the closest thing to a graveyard shift he ever worked was standing watch on a tuna boat a thousand miles off the coast of Peru

        it was a desirable gigbelieve it or not  despite the fistfights he had with crew members who wanted him gone  off the boat  literally  so one of their shit relatives could have his job 

beset by their incensed view which he deemed myopic – they wouldnt have known the word had he mused it – they were working off whamaybe was an eightthgrade education they viewed their number superior so ofcourse they spewed You know, it’s not unusual someone goes missing off a boat, in bad weather; swept overboard. No he rebutted them I have no doubt Any more than I doubt three or four men can go missing in bad weather either

he fingered the knife in his pocket as he spoke momentarilytoying with the notion since they were gathered and least expecting it he ought to get this nonsense over with 

the moment stretched longer than he thought it would

                                                         and maybe they saw it in his face saw the darknessthe nothing-to-lose gamble the set of his jaw  maybe a skull grimace 

he was a Polack from Chicago tipped twofifteen worked circles around them through them without pardon maybe they saw it wasnt a good idea to try and intimidate him

all they knew of him was that he came to the boat from working ranch in Montana  also worked part-time killing and butchering cattle

they didnt know that he had assessed human beings as no better than any other creature on the planet probablydefinitely worse  

they left him on the upper deckbacked away en masse as he was still fingering his knife

their retreat defused the situation 

later in his bunk he laughedsurmised that they were capable atleast of some smarts some dreary latent sense of survival

he also recognised that they stretched the hair of his hairtrigger violence tighter

he wouldnt see them  they were ghosts

and when they realised he wasnt seeing them they made themselves scarce 

theres was maybe another three weeks to the trip

                                                     the boat was big enough

graveyard shift

it was appropriate nomenclature to describe his circumstances

what he couldnt describe then or now he was on deck brought up there because he could smell land a scent of earth and trees and flowers and organic decay

it was miraculous

he smelled it a handful of times over the sevenanahalf months of the two trips he worked fishing tuna on a seiner seiner thats a laugh

every time the scent washed over him he thought of his wife on the beach in Montana in California more miles apart than they had ever imagined

nearly forty years later he was standing watch again

eighteen hour shifts  or whatever it took

itd only been nine dayshe hoped itd be nine months

there was no money in it

only the right reasons

he smiled mischievously 

                           wondering what any man or woman might do for no moneynothing 

to benefit was its sole reason to exist

0031,  Sunday,  15  12. 19

2116,  Sunday,  26  4. 20