The Trouble With Bernie

The Trouble with Bernie

Dearest Marksmen of Historical Accuracy,

Campbell River, it must be noted, is almost as far away from anything as a person can get in North America. It's not as far away as say, Horsefly, or Castlegar, or Duncan, and not nearly as far away as Fair Harbour; yet if we are being honest, which in all honesty we hope very much to be accepted as such, Campbell River is not as close to anything as Vancouver is, certainly light years away from Kelowna's proximity to any and all action, to say nothing of Kamloops and Prince George.

Obviously, since the readers are discerning Canadians who, given their druthers, can tell who is who and what is what, we subscribe wholeheartedly to Eastern Centrism and place Toronto at the centre of Canada, with Montreal a bright shining satellite, and some few hick towns around it like PEI and New Brunswick. Alberta and British Columbia, being fantasies in the minds of the savages who live there, only gain notice when the Prime Minister gives them the finger on his way out of town.

Snuggled within that foggy grey myth is a land that one must cross the sea to reach, at once risking long days on the mountain highways in wait for the next passage, and threatening one's health with the ever-suspicious cafeteria food. It is not the river Styx by any means but, being so far from Toronto, one could suspect that a piece of their soul had been lost in the crossing.

In the time of which we dare speak, a disembarking soul had first to navigate the treacherous maze of Nanaimo and then make the choice to turn south toward the paradoxical Capitol of BC, Victoria, or the fabled north of Vancouver Island, Campbell River. At this time, only the old twisted Island Highway existed, which wound it's way along the water through numerous villages and hamlets and places marked by little more than a pub, or gas station.

This highway also slithered through Campbell River along the water front, offering access via more ferries to other nearby islands. Indeed, Quadra Island, easily seen across the narrows, only occasionally hidden by fog or storm, could be accessed in just this way. At the dock where Quadra Island Ferry loaded vehicles could also be found a tiny gas bar which serviced the little public docks. There, a mythical giant, in the form of a little old man afflicted with gout, serviced the big 120 ft tug boats. It was there also that one could have found our now fabled protagonist, a pudgy young man with collegiate airs, wistfully spinning his wheels, steadfastly undecided about his fate, but brainlessly accepting whatever came along.

Many harsh expletives come to mind looking back on the lad but, it is incumbent upon the author to be circumspect about it, since the readers can't yet know how easily the youth could have avoided the unnecessary risks to his own life, how he could just as easily have enjoyed the pleasant company of the young women he went to school with, or perhaps adventured at university instead of choosing 'the road blocked off' so to speak; not really “the road less travelled” but more of a “that's not a road” sensibility. It is with that lackadaisical not-smartery in play that we catch up with our hero.

The gas dock itself was no more than 110 ft, and the tug boat that slid up alongside was longer yet. I dutifully stood nearby and handed over the pump to the grunt who stayed behind to fuel up, then went inside to speak with the Captain. This particular day was wet and cold, the ocean brine a bleak ultramarine blue. From the end of the dock I had looked south into Desolation Sound, and found little but a nearly black wall of stormy bluster, with sheets of silvery microbursts spilling out of the clouds on to the sea. Looking north past the mouth of the Campbell River itself, I could see little else, and the Georgia Straight between Vancouver Island and Quadra Island funnelled that storm into Seymour Narrows. An angry tempest had sprung up in the Straight, that whipped the rain at your face hard enough to warrant putting up your hand to ward it off, so the grunt was in rain gear, while the rest of the crew scooted from the cabin to the inside of the office. I raced back in myself to get the billing done, saying little to them because Arnie had already given me shit for speaking the last time. My unfortunate habit of saying- well, speaking in general, weighed heavily on my mind that day.

“No Arnie today?” the Captain of the tug said. He was a tall guy, thick beard. Not burly but with a presence. It was his comments about me that got Arnie pissed, since his one fill up today was worth more than I would get paid this year. The windows had all fogged up with the eight wet guys breathing.

“Uh, no,” I replied, “He's off today.”

The Captain turned to a crew member, a much older fellow,

“He'll probably stop by in a bit. He knew we were coming. Go take a break and ask in a couple of hours. The rest of you take a break except for chores. Those get done first, or don't come back.”

He turned back to me, “We're gonna tie up here for a few hours.”

Then they all stalked out of the office.

Only the older crew mate stayed behind. He stepped closer and said,

“Arnie usually picks me up a package. There's no drinking allowed on the ship, so I have an understanding with him. He'll be along in a bit.”

I nodded and smiled. We pretty much stayed that way for those long hours. There was no other business, on account of the weather. The rest of the crew had gone up to the Discovery Inn, the “D.I.” after the chores were completed, and the old guy went there too for a while. Arnie showed up near the end of my shift with the package.

