Soundkeeper Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the middle of the creek. They were in a beautiful, old but restored Chris Craft runabout Hall guessed had been built before the Second World War. He saw hundreds of dead fish floating in the creek water and rainbow sheen danced on the wake from his boat.
    Hall waved to the two ladies and took a notebook out of the waterproof compartment under his seat. Any type of fish kill had to be investigated and all fuel spills had to be reported to the Coast Guard. He asked the lady a few questions and made notes for several minutes, then snapped a few photographs before he started collecting evidence.
    “Why are you wearing gloves?” a girl in the boat asked Hall. She looked to be the age of a middle-schooler.
    “Just in case,” Hall said. “Whatever killed these fish may not be healthy for me.”
    Hall collected six dead fish. Two striped mullet, one ladyfish, two immature redfish (spottail bass) and one pinfish. Each specimen was packaged individually in a ziplock bag. He recorded the location, date, and time of the collection on the outside of each bag and all of the samples went into a small cooler with some ice he had brought along just for this purpose. He would put them in his freezer when he got back home and tomorrow would pack them in dry ice and overnight them to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics laboratory in Oregon. Within a week he should know what specific toxin had killed these fish.
    “Thanks for calling this in,” Hall told the lady.
    “I’m glad to help. I hope you can catch who is responsible for this. We’ve all got to help if there is to be any beauty left for my grandchildren to enjoy. Please tell Gale that I said hello, Officer.” For a few minutes he had enjoyed playing biologist.
    Hall said he would relay the message to Gale and decided to stay in the creek while he recorded his observations. Hall grabbed the chain and slipped his anchor over the side and the engine on the old Chris Craft rumbled to life behind him. When he let go of the chain and watched the anchor disappear into the water he realized that he never re-tied the anchor to the line after trying to lasso the dolphin. He hoped the good citizens hadn’t noticed his mistake, and knew he had to make a trip to the marine supply store.
    After making his notes and giving Grandma a good head start Hall left the small creek at thirty—knots, cruising speed for his patrol boat. Clouds were building in the southwest sky and Hall wondered if the low-pressure system coming up from the Gulf of Mexico was a little ahead of schedule. Never in his life had he paid as much attention to the weather as he did now, since it was as important to him as the thermostat setting was for those poor souls that slaved away in cubicle farms. More important, he realized. Out here the weather could kill him. The paperwork he needed to complete gave him an excuse to head for home and he did so, adjusting his course across the sound so that he wasn’t heading directly into the small whitecaps.
    Pinckney showed her best side when he came in from the sound. A back barrier island, Pinckney did not have any ocean frontage. It was sheltered from the salt spray and strong winds by Hilton Head Island which lay across Skull Creek. The National Wildlife Refuge consumed all of Pinckney Island and a few thousand acres of tidal marsh. Tall sabal palmettos whose likeness graced the state flag towered over tropical saw palmettos. The loblolly pine trees grew as straight as rails and were like adolescents towering over their elder oaks and hickories. A working plantation for over one hundred years, the Fish and Wildlife Service was restoring the maritime forest and wetlands on the island to their natural state. Drainage ditches that had drained the swampy inland areas were being filled in and agricultural fields were allowed to turn fallow. In a few years it would appear as it would have been if man had never settled there, Hall thought.
    When he got to the tip of the