Demon Spirit, Devil Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  Five minutes. Ten. Twelve.

  We only had a couple of hours in Eagle River before the nearly full moon slid over the trees and made the salmon too skittish to count. William’s unreliable motor was eating away at that window.

  Stone-faced, eyes closed, feet in grungy, sloshing water, Harvey perched on her seat. Harvey hated disorder. I knew she was trying to keep calm in a situation she couldn’t control.

  Me, I checked my watch every thirty seconds.

  At fifteen-and-a-half minutes, the motor finally caught and we spend away.

  Near the mouth of Eagle River, we jumped out of William’s skiff.

  Turing around, I gasped. The Pacific Ocean lay before us, entirely unbroken to the south, north, and western horizon, where the orange sun slid down beneath a gaudy rose sky. An amber ribbon skipped across the sea surface and ended at our feet.

  “My god, William. People must come out here just to see sunsets.”

  “They do.”

  “Hey, you two,” Harvey said. “Let’s get going.”

  We helped William pull the dinghy higher onto the shingle.

  I pulled off my windbreaker and ran a hand down my bare forearm. “The wetsuits they gave us on Kinuk don’t have sleeves. We’ll be in the water for a while and we’ll need full wetsuits.”

  “The wooden box in the shed. Take what you need,” he said.

  We dug out the smallest wetsuits from the bottom off the box and pulled them over our bathing suits.

  I fingered a hole in my sleeve. “Not sure about these. They’re at least five millimeters thick but look pretty beat up.”

  Harvey shrugged and stuffed the rest of the dive gear in a beat-up duffle bag. We walked upstream to the reach where William had counted fish the day before.

  Offering to go first, I fumbled with fin and mask straps, pulled on the hood and fins, walked backward into the river, and tried to not kick up stones or make quick movements. In the middle of the river, I slid the mask over my hood and eyes, wiggled fingers into the gloves, positioned the snorkel mouthpiece between my teeth, and slipped under the water. Warmed by the August sun, the river wasn’t as cold as I expected. But the borrowed wetsuit was too large and cool water instantly seeped down my neck and over my wrists and ankles. Soon I’d be sopping wet.

  There wasn’t much current, and gentle movement of the fins kept me traveling upstream at a steady rate. Salmon were easy to spot. Long, sleek gray ghosts, they glided through the water like sluggish torpedoes. From above and in the fading light, I could just make out the crimson underbelly of the males. My bulky form didn’t seem to bother them. This was nothing like snorkeling Maine’s intertidal where cunner and other fish instantly vanished beneath seaweed cover. Maybe the salmon, a food staple for millennia, sensed the Haida’s reverence for them.

  Reverence for a fisherman’s key prey. Did Maine lobstermen feel reverence for theirs? Respect, maybe, gratitude certainly. But reverence was different. Have to think about that more above water.

  I slowly crisscrossed the river, surfaced, and called out numbers and lengths to Harvey who walked along on shore.

  Sounds from the world of air—wind, a bird, Harvey’s voice—disappeared the moment I slipped under the surface. Seemingly serene, the muted, dense world of water traveled downhill toward the Pacific in slow motion. But here, as in every river and stream, insect larvae cowered in hidey-holes as fish and other predators hovered above them.

  After recording the largest number of fish I’d seen so far, Harvey said, “Mara, can’t you speed it up?”

  I exhaled hard through my snorkel and squirted her.

  Halfway through the reach, I stumbled out and handed Harvey the mask and fins.

  “H-here.” I wind milled my arms.

  “Cold?”

  I switched direction. “Wetsuit’s way too big. I’m soaked.”

  “Oh, fun.”

  I tried jumping jacks with moderate success.

  Harvey made her way into the river. We had to finish before the moon was fully up. I studied the eastern sky. Harvey called out numbers, slipped below the surface and came up again, but her progress was slow.

  She finned toward me, spit out the mouthpiece, and recited the data.

  “Harve, I’m worried about the time.”

  “Christ, Mara. I’m going as fast as I can. More fish up here.”

  The jungle blocked my view of the sky. I asked William to run back to the beach to check on the moon.

  He returned, panting. “You can just make out a bit of light coming up.”

