It was a dark night and Matthew was tired. These are many things: excuses, reasons, facts, and results. That they were excuses for what happened was true, but they were also adequate reasons, which was indisputably a fact. They were also the result of overcast weather and a large, sleep-inducing meal that he had just eaten at Jesse Newman’s cottage before stumbling back to his small rowboat, tripping over rocks in the dark on his way to the rough wooden pier.
He’d been rowing for a good five minutes or more – hard to say in the dark – when he reached the narrows. The narrows need no real description other than their name. As he quietly splashed his way through the rocky channel, he saw a gleam in the water, and half-stood up to see what it was. A brief beam of moonshine, here then, gone now as the moon dipped away behind the clouds again, had illuminated something in the water. Maybe a stray buoy, one that had snapped its tether and drifted off. He might as well retrieve it, if it was. Standing up slightly straighter, he hauled on an oar one-handed, bringing the boat around. Almost within viewing distance… One more pull on the oar brought him close enough to see, and he was satisfied to see that it was indeed a loose buoy – home-made from a plastic juice jug. Then there was a bump, he clutched at the rowboat’s side, and, with almost comical willingness, it dutifully tipped over in a sudden spin of oars and water, plunging him in headfirst.
Trying to swear and choking on water, Matthew flailed murkily, completely disoriented. He felt a vague pull in a specific direction, and realized that his lifejacket (which, he remembered, with sudden annoyance, he was now more than fifty-seven pounds too heavy for) was weakly tugging him towards the surface. Flush with relief, he gathered his legs up, tensed them, and kicked towards the surface like a gigantic frog, happy that he’d gotten out of this annoyingly little incident so easily. He was already working out how he was going to right the boat and head home when his head connected with a hard surface (emitting a startling “wokk!” noise) and he passed out.
Matthew was aware of the bobbing, lulling sensation first, the enjoyable feeling that’s the closest thing anyone out of diapers can come to being rocked in a crib. Then the dampness chimed in. After that came bleary realization that he was really very lucky to be alive; apparently the tiny lifejacket had been just enough to keep him afloat. Forcing gummed eyelids open, he couldn’t see the boat. No telling how long he’d been out, or where he’d drifted – fog had rolled in, completing the set of bad weather that had followed his family’s vacation over the weekend, and making it impossible for him to tell how far off shore was. He bobbed, disconsolate. He couldn’t even see the point in striking out in any direction; there was no telling where he was.
After a minute or two (his watch had stopped working, to his annoyance), he heard a distant, repeated splashing, as of oars dipping in and out of the water. It was hard to be sure, but he thought it was getting closer, and after another guessable period of time, he was sure of it. Raising himself out of the water slightly with circular arm movements, he called “Hey! Can I get a lift? Fell overboard!”
A moment’s pause, with the oar sounds suddenly ceased, and then “Sure! Just keep talking, hard to see in this stuff!”
“Thanks!”
Feeling marginally better, Matthew listened to the steady rise and fall of the oars with good humour, keeping up a monologue of random comments. After a surprisingly short amount of time, he felt the spray from one particularly close splash on his face. Immediately thereafter, an oar smacked him on the head, directly on the sore spot left by his earlier bout with unconsciousness.
“Aagh!”
“Sorry.”
The offending instrument was extended to him, somewhat apologetically, insofar as a shaped length of wood can be said to have a manner of bearing.
“Grab ahold.”
Doing so willingly, Matthew hauled himself into a small rowboat, only slightly bigger than his. Its occupant, a vaguely friendly-looking middle-aged man with a somewhat unfortunate wide-brimmed straw hat, grinned at him. “Boat tip over?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. Ran into the thing a little while ago. Wondered about it, looked around, and then I heard you.” The man began rowing again; steady, strong strokes that looked like they could keep going forever.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Law of the sea, or lake, or whatever. Anyways, it’s sort of my job to pick you up.”
Matthew thought that last comment was slightly odder than it needed to be, and his expression must have conveyed a little of what he was thinking, because the man sighed. “Look, do you want me to tell you all at once or in little bits?”
“How can I answer that if I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me?”
