2022-07-05 - Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

With the fourth of July now over and done with, it's possible for those engaged in the tourist trade to take a few days-- and that's exactly what they've done. Wā Kāinga left port early, the morning fogs still hanging low over the ocean, and ventured out through the bay and towards the heads: onwards, then, towards the open ocean. Mikaere's put in supplies for at least a few days, and now it's just a matter of no one killing anyone.

(Truly, it's a test of a relationship-that-isn't-a-relationship to survive multiple days in confined quarters together.)

Mikaere's quick to put Jules to work, instructing her on how to manage the sails, and when to duck as the boom swings around. For now, though, they're sailing onwards through relatively smooth waters, and there's time enough to grab a sandwich, at least.

"So far so good, eh?"

The Fourth is always complicated. Jules doesn’t get back to Gray Harbor until late, having headed to the reservation for Chief Taholah Days after her shift, so she’s a little sleepy and slow when they set out for the ocean.

The boom has yet to smack her in the head, though, so that’s a win.

The salt air helps chase away the sleepiness, and she’s keen to learn, but by the time they settle for this break, Jules is ready to relax her concentration and glug from her water bottle. She can’t have coffee unless she hydrates.

“Very good,” she agrees, smiling behind her sunglasses. “Oh, I meant to ask—are you planning on filming any of this? Or are your YouTube stardom days truly at an end?”

"I could post a thing," says Mikaere, laughing from the other side of the boom. "But no one would watch it. My days of having an audience are definitely at an end. I mean-- we're heading out of Gray Harbor, so who knows, maybe someone would see it if I posted something now. But my following has moved on." For a man now 'reduced' to helping fat cat tourists at the marina, he seems more amused about this than concerned.

"Why? Do you have a desire for youtube celebrity? We could try tiktok..." His brows waggle, but he's far from serious.

“Nooooo. No no no. No thank you.” So many ways to opt out, accompanied by a wrinkled nose. “I don’t like social media,” Jules admits. “So much posturing. Or putting on a happy face, or cultivating a brand. That’s not for me. And I just don’t like everyone knowing my business.”

After another sip of water, she thinks to add, “Though I get why you did it—good way to fund a trip, if you can manage it, and you clearly did. I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to try. I just might stay out of the frame.”

Mikaere's smile is crookedly amused, but his answer is quick enough: a shake of his head. "I'm not inclined to, not at this point. It worked for me-- it got me where I needed to be, kept me going for a bit. Working at the marina's not a long term thing, clearly, but it keeps the lights on, and... well, for now that's fine, yeah?"

He sips from his own water bottle. It's not (yet) a beautiful day, but sailing is more work than you'd think, and hydration is important. "It's fascinating, though, the way the twitter algorithm has stopped highlighting my tweets... not that, granted, I tweet all that much now. Gray Harbor is a fascinating place, that's for sure."

They're beyond those environs, now, after all.

“Yeah.” It’s not the kind of question that really requires an answer, but there it is. “Fascinating is one way to describe it. Better than a hellhole, and I’ve definitely heard people call it that too.”

Jules is content to sit there quietly for a time, working on her sandwich and gazing out at the water. “How were the fireworks last night?” she asks eventually, switching subjects instead of, well, asking something else. Something that follows on work at the marina. “I’m guessing they were out over the bay. Did you end up doing anything?”

"Hellhole," repeats Mikaere-- and laughs. But this, too, can be set aside without further comment, as he turns his attention to the rudder and the sail, to keeping an eye on the horizon line and their gentle path through the water.

He glances back as Jules asks her questions, shaking his head as he does. "Worked, mostly," he admits. "Helped clear out some people who'd had too much to drink, just a bit too rowdy. Convinced a few others not to try and sail out after a certain time. It's-- well, not my holiday, yeah? But the fireworks, from what I saw, looked nice. Bit of a big deal over here, huh? The fourth of July."

