Leaving Protection (11 page)

I
PULLED BACK ON THE
throttle and took the boat out of gear. I ran to the deck, hung on tight, and tried to spot Tor. He was on a rising wave a hundred feet away, floundering in the surf, trying to swim.

There had to be something I could throw him, and fast. There wasn't a life ring, like on the
Chimes
. What, what else was there? All I could think of was the milk crate with the glass float. I grabbed it from the closet. This was going to be a crying shame, throwing the plaques into the sea.

For a second I hesitated. Wasn't he exactly where he had wanted me to be?

Torsen was still struggling to stay on the surface. I got his attention, then heaved the crate as far as I could.

I waited, the
Petrel
getting slammed, as Torsen swam after it, up and down the slopes of the waves. He struggled, until at last he had hold of the crate. It was buoyant enough to give him some relief, but by this time he was well behind the boat and nearly out of sight.

I ran back inside and got the
Petrel
turned around. By the time the bow was pointing to the area where I guessed he was, Torsen was nowhere to be seen. What now?

I just had to make my best guess and hope I was right.

There he was, to starboard, arms encircling the rope-wrapped fishing float. I steered in his direction, wondering how I was going to get him aboard. A ninety-pound salmon had nearly been too much for me.

I brought the
Petrel
close, then took it out of gear again. The boat tossed every which way. I raced to the deck, hoping I could get to him before a crashing wave got to the boat.

“Over here, over here!” came Torsen's voice, this time from the port side.

I crabbed across to his side of the boat, desperate to avoid being pitched over myself. I got down on hands and knees and went to the rail. Tor had the crate clutched tightly to his chest.

“Get closer,” I screamed. “Give me your hand!”

He sidestroked closer, a wild look in his eye. “Won't work!” he yelled. “Get a gaff hook! I'll grab it!”

One eye on the spilling seas, I scrambled for a gaff, then shimmied back on my belly.

Torsen was trying his best to stay close to the boat as his strength drained. He was blue in the face. I reached as far as I could with the gaff hook; he kicked and was able to grab it with his right hand.

“On the count of three,” I heard him yell. “I'll kick, you pull.”

I rose as I counted “One—two—
three!
” I pulled with all my strength.

I heard him kick. I heard him grunt. He managed to get one hand up on the bulwark, but it was futile. The wave dropped out from under him, and he was swept away.

The crate with the glass ball was swept away with him. Torsen appeared to glimpse it, and swam after it. Then he must have lost sight of it; I couldn't see it either. Tor gave up on it, turned, and swam back to the
Petrel.
“Use a rising wave,” he cried over the shriek of the storm. “Gaff me in the shoulder blade!”

It was almost too horrible to imagine, but maybe he was right and it was his only chance of getting back on board.

The seas were building again toward another crescendo of fury, and Torsen was forced under. Just when I was sure he was gone, he reappeared farther away, and struggled once more toward my side of the boat.

Here he came, arm over arm, and here came the rising wave he wanted. I watched the seas closely,
spotted my chance, and stood up full height. I leaned over and gaffed Tor behind his shoulder, sticking the hook deep. All in the same motion, I pulled as hard as I possibly could, both hands on the gaff handle, and threw myself backward. Torsen, kicking and floundering like a big yellowfin tuna, teetered close to the balance point on the bulwark. He was nearly halfway into the boat. Just then, the wave fell out from underneath him. The boat rocked in his direction, and I felt myself flying toward him and the swallowing sea.

“Let go!” he screamed. I did, and not a moment too soon. Torsen fell, as if down a mountain slope, into a yawning gulf, and went under.

It was Tor's warning and the sudden recoil of the
Petrel
that saved me from going in with him. At the point of no return, gravity swung in my favor, and I was able to stop my momentum.

My last glimpse of Tor Torsen saw him giving up the fight, slipping under the waves. His precious Russian plaques were nowhere to be seen. The troller took another heavy hit, and suddenly I was flying backward, with nothing to break my fall, into a void that turned out to be the fish hold. I would have broken my neck if I hadn't landed on the salmon that had spilled over the bin boards.

