The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [45]
On the river's far side a gray-black rim of rock showed itself over the waterline and just under the bank of mist. Rapidly this dour rim bent outward into a point, of no height to speak of but too sharp-sided to land the canoe.
"On around," Melander decreed, and the pair of canoemen began to skirt the protrusion.
Karlsson glanced inland, drew his paddle into the canoe, and pointed upward.
The fog was lifting from the forest and, abruptly, half a small mountain stepped into view: a startling humped cliff as if one of the cannonball peaks around Sitka had been sawed in half from its summit downward. This very top, start of the astonishing sunder, the pair of men could see only by putting their heads back as far as they could. They might have been peering through the dust of eons rather than the morning's last waft of sea mist. On the sheerness, clumps of long grass somehow had rooted here and there atop basalt columns; together with moss growth, these tufts made the cliff face seem greatly age-spotted, Methuselan.
As the men gaped up, two bald eagles swept soundlessly across the orb of stone.
Around the point Melander and Karlsson pulled the canoe to security and clambered onto the flow of black rock beneath the cliff for a fuller look.
"God's bones, what a place," Melander murmured.
The point had been convulsed into hummocks and parapets, pitted with holes as if having come under siege from small cannon, strewn with a tumble of black boulders the size of oxcarts, and finally riven with tidal troughs.
As Melander and Karlsson stood gawking, surf blasted up from a blowhole behind them. A mocking geyser of white bowed toward them as they whirled to the commotion.
"Aye, well. At least we know what's hung those trees into the middle of the air." Atop the dome of cliff over them, tall evergreens poked forth like feathers in a war bonnet. "Had better find a way up there, I had, and see if I can place us on the map. If any Koloshes show up, trade Wennberg to them for a haunch of beef, aye?"
Melander long-gaited off around the base of the cliff. Staying in range of where they had landed the canoe, Karlsson passed time by exploring into the start of the stand of forest between half-mountain and river. Cedar richly scented the air. To Karlsson, these days of the coast had been a holiday for the nose. No more of the accumulated man-smells of the barracks—damp boots, aged mattresses, tobacco, clothes as winter-stale as the tasks they were worn to...
He was beside the bole of a particularly huge cedar when a fat bead of water ticked his right wrist.
In surprise, Karlsson tipped his head until he was peering straight up. He saw another water bead detach from a limb eighty feet above him and drop like a slow tiny jewel, giving him time to step aside before it struck.
Another, another.
Karlsson stepped, stepped again.
Like strange slowed-down rain the droplets descended two, three to the minute. The forest trees had become sharp green clouds, Karlsson upturned to them as a sunflower will seek the sun, the leisured freshet the pulse of attraction between them. Drop and drop and drop Karlsson evaded lithely, stepping back and forth around the girth of the tree, face up like a drunk man at the gate of God. As coal is said to concentrate to diamond, the coastal world of water spun tiny in these falling crystals: flicker of a mountain stream trying to leap from itself, white veils of spray brushing back from the Pacific's wave brows, quick thin lakes strewn by a half-day rain, all here now flying down in sparkle. The moment bathed Karlsson. His mind went free, vaulted the exertions and dangers of the past many days, nothing existed but the beaded dazzles from above and his body, slow-dancing with water...
"At least I know who not to stand sentry the next time it rains, aye?"
Karlsson halted in place, looked around at Melander, and was promptly splattered