by John Smelcer
Jack came out from the pilothouse wearing a white T-shirt, a cup of coffee in his hand.
‘Morning,’ he replied. ‘Got time for a cup of coffee?’
‘Always got time for a friend.’
Lucky climbed aboard and followed Jack into the galley, helping himself to a cup. He knew which cabinet they were in. He joined Jack, who removed his dark blue cap when they sat down at the small table.
‘How’s things?’ Jack asked.
‘Been fishing with Joe Weil on the Luck of the Irish,’ said Lucky, stirring a spoon of sugar into his cup.
‘I heard. How’s that working out?’
Lucky looked down as he spoke, as if he were ashamed of himself, which he was in a way for abandoning his long-time captain.
‘The season’s shaping up pretty good so far. Not as good as last year, though.’
Neither spoke for a couple of minutes. Lucky was the first to break the silence.
‘I see you still have the dog’s stuff,’ he said, looking at the food dish on the floor.
Jack turned to look at it, stared at it for a moment, as though he hadn’t seen it before, as if he didn’t know what it was.
‘Guess I just forgot to get rid of it,’ he said finally.
‘You know, Jack, you have to let go sometime and move on with your life.’
‘It’s just a bowl,’ Jack growled.
‘Yeah, it’s just a bowl, but it’s like the other things you haven’t let go of.’
‘Like what?’ asked Jack, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest.
‘Like that video game sitting on the counter. Why do you keep it?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Jack. ‘It’s not hurting anything to sit over there.’
‘But it’s not doing any good, either . . . just reminding you of your son.’
Both men were quiet again.
‘I gotta go,’ said Lucky, finishing his coffee and setting it in the small galley sink. ‘We’re heading out. But I need to say something, Jack, and you gotta listen. Bad things happen. No one can control it. But you got to keep going in spite of it, maybe because of it.’
‘What are you trying to say, Lucky, that I should just forget my family?’
Lucky pushed his chair under the table, stood behind it, a barrier for his guilt.
‘No one’s saying that, Jack. But if you don’t get back to fishing, you’re going to lose everything: your house, your boat, your livelihood. What’s happened to you shouldn’t have happened to anyone. No one’s blaming you for being sad. But you can’t give up. What does that say to the rest of us?’
Lucky stood in the doorway for a moment, letting his words sink into the depths of his friend’s darkness, and then he turned and left.
Jack sat at the table for a long time, slowly turning his empty cup, staring out the window. Finally, he stood up and put his baseball cap back on.
‘He’s wrong. It hasn’t been that long.’
• • • • •
Jack knew that Lucky was right in some ways. He had spent all of his time looking for his son, which meant he wasn’t making money fishing. That’s why Lucky wouldn’t go out with him anymore. He had to make a living. At the rate he was going, Jack wouldn’t be able to pay the loan on his boat, which meant he really could lose his livelihood and his only means of searching for Seth. Besides, diesel was expensive. He had to pay for it somehow.
Jack drove up to the town’s cemetery on a hill overlooking the bay. He sat in the quiet truck for a long time. Then he climbed out, slammed the squeaky door, and gathered wild flowers from alongside the gravel parking lot, mostly dandelions, fireweed, and forget-me-nots, Alaska’s state flower. The yellow, pink, and blue bouquet looked lovely to Jack. He laid it on the ground beside his wife’s gravestone, which was simply engraved with two small words.
Wife. Mother.
He knelt on the grass, saying nothing, running a hand along the smooth surface of the stone, his fingers tracing the groove of the words. Several times he looked high into the sky, saying nothing, the drifting clouds saying even less.
Finally, he stood up and straightened himself.
‘I’ll find our boy. I promise.’
Jack drove straight home and pulled his wife’s car out from the garage, where it had been parked since the day before she died. He washed and cleaned it and sold it to the only used car dealer in town. The man knew why Jack was selling it, so he gave him more than it was worth.
Sometimes compassion comes from the most unlikely places.
Jack took part of the money and paid his boat loan for several months. Then he walked down to the marina and put some money on account at the fuel depot. Afterwards, he felt better than he thought he would. Somehow, selling his wife’s car helped. In his mind, it seemed as if she were contributing to the search for their son.
Later that evening, under a blue, cloudless sky, the Erin Elizabeth cleared the harbor, turned its bow westward, and headed into the blinding sun, followed by a flock of noisy seagulls.
Fifteen – Qula Talliman
The remorseful young man agreed, and so the old man began to work his powerful magic. He took the hunter outside and tied his limbs to the Great Tree. Then he pushed sharp needles made of bone with string made of gut through the young man’s skin and pulled them tight in every direction, tying the ends of the strings to the tree’s branches.
There was a piercing needle for every dead squirrel.
Two pink buoys bobbed against a rocky shore.
Seth waded out to retrieve them. Tucker stared curiously from the rocks, wondering if the strange floating objects were something to eat. Giant apples, perhaps. Each buoy was as big as a beach ball. Seth recognized what they were used for. Net floats. His father used them on his boat to float net lines and for marking submerged crab pots—resting on the bottom of the sea, tethered by long ropes. Although deep red when new, the color of the rubber quickly fades to pink from sunlight and the weather. The bottom of the buoys with their eyelets were still a deep blue. From where he stood, Seth could see they were connected by a long rope.
