Sea Change Read online

  “Whoa, you’re sleeping here too?” I know it’s a stupid question, but I can’t believe she’d stay in the same cabin as a guy.

  She says, “I’ve got a tent if you don’t want to sleep in here. I use it when Denny’s here.”

  “It’s a nice tent,” Sumi says, and then she looks at me. “I’m sure the bear is long gone.”

  Bear? “No, I mean, if it’s okay with you, then I’m fine sleeping together.” My face gets red hot. “In the same cabin.”

  She waves her hand as if to erase my stupid comment. “Whatever,” she says, and she turns toward her bunk.

  So much for happy hour. I go outside but it is dark, pitch-black dark. Water and land and trees all look the same: pitch-black dark. There’s no way I’m going looking for a shitter, not with a big bear around. I shiver. Inside, in the light of the lantern, I can see Sumi cleaning her teeth into the dishpan. Nice. I step off the porch and piss on the grass. Then I wait for a while, long enough that she might think I went to the outhouse, and then I go back in. She’s already in bed.

  I avoid looking at her as I climb into my bed. The sleeping bag feels a bit damp but it’s warm. “Sumi?”

  She grunts.

  “So, my dad keeps the deer here for the guests? Like an attraction or something?”

  I hear her roll over, and then she snuffs the lantern. “It’s not like there’s a fence. He plants grass. The deer eat the grass.”

  “So the deer don’t belong to him?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “So they do belong to him?”

  She lets out a huge sigh.

  I know I should let it go, but I say, “He thinks they belong to him?”

  There’s a long pause, and then she says, “If you haven’t figured out your father by now, Lucas, I’m not sure why you’re trying.”

  Chapter Three

  As soon as I leave the sleeping bag, the coldness of the morning nails me. Wind rattles the windows. Sumi motions to a pot of coffee like I should help myself. I pour a mug, grateful for the warmth. She’s eating Wonder bread and peanut butter, and she’s left her knife stuck deep in the jar.

  “Did my dad bring some food?” I’m thinking bacon and eggs, maybe some fried potatoes.

  Sumi tongues a wad of bread and peanut butter from her front teeth. “If he did, he took it with him.”

  Well, I hope he’s having a nice breakfast. I smear peanut butter on bread and sit down at the table. “So, the coho are running?”

  She nods. “Most are already in the streams, but there are some still out there. They’re nice fish, fat from feeding all summer.” She looks out the window. The bay is covered with whitecaps, and rain slants hard against the glass. “I’m going hunting though. It snowed up on the ridge, so the game will be easy to track.”

  “Sumi the Slayer strikes again.” I say it with a laugh, but she just shrugs.

  “The deer I got yesterday has to hang for a week or so,” she says. “My grandmother might like a rabbit or something in the meantime.”

  “I guess I knew that. Beef has to age too.”

  “At home we’ve got a shed for game. Hopefully Denny will get back, and then I’ll be able to take it home today.”

  I try to keep my voice level. “You don’t have to wait for him. You don’t have to keep me company.”

  “Oh, I know that.” She looks out to the bay. “I’m not going anywhere in a boat, not until it clears.”

  That probably means the old man isn’t getting back either, which means I’m not going fishing.

  She must see my expression because she says, “I wouldn’t mind going fishing later.”

  She’s throwing me a bone and I’m not too proud to take it. I can’t help but grin. Midmorning and Sumi’s been gone a couple of hours. I’ve cleaned last night’s frying pan and dishes, found my duffel bag and descummed myself, also found the outhouse, including a well-read stack of Field and Stream—what a surprise. My jacket isn’t cutting it, so I put on Sumi’s and unfold the sleeves. It fits pretty well, actually. In the pocket there’s a cartridge. Must be for the rifle. I put it back in the pocket and head out to look around the grounds.

