Sea Change

by Diane Tullson

  Sea Change

  Sea Change

  Diane Tullson

  orca soundings

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2010 Diane Tullson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now

  known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Tullson, Diane, 1958-

  Sea change / written by Diane Tullson.

  (Orca soundings)

  Issued also in an electronic format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-333-7 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-55469-332-0 (pbk.)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings

  PS8589.U6055S42 2010 JC813’.6 C2010-903617-4

  First published in the United States, 2010

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929069

  Summary: Lucas rarely sees his father. On a trip to reconnect on the remote north

  coast, Lucas discovers that kinship goes beyond blood, and that while he can’t pick

  his relatives, he can find his own community.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed

  this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing

  programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada

  through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts,

  and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council

  and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  13 12 11 10 • 4 3 2 1

  To Stan and Dorota, with love

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  I adjust my headset over my ears, and the noise of the helicopter drops to a dull thud. I feel the noise as much as hear it, as if the helicopter is a drum and I’m inside it. My seat faces out—the penalty box, the pilot called it—and the door is right in front of my knees. The window in the door has instructions about how to push it out in an emergency. And about how not to open the door in flight, as if anyone would do that. Still, I pull my knees back from the door lever.

  My father is sitting up with the pilot. He’s got a communications headset and he’s chatting with the pilot, laughing about something. His hair used to be darker than mine, more of a sandy brown, but now it’s got some gray. He has deep lines around his eyes. Basically, he looks old.

  Through the window, below, acres of trees roll out in all directions. That’s all I’ve seen since we left the airfield in Sandspit—trees. Sometimes a stream ropes through the trees, but there’s nothing else, no roads, no cut-lines. The pilot said a crew was logging on the other side of the ridge, but here I might be the first guy to see this forest. Well, me and the pilot. And my old man.

  God, it is cold. The last of a nasty flu bug gnaws my gut. It got me a week off school though. Half the school has it, and apparently it’s policy of the cook training program to make sure I don’t infect the other half. My mother didn’t give me too much grief about going. It’s about time you spent some time with your father, she said. He had a flu shot, so he isn’t going to catch it.

  Except for us, the helicopter is empty. The tourist season finished a month ago. We’re going to fish late-running salmon—coho, not that I’d know a coho from any other kind of fish.

  My dad has been at the fishing lodge his entire working life, practically owns the place now. I’m seventeen and this is the first time I’ve been up. People pay plenty to fish the best salmon on the Pacific Northwest, he says. Only room for paying guests, he says. We’ll go in October, after shutdown, he says.

  We almost went fishing three years ago, but the weather turned bad and grounded the helicopter. That was the year Mom and I moved to Torrance. Between school and Dad’s schedule, I haven’t seen him since. Not that I saw much of him before the divorce—he spends half the year at the lodge and the other half on the road doing sportsman’s shows. Maybe he’s always looked this old and I just haven’t noticed.

  This year he was in LA, on business, and he called me up. I had the week off school and no good reason to say no. Dad said the coho are huge this year, and I want a big fish, a monster. I want a fish so big the old man pays to get it stuffed and hangs it in the lodge with a brass plate with my name on it.

  Endless trees. There’s nothing to mark this place. I could be anywhere.

  The helicopter lifts over a rise and now I can see the inlet. The trees have been cleared near the water, and there are buildings—the fishing lodge. The docks are pulled up for the winter and look like gray tiles at the edge of the water. A couple of boats bob on moorings. The pilot heads toward a grass strip between the shore and the buildings.

  I see deer right where the helicopter is going to land, about seven of them, their heads down, grazing on the grass. They must be deaf—they’re not moving and the helicopter is almost right over them. We’re still high off the ground, but the downdraft flattens the grass.

  One deer drops to its knees, then collapses. It shudders and then lies still. It looks dead, but I don’t know how that could be. We couldn’t have hit it—we’re too high. The other deer lift their heads, and then, finally, they run off.

  The helicopter lands but the pilot doesn’t shut it down. He motions with his hand for me to wait. From in front of the main building, a lodge worker jogs toward the helicopter. With the coveralls, I don’t notice at first it’s a woman, but up close I see she’s young, about my age. She’s wearing a headset over a cap, on backward, dark brown hair sticking out from under it, and yellow safety glasses. She opens my door and points at my headset. I take it off and leave it on the seat. The noise is huge. I get out and grab my bag. I’m taller than the girl, and she taps my arm and points up—the rotor. I duck my head.

  Dad is already out, tossing duffel bags and boxes from the storage compartment in the tail of the helicopter. He secures the door and waves for me to get out of the way. The helicopter lifts and veers up the inlet, the noise of the engine echoing off the steep slopes, then disappears and leaves us in silence.

  The girl in coveralls shoulders a duffel bag from the pile of stuff on the grass. Dad strides over to her—he’s not smiling now.

