Frozen Stiff (15 page)

Eric was leaning into the kayak with his body weight, watching for any water that might seep in.

Cody hesitated; suddenly her throat tightened up. All the things she wanted to say sounded too much like good-bye. Instead she touched the shell necklace and asked if the leak was fixed. Slowly her hand dropped from the shells and found its way to his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Out in the fjord, under skies opaque with clouds and drizzle, Cody shook hands with her paddle for the first time in almost a week. She threw her shoulders into her strokes, skimming the water away from shore, paddling toward Derek, who was already pointed in the direction of Hubbard. “Think we can remember how to do this?” she called to him.

Derek nodded. His face was a twist of mixed emotions; then it relaxed into a smile. “Same old friends. Paddle and water.”

“It’s another world.” She felt just as bad about leaving, but for different reasons: Eric had saved their lives but she hadn’t thanked him the way she had wanted to.

Cody looked back at Eric and Mary Jane, who stood on shore, their gazes fixed on the two kayaks. Cody raised her paddle in a final farewell. Eric slowly lifted his gloved hand and returned the gesture.

Then they were off.

The cool moist air was misty as always. No wonder this part of the world produced such lush forests, an extension of the rain belt of the Pacific Northwest, a
sanctuary for both animals and men. Even under overcast skies she could tell that the sun was declaring it to be midmorning.

Since first light came at four
A.M
., a person could have a full life before noon. The drizzle turned to light rain. They were warm enough in their rain gear with the rubber skirts snapped down. Mary Jane had packed enough jerky and berries to put fat reserves on a grizzly.

The lonely ice-armored ranges looked down on a hostile coast with steep, scarred rock: There was no relief in this part of the fjord, no place to hole up if they had to. Another sweeping bend, and the mouth of a canyon displayed a fan-shaped bank, a tiny creek flowing through it. Alaska yellow cedars were only small trees in the swampy soil studded with ferns, so richly green in places they took your breath away.

Derek finally broke the silence. “I’m going back.”

At first she thought he meant paddle back to the fishing shelter. “What do you mean?”

“They spend every summer at the shelter. I’m going back next year. Stay a couple of weeks. Learn about fishing and trapping. Maybe I’ll spend the whole summer.”

“What will you tell your mom?” Cody asked, timing her strokes with her breathing.

Derek shouted over the rising wind. “We can’t tell anyone about Eric and Mary Jane.”

Cody nodded. “I know.”

“But I know what happened and I have the map,” he said. “That’s enough for me.”

An hour farther into the fjord the clouds broke loose with heavy, bitter rain. The mountains spouted waterfalls—more fuel to the ever-rising fjord. Cody tightened her hood, realizing she’d left her baseball cap behind. No Fear. Someday an archaeologist would discover it along with the remains of primitive fishing gear.

Her paddle strained in the face of stabbing rain; streams in the distance were swollen and raging. The fjord flooded all around the kayak. Although her mind told her they were fine as long as they were on the water, her heart pounded.

Rain slashed at them for another hour before it lightened to a swirling mist. She threw back her hood and breathed easier. The Tlingits had explored, hunted, fished, and claimed the lands and waters as their own as far back as ten thousand years before, when the glaciers began receding. For thousands of years the region had survived ice, floods, earthquakes, and fires. Yet one event had created a lake overnight.

Derek skimmed the water alongside Cody. “Thanks,” he said simply.

She studied him, still paddling. “What for?”

“For bringing me out here.”

“We came through for each other,” she said, remembering her snow blindness. “When it counted most.”

A flock of surf scoters landed on the water near the kayaks. “Nothing will ever be the same,” said Derek, eyes on the birds. “Everything is different.”

Cody knew what he meant. They were different
because of all they’d been through. “Do you know what the outfitters call an adventure?”

“What?”

“An experience outside your comfort zone,” she said.

Derek smiled. “We had an adventure, Cody.”

Cody heard the
whap, whap, whap
of rotary blades. Like a metal insect, a helicopter appeared down the fjord, moving steadily toward the kayaks. The kayaks floated silently as the helicopter zipped down the middle of the canyon. The sound was unbelievably loud and out of place.

Derek lowered his paddle. “Do they know who we are?”

Cody tucked her braid into her slicker and slumped against the artificial wind and noise. The man riding shotgun was in a khaki uniform, a forest ranger, probably. He waved and pressed a thumbs-up to the dome window; then the chopper spun in a tight arch and buzzed back to Hubbard.

“I guess so,” she said.

All the days, all the miles, all the twists and turns in the fjord and in herself couldn’t have prepared Cody for the sight of Hubbard Glacier blocking the mouth of Disenchantment Bay. A massive ice cork shoved into Gilbert Point on the west; the glacial dam itself a twenty-six-story skyscraper rising above a layer of fresh water that capped the deeper salt water.

