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endured with one eye open. Around two or three in the morning, the weather calms. A dark mash of clouds parts to reveal a crescent moon, its rays casting indigo spears over black, shifting waters. The sailors awake to a cool, sunny day. As the morning progresses, a breeze kicks up, as do small foaming whitecaps. The boat churns forward, making decent time, Rodolfo and his deck crew continuing to purge the foreward aft of grime and rust. While the work is tedious, each man is glad to have something repetitive and demanding to occupy his thoughts.
    It is hard, putting the incident out of their minds, for the chief officer and second officer are roaming the boat, talking under their breath, at times gesturing. Even the captain, who had always stayed hidden in his office, can now be seen on deck, trying to engage a nervous and mumbling seaman in conversation, as if he’d always been the kind of master the sailors get to know. The morning shift ends. Rodolfo’s crew locks the equipment in the bosun store and heads to the mess.
    There, waiting for them on the tables, are cartons of milk and bars of chocolate. The seamen sit, each man staring at what has been left in front of him. Suddenly, one of the ABs chortles, and it is only a matter of seconds before they’re all laughing and ripping open milk cartons and slurping down the contents. Someone says, “I guess they’re a little worried,” which sparks a peal of bitter laughter. When the milk has all been drunk, they tear open the chocolate bars and eat them, too, Angel throwing a chunk in the air and catching it in his mouth.
    The laughter stops as quickly as it started. There are a few more brief attempts at conversation, but they fizzle, the Filipinos suddenly realizing they’re acting like the children the officersconsider them to be. With this comes a return of the gloom that has been weighting the big ship, bowing the gunwales and thickening the air. Rodolfo looks down at his food: steamed green vegetables, fried pork,
halo halo.
He takes a dry, choking bite. Then he rises and goes to his cabin. He lies on his bunk and stares at the ceiling, exhaustion propelling him toward a brief nap; when he awakes, his shoulders ache, and his head feels dull with fatigue. That evening, he’s on watch duty along with Carmelito and Joe— he has them check hoses and container lassos while he roams the deck. After a bit, he leans on the gunwale and looks out over churning white water. In the mist, he can see the shimmering faces of his children, and he smiles—he was barely more than a child himself when his first, a girl named Jinky, was born in a Manila hospital. He can recall it as though it were yesterday—the way her tiny pink face burrowed into the crook of her mother’s arm, the way she latched on to her mother’s breast with a silent, confident ease. He remembers it all so well, his contented little angel in a ward filled with screamers.
    If only, he thinks, he was from a country that hadn’t been ruined by a man and his shoe-loving wife. If only he hadn’t been forced to go to sea.
    He hears footsteps. Turning, he commands his face to lighten as the chief officer extends a hand toward him. Though the thought of touching it repulses him, he does so anyway; thick, leathery fingers fold around his, and a throbbing spreads through his knuckles. The chief officer releases Rodolfo’s hand, and both men lean their forearms on the gunwale.
    “You men do good work,” he says in English. “They work very good.”
    “Yes, Chief.”
    “You
do good job, Bosun.”
    Rodolfo nods. His heart is racing, and he can feel sweat form on his brow and under his arms.
    “I have know many bosun. When the bosun is good, the men look at him to make example. The men look at him for what to do. You understand, Bosun?”
    Rodolfo says nothing. The officer clears his throat. “Bosun, I was talk with the company today. They say they want to promote a few good men. They say they need, uh,