I climbed out and clawed my way into the wheelhouse. The
Petrel
was a cork in a maelstrom. It was only by a combination of superior boat design and luck that the
Petrel
hadn't capsized. It might yet, that was
all too obvious. As I lurched toward the captain's chair behind the wheel, a tremendous wave broke on the bow and blew out the forward window to my left in an explosion of glass and water. I was thrown to the floor. A torrent of water poured down on me, and the wind was howling.

I got up, climbed into the seat, and reached for the controls. I put the boat in gear and opened up the throttle, then hung on to the spokes of the wheel with all my might.

More throttle, I needed more throttle. The rudder responded, and I was able to point the bow into the weather and regain something like control.

I searched for Tor as long as I dared, knowing I had to race the clock to Lituya Bay.
Why didn't you put on the survival suit
, I kept asking.

A sudden lull in the storm seemed like a screaming signal that I better break and run for it. I got back on the GPS course for Lituya, pushing the
Petrel
toward land at full throttle.

The seas were rough, but nothing like they had been. For a good long while, I was able to average seven knots. The sky, however, was turning terribly dark to the southeast again. I had to gain every inch I could, and sneak into the bay before the next arm of the storm arrived in full force. I couldn't see the coast but I knew I had to be near. Nine miles, said the GPS, with ninety minutes to get there before high tide ended at 2:30.

Two miles off the bay, at two o'clock, the new storm front struck. I had to steer manually; the autopilot couldn't respond fast enough. Seas fell on the troller like avalanches. The wind gauge was reading a steady ninety, with gusts over a hundred knots. Another window broke under the barrage. More wind and water rushed in. I had the panicky feeling I'd be swimming real soon.

The wheelhouse was in shambles. The electronics were still working, the satellite still tracking my position relative to the mouth of the bay. I kept watching the map on the monitor. I had to keep my direction of travel arrow pointed at the mouth of the bay, or I'd never get there.
If we capsize, take a deep breath while there's time. Remember where the door is. Get out fast, and swim free, and get to the surface.

“Two miles!” I cried. “Two crummy miles!”

Eyes constantly shifting from the seas to the navigation monitor, I steered and worked the throttle. It was moment to moment trying to adjust to the onslaught.

Time was my enemy, as much as the storm. In the next forty-five minutes, it was all I could do to gain a mile. Two-thirty, the target, had sickeningly come and gone. There was only fifteen minutes left of the slack tide.

I kept staring into the dark rain and flying spindrift as I battled closer. Land was close, but I couldn't see it. What I did see, suddenly, was an almost continuous line of breaking waves. In the center, there was a hole, the narrowest of slots. The entrance to Lituya Bay?
The channel through the bar? The gate?

The instruments said I was only half a mile off the bay. On the left-hand side, behind the waves, I thought I saw a line of spindly trees. I didn't know for sure, but I had to believe they were growing along the spit Torsen had described, the narrow neck of land on the north side of the bottleneck entrance to the bay.

Yes, I could see it all now, the spit on the left, the breaking waves in front of the bottleneck, the land on the right. I was looking at the mouth of Lituya Bay.

I checked my watch. The slack between tides was over. The tide was ebbing; water was beginning to pour out of the bay. I'd come too late.

My forearms were cramping but I hung tight to the wheel as the storm threatened to drive the
Petrel
back to sea. Before the slot closed, I had to go for it. There was no giving up on Lituya Bay. Trying to make it to Cape Fairweather at the height of the storm would be suicidal.

I stayed on course, never taking my eyes off the slot in the line of ferocious breakers. With every minute, the entrance was shrinking.

Then, right before my eyes, the gate closed. The gap was gone. The huge white surf was breaking continuously across the bar. What now?

If I tried to punch through at the beginning of low tide, and hung up on the sand bar with the surf much more powerful than normal and the hold uncovered, the
Petrel
would be swamped in a hurry, then broken to bits.

Surf more powerful than normal…did that change things? Could the storm surge, all that wind-driven
water piling onto the coast, provide me enough extra water to work with, to float me high enough and push me on through without being immobilized by the current rushing out of the bay? It was a desperate theory.

