Maybe the porpoises are up the inlet to fish. They could be following the salmon heading back into the rivers. And maybe, like the old man, they’re fishing the shallows.
If we’re in the shallows, it’s a good thing I didn’t blast through. I start the engine but keep the rpms low. I have no idea how much water we’re in. I pass the porpoises, but they stay where they are. I take that as a good sign and give the engine a bit more gas. I glance over at Sumi and find her staring at me. Her gaze is so intent I’m not sure she’s really looking at me. Then she says, “Your dad wouldn’t have kept that hali either.”
Chapter Thirteen
I’m happy she’s awake because I really need her help. “Sumi, you’ve got to have a look around, tell me where we are. I think we passed the shallows but I’m not sure.”
“You’re strong, like Denny. You have a strong heart.”
The way she’s talking reminds me of drunken girls at parties. Not that I’m immune to drunken girls at parties. Right now, though, I’d like to know we’re not going to pile up on the shore. “That’s fascinating, Sumi. Could you tell me where the hell we are?”
She blinks, peering out under her hood at the shoreline. She looks for a long time. “Keep the rocks to your right.”
Instantly, as if she made it happen, two giant thumbs of rock appear ahead of us. There’s plenty of room to go through them, but without even looking, she shakes her head at me. I steer around the rocks.
The rocks are like pillars. As we motor past them, on the other side, there must be fifty seals resting on a shoal between the rocks. There are seals in the water, their heads like black vinyl balls bobbing on the waves.
Her voice sounds like she has gravel in her throat. She says, “You better open it up.”
“I can hardly see as it is, and it’s getting dark.”
She just looks at me.
“Don’t call me an idiot,” I say. But she’s right. Once I lose the shoreline as a point of reference, I won’t know how to steer.
She tells me to turn on the boat’s running lights, and these give the faintest glow to the inside of the boat. She twists around in her seat, groaning. Her foot is bleeding again—in the gloom I can see a black puddle where she was resting it. She grabs the edges of the seat. I can see her shoulders moving up and down like she’s breathing hard.
She turns her head toward me and says, “I’ll point. You drive. Do exactly what I tell you.”
It is like driving the boat inside a black sock. I don’t bother looking at the water because if we’re going to run into something, I’d rather not know. I fix my stare on Sumi and watch where she points. Sometimes I hear her cursing, and I know I haven’t exactly interpreted her bearing. We’re bouncing off the waves, and spray nails us in the face. I squeeze my eyes almost closed. Driving fast, the air is so much colder and my fingers are frozen on the steering tiller. She motions wildly to steer left and I cut sharply, barely scraping past a log. How she saw it, I do not know. She’s busy “steering” us back on course. Each time we hit a wave, her foot bounces. She’s stopped cursing, which probably isn’t good.
Now she’s motioning me to slow down. Then we veer right, which freaks me out because it feels like we’ll run straight into the shore. But then she points left into a cove, and suddenly the shoreline is punched with lights.
As we get closer, I see the logging camp and people walking around. The docks are lit too, and I slow the boat a bit too late and bump Sumi one more time getting the boat alongside the dock. She’s gone completely silent and her head hangs onto her chest.
A big guy in overalls takes my line and ties the boat up. He’s looking at Sumi and I know he sees the blood. He pulls a radio from his pocket and instantly there are guys all over Sumi, carrying her down the dock, and more guys are running down to the docks.
I don’t know what to do so I follow behind. My legs are stiff and I’m so cold my teeth are chattering. Somewhere, I hear a helicopter starting up.
The guys set Sumi on a board and strap her down. More guys appear, big guys, and they’re carrying Sumi on the board, almost running with her.
I can’t keep up, and the guy from the dock puts his hand on my shoulder. He seems to be talking to me but all I can hear is the helicopter pounding in my head.
I try to run after Sumi, but now he grabs my jacket. He puts his face right up to mine and shouts at me to calm down.
I want to hit him, to push him away, but then I see the chopper, its bright lights appearing over the roofs of the buildings, then getting higher, and the noise dropping as it gets farther away.
Chapter Fourteen
Last night, after the helicopter left, someone showed me to an empty bunk and gave me a blanket. I thought I wouldn’t sleep but I must have. This morning I followed a well-worn path to the cook trailer. It’s bright with morning sun and the tables are empty, so it looks like I’ve slept through breakfast.
At the table nearest the kitchen the big guy from the dock is hunched over an enormous bowl. I sit down across from him. His face is one inch from the bowl and he’s shoveling in the food. It looks like eggs and hash browns with bits of bacon, and everything is laced with hot sauce. My stomach rumbles.
The cook comes out with another bowl, sees me and slides it across the table to me. I start to protest about taking his breakfast, but he holds his hand up as if to say, Just eat.
So I eat. The cook’s name is Dylan, from the name tag on his uniform, and he makes a fine breakfast bowl. “Cilantro,” I say. “Nice touch.”
