The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [51]
Melander's sailor-habited scrutiny of the water around, every chance of rock or shoal or tide rip announced.
The reminding word to Braaf when he made his habitual dawdle in shifting his paddle.
Regulation on Wennberg's bluster, which evidently even Wennberg had come to rely on.
The musing parleys with Karlsson, treetop communing with stone.
Day on day and all the waking hours of those days, Such losses of Melander would be exacted now, in silences conspicuous where there ought have rung the watchword of that voice—aye?
***
Midday, the canoe ashore at the next southward island, Melander's three-man crew yet trying to unbelieve the folded-forward body in the trench of cedar.
Three men, each with new age on him. During the crossing Wennberg had blurted periodic and profound curses, hut now said nothing, seemed to be gritting against whatever slunk on its way next. Braaf, too, stood still and wordless as a post. Karlsson it was who stepped first out of the silence.
"We need to bury him."
They managed with Karlsson's ax, the gaff, and the cooking pot to gouge a shallow grave in the forest floor. Then, with struggle, they brought the body from the canoe. Queerly, lifelessness had made Melander greatly heavy to carry, even with Wennberg's strength counted into the task, while at the same time the sense of death somehow seemed to thin the gravity around Braaf and Karlsson and Wennberg. This emotional addle, not a man of them would have known how to utter. But now in each there swirled atop the dread and confusion and gut gall from Melander's killing an almost giddy feel of ascension. Of being up high and more alert than ever before, alert in every hair, aware of all sides of one's self. It lasts not long—likely the human spirit would burn to blue ash in more than moments of such atmosphere—but the sensation expends the wonder that must course through us at such times: Death singled thee, not me.
They dared not spare sailcloth for a shroud. Karlsson took up the ax, whacked limbs from nearby spruce. Melander's last rest along this green coast would he under boughs rather than atop them.
Next, dirt was pushed into the grave. When they had done, Karlsson stepped amid the loose soil. Trod down his right heel, his left. Moved sideways, repeated.
Wennberg and Braaf looked loath, but in a minute joined in the tromp.
Firm dirt over Melander, they hefted stones from the beach and piled them onto the gravetop to discourage—more likely, merely delay—animals.
In the unending windstorm of history, how Sven Melander of Gotland and the sea was put to earth could not possibly make a speck's difference. Vet to these three this forest grave seemed to matter all. They had done now what could be thought of, except—
Karlsson and Braaf looked to Wennberg.
The broad man licked his lips as if against a sour taste, and much white was showing at the corners of his eyes.
"No. Goddamn, no. I don't believe in that guff anymore. Particularly after this."
"Just do it for the words," Braaf murmured. "Do the words for Melander."
Wennber greyed Braaf; Karlsson. Then in a low rapid rumble he delivered the psalm:
"... A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.... We spend our years as a tale that is told.... So teach us to number our days ...'"
***
The next bad time was quick to come.
They needed a meal, and somehow pieced one together. Just after, crossing the campsite on one fetch or another—all the budget of fuss Melander had attended to now needed to be shared out—Wennberg clomped past the sitting Braaf. Stopped, and examined.
"What's here on the back of you, then?" Wennberg demanded.
Braaf glanced dully up toward the blacksmith. Slipping his arms from the Aleut parka, lie brought the garment around for a look.
Across the shoulders and the middle of the back showed small dark splats, as if a rusty rain had fallen.
The three men stared at the stains where Melander's blood had showered forward.
At last Wennberg shifted awkwardly.