March of Time and Skin (chapter excerpt.)

The boat was rocking so bad you could run up and down the door frames. People like to imagine the ocean as being blue and beautiful. I used to imagine it that way. When you're that far out at sea the water is black. Day or night it is black and deadly looking, like obsidian in slow motion. Black as far as you could see. Everyone was grabbing their survival suits. Some were crying and some were scribbling down their wills. I laid in my rack and lit up. Let them fire my corpse. I sat back and thought how it figured that I would end out there. I masturbated one last time, lit another and closed my eyes. If the boat capsized then their survival suits were useless. The boat crashed through the swells and you could hear the waves roaring into the sides. My last thought before I made myself sleep was Angela.

It was calm and dark. I didn't know what to expect. There was no light or movement. I heard nothing. I reached out and pulled the curtain back and stood in the dark. Then I felt it, a gentle rocking beneath my feet. I walked to the door and went outside.

It was warm out there. I was shirtless. The Sun sat dark red on the horizon and it was huge, and the black water stretched out to reach it. I lit a smoke and held the handrail; watched the horizon melt around the Sun. How small we were against the grace of the heavens. Our petty dreams, our need for self. Our weak assurances.

I was the only one out there. I saw a whale emerge from the water and twist out there in front of the red. It hung there upside down in front of the Sun, it hung there careless and lazy, totally oblivious to us, to the human refuse on the boat, sacrificing our luck and lives for a goddamned dollar. It went back through and my heart swelled in my chest so fast that it cracked my bones. Something happened to me which I could not understand. I wept. I stood there and wept at the beauty of what I saw. I wept when I thought that the moment was meant for me and me alone, as I badly wanted it to be that way. I wanted to be chosen by the Gods there, to be pulled out amongst the clean cold blackness of the water, to stand naked on the back of the whale before the harmlessness of a Sun which was now trained for damage. I wanted that scene, I wanted to be transcended into that scene forever. I wanted everything to be beautiful again. I wanted to be beautiful again.

I never told anybody about the whale, ever. That day we circled the Aleutian Islands and headed inward over Alaska's horn. It was the first land we had seen in over a week. They were dead, white capped volcanoes atop small isles. It was unlike anything I had seen in the contiguous states. It was a completely different planet. We were up there now, during the six months of light. We were on the southern end of Alaska, so the Sun would only fade out for about 40 minutes, then jump back up.


...The boat slowed into the bay and set anchor next to the processor. A plank was drawn and secured. That day in the galley, the lady who hired us was choppered in she and introduced us to the main foremen. They were both young guys with attitudes. They had already been at sea for four months and they were salty. Their eyes sunk into us like dirty teeth into clean food. Then we all walked the plank and sat for the main medic's lecture, listening to him spew out bullshit about him being able to recognize us by our coughs within a week. He talked about how filthy the fish were. He said that if a scale would reach into a slice on our fingers then it was possible to lose the whole hand. I didn't like him. I knew he was perverted, but it was his eyes I didn't like. They were beady and they peered at you over a fat, hairy face. He went on about the billions of tons of salmon:"Never will you see so many fish..."