An Anchor in the Salish Sea

I started looking for odd diving jobs as an excuse to get out of the city in the summer. It gets muggy. There’s no air conditioning. And all anybody wants to do is to sit at Chuck’s and drink. I’m a fish out of water, I guess. 

It’s not that I prefer the depths of the Puget Sound to people, but there are times when I need a break. And summer in Seattle is one of them. In the winter, when the one cloud covers everything like we’re looking up at the underside of a great dome, it’s easy to while away the hours in a dark and moody dive. In the summer, I feel trapped. 

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” said my friend Elizabeth, as we sat at Chuck’s the evening before I left for Anacortes for my latest job.

“It’s just a job,” I shrugged. 

“That you found on Craigslist,” sneered Madeline. “The coast guard, I get, Em. But this sounds like suicide. What did your actual job say when you told them you quit?”

“You know, you could just go to Puerto Vallarta and get laid,” sang Elizabeth. “Heck, you could come here and get laid. Are you sure you don’t need to just have a little… fun?” 

“I didn’t quit,” I said, ignoring Elizabeth. I worked as a copywriter at a tech agency by day, producing SEO posts and meta descriptions. Nothing at all to write home about. It never changes, not the scenery, not the people. “I just put in my vacation time. I mean, I still have plenty of vacation days to go home and see my dad at Christmas.” 

“If you make it to then,” snorted Elizabeth.

“Seriously, Em, if you die on this little adventure of yours, don’t come back to haunt us,” said Madeline, raising her glass all the same. “We warned you.”

In past summers, I had freelanced with the coast guard and local Native American tribes. I would help the coast guard rescue overturned recreational boats  or the tribal communities as they scavenge for historical artifacts. Sometimes I would work for a university marine biology department and help obtain samples of the subject du jour. It didn’t really matter to me as long as it met the criteria: an adventure anywhere but here. Honestly, it was coming to a point where diving hardly mattered. It was just something I did. It was pretty fun, too.

I have always loved scavenger hunts. When I was little, my mom would draw treasure maps for me for things in our backyard or in our house. My dad worked a lot and most of the time, it was just the two of us at home. She would create these intricate pirate treasure maps, with little scratch marks that led the way to a favorite stuffed animal or a new toy. When I was nine years old, she had a heart attack in our kitchen while making supper. She survived, but the message was clear: she probably didn’t have long. She never knew that she’d had a small hole in her heart. Eventually it made it too hard for her to breathe. The cardiologists that tried to save her found the spot immediately, just like a big x. They were afraid if they repaired it, it would put too much strain on her, even though she was so young. The hole had been there a long time. Those things don’t repair so easily. Losing someone doesn’t either. 

I thought about my mom as I drove up to Anacortes, how much I missed her, how much I wished she could see how I carried our tradition forward, how each adventure connected me with her. I drove through the wide open valley in the shadow of Mount Eerie, and then veered East to the sleepy fishing village full of empty boxcars and brownstone buildings and a downtown that sloped its way to the Puget Sound. Golden hills rolled out from the mountain and behind me, like the waves of a goddess’s maneI was meeting with Commander Martin Jones, the captain of my next adventure, at a small diner near the docks. Vinyl seating and blue plate specials and a dusty old jukebox. My last diving job in the summer had been down south near Astoria, in Cannon Beach. It was nice not to have to drive as far. 

Mr. Jones had sent me a picture of him with his late wife, Victoria, and I recognized him immediately. When I read his original Craigslist ad, I had expected him to be an old, cantankerous coot, the kind you’d find in the local smoker’s lounges, one of those old codgers in Ballard with their Volvos that somehow never die, wrinkled and crooked like the canes that barely keep them upright. But Mr. Jones was a retired naval captain and fit the part: trim and an exuberant 75. I wagered that he was still masking his grief, his wife having died just last month,  but it gave me some peace knowing that I wasn’t going to be taking a decrepit old man on a boat in the middle of the Salish Sea to hunt for mythical buried treasure.

“How long have you been diving?” he asked, over his medium-rare burger with cheese.

“Since I was in high school,” I said, between bites of a grilled cheese sandwich. I still ate the way I did in junior high, when I had to learn how to fix meals for myself. “I joined the swim team in junior high, after my mom died. My dad said I had to do something with my time, well, what I guess he meant was that I had to do something with my grief. And diving was a natural step after that.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your mom,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

“Well, you look too young to be as experienced as you sound,” he said.

“I could say the reverse about you, Mr. Jones,” I said.

Mr. Jones laughed.

