by John Smelcer
While he worked, building his means of escape at the edge of the high-tide line, a chilling breeze swept across the sea. Luckily, the yellow raincoat offered some protection from the wind’s teeth. Frequently, Seth had to stop to pull up his jeans, which had become loose on him. Eventually, he tightened his belt to keep them from falling down.
When he was finished securing his canoe-raft, he and Tucker waited for the slack tide, the interval between tidal shifts when the tide is neither coming nor going, neither rising nor falling, that window of opportunity when the sea is nearly as unmoving as a lake. When the moment arrived, Seth dragged the craft into the water and climbed aboard, careful not to flip it over. Two feet wide, more or less, the raft was unstable and tipsy. But with only enough rope to lash the three logs, he could not have built it wider.
Straddling the raft with his legs dangling in the water on either side, Seth motioned for Tucker to join him. It took some trial and error, but eventually he encouraged the dog to lie down and remain still. Using the impromptu paddle, Seth turned the bow toward the mainland and struck deep into the water ahead of him, pulling hard and long on one side and then the other, making each stroke count, the way his father had taught him. With the island now at his back, the uncertain craft glided landward.
A sea otter accompanied him for a while.
A little more than halfway across, Seth noticed that the raft was sitting lower in the water. The grey beach logs were partially waterlogged from each high tide that had reached them. Once in the sea, they absorbed even more water, sponge-like, gaining weight, losing buoyancy. The craft was sinking. Seth paddled faster, racing against the inevitable. A few minutes later, the water was up to his waist. Tucker stood looking nervously at his submerged paws, as if he were deciding whether to go down with the ship or jump overboard and swim for it.
Every dog for himself.
By the time they were close to the mainland beach, the raft had sunk from beneath them, and Seth and Tucker had to swim for shore. Almost humorously, like a bad joke, Seth thought about his iPod as he swam behind Tucker.
‘How could it possibly ever work again?’ he thought and laughed to himself.
The two castaways sat on the beach for a while, letting the sun warm and dry them, while the tide slowly retreated, shrinking the bay. Toward evening, they walked along the narrow beach with the sun at their back. Once the tide returned, the going was made difficult by the thick vegetation through which the rising water forced them to walk above the high-tide line. At times Seth and Tucker had to force their way through nearly impenetrable brush and over rocky outcrops.
They spent the hungry night sleeping on the grassy ledge of a rocky outcrop a dozen feet above the lapping sea, boy and dog dreaming of food, urged on by their complaining stomachs, as empty as a shallow bay at low tide.
The next morning, after hiking for a couple miles and passing a washed up and decayed beluga whale—infested with flies and maggots—the two travelers stopped at a safe distance from a sow brown bear with two-year-old cubs digging in the dark sand and mud, rooting in the holes with their snouts. From time to time they’d pull up a long golden-brown colored clam with their teeth, expertly pry it open with their claws, and consume the slimy meat inside. Even from a considerable distance, Seth could see that they were razor clams, so named because of their brittle, razor-thin shells, which live only in muddy and sandy, not gravel, beaches like the beaches most common in the Sound. He and his parents had often gone clam digging. He loved it. It was so messy, but so much fun finding the little holes in the mucky sand and then digging for the clams on the seaward side of the holes. When they finished their searching and gathering, retreating from the advancing tide, the beach always looked the way this beach did, with dozens of craters, as if a bomber had dropped its payload on the sandy shore.
Seth and Tucker circled up through the thick and tangled woods, moving far down the beach, giving ample space between themselves and the bears. Using a flat rock, Seth dug after the buried clams, stopping occasionally to keep an eye on the bears. The stone worked so well as a hand shovel that pretty soon Seth had caught half a dozen clams, some as long as ten inches. Each time Seth pulled one out from a hole, Tucker jumped at the chance to continue digging in the same place, certain of more clams.
He never learned and he never found one.
When he had harvested ten fat clams, Seth used his pocket knife to open each one. Unlike steamer clams, razor clams open easily once slit down the middle. Seth would open and eat two, then open a clam for Tucker. Before long, both boy and dog had eaten their fill of the raw, slimy meat. Seth liked the taste of the clams far better than he did the black mussels, and grimaced and gagged less.
Tucker didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
A raven flew down and pecked at the little bits of meat and guts left in the shells.
After their meal, Seth turned his attention back to the matter of getting home. He knew that his town was the first fishing community along the coast toward the east. If he followed the coastline, he’d eventually run into it, though he had no idea exactly how far away that might be. He knew, too, that to go inland was suicide. He remembered the view from the mountain top, how mountain after mountain loomed in the great distance, buried almost to their spiky peaks under snow, the accumulation of ten thousand years or longer.
Only death lived there.
No, thought Seth, to follow the coast was the surest bet. With his plan formulated, he and Tucker set off in the direction of home, their strength and determination bolstered by their satisfied bellies.
After about an hour’s hike, the shore abruptly turned inland, to the north, following a long, narrow bay that was flanked by green mountains on both sides. From where he stood, Seth could see the other side less than a quarter of a mile away. If it weren’t for the water, they could walk across in about five minutes. He could almost throw a rock that far, he mused, though he knew he really couldn’t.
