by John Smelcer
While the galley filled with the smells of cooking, Lucky played solitaire, flipping over each card and laying it thoughtfully on one of several face-up rows, absently keeping them from sliding off the table with his flannel shirt sleeve. His cup of coffee kept scooting toward the edge of the table, its contents sloshing with the motion of the boat. Tucker lay on the floor on an oval carpet, occasionally raising his head to look around, sniffing, wondering when the food would be ready. He was always given a little something extra in his stainless steel bowl. Seth played with his handheld video game, leaning back in his chair, wearing earphones, listening to music on his iPod, his eyebrows knit tightly as he stared at the small screen, his thumbs moving frantically. Sometimes his tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth. He was still wearing his dark-blue baseball cap with the words ‘Erin Elizabeth’ embroidered in gold thread across the front. It was his mother’s name and the name of his father’s boat.
That wasn’t the original name.
For a long time the boat had been called the Natsalané, the name of the mythic man who created the first killer whale. But Seth’s father changed the boat’s name after his wife died. He even painted two bright yellow flowers on the stern, one on each side of her name, the long, green, leafy stems framing the two words. She had always loved flowers, happily spending her summer days tending her flower beds.
‘Isn’t there something else you can do?’ his father asked, standing at the sink and draining water from a steaming pot of boiled red potatoes. His sarcastic tone matched his look of disappointment.
Seth understood the look.
In the year since his mother had died, he had withdrawn from the world, spending most of his time at home in his bedroom playing video games, listening to music, surfing the internet, and ignoring his homework. Consequently, his grades at school had slipped dramatically. His mother had always been proud of Seth’s good grades. He had also stopped spending time with his friends and going for long walks with Tucker like he used to. As a result, he had gained a lot of weight.
His father called him ‘soft’ and ‘lazy.’
He was right. Nonetheless, it hurt Seth to hear it. His father used to be proud of him. They used to be a happy family.
Seth didn’t respond, remaining intent on his game. Besides, his father had complained about his games a thousand times before, saying things like, ‘Why don’t you play baseball or something? Go ride your skateboard or your bike. You need to get out and exercise. Why don’t you hang out with the other boys your age?’ And his father’s favorite, ‘When I was your age, my parents made me play outside all day until it was time for supper.’
Seth had learned to tune out his father’s voice, although he wasn’t intentionally disrespectful. He had simply learned to act as if he had not heard him, to avoid an argument.
His father placed three blue plastic plates on the table. On each was a thick serving of salmon, which had been fried in a black cast-iron skillet and had honey drizzled over it. Beside the salmon fillet was a pile of small red potatoes and a heaped serving of green beans.
‘You know the rules,’ his father said, pointing to the top of his son’s head. ‘Take off your hat when we eat. And turn off that damn music. It’s so loud I can hear it from over here. You’ll bust your eardrums.’
Begrudgingly, Seth turned off his iPod and stuffed it into a pocket on his slicker.
While Lucky and his father ate, Seth stared at his plate, rolling a potato back and forth with his fork. He didn’t like green beans or boiled potatoes, and he was tired of salmon. He only liked hamburgers or hot dogs or pizza. He rarely ate vegetables. After a few minutes, Seth pushed away his plate, walked over to the cupboards and made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, first cutting away the thin, brown crust with his pocket knife, a sixteenth birthday present from his father a couple months earlier. The single-bladed knife had originally been his grandfather’s, who eventually passed it down to his son. Now it had been Seth’s father’s turn to give it to his son.
When he was finished, Seth wiped the flat sides of the blade against his blue jeans before he carefully closed the folding knife and slipped it back into his pocket.
‘You never eat anything I make,’ his father said sharply, trying not to yell. ‘You always ate whatever your mother cooked. Now all you ever want are peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and microwave pizzas. No wonder you don’t have any muscles. No wonder you’ve gained so much weight. You’re so finicky. You wouldn’t last a day in the wilderness.’
That was another of his father’s favorite sayings.
They had had the same argument a hundred times before, and Seth’s response was always the same.
