Chapter 36
The next day, Sam’s manager asked her to work another double. Sam agreed right away. She needed what fourteen hours of work would give her: both the pay and the time. Before the sun came up, the passenger deck was quiet. She could focus. Sitting in a plastic chair bolted to the floor in the empty galley, she tapped on her phone. The boat’s engines rumbled up through her shoes.
Ben slid into the seat across from her. “Hey.”
Sam glanced up from her screen, where she’d been skimming over the message she’d typed to Madeline. Hi, I just want to let you know that the bear has been taking food from my sister and following her to and from work. And as you heard it’s also been killing people’s animals. So it’s a big problem. Its behavior has been escalating and is dangerous and you all do need to deal with it ASAP.
Ben’s eyes were dark underneath. “You worked last night?” she asked. He nodded. “When was the last time you slept?”
He blinked at her, heavy-lidded, and smiled. “I took a nap around one. Look at you, so thoughtful.”
She returned to her phone to tap the send button. The email vanished. The wind across the channel would carry it to Madeline now. “That’s me.”
The ferry hummed. The noise it made pushing forward filled the quiet between them, making it familiar, bearable. She didn’t mind Ben being there as long as he didn’t open his mouth. Under the smell of the galley—coffee grounds, microwaves—Sam could smell him. Ben’s deodorant and laundry detergent and cologne. Old, delicious cigarette smoke. The base pleasure of a proximate body.
Of course he ruined it. “How are you doing?” he asked. “How was the service?”
“Great. A laugh riot.”
Ben let his breath out through his teeth. What did he want her to say? That Sam had sobbed, and seen her mother’s ex, and touched Danny’s leg like a creep, and gotten into the worst fight of her life with Elena? That she’d ended the day screaming at a grizzly bear, swearing to destroy it before it destroyed them?
She and Ben used to sit up here, when her customers were few and his tasks had been momentarily handled, and play at sharing secrets. He’d talk about roaming his neighborhood, smashing things and emptying spray-paint cans with his friends. And she’d give him her fondest San Juan memories: the beaches, the farms, the forests, the wanderings. What it had been to grow up thinking the whole world was an island, and she and Elena its rulers, its saltwater-crusted queens.
She had nothing left to say to him, though. She couldn’t look backwards anymore. Sam needed, alone, to concentrate on the future. How to salvage it now.
“I think I’m going to leave the ferry after this season,” Ben said.
Sam lifted her face from the screen. “Yeah?”
He shrugged. The bags under his eyes made him look less boyish, more adult. A cord plucked in Sam’s gut. He had been fun—and he was handsome—Ben, in his gloves and cap and vest, hauling rope out on the deck, lifting her onto him.
He said, “I don’t know. Feels like time to move on.”
“I get that feeling,” Sam said.
“I was thinking about heading back toward Oregon. A guy I know is working on a hemp grow there and he says the pay is ridiculous.”
All he’d see that she wouldn’t. She said, “Cool.”
Ben’s body was curved to fit the scoop of the chair. His legs were spread, boots flat on the floor. The windowpanes that surrounded them trembled in their frames. “Want to come?”
Quiet as it was on the boat at this time of day, Sam must’ve misheard him. “What?”
“Do you want to come with me? In the fall?”
She didn’t— “I—”
“You’re always talking about leaving,” Ben said. “I know, with everything with your mom, you’ve had to stay. But now…maybe things have changed.”
She didn’t know what to say.
He talked on. “I like you. We have a good time together. Don’t we? And down there, there are jobs, I’ve got a place for us. Maybe this is what you’ve been waiting for.”
Sam said, “I can’t. No.”
His expression changed. The boyishness came back. She hadn’t known Ben as a kid, but this might have been what he’d looked like—vulnerable this way. “Okay.”
“It’s very…” She was floundering, trying to find her words. She had never expected this from him. What she wouldn’t give, right now, for a long, irritating interruption from a European tourist family, inquiring about lavender and natural wines. “It’s nice of you to offer, but, Ben, I’m not…We’ve only known each other a couple months.”
Ben sat up. His back broke away from the line of the chair. “I know that. Okay? I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m just…There’s more to the world than this, Sam. You don’t like it here? You don’t have to sit in the same spot hating it. You can do things. Meet people. Change your mind once in a while. Try stuff. And as pointless as you think it is for me to like you, I do, and if you wanted to try stuff together, I would.”
Sam had another twinge, then. In her stomach. Her chest. Within her, something tiny, eager, vibrated: why not? The two of them could dock in Anacortes and walk off this boat. The sun would be rising by then. The whole Pacific coast, green trees shot through with sun, would open itself to her. Ben made it sound easy. She could do it, exactly as he said. She could change.
It was only a twinge, though. She moved her eyes off his body and the feeling disappeared. Ben got up. She faced away. A customer was coming toward the cash register, and Sam stood, too, to tend to that. By the time she finished ringing them out, an apple and a pastry, Ben was gone.
The sky was lightening. Under the counter, Sam refreshed her email. And though she’d expected it might take hours before Madeline even read her message, the phone buzzed in her palms, and there, to her shock, was a response. She held her breath and opened it. Hi Sam, Madeline had written. What was she doing up? Thank you for your candor. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Sam couldn’t read the sentences fast enough.
I completely understand your concern. On our end, we will pursue trapping, tagging, and relocation.
To be frank, though, the problem is your sister. Removal will not correct anything if the bear’s taught that humans are his best food source; relocated bears almost always return. He will come back, get labeled a threat, and be killed.
The only real remedy is for your sister to change her behavior. What she is doing is not only unwise but illegal. While I can refer this to the sheriff’s office—the maximum penalty is ninety days in jail—I doubt that would resolve the matter. In our experience, working with, not against, members of the public is most effective.
I would very much like to collaborate with you on this, Sam. You are, after all, the person closest to Elena.
Would you and your sister be interested in coming to our office in Mill Creek? We would host you while the three of us discuss how to proceed. We’d cover your travel costs. I imagine you both would benefit from some distance from home right now. And you and I can work together to help your sister see. This way might be ideal, I think. We can save a life.
Sam’s mouth was open. Her tongue was dry, she realized. She swallowed, and she thought: absolutely fucking not. Sam had written to Madeline because Madeline’s team was supposed to terrify the bear off this island. Show up with dogs and tags and tranquilizer darts, chase away this monster like the state had spooked the man out of Sam and Elena’s house years before. Afterward, Sam and Elena would be left to clean up the mess, but that was fine, they’d done it before, they could sort themselves out again. That, Sam knew. But this? This was unimaginable.
Their future was meant to be Seattle, Sol Duc, wide-open California, skiing and dating and ease. Not Mill Creek. And certainly not with Madeline. Jail, she’d said. Was she insane? What had Sam been thinking, writing to her? Sam didn’t even allow herself the twinge she’d felt with Ben’s proposal (because if Madeline could lift them out of here, guide Sam through, talk sense into Elena, if she could actually help—?) No, no. Instead, in seconds, she had her reply: My sister is not the problem. People like you are. Stay away.
Sent. The sun was barely up and Sam had already had enough of everyone else’s bullshit. To pacify herself, she navigated to a survey open in her browser. She had a couple bars of service, she could knock it out in the next few minutes. Reflexively, she tapped through questions about her taste in snacks and weekly grocery budget. Soon she would be done with this. Their future was coming. There was no option left than for Sam, on San Juan, to get them free.