A white haired old gentleman, Arnie had been a big wig in the Chevron corporation before he retired to run this gas dock. Before that he had owned his own tug company, but had suffered serious misfortune at the hands of a sleazy accountant. Arnie lost everything. The accountant had bolted from the country leaving Arnie, young family and all, in crippling debt. His house and possessions, his fleet of tugs, deep-sea and small ones, now gone, the story of how he and his wife and kids spent their time off collecting pop bottles from the beach for extra money affected me deeply. A short, grumpy old man, Arnie was nevertheless a giant in my eyes. He had completed his business outside the office with the crew and then came inside to talk to me.

“I have to tell you this, because I said I would, but listen to me when I tell you it's a stupid idea. Only an idiot would consider it, and I'm going to think less of you if you go ahead with it. This company does runs off of the west coast- the kind nobody talks about- and they are short-handed for one leaving tomorrow. If you're interested, since it's your day off, you can report back here tonight, and you'll be transported to the tug. It's a four day trip. The money is very good, but these deep sea trips are always risky.”

“Alright. I'm in,” I said. Arnie just walked away.

I grabbed some clothes and a couple of provisions and arrived back at the dock to find the “crew”. One of them was too drunk to know where he was. I suspect he was kidnapped. Two were local Haida boys and the three remaining guys were scruffy white guys. “White” was only technically accurate, since these rapscallions were no more like me than the Haidas were. One of them was a burly older guy with short cropped silver hair, a round Slavic face and suspiciously clever eyes. The final two were skinny unshaven thugs I had seen around over the years. Even the DI, as dingy and downtrodden as it was at the time, was too classy for them. Of the First Nations guys, one was older, maybe thirty but not weathered in the face, as some get. The other was in his mid-twenties. Their black hair was straight, and their eyes smiling but wary. Both had dressed for working outside, and carried their own rain gear.

The Captain came along and neglected the “once over” look of appraisal with the obligatory “This is going to be great!” statement. Because it was not going to be great. He nodded at our ride, and walked away from us.

He had rented a van to drive us to Fair Harbour, where we would be ferried out to the tug. It was a four hour drive, destined to seem like a lifetime. The older one, Bernie, had a gift of gab- the kind of gift you want to give back after a few minutes- and kept up a jovial tirade of lies and bad jokes the entire way- for five hours. Maybe ten minutes into it he homed in on me and pried that I had gone to college for a bit, leading to the group naming me “College Fag”.

Five hours.

There were fights in the van. Two of the younger guys got into it just this side of Sayward. Bernie looked at me like we were debating who would change the tv channel so I said,

“What? You're closer.” And then he broke it up.

Then the kidnapped fella woke up about an hour into the trip to Zeballos, which was all dirt road after Woss. He jolted upright in the front seat, gripping the dashboard and looking around in alarm.

“AYE!” he yelled, “What the hell is this? Huh? Who the fuck are you?” he demanded of the driver.

“Hey, I'm just the driver,” he replied, “I don't know anything.”

“Well what the fuck am I doing here, and where are we?”

“Easy now,” Bernie said, and made to smooth things over.

“Fuck you, Bernie! I told Angel I DON'T KNOW where the platinum is. Nobody fuckin knows where it is. It's been lost for 200 fuckin years. Where the fuck are we? Stop the van, asshole!”

Bernie kept trying to calm him. The others looked at each other nervously, or perhaps wondered about the platinum he mentioned. Weirdly, I knew what he was talking about.

“You don't want me to stop here, man,” said the driver, “We're in the middle of nowhere.”

“I'll fuckin kill you! Stop the van!”

“I'm not gonna-”

Smack! The front seat guy punched the driver in the face, and then made to grab the wheel. The driver stomped on the gas pedal, though, as a galvanic reaction, slamming all of us backwards. Then he began punching the guy back, with one hand on the wheel. He tried to keep one eye on the road, but Front Seat recovered and began punching at him some more. Bernie undid his seat belt and lunged forward in an attempt to control Front Seat, but only lost his balance and grabbed the wheel by mistake.

He was able to push Front Seat's face backwards with one meaty hand, but couldn't see what he was doing. The van fish-tailed wildly along the dirt road, pitching the rest of us one way and then back.

“LET GO OF THE FUCKIN WHEEL!” screamed the driver, who finally had the mortal sense to slam on the brakes. We skidded to a halt just before the graded edge of the road and the ditch. He reefed the gear shift into park, undid his seat belt and lunged at Front Seat, punching him madly as he struggled with the door latch. Bernie struggled to get up, but the driver leaned on him.

Finally, the door popped open, and Front Seat tumbled roughly out of the van. The driver sat back, put it into gear and slammed on the gas. The passenger door slammed shut. Bernie climbed back into his seat.

We all looked at him.

