of his back pocket and wipes a film of oil off the piston valves. Examining the heads, Ray walks all the way around the engine, and on the other side, a cool dampness presses against his rubber boot. He looks down to see he’s ankle deep in pool of murky water. Ray looks over at the bilge pump near the front of the engine room. The pump is quiet and half-submerged in a brine of salt water and grease. The pump’s hose is loose, floating on top of the pool like a water snake.

Fuck, Ray whispers aloud, walking to the bilge. The clamp that holds the hose has corroded and split. Ray bends over and touches the pump. Ice cold. How long has it been like this? He reaches down into the water to flip the switch, and that’s when he notices something red wavering near his hand. He feels for it, then pulls up a red rag. The rag got stuck over the switch and tripped the pump, for what must be hours now. He glances behind his shoulder before he wrings the rag out and lobs it on top of the shelf. He won’t tell Nick about this; he doesn’t need another breakdown to be his fault.

As the float switch rises, the pump finally starts humming, and water spews all over the back of the engine room. Ray grabs the disconnected hose, but he can’t get a good grip because it’s covered with oil. Greasy water sprays into Ray face just as Nick slides down the ladder.

Jesus, what’s going on? Nick moves past the engine and turns off the bilge. The water stops spraying.

I don’t know, Ray says, still holding the hose. This hose clamp busted last night, I guess.

But there shouldn’t be so much water down here. Christ. Nick walks forward and rips open the bulkhead. He crawls through another pool of water into the bow compartment. A busted plank in the hull, right at the waterline, has popped like a fractured bone. Seawater seeps in, along with bits of kelp and debris.

Fucking wooden boats, Nick says. He hurries back to the engine room, grabs a crescent wrench from a shelf by the ladder, and fingers through a cardboard box to find a few rusted nails and a small piece of sheet metal. He crawls on his hands and knees back through the bulkhead, the icy water so cold it burns his wrists. He nails the metal over the busted plank with the head of the wrench. The leak stops.

In the engine room, Nick pulls the hose out of Ray’s hands, jams the hose back onto the pump, and wraps Ray’s fingers back around the hose.

Just hold this, Nick says. He digs through the box again to find another clamp. Once the clamp is on, Nick flips on the bilge and watches while the pump and hose work to suck up the pool of water.

How did this happen? Nick wipes his hands on his shirt, which is soaked with water and grease.

Ray shrugs his shoulders and wipes his face with the wet rag. Hell if I know, he says.

You were down here last night. Didn’t you notice water coming in?

There wasn’t any water.

What? You’re saying that plank busted open this morning when we’re not even underway?

Ray shrugs his shoulders again and looks down at his boots. Fuck if I know.

God, that’s such bullshit. Nick picks up the wrench, fighting an urge to whack Ray with it. He slams the wrench on the shelf and climbs up the ladder. Those times his father went below last night to check on the engine room, how did he not notice the bilge was busted? Nick looks at the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table and shakes his head. Huffing out of the galley, Nick kicks a coil of line on the aft deck with the toe of his boot, then looks at the clouds on the horizon. The storm front is finally moving south.

In the wheelhouse, Ray lights a cigarette and checks the radar before turning the engine over. He’s decided it’s more than high time to leave. He flips the anchor switch, then walks outside to the bow to help ease up the chain. The rattling noise stirs the water and a few inches under the surface, leafy fronds of seaweed, rockweed, and bull-kelp reach upward and sway in a translucent-green current. Ray stares at the water. From the forest of seaweed, a basketball-sized jellyfish rises, its clear body undulating below the surface. The clover-shaped innards of the creature’s belly tuck and expand, its filamentary tentacles stream underneath its body.

Fucking jellies, Ray says and spits into the water.

Chapter 3

Mattie Johnson walks to the window and pushes open the curtains. At seven in the morning the sun is just coming up, a weak mid-March sun, but at least sunrise is coming on earlier than it’s been all winter. Clouds loll in toward the harbor and drape themselves over the mountains, the clouds’ gray color barely discernible from that of the water’s.

At the boat basin, most of the slips are empty, the fleet gone almost a month now, fishing for crabs. The boardwalk above the basin is empty, too, except for the few Herring gulls hunkered down against the cold. Another gray morning, Mattie thinks, squinting at the pewter ribbon of the horizon running between the gray sky and grayer water. But at the horizon, a white elongated shape glints on the surface and the glimmer catches Mattie’s eye. A boat. A returning seiner? No, too early yet, they shouldn’t be back until tomorrow afternoon. Maybe the boat is a tender, waiting to process a catch? But all the canneries around Snug Harbor are closed. Could be anything, Mattie shrugs, turning away from the window to put a log on the fire.

