by Tom Wright
We were startled awake in the middle of the night by a banging at the door. I couldn't make out the muffled yelling through the solid front door and thick-glassed storm door. I retrieved my gun and flashlight and scrambled to the door. Standing aside of the door, I shined the light through. Tommy peered back with tears streaming down his face.
I opened the door, and he raced into my arms.
“What is it?”
“It's Grandma! She won't move!”
Charlie and Kelly were also awakened by the commotion, so the four of us made the dreadful walk to Tommy's house. Indeed, his grandmother had died in her sleep. We broke the frosty ground in the darkness and fog and buried her. Then we went back to bed—this time, Tommy stayed with us.
Now I had three children.
The next day, the boys helped me rig up an alarm at the top of the hill while Kelly watched, or at least looked at us. Shortly into our project, I got the feeling again. I had the urge to go looking, but didn’t want to spook the children. I casually kept an eye out but never saw a thing. The feeling wasn’t as frightening as before. The stream made me aware but wasn’t telling me to be wary.
We found a long rubber bladder, filled it with water, laid it across the road, and covered it with leaves. We loosely stoppered the valve in the end of the bladder so that the water wouldn't run out. We fished the neighborhood rope swing to the top of the hill, tied a large boulder to it, and secured it to a tree with a double metal ring and upside down pin. We tethered the boulder to another line which ran from the top to a pole at the bottom. We fastened the bell from Tommy's neighbor's sailboat onto the pole. Finally, we attached a bucket to the bottom of the pin and set the bladder valve inside the bucket.
The boys jumped on the bladder to test the system. The stopper popped out which filled the bucket with water. The bucket pulled the pin, setting the boulder free. It careened along the guide wire and smashed into the bell. The force of the heavy boulder drove the edge of the bell about two inches into the pole and it stuck there, hardly making a sound. We pried the bell free and placed it on the side of the pole, refilled the bladders, and tested it again. This time, the sound was so loud that I was afraid we would attract attention clear down in Langley.
We reset the alarm and went back down to the beach. The alarm would definitely alert us of any approaching vehicles, but it would do nothing about an intruder on foot unless he walked down the road and happened to step on the bladder with enough force to dislodge the stopper. A single intruder, I could deal with. A car full of thugs, we'd need to hide.
We spent the next week alone at the beach, fishing, eating, and building our strength. Twice the boys came back with food from the little bear—a ling cod and a Dungeness crab, both of which are deep water creatures—which smelled fresh, so we ate them. I honestly had no idea what to say about this imaginary little bear friend, but it grew more worrisome. I was sure that these were just things washing up on the beach, although, somehow, I never found any of it myself.
The weather grew ever colder, and the days continued to shorten. On the fourth day of that week, it snowed over a foot. On the fifth day, the snow hadn't melted a bit, and the wind came up from the north. The salt spray began to freeze on the deck and the windows. That meant the temperature was well down in the twenties. I also realized that the freezing temperatures meant an end to our alarm's effectiveness. Despite the fact that a car could probably no longer get down the road, we spent the fifth day re-tooling the alarm. We tied a rope to the pin and stretched it across the road, just below the surface of the snow.
When the wind hadn't abated on the sixth day and it began to snow again, I grew very worried. We couldn’t fish, and the salmon run was waning. I had hoped to lay in a lot of salmon while they were around, but so much for that. We hadn’t had any meat for days, and we were getting too far into our supplies already.
Worse yet, there was no way we could make the walk I had planned through a foot of snow and near blizzard conditions. It would have been bad enough in good weather, but in winter weather, it would have been the end of all of us. But to stay there also meant likely death—an agonizing, slow, painful death from starvation. We had plenty of wood to burn for heat—we had tons of wood, in fact, considering all the houses around us—but we had all the food there was and I calculated it would last us less than two months. We'd run out in the dead of winter.
It snowed through the entire seventh day. The children sat inside and read and played games. I almost got the feeling they were happy. I continued to worry.
On the eighth day, the wind switched to the south, and it warmed up and rained. The heavy rain on top of almost two feet of snow made a terrible mess of things, but the combination of salty air, wind, and warm rain ate into the snow quickly. It blew and rained all day and melted the snow down to only a few inches by day’s end.
I was never so glad to see the rain in my life. As a meteorologist, I should have known that, despite the lack of sun, the Pacific was still quite warm and the wind would eventually switch. But my tendency was to worry—about things as they were, but more so about things as I feared them to be.
On the ninth day, the snow melted off entirely, and it became warmer than I had experienced in over a month. Not since I was out in the middle of the Pacific had it been that warm—the cheap thermometer on the fence read 74F at the day’s zenith. The sky was still dark and gunmetal gray, but the south wind brought in much deserved comfort. I spent some time fishing with the boys and noticed that they used a homemade lure. It turned out that little bear had shown them how to make it. I let it go.
We caught only two small bullheads in three hours. We had never considered eating the bullheads before. But with the salmon run apparently over, we wouldn't have considered throwing them back. We needed the protein.