“Yeah. For some people.” Jules adopts a wry expression as she looks across the way. “Not so much if you’re a person of color. Shocking, I know. I mean, we do our own thing, have our own remembrances. The Fourth of July used to be the only time indigenous peoples could practice their own ways of life—they claimed they were being patriotic. Learning how to be good Americans.” Jules sounds more amused than bitter as she expands on what has previously been a relatively simple explanation: headed up to Taholah for dinner.

“I missed most of it, but dinner was nice. Oh, my grandfather sent me home with a giant piece of smoked salmon. I put it in your fridge.”

Mikaere turns his head, studying Jules just for a few moments. He can't keep his attention away from the boat for long, but 'long' is variable, and these waters? They're not too choppy. "That sucks," he says, simply. "At least our national day is related to a treaty. Yours is-- significantly more complicated, eh? I'm glad it's a day when your people could still practice, though. Some kind of acknowledgement."

He adjusts his position, adjusts their course ever so slightly. "Smoked salmon? Yeah, nice. Bet it was good to see your family, too."

“Mmhmm. I also packed a cooler and brought home a haul of frozen fish, but I stuck that in my own freezer. Una saw it and started talking about how we should invest in a chest freezer for the basement. I’m clearly turning into my grandfather.” Humor curves her mouth into a smile.

It’s tempered in the next moment as Jules relates, “But yeah, the Fourth is fucked up. I mean, the Declaration of Independence literally lists a thing about how King George incited the merciless savages to cause problems among the colonists. We’re not about to celebrate that.”

For that, Mikaere grins. "Seems to me there's worse things to turn into," he says, lightly. "Ma-- her family always make sure she gets a chilly bin or two of frozen whitebait, when it comes in season, and that's why she has a big chest freezer in one of the sheds out the back. Only gets used then, and maybe at Christmas, but it's a whole thing."

That's an aside, really, to the main topic at hand, the one that has him wincing. "Yeah, no kidding. That's fucked up. Yet another bit of forgotten history, I bet. The kind of thing your average American doesn't know, or doesn't care, about."

Jules meets that wince with a shrug. “Probably not. I think there’s a lot more information out there now, though.”

She’s not particularly inclined to dwell on American Independence Day, though. Instead, with a grin, Jules declares, “I knew I liked your mom. Freezers full of fish are clearly the way to go.”

For this, Mikaere can only grin over the rims of his sunglasses at Jules.

He's silent a few moments, and something in his expression suggests that he's thinking about something-- or rather, that some internal linkage has brought something to mind, perhaps.

"You've gotten more powerful since you moved here, yeah?"

Jules polishes off her sandwich in the meantime, watching Mikaere for a moment. No rush on her end; he can take all the time he needs.

The question brings her gaze back from where it’s wandered up to consider how the wind fills the sail. “Yeah.” An eyebrow quirks.

"Me too," he says, acknowledging Jules' comment with a dip of his own chin. "Ma commented on it. She hasn't even seen me, but-- she could tell. I think I'm nearly at the height of mine. As far as I'll go. Nearly."

There's more to that, somehow, but he's slower to explain this; it's as if he's working through his thoughts even as he's speaking them.

Eyebrow stays quirked. “Yeah?” It’s a prompt if ever there is one. “How could she tell?”

Jules resettles now that she’s finished eating, drawing one foot under her while leaving the other straight out. “How does that feel?” she asks next, intrigued. “Knowing that you’re getting to that point? And how can you tell?”

Mikaere turns away, though surely it's just because he still needs to keep an eye on where they're headed. "I think she guessed," he admits, with a laugh. "An educated guess, maybe."

There's more to say, but he takes his time to get to it. "I can just-- feel it. I'm not there yet, but I'm close. I'm stronger. It hums more loudly in my thoughts. I won't get there, though, not until--"

Another pause. "Tā moko. Like Ma's? The tattoos? It's maybe the closest thing we have to a spirit quest, like we were talking about. The tohunga decide when. Ma was warning me, I think."

This time it’s her lips that quirk. Of course Mikaere’s mother guessed. She’s good at that.

Jules holds her comments, attuned enough to tell when Mikaere hasn’t quite finished. A slow nod greets his remarks. “Warning you,” she repeats thoughtfully. “As in—?” The guess is right there on the tip of her tongue.