  The wind has dropped and the rain too. At the edge of the forest, huge cedar trees drip rainwater. Seabirds drop and loop over the water. The guest cabins are nice. They cluster to one side of the main lodge, and each one looks out over the bay. Sumi’s cabin and a few other buildings are behind the lodge. All the buildings except her cabin are shuttered for the winter, the doorways covered with poly. Farther back, pushed right out to the forest, is a slope-roofed metal building. It’s boarded up too. There’s a sign: Generator. Not that it’s running, based on the total lack of electricity in Sumi’s cabin. I wander around back and that’s where I find the deer.

  It’s hanging upside down, by its back-legs, from a chain block and tackle on a log frame. It hasn’t been skinned. I reach up and touch the fur along its neck. It feels smooth. Close like this, I can see a subtle pattern in the deer hair. When I touch it, the body rotates, the chain clunk-clunking in the block. Now I’m looking at the underside, and the body cavity is propped open with sticks and is totally empty, as if it was scraped clean. The deer’s eyes are open and follow me as the body turns one way, then the other. It’s not very big. I think about Sumi’s bear story. A bear could drag this thing away, no problem. I glance around. It could drag me away too.

  The forest seems quiet all of a sudden. I feel hairs lift on the back of my neck. Something’s watching me, I can feel it. I spin and scan the forest. Nothing is moving. Nothing is making a sound. It’s like there’s no air.

  How fast can a bear run? I eyeball the distance to Sumi’s cabin. Too far. A small outbuilding is closer.

  I sense it more than hear it, a long exhaled breath. All I can think of is the bear.

  I run. I don’t know how long it takes to reach the outbuilding, but in those endless seconds I decide I’m going full bore through the door. It’s not that easy. My shoulder actually bounces on the plastic over the door. I take my boots to it and make some holes. Then I start ripping it with my hands and find the door handle. It’s not locked, thank goodness, but it opens out, damn it. I am totally crazed. I yank on the door, using it like a giant pry bar. The heavy vinyl finally gives and I dive through the door. Then I scramble to get the door closed. Nothing works anymore. My hands feel like I’m wearing ball gloves, but I manage to yank it closed.

  There’s no light. I rip air into my lungs. My hands are shaking, so I make them into fists and jam them in my armpits.

  Outside, something thumps on the stairs.

  Can bears open doors?

  I crab walk away from the door so fast that my head crashes into something, and what feels like every fishing rod known to man rains down on top of me. Still, I scrabble backward, and I feel rods snapping.

  Then the door opens. In the sudden light, I see Sumi. She looks at the shredded plastic around the door. She looks at me, sitting on my ass and so relieved that it is her and not a bear that I’m actually giggling. She starts to laugh too, until she sees the pile of broken fishing rods. Then she starts to swear, every word I know and even some I don’t, repeating a few choice ones for good measure.

  Chapter Four

  We’re in the tackle room, apparently, and I’ve made a bit of a mess. Sumi shovels the worst of it off to the side of the room. Still swearing, she picks out a couple of rods that escaped damage and sets these by the door. From a rack she tosses me a set of overalls and a bright yellow floater jacket. Then she points to a line of rubber boots. “Think you can find some boots without totally trashing them too?” She grabs a pair of heavy wool socks from a bin and jams them in her pocket.

  I guess we’re going fishing. I think maybe I should clean up the rods, but she’s leaving so I scramble to my feet, grab a pair of size-ten boots and follow her.

  The fishing boat we’re going to use is moored about a hundred yards from shore. The dinghy Dad used is bobbing on
a mooring buoy where he left it, which is absolutely no good to us. We have to carry down a fiberglass rowboat from the boat shed. Sumi takes one side, I take the other. It’s not a big boat, but it weighs a ton and I’m starting to sweat. “This thing have a motor?”

  Sumi tips her head at the oars in the bottom of the boat. “It’s got you.”

  This should be good—I’ve never rowed a boat.

  We have to go back up to Sumi’s cabin for our stuff, which doesn’t seem like much, just some bottles of water, a few granola bars and a plastic box of fishing gear, which Sumi insists on carrying. The bread and peanut butter is starting to look good, but Sumi doesn’t stop to eat, so neither do I. We load rods and gear into the rowboat. I take the middle bench, and Sumi pushes us off. She plunks down at the back of the boat and starts fiddling with the rods. I jam the oars into the locks and start rowing.

