The Plover: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

crucial silences between notes, without which there could be no music; no yes without no. Perhaps silence was the ocean and sounds be boats upon the deep, he thought. Perhaps silence was the mother and sounds her yearning children. Do we not yearn for silence at the deepest level, and merely distract ourselves with stammer and yammer? Isn’t that why I am out in the middle of nowhere? The ceiling of the silent sea. The silent She.
    *   *   *
    But after midnight the weather grew worse and the ocean swelled and roiled so furiously that Declan finally made his way up to the cabin, clipped onto the jackline, and went over his charts with a flicker of fear. The Plover was roughly at 45 degrees north and 140 degrees west, and if he stayed on the 45th parallel, as had been his vague disgruntled plan, he would be driving right into the belly of the North Pacific’s winter storm season, which no sane man would do unless he had a much bigger ship and the smell of serious money in his nose. He could turn south, and ride down the 140-degree-longitude line along California and Mexico, but coasting meant Coast Guard and traffic and pirates and drug smugglers and harbormasters asking questions. He could turn north, and ride along the much wilder emptier coasts of British Columbia and Alaska, where the fishing was better but the weather, let’s face it, was horrendous, and somehow the last thing he wanted right now was the prospect of ice; his soul felt like ice as it was, and even the thought of a long black cold winter in some dank dark inlet crammed to the gills with dripping spruce and cedar and pale moist silent people smelling like fish and last night’s lurching drunk made him shiver. He went over the charts carefully again as the boat bucked and shimmied. I’ll be good and damned, he finally said aloud, to where the gull used to be. I’ll be damned good and fine. We have to go fecking south. Damn my eyes. I don’t believe this. The fecking South Seas. This is a joke. What is this, an eighteenth-century novel? Is this some weakass movie where we sail into a lagoon and are greeted with flowers and songs? Fecking fecking feck. I don’t believe this. I just want to get lost, is all. The fecking islands of the South Seas. God help me. Can’t a guy just sail west without issues and problems? What have I ever done to deserve this? Hey, Ocean, I killed some of your fish, all right? But they would have died eventually anyway, you know that, I just borrowed the ends of their lives, is all. Is that so bad that you have to drown me? I didn’t add any garbage to your fecking pristine waters. I just tried to eke out a living, is all, and feck all a living it was. I thought we had an agreement. I thought we were silent partners. I never took more than I needed. I didn’t shoot your seals or flay your whales. I didn’t catch that fecking sunfish the other day you showed me. I was respectful. I returned fish parts I didn’t need to your cleaning crews. We had a deal. You didn’t kill me and I didn’t foul you. And now this. Jesus fecking Christmas. You’re forcing this decision on me. I don’t want to make decisions. That was the whole point. No decisions, no thinking, just go. But no. Now I have to make a fecking decision. The whole point of the thing is shot. Fecking fine . South and west. Unbelievable. Fecking feck.
    He wrenched the wheel 45 degrees to the left. Instantly the storm abated so noticeably that he stopped cursing and listened intently; and after a few minutes he locked the wheel in position and went back to bed, sleeping far past dawn.

 
    II
    24° NORTH, 159° WEST

    BUT ONCE IN VIEW of the islands of the archipelago, Declan found himself leery of land, and for reasons he could not explain he hove to, north of the last and loneliest island, and plunged into his collected Edmund Burke. The sun shone, the sea murmured gently, birds he had never seen circled curiously, and he sat in the stern reading and eating