About an hour later we pulled up on a tiny island with a sandy beach to take a break. Lisa and I sat down and let baby wavelets lap our feet. At one point she pushed me and I almost toppled over, so I pushed her back.
But then we stopped and fell silent.
I expected Cassidy to come over, but he was sitting with Willie and Roger and my dad on the other side of a boulder, maybe twenty feet away, hiding us from their view. They were talking with low voices, but a soft breeze seemed to be blowing the words our way.
Lisa hopped up and started walking slowly down the beach, stooping to pick up shells and stuff. I was about to jump up and follow her when the breeze brought Willie’s words right to me.
“Yeah, could be stowaways in that boat,” he said.
“That’s messed up,” answered another voice. Willie was talking to Cassidy.
“Now don’t go telling Lisa and Aaron. No need to scare them when we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Geez! I thought. They’re treating us like kids, but they’re fine telling Cassidy?
“Illegal immigrants from China,” Willie said, “shell out lots of moola to get away and join their relatives in Vancouver. The average worker in China makes something like four thousand bucks a year. That’s peanuts next to what they can make here. So they pay Chinese ‘snakeheads’ to sneak them in. And sometimes they get swindled. Lots of criminals, human traffickers, get into the action. Big bucks, man. Big bucks.”
“So you think that’s what we heard in that boat—stowaways?”
“Could be,” Willie said. “I doubt it. But could be.”
“Don’t you think we should stay away from them?” said another voice. My dad’s voice. “And then report them to the Coast Guard or whoever?”
So now my dad is talking about all this stuff without me! I leaned forward, my stomach contracting into tight knots.
“We’re jumping to conclusions here,” Roger said. “We don’t know anything. People fish or dive for goeducks off-season all the time. They just try not to get caught.”
Dad turned to Cassidy. “What do you think, Cassidy?”
“I think that we don’t run from them. We should jump their ship and see what they’ve got in there.”
“That’s the worst idea I’ve heard all day!” Willie said.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and walked over to where they were talking, and they abruptly tried to change the subject.
“Why don’t you want to know what I think, huh, Dad?” I said between clenched teeth. “Why are you asking Cassidy? Don’t you trust my judgment?”
“Aaron! We didn’t know you were there. I—” my dad stammered.
“Well here I am.”
“Okay, so . . .” Dad scratched his graying stubble and looked everywhere but at my face. “So . . . what do you think?”
I was so angry I couldn’t speak. My face felt clenched like a fist.
Willie interrupted before I could think of an answer. “I say we move out now. We’re wasting time.” He climbed to his feet and started pushing his kayak into the surf.
When we were all back out in our kayaks, I thought about what I’d heard. They might be smugglers after all! I’d been thinking it all along. Cassidy said I was imagining things, but I wasn’t. I was listening to my instincts. Willie and Roger said not to worry about it, but that made me worry even more. And it made me madder the more I thought about it. Dad and the others didn’t think I was worth asking. They didn’t value my opinion—even though I’d been right. What was that all about?
We paddled hard for about an hour, then huddled up for a short rest, drifting on the slow swells like a raft of sea lions taking a snooze. Nobody said anything.
“So then, they’re like modern-day pirates, sort of?” I said, breaking the silence. I suddenly felt foolish. A white-cap slapped our hull and broke over it, splashing me. The wind was picking up.
“Pirates?” Cassidy began to sing, “‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest—’”
“‘Yo-ho-ho and a barrel o’ rum!’” Roger joined in, trying to break the tension, and they both cracked up.
“Dad! Really?” Lisa snapped at him. “Pirates? What about pirates?”
“Willie thinks the Sea Wolf is smuggling stowaways from China,” I told her.
“I never said that! I said maybe. And not to worry about it!”
Cassidy laughed for no apparent reason.
“It might not be so funny,” Lisa snapped, “if they are carrying human cargo. And they come after us!”
“Why would they come after us?” I asked. We swung our kayak around to face the wind. A loon flew by, low above the water, like it was on a mission.
“Hold it now, mates,” Roger said. “Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? This is all just speculation.”
