by Karis Walsh
“We’ve only been open for a little less than two years, so I’ll be looking for creative ways to attract customers, just like you will. It only took me two hours to drive to Cannon Beach from my old home in Salem, but the real journey to get to this place was a long and hard one. I’ll do whatever it takes to stay here. I’m sure you feel the same.”
Helen nodded without looking up from the strange little sculptures she was forming with her hands. Mel didn’t know her past, but Helen figured most people in this isolated town had complex reasons for being here. The anonymity of tourist season, when the streets would be crowded with strangers. The hibernation of the off-season. The very reasons Helen had chosen to come here. To find some peace at last.
“Besides, you’ve made a loyal following already with those croissants of yours.” Mel tossed a wad of paper onto the growing mound of them. “I figure a few more days of this work, and you’ll be exhausted and numb enough to give me your secret recipe.”
Helen grinned, feeling a small release in the tension she had been carrying in her chest. “Not a chance. I’d have to be—” She paused abruptly and pointed across the room where four coveralled people were carrying dog crates through a side entrance. “What’s going on over there?”
“They found more birds,” Mel said quietly. “We should go help them.”
Helen saw Jenny moving quickly toward the newcomers. Almost before Mel had finished speaking, Helen had hopped over the side plank and was jogging over to her. Something about the way Jenny was carrying herself gave Helen a sense of urgency, but she slowed to a walk as she got closer. The men set the dog crates down and went back outside, presumably for more. Without a need for words, Helen stepped to one side of a crate and gently helped Jenny lift it.
Jenny smiled a weary but clear thank-you and gestured with her head toward one of the pens already filled with newspaper balls. Helen felt the weight of the crate shift as the birds inside jostled each other. She tried to make the short walk as smooth as possible, and her fingers hurt from gripping the cage tightly so she wouldn’t drop it.
“Let’s cover this end of the pen before we turn them loose,” Jenny said once they had deposited the crate in the four-by-eight enclosure. Helen helped her place a large piece of plywood over one half of the pen, making a small cave. Jenny opened the crate and tipped it slightly, sending four oil-covered birds scurrying into the darkened side.
Helen followed Jenny’s lead and quickly placed a second plank over the other end of the pen, completely enclosing the birds. She was as bewildered and surprised by the tears running down her cheeks as the birds seemed to be by their new prison.
“What kind are they?” she asked with a tremble in her voice.
Jenny looked up from where she was kneeling by the crate and pulling out dirty newspapers. She stood and came over to Helen, putting an arm across her shoulders. “They’re murres. Are you going to be okay?”
Helen leaned into Jenny’s embrace, surprised yet again by her own willingness to be touched. Usually she was the one doing the holding—holding herself at a distance from everyone else.
“Yes,” she said, drawing strength from Jenny’s combination of detachment and caring. Obviously this work meant a great deal to Jenny, or she wouldn’t be doing it. But at the same time, she seemed to have a shield in place. Do the job without the tears. They wouldn’t offer help anyway, neither for the birds nor for Helen’s future here in oil-soaked Cannon Beach. “They just seem so frightened. I hate that this happened to them.”
“I agree. They’ll be scared for a while, and then they’ll adapt. We’ll do our best to make captivity easy for them until their release. But remember, these are the lucky ones, the ones who get to come here and be scared. They’re safe now and will be clean soon.”
Helen nodded and picked up her end of the empty crate. They’d take it back to the people who would soon fill it with more birds for her to help heal.
As she worked side by side with Jenny into the night, Helen’s eyes remained dry. She had been thinking about herself earlier tonight. What it meant for her to be at risk of losing her bakery so soon after opening it. The loss in income, the guilt-driven need to volunteer. She’d learned as a child to put herself first, because she’d never had anyone else to take care of her. The sight of those four birds, burdened with oil and helpless in their cage, had finally driven her focus off her own problems and onto the small creatures huddled in corners.