The man frowned. “Hmmph. True.”
“And what do you mean, it’s your job?” continued Matthew.
His rescuer winced. “Oh, bugger the whole “break it slowly” routine. It always feels silly and everyone just asks me to cut to the point. You want the facts? You’re dead.”
A brief pause, save for the continuous, industrious rowing. Then, “I don’t seem to be.”
“’Course you don’t seem to be.” said the man, patiently. “You don’t expect to be dead, so you don’t look it.” He gave Matthew a critical stare. “Most things work like that, once you get past the body.”
Matthew spent several quiet but mentally frantic moments trying to find a way to get home without spending any more time in the same boat as this guy, and then, almost without prompting, his mouth opened and said “Why the hell do you say I’m dead?”
“’Cause you are. Think I’m a liar?” After a more careful examination of Matthew’s face, he added “Well, I guess you do. Can’t say I blame you.” He altered his stroke, and the rowboat swung to the right, changing course. “Where’re we going?”
“To grab a little proof. I do this sort of thing a lot, and let me tell you that you aren’t the first person I’ve picked up who’s a little doubtful of me.”
There was a small trip in silence, during which Matthew picked up his lost train of thought regarding escaping the rowboat, and then their side bumped against something. The man grunted in satisfaction, and leaned over the side slightly.
“What is it?”
“It’s your boat” came the muffled reply from over the edge of the rowboat. “Just lemme flip it and…there she goes!” Matthew’s driver pulled himself back into his seat for a moment, half sitting-down, and then tipped over again.
“Allright, here, have a look at this.”
Matthew twisted in his seat and adjusted his angle, and was unpleasantly surprised to see the man holding a motionless form by the strap of its remarkably undersized lifejacket. He let out an extremely large and gusty sigh. “Well, shit.”
The man watched him closely. “Satisfied?”
“No. But I believe you.”
“Fine. Just wanted to clear that up before we went any further.”
“Understandable.” Coming face to face with your own body should be more of a shock, thought Matthew. Instead, it was just vaguely gross, kind of like moving a piece of furniture only to discover that an exceptionally large mouse had chosen that location to pass away.
The man let the body drop back into the water, where it splashed.
“Was that really necessary?”
“Hey, it’s not like you’re gonna feel it.”
“Yes, but you could treat me with a little more respect there.”
“Sorry. I’ve seen a lot of this stuff, and you kinda get whatsisname, accumulated after a while.”
“Acclimatised.”
“Yeah.”
Matthew sighed. “So, two things: who are you, and now what?”
The rower grinned again. “Well, what happens next, like I said, depends a lot on what you expect. And as to who I am, think of me as the grim reaper, only less boney and more nautical. I handle the messups on the liquid-y-er parts of our big blue planet.”
“That’s an awfully big job for a guy in a rowboat, especially, no offence intended, when said guy is more than a few miles north of forty.”
“None taken. And you’d be surprised how many people have said that.” The rower chuckled. “And they were pretty surprised too, after a while. This trip takes a little bit, and you’ll see a few things before it’s over.”
“Anything dangerous?”
“Nope. Nothing’s really dangerous when you’re already dead, unless –“
“Unless you expect it.” finished Matthew.
“Yup. And even that doesn’t really apply here. This is what you could call the official part of the proceedings.”
A small pause, during which the fog managed to suck the sound even out of the gentle plashes of the oars, and then “So, I’m dead. That’s it?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“This really fucking sucks.”
“Probably,” he agreed.
“I mean, I’m still a virgin for Christ’s sake. I hadn’t even had sex yet!”
“Don’t look at me.”
Matthew winced “I wasn’t.”
“Just joshin’ ya.”
“You certainly don’t fit the “grim” portion of a gatherer of the dead. No scythe either.”
“Well, that’s an agricultural instrument, and I’m more the nautical variant.”
“A fishing net’d be favourite, then.”
“Ha! Yes, that’d be good. Never thought of that before, maybe I should find one somewhere. Hold on a second.” The man cupped a hand to his ear, and frowning, stared off into the grey fog.
“Sorry, is this another pickup?”
