Claudia Casper - The Mercy Journals

The birds weren’t silent, but they didn’t sound relaxed either. She was there, but I didn’t think she was hunting me. She was just watching. It bothers me that she can see me but I never see her. I’m sure she’s killed something else. That’s why I’m getting a rest.

Four days. If they don’t return soon, I’ll have to go on alone. I’m about a quarter the way up Vancouver Island, maybe more. I’ll head for the cabin rather than going back and hope to find them there.

It’s still very windy. In these waters hypothermia sets in in half an hour. That boy Griffin is something special. My brother is the usual lunatic.

I heard a scream. A wildcat did howl.

I check and recheck the knife, mentally rehearsing.

I finished reading my old journal. I’ve found a kind of peace. My strategy must’ve worked, though truthfully, I don’t know how.

I will find Ruby if I return. There is one sure place to look. February 21, at Molly’s grave.

I heard the scream again. I leapt up, knife in hand, thinking the cougar might be attacking Griffin and Leo as they were walking up from the beach. She screamed again and I realized the sound was coming from behind me, away from the sea. And then I heard another scream, not hers, same distance. A series of yowls finished with another scream. She must be mating. She must be at the end of weaning.

A small part of me travels in her now: a scrap of my right upper lip, some scalp, my blood.

I was taking out the stitches — pack propped up against a tree, rectangle of mirror on top — and had taken out three or four when I heard a twig snap and a small thump. I put the scissors down and picked up the knife and turned, back against the tree. The thump could have been the sound of a heavy cat jumping out of a tree, hitting the forest floor.

The river should be behind us, Griffin called to Leo. I called out to them. They arrived in camp within a minute. Hey bro. Less like hamburger, more like tripe, Leo said as he strode across the clearing.

They’d been blown way out into the strait by the wind and had paddled through the night trying to get back. Exhausted, they had gone ashore at the first land they reached, assuming they were on Vancouver Island. When they woke, they realized they were on a smaller island. Wind and exhaustion prevented them from leaving. They stayed on the island another night, eating the fish they’d caught. It had taken two full days in the chop to find the upright paddle that marked our landing point.

Griffin got me to sit down, took the scissors, and started to carefully snip and pull.

The next day we left. The wind was blowing northeast up the strait, which was excellent because I was weak. My back muscles burned, my head pounded, and my wounds ached. Leo had to stop frequently and wait for us to catch up.

Despite my discomfort, I was uncommonly happy to be back on the northern waters, moving over the strait’s dark surface. Every time I raised my paddle, icy seawater trickled onto my hands. Cold briny air filled my lungs. Jellyfish billowed and propelled below the surface.

We remarked on how few seabirds there were. The herring run, if it even happens anymore, would have been long over, but even so, the number of birds was small. We saw a few northern gulls walking on tidal flats and once we heard the peeping of sandpipers. A mini-flock of Canada Geese, five birds strong, flew overhead and we stopped paddling to watch.

Late in the day, as the evening mist rose on the water, we heard a sound like chainsaws starting. We slowed and peered ahead. To the starboard came a sigh, followed by a ripple. Seconds later, on the port side a huffing erupted, like a dog warming a scent with its breath, and a few metres ahead, another large sigh. The water’s surface broke.

Sea lions, Griffin whispered and grinned.

A large head appeared between the boats. I could see its coat was light brown. Several other heads surfaced and came round the boats, huffing. They were massive.

I’m getting the feeling they want us to leave, Griffin whispered.

We were gliding toward a small island of grass and rock covered with dark bodies. We began to paddle backward slowly, then angled away out to sea. Killer whales are thought to be extinct and we’d seen no seals. The sea lions were a privilege.

Nirvana is on the northern inside curve of a small peninsula on the east of Vancouver Island called the Forgotten Peninsula. The shape is unmistakable on a map — Leo and I always called it the penis-ula. When our family bought the place, an elderly couple from the K’omoks people were still paddling out every spring for a few weeks to camp and harvest shellfish. They stopped coming when I was about ten. My mother told us that all the broken shells in the sandy dirt were called a midden and that the piles of shells probably dated back thousands of years, way before the Roman Empire and ancient Greece. Leo and I had looked for cool stuff like bones, arrowheads, and slave killers, but never found any. Even three feet down, the shells were thick as ever.

The base of the peninsula, where it attaches to the main island, is no more than thirty metres wide and mostly blocked by a huge rock that my father believed to be a meteorite, leaving an entrance only fifty centimetres wide at high tide — just wide enough for an adult to pass without getting their feet wet. We used to park the car at the end of the dirt road and hike in all our provisions. Leo and I joked about how the mighty member was hanging on by a thread and played out disastrous scenarios of it getting an erection.

Leo said we were close to the cabin as the crow flies, but because of the peninsula and the bluffs on the south, it was still a half day’s paddle away. Night was falling so we made camp and ate a potage of lentils, rice, salt, and a small fish that Griffin had caught trolling in the one-seater. Leo divvied it up. Griffin looked at his bowl with dissatisfaction. Leo had given himself the lion’s share. My appetite still hasn’t returned so I gave Griffin some of mine despite his protests.

Hungry boy, Leo commented. I paddled solo today, brother. You could throw me some too.

Griffin’s portion was a bit light.

Oh? Was it? So sorry, my boy. He reached over and ruffled Griffin’s hair.

Leo shovelled in the rest of his bowl, looking at Griffin.

When we arrived at Nirvana I was weak and feverish. The wind had switched and blew hard against us, and rounding the peninsula had been difficult. No one realized how weak I was until I fell in the water getting out of the kayak and was unable to stand back up. Leo and Griffin helped me onto land, pulled the boats up, and shouldered me up the hill to the cabin. The door was unlocked and the house smelled like mint tea. The fact that I’d smelled chicken manure and wafts of other livestock while walking up registered now. A place was set at the kitchen table — knife, fork, plate, and glass on Mom’s yellow plasticized tablecloth.

Someone’s here, Leo whispered. My heart leapt with the hope it was one of the boys, but the neat single setting suggested something else. They led me to the daybed in the sunroom. Griffin put a blanket over me and I whispered, Tell me what you find out.

I woke to sounds from the kitchen, a serious-toned female voice and Leo’s voice, reassuring. I called out and they came.

This is Parker. Parker Leclerc. Griffin introduced me to a tall, physically strong young woman with brown braided hair, eyes that moved quickly. She looked like she was almost certainly pregnant.

She’s been living here for months, he said. She’s put in a garden and she’s raising chickens and goats.

Leo came in and said, It’s bloody Goldilocks and the three bears.

Parker looked at my wounds and left. She returned with clean linen and a hot damp towel. Griffin changed the bed and helped me undress. I slept for twenty hours. A deep twenty. I hadn’t felt so warm and safe since I was a kid. Being back in the family home was total surrender, like dying, the good version.