The Fisher Queen

by Sylvia Taylor

  It was days before John could talk, weeks before he could tell his story. Though battered and dehydrated, his body recovered amazingly well and quickly. It was his mind they worried about. When he did speak, it was to recount again and again the story of his rescue, how it was the spirits of drowned mariners who had gathered to give him hope, how God had spared him to carry on his work in the world. He spent hours slowly mouthing his way through a King James Bible and attended hospital chapel as soon as he was able.

  Apparently one of John’s therapists did a little research and it turned out that John’s detailed descriptions of his spectral saviours matched historical records of dress, hair and weaponry from the various cultures who had plied those waters in the last 200 years: Spanish and English explorers, Russian trappers, Kwakiutl warriors. How could someone like John, an early high school dropout, have known such detailed information? He was barely literate.

  John was eventually released into his mother’s care and became deeply involved in an evangelical church group. A few fishermen had visited him and said he was almost unrecognizable. He was lean and quiet and groomed to within an inch of his life. His bellow had been replaced with a whispery monotone.

  “But it was his eyes that gave you the willies. Looked right through and past you, like he was always watchin’ somethin’ far away. Last anyone heard he was a missionary in the middle of Africa, safe from that haunted sea.”

  With that, we murmured our goodbyes and padded back to our boats to be alone with our mortal thoughts.

  No Atheists at Sea

  No matter how many times I scanned the galley or checked the cast-off list or paced the deck, I just couldn’t shake that weird feeling of unease that had seeped out of my restless sleep and into the subdued grey dawn. Some undone thing. A little queasiness from the night’s revelry. Maybe a lingering eeriness from too many strange stories.

  We were already running up Goletas Channel on our long haul over the top and down to Winter Harbour, which Paul figured would take around 10 hours. Normally we would have trolled along the Yankee Spot on the way to save fuel, but the coho opening was in three days and rumours had trickled in that fish were already showing up. Besides, fishing was dead at the top and not worth even throwing in the gear. We’d run down to Sea Otter Cove and troll the rest of the way to Winter Harbour and make it in before dark.

  We didn’t dare jump the opening like a few fishermen we’d been hearing about, who figured no one at the camp could tell if they brought in a load whose bottom layers were a couple of days older than they should be. Not that it hadn’t crossed our minds, considering the difference a couple of $110 cohos would make to us. But was it worth the risk of being boarded by the Coast Guard and tied up for the season?

  We were leaving what had become home for the last six weeks, filled with the comfort of familiar voices, faces and landmarks. Bull Harbour’s little community was proud of itself and had soon welcomed us into the family. They liked the good lookin’ funny guy and his plucky girlfriend who bounced around the floats like Heidi the goat girl.

  Past Shushartie Bay, where we’d anchored up with Richard in the first few days a hundred years ago. Past Bull Harbour, where I would have to make amends to the managers for selling our springs in Hardy. Then over the usual lumpy chop of Nahwitti that I’d learned to almost ignore. Then veering west to run a straight course, a mile offshore across the top to save fuel. Past Cape Sutil, where we’d shared dinners with Papa Gerry and relished the care packages of cigs and treats and fishing gear he’d floated over to us in triple green garbage bags. Along the inside edge of the Yankee Spot, where I learned to run gear, dress fish and withstand the endless rain and pounding. Where I’d revelled in the handful of luminous millpond days.

  I tried to convince myself that it was just the choppy seas and darkening skies that were making me restless, even though we had often been in worse. Once we passed Christensen Point and veered more southwest, we started losing the protection of the headland and the seas began to kick up odd and jumbled, as if the waves didn’t know which way to go.

  It had been blowing northwest since the day before, but the weather report said it would switch to southeast by later in the day. Paul seemed confident it wouldn’t get bad until later on the west coast and we’d be in Winter Harbour by then.