In the other room, Hank Elnen is still deeply asleep, the snores that drove Mattie from bed audible even with these walls between them. The snoring is like the sounds the cannons make when forest rangers shoot into the hills to force avalanches – the horrible whiz and hard thunk, the subsequent crackling of ice and snow. In the kitchen, listening to him, Mattie has an urge to shake Hank and tell him to just go sleep on his boat, for good this time. But instead, she fills a kettle with water. It’s silly to break up a ten year relationship over such a petty thing as snoring, though some days, any excuse seems as good as another. Mattie waits for the water to boil. She looks in the mirror over the kitchen sink and gathers her hair into a bun. The grayness always surprises her and she tugs at some of the strands, tilting her head and estimating how many more gray hairs have sprouted this winter. A few times she’s considered dyeing her hair because the silver makes her look older than her forty-four years, but ever since the day Hank teased her for turning gray before she was fifty, telling her it’s a sure sign of white folks’ guilt, she refuses to change. She loops a rubber band around the knot and lets the bun settle loosely at the nape of her neck. She grabs the teakettle off the burner before the hot water starts to scream.

In the bedroom, Hank sleeps with his mouth open, his lips relaxed and loose, the noise coming out of him as if from another world. His face is peaceful and boyish, his black, thick hair scattered like raven feathers over his face. Hank breathes deep and turns his head to one side, then back again as he exhales and stretches his arms eagle-like across the span of the bed. He falls into a dream and his eyes begin to move under his almond-shaped lids. His dark lashes flutter. In his dream, he runs through snowdrifts, his fur-lined boots catch in the holes gouged in the snow with each step. He is without snowshoes or his sled and his dogs are far ahead of him, barking wildly in echoes muted by the berms. But then, as it is in dreams when one scene cuts to another, Hank arrives at a stand of Western hemlock in the middle of nowhere, in the center of all the whiteness. The dogs have stopped barking and only the wind makes a sound as it blows through the tops of the trees where the tiny cones have bunched together by the hundreds, hanging like grapes. The grove makes a shelter from the cold and Hank enters it by sliding down a snowy ledge. His wet boots land on a bed of browned needles. The layer of earth above the permafrost is soft and enveloping and inside the trees it is silent save for the hiss of wind. Hank turns on his side and finally stops snoring.

Mattie settles at the window with a big book and balances her tea mug on top. She’d like to be the kind of person who would read this big, classic text, which Hank handed her months ago after he read the whole thing in only a week. But the truth is, she’d rather use the book as a table for her mug and stare out the window. The white boat on the horizon passes Peterson Point and now she can see it’s the ferry, the Columbia, coming in for its first run all winter.

In the bedroom, Hank wakes up, reaches across the bed and feels Mattie’s absence. He opens his eyes to look at the clock. His stomach sinks; he knows he’s awakened her; otherwise she wouldn’t be up this early. How many times this month has he woken her with his snoring? This time there might be a price to pay, a morning of anger, maybe, or a whole day of silence. The thought is enough to make him want to stay in bed, but he knows he’ll have to face her some time. He puts on his pants and sweatshirt. When he walks out of the bedroom, he’s pleasantly surprised to see Mattie smile at him from the window, her face soft in the wintry light.

The ferry’s coming in, she says, and Hank goes over to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. He massages her and feels her give into his strength as they watch the boat make its way up Deception Bay.

Mattie rolls her head along the back of Hank’s hands as he squeezes her muscles.

Beware the Ides of March, you poor culls, Hank says, patting Mattie’s shoulder before he shuffles off into the kitchen to find coffee.

Mattie sighs, both because the massage is over and because of Hank’s habit of spouting off allusions she doesn’t understand. She follows him into the kitchen for more tea.

You know I don’t know what that means.

The date today, March fifteenth. Hank shakes coffee grounds from a glass jar into a filter cone that rests on top of his mug. It’s the day Caesar’s troops betrayed him. He pours hot water into the cone and watches it drip, then pours the rest of the water into Mattie’s teapot.

Oh yeah, how did they betray him? Mattie asks.

They told his secrets, Hank says, winking at her before he takes his first sip.

Chapter 4

At the foothills of two large mountains, the buildings of Snug Harbor, all of them gray and water-stained, are arranged in a wide curve around the harbor. The town is quaint, a little village nestled in a crook of mountains, except for the fact that the mountains look like they could swallow the town whole in half a minute. The ferry approaches the jetty wall, and the boardwalk and main street appear, as well as the docks along the boat basin, which seem abandoned. The east end of the basin has the most potential, where set aside from the town, a big steel-sided warehouse looms and blue crane hovers over a coal barge moored at the end of a concrete pier.

These surroundings are familiar to Anne. Many of the small Alaskan fishing towns along the Inside Passage have looked just as water-stained and run down as this, the kinds of towns that made her wonder what the people did there, if they did anything at all. Snug Harbor could be any one of those little fishing towns, with only a few people milling along the docks and weaving their way past piles of snowdrifts. The snow, she notices, is old, end-of-the-season snow, the kind that exhaust fumes from car engines have spotted black, mixed in with months’ worth of gravel and dirt and soot. But the town looks to be what she’d expected, weathered and full of stories.

As the ferry comes to dock, the hull bumps against the tire buffers fastened to the pier. Anne heaves on her backpack and stands, straightening the straps and fastening the plastic clips together. Blood drains downward into her body. The dizziness happens so quickly she reaches out her hand and steadies herself against the railing. At first she thinks she simply put on her pack too fast, yet as the dizziness moves into her belly, she knows she’s not lightheaded, but scared. This town is different. This town is her final destination. Here she’s going to have to find out what people actually do and who they have been. The deckhands throw thick ropes to a few men who stand on the pier ready to catch the lines and secure them on the dock. The other passengers crowd along the railings and wait for the deckhands to open the gate.

