The Turn of the Tide

by Rosanne Parry

  But it hadn’t been all training. Kai wandered down to the skate park in the afternoons to hang out with the guys, sometimes on his own and sometimes with Oliver tagging along. He missed Tomo and Hiroshi and the rest, but once he got the hang of skateboarding, it was easy to find things to talk about with his new friends.

  On Saturdays Kai and Aunt Karin went to the farmers’ market. They made a game of trying one of every vegetable they’d never seen before. Kai was amazed to find that carrots came in purple and white and yellow. Aunt Karin became a fan of daikon radishes. And nobody stared at Kai as he and his aunt shopped together. There were plenty of faces as brown as his, and Korean and Spanish were spoken freely in the market. Jet’s friend Skye was half Asian, and nobody seemed to think twice about it.

  Jet came downstairs to eat just as Kai was putting the finishing touches on his miso soup. There was a stack of pancakes to rival the Eiffel Tower on the kitchen counter. Uncle Per and Oliver were doing their best to make a dent in the stack. Jet pulled up a plate, but she barely nibbled. She’d been suspicious of Kai’s soups in the past, so he didn’t bother to ask. He filled a bowl for her and let the steam do its own persuading.

  Oliver was nervous, too. He had a thousand worried questions. Kai told Oliver what a careful sailor Jet was, though it wasn’t completely true. She sometimes cut a turn a little too close for comfort, and to her mind, there was no point in sailing at all unless you were going to go as fast as possible.

  “The main thing,” Uncle Per barged in, “is to be good citizens of the river. Yield when you should, even if it costs you your lead.”

  He got up, took the car keys off the hook, and went outside. Jet watched him go, her eyes lingering on the door. Kai had noticed a circle of worn paint over the kitchen door on his very first night. Every time Uncle Per left the house to pilot a ship over the bar, he reached up and touched his palm to that spot over the door. He’d never said why. Kai had never asked, but the yellow paint was completely gone, leaving a ring of the green the kitchen used to be painted and a hand-size circle of thin white paint over a solid-oak board like a wash of spilled milk. Jet pushed her empty bowl aside and stood up to go. Kai saw her put a bit of Uncle Per’s swagger in her walk. Even so, the pilot’s mark was out of her reach. She gathered herself for a jump at the door. Her fingers just brushed the edge of the circle.

  Kai smiled as he finished off his soup. Jet was the smallest of her friends. Skye towered over her. Bridgie sometimes picked her up off the ground just because she could. If you didn’t know Jet, it would be easy to think she was still a little kid, but she worked harder than anyone Kai had ever met, and she cultivated fierceness. Standing on top of her ambitions, that girl was ten feet tall.

  At the marina it was the warmest day of the summer so far. A steady wind blew down the river, putting whitecaps on the swells. It would be a rough sail but a fast one. They and the five other teams met with the admiral of the regatta to review the rules and get the GPS coordinates for the first treasure. It was a timed race. Boats were started twenty minutes apart; the fastest time at the finish won.

  The Saga won the draw for first choice of start times. Jet had spent all day yesterday calculating travel times. She didn’t hesitate. First start would give them the most favorable tide, so long as they could complete the upstream leg of the race in under an hour. Uncle Per went through the checklist, making sure they had all their safety equipment, testing the rescue beacons, and making sure the life jackets fit snugly. Then he reached in his pocket and took out two small slips of paper.

  “This is from Karin,” he said with a smile.

  “Wow!” Jet said. “For us? Look, Kai, it’s a rub-on tattoo. Mom makes them for Comic Con.”

  The design was the outline of the Saga and the flags of America and Japan. They put them on their arms below the sleeve of the shorty wet suits Dad had insisted they wear. Even though it was the end of July, the Columbia was punishingly cold.

  “I’ve got something, too,” Kai said after Uncle Per walked away. “My grandmother used to make these for me on exam day.”

  He reached in the pocket of his windbreaker and pulled out two long strips of white cloth. There were kanji drawn in the middle.