  Harvey glided to the side and rolled on her back. She let the mouthpiece fall out. “S-six large, ten medium, t-two small. Jesus, I’m frigging cold.”

  “Hate to say it, but the moon’s rising.”

  “F-fish.”

  I chortled.

  Harvey slid back onto her belly. She finished just as the moon rose over trees bordering the river.

  We jogged back to the shed. Inside, William flipped on the battery-operated lantern. Outside, the window cast a dim rectangle of light onto the shingle. Harvey and I toweled off and pulled on the dry pants and shirts we’d brought along.

  Harvey rubbed her arms. “Next time, it’s coral reef fish.”

  In the shed we used a calculator to crunch our numbers. William read out the totals and sizes from the previous day.

  “Same half-mile reach, same time of day, one day apart,” Harvey said. “We counted a total of two hundred and twelve coho. You got about half that. You saw about twenty percent large, sixty medium, the rest small. We got nearly sixty percent large, thirty percent medium, ten percent small. It’s only one reach, but the two data sets are very, very different.”

  William leaned in to read over both sets of numbers. “Like I said, we see big changes from one day to the next.”

  We flipped through the pages of his notebook.

  “The daily disparity you report here isn’t surprising,” I said. “But you’d need a whopping big change to tell if there’s a fertilization effect.”

  William bit his lip. “Why don’t you explain that.”

  “You’re using this river to gauge the iron’s impact on salmon density in your streams and rivers generally, right?”

  “Right.”

  I held up the notebook. “Given this variation, in this reach alone you’d consistently have to see fish counts spike to something like three or four hundred day after day to claim an iron effect.”

  William shelved the notebook. “Raven takes care of us. He’ll see to it.”

  4

  With soaked hair and little protection from the wind, Harvey and I shivered all the way back to the campsite. We helped William pull the dinghy above the high-tide line.

  “I’m sure Bart’s got the sauna going,” he said. “Why don’t you go in, wash off, and warm up?”

  He didn’t have to ask twice.

  Giggles from inside the sauna-teepee told us things were well underway.

  Harvey peeled off her shirt and rubbed her arms. “It’s freezing out here. Inside, quick.”

  She pulled the teepee flap aside. We both stepped in. In the middle of the tent, a cluster of glowing rocks the size of small bowling balls illuminated a half-circle of grinning faces opposite us. Except for Bart, they were pale outsiders like Harvey and me.

  Gwen from Vancouver said, “You can take my place, Mara. I’m pretty well cooked. It’s glorious.”

  The friend beside her agreed. “Me too. Time to cool off.”

  Harvey and I made room for the exiting women. Their bathing suits had little skirts, and I assumed a nude sauna with men their son’s ages would’ve been uncomfortable. I didn’t know if the Haida were modest, but given my increasingly sagging boobs, bathing suits in the sauna were just fine with me.

  Bart followed close behind the women, but he didn’t acknowledge us. William took Bart’s place.

  We settled onto the vacated log. I poured fresh water over my head and used my fingers—with minim
al success—to comb out tangles in my long hair. Eyes closed, I surrendered to the comfort of hot steam.

  I was nearly asleep when Harvey said, “William, back at Kinuk, before we left yesterday, I saw you working on what looked like a big bird on the bow of a wooden kayak. Did you carve it?”

  I popped open my eyes to catch the sparkle in William’s as he turned toward Harvey.

  “Do you know,” he asked, “the Haida have two clans—Eagles and Ravens?”

  She nodded.

  “And in the world of birds, ravens are known for their intelligence?”

  Harvey nodded again.

  “Well, I’m a Raven.”

  Harvey and I laughed.

  With the tiniest twitch in the corner of his mouth, William went on. “Before I was a Watchman out here, I apprenticed with a famous carver on Prince of Wales Island. He taught me the craft of Haida boat carving.”

  “The wood is?” I asked.

  “Red Cedar. We use a mix of modern and traditional tools. Even chainsaws.” He grinned.

  “Well, your work is outstanding,” Harvey said.

  “Thanks.” His tone sharpened. “Before you both leave, I’d like to talk more about the iron fertilizer.”