Having been skunked, I gave up and sent the boys to check on Kelly. Although she was ok being alone in the house since we'd installed the alarm, we’d been gone a while.
I nonchalantly combed the beach and woods along the shore. I hoped that a varmint would pop out of the woods and give me an easy meal or that I would find something washed up like as boys had. I neared the point where I would eat beach-kill if it didn’t stink.
I nearly came out of my skin when someone paddled around the corner in a canoe, not fifty yards in front of me. Out of habit I ducked down, but there was no hiding on the barren beach. The woods were only about twenty five feet away, but surely I had already been seen. The man stared at me and continued to paddle straight in my direction.
As I knelt frozen, the only sound I heard was the glop of the paddle entering the water and the sprinkling of water as it moved forward for the next iteration. I watched cautiously as the canoe, a green one like you get from a sports store, lurched quietly through the water toward me. I slowly reached to the back of my waistband and slid my hand over my gun. It relaxed me.
The canoeist had long black hair and tan skin and wore a flannel shirt and wool ski hat. As he approached, I noticed him to be of some age. His wrinkled face showed no hint of aggression, but his flat nose, dark complexion, and slender face were unmistakably American Indian in origin.
Perceiving no threat, I stood up but kept my hand near my gun.
The man paddled up to the beach right where I was standing. He placed an oar flat against the water and coasted to a stop, not five feet from shore. He just stared at me.
I stared back.
He looked me up and down as I continued to evaluate him.
It startled me when he reached into the canoe. I tightened my grip on my gun. He brought out a black object and threw it at me. It landed at my feet. I kicked at the thing and examined it without bending down. It looked like a large chicken thigh but with black skin. He reached down, selected another one, and threw it on the beach. Together, they must have been five pounds of meat. My stomach growled as I lowered my empty gun hand to my side.
We stared at each other.
I nodded.
He placed one oar in the water and pulled back with great force, turning the canoe completely around with one stroke. Then he paddled off. I watched dumbfounded as he rounded the bend and disappeared.
The boys clamored up behind me. They stood quietly watching me watch the horizon. Finally, Charlie bent down and picked up the seal flesh.
“You saw Little Bear,” he said.
“Yes, I did,” I said, smiling.
I left the boys to their fishing and returned to the house. A panic washed over me when I found the living room empty. I ran around back and found Kelly sitting at her mother's grave crying.
I sat next to her and put my arm around her.
She ran both her hands through the fresh dirt. She picked up some dirt and brought it to her face and smelled it. She got up onto her knees and laid her head down on the mound.
“We all miss her sweetie,” I said.
Kelly sat back and looked at me with dirt smudges across the bridge of her nose. For the first time, she really looked at me. I could tell there was someone there again. She blinked, and her eyelids pinched off a few tears. She laid her head against my chest.
“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” I asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
On the tenth day, I sat on the deck and watched the children play. Then I spotted it. A boat, approaching—a dark boat with quite a few people on board. Fearing the worst, I commanded the children inside. I wished I had binoculars. I wanted to watch, but I couldn't risk being seen, as if we hadn't been seen already. I put out the fire in the fireplace, but it was almost certainly too late. We had prepared for being spotted. We scrambled back into the hole in the foundation and pulled some of the dying plants in over the cover and waited.
After a tense half hour or so in the crawlspace, our alarm went off. I couldn’t imagine why the boat people had gone up the hill unless they had some particular place in mind to go. Certainly, they were now aware of the alarm, but I hoped that they hadn’t dismantled our roadblock. I also hoped it meant that they hadn’t seen us after all.
I never heard them land on the beach or pass by the house. I decided to continue to wait and listen. Hours passed. Agonizing hours. I thought I heard something several times, but I couldn’t be sure, and I certainly had no idea what was going on outside. We waited quietly and listened. Tommy spoke first.
“Maybe they went by,” he whispered.
“I'm not sure,” I said. “I don't hear a thing.”
“Should we check it out?” Tommy asked.
“I will. You all stay here.”
“No!” whimpered Charlie. “Don't go.”
“I will be careful.”
I quietly pulled back the cover and moved the plants aside. It was getting dark out.
I gave Tommy back his gun and cocked my own and began to emerge from the crawlspace.
I edged down the sidewalk that ran along the house toward the beach. My senses piqued just as they had the moment I set foot on the island. I realized that I had unwittingly let my guard down over those last days, and I cursed myself for it. I tiptoed along the sidewalk and neared the deck.
A lone gunshot rang out from down the beach or up in the woods, I couldn’t tell. I dove for cover.
Knowing that the children would be scared, I went back to the crawlspace.
I poked my head in.
“What happened?” Tommy asked.
“It wasn’t me,” I whispered. “It was somewhere down the beach to the north. Or maybe up in the woods.”
“I’m going to check it out.”
“Daddy, I’m really scared,” said Charlie.
“Me too, buddy.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I find out what is going on.”
