LIVY’S FIRST DAYS after getting off the dock in Juneau were hellish. Working without gloves, her hands were soon rope-burnt, and her blisters all torn. She didn’t know where to be or what to do. She’d never felt so useless. None of the commands made sense and everyone was moving too fast to explain. When they heaved, she heaved. When they stopped, she stopped.
Handsomely on the bow. Dig in and hold. Come up!
“That means drop it!” someone yelled at her.
She let go like the line was a viper.
Marne took her on boat checks where they crawled around belowdecks on their hands and knees, lifting up boards to look for water.
“How many places do we check under this floor?”
“This is the sole. We don’t have a floor. This isn’t a fucking house.”
In the mates’ quarters Marne lifted another panel.
“Hole in the sole!” she yelled.
“Hole in the sole,” muttered a half-asleep sailor.
“Say hole in the sole,” said Marne.
“Why?”
“So I know you heard it.”
“You’re a foot away from me.”
Marne waited.
“Hole in the sole,” said Livy.
Marne clicked her headlamp back on and ducked under the raised board.
When they came above Marne took her over to the pinrail and tugged on a line Livy had secured earlier.
“Too tight.”
“It was fine an hour ago,” said Livy.
“It’s not nylon. This is what rain does to real rope. I know you think it’s bullshit to not wear gloves. But we have two hundred lines belayed to deck and every single one changes tension with the weather. We have a wood hull. It’s going to swell and bend with the torque of the lines, the masts, how the yards are braced, the wind. This ship is a living thing that contracts and twists and breathes. Living things need to be touched by living hands. So no gloves. Nothing we do is for show. There’s always a reason.”
Marne eased out and coiled the line. Looking around she sighed.
“You have to understand. Once we’re off dock the dog and pony show ends. Out here we’ve got nineteenth-century problems. The tractor motor in this thing gets you through still water but it won’t get you out of a storm and a GPS is best at marking where you sank. If you’re going down and the radio goes, every now and then you can get out an e-mail to the Coast Guard. Life rafts fail to deploy and there’s no way to know if the CO2 canisters that inflate yours works until you’re in the water. So the best thing you can do, for all of us, is to forget what you think you know about being at sea.”
“First mate’s got the con,” said a voice behind them.
“First mate’s got the con,” said Marne without taking her eyes off Livy.
Soon the next watch mustered and they went below. Hammocks were strung up tight between hooks in the overhead. Inside them sailors, wrapped like fruit bats, hung touching shoulder to ankle. Marne strung Livy’s hammock, then took it down and had her do it. Livy got in. Her nose was less than eight inches from the overhead. She had two hours to sleep before she’d be up for her dogwatch. Two hours on deck then below for another four then up at midnight for her full watch, mustering in the dark.
Livy’s pride was built on her competence. Here she had none. There were at least four different commands for how to let go of a rope and she didn’t know one. She’d learned the names of things in books and did not recognize them contracted and strung together in commands—much less know what she was supposed to do to enact them. As the navigation got trickier, the commands came faster until they were an urgent, ambient barrage. Emphasis thrown from one syllable to another without apparent logic, she almost wondered if it was done on purpose to humiliate her. But of course this wasn’t true. Not because sailors wouldn’t do such things but because nothing on the ship was about her at all.
Once she heard the commands in rougher weather, she understood. The bending of the words was not laziness; each dropped vowel was intentional, designed to cut through wind and be heard. Marne was right. There was always a reason. This was a language preserved, not degraded, and premised solely on the need to act as one. It had been handed from sailor to sailor, literate and illiterate, English speakers and non-English speakers, shouted, repeated, call-and-response from Raleigh to her, down through time.
In her half-sleep on her forty-eighth hour out, cocooned in her canvas hammock, she saw Raleigh above in his velvet shoes and fur, stepping around the anchor rode. Beneath his soles, history. Gold and slaves, conquistadores and colonists, explorers, prisoners. Ships had carried all that. Crewed by poor people without better options, directed by those with only a little more, captained by second sons, driven by stockholders, seed-funded by merchants and queens—she was in the belly of all of it.