Instead of speaking it, though, she considers him from behind her dark sunglasses. “If you can feel it like that, it sounds like you’re in touch with yourself. In a good way.”

Deep breath, from Mikaere. He doesn't look concerned, just very thoughtful, as though he's trying very hard to determine the best way to explain himself.

"In a good way, yeah," he agrees. "The languages thing threw me a bit in the beginning, but-- as soon as I started paying attention, yeah. At some point," he continues, slowly. "I'm going to have to go back home to get my moko. Not on the face, like Ma's. When that moment arrives. When I think I'm ready, and can go and have that confirmed by the tohunga. But."

He makes sure he's looking at her, this time. "That's not about me planning to go home for good. I'm not-- this is not me telling you I'm leaving, okay?"

“Oh.” That single syllable does the work of realization, without surprise. Her guess was correct. “Okay.”

Even with sunglasses on, disrupting transparency, Jules looks thoughtful. “You might feel differently once you’re there,” she points out evenly. “Which—if that’s what happens, that’s what happens. This is clearly important and something you need to do.”

After another drink from her water bottle, she aims a smile at Mikaere. “So that’s exciting,” Jules says with a deliberate change in tone, upbeat. “Do you know what you want to get? Or is that something you get to decide? How does it work?”

"It's possible," agrees Mikaere, not without a certain measure of quiet reluctance, his expression twisting slightly. "But-- I'll be flying home, when it happens." So his boat will still be here. One way or another, he'll have to be back, unless he wants to sell her. It goes without saying: he does not.

He lets her lead with that change in tone, matching it as best he can. He even laughs, though it's a wry kind of a laugh. "No," he says. "The tohunga-tā-moko will make that decision. There'll be a ceremony with the whole local iwi, any who want to come. Most will only be aware that I have been deemed to have enough mana; not everyone's like us, of course. And then-- the actual tattooing will likely last days."

“Days,” Jules repeats, eyebrows lifting. “So bigger than your mom’s, then.” She too sounds wry, as is the grin that accompanies it.

“So when do you think you’ll go? Obviously you’ll have to plan for it—probably more than you would than under normal circumstances.” Circumstances where Mikaere’s not half a world away. “How far in advance do you think you’ll set it up?”

"Ma's is bigger than it looks," says Mikaere, simply. "You just don't tend to see the rest of it." What form his will take-- and how visible it will be-- really does remain to be seen.

He shakes his head to answer the rest, turning his attention back to the horizon, adjusting the tiller slightly to shift their course. "I'm working on the basis that I'll know when the time is right, and I'll talk to Ma. It's not imminent... more likely months than weeks, I think, unless something changes dramatically."

The fingers of one hand rub idly at his forearm, as if he's already imagining the sensations involved. "And then probably at least a few weeks to make the arrangements."

Interest flits across Jules’ expression, like she’s half-inclined to ask for details. She doesn’t, though—it’s private, it’s Mikaere’s mom.

Instead, she attends to what he does say, nodding. “Oh, okay.” It’s similar to how she first responded when he broached the subject. A little less deliberately even, a little more relaxed.

Jules waits a moment, then stretches her legs and moves to stand. “I’m gonna make myself some coffee and refill water,” she announces. “Do you want coffee and a refill too?”

It looks, just for a moment, like Mikaere would like to say something more, but Jules is moving to stand and maybe the moment-- for now-- is over. And maybe it's better that way, too. "Yeah," he says. "Please. And once we've had some coffee, maybe we can put on some speed, see how well she does out a little further?"

So Jules ducks under the boom, crossing over to Mikaere's side to collect his water bottle. "Sure," she says agreeably. With the straps of the water bottle lids hooked through her fingers, it leaves her with one hand to touch his shoulder.

Before disappearing below deck, though, Jules lingers, looking down at him. She's caught on enough to prompt, "You look like maybe you wanted to say something?" It's a gentle observation, not pushy. "Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off."

