by Paul Greci
Lyrics from one of my mom’s unfinished songs scribbled in a notebook she’d kept in her guitar case. I kept singing the lines over and over even though I wasn’t sure what they meant.
My arms grew warm from the movement while my feet were turning to ice. I kept running the knife and concentrating on the lyrics. I sucked air through my nose, and my eyes flew open. Three streams of smoke were rising from the wood-shaving nest. I sat back on my heels, pivoted on my hips so my face was almost in the smoking nest and gently blew. Several red eyes stared back at me and one of them burned brighter than the rest, and then burst into a thin flame.
That night I dreamed of the accident, and this time I saw it, the whole thing. My dad bobbing in front of the rock reef and then the big wave, the wave that pushed me under, smashing him against the rocks, and then him floating—facedown. I saw it happen three times. Saw his life vest hanging off his bare arm because he wasn’t wearing his raincoat. I saw it all.
In the morning I stoked RF and LF and then leaned against the Sentinel. My mind was a mess of thoughts. Was the dream telling me what had really happened? Was that my dad communicating to me? Or had I known it all along? Did I see that happen for real during the accident? I mean, it seemed so real in the dream. But the bandana I’d found. I’d dried it out last night and then tied it around my neck as an added layer for warmth. And the raincoat? Was it really his?
“Whatever happened, happened,” RF said.
“What’s happening now is what matters,” LF said.
“Just shut up so I can think.” I ran my hand across the bandana. “This could be his.”
“If you’re gonna think,” RF said, crackling. “Think about something helpful. Not something that’ll drag you down.”
“You said it yourself,” LF said. “No matter what happens, everything will be okay.”
“Yeah, but that was before the dream,” I said. “If only I’d seen that rock sooner. If I hadn’t closed my eyes…”
“You’re not telling yourself anything new, big boy,” RF said. “You’re just finally accepting it.”
“Sometimes your mind won’t let you see things for a while,” LF said, “because it’s not good for you. And then when the time is right, the information seems new, but really it’s always been there. You never discover anything that didn’t already exist.”
“But if I’d known,” I said, “then I would’ve eaten these the minute I found them.” I laid the Meal Pack bars down in front of LF. My whole body was shaking, trembling. I touched the bandana again. I lay on my back and rested my head on my dad’s life vest. I took the shredded raincoat in my hands, brought it to my lips, and then hugged it to my chest. In my mind it’d always be his even if I didn’t know for sure anymore. What were the chances I’d find a raincoat that looked just like his? I reached out one hand, grabbed the Meal Pack bars and laid them on top of my stomach and let my breaths raise and lower them. And I listened.
Eat them now. It’s okay. Everything is okay. Everything you did was okay. Everything.
CHAPTER 35
THE MEAL Pack bars I’d saved forever lessened my hunger for a couple of hours and then I was right back where I’d left off—starving. My stomach was like an eroded riverbank with my rib cage hanging over the top. And then when I’d drink a few bowlfuls of warm water, my stomach would bulge like I’d swallowed a big round rock. And the dream kept popping into my mind. Was it just a dream or was it really what had happened? And my dad’s voice saying: Everything I did was okay.
I touched the bandana covering my neck and said, “Everything you did was okay too, Dad. Everything.”
In the cold rain I walked to the shore and scanned the horizon. No boat. No boat. No boat. It was low tide and the mussel beds stretched out in front of me.
What did Dad say? Eating shellfish is risky. They could be good one day and bad the next. You never know if they’re going to be toxic. You could die.
I thought about all I’d been through. The mistakes I’d made and the consequences I’d lived with. What I had to lose. What I had to gain. And then I knew what I had to do.
I pulled the mussels from the cold mud and threw them into a bucket. They came away in groups, still attached to the rocks anchoring them. Small, black, and hard, each one closed tight. I kept tossing them in until the bottom of the bucket was covered, then headed to my shelter.
