Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (23 page)

Sandy Point

I
always turn toward the scent of salt water. Finally, I reach a junction where the call is urgent to follow a road that dips to the right and begins a steep descent. At once the brine on the air is sharp. I come to a curve and then another, a hairpin turn and then another. The trees are tall on both sides of this road, and the road itself is slick from rain.

Then where the road becomes even and straight, a gravel lane makes a break in the trees. In the distance a faint light glows. I head toward this.

At last spread out before me is water, rich with the salty scent of the sea. Across an expanse of it, lights speckle a distant shore, like thousands of stars tossed into the sky. It’s too huge a shore to be an island like the one I’ve traveled on, and from it a brightly lit ferry sails.

Closer to me, more lights shine. They come from a trailer with rust climbing its sides like dying vines. They come from an old gray house. From both of the buildings, smoke curls from chimneys. The scent of it nearly obscures the brine of the water nearby.

I go to this water’s edge. My feet sink into the sand and I move close, until the water laps near my toes. At that, I jump back. I look. I watch. But there is nothing to see. Until . . .

A fin breaks the water’s surface. Then another. And then a third. Each is huge, each like a black sail on a boat, and I know that they mean danger to me. The words come from nowhere I can identify. They are orcas and killers. Around them I know I am not safe.

I back away slowly. I wish to hide but what my gaze falls upon instead of a hiding place is the diamond pattern of a chain-link fence and within it a glittering pool of water.

Inside this fence, I find that the surface of the water boils with the movement of fish. They shine silver in the night and I long to touch them and feel their slick bodies run through my fingers. But this would mean thrusting my hand into the water and that is something I cannot do.

I look around me. A long pole with a net on the end hangs from the fence not far from me. I grab this and lower it into the water. When I raise it, it teems with fish. In the moonlight, they are bright and alive, and their bodies whip furiously, as if they seek a path beyond the net that I hold them in.

I know then: what they want and what I am meant to do. I understand why I have been brought to this place.

I carry the net to the edge of the water beyond the fence and I fling its contents high into the air. The fish fly like coins tossed into a fountain. But they are living coins, and when they hit the water, they do not sink. Instead they circle. Once, twice, and then they are free.

J
enn was using the track at school to do wind sprints after hours. It made getting home more difficult because she had to use the island bus instead of the school bus and that meant a hike all the way from Bailey’s Corner down to Possession Point, usually in the wind and the rain. But the school track was 150 percent better than trying to do her wind sprints either on the unpaved lane onto her family’s property or along the road up from or down to Possession Point. Besides, it seemed that every time she tried to do anything remotely related to getting ready for the soccer tryouts, Annie Taylor showed up with a request for Jenn’s assistance.

Squat found her on the track a few afternoons after their presentation for their Western Civ class. He sat on the bottom of the single set of bleachers. She saw him, but she didn’t stop. They hadn’t talked much after he’d gone for her boob that day at his house, and she knew they had one of two choices about the situation. They could pretend it had never happened or they could talk about it. As far as Jenn was concerned, pretending it had never happened seemed the best.

So she ignored him till it became only too obvious that he was going to sit there till the cows came home. Finally when it started to rain, she realized she didn’t have much choice. She was going to have to get out of the weather eventually. She trudged over to the bleachers and plopped down next to him.

“’Bout time,” he groused. He put up the hood of his jacket.

“I got tryouts coming,” was her excuse. “I’m way behind where I oughta be. Stuff keeps getting in my way.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“I didn’t mean
you
.” But she felt impatient with him anyway.

“Good, ’cause I got what you need.”

“’Bout what?”

“Sheesh, Jenn. What’s
with
you anyway? D’you just more or less use me when I’m convenient or what?”

Here they were, exactly where she didn’t want to be. She said, “You’re mad because of the boob shot, huh?”

“No, I’m not mad because of the boob shot. It’s your boob. You can let whoever you want to touch it. Animal, vegetable, mineral. Like I care?”

“Like you don’t?”

He brushed his hair off his face with the heel of his hand. “Okay. So I do. So I thought you did, too.”

“I
do
care,” she said. But the problem was, she wasn’t sure how. Or why. Or even
if
, really. It felt like lying but it wasn’t lying. Yet the truth wasn’t clear to her. “Anyway . . .” She hoped they could move on to something else.

He took the opening. “That transmitter,” he said.

“The one on Nera?”

