On this particular day, a Saturday in June, the ship encountered dense fog on entering the Santa Barbara Channel from the north and Captain Nishizawa himself appeared on the bridge to oversee operations. As a precaution he cut the engines to three-quarter speed and ordered the ship’s horn to sound at intervals. Beyond that, he relied on his instruments, his experience and the sheer mass of the ship to keep them from harm. He was right dead center in the middle of the southbound lane and nothing was showing on the radar up ahead of him. If there was an emergency, the Tokachi-maru would take two miles and three and a half minutes to come to a stop. The tightest turn of which she was capable was nearly a mile across. And at seven stories above the surface, even in the clearest conditions, the crew on the bridge would have little chance of sighting any small craft below in any case.
That was the way it was. That was what the shipping lanes — and the Separation Zone — were meant for. Was the system perfect? Of course not. The Separation Zone functioned like the median on a freeway, but there were no lines drawn on the water to delineate the lanes and no concrete bumpers, palms or oleanders to separate north- and southbound traffic. Were there accidents? Of course there were. But in most cases the crew of a freighter or tanker never saw, felt or heard a thing when a small craft was unlucky enough to blunder across its path. Think of it this way: a heavyset woman, heavier even than Marta at the Cactus Café, a real monument of flesh and bone and live working juices, plods out to her car on aching feet after a double shift and can’t begin to know the devastation she wreaks on the world of the ant, the beetle and the grub.
Wilson is fast, he’ll say that for him. By the time he bolts down the steps Wilson’s already got the hatch in back of the table open and manages to grab one of the sacks from it before Dave can get there and slam it closed. The girls — the second bottle of wine, Anise’s chardonnay, is half gone and they’re eating something now, helping themselves to the sandwiches he’s made without even having thought to offer him one — look up in amusement as if he and Wilson are playing some sort of game, but this isn’t funny, not at all. It’s stupid is what is. Idiotic. And he won’t have it, not on his boat. The table is between him and Wilson and Anise is wedged in on the bench, right there in his way. “Put it down,” he says.
And Wilson, all teeth, bright as a toothpaste commercial, wags the sack out front of him. “No way, man. I’m just going to”—he drops his eyes to pull loose the cord at the neck of the bag even as Dave snatches for it and draws back all in the same instant, afraid of the dark shape within, of the fangs, and didn’t Stiles say they can bite through the bag? — “loosen this and show the girls. . the, ta-da, surprise!”
In that moment, the moment at which the neck of the bag falls open and Wilson, so quick of reflex it’s as if the bag has never been there at all, thrusts his hand in and comes out with the thing itself, his hand clamped behind its flat triangular head and its body twisting on itself like a hard sure slap to the face, Dave can’t remember ever having felt more powerless. And hopeless. He’s frozen there, both girls erupting with choked-back little shrieks of horror and amusement because that’s what girls are supposed to do in a situation like this and Wilson flashing that smile and brandishing the snake as if he’s given birth to it, and all he feels is that things have gone terribly wrong.
There it is, the snake, his snake, the one he’s bought with his own private funds to possess it and free it again because that’s his pleasure and it’s not secreted in a bag anymore, not wrapped in burlap and hidden from sight, but right there in his face, coiling and uncoiling, rattling its tail in a high furious buzz like a stirred-up hive of bees, thick, potent, menacing, revealed in its essence. A snake. A rattlesnake. Crotalus viridis. Its mouth is open in outrage, the fangs yellow-white and slick with wet, with venom. The cabin closes in. The sea moves. And he understands, for the first time, how wrong this is, how wrong he’s been, how you have to let the animals—the animals—decide for themselves.
Then the ship’s horn sounds, loud as a cannon blast.
Then the crash comes.
Then nothing.
Scorpion Ranch
She’s never seen the channel so smooth. There isn’t even so much as a bump coming out of Ventura Harbor and at ten in the morning it’s as warm as midday. As far as she can tell there’s no hint of a breeze, nothing at all — it’s dead calm, the surf flat, boats fixed in place, the kelp fanned out limp on the water. There won’t be many sailboats out today, but the weekend sailors are just going to have to suffer, that’s all, because she doesn’t mind being a little selfish here — even if she had the ability to arrest the planet on its axis, she couldn’t have ordered up better weather for the occasion. Amazing, really. Though the Islander’s full to capacity with Park Service and Nature Conservancy people and campers and day-trippers alike, everyone’s just standing around as if they’re at a cocktail party in a crowded apartment with unconquerable views. Nobody’s looking green, nobody’s got their head down and there’s no Bonine or Dramamine in evidence. It’s so flat that when Wade brings her a cup of tea in the recycled cardboard container, he’s able to walk from the galley and down the length of the cabin without flailing his arms or lurching like a tightrope walker — and he doesn’t spill a drop. “It’s not water out there, it’s glass,” he says, leaning into the table where she’s sitting with Annabelle and Frazier. “We’re not sailing, we’re just skating. And will you look at that sun.”
“You’re right,” she says. “It couldn’t be more perfect.” She’s thinking of the last end-of-project celebration, the one out on Anacapa three years ago, and so is he.
“Nobody’s going to freeze today,” he says, “that’s for sure. And the paper cups and plates and all the rest — shit, even the cake — aren’t going to blow out to sea either, right, Fraze?”
Frazier and Annabelle are dreaming over their coffee, their faces soft and content, their posture so relaxed they might have been in a trance. He’s cradling his cardboard cup in his left hand and she’s got hers in her right. They’re sitting very close, hip to hip, and their two otherwise unoccupied hands are interlocked and resting casually in Annabelle’s lap. Alma is thinking how serene and pretty Annabelle’s looking — she’s wearing an aquamarine jacket and yellow blouse set off by the dangling boar’s ivory earrings Frazier gave her and gazing soulfully off across the water to where Anacapa and Santa Cruz rise up in the distance like the original Eden, the one before Eve, before Adam, before names.