Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

The Captain lit a cigarette, offered one to Jun Do, then returned to tallying sharks, using a hand counter to click off each one the Machinist winched aboard. The sharks had been hanging from lead lines in open water so they were in a low-oxygen stupor when they breached the water and slammed against the hull before being boomed up. On deck, they moved slowly, nosing around like blind puppies, their mouths opening and closing as if there were something they were trying to say. The job of the Second Mate, because he was young and new to the ship, was to retrieve the hooks, while the First Mate, in seven quick cuts, dorsal to anal, took the fins and then rolled the shark back into the water, where, unable to maneuver, it could race nowhere but down, disappearing into the blackness, leaving only a thin contrail of blood behind.

Jun Do leaned over the side and watched one descend, following it down with his parabolic. The water crossing the shark’s gills would revive its mind and perceptions. They were above the trench now, almost four kilometers deep, perhaps a half hour of free fall, and through his headphones, the background hiss of the abyss sounded more like the creeping, spooky crackle of pressure death. There was nothing to hear down there—all the subs communicated with ultralow-frequency bursts. Still, he pointed his parabolic toward the waves and slowly panned from bow to stern. The ghost broadcast had to come from somewhere. How could it seem to come from every direction if it didn’t come from below? He could feel the eyes of the crew.

“You find something down there?” the Machinist asked.

“Actually,” Jun Do said, “I lost something.”

Come first light, Jun Do slept, while the crew—Pilot, Machinist, First Mate, Second Mate, and Captain alike—spent the day crating the shark fins in layers of salt and ice. The Chinese paid in hard currency, and they were very particular about their fins.

Jun Do woke before dinner, which was breakfast time for him. He had reports to type before darkness fell. There had been a fire on the Junma which took the galley, the head, and half of the bunks, leaving only the tin plates, a black mirror, and a toilet that had cracked in two from the heat. But the stove still worked, and it was summer, so everyone sat on the hatches to eat, where it was possible for the men to view a rare sunset. On the horizon was a carrier group from the American fleet, ships so large they didn’t look as if they could move, let alone float. It looked like an island chain, so fixed and ancient as to have its own people and language and gods.

On the longline, they’d caught a grouper, whose cheeks they ate raw on the spot, and a turtle, unusual to hook. The turtle would take a day to stew, but the fish they baked whole and pulled off the bone with their fingers. A squid had also snagged on the line, but the Captain wouldn’t abide them on board. He had lectured them many times on the squid. He considered the octopus the most intelligent animal in the ocean, the squid the most savage.

They took off their shirts and smoked, even as the sun fell. The Junma was pilotless, cantering in the waves, buoys rolling loose on the deck, and even the cables and booms glowed orange in the oven-colored light. The life of a fisherman was good—there were no endless factory quotas to fill, and on a ship there was no loudspeaker blaring government reports all day. There was food. And even though they were leery about having a listening officer on board, it meant that the Junma got all the fuel coupons it needed, and if Jun Do directed the ship in a way that lowered the catch, everyone got extra ration cards.

“So, Third Mate,” the Pilot said. “How are our girls?”

That’s what they called Jun Do sometimes, the Third Mate, as a joke.

“They’re nearing Hokkaido,” Jun Do told them. “At least they were last night. They’re rowing thirty kilometers a day.”

“Are they still naked?” the Machinist asked.

“Only the girl who rows in the dark,” said Jun Do.

“To row around the world,” the Second Mate said. “Only a sexy woman would do that. It’s so pointless and arrogant. Only sexy Americans would think the world was something to defeat.” The Second Mate couldn’t have been more than twenty. On his chest, the tattoo of his wife was new, and it was clear she was a beauty.

“Who said they were sexy?” Jun Do asked, though he pictured them that way, too.

“I know this,” the Second Mate said. “A sexy girl thinks she can do anything. Trust me, I deal with it every day.”

“If your wife is so hot,” the Machinist asked, “how come they didn’t sweep her up to be a hostess in Pyongyang?”

“It’s easy,” the Second Mate said. “Her father didn’t want her ending up as a barmaid or a whore in Pyongyang, so he pulled some strings and got her assigned to the fish factory. A beautiful girl like that, and along comes me.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” the First Mate said. “There’s a reason she doesn’t come to see you off.”

“Give it time,” the Second Mate said. “She’s still coping. I’ll show her the light.”

“Hokkaido,” the Pilot said. “The ice up there is worse in the summer. The shelves break up, currents chum it. It’s the ice you don’t see, that’s what gets you.”

The Captain spoke. Shirtless, you could see all his Russian tattoos. They looked heavy in the sideways light, as if they were what had pulled his skin loose. “The winters up there,” he said, “everything freezes. The piss in your prick and the fish gore in your beard. You try to set a knife down and you can’t let go of it. Once, we were on the cutting floor when the ship hit a growler. It shook the whole boat, knocked us down into the guts. From the floor, we watched that ice roll down the side of the ship, knuckling big dents in the hull.”

Jun Do looked at the Captain’s chest. The tattoo of his wife was blurred and faded to a watercolor. When the Captain’s ship didn’t return one day, his wife had been given a replacement husband, and now the Captain was alone. Plus, they’d added the years he was in prison to his service debt to the state, so there’d be no retirement now. “The cold can squeeze a ship,” the Captain suddenly said, “contract the whole thing, the metal doorframes, the locks, trapping you down in the waste tanks, and nobody, nobody’s coming with buckets of hot water to get you out.”

The Captain didn’t throw a look or anything, but Jun Do wondered if the prison talk was aimed at him, for bringing his listening equipment on deck, for raising the specter that it could all happen again.

When darkness fell and the others went below, Jun Do offered the Second Mate three packs of cigarettes to climb atop the helm and shinny the pole upon which the loudspeaker was mounted.

“I’ll do it,” the Second Mate said. “But instead of cigarettes, I want to listen to the rowers.”

The boy was always asking Jun Do what cities like Seoul and Tokyo were like, and he wouldn’t believe that Jun Do had never been to Pyongyang. The kid wasn’t a fast climber, but he was curious about how the radios worked, and that was half of it. Jun Do had him practice pulling the cotter pin so that the directional antenna could be lifted and pointed toward the water.

Afterward, they sat on the winch house, which was still warm, and smoked. The wind was loud in their ears. It made their cigarettes flare. There wasn’t another light on the water, and the horizon line separated the absolute black of the water from the milk dark of the star-choked sky. A couple of satellites traversed above, and to the north, tracers of shooting stars.

“Those girls in the boat,” the Second Mate said. “You think they’re married?”