Adrift in the Sound (33 page)

Child dancers pranced onto the stage whooping and clowning in their homemade hats and masks, tugging on Abaya’s skirt and cloak. She ran to the side, laughing, the children chasing her like demons. Raven stepped into their midst in a crudely shaped mask with a fat, hooked beak and sharp, slitted eyes. The children shook rattles at him and waved him away with sticks. The people hooted and booed, they shouted, “Get Out!” “Go Away!” “Get lost!” The children looked hurt and confused. Raven led them away, around the shelter, back into the dark beneath the cliffs where they could watch.

More dancers, with beautiful masks and costumes, came forward. Some masks, Raven realized from a distance, he’d seen earlier in the afternoon in his parent’s house and felt another pang of shame, scanned the audience for Lizette, found her smiling on the side. Some dancers wore robes embroidered with animal symbols, and reed hats. The Tlingit danced, then the Haida, finally the Lummi. Then everyone joined the dancing, the tribes inter-mixing, children holding hands with the elders, dogs wagging their bodies in between legs. Old Auntie gripped her walker and bounced.

When the dancing slowed, parents led their children off toward the tents. Lizette found her father, standing apart, studying.
Always the anthropologist
, she thought.
Needs to lighten up
. She had her bag over her shoulder, Violet bundled against the cold wind that had grown stronger, sending smoke low across the sand, making her eyes water. “We need to go,” she told him. “I’m tired and it’s cold.”

Poland came to her father’s side. “Lizette needs to get the baby back to the cabin,” Einar said.

“I thought you guys were going to sleep in the teepee with me and my old girl friend.” Poland sounded disappointed. “It’s a gift from the Spokane people for the potlatch.”

“It’s beautiful,” Einar said. “I’m staying, but Lizette has to get back to the ranch with the baby.”

Poland waved toward a group of men to get their attention. Raven stuck his head out of the huddle. Poland raised his arm and gestured “come here.” Raven jogged over and Poland asked him to take Lizette and the baby back to Cutler’s.

“Do you need help getting up the trail to the car?” Einar asked, leaned over Violet’s blankets and kissed her on the head, squeezed Lizette’s arm. “Want me to go up to the meadow with you?”

“Naw, I got it,” Raven said, taking Lizette’s bag and putting the straps over his shoulder. “This thing’s heavy,” he said to Lizette, grinned.

“Everything I own is in it.” She laughed at the truth, pivoted on the sand, wondered when she’d stop living like a turtle with everything she owned on her back, stumbled. Raven caught her before she could fall. “I’m so tired, I’m staggering.”

“Better go,” her father said. He watched as they started up the switchbacks to the meadow above, waited until he saw they’d made it to the top.

“Go this way,” Raven pulled her to the trail that followed the rim edge of the forest, instead of taking the path toward the house. “I parked my truck in the back so I could get in and out when I need to.” They walked slowly in the dark, thick clouds had piled up in the night sky, no moonglow to light the way. An owl hooted and Lizette jumped. “Take it easy.” He chuckled. “He won’t hurt you. Hunts the meadow every night.” Around a bend in the trail, they saw his white truck, the color standing out from the trees like a beacon. He opened the passenger door and settled Lizette and Violet on the seat. They rode in relaxed silence to the ranch.

“I’ll walk you down to the cabin,” he said as he got out and took Violet from her. Lizette went to the main house, got a flashlight from the back porch, shined the beam on the trail as they picked their way down to the cabin. The light startled a big frog licking the grasses beside the trail. They paused to watch its gray-green lump of a body. It turned beady eyes to the flashlight beam, flicked its forked tongue and hopped away.

“Do you want to come in and sit down?” She pushed the door open and went to the table, lit a couple of candles.

“I can’t.” He handed Violet over, stepped back toward the door. “I’d like to, but we got a canoe race tomorrow morning, over to Friday Harbor and back. I’m meeting the guys at first light. Gotta get back, make sure they don’t get too drunk. We’re racing some good boats. Maybe you could come back over tomorrow? We’re having food and a war canoe ceremony. I figure we’ll get back by two.”

“Sure,” she said, then looked toward the windows and the little cove. “Depends on what happens with Looney.”

“Looney?”

“There’s a dead orca on the beach,” she said. “It’s Rocket’s orca. He calls him that. They’re supposed to come over with boats from the research station, haul him off.” She looked downcast, hated to think about sleeping while the orca lay there, didn’t want to say so. It wasn’t that she was afraid, it was the emptiness of his eyes that haunted her. “Depends on when they get done, I guess.”

She settled the sleeping baby into her apple box and put an extra blanket over her. Raven reached out and gathered her in a hug. He leaned in to kiss her cheek just as she turned to look at him and he accidentally brushed her lips. He pulled back as if he’d touched a hot coal, closed the door soundly as he went out. Lizette felt the urge to chase him, let the sensation go.

