AM: North Jetty
Sven recognized the mask when he saw Sammy surface – the wild eyes, the gaping mouth, the insane flapping attempt to climb air. He’d witnessed drowning men. As the wave swept by that buried Bill and Sammy together, he grabbed Glass and threw two loops of rope around his waist and one around each leg forming a harness. Another loop under his arms and a final hand loop in front of his chest completed the outfit. In the thirty seconds it took to complete the rig, he watched Billy surface and spin around to find Sammy ten feet farther down the channel and swimming for the rocks as the next wall bore down. Sammy seemed close enough to throw the rope, but Sven knew he would never find it in his crazed state and even if by some miracle he caught it, he’d never hold a line pulled hard enough to drag him free from what was coming. Sven watched Sammy’s progress slow as the net reasserted its grip with every stroke.
He handed his belt knife to Glass and looked directly into his eyes. “I’d go myself Rich, but you’ve got the rubber suit and I can pull harder. After this next wave goes past, wait till you see where they come up and go. They’ll wash down to us in that one. I won’t lose you, no matter what happens.”
Lester hadn’t realized the power of the relentless killer that enveloped his son, until he saw Glass look back at him and his thoughts slowly crystallized into dread that recognized the fear in Glass’ glance. Flushed with the false confidence of a sudden adrenaline rush, he ran toward the ledge where Sven prepared Glass for the rescue and leapt from the road into the wet boulders. He fell hard. The barnacles opened gashes on his forehead and one hand. He struggled up in time to see Billy reappear, but his vision blurred and he slumped against the stone trying to focus.
For Quinn, nothing seemed real. Everything felt like a movie. There was the drowning boy and the heroes trying to save him. There was the father stunned to sobriety and paralyzed with fear for his son. And here came the monster – white roaring, with some huge bone in its teeth. He could feel cold spray on his face and smell low tide, but everything moved slowly, and the light was strange, and he couldn’t get enough air.
Glass saw the dolphin spinning in the shore break and for an instant he couldn’t understand why it hadn’t made the wave, dolphins always made it. The whole channel seemed to glow dimly along the rocks, but brightly around the black carcass in the white water, and around Billy and Sammy, as if they moved through swarms of bioluminescent creatures. Lester had fallen. Dolphins never wiped out. He heard Sven yelling in the distance. The tumbling corpse crashed over Sammy.
He heard, “Next one - when you see them, go.”
5:35 AM: North Jetty
Billy had gone to the bottom before the chaos rolled over him. He imagined being up in that hydraulic was worse than going down into the net. At least down there he could cut his way straight up, no knots coiled tight by the wave. His hands were numb; he was shaking violently. If he could find a grip and hold, until this wave passed, he could cut a path up and get Sammy. They were close now. He had seen Sven up there and Glass with rope. Eight feet above him he watched the shore break churn over his head and seconds later the surge tore him off the bottom. This wave carried the dolphin, which towed a mat of net, gathered in its rush from the lineup. It’s power drove Billy into the base of the jetty, dragged the gossamer mat over him and rolled on, wrapping him with a new sensation of density, and binding him silently onto the black basalt wall. The knife was gone. The only way up meant crawling - pulling himself and the net up, rock by rock, to the air. Half way to the surface, the third wave of the set hit. The turbulence slammed him against a boulder that he clung to. For a moment he thought the violence had freed him, but the net had simply shifted with him. The surge moved on, increasing his entanglement before anchoring him again.
He focused. Two-wave hold down – he could do that; he had done that. Not three. Drag this net five more feet. He felt like a beast harnessed to a deep furrow plow with an anchor chain. His face found air and time for one breath. He crabbed down into a void, holding for the next shock with numb hands and feet jammed into barnacled crevices.
5:37 AM: North Jetty
They watched the wave pass and no one came up. The dolphin bounced along the rocks below them and stopped - snagged and held by thousands of fine strands twisted into the jagged wall. A third wave crashed toward them. No one came up as the dolphin spun slowly in place. With the fourth approaching, Glass saw a glow covered with sparkling net rise momentarily from the water and sink back. Quinn had seen him too and yelled frantically, pointing at the spot as Glass, tethered to Sven, moved across the boulders. The third wave passed. Glass jumped.
Lester couldn’t understand, if they were gone or if he just couldn’t see. There was blood on his hands. He could taste it.
5:38 AM: North Jetty
Billy struggled to climb again, but thousands of threads resisted. His body shook uncontrollably and he needed air. Everything that wasn’t numb hurt. Suddenly the anchor was gone and something pushed him up into the air for the breath he thought he’d lost forever. Sven had his arm, pulling, and something pushed him up and he pushed against rocks with anesthetized flesh that couldn’t feel the dull barnacle knives. The fourth wave crushed them and rope pinned him to a boulder, sawing on his chest. Foam smothered him again, but when it passed, his face felt air and Sven pulled him up over the sharpness. Then, he was lying on his back looking at the sky.
Glass cut his way out of the horror that clung to him and signaled to Sven that he was safe and he could drop the rope. He crawled out before the fifth wall hit and helped Sven get Billy onto the road.
Sven called to Quinn, who stood starring at the ocean. “Anything? You see anything?”
Quinn’s voice came from another world where children lose their innocence in fragments of calm between breaking waves. “Nothing.”
Sven needed help and he heard that Quinn needed help. “Get in the camper Quinn. Get sleeping bags and get Billy covered up. Watch him.”
He turned to Lester. “Lester, you see anything? Lester! You see anything? Jesus, where is he?”
Glass scrambled back down to the water and Sven followed, picking up the rope on the way. They stopped above the dolphin. The set had passed and the huge carcass wilted between boulders, encased in a shroud of plastic vines.
Billy jerked upright and called out in strangled tones. “Sammy’s still down there. He’s down there.”
Without discussion, Glass dove and the rope paid out until Sven had to move down beside the water. He set his feet and wedged himself into the rocks preparing for the next small shore break. It came and went, washing over his legs and soaking him. The rope tugged and he began pulling. When he could see them, he stood and backed away to next big boulder. He saw Glass surface and get air. He held fast as the next small wave rolled by, tied the rope off to the boulder, and lowered himself down to lift Sammy out as Glass slashed at the net.
Glass held his knees up as Sven laid Sammy on the sleeping bag. Sven walked Quinn back to the Jeep, started the engine and turned the heater to high. Glass and Billy took turns doing mouth-to-mouth and cardiac pressure. After ten minutes they stopped to unzip his collar and remove his hood. One side of his skull had a deep dent above and behind his right ear. He was blue, white and cold.
Nobody talked and Lester continued staring at the shore break as it churned through the black boulders. He hadn’t moved.
6 AM: The Sandbar
The Pacific Coast Highway wound down into the Nehalem River valley from the slopes of Neahkahnie Mountain and crossed the