‘It’s the only thing I like,’ he mumbled, sitting down to eat his sandwich.
His father and Lucky shared what Seth had left on his plate, giving the salmon skin to Tucker, who gobbled it happily. Dogs love salmon skin.
After supper, Jack made a pot of coffee and filled a tall, green thermos with a stainless steel cap. He would need the caffeine to keep him awake during the long night’s journey home. He was used to the routine, having done it countless times. He was a strong man who believed in the value of hard work, the kind of man who measured his honor by keeping his word, by following through on plans. Besides, there would be plenty of time to rest after the fish were delivered.
After weighing anchor, the captain climbed up to the pilot house and guided the boat out of the sheltering cove, into the blasting headwind, into the deep troughs, the bow busting through waves, the wind hurling itself at the craft, which suddenly seemed smaller, tiny and uncertain on the frenzied sea. Jack’s gamble hadn’t paid off: the wind hadn’t died down. Even with the throttle nearly wide open and assuming no unforeseen problems, it would take all night to reach home.
Once under way, with nothing left to do but wait, Seth and Lucky climbed into their narrow beds. Lucky read while Seth played his video game. Eventually, both fell asleep. Lucky, used to rough seas, slept soundly. With much less experience, Seth slept only fitfully, tossing and turning in his narrow bed like the restless sea, feeling the threat of nausea.
• • • • •
Seth awoke with a start.
He lay in his upper-bunk bed at first listening to the relentless rain and the intolerable sound of Lucky snoring. It was so loud it could be heard even above the thunderous din of the storm and the wind as it screamed through the wires of the boom. Something kept rolling back and forth across the floor—one of the marbles Seth used to play with, perhaps. But then he began to wonder whether he had brought Tucker into the cabin when he came in for the night. He couldn’t remember. He had seen him in the galley during supper, but afterwards Tucker had followed him and Lucky out on deck to make sure everything was secure for the journey home.
Seth hung his head over the edge of the high bunk, looking for Tucker. He called for him softly, so as not to wake Lucky, who was asleep on the narrow bed across from the bunk, one of his skinny legs exposed from under the blanket.
Seth didn’t see the dog anywhere on the open floor or beneath him on the empty lower bunk, where his father slept unless pressed by duties on deck, as on this night. He swung his legs over the side and carefully climbed down the sturdy ladder, gripping the rungs tightly as the boat swayed and heaved. When he was safely down, he knelt to look beneath the bottom bunk. That was where the dog sometimes hid during thunder, which always made him tremble and whimper. He didn’t like gun shots either.
He wasn’t much of a hunting dog.
Tucker wasn’t there; only a pair of tennis shoes, two black rubber boots, and a single white sock with a red stripe.
Worried that his dog was on the deck outside, exposed to the storm, soaking wet and shivering and miserable, Seth quickly put on his clothing and boots, as quietly as possible so as not to awaken Lucky, who never stirred. When he was dressed,
he grabbed his baseball cap and his yellow slicker from a hook on the wall beside the door.
Seth stepped out of the dry cabin, leaning against the door hard to close it, catching himself as he almost slipped on the deck, made all the more slippery by the salmon that spilled while being loaded into the hold. Their slime never quite washed away no matter how many times the deck was hosed and scrubbed.
Although it never turns truly dark during summer in Alaska, the sky churned like the sea, grey-black and seething. The stinging rain fell so hard that it hurt Seth’s eyes when he looked up, squinting and covering his face with one hand. He had trouble telling where the swirling sky ended and the swelling, white-tipped sea began. Lightning flashed. From where he stood, Seth could make out his father’s back in the pilot house. He wished he were back inside where it was warm and dry. And safe. When a large wave slapped the side of the boat, Seth grabbed a deck rail to steady himself. A blasting gust blew his cap from his head, sailing it upward and far from the boat on the shifting winds, before it dove like a hungry seagull into the roiling chaos of the sea.
Suddenly, almost imperceptibly above the din of the storm, Seth heard a high-pitched whimper, almost but not quite a bark. He followed the sound across the deck, calling the dog’s name.
