Page 22 of The Wild Beneath

It hurts to think it was all in the water before. Each day there’s a new arrangement: garbage sucked back out to sea and swallowed, the water eating away at the remains, and new garbage deposited on shore. The sea spits back out so much of what it doesn’t want.

It’s not until they reach the hard wet sand of low tide that they’re past all the debris.

“You need to be around at slack tide,” Annie says. “There’s a couple hours to get them.” She drags her rake through the sand, feeling the knobby clamshells. She grabs a littleneck and holds out her palm. “It’s like sorting through soil for potatoes.” She bends down and pulls her muddy glove through the sand.

Walker does the same, then holds up a clam. “What’s this one?”

“Butter clam,” Annie says. “You have to cut the neck off before you eat it.” She holds the bucket out and he tosses it in. Annie knows the clams by rote: butter, manila, varnish, razor, littleneck, geoduck. Soak, scrub, then steam them, with shallots and garlic, if there is any, until they open and give up their sweet meat. “They blow holes and give themselves away, too,” Annie says, digging two feet down over a larger blowhole and reaching her hand deep into the water. Her fingers brush a clam. She grabs it before it can get away. “Razor clam.” She shows Walker the yellowish tongue sticking out from the side of the shell. “He’s playing with us.” She throws it in the bucket and shovels some briny water over the top.

They stop at all the tide pools. Annie shows him every sand dollar she finds. How are they still here? They’re her favourites, the way they tuck themselves into the earth. She moves two sand dollars next to one another, the way she always does.

“You paired them up,” Walker says.

Annie nods. “I like doubles. Then they’re together.”

So far out, she can almost pretend there was no tsunami. Only stretches of beach, calm water, and the thud of clams into the bucket.

But her shovel catches on a set of children’s building blocks in a netted bag. She drags it from a muddy puddle, unsure what’s compelling her to examine these things the sea leaves behind. Each block has the carved imprint of a sea animal: a perched walrus, a lobster with pincers, a sea turtle gliding through water.

“Annie.” Walker’s voice comes from behind her. He’s on his knees in the sand and elbow-deep in a hole. But his eyes are focused on the horizon, staring at something she can’t see.

Thethwump-thwump-thwumprises again through her boots, into the tendons of her feet, ascending into her ankles and shins.

Walker stands up and tosses another butter clam in the bucket, then removes his gloves. He touches the back of Annie’s arm. “Do you hear it?” he asks.

A whooshing noise erupts from the channel. Annie turns with a jolt to look at the water. A spout of breath lingers a hundred metres west of them where the sea is deeper. A long, barnacled back breaks the surface.

The thwumping settles in her ribs. It’s pulsatile and alive. Annie is sure it’s trying to tell her something—­if she could only speak its language.

More thwumping from underneath, spreading outward, liquefying everything in its path. Nothing feels firm.

But it’s fleeting. Tail flukes poke up as the whale drifts under and disappears, leaving a circle of bubbles in its wake. A wavy footprint. The ocean settles and stills. The thwumping dissipates to a faint coming-and-going tone. Annie solidifies, contained inside her skin again.

After what feels like hours but surely is not, Walker picks up the bucket with his gloved hand. “Home?” he asks.

Home.She rolls over the shape of the word. She looks around at the beach, the endless sand, the accumulated garbage, andhas trouble understanding what she’s seeing. Is this where home is now?

He takes the bucket over his shoulder, carrying it like it’s nothing. He does not mention the whale, or that liquid feeling, but for that brief moment, things felt reordered. On the beach, the two of them, the clams, the whale; but mostly the sound beneath her. Something made sense, deep in Annie’s body, when nothing about their situation really makes sense at all.

Chapter 10

Before

After the humpback dies on the beach, Mara and Aiden decide to leave Hale’s Landing for a while.

Mara wants—­needs—­to get away from everyone; from the noise of town, from Rosie’s, the fishermen, the loggers. They call her crazy behind her back, spread rumours that Mara believes she’s made of seawater. She needs the expanse of the open sea. They’ll sail down the coast toward Baja. She wants the warmer waters, and doesnotwant Annie to do second grade with other kids.

“It’ll be good for us,” Mara says. She strokes Annie’s hair.

“We’ll be away until next spring.” Aiden stacks cans of tuna into the galley cabinet, snug against the boxes of couscous. “Then we’ll be back.”

It lands with a thud. They’d left Hale’s before, many times, long excursions down the Pacific coastline fishing Chinook. But this feels different to Annie; a line being traced in permanent ink.

By late October, they’re ready to leave. It rains hard. They wear Gore-Tex gear and galoshes that squeak as they move over the deck. Uncle Henry comes in on his gillnetter to see them off. He reaches his hand down into the sea, touches water, scoops up a handful, then tastes it. Annie once asked him about this strange gesture; Henry shrugged it off as superstition, something he’s done since he was a kid. Satisfied in whatever way it satisfies him, he gives Aiden a firm clap on the shoulder and a handshake.

Ruth hugs Annie for a long time and kisses her repeatedly on the cheeks. Annie studies her grandmother’s face up close. She has bags under her eyes and her cheeks aren’t as flushed as usual. Henry probably tried to reassure her all morning that they’ll be fine, the way he does. Henry understands this need for the sea. But Ruth doesn’t look reassured at all.

Henry and Ruth wave them off. Annie waves back. The lifelines are cold and wet in her fists.