Free The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan Page B

pretty names we had for things—coq au vin or angels on horseback or lobster Newburg—the hard fact of the matter was that life depended on the ability to subjugate other creatures to our use.
    The fish brought a kind of holiday mood upon us. When Anya Robeson told Charlie to imagine he was eating a seed cake, it gave us the idea to take turns naming our favorite foods and pretending we were eating those. The Colonel said something facetious about military rations, and Mrs. McCain had to be stopped from describing all the dishes at a typical Sunday supper in the McCain household. Mary Ann, of course, merely repeated what I had suggested about her wedding feast, but when it came to my turn, I said, “Right now I can’t think of anything much better than raw fish. I am developing quite a taste for it!”
    “Good, because ye’ll get some more tomorrow,” said Mr. Hardie. As he said it, his eyes found mine and we shared a long look. He dipped his chin in a faint nod, as if I had pleased him in some way. I nodded back, and for the rest of the evening I savored that brief exchange. It was something I had been waiting for but had long since stopped expecting. Later, I tried to catch his eye again, but he either failed to notice me or pretended not to, and I wished I had been satisfied with that first small crumb of acknowledgment and hadn’t asked for more.
    Catching the fish went a long way toward restoring the confidence we had lost during the episode with the lights. It seemed too easy—one minute Hardie was unsheathing his knife and peering over the side and the next he was drawing forth sustenance from the water; and when he repeated the performance later in the day, Maria and Lisette began to turn their worshipful eyes on him at regular intervals.
    The deacon had uttered some kind of verbal incantation over the fish, and even though we had each eaten only a few small chunks of it, we felt a certain bodily satisfaction, because we were reminded of a merciful God and because we now knew Hardie had only to plunge his knife into the back of the sea for it to cough up the elements of our survival. But after those two, we caught no more fish. Every day we expected the ocean to yield more of its bounty, and when Hardie failed to make this happen, we saw it as a willful withholding on his part rather than bad luck or the fact that soon after, the wind came up and it became impossible to visually pierce the choppy cobalt surface of the sea. The idea of a flat ocean, which we had enjoyed for five full days, took its place with the future and the past beyond our myopic imaginations.
    The fish became a symbol of what Hardie could do if he wanted, of what he might do if we would only behave and stop questioning his plan for us. His eventual failure to provide was not the only reason for a growing undercurrent of anger. He continued to predict a change in the weather. He said, “When it comes, ye’ll see for yerselves that there are too many people in the boat,” but we didn’t want to hear it. It made us angry because we didn’t know what we were supposed to do about it, even if what he said was true. Were we supposed to simply fade away like Mrs. Fleming? But these feelings of anger and doubt accumulated gradually. On the evening of the fifth day, we were still grateful to Hardie for the miracle of the fish.
    The deacon liked to recount Bible stories, and he used this occasion to tell us about the fishes and the loaves. The moment he launched into a parable or psalm, Mary Ann and Isabelle stopped whatever they were doing, and Anya Robeson let little Charles sit on her lap without his ears covered whenever the deacon held forth. I have to admit that I, too, could be lulled by the familiarity of the stories, despite the fact that some of them were quite grim. People like repetition. They like to know how a story ends, even when it ends with everyone but Noah dying in the flood. The deacon would tell a story that was known to