Nehalem (Place People Live)

archipelagos.

For All The Empty Streams

A water bird comes and goes,

Leaving no traces at all

Yet it knows

How to go its own way.

Anonymous

August 10

4:30 AM: South Jetty

Neahkahnie Mountain absorbed dawn’s color, and night ended with an Oregon mist that blurred the horizon in mirror haze. Before warmth moved the air, Nehalem’s jetties slowly materialized, levitating into that monochrome void like mandibles sampling Pacific offerings. They collected the night detritus that would ride the rising tide through the river mouth into the bay, and before the ocean pressed in or light revealed the placid water, small black shapes assembled between the jaws, where they hovered, like bits of punctuation poised to structure the day’s inevitable text.

Two boys listened to surf breaking in the distance as they climbed into the moist darkness surrounding the south jetty. They had left their trailer before dawn, following a familiar route lit first by streetlights and finally by harbor lights to a trail that led up through jagged blocks of black basalt. When they reached the concrete surface on top, the older boy walked ahead shining his flashlight into sharp holes on either side of the crumbling pavement and then onto the path behind him, reassuring his brother’s steps. Salt spray and floods had eaten away sections of the road that once allowed motorized access to the jetty’s beacon and in shadow-less light, dark boulders merged with the voids between them. They passed the rusted warning sign prohibiting vehicles, and continued slowly for the first hundred yards until dawn challenged the weakening flashlight.

When distinct details of the world finally appeared, they stopped to listen and the older boy pointed the beam at the water where it met the rocks. He studied the swell as it slid past barnacles, mussels, a few starfish and sea anemones wilting in the low tide. Strapped to their backpacks, they carried homemade crab traps constructed with chicken wire bound to sticks. The smaller boy collapsed on the dusty concrete, shrugged off his pack and dropped his feet into a hole. It sounds like cannons going off. How big do you think it is?

His brother pointed the dying beam into the haze revealing nothing more than a faintly glowing cone dancing before a long dark shadow. A lot bigger than you. Definitely overhead, maybe six to eight. I can barely see the north jetty. Doubt if anyone’s in the water. When we get halfway out it should be light enough to tell, but if the swell is this big over here, it’s gotta be overhead on the north jetty. This glassy, they’ll be out.

The younger brother tightened his sweatshirt hood as he swung his legs between the boulders. Let’s stay here till it’s light. Your batteries suck. Half the time I don’t know where you’re going.

Quinn offered the flashlight with a note of impatience in his voice. I want to get out there while the tide is still slack. You take the light. I don’t need it anymore.

I don’t need it, either.

Take it.

I don’t want it. I just want to sit here a while.

Quinn ignored Rhys’ request and added, If you don’t want to use the light, just stay behind me and watch where you’re going. It’s getting light, but I don’t want to carry you back with a broken leg.

Rhys didn’t get up. Why are we out here in the dark anyway? We can catch crabs anytime.

I already told you, pea brain. You catch crabs on an incoming tide just after it turns; tide brings in food, but crabs don’t eat when it starts rippin. They hunker down in the rocks.

Smells like the tide’s turning right here and I’m cold. We’re supposed to be hunkered down in bed like normal kids.

Normal kids don’t surf. You want to surf?

Rhys considered the sound and the dark water. Not out there.

Quinn’s irritation increased with Rhys’ stubborn refusal to accept his authority. You want a surfboard; you sell crabs to the Crab Pot. You want to catch crabs; you take the weather.

Rhys started untying his trap. You sound like dad. I’m for fishing here.

Crabbing dill weed. We need to go all the way to the point.

You just want to go out that far so you can see them better. There’s plenty of crabs right here. I’m tired of lugging this crap.

Quinn began walking. Fine, you stay. I’m going out where I can catch crabs. I told you not to come – that this was too hard for a little kid. Just sit here for an hour till I get back and don’t fall in a hole if you try to catch up.

I didn’t say I was staying. I said I wanted to fish here.

Crab. I’ll carry your trap, but I get half of anything that comes up.

No way. I’m putting it in here. I’ll get the crabs out when we come back.

The older boy stopped and looked across the channel at the junction of the north jetty and the sand spit, where headlights appeared and started a slow crawl out the access road that remained intact on the north side. Alright, I’m waiting three minutes; then I’m leaving. Don’t slide off the rock slime and get drowned.

