Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank M Sheldon

CHAPTER 2

  Matthew had gone to have a drink at the High Life, his favorite bar in Victoria. It was his last day before heading back for classes. Through the picture window looking south, a light from over the water in Washington State blinked like messages waiting. In many ways he preferred his quieter life here in British Columbia, but he was looking forward to completing his degree.

  Unfortunately, Gilliard had just spotted him and invited himself to Matthew’s table, and was now going on and on about his belief that an experiment gone wrong was surely responsible for all they had witnessed on the Eva Shay.

  “Why’d you have to bring that up?” Matthew said. He stared into his glass, annoyed. Matthew did not want to get into it at all, not with these other characters from the bar around. He signaled the waitress, so he could pay his tab and slip out.

  A regular from the next table looked over his shoulder toward Matthew.

  “You saw a purple whale?” he said in a voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. “Might be some kind of sign, I guess, but kinda early.” He leaned toward Matthew unsuccessfully hiding his smirk and said, “After all, the Millennium’s still a couple years off!” Most of the bar’s frequenters laughed, but not too loud.

  “We all seen it,” Gilliard shot back as he slammed his glass down on the table. “Captain Juvinor, the whole crew. Swimming at the head of these grays like a circus parade! Them bastards down at the professor here’s school in the States did it, but he denies it to my face.”

  “Of course he would,” the regular said, leering at Matthew. He tipped his chair forward. “But what’s this about them disappearing?”

  “Lies,” Gilliard said, yawning. “They all dove under, that’s all. We couldn’t hang around and wait, just got the hell out of there ’fore the weather front broke.”

  What?

  Gilliard made this last comment casually as if nothing much had happened when the whales disappeared. Then again, Matthew’s own memories had by now faded like a dream at dawn.

  “You know,” Gilliard blathered on, “I heard this thing the other night on cable, about how the scientists can change animals now, mix them up, maybe even make new ones.” The deadly serious expression he wore made his face almost unrecognizable. The bar patrons stared as he went on. “Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they were doing something like that across the Strait, and who knows,” he continued in a stage whisper, “maybe we saw one that got away.”

  By this time, those at the other tables were smirking and giving each other elbows and winks. “Ooo, stop, Gilliard, you’re scaring me!” one of the regulars fake-whimpered.

  “It coulda!” Gilliard bellowed. “Look at the trouble those bug-heads caused us already, and the government don’t give a—hey, where you going?”

  “Getting late,” Matthew said. “Got to work tomorrow.”

  Gilliard turned his head and spat on the floor. “If by work, you mean poking fish brains in a lab with the rest of those Birken-stockinged ninnies at that useless school, well you can—”

  “Gilliard!” yelled the barmaid, “How many times I told you not to spit on the floor!”

  “Then put the spittoon back! This place used to be fine, now you got that overpriced microbrew piss and next thing we’ll be sipping herb tea and stuffing tofu up our—”

  “Out of here!” the barmaid yelled.

  “Then who’ll walk you home, huh?”

  The whole bar laughed again, and Matthew used the distraction to make an unnoticed exit, though the damage was surely done. Around the waterfront, they would get years out of a story like this, and he was sick of it already.

  Matthew walked quickly in the light rain. Despite the on and off drizzle that had fallen through the day, it was warm for late May. The wet air soothed the flush of emotions burning through him, and he took in a few deep breaths to clear his head. Maybe what happened in the bar had been for the best. It was only the debt he incurred pursuing a degree in marine science that brought him back to the life of a fisherman, the little money he earned during his late-spring break from studies being better than nothing. What he needed was to focus on his degree in marine science, get away from a world of busted gear and diminishing catches, not to mention idiots like Gilliard, and do something with his life. Still the doubts, as usual, trailed him home.

  Twelve years before, after a halfhearted stumble through college, he decided not to go into his father’s retail clothing business in Vancouver as had been hoped. Against the wishes of his family to see him safely established in the salary man’s world, he had instead moved further north up the coast of British Columbia, to a cabin by the sea. He took odd jobs when he could find them, barely keeping up with his low rent and the need to feed himself. Even if his family saw his choice as a long step down, he enjoyed working with his hands and living away from the hustle. His simple life ended when he became involved with a group that tried unsuccessfully to stop encroaching development. That, and a failed relationship with a woman who in the end left him for one of the developers, left him deeply disillusioned.

  He moved back south to Victoria, where a friend managed to secure him a trial berth on a commercial fishing boat. Matthew’s first trip out on the Eva Shay was far more arduous than any other work he had ever done. The crew labored around the clock, resting only to sleep when they could. In spite of that, he took to a life that left him little energy to dwell on the past. He did well enough that they called him again, and he had been going out sporadically ever since, filling the ever more frequent down times due to quotas with the odd small building project. For a while, this was all he needed to do, and he was content.

  Eventually, however, he had come to realize that the life of a fisherman would never be his own. He would never be fully accepted as one of them. It was a world he could only visit. As for the other crew on the Eva Shay, they could only keep trying to make a living at commercial fishing. Catches were dwindling but there was nothing else they could turn their hands to that bring in close to their share of even the current hauls.

