Heartbroke Bay (24 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
Another paddler, this one with the lean, dark features of an otter, a labret piercing his lower lip, and a pattern of small-pox scars across his cheeks, leaps forward shouting,
“Ya yucke-ya. Andai! Andai!”
Planting himself in front of Hans and Harky, he yells again,
“Andai!”
“Ya yucke-ya. Andai! Andai!”
Planting himself in front of Hans and Harky, he yells again,
“Andai!”
Hans and Hannah step back from the open hostility. Harky holds his ground. All look to Negook for translation.
“Ta dar da nook,”
he says. “The wind is southwest, it makes the sea too heavy. Tomorrow,
Sa-cum
, or maybe two days more, it will be better
.
But this man . . .” He points with his chin at the dark, weasel-faced man. “This man says you must go now. Today.”
he says. “The wind is southwest, it makes the sea too heavy. Tomorrow,
Sa-cum
, or maybe two days more, it will be better
.
But this man . . .” He points with his chin at the dark, weasel-faced man. “This man says you must go now. Today.”
Harky looks out at the sea hurling itself headlong onto the shore. His eyes squinch, his face knotting. “Tomorrow maybe. Looks rough for a canoe today.”
Hannah feels the sting of fine, windblown sand against her cheeks and nods in agreement. The canoe will be open, cold, and the furious state of the sea evokes the terrifying power of the surf that pounded the
Tara Keane
to pieces. Dutch, too, eyes the surf warily and agrees with Harky. “Sockum sounds good to me. What do you think, Michael? You’re a sailing man like me, what you wanna do?”
Tara Keane
to pieces. Dutch, too, eyes the surf warily and agrees with Harky. “Sockum sounds good to me. What do you think, Michael? You’re a sailing man like me, what you wanna do?”
Michael has been sullen since the loss of his ship, darkly quiet and unsmiling, speaking only to Hannah if he speaks at all, and addressing her carefully as “Mrs. Nelson.” Hannah’s heart aches for his loss—it was everything he had—but he is removed and self-contained. Now he glances from the canoes to the sea and around at the villagers. He shrugs, makes a slight spitting sound between his tongue and lips, and looks away. A small boy imitates his dismissive gesture, spitting repeatedly as if trying to clear a shred of something foul from his lips, then laughs aloud. The otter man again shouts,
“Andai!”
and waves the miners toward the canoes.
“Andai!”
and waves the miners toward the canoes.
Negook bends, pulls a weed from the ground, rolls it rapidly back and forth between his palms, and turns in a circle, muttering. With a motion like a man releasing a captive bird, he tosses the tattered plant aloft and stands aright, palms upward, watching the shreds of leaf flutter between the wind and the earth.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “Tomorrow there will be no wind.” Then he shouts in his own language this verdict to his people. Turning to the miners, he repeats himself. “No wind tomorrow. You go back to your people, go to Sitka, go to Juneau. Go away.”
A place is made for the whites to sleep in the longhouse of the Dogfish Clan, where they are surrounded by laughing, walnut-colored children. The children reach out to rub at the miners’ skin, tugging at their beards and squealing with delight. Old people marvel at Harky’s size; girls and young women glance sideways at Michael; teenage boys assume fierce, glaring postures. Motionless warriors sit back in the shadows and bide their time. Hannah is handed a baby, and the chucking sounds she makes at the small, astonished black eyes brings a smile to the face of its mother.
The miners, so recently threatened by privation, wander the village, staring at a cornucopia of plenty. Food baskets filled to overflowing line the walls of the houses. There are blueberries, nagoon berries, thimble berries, and strawberries. Some are dried, hard as raisins; others are heaped like fresh jewels, glowing with freshness and the sweetness of the sun. The rafters of the house are hung with bushels of wild vegetables and roots of numerous varieties.
When the miners walk around the village, there is more harvest to be seen. There are huge moose hides stretched between trees, dense, rich pelts of otters and wolves drying on wooden stretchers, a smokehouse bulging with the purple black meat of seals. In an open space behind the longhouses a half-dozen white goat hides lie pegged to the ground.
