by John Smelcer
Seth rolled the word around in his mouth, his tongue pressed against the back of his upper front teeth, forming the first sound. He practiced saying the word aloud.
Nok-WOK, he said, placing extra stress on the second syllable.
The day was hot and windless. Seth noticed that the small puddles of rainwater were evaporating, so he shrewdly piled spruce boughs over them to shield them from the direct sunlight. In late afternoon—Seth could only guess by the position of the sun—an airplane flew overhead, far overhead. It was a large passenger jet flying five or six miles above the island, a mere silver speck moving against lazy clouds, its long, white contrail streaming behind it, dissipating after a few minutes.
Seth knew that from such a height, his tiny island was little more than a dot, more sea than land. There was no need to jump up and down and wave.
That night, he thought about eating the candy bar. He imagined the delightful taste of chocolate. But no matter how much his empty stomach begged for a piece, he knew he had to wait until the next morning.
Seth remembered what his father had once told him.
‘If you get lost in the woods, don’t wander away,’ he had said one night while they were sitting around a campfire in their backyard roasting marshmallows. ‘That’ll only make things worse. Stay put so that rescuers can find you.’
It was good advice, generally.
But Seth began to question it. He had been missing for two days now, and he hadn’t heard a single boat or small aircraft searching for him.
What if they never come? he wondered.
The question haunted him all night. He couldn’t push it from his thoughts, no matter how hard he tried. Surely his father had noticed that he and his dog were missing. Certainly his father would come looking for him or contact the Coast Guard. Besides, there were other fishermen in the Sound. And yet, he hadn’t seen a single boat in two days.
At last, he fell asleep and dreamed of an all-you-can-eat buffet with a soft ice-cream machine. While he slept, Tucker snored and occasionally whined as if he too were dreaming.
In the twilight, a pod of killer whales swam past the island, their tall, black fins slicing the surface, and Seth’s stomach, bare as the cupboards in one of his favorite childhood nursery rhymes, rumbled like an earthquake.
• • • • •
On the morning of the third day, the lone inhabitants of the tiny island awoke stiff and hungry. After standing up and stretching his limbs and yawning loudly, Seth sat down beside his dog and finally opened the wrapper to the candy bar. Tucker’s eyes were glued to the object in the boy’s hands, his pupils as large as black tea saucers. Even his tail stopped wagging, his whole being focused on the thing the boy was holding. As Seth pulled the chocolate bar out of its wrapper, he could almost swear the dog was smiling.
This time Seth gave Tucker his portion in smaller bites, making the breakfast last, taking equally small bites himself, savoring the flavor of the chocolate melting on his tongue.
It was the best thing he had ever eaten in his life.
When the candy bar was consumed and the empty wrapper was licked clean, boy and dog went from puddle to puddle, sipping and lapping the very last drops of water, which, being the dregs, were a mix of moss, dirt, and lichen.
Not a drop of freshwater remained on the island, and the sky was deep blue and clear. Only a single, fluffy white cloud flitted on the horizon, all alone on the bend of the world. Seth wondered how long they could last without water, appreciating the irony that he was surrounded by countless billions of gallons of sea water, as undrinkable as motor oil.
With nothing else to pass the time, no television or video games or cell phones, Seth and Tucker lounged all day, sitting first on one side of the island and then on the other, occasionally napping. All the while, Seth kept listening and looking for anything out of the ordinary. And while he waited, he kept studying the larger island across the way, rationalizing that because it was so much larger, it most likely had freshwater and maybe even food. There might even be a cabin.
Besides, it was east of their island, in the direction of home.
Five – Talliman
The curious hunter knelt and looked within. He saw that it was a house with a great many empty beds. It was a community house for many people, but there was no one inside. It was entirely empty except for the white squirrel that stood in the middle beckoning him to come inside.
By high noon Seth was unbearably thirsty. His barren stomach felt the way he imagined a spent balloon must feel after all its air is released, withered and collapsed on itself. He kept thinking about the far island.
It seemed too far away.
Then, something in the water caught his eye.
A log was floating slowly past his tiny island. He sat watching it, not particularly interested at first. But within minutes the log was more than a hundred yards away, in the direction of the larger island.
Suddenly, a truth dawned in Seth’s brain.
The tidal currents.
Twice a day, influenced by the invisible effects of the tugging moon, the tide comes in and out of the Sound. Among and between the hundreds of islands—more than a thousand in the Inside Passage to the far southeast—the tide actually pours itself like a river. In some places, the changing current is dangerously swift and sudden. In many shallow and narrow bays, like Turnagain Arm, the change in sea level creates bore tides, swift tidal waves miles across that race up into the bays.
Seth watched the log for another few minutes. It was almost out of sight, but still floating toward the larger island.
Although his father had warned him to stay put when lost in the wilderness, he probably hadn’t considered lack of food or water. Then, too, his home was in that direction. Besides, maybe no one was looking for him in this area. It made sense to work his way nearer to home, closer to where people might be looking for him.