“Geez! Don’t you think we should get moving?” I said. “If they are smugglers, we’re just sitting ducks here!”
“You guys are freaking me out! Knock it off!” said Lisa, who, until now, had almost never been afraid of anything. Last year—white-water rafting, almost bit by a rattler—Lisa never showed fear. But now it was as if the unknown had been given a face:
The face of the man with the eyes of a wolf.
“There’s nothing to be scared of, Lisa,” said Roger, gently. “Like I said, this is all just conjecture.”
“Okay,” said Willie. “Enough chitchat! Let’s roll.”
Soon we were all taking off across the waves again.
Terns, auklets, murres, black oystercatchers—Roger named each bird as it winged and darted and dove in the watery world around us. As if there wasn’t a care in the world.
No smugglers. No pirates. No sea captains haunting my dreams.
Finally, we slid along a rocky island rimmed with stunted spruce right down to the shoreline. Roger, Willie, and Dad scanned with their binos for a good place to camp.
Nothing.
We’d been lucky finding good spots to camp—and we’d been lucky with the weather, too. Now, as we punched into the wind, there was no place in sight. Tomorrow, Roger had said, we’d make the run across Tide Rip Pass to Goose Island, out in the open Pacific. Tonight we needed a good night’s rest.
Just when I thought my arms were going to fall out of their sockets from all the paddling we’d been doing, we ducked into a tiny hidden inlet and found a place to pull in.
The tide was out, and we had to haul our kayaks a long way over sharp stones. My feet kept slipping in my wet water sandals, and I wished I were wearing water boots, like Roger, Cassidy, and Willie.
We tied off and went scouting for places to camp. The dwarf forest was so dense that we had to fight our way around. But we soon came upon some big cedars, and there at their feet were what we were looking for: flat beds of soft needles.
Even from here we could hear the barnacles in the tide pools clicking and hissing. Or was it our stomachs?
“I’m starved,” I said.
“The sea is your garden,” Roger said. “What are you waiting for?”
Even before making camp, we all scrambled down over the rocks and started rummaging around for something edible.
Willie pulled out his bowie knife—a large hunting knife—and tugged limpet snails off the beach rocks by slipping his blade between shell and rock. He scooped out small chunks of white meat and popped them into his mouth. “Sea popcorn!” he said with a hearty laugh.
“Escargot,” Roger said, scooping one into his mouth. “Snails seasoned with sea salt. Nothin’ better.”
“Dude! Let’s start a fire and cook up some real food,” Cassidy snarled.
Lisa laughed. “The he-man doesn’t eat at the sushi bar, huh?” She held out her hand for a couple of chunks of raw snail from Roger and tossed one into her mouth. “Deee-lishious,” she said in a refined English accent. “Won’t you try one, Cassidy, dear?” she added, holding one out to him.
“Not me!” said Cassidy, shaking his head, and he went scouting down in a tide pool, looking for oysters or clams. Food you could barbecue over an open fire.
“I’ll try one,” I said.
But Lisa, teasing me, popped it into her mouth and chewed slowly, going mmm-yummm—like it was the tastiest morsel in the world. She licked her lips and made big eyes at me.
Why is she doing this? I wondered, though I guess I knew the answer. She just took pleasure in teasing me. Or torturing me.
But why?
I fished out my Swiss Army knife, pulled out the small blade, and plucked my own snail. Gulped raw, it was like chewing a gritty raw oyster, only a little tougher.
I can’t say I really loved it.
Hunger no longer made my stomach rumble. But something else did.
Was it the raw limpet snails?
Or was it buried fear twisting my intestines?
I didn’t know. I hauled our gear up and helped set up the tent and helped look for driftwood, and tried to quell whatever it was making my belly hurt. Making my throat feel like there was a large clam stuck in there. Still in its shell. A geoduck.
After dinner we sat around the fire as the first stars came out, one by one, like pinpricks of doubt. I kept thinking about the “pirates,” and who might be stowed in the hold of their boat.
I felt like I needed a little space, especially from the adults, so I got up and wandered away. Nobody said anything. I just walked farther down the beach.