  “You do that again, Sumi, and I’ll fire your ass.” He stabs his thumb at the dead deer. “Get that thing out of here.”

  The deer’s eyes are open and it still has grass in its mouth. There’s a round black hole just behind its shoulder, a bullet hole, and there’s blood on the grass. It has pronged antlers but it’s not a big animal.

  Sumi shrugs. She tosses the duffel bag to me and then heads to the lodge. I glance at my dad but he’s got his back to me, his
hands on his hips, looking out at the water. So I follow Sumi.

  The lodge windows are boarded up for the winter and the entrance is sheeted in heavy plastic. It doesn’t look like we’re staying in the lodge.

  “Where should I put our stuff?”

  She gives me a long look, up and down, like she’s assessing me. I’m wearing shoes I’ve had for a year and a rain jacket I bought when I still lived in Vancouver. I’m suddenly aware I need a haircut. She grabs a wheelbarrow leaning against the porch. I wait for her to answer, but she doesn’t. She goes back to the dead deer and hauls it into the wheelbarrow in a smear of blood. Its hooves bounce over the side as she wheels it behind the buildings.

  That went well.

  I dump my bags on the porch and go to the pile from the helicopter. I grab a couple of boxes of what I hope is fishing gear and head down to the water. Dad has put on rubber boots, and he’s loading an inflatable boat pulled up close on the stony beach. I hand him the boxes.

  “So, those coho hungry?”

  Dad looks at me, then at the sky. “Too late to go fishing now, Lucas.”

  It’s maybe three in the afternoon. We left LA early in order to catch the flight from Vancouver to Sandspit.

  I say, “We’re not going fishing?”

  He rubs his hair. I hate it when he does that. When he tries to get out of something, he always rubs his hair. “I’ll be back tonight or first thing tomorrow. We’ll go fishing then. We’ll spend the whole day.”

  “Tomorrow! What am I supposed to do until tomorrow?”

  He unties the boat and pushes it off the beach, stepping in as it floats clear. “You still do that whiny thing with your voice.”

  Whiny thing? “You’re going to see her.” I’m so mad I don’t care what my voice sounds like. “You’re going to see Deirdre.”

  His mouth tightens. “Tomorrow, Lucas. I promise.”

  Deirdre is the reason for the divorce. “What does that mean exactly—you promise?”

  He starts the engine and gives it some gas. He waves, like he hasn’t heard me. He motors over to one of the aluminum open fishing boats moored in the bay. He transfers the stuff, ties the inflatable to the mooring buoy and starts the engine on the fishing boat.

  I do not believe this.

  The fishing boat backs off the mooring and then powers up. White water curls off the front of the boat. It gets smaller and farther away.

  I sit down on the stony beach.

  Actually, I do believe this.

  I watch until I can’t see the boat anymore. I throw about nine hundred rocks in the water but he still doesn’t come back, so finally I head up to the lodge.

  Chapter Two

  My duffel bag is gone. I figure Sumi moved it. On the porch of one of the small out-cabins I see a pair of boots and a rifle leaning against the wall. It must be Sumi’s cabin. There’s no answer when I knock, so I push open the door. I see my duffel bag, and I go in.

  The cabin is just one room with a woodburning stove in the middle. The stove gives off some heat. A set of metal bunk beds fills one corner, and there’s a small square table that’s pretty nice and looks like it might have come out of the lodge. The chairs don’t match the table. Hanging next to the table is a small framed painting of a girl dancing on a shore with whales in the background. I don’t know anything about art but it’s a pretty girl.

  A stack of cardboard boxes lines one wall. Inside the boxes I see cans of coffee, soup, beans, tetra packs of milk and juice, bags of rice and spaghetti, a huge tub of Golden Crisco. In a big tin box I find two loaves of Wonder bread.

  My stomach rumbles, a good sign. I haven’t had an appetite in days. I spot a can of tuna and peel back the lid. There’s no fridge that I can see, so I don’t bother looking for mayo. I tip half the tuna onto a piece of bread and squish the bread into a torpedo. Some of the tuna plops out of one end of the bread and falls on the floor. I bite into the sandwich. It’s good, amazingly good.

  My mouth is still full and I’m making another sandwich when I hear footsteps on the porch. The door swings open and Sumi is standing in her socks, holding a plastic pail. She takes off her heavy rain jacket and hangs it on a hook by the door. The sleeves of the jacket are rolled up, like it’s too big for her. She’s still wearing the cap, but without the safety glasses she looks way more like a girl—a nice-looking girl.

  She takes in my sandwich, the empty tuna can, my shoes and the spilled tuna. I try hard to swallow the lump of sandwich. She steps around me and sets the pail on the table.

  I shouldn’t have looked. The bottom of the pail is filled with a smooth red liver.