Quinn watched passively as Rhys picked the remains of several fried chicken wings from a greasy fast food container at the bottom of his pack and straightened the sticks inside the trap. He baited it by suspending the bones with heavy twine in the center of the crumpled wire cage, and attached a length of clothesline, which he tested as he lowered it into the rocks below the path. Rhys descended to a large flat boulder a few feet above the high water line and dropped the trap beside him, while he secured the rope’s end loop around a sharp corner. He tossed it into a passing swell, but the wire frame remained visible, suspended a few feet below the surface.

Quinn had watched his brother’s slow process silently, but laughed cynically when he saw it wouldn’t sink and added, You forgot to put rocks inside. It’s never going down without weight.

Frustrated but determined, Rhys tried retrieving it for another launch, but the trap resisted. As it reached the surface, he saw clear monofilament fishnet snagged by the corners of the wire frame. Hoisting it the last four feet onto his rock ledge, his sneakers slipped on the smooth wet surface as each passing swell tugged hard at the trap, threatening to drag it and him back into the water.

When Quinn shifted his attention from the truck’s progress and looked down again, he saw his brother standing over the trap, staring at the strands of twisted net trailing off into the channel. Three minutes are up. Five minutes are up. Let’s go. Cut that crap off your trap and let’s go.

Rhys began pulling more net onto the rocks. Hey Quinn, fishermen make more than crabbers, right?

Yeah. So?

Rhys turned and grinned with the satisfaction that justifies stubbornness through unexpected success. Well, you catch crabs and I’ll just sell big fresh Chinook.

As a pile of net accumulated between the rocks, Quinn saw the dark silhouette of a heavy fish rise on the swell and fall as it passed, dragging his brother to the edge of his perch. Jesus, Rhys, that fish is going to pull you in. Stop fighting it; just hold on. Wait till I get down there.

Rhys sat down and braced his feet. My fish.

Quinn scrambled down to the ledge. Fine, your fish. Stay down and hold on. You don’t want to try swimming with that mess wrapped around you.

Together they dragged the salmon onto the boulder. The net had drowned it, but it was fresh from a recent death. A few yards off the rocks, they could see smaller fish suspended in barely visible filaments that rocked back and forth with the surge. Quinn inspected the salmon and calculated the extent of the treasure they had discovered. That fish is as big as you Rhys. What do you weigh? Fifty, fifty-five? You just got like a hundred bucks. Let’s keep pulling and from now on, just so it’s fair, we share what comes up. Rhys nodded. His treasure already exceeded anything he had imagined.

A knot of rockfish and herring came up easily, but what had been a thin streamer of net gradually thickened into a conglomeration of several nets in graduated sizes and progress stopped as more and more fine mesh tangled in the barnacles and mussels. Five yards off the rocks, the first of the floats appeared. It was ten inches wide, five inches high and black with a thin red line just above the water. It looked like a plastic bowl floating upside down.

Erratic pulses of wind whispered from the bay toward deep water, and Quinn imagined the offshore breeze arriving, building, and perfecting the waves for whoever had the guts to face them. He looked up to check the truck’s progress on the north jetty, but before his gaze had crossed the channel, hundreds of floats, extending across its entire width, diverted his attention. They receded from the rock where he and his brother sat beside their salmon, to the tip of the north jetty, now visible three hundred yards away beneath the lifting mist, like helmets of a submerged infantry. The north jetty terminus stalled and condensed one end of the column as the tide slowly rotated the expanding remainder into the channel. The erratic dotted line that marked the advancing edge led directly from Quinn’s hand past a hollow eight-foot wave that rolled like a cavernous barrel along the north jetty. Occasional puffs feathered the wave’s lip into fine white mist that trailed behind the dark green wall before it collapsed. He saw two silhouetted figures standing above the rocks waiting for a massive set to pass before they paddled out. He tried yelling and waving. Then both he and Rhys shouted together as loud as they could, but the break was two hundred yards away. Quinn knew that not much sound could penetrate a wetsuit hood. Together, they dragged the salmon and the small fish up to the path and tried yelling again. One of the surfers dove from the jetty and began to paddle.

Quinn dropped his pack. He demanded that Rhys promise not to drag anymore net alone and wait on the path with the fish until he returned. He offered his knife to cut the small fish free. Rhys agreed and Quinn ran.