*
Jenny sat on a wooden bench at the top of a staircase and stared at the beach below. She had witnessed scenes like this on countless occasions, but the discrepancy between normalcy and disaster always unsettled her. The timeless sound of waves thundering to shore from deep ocean origins was unchanged, unhindered by the spill. Rugged Haystack Rock looming in the foreground looked the same as it did on the numerous postcards sold at every store in town.
Contrasted with these were the lingering stench of oil and the volunteers spreading across the beach as the sun rose. They made slow but steady progress as they scooped blackened sand into trash bags. The sight of them made Jenny feel guilty for not being at the center doing her part to help, but Mel had practically carried her back to the inn for a few hours of rest.
Jenny stretched and yawned. The short nap had been good for her. She had been getting punchy with lack of sleep, and she needed to be clearheaded enough to make good decisions for the animals and birds temporarily in her care. Plus, she had organized the rescue effort well enough for it to run without her for two or three hours. Shifts of volunteers had been working around the clock for five days, but starting tonight, Jenny would shut down the operation during the night except for a small staff of people to keep watch over the full pens. Both the workers and the frightened sea creatures would benefit from the dark, quiet hours. Time to heal and rest.
Although she usually moved on as soon as life was returning to normal at a disaster site, she thought she might stay here at Cannon Beach for a little longer. She could imagine the area in full glory, with white-and-gray gulls dotting the shore and sky. The waves would be blue green and splashed with foam, not rainbow slick with oil. Tide pools would be full of life and not merely dead, greasy puddles. Like the mosaic hanging over her bed in the inn, with Pam’s signature scrawled across the bottom corner. The painting showed a slab of basalt, lit by the sun and darkened by shadows, standing watch over a pool of clear, glistening water. Starfish shimmered with embedded pink sea glass. Anemones and mussels adhered to the rock’s surface, giving a sense of permanence and solidity.
Jenny rarely stayed in one place long enough to see the stable, real world reappear. She only saw the veneer of disaster covering the familiar, and the steady progress of those laboring to remove it. Surprisingly, she wanted to be here long enough to see Mel welcoming guests to the inn, and to stare through the studio window as Pam painted. To see Tia opening her gallery once again and gabbing the ears off every tourist who strolled in.
Most of all, though, Jenny wanted to see Helen in her bakery, covered with a film of flour and chatting with customers, the worry lines around her eyes and creasing her forehead gone for good. Jenny sighed deeply and coughed at the smell of oil, feeling as if it was coating the inside of her mouth and lungs. She had spent long hours in the same room as Helen over the past couple of days. They had talked a little, but only about the work they were doing. They had never been alone like they had been when they first met, but instead had always been surrounded by crowds of volunteers. Still, Jenny had felt a connection and she couldn’t shake the desire to know Helen better. To know who she was when she wasn’t functioning in disaster mode.
A cool, wet nose gently nuzzled her hand where it was resting on the edge of the bench. Jenny smiled, relieved to have a distraction from thoughts of Helen, and reached down to pet the inn’s resident spaniel.
A young man’s voice called, “Piper! Piper, where are…oh, there you are.” Danny, Mel’s son, came around the corner of the garden pa
th and halted when he saw Jenny. “I should have known she’d find you, Jenny.”
He sat on the bench next to her, over six feet of gangly college sophomore. He and some friends had driven from Corvallis to help with the rescue efforts, and the sight of the six rested and ready-to-work young people had nearly made Jenny cry. She and the other volunteers had been dragging with exhaustion after the first heavy wave of birds came into the center, and the reinforcements had been more than welcome. Jenny saw Mel in her son’s face and eyes and in his friendly, easygoing manner. But even though Jenny knew they weren’t related by blood, she saw Pam in him, too. He was sensitive and artistic, with a deep connection to nature and animals. He took to the job of washing the fragile, oil-covered birds as if he’d been born to do it.