As Seth waded ashore with his catch, an idea was forming in his mind. He cut one end of the long rope, shortening it to a little less than three feet. Then he retied it, making sure the knots securing it to the buoys were tight. Now, he could use his double-buoy invention as a kind of unsinkable life preserver.
When the tide was just right, Seth waded into the bay and situated himself so that the short rope ran across his chest and under each armpit. The buoys floating on either side reminded him of the armbands his mother strapped around his little body when he was first learning to swim. In such a fashion, he was able to use his arms to swim while floating effortlessly.
He turned and called Tucker, who splashed into the water and swam around him in an eager circle. Together, they struck out toward the next eastward island. Whenever Tucker grew tired, Seth held him close, holding his head well above the water, their combined weight barely affecting the two, stout buoys.
Without incident, the two made it ashore to a small island, a landmass as tiny as their first landfall the night they fell overboard. Although Seth and Tucker were cold from their swim, the sun quickly warmed them. By midday, followed by his dog, Seth used his flotation device to swim to the next, much larger island, leaving behind the provisionless pit stop on their journey.
They were making good headway, the miles falling away.
Come mid-afternoon, Seth explored their new home looking for something to eat. Island hopping burned calories.
During his search he made his way into a small cove with a fast-flowing creek pouring into the far end. The water at the mouth of the stream was choked with salmon, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. There were so many fish that the light-grey pebbly bottom of the cove was obscured by salmon. The place was a fi
sherman’s dream. If Seth only had a fishing rod he could catch as many fish as he needed. Without one, though, it would be almost impossible to catch one. Every time he waded into the water to snatch one, the cove’s surface would roil with splashing and darting fish, some as long as his leg.
As he stood knee-deep trying to figure out how to catch his supper, Seth remembered the word for salmon his grandmother had taught him.
Igalluk.
She had made her grandson say the word many times until he pronounced it correctly.
Ee-GOL-luk.
Afterwards, she told him that there was an Alutiiq name for each of the five salmon species: reds, silvers, pinks, kings, and chums. Most Alaskans call chums ‘dog salmon’ because in the old days the chums, the least tasty of the five species, were dried and stored to feed their dog sled team all winter.
Seth couldn’t remember all the names, but he remembered igalluk.
The memory of his grandmother teaching him that day saddened him. She passed away only a month later. Seth remembered what she had demanded of him the day she died.
‘Don’t turn away from your heritage the way your father did. Promise me, grandson, that you will not forget the things I have taught you.’
Seth kissed her forehead and promised. What else could he say at a moment like that, a moment chiseled in stone, everlasting in memory?
‘I promise, Umma,’ he’d told her, using the Alutiiq word for grandmother.
She’d slipped away after that, quietly and peacefully, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.
Standing there in the shallows of the cove, watching the darting salmon beyond his grasp, Seth suddenly had an idea. He knew how he might catch a salmon. He rummaged along the shore looking for a suitably long pole-like branch. When he found one, he sharpened the end with his pocketknife. Then he waded into the water behind the fish, slowly working his way toward the shallow, narrow stream. From behind, his shadow didn’t fall on the large school, frightening them. When he was close enough, he stabbed a fish, not throwing the spear. The sharp point penetrated all the way through, but the flapping, wiggling fish slipped off and swam away, most likely to die later from its wound. Seth tried twice more, and both times his supper escaped.
The losses frustrated Seth. Tucker had an expression that seemed to say, ‘So, where’s supper? Look at them all. What’s so hard? Just get one. What’s up with the stick?’
Seth sat down on the beach and thought about his technique. It dawned on him that he needed something on the spear tip to keep the fish from sliding off once stabbed. He used the point of his knife to cut a small slot through the spear, just a few inches above the sharpened tip. Then, he found and cut a slender branch from a shrub, skinny enough to fit through the slot. He cut off both ends until only a couple of inches protruded from either side. The green branch was slightly flexible. Seth hoped the addition to his spear would act as a barb, securing the salmon long enough to seize it.
Armed with his invention, Seth waded into the water again, and this time when he speared a salmon, it was unable to slide off the end and escape. In no time, the proud, young fisherman had caught two fish, a meal fit for a king. Seth gutted both, and after he and Tucker had consumed one raw (as always), he tied the other to a piece of rope and kept it fresh in the water.
While looking at the skein full of bright-red salmon eggs he had pulled out from both fish and discarded when he gutted them, Seth decided to try preparing something he recalled from his grandmother, something she and other elders liked to eat. He built a little circle of rocks near the edge of the creek and placed the eggs inside, so that they were chilled by the water, but the stone structure kept them from being washed away. He covered the stone circle with leafy branches so that hovering seagulls wouldn’t see them and eat them all. By the next morning, the eggs would turn from bright red to a pale pink. The exposure to the fresh water would make them somewhat hard.
