Death of a Whaler Read Online Free PDF

tempestuous wind. The wind not strong enough, though, to remove the stench of the fish as they died, the mass of squirming silver bodies as theywere dumped on board. The horror of it. All that accumulated panic in scales and fins.
    â€˜Comin’ back?’ asked the fisherman, when they deposited him green and shaking on the docks.
    â€˜See you tomorrow,’ belched Flinch.
    The fisherman turned a raw pink and roared with laughter. ‘Rotten bugger. See you tomorrow. What’s your name, since I’m gonna have to write you in the logbooks?’
    â€˜Flinch,’ replied Flinch.
    â€˜Flinch, eh? Nickname?’
    â€˜Dunno,’ said Flinch. ‘It’s what my mum calls me, anyway.’
    The fisherman didn’t respond, but knew that the boy in front of him wore the name because he looked like a dog about to be slapped. Always blinking and squinting. That leg cowering underneath his torso.
    â€˜Guess it’ll do then,’ said the fisherman. ‘Flinch.’
    Unlike his schoolyard experiences, out on the sea he slotted right in. Instinctively knew not to talk much. When he did, he made the kind of quiet observations that would bring about a smile and a nod from the others. Became known as a good little worker. A battler. It made him feel as if he was a soldier who had been injured during a heroic act rather than the unfortunate recipient of a common enough birth defect. At night, feeling the sway of the ship and the churn of the water while lying in his bed, the room rocking about him, he would reach towards his short leg and pinch his toes. He did this for the same reason he imagined old soldiers fingered the scars of bullets. To remind themselves of who they were.
    When he heard that the whaling station was looking for a new spotter, it seemed an opportunity for promotion, in a way. From small fish to big ones. He’d spent four years on the fishing boats by then, now a permanent shade of red-brown, wrinkled beyond his nineteen years and with the furrowed brow of a man straining under the necessity of hard labour. He presented himself at the station in a new blue shirt, buttoned up to the collar, with a stance he imagined was plucky, chest out and arms hanging out from his sides as if there were apples under his armpits. The captain of the main whaling boat looked him up and down and, seeing the salt-abraded skin of Flinch’s young face and smelling fish even through soap, decided the leg was not important and hired him.
    His first day on the job he spotted more whales than they’d hauled in weeks. When they harpooned the first one it didn’t die immediately. It ploughed straight down dragging the boat bow-first towards the water before the captain wheeled it around. The whale then reared skywards and Flinch saw for the first time but not the last the whale’s lip line in its permanent grin, the white underside of the lower jaw riveted with dark crevices, its massive unblinking eye looking straight at him. He crouched down in the nest and clung to the mast and when the crew called out to him to praise his keen sight he was pleased that they couldn’t see he was crying.
    Cutting the whale up was worse. After a few months of squatting nauseous and teary in the crow’s nest after each sighting, Flinch grew used to spotting, to the swift shuddering kick of the harpoon as it was shot, the thud of the impact, but he never quite got used to the slaughter onshore. The way every whale looked different was more noticeable once they were out of the water, on their sides, slowly being crushed under their own weight. The lifetime of battle scars, tears and holes in fins and tails, the odd jigsaw pattern of an old shark bite, the broad patches of shining black and white on the bellies. The age of them, the size of them, like ancient monoliths. Occasionally barnacles were stuck to the whales as if they were just big old abandoned ships. Flinch had watched the live molluscs