Chapter 20

Danger

When Lillian and Nicholi finally reached the beach, they could see the smoke from the little fire that was cooking their dinner. The smell of cooking salmon permeated the surrounding beach. There was no wind now, nothing to blow it away.

The two were walking calmly back to camp, looking forward to their dinner, when Lillian sensed danger. She stopped and continued to look at camp.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nicholi.

Lillian just stood still for what seemed like eternity to Nicholi.

“Well, I’m going to go see if dinner’s ready yet,” he said flatly.

She slowly turned around 180 degrees and looked down the beach in the opposite direction beyond where she had walked that day. She stood still in her tracks and just stared while Nicholi, with his rumbling stomach, continued to watch her.

“You pee down there since we be here?” she whispered to Nicholi.

He looked at her, smirking, amazed with her question before answering, “Yeah, and so did Sam.”

“Good.” She continued to look, and suddenly Nicholi saw some movement on the beach where he had been walking alone earlier in the day. Whatever it was was coming around the shoreline about 300 yards away. “Big dog?” he questioned.

“Don’t know,” she said with her flat tone.

“It’s brown and walks like a big dog. A big, fat dog.”

Lillian stood watching for a few more seconds. Then, “Bear here,” she said with confidence and a slight tremble in her voice. “Back up, walk to camp. Watch bear.”

Nicholi did as he was told. He walked backwards slowly down the beach until he was almost out of sight of the bear. Then he saw something that surprised him. The bear stood up on his back legs and looked in their direction. He started to run toward them as if curious as to what they were. At about 100 yards he abruptly stopped, skidding on all four feet. He looked at the bushes beside him and stepped cautiously toward them. Then he barked a “woof” and ran into the bushes. Nicholi and Lillian stood still listening as the animal ran up the hillside, crashing through the bushes of heavy alder and willow. In a minute, they could no longer hear a sound.

Lillian grabbed Nicholi’s hand and held on tight. “I no like bears, but they no like us either.”

They jogged back to camp, shaking in their dirty tennis shoes, and sat down, trembling, unable to talk for a minute. Everyone watched them with curiosity, but only Marie said anything.

“You see a ghost or something?”

Nicholi said, quaking, “Bears here.”

They all looked at each other with fear in their eyes.

Helen was awake again and said very calmly, “Bears where?”

“Pee scared him, ran up hill,” said Lillian.

Helen, Patrick and Marie didn’t understand what she was saying.

Lillian stared at Nicholi as he sat shaking. She took his hand to calm him down and said, “Bear scared. Ran up hill. Say it, Nick.”

Finally he said, “My pee scared him. He ran up the hill.”

“Well, great,” said Helen with a little more confidence in her voice. “You put out a little of your scent, and he interpreted it as stating your territory. He didn’t know what you were so he ran away.”

“Guess so.”

Helen handed him her water bottle and said, “Drink up, boy. You saved the day.”

He smiled and looked over at the fire as he took a swig of water. “Oooh, salmon.”

Patrick, still on plane observation duty on the rock, said, “Looks and smells cooked to me. We gonna eat now that everyone is here?”

Sam, Marie, and Helen all said in unison, “Yeah!”

Marie and Sam pulled the salmon sticks down and put them next to the fire. Then they divided up the fish into chunks, and everyone that could walk grabbed a chunk. Marie took her sister a piece and started to feed it to her, but she said, “I think I can do it. Let me try to feed myself.” She lay there, holding her head still and slowly nibbled on the pile of fresh salmon in the tin can. “Lillian and Sam, it tastes like heaven. Excellent dinner.”

Lillian had nibbled a bit of her salmon, but what she really wanted was her favorite, the fish head soup. She pulled the pot off the fire and looked in the pot. Then she took the spoon and popped the eyes out of the heads and gobbled them down.

“Ahhhhh, yuck!!!” exclaimed Marie. Then she looked in the pot and found that the heads were falling apart and swimming in fish fat. She curled up her nose and acted like she was going to throw up.

The soup had a slightly burned odor to it, but Lillian ignored it. She spooned the fatty flesh from the cheeks and head into the one bowl and poured the fat liquid on top. With the one spoon she slowly devoured the soup, smiling after each bite.