“I’ve been trying to clean her ears, but she hates it,” Danny said, holding up a tube of ointment and a gauze pad. “She’s been tilting her head and fussing at her right ear, and we think she got some oil on her paws and then got it inside her ear when she scratched it. She’ll let us do anything with her, except this.”
“She’s probably hurting,” Jenny said. Piper was sitting at her feet, gazing at the beach with a forlorn expression. She didn’t move beyond the yellow tape marking the shore as off-limits, though, treating it like a solid barrier. Jenny slid off the bench and gathered the small brown-and-white dog against her. She wrapped one arm around Piper’s chest and used the other hand to gently raise the outer flap of her ear.
“She has some inflammation, but it looks like you caught the problem early enough.” She reached for the ointment and gauze, and then read the label before awkwardly smearing some of the tube’s contents on a clean pad with one hand. “This stuff should clear up the problem in a week or so. See how I’m holding her against me? She’s confined, but she’s also comforted by the pressure and closeness.”
Jenny swabbed Piper’s ear while she quietly explained everything she was doing to Danny, who had come to kneel beside her. “You should clean both ears, even if she’s just showing symptoms in this one,” she said, releasing Piper and getting a new gauze pad out of its wrapper. “Why don’t you try doing her left ear?”
After a short struggle, Danny got the hang of holding Piper still while he treated her ear.
“Good job,” Jenny said when he let the dog go with a pat.
“Thank you. You make it look so easy, but by the end of the week, I’m sure I’ll be better. I’ve thought about trying to get into the vet school at OSU, so any practice or advice I can get will help.”
Jenny had met quite a lot of aspiring veterinarians doing the work she did. Some were discouraged by the manual labor and heartbreak involved, but others seemed to thrive on the work at her temporary rescue centers. Had any of them gone on to finish school? Would she ever know if Danny made the choice to follow that dream or not? Most likely she wouldn’t. By the time he made any serious plans for his future, she’d be in a different state, or even country.
“I’ll make sure you get a chance to work with some of the injured animals and birds while I’m here,” she said. She could trust him to be gentle and to listen to her. “You’ll be helping them, and it will be an interesting experience to add to your application, if you decide to pursue your degree.”
“That’d be fantastic. Thank you,” Danny said. He stood and called Piper to his side. “Thank you for everything you’re doing here, not just this chance to help you.”
He looked back at the inn for a few moments before meeting her eyes again. “And for my mom. This place means so much to her. If she lost too much business, or ever had to close…” He shook his head. “And for Pam, too. She cares about the sea life, and I know it’s killing her to see any creature suffering. You’re doing something really good for all of us.”
Jenny blinked away the unexpected and unpleasant heat of tears. She felt proud of what Danny was saying to her, and she’d enjoyed the small interaction with a pet and its owner. She hadn’t had a chance to do simple vet work since her earliest internships and clinic work. She had been raised by parents who gave up everything to practice medicine abroad, and—except for following her heart to vet school instead of medical school—she had tried to follow in their footsteps. Danny’s appreciation touched her on a personal level. She’d heard similar words before, but she’d never felt them so keenly.
She shrugged, creating some emotional distance with the casual gesture. “It’s just what I do. But you’re welcome.”
Danny nodded and turned away. Jenny figured he was as uncomfortable with the emotions this rescue project was bringing to the surface, in him and in his mom and Pam. Jenny knew it was better to focus on the details and not the feelings involved. Build pens, assign volunteers to tasks. Deal with the facts on the clipboard, not the emotions in her heart.
Unfortunately, the cause of too many disconcerting emotions was standing on the path watching them. Danny nearly bumped into Helen in his haste to get back to the house.
“Oh, sorry, Helen, I didn’t see you there,” he said. “Is breakfast ready? Whatever you and Mom were baking smelled awesome.”
“There’s quiche and banana bread on the table.” Helen smiled at him, and then turned her attention to Jenny. “Are you coming? You really should eat something before you get back to work.”
