The Big Both Ways (19 page)

“Let me row a while,” Ellie said.

“Get the hell out of here,” Slip said softly.

“Your ribs are banged up. You were spitting up blood last night. I’ll row.” Ellie stood up and put her hand on Slip’s shoulder.

“Just till I get this knot worked out. Then I can row again.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t hog it all,” she said. Ellie settled herself and began pulling on the oars.

They worked their way around the point. Slip drifted in and out of sleep most of the afternoon. He would wake up with a start, shake himself, then lean back against the seat of the dory and close his eyes.

“You sure she’s going to be all right on that boat?” Ellie said out of nowhere.

Slip opened his eyes and took a moment to orient himself. “She’ll be fine.”

Boot Cove had a narrow entrance that opened up into a tight anchorage. There was a shallow beach with some flat ground at the north end where they pulled the dory. The water came up almost to the grass where big drift logs lay bleached out and picked clean. The sky was clearing and as the afternoon wore on, the sun slanted in on their camp spot. Ellie gathered wood and got a fire going while Slip tried to figure out how to put up the tent, eventually giving up in favor of using it as a ground tarp.

The truth was, no matter how optimistic Ellie had been about the food supply, there wasn’t much food left on the dory. There was some dried beef in a tin that was powerfully salty but they ate it and then washed it down with gulps of water. The beef made
them thirsty and they drank more water than they could afford, so Slip offered to hunt around for a stream. Besides the beef, there was a can of peaches and one tin of crackers.

Slip and Ellie lay on their backs and watched as the sky darkened and the stars began to wink in the purple screen above them. The fire hissed and sparked every once in a while, sending a lightning bug of ember out toward the water. They had tied the dory off to a stubby tree but there was no need. As the tide lowered, the dory sat dry on the sand and cobbles of the beach. A wind from the north was beginning to build from behind their backs but it passed over their heads and only rippled the water out past the stern of the boat. Slip grumbled as he closed his eyes, and soon he was dreaming of food: hotcakes, beefsteaks, and banana cream pie.

Slip woke up and a teenage boy was standing next to the fire. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a wool coat with a thick collar. The bulky coat made his raw-boned face appear all the more gaunt. The firelight on his face cast more shadows on his skin than light. Slip didn’t start and he didn’t say a thing, feeling sure the boy was a phantom.

The boy kicked the fire and sparks funneled up into the sky. The apparition then turned and looked at Slip lying on the tarp. Now Slip could see that the ghost held a shotgun cradled in its arms.

“Private property. You know that?”

“No sir,” Slip said, and sat up straight. “We’ll be gone in the morning.”

“What you have for supper,” the kid asked, and hugged his shotgun as if for warmth.

“Some dried beef. We got extra if you want.”

“You sure you didn’t have some roast lamb?” The kid was scanning around the campsite. His skinny legs scissored over to where the mess kit was laid out against a beach log, and he pushed the cookware around with his toe.

“No sir, we didn’t have any lamb. All we packed was this dried beef. Like I said, you can have some if you want.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “You won’t be here in the morning.” He shifted the gun in his arms. This wasn’t a question.

“No sir,” Slip said and he stood up.

“If you’re gone in the morning I won’t tell Carl about it. He’s madder than a hornet ’cause people been stealing his sheep. If he knew you were down here with a fire going he’d make you pack up tonight.” It wasn’t until he said the word “sheep” that Slip heard the tinkle of bells. Up the beach and in the darkness he heard bells and the faint mewing of a flock.

“Take a look around if you like. There’s no blood. No meat. We didn’t bother your animals. I swear.” Slip walked slowly toward him with his hands out.

“I believe you. I just think it would be better if you packed up your kit and were out of this cove by sunup.”

“You can count on it.”

The skinny boy lowered the shotgun to one hand and walked out of the firelight and into the darkness of tinkling bells. Slip could hear leather boots crunching on the mussels encrusted on the beach rocks. As soon as the kid was gone Slip turned back toward the fire and bumped straight into Ellie.

“Jesus,” Slip sputtered.

“He gone?” Ellie was looking over her shoulder in the direction where the kid had walked.

“I think so. They’ve had some poachers around. He wanted to make sure we didn’t help ourselves to any of their lambs.”

“Ah,” Ellie said. Her eyes seemed even wilder in the light from the fire. Slip was going to step around her and head back to his bedroll when he looked down at Ellie’s hands. She was holding the long knife from the mess kit in her right hand. The knife was covered with blood. Slip turned Ellie toward the fire and saw that she was spattered with blood along her sleeves and dungarees.

“Then I guess we better be getting a good start in the morning,” she said, and turned to wash off the knife in the salt water.

The next morning they had to push the dory down the beach to be able to reach the water before the sun came up. The tide wouldn’t be in for hours and Slip was eager to get out of Boot Cove. They were able to use some small drift logs as rollers and a couple of green limbs for levers to push the dory across the mud and rocks of the exposed beach. The sun was brightening in the eastern sky as the dory floated in the shallow water. They loaded the gear in the dory, and the last thing to be put in was a burlap bag Ellie fetched from the woods. Slip was standing in the water in his bare feet and pants rolled up, holding the dory and waiting for Ellie to get in. He considered pushing off and leaving her there with the bloody knife and the skinned-out lamb to explain herself, but he thought better of it.

“Got it. Let’s get going.” Ellie threw the burlap bag into the stern of the dory and lifted herself in. Slip was still sore from the beating he had taken at the hobo jungle but he was able to arrange himself tenderly into the stern of the boat. Ellie settled in the middle with the oars in her hands and began pulling off the beach.

“With all the trouble we’ve got, why’d you poach that lamb?” Slip asked.

“I’m hungry. I figure this meat belongs to me as much as anyone.”

