Spring Tide

by Robbi McCoy

  She glanced at the map in her hand, sucked in a deep breath and thought, This is my salvation.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wind decorated the surface of the water with a regular pattern of inch-high ripples that sparkled in the early evening sunshine. Jackie paddled steadily, matching Gail’s pace, moving her kayak unhurriedly upstream. Like always, Jackie had her eye out for wildlife, a muskrat or river otter if she was lucky, but more likely a great blue heron would appear in the shallows near the shore, its slender head cocked to keep one eye on the water, waiting for a meal.

  At a fork, Gail’s bright yellow craft veered right into Duggan Creek and Jackie followed. They entered a narrower waterway shaded by large overhanging trees where the sunshine didn’t penetrate. Jackie had been here plenty of times before and knew the likelihood of seeing herons was high, but fishermen, so plentiful on the banks of larger sloughs, were rare. This stream off of Georgiana Slough cut through acres of grazing grassland with few inhabitants other than cattle. She saw cows now and then, wading down to the shore to take a drink or cool off. But at this time of the evening, she didn’t expect any cows. They would have headed back to the dairy by now to be milked and fed.

  It was quiet except for the sound of their paddles cutting the surface of the water and the occasional croaking frog that always went silent as they approached. Duggan Creek was narrow but deep, so it flowed slow and smooth-surfaced. It was still swollen with spring rains, though it was late May and there had been no rain at all since April.

  Plowing the way ahead, Gail wore a red baseball cap over her curly blonde hair and a sleeveless blouse that revealed her pale upper arms and the distinct line where the short sleeves of her Fish and Game uniform fell. Below that line, her arms were already thoroughly tanned from working outside much of the time. By mid-summer her face and arms would be dark brown. At forty-two, she was lean and sinewy, shaped like an athlete, a long-distance runner, not a wrestler, straight up and down with no curves. But Gail wasn’t a runner. She was just naturally skinny, blessed with an efficient metabolism. Her wife Pat complained bitterly on a regular basis that she and Gail ate the same diet, yet she kept getting fatter and Gail got even thinner.

  Gail and Pat were Jackie’s best friends, the three of them making up the core of Stillwater’s lesbian community. Gail had been in town five years, since she started working for Fish and Game, but Jackie had known Pat all her life. Their families were neighbors. The Wongs had been in Stillwater Bay since the beginning. They were one of the families who had settled here when the Chinese arrived in the 1800s to build the vast levee system.

  Recalling Pat as a child, Jackie remembered the thin, willowy girl who gave the appearance of extreme fragility, an impression enhanced by her pale skin and petite build. Despite the look, Jackie knew Pat as anything but fragile. She was quiet and docile most of the time, but messing with her was a bad idea. She could turn ruthless in a second, as more than one playground bully had learned. Jackie herself had made the mistake of pulling her hair once when they were little and had ended up on her back on the ground with the wind knocked out of her and her nose bleeding. That was the last time she’d even considered tangling with tiny Patricia Wong.

  Despite their long-term acquaintance, Jackie had never guessed Pat might be gay. Pat claimed she had never guessed it either…until Gail showed up. Gail was her first lesbian romance and, by all appearances, would also be her last. They were a solid, well-matched couple.

  “How was your day?” Gail asked without turning around.

  “The kind I dread,” Jackie replied. “I had to put a cat down.”

  “Oh, that’s lousy.”

  “It was. A little girl and her mother brought in their orange tabby. He’d been hit by a car and there was nothing I could do. The girl looked at me with big round watery eyes like she was expecting a miracle.” Jackie sighed.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Yeah. Not what you want to see come in…ever. That’s why I called you tonight. So you could make me laugh.”

  “Oh! I’m the comic relief, am I?” Gail laughed her deep, carefree chortle, scaring up a pair of ducks. They lifted off from the water and circled above, looking for a less crowded place to roost.

  “But I do have some good news,” Jackie said. “You remember that shepherd we rescued last month?”

