Salt Water Tears Read online

  Joey resented every minute of it.

  His world was touch, taste, smell, and sound. He didn’t need to hear about colors. About light and shadows. The ice might “coruscate in the sunlight,” but what exactly did that mean? Could he taste it? Could he hear it? Father and he lived in different worlds.

  They’d come to the bay to find a Christmas tree. Father had insisted. Joey stood shivering in the cold, listening to the snow crunch under his boots as he shifted his weight. He could smell the ocean. Birds and leaves talked in the wind. The air tasted of cold, tasted of North, tasted of ice and wolves and mysteries.

  He heard his father retrieve the saw from the back seat of the car. ‘“You ready?”

  “I’d rather be at home.”

  “Wouldn’t be Christmas without a tree.”

  “We didn’t need one last year.”

  “No,” said his father, “I guess we didn’t. I guess maybe we weren’t ready for a tree last year.” Joey heard him kneel in the snow and felt his warm breath on his cheek. Father’s breath was alcohol free and had been that way since they’d come North. “But this years different, Joey. It’s a beginning for us, Mom would want us to go on, you know. Mom would want us to have a Christmas tree.”

  He couldn’t even remember his mother, but he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything.

  “Hold on,” said his father, standing up. “Someone’s coming.” The cold was seeping into the collar of Joey’s parka and wrapping itself about his feet. He wished he were home in front of the fireplace.

  “Oh, man, I wish you could see this, Joey.” (How Joey hated that expression!) “It’s an Indian. An honest to God Indian.” This last was half whispered, so Joey knew the stranger must be close. He waited, wondering what an Indian would sound like, how he would smell.

  “Hello,” said Father. “I didn’t realize we were on someone’s property.”

  “You are not,” said the Indian, his voice deep and heavy, like distant thunder, capable of shaking the ground. “No man can lay claim to the earth. It exists for all of us.”

  “Uh... yeah. You’re right.” Joey wondered if the Indian could hear the restrained sarcasm in Father’s voice. “Well, we wanted to find a Christmas tree. Someone told me this was a good spot, that there were plenty of nice spruce in the woods here. Do you think that would be all right? If we took one, I mean. Would that be okay?”

  “Are you an Indian?” Joey asked.

  “Joey!” Father’s hand fell on his shoulder. “You’ll have to excuse Joey,” he told the Indian. “He’s just curious.”

  “What would a boy be without curiosity?” asked the Indian. “Are you?” Joey asked again. “An Indian?”

  He heard the Indian step closer. A moment later he could tell he was bending close, peering through the dark sunglasses that Father had given Joey to wear outside. The Indian smelled like... well, like nothing Joey had smelled before. Some of the smells he thought he could name: wood smoke, leather, fresh-turned soil. But others were a complete mystery.

  “He lost his eyes,” Father muttered, silence having reigned several seconds too long. “Cancer.”

  “I am Haida,” the Indian told Joey. “My people have lived here since the beginning of time. Long before the Mexicans and the Europeans sailed up the coast, my ancestors paddled their canoes down the Strait of Georgia and made war on the Musqueam and Capilano.”

  “Haida,” Joey said, tasting the word. “That’s your name?”

  “It is the name of my people. You may call me Samuel.”

  “Doesn’t sound like an Indian name.”

  Samuel chuckled. “You are right. So, you have come to cut down a tree, Joey?”

  “For Christmas,” Joey replied. “My father says it’s the thing to do.”

  “You will want to walk south then, through that pass. Plenty of nice trees in that direction.”

  “Thank you,” Father said dismissively.

  “South,” the Indian repeated. “North and west is the bay. East is the road. South is the forest. Can you see the forest, Joey?”

  “No.”

  “I think you can.”

  “I have no eyes,” said Joey.

  “Look,” said Father, irritation crowding his voice, “we appreciate your help, but we should get going before it gets late.”

  “Does one need eyes to see?”

  Joey didn’t answer.

  “You can hear the birds. You can hear the leaves.”

  “I can hear the birds,” said Joey, “but I have no idea what they are. I’ve no idea what they look like.”

  “I think you do.”

  “We really need to go,” said Father. His hand slid from Joey’s shoulder to his arm, and he tugged at the boy.

  “Can you hear their wings?” asked Samuel. Joey tried, but even with his heightened sense of hearing, he was unable to hear the stroke of a bird’s wing. “Feel the rush of those wings, lighter than air, softer than a whisper?” Like the airy touch of tissue paper; thought Joey. “Can you taste what it must be like to soar on the wind like an eagle?”

  “The wind on my face,” whispered Joey.

  “The sun warming your back,” said the Indian.

  “The echo of my cries coming back from the mountain side.”

  “The smells of the earth rushing past you.”

  “All this is a bird?”

  “All this and more is a bird.”

  Joey’s father laughed nervously. “You’re good with kids,” he told Samuel. “Thanks.”

  Samuel ignored him. “Listen to the bay, Joey. Can you hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you hear?”

  “Water. Birds. The rubbing and cracking of ice against the shore.” There was a short expulsion, like a garden hose firing that first burst of water and trapped air. “What was that?” Joey asked.

