Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) (26 page)

The sun had set, leaving just enough daylight to see the strange calm of the water to the north of the island. Small though Green Island was, it made an effective barrier to the wind, creating a broad stretch of almost flat water in its lee.

At the far end of the island, Scruff went tearing over the rocks, whimpering. He stopped suddenly, standing dead still, staring out over the water to the north, shivering.

What had he seen?

Lyle started to follow, stumbled on the dark rocks and stopped. He waited for the lighthouse light to illuminate the rocks ahead.

Scruff whimpered again and looked back at his master.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, Scruff.” Lyle hoped his voice would calm the dog, but the eerie violence of the night was affecting both dog and master.

Scruff yelped, a sharp bark, then ran swiftly along the edge of the rocks.

Lyle found himself searching the water again, finding nothing.

“Nothing there. Come on! Let’s go home.”

Scruff followed after a moment, still whimpering. When they arrived at the house the dog stopped, hung his head and began whimpering again.

What now? Forcibly haul him into the house, then put up with this whining and yelping for the next few hours?

Leave him outside in the storm?

“Scruff—” he began helplessly.

Scruff threw back his head and emitted a long, mournful howl.

“Oh, all right! I’m probably crazy, but I feel a bit the same way myself. Just give me a minute to check on Robyn, then we’ll take another look.”

Robyn was sleeping with the headphones askew on her tousled hair. Lyle carefully lifted them away and traced the wires until he found the Walkman tangled in her blankets.

He closed Robyn’s door carefully. Then he went into the porch and got out his wide-angle binoculars and a powerful portable spotlight.

Scruff was lying under the stairs, staring up, waiting for Lyle. He shuffled to his oversized feet as his master came down the stairs.

As if the dog could understand, Lyle said, “Don’t expect much. We’ve probably both got island fever. There’s nothing but waves and floating logs out there. You just stay put under the stairs. I’m going up the light tower.”

At the top of the tower, the powerful white light rotated night and day, marking Green Island’s position on the inland shipping lane, sending its message to mariners… ‘danger, rocks, keep clear’. The light was surrounded by glass panels. Outside the glass, a walkway provided the best lookout position on the island. On warm, sunny days this was an inviting place for seeing the world, the beautiful blue expanse that swept from the southern extreme of Chatham Sound to the Alaska Panhandle. Tonight it was a cold, miserable outlook.

Lyle climbed the circular lighthouse stairs, stopped to tie his sou’wester so the wind wouldn’t tear it off, and emerged outside.

He searched the water with the powerful binoculars, following the sweeping beam of the white light behind him. The darkness was deepening by the moment. He tried to focus on the dark shadow of Grey Islet to the north.

A strange shape protruded up from the rocks, glistening white in the beam from the light tower.

He waited endless seconds until the light swept over Grey Islet again, his heart pounding with an ominous conviction.

It wasn’t a log. Could it be a sail? Earlier, he could have sworn he had seen a sail.

He turned his binoculars onto the water between the two islands, searched wave tops and troughs in the sweeping white light.

Nothing.

When Lyle came down, Scruff was waiting at the door to the light tower. He followed behind Lyle, silent but unnaturally tense. Animals sensed things that people were blind to. Not that Scruff was a Lassie, but—

“I’m probably going insane. They say lightkeepers are odd, and I’m about to prove it.” He pushed his hair back absently and opened his basement door.

The dog followed him to the radio room.

“Prince Rupert Coastguard Radio, this is Green Island.”

Almost immediately, Murray’s voice answered.

“Green, Prince Rupert. Go ahead, Lyle.”

“Murray, have you got any boats in trouble? Overdue vessels?”

Static crackled over the speaker as Lyle waited. Scruff leaned against his chair and Lyle scratched him behind the ear.

“Green, Prince Rupert… Nothing much, Lyle. A fishing boat broken down in the Hecate Strait. He’s okay, though. There’s a fish packer in the area that’s just taking him in tow now. Have you got something there?”

Lyle grimaced at the microphone. “Maybe just my imagination. There’s something over on Grey Islet, but I’m not positive it’s not a big log. I’ll go take another look.”

“Okay, Lyle. I’ll query Rescue Coordination Center, but I imagine if they had anything in this area, we’d know about it.”