  “Sure. The one that was nearly starved to death. Stupid bastards.” Gail was referring to the previous owners of the dog who had been evicted from their rental and had left their pets behind. The cats had fared better, being free to roam and find food, but the dog had been confined to the backyard with nothing to eat but grass. Fortunately, a neighbor had finally noticed that the vacant house was not entirely uninhabited and had brought the dog to Jackie. Her veterinary hospital wasn’t officially a rescue center, but it wasn’t unusual for people to “donate” ailing animals they found. Jackie didn’t ever turn them away and most of the time the story had a happy ending. She had a knack for finding the right home for the right pet. Once in a while, the right home turned out to be her own. She thought briefly of her menagerie. At least this dog would not be joining them. She didn’t expect to have any trouble finding a new family for him.

  “He’s recovered,” she said. “Physically, at least. And is coming around otherwise. Much less timid now.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “We named him Mortimer. I think I can start looking for a home for him soon. You interested?”

  Gail spun around to furrow her brow at Jackie. “Oh, no you don’t!”

  “All he needs is some love and patience. He’ll be a great pet once he learns to trust again.”

  “One dog is enough,” Gail said firmly. She and Pat had adopted a dog from Jackie a year ago, a boxer mix, Bosco, whom they were very happy with. And, equally important, he was as happy with them.

  Jackie smiled to let Gail know she was teasing. “What about you?” she asked. “How was your day?”

  “Pretty routine for me.” Gail stopped paddling and let the paddle rest across her boat. It drifted sideways until they were facing one another, Gail’s craft floating backwards. “I wish some things weren’t so routine. I stopped out at Whiskey Slough this morning. Some greenhorn. He’d caught a large-mouth that had swallowed the hook. He’d practically tore the fish up trying to get it out. Damn fool was planning on throwing it back. As if he thought it would live.”

  Jackie shook her head.

  “I told him the fish was too injured to survive. It was legal size. He could keep it. He said he didn’t want to eat it. Didn’t like fish.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I put it out of its misery. It was practically dead already anyway from being out of the water while he shoved a pair of needlenose pliers down its throat. I suggested he use it for cut bait.”

  “People think fish are incredibly resilient,” Jackie added. “That they can handle a huge amount of misuse.”

  Gail shoved her paddle in the water and pushed her kayak face forward again. “They’re actually not that tough.”

  “But they’re not mammals. They don’t smile or look sad, so people don’t think they suffer.”

  “Right. That’s why we use the smiling cartoon fish with the kids, to show they can be happy or sad just like them, and hope they grow up to be sensitive anglers.”

  “You’re doing your part, Gail. The kids get a kick out of those lectures. My nephew Adam was so excited that day you came to his class. He said you brought mudpuppies.”

  “Yeah. Kids like salamanders, especially mudpuppies because of their name. I’ll tell you what, though. When I set out to be a wildlife biologist, I had this idea I’d be protecting deer and other furry forest animals from poachers, forest fires and that sort of thing.” She shook her head. “Turns out it’s all about fish.”

  “Especially around here,” Jackie noted.

  They went around a bend and the creek narrowed again. None of this territory was new to Jackie. She knew ev
ery curve, the names of all the waterways and their characters in every season. It was late spring now and the occasional patch of wildflowers poked up through the bordering grasses. The bank was lined with willow, scrub oak and thorny wild blackberry vines with their clusters of light green berries promising a summer bounty of sweet purple fruit.

  “What’s that?” Gail asked, pointing to the east bank.

  A large animal moved through the brush on shore. They lifted their paddles and watched, letting the boats drift. As they neared, Jackie saw it was a dog with a beautiful amber-colored coat and red collar, rutting through the grass.

  “A golden retriever,” she said.

  As they watched, the dog started digging at the ground with its forepaws. Unusual to see a dog here, Jackie thought. He must have come from one of the farmhouses.

  At the sound of a short whistle, the dog looked up. Jackie followed the direction of his nose to see a woman thirty feet further on. She stood under an oak tree, wearing camouflage cargo pants and an open, long-sleeved shirt over a black form-fitting top. Her hair was dark brown, wavy and shoulder length. She was tall with a shapely body, but her face was in shadow and Jackie couldn’t make out any detail.

  “Deuce!” called the woman, her voice echoing across the waterway.