  Given my lethargy, this was the last thing I wanted to discuss. But Harvey agreed, out of tact or the need to know I wasn’t sure.

  William’s face showed red in the glow of hot rocks, his eyes a startling white. “You understand why we did it?”

  “Why don’t you tell us?” she said.

  He spoke quickly. “Two things. One is money from carbon credits. Iron makes algae in the ocean bloom. That pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We get carbon credits.”

  Harvey kept her eyes on William. I looked down at my hands.

  He kept going. “Ah, like we talked about, Roger Grant says the salmon catch will go up.”

  I felt utterly exhausted. This wasn’t the time to debate Grant’s wild assertions about the benefits of iron enrichment—named the “Geritol solution” after the old-fashioned, iron-enriched liquid supplement. “He claims that. William, I’m dog-tired. Let’s talk about this in the morning on the ship. Okay?”

  William pressed his lips together then said, “You traveled yesterday and did a lot today. Of course.”

  I scanned my now lobster-red body. “Harvey, I’m done. Meet you outside.”

  “Be there in two minutes.”

  I was toweling off in the chilly night air when it happened.

  William screamed, “Out! Get out!”

  Explosions from inside the sauna shattered the evening’s peace.

  Harvey and William plunged through the tent flap like a single torpedo. He landed on top of her and rolled off with a grunt.

  I ran over and knelt beside Harvey. “Tell me! Are you all right?”

  Harvey groaned and managed to get up on all fours. I steadied her shoulder while she swung her legs around and sat cross-legged.

  She coughed. “The rocks.” Deep breath. “They blew up. If William hadn’t—”

  “Gotten you out, red-hot rock shards would’ve speared your body.”

  “Yeah.”

  On his feet, William extended his right leg back and craned his neck to inspect his calf. In the moonlight, blood streamed down his leg, black as squid ink.

  Harvey gasped. “Good lord, William. How bad is it?”

  He reached down and came up with a blood-smeared palm. “Surface cuts. Nothing serious. If you’re not hurt, Dr. Allison, I’ll walk down into the water and soak my leg.”

  “Harvey. I’m fine—because of you. Thank you, William.”

  “William, before you go,” I said, “Rocks don’t usually explode inside your saunas, right?”

  He hesitated a moment. “They don’t. You’ve got to know which rocks to use, and I picked the right ones. This shouldn’t have happened. I am so very sorry.”

  “Sounds like it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I’ve got to soak my leg. See you both in the morning.”

  He turned away. Harvey called after him. “William, thanks again.”

  The young man limped down the beach, waded into seawater to his knees, and looked up at the moon.

  “Guess he’s your knight, too,” I said. “Are you okay now?”

  “He is and yes, I am. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to be scared. But Mara, first the kayak’s rudder got stuck and now this? Don’t you think that’s pretty odd?”

  “You bet, and Bart was involved in both. Maybe he’s a screw-up, I don’t know, but it looks like we’ll have to be on our guard.”

  “As if we didn’t have enough to deal with,” she said.

  I helped Harvey to her feet. In moon shadow, we followed the path up to the tent site.

  “Harve, those stories William told us about Salmon Boy and Raven?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something important there doesn’t jibe with this iron project.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the Haida are so tuned into nature, why would they pay Roger Grant to dump tons of iron slurry right off their coast? Besides that, Grant’s not even a scientist. From what I can tell, he’s a reckless entrepreneur.”

  “You’re right. It’s illogical. I wish people weren’t so damn complicated. So often, they do things you don’t expect. We think Maine lobstermen should care that warm seawater is chasing lobster north to Canada. But most deny climate change is even happening.”

  Boy, did I know that. My cousin Gordy was a Maine lobsterman. We’d gotten a grant for a pilot project to connect fishermen and climate scientists so they could learn from each other. That Gordy and his buddies called our warnings about a hotter planet “a bunch of crap” made the interaction a challenge, to say the least.

  Harvey stopped and put her hand on my arm. “Mara, this UN report’s very high-profile. We’ve got to do an excellent job, but how little we know about the Haida really, really worries me. As senior scientist, I feel—.”