“Thanks, Murray. I’ll get back to you.”

Feeling foolish, Lyle exchanged his rain jacket for a buoyant floater jacket. He had no real intention of going into the water, but if he suddenly found he had to, he didn’t want to have to waste time returning to the house for the proper gear.

Scruff followed Lyle up the stairs to Russ’s house. Lyle didn’t bother to try to keep Scruff outside. Russ had such a mess inside, one dog wouldn’t make much difference to it.

“Russ, get up and give me a hand!”

Russ was sprawled over the bed, thoroughly tangled in a sheet, with the blankets half-dragging onto the floor. He rolled over and pushed his face into the pillow as Lyle walked into the bedroom.

“Come on! I need help outside. I think there might be a boat wrecked on Grey Islet!”

“What?” He was sitting now, coming alert quickly. “A wreck?” He took his pants from Lyle’s hands and started dressing. “What kind of a boat? How many people on board?”

“I’m not sure there’s a boat at all, but I saw something over there. Get your things on and come down to the north end of the island.”

Scruff pushed his nose into Russ’s lap and earned a hefty shove from Russ’s muscled hand. “Get out of here, you mongrel,” muttered Russ without any heat.

The wind had shifted to beat on Lyle’s back as he walked down the boardwalk with Scruff. Once he reached the helicopter pad, he used the flashlight beam to find his way over the rocks. He didn’t use the spotlight. Not yet.

He stopped at the water’s edge, looking down to where the water moved sluggishly, angrily, in the lee of the island. He switched the brilliant spotlight on, lifting it, trying to settle the beam above the water, onto the rocks of Grey Islet.

“Looks like part of a sail,” said Russ as he came up behind Lyle.

“That’s what I thought. Hold the spot, will you? I want to try the binoculars. I tried earlier in the beam of the tower light, but it sweeps too fast for a good look.”

Russ braced himself sturdily against the wind and held the spotlight fairly steady, the beam spreading as it crossed the water to Grey Islet.

“It
is
a sail!” Lyle’s voice was thrown away by the wind. “A mast, broken on the rocks, and what looks like the bow section of a boat. It’s smashed to bits – a real mess!”

Russ lowered the light. “If anybody was on it— in this storm, any loose wreckage, any bodies, would be blown north.”

North. Deep water. No towns. No villages. No islands until the Alaska Panhandle.

Lyle turned away from the water. “I’m going to launch the inflatable and take a look out there.”

“In the dark? In this storm? You can’t go out there!”

“I’ll tie a rope on and leave one end on shore here in case I can’t get back under my own power.”

Russ followed across the rocks, grasped Lyle’s muscular arm with his own hard hand. “You’re crazy, Lyle! You’ll see as much from shore here as you could—”

“Maybe.” Lyle ignored the attempt at restraint, freed his arm and walked swiftly away, throwing back, “Get the polyprop rope from the engine room, will you? I’ll bring the inflatable down.”

Six hundred feet of rope. Lyle knew it wouldn’t let him get even half way to Grey Islet, but he had to get out there on the water. Why, he wasn’t sure.

He took a minute to return to the radio, to tell Murray, “I’ve spotted wreckage of a sailboat on Grey Islet. We’re still looking for signs of survivors.”

Murray’s response was the practiced calm of a man accustomed to emergencies. “I’ll notify RCC. We’ll put out a request for mariners to come to your assistance. Can you get over there?”

“Not in this storm. I’m going to look around in the calm area, in the lee of the island, but that’s all I can do.”

Murray’s voice was ringing out over the international distress frequency on Lyle’s marine VHF radio upstairs, as Lyle dragged the inflatable out of the basement and threw it into the trailer behind a small tractor.

“…Relay. Mayday Relay. Mayday Relay. An unknown sailing vessel is reported wrecked on Grey Islet, one mile north of Green Island Lighthouse. Mariners in the area are requested to…”

Lyle doubted if many other mariners were foolish enough to be out in this storm. Certainly most of the fishermen knew better. The fool at the helm of this sailboat obviously hadn’t had the sense to stay safely in harbor until the storm abated.

The fishermen and tugboat crews knew the dangers, but Lyle had seen too many ill-prepared pleasure boats setting sail for Alaska as if it were a weekend picnic.

