The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [61]
"No," said Karlsson. "Channel again, tomorrow."
... and the day after that, and maybe another and another, then it's ocean again, Braaf, bigger yet....
And after that, Karlsson knew but did not say either, the expanse beyond the edge of the map.
Days of rain, those four next.
Of channel water like a gray-blue field very gently stirred by wind.
Of clouds lopping the mountains, so that they seemed strange shagged buttes of green.
Of soft rattle of wings as gulls would rise in a hundred from a shore point of gravel.
Of fog walking the top of the forest in morning.
... God's bones, look at it tumble. Melander, you'd have had the words for it, you've maybe seen the like, but I...
Alongshore to the southeast of the canoemen a fishing fleet stood in long file, sails of many shapes bright against the forest.
As Braaf and Wennberg and Karlsson ogled, the fleet toppled and was folded back into the water for the next stunt of surf.
This time, not ghost boats hut round white islets, a pretty archipelago of froth.
Karlsson, Wennberg, Braaf stared on at the vanishment, the magical refashioning—this version, momentary cottages shining with whitewash.
The onlooking three considered that already the voyage had shown them ample surf for their lifetimes. But eruption of this sort was of new order altogether: so powerful the water in this tidal expanse that it sought to cavort up into the sky. As shown by the fourth Tebenkov map this was the part of the coast where the Pacific abruptly got two harsh pries against the continent, broad rough thrusts of water driven in like points of a clawbar through the offshore layer of islands. First of these shore gaps where the Pacific prised had been Mil ban ke Sound, the four days before. The second, and much greater, was here—Queen Charlotte Sound.
"Tomorrow's work, that," pronounced Karlsson, and nobody arguing this in the least, they made camp.
Usual now, ever since the ordeal of Mil ban ke, Karlsson waking to the peg of warmth between his groin and his belly. "Pride of the morning," Melander called such night-born rearing‹. "If your britches don't bulge at dawn it's a scant day ahead, aye?" Hut from all Karlsson could tell, these particular full-rigged longings seemed to be put up not by the habited urges of a man's blood hut by his nights of dream. In each dark now matters chased one another like squirrels, Småland and New Archangel somehow bordered together, people of gone years thrust their faces inside hi skull. Dream maybe was a wild sentinel against the clutch of this coast; perhaps demanded that the night mind of Karlsson hear its howling tales instead of brood on predicament. Whatever, all of it built and built through the nights into the wanting which he awoke to. Made him enter each morning in a mood to want any of a variety of things that were nowhere in the offing—a woman, time under a roof, fresh clothes, a square meal, existence without Wennberg. Just now, though, the one particular wanting took up all capacity in Karlsson. He wanted not to be captaining this canoe voyage, and more than that, not on this shore brink of Queen Charlotte Sound, and more than that again, not on this day of crossing that Sound.
Karlsson lay on his side, waiting for the longing to unstiffen. Then rose and went into the forest to start the day with a pee.
"We could make a wintering of it."
The words halted Karlsson and Braaf in mid-chew. Carefully they eyed across the fire, as if to be sure some daft stranger had not put on Wenn berg's whiskers this morning.
"Keep snug here, we could," the broad man was saying. "You're clever with an ax, Karlsson, whyn't we grapple together a shelter of some sort, wait out this pissy winter?"
Braaf palmed a hand out and up as if to catch rain, gazed questioningly into the air. The sky over the three men was as clear as if scoured to blue base. A moment, it took Wennberg to catch Braafs mockery.
"Hell swallow you, Braaf. So it's not pissing down rain just now. That only means it will tomorrow and the forty