  “It’s a custom. Some people say it’s silly, just a good-luck charm, but I think it helps.” He held one out to Jet. “You can carry it in your pocket if you want, or you can wear it like this.”

  He tied the strip of cloth around his head with the kanji over his forehead and his hair all tucked in so it wouldn’t blow in his face. It was cool and soft and familiar, and Kai felt a wave of calm pass through his body. He was ready for whatever would come.

  “What does it say?” Jet said.

  “Usually it says konjoyō—determination or something like that.”

  Jet looked at her headband. Kai turned it so it was right-side up.

  “Hey! I’ve seen these characters before. You wrote that on the geocache log on Saddle Mountain. Is it…” Jet looked over his shoulder. The other competitors were all close by. “Isn’t this the name of your town?” she whispered.

  Kai didn’t have to answer. She knew.

  “I’d be honored,” Jet said quietly.

  “READY?” JET SAID. A shiver passed through her. This was it, the first step. After all their practices Jet was a hundred percent confident of their chances. Her cousin was the perfect racing partner. All they needed was a little bit of luck and a fair wind. The starter’s pistol echoed over the river as Jet pushed off from the dock to the cheers of the crowd. Kai rowed them into the channel, and Jet raised the sails.

  They started with a headwind in the wide spot between Mott Island and the Oregon bank of the Columbia. They’d get at least two good tacks in before they’d have to deal with the current from the John Day River.

  “Ship oars!” Jet called.

  Kai pulled in the oars and moved to the bow while Jet trimmed the mainsail. Instantly the sail swelled with wind and rocked the Saga to the port side. Jet ran as close-hauled as she could. There was the wonderful gurgling noise a sailboat makes when it gets under way. Bubbles streamed out from the rudder, and a wake formed a V of ripples behind them.

  Kai took out the GPS and fed in the coordinates of the first treasure. They checked the chart they’d taped to the thwart.

  “Looks like the treasure is between Lois Island and Settler Point,” Jet said.

  “In all those weeds?” Kai asked.

  “We’ll find it,” Jet said, all confidence.

  The eastern side of Lois Island was a marsh. Birds loved to nest in the tall grass, but it would be easy to sail right past a hidden cache. Jet headed toward the mouth of the John Day River. It hadn’t rained in weeks, and the snow had already melted off the coast range, so the John Day wasn’t very full.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Ten thirty-eight.”

  They would have another forty minutes of rising tide and then about fifteen of slack current. Luck was with them.

  “Excellent!” Jet beamed. “The tide will push the current of the John Day upriver and help move us along even faster.”

  She got ready for another tack just as they were reaching the mouth of the John Day. Jet squinted at the surface of the river for some hint of where the fresh water was moving.

  “There it is,” Kai called out, pointing to a stretch of water a dozen yards off the port bow.

  “Where?”

  “Sediment,” Kai said.

  There was a swath of brownish water coming out of the river’s mouth. The incoming tide pushed the river water up the Columbia before it got lost in the current of the larger river. Jet swung the tiller to move the Saga into position.

  “Almost there…almost there…Helms alee!” she called, swinging the tiller as they hit the river current. The Saga leapt to the right, and Kai scrambled to get the sails properly trimmed.

  “Yes!” Kai hollered as they felt the extra push of the John Day’s current moving them alo
ng.

  “Watch for snags!” Jet called out. “There’s usually a bunch in here.”

  The south channel was a tricky one, twenty-five feet deep in some places and only three in others.

  “How’s our course?” Jet asked.

  “Two miles straight ahead.”

  They settled into a rhythm of tacking every few minutes, working their way upstream. They slowed quite a bit once the current from the John Day got absorbed into the much larger flow of the Columbia. It was the last push they’d get until they turned downriver. They sailed on between the rocky shore on the south side of the channel and the reeds and weeds on the north side.

  “About three hundred feet,” Kai said at last. “Can you pull us in tight to the island?”

  Jet loosened the mainsheet to pull them alongside the waving reeds and grasses of Lois Island. Kai stood up beside the mast to search.

  “See anything?” Jet called.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are we close?”