‘Tucker!’ he yelled, trying to steady himself as the boat dove into a rising swell and crashed through the other side, sea spray exploding from each side of the bow. The jolt almost bowled him over.
‘Here, boy!’
The howling wind swept Seth’s words off the boat like his cap, out across the roiling sea, where they floundered in the swallowing waves.
Seth followed the muffled sound of whining. He only heard it intermittently. He had to listen carefully, turning his head toward the direction of the sound. Following a clap of thunder that split the air, he again heard the sorrowful whining. He moved slowly in the direction of the noise, hanging onto whatever steadfast support he could find. At the stern was a stainless steel table bolted to the deck where the crew worked on the nets. Seth bent down and looked beneath it.
There was Tucker, curled up and trembling, his drooping face soaking wet and pitiful.
‘Come on, boy,’ said Seth, grabbing the dog’s collar and tugging. ‘Let’s go inside where it’s warm and dry.’
He dragged Tucker out from beneath the table, but when they had walked only a couple of steps toward the cabin, a large wave suddenly struck the side of the boat, and a wall of seawater swept boy and dog across the deck and over the starboard side. At first Seth was turned helplessly in the dark foam, rigid with panic, unable to determine up or down. He hadn’t taken a deep breath before the wave snatched him, and he felt his lungs trying to gasp, to suck in air. He struggled to swim to the surface. When his head finally popped out of the sea, he screamed in reverse, taking in a chest full of water.
Shaking the hair from his eyes, he looked around for Tucker.
‘Tucker!’ he yelled as whitecaps crashed over his head, making it hard for him to breathe or shout. ‘Tucker!’
He couldn’t see very far. His body rose and plunged on the crests and valleys of each wave.
The boat was still close enough for Seth to see the two yellow flowers framing the name on the stern, Erin Elizabeth. He called out, desperately waving one arm, frantically trying to keep himself afloat with the other.
‘Hel . . .! Help!’ he tried to scream, but briny water choked his words.
The boat kept going, crashing into the waves, its propeller churning the darkened sea, the distance growing between them, grey and rain-drenched.
Seth turned to look again for his dog, treading the water as he spun about. When lightning flashed, he saw Tucker’s head, not too far away, but only for an instant at the peak of a swell before he disappeared. Seth swam for it, struggling against the twisting currents, the pelting torrent, and the surging waves. He could feel his muscles stiffening from the icy water.
Seth knew how dangerous Alaskan waters can be. He had heard stories how even the strongest swimmers can’t last long in the frigid northern seas, even during this, the warmest season of the year. When he was close, Seth grabbed the dog’s collar, careful not to pull his head below the surface and, at the same time, spoke to him, calming him and encouraging him.
‘Are you okay, boy?’ he asked, swallowing and coughing up a small portion of the sea, trying to reassure the frantic dog, whose wide eyes sparked with fear.
For a long time they bobbed on the surface, the thrashing sea heaving and scudding around them, tossing them about like lost buoys. At times, the waves seemed to rise up, sharp and angular, like fins or jagged teeth. Seth had to use both arms to tread, trying to stay close to his struggling dog. He had learned long ago to keep his fingers close together, paddle-like. Spread fingers were useless when swimming or treading water.
He could no longer see or hear his father’s boat.
It could be miles away by now, he thought, noticing for the first time his bone-deep trembling and that he could no longer feel his toes. His arms were getting tired. He felt dizzy and exhausted.
Seth began to wonder how much longer he could stay afloat.
Two – Atel’ek
The brothers, on the edge of becoming young men, had forgotten one of the most important values of The People of the village—the respect of nature, to take only what one needs and nothing more. One day, the oldest of the brothers was hunting alone far from home when he saw a squirrel running along the trunk of a tall tree.
Just when Seth thought he didn’t have enough strength to stay afloat any longer, he saw a tree, maybe half the length of his father’s boat, tossing on the waves, its leafy branches rising from the sloshing sea, waving on the wind like a beckoning hand.
Boat captains in the Sound always have to be on the lookout for trees, uprooted in storms and cast into the sea, sometimes floating unseen just below the surface.