  “Well that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, reaching to turn on the continuous Coast Guard weather report. “We’re travelling the north end that’s not protected in a nor’wester, then down the west coast when it’s blowing southeast right into us? Listen, it doesn’t sound too good. Why don’t we wait it out until tomorrow in Fisherman Bay?”

  “Ten-to-15 is nothing to run in,” Paul said, turning off the radio. “What’s the matter with you today?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t feel right about this.” I scanned the rough chop. “One of the fishermen at the bar last night told me that Cape Scott Channel can get pretty tricky between the mainland and some little islands just offshore.”

  “I was told if you stay in the middle of the channel you miss the rocks and shoals and it’ll be okay. We can’t waste time screwing around. The coho opening is in three days and we have to get down to Winter Harbour tomorrow to check in at the BC Packers camp and find out what’s going on. I’ll bet half the fleet is already there. We have to tie a bunch of coho gear and get ready to really start hauling in some fish. Coho is just the start. Wait ’til the pink opening August 1st. They were pulling in 300 a day two years ago and there’ll be a hundred boats out there tacking a grid pattern. Think you could handle it?”

  “I’d love the opportunity to handle 300 fish a day,” I mumbled and went to the open back door, noticing how it was getting a little harder to walk. I felt like a dog sniffing the wind, hackles up. It was getting so dark and nasty out there, it was hard to believe it had been summer solstice a few days ago.

  Suddenly, as we rounded the last bit of headland and entered the channel, we were flung into chaos—sharp erratic waves came over the bow and gunwales from everywhere.

  “Christ, Paul, what’s happening? I’ve never seen anything like this before!” I grabbed the dashboard, my heart pounding.

  “I don’t understand why it’s so bad—it’s not blowing that hard. Give me the tide book and the chart fast. The fucking loran isn’t working so I’ll have to use the chart. Shit, I can’t let the wheel go. Tell me the fathoms in the middle of the channel.”

  I frantically searched the chart for the tiny lines and numbers that told us depth. In the middle of the channel, right where we were being thrown around, the depth suddenly jumped up to 15 fathoms.

  “Now find out when slack tide is,” he said sharply, gripping the wheel and scanning the endless angry water.

  “Slack is over, the tide has already turned and the waves are coming in against the tide. Christ Almighty Paul, we have to turn around and get out of here right now.”

  “Jesus,” he hissed. I followed his stare to a dark green wall of water rising straight up, right in front of our bow, higher than I could see above the window.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, and felt my heart stumble. A shockwave rushed through my body and I gripped the dashboard to keep from falling. Shutting my eyes and bracing for the wave that would crash over us, I felt myself tip back and opened my eyes to see our boat miraculously climb the impossibly vertical wave, then careen down into the trough. The next crest revealed massive curling waves advancing straight for us as far as I could see, taller and more savage with every pass.

  Soon we weren’t sliding down into each trough anymore, but teetering on the crests and then falling the 40 feet into the troughs. It was like falling four floors in an elevator, and I groaned like a sick animal; the whole boat shuddered and cried out in pain as it struggled to survive each terrible blow.

  Paul glanced at me braced in the corner of the wheelhouse and snapped, “Get below and lie down. You’re scaring the shit out of yourself.”

  “No, I’m n
ot going down there. I’m staying here with you.” Everything in me wanted to snarl, You put us here, you stupid bastard. Everything in me screamed to fight, to flee—anything but crouch mute and helpless. I struggled to calm my ragged panting. I couldn’t bear to lie on my dark bunk as the minutes of my life ticked away. If I was going to die here, I’d die my father’s daughter, my eyes open to the world I’d loved so much. I stared mutely at each wave, praying it would not be the one to kill us.

  I grieved that I was only 26 and had fought so hard to survive so many things. I thought of my parents and their horrendous loss and was furious that there was nothing I could do to save myself, to fight for my survival. I had never felt mortal terror before, had always danced my way out of life-threatening experiences in nature. Always relied on myself to get myself through. But once again, someone else’s shit was colliding with circumstances to put me in harm’s way.