I went back down the sidewalk along the house and peered around the corner, over the deck toward the water. To my surprise, the boat I had seen earlier bobbed up and down in the surf, right in front of the house. In the darkness of dusk, I couldn’t make out any name on the side. It didn’t help that the boat was also dark in color—like camouflage. Nothing moved on the boat, but I couldn’t risk being out in the open so close to the unknown craft.
I worked my way back along the sidewalk and then slipped in behind the neighbor’s house. I walked behind several houses and then emerged back on the beach side. With enough space between me and the boat, I moved to the edge of the beach and peered north along the waterline. I saw several men crouched down behind the bulkhead about four houses further down.
A shot echoed through the woods. The sound echoed too much to determine its origin, but the flash seemed to come from somewhere up the hill.
Then the men on the beach returned fire. Several flashes lit up the beach. I noticed something familiar about one of the men—something about the way he stood.
I moved very quietly another house down and went beach side to take another look. I couldn’t see anything in the dark.
One of the men flicked a lighter to life and lit a cigarette. The light briefly illuminated the man in question. The way he leaned against the bulkhead was familiar as was the way he braced himself against the breeze when he shifted position.
I turned back toward the boat to take a more careful look. I still couldn’t see it. I turned and worked my way back to the house. Once at the edge of the deck, I looked at the boat. That was when I noticed the hand-carved mast.
Suddenly, I realized who the man was on the beach. I ran back between the houses and got right up on them before I emerged at the beach. I was less than twenty yards from the men. I had no idea who the other two were. I considered how to make my presence known without getting my head blown off. What if I were wrong about the man? But I knew that posture.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I whirled noisily and pointed my gun at the visitor.
“Dad!” Charlie said, much too loudly.
“Shhh!”
Tommy was right behind him.
“I thought I told you two to stay,” I said.
I turned back to the men on the beach, who were already under cover and out of my line of sight.
“Who’s there?” one of the men said.
I took a chance and said: “Jeff, it’s me. Matt.”
“It’s him,” I heard Jeff say. “Don’t shoot.”
“Are you sure?” asked one of the men.
“How else did he know my name? Take it easy.”
“Are you all right?” Jeff asked.
“Yes, fine.”
“Stay put,” one of the other men said. “We’ve got hostiles on the hill.”
“Roger that,” I said, slipping into military-ese.
“Do you know anything about them yet?”
“Nope. We saw them up on the hill when we pulled up. They saw us, and we’ve been standing off ever since. They just fired at us a few minutes ago.”
“How many?”
“I saw four, maybe more. Only two separate muzzle flashes though.”
“Didn’t you hear the racket they made coming down?”
“Yeah, that was our alarm.”
“No shit! I’d say it worked. They probably heard that in Seattle!”
“What are we going to do?”
“Wait them…”
Someone yelled from up on the hill.
“Did he just say my name?” I asked Jeff.
“Sounded like it.”
“Is that you? It’s me Joe! I’ve got the Blackmans with me.”
“Oh my God!” I said.
“Yes, Joe, it’s me,” I yelled back. “Is it just the four of you?”
“Yes.”
“Come on down. Be careful of the barricade at the bottom of the hill.”
“How do you know there aren’t other people with them?” one of the men asked. “Could be a trap, a Trojan horse.”
“Joe’s a smart guy,” I said. “He’d have figured out a way to let us know. Besides, I don’t think he would have brought anyone
else here.”
Charlie, Tommy, and I jumped down onto the beach and joined Jeff and the two men.
Jeff grabbed Charlie and hugged him.
“I’m so glad to see you. And who’s this?” he asked, pointing at Tommy.
“This is Tommy. He lives down here. He’s with us now.”
“Good, we can use all the men we can get,” Jeff said.
Tommy stood up straighter as if to re-affirm that he was, indeed, a man.
I stepped forward and extended my hand to the first of the unknown men.
“Dean Collins, Brenda’s brother,” the man said, shaking my hand and nearly crushing it. The first thing I noticed about Dean was his square head and shoulders. He was short and stout.
The other man stepped forward and took my hand.
“Josh Collins. Brenda’s better brother.”
Dean slugged Josh firmly in the shoulder. The solid punch knocked his tall, skinny frame back a couple of steps.
“How are Brenda and the girls?” I asked Jeff tentatively.
“They’re fine,” he said. He looked at Charlie and then sheepishly toward me. He raised his eyebrows in a sort of nonverbal question.
“Kelly is back at the house. It’s just the four of us now.”
Jeff performed the squinted smile one might make when experiencing a sharp pain—it was the facial gesture of condolence. It's next to impossible to know how to behave in the presence of an adult who has just lost a dear member of his family much less a child like Charlie. Jeff did well.
“Let’s go back to the RY,” Jeff said.
“We’ll go escort your visitors,” Dean said while motioning to his brother.
As we walked down the beach, Jeff hooted toward the boat.
Heads popped out from below decks.
“It’s ok,” he said.
Three adults and two children spilled onto the deck. I thought I knew who those people might be. A plank of wood lowered to the beach and people filed down, their arms held wide for balance.