Mudlark (28 page)

Bonnie let out a long whistle.

I was surprised, too, and not thrilled.

Oblivious to my dismay, Clara went on with the rules of the game. "You have to dig separately, and you
ought to wear gloves if you go for softshells. They can cut up your hands."

Bonnie said, "I didn't bring gloves."

"Maybe you should look for cockles, then. They have a less fragile shell."

I swallowed the last of my coffee. "I brought gloves. You can dig the holes, Bonnie. I'll grope for the little
devils."

Clara said, "Trade off. Be sure to take both buckets. I doubt that you'll run into a warden, but it's best to
stick to the letter of the law. Fines for violations can be hefty. And be sure to fill your holes. That's the number one
rule."

Bonnie shouldered her shovel and grabbed her pail. "Let's go, Lark."

Hiking in waders was no damned fun, but Bonnie said we should save our sneakers for the trek back. I
carried the bag of shoes, along with my shovel and pail. We plodded on. By that time the sun had burned off the last
of the fog. A tiny breeze riffled the water. We stopped to admire a blue heron.

"Just like an Audubon print."

I glanced at Bonnie. Her face had a look of purest ecstasy. Of course, she hadn't rowed across the
bay.

When we rounded the shoulder of wooded land, we lost sight of Clara and the boat. One of the many
ships' crews that had wrecked in Shoalwater Bay in the 1840s had wintered on Coho Island. I decided I wasn't
enough of a pioneer to want to be similarly stranded. Clara had said we had plenty of time for clamming. It was not
yet low tide. I imagined a freak wave floating the boat out to sea--and lapping around Clara's purple boots.

When we finally reached the stretch of mudflat and got down to the business of looking for clam sign, I
began to see the utility of our rain gear. I had left my jacket unzipped while I rowed, and even so I had worked up a
sweat. The waders felt like a portable sauna.

The day was cool but by no means cold. It wasn't raining. Still, one slurp with the shovel in the sticky
mud persuaded me I'd need a total cover-up. I handed the digging over to Bonnie, took my gloves from the pocket
of my jacket, and zipped up.

Bonnie was sure the dents she had spotted in the mud were clam air holes. She found quite a few
worms but no clams. I dissuaded her from digging deeper. We strolled farther out and tried again. This time we
found seven undersized softshells. At least we knew what they looked like.

We picked our way over mossy gravel strewn with dead crabs and bits of shell to another streak of
mud. As we intruded on their territory, half a dozen gulls squawked and flew off.

Then we lucked out. Bonnie spotted the oddly rectangular dents almost at once and began digging.
About a foot down she uncovered a cluster of fine specimens. I knelt and began to pull them out.

Perhaps we went a little mad. Bonnie dug. I scooped clams. When she saw my primitive delight, Bonnie
leaned her shovel on her pail and started scooping, too. We found fifty-two keepers in ten minutes. The mud felt
glorious, once I removed my right glove and began squishing with my bare hand. By the time we had picked over
that colony, refilled our trench, and divided the spoils, we were hooked.

We were also covered with mud, juicy, salty, glorious mud. We made a lot of noise.

Bonnie said, "It's like messing with Play-doh."

"Nope, too dry. Mud pies."

"My mother never let me make mud pies." She adjusted her glasses and left a streak of silt on her
nose.

I snickered. "You look like Paleolithic Woman."

"I want to sit in that mud. Sit and roll and make grunting noises like a hog in a wallow."

I grabbed my shovel and pail. "More!"

It took us awhile to find another concentration of clams. We dug side by side, giggling and squeaking. At
once point Bonnie lay up to her shoulder in the muddy hole and began to grope frantically.

"God, you must have found a geoduck."

"My ring!"

"What?"

"I lost my ring." She swore and groped and kept pulling up bits of shell and rock.

"Want me to look?"

"What's to see?" She stood up and shook off about half a pound of slime. "Rats, it's lost. That was my
mother's friendship ring. She's going to kill me, but it was worth it. How many do we have?"

We took inventory. Definitely forty apiece. We looked at each other. Bonnie started scooping the heap
of mud and gravel over the grave of her mother's ring. "Let's go on to the gravel bar and find those cockles."

"Okay." I filled in my hole, too.

