Sea of Tranquility (23 page)

Then August and a different phase of the moon. Lowest tide in maybe three years or more. Todd and Angie out on the prowl, looking for adventure, when they discovered that the shoreline
in front of the caves was exposed. They scrambled down and landed on a strip of smooth, sandy beach — and saw a tunnel going back under the hill.“Too dark in there,” Angie observed.

But Todd's tug of curiosity was a powerful thing and did its usual trick. Todd and Angie, hand in hand walking into the sea cave on a floor of smooth, damp sand, listening to the sound of their voices echoing.“This is way cool,” Todd noted.

“I don't know.”

“It's okay. Our eyes are adjusting. The pupils are dilating to allow in more light. See? It's not so bad.”

The sea cave veered a bit to the left, the result of the weaker band of sedimentary rock that had been eaten away by the ocean over the years. And there was a low part where they had to duck down, but then it opened up again into a kind of room with a higher ceiling. Todd had a tiny flashlight attached to his collection of keys that unlocked things left back in New Jersey. He carried it everywhere, and it afforded a small, delicate ribbon of light.

But the stubborn moon was at work on that low tide. Water was seeping in. Todd was already practising the narration for a potential video documentary about this amazing place, trying it out on his usual audience of one.“We're here inside the sea cave of Ragged Island and, as you can see, well, it's very dark.”

They sat on a small ledge about three feet off the floor, and, as long as Angie focussed on the bright sunlight creeping into the tunnel, she could keep herself calm. While Todd pontificated,Angie silently sang a Spice Girls song to herself, one that she used to hear on the radio in New Jersey.

Todd was wondering if there were any cave paintings or gold or buried treasure or maybe stalagmites.“Stalactites are usually formed by calcium and they hang down from the ceiling. Stalagmites are the ones that come up from the floor.”

“Can we go now?”

“Sure. I'm hungry.”

“Me too.”

Splash.

Ankle-deep water and creeping up. The moon busy calling back the tide from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Todd held onto his little sister's hand and urged her forward, but she wouldn't move.

“Damn,” Todd said out loud.“Come on, Angie.”

“It was dry when we came in.”

“I know. I guess the tide is coming in.”

“Let's wait until it's dry again.”

“Not a good idea.”

“Why?”

Todd wasn't sure how long it took tides to cycle. He also didn't know that there was a tropical storm sitting a couple hundred miles off the coast and even though the weather was perfectly fine in Nova Scotia, the distant waves were creating an unusual storm surge that was pushing the incoming tide.

When Todd finally convinced Angeline to jump into the water she screamed. It was only three feet deep, but that was almost up to her chest.

“We've got to get out of here now,” Todd insisted.

“I can't.”

“You can.”

“No.”

“It's no big deal.”

“It is.”

Todd said he'd check the passageway. Maybe the water was shallow there. He checked and, much to his despair, he discovered that in the passageway, with its low ceiling, the water was almost up to the top. There was only about a foot of air space.

When he sat back down on the ledge, Angie was crying. “I'm not moving,” she said.

Todd felt panic rise up like some kind of acid taste in his throat. He shone his tiny flashlight around the cavern. It had a high ceiling. He was sure the tide would not fill it up. He didn't know what to do but heard a sound that sent a shiver down his spine. A wave had broken at the shoreline and water was rushing into the cave. He heard it slapping the top rock of the low passage. Damn.

“Here. Take this.” He handed her his keys and flashlight. “I'm going out and I'm getting help. You stay put. Don't be scared. Move up higher onto those ledges, if you have to. Stay calm, Angie. I'll be back as quick as I can.”

“Don't leave.”

“I have to. I'll be back. You'll be okay.” Todd could not look at his sister's face. He knew he'd start crying. When he jumped in the water this time it was already deeper from the waves pushing the sea in. Angie was still high and dry. She'd be okay. She had to be okay. He was almost swimming by the time he came to the low overhead. Inches of air left in the passage. He banged his head on the rocks several times. Blood trickled down his face. He took a mouthful of water when a wave washed in. Swallowed it and coughed but yelled to Angie that it was all okay. Just water up his nose. And then he was out in the bright sunlight, blinding him. He didn't know if he was doing the right thing. He couldn't think straight. Should he go back in and drag her out? He didn't think he could do it against the current sweeping in. An adult could. He'd have to find someone.