Anne follows the crowd, stepping down the ramp and onto the concrete. Her legs wobble under her, as much from her anxiety as from her days at sea. She pulls a piece of paper out from her jacket pocket to read, for the hundredth time, the words, Mattie Johnson, The Mooring, Snug Harbor, AK, written by her mother in ballpoint pen, the letters loopy and shaky. The information is the result of Anne’s barrage of questions when she decided she was going to Alaska no matter what her mother said. Fine, Katherine huffed, handing Anne the scrap of paper. If you must go, then find this woman. Mattie will know where your father is. That’s all Katherine would say and after that she watched her mother fall into the worst depression she had seen yet. Anne tucks the paper back in her pocket and keeps walking up the pier until she is stopped by a sign, hand-painted on a piece of faded driftwood. It says Snug Harbor and points the way with a red arrow. She stares at the sign as the other ferry passengers walk on either side of her, all of them eager to get to town.

Chapter 5

Ray stands at the helm of the Legacy with a mug of coffee in his hand. After pulling pots this morning in Foul Bay, he tries to calculate how big their haul might be, imagining the crabs down in the hold slow in their movements, their big front claws folded in front of them, spittle bubbling from their mouths. He’s seldom right when he tries to guess their weight and even then the tender boss never buys the crabs at the price per pound initially set. After their three days of waiting out the storm, many of those first crabs in the hold will be dead or rotten. Ray doesn’t have the heart to check and see. The tender will dock their pay, and there’s nothing that can be done. A storm is a storm, an act of nature he’s powerless over. He sips from his mug, places it on the dash, and focuses out the window, where he looks for color other than gray. But all he sees are dirty-looking gulls following the boat, and dark, looming haystack rocks jutting out of the water, and the endless array of snow-covered mountains.

In the galley, Nick has dozed off. He’s slumped over his empty breakfast plate at the table and he’s sleeping the deep sleep brought on by hours of monotonous work. His body is slack, and he rocks back and forth with the movement of the boat. He dreams in flickering images; squalls of waves breaking through the scuppers in the stern, slipping rubber boots on slime, froths of spray, the metal crabpot crashing against the bulwark, ice breaking off in chunks from the rails. A coil of line, looped on the deck in a perfect circle, unravels and grabs a foot. He hears the splash of a man overboard and then sees himself, the line wrapped around his ankle, the rough ocean closing over him just as a steel grapple breaks through the surface to save him. But the grapple is out of reach. He descends, sinking downward along with the heavy steel pot to which he is lashed. He hears a voice crying out, but instead of fighting to live, he surrenders to the quiet dark world under the hull of the boat. As he slides down, he hears the voice again and this time, he recognizes his father yelling his name, Nick, come on!

The Legacy slows. Nick wakes up with a start. Out the porthole, Wondriff Island passes by. The island is a big snow-covered thumb sticking out of the water, barren of life, especially in late winter, but it’s a landmark seiners use as their meeting place with the tender. The hull of the converted Bering crabber, the Pacifica, anchored in the water, appears before the porthole. Nick rubs his eyes and scratches his head to get rid of the feeling of the dream. He jumps up from the table, leaving his dirty plate, and ducks out the galley door.

At the bow, Nick grabs the bowline and inside the wheelhouse, Ray sees his son, eager to throw out the line, his cheeks reddened, his hands outstretched. Always quick on his feet when it’s time to get weighed and paid. Ray pushes on the throttle. The engine groans and Ray would like to groan, too, steering the Legacy next to the Pacifica, her bulwark a full boat taller than his seiner. Outside, Nick, throws a mooring line out to the tender’s deckhand who reaches for it with a grapple and pulls it around one of the cleats. Ray steps outside to make sure they’re tied on. He looks up. The tender dwarfs the seiner like a humpback whale and her calf surfacing for air, the smaller of the two so dependent on the larger. Ray walks to the stern where the twenty crab pots are lashed to the rails. He grabs the ladder to the Pacifica and climbs up. Stepping aboard the tender, he feels it, the dynamics of power tilting. His livelihood is now at their mercy. He heads inside to find the skipper.

The crane from the tender swings the large hopper over the stern of the Legacy. On deck, Nick grabs the line and guides the steel basket down into the hold until it hits bottom. He climbs down the ladder and once inside, Nick grabs crab after crab out of its plastic tote and throws each one in the hopper. As the crabs pile up on top of each other, their tan-colored bodies come alive, their spindle-legs stretching and grating against the metal of the basket, their pincers raised and ready for battle. Nick notes that some of the crabs are awfully lifeless, their claws folded in on themselves and their bodies stiff when he pitches them. But he pretends he doesn’t notice, he just keeps tossing crabs. When all the totes are empty, Nick looks up to the tender where he gives a thumbs up to one of deckhands above. The crane reels up and swings the hopper back onto the deck of