He looks at me, both eyebrows raised. “You cook?”
I finish my mouthful. “I want to.” The cilantro surprises me at a logging camp this side of nowhere. I pour myself a coffee from a carafe on the table and add a dollop of real cream. Somehow I’m beginning to feel human.
Another guy comes into the trailer. He slips off a small backpack and sits down with us. Dylan pours him a coffee and says, “How was Vancouver?”
Now I recognize him—he’s the medic. I remember him from last night, working on Sumi. I slop coffee over the rim of my cup. “How is she?”
He looks at me. “Sumi is surprisingly good, actually.”
I have to set down my coffee, my hands are shaking so badly. “What about her foot?”
“They were taking her into the operating room when I left her last night.” He adds cream and a stream of sugar to his coffee. “What I want to know is how you managed to get her here.”
I really don’t have an answer. I say, “She seemed to know the way.”
The guy from the dock grins, and something about him makes me wonder just how well he knows her.
I say, “I guess she comes here a lot.”
“Don’t worry,” Dylan says, and he eyes the guy from the dock. “Sumi doesn’t come to see Leo. She brings us her limit, trades us fresh salmon for provisions. Somehow she resists Leo’s stunning looks and table manners.”
The medic laughs and gets up. He offers me his hand. “You must have inherited your father’s internal gps. He can find his way along this coastline blindfolded.”
“I think it was luck.”
“Well then, it was lucky for Sumi.” He shakes my hand. “She’s at Vancouver General Hospital, probably will be for a while.” Then he leaves.
Leo offers to take a boat with me back to the lodge so I don’t get lost, but I want to go on my own. The sea is flat calm and there’s no fog, so it should be an easy trip. And it is. In the bright clear light of morning, the inlet looks completely different from yesterday, but strangely the same. It’s like the landscape has soaked into me. At the rock pillars I slow down. The seals bark at me from the shoal. No porpoises today. Past the shallows I open it up again, standing in the boat to steer.
When I get close to the lodge, I see the deer on the grass, feeding. It’s weird, arriving back here alone. I’m trying not to think about Sumi, how she’s doing— and what they’re doing at the hospital.
I tidy up the fishing boat
and then transfer into the dinghy. On the oars I feel stronger, although I’m sure Sumi would still have something to say about my steering. I pull the dinghy high up on the beach and tie it to a driftwood log. When I walk toward the lodge, the deer lift their heads and watch me, but they don’t run off.
In Sumi’s cabin I wash and dry the dishes. I wipe up dark blood from the floor. I straighten her bed. I bag the trash, including the last of the bread, so that nothing attracts mice, or the bear.
This makes me think of Sumi’s deer. Her grandmother is going to need that deer. I retrieve the wheelbarrow from down at the beach and then head back to the generator hut. The deer is still there and doesn’t look too beat up by the bear. I lower it into the wheelbarrow. Sumi’s rifle is still on the ground. Carefully, I pick it up and put it in the wheelbarrow with the deer. Then I head back out to the front of the lodge. I see Dad’s boat on the mooring. He’s in the inflatable, motoring in to shore. I take a deep breath and head down to the water.
Chapter Fifteen
He looks tired. He throws me the rope and I pull the boat in while he lifts the prop out of the water. I feel like a little kid again. I have to tell him what happened, but I just want it all to go away. He steps out of the boat and we each take a side and haul it up the beach. He ties it beside the other dinghy. He goes over to the dinghy and checks my knot but he doesn’t retie it.
My throat feels like it could stick closed. “Dad,” I say, but nothing else will come out.
He says, “I heard.”
Just then a helicopter flies in over the ridge, the same one we came in on.
He says, “The pilot let me know.”
As the helicopter lands, we walk up to the lodge. I’m grateful for the noise of the chopper because I don’t have to speak. But then the pilot shuts down the engine.
I just have to tell him. I have to tell him I screwed up, badly, and that it’s all my fault.
The pilot is getting out, looking at me. He knows. Everyone knows. But then Dad says, “Sumi told the camp crew that it was a hunting accident.”
I look at him and I know he doesn’t believe it. I start to tell him but he interrupts me. He says, “Up here, hunting accidents happen all the time.”
He’s letting her have this half-truth, and me too. He says, “I should have been with you.”
It’s half an apology, but it will do. I say, “It’s okay.”
“No, I really wanted to be here. But Deirdre and her mother, they’re all sick with that damn flu and I didn’t feel I could leave.”
I say, “It was good you stayed.” I mean it too. “Sumi would want to know her family was being cared for.”
He nods. “Apparently she was asking about you too.”
I’m not sure what that means, but he grins so I guess it’s good.
The pilot makes a point of checking his watch, and my father says to me, “You’re on the next flight out of Sandspit.”
“You’re not going?”
