River Odyssey Read online

  And then I thought I heard the radar beep.

  I wasn’t sure at first; the rain was so loud. But the beep of the radar had a piercing tone that travelled through the sound of rushing water. I shut the hatch and we went inside. It wasn’t a strong signal. It was there one moment, gone the next, then back again. That happens sometimes when an object is riding a wave, submerges then comes back up. It could have been a metal barrel or a container. But there were no waves tonight. The signal was only five miles away and didn’t appear to be moving. I wondered why I hadn’t heard the radar until now. Since it wasn’t far out of our way I decided to investigate.

  I had never seen such rain. It never let up, not for a minute. Half a mile from the signal I couldn’t see any evidence of a light. Still none at quarter of a mile. Whatever it was, it wasn’t very big or well lit. As we closed in on it, I slowed to ten knots, then five, then cut the engine and climbed the portal with the umbrella and tried to see through the rain as we drifted closer. There was something there; I just needed to get a little closer … a little closer … Oh! We hit something! I heard someone yelling. Then I heard two people yelling. They were speaking French. I turned on our floodlights and scanned the water. I saw a long sea kayak. There was a man and woman in it. She looked frightened and he looked angry. We had struck the kayak but weren’t going very fast and I was pretty sure it just bounced off the hull. I couldn’t understand what they were yelling because it was in French, so, I pulled on the harness, climbed out and went halfway down the railing.

  “Are you all right?” I yelled.

  “Non!”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  They were dressed well enough for the weather but carrying only a flimsy light. They must have had some metal somewhere that was showing up unevenly on radar.

  “Nous sommes perdus!” cried the girl. “We’re lost!”

  “We’re not lost!” yelled the guy. “We are just caught in the rain.”

  “We’ve been lost all day!” cried the girl. “We’re exhausted!”

  “Nous ne sommes pas perdus!” said the guy. “I know where we are.”

  “Do you want to come inside and dry out?”

  “C’est un sous-marin?”

  “What?”

  “Is that a submarine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh! Is it safe?”

  I felt like saying it was a heck of a lot safer than where they were right now. “Yes, it’s safe, but it’ll be a little crowded. Come in slowly and don’t scare my seagull, okay? You’ll have to sit on the floor.”

  “D’accord. But we must first cover our kayak so it doesn’t fill with water. Can we tie it to your submarine?”

  “Okay.”

  I grabbed some rope, tied one end to a handle on the portal and tossed the other to the guy. The girl climbed up first. As she passed me she said, “Merci beaucoup! I am Marie. He is Jacques. We were lost all day. I was really afraid.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m Alfred. Please don’t touch any switches inside, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  When Jacques climbed up, he said, “We are not lost. It is just rain. It is going to stop any moment.”

  “I understand. Please don’t touch any switches inside, okay?”

  “Oui, oui. Thank you for stopping for us, hey?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I followed him in and shut the hatch. Seaweed was already on my cot. He wasn’t fussy about company, unless they were other seagulls, and would have left had it not been raining so hard.

  “Just leave him alone and he’ll be okay,” I said.

  Marie sat beside Hollie and scratched his ears. She was very gentle and Hollie liked her right away. He was a suck for affection.

  “What a sweet little doggie!”

  “Please sit here,” I said to Jacques, and pointed to a spot behind the bicycle seat. “We need to distribute our weight evenly.”

  “Oui. Oh, man, it is amazing in here! Is this where you live?”

  “Pretty much. I spend a lot of time at sea.”

  “You know, I think I have heard of you. You rescued a family a couple of years ago, yes?”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “They call you the ‘outlaw du sous-marin.’ The ‘outlaw of the submarine,’ oui?”

  “I guess so. Something like that.”

  “But … how come they still chase you? Did you steal something? Do you carry guns?”

  “No. It’s just that my submarine is not registered. To have it registered they would have to inspect it. It probably wouldn’t pass their inspection and I probably wouldn’t get it back.”

  “Ah, tu as bien raison. My uncle works for the government. He says the government is run by insurance companies now. It is the insurance companies that would shut you down. The government cannot allow you to ride around in an uninsured vessel.”

  He looked around. “I don’t think they would insure you for this.”

  “I don’t think so either.”

  “So, you become an outlaw. Maybe it is not so bad, hey?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But… can they not catch you if they want to?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they don’t want to.”

  “They don’t want to?”

  “It’s because he’s helping people, Jacques,” said Marie.

  She sounded fed up with him. After a day lost at sea I’d be fed up too.

  “How did you get… I mean, how is it you got caught in the rain?”

  “He still doesn’t believe we are lost. It is because he never believes it is dangerous,” said Marie, without looking up. “He thinks the water is just as safe as the land. C’est incroyable!”

  “Ah! Marie! Tu exagères toujours! The water is not so dangerous. You just need to know what you are doing.”

  “Yah! And you know what you are doing! That is why we were lost all day!”

  “We were never lost.”

  “Dis-lui! Tell him! Please! Tell him how dangerous the water is.”

  I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of this but I couldn’t deny that she was right.

