Waters Edge

Chapter One: A Small Boat on a Big Ocean

I sigh and lean my head back, my shoulders ache and the muscles in my back burn from being bent at the wrong angle all day. I feel a light spray of salt water on my face, a gust of wind whips at my hair as the sun beats down upon me. I open my eyes and gaze up at the clear blue sky, so bright and vivid it hurts to look at it for too long. I look down at the rusted side of my boat and sigh. I push off from the railing I am leaning on and back to the wheel. I steer toward the bobber in the distance. When I pull up next to it I walk toward the back of the small vessel and grab the anchor. I haul it up and push it over into the clear blue water.

I watch as it shoots downward in the blue waters before disappearing into the shadowy depths amongst the kelp. I pace back to the bobber and watch for just a moment as it dips and rises in the calm waves. I slip on a pair of gloves and then, turn and grab my boat hook, a simply pole with a hook on the end to grab the chain attached to the cage. I hook it on and pull the chain in, pulling hand over hand until the crab cage appears from the water.

I do have a small motor device that could pull these traps in for me, but lately they have been too light to require the use of the tiny crane-type machine. Plus, it requires gas to operate so I find it is cheaper to just pull the cages in by hand. When the cage is right at the surface of the water I use the hook to grab onto it and pull it in. I sigh in disappointment when I see the cage laying in the center of my boat holds within it only a few measly crabs. I dump the contents out onto the floor. Three crabs of decent size are all of value that lays within the pile, the trap having pulled them up along with kelp and a few glass bottles. I chuck the kelp back into the ocean and then bring the crabs over to a holding box along the one side of the boat. I lift the wet blanket up and throw the three crabs in with the other catches of the day.

I feel disappointment flood me when I count fifteen crabs within. Today was a bust, this entire week has been one. Or more like the entire god damn year. I throw the blanket back atop the box and bait the trap again before throwing it off the side. I want to hit something when I think about the fact of how this keeps happening. I rub my hands over my eyes and let out a slow breath. Everything in my life likes to screw me over like this and I grumble thinking bout returning ashore to be meet with disappointment. These crabs will hardly bring me in enough money to pay for coming back out tomorrow. I realize I should probably wait a few days before coming back out for this.

I don't want to return to my house on the tiny island. Its empty and lonely, slowly falling apart in the salty ocean winds. I never like being up there, the ocean has been my home since I was just under nineteen years old. Mostly because nothing from my life before that remained. Only a few months after my eighteenth birthday, my entire family was taken from me. They all were killed by a drunk driver on a night I was out with a friend. I shudder just thinking about it. If I hadn't had fought with my father the night before I would have been in the car with them.

Ever since then I had no desire to be anywhere near that place. I buried my mother, father and two siblings. Sold the house to pay for the funerals, sold the furniture to have money for myself. I left LA with $1000 to my name and joined a fishing boat company.

When I had enough money saved up I bought my crappy little house, then this crappy little boat on an island out in the middle of nowhere and the rest is history. If I could live the rest of my life without ever returning to land I would, for it holds nothing but misery for me.

I snap out of my thoughts and rub my eyes. I can't keep thinking about the past. I walk into the cabin in the front of the boat, a tiny cramped space with barely enough room to stand and I grab an old fishing net. The thing had come with the boat, I never had a use for it but maybe now with my crab traps coming up practically empty it could be useful. I sit in the shade cast by the small roof over the steering wheel and begin untangling it.