by John Smelcer
It was the best plan, covering the most likely terrain.
Many times the pilot turned the white, blue-striped Citabria around to get a better look at something on a beach. And every time, as it had been before, the thing that caught their eye turned out to be a bear, a deer, a beached buoy or fuel drum, a pile of dark stones, or a log.
After returning to town, Jack followed Lee into the blue metal-sided building to close his flight plan. Rod Clark, the airport manager who had shared the bad news about the discovery of Seth’s baseball cap, was waiting to talk to him.
‘I got a call while you were out.’
Jack didn’t like where the words were headed. The serious tone was contrary to any possibility of good news.
‘The Coast Guard and the State Troopers have called off the search. They say it’s been long enough.’
Jack looked at Lee, who was leaning over and scribbling something in the open flight-plan book lying on the counter. Then he looked back at the airport manager.
‘Are you sure they’re calling it off?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it hasn’t been that long.’
Rod took the black book from Lee after he signed off on his form.
‘They called about an hour ago. I decided not to radio you. I thought it was best to wait until you returned to hear the news in person.’
‘What happens now?’ Jack asked, visibly shaken.
Clark’s tone remained serious but somewhat softer. ‘The government won’t continue to look for Seth. I’m afraid you’re on your own.’
Lee, who hadn’t said a word since he first asked for the black book, spoke.
‘I know it’s hard, Jack. But you may have to accept that your son is gone.’
Jack hadn’t allowed himself to think that. He was convinced that Seth was lost somewhere in the Sound, cold and hungry and frightened, praying that his father would find him. The thought filled his mind so much that he couldn’t sleep at night; and when he did doze for an hour or so, exhausted, he had fitful nightmares of Seth screaming his name.
Both men said how sorry they were, offering their condolences.
• • • • •
An hour later, Jack walked into The Salty Dawg, the only bar in town, built near the dock at the edge of the harbor overlooking the many boats so that fishermen could spend their hard-earned wages conveniently. Next door was the Puff Inn, the only bed and breakfast in town. The Dawg was crowded and loud. Friday nights were always busy. Though it was bright outside—the summer sun still high—the inside was windowless and dark, the way most bars are, a place where time doesn’t matter, except, of course, for closing time, when the regulars shuffle homeward, exhausted, bleary-eyed, and often broke.
Jack walked up to the bar, leaned close to the bartender, and asked her to turn off the wall-mounted television. She smiled and grabbed the remote. When the screen went black, Jack turned toward the crowd, sitting at tables or standing around the two red, felt-covered pool tables.
‘Can I have your attention?’ he shouted, trying to catch everyone’s notice. ‘Excuse me!’
The room quieted down.
‘You all know who I am,’ he said. ‘And you all know my son is missing.’
People facing away turned their chairs toward Jack. He could hear the legs scooting on the wood floor.
‘By now you’ve probably heard that the search has been called off.’
Many heads nodded. Word travels fast. A few of the men exchanged whispers with one another.
Jack took off his baseball cap, wrung it in his hands.
‘I want to ask you to keep looking for my son. He might still be out there.’
Anyone who has ever lived in a fishing community understands moments like this, when news of a lost ship arrives with its list of lost souls. Every fisherman knows such a list could contain names of friends and relatives—perhaps even one day his own name.
‘You all know I lost my wife last year,’ he began.
But Jack couldn’t finish his sentence. He stood in the dark bar, trembling, trying to net the fleeting words. He looked down at the dark blue hat in his hands, saw his dead wife’s name embroidered in gold. Some of the men looked down at their beers, others at the floor. Some pains are unfathomable, too deep to be plumbed. Jack tried to collect himself enough to speak again. Unable, he turned and walked out the door.
He had said enough. Everyone understood.
Someone once said that the world breaks everyone. Most are stronger in the broken place. Some never heal. Jack worried that if he lost his entire family he would be among those too broken to mend.
He looked out over the harbor, at the gently rocking fishing boats, and then he walked down the long dock, turning toward the slip where the Erin Elizabeth was moored. By himself, he untied the ropes and motored slowly to the fueling station, where he filled the tank. The salmon swarming into the Sound were no longer of interest to him. The livelihood they represented didn’t matter. He would continue the search on his own, leaving first thing in the morning after gathering provisions.
Nothing else mattered.
After returning the boat to its slip and securing it for the night, Jack Evanoff drove home in his pickup truck and walked upstairs to his son’s room and sat on the edge of the bed. The springs squeaked. He looked around at the posters on the wall, at the small trophies and ribbons from Seth’s earlier youth. A framed photograph stood on the night stand. In it Seth and his mother were standing on the boat, their arms around each other, laughing, though drenched, their hair wet and flat. Jack remembered that happy day, the picnic on the hill.