“Like, there’s another?” He didn’t wait for her to reply. “There’s a lady over at U-Dub I talked to. I called about ten people and ended up with her ’cause she teaches ocean stuff and don’t ask me what ’cause I can’t even remember. I told her I had a project for school and I asked her about the whole transmitter thing. She said a seal would have one on if someone was tracking it. Like for migration or feeding or breeding.”

“Well, we figured that,” Jenn said.

“Yeah. But she
also
said that no matter what anyone told you it
couldn’t
be an old transmitter because the way old ones were made, they didn’t stay on. They
never
stayed on, so someone invented a new kind of transmitter. She says the one Annie saw has to be just banged up or something. But it’s not old, no how, no way.”

“Annie says it is. Annie says—”

“
So
,” Squat cut in impatiently, “I called the aquarium like I said I would.”

She linked her arm through his. “You
are
the best.”

“I talked to a lady who’s in charge of taking care of the sea mammals—otters and seals and stuff—and
she
said if we got a seal with an old transmitter still on her, we got ‘one interesting animal there,’ she said.”

Jenn didn’t see how this was useful. They already knew they had an “interesting animal there.” Practically everyone on the island thought Nera was interesting. But that didn’t turn out to be the important part of what Squat had discovered, as it happened. The important part was what he’d learned about the transmitters themselves.

They were numbered, each and every one of them, according to the woman at Seattle’s aquarium. If you were able to get the number off the transmitter, Squat told her, you would also be able to discover who’d placed it on the seal in the first place and why and when and where.
That
was key information to have because
if
the transmitter was an old one and
if
Nera had truly never shed it along with her skin, then someone somewhere knew a lot more about the seal than he was saying and that was the person they needed to find. But they had to start with the transmitter’s number.

“Great.” Jenn sighed. “How’re we s’posed to do that?”

“Don’t know unless you learn how to ride her to get a close look.”

“Oh yeah. That’s a real possibility, Squat.”

“Like you think I meant it?” he inquired. He thought for a moment before he sighed and said, “Well, you’re diving now, right?”

“More or less. Last time I freaked out and got the Big Bad Lecture from Chad, the instructor. He lets me into the water again, believe me, it’ll be a miracle. Plus, I don’t know if I even
want
to go in the water again.”

“You have to, way I see it,” Squat said. “You’re going to have to get close to her. Or someone is. At least close enough to see the numbers on the transmitter.”

Jenn cursed. She thought of Nera coming straight at her. She thought of what could happen if the seal got too close.

“Well?” Squat said.

“I just wish there was another way. I sort of want to forget the whole thing.”

“Why? I mean, what’s the big deal getting close to her? She’s just a seal.”

But that was the part that bothered Jenn. For one of the many things she was beginning to think was that
just a seal
didn’t apply to Nera.

Into her silence, Squat said, “On the other hand, I guess we could keep looking for pictures of her.”

“There’s pictures of her all over town,” Jenn groused. “Did you ever see
one
with a clear shot of that transmitter? I sure as hell haven’t.”

“Then . . . ?” he said. And when she didn’t answer, “Why d’you care about this dumb seal anyway?”

“Because Annie does” was the real reply. But Jenn didn’t want to say it because saying it would lead to another
Why
, and to that one she truly didn’t know the answer.

• • •

JENN SWORE TO
herself that there had to be another way short of another diving experience to get a glimpse of Nera’s transmitter, but aside from finding a close-up picture of it through some miraculous means, she didn’t know what that way could be. She did a few more Internet searches with Squat helping her, but to no avail. It was going to be a dive or nothing. That meant making up with Annie.

After her failed dive in the marina, she hadn’t even let Annie drive her home. She’d been so furious at Annie’s excitement when Nera had shown up and spooked her that she hadn’t even wanted to
talk
to the marine biologist, let alone ride in the same car with her. Three times since then, Annie had called out a hello and had asked her to come over to the trailer. Jenn had pretended not to hear till Annie finally said, “Whatever,” and left her alone.

But now . . . she told herself that even if she
did
the dive, she couldn’t be sure she’d see the seal close up again. On the other hand, she also told herself, if she
didn’t
do the dive she wouldn’t see the seal at all.

She had her chance with Annie when she got home from school one afternoon a couple of days later. She was about to go up the steps to the porch when she saw her dad and the marine biologist down by the bait pools. They were inside the chain-link enclosure, and her dad was squatting next to the water, pointing here and there, then talking over his shoulder to Annie. For her part Annie was shaking her head and looking serious. Bruce McDaniels gestured and looked gravely ticked off. He seemed like a man accusing someone of something. Jenn went to join them.