“Yes, and now sshh up for a minute, please.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, be quiet.”
A moment or two passed with intense listening, and then the rower sat back down and picked up the oars again. “Right, this should be easier than picking you up was. Passenger liner went down.”
“How’d it do that?”
“Bomb in the hold. Dunno why, but motives scarcely matter at this point, wouldn’t you say?”
Matthew nodded. “So, how many people?”
“A few hundred. Tropical seas, so you don’t have to worry about hypothermia, and since the GPS stopped working, they should be picked up before they attract the attention of any sharks.”
“A few hundred? In this rowboat.”
The man smiled. “It’s all what you expect –“
“It to be,” Matthew finished again, a tinge of annoyance colouring his voice.
“Well,” said the rower, a touch exasperated, “It’s true. They were just on a big ol’ passenger vessel, they’ll have them on their minds. So most of ‘em’ll probably see this as one.”
“And what it is? Really?” asked Matthew.
The rower looked thoughtful for a couple strokes, and then “You know, I don’t know. Personally, I’m always in favour of a good row, you know? So for me it’s a rowboat. But when someone else comes on board, if you try, you can always see it from their point of view. I’ve seen this little girl as a battleship, outboard, aircraft carrier, ocean liner, and once, the Flying Dutchman.” He paused again, for a moment. “That was a very odd man, that was. Gibbered at me the whole time about how I wasn’t going to get my filthy hands on his soul. Gave me the creeps, he did.”
He leaned over the side, staring into the fog. “Ah, there’s our first customers. Stick an oar out, willya?”
Shrugging, Matthew did as asked, and was mildly surprised when he immediately felt a heavy weight on the oar. Pulling it in, he found that it had a wild-eyed young man attached to it. Wordlessly, he hauled him up over the side, and then inserted the oar back into the water. Again, he felt a tug almost right away. This time it was a middle-aged man. Again, and it was a bedraggled-looking woman. After that he stopped paying much attention, and just kept hauling them over.
After a time, he felt an exceptionally heavy pull, and began the weary process of bringing in the oar with a very fat person hanging onto it. Instead, rather to his surprise, the oar’s occupant was an extremely large shark, which glared at him resentfully.
“I ‘ot it. It’s ‘ine. ‘Lear off, huhan,” it said, muttering incoherently around the edges of the wood.
Matthew stared for a moment, and then, somewhat automatically, he said “Could you wait a second?”
“’Ot all niht.”
Matthew leaned back into the boat, keeping a tight grip on the oar, and poked the rower on the shoulder, drawing his attention from his most recent catch. “There’s a shark on the oar. Could you have a word with him?”
“Just tell him that we’re on collection duty,” the man said, turning back to his efforts.
Matthew leaned over the edge again. “I’m sorry, but we’re on collection duty. And might I tell you, just as a carry-away bit of advice, oars aren’t edible.”
Releasing the implement, the shark gave him a look. “Goddamn typical of you bastards, sticking stuff in the water and waving it around like it’s in cardiac arrest, and then telling us it isn’t even goddamn alive. Fucking humans.” Its piece said, it dived under the boat with a flick of its tail, vanishing from sight.
Matthew gazed at the spot where it had dived. “You didn’t mention we’d end up talking to sharks, you know.”
The rower talked without moving his attention. “Yeah, animals can see us. Mostly I end up talking to the sharks, y’know? They’re damn bright compared to most fish, and they turn up at wrecks a lot.”
Matthew took his eyes off the sight of the shark’s submersion to haul in another passenger. “Are they all such assholes?”
“Hey, not like we give ‘em reasons to be happy, you know? One time I got into a good long talk with a bronze whaler about world fish markets and he said they’re being hunted down like rats, poor bastards. Being fifteen feet long and having a mouth full of fangs isn’t much good against a five-hundred-foot fibreglass-hulled fishing boat, and they aren’t as luminous as the little fellas, like sardines and so forth. Hard for ‘em to recover from being fished up in big bunches like that.”
Matthew hauled in another dripping castaway. “Numerous.”
“Pardon?”