For the next two days the boy and his dog worked their way along and around the narrow bay, the going made slow by dense brush, steep cliffs, and changing tides. After two full days, exhausted, they stood across from the exact same point where they had begun, with less than a quarter mile of water between. Seth couldn’t believe they had traveled so far—fifteen to twenty miles he estimated—only to end up right back at the mouth of the bay.
Standing there, looking backward toward their recent past, defeated, it dawned on Seth that the entire coast of the Sound was like this, beset by dozens and dozens of similar bays, many with their northern terminus guarded by untraversable glaciers. He recalled having seen with his own eyes such glacially bound bays the few times he and his parents had flown to Anchorage. To follow the coastline was impossible.
The only way home was by using the islands in the sea.
Thirteen – Qula Pinga’an
But the chief was still sad. ‘It is too late to stop killing us,’ he said. ‘We are all dead now. My granddaughter and I are all that is left of our people.’
‘I did not mean to kill you all,’ exclaimed the young hunter with tears filling his eyes. ‘Isn’t there something I can do?’
‘There is a way,’ replied the old chief. ‘I can make you a great shaman and you can return my people.’
Seth found a driftwood log. He could tell by its weight that it was drier than the logs he had used to fashion the raft. He dragged it down to the beach from well above the high-tide line. When the currents were right, the flow of surging tide going toward the easterly island, he pushed the log into the water and wrapped an arm around it, using his free arm to paddle. Tucker swam alongside. Whenever the dog appeared to grow tired, Seth placed his arm around his upper chest, lifting Tucker’s head above water. In such a manner, they eventually found their way to the beach.
Seth recognized the island.
His father had anchored here many tim
es to picnic, telling the story of what happened to the people who used to live in this place. It was one of the most tragic, little-known stories of Alaskan history, of American history.
His father said that a village used to exist at the exact place where Seth now stood on the beach, looking out over the sparkling water at a raft of floating ducks. More than a hundred people had lived here in small houses. There had been a church, a cemetery, a long dock, a village store, even a schoolhouse. Seth could see the remains of the dilapidated schoolhouse on the top of the hill overlooking the beach, its roof caved in, a stark reminder of what had happened here.
Seth remembered the story the way his father had told him.
In March of 1964, barely five years after Alaska became the forty-ninth state, the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America rocked south-central Alaska.
It was Good Friday. The epicenter of the quake was offshore, deep in the earth beneath Prince William Sound. The quake destroyed parts of Anchorage, Seward, and Valdez, collapsing roads, streets, and buildings. While most Alaskans are aware of the effects of the quake on the mostly white towns, almost no one knows the untold story of Chenega, the small Native village that used to stand along this shore.
A side effect of the earthquake was the creation of four giant tidal waves, called tsunamis, which formed offshore near the epicenter. The waves, each as tall as a six-storey building, raced across the Sound at speeds over 300 miles per hour, aimed right at the tiny, unsuspecting village.
Seth was always astonished that waves could travel so fast.
It was hard to imagine.
Without warning, the waves blasted through everything like giant bulldozers made of churning seawater and sea-bottom debris, destroying whatever was in their path, buildings and people alike. The fortunate ran uphill as fast as they could. The next day there was nothing left of the village, not even the lumber from the shattered houses and boat hulls and timbers from the dock.
Nothing floated in the bay. The tides had carried it all away, erasing the community from the face of the earth. All they found was the Bible from the church, preserved in a new church to this day.
Twenty-six people, more than a quarter of the village population, died that day.
Seth looked behind him at where the village used to be. He marveled at how far up the hill the waves must have traveled. Only the old schoolhouse perched at the top of the hill survived untouched. Now time was claiming even that.
Seth walked up to the schoolhouse and found a plaque with the names of the dead. He read them all, one after the other, recognizing some of the family names from his own town.
• • • • •
Seth and Tucker stayed on the island for several days, eating whatever the island provided, which wasn’t much. The villagers who had lived there used boats to catch salmon and hunt seals. One of the strangest things the castaways ate was gumboots. Seth knew that ‘gumboots’ was not their real name but what his father called a form of chiton, a sea slug in a hard shell that clings to rocks like barnacles, easily harvested at low tide.
Alaska’s escargot.
Seth pried them off boulders with his knife, and, like always, he and Tucker ate them raw. He didn’t know why they were called gumboots, perhaps because they are so rubbery, like eating boiled shoe leather. Seth even remembered the Alutiiq word his grandmother had taught him: uuqiituk. He liked saying that word, the way his mouth moved when making the unfamiliar sounds: oo-KEE-duk. He remembered that some famous British writer had once said that the most beautiful word in the English language is cellar door.
He’d obviously never heard Alutiiq.
While Seth ate the slimy snails, swallowing them instead of chewing them, wishing he were eating donuts instead.
Many times Seth tried to make a fire—unsuccessfully. And twice, different fishing boats passed the island too far away for anyone aboard to see the boy waving from shore. A smoke signal could have ended his journey on either occasion. But it wasn’t to be. Without fire, Seth and Tucker were all but invisible to the passing world. Only their own muscles and ingenuity and perseverance would rescue them.