“Well,” he said, “I don't know who Angel is. I just told him that story about the platinum. I read it in a book about BC, years ago. Some prospector misplaced a 20 lb bucket of it out near Tulameen. Never found it again. But I mean, nobody even knows if it's true. You'd have to be pretty misguided to take it seriously.”

Well I'm pretty misguided, I thought. That sounds like BC, to me, alright.

Though I was no tough guy, I had still grown up in a time when the national homicide rate tracked nicely along the consumption of alcohol, in a disturbing way. The previous generation had grown up in the shadow of WWII and the VietNam War and the Korean War and those shell-shocked people, although they tried to maintain the utopian potential they were sold as children, were angry and drunk.

The high schools I attended had fist fights almost daily among the kids, and I had seen kids challenge teachers to fights. After high school, as a taxi driver, I had seen people fighting on a very consistent basis. I had fights in my taxi more than once and I'd been attacked myself more than once. So this scene was not as new or frightening as it might seem at first. As we drove away into the dark, I could see Bernie taking note of how unconcerned I was by the disturbance.

Zeballos was a small and very pretty town described by our driver as, “So fucking far from anywhere that the names are actually meaningless.” I mean he was right, a little bit. Many people from Campbell River couldn't tell you what a “Woss” was, let alone where to turn once you got there to get to the other places they didn't know about. It was the west-est part of the west coast, next to Kyuquot ('kai yoo cut'). Once you chugged out past Catala Island, your next stop was Japan, or Russia. We stopped in Zeballos because it was the only place to refuel for the extra two hours to Fair Harbour.

In Fair Harbour, one could have noted that the term “harbour” was a bit unfair. It was a parking lot with a government dock and a few fishing boats. A float plane rocked gently on the misty ocean as we piled out of the van and stretched.

As the van peeled away, Bernie remarked,

“Seems like he was in a hurry to get away.”

“Whatever we are being sacrificed to,” I said, looking around for the bones of other victims, “Doesn't leave any evidence behind.”

Ahead of us, the sea lapped against the dock deceptively.

By then, an older Haida fellow, dressed in bright yellow Helly Hansen rain gear, came up to us and addressed the two guys in our gang.

“Sinoo dang heegung,” he said to them.

“Dee lagung,” they replied, and then carried on a conversation in Haida, sometimes pointing to us. Before long the older one gestured to us,

“Follow me,” he said in English, “I'll take you out to the tug.”

Down the dock we went to a pristine looking 16' zodiac with twin Mercury 200's on it. The driver sat on a saddle-type console seat in the middle while we piled around it and in the bow. Then out into the dark sea we were taken.

I found out later that he took us only some 50 kilometres to a nameless cove on the inside of Union Island. There, the 150 ft deep sea tug waited for us on relatively calm water. We clambered aboard as best we could. In the inky blackness of the near-open ocean just before dawn the lights of the massive ship almost looked like a small city to my fresh eyes. The zodiac thundered away but, as the tug engines started up, the twin Mercurys sounded more like the buzzing of mosquitoes. The entire ship shook and I got the sense that I only heard the deep thrumming that was audible to humans, that most of the rumble shook the oceans below our threshold for perception.

I stood almost as far back on the ship as one could get. There were two massive hatches in between me and the starboard rail, both locked down tight. I guessed they would be how the engines were hoisted in. There was perhaps 25' between port and starboard rails, and the precisely cut rubber tires that rimmed the ship added another three feet to each edge all the way around. I barely had time to look up past the main cabins to the fore when the Mate, Dane, began yelling at us.

“Shut, the fuck, up!” he barked. Bernie had been cracking a joke. Dane was tall and thin as a whip. Couldn't have been more than thirty years old or so, he had some grey stubble on his chiselled jawline. I didn't look too closely, but beneath his scowl lay cold blue eyes.

“Shut the fuck up, or you're going overboard. I don't have time to coach you fucking nimrods on every little thing so anybody who doesn't catch on is going for a swim.

“Don't even fucking say it!” he yelled, “I know where Captain Vero got you and I know nobody will come looking for you. You do what I say when I fucking say it. Don't ask any stupid questions. Do what I tell you the way I tell you to do it, and you'll all be well paid. Keep that in mind. Now fucking follow me and speak when I speak to you.”

The ship had turned to the east and began roaring east. Dawn was breaking by then, but not like the Cat Stevens song, not like George Harrison would have sung about. It had begun to rain big, fat 'fuck you' rain, now coming down hard, and the wind had picked up. Beyond the lights of the ship, the sky was dark but for a flash of lightening far to the south. Dane led us to different parts of the ship, showed us where to stow our shit and made us copy him at basic tasks like tying things down.

No troubles for me, obviously, but the others struggled at times. Dane caught me coaching one of the Haida boys with some knots.

