Soundkeeper (16 page)

The silence that followed confused him until he got close enough to speak. Every young eye was staring at his gun or badge. While his uniform didn’t mean much to an illegal netter, he was glad to see it still meant something to these boys.

Surveying the camp, he was immediately impressed. Firewood was stacked neatly next to the tent, and the ground near the fire had been cleared of dry leaves and pine needles that might catch a stray spark. There were four separate piles of wood shavings and Hall guessed that last nights entertainment had been whittling, a time honored activity of young boys and old men.

They warmed up to him a bit after he complimented them on their camp and asked them if they were having a good time. When he told them how much he enjoyed camping out when he was scout, they offered him some bacon.

“Don’t your parents worry about you out here all by yourselves?” Hall asked

The oldest boy went into the tent and came out carrying a small cellular phone.

“We live just a few miles up the river. If anything happened, my dad knows where our camp is.” Hall learned that all the boys had grown up in the area and had fished and camped nearby ever since they were little kids.

The boys followed Hall back to his boat, and he obliged their request to show them some of his equipment including the shotgun which was kept in a locking rack under the console where it was protected from the elements. By now their shyness had vanished, and he spent fifteen minutes answering questions about what kind of gun he carried and what the Fish and Wildlife Service was. He invited them to visit him on Pinckney Island and when he pushed off of the beach they were getting ready to go crabbing in the creek.

The excitement he had about helping Cliff faded for a moment. It was replaced by the satisfaction that by simply doing his job he had helped ensure that the boys he just met, and generations after them, would be able to enjoy this wonderful ecosystem. Some of that pride was scraped off when he got stuck on a sandbar. He looked back and was thankful he was far enough away from the boys that they couldn’t see him. Hall tried reversing off of the obstruction, but his propeller only churned mud. He was stuck until the tide rose again.

After sinking his brand new anchor into the marl his bow was embedded in, he pulled on his rubber boots, grabbed his binoculars, and walked to the bank. Within a few minutes he was on solid ground and underneath the shade of a spreading oak tree. From where he stood he could see the young campers splashing and playing at the water’s edge—apparently the crabbing was a little slow. In the other direction he could see across Dawes Island to the Broad River and beyond to Port Royal Sound.

Through his binoculars he watched several shrimp trawlers head out of the sound and into the Atlantic Ocean. A single shrimp boat was coming in, and Hall didn’t have to guess about the success or failure of their voyage. The boat rode low in the water, so great was her cargo. On the far side of the sound a rusty old barge was coming out of a creek near the Penn School. Hall didn’t know there was a commercial dock in that area, but it didn’t surprise him. He still felt geographically handicapped but learned more about his new home every day. Just a few minutes ago he had discovered a sandbar in the middle of an unnamed creek off of the Chechessee River and he would remember it the next time he traveled here.

Blurred movement caught his eye, and he refocused his binoculars on an oyster bar that had been exposed by the retreating water. A bird was walking among the knife-sharp shells and was picking up loose oysters in its bill. He watched with fascination as the bird flipped the mollusk into the air and watch it land against the other shells. After three throws, the oyster broke open and the bird dined on the half shell.

A large helicopter with two rotor blades interrupted his solitude, and he trained his binoculars skyward. The large rear cargo door was open, and two airmen seemed to be looking right at him. He could only imagine what the view must be like from up there. When he found the barge again it had barely moved and was struggling against the weakest part of the incoming tide. It seemed to give up and turned into another creek, not far from where it had started.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Arnold hid in the wheelhouse while Blondie stomped around the deck of the barge, cursing and swearing and making threats that Arnold was glad he could not hear. He was not wearing a life jacket and was terrified that Blondie might toss him overboard now that the hydraulic system was repaired.

This time it was the engine that was failing. The four-cylinder diesel was one cylinder down, and the slow rpm’s made the miss in the engine seem like the boat was stuttering. Blondie insisted on overloading the barge with a second truckload of dirt and as a result they could not overcome the wind and the currents.

“Pull into that creek,” Blondie said when he stuck his head in the doorway. Arnold acknowledged and turned the wheel.

He watched the depth finder closely, and it seemed the creek was deep enough for them to navigate. A trio of dolphins splashed off of the port bow, but no one aboard noticed. Both passengers had their eyes glued to the horizon, scanning the water for any other vessels or people that might detect what they were about to do. Other than the distant shrimp trawlers and a single sailboat near the horizon there were no other ships nearby.

“Go ahead,” Blondie said.

Although Arnold had managed to repair the hydraulic system that operated the bottom opening mechanism of the barge he had to use the auxiliary controls which were located below decks. As soon as he threw the heavy lever he felt the boat shudder as she suddenly became several tons lighter.

Since he’d seen a bulldozer operator set himself on fire at the removal site in Beaufort, Blondie waited until the flammable soil was dumped before he lit a cigarette. Arnold was pleased that he seemed much calmer now.

“One more load,” Blondie said.

Arnold grunted and nodded his head. He had a few things to accomplish himself before their partnership was dissolved.

In the wake of the decrepit barge, the contaminated soil drifted to the bottom, carried inland by the now rising tide. A lethal underwater cloud soon spread from the surface to the bottom of the creek and began to kill. Surprisingly, the first to die was not a fish, but a bird. A common loon had been swimming underwater, harassing a school of mullet, when it swam into the deadly mixture. The chemicals first began to burn the bird’s eyes, panicking the creature and confusing it so that it swam deeper instead of towards the surface. The bird drowned before realizing its error.