Clara had said the bar lay just beyond the mudflat. She was right, but she hadn't mentioned that the
mudflat extended a good quarter of a mile south. Here the evergreens were beginning to encroach on the shore.
Something had made a crude path through the underbrush. Beyond the bushes that rimmed the beach, the trees
loomed taller. I hoped the path-maker wasn't a bear.

Cockles proved more elusive than the soft-shells. We probed and dug, and uncovered quite a few
worms. I saw the shadows of ghost shrimp in a tide pool. Once I thought I heard Clara calling. I stood and listened.
The sound came again, vague and high, but not from the north. Some bird, probably, whose call I didn't recognize. I
went back to serious clam hunting.

I started to think about the time, though. I kept glancing at my watch. A quarter of three. We had
perhaps forty five minutes of slack water. Then the tide would creep back. According to Clara, the change wasn't
dramatic in calm weather, so we were unlikely to run into trouble. Still, it would take a while to haul the pails with
their burden of clams and seawater back to the boat.

I was about to suggest that we leave when Bonnie found a clump of cockles. They were prettier than the
softshells, and the sandy aggregate was much less messy than mud, but cockles were too easy. They lay a mere
hand-span under the sand. We had sorted our limits into the pails and filled the shallow holes by three o'clock.
Plenty of time.

The distant bird call came again. I listened hard, frowning.

"What is it?"

I shrugged. "Just a noise."

"A bear?"

"More like a bird."

"Whew. I don't like the idea of bears. Let's change into our sneakers before we walk back. That bucket's
heavy and I don't want to walk in waders."

We sat on a drift log with our backs to the woods and stripped the waders off. I decided to change
socks, too. In my clam frenzy I had slopped seawater into the left side of my waders. My sock and jeans were
damp.

Bonnie tied her Reeboks and stood up, stretching. "God, that was fun. There must be some atavistic
impulse that makes women want to amass shellfish. Did you read about those Stone Age sites in Spain with all the
mussel shells? I wonder if the mussels in this area are tasty?"

I tied my laces. "Probably. I ordered a smoked mussel appetizer once. It was good eating."

"All right, stand up. Slow and easy now."

The man had approached so carefully down the crude pathway that I hadn't heard him. I stood. Bonnie
and I turned. My first thought was that the game warden wanted to inspect our catch, so I was more annoyed than
alarmed. Then I saw the rifle.

He was a heavy-set, ruddy man in a plaid shirt and jeans. He raised the barrel so that the little black
hole pointed right at my stomach. "Follow me."

I swallowed and exchanged a swift glance with Bonnie. She looked pale and blank. Far off and inland,
the birdcall sounded.

"What's the problem, officer?" Bonnie had leapt to the wrong conclusion, too.

I cleared my throat. "He's not--"

"Shut the fuck up. I said follow me." The barrel waved in the direction of the path.

I bent to pick up my shovel.

"Leave it!"

I dropped the handle on the sand and straightened. "You must be Kevin Johnson."

The rifle swung my direction again. "Yeah, so what? Who the shit are you?"

"I'm Lark Dodge. I met your wife."

"Well, ain't that nice? Move it, lady."

"Shall I bring my clams?" Bonnie had to be out of her mind.

Apparently Johnson thought so, too, for he snarled and gestured with the rifle. Bonnie abandoned her
pail and trotted to the edge of the woods. I followed with Johnson behind me. I couldn't see the rifle, but I felt it in
the center of my spine as if he were prodding me with it. In reality he kept his distance, but the sensation was
undeniable. We stumbled along. When we slowed, Johnson swore at us.

The path would have been difficult walking without the threat of a bullet between the shoulder blades.
It looked as if an elk had crashed its way through the tangle of undergrowth in a beeline for the water. Fallen
branches and blackberry tripwires made the footing treacherous.

Bonnie and I were Johnson's prisoners, hostages. At first I had no idea why he hadn't just ignored our
presence on the beach. We were clamming, unlikely to turn our attention inland to his hideaway. Why hadn't he
just watched us and let us leave? Then the cries of the bird began to resolve into human shrieks. Somebody was
hurting. I remembered Melanie.

"Has your wife gone into labor, Kevin?"

