I sighed and put it back in my pocket. Dex peered at me inquisitively.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting tweets and Facebook messages sent straight to your phone.”
I gave him a haughty look. “No. I am not. And not that it’s any of your business, but I haven’t checked the blog more than once today.”
He looked at the clock on the instrument panel. “More than once? That would probably mean something if it wasn’t early in the day. Anything new from Miss Anonymous?”
“Yeah. How do you know it’s a girl?”
He quickly ashed his cigarette into the wind and said, “I don’t know. I assume. Chicks do that stupid stuff. Jealousy, remember. What did it say?”
I didn’t want to get into it so I gave him the Cliff Notes version. “The usual. I look stupid, don’t have what it takes to be a good host, don’t even belong on the internet.” I left out the part where they said I only got the job because I was sleeping with the cameraman. That was too embarrassing to mention and I didn’t want things to get awkward. Why they would assume that, I don’t know. It’s not like Dex was really ever on any footage. Even Ada was off and running with that assumption. Was I so obvious?
The wind turned sharp as the boat rounded a rocky barrier and we headed in a northeasterly direction, with small waves rising up from nowhere. I shivered, realizing that the clothes I had brought with me probably weren’t going to cut it during this trip.
“There are some jackets below in one of the cabins,” Dex said, noticing.
I nodded and I told him I was going to go down and start reading the books. I didn’t feel like getting into a conversation about “Miss Anonymous” and he obviously was done talking about himself. Only problem was once I made my way across the rolling ship and down the stairs, I started to feel sick and claustrophobic.
Inside was nice enough and did have a nautical and homey feel but it was quite small. The galley was tiny, as were the two back cabins and the living area. The double bed at the front (head) of the boat was larger and cozy. It didn’t seem to matter where I sat, the up and down movement from the waves and the overpowering roar of the engine (mixed with the smell of diesel fuel) gave me the largest headache and tickled my nausea bone, especially when I opened the books on D’Arcy Island.
I did manage to get some reading done before I had to shut them and lie down on the couch. What I read didn’t help to make me feel any better either.
Basically, at the turn of the century or just a bit before, Chinese lepers were gathered off the streets of Victoria, Vancouver and other places in B.C., and shipped to the island, where they were left to fend for themselves with no medical treatment. They had rudimentary housing and the only outside contact was from a supply ship that came every three months to drop off food, water, opium and…coffins. Turns out that when one of them died on the island, it was up to the lepers to bury them. They really were just left on the small island to rot away.
And some of them did rot away. The leprosy not only caused huge bumpy lesions on their bodies and faces, they also disrupted their nerve endings. On the eyes it would cause them to go blind. On their feet it would cause them to walk around with glass and other sharp objects embedded in them. They couldn’t feel any pain, so they didn’t notice, even if the wounds had been worn down to the bone. And their hands would often curl up and get burnt to a crisp – it was easy to burn your hand in the fire if you couldn’t feel it. Not to mention the fact that rats would come in the middle of the night and nibble away at their fingers until they fell off. Imagine waking up in the morning to find your fingers on the floor, breakfast for vermin.
It was absolutely disgusting. Not just the disease but the way they were treated. I couldn’t imagine the lives they lived, knowing that no one cared, knowing that they were going to die there to a terrible disease. One of the books had mentioned that after awhile, people had taken pity on them and a reverend from San Francisco had lived on the island for a few years, taking care of them or at least observing them. But even with that comfort, too many men had already died.
“Perry!” I heard Dex bellow from the upper deck. I opened my eyes and gingerly raised my head, careful not to disturb the pukey feeling that was rustling around in my stomach. “Come up here! Whales!”
That got my attention. I walked unsteadily to the stairs and made my way up. Dex was at the wheel, trying to take a picture with his iPhone. He saw me and told me to get one of the video cameras from downstairs.
I did so, picking the smallest one, and brought it up. It was cold and bright up top, a change from the feeling below. I handed him the camera and followed his gaze. Off in the distance, a pod of killer whales were gliding through the water, their dorsal fins puncturing the waves like wet knives. I had never seen whales in the wild before. It was pretty amazing.
Dex brought the camera to his face and started to film them. “Can you take the wheel, skipper?” he asked.
I went behind it, feeling every bit like a pioneer.
“Just keep it on the same path. They have a law here that we can’t get too close.”
As much as I would have loved to see them closer, I had also heard horror stories about killer whales overturning boats. No thank you.
I kept the boat heading in the same direction while Dex filmed them. We didn’t say anything, just enjoyed watching them move through the water, the sunlight gleaming off their black heads, the misty spouts of air as they exhaled, the hazy green islands in the background. It erased the creepy, sick feeling I had below. I decided, even as the distance between us and the whales was steadily increasing, that I’d be staying on the upper deck for the rest of the journey. Cold air be damned.
When they were too far away to see clearly, Dex put the camera down and smiled at me. He looked genuinely happy and enthused, his eyes round and childlike. It suited him.
“How cool was that?” he exclaimed.
“Very cool,” I agreed, moving over so he could take over the wheel again.
“I’ve seen a lot of dolphins out here but never a pod of killer whales. I’m so glad I got that on film. That was amazing. What great fucking luck.”
“Hoping to make this episode part nature documentary?”
“Nah. Hoping to lull people in with something beautiful so they’ll be shocked when everything starts going horribly wrong later.”
I shivered again, this time from what he said. “I don’t think we should plan on things going horribly wrong.”
“They always do, don’t they?” he commented.
“I guess.” Though we always did make it out alive, so I guess it never really went that wrong. That said, there was no way I would ever want to experience what happened to me in the lighthouse when Old Roddy had his kelp hands around my throat, nor when I thought I was going to be raped by local rednecks slash human hawks while in Red Fox.
“I’m just kidding you know.” He was staring at me with a frown of concern. I must have looked worried.
I gave him a weak smile. “I didn’t know but that helps. I don’t want to push our luck out here. And not on the Island of Death.”
“You’ve been doing some reading?”
“Yes. I really wish you had told me more about what went on back then…”
“Why? Would you have changed your mind about it?”
It was a possibility. Had I known I was going to an isolated island where 40 forgotten, miserable, rotted souls had died, I might have said no.
“I don’t know. Guess it doesn’t matter, does it? Too late now.”
“You’re right about that. There she is.”
I looked up and followed his gaze. A rather flat looking island comprised of rocky shoreline and dense forest was fast approaching the bow of the ship.
This was it. I knew it. There seemed to be an invisible wall of angry fog washing over the boat. Dex and I both shivered simultaneously.
I turned and looked behind me. The landmass of Vancouver Island seemed so close yet oh so far.