“You! College Faggot! Get your fat ass up to the bridge and tell the Captain I sent you!”

I nodded and left, but not before Abe, the younger Haida guy, nudged me and nodded thanks.

This tug was a 150' Seaspan King Twin-Screw. The bridge was sixty or so feet forward, up a metal-grate stairway to the Quarterdeck above the Dress Cabin (the room where you stored and got into your rain gear), along the side of the massive funnel, past the life raft and up another stairway. You could walk all the way around the bridge but I just opened the door and went in. The Wheel, where the Captain was seated, was off to the right behind a well-worn seat on a pedestal. Behind the Wheel was a bank of gauges and instruments, including the radar. Beyond the thrumming of the engine could be heard the two-way radio occasionally barking out chatter from other local sea traffic.

The Captain was an iconic image of a sea-going man, hardly a caricature. In his late 50's, thin and worn by the sea, his grey hair, moustache, and sailor's grey sweater adorned him as froth adorns the deep green waves. Smoking a rollie, he barely turned to address me,

“Ya I heard him. Go get me a coffee, black.”

This I did, and right away. The Mess was below the Dress Cabin, and aft of the kitchen, but only sort of. Technically they were the same room. It took a few minutes to find everything, but I soon had a decent cup of coffee squared away and brought it up to him. He looked straight out to sea in his seat, and fumbled in his left hand with his next rollie. He rolled it one-handed as I watched.

“You'll stay up here most of the time,” he said after a minute, “A run like this needs two sets of eyes, and my only other reliable set is watching the degenerates we picked up today. I have to sleep and eat sometimes, so you'll watch the screws while I do.”

“Don't ask too many questions,” he said with a glance I had seen before. The blunt frankness of staring directly into your eyes, but from the side, with little else but a raised eyebrow; a sort of 'you really don't wanna know where we're going' kind of look; A 'You're going to need plausible deniability when this is over,' look; A 'don't make me say this out loud', look. I nodded.

Even as oblivious as I generally was, the awareness that I was now on the front lines of the trafficking industry had not escaped me. As of that moment, there was no inkling as to what I was now helping to traffic, but my guess was cars, and probably hashish from Afghanistan. The west coast of BC was ideal for this work because of how secluded most of it was, but also because the old logging industry had built roads through all of it. Big deep sea tugs like this one were used for pulling barges of materials across the Pacific from the South East Asian producers.

Nor had I failed to notice just how out of place I felt once again. A smart young man would have avoided work like this, because the people who worked in it would almost all be criminals. They would not be the run of the mill small town gangsters, though; not like I was acquainted with as a taxi driver. These grim ronin would be more professional, more objective, and certainly more ruthless. Dane, I could sense without being told, really would pitch someone over the side if they became too troublesome. It didn't change my disposition, really, because as long as I did what was required of me, I was certain of my basic value. Compared to Front Seat Guy, or Skinny, I felt like I was safe- relatively safe- from random disposal.

Underneath it all, I had a powerful need to see, for myself, who these people were. It was something I could but barely put words to, something that I would not have tried to make sense of because it did not rise to consciousness enough to verbalize. I understood that, to be a writer, one required experience. It was well-known that Melville did not simply write about men on ships from any academic re-telling. He could only have worked on ships himself. In my position, it seemed self-evident that in order to write about people, one must have experience of them. In this way I may have been able to say why I was there, when Arnie had so clearly disapproved of it, but mostly I felt no need to question it. This would not be a permanent life for me, but it was right where I was supposed to be right then.

“Now, you don't need to know too much,” the Captain said, “The ship knows how to stay on course. Even so, it's best if you study those maps,” he pointed to the table off to the left of the Cabin stairs, which was covered in charts, “And that one with constellations on it. If something goes wrong, which is pretty likely on a run like this, you'll be good to go.”

I picked at the big chart of the Pacific Ocean.

“How long does it take to float around this northern current?” I asked.

“Depends,” he said after a pause. I almost think he was impressed, “It doesn't really have any centrifugal force, so if the ship zig zagged at all well. Shit, let's put it this way: near the middle, say a hundred miles out from the center, it could take a week. Out maybe a thousand miles, maybe a couple or few weeks. But if you drift between the north and south gyres, you could be out there for fifty years without ever spotting land. And that's if you're in a ship like this. A little raft would get sucked into the middle, into the Garbage Patch, and you'd never be seen again.”

“We're heading straight west about 200 miles from the Gyre, and then coming straight back. Hopefully it's a nice calm trip.”

The trip certainly started out that way, for me. The Captain was talkative, even if he was harsh at times, and even if he explained more than he should have. I learned the charts, the controls and the feel of the ship and the engines and currents. Since we had no tow, we made good time.