I warmed my numb hands by LF, then cut the mussels from their anchors and plopped half a dozen of them into the bowl, which was filled with water and just coming to a gentle boil on RF. I decided to start with a few mussels on the outside chance that if they were poisonous, then eating just a few might only make me sick and not kill me.
I let them roll in the boiling water until I could see the shells separating, then herded the mussels to the side of the bowl with a piece of driftwood. With my fingers I fished them onto the lid of a five-gallon bucket.
In the firelight I could see steam drifting from the hot shells. At least I had a warm shelter. The windbreaks, plus the killer roof, kept it pretty warm as long as I had wood to keep RF and LF going.
But without food, it was just a warm place to die.
If only I could’ve killed that bear. All that meat. Maybe it was dead, but I’d never know. And I hadn’t tried to kill it. I was just trying to keep from getting killed. Maybe I should’ve driven the spear farther instead of pulling it out. Or stabbed it again instead of throwing that second rock. Maybe that was the difference—I had to think like a predator, instead of prey.
As for the mussels, I think I’d rather fight the bear again than eat them. The closer you are to death, the more chances you take, that’s what I thought. If Dad were here, and was a shriveled up wreck like me, he might make the same choice.
I lifted a mussel off the lid and pried it the rest of the way open with my thumbs. In one of the half shells lay a small hunk of gray tissue.
“Sure you want to do that?” RF asked.
I nodded.
“There’s no going back, once you do,” LF said.
“Back to where?” I said. “Back to starving?”
“Forget it,” LF said. “Just eat.”
I scooped the mussel partway out of the shell with my index finger, then grabbed it with my front teeth and pulled. It was chewy and had a strong, fishy taste.
After consuming the six mussels, I stoked the fires, lay down on top of the life vests, and covered myself with the emergency blankets, hoping to be alive come morning.
CHAPTER 36
HOURS LATER, I woke.
The mussels.
My stomach, it felt okay. I pulled air through my nose, and smiled.
I placed small sticks on top of RF’s coals and blew until I saw smoke, then flames. I built up the fire and let it burn down. Then from the bucket I added more mussels to the bowl and put it on the coals.
I pulled my boots on and stepped outside. A cold, wet wind was blowing snow sideways. I jogged to the shore to take care of business and a small flash of light caught my eyes and disappeared. I squinted and tried to see through the blowing snow across the water. It flashed again.
“Hello!” I yelled. “Hello! I’m over here!”
And I kept on yelling, and every yell stabbed my side. And I kept looking, squinting. Now I could hear the deep hum of a motor. I saw the flash again, then again. It was moving away from the cove toward the point closest to the mainland. Of course, it was gonna cross at the point, the same way Dad and I crossed to get to Bear Island.
I kept screaming and waving through the snow, and jumping up and down, hoping that whoever it was would hear me or see me and turn.
I looked for that flash to grow closer, but the next flash I saw was farther away. I kept looking and looking. And yelling. And the hum of the motor faded in and out. After a while I didn’t hear it anymore. I yelled and yelled and kept scanning the water but saw nothing. Probably motoring across to the mainland by now.
I fell to my knees and they sunk into the wet
gravel. Then I lay on my side, facing the water. I felt a few snowflakes land on my cheek. Just cover me up, I thought. Cover me up and get it over with.
So close, I was so close. But close didn’t matter if I didn’t make it off the island. I was still here. I wasn’t any closer to anything. Nothing had changed. And I felt farther away than I ever had.
Farther than when I’d found my dad’s vest and not him.
Farther than when I’d learned that my mom had died in a hit and run accident.
Farther than after I’d had that dream about my dad.
The wake from the boat started washing onto the shore. A wave touched my feet and I pushed myself up from the beach and headed back to my shelter.
I had to live like I was never gonna get rescued because if I didn’t live like this, then there was no way I’d gather enough food and firewood to keep me going. I couldn’t rely on anyone. Maybe a dozen boats would pass by off shore like that one.
I fished the mussels from the bowl and ate them. There had to be thirty or forty of them, but they were small and I was still hungry so I took a bucket and got more mussels, boiled them up and ate them. I’d just eat mussels every day and gather a ton of firewood. And wait. I’d wait forever if I had to. I’d wait for the rest of my life.
