The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [39]
“Lose something?” the Captain asked. He was just a voice from the helm.
Jun Do turned to see the tip of his glowing cigarette.
“Yeah,” Jun Do said. “I think I did.”
The Captain didn’t leave the pilothouse. “That boy’s pretty messed up right now,” he said. “The last thing he needs is some craziness from you.”
Using a lanyard, Jun Do fished a bucket of water from the sea and poured it on his chest. He felt the pain as a memory, something from long ago. He looked upon the sea some more. The black waves would rise and clap, and in the troughs between them, you could imagine anything was out there. Someone will save you, he thought. If you just hold tight long enough, someone’s bound to.
The crew put down longlines all day, and when Jun Do woke at sunset, they were bringing aboard the first sharks. Now that they’d been boarded by Americans, the Captain was no longer afraid of being boarded by Americans. He asked that Jun Do channel the broadcasts through a speaker on the deck. It would be late, Jun Do warned them, before the naked rower checked in, if that’s what they were hoping for.
The night was clear, with regular rollers from the northeast, and the deck lights penetrated far into the water, showing the red eyeshine of creatures just a little too deep to make out. Jun Do used the array antenna, and rolled the crew through the whole spectrum, from the ultralow booms of sub-to-sub communications to the barking of transponders guiding jet autopilots through the night. He let them listen to the interference caused when the radar of distant vessels swept through them. At the top of the dial was the shrill rattle of a braille book broadcaster, and out there at the very peak was the trancelike hiss of solar radiation in the Van Allen belts. The Captain was more interested in the drunk Russians singing while they operated an offshore drilling platform. He muttered every fourth or fifth line, and if they gave him a minute, he said, he’d name the song.
The first three sharks they brought aboard had been eaten by a larger shark, and nothing remained below the gills. Jun Do found a woman in Jakarta who read English sonnets into a shortwave, and he approximated them as the Captain and mates examined the bite radius and peered through the sharks’ empty heads. He played for them two men in unknown countries who were attempting to solve a mathematical problem over a ham radio, but it proved very difficult to translate. For a while, Jun Do would stare toward the northerly horizon, then he would force himself not to stare. They listened to planes and ships and the strange echoes that came from the curve of the earth. Jun Do tried to explain concepts like FedEx, and the men debated whether a parcel could really be sent between any two humans on earth in twenty-four hours.
The Second Mate kept asking about the naked rower.
“I bet her nipples are like icicles,” he said. “And her thighs must be white with goose pimples.”
“We won’t hear from her until dawn,” Jun Do said. “No use talking about it till then.”
The Machinist said, “You need to look out for those big American legs.”
“Rowers have strong backs,” the First Mate said. “I bet she could tear a mackerel in half.”
“Tear me in half, please,” the Second Mate said. “Wait till she finds out I’m a hero. I could be an ambassador, we could make some peace.”
The Captain said, “And wait till she finds out you like women’s shoes.”
“I bet she wears men’s shoes,” the Pilot said.
“Cold on the outside and warm on the inside,” the Second Mate said. “That’s the only way.”
Jun Do turned to him. “You want to shut up about it already?”
The novelty of radio surveillance suddenly wore off. The radio played on, but the crewmen worked in silence, nothing but the winches, the flapping of ventral fins, and the sound of knives.