  When I tell people what my old man does, that he’s in charge of a fishing lodge, they figure I fish all the time. They ask me what the biggest fish I’ve caught is. They ask me what kind of rod I use, what kind of line, like I would know.

  Sumi glances up from her work. “Where the hell are you going?”

  I look over my shoulder and see that the fishing boat is way off to the left. I say, “What genius made it so you have to row backward?”

  Sumi rolls her eyes.

  I get the boat pointing where it needs to go, then pick a big rock on the shore and visually line it up. It should work. Keep the rock in line, keep the boat going where it’s supposed to.

  Sumi doesn’t even look up. “You’re pulling left.”

  I concentrate on pulling evenly.

  “Now right.”

  “It’s the waves. They’re throwing me off.”

  “These little things? These aren’t waves.”

  The wind is cold, but the waterproof floater coat feels too warm.

  We arrive at the fishing boat with a clunk, which makes Sumi mutter. She steps into the fishing boat, takes the rope from the front of the dinghy and ties it to the mooring buoy. Meanwhile, I’m still in the dinghy. It takes me a while to get back alongside the fishing boat, and with absolutely no grace I tumble into the bottom of the boat. Sumi sighs but doesn’t say anything. She starts the big outboard and hollers at me to untie us. Then, before I can sit down, she guns the engine so I fall again, this time cracking my knees against the side of the boat.

  “Hey,” I shout. “I almost fell in!”

  Sumi seems to smile. “One hand for the boat,” she shouts back.

  We motor out of the bay at what feels like full speed. Sumi stands and steers the outboard. She has pulled her hood up against the spray. I turn on my seat so the spray hits me in the back of my hood.

  She’s right. These aren’t waves. They are watery brick walls. The boat slams into them and makes my teeth clack. Then the boat thuds into the trough, and each section of my spine jams together.

  “How far are we going? Alaska?”

  She doesn’t answer but careens around a point of rock jutting into the sea. The rock is covered with sea birds. Some take wing as we blast by. It looks like the rock is painted white with bird crap.

  Sumi throttles back. “Low tide. It’s shallow in here.” She picks her way through some invisible channel.

  “How can you tell it’s low tide?”

  She gives me another you’re-an-idiot look and points her thumb at the shore. A ragged row of logs and seaweed lines the beach far up from the water. “Twice a day up here we get high and low tides. And big enough that you know it—it’s like the sea breathes in and out.” She tamps the engine way back so we’re barely moving.

  It’s quiet now. I can hear sea birds. Along the shore, massive cedar trees lean out from stony outcrops. Going this slow, Sumi doesn’t have to steer the outboard all the time. Occasionally she reaches over and makes a small steering correction but otherwise her hands are free.

  She grabs a fishing rod and pulls a bucket of small dead fish from under the other seat. She cuts the head off a fish and hollows out the body cavity, then flicks the head and guts into the sea. She weaves the fish hook into the bait, then drops the lead into the water. The headless fish looks like it is swimming.

  “Cool,” I say.

  She shows me how to attach the line to a down rigger so that the bait stays at a certain depth. She rigs a second rod, plunks it into a rod holder and then settles back on her seat.

  “Watch the tip of the rod. If it wiggles, you’ve got a bite.”

  “Like, wiggles how?”

  “Like, it wiggles.”

  I stare at the end of the rod. Sumi sits with her hands in her pockets and her eyes half closed. I’m afraid to even blink in case I miss whatever it is I’m supposed to be watching for.

  She says, “You’ve got one.”

  She’s so calm I sit there for a moment wondering what she’s talking about. Then I notice the end of the rod bending toward the water. I jump to my feet and grab the rod.

  “Other way.”

  I glance down at the rod. The reel is on top. I feel my face flush, and I fumble the rod around so the reel is underneath.

  “Set the hook.”