Upstream from the village the river accelerates into a downward curve, just at the lip of a falls, congregating itself into a flow with the shining texture and color of green glass before breaking into a thousand pulsing streams of white. At the foot of the falls lies a swirling pool, thick with salmon layered into its depths like cordwood. The fish surge and spawn in the current. Along the banks of the river a dozen wooden racks sag under the weight of countless muscular silver bodies, which have been split and hung over low, smoky fires to dry. It is a display of such natural wealth and plenty that the whites stand speechless, wondering at the ignorance of their own poverty.
Michael fingers a strip of the ruby-colored meat, looking ponderous as his eyes roam these riches. But it is Harky who speaks first, and his words surprise Hannah. “We ain’t going back, are we?”
Severts smiles slightly, gives a single shake of his head. “No reason now, is there?”
It takes Dutch and the Nelsons a moment to decipher what Harky and Michael have decided: There is no shortage of food, no reason to fear; the land will provide all that they need to continue mining.
“There’s still a chance,” Michael says, placing his hands on his hips. “We ought at least recover our losses.”
Hans shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s a lot of work to feed five mouths. How can we run the operation and feed ourselves hunting and fishing?” Waving a hand at the fish racks and meat houses, he repeats himself. “It’s too much work, all this cutting and drying. No time for mining, if you still want to eat.”
“This is all for winter, Nelson,” Michael explains. “They’re putting food away. We only have to get it on the table for now, nothing more.” He looks from Hans to Hannah and back to Hans. “I’ll do the hunting and bring in the fish. Mrs. Nelson can gather the greens and berries. With a few things from the garden and tightening our belts, we’ll be all right.”
Hans looks at the ground, considering the proposal, then shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
Dutch looks around at the villagers at work preparing for winter. “I ain’t too sure, Michael. I think maybe we ought to get away while these Indians is willing to take us.”
Severts’s face grows dark, and his lips draw tight across his face. Hannah has the same odd, unsettling sense she had when Dutch’s lie of having prospected Lituya was first exposed: That there is someone unknown, of great fury and brooding violence, looking out through Michael’s eyes. When he speaks, his voice is like broken glass. “Well, that’s damn-all fine for the lot of you. We split the take and go our merry ways, huh?” One fist clenches white on his waist; his eyes narrow, and he hunches his shoulders, settling the shotgun slung across on his back. “Well, I’ve lost my ship, and a single share won’t cover my losses. And that isn’t good enough.”
Michael turns his back on the Nelsons. Hans’s face mottles at the implied threat. Taking a pace forward, he says, “Now see here, Severts,” and stops, uncertain what he wants to say.
Hannah sees Michael’s chest swell as he takes a deep breath and forces his shoulders to relax. When he turns to face them again, his face is composed with studied ease.
“Sorry, Hans. I didn’t mean to go off so hard. But really, what difference does it make if we leave now or next month?” Making a broad sweeping motion with his hand, as if presenting them with the bounty of the fish racks, he promises, “We’ll make out all right.”
When he continues, his words are soft, yet urgent and convincing. “One thing’s for certain. We won’t hit pay dirt back in Sitka or Juneau. As long as we’re at work here, there’s always a chance, hey?”
Dutch wipes a hand across his mouth, bites at his lower lip for a moment, then whines, “I dunno. This weather’s getting worse all the time. Few more weeks, it might be pretty tough getting the Indians to paddle us to Sitka.”
Dutch’s wheedling tone settles Hans’s opinion, and he curls his lip. “You got us into this mess, Dutch. Now you want to cut and run.” He shakes his head, condemning Dutch as a coward.
Dutch’s hands tremble, and Hannah realizes he is caught between fears: the fear of facing the autumn ocean in a canoe and the fear of being thought poorly of by others. His shoulders slump, and one eye looks at the sky. “I just don’t know. It’ll be winter ’fore you know it, that’s all.”
Hans looks pointedly at the sunny sky and the river brimming with salmon, the green foliage and grasses nodding heavy with seed.
“Winter, Dutch? Winter? It’s full summer!”
Hannah remembers the ambush of winter in Skagway, the cold fist of snow and wind that fell out of a clear, warm sky and hammered at the tarp under which she huddled. She considers speaking in Dutch’s favor, but she cannot bring herself to contradict her husband in front of the others.
