Dead in the Water

by Dana Stabenow

  “No.” Sasha shook her head violently. “No no no no.” Snatching for the storyknife, she erased the man figure.

  “Oh,” Kate said, disappointed but not really surprised. It had been only a guess, after all.

  Sasha was drawing in the sand, next to Kate’s shaky thunderbird. She drew a male figure. She drew a second. “Mans,” she said, sounding like a not very patient schoolteacher trying to impart valuable information to a not very bright student. “Mans.”

  “Oh,” Kate said, light breaking. “Not one man with the thunderbird. Two men with the thunderbird.”

  “Mans,” Sasha repeated, satisfied. She handed back the knife and waited expectantly.

  “Okay.” Kate hunkered down, shoulder to shoulder with Sasha, both of them absorbed in the drama unfolding in stick figures on the sand before them. “Five men on the kayak, two men with the thunderbird, all home.” She paused. “Then what happened?” She balanced the storyknife on her palms and held it out. “What happened after the thunderbird and the kayak came home?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Sasha took the knife and began to draw. It was the man figure again, but twice the size of the others and with eight arms and what looked like horns and fangs and maybe even a tail. “A monster?” Kate guessed.

  Sasha looked grave. “Bad. Kill mans.”

  “The monster killed the men,” Kate said, her voice calm although her heart rate had picked up. “All of them? Did the monster kill all the men?”

  The storyknife wiped out two of the male figures. “Bad kill mans.”

  “The monster killed two of the men,” Kate agreed. “Did the rest run away?”

  Sasha, obviously pleased at this display of intelligence by her backward pupil, gave a firm nod. “Rest run away.”

  “Sasha,” Kate said. “Did the monster kill the men, or did the men kill each other?”

  “Bad kill mans,” Sasha repeated. “Rest run away.”

  Kate sat back on her heels and regarded Sasha thoughtfully. “Is home an island, Sasha?” she asked gently. “Is home Anua?”

  “Bad kill mans,” Sasha said stubbornly. “Rest run away. That’s all.”

  Kate reached for the storyknife again and held it poised, hesitating. There wasn’t much point in further questioning. Sasha was no kind of credible witness, and besides, if she had gone home the previous year, she had not gone home alone.

  She made as if to sweep the sand smooth once again. “No,” Sasha said, gripping her hand and removing the storyknife from it. “Let water take.”

  Kate relinquished the storyknife with a reluctance she only dimly recognized. The smooth, worn ivory was so warm to the touch, the weight perfectly balanced. It fit so well into her hand. Olga was right. The storyknife was a living thing, with its own spirit. Kate felt privileged to have been permitted to speak through it and she was glad that, as before, she had been judged and not found wanting.

  *

  Kate let herself into Olga’s house and walked down the hallway to the kitchen.

  The old woman looked up from her weaving and smiled. “Hello, Kate.”

  “Hello, Auntie.”

  Olga indicated the table. “Did you come for another lesson?”

  Kate sat down. “Why not?”

  “I kept your basket for you.”

  Olga handed it over and Kate eyed it. “This looks like the cat’s been chewing on it.”

  “It’s exactly as you left it,” Olga said mildly.

  “I’m sure it is,” Kate said with a sigh.

  Olga made tea and put a plate filled with round, golden sugar cookies on the table. The tea was strong and hot and sweet, the cookies crunchy and flavored with lemon. Kate, chilled from the half hour of squatting half in and half out of Iliuliuk Bay and probably still from her swim in the survival suit as well, ate and drank everything she was offered.

  Putting her cup down, she said, “I saw Sasha on the beach.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. She was drawing with the storyknife. The story about the thunderbird and the kayak and the men.”

  Olga squinted down at her basket, working out an intricate stitch with intent care.

  “This time, she told me about a monster with eight arms. It was bad, she said.”

  “The kelet,” Olga said, nodding. “An evil spirit.”

  “The kelet,” Kate said, testing the word on her tongue. “Sasha says this kelet, this evil spirit, killed two of the men.”