Sitting in the well-worn Captains chair, fairly high off of the floor of the Bridge, looking out of the very solid and sectioned windows to a flat horizon of Pacific Ocean, I could see nothing else in any direction. The seas were calm right then, so it was straight on till morning with almost no chop. The rain had quit toward evening, so Dane could be heard blistering the cosmos with verbal abuse at the crew.

There was a fleshy smack, at one point, and then a gruesome laugh as Dane belittled one of them, probably Skinny, the other younger white guy, since Bernie and the other one were witty enough to avoid that kind of treatment, and the Haidas generally performed as requested. Bernie protested the treatment of the guy briefly, but piped down when Dane turned on him,

“Shut up, shithead, or you're next!”

Out front of me, the ocean pretended to be my friend, but I knew a little bit of history, so was aware that it was all an act. That bitch was going to turn on me, and I had better be ready. The heavily rubber-tired bow was twenty feet up from the water, just laughing it off at the moment, but the sun has died a bloody death and the stars were obscured by clouds. Somewhere ahead was Japan, Korea and Russia, but they were a long, long way away.

I cleaned a lot. Slept, ate, drank coffee and endured the jeering of the scum from below. The Haidas, Abe and Ronnie, were pretty nice. They laughed at me as well, but not in the hostile way Bernie and Skinny did. They were just as quick to laugh at each other, or themselves, as they were at me. The white guys, the 'G'danga', as they called us, were not so sanguine. If you laughed at the G'danga, they became dangerous.

Not more dangerous than Dane, though. The Captain called up from the Quarterdeck, the next day,

“All ahead negative!” and I remembered to back the screws off slowly. If he had wanted to reverse he would have called, 'All back one quarter,” He didn't because, as Dane had said he would, he threw one of the idiots over the rail.

Then he protested to the Captain that we were rescuing him.

“You made your point,” Captain said, “Have the others fish him out.”

They dragged Skinny out of the freezing water and took him downstairs. The Captain ordered me to treat him for hypothermia. Right? Because why wouldn't I know how to do that?

I did as I was told because, well I did know what to do. Bernie came along and, as the engines roared back to life, gave Skinny an earful of advice. Skinny had begun to complain again but Bernie cut him off,

“You stupid bastard,” he began, “You ain't got even one lick of sense, do you? Did you actually think he was all talk? Lord t'underin Jesus! Even the College kid could tell you Dane ain't no joke. Huh?” He looked at me.

I shrugged, as if to say he was right. Bernie continued. I stuck a thermometer in Skinny's mouth and a cup of hot tea in his hands.

“Literally too stupid for words,” Bernie said, “The only reason he didn't just shank you or break your scrawny pencil-neck was the inconvenience of your corpse! The ocean is just easier.”

He chuckled and to me he said, “I'll tell you what, boy. I've been getting myself into trouble all my life, and even I know that when a guy like Dane tells you not to fuck with 'em, you just take it as good advice.”

Then to Skinny he said,

“Keep your mouth shut and do what he tells you.”

The Captain called me back up to the Bridge.

After that, the winds picked up and the waves turned into rollers, which got bigger and bigger until one had to admit a certain amount of anxiety about it. They continued to grow until it took a full 10 minutes to get from one trough to the next. In the rain and darkness, to top of the next swell was actually too far away to see, and from the top of the swell to the bottom of the trough was roughly 100 ft, according to the readings from the buoys. The first night of this was pretty hard on the nerves.

The next night of them had the added, bonus-stress, of the feeling that this might go on for a really long time. Dane came up with a coffee for me, as the Captain was sleeping. I must have been whiter than normal because he said,

“It would be pretty strange if you weren't scared. Most guys put up a bravado, but you're just up front about it, eh?”

I nodded.

“Me too,” he said, “The sea prefers people like us. It takes care of us. The fear is just the ocean's way of saying, 'Look! I want to show you something important,'” He nodded at the rollers in front of us, “Do you notice anything?”

“Actually, yeah. It felt like every seventh wave or so had a kind of a reset, like it was starting over or something. It seems to pause before it begins again.”

“Ah, see? Good! The sea is talking to you. It talks to everyone out here, but most people only watch the instruments. Too bad you went to college. You would have made a good sailor.”

“Give me 5 percent rudder to starboard, and Ahead one quarter on the screws,” he said.

I complied. Looked at him again and he said,

“It's 'The Sevens'. About every 49th wave is a rogue wave from the north. It equalizes the differential currents in this region.”

Oh. That's all, I thought. It just equalizes these 100 ft swells. We topped the next rise askew of the wave and began coming down on a much steeper angle than normal, maybe six degrees compared to the usual pleasant twenty degree angle. Never mind the view out the windows, it was clear from our 45 degree disposition on the wave that something was wrong.

“Better hang on college boy!” I think Dane said that, but honestly, it might have been me.

