Sea of Tranquility

by Lesley Choyce

  “Here. Take this.” He handed her his keys and flashlight. “I’m going out and I’m getting help. You stay put. Don’t be scared. Move up higher onto those ledges, if you have to. Stay calm, Angie. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  “Don’t leave.”

  “I have to. I’ll be back. You’ll be okay.” Todd could not look at his sister’s face. He knew he’d start crying. When he jumped in the water this time it was already deeper from the waves pushing the sea in. Angie was still high and dry. She’d be okay. She had to be okay. He was almost swimming by the time he came to the low overhead. Inches of air left in the passage. He banged his head on the rocks several times. Blood trickled down his face. He took a mouthful of water when a wave washed in. Swallowed it and coughed but yelled to Angie that it was all okay. Just water up his nose. And then he was out in the bright sunlight, blinding him. He didn’t know if he was doing the right thing. He couldn’t think straight. Should he go back in and drag her out? He didn’t think he could do it against the current sweeping in. An adult could. He’d have to find someone.

  With blood running down over his forehead,Todd ran. His lungs felt like they were on fire. He wished they’d never come to Ragged Island. He wished he’d never woken up today.

  Sylvie’s house was the closest to shore. Todd banged hard on the door, then opened it and roared into the room. Sylvie stood calmly in the kitchen by the hand pump, washing dishes.

  “Todd?” She saw the blood on his head first.

  “Sylvie, Angie needs help. We found this cave down at the foot of the hill and there was no water and we went in.” He couldn’t get the story right. No air in his lungs. His head was spinning.“But then the tide came up kinda quick. I couldn’t get Angie to come back out with me. She’s in there.”

  Sylvie closed her eyes for a split second. The sea cave. Yes, she knew. The low tide. Yes. She understood. The tide was coming up and she knew there was something brewing at sea. A storm somewhere. She had not read a newspaper or heard anything on the radio. She just knew. Things of the sea, things of the moon. The tide would only get higher, waves would wash in there. Angie, inside the rock womb of that cave. Sylvie had been there once herself, as a teenager. Same low tide. No problem. In and out. An exquisite adventure. As long as you understood the tide business.

  “You okay,Todd?”

  “Yes. Help Angie.”

  “I will.” Sylvie picked up the phone and called Moses.

  “Moses, one of those little children from the States is in the sea cave. Tide’s coming in fast. I think she’s trapped. She’s eight, Moses. Do you still have your diving gear?”

  “Damn. Sold it when the bottom dropped out of the sea urchin business. But I can get down there with the Zodiac.”

  Sylvie could see the problem fixed in her head as clear as if it were a photograph. “Yes, bring the Zodiac, but it won’t be enough. Call the RCMP and Coast Guard. Explain it. Tell them we need divers. Now.”

  “You know about Freda?”

  “Who?”

  “Freda. Tropical storm. Off Sable. It’s staying put, but they’re calling for heavy surf.”

  “Moses, I’m going out there. You get some help and get out there. Please, Moses.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sylvie knew Moses would do all the right things. But she also knew it was not enough for the immediate problem. She also knew that divers could not bring a little girl back out through the tunnel if it was filled with water and getting hammered with heavy waves.

  “Todd, go get your mother. Bring her out there. I’m going to find a way to help your sister.”

  “She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  Todd left, running.

  Sylvie split every second into four parts and made sure she was using her time wisely. No, she could not swim underwater and get inside the chamber. But she could see the tunnel in her mind. She could see the chamber inside. Back then, she had lit up a kind of torch made from a cattail. The tunnel could fill, but there was air space inside the inner chamber Todd had described. Ledges to be climbed. Tough it out till low tide again, a long twelve hours away. She shuddered at the thought of a little girl all alone in there. She put four chocolate chip cookies into a plastic bag and wrapped it in two more plastic bags, grabbed a flashlight and put it in three bags, sealed each one with a knot but didn’t think it was enough. What else?