The roar of the tractor’s engine was swallowed by the wind. He had to drive slowly on the boardwalk. The wind was catching at the bulk of the tractor and trailer, threatening to push him off the boardwalk onto the rocky beach below.

They fastened the rope to a surveyor’s tripod on the shore, then Lyle inflated the dinghy and climbed into it.

Within moments he found a floating orange life ring. He hooked it with the boat hook and brought it aboard. The words
Lady Harriet
were painted on the round ring.

He glanced back to shore. Russ, as instructed, was searching the water with the binoculars and spotlight. Lyle had a smaller spotlight and he was making his own search from water level.

A plastic dinner plate floating upside down. He didn’t try to retrieve that.

Surprising that any of the wreckage had floated this way, with the wind so strong from the south. It must be some combination of tidal current and back eddies from the wind as it bent around the islands.

His radio crackled urgently. Lyle pulled the portable off his belt, holding it close to his face.

“Go ahead, Russ!”

“Something yellow in the water to your right!”

Lyle moved his spotlight, sweeping the wave tops. As his dinghy rose on the swell, he spotted a flash of reflective yellow, then lost it again.

Yellow. It was a color commonly used for life jackets and survival gear.

It took a long time to get the dinghy over to the floating yellow. The rope dragged back, pulling against him, making the rowing difficult. He considered untying the rope, but decided against it. Even in the shelter of the island, the water was getting wilder. A fourteen-foot inflatable was no vessel to take on the high seas in a gale.

The body was floating face up, sprawled in the water, wearing the anti-exposure flotation coveralls that were so popular amongst the fishermen.

Lyle thrust hard with the paddles. The rope pulled tight. He tried to reach the yellow sailor with the boat hook, but missed by several feet.

“Russ, give me more rope!”

“Hold on!” cracked the radio. “Don’t pull on it for a minute!”

Lyle sat helpless in the dinghy as he drifted farther away from the floating yellow body.

“Okay, go ahead, but for God’s sake, don’t pull too hard! I’ve got it wrapped around a log! I think it’ll hold!”

The wind was against him now, swirling up in a back eddy, pushing the dinghy away from the yellow body. Despite Russ’s warning, Lyle pushed hard with the oars, swift, powerful strokes that drove him closer. He still couldn’t quite get there, but— He timed his strokes carefully, getting the dinghy surging forward, dropping the paddle and swinging the boat hook out over the body.

The water surged unexpectedly. The boat hook swung frighteningly close to the floating man’s head. Then, for a miraculous second, everything turned calm and still. Lyle slipped the hook across the middle of the suit, managing to catch it in the belt.

He pulled slowly on the hook, not wanting to destabilize the floating body. God knew, it didn’t look alive, but if he pulled too hard it might turn face down. Those cruiser suits were comfortable, warm, and they floated – but they did nothing to keep an unconscious person’s head out of water.

The body swung against the side of the inflatable, dislodging an oar which promptly drifted away.

The radio crackled. Lyle couldn’t spare a hand for it, so he ignored it. He had to get a better grip. He reached over the back of the suit, managed to close his numbing fingers over the belt. Thankfully those belts were designed for this sort of thing. The tough nylon webbing would hold.

With one hand on the belt, the other slipped under an inanimate arm, he leaned back and pulled hard.

At first nothing happened, then the suit started to slide over the edge of the dinghy. As it came free of the water, he was suddenly pulling too hard. The body was pushing him, throwing him onto the floor of the dinghy.

He landed, gasping, pinned down by the yellow suit and the body in it. Water poured out of the suit, drenching the parts of him that weren’t already wet.

He closed his eyes for a second, taking a breath for strength, getting ready to push the man off him and try to start some form of artificial respiration.

Then he felt the warm breath on his face.

The body was alive, but the skin deathly cold.

Hypothermia. In these waters a man without protection could die of the cold in less than twenty minutes.

But this was no man.

The face was fine boned, heart shaped, the long lashes fanning out over pale cheeks, full lips blue with the cold.

Was the cold numbing his brain, creating delusions?

No. It
was
the same woman he’d seen last year, her lively face now pale and lifeless.

He turned to lift the radio, to tell Russ he’d lost an oar and ask to be pulled in. Then he realized that Russ had been watching, was already using the rope to pull the inflatable back towards shore.