Heartbroke Bay (26 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
The door springs open behind him, and a gust of wind billows the canvas roof over their heads. The lantern flares, swinging and throwing wild, harsh shadows across the walls. Negook spins on his heel and steps out into the darkness.
The miners sit silent, speechless, and frozen in their places, watching as the rain blowing in through the open door draws a faint, glistening pattern in the light of the lantern until Michael rises to his feet, walks to the door, and peers out into the night. The rain splinters against his face for a moment before he closes the door, wipes a hand across his eyes. Drops of water turn silver against the black of his hair, and Hannah’s breath catches, arrested by the sight of how beautiful he is.
“This bear, Dutch. Where was it you saw this silver bear?”
Dutch sits upright on his stump, looking puzzled by the question. “What? The silver bear? I seen it down to the west there, on that little creek what comes from behind a hill. Why?”
Michael pulls a handkerchief from a hip pocket and rubs his face before answering. “These Indians. They give away gold, but seem uncommonly worried about some silver bear. Seems queer, that’s all.”
Folding the handkerchief carefully, he squares the edges, patting it flat. “Must be a pretty valuable bear.”
When dawn comes, the sky is as clear and blue as a robin’s egg. The air carries a crisp sweetness, like the smell of something clean, and the highest ridges along the fjord are laced with fresh snow. Hans, Harky, and Dutch prepare to settle into the gut work of mining, barrowing stones and earth into a sluice. Michael settles an oar into the thole pins of the skiff, passes a loop of line over the shaft, and nestles a pack stuffed with rope, water, and ammunition into the bow along with Hannah’s oilskin coat and the shotgun, wrapped in a square of tarpaulin cloth in case of rain.
Hans thinks of nothing but gold these days—how to move more earth, channel more water, recover more ore—and seemed distracted when Hannah asked his permission to join Michael on a hunt deep into the fjord. Now Nelson frowns at the sight of his wife climbing into the skiff with the Irishman, but unable to think of an excuse to rescind his consent, he simply growls, “Be back before dark.” The tide is rising, covering a band of seaweed along the rim of the cove.
“We’ll ride the flood in,” says Michael. “That’ll save me rowing. And with Mrs. Nelson along to carry the pack and help with the skinning, I’ll be able to get a young goat and still ride the ebb back down the fjord. We’ll be home well before sunset.”
Hans looks dark and doubtful. Hannah is careful not to look at Michael as she climbs into the skiff, but turns and smiles with a wave at her husband, feeling deceitful.
The tide hurries the skiff along the beach and close along the upthrust walls of the fjord. Icebergs blue as the sky drift and sparkle in the sun and as Michael’s strong strokes wend the skiff expertly through the belts of floating ice, Hannah has a sense of being in another world. Seals at rest on low, bobbing icebergs raise their heads to stare as the skiff passes. Once away from camp, Hannah is keenly aware of being alone with the Irishman. He knows this by her silence and by the way she avoids his eye.
An hour later the keel scrapes against a mossy, bouldered beach, and Michael jumps out to steady the hull. Moving to the bow, he hoists the pack to one shoulder, braces the skiff with both hands, and instructs Hannah to step out. When she slips on the slick stones underfoot, he catches her about the waist, lifting her effortlessly to her feet; she blushes at the firm touch of his hands.
They secure the skiff, binding a boulder into a double loop of line for an anchor, then begin climbing toward the cloudless sky. The mountain rises steeply, and Hannah quickly finds herself warm and panting. Michael goes ahead, the shotgun slung down his back, searching out a route that switchbacks along grass-covered ledges, across slopes of loose, rattling shale. High overhead, below the new snow, a small herd of goats forms a cluster of white dots in the alpine. They climb steadily higher, ascending first through alder, then grasses, then into a band of low plants blushing red at the brazen approach of autumn.
Far below, a pencil stroke of coastline unreels to the south. In the north, the spires of the mountains reach up from shadowed valleys, turning rose-colored, then white as the sun rises. To the west the sea is a shimmering expanse of silk.
Hannah and Michael pause in their climbing to watch the thin line of the surf knit itself to the land, the rise and fall of the swell like a loom weaving silently through beds of kelp until some trick of the wind brings the rumble of the waves to them on their perch high above the sea. Another shift of the wind, and they hear the mad, muddy rush of a river tumbling from a cliff at the head of the fjord.
From above, the elements of the world are obvious. Bold faces of stone worked smooth by the glacier stand high above plains of blue ice. Steep valleys carved by eons of rushing water fall away in all directions. Below, the shape of the sea fits neatly into the land, then reaches out, curving sinuously into the horizon, blending sky, stone, ice, and water together into a complete picture of creation.
Hannah is breathless from the climb and envious of the eagles and goats that awaken and rise from their beds to such a vista every day. All around, the immensity of the mountains gives way to the space of the sky, and she lifts up her arms, feeling free.
Michael motions for her to bend low. Pointing at a large shoulder of stone a hundred yards away, he whispers, “The goats are just over there.”
Hannah tucks her heavy wool skirt about her knees and crouches, suddenly aware that the beauty of the day is about to give way to killing.
“Stay here,” Michael directs her. “I’ll go up and come down on them from above.” Shading his eyes against the sun to inspect the route of the stalk, he says, “This shotgun has a limited range. I’ll have to get close.”
