The Inspector Locked Our Boat While The Tide Began To Turn

Nolan Strake put the chain through our workboat's wheel before he asked my name.

"Nobody takes this vessel out," he said.

The rain had stopped, but water still fell from the spruce trees above the dock. Across Sitka Sound, the mountains had lost their tops in cloud. Our boat, the Moth, rose against her wet fenders.

I held two empty seed racks. We had forty racks waiting in the floating nursery, each wound with thin cord that carried young sugar kelp. We needed to move them to the growing lines that afternoon.

"I'm Nandita Srinivasan. I maintain this nursery. What's the problem?"

"Solvent. In the water beside your shed."

He held up a clear bottle with a blue cap.

I was a small, brown-skinned Indian American woman with thick black hair in a braid and a pale scar across my left thumb. At twenty-nine, I still got asked whether I needed a parent to sign things. My orange rain pants, patched at both knees, did not help.

"Where did you collect that?" I asked.

"Where you dumped it."

Nolan Strake was a broad white man with a red neck, gray stubble, and rain-dark brows that made every look seem like a warning. He was forty-eight. I knew that because the harbor newsletter had printed his birthday beside a photo of a cake shaped like an anchor.

Now he looked at the racks as if they were tools for a crime.

"We don't use solvent on the float," I said. "We scrub with brushes. Anything from the engine goes ashore in sealed tubs."

"You're seasonal?"

"I'm the kelp-nursery technician."

"Then call whoever's in charge."

I set the racks down before my hands could shake them.

Our cooperative manager, Ruth, was in Juneau seeking the last $18,000 of our season's funding. We had $6,420 in our working account. The Moth was our only boat with the open deck and rack mounts we needed.

I had painted those mounts yellow so I could find them in poor light. His chain scraped a bright curl of paint onto the deck.

"I am in charge of the nursery today. Give me the order."

He pulled a damp sheet from his coat. The notice said suspected unlawful discharge. Under equipment held, he had written one workboat.

The sample time was 7:10 a.m.

I opened the pocket sketchbook I kept inside my bib. Tide marks ran down its margins like small stairs. Beside them I drew holdfasts, float knots, birds, and broken parts I needed to replace.

At 7:10, the water had been moving toward our nursery from the service pier.

"Your bottle needs a collection location," I said. "And a seal number."

"The lab knows its job."

"I'm asking about yours."

His jaw tightened.

I wished I had said it more softly. Then I looked at the chain again and stopped wishing.

Behind the shed, three tide stations clicked through their sampling cycle. I had built their glass cartridge racks during winter, when people thought my little drawings were just something to pass the dark hours.

The cooperative paid for the station frames. My small research award had paid for the sample archive. Our agreement named me its custodian and required my signature before any stored cartridge could be opened or thrown away.

Strake had signed the installation page in April without reading its second sheet.

"We have water from before your visit," I said.

"You've got jars from a student project. I've got an enforcement sample."

He handed me the notice.

"Don't tamper with anything."

"Does that include keeping our seedlings alive?"

"You should have thought about that."

He went up the ramp. His boots left dark blocks on the boards.

I called Ruth. She went quiet when I read the notice, then asked for a photo of every page.

"Don't sign a confession to get the boat back," she said.

"He hasn't offered that."

"He will."

By noon, the thin brown fuzz on six seed cords had started to pale. Those racks had spent too long in the crowded holding bay. The nursery could keep them cool and fed, but the new crop had outgrown its space. They needed clean moving water on the outer lines.

I logged the change, photographed each rack beside its number, and drew another tide step.

Aileen Chen called while I was checking the flow pump.

"Heard you became the harbor's criminal mastermind," she said.

"I lack the boat for it."

"Bad planning."

Aileen maintained the harbor's gauges and cameras. She was thirty-five, Chinese American, and cheerful in the stubborn way of someone who kept three copies of every useful thing.

"Save your station records," she said. "I'll save mine."

At four, a harbor runner brought a second envelope.

Inside was a proposed settlement: $7,600, an admission of responsibility, and a promise that signing might speed the boat's release.

Strake had underlined the deadline.

We had until noon tomorrow.