With blood running down over his forehead,Todd ran. His lungs felt like they were on fire. He wished they'd never come to Ragged Island. He wished he'd never woken up today.

Sylvie's house was the closest to shore. Todd banged hard on the door, then opened it and roared into the room. Sylvie stood calmly in the kitchen by the hand pump, washing dishes.

“Todd?” She saw the blood on his head first.

“Sylvie, Angie needs help. We found this cave down at the foot of the hill and there was no water and we went in.” He couldn't get the story right. No air in his lungs. His head was spinning.“But then the tide came up kinda quick. I couldn't get Angie to come back out with me. She's in there.”

Sylvie closed her eyes for a split second.
The sea cave.
Yes, she knew.
The low tide
. Yes. She understood. The tide was coming up and she knew there was something brewing at sea. A storm somewhere. She had not read a newspaper or heard anything on the radio. She just knew. Things of the sea, things of the moon. The tide would only get higher, waves would wash in there. Angie, inside the rock womb of that cave. Sylvie had been there once herself, as a teenager. Same low tide. No problem. In and out. An exquisite adventure. As long as you understood the tide business.

“You okay,Todd?”

“Yes. Help Angie.”

“I will.” Sylvie picked up the phone and called Moses.

“Moses, one of those little children from the States is in the sea cave. Tide's coming in fast. I think she's trapped. She's eight, Moses. Do you still have your diving gear?”

“Damn. Sold it when the bottom dropped out of the sea urchin business. But I can get down there with the Zodiac.”

Sylvie could see the problem fixed in her head as clear as if it were a photograph. “Yes, bring the Zodiac, but it won't be enough. Call the RCMP and Coast Guard. Explain it. Tell them we need divers. Now.”

“You know about Freda?”

“Who?”

“Freda. Tropical storm. Off Sable. It's staying put, but they're calling for heavy surf.”

“Moses, I'm going out there. You get some help and get out there. Please, Moses.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Sylvie knew Moses would do all the right things. But she also knew it was not enough for the immediate problem. She also knew that divers could not bring a little girl back out through the tunnel if it was filled with water and getting hammered with heavy waves.

“Todd, go get your mother. Bring her out there. I'm going to find a way to help your sister.”

“She's going to be okay, isn't she?”

“Yes.”

Todd left, running.

Sylvie split every second into four parts and made sure she was using her time wisely.
No, she could not swim underwater and get inside the chamber.
But she could see the tunnel in her mind. She could see the chamber inside. Back then, she had lit up a kind of torch made from a cattail. The tunnel could fill, but there was air space inside the inner chamber Todd had described. Ledges to be climbed. Tough it out till low tide again, a long twelve hours away. She shuddered at the thought of a little girl all alone in there. She put four chocolate chip cookies into a plastic bag and wrapped it in two more plastic bags, grabbed a flashlight and put it in three bags, sealed each one with a knot but didn't think it was enough. What else?

Negotiate with the sea, with death.

She hurried out the door of her house, towards the headland. She would stop for the college boy, Greg Cookson. The one who had quit his government summer job to live in the fish shack up along the shore. He'd said something about being a swimmer. Long distance, laps in a pool. She didn't know. He was bragging, maybe, a liar. No, he couldn't bring her out. It was twenty yards underwater.

There would be help, yes. But RCMP divers would be at least forty minutes in getting here at the best of times. Coast Guard rescue craft? What could they do? They couldn't get in there.

Sylvie felt betrayed by her sea, by the moon. But she knew she had some hidden knowledge, some special arrangement with death. Four good men, buried. She understood something of death, something to toss back in its face, maybe.