Shrugging out of the pack, he drops it to the ground and digs out a handful of shells, gives Hannah a dazzling smile, and crawls away, slithering from shadow to shadow. Watching him go, Hannah understands he is showing off for her, moving silently and smoothly through the broken stones and heather; once he glances back to see if she is watching, and she wonders at the joy men find in killing. Then she remembers Uliah Witt’s description of most interplay between men and women as simple biology: man, the provider, woman the nester. She pictures herself standing between Michael, the huntsman, and her husband, who digs at the ground, both compelled by the same urges.
But I have never known a man like him,
she thinks, meaning Michael’s exuberance, his willingness to joke, sing out loud, and laugh. Hans, she realizes, has never made her laugh. She feels a twinge of guilt, as if the very thought has made her somehow unfaithful. Then she watches as Michael eases forward on hands and knees, and feels that which binds her to Hans to be on the verge of fleeing, of casting itself into this vast and beautiful wilderness.
she thinks, meaning Michael’s exuberance, his willingness to joke, sing out loud, and laugh. Hans, she realizes, has never made her laugh. She feels a twinge of guilt, as if the very thought has made her somehow unfaithful. Then she watches as Michael eases forward on hands and knees, and feels that which binds her to Hans to be on the verge of fleeing, of casting itself into this vast and beautiful wilderness.
A twist in the wind ends the hunt before Michael can raise his gun. The cool air over the snow carries his scent like a thin tendril of smoke to the delicate nose of an old nanny grazing close to the ridge. She springs away, scattering stones that clatter and slide down the mountain, her fright sending the herd bounding out of range.
Michael rises to his feet, watching the goats go, then turns toward Hannah and shrugs. He returns with long, bounding strides, springing down the steep hill from foothold to foothold with the balance and grace of a stag. He smiles. “We’re all getting a bit tired of goat meat anyhow.”
They share a drink from the flannel-covered canteen. The water is sweet and cool. They sit together quietly, watching a soaring eagle pass below them. The sun falls into the layer of clouds and emerges from below to bathe the sea with a color that is between scarlet and gold. Michael sweeps a hand before him and sighs. “All this space . . . ,” he says.
She knows what he means, how it reduces you.
Hannah looks at the color of the sea and feels the bite of winter in a breeze drifting down from the snow-covered peaks. “It does make the gold seem less important,” she replies.
“Aye,” says Michael, coming to his feet and holding out a hand to Hannah, “but it also makes our larder seem rather empty. We better get on. We’ll try for a seal on the way back.” Their hands linger together as she rises. Hannah feels the planet wobble beneath her and pulls away.
Ice hisses and grumbles at their passing as the tide draws the skiff down-fjord. Aging bergs, the size and shape of wrecked houses, fracture and splinter into smaller bits to the sound of rifle cracks, booms, and echoes. As the sun lowers toward the horizon, points of light begin to sparkle along the ice’s fissures and serrated edges.
Michael rows slowly, letting the tide and the breeze work the boat westward. The color of the sun on the water, the feel of the oars in his hands, and the penny-pipe calls of seagulls draw him into a waking dream of his childhood, when he rowed with his father through the chill, gloaming waters of Ireland, and in his mind he rows now among the reefs of the Atlantic instead of between Pacific icebergs.
The birds among the alders and willow thickets ashore have just begun to mourn the approaching loss of daylight, when Michael spots a herd of seals on a low, tabular berg. Shipping the oars, he draws the gun.
“Don’t move,” he instructs Hannah, raising the weapon to his shoulder. “The wind will drift us down on them.”
The skiff creeps inexorably closer, slowly broadsiding itself to the sleeping seals. A mother on lookout raises her head and inspects the strange apparition, stealing quick glances over her shoulder at the pups behind her. Hannah closes her eyes and holds her breath; Michael braces the gun; the ice mumbles and grates against the hull. The sleeping seals, used to the chatter and pop of the ice, hear nothing unusual and slumber on.
The lookout grows nervous, staring wide-eyed and considering alarm, but stays her warning too long. When Michael fires, Hannah jumps at the report and opens her eyes to the panicked splashing of the fleeing herd. A young seal remains behind, its body arching and thrashing. A bright flower of blood blooms intensely red against the blue ice, and as the skiff comes alongside, the wounded seal rights itself, lowers its head, and considers its approaching executioners with eyes huge and round with fear.
The eyes of the seal as it regards the approaching knife in Michael’s hand are as tender and soft as anything the Irishman has ever seen. The rowing dream of childhood still lingering, he sees in the dark and frightened orbs an image of himself looking up at his father as his elder loomed over him, damning his son’s English blood and preparing to beat him for something minor. A tear of self-pity starts at the corner of Michael’s eye. Hannah, believing the tear is for the seal, says to herself, against her own will,
I could love this man—
and knows that the world has suddenly become a very bright and dangerous place.
I could love this man—
and knows that the world has suddenly become a very bright and dangerous place.
A stab and a slice, and the seal’s young life is ended. Michael strips to the waist before opening the small body. The gut cavity steams and smokes in the cool air. Red to his wrists, he asks Hannah to hold the carcass by the hind flippers while he works. The spotted and glistening hide, layered in fat, peels away in a blanket that smells strongly of fish and the sea.
Hannah stacks the purple meat in neat piles on the hide. Michael folds the lot into the tarpaulin, forming a pack, which he hoists to his shoulder and carries to the skiff. After rinsing his hands in seawater, rubbing at his nails and wrists to clear them of blood, he helps Hannah into the skiff. The smell of warm blood and meat fills the air.
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