They were three days out when Marne came over and told Livy they were going aloft.
“Grab a harness. Check it for tears, empty your pockets, and come with me.”
Livy followed Marne over to the portside rail. Stepping up and around to the outside of the shroud they began to climb. The first twenty feet were easy, Livy had been up a million ladders, but the higher they went, the narrower the ratlines she had to step on and the more slippery the shroud. She glanced down to find a better toehold and felt a wave of dizziness. Her boot slipped. She swung out but both hands were gripped to the shroud so she righted herself quickly, but a wave of fear rolled through her. She didn’t breathe until she made it to the fighting top.
“I need to sit down.”
“Just clip in,” said Marne.
Livy wrapped one arm around the outer line of the shroud, her shaking hands fumbling with the clip. Marne casually dangled her legs over the edge. Livy kept her eyes on the yard.
“How high up are we?”
“About fifty feet. We can go higher.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
Marne nodded. “That’s right. Never let yourself get bullied into something you don’t think is safe. I had a friend who worked deep-draft container ships. He said there are these wells that fill with gas. They used to send sailors down to check them out. Guy goes down and keels over. They send another down. He keels over. Then they grab another sailor. Hey jackass! Go down and see what killed that other guy. No one wants to go but it’s do it or you’re fired. Meanwhile bodies are piling up. It’s kind of always like that. Nobody cares about sailors. We have to care for ourselves.”
“That’s how it should be,” said Livy.
“Well maybe you’ll make a sailor after all.”
Aloft on the main! Aloft on the main.
Lay to deck. Laying to deck.
Going down was worse and Livy was visibly shaking by the time they got to the bottom of the shroud.
“You shouldn’t feel weird,” said Marne once they got back down. “Scares the hell out of most people the first time.”
Livy gave her a grateful look.
“But it is the job,” said Marne and walked off.
No one on the Neva pretended it was a good idea to sail down the Inside Passage in November in a knock-off 1800s sloop of war. They came apart with every nautical mile: the crew, the rigging, unspooling into dross. Livy got yelled at for things she couldn’t have known and there was no time to show her anything. As she slept, the language of the boat ran through her dreams, tarries and ballantines, halyards and sheet bends— Say again?
The Russian oligarch who owned the Neva had grown bored with the idea of having his own tall ship, leaving it to float the oceans poorly maintained and under-crewed, ignored like a fallen satellite. Livy soon learned that people had been jumping ship since Yakutat. Unbeknownst to her, an ordinary seaman had jumped in Juneau. When they docked in Ketchikan, two of the better able seamen slipped off. Fuck this sprung-beam rotting future fish castle! Once back under way, the first mate just rebalanced the watches to compensate for their absence and not a word else was spoken.
By Petersburg they were short an able seaman, a bosun, and a mate, and of the three remaining mates, two had recently been promoted. The captain yanked a marginally qualified able seaman from the portside watch and promoted him to bosun. Livy came across the man botching a long splice and tried to help. Different ship, different long splice, he muttered, go away. In this manner, ill-maintained, abandoned by its backer, the ship, once a perfect technology of its time, transformed slowly into driftwood. For some of the crew that wouldn’t matter. They’d be on the next tall ship that passed. For others, the Neva was less a ship than a raft. An international no-man’s-land, a floating seedy youth hostel, a place where people used to being yelled at bartered their labor at a disadvantage. But to survive, the Neva needed money; to get money, it needed investors; and to get investors, it needed to look profitable, which is why in every port they called, they put on the funny clothes and did tours and day sails. An authentic maritime experience! Sail with the Neva, a piece of living history. But the Neva they sailed on had little in common with the original. It was a hack job cobbled together from several ship designs and muscled toward authenticity by Russian money and a lack of interest in historical detail. The rumor was that a real re-creation of the Neva was being built. Once a true replica was working the ports, they’d be done.
“Whatever,” said Marne, “we’re the most authentic ship around. We’re miserable, they’re screwing us on pay, we’re doing stupid things for investors—that’s authentic.”
