Seaweed in the Soup (27 page)

The car stank of cigarettes, rotten fish and something worse.

“Jesus,” Charlie said in his phlegm-laden voice. “You look great, you haven't changed a bit.”

“What happened? They gave you an eye transplant, you can see people's faces now?”

“I wish. You're a bit blurry, Silas, but you sound good anyway.”

Charlie lit a cigarette, pointed vaguely and said, “Like I told you on the phone, the fishing's fantastic, boats are scarce this month. The best I could do is the
Belle Girl
. It belongs to a widow who's trying to sell it. She's asking seven and a half thousand. Otherwise it'll cost you three hundred a day with a three-day minimum. I checked it out, she's good to go.”

Charlie handed me an ignition key. “The
Belle
's not fancy, but she's reliable, I use it myself sometimes. It's got radar and a good diesel. It's flat-bottomed. You can get it on and off the beach single-handed, so it should do you okay. I threw some groceries aboard and the fuel tank is full. If you take it easy on the throttle, it'll take you a hundred miles on a single tank. Fill her tanks if you get back.”

“If?”

“Will you be going ashore on Quanterelle Island?”

“That is the whole idea.”

“Be careful, then. Twinner's got pit bull dogs and he turns 'em loose at night. Them dogs will chew your legs off if they catch you.”

“Thanks for the advice. Who do I make the cheque out to?”

Charlie's laugh was a strangled, snot-laden gargle. “Cheque? Are you kidding me? I need nine hundred cash up front. There's an ATM in the general store.”

It had started to rain by the time I got back from the store. Charlie pocketed the money, and I climbed into the Ford. Its floor had mostly rusted through and was patched with bits of loose plywood.

Charlie put the Ford in drive and aimed it out of town. We went past Whaletown's tiny library and a straggle of tree-shaded houses, after which it was lonely dirt roads and green jungle all the way. A local driver who saw Charlie coming drove his car into the ditch for safety. After fifteen minutes and several near misses, we turned off the main road and bumped down a single-track lane till we reached a moss-covered cabin. Under the wide porch, fuchsias and bacopa spilled profusely from hanging baskets. A couple of rickety Cape Cod chairs faced the road. Charlie honked his horn. A woman who had been working behind the cabin emerged from the trees and plodded towards us with lethargic steps. She was skin and bone, wearing a Dogpatch frock and gumboots. She must have been beautiful once. Now, marred by hardscrabble living and unhappiness, her face was sullen and prematurely wrinkled.

“I've got that money for you, Lettie,” Charlie said.

Without a single word or change of expression, Lettie took the money and left.

Charlie put the Ford in low gear. A hundred yards later we reached a sandy beach.

Charlie opened his door and swung his legs out. Coughing and spluttering, he tried to stand up. He didn't make it on the first go.

Charlie abandoned a feeble attempt to unlock the Ford's dented trunk with a key, and pried it open with a tire iron instead. The mysterious stink that I'd noticed earlier emanated from a five-gallon plastic bucket with a leaky lid. Red juice oozed when Charlie lifted the bucket out and put it down on the beach.

“Take this with you,” Charlie said. “It's full of old pig knuckles, deer entrails, sheep brains. Shit like that. Plus some knockout drops. Dogs love it. Just dump it on the beach when you get to Quanterelle and I guarantee you it will send Twinner's pit bulls to dreamland.”

“I'll never make it to Quanterelle. That smell will send me to dreamland first.”

“Jesus, you city people,” Charlie gurgled. “If you're so sensitive, put the bucket in a garbage bag.”

“Have you got a garbage bag?”

“Lettie will probably have one.”

“I wouldn't ask her. Lettie's bushed.”

“No. She ain't bushed yet, but she ought to be. Her husband was that logger. The one who was working alone and got killed when a tree fell on him last year. Then he was ate by grizzlies.”

“What the hell's she doing then, still living here on her own?”

“She's not on her own. There's two kids. A lodger has moved in with her already.”

The
Belle Girl
's stern was in the water; her squat bow was nose-up on the beach. The boat's mooring system was a clothesline arrangement whereby one end of the rope wound around a tree and the other end of the rope wound through a shackle on a buoy anchored fifty yards out.

