“We got something!” he shouted over the howling wind.
“Yeah, I’ve been watching. You got the best damn catch of the season.”
“No,” Farrell said, “no, take a look!”
And now, lifting himself up from his seat to get a better view of the deck, Harley could see what Farrell, the hood thrown back on his yellow slicker, was wildly pointing at.
A box—big and black, with icy water cascading down its sides—was tangled in the hooks and lines, and with the help of a couple of the other crew members, it was being hauled over the railing. What the hell …
“I’ll be right down!” Harley called before turning to Lucas and telling him to hold the boat in position. “And do not fuck with the course.”
Harley grabbed his anorak off a hook on the wall. As he barreled down the narrow creaking stairs, he pulled a pair of thermal, waterproof gloves out of the pocket and wrestled them on. Just a few minutes out on deck unprotected and your fingers could freeze like fish sticks. Yanking the hood up over his head, he pulled the sliding door open, and was almost blown back into the cabin by the driving wind.
Forcing his way outside, the door slamming back into its groove behind him, he plowed up the deck with one hand clinging to the inside rail. Even in the gathering dusk, he could see, maybe three miles to starboard, the ragged silhouette of St. Peter’s Island sticking up out of the rolling sea. That one island, with its steep cliffs and rocky shoals, had claimed more lives than any other off the coast of Alaska, and he could see why even the native Inuit had always given it a wide berth. For as long as he could remember, they had considered it an unholy place, a place where unhappy and evil spirits, the ones who could not ride the highways of the Aurora Borealis up into the sky, were condemned to linger on earth. Some said that these doomed souls were the spirits of the mad Russians who had once colonized the island, and that they were now trapped in the bodies of the black wolves that roamed the cliffs. Harley could almost believe it.
“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. Mutilated crabs, most of them dead but some of them still twitching, lay all over the wet floor. The overhead lights cast a sickly 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.