I made the long hike to the point, up and down over spiky headlands. I wanted to leave some kind of marker, something that would show someone coming from the mainland that something wasn’t right. But I didn’t want to part with my life vests or emergency blankets. I thought about tying my dad’s raincoat to a tree, but it was blue, which isn’t the brightest color to attract attention.
I would’ve camped on the point if I could, but it was too exposed.
So I brought two yellow five-gallon buckets with me. At the point I filled them with rocks and set them up high. They didn’t point exactly to where I was, but it was the best I could do.
On the hike back my stomach cramped up. Maybe my body couldn’t take the mussels in large quantities like it did the salmon. I wasn’t keeling over and vomiting blood, but cramps and diarrhea kept hammering me.
There were lots of mussels, but if I couldn’t keep them inside my body, then it didn’t matter.
Still, I hoped small amounts of them would be enough, just enough for me to hang on if I didn’t find something else to eat. And maybe my stomach would get used to them.
Two days later, snow continued to blow without sticking as darkness fell. The tide was high, covering the mussel beds, and I was collecting firewood. I never felt like I had enough wood.
I knew a big storm could blow in and confine me to my shelter for several days, so I wanted a cushion of wood, but the more I collected the farther I had to go to get it. And the more energy I put into collecting wood, the more food I needed to fuel my body. And I could only eat so many mussels at a time before stomach problems set in.
But I knew I needed more food. My clothing hung limp on my body. Sometimes I’d feel a little energy surge after eating some mussels, but not for very long.
What choice did I have? Not having enough wood meant the same as not having enough food.
A week passed and still no one came. The high tides had come and erased the fire-darkened patch of rocks where I’d found the bandana. Sixty-five scratches on my spear. And the snow had stuck. The Sentinels kept a lot of it off the spit, but when I went in search of firewood I was plowing through six inches of wet snow.
I kept eating the mussels, and they still gave me stomach problems. And having diarrhea in the snow was no joke, especially trudging down to the shore in the dark with my insides twisting and screaming.
I found a few shriveled berries, but they did little to combat my deep hunger. I looked for animals, hoped for another porcupine, but didn’t see any. Just a few bird tracks in the snow. Still, I pushed myself forward, my mind telling my body to keep going. If I could just hang on until I found something to eat or until someone came. Just keep living, I told myself, even if only barely, because you never know when you’ll get a break, when you’ll get lucky. But if you’re dead, there’s no way to get lucky.
I was gathering firewood on a slope and slipped. I tried to regain my balance, but I must’ve tripped on a rock or a root beneath the snow because all of a sudden I was in the air going sideways and then I landed on my ankle. Pain burned into my foot and partway up my shin. And my whole lower leg and foot kept on burning and buzzing like it was going numb, except it hurt at the same time.
I limped back to camp with a little wood. My ankle swelled up and pressed into my rubber boot, and pain shot through my lower leg when I put weight on it.
I tried to rest it for a day, but if I wasn’t moving around I needed more wood to stay warm, and if I needed more wood to stay warm I needed to get more wood, which was hard to do with an ankle you couldn’t put weight on.
I dragged my leg through the snow and got what wood I could. My wood supply dwindled. I ate more mussels, but knew they weren’t enough.
I tried to will that feeling back—that feeling that everything would be okay—but the harder I tried the farther away it went.
I scratched my eightieth line onto my spear, and lay back down. It was morning, time to gather some mussels, but I just lay there. I closed my eyes and felt the air going in and out of my lungs in shallow breaths. I tried to breathe deeper but couldn’t.
I felt warm even though RF and LF had burned down to coals and weren’t putting off much heat. Wood, I thought. I needed to put some wood on them. I’d managed to keep a fire going ever since I’d been here and didn’t want to have to face using the flint again.
“In a minute. In a minute. In a minute,” I whispered.