  I wanted to do something: paddle harder, climb higher, run faster, think my way through this and let my cast-iron constitution get me out of it and heal me later.

  Fight like a wildcat, like—like when I was trapped and dragged underwater behind an overturned canoe through rapids and logs and boulders. I’d kicked so hard I was bruised for months from foot to hip. Took years for the numb patches to heal. A calm, still voice inside me had said, Your boots are jammed under the seat. Pull yourself up by handfuls of clothes and free yourself. When I did and my head broke the surface, it was to hysterical voices screaming my name.

  I screamed only once, when a freak wave hit the side of the cabin so hard the galley cupboards flew open and everything tumbled out. I crawled on the floor to shut the cupboards and turned off the oil stove, then shut and latched the back door to stop the swinging and slamming with each climb and fall. It was impossible to even crawl back to the wheelhouse, so I wedged myself into the corner of the back wall and day bunk. I had saved a pot of spaghetti sauce from that sport and now couldn’t save myself.

  “We’re going to be okay, this is a tough old boat.”

  The engine shrieked as we climbed higher and steeper.

  Please God, don’t let it be here.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Daddy, I’m so sorry.

  I crawled on my belly to the wheelhouse, felt the engine grind and howl under me. If we lost power now we’d be killed for sure. The boat leaned horribly to one side on a crest. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. The boat was lifted and flung. I wondered for a moment if I was already dead and didn’t know it.

  Dragging myself up at the dashboard, I wedged my back into the opposite corner of the wheelhouse, clutching the dashboard rim and the chart rack on the wall beside me.

  “Turn around, goddamn it, Paul, turn around,” I pleaded. “We can’t make it through; you’re going to kill us if we keep going.”

  “We can’t turn around, it’s too late. The waves are too close together. If I try to turn around we’ll be broadsided and sink. We have to keep going.”

  A sob tore its way up my throat.

  “Turn around, Paul, you can do it. You know how to do this. Turn around.”

  He turned to look at me with eyes burning in a frozen face. “Sylvia, I never meant for this to happen. You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever known. We’re gonna be okay. I’m going to get us out of here. Look out the window and start counting the waves out loud as far ahead as you can see. Find two that are a little farther apart and count seven waves. Then the next set until there’s one wider than the rest; that’s the one we’ll turn on.”

  I felt a surge of energy and we started counting. Louder and louder, over and over.

  We saw it coming from a great distance . . . this was our only chance. Neither the boat nor us could hold out much longer. It had to be a perfect turn at the perfect second. If we were broadsided during the turn we would be sunk, and the waves would soon be too close together to fit between them when we fell.

  He spun on the crest with a massive shove to the wheel and I heard the prop whine in thin air, then catch the edge of the wave, and we turned just in time before the wave passed. The next wave was straight on our stern, and it lifted us and rushed us forward instead of crashing into our deck and hold. If it had, our cabin would be torn apart. If the hatch cover came off, we would fill up and sink.

  We surfed on the massive following sea in huge strange surges that pulled rhythmic groans from the labouring engine. Elated now that the dark mountains no longer loomed over us, I could see land and calmer seas ahead. I squeezed my arms around Paul’s waist and held him tight as I smiled up into his face.

  “I knew you could do it. We’re safe now, aren’t we?”

  “Yuh, we’ll be okay, but I have to pay attention and keep the stern straight on to the waves. Luckily we don’t have a flat stern. It’s harder for the waves to lift and move past. Uh, I wouldn’t look out the back window yet; it can be a bit scary with a big following sea.”

  Of course I ignored him and looked—and then reeled back, stunned by the mountain that loomed just behind our stern. My heart raced again and I fled to the wheelhouse. Panted and listened to the prop whine as the boat struggled to lift with every surge and I willed the land closer. We would run into the closest sheltered bay and anchor there until the next day, when we would run the channel again at high slack tide and closer to the shore in deeper water.