  “Two of the men?” Olga displayed only polite interest. “This kelet must have been very evil indeed. But then they usually are.”

  “I see.” Kate wound a weaver around a spoke. The grass was dry and difficult to work. “She says the other men who came with the thunderbird and the kayak got away.”

  “In that story, usually the men trick the kelet and they all get away. And usually the story says the men are women.”

  “Sasha and the storyknife say men this time,” Kate said cheerfully. She dabbled her fingers in the bowl of water and dampened the weaver. “The last time I was here, didn’t you tell me that if you keep picking the rye grass in the same place that the grass gets better?”

  “Yes.”

  Kate paused, wrestling with her weaver. “Did you pick grass in the same spot when you lived on Anua?”

  “Yes.”

  The stitch snugged up against the spoke as if Kate had been weaving all her life, and she viewed it with satisfaction. “And were you picking grass in that same spot in March this year?”

  “Whatever would we be doing on Anua in March?” Olga wondered, her expression one of gentle surprise. “The time to pick the grass is in June and July.”

  “I don’t know,” Kate admitted. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “Mmm.” Olga rose and took the basket from Kate’s hands. “You’re improving. You should take this with you this time. You can practice on the boat. More tea?”

  “Why, yes. Thank you.”

  They worked together on their baskets. Sasha came in and without speaking settled into a seat next to her mother, plucking a half-made basket from the debris on the table that had a sort of Greek key pattern worked around its base. Her dark hair, carefully trimmed by an inexpert, loving hand, flopped in her face. The tip of her tongue stuck out of one corner of her mouth. She was intent, absorbed, her misshapen fingers as deft at weaving baskets as they were in telling stories in the sand.

  Olga broke the silence first. “Have you heard the story of how the first basket was made?”

  “I don’t think I have.” Kate said, bending over her basket again. “I’d like to.”

  Olga selected another weaver, and when she spoke again her voice had fallen into that singsong kind of near chant that Kate had found so mesmerizing before. It was obvious where Sasha got her talent for telling tales.

  “The Sun married the Woman Who Kept the Tides,” Olga began.

  “The Sun’s new wife cut the rye grass.

  “She cured the grass.

  “She split it on her thumbnail.

  “She split it into spokes and weavers.

  “She made a basket.

  “She made it around her husband’s thumb.

  “When it was finished she took it off his thumb.

  “She blew in it.

  “It got big.

  “She made a rope out of roots.

  “She tied the rope to the basket.

  “She tied their children to the rope.

  “The Sun let the basket go.

  “Their children floated down to the world.

  “The world was an island.

  “It was our island.

  “That is how the people came home.

  “That’s all.”

  Kate, bent over her basket, inhaled the top of a slender frond of split grass and sneezed violently. “Sorry. So which island did the people come to, Auntie?”

  “Anua, of course.” Olga laughed, a rich, merry laugh. Sasha laughed, too, less richly, less merrily. “On every islan
d, in every village, it is the same. The legend may be different, but the old ones tell the children it was their island the children of the Sun and the Woman Who Kept the Tides came to. Their island is always the first island, and it is from their island that all Aleuts come.”

  Kate grinned. “I have heard that story before, Auntie. Only it was the children of the Daughter of Calm Waters and Agudar, the Moon, Master Spirit and Keeper of the Game, and the way my grandmother told it, the people floated down to Atka.”

  Olga laughed again, and again Sasha echoed the sound. “You see? Every island tries to be the best.” She held up her basket. “In weaving. In storytelling. In everything.”

  Maybe even in guile, Kate thought.

  She took her leave soon afterward, carrying with her the few rounds she had woven into a gnawed-looking little base, a small sheaf of spokes and weavers, and the certainty that if the need arose, she wouldn’t have a witness to the events that took place on Anua Island the previous March.

