Raincoast Mystery

Even though it was my day off I was still working, and still tired. All of my trips for the day were taken up by Rick, Hannah, Sam, or Terry. But I needed to change the oil and replace a fuel filter. One of the starboard side windows was loose. I had stuffed a rolled up paper coffee cup between it and the frame to prevent it from rattling unpleasantly whenever I hit choppier waves, so obviously that needed to be addressed too. It was always something.

People had warned me that the conversations would be very formulaic, especially with out of state tourists. Questions such as “ How long have you been doing this?” or “So did you grow up around boats?” or even questions about the process of how to go about becoming a captain were commonplace. I usually had an answer ready to go at a moment's notice; “This is actually my first summer” and “I've spent a few years commercial fishing and wanted a better work/life balance” I would usually ask where they were from, because people like to talk about themselves after all. I was usually really tired and would nod and say “Ah, right on, (place that they were from)” and hope that it was a place I could small talk about. The framework of the conversation was almost always the same, just the small details varied.

I remember something that Hannah had said about how even if we're burned out we still need to remember that this was a bucket list experience for a lot of people. No sense in raining on their parade just because you were exhausted all the time. After draining an unpleasant lukewarm coffee from my thermos-cup I went inside the small cabin and started pulling up the seat cushions. Terry had built in some storage cabinets that I kept spare parts and tools for boat work in, and that's when I found it.

It was a small ziplock sandwich baggie, sealed up. Inside of it there was a small black book, like the ones reporters use for taking notes. I couldn't help but notice that it was far down between the seat cushion and a slight gap in the storage bins, as if helped by a pushing hand. I removed the book and flipped it open, hoping to find some clue that would help me return it to whoever had “lost” it.

59.45.27N 151.47.38W Rockline!! Do not face the lake. Southwest of the big W center point 10 meters. Can you dig it?

59.3013N 151.18.14 Rockpile!! Tall and short, you are the middle 2 meter slide ocean side, center of the spiral. Don't get crushed like a bug!

59.31.56N 151.12.11W Rockfield!! The three gray boulders, the one black boulder. On the rocks and underneath. Statue of a soldier.

Coordinates. Each with a bizzare message to go along with them, written in a looping, lazy scrawl. I flipped through the little book. Two dozed altogether. I found my tiredness gone, and replaced with a slight tingling sensation, which might have just been been what was probably too much caffeine in my system. Then on the very last page there was a phone number and the name Natalie written next to it, underlined twice. Well here we go, I thought. Maybe this Natalie, whoever she is, has lost her notebook. I called the number. A sleepy voice answered.

“Is this Natalie?” I said

“Yeah, who are you and what do you want?” she asked. Sounded annoyed now.

Well, I'm a water taxi captain in Homer, Alaska and I just found a small notebook. It had your contact information in it but no one else's” I explained. And some weird cryptic shit, but I didn't tell her that.

“I've never even been to Alaska, but my Grampa was there earlier in the summer” she said.

“Ah, I see. Can you think of any reason why he wrote just your name in his notebook?” I started to pick at the paper cup wedged in my window. It had broken down into a bunch of smaller pieces.

“Not really. Dad hates him but I think he's just old and goofy, trouble focusing, all the elderly blues” There was a long pause. “He passed away about two weeks ago from leukemia. Also smoked cloves like it was going out of style, which probably didn't help. He picked up geocaching as a hobby in the last few months he was alive. I was the only one he talked to on a regular basis. I dunno, he just loved adventure stories and kept reliving his old days as a paratrooper instructor. You can keep the book or just throw it away. I just started my first semester of nursing school and don't have time for geocaching or hiking or whatever” she said.

“All right, sorry to have bothered you. Take it easy” I said.

The tingling sensation consumed me now. I powered through the rest of my projects and cleaned my boat thoroughly. As I was working I remembered the old man clearly. Tall and lanky, with bright white hair and a rather pointy face. He didn't say the scripted lines that I was so accustomed to. All of us had taken him across at one time or another, and we were all struck at how nice and quiet and polite he was. He had tipped all of us $50 per trip, which was pretty high, considering that they typically ran $80-100. The thing that really stood out to me was how peaceful he had looked. I recall that I had felt a twinge of jealousy. Maybe it could only be reached when you knew your days were numbered. The thought gave me an involuntary shudder.