  Kai checked the GPS. “According to this, we’re sixty feet from it. It’s got to be right here!”

  “There’s no such thing as a perfect signal,” Jet said. “Keep looking. It’s bright red. How hard can it be?”

  “We’re past it,” Kai said a minute later. He turned the GPS unit so Jet could read the distance counter. It was at ninety feet and rising. “Can you turn us around?”

  Jet sucked in a breath. This was the narrowest spot in the channel. The railroad tracks on the Oregon bank were less than a stone’s throw away.

  “It’ll have to be a quick one,” Jet said.

  She looked over her shoulder to calculate the distance and the strength of the wind.

  “There it is!” she hollered.

  Across the channel a railroad trestle bridged the small cove in front of Settler Point. Halfway up the trestle was a red box.

  “Treasure, ho!” Jet called.

  They swung the boat around and brought it alongside the bridge. A brand-new cleat to tie up boats had been screwed into the bridge support. A line of steel spikes like they put on telephone poles went up to the crossbeam where the box rested.

  Kai took the tiller, and Jet scrambled up. She flipped open the latch of the treasure box. Inside were a dozen bronze-colored coins that had been stamped with a sailboat and the points of a compass. On the reverse it said TREASURE ISLAND RACE. Inside the lid was a note.

  “Well done, Hawkins!” it said in curling piratical script. “Your voyage is one-third complete. Here are the coordinates for Flint’s chest of silver doubloons.”

  There was a number and a grease pencil. Jet hastily copied it on her arm and hustled down to the boat. A long smear of tar got on the front of her life jacket, and the smell of creosote was pungent on her hands, but she barely noticed as they pushed off for the next leg of the race.

  Jet checked over her shoulder for the red mast of the Viking. Beck and Roland had drawn second start and would be right behind them. Their boat was at the mouth of the John Day. She hoped they hadn’t seen her climbing the trestle. She’d been sorely tempted to cheat and make the treasure box just a little bit harder to find.

  Kai put the new coordinates in their GPS. Jet steered them around Settler Point, toward Russian Island.

  “Where are we headed?” Jet called out.

  “Take a look,” Kai said, showing her the GPS unit. Its red arrow pointed the way.

  “How is our tide holding?” Jet asked.

  “We’ll make it if we keep to our pace,” Kai said.

  Jet glanced at the chart. “Looks like our next treasure is past Russian Island and past Karlson Island, too.”

  “I think it’s going to be in the middle of Marsh Island,” Kai said, leaning back to look at the map upside down.

  “Lots of channels in there,” Jet said.

  “So which side of the island has the strongest current?” Kai asked.

  “North.” Jet swung the tiller and trimmed the sail closer to the wind. “We should use it while we’ve got it.”

  “The ship channel’s on that side,” Kai said.

  “It’s race day! Now or never.”

  “I’m with you,” Kai said. “Just saying, there could be some really big ships.”

  “If we don’t push every advantage, Beck and Roland are going to blow right past us,” Jet said.

  In spite of Kai’s predictions, the boys had practiced in the last month. Not as much as Jet and Kai, but Beck had always been a good sailor, and Roland, annoying as he was, learned pretty quickly. Jet felt a knot grow in her stomach. Uncle Lars had emailed her three weeks ago, back when things at the power plant had been at their worst. It was a short message thanking her for asking Kai to sail in the race. Saying that in the worst and longest days, it gave him peace of mind to know Kai was out there on his home river having the time of his life. No way was she going to let her uncle down.

  Kai had come so far since their first sails together a month ago. He was an able sailor from the start and understood instinctively how to handle a boat like the Saga, but he’d spent those early sails fighting down panic, especially on the foggy mornings. He was rock steady now, but Jet had come to understand that her cousin was always going to be a more cautious sailor than her. Something Dad heartily approved of.

  “I’ll keep plenty of room between us and the ship channel,” Jet said.

  They passed a race official’s boat and the coast guard lifeboat. The official waved the Saga on. Jet couldn’t resist checking on the Viking. It was steadily closing the gap. They were so close she could hear Beck and Roland arguing.