Seth recalled how the elders referred to this delicacy as beebles. He remembered the word because it sounded so funny. His grandmother used to say it over and over and then laugh. She said that no one knew for sure where the word came from. It’s not a Native word. Seth decided, when he first ate them, that they must have got that funny name because they looked and felt like tiny pink bee-bees. Though oily and fishy-tasting, they were very nutritious, making popping sounds when you chewed them.
After a long and restless night, fearful of bears because of the salmon-plentiful creek, Seth and Tucker ate the beebles for breakfast.
While they ate, a distant rumbling caught their attention. A jet airliner was flying over thirty thousand feet above them, its long white contrail dissolving in its path. Seth didn’t even move. There was no need. From such a height, the airplane was of no help to them whatsoever. Even if he somehow managed a signal fire, no one aboard an airliner five or six miles above would notice.
Later that day, a storm blew in from the gulf. It was almost as bad as the one that launched their adventure. The slant, wind-driven rain lashed at everything, tamping down the earth itself. The little stream swelled and turned muddy, and the salmon went out to sea. In no time, the mossy forest was rain sodden. Tree branches provided little protection. Seth wandered the island seeking shelter from the storm with Tucker trailing behind him, a drenched and pathetic orange mop with four legs.
Seth eventually discovered a cave in the side of a hill, its mouth partially concealed by undergrowth. He crawled inside. Immediately, the cavern opened up, revealing a large room, tall enough to stand in. Grey light filtered down from several holes in the ceiling. But it was mostly dry. It took a moment for Seth’s eyes to adjust to the near darkness.
The room, for lack of a better word, was about twenty or thirty feet wide, and maybe twice as deep, the roof of the cave slanting lower toward the far back wall. It wasn’t your traditional cave with stalactites and stalagmites. Large rocks were strewn on the floor where they had fallen from the ceiling.
As Seth made his way around the cave, something snapped underfoot. It sounded like a branch or twig. He bent down to see what it was. To his horror he saw that it was a skeleton. A human skeleton. He jumped back. As his eyes focused, he saw that there were two others nearby. After the initial fear subsided, Seth examined the bones more closely. He found a sword lying near one with some kind of markings. He carried it near the entrance where the light was better. The markings near the hilt of the sword looked like writing he had seen in a Japanese restaurant his mother used to make his father take them to a couple times a year. Although Seth didn’t read or speak Japanese, he recognized the shape of the characters. Besides, he knew that it wasn’t German, French, or Spanish, classes offered at school. A few minutes later he found an old, rusted pistol with some markings that looked similar. The slide and magazine wouldn’t move, welded shut by decades of rust.
But what astonished Seth the most was what he eventually noticed on the wall toward the rear of the cave. Someone had scratched symbols into the stone, most likely with the point of the sword. There were three short vertical sets of symbols. Wondering what the three brief columns of strange figures might mean, he realized that there were three skeletons and the scratchings were probably their names.
While he sat on a rock in the cave waiting for the storm to subside, Seth puzzled over his gruesome discovery. How had the three Japanese ended up inside the cave? And how long had they been here?
He remembered from his Alaska history class how Japan had attacked Alaska during World War II. Everyone knows about Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, but the Alaskan invasion remains largely forgotten. The battles were far away on two tiny islands at the western end of the Aleutian chain, a thin arm of islands that extends over a thousand miles toward Asia—and Japan. Seth remembered that the battles raged all winter on tiny Kiska and Attu. The winter was hard on both sides, especially on the American soldiers, who had been diverted to Alaska after trai
ning for desert warfare in Africa. They arrived without proper clothing and equipment for the frigid, hostile conditions.
Frostbite took its toll.
Many American soldiers suffered amputated fingers and toes.
But the soldiers on both sides weren’t the only ones to suffer. The local Natives, called Aleuts, suffered almost as much, perhaps even more. The American government, worried that the invasion might spread to the rest of the islands, evacuated the Natives. They forcibly removed them from their homes and shipped them to a dilapidated old fishing cannery a thousand miles away. It seemed like no one from the government even bothered to investigate the site or its structures, which had broken windows, leaky roofs, and no heat source or running water or latrines. They dropped off the Aleuts and left them, largely forgotten, until the end of the war. They said it was for their own protection. It bothered Seth that the Aleuts, citizens of Alaska, a territory of the United States, were treated worse than the Japanese prisoners.
Today, the internment place is littered with untended graves.
At the very end of the Aleutian Island battle, just as an armada of American transport ships arrived through a thick fog carrying reinforcements, several small, two-man Japanese reconnaissance submarines escaped the makeshift harbor. Each had enough diesel fuel to keep their engines running for maybe a thousand miles.
Seth remembered reading that none of the little submarines were ever captured.
Looking at the skeletons and the words cut into the wall, Seth imagined that these three men might have crammed themselves into one of those tiny subs and made their way up the Aleutian Chain until running out of fuel. Perhaps they made their way toward the mainland just as he and Tucker were trying to do. They must have survived off the land until their deaths—from cold, from exposure, from hunger. Apparently, just before they died, they carved their names into the wall, in the event that they were ever discovered, and maybe a short message elsewhere in the cave that Seth had failed to notice.