by John Smelcer
Tucker rolled over on his back with his legs in the air looking ridiculously contented.
By late afternoon Seth was rested but hungry and thirsty. He had swallowed a good deal of saltwater the night before, which caused dehydration, among other less comfortable effects such as relentless and explosive diarrhea. Now he was parched. He imagined that Tucker also needed to drink. But the island was very small, barely a dry spot on the edge of nowhere. He had been too cold and too tired to notice its size before. Seth walked from one side to the other—twenty-three paces at the longest point, only fourteen at the shortest. Because of its size, there were no streams or ponds. No freshwater sources. But it had rained all night. Seth determined that some rainwater had surely collected amid rocks, like tiny cisterns. He found a few such places, occasional cupped formations on the tops of ancient rocks with enough accumulated water for him to sip directly from the rough, gritty surface and for Tucker to lap. They were both able to slake their thirst, at least moderately.
To satisfy his hunger, Seth remembered the candy bar and the Slim Jims in his slicker pocket, the ones his father had told him to put away the day before. They weren’t much, and they weren’t very nutritious to be sure, but it was all he had.
Seth dug into a pocket and pulled out his iPod.
‘Ruined,’ he thought as seawater poured out of it.
He shook it until the water stopped dripping; then he set it on a rock hoping that it would dry in the sun and work again.
He reached into the other pocket and found the Slim Jims, still dry in their wrappers. He opened only one meat stick, using his front teeth to tear open the clear plastic package. Tucker stared, his golden-orange head cocked sideways, looking first at the food and then into the boy’s eyes, the way dogs look when they are curious or expectant.
He drooled.
Seth shared the meat stick evenly with his dog but decided not to open the candy bar. He would save it and the other Slim Jim for later. He didn’t know when rescue would come. Perhaps it would arrive at any minute, perhaps not until the next day since it was already evening. He thought it best to wait awhile, to save it just in case.
Seth looked out over the water, sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight, and saw numerous other small islands nearby, a larger one about a half mile away. Two sea otters swam close to where he and Tucker sat. The floating creatures watched them curiously until the dog got up and barked, scaring them away.
Seth’s grandmother, who was born in the Sound—where her parents and their parents and perhaps a hundred generations of her ancestors had been born—had always tried to teach her grandson the ways of her People, including their stories and the words of their language, now more forgotten than remembered.
They call it Alutiiq.
Only a handful of elders in the region still spoke it, mostly the very old. Seth had never really cared to learn. Most of his generation didn’t. Even Seth’s father hadn’t learned. In all fairness, few people born after the 1950s spoke the native languages of Alaska at all. Everything was in English: television, movies, radio, newspapers and magazines, business . . . even schools were taught in English only. In fact, for a long time the government sent native children, Indians and Eskimos alike, to distant boarding schools, sometimes thousands of miles away, where they were punished if teachers caught them speaking a single word of their native language. They said it was for their own good. They had to stop being Indian. Seth’s grandmother had once told him that she had had her mouth washed out with lye soap for accidentally saying a single word.
She couldn’t remember which word it was.
It wasn’t important.
To the younger generations, no one seemed to care if the language vanished, the way all useless things eventually fade away. Like so many of the old ways themselves, Seth’s grandmother had also passed into memory.
But suddenly, sitting as he was against the tree watching the retreating otters, the yellow sun’s warmth on his face, Seth recalled the word for sea otter that his grandmother had taught him.
Igam’aq.
He repeated the word several times under his breath, carefully pronouncing each syllable: ee-GUM-uk.
It was strange, he thought, that he should remember this word so clearly.
While he sat, awaiting rescue, swatting mosquitoes, Seth mused about how much he had in common with the character in his favorite novel, Robinson Crusoe. Both he and the protagonist had been marooned on an island. If memory served, Crusoe’s island was also in the Pacific, albeit much farther to the south. But instead of Friday, Seth had Tucker. He took the parallel only so far, concerned about the rest of the story—the duration of Crusoe’s stranding. Seth didn’t want to think about that part. He tried to push the thought from his mind, keep his attention focused on listening for the sound of a boat or an airplane.
And then Seth remembered his father’s words.
You wouldn’t last a day in the wilderness.
Three – Pinga’an
A long time ago, a young couple was married in a small village. They were very happy together. The man was a good hunter who had learned well from his father and uncles. The woman was a good wife who had learned well from her mother and aunts.
The Erin Elizabeth made port earlier that morning beneath a clearing sky. And while the bay itself was still choppy, the wind whipping up small whitecaps, the surface in the harbor was nearly flat, protected as it was by the seawall, a long barrier made of giant boulders placed to shelter ships and boats inside.
The journey had taken longer than expected because of the strong headwinds and hampering waves, requiring more diesel than usual for the distance. Jack Evanoff pulled back on the throttle, and the boat drifted up to the cannery dock, gently bumping into the cushioning rubber tires. It idled while Lucky cast the bow and stern lines to a longshoreman, who deftly secured the ropes to the dock moorings.