5 AM: North Jetty

When storm swells arrived from the southwest they broke along the outer reach of the north jetty. If the direction became more westerly, the break moved farther into the channel and rides lasted longer. Extreme southern exposure slammed the swells into the outer reach of the sandbar making the waves hollow, the rides fast and the impact of the shore break on the jetty boulders vicious. Richard Glassman and Sam Rodeheim had grown up surfing Oregon waves and this break with these conditions happened once a year – maybe. They had driven out onto the jetty with headlights and hadn’t seen the break from the harbor, but when they parked Glassman’s ‘65 Chevy pickup and shut down the engine, they could hear that it was big. The calm excitement of pulling on wet wetsuits in dawn light and searching for booties under sleeping bags kept the Chinook camper quiet and each time a new peak thundered down, one or both of them stopped and silently estimated size. Adrenaline washed away the morning’s daze and any weed residue from the last night’s party.

Sammy stepped out of the camper first and stood completely still. I think I’ve waited most of my life for this. You are not going to believe what’s out here. This is what I named you for. This is perfect. This is the day you will not forget. A big barrel collapsed in a spitting roar and he howled as loud as he could, as if his lungs could compete with the air exploding from the heart of the wave. As they walked along the jetty looking for the right spot to launch, they saw more headlights pull up onto the access road.

Sammy watched them with mild annoyance. Hey Glass, you think we should pull the truck over? If that’s Murphy, he’s gonna be pissed and haul our ass out of the water to move it.

Glassman recognized the headlights. Murphy’s sound asleep. That’s Billy. You think Billy would sleep through this? He’ll park behind us. He knows we’re already here; I told him the waves would be here today. One of these days he’s gonna learn to believe me and get up when I do. How long did it take you to start believing me? You guys all treat my visions like they’re bullshit, but when I know waves are coming – they’re coming. I see things.

Sammy laughed dismissively. I don’t know what you see without your glasses, but I see the best freakin tubes of the year – right in front of me. He saw Glass stop and for no apparent reason stare across the channel.

Halted by the impression that he heard the echo of what he had just said, Glass looked for the source of the sound and found two small figures on the rocks across the channel. For a moment they appeared mysteriously - vague, gray and distant. He imagined the other end of this swell stretched across the river mouth to their side, where it barely made a splash as it slid past them. On his side, a head high maelstrom crashed through the basalt a few steps below. Fifty feet of churning foam attached the black and white violence beneath him to a steep green wall that swept past – empty, smooth and stretching into deep channel oblivion. It was well overhead, maybe eight feet, which meant the peak would be at least ten. His attention returned to the figures, who solidified and really seemed to be there, standing on the jetty - waving. Maybe they were surfers excited to see someone going out; or more likely, they were birders who had never seen a big flock of murres and ducks at dawn, black shapes floating in the south jetty’s protective shadow.

Sammy dove from the jetty as the last wave of the set passed, sprinted into the channel and paddled out to the lineup as the next set began to show. Glass waited for another small wave to wash past and dove after him. He was far enough behind that he decided not to stroke for the line up. He could miss this set, and sitting out in the channel he could relax and watch Sammy take his pick and work it alone. It was always amazing to stare directly into a big barrel from the safety of the channel, even better if your partner was locked in the tube screaming at you. In these waves, Sammy promised a great show. He could see Billy’s truck parked behind the camper with Billy sitting half naked on the hood. It was now an audience of two waiting for the show to begin and Glass had the cat seat. Sammy let the first wave go and the second and the third. Glass watched the barrels roll past and began to regret waiting, but on the fourth, he saw Sammy drop in behind a huge peak. He pulled up onto the wall as the lip pitched out behind him and the tube enveloped him. Glass thought he saw a dead bird follow the lip down into the white water and the barrel rolled by empty. Sammy popped up behind the broken wave swinging his arms as if he was swatting away flies, and began paddling for the channel.

Glass yelled over the roar of the shore break. I thought this was the big show. Nice burial, dude.

Sammy yelled back irritated and frustrated by his failure on a wave that had promised to be a perfect beginning. Bite me. I snagged some fish net and it’s all over me.

Glass yelled a half-joking warning. You gotta pick a better line next time. And you better start stroking, the next barrel’s on its way.

Sammy began paddling hard for the channel, but moved sluggishly as the next wave broke and rolled toward him. He managed to reach the shoulder of the wave and avoid the impact, but as it passed, the white water seemed to exert an invisible force that dragged him along with it. When the motion of the net subsided, he had almost reached Glass, but it had drawn him closer to the jetty and into the path of the next wave. They were still thirty feet apart.