There was little time. The tide would turn. He decided to swim for the larger island, letting the current do most of the work. What the current was doing for that log it could do for him and Tucker. Although he didn’t like the idea of being awash on the sea again, Seth committed himself to his plan.
‘Come on, boy!’ he shouted to Tucker, as he shoved his iPod into a pocket and started to make his way down the rocks toward the sea.
Tucker looked over the bank at the boy scrambling over the giant stones.
Seth clapped his hands.
‘Come on! Heel!’ he shouted up to the dog, who had a puzzled expression.
He patted his thighs.
‘Heel! Heel!’
Tucker didn’t budge.
Frustrated, Seth looked for a stick among the rocks. He found one and held it up, as if to throw it into the water.
‘Let’s play fetch, boy! Fetch!’
Tucker loved the game. He quickly and nimbly worked his way down to the water’s edge. Seth threw the stick in the general direction of the other island, and the dog eagerly splashed into the sea, swimming after it, his powerful tail serving as a rudder. Seth swam after him, satisfied that his plan was working and aware that his iPod was again submerged in the corroding sea.
The water was very cold. But when the dog retrieved the stick, he turned around and swam back to the island. That’s the way the game was always played.
The boy threw; he fetched.
Seth trod the water, calling his dog.
‘Tucker! Here boy. Come here!’ he shouted, waving an arm.
But the dog just dropped the stick and shook himself, water spraying everywhere. Then he looked down at the stick and out at the boy, as if to say, ‘There it is. Come get it. What are you waiting for? Throw the stick. Stick, stick, stick.’
When it became apparent that Tucker wasn’t going to come after him, Seth swam back to shore and threw the stick again. And again the same game repeated its
elf.
Seth tried a new strategy.
He pretended to throw the stick, and the gullible dog swam after it, circling where he thought it had landed. Seth swam alongside him, took hold of his collar, and led him out to sea, the current pushing them along toward the other island like flotsam.
Halfway across, Seth looked back, still holding onto the dog. The island they had lived on for three days was little more than a fleck. And although he was already tired from swimming, Seth understood that there was no going back. The strong current that so obligingly carried them this far would be against them all the way if they turned back. It would be like swimming up a waterfall. Better, he thought, just to stay afloat and to let the current carry them.
Seth had no accurate sense of time as they bobbed on the waves. He tried to believe that their progress, a little more than half the distance between the two islands, had been only a few minutes, but he knew it had taken much longer. He wished he had noted more certainly when the tide had begun to flow eastward. If it slowed and stopped, could they still make it under their own power?
After what seemed too long a time, Seth grew certain that the tidal momentum was slowing, but they were, by then, quite close to the larger island. He began to swim vigorously, paddling with one hand and helping Tucker stay afloat with the other. Finally, one foot brushed the pebbly bottom, then the other. Little by little, the pair managed to make it to a beach, a real beach, gently sloping and gravelly, not at all like the steep, boulder-strewn shoreline around their last home.
Boy and dog slogged up out of the sea. They made their way up the beach toward a grassy area above the tide line, the high summer sun warming them.
Thoroughly exhausted, they collapsed into the grass and slept for hours.
A low, humming noise awoke them both. It sounded mechanical, like an engine far away. Seth sat up, rubbed his eyes and scanned the sea trying to find the source of the sound. Far off, almost against the mainland, he saw a fishing boat. It was far away, maybe a mile or further. From where he sat, it looked like an ant crawling along the edge of a table. Even the mast of the boom looked like a toothpick. Seth leaped up and ran to the water’s edge, jumping up and down.
‘Over here!’ he shouted as loud as he could, waving his arms.
‘Hey! Over here!’
The ant of a boat chugged along without altering its steady course.
‘Help! Over here!’ Seth shouted until the boat finally disappeared behind an island.
He couldn’t hear it any longer.
Seth’s heart sank like a slowing flat stone skipped on the water.
As disappointed as he was, his hunger was even more urgent. He and Tucker hadn’t eaten anything more than a bite in three days, and junk food at that. The first business on their new home was to find food and water.
They started off down the beach. The tide was going out, exposing more gravely beach every minute. Coming around a bend in the shoreline, Seth saw a streamlet emptying into the sea. He ran toward it. Tucker followed. The shallow stream was barely a foot deep and only a couple of feet across, a little wider in some places. Seth fell to his knees, cupped his hands and scooped up the freshwater. Tucker stood in the stream lapping louder than the sea itself.
After drinking their fill, they walked along the stream, Seth wondering if salmon might be in it. About fifty yards up he saw two salmon, side by side, holding steady against the stream—most likely a male and a hen.
That’s what they call female salmon, like a chicken that also lays eggs.
Seth jumped into the water, desperately chasing the salmon, trying to catch one. He splashed about, spinning first this way and then that, the streamlined fish darting around his feet, sometimes brushing against his legs. He almost had one, but it flipped out of his hands, and then both fish turned and raced downriver, back into the depths of the sea.
Both boy and dog walked along the beach, thinking about their hunger.
