The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [72]
"Working like Finns at it," observed Braaf. "Digging paddles that deep, you'd think their arms'd pull off."
Wennberg, still not wanting to accept: "But how in Judas—M"
Karlsson had plucked the glass back from him and was studying again. "Laying up over the prows there. Harpoons. They paddle out and kill whales."
... And small fish we'd be for them. Holy Ghost and any of the others, what'll we...
Karlsson felt a dry clot form hard at the top of his throat as he watched the long canoes—five, six, seven all together. Six paddlers at work in each and two further men, a steersman aft and likely the harpooner forward, to scan the ocean like fish hawks.
Rare for him, Braaf was openly perturbed; his right leg jigged lightly in place, as if testing for run. Wennberg sought to look stolid, but Karlsson noticed him swallow at his own throat-pebble of fear.
In the next hour or so the canoe procession angled between the three watchers and the kettle island, closing slowly on the beach in front of the village. A strenuous chant—"bastards sound like hell let loose," Wennberg appraised—could be heard now from the whalemen. Braaf was first to see what was intended: they would employ high tide to beach their sea creature.
The towline soon was taken from the lead canoe by quick hands ashore and the villagers leaned back in pull as the canoe crew carried their craft high onto the beach. The harpooner, a man larger than the others, was followed to the surf's edge by a swirling attendance of women and children. Canoe followed canoe now in swift unharnessing, the hawser at last only between the whale carcass and the people of the shore, tug-of-war between nature's most vast creature and its most pursuitful.
Slowly the gray form, a reef of flesh, crept toward tide line.
Just short, the tugging ceased. The children of the village ran to the towline and took places, small beads among larger. Then as it is said, a long pull—a strong pull—and a pull all together—the generations of the village drew the whale the last yards up onto their beach.
"So?" This was put by Braaf, in confoundment.
"Yes, so." If this portion of coast was populated with such sea hunters, the problem was beyond any ready words. Karlsson was casting for anything more to say when Wennberg blurted:
"This is a how-d'ye-do we don't need! You bastard."
"Karlsson, you touched us in at this island, is there nothing you can't make goose shit of?"
"Rather be ashore there to welcome those Koloshes, would you?" That held Wennberg for an instant, and Karlsson used it to go on: "One thing we can do. Need do. Travel from here by night."
This notion set Braaf to chewing at the corner of bis mouth. Wennberg meanwhile tried to lurch the argument sideways.
"But these whale chasers—why n't they be like other Koloshes, lay up now and celebrate themselves silly? Eat and drink and tumble one another in the bushes and the like, won't they now? Reason it, Karlsson. What if we paddle wide of them here, right now, out from this island and swing to shore downcoast?"
... A notion, there. Get away maybe while they're prancing around that whale-But...
"This lot may cut capers for a while," Karlsson allowed, "but what if there're more crews, still out there running down whales? Which risk would you rather, dark or meeting a pack of those canoes?"
"Dark," voted Braaf rapidly. "And blacker, better."
Wennberg stared morosely toward shore, where the whale had been lashed into place and the village people seemed to be standing back and admiring.
"Oh, Judas's ball," he at last gritted out. "Dark, dark, dark. These fish-fuckers down this coast, whyn't they just squat on their asses and look wise all the while like the Sitka Koloshes?"
***
A watching clay, they would need to make it.
Wennberg claimed the top of the island where the seaward side could be scanned for further canoes, "Spares me some hours with you pair," he rapped out,