"I-- yes and no." Mikaere hesitates, watching Jules hesitantly. "Not really. Nothing I'm going to say is really all that helpful at this point. I can't reassure you that I'm not leaving, because I don't know that yet. As you say, things could change. So-- no, I don't think there's anything else to say right now. Just."

Just. The unspoken things. At least he smiles, more or less, a little rueful but not unpleasantly.

"Hm." Jules isn't ready to walk away and leave it at that. She remains as she is, hand light on his shoulder, contemplative behind her sunglasses. There is more to say -- it's just that she's the one to say it.

"Look," it begins. She drops to sit next to him and pushes her shades up to the top of her head. "I don't need you to reassure me. I get it -- well, as much as I can, when it's not my culture. This is something you need to do, and it's important. And like anything important, it changes things. And you can't know how, not now, before you do it. So maybe it means you'll come out of it knowing that it's time for you to go back. That doesn't mean you don't do it, and it definitely doesn't mean that I'm going to try to stop you. Or that I even want to stop you. It's important," Jules reiterates. "I'll deal, and you'll deal, and life goes on."

She summons a smile. Jules is perfectly calm, though her brow holds a faint crease, perplexed. "What did you think I was going to say?"

The water is relatively calm, and Mikaere's an experienced enough sailor to be able to sail by feel as much as look; he turns his attention away from what he's doing so that he can focus on Jules, and really, really listen to what she has to say.

One corner of his mouth turns up. Not a proper smile, but-- not not a smile either. "Thank you," he says. "And you're right. Of course we'd deal. Will deal. With whatever happens. But fuck, Jules. This wasn't the plan, and it's not making any of the questions easy ones. I didn't think you were going to freak out. I just know... the timing's bad, maybe. It's another big question mark when maybe we didn't need one. That's all."

Now her smile turns wry. "The plan," Jules points out, "didn't involve you sailing through a storm and winding up here at all. Or sticking around beyond repairs. Or," she adds after the briefest of pauses, "meeting me. Your plan is already well and truly fucked, dear." The slight emphasis on the last word colors it with a droll kind of affection.

"And who knows. Maybe the experience of it will be clarifying. I'd be more surprised if it isn't." Jules shrugs, rolling them back to turn it into a stretch. "Maybe the timing is exactly what it's supposed to be."

These are all good points, and they make Mikaere, ultimately, grin. "One could argue," he agrees, "that all of this is happening exactly the way it is supposed to. And you're right: it probably will be clarifying. There's only one way I know of to deal with that kind of pain."

His gaze still lingers on Jules, but he nods, now. "So-- we'll just take it one day at a time, and see what happens. Go make coffee, yeah?"

"Coffee time." Jules agrees not only to this, but through it, to all the rest. She leans in to claim a quick kiss, leaving Mikaere with that as she pops up to take care of this most important business: caffeinating.

With that particular piece of news out of the way, the trip can just be enjoyed, right? Something like that. Wā Kāinga can't go incredibly fast, of course, but it feels fast enough when her sails have caught the wind and they're racing down the coast. Sometime on the second day they pass a silent milestone for the longest time they've spent together (and long since, the longest time they've spent fully alone), but for the most part it's easy. There's not enough room for Mikaere to leave his things on the floor in the cabin; there's plenty to talk about; silence, also works.

"Thought we could pull in and have dinner in one of the towns," he suggests, at some point in the afternoon. "You want to look at the map and make a guess at which is most likely to suit our purposes? Nothing fancy, just--"

Jules doesn't require entertaining. She's brought along her sketchbook and spends a good bit of time drawing in companionable silence when she's not learning Sailing 101.

She looks up from that artist's pad now from where she's stationed, snug on one of the other seats. "Sure," she agrees, putting down what she's working on to rummage for her phone and the offline maps she's uploaded. "Astoria's gonna have the most stuff," she judges, "if we wanna go up the mouth of the Columbia. I think that's our best bet. And there's stuff to explore around there, if we wanna do that." Jules flips her phone to show Mikaere, leaning over.