“If something’s luminous, it’s glowing. If it’s numerous, there’s a lot of it.”
“Thanks. You’re a regular dictionary, aren’t you?”
“I do my best.”
The man sat down with a sigh. “Well, we’re done here – thanks for being such a help, by the by. Pass me that oar, would you?”
Matthew did so, noticing, without much surprise, that there was no sign of the people they’d fished up.
“So, they’re all off in an ocean liner?”
The rower grinned. “Yup. If you want, you can take a peek. Just change what you expect. I’ll poke you if I need help again with a big order, don’t you worry.”
“Right.”
Matthew sat motionless, trying to picture the place as an ocean liner might look. Big, fancy, huge buffet tables stuffed with the kind of food that made you waddle after a few days of it, big soft beds, onboard entertainment…
It wasn’t working. The rowboat remained, steadfastedly, a rowboat.
The rower looked up for a moment. “Try shutting your eyes. That always helps.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem”
Matthew shut his eyes. Ok. Big. Fancy. Buffet. Beds. Enormous television screens for lazy people who didn’t want to have to look at tropical views all day. He opened his eyes.
Woah.
He was sitting on a large soft-backed chair in a small room filled with incredibly complicated equipment. In front of him, a wide window showed an enormous prow cutting through the fog. Besides him, the rower, still wearing his straw hat, sat at the wheel. He gave him a mischievous little grin. “Bigger, isn’t she?” Matthew slowly nodded. Down there, there was a tennis court. He could see a handful of people wandering around, moving in and out of doors.
“How many people were onboard when you picked me up?” he asked.
The captain grinned again. “No one, actually. First catch of this trip.”
“Won’t this take an awfully long time then?”
“You’d be surprised. Not as if I’m the only person on duty, you know.”
“There’re other…” Matthew fumbled for a phrase, and grabbed hold of his first thought; “…grim rowers?”
“Ha! First time I’ve heard that. Yeah, there’re others. I’m actually the only one who rows nowadays. Most of the others prefer to change around from boat to boat, but mostly powered stuff, or sailboats. Me, I like the work. And the one time I ever was in a sailboat, I managed to knock myself overboard within two minutes. No, I like this girl as she is.”
Matthew looked out upon the intimidating expanse of deck. “Yeah. I think I do too.” He squinted for a moment, and abruptly, he was sitting in the rowboat again, opposite the steadily rowing man. He gave him a quizzical look. “You weren’t always like this?”
The grim rower snorted in amusement. “Nope. I dunno how long I’ve been doing this, but it must be more like fifty years than all eternity.”
“How’d it happen?”
“Well, I got picked up after an accident a lot like yours, ‘cept I was kayaking and was out off California, ‘bout the late summer of nineteen-sixty. Then I hit a rock, went under, managed to smack my head on a rock – might’ve even been the same one – and then some little old guy in a kayak picks me up. We chatted along, I took a look at what he was driving – for him it was a big ol’ sailing ship, the like the world hasn’t seen for a hundred years and more– and then as we dock and everyone starts departure, he up and asks me if I want his job. Said he’d been doing this since eighteen-ought-four and he was ready to retire. And really, how could I refuse? Always liked messing around in boats, and it’s almost like community service. Always liked that, too; it gives you a lovely warm feeling inside.”
Matthew mulled over this for a minute. “What’d he do?”
“He disembarked with the rest of them, and I went off in my rowboat, visited my first passenger – some guy who’d managed to drown in a bathtub, believe it or not – and I’ve never looked back since.”
“You had to fit this in a bathtub?”
The grim rower gave him a look. “Oh, c’mon now. Have you ever seen hide or hair of land since you drowned? Think about it.”
“Well…”
The man whisked an oar out of the water and held the dripping instrument in front of Matthew. “Here, give the water a taste.”
Matthew reached out with one hand, smeared off a drop of water, and gingerly licked his finger. “Salty.”
“Yeah. It’s all pretty much one big ocean, out here, once you die. Whether you drown in a pool or the Atlantic, it’s all Neptune’s domain out here, boyo.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.”