  The dog left the hole he was digging and bounded to her side as the kayaks drew nearer.

  Gail turned around to raise her eyebrows at Jackie, then turned back to give the woman a wave.

  The woman on shore reached up a hand to push her hair back. As she looked their way, a ray of light through the tree branches briefly illuminated her, revealing a pale, youthful face. Her eyebrows were arched and her eyes narrowed in an attempt to see them clearly through the glare of the sun. She waved back tentatively before turning and walking away from the water, the dog running ahead of her. She had disappeared beyond the horizon of the bank before they reached her location.

  “Oh, mama!” Gail exclaimed. “Who was that?”

  “Don’t know. Never saw her before.”

  “I thought you knew everybody around here?”

  “Not anymore. The town’s growing. There’s that new development on the north side. Or she could just be visiting somebody.”

  “Miss Tall, Dark and Delicious can visit me anytime,” Gail declared with enthusiasm.

  Gail was a self-acknowledged flirt and sometimes got downright crude in her suggestive remarks, but she was devoted to her wife Pat, and it was all in fun for her. Especially since in a town the size of Stillwater Bay, lesbians were rare and Gail’s flirty behavior was almost always directed at straight women. Single lesbians were rarer yet. Single lesbians you hadn’t already dated were nonexistent. Or if they did exist, they were so far in the closet you’d need superpower gaydar to detect them. If they were that far in the closet, no point to it anyway. Slim pickin’s in these parts, Jackie thought, not for the first time.

  It was unusual to see someone on this particular stretch of the creek, so she was mildly curious. It was true, she knew almost everybody in town. Not hard to do with a population under a thousand. Stillwater Bay was a town of merchants supporting the farming, fishing, boating and tourist trade. Jackie’s family, her paternal grandparents, had moved into town in 1947 after her grandfather had gotten out of the army and bought a small, affordable house in the heart of the California Delta. It was that house they were now paddling toward with its weathered wooden dock. It was Jackie’s house now. Her grandparents had sold it to her and moved “downtown” two years ago, feeling suddenly that the five miles into town was too far to drive on a regular basis.

  As they edged the kayaks up to shore and stepped out into shallow water, Jackie asked, “What time does Pat get home tonight?”

  “Ten. She’s got her night class. I’ll be ecstatic when she gets enough seniority to have regular, daytime hours.”

  Pat was a teacher at a vocational school. Because she hadn’t been there long, she’d been saddled with night and weekend classes, leaving Gail to fend for herself more often than she would like.

  “You don’t sound like you care for my company,” Jackie pouted, grabbing the rope on the front of her kayak. She hauled it up on the bank, sliding it easily across the grass.

  “I adore your company, Jacks!” Gail laughed. “What would I do without you? But I’d like to spend a whole weekend with my woman once in a while. Besides, one of these days you’re going to have your own significant other and no time for me.”

  Jackie sighed, then smiled, knowing there was no need to comment. Gail was well acquainted with Jackie’s romantic prospects, or lack thereof.

  Gail pulled the other kayak up on the bank as Rooster, Jackie’s one-eyed dachshund, came running toward them, tongue out, tail zipping back and forth like hummingbird wings. Gail scratched his head as he happily greeted her.

  “So we’ve got hours to kill,” Jackie said. “How about a movie?”

  “Okay. What’re you in the mood for?”

  Jackie picked up Rooster and gave his wriggling body a squeeze. “There’s a new lesbian romance that just came out.”

  Gail laughed shortly. “Are you kidding? You think I’m going to waste a hot lesbo flick on you?”

  Jackie conceded her stupidity with a sigh. “What then?”

  “Crime drama. Adventure. Something with cars blowing up.”

  With Gail following, Jackie carried Rooster through her backyard to the cozy two-bedroom house she shared with the little dog, three cats, a gerbil, four chickens and a freshwater aquarium full of an ever-changing array of aquatic life.

  “Maybe we should play Scrabble,” Jackie suggested, pulling open the back door.

  “No, thank you. You always win. I know I’m not your dream date, Jacks, but until she shows up you can put up with a mindless blood-and-guts movie now and then. You make some popcorn and I’ll see if I can find something both of us might like.”