Twenty thousand immature brown shrimp were the next to perish. A school of over two hundred juvenile redfish, which were feeding on the shrimp, died as well. The three dolphins sensed the danger immediately. Since they did not have gills, they were better able to withstand the poisoning. Instinct drove them from the creek to the safety of deeper water. The total number of casualties was impossible to count; Innumerable oysters, crabs, stingrays and clams would die over the next few days. Birds and other animals would eat the dead and dying and would poison themselves in the process. As the dolphins once again passed the boat that brought devastation to their home, the distinctive stuttering rhythm of the missing engine was etched in their brains as the sound of death. They fled at full speed, easily outpacing the decrepit old boat and its cloud of death.

Freed by the rising tide, Hall sped across Port Royal Sound and found the creek where Gale had discovered the fish kill. Before he began to collect samples he locked his latitude and longitude into his GPS. He needed to make sure that subsequent samples were taken from the same area.

The water in the creek was shallow enough for him to use a core sampler attached to the end of a fifteen-foot long fiberglass pole. After plunging the sampler deep into the bottom, he withdrew it and used a small plunger to extract the sample into a glass jar. It was a messy job and by the time he had collected three samples the deck of his boat was covered with sand and sticky, gray mud. He labeled and secured the glass jars and then dipped a bucket over the side and dumped the water on the deck to wash it off.

When he left the creek and re-entered Port Royal Sound he thought it would be a good idea to obtain a few samples from a creek where there had not been a fish kill. Cliff Anderson would be able to compare the samples to determine how many pollutants were already present in the environment. Hall turned into the next creek and had gone less than one-hundred yards when he saw the oil slick on the water.

The slick was huge and went from one shoreline of the creek to the other. Hall could smell something that reminded him of a telephone pole in the hot summer sun and it overpowered the sweet smell of the salty air. This spill was much larger than an accidental discharge from an overfilled fuel tank or from someone pumping out their bilge, as Hall knew some people did in the creeks and other out of the way places.

His next act was to report the spill to the Coast Guard. They received his report and dispatched a small boat with a spill-response team. Hall hoped they would be able to position the floating booms before the tide started to go out. He then took several more bottom samples and some samples of water at the surface, ten feet deep, and near the bottom.

It was not until he noticed the dead loon floating on the water that he realized he had forgotten to put on rubber gloves. After doing so, he recovered the bird and began to collect some of the dead seatrout and mullet, stopping after he had a dozen of each. Hundreds of immature fish of several species swam upside down and in circles as they died. His sadness and anger grew with every fish that floated to the surface, dead or slowly dying, and he wondered why anyone would do such a terrible thing.

After the Coasties arrived and successfully contained the spill, Hall realized this was the same creek he had seen the old barge enter when he was on the bluff on Dawes Island. He tried to remember what it looked like but the only thing he could remember was how slow it was. He tried to visualize what color it was and “rusty” was the only thought he had. He knew the boat had an open cargo bay and didn’t know if a boat like that could carry liquid cargo. Maybe the captain was just flushing old fuel out of the tanks. He imagined the fuel tanks on a boat that large would have been enough to cause a spill like this.

Hall didn’t mention the possible suspect vessel to the Coast Guard. They would assign a Marine Science Officer to investigate the case, and he wanted to do a little poking around on his own first. On his way home he pulled into the Lowcountry Seafood docks. Silas was cleaning some fish and feeding Gale’s bird, much to the delight of his customers. By the look of things they had enjoyed a successful day of fishing. Hall waited until they left with their catch to approach the guide.

“Looks like you had a good day,” Hall said.

Silas shielded his eyes against the setting sun and smiled when he recognized Hall. He took two bottles of water from his cooler and offered one to Hall who gratefully accepted it.

“The fishing was good today, but the clients always make the trip. The two guys I took out were residents from the Naval hospital and were just grateful to get away for the day. They’d both been in Beaufort for almost a year but had never been on the water before. We caught enough trout and spottails to feed ‘em for a week. They already booked another trip next month,” Silas said.

They talked about fishing and the upcoming tourist season, the weather, and each other’s past. Hall learned Silas was a Parris Island alumnus. He had a fierce looking bulldog tattoo on his left forearm, but he was so darkly tanned that it was hard to see in the fading light.

“Four years,” Silas answered when Hall asked him how long he had been in the Marines. “I always said that I’d sleep late when I got out and I get up earlier now than I ever did when I was in the Corps.”

Silas seemed surprised to learn that Hall was actually a biologist by training and peppered him with questions about the growth cycles of fish, Pfsteria, and how the shrimp-baiting season affected local shrimp populations. Hall helped Silas hose down his skiff and it was dinner time by the time they were finished.

“Hungry?” Silas asked him.

“Starved.” Hall didn’t realize how hungry he was until the question had been put to him.

“Sometimes I keep one for myself.”

Silas held up a beautiful spottail bass and in a few minutes had reduced it to some nice looking filets.

Lowcountry Seafood was closed for the day and Silas opened the door to Gale’s office with a key. They walked through the office and up a set of steep and narrow stairs. The fishing guide pushed open another door and they were inside a small apartment loft.

Hall was drawn to the windows at the end of the room which were open to the cool sea breeze. The view across Skull Creek to Pinckney Island was magnificent-the mirror image of what Hall saw from his own home across the water. The rest of the loft was well kept and just as interesting. One wall was covered with photographs; a snapshot collage of family members, a high school graduation picture of Gale. There was a picture of Silas with two other young Marines, all wearing their dress blues. On the bottom of the frame was a brass plaque with a date and “Semper Fi” engraved on it.

“I thought Gale lived up here?” Hall asked.

“We kind of shared it. She split her time between here and mom and dad’s. She stayed up here if she worked late and needed to get an early start the next day. She’d been staying here a lot more lately.”