by Simon Archer
“They have whole months off?” Lottie chimed in.
“Yep. The fishing industry has seasons. When it is the off-season, very few men are needed to keep the docks operational. That is when most fisherman and longshoremen take their extended vacations,” Vila answered her.
“Your master decided to spend his vacation next to the water on the beach after being next to the water on the dock all season?” Lottie seemed puzzled.
“Oh, yes,” Andi started. “Most men go up and get into that line of work because it pays well. However, the ones that end up staying longer than a couple of years make it their career simply because they fall in love with the ocean.”
“Isn’t it cold all the time, though? That would be enough to keep me from staying anywhere!” Lottie retorted.
“It isn’t cold all the time, no.” Vila rolled her head on her lounger so she could see Lottie. “Summertime is magnificent there. It’s next to impossible to describe properly using words. Why don’t you give me your hand?”
Lottie looked back at Vila. “My hand?”
“Yes. Give me your hand, and I’ll show you,” Vila offered.
“You can do that?” Lottie’s voice went up an octave with every syllable, she was so excited.
“Woman,” I said to her, laughing, “just give her your hand already!”
Lottie extended her arm out, and Vila, sitting in the lounger next to her, reached out and took hold of her hand. Both of them closed their eyes, and I heard Lottie gasp. Andi and I exchanged knowing glances and smiled. It was the first vision that Lottie had been given, and we were both anticipating her reaction. It only took a few minutes before Vila slowly let go of Lottie’s hand, and they both opened their eyes. Lottie stared at Vila, speechless for a moment.
“Well, did you like what you saw? Summer in Alaska really is pretty, isn’t it?” Vila chuckled.
Lottie blinked several times before she was able to speak.
“It was magnificent, but I’m not sure what I like more: what I saw or the fact that I saw it at all!”
The four of us laughed at her newness to the visions process.
“Did you show her Cordova?” Andi asked Vila.
“She did!” Lottie answered for Vila. “Was that beer being sold in a hair salon?” Both of the genies started giggling.
“It was indeed!” Vila replied. “It was just as much a shock to us when we first saw that. It is an entirely different culture there!”
“Yes, I see that! Have you shown Bennett?” Lottie wanted to know.
“No, not that one,” Andi answered. She rolled her head to look at me. “Wanna see?” I wasn’t certain my brain could register any more natural beauty than that which I was already surrounded by at the time, but the look on Lottie’s face as she waited for my answer made it clear that she wanted me to see what she had.
“Sure, why not?” I told Andi.
She immediately reached out her arm, and I placed my hand in hers. She squeezed my hand, and suddenly I was standing on the top of a hill. I was surrounded by berry bushes and wild grass. As I looked down the hill, it appeared to become greener before it flattened out for a small distance, then ended at the water’s edge. Beyond that, there was nothing but ocean. I turned a full circle while looking down the hill, across other hills surrounding me, and all sides were surrounded by ocean waters stretching endlessly beyond the horizon in every direction. Andi was standing beside me, watching me take in the view.
“I am pretty certain that Alaska is not an island,” I mentioned to her, wondering exactly where I was. She giggled a little and rolled her eyes.
“Technically, we are in Unalaska,” she started. “This is just one in a chain of islands off the southwest coast of Alaska. This is where the fishing boats bring in their hauls at the end of their weeks out on the water.”
I looked up at the sun high in the cloudless sky and put my hands out in front of me. “It has to be at least seventy-five degrees. I’m with Lottie on not thinking of this kind of weather in Alaska.”
“You are with Lottie on being wrong,” Andi laughed. “It’s closer to eighty down there.” She held her arm out and pointed down the north side of the hill. At the bottom, looking like a child’s toys were a cluster of buildings and boat docks. There weren’t many structures, and the entire visual indication of civilization couldn’t have been more than a few square miles if that.
“The place is tiny,” I observed aloud, squinting to get a better look.
“It may be tiny, but it is the number one U.S. port for seafood,” she informed me.
“How does a tiny place like that end up being top of the list for seafood volume?” I asked, thinking she was pulling my leg.
“There is a reason that most who come to work here, thinking they’ll make bank because the pay is great, don’t end up staying,” she replied. “The port is small, but the manpower used to run it could rival the biggest city. The men and women down there put in twenty-four to thirty-six-hour rotating shifts with a maximum of eight-hour breaks, all season long, regardless of what the weather is like.”
I looked at her and back down to the tiny port and was suddenly grateful for my chosen career. I turned in place again and noticed the top of a nearby hill was completely void of greenery in contrast to the one I was standing on.
“What happened over there?” I asked, pointing to the grey hilltop.
“The island has an active volcano. That’s it,” she answered.
“It just looks like the top of the hill is dead. That’s really a volcano?” I’d seen documentaries on volcanoes, but up to the point I’d never paid attention to the fact that the films never showed anything that looked like that hill.
“It looks like that until it gets a stomach ache and starts spewing ash out the top,” Andi laughed at me again.
I failed to see the logic of the situation. “If this is a chain of islands, and this particular island has an active volcano on it, why wasn’t the port built on another one of the islands where they wouldn’t have to worry about being taken out by ash and lava?”
