“What do we do with it?” Farrell shouted as the great black box swung in the lines and netting overhead.
It was about six feet long, three feet wide, and its lid was carved with some design Harley couldn’t make out yet. The other crewmen were staring at it dumbfounded, and Harley directed the Samoan and a couple of others to get it down and onto the conveyor belt. Whatever it was he didn’t want to lose it, and whatever might be inside it, he didn’t want the deckhands to find out before he did.
Farrell used a gaffing hook to pull the box clear of the railing, while the Samoan guided it onto the deck. It landed on one end with a loud thump, and a crack opened down the center of the lid. “Quick!” Harley said, lending a hand and pushing the box toward the belt. Harley guessed its weight at maybe two hundred waterlogged pounds, and once they had securely positioned it on the belt, Harley threw the switch and watched as it was carried the length of the deck, then down into the hold below.
“Okay, show’s over,” he shouted over the wind and crashing waves. “Haul in those pots! Now!”
Then, as the men cast one more look over their shoulders and returned to their labors, he went back toward the bridge. But instead of going up to the pilot’s cabin, he stumbled down the swaying steps to the hold, where he found the engineer, Richter, studying the box.
“What the hell is this?” Richter said. “You know you could have busted the belt with this damned thing?” Richter was usually just called the old man, and he’d worked on crab and cod and swordfish boats for nearly fifty years.
“I don’t know what it is,” Harley said. “It just came up in the lines.”
Richter, pulling at his bushy white eyebrows, stood back and surveyed the box, which had come to rest at the end of the now stationary belt. Bits and pieces of crab, most of them dead, some of them still twitching, lay all around the wet floor. The overhead lights cast an uneven yellow glow around the huge holding tanks and roaring turbines. The air reeked of gasoline and brine.
“I’ll tell you what I think it is,” Richter said. “This damn thing is a coffin.”
Harley had reluctantly come to the same conclusion. It wasn’t built in the customary shape of a coffin, but the general dimensions were right.
“And you don’t want to bring coffins aboard,” Richter grumbled over the engine noise. “Didn’t your father teach you a goddamned thing?”
Harley was sick to death of hearing about his father. Everybody from Nome to Prudhoe Bay always had a story. He ran a hand over the lid of the box, brushing off some of the icy water, and bent closer to observe the carvings. Most of them had been worn away, but it looked like there was some writing here. Not in English, but in those characters he’d seen on the old Russian buildings that still remained here and there in Alaska. In school they’d taught him about how the Russians had settled the area first, way back in the 1700s, and then, in one of the colossal blunders of all time, had sold it to the United States after the Civil War. This looked like that writing, and in the dim light of the hold he could also make out a chiseled figure. Bending closer, he saw that it was sort of like a saint, but a really fierce-looking one, with a long robe, a short beard, and a key ring in one hand. He felt a sudden shudder descend his spine.
“Get me a flashlight,” he told the old man.
“What for?”
“Just get me one.”
Moving his head this way and that, trying to avoid throwing a shadow onto the box, Harley peered through the crack in the lid, and when Richter slapped a flashlight into his hand, he pointed the beam into the box and put his nose to the wood.
“God will punish you for what you’re doing.”
But Harley wasn’t listening. Although the crack was very narrow, he caught again a glimpse of something green and glistening inside the box. Something that glinted like a bright green eye.
Like an emerald.
“The dead oughta be left in peace,” Richter solemnly intoned.
On general grounds, Harley agreed. Still, it didn’t mean they got to hang on to their jewelry.
“What did you see in there?” the old man asked, finally overcome by his own curiosity. “Was it a native or a white man?”
“Can’t tell,” Harley replied, snapping off the flashlight and leaning back. “Too dark.” Nobody needed to know about this. Not yet. “Get me a tarp,” he said, and when the old man didn’t budge, he went and got one himself. He threw it over the box, then lashed it in place with heavy ropes. “Nobody touches this until we get back to port,” he said, and Richter conspicuously crossed himself.
Harley climbed the slippery stairs to the deck level, then up to the wheelhouse, where Lucas was still holding the course as ordered. But with Harley back, he couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.