  “Is that from the deer?”

  She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Where else would I get it?”

  I can’t help but think of a female Hannibal Lecter.

  She opens the wood stove and jams in some sticks of wood. She blows on the embers and the wood catches. The fire crackles, and she adds a couple of split logs and then closes the door. On top of the stove she puts a heavy skillet.

  “We’re going to eat it?”

  Another look. Sumi reaches into the bucket and grabs the liver. It slumps over her hand. She plops it onto a plate and pulls a knife from her side pocket. Holding the liver with one hand, she slices it into quivering pieces. The bite of sandwich I’ve only just managed to swallow threatens to come back up.

  I say, “I’m actually not that hungry.”

  She looks at me, then at the empty tuna can. “I guess not.” She pries the lid from the Crisco and uses a fork to gather a big blob. The tines of the fork leave marks in the yellow fat. The whole tub has fork marks. She flicks the fat into the hot pan and it starts to sizzle. From a big plastic jar she cups a handful of flour and coats the slices of liver. She drops the liver into the pan and then grabs a rag and wipes her hands. There’s no sink and no running water, just a plastic dishpan. Maybe this counts as washing her hands.

  Sumi rummages in one of the cardboard boxes and comes back to the stove with an onion. Using the same knife, she peels the onion in one big piece and then cuts it into rough chunks right in her hand. She puts the onion in with the liver and then plunks down in a chair.

  I say, “So, this is your cabin?”

  “I use it. In the winter I take care of the place.” She has nice eyes, almond-shaped and golden brown.

  “You don’t go to school?”

  “I’m done, graduated in June.”

  So she’s older. But maybe not that much older. I turn eighteen in a couple of months. Maybe we’re less than a year apart.

  She says, “Your dad take off?”

  Her question brings me back and I nod. “He had to see someone.”

  “That would be Deirdre.” She smiles like she knows something. “She’s my aunt. She and her kids live with my grandmother and me.”

  I feel like I’ve been transplanted into my father’s other life. I look at Sumi, trying to imagine what her aunt looks like. I say, “Your grandmother’s place, is it far?”

  “No, a couple of hours.”

  “That seems far to me. He said he might not be back until tomorrow.”

  Sumi grins. “He won’t be.” Her front teeth look very white. “He usually brings her here. Maybe he’s staying at our place because of you.” She gets up and turns the meat in the pan.

  Nice, having this time together, me and Dad—except that he’s two hours away with his girlfriend.

  It’s already getting dark, and Sumi lights a Coleman lantern. She says, “He won’t be on the water in the dark, not with the weather changing.”

  “Maybe we should phone him.” Maybe, if he leaves right now, he can make it back and we can forget, again, why he left.

  “No satellite phone in the off-season.” Sumi shakes the pan and hot fat spits onto the stove. “And we’re out of radio range.”

  There’s no cell service either. My mom used to say it was convenient for Dad that she couldn’t reach him.

  “Anyway, he knows to check
the weather.” Sumi tips the liver and onions onto the same plate she used to prepare it. She forks a piece into her mouth and shoves the plate toward me. The liver is nicely browned and crusty. It actually smells pretty good. Still, I wave it away. Sumi seems glad. She digs in like she hasn’t eaten for days.

  I let her eat for a while, then make an attempt at conversation. “My dad seemed pretty pissed about you killing the deer.”

  Sumi shrugs.

  “You sniped it, really. Assassinated it.”

  She stops chewing, looks at me, picks a hunk out of her teeth and starts chewing again. She says, “It died happy.”

  I snort.

  Now her eyebrows lift. “I guess you don’t hunt.”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “The deer, they’re so used to the helicopters they don’t even move. When the helicopter is close like that, the deer can’t hear anything.”

  She swallows, takes another bite. “Up here the deer are small but the bears are big, the biggest black bears you’ll find. We see bears around the lodge sometimes, and usually they just wander through. This one time, though, the helicopter was coming in, full of guests, and the deer were out on the grass like always, and this bear showed up at the edge of the clearing. He waited until the chopper got close, and then he ran out and bagged a deer. The other deer didn’t even know what happened. The bear dragged the deer into the woods and was eating it by the time we got the guests unloaded.”

  “That would be something to see.”

  She nods. “All the guests saw. One of them thought it was harsh, said we were endangering the deer.” She laughs. “She thought we should kill the bear, like it was a murderer.” She jams the last piece of liver into her mouth. “Or should I say an assassin?”

  I say, “Okay, it was hunting for food. I get it.”

  “It must have been watching the deer for a while to figure out the whole helicopter thing. They do that, bears. Sit and watch you. You won’t even know they’re there.” Sumi slides her plate into the frying pan, pours water in from a blue jerry can and covers the pan with a lid. She points to the top bunk. “You sleep there. Shitter’s out back. Don’t wake me up in the night.”