  Slowly the waves shortened and broadened as we cleared the channel and turned to run deep into Experiment Bight’s sheltered waters. We never spoke of that perfect storm of circumstances that had nearly taken us. Not then, not ever. We went about our business as if nothing had happened and Paul’s brisk matter-of-factness and the way his eyes slid away from my face made that clear. When he said he was a little tired and would take a nap on the day bunk, I said I would tidy up a bit and maybe catch up on some reading.

  I was in an agony of aftermath with no one to help me work through it. No one to help me dump out the jumbled box of thoughts and feelings and images to inspect them, to hold each to the light before wrapping and rearranging them according to their connections. Even my journal was little comfort. I quickly recorded just a few truncated sentences so I wouldn’t have to read the enormity of it later and then quietly made it all go away.

  Pretty much everyone did that out here—downplayed or mocked or bragged the terrors and revelled in the good—it was the only way to survive where life was in the balance every moment. Where we lived on the knife edge of extremes. For many, it was a drug and a lover they couldn’t quit; to do so would be to live in the careful, grey world of moderation.

  I had swum to the canoe that eventually got me to shore. I had clung to the gunwales while my friends fought through the rapids, my heart singing with joy at the world’s beauty, while I was pulled numb and blue through the spring runoff waters for nearly an hour. My burning spirit and my father’s wool sweater that my mother had lovingly knit him had kept me from slipping away from this world at 20 years old, had me running down the beach an hour later to find the others while my rescuers collapsed on the shore.

  Now I found myself out on a fishboat deck, slowly turning in a circle, drawing in the beloved breath of the sea, filling my lungs, my belly, my brain, with the brightening light and lifting skies, the coquettish whitecaps, the perfect crescent moon of beach. Facing the churning channel, I slowly pulled off my baggy old pullover, then the long-sleeved T-shirt damp with sweat and fear, and let them dangle then fall to the deck; unhooked my bra and dropped it to the pile; unzipped my faded Levis and let them and my white cotton underpants fall to my feet; closed my eyes and tilted back my head and let the last of the westerly wind blow over and through me and pull the fear and rage from me, to wait in the place of a thousand sorrows. I reached and stretched high on my toes, the air electric with life.

  When I tiptoed past the day bunk to the fo’c’sle, clothes under my arm, Paul stirred in his sleep. I paused to watch his weary face and was aware for the first time of the gulf of years between us, his dark good look
s and electric sexiness receding in the hardened eyes and deeply etched lines. I longed to lie with him, to caress him to wakefulness, but I wouldn’t risk another rejection that I would never understand. Instead, I dressed in clothes fresh from the previous day’s laundry and stowed my sad little bundle deep in the corner of the storage bin beside my bunk, under the extra canned goods and gear. I knew I would never wear them again.

  By the time I finished tidying up, the sun was coming out and Paul sleepily offered to go to shore with me to look for glass balls. Used as floats on Japanese nets, they were now quite rare, travelling thousands of miles over the Pacific to west coast beaches. Everything was light and bright with chatter about glass balls and beaches as we ate a quick salmon sandwich and prepared for our favourite event: exploring somewhere new.

  Paul rowed us into shore on a slack wind and I was thankful for the smooth ride into the postcard beach. We dragged the skiff up the beach and couldn’t find anything to anchor the bow rope, the glistening crescent was swept so clean and white. Grass-covered bluffs on either side of a sandy spit filled with twisted trees and sand dunes led like a corridor to the stunningly beautiful beach of Guise Bay that opened its long graceful arms to the west coast. Speechless, we stood on the bluff and absorbed the almost unearthly beauty of sand and sea and dense, deep forest, luminous in the warm southeast breeze.

  As we descended the spit into the low dunes leading to the beach, I noticed tall crooked slats of weathered wood marking an irregular arc across the dunes and almost tripped over the corner of something half-buried. Kneeling down, I brushed away the sand to reveal a small square metal plaque that told us this was the site of a Danish settlement in the late 1800s. The slats were remnants of a wooden fence windbreak built to halt the drifting sand.