“Please, it’s Martin. We leave at dawn,” he said, writing something on the back of the receipt. “Here’s the address. Don’t be late. If there’s one surefire way to get on the bad side of a retired naval captain, its tardiness.”

I spent the night at the Anacortes Motel. I texted Elizabeth and Madeline to let them know that I was alright, safe and sound. They demanded that I send them a selfie as proof. After that, it was lights out.

I woke up at 4am the next morning. My gear — a pair of wet suits, tanks, and enough reserve oxygen for the trip — were already in the car, ready to go. Mr. Jones said he would bring provisions. I met him at the Anacortes Moorage, where he slid open the metal gate and the noise rang through the air. His dog, a German Shepherd named London, looked ready to go. Overhead, blackbirds scattered like stars at the sound.

“Which one is yours?” I asked, as we unloaded the gear from our cars. I wished I had packed more instant coffee already.

“Ah, we’re borrowing a buddy’s,” he said.

“Borrowing?”

“You know,” Martin said. “He won’t mind. He’s dead.”

“Oh,” I said. “You’re sure it’s okay?”

“Emily, relax,” said Martin. “If we weren’t stealing a boat, this wouldn’t be as much fun, now would it? Let’s live a little before we die.”

As the events in which I became a diver employed by a pirate unfolded before me, I began to wonder if maybe Madelina and Elizabeth were right. I thought that I didn’t want to let Mr. Jones down, of course, but perhaps this would be my last Craigslist job after all. From now on, I’d only work with people that I knew. Mr. Jones had seemed the grieving widower before, the previous day, in the diner. But now, he cackled in the pre-dawn light of the docks and unlocked the gate to his buddy’s boat with the key he said he had taken from his buddy’s house when he had visited his friend’s wife for a beer. There was something maniacal in the way that Mr. Jones moved in the purple air that brightened all around us. He was a man obsessed. 

“This treasure, you know,” he said, as he led the boat trailer down the ramp toward the Sound, “is supposed to be the gold of the Native Americans as Vancouver himself pillaged his way along the coastlines. Canadians don’t want you to know this part of their history.”

“Are you sure it’s out there?” I asked, loading the gear into the small boat. “I don’t think Vancouver ever did anything like that.”

“I’m sure,” he said. “Sam and me, we were gonna do this before he died, you know. He went suddenly, like your mom. Then my wife. And then I just thought, what the Hell. Maybe it’s me, next. They don’t tell you about this part in your life, where you start to lose people. I mean, they do. But you don’t know until you get here how much it hurts. They don’t tell you that you watch everything around you slip away, after watching yourself slip away, the person you always thought you were, for the years leading up to it. I’m telling ya, kid. Do everything that comes to mind, and do it with the people you’re meant to.”

We pushed the boat into the water and clambered aboard, London wet with craggy fur in last, the cold water brisk around my boots. The engine roared as the boat pulled ahead into the strait. We were off.

We meandered through the twisted maze of fir-covered islands that dotted the strait, on our way through it to the Salish Sea. By mid-morning, the marine layer lifted, and my spirits were bright.

“We’d been testing for the silver content of the water,” said Mr. Jones, “before Sam died. He had become a pharmacist after the war and knew a thing or two about chemical reactions. We’d divided up the map of the Sound by square miles or so and would test it here and there to try to narrow down the location of the treasure chest.”

“You think it’s going to be a treasure chest like in a fish tank somewhere, don’t you?” I asked. “Because in my experience, treasure doesn’t alway mean what you think it means.”

“And how much have you found, young knave?” Mr. Jones jabbed.

“A fair bit,” I said. “I helped a tribe down in Long Beach uncover the ocean burial grounds of lost native tribesmen.”

“The difference is, they weren’t looking for gold,” said Mr. Jones. “And we are.”

“I just mean —” 

“I know what you’re tryin’ to do,” said Mr. Jones. “You’re trying to set me up for disappointment. It ain’t gonna work, kid.”

I raised my hands in defeat.

“Okay, old man,” I said. “Let’s go find us some treasure.”

“You sound like my wife,” he said, after we sped a few knots into the depths of the islands. 

“How so?” I asked.

“She thought I was crazy, too,” he said. “She told me that I ought to get a new hobby. That I should get into classic cars, or something. This treasure hunting nonsense was just rotting my brain. Oh, I know she loved me. She just said that because it was her wifely duty. It’s just — it kept Sam sharp, I think. Using his skills. You gotta take care of this, you know.”

Martin pointed to his brain.

“How far are we, do you think?” I asked, munching on a stick of jerky that Martin had cured himself and that London was particularly keen on snatching out of my hand. 