The boat was a boxy, no-frills, twenty-six-foot aluminum cabin cruiser with a Volvo inboard/outboard. After stowing my backpack and Charlie's bucket of guts in the cockpit, we both got our feet wet shoving its bow off the beach. Charlie stayed ashore while I climbed over the bows and worked my way around the deckhouse to the cockpit. With the tide running at about two knots, I reeled the stern line in until the whole boat was afloat in deep water.

Instead of taking Charlie's word for it, I checked the fuel tanks. They were full. The engine's oil and water levels were where they were supposed to be. The bilges were dry except for a thin film of black grease. The radar worked properly. There was plenty of drinking water. I lowered the outboard leg. When I pressed the starter button, the Volvo started immediately. Waiting for the engine to warm up, I familiarized myself with the ship's radio, the galley and the hand-pumped potable water system. I found out where the lifebelts, fire extinguishers and emergency flares were stored. The loaf of bread, cheese, cans of Spam and some biscuits that Charlie had promised me were in a cardboard box on the galley table.

By then, the Volvo's cooling water temperature gauge showed 210 degrees. Lashing Charlie's bucket of guts to a cockpit stanchion, I looked up and saw Lettie, watching me from the house.

I reeled the mooring line aboard, nudged the
Belle Girl
's controls until she was moving slow ahead, and set a course along Redonda Island's rocky, vast and remote western sea passage towards Toba Inlet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The view along Lewis Channel from the
Belle Girl's
windows was sterile, austere and superb. Faces of sheer granitic rock rose perpendicularly for hundreds of feet on either side of the boat before levelling into forested mountain scenery of unrivalled magnificence. To my left was Cortes Island, and to my right was Redonda, a perpetually snow-capped island with the largest mass per surface area of any place on earth. Redonda's Mount Addenbroke climbs right out of the water and then rises almost straight up to a height above 5200 feet. Apart from squeaking harlequin ducks, mergansers, squawking crows, great blue herons and the crying gulls that follow every sailor's travels, I had the whole country to myself. British Columbia's Coast Range mountains rose in the distance. Range upon range of tremendous peaks receding to apparent infinity in diminishing shades of blue and cobalt and sapphire. Crowning it all was Mount Denman's white, colossal mitre-shaped peak.

After three hours, I reached an indent in the shoreline that I'd been on the lookout for.

A colony of double-crested cormorants, fluttering their throats to cool off, watched warily as I emerged from Lewis Channel and sailed up a short narrow inlet. The tide was ebbing. A type of greyish algae that only grows in brackish water showed me that there was a small creek nearby. The inlet's muddy bottom was clearly visible about two feet below my keel. I stopped the diesel engine, lowered the anchor and raised the outboard's leg.

Miniature lagoons, tidepools and a narrow strip of marsh lay between me and a white sandy beach. Sunstars sidled across the mud like slow-moving octopuses. An eagle trying to torment an osprey into dropping the fish it had just caught reminded me that I was hungry. I lit the propane stove, put a kettle on for tea, made myself cheese and Spam sandwiches for dinner, and sat in the cockpit to eat them. By then, Charlie's bucket of guts had paralyzed my olfactory organs. The stink was no longer noticeable.

Above the beach a terraced rockery, an old orchard and a tottering house were all that remained of an abandoned homestead. After a little while, harsh metallic grating noises told me that the
Belle Girl
's keel was touching the bottom. Gradually, the boat tilted to starboard. After polishing off all the sandwiches and a second cup of tea, I slung binoculars around my neck and waded ashore. Crows were busy beachcombing amongst the rocks. An almost dry creekbed lay a few yards to the right side of the old house.

The sun was nearly down, and the western sky was rapidly losing colour when I set out to walk an old trail that wound uphill from the beach. Scattered here and there in the bush were signs of human activity: a rusted bucket, lengths of wire rope, an ancient stove, a crosscut saw lying forgotten since somebody had dropped it there many years earlier. Second-growth trees crowded out the light. The ascent was very steep and strewn with loose rock in many places. My shirt was pasted to my back when I reached the top of a cliff, where I had a clear view ahead.