Mikaere tracks across the map with his gaze, giving a little nod. He's got instruments of his own to determine their present location, though the truth is he's probably already got a reasonable idea in his head-- the coastline may not be familiar, but an experienced sailor can make some guesstimates backed up by visual clues: and if that's not the mouth of a pretty large river, there in the distance, he'll eat one of his jandals (that he's not wearing, mind, because sailing does require properly grippy footwear).

"That's across the state border, isn't it?" he wonders, adjusting their course just slightly. "Into... Oregon?" He stumbles over the pronunciation.

"Oregon, yeah," Jules confirms, cracking a smile for how unfamiliar it sounds coming from Mikaere. "The Columbia River is the border between Washington and Oregon. If you keep going up it, eventually you'll hit Portland. For the record, the point we're gonna round on the north side of the river is called Cape Disappointment, which is kind of one of the best names ever. This was all Chinook land -- the Quinault have a messy relationship with them. They got shoved in on our reservation -- and you kinda get a sense of how far away that is, now? It's a whole thing." She gestures like that describes that whole, messy thing.

"Oregon," repeats Mikaere, this time making a much better go of it. "Okay, you'd better tell me: what was so disappointing about this particular cape?"

He's watching the scenery, though that's as much to keep an eye out for anything that might get in their way, not that they're so very close to shore. "That must have sucked. It's like assuming everyone's the same, when you're clearly not. Māori may share a language and a lot of culture, but there's still differences between us. I can't begin to imagine what it would be like for it to be a completely different nation of people."

'Messy' is clearly a good way to put it.

“I’d have to Google it,” Jules admits. “Once I’ve got signal again.”

She shifts into a different position now that she’s not sketching, putting her feet up on the bench seat. “The Chinook were our traditional enemies. So it’s been bad since the beginning, and all the more so when the treaties were made and the government shoved all these different people into the same area, onto Quinault territory. Now it’s about land rights—hunting, fishing, logging, stuff like that. They need their own land, but it’s not like the government is going to give them the Oregon Coast. So they’re on our land, and people feel like they’re trying to steal it.” Jules herself is struggling to stay neutral in the telling. “They can be adopted into the tribe, but they don’t want that. So there’s these constant legal battles, and it all goes back to the original treaties in the 1850s and federal recognition and whether they’ll take parcels of Quinault territory if they’re recognized. When the government assigned land allotments, they were the majority land holders, so it’s a big fucking deal, were they to be granted our land in perpetuity. But the Quinault are the only ones who have voting rights for tribal governance, because it was and is our territory, and the US government recognized that in the treaty. But you can imagine how well that sits with those who got forced onto the reservation.”

"What kind of tour guide are you?" Mikaere teases, grinning. "Useless!"

But that grin fades, as he focuses instead on the rest of what she's saying, and by the end of it, he's frowning outright. "Shit," he says. "So there's really no good way to solve it that's going to work for everyone. And it's deeply personal. Like..." he hesitates over this analogy, then goes on with it anyway, "Well, the tiniest bit like the whole issue between Palestine and Israel, just with fewer weapons and-- I don't know, maybe that's a terrible analogy. Complicated, regardless. I'm sorry. Like you didn't all have enough issues without adding to it, like that."

Jules makes a face in response to the teasing; there’d be a verbal answer to go with it, if not for the deep dive into tribal history.

Jules shrugs, simply agreeing, “It’s deeply fucked up.”

Maybe not so simple, though, because there’s more to say. “The Quinault blocked a bid for federal recognition about twenty years back unless the Chinook would give up the land rights. It was a dick move in a lot of ways, since so much depends on recognition— like, you can’t get money for stuff like health care and education.”

Her mouth twists into a smile without humor. “As far as Israel-Palestine goes, most indigenous people here will tell you it’s more like the U.S. versus us. Settler colonialism and everything that entails.”

Jules blows out a breath and says sardonically, “Welcome to America. It sounds like maybe it’s better for the Māori? In terms of legal rights?”

"I'll grant you," admits Mikaere, with a sheepish little laugh, "Clearly neither of you, Quinault or Chinook, are Israel in this situation."