“This place was settled well before modern science. Nobody knew it was a volcano until it erupted. However, there have only been small eruptions over the years. The last big one was over eight thousand years ago,” she explained. “Plus, money makes men do strange things.” She shrugged her shoulders and took hold of my hand again and squeezed. I had just enough time to blink before finding myself standing on grey sand, just yards from the ocean. I stepped back and felt my foot sink into the soggy sand.
“Where did you whisk us to now?” I cried out, almost losing my balance.
Andi grabbed me by the arm to steady me as she answered. “This is Clam Gulch. We always just called it Soldotna Beach.”
“It’s not nearly as pretty,” I sniped, getting my footing back.
“Turn around,” she instructed me.
I slowly turned around, being careful not to sink into the beach again. A moment later, I was face-to-face with a beautiful sight. Sharp hills rose up in front of me and were covered in greenery that reminded me of the visions Vila had given me of Ireland. Above the hills, bright white clouds floated lazily through a piercingly blue sky. It seems like an entirely different world from the one I was actually standing in. The beach was gray and foggy, whereas the scene I was looking at was crisp and bright.
“Wow,” was all I could say.
Andi smiled at me. “That’s a pretty common reaction for first-timers. Do you want to dig for a clam while we are here?”
It took me a moment to process what she asked me.
“Why?” I was puzzled.
“Because we are in the middle of Clam Gulch. It would almost be a shame not to!” She laughed, raised her arm, and snapped her fingers. I found myself holding a long, skinny shovel, and a bucket. “Here, I’ll show you how.” She took my shovel from me and started looking at the sand. She pointed down and looked at me. “See that?”
“No.” I did not see
anything spectacular on the beach where she was pointing. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“See that tiny indentation in the sand? A clam is underneath that,” she explained.
“It looks like someone pressed a small circle in the sand is all,” I observed.
“Yep, exactly.” Andi laughed and smiled. “Every now and then, you will get a kid down here taking the end of their shovel handle and making tiny indentations to mess with the people actually trying to find clams. It’s hilarious to see them run off the beach.”
With that, she placed the edge of the shovel a few inches behind the indentation, put her foot on the top of the scoop, and quickly pushed the shovel straight down into the sand. She quickly tipped the shovel and pulled up the sand directly under the indentation and shook it out on the ground beside her. Apparently, Andi found something as she dropped the shovel, bent over, and picked that something out of the sand. When she held it up to me, I saw that she had a razor clam in her palm.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to do?” I was surprised at how easy it looked.
“Yes, sir! As long as you are sure to push the shovel straight down and scoop quickly, you’ll get ‘em,” she informed me. “If you don’t, either you will cut them in half, or they will dig their way to China, and you will never see them again!”
“Really? China?” I joked at her exaggeration as she handed the shovel back to me.
“I always assumed that they ended up in China because you could dig for hours and never find them if you miss them the first time,” Andi joked. I looked around on the sand and saw another indentation similar to the first one.
“Is that one?” I directed her attention to the sand.
“You’ve got an eye for this,” she replied, nodding her head. I lined the shovel up behind the divot and pushed it into the sand hard with my foot. I scooped the sand and shook it out as she had done. I dropped down and started sifting through the sand to find my prize. The only thing I found, however, was a crushed clamshell.
“What? I did the exact same thing you did!” I looked up at her, irritated. Andi stood there with both her hands clapped over her mouth, trying not to laugh.
“All except pushing your shovel straight down into the sand!” she said, laughing through her fingers. I opened my mouth to object to her criticism of my technique, but realized I didn’t have a leg to stand on, seeing as how I had evidence of incorrect technique laying in my hands.
“Fine,” I told her. “One more try. This next clam better be in the right spot!” It only took me a moment to find another divot in the sand and place my shovel behind it. I was very careful to push the blade vertically directly down before scooping. I half-heartedly tossed the sand out on the beach and got down to sift through it. Right in the middle of the pile was a perfectly intact razor clam.
“See! Perfect!” Andi called out, jumping up and down and clapping. “You did it!” I was surprised by my level of excitement, which almost matched that of hers.
“I sure as hell did!” I yelled. I stood up, and Andi threw her arms around my neck.
“Now, you know that you will be able to survive if you got stranded here!” she said humorously. “Good job!”
I hugged her back, gripping my clam. “Hey, can I take this back with us?” I really wanted to show Lottie that I had dug up a clam for some reason. Andi let go of me and took a step back.
“Are you a newbie at this vision thing, or what?” she asked, hands on her hips.
“Okay, okay. False hope, I know,” I chuckled. I looked down at my prize and figured that since it couldn’t go with me, I may as well give it a shot at life, so I dropped it back down into the hole I had dug it out of. I brushed my hands off and turned to Andi.
“Now what?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if she had shown me everything she’d wanted to.
“I’ve had enough of Alaska for now. Let’s go home,” she declared. She reached over before I had a chance to respond and squeezed my hand. Just like that, I was sitting on my lounger at my house in Barbados. I blinked a few times to get my bearings and then looked to my side to see Lottie staring at me.