Half a dozen small tree-girt islands dotted the water like a pod of giant green whales. According to the
Belle Girl
's charts, Quanterelle was a triangular-shaped island about two miles north. In the failing light, I put the binoculars to my eyes and had a good look at it. A stone breakwater extended its sheltering arm around a small harbour, where a big Zodiac inflatable boat and Twinner Scudd's
Polar Girl
lay stem to stern alongside a dock. Small outbuildings and a Quonset workshop lay along Quanterelle's rocky shore. Scudd's house wasn't visible, but a thin column of smoke rising vertically above the trees alerted me to its probable location.

After scanning the area thoroughly, I returned to the
Belle Girl
, but I'd left it a little late. It was dark under the trees, and it took me longer to get down the hill than up. Back aboard the
Belle Girl
, I brought the charts out and spent an hour studying Quanterelle's coastline. After noting several possible landing sites, I settled down to wait.

≈  ≈  ≈

The
Belle Girl
lifted off the mud at about midnight. With the radar going, and using the boat's powerful searchlight, I managed to stay off the rocks and get out of the inlet safely. Lewis Channel seemed larger and emptier when I switched the
Belle Girl
's navigation lights off. Stars filled the whole sky, except for a thin sliver of moon. There was a slight swell, and Quanterelle's shape blipped on the radar screen. I set a slow course towards it. Phosphorescent sea creatures glowed in the
Belle Girl
's bubbling wake. At low speeds the diesel engine wasn't too noisy, although the slightest sound travels a long way across smooth water. If listeners—human or canine—were ashore on Quanterelle, they would know that a vessel was approaching.

At last, a fringe of white surf broke against a beach directly ahead. I went in at dead slow and nosed the
Belle Girl
gently ashore about a mile east from Twinner Scudd's private harbour. Leaving the controls in neutral, I grabbed the bucket of guts and carried it ashore. Dogs were already barking in the distance when I dumped the bucket above the tideline, climbed back aboard, and shoved the control into full reverse. Nothing happened when I revved the engine—I was stuck.

I went over the side, and waded ashore again. Three dark running shapes emerged from the trees. They were closing in fast when I put my shoulders to the bows and pushed. Slowly, the
Belle Girl
shifted. The first dog was only fifty yards away when I leapt aboard the boat, lost my grip on the railing and slid backwards. A dog had the heel of my boot in its mouth when I crawled on deck, reached for a pike pole and stabbed the dog with the sharp end. It fell back into the water with my boot in its mouth, tore it to shreds, and then lent its voice to the other barks echoing all around. I backed my boat clear of the beach and headed out.

The dogs were still within hearing when a fast boat emerged from Twinner Scudd's harbour. It was a large Zodiac, silhouetted on the horizon with three men aboard. At that point, I could see the Zodiac's crewmen, although they probably couldn't see me, because I was against a backdrop of black rocks and trees. I put the engine controls in neutral and let the
Belle Girl
drift in the darkness. As a defensive ploy, that worked beautifully until a magnesium flare lit up the sky.

Capable of doing about thirty knots, the Zodiac changed course and interposed itself between my boat and the island. The game was up. There was no possibility of outrunning the Zodiac or of getting ashore unhindered. So I pushed the
Belle Girl
's throttle wide open and set a course for Redonda Island.

Twinner Scudd's pot-growing operations were notorious. A few rash poachers had tried to rip him off over the years, but I was empty-handed and in open water. At worst, I expected threats. Possibly a couple of warning shots across my bows. Instead, the Zodiac's crew tried to blow me out of the water with high-powered automatic rifles. I dropped below the
Belle Girl'
s gunwales, crawled into the forward cabin, grabbed my Glock, and then lay on the floor-plates and waited for the fusillade to stop. It did, briefly, when the gunmen stopped firing to reload. By then the
Belle Girl
's aluminum hull was already riddled with bullet holes; jets of seawater poured in.

What was worse, bullets had penetrated the
Belle Girl
's fuel tank; the powerful smell of spilt diesel oil wafted into the forward cabin.

Liquid diesel is hard to ignite at atmospheric pressure—diesel fumes are a different matter. The Volvo engine was still running, which meant that the boat's electrical system was energized. I was worrying about an electrical spark igniting the diesel fumes and blowing me to kingdom come when, still face down in the forward cabin, I turned my head and shouted, “Hold your fire. I'm coming out!”