I climbed down onto a narrow pier, whose many missing planks made it resemble a mouthful of broken teeth, and hopscotched my way past the empty berths. Nearing the end of the pier, I came upon a battered trawler checkerboarded in soldered iron patches, like playing cards in a game of 52 Pick-Up. I spotted a man of undetermined old age swabbing the back deck with a whisk broom blackened at the bristles. Balding, with a sloping, reptilian forehead, the man’s spine curved so that he resembled a question mark. I approached the vessel, hoping the man to be a grandfatherly type who’d take pity on a young fisherman.
“Excuse me, sir, but would you happen to know of any captain in need of an experienced deckhand?”
“Where you from, boy,” asked the man, spitting a long line of tobacco juice where h