Lucky had been up for the previous half hour. He always seemed to sense when the boat was nearing harbor, waking up just in time to do his job—uncanny in a way. He was quiet as he dressed, trying not to disturb Seth, who appeared to be in a deep slumber on the upper bunk bed. The way the blankets were pulled over the lumps of two pillows gave that impression.
Almost immediately after Jack killed the engine, the longshoremen began the task of unloading the hold and weighing the salmon. This was the industry of the Sound. The same scene was repeated a thousand times over the summer as fishing boats came into the harbor to sell their catch. Small fishing communities like Jack’s lined the Gulf. A check would be ready for the captain in less than an hour, its amount based on the weight of the salmon and the day’s market price.
‘I can’t believe you guys were out there last night,’ one of the workers said to Lucky. ‘All the other boats came in because of the gale warning.’
The old deckhand grunted gruffly and lit his pipe.
‘No one’s gonna buy rotten fish.’
While the dock workers did their job, Jack Evanoff poured himself a glass of water and swallowed two aspirins. He had a headache from not sleeping all night and from drinking too much coffee. When he was done, he went down to the sleeping quarters to awaken his son.
Jack opened the door and saw Seth’s motionless form under the blankets.
‘Rise and shine, sleepy head!’ he yelled, loud enough to shake anyone from a dream.
He always said ‘rise and shine.’ It was something his wife had always said.
When the shape did not rustle, he yelled again.
‘Come on, lazy butt. Time to get up!’
When the form failed to move, Jack walked over to the bed to shake his son awake, but his hand felt something other than a body beneath the blankets. It gave too easily, too lightly. He pulled back the blankets, exposing two long pillows; their haphazard arrangement had given the impression of a sleeping body.
Jac
k walked over to the head and knocked on the door.
‘Are you in there, Seth?’
When no reply came, he knocked again, a little louder.
‘Seth?’ he said, leaning closer, turning an ear to the door.
He opened the door slowly and looked into the empty space, barely big enough for the toilet and a pair of feet. There is no wasted room on a fishing boat.
Jack backtracked to the deck and looked up toward the dock, toward the main shore and town. Frequently, Seth and Tucker got off the boat to stretch their legs while the catch was unloaded. Seth and Tucker had nothing to do aboard ship. Jack and Lucky and the longshoremen did all the work. Besides, for Seth and Tucker, the unmoving earth felt good beneath their feet. Seth never really liked being at sea. He didn’t yet truly have his sea legs.
Jack looked for a long time, his head and eyes following the shoreline. Far off he saw someone with a dog walking along the beach near the water. He squinted, bringing the image into clarity. Even from where he stood he could see that it was a woman and a black lab.
Lucky walked by on the dock below, checking the mooring lines, making sure they were fast.
Jack leaned over the deck rail.
‘Have you seen Seth this morning?’ he asked.
‘He was still sleeping when I got up,’
‘He isn’t in his bed,’ Jack replied in a worried tone.
Lucky, bent over and pulling in the slack, was retying the rope on the giant metal cleat. ‘Maybe he got off the boat while I was inside the office,’ he said, without looking up.
‘Yeah, could be,’ Jack said with a hint of disbelief in his voice, his eyes following the curve of the beach. ‘All the same, I’m going to walk around town and see if I can find them. You stay with the boat. Move it into its slip when they’re done unloading. And don’t forget the check.’
‘Aye, Captain,’ replied Lucky, nodding his head, tapping the bowl of his pipe against the bottom of his boot to empty the ash.
Lucky loved using old sailors’ terms like that. He had been at sea all his life, since before Alaska was a state, when it was still a territory. He was what they call a sourdough.
Jack Evanoff walked up the long dock and into town, keeping an eye out for his son and his dog. It wasn’t a big town. Its main street was actually called Main Street. Most coastal communities are small, perched at the base of mountains on narrow strips of land bordered by the sea, with a population of a couple thousand people, more or less. Most people are employed in the fishing industry.
This town didn’t even have a traffic light, though there was talk of getting one.
All summer long, cruise ships anchored in the harbor almost daily, bringing tourists who disembarked and walked around the quaint streets, taking pictures and buying souvenirs in the various gift shops and stores. Some tourists went on glacier tours and others went out on charter boats to catch salmon or halibut or even salmon sharks, a sport that was growing in popularity. Salmon sharks follow the schools of salmon and often reach up to ten feet in length and weigh as much as five hundred pounds. Unofficial sightings have reported some sharks as long as fifteen feet, weighing upwards of a thousand pounds. They look a lot like a smaller, distant cousin of the ferocious Great White, which live far away on the other side of the world.
Jack walked up Main Street looking into storefront windows, stopping to go inside the places he knew Seth sometimes frequented, like the pizzeria with its old, quarter arcade games, a favorite hangout for the local teens.