“Getting close,” Martin said, looking at his map. 

We drove a little ways out into the straight and Martin finally ceased the engine. The air reeked of pine needles, humid and warm, something sweet like body odor. I had pulled my wet suit on before we left the dock, and continued to check my gear. I pulled on my flippers and checked the O2 tank. Then I pulled my goggles down and prepared to disembark from the boat. 

“All good?” Martin asked.

“All good,” I said. In truth, I was a bit nervous. I strapped the O2 tank on and put the tube in my mouth, and then dove off the side of the boat.

The Salish Sea was cold, even for summer, but felt good through the suit. Martin checked the radio to make sure everything was operational, and then I went under. It was low visibility and this was not looking good. My research suggested that the Sea was deeper than I could or should go, but I was going to try. I tugged on my tether to make sure it was sturdy, and then swam into the dark waters.

My flashlight on my tank lit the way, but dimly. I could make out shapes in the glow beneath the surface, and was swarmed by rockfish and trout. It was too early for salmon, but I could watch the fish jumping out of the sea from the train window as I sped home to see my father, wishing that I was with them, out in the water. 

I dove as far as I could. The marine layer masked any sunlight that might have filtered through the surface of the water, and the lamp on my suit did not help matters much. At around 100 ft, I began to feel strange.

I found a large formation under the water, just the reef that has formed over time, with what appeared to be a large opening. It was dark, but wisps of silvery fish swam in and out of it. It was a large hole, a cavern, large enough to fit a small boat through. I could make out the outline of a large chain. I tugged on it, but nothing moved. 

I heard someone say my name in my radio, but it was not the voice of Mr. Jones. I spun around in the water. There was, as expected, no one there. But then I turned back to the cavern. Something flashed in the water, like the pulse of light from a lighthouse, and my mother’s face was right before mine. The chain that I had tugged on, that led into the cavern, had caught on something on my suit. I couldn’t see what was holding me there, or break free from it, in the dim light down in the water. My mother’s face flashed in the light again and I sensed the chain being pulled into the hole. I tugged at last not on the chain, but on the tether. Twice, our signal for emergencies. The tether began to reel in, and finally I broke free.

Back on board the boat, I tried to catch my breath. I felt like I was still sinking. That had never happened to me on a dive before.

“Hey, Emily, breathe,” Mr. Jones said, offering me a bottle of water. London laid his head on the small bench in the boat next to me. “What happened down there?”

“I didn’t see anything,” I lied. “It was too dark, I’m sorry.”

“Something must have happened to pull on the line like that,” Mr. Jones said. 

“There’s a big cavern down there,” I said. “Something could be in it, but the current was rough. Scared me, is all.”

I could see the disappointment wash over Mr. Jones’s face.

“We came all the way out here,” Mr. Jones said.

“I know.”

I leaned forward and looked at the floor of the boat between my legs, still breathing heavily. 

“You’re telling me I’m going to have to find someone else to do this?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Mr. Jones. He revved the engine to life and we started back toward Anacortes.

We rode back to Anacortes mostly in silence, with Mr. Jones occasionally talked about his trips to the islands with his buddy, Sam, and how Sam would be delighted to know we were. Mr. Jones offered to take me out again, but I declined. It wasn’t his fault, but something gripped me down there in the deep, its hands icy like death, and I never wanted to feel that way again. 

I helped Mr. Jones unload the remaining provisions at his house. It was a small thing in the middle of town. He opened the metal mailbox, which creaked on its hinges. He rummaged through the mail as we walked up the steps.

“Well, how about that,” said Mr. Jones.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Look who this is from,” he showed me a yellowing envelope with cursive penmanship. It was addressed to Cmdr Martin Jones from Private Sam Jones. “How in the devil.”

“You had the same last name?” I asked.

“I named my son after Sam,” said Martin. “He saved me during the war. Seemed only right. Sam wouldn’t have been here otherwise. Sam went off to Afghanistan, but never came home.”

“I’m sorry about your son.”

“Have a nice drive, Emily,” said Mr. Jones, as he shut the screen door behind him.

On the drive home, I had Siri call my father. Surprisingly, he answered. I think he was as surprised to hear from me as I was to be calling him.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, sweetheart?” he asked.

“Had some time to kill on my drive,” I said. “I was thinking about mom — and you.”

“Where are you going?” 

“I thought I’d come down to Port Angeles for a bit. Get out of the city a spell.”

“Oh, well, that’d be just fine,” said my father. “Are you on the way now?”

“I guess I am on my way.”