A wordless snarl answered me, but I knew I was right. He had dragged his pregnant wife off into hiding
with him. She was going to have her baby at any minute from the sound of her. Kevin had spotted a couple of
women on the beach and decided we would make good midwives. What a hope.

There was nothing funny about the agony in Melanie Johnson's cries, nothing amusing in the prickle
between my shoulder blades, but I had to suppress a wild urge to laugh. What I knew about childbirth would take
less than a typed page to tell. Kevin was going to have to go for a doctor or a paramedic. Whatever. I would have to
persuade him.

I decided the path was not the right place.

Kevin's camp indicated that he had done some planning. There was a green umbrella tent, from which
came the now-piercing screams, and a fiberglass canoe rested against one of the huge evergreens that ringed the
clearing. He had set up a Coleman stove. A tarp covered a hump that was probably supplies. He must have made
several trips. The site looked oddly familiar, but it took me a minute or two to make the connection. He had pitched
his tent under dark towering cedars like those that dwarfed his mobile home.

When we came to a halt, I turned and tried to ignore the rifle. "Look, Kevin, I know you want us to help
your wife, but the truth is she needs a real doctor."

His mouth set in a thin line. "Tough shit. You help her."

I said, "I'd be glad to, but I don't know anything about childbirth. I've never had a baby, Kevin. I've
never even spent any time around babies. What can I do for her?"

Melanie shrieked.

Bonnie said, "
I'll
help her."

Kevin and I looked at her.

Mud streaked her face and her nylon rain jacket. Her blond hair had wilted into witch-locks. She raised
her chin. "A friend of mine needed a Lamaze coach. I took the course. I can help Melanie. Come on, Lark." She jerked
her head toward the tent.

"No funny business." Kevin waved the rifle.

I followed Bonnie into the tent.

Melanie Johnson was lying on an open sleeping bag. She was half naked, and blood and mucus streaked
her white thighs and buttocks. She lay on her side. She was sobbing as we ducked into the dim green shelter,
whimpering with pain, her eyes clenched shut. A spasm rippled her too-visible belly, and she screamed. My hands
went to my ears. I was as near panic as I have ever been.

Bonnie knelt at her head. "Melanie, we've come to help you."

Melanie gave another soul-rending shriek. Bonnie reached out and took her face. "Look at me. I'm
Bonnie. Do you see me, Melanie?"

The eyes fluttered open. "Hurts."

"Yes, I know. You're afraid. But it's just a baby, and you've already had two babies. You know what to
do. I'm going to help you breathe."

The next shriek was muted.

"That's better. Come on. I know you're scared, but that just makes the pain worse. Lark is going to find
something to make you warmer. Did your water break?"

Melanie gasped. "Yeah. I went to take a pee. When it broke, I come back and got out of my jeans. Oh, ow.
It hurts."

Bonnie was holding her hand. "That's right. Brace against me. The pains are pretty close together, aren't
they?"

"It's coming. Help me."

"Right. Do you want to lie there on your side or would you rather squat? I'll help you up."

"Lie. Ow. I'm thirsty."

"Go get her something to drink, Lark."

I went.

I ducked out of the tent into the camp. Kevin's rifle barrel came up. This time the muzzle pointed
straight at my throat.

I swallowed. "She needs something to drink."

He gestured with the barrel at the tarp-covered pile of supplies. "Over there. We got beer and
Coke."

Beer! Hadn't the man heard of fetal alcohol syndrome? "I want water."

"Stuff in the pan's okay." He waved the rifle again. He was standing in the brush at the edge of the trail
to the beach. His flat stare didn't waver from me.

Melanie gave a muffled scream. I could hear Bonnie's voice, low and calm, reassuring her. I could hear
my own heartbeat.

I skirted the edge of the clearing, keeping maximum distance between me and the rifle, until I reached
the Coleman stove. A rusty sediment had settled in the bottom of the pan. "It looks dirty."

"She boiled it this morning, lady. It's safe."

"Where's a cup? Never mind, I see it." A chipped mug sat on the stump behind the stove along with two
empty plastic buckets. I dipped a cupful of water from the pan, careful not to roil the silt. My hands shook. "Is there
a creek? We'll need warm water soon." All I knew about primitive birthings came from old western movies. Surely
the midwife boiled water.

"Spring," he said. "Over there." The rifle barrel pointed beyond me into the woods.