  “The sea is very dangerous. And so is the mouth of the river.”

  “You see? There! You have heard it now from the ‘outlaw of the submarine’ himself. Please tell him why it is so dangerous.”

  “Well… it is so unpredictable. Weather conditions will change without warning. Storms will blow in your path when you are least expecting them. Then, a miscalculation of your position could be fatal. Last year I came upon a drowned fisherman after a storm. It was really sad.”

  “Tu vois, Jacques? A miscalculation.”

  Jacques seemed less confident now but didn’t want to show it. “I never miscalculated! I know exactly where we are! Once this rain stops, we can continue to Anticosti Island. It is just five kilometres away!”

  Boy was he off! But I hated to correct him. I would have hated being corrected in front of my girlfriend, if I ever had a girlfriend. But the truth was it was dangerous for both of them. I was surprised he didn’t realize that. I had to find a way to explain it to him without embarrassing him. “Umm … I can show you on a chart exactly where our position is now, if you would like.”

  He looked surprised. “Oui! Of course.”

  “We are … here!” I touched the chart with my finger. “And Anticosti Island is … here!”

  “And that is … how many kilometres?”

  “Umm … it’s about twenty miles. Thirty-two kilometres.”

  “Oh … mon … Dieu!” said Marie.

  Jacques stared at the chart, disbelieving. “Are you sure we are here, so far to the west?”

  “Absolutely sure. I think probably what happened is that you drifted with the current without knowing it.”

  “Ahhhh … ”

  He continued to study the chart, but his face grew pale and I could tell he was fighting feelings of embarrassment. He stole quick glances at Marie but avoided her dire
ct stare. If they had continued the way they had been going, they would have missed Anticosti Island completely and would have been lost at sea. I wondered if he realized that. I wondered if I should tell him. I decided not to.

  In less than half an hour Marie was asleep. That didn’t surprise me. Being at sea has a way of sucking the energy out of you, especially in bad weather. But Jacques was fidgeting in his sleeping bag. Was his conscience bothering him? Or his pride? A few times I had the sense he was going to get up. It was three hours before sunrise. I set a course for Anticosti Island once more, but headed farther north, correcting for Jacques’ loss of position and heading closer to the river at the same time.

  An hour before sunrise we were just a few miles offshore. We would have been able to see the island if there had been lights. But there weren’t any. Suddenly, Jacques stood up and said that he had to pee. He climbed the portal. I noticed that he took his pack with him. That seemed odd but I didn’t say anything. Five minutes later I poked my head through the hatch. He was gone. He vanished like a ghost. The kayak was gone too.

  Chapter 9

  “NAVAL OFFICERS DISCOVERED three illegal persons on board a cargo ship in the mouth of the St. Lawrence River yesterday,” said the radio announcer. “Officials haven’t confirmed the nationality of the stowaways but believe they may be from Somalia. The stowaways were discovered when they exited the container in which they were hiding in search of food and water. One of the stowaways was described as being in critical condition. One unidentified official said the stowaways could have been locked up in their self-imposed confinement for as long as two months.”

  They didn’t mention that anyone had died. That was good. He must have survived the fall after all. But man, how those stowaways must have suffered. And now, after all that trouble, they had been caught anyway. I felt sorry for them. The next bit on the radio was interesting too.

  “Reports of an unidentified submarine spotted in the area have not been confirmed. Officials refused to comment. The submarine is not believed to be linked to the stowaways.”

  I wondered if they would have confirmed those reports had they captured me.

  The radio had woken Marie. She was devastated when I told her that Jacques had abandoned her. And yet, she didn’t seem all that surprised. I wondered if he had done something like that before. He struck me as the sort of person who acted before he thought things through; all enthusiasm and no caution—a dangerous combination at sea.

  I made her a cup of tea and carried it over. She had spread out her mat and sleeping bag and looked very cozy with Hollie on her lap. He looked like a baby kangaroo in a pouch. Hollie became attached to people very quickly because he was a dog, but also because he was an orphan. He never seemed to feel that he belonged anywhere except in the sub, and was never happy left alone. I rarely left him alone.

  Marie looked so sad. I felt bad for her.

  “Did he steal your kayak?”

  “No. It was his kayak.” She took a deep breath. “I am glad he is gone.”

  “Really?”

  I couldn’t tell if she meant that or not. “How long have you known him?”

  She wiped a tear. “Seven years.”

  “Oh.”

  That was a long time. She scratched Hollie’s ears and sighed, then raised her head and looked at me. She was upset but was trying not to show it. Her voice was breaking. “What kind of person leaves you in the middle of the night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What kind of person leaves you in the middle of the river?”

  Actually it was more like the sea. “I don’t know.”

  I knew she wasn’t expecting me to answer. I was wondering what kind of person would throw a dog off a wharf. And what kind of person would walk away from his own child? I didn’t want to think about those things but couldn’t help it. Before Sheba’s dream, I didn’t think about such things much. Now, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t like it.