“You thought it was a wild lamb?”

“This meat is better used in our stomach than going to some grocery store in Vancouver. You’ll be happy enough when we get to shore and cook some chops.”

“We could have got thrown in jail,” Slip said.

“Then you should be happy that we didn’t get caught,” she said with a smile.

The weather was gentle from the north as the sun came up. The new daylight cut through the strips of fog that lay in the main channel
and pushed over the islands to the north. For a few moments of sunrise, the air was a silver halo surrounding the gray-green islands in every direction. The inlet was quiet, only disturbed by the dipping of oars.

Slip lay down as best he could in the stern and listened to Ellie pull on the oars. Her breath was even and filled her throat as she warmed to a rhythm. He sat up and took the chart out of its round case and put his finger on their position.

“How we doing?” Ellie asked.

“We got lots of choices. I don’t know what’s in all of these little coves but I think we’ll find something before nightfall. Let’s just see how far we get. Yesterday it was easier going close to the rocks. You want to go that way?” Slip leaned in so his head was close to hers.

“Look out there,” Ellie said. “See those ducks just sitting in the water out toward the middle of the channel? They seem to be moving almost as fast as we are and I’ve got to be working harder than them.”

Slip looked, and sure enough there were three black-and-white ducks sitting equitably in the current moving at an easy pace.

“I think I’ll go with the ducks,” Ellie said. She pulled on her left oar and took the dory out into the bigger water of the channel.

The morning wore on at the pace of the oars. A slight breeze from the north started to stipple the water and Ellie leaned into her work. Slip finally got into the burlap bag and unwrapped a section of hide. Using his pocket knife and some pieces of tarred twine, he fashioned some fingerless gloves for his sore hands. The lanolin in the lamb’s wool would soften his hands a little but that was all right because of the relief the gloves would offer him for the next few days.

He was just finishing up lacing on his crude gloves when they heard a puff of breath by the bow of the dory. Slip sat up with a start and looked around as if someone had fired a shot. Ellie kept rowing but craned her head around to see. There was another
breath and another, and Slip looked at three black-and-white porpoises passing under the boat, curling through the water and coming up on each side.

“Are they sharks?” he asked, reaching around for the gaff hook wedged under the center seat.

“No, I don’t think so. Their tails don’t look like a shark’s,” Ellie said as she shipped oars and let the boat glide along.

“Well, they sure like this boat,” he said, standing up in the bow.

Slip could see underwater that the darkness was almost alive with the black-and-white creatures swimming faster and faster under the surface.

“I wish Annabelle could see this,” Ellie said. She watched as the flashes of black and white zigzagged under their boat, which was now drifting slowly to the north on the incoming tide.

“What do you think they’re doing?” she asked.

“Looks like they’re playing tag or something.”

Just then a massive black-and-white form broke the surface of the water some fifteen feet from the dory. Something shuddered against the bottom of the boat. Another massive animal, larger than the dory itself, churned to the surface, sending a hissing spray of water off its back and into the boat.

“What the hell?” Slip yelled, grabbing the little axe as if that would protect him.

Under the dory, porpoises were cutting back and forth as if looking for a way out of the sea. Slip was watching the small animals slashing through the water when suddenly a huge black-and-white form slid underneath, close enough for him to reach out and touch. This animal moved with the steady grace of a tree being felled. It rolled underneath the boat and Slip could see its great eye looking toward the surface of the sea and the tender little boat.

“Whales!” was all Slip could yell.

A killer whale pushed its head out of the water as if it were a large log bobbing on end, and then it rolled around so its eye could scan the length of the dory. Another whale came to the surface
with a dagger-shaped fin that jutted almost six feet into the air. This one carried the carcass of one of the small Dall’s porpoises in its mouth.

“Look,” Ellie whispered, lost now in a collapsed moment of surprise, like a person in a train wreck who only manages to say “oh” before walking out of the wreckage unharmed.

Another whale surfaced and tossed the broken corpse of a Dall’s porpoise into the air. Smaller whales swam after the dead porpoise, and a dark red slick bloomed up on the surface of the water.

“I don’t think these real little ones are whales,” Slip said. “But these whales sure as hell used this boat as a backstop to trap the little ones.”

Two of the adult killer whales stayed still in the water and tore at the one corpse. The large male with the huge dagger fin swam around the dory with a skein of red flesh streaming from his mouth, and the smaller whales struck at the bloody streamer.

“Pull,” Slip said, still gripping the camp axe in his right hand. “Pull hard.”

Ellie was stunned, looking at the blood that spread like a storm cloud all around the boat, and could not move. Slip stepped around her and sat in the middle seat, and took the oars out of her hands. He began pulling hard, leaving the kill site behind.

The surviving Dall’s porpoises scattered like panicked colts in all directions. One of the juvenile killer whales gave halfhearted chase but soon came back to the kill site where the adults were sharing the meal and the little ones were learning how to hunt.

Any tiredness Slip had felt had been replaced by adrenaline pumping through his veins. He pulled on the oars so hard he felt he might snap them at the oarlocks. He watched the whales milling in the slick of blood as he pulled away. Gulls began wheeling over the kill site, diving down to pick up any bits of flesh that might float to the surface. Once Slip thought he saw a killer whale lunge up
at one of the diving birds, but the gull pushed off into the air and circled back around to scan the scene for food.

“Let’s go in someplace and start a fire,” Ellie said after a few moments.

Slip pulled on his left oar and made a course for the islands to the west. The northwest wind was quartering off their bow, and after half an hour Slip suggested they put up their sail and he would keep rowing and using the oars as leeboards. This seemed to work quite well. He found that with the light wind and the oars, he could set a course for the south end of North Pender Island and the small bay that looked to be hospitable for them and perhaps no other deep-draft boats.