They made another stop, this time for three luckless souls who’d managed to run aground on a sandbar before their boat had sunk from under them, but then had been picked off one by one by a solitary shark who’d apparently developed a sweet tooth for bipedal apes, a rare commodity in the sea. Matthew saw the shark as they paddled off. It gave him an unrepentant grin before it was lost in the fog.
“You said you ran into my rowboat…”
“Yup.”
“So we kind of are in the place where the people died, and here, at the same time?”
“Far as I can tell.”
“And we can see the animals, and they can see us.”
“Yup.”
“So they just see us pop out of thin air, or what?”
“Pretty much, I think.”
“Weird.”
“Has anything not been, for you, on this trip?”
Matthew thought it over. “No.”
“Well there you go.”
Another long period of silence, during which they picked up a ten year-old girl who’d fallen off a dock. Unlike the other passengers so far, she seemed to see the ship as a rowboat, and she sat next to Matthew, sucking on a lollypop the grim rower had produced from a pocket.
Matthew contemplated the candy for a moment, and then “That wasn’t there a moment ago, was it?”
“Nope.”
“What you expect, right?”
“You bet.”
Five or six more shipwrecks, one after the other, all small boats, anywhere from one to eight people on each. Matthew talked with the little girl in between stops (her name, she said, was Melissa), and helped with the larger wrecks. Melissa remained the only person who saw the rower’s vehicle as a rowboat.
Finally, the grim rower sat back with a sigh. “Well, that’s it for this trip.”
“To the pier, eh?”
“Yup. Off to the dock.”
“Let me guess…this dock looks different –“
“Depending on what you expect.” The man grinned. “You catch on pretty quick.”
There was a long and splashing sort of silence, ending after what might’ve been ten minutes, and might’ve been something very different, when a battered wooden pier that barely cleared the waterline hove out of the gloom. It must’ve been no more than ten feet long.
The grim rower sat back on his oars and sighed. “Well, end of the line. All passengers disembark and all that.”
“Can I have your job?” asked Matthew.
The man started slightly. “I expected you to ask, but not like that. For goodness’s sake, didn’t your parents teach you manners?”
Matthew grinned with the same impertinence of the shark with a taste for humans. “All right. Can I have your job, please?”
The rower grinned back. “That’s the ticket. As to your question, sure. You seem an ok sort, you didn’t mind the work, and I was starting to get bored anyways.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And you saw my old girl here for what I think she is at heart, never anyone else mind – a nice little rowboat.”
Melissa piped up. “Can I stay too? I like this.” She pointed at Matthew. “I like him too.”
The man gave her a funny look. “I don’t recall any – aha – “grim rowers” taking permanent passengers on before, missy.” He smiled. “But who’m I to know? You can get off whenever you want, at the end of any trip, and you seem a nice sort. By all means, if it’s all right with the young man here.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t mention it. And of course it’s all right, Melissa. You can stay on as long as you want.”
“Yay!”
As they sat, they watched the passengers stream off the boat, walking onto the misty shore. “Where’re they going?” said Matthew.
The man smiled and got up, placed his straw hat on the seat, and stepped awkwardly onto the pier. “Wherever they expect, which is just what I plan to do.” He leaned down and solemnly shook their hands, one after the other. “Curt Veitch.”
“Matthew Stuart.”
“Melissa O’Conner.”
The grim rower – Curt – straightened up. “You have a good trip now, you hear?” Turning on his heel, with a final wave, he strode down the dock and into the mists.
Matthew moved into his vacated, still-warm seat and looked at the hat. Then, with great deliberation, he picked it up and placed it on Melissa’s head. She watched him with large, solemn eyes. He grinned. “It doesn’t suit me, you know. But it looks good on you.”
She smiled back, exposing tiny, perfectly-white teeth. “I like it.”
“Good.” Matthew reached under the seat and pulled out a battered old captain’s hat. He turned it over carefully, examining it. “It’s what you expect. I’ve had this hat since I was a baby, and I expect to put it to good use now.”
He took up the oars and grinned at Melissa. “Ready to go, cabin boy?”
“Cabin girl.” she corrected him, primly.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.”