  Negotiate with the sea, with death.

  She hurried out the door of her house, towards the headland. She would stop for the college boy, Greg Cookson. The one who had quit his government summer job to live in the fish shack up along the shore. He’d said something about being a swimmer. Long distance, laps in a pool. She didn’t know. He was bragging, maybe, a liar. No, he couldn’t bring her out. It was twenty yards underwater.

  There would be help, yes. But RCMP divers would be at least forty minutes in getting here at the best of times. Coast Guard rescue craft? What could they do? They couldn’t get in there.

  Sylvie felt betrayed by her sea, by the moon. But she knew she had some hidden knowledge, some special arrangement with death. Four good men, buried. She understood something of death, something to toss back in its face, maybe.

  She walked fast and purposeful, her mind racing. Death, take me, please. She would not abide the drowning death of an eight-year-old girl. Gladly give her life several times over. Take me, dammit. God, if you exist, bloody take this woman from the earth and spare the child.

  Anger rose up in her veins. Who was she negotiating with? She didn’t even know what she believed in. Could she pull the tide back out to sea, make the waves from Freda move off in another direction, move the clock of earth ahead twelve hours to the next low tide? She kicked at a rock in her path and looked at the hopelessness of a small supply of cookies and an old flashlight in a couple of Ben’s Bread bags.

  Sylvie knew there must be something in the crazy mix of beliefs and understandings within her, something of value and use right now. Her personal relationship with the sea, with the island, with the way the planet talked to her. But there was an intrinsic logic that kept telling her that some things cannot be changed. Some things, even horrible things, were meant to be.

  No. They were not.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Greg Cookson had slept in. He’d been feeling depressed for a few days. He wasn’t used to living alone. He had quit his summer job, a good one that paid well. He’d decided not to go back to university. He’d started to fall in love with some woman on the island who turned out to be totally nuts. He’d screwed his life up in some grand way and didn’t even quite know why. Twenty years old and living alone in a fish shack. No job. No real friends. Swimming in the ocean, staying up late and reading books by a kerosene lamp, collecting mosquito and blackfly bites. Sleeping late and waking up drowsy.

  Someone banging on his door, opening it and walking in. He sat up quickly, pulled the sheet over his nakedness.

  An old woman full of anger. Why was she angry at him?

  “Sylvie.”

  “Greg. I’m going to ask you to do something for me. I’m going to talk you through it. I won’t allow you to say no.”

  Greg’s mind was a jumble.

  “Listen. Carefully.” Sylvie explained haltingly. She stumbled on words and regretted the loss of each second. She threw Greg a pair of canvas swim trunks she saw hanging over a chair. He slipped them on, still feeling funny about sleeping naked and having a woman, even an old woman, walk in on him.

  “That sounds crazy. Why would they go in there? I saw the place but it always seemed too spooky to me.”

  “Kids. It doesn’t matter. You’re a swimmer, right?”

  “I was.”

  “How long can you hold your breath?”

  Greg laughed out loud. He had passed out and nearly drowned himself once in his own bathtub when he was thirteen. One thousand and one, one thousand and two… one thousand two hundred and ten. He had counted.
His father had had to break the door lock and haul him out of the bath. Greg could hold his breath. Not forever, but it was one of those idiotic skills that boys hang onto, and it had helped him win a swim meet or two — one less bob of the head to catch air.

  “You want me to swim into this tunnel?”

  “Yes. You have to do this for me.”

  “But I can’t possibly bring anyone back out of there that way.”

  “I know. You have to go in and wait.”

  Greg couldn’t bring himself to say what he was thinking. He was a swimmer, yes, but he was deathly afraid of drowning at sea. When he was young, he’d been caught in a river current once at Lawrencetown Beach and swept to sea. He and his father both had nearly drowned. It was after that event that he had begun to practise holding his breath and swimming long distance, but he never had gotten over the terror of being swept a half mile to sea and expecting to drown.“I don’t know if I can, Sylvie.”

