The Big Snapper (3 page)

The Northorpes are staying in Eddie's room. There is Mr. Northorpe, who is thin and studious and is never without his binoculars. And there is Mrs. Northorpe, who is as restless as a bubble that can't settle on a place to land. She wants to know everything about the Queen Charlotte Islands and all the best places to visit. Whenever Granddad suggests a place, she runs for her map, which she spreads across the floor. The Northorpes also have a daughter named Becky. She is twelve years old, and to Eddie, appears totally bored with it all.

“You have a girl staying in your room?” Jake scoffs. It is the final day of school, and their backpacks are loaded with crumpled exercise books and brittle erasers cleaned out of their
lockers. “How are you ever going to get it smelling normal again?”

Eddie shifts the weight on his back. He has already thought about this. “I thought I might do some wood burning. I'm thinking of making a name for the new skiff Granddad's building.”

“What would you call it?”

Eddie doesn't take long to consider. “The Big Snapper.”

“Yeah, I suppose that might work.” Jake kicks a stone down the path. “I guess it depends on how long she stays.”

Eddie has discovered that the worst part of having guests is not the space they occupy. It's the things you can't do in your own home. Like being impolite. Not that Eddie makes a habit of being impolite, but once in a while he picks the mushrooms from his chowder. Or he burps contentedly after downing a glass of Coke. Just to know that he can and that he won't get killed, like he would if he was eating in a restaurant. Since Mom started the bed and breakfast it's like eating every meal in a restaurant.

Becky Northorpe doesn't like fish. She doesn't like the taste or smell of it. And she hates the beach. She can't stand the crunch of barnacles
beneath her sandals, and the hermit crabs scuttling between rocks give her the creeps. After beachcombing with her parents she uses up all the hot water in the cabin for a shower; then complains she still smells like sardines.

“I have an idea,” Mom tells everyone at breakfast the next morning. “Mr. and Mrs. Northorpe are hiking to the Pesuta shipwreck today. Since Becky doesn't like the beach, Eddie, why don't you and Jake take her up to Spirit Lake?”

Eddie looks up with a start.

Mom is standing there, beaming, like she's just come up with the theory of relativity. Becky continues to pick Grandma's fry bread to shreds. Wearing broad hopeful grins, Mr. and Mrs. Northorpe have their eyes on Eddie.

“But I planned on going fishing with Granddad,” ventures Eddie. “He needs my help.”

“Oh, I think your grandfather can do without you for one day.” Mom rises from the table and begins collecting plates. “What do you say, Granddad?”

Granddad agrees that he can manage, before glancing at Eddie. He raises his eyebrows in an apologetic way.

Mr. and Mrs. Northorpe drop Eddie, Becky
and Jake off at the bottom of the hill on their way to Naikoon Park.

Becky picks a stone from the toe of her sandal, tosses her blond ponytail over her shoulder and looks around. “So, where is this lake?”

“We have to hike to the top of that hill.” Eddie points to a break in the trees on the side of the road.

Becky rolls her eyes.

“How did you get sucked into this?” Jake whispers to Eddie as they start toward the path.

“I wasn't given any choice.”

It is a beautiful, sunny day—there are not that many on the islands. The dark forest is full of bright shadows and dappled sunlight, and in places where the underbrush is thin, shafts of light reach through the tall cedars and illuminate the forest floor.

Becky doesn't like the forest. Even on this particularly cheerful day when the recent rain has stirred up life, she thinks it's dark and spooky and smells musty. Eddie has grown up with the odor of damp cedar and hemlock in his nose and it makes him feel at home.

Jake spots a tiny sitka deer standing in a bed
of ferns. He points it out to Becky, but she is busy complaining about the steepness of the hill and by the time she has turned, it is gone.

She shrugs and returns to the path. “So, what do you guys do for excitement around here?”

Eddie thinks about this. “Mostly fishing and crabbing. My granddad and I are building a fifteen foot—”

“Not those kinds of things,” interrupts Becky. “I mean like stuff that you do for fun. Don't you have any shopping malls or movie theaters? It just seems so dead around here.”

“Yeah, we wrestle grizzly bears,” snorts Jake. “And when we're not doing that, we pull on wet suits and swim after hammerhead sharks.”

Becky stops, opens her mouth a little, looks between Jake and Eddie and closes it again.

Eddie really wishes he was fishing with Granddad as they walk the final stretch to Spirit Lake. When they arrive, Becky is again not at all impressed.

“It's full of old logs and just spooky,” she says, “and all that moss hanging from the trees looks like something gross and ugly sneezed.”

Eddie tries to keep in mind that she's a girl, but even considering that disadvantage, he doesn't
understand her distaste. He and Jake have spent hours, probably weeks if they added it up, building rafts and just hanging around Spirit Lake.