THIRTY–FOUR

THE THROATY DRONE OF A HEAVY ENGINE WOKE HER
. Morning light cut through the moisture-glazed windows. Lizette settled back on her pillow, closed her eyes and the dream came back, vivid and bright. Rocket lay among tousled sheets, his flat hand resting on the bed. She crawled gently, hovered above his peaceful body, lowered herself, kissed the back of his hand. He roused in the sun-warmed bed, rolled over, smiled. “I’m going to take a bath and shave,” he said.

“Can I come?”

“Sure.” He held out his hand. He slipped into the steamy tub, filled with bubbles that crackled softly as he washed, his foot lifted gracefully above the frothy bubble cloud. She sat on the cool tile floor, back against the wall.

He laughed, the sound transferred into a contented rumble in her chest. They talked about anything, nothing. In her dream they were intimate and comfortable, melded like the soap bubbles on Rocket’s back. There was no friction or hardness now, just acceptance melting warmly between them, completely relaxed. She looked up from where she sat and watched him shave, pulling the razor smoothly across his throat, lifting his innocent chin to the light.

The rumble of engines reversing jerked her from her reverie. She got up and walked to the window. Through the raindrops spattering the glass she saw men standing on the beach around Looney. She watched them huddle and move down the orca’s sides, as if planning what to do. She pulled on jeans and sweatshirt, zipped up a yellow rain parka. Violet slept soundly. She closed the door softly on the way out.

At the waterline, she greeted the men, stood aside. One nodded at her as he took measurements. Another wrote in a pocket notebook. “About twenty-five feet long, maybe ten tons,” the one with the measuring tape said. “We can wrap lines around the flukes and try winching it off. Pretty heavy for the outboard motor, but it should get lighter if we can refloat him.” Lizette looked at the small boat bobbing in the waves rolling to shore on the incoming tide. “Don’t want to burn out the motor. Then we’d really be stuck.”

They wore waders and moved to thigh depth in the water, stretched lines around Looney’s tail flukes. One guy got into a rubber dinghy with a small outboard motor. He pulled the starter rope, gray-blue smoke belched from the engine and the acrid smell of burnt gas filled the air.

Lizette felt a tap on her shoulder, turned to find Toulouse, rumpled and bleary-eyed, the white ostrich plume on his hat limp in the rain. Tucker danced around his legs. Lizette bent and cuffed the dog, he re-approached and she scratched him behind the ears before he scampered off to sniff Looney.

“This won’t take long,” Toulouse reassured her. “A few tugs and it will be gone.”

She turned from him and walked to the yoga platform, leaned against the edge and looked out to sea. White caps peaked in the channel between Orcas and Shaw islands, rainwater ran down her cheeks. A big research vessel hovered offshore in the strait. She figured the ship was waiting for the smaller boat to haul Looney off the beach and then drag the carcass to it. She knew when they got it aboard they’d perform the necropsy, find out why Looney died. She let out a soft “oo” and kept the sound going.

The men wrestled with the ropes, the dinghy came around and they threw the lines to the tender, who gathered them in gloved hands, straightened out the lines. He eased back from the shore, careful not to tangle the ropes. Looney’s limp body shifted with the tugging, lifted on the rising tide.

One of the men stood by the puddle of dark blood in the sand. His voice carried to Lizette on the wind. “Shot.” He fingered the round wound behind Looney’s eye. “Looks like a heavy caliber rifle from the size of the hole.” He pushed Looney’s body and it seemed to come right, the big orca resting on its belly, dorsal fin flapping to one side, deflated. “If I had to guess, I’d say he got shot for stealing, probably from a commercial catch by the look of the net. We’ll need to report it to the Coast Guard once we get him on board and confirm it. And, he’s got some nasty propeller scars.” He ran his hand down Looney’s sleek back. “They look old. From the description, this must be the rogue that’s been screwing around in the shipping channels, chasing tugs. Looks like that problem’s solved.”

He yanked at the fish net tangled around Looney’s flukes. “Wonder where the rest of the net is?”

“Probably wrapped around a half a dozen harbor seals by now,” the man standing next to him securing lines answered. They grunted to each other in disgust and kept working.

Toulouse paced above the waterline in the soft sand. His black-and-fuchsia-lined cape flapped foolishly in the wind and rain. He held up a sheet of paper, “Wordsworth,” he shouted to her over the wind and the whine of the outboard motor. He went on pacing, reading poetry in deep, sonorous tones that carried to her on wind gusts.