  Sylvie said nothing, closed her eyes. Stood there in the morning sun with the door open, sunlight spilling into the room, washing the wood plank floor in bright, cleansing light. She didn’t know what to say.

  Greg had heard the words come out of his mouth and felt ashamed. He rubbed his eyes, recognized the depth of his fear, wondered at the horror of swimming underwater through some kind of a tunnel to a cavern inside a rock headland. Swimming blind and unable to come up for air if he needed to. But as he rubbed his eyes, this other thing came into his head. What had he accomplished in his whole life? Sweet nada. Nothing he had ever done had mattered very much. Swimming medals, good grades at school — what was the point? All his life, he realized, he’d been waiting for a chance to do something worthwhile. It was like a powerful, cold wave washing over him. He stood up.

  “Do you know the distance?”

  “Twenty yards. Wait for an incoming wave, stay deep and go with it. The tunnel turns halfway. You’ll have to feel for the wall in front of you and veer left.”

  “What if I don’t make it?”

  “You will. You swim. I’ll guide you.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for backup or something?”

  “No. Too long. Her name is Angeline. She’s eight.”

  “I’ve seen her with her brother collecting sand dollars and shells.”

  “Then you know.”

  “What do I do once I’m in there?”

  “Stay with her and wait.”

  Greg knew that there would be no way out of there for ten or eleven hours. It would be dark in there. If he made it. If he tried to turn around and come back out halfway down the tunnel, it would be much, much harder to swim against the incoming surge and there was a good chance he’d be pushed back. He wouldn’t make it. One-shot deal. Greg decided not to think too much on it. All his life, right, waiting for a chance. Go for it.

  “Take this with you.”

  Sylvie held out the small packet of cookies. It seemed like a ludicrous gesture. He almost laughed but didn’t. He put them into the back pocket of his swim trunks and pulled the Velcro tab over. She tried to hand him the flashlight too, but he knew he couldn’t swim with it. “It’s going to be completely dark in there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I thought this might work.”

  Greg grabbed something off a shelf above his bed. A silly thing. A glow stick he’d bought in Mutton Hill Harbour. Cold, chemical light. You break something inside it and it glows for thirty minutes. You toss it around with a friend at night, on a beach maybe, and it’d look cool. But he never had the right chance to use it. He put that into the other back pocket and snapped the clasp.

  Angeline cried for ten minutes and flicked the tiny penlight lamp on and off to try to keep herself focussed but gave up on it and instead concentrated on the diminishing light in the water, sunlight that could find its way only so far into the cave. She heard waves smacking against the rocks outside and heard them enter the tunnel before she saw the foaming white come spilling into the larger chamber. The water splashed against her legs and, as she tucked them up and under her, she felt the cold snap of the wave upon her. She was shivering and she was more scared than she had known possible. But she refused to believe she would die. She was eight years old and death was not real for her. Fear and pain, however, were very real.

  Why wasn’t her brother coming back for her? It seemed like forever. Every minute seemed like an hour to her. But she had only been alone for fifteen cold minutes.

  Just as she was about to start crying again, something popped up in the water near her. She screamed and pushed her little body back into the rock face behind her until the sharp rocks hurt her. Something was there in the cave with her. It made a sound like it was spitting and then it moved away from her, circling in the water that filled the bottom of the cave. When she got up the courage to turn on the little light for a split second, she saw it was a seal.

  A young seal with that funny comedian’s mustache and big, curious, dark eyes. He came within arm’s reach and remained upright in the water looking at her. Angeline was not afraid of seals, especially a small one like this. Young seals, she knew, were very curious.

  “Hello,” she said.“Can you help me? Please?”

  The seal dipped sideways, splashed and went under, swam around the cavern and came up a little further away. Angeline was still shivering but the seal gave her new hope. She did not feel alone.

  The seal came back close to her and lifted itself half out of the water, eyes open, watching her.