Off in the distance in the upper left hand corner of peripheral vision, the next roller was way too far away, and in it's place directly afore was a tsunami. We were heading right under it.

“Give me all ahead three quarters,” Dane said calmly.

Are we going to die? Is this normal? We reached the bottom of the trough too fast for me to think for myself, and I was petrified.

“All Ahead full! Hit it!” Dane barked, “Hold the rudder, boy!” which meant hang the fuck on. I complied quickly. The ship sank a bit from it's own weight and momentum at the bottom of the trough and then the rogue wave was upon us. We could see only water, so couldn't have known that the top edge had already overshot us by twenty feet or so. My stomach rose into my mouth, signalling that we were going upward now, and then I noticed it was true. The ship's prow began to nose up on us, but the Bastard Rogue was moving past us.

Water poured over the prow and surrounded the cabin and then we were in the wave IN- THE- WAVE! For a wet second all was black. Did I see a shadow of something in the window, a whale? It washed over us, we were out of the wave and floating, in the air, above the ocean, for a good ten seconds. I lifted out of the chair, panicked and tried to hold onto the wheel. My hair floated for a second and the maps and books lifted off the table and gently landed back in place as the ship hit the lee of the rogue and sped downward. In shock, I could only hold myself in place until an order brought me back to reality.

“Give me ten percent rudder to Port, College Boy!”

I complied.

“Back the screws gently to one half.”

I did. The ship bobbed in the most uncomfortable way. She swayed like a drunken teenager at closing time and then were back on a nice, light, soft and cozy 100 ft swell. It was like a fresh, fluffy pillow after that, like resting your head on a cool clean toilet when you know you're done vomiting. Like butter.

“You did good, College boy. Next time, though, when you are given an order, say 'Aye Sir' and repeat the order back. I'm going to wake the Captain, and go see which of the degenerates shit themselves. You clean up your coffee 'fore the Captain gets up.”

Oh yeah. Coffee. I didn't reckon I needed it now.

The rollers continued for more than a day and a night, and then the water became very calm. It stayed calm for another two days. Arnie had said it was a four day trip, but this was clearly four days just to get to where we were going. Late in the first day of calm waters, I caught sight of the Great Garbage Patch. This was just the north one. The Captain said they were building up in most of the oceans now. The Pacific had two of them. Right around the middle of the northern gyre it floated about ten miles across.

We skirted the northern edge of it and pulled back on the throttle to stay in place about ten miles out from it. We didn't need any shit getting caught in the screws. On the second evening of calm water, another tug came along with a barge in tow.

“You stay up here and keep your hands on the throttle,” the Captain said, “If I yell- only me or Dane mind you- then you punch it and get us the fuck out of here. Otherwise just keep out of sight.” He had Dane and Bernie perched on the Quarterdeck with rifles while Skinny and the others helped pick up the barge. The Captain stood on deck and met with the other Captain.

Since it was calm, I could mostly hear them talking.

The other Captain said, “You're late, but only by an hour or so. Let me guess. Dane threw somebody overboard?”

“Got it in one.”

“Figures. Well it wasn't the fat one with the rifle up there. Too wary. He's got a clever look in his eyes. Couldn't have been the College Kid up there on the Wheel. Too smart. Probably wasn't the Injuns, cuz they mostly do as their told. Good workers, when they show up. No, it had to be the skinny white boy over there. The shitty attitude shows on his face.”

I learned later that this was a common topic for these visits. The other Captain enjoyed guessing who got thrown overboard, and it seems somebody always did. Even so, he seemed a bit too well-informed about who was on board our ship, because how could he have scoped everyone out so well? It turned out that this hadn't escaped the Captain's notice, either.

Our Captain didn't say too much, and there wasn't much talking afterwards. Once the barge was secured to us, I got the signal and hauled ass as instructed. The other tug, a 120 foot Okhtenskiy, clearly not owned by the Russian Navy anymore, roared away to the west.

The trip back was smoother. The system we had plowed through to get here had diffracted into an upper level high pressure ridge stretching from Alaska to Hawaii, so we essentially let the current pull us back around to Kyuquot. It was only after we crested that giant current that we had to buck it slightly and come directly east. Downstairs, the mood had also become quieter. On the one hand, the whole 'College Fag' business had stopped, because a couple of the boys had fully panicked while I was manning the Wheel upstairs. One of them, it turned out, had actually messed his pants. They were all fairly impressed that I had been cool about it.

I spoke with Abe, who said, “Ya, no, we were scared shitless too, but really, what are ya gonna do in that case anyway? Yer gonna die when ya die. No point losing yer head.”

It seemed like a valid point. It was my turn to relieve the Captain again, so I went back up. The wind and the rain that had seemed so harsh at the gas dock now did not even perturb my pensive philosophizing. The ten-foot chop on the water was as no different than a sunny day.