Michael looks from Hans to Harky, who has remained silent throughout the exchange. “Agreed then, Harky? Hans? We stay and work the claim, get the Indians to paddle us into Sitka in a month or so?”
Both nod in assent.
Dutch is overruled, and Hannah’s opinion remains unsolicited. Misgiving nibbles at her thoughts, nudging her in the ribs. She holds her tongue.
Negook does
not
hold his tongue as he stamps at the dirt floor of his hovel. A bundle of herbs and feathers plaited about a leather thong hanging from the rafters jerks and sways as he howls, “Horseshit! Horseshit!”
not
hold his tongue as he stamps at the dirt floor of his hovel. A bundle of herbs and feathers plaited about a leather thong hanging from the rafters jerks and sways as he howls, “Horseshit! Horseshit!”
The lines furrowing the shaman’s windswept brown face knot into patterns of anger and disbelief as his voice rises. “You dig at your mother’s bones! You dig and dig until the ground shakes and the ice kills your boat! You must go! Go!”
“Mr. Negook, please, let me explain.” The men are wandering the village, bartering for food, and Hannah tries to be reasoned and calm, since it falls to her to placate the irate shaman. “Mr. Negook, we simply must stay a few more weeks. We must work doubly hard now to recover our losses.”
Wattles of loose skin along Negook’s neck tremble. He shakes his head. “You will have great losses if you keep digging at the ground!” He is so angry his eyes bug until the huge, dark pupils seem to strike out at the woman. These idiots. Kah-Lituya will kill everyone! Perhaps he should let the young men put the
Guski-qwan
into the ice caves, feed them to the great bear. But then the smoking boat will come and shoot its cannons into the longhouses of the Lituya-kwan, and winter will take them all to their graves.
Guski-qwan
into the ice caves, feed them to the great bear. But then the smoking boat will come and shoot its cannons into the longhouses of the Lituya-kwan, and winter will take them all to their graves.
“Why you are staying here? Why don’t you go back to your own people?”
“Sir, we have risked everything to come here. Our success has been limited, and our expenses high. And now Mr. Severts has lost his vessel. We simply must recover more gold before we can return to civilization.”
“More gold! More gold!” Negook hacks a gob of phlegm onto the ground at his feet. “You must have more gold to buy things in your stores! You get clothes, fancy things. You buy food that comes in metal cans. Your man got to have more gold to buy another boat, but white men already got a lot of boats!” The shaman pounds at empty air with a clenched fist and stamps a calloused foot in the dirt. “Ayah!”
Their logic diverges as each tries to show the other the blunder of their opinions. Hannah argues calmly, as a dispassionate woman reasons with an uncontrollable child. Negook browbeats a fool, an imbecile who does not know how hot the coals are when she sits on a fire.
A clamorous barking of dogs breaks out in the village, and there is a long howl, which Hannah cannot distinguish as animal or human, followed by muffled shouting. In a moment the ragged blanket across Negook’s doorway is thrust aside and a battered Dutch stumbles inside, pushed through the opening by Harky, who follows with his pistol in his hand. Blood streams from a cut across Dutch’s forehead, flowing in a bright mask down his face. His eyes are wide with shock.
Hannah jerks upright and covers her mouth, trapping a gasp beneath her hand. The wall of the hut rattles with a banging of sticks and thrown stones. Outside, Hans’s voice shouts for Michael. Both men burst breathless through the door.
Hans’s hair is disheveled, and his coat is askew. “What in the hell, Dutch? What did you do to rile them?” Michael grips the shotgun to his shoulder, fingers the trigger, and levels the barrel at the door.
Dutch shakes his head. Mouth agape, lips wet and trembling, he looks as if he is about to start crying. Clutching at the wound on his scalp, he flinches, pulls his hand away, and gawks at the blood on his fingers.
Negook shouts through the wall in harsh, barking syllables. A yowling caterwaul of voices responds.
“Klute utardy tseek! Tseek-noon! Tseek-noon!”
“Klute utardy tseek! Tseek-noon! Tseek-noon!”
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