  For Matthew, it was then that a clear calling emerged for the first time in his life: marine science. He would make a place for himself on his own terms. He went back to school part-time to complete his undergraduate requirements and then steadily worked his way towards completing a graduate degree. It had taken thousands of hours of work and nearly all his free time for the last few years. More than once, it had seemed impossible. In the end, it had proved only difficult, as long as he avoided distractions. And the sighting of a strange whale that no one would believe was a distraction. He would not take on a fool’s errand again.

  He rounded the last corner and stepped along the wooden planks of the walkway to his place. He lived in the back of what had once been a net factory, and a few years before had helped the owner convert it into simple living spaces. When he was given a choice as to which space he wanted, without hesitation he had picked the loft. It was perched over one of the smaller harbors on the west side of the waterfront, held up like an offering on pilings that seemed to grow out of the sea like a drowned forest. Even at low tide, he could hear water lapping, but for the most part the place was quiet. Other people found the smell of rotting seaweed, fish and the occasional whiff of diesel offensive, but somehow it kept Matthew feeling clean. He could never explain why.

  He walked in and threw himself down on the couch. As he looked out the window toward the harbor, he remembered his fishing mates. He would miss them and the life, in spite of everything. Although not as big as most of them, over time his muscles had become hard and tough, and gradually they had accepted him, if not as one of their own, then at least as part of the crew.

  Well, so what. He was making a new life, and this time he’d get it right. He got up from the couch and turned on the water in the rickety tin shower stall he had salvaged from a job and waited the usual minute for it to heat up before getting in. The hot blast of water shocked his cold skin, and a strangely pleasurable sadness washed over him. Wh
at would it really be like to die at sea?

  Stupid thinking.

  He turned the faucet to full cold.

  The Eye took him in and he is falling, falling out of time, falling through the only thing there is forever…

  In an instant, what had really occurred on the Eva Shay washed back over him with the full force of a winter squall. He thumped the water off and leapt out of the shower, his adrenaline ramping up so fast he started to black out. He clutched weakly at an exposed water pipe and slowly slid down the wall. He slumped against the enameled tin of the stall, breathing hard. His vision gradually came back, and the pumping of his heart began to slow.

  Out on the ship, the whale had looked at him just before disappearing, but not just at him. It was as if the whale had somehow seen into him, utterly and completely, with nothing left hidden! He didn’t know how or why, but it was both terrible and profound, and yet he had almost instantly forgotten, forgotten it all.

  Twenty minutes later, he was steady enough to get to his feet and pull on his jeans. He walked slowly to the corner that served as his kitchen. The sound of the running tap helped, but it was a large glass of water that made him feel somewhat well again. He filled the glass again and sat down. There was a can of colored pencils on the table in front of him. He grabbed one, pulled over a sketchpad and began drawing what he remembered. His thoughts wandered to the next days. Classes began the day after tomorrow. If he took the early morning ferry stateside to Port Angeles and got to the Point, maybe he could find some answers. He did not believe for a minute that what he had seen was connected in any way with the whale research going on there, as Gilliard had imagined, but it was hard to believe what he had experienced was a natural phenomenon.

  If only he had brought his camera!

  He looked down at the sketch of the whale he had been drawing. It needed color, and he tried purple. He was appalled at how silly it looked. No one would ever believe him. He’d make a fool of himself if he even mentioned it. At thirty-six, he was oldest student in the program by ten years or more, and he was the only Canadian. They hadn’t been welcoming when he showed up. Calling attention to himself with something like this was the last thing he needed. In less than a year, he hoped to complete his paper and would then have a good chance of doing serious work, while getting paid as an assistant. If he kept at it, he was sure he would find a place in the field that he felt had chosen him. If not, he would make one, and make a new life as well.

  Dammit!

  The competition for an internship at the Point would be intense. He had to be realistic about his chances. The other students were not only younger, but eager and competitive in the way of those who had never really had to take a bad hit. They excelled at networking, which had never come naturally to him. Doctor Bell, the head of the Point, had on one occasion given him some encouraging words, but he was largely on his own.

  He had learned this not long after he first arrived to take part in the program. Another of the grad students had sat down next to him in the cafeteria, which at first he had taken as a welcome. He had been, if anything, excessively courteous, until he came to his real point, which was to tell Matthew just how lucky he was to get into the new exchange program with Canada. The implication was clear from the rest of the conversation, that otherwise, he would never have qualified. This program was for the exceptional, after all, the best of the brilliant. Not a place for the merely qualified.

  As it was, working as hard as he could, he still barely managed to keep his head above water. There was truth in what the young grad student had implied, but he had resolved to hold to his course and avoid trouble. Now trouble seemed to have found him. Again.

  As the energy surge wore off, a wave of sleepiness washed over him. He climbed into his bunk in the loft and lay staring into the dark skylight, his face dimly reflected in the glass. He sank into drowsiness, the oblivion of sleep welcome. As he slipped under, the image of the eye from his encounter on the Eva Shay flickered before him until he sank into the welcome oblivion of sleep.