“What do the waves say, Captain?” It was a bit pretentious, but then, not really anymore either.

Captain smirked at that, but replied, “Matter of fact they are restless. Probably just me, but it feels like something is afoot. I'm going to get some more coffee. Man the screws.”

“Man the screws, Aye Captain.”

He walked into the black and angry weather and shut the door behind him.

There wasn't much to do at the Wheel on nights like that one. You look out the windows through the rain at the waves, watch the green radar, for anything. Sometimes you listen to the gulls if there are any, and if you are near the coast, to the chatter of the other traffic on the two-way radio. The Captain had some Louis L'Amore books lying around, but I'd read them all.

That rogue wave played over and over in my mind. The view of the wave from a distance versus the view from directly under it, versus the view from inside it. The giant pressure on my stomach going down and then going up, and then down again. The water, engulfing the windows, a moment in darkness played in slow motion. The water, taking us. The wave, reminding us that we are not masters out here, not masters of anything. The water, letting us go as if judged worthy, spitting us out like a cork.

'I could have,' said the Sea, 'I could have taken you. I own you. You are mine. But you read the signs. You listened, and obeyed. You are spared, therefore, temporarily, on your merits.'

I felt like I should have been freaking out, as if panicking and running about screaming might have been reasonable, but as Abe had expressed, 'What are ya going to do about it anyway?' The Sea owns us, and will take us when she takes us. I also felt exhausted, however, so even talking with other people was not an option right then. Not physically exhausted, but spiritually. Burnt out. In the wake of an Adrenalin overload, I could manage no more than to stare at the ocean, and let it refill me.

To care about things was too much to ask of myself right then, and it seemed like that wave, that Bastard Rogue, was now my comparison for the other so-called 'events' in my life. School. Girls. Getting assaulted. Waking up drunk on the lawn. Acid trips. Work. Acid trips at work. Family. Right then and there, I could have replaced all of it, everything, with the Sea, and never looked back.

For an instant I pictured myself as an older man, sitting behind the Wheel of a ship like this, and the image felt good. The Sea itself, as I sat there listening to it, did not disapprove.

The thought of the Captain, though, made me wonder where he was. That coffee had taken a long time. I had been daydreaming for over two hours.

I hit the intercom, “Cap'n?”

No answer. Well, the Captain never answered. It was always one of the degenerates calling up with a comment about my dick, or all the boyfriends I supposedly had, and then saying he was on his way up. This time there was none of it. It was weird. I began double checking the instruments in case I had to go below.

We were about two hours from the west coast of Vancouver Island by this point. I had instructions to cut thrust in about an hour and a half. We were on course though.

Then Bernie called up on the intercom, “Yeah, uh, you better come down here, College Boy.”

After a moment of thought, I settled everything on the Bridge and went downstairs. Out on the Quarterdeck I could see the chop had settled and the wind had become a gentle southerly. So, I had enough on my plate. The Sea was not going to complicate it.

Below in the Galley/Mess, I found Bernie smoking, which was a big no no for Dane, and on the floor, trussed up like hams were the crew and Dane and the Captain. The latter two both had head wounds. They had been struck from behind.

I paused, not entirely prepared for anything like this but with the Sea at my back, and said,

“Motherfucker, you have GOT to be shitting me.”

Bernie was prepared for some other response, and made to respond in kind, but stopped and said,

“Hwut?”

I raised my voice, “I said, you have got to be shitting me! These are the only two people on the ship that can get us home from here! What were you thinking?!”

“The Captain said we were cutting thrust at thirty-five miles out.”

“Yeah! In a couple of days! We're still in the middle of the North Pacific right now. Do YOU know how to get back, because if you get it wrong, which in all fairness seems pretty fucking likely, we'll be in the fucking Phillipines before you figure it out!”

“Woah! Hang on a minute. Hang on, and quit yelling at me. We just headed straight back from where we were, so -”

“And how the fuck would you know? Do you actually think the Captain broadcast our location to everybody on a trip like this? We headed west behind the other tug out of radar range and circled the other way around the Garbage Patch because we were expected to come back the other way.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “Are you being paid for this? Because I find it hard to believe any gangsters would pay someone as dumb as you to fuck this up.”

“The less you know the better,” he growled. I could see he was getting tired of my verbal abuse, but I couldn't afford to let him think too much.

“Fuck. Off,” I said, “You're doing this on your own. You fucking moron.”

He leapt off of his seat and pinned me to the wall.

“You listen to me you little college faggot. I've killed people like you just for fun before, so don't think I won't to shut you up. The only reason you're alive right now is because I need help with the bodies, so be careful of what comes out of your mouth next. I could still kill you.”