Out of nowhere, my last morning in Protection came back to me, so real I could hear the fire crackling in the stove. I saw the floathouse suddenly pitch up in the air, saw the sugar bowl sail across the table, saw my dad reach out to grab it and miss. There we were, running out onto the deck, laughing, in time to see the whale come out from underneath. “It's a good sign for Robbie fishing the big water,” Maddie had said.

“We'll soon find out, Maddie.” I laughed out loud as I aimed the bow of the
Storm Petrel
for the violent entrance of Lituya Bay, at the same angle that the storm was sending its huge swells against the bar. I made sure my survival suit was zippered up as far as it would go.

I thought of Tor at the last, when his weight was pulling me into the ocean, how he'd told me to let go. He was done, and he knew it. Whatever terrible thoughts he'd been thinking since he first met me, the last thing on his mind had been that he wanted me to live.

“I aim to,” I said aloud. “Your
Petrel
and your deckhand have made it this far.”

I eased back on the throttle. I felt a big lump roll under the boat, then another and another. Some of the swells were bigger than others.

“Gotta pick the right one,” I shouted above the whine of the wind.

Over my shoulder, I spotted the swell I wanted. It was rising, rising, rising, and I wasn't going to let it slide underneath me. I gunned the
Petrel
full throttle, and the troller plunged ahead with the swell. I was committed. When this enormous wave broke onto the current shooting out of the bay, the collision was going to be colossal. If the
Petrel
foundered, I had to bail out fast. The ocean would make short work of her.

“Hang on,” I told myself. “It won't be long.” I stood up, spread my feet wide, and clung to the spokes of the wheel with my hands clenched tight as talons. The boat came off the crest of the wave in free fall, mountains of water on both sides, and it hit bottom with a thud. The troller shuddered, and I was sure it was the end.

It was all white water and confusion. For the time being, we were intact. It seemed possible that the hull had withstood the impact. The propeller was still responding and so was the rudder. We must have bounced loose off the bottom. I had a death grip on the wheel—the turbulence was all but overwhelming—and was cranking it hard left to keep the boat from being spun into the whirlpools.

Next thing I knew, the
Storm Petrel
was being sucked into the backwash. Over my shoulder, the next wave was building higher and higher and was about to break. I pointed the nose of the
Petrel
directly into the current and slammed the throttle forward. The boat began to gain against the current. Relative to the trees on the spit, directly opposite, she was making headway.

How much headway, that was the question. The tremendous wave looming above the
Petrel
was about to break on her back. “Go, go!” I screamed. The wave broke behind us instead of on top of us. Its surge gave an assist, adding enough water and momentum to allow her to slip inside the bay, taking me along for the ride.

Suddenly I saw trollers, dozens of trollers anchored inside Lituya Bay.

They must have been watching. They all started blowing their foghorns.

As I motored into the bay, my eyes filled with tears, and I gave a few blasts in return.

O
NCE INSIDE THE BAY,
I steered for the nearest troller. I brought the
Storm Petrel
as close as possible to the
Slow and Easy,
whose skipper appeared on the deck. We were only a stone's throw apart but had to holler back and forth over the wind. At last he understood me. I moved a little farther off and dropped anchor while he lowered his skiff to come and get me. I was soon inside his wheelhouse, on the radio, reporting Tor's disappearance.

Tor wasn't the only one missing. In the last hour, two trollers had sunk trying to make it to Cape Fairweather. Both had been able to broadcast Mayday calls before they went down. Two Coast Guard helicopter teams with swimmers were attempting their
rescue with the storm still raging.

“You're lucky to be alive,” the skipper of the
Slow and Easy
told me. “Lucky you gambled on Lituya and lucky you made it across the bar.”

Doug Fender, one of the many solo skippers this king season, was happy to have company. He'd been sixteen days alone and looked pretty haggard, still covered with salmon scales. In his mirror, I looked worse. Fender made a slumgullion stew—some canned stuff with onions, carrots, and potatoes thrown in—and we listened to the radio as we ate. The trollers in the bay were all comparing notes about the storm. Everyone was anxious to hear the fate of the missing fishermen.

