Real hard to get work done today.
This fucking rain, Ted thought. This fucking rain, this fucking wind, and these fucking tarps.
He didn’t know why they were even bothering with tarps; it wasn’t like the crates were gonna get any more or any less rusty than they already were. But on they had to go, so the first mate (his name was Rahi, the others said he was from Yemen or one of those places, and he mostly communicated via grunts) had told Ted to go and help fix the tarps. Or, rather, he grunted at Ted, jerked his head at the other poor bastards going out on tarp duty, and threw a duct-tape patched slicker at him.
That was enough to get Ted moving; he could take a hint, and at least outside he’d be away from everybody else’s smell. Besides, it wasn’t like Rahi had even thrown it at his head. It was practically a lob.
Of course, the smell on the deck wasn’t really better, just different. Less weird food-farts, more rust and bad seasfood. Although Ted had always thought old fish smell would be more like actual fish, instead of this weird nasty-sweet iron and copper reek permeating the cargo crates. This close up, it was pretty foul.
If you hate it so much, he told himself, then get the damn tarps on. Then you can go somewhere that doesn’t smell like this.