“How was it?” she asked, anxiously excited.
“Well, I dug up a clam!” I laughed at myself, hearing how ridiculous the words sounded to my own ears. Apparently, I was not the only one amused. Vila and Lottie both laughed at me as well.
“I got to eat wild berries and run through sunlit meadows, and you are excited about a slimy sea creature,” Lottie yelled out through roaring laughter. I looked over at Andi.
“Wild berries? Really? Where were my wild berries?” I asked with mock exasperation.
“All around you on the island, but you were more interested in the volcano!” Andi piped back. She wasn’t wrong. I was perfectly happy with my experience and decided to put Alaska on my list of places to vacation, eventually.
“You got to see a volcano?” It was Lottie’s turn to feel as though she had missed out on something. Andi and Vila looked up at each other, and both of them rolled their eyes.
“Isn’t it interesting how different people noticed different things when it seems they would have been happier taking the time to notice everything?” Vila asked Andi sarcastically.
“It is interesting, Vila. I do wonder why that is,” Vila answered, as though Lottie and I weren’t present, listening to them make fun of us.
“Oh, shut up, you two!” I scolded with mock-irritation. I switched to a quick smile and winked at Andi. “And thank you!”
“You are welcome,” she replied with a nod.
The four of us went back to looking at the sky simultaneously. The fire was dying down, and the stars were getting brighter as it did. I felt the first wave of exhaustion pass over me just then. It had been a long day, and regardless of me not actually lifting a finger to move furniture, I felt like I’d been doing so all day. I felt my eyelids get heavy and let them slowly close. I was a moment away from drifting off to sleep when a thought crossed my mind. I opened my eyes and glanced at Lottie.
“You never saw what we were looking at on the beach earlier, did you?” I asked her. Her eyes were closed, but she smiled a little.
“Nuh-uh,” she muttered sleepily.
I smiled at how cute she was, sleeping there under the stars, and I decided not to wake her further. I laid my head back and figured a quick doze wouldn’t hurt anything, and let myself drift to sleep as well.
4
A loud swooshing woke me up. I sat up and blinked myself further awake, wondering where I was. It took a moment to get my bearings and remember I was at my new house. I peered to my side, and Lottie was asleep in the lounger beside me. The other two chairs were empty. I had an eerie feeling that something was off but then realized what was unsettling.
It was light out. We had slept the entire night outside.
I looked around and saw Andi and Vila were sitting in the sand where the rock wall opened up to the ocean. The water was only a few yards away from them, and I determined it was making the noise that woke me up. When I had drifted off to sleep, the water was much further out. It was my first dramatic experience with low tide versus high tide. I stood and stretched before heading down to see the girls. They looked up at me from their seats in the sand when I approached.
“More whales?” I looked out at the water to see what they could be looking at since they were sitting so still.
“No, just keeping watch. It’s a really pretty sunrise,” Vila answered.
“Keeping watch for what?” I asked sleepily.
“Nothing in particular. You and Lottie were sleeping, so we were just keeping an eye out to make sure no beach-wandering human or animal came upon you,” she replied.
“Plus, we wanted to see how high the tide would come,” Andi added. I sat down on the sand between them and looked out over the water. The sun was barely up over the horizon and shone golden rays across the ocean, making the tiny, incoming waves sparkle. There weren’t any clouds, and a
straight line of pink and orange shot directly out of each side of the sun, wrapping around the sky.
“What time is it?” I asked, marveling at the sunrise too much to think about looking at my watch to answer my own question.
“Five-thirty,” Vila answered. “I can get breakfast started. Are you going to stay here with Lottie?” I looked behind me to see my fiancé still fast asleep.
“I’d love to stay, but I have a conference call with Jack in under an hour. I don’t want to wake her, though. She looks so comfortable,” I commented.
“I’ll stay with her,” Andi volunteered. “It’s beautiful out here.”
“Perfect!” Vila said, hopping up. “Come on, Bennett. You can tell me what you want for breakfast on our way in.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the house.
I looked down at Lottie as I passed her. She was sleeping so deeply that Vila rushing us by didn’t even cause her to stir. When I was pulled into the kitchen, Vila finally let go of my hand and went directly to the refrigerator.
“Eggs? Bacon?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at me.
“How do you expect to pull off either? We haven’t stocked this place yet,” I reminded her.
“You really must be tired still,” she answered flatly, turning to look at me with a raised brow.
“Oh, yeah,” I muttered. “You can magic-up whatever we need. I remember now,” I replied half-joking. My mind was still a little sleepy.
“You go jump in the shower while I cook, and we will have you ready in time for your meeting with Jack,” Vila chimed as she whirred about the kitchen. I followed her orders and headed to the bedroom. By the time I returned, my mind-fog had cleared, and I was much more alert. I cleared my throat on the way back into the kitchen so as not to scare Vila. She turned to me with a smile.
“You look like you are ready to live the day!” she complimented me.
“I feel like I am, too,” I replied, walking to the kitchen island. “It smells fantastic in here!”