It wasn't long before we heard that the skipper of the
Trumpeter
, along with his deckhand, had been rescued by the Coast Guard swimmers. They'd been found in their life raft, both wearing survival suits. Torsen and the skipper of the
Distant Thunder
were still missing.

I asked Fender where Tor's body might wash up. He described a tide rip a few miles north that collected most of the flotsam and jetsam along that stretch of coast. The weather forecast described the storm as fast moving. There was a good chance it would be over by sunrise.

The trollers in Lituya Bay were making plans to cross the bar in the morning, before high tide ended and the entrance closed. I was asleep aboard the
Storm Petrel
by a quarter to eight, counting on a
borrowed alarm clock to wake me.

At six the next morning I woke to the fresh memory of the storm, scenes on a scale too huge and terrible to be believed, yet it had all happened: the violence of the water, Tor in the ocean without a survival suit, me trying to gaff him like a salmon. These were images that were never going to go away.

I climbed the ladder into the emptiness of the wheelhouse. With his equipment and possessions all around me—much of it still on the floor—Torsen's absence loomed large. I shuddered remembering him going down at the last, his acceptance of it.

I went out onto the deck to see if the weather was going to pin me down for another day.

The storm was gone. I could see the forest surrounding the bay, the island at its center, the glaciers at its head, and all the way up the great white wall. Jagged peaks were shining in the morning light.

Fender came onto his deck and told me the news. His voice carried easily across the still water. The two missing skippers were still unaccounted for. I dreaded the inevitable: I would have to contact Tor's daughter as soon as possible.

I crossed the bar in the
Storm Petrel
at the next high tide, while the going was good, along with the small fleet of trollers that had sheltered in Lituya Bay. Once on the ocean, the trollers headed south. King season was over, and they were eager to sell. Almost all of them were heading to the closest fish plant, at Pelican.

I wanted to sell as much as any of them. Wanted more, even, to get home. Once out of the bay, though, I turned north. It wasn't only Torsen's body I was looking for, it was the milk crate and the plaques.

I heard a helicopter but I couldn't see it. No doubt they'd been searching all night.

By the time I reached the tide rip, there were trollers on the horizon that were heading my way. These were the boats that had sheltered at Cape Fairweather. They would be abreast of my position in half an hour. I had thirty minutes to look, and then I would join them for the run down to Pelican.

It was tricky guiding the
Storm Petrel
alongside the rip. It was swirling with opposing currents, awash with kelp and other debris that could foul the propeller. I was afraid I might actually find Torsen's body, all swathed in kelp. Finding the crate seemed impossible. All that rope I had used to secure the big glass float inside the crate was the same shade of brown as the bull kelp. I kept telling myself to look for the roundness of the ball camouflaged by the rope. That was the only thing that would give it away.

I had passed back and forth along the rip half a dozen times, as slowly as possible, and was close to giving up when a pair of sea otters caught my eye. They were playing in the rafts of kelp unmoored by the storm. I thought I saw a third otter, then realized it wasn't moving in any direction, just washing back and forth with the swells.

The third otter was the prize I was looking for. I soon had it on board, none the worse for wear: the big green fishing float for my sister, the Russian plaques for history.

 

Two weeks later, I met up with Torsen's daughter. Grace came to Port Protection and stayed with my family. She'd come to arrange for the sale of the
Storm Petrel
, which my father and I had brought home from Pelican at her request.

I didn't know what to expect. How had she taken the news of her father's death? What would she think of me? She had said almost nothing when I called her with the grim news.

When Moose Borden brought her in the air taxi and she first stepped onto the deck of our floathouse, tears came to her eyes and to mine. “And so we meet, Robbie Daniels,” she said. “I've brought the journal, Rezanov's journal. It was in my father's safe-deposit box. Thank you so much for telling me about it.”

The first low tide that came along, Grace and I went for a slow walk around the cove. “Ever since he lost my mother,” she began, “my father has been a difficult man.”