One afternoon, Seth found a bush full of small, white berries. While it was still too early in the summer for blueberries or cranberries or rosehips, these looked ready to eat. Seth ate a few. They tasted bitter. But he knew that berries contain important nutrients, like Vitamin C to reduce scurvy, old-time sailors’ bane, so he swallowed them nonetheless. He gave some to Tucker as well. The dog ate a few, but didn’t seem to like them very much and turned his nose away.
After Seth had eaten several handfuls, the two castaways explored the low tide pools, looking for food. While they were walking along the beach, Tucker suddenly stopped and retched, throwing up the berries. He vomited several times, until nothing came up any longer but slick bile. All the while, Seth squatted beside him, patting the dog’s back, encouraging him the way his mother sometimes did whenever he had been sick.
‘It’s OK, boy. You’ll be all right.’
A little further down the beach, Seth suddenly felt a wave of nausea that stopped him in his tracks. His face broke into a sweat, and he dropped to his knees, weak and dizzy. And then it came. He began to throw up like Tucker, violently. The hot, sour vomit even came up through his nose. He hated the dry heaves most, when nothing came up at all, yet the sickened stomach still tried to purge itself. The heaves were so forceful that Seth was sure he would retch up his lung or part of his stomach.
Weakened and exhausted, his gut muscles as sore as if he had done a thousand sit-ups, Seth climbed up above the high tide line and lay down in some tall grass. Tucker lay down and looked listlessly at his young master, the rim of his eyes red and sagging. Seth felt the dog’s nose. It was warm. He remembered his parents telling him that a warm nose means a dog is sick. He didn’t need a warm nose to know that.
The vomiting was a dead giveaway.
For the next twenty-four hours, the two of them lay in the grass, hidden from seagulls and any passing boats. Seth’s cold sweats continued on and off, his clothes drenched, his muscles tight and trembling. Several times he had to raise himself to his knees to heave. He’d collapse afterwards, too weak to hold himself up for long, too weak to swat away mosquitoes. At one point, dreamlike, Seth thought he heard a boat engine and voices close by, but he was too weak to pull himself up to look.
While he lay curled beside his dog, Seth thought about his life since his mother had died, how he spent all his time sitting in his room, pretty much ignoring his friends, watching television, listening to his music, playing video games, surfing the internet, conversing in chat rooms, and texting on his mobile phone instead of spending time with real human beings. He saw himself sitting all alone in his small room while his friends played football and basketball, went swimming, had sleepovers, or just hung around the pizzeria in town.
Looking at himself that way, distantly, Seth felt a change taking place, something he could actually feel above the continuing waves of nausea. He felt disconnected, unleashed from all those solitary moments and moods, the inward diversions from the outside world. He suddenly felt no connection at all to those things he had overused to isolate himself from everyone. And just as suddenly, Seth missed and longed for his father.
He thought about what his father had gone through on the day of the wreck, the accident that killed his mother, how his father must have felt as he crawled over to his wife, saw her lying broken in the snow, unable to save her, the winter cold and darkness absorbing her warmth and light.
Seth began to cry.
For the first time—really for the very first time—he felt his father’s loss, the grief that must lie beneath his facade of strength and stoicism, which Seth had always viewed as a lack of caring, or worse, as indifference. He cried harder, not just for himself and the loss of his mother, but for his father, for his loss—of his wife and, now
, of his son.
That night, as he lay shivering in a sweaty delirium, Seth dreamed that he was grown, a shabby figure like Robinson Crusoe climbing palm trees to cut coconuts, marking days with scratches on a tree. The dream disturbed Seth, the notion of being lost for so many years. He mumbled in his sleep, occasionally calling out, waking Tucker. He also had a strange dream in which the dead people of the island, children and adults alike, came and danced around him. His mother was there, too. In the vision, he danced with the ghosts, the sound of seal skin drums echoing across the sea.
It was the first time Seth had dreamed of his mother since her death.
By late afternoon the next day, Seth was feeling strong enough to get up and look for food and fresh water. Both boy and dog were dehydrated from their ordeal. As they walked along the beach in search of food for their very empty stomachs, Seth had to stop to tighten his belt one more hole to keep his jeans from falling down. The knees were almost worn out, the hems frayed. He was shedding pounds the way mountains shed snow in the spring and summer—a trickle at first, then faster and faster, the alpine snow fields shrinking to nothingness. His belt was running out of holes.
Tucker looked leaner as well—his ribs beginning to show—but his coat was still shiny, the sign of a healthy dog.
Seth’s weight wasn’t the only thing changing. As he knelt over a pool of rainwater quenching his thirst, he saw the reflection of his thinning face covered with a scruffy beard and sideburns, his dark hair disheveled.
Everything about him was changing.
Fourteen – Qula Staaman
The young woman didn’t believe that her husband was dead. She climbed a steep hill at the edge of the sea and stood watching for him. For weeks, her mother and sisters brought her food and drink. One day, after months, the comforters returned and found only a pile of stones where she had stood.
Morning, Jack!’ Lucky shouted up from the dock.