Beyond Fate

The taut line soon revealed nets filled with shimmering fish.  The three men, clad in rubber aprons and gloves, went to work stripping the fish from the nets as they rolled over the stern and onto the deck.  As each net was emptied and reset in the water, chubs covered the floor with an occasional Chinook salmon as a bonus. 

“Dave, let’s start cleaning these fish below.  I gotta call Smith Brothers and let them know what we’re coming in with.  We’ll need one of their trucks at the dock.  Jim, you reset the last net, put her on auto-pilot, then come below to help us clean these chubs.”

“Sure, Pop.”

“And don’t call me Pop!  I ain’t that old yet.”  Karl followed Dave below deck and reached for the cell phone hanging on the wall.  Twelve miles away the dispatcher’s phone at Smith Brothers Distributing rang. 

“Hello, Patty?  It’s Karl.  I’m gonna need a truck at the dock.  Yeah, we got about a half-ton of chubs we’re bringin’ in.  That’s right, you heard me right.  We should be there in an hour, about 10:00.  What do you mean, it’s 9:30 now?  Okay, then make it 10:30.  I guess this damn watch gave out on me.  Hell it ain’t even runnin’.  Okay.  See you in an hour.”  He hung up the cell phone and held his watch to his ear, then shook his arm in an attempt to free the stopped hands.

“Damn.  Guess it’s time for a new one.”  Karl grabbed one of the sharp fillet knives and began the work of gutting fish.  This was the messy part, but each of them could do it in their sleep, they had cleaned so many fish over the years.  Jim soon joined the others below, looking somewhat puzzled.

“I got the net back out, but it ain’t unhooked from the winch yet.  The line went taut on me like it was hooked on something when I put it down.  I can’t get it slack enough to untie it from the steel cable feeder line on the winch.”

“Hooked?  Shit, Jim, what the hell could we hook on?  We’re sittin’ in over two hundred feet of water.  The damn nets don’t go down that deep.  You sure you didn’t mess up the winch, Jim?” Karl gave Jim a look of disbelief he knew would get the younger man’s blood moving.

“Damn it, Karl.  I’m telling you it’s hung up on something below--oh, shit!”

The Gloria B. rocked violently, sending the crew off balance.  Boxes of ice-covered fish spilled everywhere in one of those brief few seconds when time stands still.  Before anyone could recover the bow pitched upward at a forty-five degree angle, throwing the contents to the rear of the cabin, pinning the hatch closed.  Jim slipped below the rising water, unconscious from being thrown into a bulkhead. 

The cold, clear Lake Michigan water rushed over the aft gunwale like a raging river.  In seconds the Gloria B. stood on its stern with water to its helm, only moments from sliding under the peaceful surface.  Inside the cabin, Dave and Karl scrambled for anything that might free them.  Dave beat furiously at the hatch, water rising to his chest.  Karl turned knobs on the ship’s radio, but it was dead and the cell phone had long since been buried beneath fish, water, ice and any gear not tied down.   

Outside the forty-two-foot boat paused, its bow showing twelve feet above the surface as though ready to ascend through a cloudless sky, then slid downward like a glider into the darkness.  Only the circling seagulls looked on as bubbles escaped to the surface and disappeared.  The Gloria B. was gone.