“So why are you looking for Sea Shepherds?” asked Sheryl, the woman who was giving us a ride across the island of San Juan.
“It’s kind of a long story…” I said, and it was. Five years ago my father had made the dreadful mistake of mentioning the radical offshoot of Green Peace, one that had splintered off when the activist had felt the organization wasn’t taking direct enough action. The founder of Sea Shepherds basically organized a gang of crunchy pirates to go on boats and physically prevent Japanese whalers from killing whales. For the last four years I’d vowed that when I had the time I’d apply to be a whale hunter hunter, and that’s exactly what I’d done.
“We applied to be on their crew but we never got an answer,” said Kevin. “And we figured, you know, since we were in the neighborhood, we’d hunt them down.”
So we were whale hunter hunter hunters, hunting down the founder of Sea Shepherds since we were in his neighborhood (Seattle) and had heard the headquarters was in Friday Harbor. The internet had not proved as useful as usual when Sea Shepherds was concerned: their museum in Seattle, which had gotten five stars on Yelp, had suddenly disappeared. And I hadn’t found much besides.
Even in the age of modern technology the best way to get things done is to knock on somebody’s door.
“You here rumors of course,” Sheryl said. “But he seems to have started hiding out. We heard people were trying to kill him. So they moved their headquarters from Friday Harbor and now he gets all his mail from a P.O. box.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah. And I heard that on his property there are watch guards to protect him.”
“Who’s “he”?” I asked.
“Watson,” she said.
“First name or last name?”
“Last. I saw him once: didn’t believe it when he told me his name. Thought he was joking.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Sea Shepherds just gets more mysterious the closer we get to them.”
Sheryl dropped us off on a forest road like so many others in San Juan. San Juan is probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been: filled with trees of a thousand shades of cool, bluish greens, with red-barked trunks and golden mosses, sunny farmland and a sparkling blue sea with the silhouettes of blue, hilly islands in the distance. Watson’s property stuck out, though: there was a huge “No Trespassing” sign and a rope strung in front to pass cars. We paused in front of it.
“What do you think, my friend?” asked Kevin.
“Dammit!” I said. “We’re so close! But I don’t want to sneak onto his property.”
“Yeah, we’re like the hippies rifling through Bob Dylan’s dumpster.”
“Let’s do some research. Ask around. Worst comes to worst, we go in.”
“Agreed,” said Kevin.
We had nothing else planned for the day, so we decided to sit down in a field of lavender (I’m not even kidding: San Juan is ridiculously idyllic) to have our customary dinner of peanut butter and bread.
I was in the midst of telling a story about my friend Anthony, imitating something he’d said in our last conversation (“And at my job I pretty much only speak to old people. Which is fine, I love old people, but…”) when I heard a voice behind me:
“You love old people? I’m glad! Well I hope you love me!”
Behind me stood a woman in her sixties, strikingly beautiful with white wavy hair and piercing blue eyes. Her name was Jessica and she, fittingly, worked at the lavender farm. “Are you enjoying your picnic? Oh, you look so cute!” She was going west, where we’d planned on going, and she offered us a ride.
“Now I warn you, I might have my music on too loud,” she said, and as she turned the car on Florence and the Machine blasted us near-deaf. The hood ornament on her car had been decorated with string covered in pink plastic stars. “I just came back from the Oregon Fair, did you make it? I was selling skirts there that I make. It was full of old people–you’d’ve liked it.”
I realized there was no way for me to live that comment down.
“So what’re you doing around here?”
We explained we were hitchhiking around the country, which delighted her.
“You’re the genuine article, aren’t you!” she said. “I used to hitchhike, back in the 70s. But that was a long time ago. I’m old. How old are you guys? Fifteen?”
I swiftly turned the conversation around to Sea Shepherds.
“Yes, my friend Deborah knows where there headquarters is. They have a secret office people aren’t supposed to know about. Watson’s hiding out, I hear. I’ll ask Deborah.”
Me and Kevin exchanged looks again. Sea Shepherds was getting more mysterious, and we were right outside their door.
this is real this is fiction 