  “Orca,” said the Indian.

  “Oh, wow!” exclaimed Father. “Joey, there are whales in the bay!”

  “Not whales,” said the Indian. “Orca. Wolves of the sea.” Joey shuddered. “Wolves?”

  Samuel touched his arm. “Nothing to fear, Joey. Would you like me to tell you about them?”

  Joey nodded.

  “A long time ago, one of my ancestors, a Haida man from Nootka in Vancouver, found two young wolf pups on the beach. Because the man’s wife had recently drowned, he took the wolf cubs home and raised them, so that he would not have to live alone with his sadness. One day, after the wolves had grown, the man saw them swim out into the ocean and kill a whale. They brought the whale back to the shore and shared it with the man. Every day it went like this. Soon there was so much meat lying on the beach that it was going bad. When the Great Above Person—god of the Haida—saw this waste, he was angry. He made a storm and brought down a fog. When the wolves swam out to sea, the fog hid the whales. The wolves couldn’t find any whales to kill. The waves were so high that the wolves could not find their way back to the shore. They had to stay in the ocean. These wolves became sea wolves. Whale hunters.

  “Can you see them?”

  “No.”

  “Listen for them. There, in the bay. To the North.”

  He heard the wind. He tasted the cold. He could smell the bay and the woods and... there, in the distance: a splash. Something large. Sleek. Wet. The expulsion of breath. The smooth slice of a streamlined body through the water. Joey had realized years ago, with an intuition gifted only on the blind, that design and purpose went hand in hand, that in every tool, in every structure, in every creature, evolution fit form to function. He could almost imagine what they must look like, these orca, designed to swim endlessly in search of prey, to see vast distances through the murky waters, to feed on creatures whose size Joey could not even begin to imagine. Whale hunters. Sea wolves.

  “Can you see them?” Samuel asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “North,” said the Haida. “The sea wolves are to the North. The wind’s from the west, bringing with it
the snow and the cold. The road’s to the east. Your Christmas tree is to the south.” He squeezed Joey’s shoulder. “I hope you find one that you like.”

  • • •

  “Christmas tree” his father called it. Joey recoiled from its needles, but welcomed its smell. It might be worth the discomfort to just curl into this thing called a tree, to wrap himself in its aromatic cocoon.

  “Someone, Aldo Leopold I think it was, said that a man defines himself by what he takes his axe to,” Father said as they stood before the tree. “Or something very much like that. I’m sure I’ve gotten it all backwards. Your mother was the big reader, you know.”

  “No,” Joey said, barely a whisper. “I’ve forgotten.”

  “She would have said this was a beautiful tree and it would be a shame to cut it down.”

  “She liked trees?”

  “Loved them.”

  There was a long moment of silence then. The wind urged the trees to murmur. The cold crackled. Somewhere in the forest a limb shed its burden of snow with a muffled crumpf!

  “Okay,” Father sighed. “I want you to stand back now, because this tree is growing right here on the edge of this little cliff. I don’t want you to fall.”

  Feeling carefully behind him, Joey sat in the snow to wait. “I’ll try to cut it off as close to the ground as possible, so we’ve got a nice base to fit in the tree stand.”

  Joey heard his father kneel in the snow. He heard the rasp as the saw blade bit into the trunk of the spruce. As his Father cut, the tree bled a powerful aroma of forest life.

  “At least pine is soft,” Father said, somewhat out of breath. “I’d hate to have to saw through an old oak or something.” He panted. “Almost there... Got it. Whoa! Joey, I—”

  There was a scraping, a crash, and nothing but cold air on Joey’s face where before he had felt the warmth of his father’s exertion.

  Joey reached out tentatively. Right about... here... he knew that moments ago he had felt the prickling needles of the tree. Now there was nothing.

  “Joey?” His father’s voice was distant and down.

  “Where are you?” Joey called. “What happened?”

  “The tree...” There was pain in his father’s voice. “When it fell, it slid over the edge. I tried to grab it. It pulled me over with it.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think—Ah! My ankle. I think I’ve broken my ankle.” Joey heard his father shifting below—not too far away, maybe twice the span of the living room at home. He cried out in pain. “Yeah, it’s definitely broken. Damn, that hurts.”

  “I...” Joey trailed off, unsure what he’d been about to say. “Stay where you are,” Father said. “Someone will come and find us. There’s that Indian. What was his name? Samuel. Yeah, he’ll get worried when we don’t come back. It won’t take long, Joey. Just stay where you are. Don’t be frightened.”

  “What if Samuel left?”

  “Then someone will see the car.”

  Joey shivered. “Can I come down there with you?”

  “No! Stay where you are, Joey. I don’t want you falling.”

  His backside was growing numb against the snow. He stood and began to shuffle in place to keep warm. It occurred to him that it would be even colder for his father stretched out down there in the snow.

  “Joey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t be scared. I’m okay. All right?”

  “Are you cold?”

  “A little bit.”

  He was lying. Joey could hear the trembling of his lips, the barely restrained chattering of teeth.

