The Darkening Archipelago (8 page)

“He invited us to an hour-long meeting and spent fifty minutes of it talking. He didn't listen to a word we had to say.”

“Archie, I'm not getting into this with you right now.”

“Then when, Lance?”

“Are you going to be at the next Aquaculture Advisory Task Force meeting?”

“Damn right.”

“Well, I guess we'll see you then.”

Archie hung up the phone without saying goodbye. “Pecker head,” he said, smiling.

“Who was that?” asked First Moon, starting the
Inlet Dancer
's motors.

“Lance Grey from the minister's office.”

“You were pretty hard on him.”

“A kid. They hire a kid to do the political dirty work. He can't be more than twenty-five.”

“Still, you were pretty rough. Why are you always talking that way to people, Archie?”

“Come on, Moon, don't play dumb. Sometimes it's the only way people will listen.”

“Oh yeah, how's that working for you so far?”

Ravenwing looked straight ahead. Darren piloted the boat from the slip and moved out of the harbour dead slow.

“I guess the thing is, Archie,” said First Moon, pushing forward on the throttle as they cleared the breakwater of the harbour and entered Knight Inlet's open water. “You can be an advocate for wild salmon without making everybody you talk to want wring your neck.”

5

When the plane banked and circled, starting its precipitous decline into Port Lostcoast, Cole Blackwater's lunch sluiced in his stomach and threatened
5
to decorate the interior of the tiny fuselage. He gripped the armrest and closed his eyes.

“Don't like flying?” the man next to him asked.

Cole, eyes pressed shut, didn't say a word, fearing that opening his mouth might provide the opportunity his breakfast was looking for to vacate his stomach. The plane dropped like a stone out of the sky toward the pan-flat ocean at the mouth of the harbour. What had only a moment before looked like a village of sticks and stones took the form of a real community huddled around a small bay, the fingers of the harbour slips pointing at the breakwater. The most recognizable building was the community centre, perched on a small bluff overlooking the bay, its stalwart totem pole visible from high above, adorned with the images of bear, otter, and raven. Around the centre, spread out on ill-defined streets, were small, colourful wooden homes, and near the water stood a row of storefronts and businesses: a grocery and hardware store, a gas station, a restaurant, and a bar called The Strait.

Cole had flown from Vancouver to Port Hardy the night before and spent the evening in a cheap motel on the waterfront, watching a hockey game in a bar across the road. He drank too much beer and walked the streets of the tiny fishing and lumbering town until after two am, thinking about his friend Archie Ravenwing. Then he finally crashed into his bed, fully dressed, to be awakened a few hours later by Mary Patterson, who called to tell him she'd booked a charter flight to Lostcoast.

He couldn't have been happier.

“The trick with these little planes is to keep your eyes on the horizon. That's why I always take the window.”

Cole took a deep breath and looked at the man sitting next to him — a kid, really. He tried to focus on the horizon over the man's shoulder, but all he could see out the window was water, the harbour, and the tiny settlement as the plane banked again.

His travelling companion had introduced himself when Cole had shuffled onto the plane and taken the last seat available in the ten-seater. Lance Grey, special assistant to the provincial minister of Agriculture and Lands for Fisheries and Aquaculture. Cole asked him how he knew Archie.

“We worked together on the provincial Aquaculture Advisory Task Force,” said Grey, looking out the window.

“I think Archie might have told me about you,” said Blackwater.

“Don't believe everything you hear,” said Lance Grey, a broad smile on his face.

“I don't. The truth is usually far worse,” Cole said, buckling his seat belt.

Now the plane levelled then skipped once, twice on the flat water. The engines whined, and Cole's body pressed into the seat belt, putting uncomfortable pressure on his churning gut. When the motion came to a stop, Cole breathed out heavily through his mouth.

“You never did say how it is that
you
knew Archie,” said Grey, unbuckling his seat belt and straightening his sports coat.

Cole pressed his palms against his thighs. “I was helping him shut down fish farms,” he said.

They disembarked from the plane, the latest arrivals to Port Lostcoast. Cole sucked the moist ocean air into his lungs, feeling his legs wobble under him as he made his way down the dock. It had been two years since he'd been on Parish Island. The last time he was here was to serve the band council in its effort to keep the Broughton Archipelago off-limits to new fish farms. The BC Liberal government had reversed a policy by the previous government that kept these salmon-rich waters off-limits, and dozens of new farms were springing up along the migration routes of wild pink salmon. He had stayed for nearly two weeks, working with local band council member Archie Ravenwing, biologist Cassandra Petrel, and other members of the community to cobble together a defense against the corporate onslaught of open-net Atlantic salmon farms. They had joined with others along the coast — First Nations and environmental activists — to plot a joint strategy, and dug in for a long fight.

The days were punctuated by time spent on the water, when Cole would ride out into the inlet with Archie and Grace Ravenwing. In the short time that Cole was in Port Lostcoast, he came to respect and admire Archie Ravenwing for his courage and vision. And he came to care for Grace and the rest of Archie's family, who seemed to come and go from Parish Island on a nearly daily basis. Cole had left them with a four-pronged plan: take on the provincial government regarding its retrograde policy; target the public with messages about public health; take on the federal government about federal fisheries laws that were supposed to protect wild salmon; and go nose to nose with the fish farmers with an aggressive media campaign in Europe and across the United States.

Cole knew it was not a spectacular plan. He knew it then and he knew it now. He'd been new to consulting, new to the job of stitching together other people's ideas. He'd been distracted. Two years into his life on the West Coast, the events that had propelled him across the country still festered in a shadowy, hidden corner. He spent more time than he should have in the strait. He drank with Archie's friend Darren First Moon and tried to steer clear of the inevitable loose cannons that a remote place beyond the reach of the police tended to attract.