But when I sat down and leaned against a drift log, along came Lisa and Cassidy. They sat down beside me, Lisa next to me, Cassidy on her other side, facing the sea.
I didn’t mind. Not really. Though it would’ve been better if it was just Lisa.
Then out of the blue, I started talking about what I’d been thinking. “The man on the Sea Wolf, the captain, did you notice he was trying to get that diver to hurry into the fishing boat? Like he didn’t want him to talk to us. And he must know we heard that cry coming from inside his boat. What if he figures out we know there’s something not right going on inside that boat. If he really is smuggling stowaways, he won’t want to be found out. He’ll come after us.”
“I’ll be ready if they do,” Cassidy said, folding his thick arms across his chest.
“Oh my God,” said Lisa. “You should listen to yourself. You’re going to do battle with the bad guys and save us all.”
“Where I live,” I said, trying to change the subject, but not too much, “migrant workers stand on street corners in the morning, trying to get work. Our neighbors sometimes hire them when they need help: building fences, cleaning gutters, digging gardens. Everybody pretty much assumes that most of them crossed the border from Mexico illegally.”
“I’ve read about migrants from Mexico, and Central America, too,” said Lisa, getting into the conversation now, “paying ‘coyotes’ to sneak them across the border. They’re always trying to squeeze more money out of the migrants, using threats to their families and making slaves of the ones who don’t pay.”
“Yeah,” Cassidy cut in. “I’ve seen that on TV, too. Sometimes the coyotes run off with the money and leave ’em locked in the backs of trucks in the hot sun. US border guards find a truck in the desert, open the door, and—whoa! pile of dead bodies inside.”
“That’s gross,” Lisa said, hugging her knees. “And evil.”
The image of those bodies burned in my mind. Were there really people trapped in the bottom of that fishing boat? “If that boat we saw capsized and sank with refugees inside, they’d all go down with it, and drown.”
“Yeah. The coyotes and . . . what did Willie call them? Snakeheads? They should all be shot,” Cassidy said. “Or at least thrown in jail. When I was in juvie, some of the guys I know were from Mexico. They told some bad stories about coyotes. I felt kinda sorry for them I guess, but they had no business being here in the first place. They would’ve been better off staying at home. And they were taking our jobs. They were taking my job! I had to compete with them to get a lousy job at a McDonald’s! And my best bud, Ronnie, he’s a Spokane Indian. A real native American, not an immigrant. And he couldn’t get a job anywhere, unless he wanted to pick apples with the migrant workers. I don’t know. I say we send them all back where they come from, the ones that came in illegally. It would be better in the end for everyone.”
“I can’t believe you’d have those people you know sent away!” Lisa said. “America, and Canada, too, were totally founded on immigration. My great-great grandparents were Dutch and French and Irish. When the Irish first came here, they weren’t allowed in restaurants and stores and cafes in lots of places. The owners would put up signs that said ‘No Negroes. No Irish. No dogs.’ People hated the Irish. Wanted them to go home, too.”
“At least they were white,” Cassidy said.
“I can’t believe you just said that!” Lisa yelled. “Your best bud, Ronnie, he’s not white, right?”
Cassidy didn’t say anything. He just looked down, like he was ashamed or something. I was way more on Lisa’s side. But it was complicated. I really had to think this through.
“They all just wanted a better life,” Lisa said. “That’s what our country is built on. And that’s what these people coming in now want. It’s just human.”
“But then they’re at the mercy of the human traffickers,” Cassidy said. “And those guys are brutal. They’d betray their own mothers if the money was right.”
“If more were allowed to come in legally,” Lisa said, “fewer would fall into the hands of the human traffickers. We need to fix the laws, that’s what I think.”
That made sense to me. But it was still complicated. There are a lot of people who can’t find jobs. Like librarians. Our school library doesn’t even have one anymore. I was about to mention this when Willie came running over, bent low like in a war movie or something.
“Listen,” Willie said, stooping down.
“What?” said Cassidy.
“Quiet!”
Then we all heard it. The sound of something splashing through the shallows.
It was coming our way.