  “Your mother’s the one who couldn’t stand the cold. If she were here, she’d probably be waiting back at the car with the heater going. Remember how she used to make me light the pilot light on the heater in September?”

  “I don’t remember that,” said Joey. I don’t remember her at all.

  “She always had a comforter on the bed, even in the summer.”

  “I remember that,” Joey said, but the truth was that he remembered the comforters because they still owned them, not because they had any specific tie to his mother. He’d tried once, years ago, to smell her on the comforters, the pillows, the clothing that still hung in her closet. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t do it. There was nothing left, not even a trace of her perfume.

  “I can’t even remember what she looked like,” he admitted to his father.

  “Ah, Joey, I’m sorry, Son. All those years I spent drinking and trying to absolve myself for the accident... all those years wrapped up in my own pain... I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of helping you through yours. I wasn’t much of a father, was I?”

  He could hear the cold growing in his father’s voice. He could feel the wolves drawing near.

  “I should have done more to keep her memory alive in your mind, Son. I should have described pictures of her to you. Told you about the things she loved to do, the places she wanted to visit, the dreams she had. I’m sorry I didn’t do that. You understand, don’t you? I loved your mother so much. I was just in too much pain.”

  The wind picked up. Wind-driven snow tickled Joey’s numb cheek. The wind comes from the west, off the sound.

  “I’ll do better, Son, I promise. Coming North was the best thing we could have done. We needed a fresh start, that’s all.”

  The bay is to the North.

  The road is east.

  The forest is south, through the pass.

  “Father?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going for help. I’m going to find Samuel.”

  “No, Joey! Someone will come and find us. Stay where you are.”

  “I’ll bring back help.”

  “Joey!”

  “Don’t worry.”

  • • •

  A compass is a directional device, a tool for finding one’s way. Though he’d never seen one, Joey knew they existed. A compass works on the principle of magnetism, on the fact that the Earth is polarized. Magnetism, polarization, these were concepts beyond Joey’s grasp. But he understood that a compass points to magnetic North.

  But if you can’t see the face of a compass, how do you find your way? How do you know where North lies?

  The wind comes off the sound. That’s west. It carries the snow, which piles against the west side of the trees, accumulates on the west slope of the hills. The wind paints the ground in frozen white waves whose crests break to the east, toward the road. There in the distance, the hum of a large truck. To his right. To the east.

  South is the forest, with the whisper of the trees and the moaning of the wind in the pass. South is his father calling him, his voice growing ever more distant.

  North. North is the smell of the bay. North is the eerie cry of the sea wolves, urging him on, the sound of their long sleek bodies cresting the waves, their large eyes and great white teeth breaking the water before them.

  With the wind stinging his left cheek, Joey made his way through the forest, hands thrust out before him to find each tree and branch that blocked his path. His feet were numb. His nose was running. His sunglasses felt as if they were permanently frozen to his face.

  When he was uncertain of his direction, he listened. He sniffed the air. He knelt and ran shaking hands across the surface of the snow, reading the patterns there as if they were braille.

  His fears mounted with each step he took. What if he was wrong? What if he was stumbling blindly through the woods, completely lost? His father might freeze to death. He might freeze to death.

  He could no longer feel the sun on his body. It was growing colder. Night must be falling. It was beginning to snow harder. Neither of them would last a night out here in this weather. Hadn’t the wolves taken enough? They’d taken his eyes, taken his mother...

  There came a familiar expulsion of water and air, the sound of an orca breaching not far away. Joey held his breath. He could hear the grinding of the ice in the bay. He could hear the lapping of w
aves against the shore.

  He couldn’t be more than a stone’s throw from the water.

  “Samuel!” he called.

  He had no way of knowing how far he was from the car and the spot where they’d originally seen the Indian.

  “Samuel! Help! I need you!”

  A twig snapped to his right. He heard the halves of the branches fall to the ground and knew that Samuel had snapped the branch in his hands, that the Haida Indian would never make a sound as he moved through the forest.

  “Looks to me as if you’ve done just fine without my help, Joey,” said Samuel. “How did you find me?”

  “The sea wolves,” he answered. “The wind and the snow and... but we don’t have much time. It’s my father. He’s broken his ankle.”

  The Indian stepped closer. He smelled like the forest. Like new-fallen snow and leaves gone to mulch. Wood smoke and jerky and trees and wild grass.

  “Let’s go find him, then,” said the Indian.

  “I’m not sure I can find the way back,” Joey admitted. Direction was one thing. Finding an exact spot, he thought, was another thing entirely.

  “Of course you could find him,” Samuel replied. “Given enough time.” He touched the boy’s chest. “Given enough heart. You could find him.”

  “But we don’t have much time,” Joey countered.

  “I know. We’ll use an old Indian trick.” He took Joey by the hand.

  “An old Indian trick?”

  “Yeah, an old Indian trick, handed down through hundreds of generations. We’ll just follow your footprints in the snow.”

  And the Haida laughed, a sound as natural as the dawn of a new day.

  The Promised Hour