  She had all of the story now, though, or all of the most important parts. She could have pushed for a more definite description, but she didn’t have to, and she wouldn’t, and Olga knew she wouldn’t. There was a bond between them, a link in a chain that went back a thousand generations. At one level of that chain there was race, white against brown. On another level was the ingrained, innate, inherent respect every Aleut has for their elders. The elders were the wise ones, the teachers, for many generations all the law and history there was among the people. With all Olga’s authority of eighty winters, Kate couldn’t, she simply could not interrogate her. She was too young, Olga was too old, she knew too little, Olga too much.

  On a third level, and perhaps the strongest level of all, they shared the unspoken but very real determination to see that Sasha took no harm. She would not be uprooted from everything that was familiar to her to be hammered away at by some Anglos anxious to bring people she didn’t know to justice for killing other people she didn’t know, Anglos who would be both impatient of and repulsed by her disability.

  No. She would remain instead on the beach of her birth, wielding her storyknife in the gray sand, telling stories to a rapt, enchanted audience of Unalaska girls for generations to come.

  The thought pleased Kate, and she quickened her pace over the Bridge to the Other Side. She hoped young Andy hadn’t managed to stir up any trouble in her absence. That boy needed a keeper.

  Eight

  KATE’S FEET HIT THE DECK with a satisfying thump. Crossing over had not been such an ordeal this time, as it was still light out and this time the Avilda, bless her heart, was only the second boat out from the dock. Whistling, she opened the door to the galley. The whistle died on her lips.

  The whole crew was there. Harry Gault, standing, had his arms crossed across his chest and a glower on his face, but as that was his natural expression Kate ignored it. Ned looked as if he might take a bite out of the next person to walk too close to him, but that, too, was natural. Seth, as usual, looked tranquil, even a little bored. Andy was wide-eyed and apprehensive and looked every one of his nineteen years.

  The Coast Guard was there, too, in the persons of two officers, crisp and official in blue uniforms, clipboards held at shoulder arms. One was short and stocky and white-haired, the other was short and skinny with brown hair that curled out from beneath his cap in an undisciplined mass. Her cap, Kate realized. When the door opened they turned.

  “Hi,” she said, shutting the door behind her. “Don’t mind me, I’m just the other deckhand.”

  She leaned up against the wall next to the door and shoved her hands in her pockets. She knew immediately what was going on. It was a snap safety inspection. What with federal cutbacks they didn’t happen all that often anymore, but neither were they unknown, the proof positive standing four feet away from her. She was only sorry that engine maintenance didn’t come within the Coasties’ purview. She settled back and prepared to enjoy herself.

  “Your mast light is out, your fire extinguishers needed servicing six months ago, your EPIRB hasn’t been tested in seven months, you’ve forgotten the last time you assembled the crew for an emergency drill, and you can’t find your ship’s log to jog your memory,” the older Coastie said. “Pretty sloppy seamanship, Captain Gault. It’s going to cost you.”

  The thin officer stared around her with a puzzled air. “This is the Avilda, isn’t it?”

  Harry ignored her and Ned only scowled. Andy looked as if his vocal cords had frozen in place and Kate wouldn’t have volunteered a helpful remark if her life depended on it. “Yes,” Seth said laconically.

  “Owned by Alaska Ventures? Out of Freetown, Oregon?”

  Seth nodded.

  The officer looked back down at her list. “I’d never have believed it.”

  “Okay,” the first officer said, “flotation devices.”

  “There’s a survival suit for every crewman on board,” Harry Gault growled.

  “Standard procedure on any boat owned by Alaska Ventures,” the second officer said, and met Harry’s glare with a smile that said she hoped Harry might try to make something out of the implied insult. Kate found herself liking the younger Coastie without any effort at all.

  “Well, trot ’em out,” the first officer said impatiently. “Come on, your survival suits. Let’s see ’em.”

  Kate was suddenly very still. Her eyes met Andy’s across the galley, his alarmed, hers holding a distinct warning.

  Nobody moved. Again, it was Seth who broke the stalemate by coming forward and pulling up the seat of the bench that ran around the galley table. He stood staring down for a moment.