Hitting a submerged log at full throttle could sheer the lower half of an outboard motor or ruin a propeller, not to mention punching a hole through the hull. But in this case, it was a godsend. The wind was urging the tree toward Seth and the dog. With his remaining strength, he grabbed hold of Tucker, and with the other hand paddled as best he could toward the unlikely raft. On reaching the tree, Seth wrapped one arm tightly around the trunk, holding Tucker close to him with the other. The buoyant tree easily supported their weight, and boy and dog momentarily rested their weary limbs.
But the floating tree did nothing to warm them. Seth could no longer feel his fingers or toes, and he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth chattering. He could feel Tucker trembling as well.
He was scared for both of them.
Having grown up in a fishing town in Alaska, Seth knew that Alaska is fraught with danger. Every mile of it screams out that it can kill you in an instant, from the tallest mountains to the barren Arctic tundra, where even polar bears must struggle over vast distances in their tireless hunt for food. Food means energy to heat the body. Every calorie matters. Stories abound about the hardships of life on the Last Frontier. The waters are so cold and help so remote that kayakers and rafters consider them more dangerous and challenging than similar rivers in the rest of the world.
A crab fisherman who falls overboard in the Bering Sea during the winter crabbing season, where the waters are far more treacherous than in the Sound, has little chance of survival. By law, all vessels must carry a survival suit for each crew member, specially designed to trap body heat and maintain buoyancy, most fitted with strobe lights. But frequently, disaster strikes so suddenly that a man has no time to don the lifesaving gear.
The Bering Sea is callous, unsympathetically taking what lives it can, sparing few.
After a while, Seth caught glimpses of a dark, unmoving shape on the horizon, distant but rising above the height of the frigid waves. He squinted hard each time the log rode to the top of a
wave crest. It was a small island. And although it was too tiny to have a name on any map, it could have been called Hope.
From where he was, tossed about helplessly, Seth could see several windswept trees, stunted from trying to grow where they had no business growing. But life is like that, always trying new things, new places, resilient, willing itself to exist by stubborn determination and a bit of sheer luck.
And by good fortune, the log with its desperate, clinging cargo, was carried by wind and current toward the island. The distance closed quickly, and soon boy and dog were able to pull themselves up the rocky shore, where the crashing surf pounded them against the stones, pulling them backwards with each retreating wave, as if trying to drag them back into the sea, frustrated by its failure to swallow them whole.
At last, they clambered away from the beach and crawled beneath a tree, its swaying boughs shielding them from some of the rain. Only some. The boughs did nothing to stop the wind.
Though they were finally out of the water, Seth and Tucker shook from hypothermia. The fact that they still shook was a good thing. It meant their bodies were still fighting to stay warm, a last-ditch effort. Only after the trembling stops does the body begin to give up, surrendering to the elements.
Seth knew that he had to get out of his soaking clothes. Though his fingers barely did what his brain told them, he managed with great difficulty to remove his yellow raincoat and his shirt and pants and shoes and socks. He wrung out as much water as he could and then put them back on. Afterwards, he and the dog leaned against the tree trunk beneath the raincoat, huddling close, shuddering, and moving slightly this way or that to hide from the shifting wind. Occasionally, Seth rubbed his arms and legs vigorously, trying to warm them.
He rubbed Tucker, too.
The dog seemed grateful, licking the boy’s face when he was done.
The raging night seemed to last forever, but eventually the rain stopped, the wind ended its flailing tantrum, and the sun began to shine through blue spaces between drifting clouds. By noon, the sky was nearly clear, the sea calm, and the summer sun warming. Seth took off his clothes and hung them over low spruce boughs to dry. He lay sleeping in his underwear on a mossy bed beside a sprawled Tucker, the sun raising their temperatures until, though exhausted, they were no longer cold. Occasionally, Seth would stir at some sound, thinking it to be a boat or an airplane or a helicopter. But each time the rescuers were only a seagull or an eagle or a salmon splashing in the water nearby. After each disappointment, he again slept.
