The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [26]
There was a single channel that wound through fields of frozen lava that even the tide was at pains to crawl over, and soon the tide began drawing them fast and almost sideways through the trough, the dark glitter of bottom whirring by in Jun Do’s light.
The Captain seemed revived, with a wild, nothing-to-lose smile on his face. “The Russians call this chute the foxtrot,” he said.
Out there in the tide, Jun Do saw a vessel. He called to the First Mate, and together, they lit it up. It was a patrol boat, broken up, on its side upon an oyster bar. There were no markings left, and it had been upon the rocks for some time. The antenna was small and spiraled, so he figured there was no radio worth salvaging.
“Bet they cracked up someplace else and the tide brung her here,” the Captain said.
Jun Do wasn’t so sure about that. The Pilot said nothing.
“Look for her lifeboat,” the Captain told them.
The Second Mate was upset to be on the wrong side of the ship. “To see if there were survivors?” he asked.
“You just man that light,” the Pilot told him.
“Anything?” the Captain asked.
The First Mate shook his head no.
Jun Do saw the red of a fire extinguisher strapped to the boat’s stern, and much as he wished the Junma had an extinguisher, he kept his mouth shut and with a whoosh, they flashed past the wreck and it was gone.
“I suppose no lifeboat’s worth sinking for,” the Captain lamented.
They’d used buckets to put out the fire on the Junma, so the moment of abandoning ship, the moment in which it would have been revealed to the Second Mate that they had no lifeboat, never came.
The Second Mate asked, “What’s the deal with their lifeboat?”
“You just man that light,” the Pilot told him.
They cleared the offshore break, and as if cut from a tether, the Junma settled into calmer water. The craggy ass of the island was above them, and in its lee, finally, was a large lagoon that the outer currents kept in motion. Here was where the shrimp might congregate. They killed the lights, and then the engine, and entered the lagoon on inertia. Soon, they were slowly backpedaling with the circular tide. The current was constant and calm and rising, and even when the hull touched sand, no one seemed to worry.
Below raked obsidian bluffs was a steep, glassy black beach whose glint looked sharp enough to bleed your feet. In the sand, dwarfed, gnarled trees had anchored themselves, and in the blue light, you could see that the wind had curled even their needles. Upon the water, the moon revealed clumps of detritus swept in from the straits.
The Machinist extended the outriggers, then dipped the nets, soaking them so they’d submerge during skim runs. The mates secured the lines and the blocks, then raised the nets to see if any shrimp had turned up. Out in the green nylon webbing, a few shrimp bounced toward the trap, but there was something else out there, too.
They spilled the nets, and on the deck, amid the flipping and phosphorescing of a few dozen shrimp, were a couple of athletic shoes. They didn’t match.
“These are American shoes,” the Machinist said.
Jun Do read the word written on the shoe. “Nike,” he said.
The Second Mate grabbed one.
Jun Do could read the look in his eye. “Don’t worry,” Jun Do said. “The rowers are far from here.”
“Read the label,” the Second Mate said. “Is it a woman’s shoe?”
The Captain came over and examined a shoe. He smelled it, and then bent the sole to see how much water squished out. “Don’t bother,” the Captain said. “The thing’s never even been worn.” He told the Pilot to turn on the floodlights, which revealed hundreds of shoes bobbing out in the jade-gray water. Thousands, maybe.
The Pilot scanned the waters. “I hope there’s no shipping container swirling ’round this bathtub with us,” he said, “waiting to take our bottom out.”