She was vaguely aware of bits and pieces of civilization off to the sides, a scant five miles away. Dome tents were but mere dots atop Gilbert Point; on the northeast side, across from the point, bush planes littering an ancient river of dried mud and debris. And a single helicopter, its blades still whirling. Most likely the same chopper that had buzzed them earlier.

Ant-sized people rushed down to the water near the airstrip, arms raised and waving wildly. Probably shouting too. Nothing could be heard above the din of water and wind.

They’re waving at us
, she realized.
They’re calling to us!

She looked over at Derek, who’d stopped paddling, his face thin under the yellow hood, his dark eyes taking
it all in. Culture shock. It was just too much. He seemed lost—which was odd since they were
found
.

Derek looked back at her and a shared feeling passed between them. For a few more minutes they would be bound with water and weather and the fjord. She remembered how she had sworn at the elements, cursed at them for plotting and scheming against her. Now the word
respect
had worked its way into her mind.

As they silently paddled, Cody thought about her mother back in the tavern, receiving word from the chopper. With one call the unbearable burden of worry would crumble and drop away. She pictured her mother on the tarmac of Yakutat’s one-strip airport, huddled against the wind, waiting.

An explosive crackling and roaring reverberated through the fjord as an ice cliff three hundred fifty feet high calved from Hubbard’s face. The cliff disappeared under its own cloud of spray, then vaulted up into the air seconds later, careened forward, and shoved a giant wall of water at the kayaks. Mother Nature wasn’t about to let them go without a fight.

The kayaks offered no security, and shore was too far away to reach in time. Explosions of other calving bergs boomed across the fjord as the wall of churning foam and ice bore down on them.

Cody yelled, “Get ready!” and gripped her paddle as though born with it. She braced herself as the onrush washed over and into her kayak, and she was drenched to the skin one more time.

She saw Derek’s face—all smiles—just a paddle
length away, hollering, “
Yee ha!”
like a bronco rider. Then he dropped, disappearing in a watery trough. Only a scrap of blue canvas showed as he was swept sideways into a deeper hole: Cody’s kayak plunged headlong into the second hole, then flipped. No time to hold her breath. No time to hold anything.

Except her paddle.

Always her paddle.

In the middle of a split-second roll, ice picks stabbed at her body, which numbed almost immediately. Just as quickly the torrent rolled the kayak all the way over and spit it into the air. It was over that fast. She breathed hard, her chest on fire and numb at the same time. Her head throbbed with the pain of cold. She couldn’t hear a sound. Cody released her death grip on the paddle to touch her ears and be sure they were still there.

Frantically she searched the swells for Derek.
Where was he?

Then she spotted his kayak, miles away it seemed, but probably only a hundred feet, bucking the whitecaps—upside down.

Derek was awash in the fjord.

She paddled like a crazy person, screaming, “Hang on!”, faintly aware of the
whap
of blades in the distance.

He’s going to die
, she thought.
Like the men in Wildman’s expedition. Glaciers demand a human sacrifice. Just like mountains
.

Then she swore loud and clear, mad as anything that she’d forgiven the elements so soon.

If it hadn’t been for the flash of his orange life vest she wouldn’t have been able to see Derek at all. She paddled wildly, slashing the water in an incredible display of what could be accomplished when someone was scared out of her mind.

The helicopter buzzed in front of her, hovering over the water, a cigar-shaped float swaying on the end of a rope. Derek swiped at it uselessly. Too much wind, too much water.

She closed the final yards, grabbing the nape of the orange vest, dragging Derek, coughing and sputtering, over the seat behind her. Except for the hood, which had been torn off, the rain slicker remained intact; but his boots had been stripped away, exposing feet as blue as Hubbard. Looking lifeless, he still managed to crawl all the way in. Then he collapsed nearly unconscious, stone-white fingers gripping the canvas lip. No time to dig out the sleeping bag. No time for anything but to react to what was happening.

“Hang on!” she shouted over the roar of exploding ice. “That’s an order from your captain!”

A hint of a smile tinged his pale blue lips, then faded as he sank into unconsciousness.

Cody’s mind went numb as sleeping bags appeared from nowhere, doubling as blankets, wrapping her and Derek like mummies.
Faces
. A horde of them crowding around her on the muddy shore, battering her with questions. A mass of jumbled syllables that made no sense. So much noise. She realized how conversation between them had steadily dwindled since they had first left the pickup. Something else had taken over.

These people were so unbelievably clean. And Derek. A man in a khaki uniform was rushing him off to the helicopter. Trailed by Aunt Jessie.
Aunt Jessie?

Cody accepted a mug of something hot with trembling hands. Coffee. Black. She hated and loved it at the same time.
Aunt Jessie? At Hubbard?
The coffee warmed both her hands and her insides, finally thawing the numbness in her head.
Of course. Flown in from Yakutat, less than an hour away by plane
.