Becky finds a log just off the path overlooking the lake. She inspects it for bugs and sits down. Eddie swings the backpack off his shoulder and pulls out the sandwiches Grandma has made: smoked salmon for him and Jake, and, because she doesn't like fish, peanut butter for Becky. Jake wanders along the shore while Becky chews gingerly.

She drops the sandwich to her lap. “Man, what I wouldn't give for a Big Mac right now.”

Eddie knows what a Big Mac is—he's seen it on TV. But he has never eaten one because there are no fast food restaurants where he lives.

Eddie's attention wanders from Becky to an eagle that is watching them from its nest in the tallest cedar across the lake. Like Eddie, it's probably trying to make sense of this chatty animal that has invaded its world. Eddie would really prefer to be down at the edge of the lake with Jake, launching the raft they'd made earlier in the year. But Becky is a guest, and he knows he'll never hear the end of it if he isn't polite.

When Eddie was younger, and Granddad was able to walk properly, the two of them would make the hike up to the lake almost every week.

“Have I ever told you how this lake was formed?” Eddie remembers Granddad asking him many years earlier. They had hiked about halfway up the path to the lake. Feeling particularly lazy that day, Eddie had been complaining about the climb and how far they still had to go.

Eddie didn't know how the lake was formed, but he guessed it might have been left behind by an ice mass, like he'd learned about in school. Many of North America's lakes had been created this way.

“Well, that's true. But not this one,” Granddad had said. “It came to be during my great-great-grandfather's time. A tidal wave swept over the island. When the water receded, it took many things with it, but it also left some behind. Great-great Grandfather lost his home and his canoe, although fortunately, everyone in his family was safe.

“The morning after the flood, he set out in search of wood to build a new home. He was
walking up this very same hill with his own grandson—my grandfather—who was about your age at the time. They felt the earth move. At first they thought they were in for another tidal wave, or perhaps an earthquake. But then it moved again, although this time it was accompanied by a rumbling sound. The rumbling turned to moaning and something like a groan. It sounded like someone, or something, was in pain. After following the sound, they broke through the woods into a clearing. Before them—right where Spirit Lake is now, lay a blue whale.”

“Were they seeing things?” Eddie asked.

“Oh, no. It was a blue whale, all right. He'd been dropped by the tidal wave. Well, you can imagine the size of the depression one hundred tons of whale falling from the sky would leave. It was filled with water, but only just enough to have kept the whale alive. Great-great grandfather knew they'd have to do something quickly if the whale was to survive.

“So, the first thing he did was organize the children of the village to pass buckets of water up the hill to keep the whale damp. He then had the women sew hides together, working by
the fire through the night, while the men cut a path from the top of the hill to the sea.

“All night, the whale continued to thrash around and the depression became quite a crater. By the next morning, everything was in place. It was a good thing too, because the whale was growing very weak. The men carried the hides the women had sewn to the top of the hill like a giant bolt of carpet. They rolled it down the path to the sea. Some of the people threw buckets of water over the hides while others dug next to the crater until the water began to flow. All at once, the whale came along with it. He slipped down that giant waterslide right back into the ocean while everyone cheered.”

“Was this the path he slid along?” Eddie asked.

Granddad had said it was the very one. “Of course,” he'd added, “it's grown over since then. You'd never be able to get a blue whale down it now. And the rain has filled the crater which you now know as Spirit Lake.”

Becky is looking at Eddie. He realizes she has said something, and she's waiting for an answer.

“Sorry, what?”

Becky groans. “I asked you what's down that path?” Without waiting for an answer, she bounces from the log and starts to follow it. Eddie cannot resist any longer, and he joins Jake on the raft just as he is about to shove off. Spirit Lake is not a large lake and from any point they can see Becky moving through the trees where she follows the path encircling it.

Eddie and Jake push past the sunken cedars with long poles, headed toward the deeper water in the middle of the lake. They are leaning over the raft, their poles deep in the water, when a scream from Becky just about sends them overboard. They quickly scan the shore, but cannot see her.

“A mountain cat,” Jake breathes.

Using their hands as paddles, and plunging their poles in the water, they furiously splash their way back to shore. They jump off where the water is knee deep, soaking their shoes and pants. Armed with their poles, Jake, followed closely by Eddie, climbs frantically back up to the path through the gooseberries, ignoring the scratches on his arms and face, intent on fending off a snarling cougar. After racing down the path, the boys run into Becky. She is just
straightening up, brushing dirt from her knees and whimpering over a tear in her shorts.

“That root!” she sobs, pointing accusingly at a twisted old root protruding from the path. “It tripped me.”

Jake and Eddie, dripping and breathless, glance at the innocent-looking root. In confusion, they look at each other.

“Well, someone should take better care of this path. It's hazardous. It's lucky I wasn't hurt.” Becky turns and starts toward the main path leading down the hill.