Free Sea Change by Diane Tullson

Chapter One
    I adjust my headset over my ears, and the noise of the helicopter drops to a dull thud. I feel the noise as much as hear it, as if the helicopter is a drum and I’m inside it. My seat faces out—the penalty box, the pilot called it—and the door is right in front of my knees. The window in the door has instructions about how to push it out in an emergency. And about how not to open the door in flight, as if anyone would do that. Still, I pull my knees back from the door lever.
    My father is sitting up with the pilot. He’s got a communications headset and he’s chatting with the pilot, laughing about something. His hair used to be darker than mine, more of a sandy brown, but now it’s got some gray. He has deep lines around his eyes. Basically, he looks old.
    Through the window, below, acres of trees roll out in all directions. That’s all I’ve seen since we left the airfield in Sandspit—trees. Sometimes a stream ropes through the trees, but there’s nothing else, no roads, no cut-lines. The pilot said a crew was logging on the other side of the ridge, but here I might be the first guy to see this forest. Well, me and the pilot. And my old man.
    God, it is cold. The last of a nasty flu bug gnaws my gut. It got me a week off school though. Half the school has it, and apparently it’s policy of the cook training program to make sure I don’t infect the other half. My mother didn’t give me too much grief about going. It’s about time you spent some time with your father, she said. He had a flu shot, so he isn’t going to catch it.
    Except for us, the helicopter is empty. The tourist season finished a month ago. We’re going to fish late-running salmon—coho, not that I’d know a coho from any other kind of fish.
    My dad has been at the fishing lodge his entire working life, practically owns the place now. I’m seventeen and this is the first time I’ve been up. People pay plenty to fish the best salmon on the Pacific Northwest, he says. Only room for paying guests, he says. We’ll go in October, after shutdown, he says.
    We almost went fishing three years ago, but the weather turned bad and grounded the helicopter. That was the year Mom and I moved to Torrance. Between school and Dad’s schedule, I haven’t seen him since. Not that I saw much of him before the divorce—he spends half the year at the lodge and the other half on the road doing sportsman’s shows. Maybe he’s always looked this old and I just haven’t noticed.
    This year he was in LA, on business, and he called me up. I had the week off school and no good reason to say no. Dad said the coho are huge this year, and I want a big fish, a monster. I want a fish so big the old man pays to get it stuffed and hangs it in the lodge with a brass plate with my name on it.
    Endless trees. There’s nothing to mark this place. I could be anywhere.
    The helicopter lifts over a rise and now I can see the inlet. The trees have been cleared near the water, and there are buildings—the fishing lodge. The docks are pulled up for the winter and look like gray tiles at the edge of the water. A couple of boats bob on moorings. The pilot heads toward a grass strip between the shore and the buildings.
    I see deer right where the helicopter is going to land, about seven of them, their heads down, grazing on the grass. They must be deaf—they’re not moving and the helicopter is almost right over them. We’re still high off the ground, but the downdraft flattens the grass.
    One deer drops to its knees, then collapses. It shudders and then lies still. It looks dead, but I don’t know how that could be. We couldn’t have hit it—we’re too high. The other deer lift their heads, and then, finally, they run off.
    The helicopter lands but the pilot doesn’t shut it down. He motions with his hand for me to wait. From in front of the