  “I bet you know all about this place,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m going to be okay, aren’t I?”

  The seal blinked, flopped sideways in the water again, and looked so foolish that it made her laugh. The seal had some gift for making the minutes slide away more quickly. He made the waves coming through into the cave seem less hostile. Something had brought him in here for these brief moments. Maybe it was just a favourite feeding place where small fish were driven by an incoming tide. Maybe it was just curiosity. And then he was gone. But even then it wasn’t quite as bad as it had been before until a big wave plowed through the opening and drenched her completely, almost knocking her off the small, flat ledge. Angeline began to cry again, feeling this time even more hopeless than before. She was sure a bigger wave was coming and if she fell into the cold, dark water beneath her, she didn’t think she could scramble back up.

  Greg forced himself not to think of the logic of what he was doing except that he was buying time. He trusted Sylvie implicitly even though he had thought she was mental. Not as bad as Kit, but mental just the same. Old and crazy like that. And now he had to trust her completely, believe she was right. Hell, maybe there wasn’t even any air inside there. How was he so sure there was this cavern she was talking about? What if there was no little girl in the there at all? Maybe she had made it all up or hallucinated it? Then what? Maybe he’d get inside and find no help coming for him. Maybe there was no open cavern inside, just a dead end tunnel. Fishermen might find him later, flushed out of there on a dropping tide, and wonder why he had a glow stick and a smashed pack of sea-soaked cookies in his pockets.

  He looked at Sylvie for some kind of signal, but she was staring off to sea. There were waves for sure and they were building. Freda out there with high winds. Maybe there would not even be a normal low tide in twelve hours, maybe the push of the storm would keep the sea high. That happened sometimes.

  “Greg. Ten yards and reach out for the wall. Veer left. Just save your strength if you can and let the wave push you in. If you hit backwash, you’re going to have to hang onto something until it passes.”

  Greg looked at her and suddenly realized how beautiful the woman’s eyes were. For an old woman, she had an extraordinary look about her. But mingled with the beauty was fear. “I must be out of my mind,” he said out loud.

  She touched his face then, held out her two hands and put them flat up against his cheeks and suddenly realized this was something she had done in the days before William Toye
had died. And she had sworn never to have anything to do with death again. She had convinced herself that she had suffered enough loss in her life, believed there was some silent pact signed with the great decimation of her men and that she would be spared any further tragedy. For an instant, she almost changed her mind, was certain she was sending this good-intentioned boy to his death. But no.“Try to keep your eyes open, Greg. But if you get confused, close them and trust what you feel.”

  She meant it, Greg realized. That sounded crazy for sure. Just what he needed. Hell. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this. He was going in. He tried to stop the thoughts wrestling around in his head. He walked into the sea near the foot of the cliff, swam into the choppy waves, pulled a good lungful of air, then dove and swam underwater into the entrance of the flooded cave. His body was tugged about by the surge of waves that seemed to want to dash him up against the rocks. And then came the backwash sucking him back out, diminishing his progress. Stiff currents both ways seemed far too powerful for him to fight against. He imagined himself in the emptying river current again at Stoney Beach in Lawrencetown. Not good at all. Think bathtub. Warm bath water. One thousand two hundred and ten.

  Greg gripped his fingers onto the rock wall, tried to perceive the give and take of the waves pushing and pulling at him. Began to reconstruct his confidence, and failing that, bolster his determination. He reached up and his fingers broke the surface of the water. He surfaced inside the cave and sucked quickly at the air beneath the rock above him. A thin seam of air, mere inches at the top of the tunnel. The next wave would steal it away. He felt the seaward tug first and prepared for the next wave that would return. He got his bearings. The walls of the tunnel, the ceiling. He realized that he could turn back right now if he had to. He wasn’t that far inside. The backwash could carry him out.

  The water was clear with a greenish blue tint to it, and loose seaweed whipped back and forth in a way that did not seem threatening at all.