A ringing sound invaded my ears. It just kept coming and going. Fading in and out. Like someone was humming a tune. Like the way my mom used to hum while she drew. And then I saw her, at the kitchen table, humming and drawing. And throwing a smile my way.
I drifted off with the humming, with my mom, and that feeling came back—that everything would be okay, no matter what happened.
A scraping noise forced its way in to my awareness, blotting my mom out. I opened my eyes and saw the metal roofing and remembered where I was. I put my hands over my face. They smelled fishy, like mussels. Then I remembered that I needed to drag my leg down to the shore to get some mussels.
I closed my eyes again, and felt warm.
Warm all over.
And saw my mom, and my dad. They were smiling at each other, holding hands, standing under a big tree, one of the Sentinels. I walked toward them, and they held their arms out.
I heard gulls squawking. Something I hadn’t heard in days. Really since Silver Camp. I lifted my chin and rolled onto my side. A cold rush of air nudged me, and I coughed. RF and LF, I couldn’t let them go all the way out. But I just lay there. Closed my eyes and there they were—Mom and Dad. We were at home on the deck, eating hand-cranked, homemade ice cream.
But the gull squawks slammed my ears again. Like they were right outside my shelter. They were coming for me, for my eyes. I sucked in a few short breaths.
No, I thought. No. I’m not ready to die. Not ready to lose my eyes.
But they kept squawking.
I stretched my arms over my head and opened my eyes. I’d show them. Show them that I was alive. That I could fight them, and win. Kill one and eat it. I dragged myself forward with my elbows, grabbed my spear, and stuck my head out of the shelter. Through the blowing snow I saw no gulls but kept hearing their taunts over and over.
I squinted, and my heart jumped into my throat.
Two green blurs were marching toward me.
I opened my eyes wide.
Two people, real people, clad in green raingear were moving toward me, walking just above the highest strand line, shouting hellooo over and over.
I tried to talk, formed the word help in my brain, but all that came out of my mouth was a muffled grunt.
One of them lifted a hand and waved.
<
br /> I raised my spear, then let it fall.
My eyes closed and I saw Mom and Dad again. Just their faces—smiling against a sky of puffy white clouds. Their faces kept getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared and my mind was a wall of clouds.
But the crunching sound of boots on snow and gravel filled my ears along with more shouts of helloooo. I forced my eyes open again, and felt them grow hot with tears.
I didn’t know where I was going, or who I’d be living with, but I was getting off this island.
I was going to live.
THE END
NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR
PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND is a real place on the Alaskan Coastline. Over the past twenty-four years I have paddled a sea kayak many hundreds of miles in the Sound, exploring the remote, jagged coastline and camping on uninhabited islands alone and with friends. The first time I went sea kayaking was in 1991 and it turned into a nine week, five-hundred-mile adventure. I was hooked!
I have written many journals about my experiences in Prince William Sound. On one solo kayaking trip, I cooked salmon the way Tom cooks them. I have watched bears fish for salmon, have taken a fall on a mountain similar to the one Tom takes, and have paddled through big seas and breaking waves.
Fortunately, I was never stranded, but a couple of times when I was in rough waters, I felt I was a few paddle strokes from disaster.
While Bear Island is a fictional island, the places Tom discovers on his journey on Bear Island are based on and inspired by places I have a spent time exploring while on wilderness sea kayak trips in Prince William Sound.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to all my friends who’ve spent time with me on wilderness trips over the past thirty years. All of those experiences have played into the creation of this story. Thanks to my early readers Lisa Muscavage, Natalie Bahm, Robert Guthrie, Eva Saulitis, Lou Brown, Carol Lynch Williams, Terry Lynn Johnson and Carl Greci. A big thank you to my agent, Amy Tipton, who not only found a home for my story but also was instrumental in the final rewrites before putting it on submission. Thanks to Eileen Robinson and all the great people at Move Books who worked hard to make this the best book it could be. And finally, a thank you to my wife, Dana, for believing in me as writer, letting me use some of her song lyrics in the story, and for reading countless drafts and offering her expertise as a writer.