She caught some of his words, “The tide rises, the tide falls.” He raised his arm in grandiloquence and turned to face her, stopped his pacing for a moment. “But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls, the little waves, with their soft, white hands, efface the footprints from the sand.” She looked at him gravely, he offered her a theatrical head bow and continued. “The tide rises, the tide falls, but nevermore returns the traveler to the shore.”

When he finished, he wiped away tears, but it might have been the wind that watered his eyes. Standing alone at the water’s edge, looking like a drowned Three Musketeer in his wilted three-corner hat, she saw his honest sympathy, his sincere desire to help. He fluttered the page into the wind. It lofted into the air. She watched it go and knew then, truly knew it was done. She knew she’d never see Rocket again, that those days were gone. She accepted the loss, let his spirit go, listened to the wind, breathed a long “oo.”

At first it sounded like a kitten mewling. The sound came again, changed pitch. A lusty cry! She flew across the beach, kicked up sand, took the slope in a gallop, charged toward Violet, to all that matters. The baby was kicking and flailing when she burst into the cabin. Lizette picked her up, patted her back, kissed her head, and shushed her, then walked to the rain-veiled windows, sat cross-legged on the floor with Violet in her lap, puckered her lips, supped air and watched, as if floating under water.

NOTABLE EVENTS
^*

1973

January

• The Marine Mammal Protection Act, passed in October 1972, begins protection for all marine mammals in U.S. waters, including orcas and seals.
  
• U.S. President Richard Nixon inaugurated for second term.
  
• Roe v. Wade
  : The U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion, legalizing the procedure nationwide.
  
• U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War officially ends with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27.
  

February

• The U.S. dollar devalued by 10%.
  
• The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
  

March

• The last U.S. soldier leaves Vietnam.
  

April

• The World Trade Center officially opens with a ribbon cutting in New York City.
  
• Watergate Scandal: President Nixon announces that top White House aides and others have resigned.
  

May

• The 71-day standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends between federal authorities and American Indian Movement activists.
  
• Skylab
  , the United States’ first space station, is launched.
  
• Watergate Scandal: Televised hearings begin in the U.S. Senate.
  

June

• The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is founded and the War on Drugs launched.
  
• The U.S. Congress passes the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), ushering in rights for the disabled.
  
• Martial artist and actor Bruce Lee dies and is buried in Seattle.
  

August

• Top-grossing movie “American Graffiti” released.
  
• The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, halting 12 years of U.S. combat activity in Southeast Asia.
  

September

• The Battle of the Sexes
  : Tennis professional Billie Jean King defeats male tennis pro Bobby Riggs, making a statement about women’s equality.
  
• United Farm Workers union opposes sanctions on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.
  

October

• U.S. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigns and then, in federal court pleads no contest to income tax evasion.
  
• The Arab Oil Embargo against several countries that support Israel triggers the 1973 U.S. and global energy crisis.
  
• Watergate Scandal: “Saturday Night Massacre” leads to dismissal of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, raising calls for President Nixon’s impeachment.
  
• The Oakland Athletics win baseball’s World Series, defeating the New York Mets 4 games to 3.
  

November

• Congress overrides President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
  
• President Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
  
• Watergate Scandal: In Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors “I am not a crook.”
  
• The U.S. Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States.
  

December

• The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
  
• OPEC doubles the price of crude oil.
  
• Congress passes the Endangered Species Act.
  

January 1970-1976:

In the late 1960s, millions of American teenagers left home and headed out on a grand hippie adventure. By the early 1970s, many of these young people—now in their early-to mid-20s—were beyond the reach of social programs for children. Many were strung out on alcohol and drugs, living on the streets, working as prostitutes, physically maimed, and/or suffering from mental illness. An untold number of them, including young women and, in some cases the children they bore, did not survive.

Karen M. Staller, author of
Runaways: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped Today’s Practices and Policies
(2006, Columbia University Press) writes that passage of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1971 lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. One result was that rules governing runaways, dropped to below age 18.

The severe U.S. economic recession of the era, followed by soaring inflation, halted new U.S. initiatives to expand medical care and other social programs, which likely could have helped the walking casualties of the late 1960s. Midwives were not licensed to practice in Washington State until 1976.

Due to the winding down of the Vietnam War and the ongoing recession, the Seattle-based Boeing aerospace company cut its work-force from 80,400 to 37,200 between early 1970 and October 1971. By 1973, unemployment in the Puget Sound area topped 17 percent (
Seattle Times
). Seattle suffered massive home foreclosures and severe urban blight. During the economic bust, a famous Seattle billboard asked: “Would the last person leaving SEATTLE—turn out the lights?”

Sources:
Seattle Times
, University of Washington Library, Worldwide Web

*
Adrift in the Sound
is a work of fiction and, while the social-political events mentioned in the novel took place in 1973, the occurrence of events in the story is not historically precise as to month and day.