  “It’s not over yet,” Kai said firmly.

  When they turned into the channel between Snag Island and Marsh Island, Jet lost sight of the Viking. Kai started counting down the distance on the GPS unit.

  Jet backed off the wind, slowing the boat and swinging closer to the north shore. There were a few overgrown channels, but none big enough for a sailboat.

  “There!” Kai shouted a moment later, pointing to the mouth of a channel wider than the others and with no overhanging trees.

  “Helms alee!” Jet moved the tiller hard to the right. The Saga nosed into the channel and lost the wind completely. It was like sailing into a closet. Not a breath.

  “Now what are we going to do?” Kai said.

  “Can you see the bottom?” Jet asked.

  “Nope.”

  The channel was edged around with reeds. It thrummed with frog noises. Jet stuck an oar straight down in the still water. When it hit mud she drew the oar out and stood to measure it against her body. The water was up to her neck.

  “I don’t think we can hop out and tow it,” Jet said.

  Actually they probably could. Kai was tall enough, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to walk along a channel bottom they couldn’t see, in waters that were clearly piled with frog poop. Not when he’d refused to swim or even go wading all summer long. He’d only just gotten brave enough to look for submerged snags in the water.

  “I’ll row,” Kai said. “You steer.”

  Jet slipped her oar back in the lock, and Kai sat on the thwart to row. She stood up at the tiller to better spot the treasure. The GPS numbers clicked lower and lower as they followed the channel’s winding turns.

  “Know what’s great about this?” Jet said. “We’re the only boat small enough to have oars. Everyone else has canoe paddles instead. We’re going to be way faster than any of those longer boats in this tiny channel.”

  “Should be right around here,” Kai said, glancing at the GPS.

  “Look.” Jet pointed to an oversize nest tucked in among the branches. A few bits of blue-green eggshell rested inside. A pure-white shorebird stalked out of the tall grass, looked at the boat, and then lifted off with an impossibly slow wing beat. Two baby birds followed. Jet stopped and took a breath. Gray herons were all over the place, but these white ones were rare; it felt lucky to see them take to the sky.

  “There!” K
ai shouted.

  The second treasure box was in the V of some willow branches. This time they didn’t have to climb for it. The chest held silver coins and the coordinates for the third treasure. By the time they rowed out of the channel and back into the river, the tide was completely slack, and the river current was pushing them backward. Jet swung the nose of the Saga around to start the third leg of the race. She glanced over her shoulder, and there was the Viking, closing the gap. Jet swore like a sea captain.

  “Gambare!” Kai said. “It’s not over yet.”

  “THE WIND IS still in our favor,” Kai said. “If we take longer tacks, we’ll pull ahead.”

  He was sure of it. If they tacked more efficiently like they’d practiced, if they took longer before each turn, then logically they should win.

  But now the Viking was closing the gap again, and Kai felt doubts creep in. Everyone at the power plant was rooting for him. They’d finally turned the corner on their problems at the end of last week. Today was the first day off they’d had in more than a month. The thought of disappointing them made Kai physically sick. But the white cranes they’d seen when they found the second treasure—they were good luck. Obā-san had always said so, especially a mother and baby cranes. Their luck would turn. He could feel it.

  “We’ve got to find the next treasure quick,” Jet said. “Or we’ll be fighting the outgoing tide along with the river’s current.”

  The day was heating up. Kai passed Jet a water bottle. A few spectators in boats cheered them on as they rounded Quinns Island, and then they had one last island to pass before they turned downriver and headed for the finish line.

  “Looks like the third treasure is on the other side of Tenasillahe,” Jet said. “Good thing. The sooner we turn toward the ocean, the better.”

  Jet and Kai passed another race officials’ boat. They marked the Saga’s time and waved them along the course.

  “Okay, ready for the turnaround?” Jet called. The ship channel passed through the narrow spot between Tenasillahe and Puget Islands. Jet looked upriver and saw the way clear. But downriver there was a container ship just clearing the passage between the two islands.