Jenn heard Annie say, “It could’ve been a raccoon, couldn’t it?”

“Raccoons don’t climb up chain-link fences,” Bruce McDaniels responded. “And far as I know, they sure as hell don’t dig under ’em if what’s under ’em is a bed of concrete.”

“A cat then?”

“With a fishing pole maybe?” Bruce scoffed. “I’d say a heron but the enclosure makes it too much of a risk. So that leaves . . . let’s call it human intervention.”

Jenn went through the gate. The pool they were standing by had crystal water but the herring within it made it turbulent, like a liquid about to boil. She said, “Hey. What’s up?”

Her father shot her a smile of hello, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He said, “We’re down on bait. Someone’s been stealing it. A lot of it.”

Jenn didn’t look at Annie as she said helpfully, “For food, you mean?”

“Hell if I know. Could be, if someone’s using it for fishing, but they’re taking enough to set themselves up in business.”

Jenn looked at the water again. She didn’t see how her father could tell any fish were missing, since they were only flashes of silver to her. But it was his business to know his business. If he said that fish had gone missing, then that was what had happened, and losing bait was something they could ill afford. She didn’t want to think that Annie Taylor had had a hand in this. But Annie Taylor was, in truth, the only person whose intentions suggested a need for bait by the bucketful at the moment.

“But that seems like a lot of trouble,” Annie said. “Someone coming all the way down here to Possession Point, someone sneaking onto your property, someone using . . . what? A big net to scoop up your herring? Wouldn’t it be easier to go out and catch them in the Sound?”

“If you want to pony up the money for gas and the time to track the fish and the time to cast the nets and haul them in and haul them back. That seem easier to you than showing up here and stealing them?” He looked around as if for answers: out in Possession Sound first and then closer on the property. He nodded at the ground next to the chain-link fence where the net he used to scoop up bait for customers lay discarded. It didn’t belong there. He said, “You leave that there, Jenn?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Andy or Petey?”

“They can’t get in the gate, Dad. They could climb the fence but they know you’ll give them a good one if they try it.”

He looked at Annie Taylor then. “And you?” he said. “Unless you have a need for herring, I rest my case.”

Jenn shot her a look. Annie had a need for herring and both of them knew it.

Annie said, “Fact is, I do need herring. That’s what I came over to tell you. I need some bigger bait, too, if you can arrange it.”

“Why? What’re you catching?”

“A seal. And I’m not catching it. I’m just containing it for a few minutes.”

Bruce shook his head darkly. “It’s that damn black seal again, isn’t it? You trap that seal and there’ll be hell all over. That animal hasn’t done a lick of good to anyone in all the years she’s been hanging around, but the way people act you’d think she was the Virgin Mary making a yearly appearance.”

“She’s helped Langley,” Jenn pointed out. “I mean, they’ve got the festival and the tourists coming to see her and all that.”

“Langley,” Bruce McDaniels said, “would make a festival out of a killer squid if they could just get their hands on one. Anything to bring in ten tourists and sell them a T-shirt, Jenn.”

“Actually, I just need to contain her for a couple of minutes to get a skin sample,” Annie said. “It’s just to look at her DNA. The fact that she’s black suggests—”

Jenn’s dad blew off everything having to do with why Nera was black. To him, the seal was black because the seal was black and who cared anyway when there were mouths to feed. “And giving her herring’ll get you her DNA?” he asked Annie Taylor.

“In a manner of speaking, I think it will.”

Bruce crossed his arms and gazed at Annie, as if studying her face for truth or lie. He finally said, “Well, selling bait’s my business, so I’ll sell you bait. But I hope you’re not thinking of trying this experiment of yours—or whatever it is—alone. That seal’s one hell of a lot stronger than you are and if you get in the water with a wild animal in a panic—”

“I’m a scientist, Mr. McDaniels,” Annie assured him. “I know what I’m doing. And
what
I’m doing, I’m not doing alone.”

• • •

JENN FOLLOWED ANNIE
back to the trailer. Something new had been added to the overall clutter of Annie’s possessions. On the table a map of the island was spread out. Next to it was a chart of the kind that boaters used. Both of them bore a large red
X
.

Annie came to Jenn’s side and joined her in looking at the map and the chart. She said, “Chad found Eddie’s boat.”

“You guys are going after Nera,” Jenn said.

“We’re going after the boat first. I want my rent money back from Eddie Beddoe.”