She walked fast and purposeful, her mind racing.
Death, take me, please.
She would not abide the drowning death of an eight-year-old girl. Gladly give her life several times over.
Take me, dammit. God, if you exist, bloody take this woman from the earth and spare the child.

Anger rose up in her veins. Who was she negotiating with? She didn't even know what she believed in. Could she pull the tide back out to sea, make the waves from Freda move off in another direction, move the clock of earth ahead twelve hours to the next low tide? She kicked at a rock in her path and looked at the hopelessness of a small supply of cookies and an old flashlight in a couple of Ben's Bread bags.

Sylvie knew there must be something in the crazy mix of beliefs and understandings within her, something of value and use right now. Her personal relationship with the sea, with the island, with the way the planet talked to her. But there was an intrinsic logic that kept telling her that some things cannot be changed. Some things, even horrible things, were meant to be.

No. They were not.

Greg Cookson had slept in. He'd been feeling depressed for a few days. He wasn't used to living alone. He had quit his summer job, a good one that paid well. He'd decided not to go back to university. He'd started to fall in love with some woman on the island who turned out to be totally nuts. He'd screwed his life up in some grand way and didn't even quite know why. Twenty years old and living alone in a fish shack. No job. No real friends. Swimming in the ocean, staying up late and reading books by a kerosene
lamp, collecting mosquito and blackfly bites. Sleeping late and waking up drowsy.

Someone banging on his door, opening it and walking in. He sat up quickly, pulled the sheet over his nakedness.

An old woman full of anger. Why was she angry at him?

“Sylvie.”

“Greg. I'm going to ask you to do something for me. I'm going to talk you through it. I won't allow you to say no.”

Greg's mind was a jumble.

“Listen. Carefully.” Sylvie explained haltingly. She stumbled on words and regretted the loss of each second. She threw Greg a pair of canvas swim trunks she saw hanging over a chair. He slipped them on, still feeling funny about sleeping naked and having a woman, even an old woman, walk in on him.

“That sounds crazy. Why would they go in there? I saw the place but it always seemed too spooky to me.”

“Kids. It doesn't matter. You're a swimmer, right?”

“I was.”

“How long can you hold your breath?”

Greg laughed out loud. He had passed out and nearly drowned himself once in his own bathtub when he was thirteen.
One thousand and one, one thousand and two… one thousand two hundred and ten.
He had counted. His father had had to break the door lock and haul him out of the bath. Greg could hold his breath. Not forever, but it was one of those idiotic skills that boys hang onto, and it had helped him win a swim meet or two — one less bob of the head to catch air.

“You want me to swim into this tunnel?”

“Yes. You have to do this for me.”

“But I can't possibly bring anyone back out of there that way.”

“I know. You have to go in and wait.”

Greg couldn't bring himself to say what he was thinking. He was a swimmer, yes, but he was deathly afraid of drowning at sea.
When he was young, he'd been caught in a river current once at Lawrencetown Beach and swept to sea. He and his father both had nearly drowned. It was after that event that he had begun to practise holding his breath and swimming long distance, but he never had gotten over the terror of being swept a half mile to sea and expecting to drown.“I don't know if I can, Sylvie.”

Sylvie said nothing, closed her eyes. Stood there in the morning sun with the door open, sunlight spilling into the room, washing the wood plank floor in bright, cleansing light. She didn't know what to say.

Greg had heard the words come out of his mouth and felt ashamed. He rubbed his eyes, recognized the depth of his fear, wondered at the horror of swimming underwater through some kind of a tunnel to a cavern inside a rock headland. Swimming blind and unable to come up for air if he needed to. But as he rubbed his eyes, this other thing came into his head. What had he accomplished in his whole life? Sweet nada. Nothing he had ever done had mattered very much. Swimming medals, good grades at school — what was the point? All his life, he realized, he'd been waiting for a chance to do something worthwhile. It was like a powerful, cold wave washing over him. He stood up.

“Do you know the distance?”

“Twenty yards. Wait for an incoming wave, stay deep and go with it. The tunnel turns halfway. You'll have to feel for the wall in front of you and veer left.”