As I was wrapping up my projects I got a text from the Captain's Chat. Rick's last group of the day had given him a case of beer and a bottle of bourbon, and he had just picked up a pizza. I put everything away and walked over to H-float where his slip was. The others were already there, sitting on the back deck on coolers or folding chairs. As I walked up I knew I had to tell them about it. My hands shook as I pulled out the book from my hoodie pocket. Sam's eyes followed it, and I tossed it over. She only glanced at a couple of pages before handing it over to Terry asking me “So who does it belong to?”

I told them everything, including the call with Natalie. As I was speaking, the book made the rounds and everyone got a chance to sift through it. Hannah pulled up the Navionics app and found that one of the coordinates was less than a mile from the beach, directly across the bay. There was an awkward pause as we all glanced around at each other

“Buried treasure, we're all thinking it!” Terry said. Everyone let out a nervous chuckle.

“Well it's true, we should go check it out?!” asked Rick. He leaned over and started untying from the dock, and we set off across the bay.

The nice thing about July was that it was still light out at 9PM, and would be for another couple of hours. The day breeze had died down and the ocean was smooth as glass, with the occasional lazy rolling swell. The sun was setting behind the mountains on the Alaska Peninsula, backlighting them in purple and orange hues. Even if I lived to be as old as the strange man who left the book, I doubted very much that I would get sick of the scenery here.

We hit the beach with soft crunch of gravel and jumped down. The tide was coming in, so Rick tied a line to a nearby rock and we all fell in behind Hannah who was leading the way with Navionics open. We made our way through an alder forest for only a couple of minutes before coming to a clearing. Thick moss covered the ground. Four large boulders, about the size of station wagons, sat in the clearing. They had been left behind by the retreating glacier. A shudder passed down my spine, taking me completely by surprise. Sentries! Guarding a treasure! We each started examining around the rocks. This was the spot that was referred to in the third clue.

Sam called us over to her rock. There was a smear of black paint on it, about the size of a paperback book. It looked as though someone has hastily slapped it on with a brush. We all looked around the rock, and then I saw the glint of something in the ground among all the moss. It was a pint glass, filled with small glass marbles. I pulled it out of the ground with a shhhhhuckkk sound of mud suction being overcome and water immediately began to run into the hole. A small plastic action-figure of a WWII soldier floated around. My mind instantly went to the movie Toy Story and I let out a vague chuckle. We were all on our knees forming a semicircle around the hole where the glass was. There was another awkward pause and we all just started digging with our hands into the cold moss and mud. Finally I felt something and pulled it up out of the hole and brushed away the mud. It was pelican case, similar to the one that Terry used for his nice cameras and lenses for taking pictures of wildlife and fishing trips.

We all looked around at each other. We looked absurd kneeling there on the ground, the cold water seeping into the fabric of our pants. We all stood up and set the box on top of one of the boulders before flipping open the sides and raising the lid. We all let out a collective gasp, followed by cheers.

Money. A lot of it. Vacuum sealed into ten neat bundles like so many bricks. I picked up one of the bundles and peered through plastic at the currency strap. Hundreds, Ten grand in each pack. So $100,000 altogether. I couldn't even think straight I was laughing so hard. I tossed two packs to everyone and kept two of my own. 20 grand apiece. Rick started juggling his and one of Terry's stacks. We all swore to secrecy and agreed to finish out the season and not blow an bunch all at once or draw attention to ourselves in any other way. We also agreed to track down the other coordinates as a team, all for one and one for all sort of thing. We carefully put all the moss back into place as best we could and took the glass with the marbles, the action-figure, and the case. We stuffed the packets of money into our pockets or coats and hurried back to the beach, giggling like a bunch of children. I opened the case again to see if my camera would fit in it, and noticed the edge of a sheet of paper sticking out of the foam. A note. I unfolded it and read it out loud.

By the time you read this I will be dead. Leukemia sucks. I hope that you are a good person, and that you love people and have people that love you. I have neither. I was quite successful in my career in the military, working my way up from nothing. But my family was greedy and selfish, and saw me as little more than a geriatric cash machine. I made sure to leave them something, and pay for my granddaughter's college education. I've always loved adventures and stories, and so I hope that I can provide that to others, albeit from the other side.

Live the way you wish to be seen, listen more than you speak, and try to do the right thing even if it's difficult.

And good luck -Daniel Bradley Cooper