  “You’ll be a terrific team leader, and we’re the perfect team for this. You know that.”

  “Hmm.”

  I knew something besides being an outsider was bothering Harvey but didn’t have the energy to talk about it right then. “We’ve had two near-catastrophes today, Harve. The stuck rudder and exploding rocks in the sauna. At the moment, that’s what’s worrying me.”

  She blew out a long breath and walked on. “Like you said, Bart was involved in both.”

  “Right. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s to blame. Could be a coincidence.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if coincidences are God’s way of quietly telling us something.”

  “Harvey, you don’t believe in God. You don’t even go to church.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m past forty, but lately when I’m alone in nature, a spiritual sense—I can’t put words to it—comes over me.” She held out her arms. “Here, in Haida Gwaii, it feels very strong.”

  I was amazed. Harvey didn’t say things like that. “The archipelago’s world-famous for kayakers, sailors, birders—outdoor people like that. But spiritual?”

  “What about your vision, Mara?”

  “Like I said, panic makes people imagine things.”

  We reached the tent site, an elevated spot well protected from the wind, and set up our tents side by side on a thick carpet of moss beneath a cathedral of red cedar and hemlock. Moonlight, nature’s flashlight, showered through openings in the canopy. I’d just finished securing my rainfly with stakes when Harvey crawled out of her tent.

  She straightened up. “This is an enchanted wood.”

  Behind her, a cluster of lantern-lit dome tents glowed in the gloom of majestic giants dripping with water and lichens. I felt tiny in the natural cathedral—trees ten feet in diameter and hundreds high—and sensed the passage of time witnessed here.

  “Yeah. It’s absolutely extraordinary,” I said. “Come on.” I lay on my back to take in the cathedral ceiling, moss as my p
illow. Stars flickered between the trees. As a bank of clouds blackened the moon, the trees morphed into a looming tangle. “Bet some of these cedars saw the arrival of the first Europeans.”

  Harvey stretched out next to me. “When the cedars were seedlings, the Haida were nearly wiped out by measles and chickenpox carried by explorers and trappers. Jeez.”

  “What?”

  “You know. That’s what happened to every North American tribe.”

  We studied the formidable canopy in silent reverence.

  Harvey stood and brushed off her butt. “All right, big day tomorrow. Sleep well.”

  My sleep wasn’t sound. Weird dreams woke me. In one, an explosion inside my tent sent dozens of screaming ravens into the sky. In another, an empty kayak bobbed on the sea.

  I sat up with a start. It was already fully light. Had I overslept? In the tent beside mine, Harvey quietly hummed. She did that when she was in tidy mode, so I assumed she was organizing her stuff. All was well.

  I unzipped my sleeping bag and reached into the duffle for a heavy-duty thermal turtleneck. Today I’d need it for sure. I stepped into the cool, bright morning and stood in front of Harvey’s tent.

  “’Morning, Harvey. I’m starved. You dressed?”

  She pushed aside her tent flap, stepped out, and straightened up. Her champagne hair was neatly combed, clothes like she’d just pulled them from her dresser, and touch of makeup you hardly noticed.

  I pushed aside the clump of hair covering my eye and glanced at my crumpled fleece pants and frayed turtleneck cuffs.

  After a hot oatmeal breakfast, we pulled down the tents, packed the kayaks, and were on the water before seven. Across the channel on Kinuk Island, a fifty-foot research vessel waited for our ten AM departure. Plenty of time.

  Anticipating hot-spring pools on the island, the friends from Vancouver chatted excitedly as they paddled along. I fell back to ruminate.

  Ted McKnight would be waiting for us when we reached the Kinuk dock. While Harvey and I counted fish, he’d flown to the archipelago’s Skidegate airport with our research gear and taken a boat taxi down to Kinuk so we’d be ready this morning for the one-day cruise.

  Late in the spring, Ted and I had started hanging out. As the weather warmed, we spent more and more time together. Now he was always, well, there. At work, his office was down the hall from mine, and he didn’t hesitate to stop by. In my few hours of leisure, we often did things with Harvey, Ted’s half-sister. I loved them both, but the constant togetherness felt stifling, like I was underwater and needed more air.