A tapping sound caught his attention. He looked out the bedroom window. Just then it began to pour outside, a rain so heavy that its falling on the tin roof was thunderous. It reminded him of the night he last saw his son. Staring out the window, Jack wondered if Seth might still be alive, coping with this storm, somehow. He wondered how long anyone could survive such hardship, let alone a boy. He looked down at the photo in his hands, saddened that he had let so much distance come between them. Tears had fallen on the glass. He wiped them away with his fingertips.
‘I’m sorry,’ the father whispered to the picture of his son. ‘I should never have said the things I said to you. I didn’t mean it.’
Eleven – Qula All’inguq
The old man shuffled close to the young man and spoke again.
‘I am the chief of the Squirrel People. You and your brothers have killed all of my children and grandchildren and now their skins hang outside your house.’
Suddenly the young man understood what had happened. He looked at the girl and saw that she was indeed very beautiful. He felt ashamed and saddened.
Seth climbed the mountain in the middle of the island to see where he was. From the summit, the world spread out in every direction. Seth imagined he could see forever.
To the south lay the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean, unbroken until the southbound waves crashed against the northern coasts of New Zealand and Australia; and even further away, against the Antarctic ice shelves at the southern end of the world. Westward lay the Aleutian Chain, pointing its long, bony finger at the bend toward Asia. A mile or so northward across the bay was the mainland, only the first several miles green with trees, brush, or grass. After that, an impenetrable blanket of snow, thousands of feet deep in places, buried the Chugach Mountains. Nothing survived there, not even mosquitoes. And eastward—in the direction of home—island after island jutted up from the sea like stepping stones set across a stream. From where he stood, Seth imagined he could see his small town, more than a hundred miles away.
He wiped sweat from his forehead. It had been hard work climbing to the summit. Tucker ate snow from a nearby patch, protected from the afternoon sun in the shadow of a ridge. When he had finished eating, he lay in the snow panting. Soon after, the two companions began the descent back
to the beach.
After they’d scrambled down sideways for a few minutes, almost falling down a field of scree, something caught the boy’s eye. He stopped to look. It was a boat traveling slowly along the shoreline, just far enough out to stay in deep water, but far away so that Seth couldn’t hear the engine. He judged by its speed that the boat would reach the beach where the tiny salmon creek emptied into the sea in a matter of minutes. The distance between where he stood on the mountain slope and the beach was much too far to close in the short time, no matter how fast he ran. Seth began to shout, cupping his hands around his mouth. Alternately, he waved his arms, hoping that the contrasting motion against the unmovable mountain might catch the eye of someone aboard.
But the boat kept its unwavering course.
Seth scrambled down the slope as fast as he could, careful not to twist an ankle, shouting all the while. When he was only half way down, he stopped to look and listen. From where he stood, squinting, the boat looked like his father’s. It was the same color and the same shape. But many of the fishing boats in the Sound were white and blue. From a distance, the pilot houses, the giant spools that held the net, and the booms all looked the same.
The boat passed the place where the stream poured into the sea. In a couple minutes it would be out of sight. Seth ran downhill recklessly, regardless of the peril. The tree line was approaching. Once inside the dense forest he would be unable to see, or be seen. At the last minute, while he could still see the boat before he descended into the trees and brush, Seth stopped to look. And just then, as the boat made a slow turn to head toward the next island, Seth could see the back of the boat. And while it was still much too distant to read the individual words, he could see, just barely, two bright yellow dots on either side of the stern—two yellow flowers on either side of the unreadable name.
It was his father.
He ran crashing through the forest, using his hands to protect his face and eyes from limbs and branches.
By the time he reached the gravelly beach, winded, the boat was gone. Seth couldn’t believe his misfortune. If he hadn’t climbed the mountain, he might have been standing on the beach when the boat passed.
Standing there now, filled with a desperate and unlikely hope as grey and weathered as beach stones, Seth remembered something his father, in a comic mood, used to say to him.
‘If it weren’t for bad luck, you’d have no luck at all.’
He had always laughed at the saying in the past. It wasn’t funny this time.
When it was clear the boat was not going to return, Seth trudged toward the streamlet, defeated, pushed along by his empty stomach. Tucker ran ahead, happily chasing shorebirds and seagulls, oblivious to self-doubt, excruciating disappointment, loneliness.
At that moment, Seth wished he were a dog.
Upon reaching the stream, Seth saw a salmon stranded in a small pool left behind when the tide went out. It was a simple matter to catch it. Luckily, the bears were nowhere in sight. After gutting the fish with his pocketknife, Seth tried to make a fire again. Although he was growing accustomed to eating his food raw, he wanted to roast the fish over a fire. He gathered tinder and dry wood, stopping every so often to shout at Tucker, who kept sneaking up to lick the salmon.
But try as he might, with the determination of an athlete, no sparks arose from his futile attempts with stick or stone. He kept at it for a long time, his frustration building. Without matches or a lighter he would have to eat the fish raw. Seth tossed the useless sticks aside and picked a handful of dandelions growing above the hide tide line. He knew they were edible. His mother sometimes made dandelion salad.