  “Well?” the first officer said impatiently. “Haul ’em out, let’s take a look.”

  “Okay,” Seth said equably, “but one of ’em you won’t have to check. It’s already been used.”

  Harry’s head snapped around. “What?”

  In reply, Seth reached into the locker and produced the survival suit that Kate had field-tested two nights before. It wasn’t exactly dripping, but it had been folded and put away wet. Some of the folds still held water. As they watched, a drop of seawater collected in one fold and dripped to the floor.

  The galley was very still. Slowly, Harry looked up, first at Andy, and then, a much longer and more considering look, at Kate. She met his eyes with a slight lift of her brows. The silence stretched out. “What?” she said, ignoring the wet survival suit dangling from Seth’s hand, staring straight at Harry with as much innocence as she could muster. “What’s the problem?”

  Oblivious, the thin officer was pawing through the locker. “One, two, three, four,” she said. “And five.” She looked up and counted heads. “One, two, three, four, five. All but four in the original, unopened packaging.”

  The stout officer scratched his head. “You know we can’t require you to test those suits. Hell, it was only recently we were allowed to require you to carry them. But,” he said, bending a hard look on the skipper, “you have got to know that it’s a whole lot safer when your crew is versed in survival suit operations. Look what happened to the Daisy Mae. We found a survival suit still in its package. Hadn’t even been opened. Hadn’t even been tried on.” He gestured. “Not like this one. Ought to have let it dry out before you put it back, though.”

  “I guess I better ’fess up,” Andy said suddenly. Everyone turned toward him, as, behind them, Kate shook her head violently. Ignoring her, he said, “I got curious and tried it on this morning. And then I thought what the hell and took a little dip in the harbor.” He grinned. “I’m from Ventura. I’m used to surfing every day. I miss the water.”

  The two officers exchanged a wooden glance. “There’s a world of difference between the water off Ventura and the water in Iliuliuk Bay,” the stocky officer said dryly. “The idea here is to keep the hell out of the water if at all possible.” He looked back at his clipboard, making a minute notation to his list. “Anyway, the point is to maintain your boat in such a fashion tha
t you don’t have to go swimming.” He ripped off a copy and held it out to Harry. For a moment Kate thought he wasn’t going to take it. Seth nudged him, and he extended a reluctant hand.

  The slip was thrust into it unhesitatingly. “Your owners will receive formal notice within ten days to two weeks. If I were you, I’d see to rectifying those violations before you ship out again. And if your mooring light is gone, maybe you should check your stock of bulbs for running lights. They generally tend to need to be replaced all at the same time.” He touched the brim of his cap. “Good-bye.” Like a skinny mirror image, the second officer echoed the movement. “It’s been swell,” Kate heard her breathe, and then they were gone.

  *

  Harry chewed Andy out for a good five minutes, using every four-letter word in the book and some he made up on the spot, and when he was done, Ned took over. When he was finished, Andy looked, if not squelched, at least a trifle subdued. Kate stood in the galley with him, knowing he had taken the onus of suspicion on himself, angry because he had, a little grateful, too, and more than a little touched by the gesture. She only hoped it didn’t get him killed.

  She had no chance to express any of these feelings. Ned took the first watch and they rumbled out of the harbor on the evening tide. It was too early to go to bed, and Kate thought it best to fall in with the first night out’s regular routine. There was some discussion as to who and what would occupy the VCR in the rec room. Seth chose Debbie Does Dallas, as expected, Andy chose Gandhi, also expected, and Harry chose The Dam Busters, which show of good taste amazed Kate. The fact that the movie was even in Harry’s library amazed her even more, before she realized that their selection was probably standard issue on Alaska Ventures’s boats. Kate, who harbored a secret letch for John Wayne, chose Rio Lobo. “Who wants popcorn?”

  “Me!” came a chorus of three.

  “Butter?”

  “Lots!”

  John Wayne saved the Union in spite of itself one more time and Andy got up to rewind the tape and start Gandhi.