Sam decided to feed Patrick. He stood beside the chair and stuffed the fish in Patrick’s mouth, managing to smear a large percentage of the meal all over his face. It dribbled down his chin and splattered on his already very filthy clothes. Patrick was a mess, but it tasted so good, he didn’t mind.

Nicholi decided to try the fish head soup. “Hey, it’s not bad, just looks awful.” He ate two bowls of it. When they were all finished and were lying around the fire, burping up their fabulous meal, Lillian started to stare at Nicholi. Then she said something that, as usual, only he could hear.

“What she say?” said Marie.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. We found a cabin.”

“A cabin!” exclaimed Helen. She bolted upright and instantly found her head was still swimming. A headache struck like lightning, and for a second she thought she was going to lose all her dinner. She quickly put her head down and closed her eyes, and only after the spinning went away did she ask for more details.

While everyone was learning about the new cabin, Patrick had his eye on the top of Mt. St. Augustine. “Helen, I think that thing is going to blow. Maybe we should move to the cabin. If not tonight, then early tomorrow morning.”

“What thing?”

“Augustine. It’s been really smoking all day. I didn’t want to say anything ’cause there wasn’t anything we could do about it, but it’s smoking more now than it did this morning. A flimsy shelter like this one wouldn’t be a good place to be if it did blow. What if it shot rocks up? Wouldn’t we get buried in the ash?

“Sam and Marie, help me out of this tent so I can see what he’s talking about.”

The two strong young adults took her by the armpits and dragged her outside, propped her up against a tree, and held tightly onto her.

Helen kept her eyes shut during all the movement, but once she stopped moving, her head seemed to only ache. She could handle that. She opened her eyes slowly and looked across the water toward the mountain that stood only a few miles across the bay to the south of them. “Oh, God help us!” she said when she saw it. “I think you’re right, Patrick.”

“The only good thing I can see is the wind is going away from us. The steam and smoke are all blowing southwest now, so even if it did erupt a little, we’d be fine, wouldn’t we?”

“You know I think you’re right on that. Good observation.”

Nicholi, Sam, and Lillian looked a little relieved.

“I’m sick of camping!” Marie whined. “I just wish someone would come get us. Bears, the volcano erupting, no food, and I stink!” She started to cry.

Lillian nodded in agreement. She was completely covered in fish scales, and fish guts were drying on her pants. Her hands were all chapped from the hard work, and her face was covered in splotches of mud. On top of it all, she had nothing clean left to wear.

“Problem is, it’s really late now. It’s getting darker, and both Patrick and I will need help to move up the hillside. There might not be enough time. I think we better clean up all the food that we can now, pack up our sleeping stuff early tomorrow morning, and then work on moving to the cabin. Let’s make sure where we sleep is clear of food. Wash the tin cans good too. If our bear comes back looking for a snack, I don’t want him looking in our bed. Hopefully he won’t snoop around us or the fire pit.”

Everyone looked from Helen to Patrick and back to Helen.

“Steam,” said Lillian with smiling enthusiasm.

“I heard that, Lillian,” said Helen. “Yeah, we’ll take a steam bath tomorrow.”

Marie took a dirty shirt and used it as a broom on the girls’ side of the tent to clean out all the crumbs she could see. Sam did the same on the boys’ side. Then they moved Patrick and Helen back into the shelter for the night. All cooking sticks, crumbs, and fish bones and skin were tossed in the fire. The bowls and spoons were rinsed out so they were clean of fish. Finally they straightened up the shelter so it wasn’t such a disaster area and all settled down to sleep for the last night.

“So glad move,” said Lillian with a sigh of relief.

“I heard her! I heard Lillian! She’s glad we’re moving tomorrow,” said Marie.

“We have to be good listeners and observers to understand each other, Marie,” said Helen. “I know that if I hadn’t been paying attention, I would’ve missed really knowing each of you. And what a loss that would have been! I’m so grateful to have you all for my friends.”

“Lub uu oo” (Love you too), said Sam as he reached over and gently touched Helen’s arm.

The gesture brought tears to her eyes, and she lovingly smiled back at him.

“Sweet dreams, everyone,” said Helen.

As darkness settled over the camp, light snoring soon pervaded the shelter filled with dirty campers.