A tone of mild fear crept into Sammy’s voice as he realized that enduring noxious pollution could degenerate beyond humiliation to survival. Hey man, help me get this crap offa me. It’s all wrapped around me and tangled in the board’s fins. This is messed up.

Glass looked outside at the last wave of the set and decided to stay in the channel. You gotta get out here or take one on the head. Come on dude, paddle. You can make this. It’s the last wave of the set. I’ll get that off you after this one.

Sammy struggled awkwardly, but couldn’t gain traction.

Glass watched the wave break and the barrel roll toward Sammy. He yelled. Leave it and swim. Come on man, you got about twenty seconds.

I can’t. He screamed back. It’s like I’m tied onto the board."

The last barrel rolled over Sammy. As Glass rose on the shoulder he checked the lineup for another wave and suddenly visualized the deadly expanse of black floats not as birds, but bulbous spiders bringing their web forward with each successive wave. He turned toward the jetty and stroked hard after the white water, hoping it wouldn’t drag Sammy onto the rocks before he could reach him. Suddenly Sammy was there, on the surface beside him, wound so tightly he could barely control the board enough to right himself. He floated almost vertically and his eyes bulged as he gasped for air. Glass could see the net spreading beneath them and feel it collecting on his legs as he kicked to maintain leverage while he tore at the lines binding Sammy’s arms.

Panic gripped Sammy and he screamed at Glass. Get the knife. Get in there and get the knife. I’ll paddle through the next couple; they’re small. They can’t put me in the rocks. We gotta get me out of this before the next set comes through.

Glass continued tearing frantically at the net, breaking only the light lines. Heavy lines cut into his wetsuit gloves and held. A small shore break passed between them and the jetty, dragging Sammy a few feet. He screamed at Glass. Forget it man. I can paddle enough to get around these little ones. Get the knife. You’re thirty feet away; get the knife!

Glass stroked away from the net, and directly at the jetty, but didn’t reach it before the next wave caught him. Using his board as a shield, he braced for the impact as it drove him onto the rocks. The white water that caught him was small, comparatively, but big enough to slam him and his board into a ledge with enough force to snap the board. He caught a boulder, let the wave pass and scrambled out screaming for Billy. When he looked back, he saw Sammy paddling again. He still had control, but a corner of that broken wave had twisted a fresh layer of net into his tether.

Glass ran toward Billy’s truck yelling frantically. Billy, gimme your knife. Sammy’s caught in some crazy net and it’s gonna drown him or drag him on the rocks. He’s totally snarled. I gotta get back out and cut him lose. Gimme your board. I just broke mine. Where’s your deck knife?

Billy stepped out from behind his pickup wearing trunks. One leg was a few inches into a wetsuit. He looked out at the next wave bearing down on Sammy, stepped on the wet suit with his free foot and pulled lose in one motion. He opened the truck cab, grabbed fins from under the seat, snatched a deck knife that hung from the rearview mirror and ran.

Glass ran after him. As he scanned the boulders for a way down, he saw the net beginning to nest around a piece of his shattered board that had wedged between boulders. The white water rushed past and for a moment everything stopped as he stared at the wet lines glittering around it like old tinsel clinging to a trashed Christmas tree. His entire body shook violently, as if he had gone hypothermic. He looked up as Billy pulled on his second fin. It suddenly occurred to him that Billy was going without a wet suit. You can’t go out there. You’ll freeze.

Billy yelled before he dove. There’s a car headed this way on the access road. Whoever it is, get them down to the water. I’ll get Sammy lose. There’s rope in the truck. Get it and stay on shore. Honk the horn till you see me headed in with Sammy or till they get here – whoever they are.

The last of the small waves rolled over Sammy sweeping him closer to the jetty. Three waves he couldn’t escape had wound him to the board in a cocoon of fine filament, but he managed to stay upright with his head above water. The net bound the tail of the board with knots around the fins. As the surge moved past, it swung him like a swamped kayak in a powerful current with nothing but the bow floatation out of the water and the stern tethered to the bottom by an unbreakable anchor chain.

He was only thirty feet away, nothing, the width of a swimming pool, but this was not just water. The cold and the adrenaline pumped him, but Billy had almost no body fat and he was swimming through an exotic soup of clear tentacles that clung to anything that moved. As soon as he hit the water, he realized that his arms were useless. One stroke wound a few lines around his shoulder that he shrugged off easily, but the message was clear – forward progress would be limited to kicking with fins.