  “He is such a child,” she said. “He cannot take responsibility for anything, for making us lost, so he runs away like a little boy. Un enfant immature!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had never seen anyone behave the way Jacques had. Could there be anything worse than abandoning someone in distress? That was beyond me. Wherever he was now, Jacques must have been carrying a heavy conscience. He must have known what he did was wrong?

  I couldn’t help wonder about my father too, as much as I didn’t want to.

  Marie was a naturalist. She studied birds and whales and took pictures of them and sold them to magazines. She said it was her dream to share the beauty of the natural world with people. That sounded like a pretty nice dream to me. She said that Jacques was also a naturalist but that he was a lot more interested in experiencing the world than in sharing it. That didn’t surprise me.

  She said she was from a little village on the Gaspé Peninsula but lived in Quebec City now.

  “My grandpapa has a beautiful old farm. It overlooks the river from high up. You would really like it. You could drop me off there, Alfred. It would be nice if you came and visited my grandpapa with me. He would like you. When he was a young man he saw submarines in the river.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He and his friends saw German sailors climb out onto the islands and drink and sing and laugh.”

  “But… weren’t the sailors afraid of getting caught?”

  “I don’t know. You have to ask my grandpapa. But he would be happy to tell you. He loves to talk about the war.”

  “I would love to hear about it. I really would.”

  I decided to drop Marie off on the riverbank below her grandfather’s farm, hide the sub and join her for a short visit. She said I would receive some good old-fashioned Québécois hospitality. That sounded pretty good.

  We sailed on the surface in broad daylight with the hatch wide open. Only a few times did I have to submerge when ships came down the river. Marie didn’t mind that too much but preferred when we were on the surface and the hatch was wide open. She said that she didn’t like small spaces but that the sub was cozy. She was good company. She taught me lots of things about birds and whales in the river. The St. Lawrence is a kind of portal between saltwater and freshwater worlds, she said. In its mouth are all the saltwater birds, just as out at sea. And there are whales and seals and dolphins. Upriver, the birds are freshwater birds and the fish are freshwater fish, but the whales and seals can only swim partway, to where the salt water and fresh water join together. The water forms a brackish mix there, especially around the mouth of the Saguenay River, which empties into the St. Lawrence. Where the two rivers meet is a hot spot for feeding and spawning and is a favourite spot for beluga whales, the smallest of the whales.

  “They’re the sweetest ones,” said Marie with delight. “But they have been hunted almost to extinction. Scientists hope they will make a comeback now. Belugas are like little children, really. They love to play. They’re so friendly. That’s why they’re so easy to catch, and why so few of them are left.”

  As we sailed up the mouth of the river, Marie insisted upon sitting on the hull, down in front of the portal—Seaweed’s spot, though I didn’t think he minded. He spent most of the day soaring above us, when he wasn’t sleeping on the stern. I tied a rope around Marie’s waist and tied it to the hatch so that she could hold on while she dangled her feet over the side. She said she never realized a submarine could be so much fun.

  “I feel like I’m riding a whale! This is the best way to travel in the world!”

  Well, I had to agree with that.

  Darkness fell as we sailed under the shadow of the Gaspé Peninsula. There was a cliff and rocky hillside. Marie couldn’t recognize her grandfather’s farm from the water, so I searched for a small cove in which to moor the sub and hide it. I tied it securely with three ropes. There wasn’t much current yet, but there was some, and it was flowing consistently in one direction. That was different from having to consider only th
e tide. Now there was the tide and river current. I could not turn my back on the sub unless it was securely moored or anchored.

  There was no beach, just a rocky landing below the cliff. Hollie jumped out of the dinghy, stared impatiently at the rocks that were too big for him to jump over, and whined. So I picked him up and we climbed the hill and found a small road where he could run, and then he was happy. We walked to the nearest house. Marie asked to use the phone and called her grandpapa to come and pick us up. In less than an hour, Hollie and I were in the back of an old pickup truck, riding along the road high above the river. Marie and her grandpapa were sitting in the front, talking in French a mile a minute.

  Chapter 10

  OLD FARMERS AND fishermen have something in common: enormous hands. Like my grandfather, Marie’s grandpapa had hands that could crush a coconut. It was as if the strength of their backs and legs went into their hands when they got older. When he shook hands with me it felt like my hand had been caught in a wooden trap. I couldn’t move it until he let it go; and he didn’t let it go until he had shaken it up and down about ten times. I didn’t believe in all my lifetime I would ever have strength like that.

  Marie was right; he loved to talk about the war. And he spoke English too. But he didn’t hear very well, so we had to shout. Marie and I sat on the floor with a plate of crepes and cups of hot chocolate, like two kids listening to a bed-time story. The crepes were just skinny pancakes filled with fresh strawberries, cream and maple syrup, and they were absolutely delicious. Hollie sat on Marie’s lap, sniffed at her crepes and waited for her to pat him, which she did a lot.

  Her grandpapa was gentle, but his eyes were wild. Marie said that one of them was made of glass. I didn’t want to stare, but one of the eyes kept staring at me. The other one was smaller and wandered around a lot. I couldn’t tell which one was the real one.