When they came on a large boulder, which was exposed from the low tide, Seth approached it and saw black mussels growing on the rock below the water line. He remembered how his father once ate raw oysters at a restaurant. The slimy meat looked like snot oozing on a half shell. But his father loved them, dousing them first with lemon juice and a dash of hot sauce. His father hadn’t gotten sick on them. They were safe to eat. In fact, Seth remembered that his mother had been particularly fond of sushi, raw fish on an oblong-shaped blob of cold, sticky rice.
Seth used his pocket knife to pry several of the mussels from the rock. Then he used the flat of the blade to wedge open the shells. He scraped out the meat, which was gray and green and slimy.
He wished it was a hot dog instead.
And although his stomach didn’t particularly care what went into it as long as it was satisfied, Seth had a difficult time swallowing the first bite. He slid it into his mouth, held it there for a while, his tongue trying to avoid its taste and texture. In spite of his consuming hunger, he couldn’t make himself swallow. As hard as he tried, he worked even harder not to spit out the slimy presence in his mouth. It felt like big, chewy snot. Nearly gagging, pounding his fists on his thighs, grimacing, his eyes watering, he managed to swallow, struggling against the retching reflex. Eventually, it went down. He ate three more, each requiring the same stomach-turning efforts.
They stayed down.
Then Seth removed several more from the boulder and fed them to Tucker, who actually seemed to like them, eating them greedily from Seth’s palm. They stayed at the rock for a while, eating raw mussels, a pile of empty, black shells growing at their feet.
Several seagulls flew overhead, considering what might be left for them.
Seth remembered the word for mussels that his grandmother had taught him. She called them umyuk, pronounced just the way it sounds.
Um-YUK.
When the boy and his dog had consumed over a dozen mussels each, they walked back to the shoreline and sat on a great rocky outcrop, looking out over the sea. Tucker sat beside the boy, who placed an arm around the dog’s shaggy neck.
Seth remembered the drenched iPod in his pocket. He shook out the water and sat it in the sun to dry. He didn’t really know why he kept thinking he could save the thing. There was no chance it would ever work again. And even if by some miracle it did work, he had no way to charge the battery.
Seth laughed as he looked at the device shining in the sun, realizing the absurdity of his unwillingness to give up something so useless.
While the tide was still out, Seth counted over twenty boulders on the exposed coastline. They looked like giant heads stuck in the mud. Eagles rested on some of them, their keen eyes searching the beach for something to eat. So many boulders, each of them crowded with mussels. Food was everywhere.
The sea would provide for them.
Six – Urwinlen
One day, the newlywed husband went whale hunting with many other men from the village. As they paddled out to sea in their longboats, the men waved at their loved ones standing on the shore in front of the painted plank houses and totem poles.
Slow down,’ said the man on the other end of the phone. ‘I know you’re worried, but it sounds like your son could still be in town, maybe with some friends or a girlfriend. I think it’s too soon to call a search.’
‘I told you, I already looked for him in town. He’s not here.’
‘Did you call his friends?’ the man asked.
‘Well, no.’
‘Then I recommend you first check with them, look around town some more and go back to your house. He might be there by now. Maybe he left a message.’
‘I guess I could check around some more,’ replied the anxious father.
‘Good,’ said the man on the phone. ‘In the meantime, I’ll call the Coast Guard and let them know what’s going on. They may need to be in on this.’
�
�All right,’ replied Jack Evanoff, promising to call back if he found his son.
For the rest of the day he stopped at the homes of some of Seth’s old friends, the ones he used to hang around with before his mother died, before he withdrew into the lonely world of himself. No one had seen Seth or Tucker. Jack drove back to town and stopped to inquire in every single store. Same news. He went home twice, each time greeted by the yellow note he had taped to the door.
By the time someone called from the State Trooper’s office, it was already evening. Jack told the officer how no one had seen his son since the day before they left to go fishing. The officer agreed that it was time to begin a search. Because their airplane was down, awaiting a new alternator, which would arrive in the morning, he promised to start as soon as the part was installed.
That night was the second longest night of Jack’s life—the other being the night his wife died. He couldn’t sleep. Instead, he sat at the dining table looking through photo albums, listening for the telephone or the sound of the front door opening.
Some nights seem to last forever.
• • • • •
Bright and early the next morning, a small white and blue-pinstriped Citabria lifted from the runway, banking almost immediately, making the turn westward to follow the coast. Turbulence rattled the aircraft.
‘You have any idea where he might have fallen overboard, Jack?’ asked the pilot, Leo Walsh, speaking through the microphone on his green headset, which sounded tinny. It was too loud inside the small prop plane to hear without headphones. Like Jack, Leo had grown up in the town. His friends called him Lee. His father had also been a fisherman and a pilot. Lee and Jack had gone to school together, though Jack was a year older. They had even gone bear hunting together. Lee was a big man, six foot one or two, almost too large for the tight cockpit.
‘No. I was up in the pilot house driving all night,’ replied the anxious father. ‘Could be anywhere.’
