Rogue Wave

It’s not physically possible. And I’ve explained this to Gregg. Over and over. I didn’t think I’d need to explain it to you too.”
“Gregg didn’t seem to have an explanation. He’s pissed.”
The bubbles in my beer rose, and I rubbed a finger along the condensation so I could better see the pattern.
“So, what? You were out on these ships for ten years? Don’t you have to dock at some point?”
“Sometimes. You can get gas from ships that come out to you.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to think about all the years spent on the vast ocean. “Even when you dock, the places we docked, they were third world.”
“Like what? Where? If you needed money, I would have sent you money. Your grandmother would have, too.”
“I know. And I appreciate it. But the issue wasn’t money. When we docked, it wasn’t for long. And it’s not like I was twiddling my thumbs. Or we were around people I could ask to plug my phone in for a charge.” I thought of the tamped down red dirt floors, the filthy fabric hanging from slim dried bamboo, the men, women, and kids in tattered clothes, many barefoot. How did I communicate any of that to someone like Gabe?
“What’d you end up doing?” He tapped my shoulder with a lighthearted smirk plastered on. “CIA? Were you kidnapped? Like we had a million theories. Personally, I think the CIA option is the best one.” I chugged my beer, doing my best to ignore him. He put on his serious face. “But, for all Gregg’s anger, he was worried about you. He’d stop by the house, talk to my dad about his options for trying to track you down.”
I scratched my head, letting that sink in. My conversations home had been brief and short by necessity. But it wasn’t like there’d been tears. The lawyer my brother hired to contest the will certainly told a different story. A text informed me of Dad’s heart attack. A text alerted me to Nana Pearl’s passing. She’d been in hospice, and no one contacted me.
Gabe tapped my arm. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me anything that you’ll have to kill me over. Just give me the highlights.”
“I don’t even know where to begin.” I’d seen so much, done so much. On the other hand, so much of what I’d seen was all the same, and I hadn’t done nearly enough. “I started out on the Panglossian. That, you know, right?”
“Yeah. And we all got it, at first, that you didn’t have a way to call home. And your goal was to track boats that were violating international fishing law? Did you catch any bad guys?”
“It wasn’t exactly like that.” I chewed on my lip, thinking about the results from four years of my life following ships around, tracking their activities. “We stopped two of the big offenders.”
“So, you saved lots of fish?” He leaned his side against the bar with a smirk.
I sighed, ignoring his slight. “These fishing ships nowadays. Did you know they have nets that can trail two miles back? Freezers that let them haul catch for months? They’re depleting the oceans.” Something of the old emotion I used to feel stirred at his amused expression. He’d always seen me as the crazy one, the one who cared about fish.
“It doesn’t matter. You stop one boat, another three set sail. Until governments care, and someone tries to police the ocean, it’s…even if they care, it’s not something that can be solved easily.”
“You giving up on our planet?” I side-eyed him, and he still wore that blasted smirk, but there may have been a shadow of concern.
“No. Not giving up. I don’t know. Aside from the fish, which I know you don’t care about—”
“Hey, I care about the environment. Just because I didn’t join Greenpeace doesn’t mean I’m an ass.”
“Aside from the planet, it’s the living conditions. The humans.” I stretched my fingers out before me, struggling with how to explain. “The men on those fishing ships. Most of it’s modern-day slave labor. You dock in ports that, let’s just say, tourists don’t visit. Kids—like, kids, Gabe—are in brothels, if you can call them that. You can walk down alleys and step inside a room and have your choice of a ten-year-old girl or boy, to do whatever the fuck you want for a dollar American. It’s…” I closed my eyes, aiming to prevent those images from resurfacing.
“What’d you do after Greenpeace?”
“Helped an organization get women out to sea so they could have abortions. It’s a women’s organization that helps women in countries with no rights.”
“Damn. I guess I can see why you didn’t want to tell your grandmother about that.”
I knew what he was assuming, but he’d be wrong. My grandmother was pro-choice. I’d taken the job sometime after my dad died. He would have wanted me to pursue a more lucrative career, but I didn’t expect he’d have more of an issue with my helping desperate women than helping the planet. And Nana Pearl, she was supportive, period.
“But I guess a phone was still hard to come by on those missions?” he prodded.
“I worked for that group for less than a year.” The group had been tiny, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could do long term. Not only was it dangerous, but it was emotionally grueling. I saw battered women, women who looked like girls, too young to even get pregnant. I swallowed, trying to shake the eyes. It was the eyes, the dark pupils set on white, that haunted me. An ever-present reminder of the other human beings with the misfortune of being born into squalor.
“And then? Ten years,” Gabe prompted.
“I started working for a man based out of Mississippi.”
“Let me guess. Saving whales?”
I slung back the rest of my beer and slid it forward for a refill.
“Hardly. Stealing boats behind on payments.”
“No way. A repo man.”
“Yep. Paid good. That’s about it.” Yes, I’d set out to change the