No air. The shock of cold, and our heads down where fishes live. Our whole lives all of a sudden topsy-turvy.
I’d never been taught how to do a tandem kayak roll—and in a fully-loaded two-person kayak, you’d have to be an expert. Instinctively, Lisa and I pushed out of our cockpits and swirled around in the onrush of burning, churning seawater. My life jacket was snagged on something. I didn’t know which way was up, and my lungs were on fire. I thrashed and kicked and twisted.
Then, with a bolt of adrenalin, I tore myself free, and shot to the surface.
AIR! Blessed air filled my lungs.
But where was Lisa?
With our kayak bottom up, I thought maybe she was on the opposite side of the hull. All was confusion, with shouts ringing out and a paddle blade poking me in the chest. “Grab it, Aaron! Grab it!” someone hollered. I grabbed it, but then let go. I had to find Lisa first. Where was she?
Something banged against the hull of the kayak. I ducked my head into the black freezing water, but saw nothing. I tried to dive down but couldn’t get very far—not with a life jacket on.
And just before I ran out of breath and kicked for the surface—there she was! Her head bumped into my hip beneath the hull, the tips of her hair swirling up into my face.
I reached down, grabbed her by her life jacket, and kicked for the surface. We both burst through at the same time, gasping for air.
Hooking her life jacket with my left hand, I grasped an outstretched paddle with my other hand. Willie hauled me up by the back of my life jacket till I lay sprawled across the rear hatch of his kayak. Cassidy, with one arm, did the same with Lisa.
Determined to save our kayak before it filled with water and sank, Dad managed to snare the bowline and hand it to Willie, who hauled the sinking boat toward shore.
Roger climbed out of his kayak, splashed through the shallows, and took the rope from Willie. He held our kayak in tow till the rest of us clambered ashore. Then Willie and Cassidy lifted one end of our boat, which allowed some of the water to pour out. Finally they dragged it up on the rocks, still upside down.
Then they lifted the kayak—it must’ve weighed a ton!—rocked it back and forth, and sloshed out the remaining water.
Lisa and I leaned into each other on a slick rock, our feet still dangling in water.
“Smooth move, dude.” Cassidy grinned. He just couldn’t help it. He’d pulled Lisa out of the water, after I pulled her up to the surface—but he just had to dis me. By now his attitude should just roll off me like water off a duck.
But it didn’t. I tried to ignore him.
“Geez! It was crazy cold down there,” I said to Lisa. Dumb thing to say. Her teeth chattered in response, her eyes wide and bloodshot. But by the way she was looking at me, I knew she was trying to say something.
But she couldn’t.
We were soaked to the bone, shivering like reeds in the wind. Everything in our kayak had been submerged. We could only hope that the storage hatches hadn’t leaked, and that our dry bags had kept our clothes and sleeping bags dry.
The dark clouds, bunched like purple grapes, blotted the moon and the stars. And sure enough, to add insult to injury, the wind started flinging great handfuls of cold rain at us. Take this! Take that!
I was going to say something like “You were right, Lisa. The rain bird rules!” But I didn’t have the energy and the wind was roaring.
Then behind the roar of the wind, we could hear another sound. Was it distant thunder? Or the rumble of a motor?
Or both?
“If we stay here any longer, with them freezing wet, they could die of exposure,” Willie said. “And the Sea Wolf could show up at any time.”
“Through my binos, I saw what might be a good place for camping on Hunter Island when we were looking for Lisa,” Roger said. “It’s not too far from here.”
“Good!” Willie said. “We have to find a campsite and build a fire. Pronto!”
Lightning ripped the clouds, and a moment later thunder boomed across the sky.
Rain crashed down, then stopped.
That’s when we heard it: the unmistakable sound of the Sea Wolf, somewhere off in the dark.
“We’ve got to skedaddle,” Dad said.
“You got that right,” said Willie. “Let’s get this show on the road!”
Dad said he could paddle now—though I could see, by the way he cupped his elbow that he was still in pain. There was no time for Lisa and me to change into dry clothes—assuming we had any dry clothes to change into—so all together we flipped my and dad’s kayak upright, then we all slogged back into our kayaks sopping wet. Me back with Dad, Lisa with Roger.
And then we pushed off and paddled into the darkness, rounded a point, and wrestled through hordes of whitecaps.
Still weak from exertion and shock, I wasn’t much good with my paddle, and my dad—with his hurt elbow—wasn’t much better. Though my body was creating heat with all the effort expended, I couldn’t stop shaking. My fingers felt like frozen sausages. I had trouble gripping the paddle, and I was so out of it that sometimes the blade of my paddle missed the water altogether, or just skimmed uselessly across the surface.
Other times I dug too deep and almost flipped us over. But we paddled on—the crippled and the cold. There was nothing else we could do.
Finally, a couple hundred yards off to our right—lit up by a tremendous flash of lightning—was Hunter Island. But as the thunder rolled over us the island sank back into darkness, and we figured we’d have to make a blind landing, where we couldn’t see the shore.
Then another bolt of lightning momentarily illuminated a small inlet. We changed course, paddled ferociously, and slid into it on waves of fear.
At that moment, a gunshot blasted a hole in the night.
If you’ve never been shot at you can’t possibly know what it’s like. Nothing prepares you for it. Your body recoils and your heart tries to burst free. You try to disappear into yourself and you forget to breathe and then you breathe too fast and your mouth goes dry and your palms sweat. You want to freeze and flee at the same time. You want to wake up out of this nightmare or fall fast asleep and pretend it’s all just a dream.