Cole woke with a hangover each morning only to start all over again. That was the extent of his experience in Port Lostcoast.

The provincial government's response to the strategy had been to create the Aquaculture Advisory Task Force to “study” fish farming's future, while continuing to expand the industry at breakneck speed.

Where Archie had passion and determination in spades, he lacked administrative skills, and Cole Blackwater's invoices went unpaid, further supporting Cole's precipitous downward spiral. Lacking new clients and mired in his own inadequacies, Cole couldn't keep doing pro bono work, and he had to close the salmon farming file. He hated to do it, but what choice did he have? He certainly felt like he was abandoning Archie Ravenwing, his proud family, and the wild salmon that Archie defended.

Now he was back in Port Lostcoast, only one day before the spring equinox. The salty air was still and warm. He walked to the end of the dock, the voice of Lance Grey still ringing in his ears like an annoying car alarm. He stole a look back over his shoulder to see Grey chatting with another band councillor who had greeted the plane.

“Cole!” The voice brought his attention back to the dock, and Blackwater saw Grace Ravenwing running toward him. “Cole, I'm so glad you made it!”

“I wouldn't have missed it, Grace,” said Cole sombrely. He dropped his flight bag and embraced the young woman. She hugged him tightly, her small body disappearing in Cole's leather jacket. He could smell her hair, like flowers, and the feel of her against him made him dizzy.

“I'm so sorry about your dad.”

“Me too,” she said, lifting her gaze, her eyes red.

They stood looking at each other for a moment. Finally she said, “So, how was the flight?”

“To be honest, pretty awful. I've been in lots of these puddle jumpers, but I never really enjoy them. The Queen Charlotte Strait was lovely, but I could do without the splash down.”

“Come on, let's get you settled.” She took him by the arm to lead him down the dock.

“I appreciate you asking me to stay at your place. Are you sure it's okay?”

“Why not? It's big enough, and it feels pretty empty now with Dad gone,” she said, a tear sliding down her cheek.

She hooked her arm into his while he slung his bag over his shoulder and steadied himself after the flight and the night of drinking. With Grace leading, he trudged toward the tiny town.

“I'll see you around, Cole,” said Lance Grey striding past them, his flight bag and computer on tiny wheels bumping along the uneven dock. “Oh, hi Grace,” he said, looking back. “I'm sorry about your dad.”

“Thank you, Lance,” she said, not turning to face him.

“Well, see you.” Lance reached the end of the dock before them and continued down the hard-packed dirt street toward Port Lostcoast's only accommodation, a six-room bed and breakfast next to the gas station.

“You know Lance?” Cole said as they reached the end of the dock. Grace led them to a grey 1988 Ford Ranger pickup.

“Oh, sure. He's here all the time, schmoozing the band council, schmoozing the business folks in Port McNeill and Alert Bay, schmoozing everything with a pulse.” She laughed, and Cole thought she sounded just like her father when she did. “He's a dirt bag. I think he means well, but there is something about the way he does things that's just, well —”

“Slimy?”

“Yeah,” she said, opening Cole's door as he hoisted his bag into the cluttered bed of the truck. The box was strewn with fishing nets, broken paddles, floats, assorted tackle, a dented and rusty tool box, and an assortment of beer cans and soda bottles.

“Dad's truck,” said Grace, seeing Cole take inventory. “Bit of a pig. I only drive it once in a while. I thought you might have had more luggage, or I would have walked.”

“I like to keep stealthy. You know, slip in and out of town without any fuss.” Cole grinned.

“I remember….” Grace said, not smiling.

Red faced, Cole got in the cab and kicked a space on the floor for his feet. Grace slid in behind the wheel. “The only part of his life that wasn't a junk heap was his boat. I've managed to keep the house in one piece since Mom died, but it's been a Herculean task.” The truck rattled to life and Grace piloted it up the hill and between houses whose colourful paint jobs were weathered and chipped from the winter gales that howled down the Queen Charlotte Strait and over tiny Parish Island. Grace piloted the truck up a steep hill, past an exposed cliff face, and onto a hillock where seagrass blew in the light breeze.

They parked in front of a ramshackled home that looked as though it was a perpetual work in progress. The original house was squat and sturdy, and two new wings jutted out on either side, one built into the rocky hillside devoid of trees and scoured by the ocean winds, the other built on stilts on the side of the cliff where it plunged down to the harbour. A broad deck, lacking a railing, circled that addition, twenty feet above the rocks below.

“Dad called it the Bluff House,” she said, shutting off the engine.

“I remember,” Cole smiled. “Is that addition new since I was here last?” Cole asked, pointing to the precarious wing on stilts.

“Dad was never content to do just five or six things at once, you know,” Grace said, leading Cole up the oyster-shell pathway to the front door. “He was never satisfied to leave well enough alone. Always tinkering, finding fault, finding something more to do.”

Cole nodded, and knew that Grace Ravenwing was talking about more than the house.

They entered the main home, where the aroma of seafood stew greeted them. The front door led to a mud room, where slickers and boots and float coats were hung on pegs, and a broad deacon's bench was open, exposing hats and gloves and assorted fishing paraphernalia. Cole pulled off his shoes and dropped his bags, looking around the sprawling home. A wide, open kitchen with broad windows providing a view out over the harbour and the strait beyond opened off the mud room. There were no cupboards above the counter to spoil the view, and Cole recalled many meals prepared in this kitchen while watching pods of orca or humpback whales swimming up and down the watery west coast highway.

“It smells great in here, Grace.”

Grace swept into the kitchen and checked on the stew. “You hungry?”