While the slant sun watched as Seth and Tucker ate their supper of fish and weed, two curious seals swam close to shore, their sleek heads bobbing on the sparkling surface of the sea. Seth cut two chunks of tail meat and tossed them at the seals, which raced for the pieces, beating the hovering seagulls.
Seth remembered his grandmother’s story of how the first seals came into existence. She had told it to him when they were standing on the dock watching some seals swimming amid the moored boats. Seals frequent harbors, catching salmon that inadvertently fall overboard during unloading or eating discarded halibut after they are filleted, their corpses tossed into the water.
It was a strange myth as myths go, unsettling even.
Sitting on a boulder eating his supper of salmon and dandelions in the sunshine, sharing the fish with Tucker, who, to his credit, sat patiently waiting for his next bite, Seth recited the story to himself, his memory stumbling at times to remember the details. Even in his mind, he began the story the way all such stories begin.
A long time ago.
As young as he was, Seth vaguely understood the reason. To begin a story in the long ago, in deep time—dateless and immeasurable—guards its usefulness, even its veracity. Stories set in a known history, in a known place and time, as are legends, are easily cut up, like canned salmon, every part questioned, their full purpose ruined. All important stories, no matter where they arise in the world or in what language, begin in a similar manner—time out of time, being out of being—existing only to exist, for no sake, for every sake. There can be meaningful truths in myths that do not depend on fact. The power of myths does not require steadfast belief in the story: that is the realm of religion.
In his own way, Seth knew these things.
And so he began.
A long time ago there was a girl who lived in a small village. The day came when she was old enough to marry. One night, a man crept into her room and forced himself on her. It was so dark she couldn’t see who the man was. The next night, he came again, and the night after that. But she was smart, that girl. The next time the man stole into her room, she scratched his face with her fingernails. The next morning, she walked around the village, looking for a man with scratches on his face. She found him. To her horror, she saw that he was her own brother! Ashamed, she ran to the cliff at the edge of the village and hurled herself into the sea. But instead of drowning, she surfaced as a seal! She had turned into the very first female seal. Seeing what his dishonored sister had done and unable to live with his own shame, the brother also cast himself off the cliff. And he surfaced also as the first male seal.
The end of that story had always bothered Seth. How had anything changed for the poor girl except her appearance? He remembered the sound of his grandmother’s voice as she told him the story. Why couldn’t her myths be more like fairy tales? Unlike fairy tales, which begin cruelly and are frightening but generally end happily, myths rarely have joyful endings. But then he thought, how can they? The world is a hard, breaking place.
There must be equally hard stories.
And then Seth also remembered his grandmother’s story of how an entire village was once destroyed by a volcano after some irreverent boys cast stones at salmon spawning in a stream. No second chances in that story. Nature rarely gives a break.
Sitting there with his hands dripping in raw fish flesh and slime, Seth understood that some stories are about how ruthless and unforgiving life is, and that they are that way to help us navigate through rough seas. Perhaps he himself would one day be a myth, the story of a boy and his faithful dog lost at sea. It would be the myth that would survive, even if he did not.
After supper, Seth and Tucker walked along the beach. Two deer stepped out from the brush far ahead of them, stopped to look, wearily, lifting one front leg then the other, ready to flee in an instant, their ears and white tail twitching. Tucker saw them. He barked, and the nervous deer bounded back into the forest.
Seth stood at the edge of the sea facing the mainland, measuring the watery distance between.
A mile, he thought. It was about a mile to the other side.
Twelve – Qula Atel’ek
‘We did not know that you live like people,’ the young man replied shamefully, tears filling the w
ells of his eyes. ‘We did not know that you love your children and grandchildren. I am sorry. Forgive me. I will tell my brothers not to hunt your people any longer.’
Seth combed the beach for rope. He found several pieces of varying lengths and colors. He was surprised how much rope was washed ashore, undoubtedly from snagged and lost fishing nets. Combining these newly found pieces of rope with those he had found earlier and used to hold his shelter together, he lashed three grey driftwood logs into a makeshift raft. It was more awkward-looking canoe than square platform, like the one he imagined Huck Finn and the slave Jim fashioned to float the Mississippi, the one chewed up by the paddle-wheeler. He would use it to cross to the mainland, a distance far too great to swim, especially since tidal surges poured only between the islands like a river, not toward the mainland.
Seth even found a piece of lumber that would serve as a paddle.
But most important, he found a one-liter plastic soda bottle with an inch of flat cola still inside. It was a necessary find. Seth had no idea how often he would find fresh drinking water once he left the island. With the capped bottle, he could at least carry some water with him wherever he went until he found another source. He rinsed and filled it in the stream and tied a piece of cord from a frayed rope around the neck so he could sling it over his shoulder like a canteen.