  She’s calm. I’m not. “What does that mean, set the hook?”

  She makes an upward yanking motion.

  I do that.

  “You’ve lost the fish,” she says.

  “No, I can feel something.”

  She shrugs. I reel in the line, waiting for the fish. Finally the hook pops to the surface. The bait is gone.

  “I lost him.”

  She nods. “Didn’t set the hook.”

  She makes me bait the hook this time. My headless fish looks less real. It flops more than swims.

  Sumi says, “It probably doesn’t matter.”

  “Like I won’t be able to bring it in anyway? Oh, that’s nice. It’s not like I’ve been doing this all my life.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “You haven’t always lived here?”

  She shakes her head. “Lived in Vancouver with my mother. Moved up here three years ago.”

  “Your mom is from Vancouver?”

  “She was from here. Left when she got pregnant and never came back.”

  “I guess she can fish.”

  “I guess not. She’s dead.”

  “Oh.” What do you say to that? “Sorry.”

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. I don’t even see the motion of her rod, but Sumi slips it from the holder. She holds it poised over the water.

  “Do you have a bite?”

  She ignores me. She lets out some line.

  “Why aren’t you setting the hook?”

  She still doesn’t answer. She rests her hand lightly on the line, as if she’s listening with her fingers. After what seems a long moment, she snaps the rod upward and starts reeling. “Fish on!” she shouts. “Take the tiller!”

  I grab the steering arm on the outboard. Good guess.

  “Starboard!” she shouts as she reels.

  Starboard?

  “Right! Go right!”

  I pull the tiller to the right. We go left. Sumi stumbles. “The other right!”

  “Oh, like that makes sense.” I push the tiller left and, sure enough, the boat turns right.

  She’s alternately reeling like crazy or letting line scream off the reel. I ask her why she’s letting the fish run, and she answers, “Only way to catch him.”

  Like that makes sense either.

  She says, “coho like to jump, and he’ll fight right off the line. This tires him out, lets him get used to the idea of being caught.”

  A short distance off the boat, something silver flashes on the surface of the water. “Is that your fish?” It jumps and twists, throwing its head back and forth, trying to shake the hook.

  She’s reeling fast now. “Keep us heading straight.”

  I grip the tiller arm and the handle twists in my hand. The engine revs and we lurch forward. Oops. Sumi just about la
nds on her ass. She regains her footing and snarls, “Back off!” I twist the handle to throttle down on the engine and concentrate on steering.

  She’s got the fish close to the boat.

  It’s frantic, flopping so its white belly flashes. I reach for the net, but in the time it takes to grab it from the front of the boat, Sumi has unhooked the fish and let it go.

  “What the…?”

  She says, “I always let the first one go.”

  “What if that’s the only fish we catch?”

  “Oh well.” She watches as the fish recovers and swims away. Then she baits another hook and sends it down.

  Chapter Five

  I manage to reel in a ten-pound coho. It won’t break any records, but we take it because I’m not eating unknown deer parts for dinner and we’re both so bloody cold we’re just about ready to go in. At one point Sumi put on the wool socks she took from the tackle room. She was already wearing a pair of heavy socks. I’ve just got my regular socks and I can barely feel my feet in the rubber boots, they’re so cold.

  “Fish on,” she says, looking at my rod.

  My hands fumble with the rod but I know what I’m doing now, more or less. I set the hook and start reeling. The rod end bends hard.

  “It’s big,” she says.

  It feels big.

  She says, “Steady. Don’t rip the hook out of its mouth.”

  I don’t know where the fish is but it has a lot of my line. Despite the cold, I feel sweat prickle under my arms. I’m imagining this fish, a monster king, maybe forty pounds, bigger than anything my father has caught, maybe a record.

  “Watch your line!”

  The rod end tips down close to the boat. I pull it back up but it takes all my strength. Sumi gives the engine a shot of gas, and I’m able to reel in more line. It feels like I’m bringing up a refrigerator. Sumi’s on her feet now, looking over the side of the boat.

  “Holy crap.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a hali. A big one.”