“In a minute,” Jenny said, hoping Helen would stay with her instead of disappearing into the inn. She breathed a silent thank you when Helen sat on the bench next to her as if in response to Jenny’s unvoiced request.
Helen was silent for a few moments, apparently unaware of the turmoil she was causing in Jenny’s mind. The two of them had worked together for days, but they hadn’t yet been alone together outside the center. Jenny had been trying to keep her perspective clear, seeing Helen as merely one of her volunteers. An attractive and tempting one, to be sure, but in reality no different from the hundreds of other people Jenny worked with at every job site. Sitting here, close enough for their thighs to touch, was something altogether new. Jenny felt them connected to each other and held apart from the rescue effort. This was one of those moments they might share if there was no spill, no need to rush back to the center, if Jenny was just a regular member of this community. Sitting on a bench together and watching the ocean waves—so normal, yet so out of reach. Jenny tucked her hands under her legs to keep from touching Helen, who looked beautiful with her cheeks slightly reddened from working in the kitchen. The scent of vanilla seemed to enrobe the two of them in a homey and safe bubble.
“Danny is right, you know.” Helen finally spoke, in a quiet voice and as if choosing her words with care. “You’re doing something amazing here. With the birds and animals, of course—their care is the most important—but for the community, too. You’re healing this town, in a way. People would suffer if their businesses had to close because the beach stayed toxic. But it’s even more than the money. It’s this community. The people here are close and care about this place, but you come here as a stranger and work alongside us like you belong. You seem very selfless.”
Jenny shrugged again, as conscious of her need to deflect Helen’s praise as she’d been when Danny had thanked her. “I appreciate the way everyone has made me feel like part of the community. This is a special place with very generous people who give more of themselves than I do. Look at what you’ve done here. When you aren’t working at the center, you’re feeding the volunteers. I’ve chosen to live as a nomad, but I sort of envy the way you belong.”
Helen gave a short, humorless laugh. “I don’t know about belonging.” She stared out toward the ocean, but Jenny wondered what she was really seeing. “I was so excited when I found the perfect spot for my bakery, but before renting, I should have asked how many people had tried and failed to run a successful business in that very spot. When I first got here, everyone was very polite and friendly, but I used to wonder if they were secretly making bets about how long I’d last. I’m certainly not the first person to come to the ocean with
big dreams and little business sense.”
Helen looked at Jenny again, her intense gaze direct and almost sharp. “And to be even more honest, I wasn’t planning on volunteering when I walked into the center. I’d spent the day trying to figure out how to get out of my lease because of the spill. When I worry, I bake, so I ended up with several dozen croissants. I thought I’d drop them off and get the hell out of there.”
Jenny laughed. She kept her hands under her thighs but used her shoulder to bump Helen’s softly. Instead of moving away again, she leaned into Helen and felt her respond in kind. She meant the gesture to reassure Helen, but Jenny felt more electric and recharged from their contact than she ever did after a good meal or decent sleep. “Whatever your initial motivation, you jumped right in with everyone else. Like it or not, you’re as much a part of this town as anyone who’s been here for decades.”
Helen shook her head with a rueful expression. “I always thought a community was where other people lived, something out of reach for me. I never expected to have one of my own, and now I probably won’t…Well, never mind.”
Jenny wanted to question Helen. Find out what was going on behind her troubled expression and offer comfort. But she wasn’t here to get involved more than necessary. Her attraction to Helen was obvious to her, but she couldn’t even imagine a way to act on it. She couldn’t picture a future that didn’t have her leaving town and Helen staying. Her parents had always warned her about attachment because they never knew where their next assignment would be or when they’d need to pack up and leave. Jenny had become very good at being on her own, making friends quickly and letting them go just as fast, and she used the skills her parents taught her in the career she’d chosen. Most people had a few friends they knew for years, her mom had told her. She said Jenny was lucky to have hundreds of friendships, even if they only lasted a brief time.