"No women on the boat."
"Sig…"
"I said no, Edgar. No women on the boat. No wives, girlfriends, daughters, ESPECIALLY my daughter."
"You're doing that thing again."
"What thing?"
"That thing where you yell and act like it will make me listen better. Look, she's twenty five, she can crab if she wants to."
Sig Hansen stopped pacing back and forth and turned to face his younger brother. Thirty years on the Bering Sea had aged him twice as fast, the bags under his eyes drooping down almost to his chin.
"She will not step foot on the deck of Northwestern, do you understand me?" Edgar shrugged.
"You're doing it again. See, you're yelling and I'm still not listening," Edgar followed Sig downstairs and out onto the deck where Norman and Jake were cutting bait.
"Oh, go do something else," Sig grumbled, lighting a cigarette and puffing angrily before heading back to the wheelhouse.
"I'm guessing he said no," Norman said, laughing. Edgar didn't respond as he plunged a knife deep into the gut of a cod. "He'll never change."
"She'll just board the Wizard, won't she?" Jake asked, his voice barely audible over the crashing sea. Edgar and Norman both nodded. "He wouldn't rather have her on his boat so he can keep an eye on her?"
"Sig is so superstitious that he would put Nina on a buoy and send her to the bottom of the sea if he thought it would bring the crab!" Matt laughed.
"Besides," Edgar interjected," Sig wants her on the Wizard. She's Keith's girl." Jake looked at Edgar, then back at Norman.
"What do you mean?"
"She's his side piece, you know, his other woman!" Matt yelled, grinning salaciously.
"Keith is sleeping with Nina Hansen?" Jake asked again, like it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. The other men just laughed and kept working. "I don't get it, this doesn't matter to you guys? It's like… it's not right! He's married!"
"Boy, if you want to last more than one season, you're going to have to can the sacrilegious bullshit. You're not crabbin' if you're not fishin'," Norman chortled.