‘Did Seth come in this morning?’ he asked the owner, who was chopping onions.
‘Heck, Jack,’ replied the nearly bald man who looked to be in his thirties. ‘I don’t even open for another two hours. I was just cutting up toppings.’
‘Can you tell him I’m looking for him if he comes in?’
‘Sure thing, Jack,’ said the man, raking the pile of cut onions into a plastic bowl with the side of his hand.
Jack ducked into several other stores, asking the same question and always receiving the same answer.
No one had seen Seth or Tucker that morning.
No one had seen them in days.
His concern growing, Jack walked briskly back to the harbor and drove his pickup truck the two miles home, thinking that perhaps Seth had caught a ride home with someone. The thought that his son might be so inconsiderate as to go home without telling him made Jack angry.
He clenched the steering wheel harder than usual.
When he arrived, Jack opened the door and yelled.
‘Seth! Seth! Are you home?’
No reply. The house was always quiet in the summer. In winter it could be heard breathing whenever the furnace kicked on, blowing warm air into each room.
After a quick search of the house, Jack scribbled a note on a piece of yellow paper, which he taped to the front door, climbed back into his truck, slammed the door, and drove back to town, his thoughts beginning to fill with worry.
Where is my son?
He remembered the last time he saw him: in the galley after supper the night before when he was making the pot of coffee for the long journey home.
Halfway to town, Jack called his boat using the CB radio mounted under the dashboard. Most people used mobile phones, but Jack still liked some of the old ways.
‘Erin Elizabeth. Come in. Repeat. Erin Elizabeth. Lucky, can you hear me?’
Lucky responded.
‘Yeah, Jack. Go ahead.’
‘Did Seth come back to the boat?’
‘No. I haven’t seen him. Copy that?’
Jack’s thoughts turned to his wife. She was never far away. He wondered what she would have done in such a situation. She was the glue that held the family together. She would have known what to do.
‘I copy,’ replied the worried father, letting go of the transmit button.
When he arrived in town, Captain Jack walked straight into the Harbormaster’s office and called the Coast Guard.
There was only one other place his son could be.
Four – Staaman
The squirrel was all white! The hunter had never seen anything like it before. He raised his bow to shoot, but it was so pretty he could not kill it. The squirrel ran into a hole in the trunk of the tree, and then it turned around and motioned for the young man to follow.
Although the sun never completely sets in Alaska during summer, that night Seth noticed that it was lowest over the mountains to the west. Knowing the sun rises in the east, he was vaguely able to reckon the direction home.
Growing increasingly hungry, Seth thought about a slice of pizza from the pizzeria in town. He imagined it with extra cheese, pepperoni, and black olives—his favorite. He knew that Tucker had to be just as hungry, his belly equally tight.
Tucker tilted his head and stared at the pockets on the front of Seth’s yellow slicker. He knew there was food inside. He had seen the boy place it there.
Seth rubbed the dog’s head, scratching his throat and behind his ears. When he was done, Tucker licked the boy’s hand.
But he still gazed forlornly at the pockets.
‘I know, boy. I know,’ he said, thinking about the meat stick and the candy bar inside the pocket. ‘We’ll split one in the morning.’
While schools of salmon all pushed on through the night toward their birth streams, driven by relentless instinct, taking no time to rest, the boy and his dog curled up close together. Seth draped an arm over the dog’s chest, feeling it swell with each breath, as the constant waves lapped against the rocky shore. Although this windless night was infinitely more comfortable than the miserable night before, neither of the two slept soundly.
• • • • •
When he awoke in the morning, the rising sun’s meager heat on his face, Seth kept his promise, sharing the other Slim Jim with Tucker. He broke the mea
t stick in half. Tucker swallowed his in one gulp, barely taking time to chew it. Seth ate his slower, savoring each small bite. Tucker watched and drooled the whole time. He didn’t understand why the boy still had something to eat while his was already gone.
Dogs don’t do fractions.
After the infinitesimal breakfast, the two drank their fill of freshwater from the little standing pools about the island. It felt briefly good to be full of anything.
For the rest of the day, Seth kept his eyes on the horizon, hoping to see a boat. He kept his ears attuned to any sound in the distance that might mean rescue. But he neither saw nor heard anything that fanned the embers of his hope. All the while he sat waiting, thinking about food, the tide was going out, temporarily expanding the size of his poor and tiny kingdom.
The only other living things he could notice on the island were the seagulls that came to perch on the few treetops, looking over the water for something to eat.
They were hungry, too.
As he listened to them, Seth thought he remembered the word for seagull.
‘Na . . . na-something,’ he said, trying to recall the other syllable.
Several seagulls waddled along the beach arguing over food, chasing one another away from some meager morsel, their grey-white wings outstretched in a gesture of anger.
‘Naahqwaq,’ he finally blurted, remembering what his grandmother had told him. He could almost see her mouth move and smell what she was cooking in her kitchen that day. Deer soup with potatoes and onions.
