Chapter 10 - The Sea Lions of Astoria
On the morning of December 20, the temperature in Philadelphia was eighteen degrees with a freezing drizzle that turned the runways at the international airport into sheets of black glass.
My phone, resting on the bedside table in my farmhouse, began ringing at 5:45 AM.
I didn't answer.
At 6:12 AM, the messages began to arrive in a frantic, unspooling ribbon of text that vibrated against the wood like a trapped insect.
Mom (6:12 AM): Darcy, where are you? We are standing by the United premier check-in desk. The agent says there is no reservation under Lynn. She says the seats were released four weeks ago. Call me right now.
Dad (6:18 AM): Darcy, pick up the goddamn phone. Preston's parents are here with their luggage. Ted had to hire a private van to bring the golf bags. What did you do with the confirmation numbers?
Kelsey (6:22 AM): DARCY. Maryanne is crying. She gave away her church choir solo for this week because she was supposed to be in Hawaii. Preston is talking to the station manager and they're saying the tickets were refunded to your corporate card on November 20. Tell me this is an administrative error. Tell me you didn't do this.
Mom (6:31 AM): You have destroyed this family. We are standing in the middle of Terminal C with eight bags of luggage and Maryanne Hail is looking at me like I am a criminal. I will never forgive you for this. Do you hear me? Never.
Dad (6:40 AM): Thirty thousand dollars. You threw away thirty thousand dollars because of a seven-year-old’s paper basket. Your sister will never speak to you again.
I picked up the phone, swiped into the settings menu, and toggled the button that said BLOCK THIS CALLER for each of the three numbers. Then I walked down to the kitchen, built the fire in the woodstove, and sat with Ren while she ate toast with blackberry jam.
Two days later, on December 22, Ren and I boarded an early morning flight out of Newark.
We landed in Portland under a sky the color of wet slate, rented a small blue hatchback with all-wheel drive, and drove west through the coastal range along the Nehalem River, where the massive Douglas firs hung heavy with moss and the air smelled of cedar needles, cold river gravel, and the salt of the approaching Pacific.
We reached Astoria at three in the afternoon.
The town clung to the steep, forested hillside above the Columbia River, a landscape of Victorian houses with weathered paint, rusted iron docks, and cannery piers that stretched out into the gray, churning water where the great river met the sea.
Our hotel was built on century-old creosote pilings sixty feet out into the current.
The room smelled of salt, woodsmoke, and wool. A broad stone fireplace stood in the corner with a basket of split alder logs beside the hearth, and through the double glass doors of the balcony came a sound that filled the entire harbor—a raw, booming, rhythmic chorus that rattled the windowpanes:
ARK. ARK. ARK. ARK.
Ren dropped her canvas backpack on the braided rug, ran to the balcony doors, and threw them open.
The wind off the bar hit us like a cold, wet hand, carrying the smell of brine, diesel oil, and raw fish. Fifty feet below the cedar railing, clustered across three massive floating wooden platforms that had once served as net-drying docks, were forty-two Steller sea lions.
They were enormous—massive, golden-brown bulls that weighed a thousand pounds, their wet hides glistening like polished leather in the December mist. They were piled three deep across the timbers, their flippers twitching in their sleep, their whiskers bristling like wire brushes. Every few seconds, an enormous male with a scarred shoulder would lift his head toward the gray clouds, open a pink mouth the size of a coal bucket, and let out an explosive, vibrating roar that shook the cedar floorboards beneath our boots:
ARK! ARK! ARK!
Ren didn't say a word.
She stood at the railing, wearing her navy-blue wool pea coat and her gray canvas sneakers, her gray-green eyes wide and unblinking, her hair blowing wild across her mouth.
Slowly, carefully, she reached into the deep pockets of her coat.
She pulled out her hands. In her left hand was her plastic ruler with the rounded edges. In her right hand was a small, round stone she had found by the river—a piece of basalt, smooth and black and cold as the river floor.
She set the stone on the railing, leaned her forearms against the wet cedar, and looked down at the barking animals who filled the bay with their untamed, magnificent noise.
"Renny?" I said, standing behind her with my hands resting on her shoulders. "Are you cold?"
She shook her head. She didn't look back at the room, or at the fireplace, or at the road that led back to Pennsylvania.
"They're very loud," she said, her voice small against the thunder of the Columbia River bar, but entirely clear, entirely peaceful, entirely her own. "And nobody is telling them to go into the kitchen."
May you like
"Nobody," I told her. "Not on this dock."
She turned around, leaned her back against the wet railing, drove both of her hands deep into her pockets until her elbows made those two small, unbreakable wings, and smiled into the salt wind.