“If people keep jumping, we won’t be able to sail.”
“We just need to get her to Panama,” Marne said. “After that I don’t care.”
In talking about Panama, Sarah’s name came up a few times, mostly in relation to PRAJNA and the work she and Marne had done last year. But every time Sarah’s name came up, Livy found other things to do. The doors Marne opened in the conversation, she closed, at first because she didn’t want her mind on Sarah, and then because she did but it was private. Marne realized it was a dead subject and stopped mentioning her, and Livy filled that silence with her own thoughts.
Hard weather descended: There was nothing but dark and fog, and all conversations stopped. Sir Walter Raleigh appeared, pacing the quarterdeck, at home. His sea legs planted on the Douglas fir deck, his fists on his hips, he took a sharp intake of air then blew a cloud of hot breath back at the stars only he could see. He began to sing a song about a sun that had set and cedars, and a troubled ocean that beat its banks. Then in the middle of the verse he stopped.
For days, the only words Livy heard from anyone living or dead were commands. The wind kept switching directions. Dying off then coming out of nowhere. They set sails only to strike them moments later. The waters got choppy and enough of the sailors got seasick to keep the remaining ones working almost around the clock with half the crew needed. Buckets of vomit, if not emptied fast enough, tipped over, and the watch slipped on the deck while sweating the lines in icy rain. In the red light belowdecks, in the hammocks between work shifts, they swung against each other with the rock of the ship. Every time the sailor on Livy’s left bumped her, she woke in terror, the Eliana fresh in her mind.
A week out, Livy got her first regular period. She hadn’t known she’d been waiting for it. But it didn’t fix what was happening. Other things were growing in her, too, as a result of the rape. The world hit her—and didn’t notice. She noticed it now, but it blew by without a look back, a relationship that was no longer mutual. Once such a power differential, such a loss of reciprocal impact would have spurred in her a fierce drive for parity at all costs. Now the feeling bred no ambition; the part of her that touched the world spun without friction.
The weather began to clear. She was on a dogwatch when Marne found her on lookout.
“I told you never to do anything you didn’t think was safe but I need you to get over your fear and help me up on the t’gallant. I need to see why it’s not setting right.”
Livy had gone aloft only once since her first trip. She had stayed close to the mast and clipped in and was in a fearful sweat the whole time, able only to look as far as the sail in her hands. She had never been up above the crosstrees.
“We’re going to have to go pretty far out on the tops’l yard too,” said Marne. “I can wake someone up if you can’t do it, but you have to tell me now.”
Everyone was getting less than three hours of sleep a day. The idea of waking someone up because she was too scared to do what they did was something Livy could not manage.
Marne held out a harness.
“It’s not a bad night for it,” she said. “The moon is out so we’ll be able to see.”
Livy followed her through the shadows cast on deck by the main and topsail to the starboard edge of the ship. They began to move out. Livy paid attention to her hands and her grip. She tested the ratlines with each foot before putting her full weight on them. The wind was gentle and steady. She made it to the fighting top and paused.
“You good?” asked Marne.
“I’m good.”
Livy looked up to where the shroud met the mast on both sides. Above that was the crosstrees, a small arc of metal to stand on, no more. It was only thirty-five feet above where she was but she would have to climb the futtock shrouds.
They started again. The wind changed above the topsails. There was more of it to catch and less cover. It buffeted her jacket and stray hairs tickled her face. As the shroud narrowed to attach, the footholds were so small she could barely get a toe in. She was now at the base of the futtock shroud. The web moved up and out from the mast before wrapping around the crosstrees.
“It works best if you just do it fast,” said Marne. “And when you’re climbing, think of pushing the ratlines away with your feet, not down. You don’t want to end up dangling. Momentum is what will keep you on the shroud when you’re upside down. Once you start don’t stop.”
Marne scrambled up the shrouds, out and over the side of the crosstrees until she was standing again on the strip of metal.
“Like that,” she said. “Go.”