“Sure,” I said calmly, “Kill the only other person who can get you home. That'll cap off your day nicely. Fuck you.” I took his hands off of me, “Move the fuckin bodies yourself.”

He paused a moment, now calmly considering the options.

“I can't,” he said, “I hurt my back.”

I swore at him some more, but mostly to give myself some time to think. I needed him distracted. The Haidas, I noticed now, were only pretending to be unconscious. Skinny was actually turning grey, meaning that Bernie wasn't kidding. The other one was still out and Dane and the Captain were still out.

Moving all of the bodies was hard because Bernie really was struggling with some back pain, but we got them all on deck into the rain and wind. There were more frustrating moments in which I berated him furiously.

“I mean what the fuck were you thinking!” I yelled at him.

“Would you stop yelling at me?” he said, “Do you know what's on that barge?” he asked.

“I don't want to know. I don't need to know. I just need to get paid for the trip and go home.”

I totally knew. It was 80 metric tonnes of Afghani Gold-Seal Hashish. One hundred and seventy six thousand pounds of it. And some exotic cars and shit. Bernie had really fucked himself because even if he got paid for this, he would still be lynched by someone else for doing it. Even if he was working for the cops, which seemed pretty far from likely, he'd be lynched by the owners of it, or their partners. Skinny was shoved unceremoniously over the port rail. By then, both the Captain and Dane were coming around.

“Get the lifeboat ready,” I said, “We'll put them in there and have it ready to go for later.”

To my relief, he did just that. I quickly placed a pocket knife in Dane's hand and put a hand on the Captain to keep him quiet. But now there were more problems. Bernie, for one, couldn't be counted on to simply abandon his plan and leap overboard, and it was only a half hour before he sighted land. Then I'd be fucked for sure.

The bodies were acting limp, lying by the port rail. Bernie had lowered the lifeboat nearly to the water.

“I'm going to check the helm,” I said and squeezed past him by the boat crane to go up the stairs.

“I think I'll go with you,” he said suspiciously. He stopped fiddling with the boat and came along behind me, only a step or two as we went up the stairs.

“Don't try anything stupid,” he said as I pulled myself up in front of the cabin door. He was expecting me to try to kick him off the stairs or something, so was not prepared for me to pick up the pipe wrench I had stowed earlier on the deck and swing it at him.

I was not prepared for it either, unfortunately. The wrench was heavy and awkward. It struck the hand-rail first and then glanced off his forehead as he ducked.

It was enough to stun him, though. He slumped and rolled roughly back down the stairs to the quarterdeck. I skipped down and over him and then down to where the bodies were. Dane and the Captain were gone. I untied the Haidas and the other white guy.

“Get up and get that lifeboat ready,” I said, “And get the extra 10 horse and some extra fuel just in case. Abe, grab some rain gear for us.”

“We already stowed everything we need in the boat a few days ago,” he said, “Let's get the fuck out of here, before we get killed.”

“A sound plan if I ever heard one,” I said. I looked up the where Bernie was struggling to his feet on the Quarterdeck. He gave a violent jolt when he found the Captain and Dane waiting for him.

“Hurry up,” Abe said, “They might not stop with him.”

We got the boat in the water and pushed away from the ship. Just as we finished, we looked up to find Dane standing at the rail watching us. He tossed four shrink-wrapped bundles of money at us.

“Good luck, College Boy,” he said, and nodded at the others. Then we were away.

We rowed like hell, even with the 10-Horse going, and finally pulled into Port Alberni- only 100 miles off course- the next night. One of Abe and Ronnie's cousins drove us to Nanaimo.

I never saw the other white guy again, but saw Abe and Ronnie Joe once or twice. We never spoke.

I can only speculate about what happened to Bernie, but I've wondered about him many times over the years. Always it is that most pertinent question, “What the fuck were you thinking?” Because he could have just done the trip and got paid well like the rest of us, but more than that, he wasn't just some dumbass. He was clever enough to have made a career out of whatever criminal enterprise he liked. It wasn't that he was a dangerous psychopath, it was that he was an uneducated psychopath. Really, that was the only reason he didn't get away with his hastily concocted scheme.

The trouble with Bernie was that he was impulsive. As I learned later in university, it was the thing that kept most such people in prison. Bernie could have been a likeable and successful criminal or businessman; hell, even the Iceman himself, an infamous mob hitman, raised a family, and that guy had serious issues. Sure it wasn't ideal for them by any means, but he was a productive member of society for those years that he was killing people. Bernie was no further from success than a habit of reading, and that is what really seems like the shame, the waste, ultimately. I met plenty of people like Bernie over the years, not all of them criminals.

It was not safe to say anything about the trip to anybody when I got back. I told Arnie I couldn't work at the dock anymore. He didn't ask but wished me good luck. I went and got my job at Lony's Taxi back shortly after.