“WE KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE!” boomed a voice through a bullhorn.
It wasn’t a dream. It was all really happening. We couldn’t see the fishing boat in the darkness, but it had to be pretty close.
“WE WON’T HURT YOU. WE JUST WANT TO TALK!”
“It’s a bluff,” Willie hissed. “They can’t see us, and they’re not using their spotlight so they can keep us from seeing them. Keep paddling.”
So we paddled in frenzied rhythm through the gloom and into the inlet until Willie nosed his kayak into a slush of gravel-like stones.
“We’re in luck,” Willie said. “The tide’s still far enough out so they won’t be able to follow us in.”
“Till high tide,” Roger said, sliding up beside him. “Or they could drop anchor and come in by dinghy.”
“Either way,” said Willie, stepping out of his kayak, “we have a window of time and we have to use it. NOW!”
In a craze of movement we hauled up our kayaks and buried them beneath fallen branches and kelp. Then we followed our senses—in the brief moments of moonlight between clouds—and stumbled through thick old growth till we found a small clearing.
Exhausted, we dumped our gear and Willie reminded everyone to get busy gathering stuff for the fire.
“Risky, don’t you think?” Dad said. “We need heat, yeah, but we don’t want to be seen.”
“I’ll rig up a tarp,” said Willie. “So it can’t be seen from the water. We’re well into the brush here, and it’s dark. I think we’re good to go. They need a fire and they need it now!”
While the others began gathering wood for a fire, Lisa and I collapsed next to our dry bags.
Our not-so-dry bags.
My teeth chattered, my knees knocked, and Lisa clutched her elbows as if she were trying to fly into herself.
I wished she’d clutch me. I hugged myself and concentrated on not biting my tongue with my clacking teeth.
Again, she turned toward me, as if trying to say something.
But just then Dad brushed the top of my head with his hand. He and Cassidy went back and forth for more fuel, while Willie tried to coax wet wood into flame. Roger said he’d see if Lisa had any dry clothes, but first rigged up a tarp like a lean-to over the sputtering fire, and Willie fed it with the treasure of windfall limbs and sticks.
He was just in time. With a tremendous clap of thunder, a jagged spear of lightning cracked open the night—and again, the rain came driving down like nails.
And this time it didn’t stop.
But Willie was a wizard with fire. Though it sizzled and steamed, he managed to keep it roaring while Dad, Roger, and Cassidy pitched tents, and Lisa and I huddled close and tried to warm ourselves and our wet clothes by the flames.
And that’s when she said it. “I think you saved my life, Aaron. I came up under the kayak and bumped into it. I couldn’t breathe. I kept kicking and kicking. My lungs bursting. And then you snatched me from the darkness.”
At first I couldn’t speak. I was all clutched up. Then I stuttered, “Yeah, well I, I don’t think I would’ve found you if you hadn’t bu-bumped into my hip.”
She bumped my hip with hers. I was too out of it to bump her back.
I was trembling so hard my whole body tensed up and felt like one big cramp. A whole-body cramp. My stomach ached with emptiness, and we were in the grips of a chill that shook us in a fist of cold iron. Chill from cold and chill from fear.
Roger called Lisa to come into the tent and change her clothes. She came back a few minutes later in a warm jacket over her dry clothes. She sat back down beside me, leaning into the fire. “Brrrrrr,” she said. “I’m still freeeezing.”
The rain lashed down and the thunder crashed. The wind moaned like a wounded ghost bear lost between worlds. I put my arms around Lisa, but she just hugged herself, and we shivered together so hard that we both started to laugh—a nervous laugh that wracked us like sobs.
Then Dad came with bad news. Huddling with us beneath the tarp, he told me that seawater had leaked into the hatch and into one of my dry bags when we’d capsized—and my sleeping bag and clothes were soaked.
“Great,” I said.
Dad hung my wet clothes and sleeping bag on a line near the fire. He looked at me, like maybe I hadn’t secured the hatch well enough. Or closed the dry bag well enough. Or handled the riptide well enough.
He was disappointed in me. He wasn’t proud of me. And it hurt.
“Here, dude.” It was Cassidy. He offered me a dry flannel shirt and army style camouflage shorts with cargo pockets. Then he held out his sleeping bag. “Just until yours dries,” he said.
“Take ’em, or you’ll turn into a frozen turkey!” He pushed the dry clothes into my arms.
“Uh, thanks.” I really couldn’t believe he’d done that.
I scurried into our tent and changed out of my wet clothes and into Cassidy’s. I came back out and everybody laughed—with muffled laughs, like soft coughs. I looked down. The shirt was ginormous, the sleeves down below my hands, and the shorts were almost falling off, hanging down below my knees.
Roger handed me his bandana—he had others—and said, “Here. Better tie those on before they fall to your feet.” He almost cracked up, and so did Cassidy.
I rolled up the sleeves and cinched up the waistband of Cassidy’s shorts, and tied up the excess with the bandana, kind of like a tourniquet.
Willie handed me a mug. “Here, pard, this’ll put a fire in your belly.” I sat down and took a sip, then another, and the fiery tea—with maybe some medicinal herb—burned a tunnel to the pit of my belly, and from there it seemed to flow into my bloodstream.
That’s when I felt the barrel of a gun rammed up against my spine.
“Freeze!”