The rest gives him serious pause, though, his gaze sliding from Jules to focus on what he's doing: the wind in their sail, the feel of his hand upon the tiller. "Deeply, deeply fucked up," he concludes, with a sigh.

"Sort of," he adds, of his own people. "I mean... mostly, yeah. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, and it wasn't a bad treaty as these things go. It made us citizens, at least. In our own country, but... well. It wasn't always upheld, and there's a whole commission now to investigate breaches, but the point is that it still matters. It's been formally adopted into law. Not perfect, not even close. But clearly--"

It's not like it is here.

What can Jules do except sigh and shrug?

"Anyway," she says briskly in a clear subject change, "I may not be much of a tour guide for American history and why Cape Disappointment got named that by some sailor, but my grandparents made sure I know my own history. And sometimes it overlaps -- for instance, this is where the Lewis and Clark Expedition ended, at the Pacific Ocean, and they had plenty of dealings with the Chinook, trying to find out what European ships were lurking out here and conducting trade. The Americans definitely weren't the first to come into contact with us."

"Lewis and Clark?" It's genuine lack of knowledge, in this case, though Mikaere is clearly acknowledging that change of topic, shifting on to it relatively seamlessly. "I'm going to guess... earlier explorers? Who else was around here at this point? Long way away for Europeans."

It's a moment for Jules to grin somewhat ruefully. Of course the standard components of an American education aren't necessarily heralded abroad. "I don't know if they were the first Americans, but they were definitely among the first, right around the time that the U.S. government 'bought'," and yes, she lifts her hands for scare-quotes, "a big chunk of America from the French. So they were told to go out an explore it, map it, meet the locals, and try to plant a flag on whatever else European powers hadn't gotten to first. There were fur trappers out here by that point, and Spain had claimed land to the south, like California, and they explored up the coast. Russians sailing down from Alaska, the British sticking their noses everywhere...the Hudson Bay Company made it out here not long after."

"Huh," says Mikaere. Shrugging, he admits, "Not a thing I know a lot about, I guess. I'd've figured getting here would be utter madness for Europeans, back in those days-- we're talking, what, early eighteen hundreds? Something like that? But I suppose not much stands in the way of the conquering Europeans, when they set their minds to it. And then it was the discovery of gold that really started things out, I guess?"

“Mid to late seventeen hundreds, I think. The Spanish were definitely all up in Mexico’s business way earlier than that. Native people up here used to go down to California to trade with them, or with the European ships—that’s when the first plagues were introduced, before the Americans even got here. I think the California Gold Rush was a factor, but people were already settling out here by then. The whole Oregon Trail, Manifest Destiny, God wants you to go forth and settle thing. Clearly it’s God’s will that the Indians are dying off so don’t think twice about stealing their land.”

At this point, Jules can but grin and crack a joke: “Welcome to America. You sure you wanna be here?”

Mikaere's return quip is immediate: "No. Let's blow this popsicle stand-- I don't even know what that is-- and sail for Auckland. It's just a little further south, right?"

After all that ugly history, how freeing it is to burst into a delighted laugh. “Just a smidge,” Jules agrees, lifting her hand to demonstrate, thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

"No big deal," promises Mikaere, faithfully; he's grinning, pleased by Jules' laugh and by his own reaction too. "If we keep sailing now, we'll have summer the whole way. It'll be a grand adventure, you'll see."

"I might need a couple more changes of clothing." Jules is still grinning, and even with sunglasses on it's easy to tell how the corners of her her eyes crinkle with mirth. "Otherwise that adventure might not be one you want to have after all."

"Stinky Jules," teases Mikaere. "Stealing my shirts. Fine, fine. We'll save that for another day. Today, we're headed for--" He pauses. "Oregon. C'mon. If we pick up some speed now, we'll be there in an hour or so."

"I excel at that," Jules declares, leaving it open to interpretation whether she means stinking up a storm, stealing Mikaere's shirts, or some combination thereof.

Whatever the case may be, she's happy to sign on to this proposed plan with a cheery, "Aye, aye!"