  Jackie put Rooster down on the back porch, then went to the kitchen while Gail headed to the family room. Gail would never be Jackie’s dream date, but she was a good friend and Jackie was grateful for her. She took the popcorn kernels out of the cupboard, flashing back to Miss Tall, Dark and Delicious on the shore of Duggan Creek. Now somebody like that, she thought wistfully, could definitely qualify as her dream date.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Needham turned a sharp corner, sliding out of his stride, nearly losing his balance. A shot rang out from Molina’s gun. A clean miss. Molina rounded the corner two seconds behind Needham, his department-issued boots hitting asphalt as sharp slaps that echoed down the street. Stef lagged behind. She was having trouble breathing, gasping to take in each breath. She didn’t know why. She was in great shape. They hadn’t run far. Something was wrong with her. Heart attack? she wondered, as she labored to catch up.

  She heard a siren somewhere in the distance. Was that their backup?

  As she turned the corner into an alley between concrete apartment buildings, she saw Needham running up ahead. Molina fired again, aiming low. The bullet grazed Needham’s leg. He went down with a cry of pain and Molina was on him fast, slamming him face down in the street, a knee in his back. Stef stood back with her gun trained on Needham as Molina cuffed him.

  No longer running, Stef still couldn’t catch her breath. She felt like she was drowning.

  Out of nowhere, somebody jumped her, knocking her sideways and grabbing for her gun. As she lost her balance, her body went into slow motion. She took her left hand off the gun to fight off the attacker, catching him under the chin and pushing his face back as hard as she could.

  Why hadn’t she heard him coming? The sirens in the distance? The hum of an air conditioner in a nearby window? Her own labored breathing? There was another sound too. The familiar ring of a cell phone.

  Fighting against her assailant in slow motion, she realized she was holding her breath. All of a sudden their struggle was taking place underwater. She kicked at the man and clawed at the water, trying to get
to the surface so she could breathe. For some reason she could still hear a phone ringing. Finally, slapping at the water and kicking as hard as she could, her lungs desperate to suck in air, she broke the surface of the water and opened her mouth.

  Gulping in oxygen, she looked around, taking in her surroundings. She was sitting up in bed in her tiny bedroom. She looked around at the familiar space, grasping its details. Her queen-sized bed nearly filled it with just a two-foot wide area on one side between the wall and mattress. Her bedroom television was mounted on the wall across from the headboard. Next to the bed was a small table wedged into the corner. On it was a clock radio. A swing-arm lamp was mounted over that. She focused on the wood grain of the paneled walls and gradually her breathing slowed to normal.

  Deuce, her golden retriever, jumped on the bed and pushed his cold nose against her bare arm. She absentmindedly petted him while gazing out the window at the dry grass that stretched toward a line of green vegetation a quarter mile away. Between the houseboat and the creek, there was nothing but a bare brown field of weeds and hard dirt. Still, that was better than her old city view—the wall of the neighboring building just a few feet away.

  It was almost nine o’clock. She’d had trouble getting to sleep the night before, as she often did. The miracle of sleep had occurred somewhere around three o’clock. Though she wasn’t on a schedule, this was late to be just waking. She rolled out of bed and pulled on an oversized T-shirt, slipped her feet into the rubber flip-flops beside her bed. Remembering the ringing phone from her dream, she went to the living room to check her messages. Normally, there was no ringing phone in this nightmare. That had to be what woke her up. The message was from her mother, not surprisingly. Stef had avoided calling her for the last two weeks, not ready to tell her about the new plan. She knew her mother would disapprove of the houseboat. She’d think it was rash and shortsighted. She’d view it in entirely pragmatic terms, as in, was it a good investment? Stef laughed shortly at the thought. Her mother was a sensible woman whose advice was often sound, but this was one situation where her experience was of little value. The houseboat was not an investment, at least not a financial one. But just so it didn’t seem entirely nuts, Stef wanted to wait until it was seaworthy to tell her mother. Then it would be a boat that actually cruised the rivers and not just a strange little house in the country.