Hands stretched in front, above the water, gliding over the invisible mesh beneath him, he could see the next wall of white water coming - not too big, still no set. Sammy was ten feet away when it hit. Billy tried to power up and over hoping to stay clear of the net, but three feet of broken wave had enough power to flip him, roll him and wind him into the web. The deck knife went through the monofilament easily and he was on the surface in seconds, but Sammy was gone. When the board bobbed back up, it was close, but inverted. Billy jerked hard on the board’s nose, spinning the cocoon over and Sammy gasped for air. Without waiting to see the mask of terror attached to Sammy’s face, Billy dove again. The knife unzipped the cocoon with a few hard slashes against the bottom of the board and Billy felt the explosion of freedom above him when Sammy could suddenly move again. He stayed down, cutting away his own entanglement and the trailing web still knotted to the board’s fins. He sensed the panic inches above him as Sammy collected the freed board and spun away for the jetty; and he felt an invisible presence surrounding them – the mindless silence of an amoral killing machine passively awaiting movement.

5:20 AM: North Jetty

Quinn rode out the north jetty road in Sven’s Jeep, sandwiched between two towers of anger. Sven and the Jeep smelled like fish and the other guy just stank. They were both huge and Quinn felt insignificant, squished out of existence. Maybe Rhys had it right; they should have stayed in bed like normal kids. Sven had been OK when he told them, but Lester reminded him of everything bad that happened when their father got too drunk. At first no one would listen except John and Sven, who thought it was hilarious that two kids could land a fifty-pound Chinook off the jetty before the commercial boats had even loaded to go out. John had disappeared and Sven didn’t believe there was a net or a Chinook until he walked out of the Sandbar and saw the dots on the channel. Then he turned mad. He was still mad. No one had talked since they climbed into the Jeep. When they turned up onto the jetty, they could see the trucks parked out at the break.

Lester exploded first. That’s that meathead hippie’s truck. What the hell is he doing out there? You said you saw two surfers. Now we got two trucks. You need glasses kid?

Sven didn’t look at Lester. Lay off the kid.

You his mom? This is all bullshit. I don’t know what I’m doing in a fish wagon anyway, it stinks. He turned his hangover breath on Quinn. And you’re probably a lying little bastard, cause your lazy old man got a illegal fish and this net shit is all crap.

Sven kept his visual attention on the concrete, but didn’t conceal his anger. You said it’s your kid out there. I didn’t ask you to come. You want to walk; you can get out. You want to ride; you can shut it.

Pull this shit heap over.

Sven turned bright red. The Jeep slowed. Quinn knew it was dangerous to talk. He’d heard that tone before, but in the moment of calm before the fight he could hear the steady whine of Billy’s horn. He wanted to say ‘they’re blowing the horn, because something is wrong’, but Sven heard it too and slammed the accelerator down.

You want to walk, tough guy? Jump.

When they got to the Billy’s truck, Glass had gathered the rope and was running out the jetty waving wildly for them to follow. Sven parked and ran after him. He was a waterman and one glance at the floats and the netted rocks told him disaster had moved into their bay. He saw Billy disappear under the whitewater and moments later Sammy and his board surface.

Quinn looked out at the lineup as the first wave of the next set began to rise. Thirty yards away, the peak ascended like the apex of a green glass wall. An offshore gust blew a wedge of spray off the transparently thin lip.

Glass watched the peak pitch out and form the empty ellipse that collapsed into a hollow barrel spinning toward them on the channel side with its thundering wall of white water hammering the boulders on the jetty side. He saw black dots stretching across the green face of the wall and a shadow like a log or a dolphin surfing.

5:30 AM: North Jetty

With every stroke Sammy wound his arms back into the web and the nose of the board, slipping under new lines, collected connections. Fifteen feet from the jetty Billy caught up to a frantic windmill whirling uselessly - all progress stalled, all rational thought absent. He had seen the peak come down and the size of the wall about to engulf them and he knew the time to cut loose was gone. He screamed into Sammy’s face to get air, wrapped his arms around him and his board, and filled his lungs. They would take their chances with the rocks.

Six feet of white water struck like a wet slab avalanche moving everything in its path. When it engulfed them, the turbulence wound them together in a new cocoon, drove them to the bottom, and anchored them to the rocks with tendrils that drew taught and cinched the lines surrounding them. The surface was out of reach. Bill cut his arms free and slashed at the back of the board. As soon as the cocoon’s grip loosened, Sammy’s flailing