The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [53]
On the next map the penciled line hugged the west shore of Baranof Island to Cape Ommaney; then, as if deflected by what waited south, struck east to Kuiu. Because of Melander's route sketch in the dirt and the knowledge that their port of destination lay southward Karlsson had supposed that they were going along the escape route much like men shinnying down a rope—maybe a sidle of effort once and again, but the total plunge into one direction. It was a revolution in his thinking to sec now that all the time they were canoeing south they also were sidestepping east.
More of angling down the North Pacific, map three brought. The Kuiu-Heceta-Noyes-Suemez-Dall skein of islands and the crossing of Kaigani Strait to the horn tip of the Queen Charlottes. Those days of voyage Karlsson tried to sort in his mind. In the waters along Heceta, was it, where they caught the ugly delicious fish? On which island did the carved creatures rear over Braaf? The great trees beside that dome of cliff, the water diamonds dropping in dazzle, had they been—? Hut the days of this coast blended like its trees, none could be made to stand in memory without the others.
Karlsson unscrolled to the fourth map, the one showing how they crossed Hecate Strait, stairstepped the islands of the past several days, and then, just more than halfway down this chart, at a rough-edged small island with no name written in beside it, Melander's penciling halted. Yes, well...
Melander. In every corner of Karlsson's thoughts, Melander. A painful stutter in the mind, him, his death, the cost to it. Melander with that abrupt alert face atop his length, like the glass cabin up a lighthouse; Melander who believed that an ocean can be fended with, ridden by a Kolosh saddle of wood and reined with these Russian maps. But Melander no longer on hand to dispense such faith. Too well, Karlsson understood that he and Braaf and Wennberg, none of them anything of a Melander and as different from each other as hip-high and upstairs and the moon, needed now to find their own resources to endure this sea run.
At least Braaf had wrinkled smooth again. When Karlsson and Wennberg returned to camp and the who-ought-lead proposition was put to him, it took the young thief an instant to realize he was being polled at all. He blinked then and said as if it were common fact: "You've to do it, Karlsson. I can't read the maps and Wennberg couldn't lead his shadow. You've to do it."
And at least there were the maps, these extra eyes needed to know the intentions of this coast and ocean. Glancing to the bottom of this fourth map, down from where Melander's tracery of route left off, Karlsson saw that the coastline was shown as far as the north most tip of Vancouver's Island. Cape Scott, Melander had penciled in beside the ragged thumb of land. Karlsson recalled Vancouver's Island to be the third of the landforms, those wheres of their escape, scratched into the dirt by Melander the day of last summer. The maps next would bring Vancouver's shore and then the final southering coastline from the Strait of Fuca to Astoria.
Karlsson slipped his fingers beneath the top and bottom edges to lift away this map to those next ones. And was fixed to that motion, as if the chill of beach gravel against Ins knuckles had conducted petrifaction into him.
Beneath the fourth map lay nothing but that gravel.
Karlsson drew in a breath which met his heart at the top of his throat.
Came to his feet, yanked a brand from the fire for light, and was gone past the sheltered sleeping lengths of Braaf and Wennberg on his way to the canoe.
There he dug through the entire stowage. Then dug again, and still found only what lie dreaded most, confirmation.
There weren't more maps. The fourth map was the last of the scroll.
"Narrow enough matter it was ... Needed to paw through every bedamned scrap of sheet..." Melander's