“To Vancouver?” He shakes his head. “No, I’m going…”
“Home.”
“Yes, home.” He reaches into his jacket and hands me a printed boarding pass to Vancouver. “I’ve prepaid your ticket on to LAX. You just have to pick it up at the airport.”
I wish he were a total stranger. It would be easier to feel this way, like the pain I’m so used to is just a feeling. Like he is nothing at all. But he’s not. I say, “I’ve still got a few days. I could stay with you.”
He rubs his hair and already I regret saying it. But then he says, “There’s nothing I’d like better, Lucas, any other time.”
He might mean it too.
On the flight into Vancouver, I show the guy sitting across the aisle the photo on my camera of the halibut. “You let it go?” he says, like I’m crazy.
When the plane lands, I follow the stream of people out to where family members are waiting, hugging and laughing, and I keep walking. At the SkyTrain, I pause just long enough to figure out where I’m going, and then I take a seat and wait for my stop: Vancouver General Hospital.
Acknowledgments
With deepest appreciation to SH, KD and the writers of UBC CrWr509, and to Maureen in Haida Gwaii.
Diane Tullson has written numerous novels for teens, along with Red Sea and The Darwin Expedition. Diane lives in Delta, British Columbia.
orca soundings
The following is an excerpt from
another exciting Orca Soundings novel,
Masked by Norah McClintock.
978-1-55469-364-1 $9.95 pb
978-1-55469-365-8 $16.95 lib
WHEN DANIEL ENTERS A CONVENIENCE store on a secret mission, he doesn’t expect to run into anyone he knows. That would ruin everything. When Rosie shows up, she’s hoping to make a quick getaway with her waiting boyfriend. But the next person through the door is wearing a mask and holding a gun. Now things are getting complicated.
Chapter One
“Uh, do you have a bathroom I can use?” I’m ready with an excuse for when the man behind the counter says no. I thought long and hard to come up with it. You have to when you’re asking to use the bathroom in a convenience store, which doesn’t have to provide one the way restaurants do. I have to get yes for an answer if my mission is going to be a success.
The man behind the counter scowls. He peers at me from under gray eyebrows that look like steel wool. Is he on to me? Does he suspect?
“What about your coffee and taquito?” he says. “Are you still going to want those?”
“Yeah. And a two-liter cola and the latest Wrestling World, if you have it.” I throw those in to improve my chances of getting a yes.
“We have it. What about Wresting Today? You want that too?” His piggy little eyes drill into me. I see immediately where he’s going. If I want to use the facilities, I’m going to have to cough up some more money. I take another glance at the magazine rack.
“And Wrestling Connoisseur,” I say. What the heck—I’m getting paid enough. A few magazines aren’t going to make a dent in my paycheck.
“Through the door beside the coolers and down one flight,” the man behind the counter says.
As I head down the narrow aisle toward the coolers, I glance in the security mirror at the back of the store. The man at the counter, the owner, is watching me.
Going through the door beside the big Coke-sponsored cooler is like stepping from Oz back into Kansas. The tile floor in the store sparkles. The wooden floor on the other side of the door is dingy, scuffed and slightly warped. The lights in the store are blindingly bright. On the other side of the door there is only a single naked lightbulb that makes the places it doesn’t hit look inky and a little spooky. The walls of the store are chock-a-block with neatly displayed and colorful products. The walls of the small room are bare except for a car dealership calendar that hangs from a nail directly above a battered old table and chair. On the table is an adding machine—I didn’t even know those still existed. Next to it is a two-drawer olive green filing cabinet. On the wall, in an ancient fixture with a pull chain, is another naked light-bulb. This is where the owner does his accounts. To the left of the door is a flight of wooden stairs. But I don’t go down it.
Instead, I listen. It’s quiet in here. It’s also quiet out in the store. I tiptoe over to the desk. I’d been expecting a computer, but there isn’t one. I open the top drawer of the filing cabinet. It’s jammed with files. I thumb through them, looking for the one I’ve been sent to find. I don’t see it. I close that drawer, open the next one and thumb through more folders.
Bingo! There it is, neatly labeled.
I pull it out and scan the sheets inside. They look like the ones that were described to me. I dig the miniature camera—a spy camera, if you can believe it—out of my pocket and photograph every sheet. I put everything back into the folder and replace the folder in the file cabinet. I tuck the camera into my pocket. I start back to the door.
Before I get there, I hear the man behind
the counter yell something—a name. I’m about to push the door open and go back into the store when I hear a different voice—a familiar one. This has never happened to me before. I decide to wait. If I go out there, I’ll be recognized. If I’m recognized, I’ll be exposed. If I’m exposed, I’ll have to abort my mission. And if I abort…let’s just say I don’t want to kiss my paycheck goodbye.
orca soundings
For more information on all the books
in the Orca Soundings series, please visit
www.orcabook.com.
Sea Change Page 5