I was surprised by how quickly she had cut to the chase, and I didn't know quite how to respond.

“I'll bet he was hard to work for,” she said with a smile.

“We had our ups and downs.”

“Tell me about the storm,” she said, “and how he died.”

I told her about Tor going out to secure the starboard trolling pole, getting swept over, how I threw him the crate with the glass ball and the plaques. I spared no detail, not even the gaff hook. It was what happened at the last, Tor saving my life by warning me to let go, that gave her the comfort she was looking for. Grace appreciated everything I told her about her father—especially that he'd talked of her and her mother.

“What should I do with the plaques and the journal?” she asked.

“There's a museum in Sitka that has the first plaque ever found. I think your plaques and the journal belong in that museum, since Sitka was the capital of Russian Alaska.”

“Then that's where they'll go. Meanwhile, I have some settling up to do with you.”

Back at the floathouse, Grace wrote me a check for my fifteen percent of the take from the two fish sales, the small one to the
Angie
and the big one to Pelican Seafoods. It came to $2,256, far more than I'd ever hoped to make in one king season.

From Protection we all went to Sitka in the
Storm Petrel
, its blown-out windows and the radio antenna freshly replaced. Once we tied up, we headed straight for the Bishop's House Museum. My family and I were proud to be there with Grace, to be a part of it, when
she presented the plaques and the journal on behalf of her father. It turned out that Tor Torsen was going to be famous instead of infamous, in spite of himself.

On the way back to Protection, I was at the wheel and the other four were at the table as we skirted the tide rips off of Cape Ommaney. Grace got up and looked out the wheelhouse window at the drama of the surf pounding the tip of the cape. “It doesn't matter if my father's body is never found,” she said softly. “In a way, it would be fitting if the sea, which he loved so much, took him to be with my mother.”

There was a silence, and then Maddie said, “Your father fished on the prettiest boat there ever was.”

Grace turned around and smiled. “I know, Maddie, and I've been thinking. I sure hate to sell the
Petrel
to strangers.”

It took a few seconds for this to sink in. “We could never afford her,” my father said. “She's not in the same class with our
Chimes of Freedom
.”

Grace's eyes, a deep sea green like her father's, were all lit up. “What if we were simply to exchange boats straight across? I'm certain my father would have liked that.”

My mother gasped. “We couldn't—”

“No, really,” Grace said. “I'd like to be able to picture you all together on the
Petrel
, just like now.”

I was still trying to get ahold of what she was saying. This was huge.

But was it true, like she'd said, that Tor would have wanted me to end up with his boat? I searched for a
memory. Suddenly I could see him hanging on the hayrack and watching me pull king salmon. I could almost hear his gruff voice saying, “Not bad for a morning's work.”

So many things came flooding back: the dawn colors our first day out, all four lines rattling, the two of us pulling salmon side by side, the roll of the open ocean, the stone-washed beauty of the capes. Our feelings for the trolling life were one and the same, and Tor had known that. The rest of it, the dark parts of our journey, I wanted to put behind me, let it all drop to the bottom of the Pacific. Maybe Grace was right, that this was what her father would have wanted.

My mother got up and stood next to Grace. They were both looking over the bow into the distance. “We could fish the outside waters off Addington and Chirikof, right from home,” my mother said. “It would be a big addition to our economy to be able to fish king season, and it would mean college money for Robbie and Maddie.”

“Let's ask the man at the wheel,” my father said. “What do you say, Robbie? You're the one with the experience on the outside waters.”

“As long as we keep land in sight,” I said. “Count me in.”

I was already thinking that I wouldn't have to wait until next year's king season to show my family the wonders of Cape Addington. In a couple of weeks, the cohos would be running strong out there.

These outside waters were in my blood now. It
would be a while before I felt okay about taking the
Petrel
out as far as Tor and I had gone, but I knew there would come a day when I'd point her bow back toward the Fairweather Grounds. Maybe it's true that the trolling way of life is in its twilight years. But the twilight lasts a long, long time up here in Alaska, and I mean to enjoy every minute of it.