The Closer Read Online Free PDF Page A

complete darkness, the sun still two hours from coming up. Our deck lights are not on because lights would alert the fish to our presence and then they would swim away. We are about to close the net and fire up the hydraulic winches and bring the fish up. I am near the middle of the boat, about six feet from my uncle Miguel. It’s a bit tricky working in the dark, but we’re all so familiar with what needs to be done that it isn’t usually a problem.
    Except that one of the pulley flaps is not secure. In the daytime somebody definitely would’ve noticed. In the darkness nobody does.
    The ropes have to close the net in tandem, one after another, and when I notice that one rope is too far ahead, I tell the crew member on the second rope to let go of his rope. He lets go, but because the flap is not secure, when the winch starts reeling it in, the rope takes off, coming at us like a braided bazooka, ripping out of the water and onto the deck. It happens in an instant. There is no time to get out of the way. The rope blasts into my uncle at chest level, knocking a 240-pound man across the ship as if he were a palm frond. My uncle crashes face-first into the metal edge dividing a large salt-water-filled bin in the middle of the boat. Therope lashes into me a microsecond later, also hitting me in the chest, and I go flying even farther, but I don’t hit the metal edge, just the divider itself.
    I get a tooth knocked out and get scraped and bruised but otherwise come out unscathed. It has nothing to do with athletic ability or anything I do to minimize the damage; by the grace of God, I simply land in a relatively safe place.
    My uncle is not so fortunate. His face is split open, blood gushing everywhere. He is badly hurt. He is screaming in pain. It is the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen.
    Stop! Help! Miguel is hurt! somebody yells.
    Call for help! Quick! He’s hurt bad!
    Everybody on board is screaming. My father, who is at the helm in the cabin upstairs, races down to find his brother looking as if he’d taken a machete to the face. I keep replaying the nightmarish sequence of events. An unfastened flap, an out-of-control rope, and seconds later, an uncle I love—the man who gently explained to me why my father is so strict and quick with the belt—seems about to die before my eyes. I wish I could do something. I wish I could do anything. My father radios the Coast Guard, our first responders, and they arrive within minutes and take my uncle to the nearest hospital. The sun is coming up now. I can’t get the brutal images out of my head.
    My uncle is a diabetic, and that massively complicates his recovery. He seems better on some days, and on others slips back again. He fights for his life for a month. He does not win that fight. The funeral and burial are held right in Puerto Caimito. People show up by the hundreds.
    Miguel has gone home to be with the Lord, the priest says. We grieve for this loss, but we have to remember that the Lord has prepared a room for him and he has gone to a better place. There arenine prayerful days of mourning. It is the first time I remember seeing my father cry.
    We are back out on the boat a few days later, because the nets only make money in the water. We return for the final day of mourning. The perils of the job are nothing we can change. This is just what we do, day after day, week after week.
    Close to a year after my uncle died, we are supposed to be off on a Friday, only my father doesn’t know it because he never gets the message from the company that owns the boat. We spend the first part of the day repairing the nets and then set out in the direction of Contadora Island, in the Pacific Ocean, heading toward Colombia. The nets fill quickly and we start back toward our base island to unload our haul. We have not gotten far when the belt on our water pump stops working. We try a backup belt that we have, but it doesn’t fit properly. The pump is still not working.
    This is