Livy went. With strong quick movements crawling backward, eyes glued on nothing but where she was grabbing hold. Shaking, she was upright on the outer shroud again and could swing to the inside where she found footing.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” she said.
“You can.”
Livy did what Marne asked, keeping her eyes on her hands. The whole time, fear like a chatter. When they were done on the t’gallant Marne climbed down to the topmast.
“When you step out,” Marne pointed to the line of rope dipping in scallops beneath the yard, “you have to warn anyone out there because they’re standing on the same line so you say ‘laying on’ and wait till they answer. Same when you’re coming back to the crosstrees, you say ‘laying off.’ Gives them a chance to get hold of something if they’re not clipped in. This,” she slid four fingers under a thick line across the top of the yard, “is the jackstay. That’s what you hold on to until we get to where we’ll clip in. I need to work closer in so you’re going to have to go out first. Just keep hold of the jackstay and I’ll tell you everything else as you go.”
“Laying on,” said Livy.
Marne waited for Livy to get used to standing on the line.
“Laying on,” she said.
Livy didn’t answer.
“Say ‘laying on.’ ”
“Laying on,” said Livy.
Marne moved out onto the yard. As soon as she stepped on, Livy felt the line pull taut, lifting her slightly, shaking her from underfoot. A small gust came and she fought the urge to hug the yard. Marne told her to just hold on to the jackstay and push her legs out like a drawn arrow in a bow.
Once halfway out, they clipped in and went to work. Marne told Livy to reach into the sail and grab any loose lines and gasket coil them to keep them out of the way. A reef point on the tops’l had been sucked into the t’gallant sheet block. Marne got out her marlinspike. She worked deep into the sheet, prying on a tangle of lines to try to get things free. At times it seemed her feet were higher than her head and when she came up her face was red from the blood flow. They moved farther out until they were only a few feet from the end of the yard, which was now below Livy’s center of gravity and at her upper thighs.
“We’re almost done.”
“There’s nowhere to step,” said Livy.
“There is. Just doesn’t seem like it.”
Livy couldn’t get the terror in her body to stop her from shivering. She waited for a moment of steadiness between tremors then found the loop with her boot and stepped.
She was seventy-five feet up and thirty-five feet out on the yard, no longer over the boat but over water. Looking down she saw that Raleigh had returned. Strolling in the fall of white light, turning on his corked heels, she felt the centuries slip.
“I’m going to send you another line,” said Marne. “Don’t drop it or we have to do all this again.”
At one point, trying to catch a line, Livy dove into the sail, kicking her feet out until she almost went headfirst over the yardarm. Righting herself, she passed it through where Marne told her. They were done and she turned to move back across the yard but Marne didn’t move.
“Stop. Stop, look around,” she said. “That’s what someone told me the first time I came up here. Don’t forget to look around.”
Livy forced herself to do it. It was stunning.
Moonlight lit the glaciers, the current in the water, the sails, their hands; there was frost on the bowsprit and the yards ticked and cracked against the masts—Bring me before the docket. Ask. Do you believe things happen for a reason? No. I don’t. And I never will. But inside Livy shame blazed. Because she was better now than she had been before. Whatever life the morning-after pill could not kill had taken hold, and she felt joy kick inside her, something new in the world.
An undulation of color caught her eye. Livy had seen the northern lights many times because, even in summer, a green curtain could ripple across the Alaskan sky if it was cold and clear enough. She had never seen them like this, though. A whip tail of pale yellow appeared from behind the mountain forest, and within minutes, flags of turquoise and fuchsia, of lime and violet fanned out across the stars. It was so remarkable that the starboard watch actually woke the portside watch. They came above, one by one, wrapped in sleeping bags and whatever layers they could find and stood in clouds of frozen breath, staring. It went on for hours, all night. Color like a shower of stars flung down on the rocky shore. Astral shards among the kelp. Like in summer, she remembered walking past stranded jellyfish, in red and yellow and purple, pulsing while they drowned in sand. She wanted to show this world to Sarah. Maybe the hardest thing to see straight is love. It’s not the view through the window but the frame around it, and the glass is gone.