The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [73]
Karlsson and Braaf stayed to where they could see across to the village. One Kolosh—Karlsson thought he might be the big harpooner from the lead canoe—had sliced a saddle of flesh from the whale's back and with his train of admirers disappeared into a longhouse with it. Otherwise, though, all the come-and-go of the village still was around the long blunt-nosed carcass.
Sen tried for the day this way, life maybe depending on what he and Braaf could bring into their eyes and calculate from it, Karlsson felt the dividing come to him again. The kettle island, green flow of the shore horizon, the water span around, the might of the whale, the speckle of white barnacle scars along its vast skin, the festival the Koloshes were going through, all this pageantry of what the world could be held a side of his mind even as he sorted at predicament.
"Sweden," Evidently Braaf's mind was in two, as well. "Tell me truth, Karlsson. Think we'll see it again?"
Karlsson studied the kettle island as if it were Braaf's question. Then answered:
"I won't."
Braaf turned to him in quick regard. "What, you think we can't keep in life? Those Kolosh eg across there—?"
"No. Not that. I'm not going back."
"But then, why're you—the place Astoria, what about—?"
"Astoria, we all need find. And will. It's the foothold of this part of the world. Only one, so far as we know. Or Melander knew. But once there I'll stay to America."
"And do what?"
"New land, here. Christ knows, we've seen skeins of it along this coast. Melander said the Americans are taking this shore. Reason for Astoria, must be. New land is land to clear. A timberman can find a place in that."
On the foreshore the Koloshes were gathered close around the whale. They seemed to be listening raptly to one of their number, the big harpooner again. Among the New Archangel whites it was lore that no Kolosh could so much as glance up at the weather without feeling the need for a speech.
"What d'you suppose he's preaching, Parson Kolosh there?"
"I don't have any glint of it. Maybe saying what it's like to hunt a mountain of creature like that."
Another whaleman seemed to be marking off the carcass into portions. Six or eight old men, still as cormorants, stood watching him.
"Are they brave, Karlsson? To chase whales? Or just fools?"
"Might be more than one yes to that."
The oration at last concluded, the villagers circled the whale and began to cut at the great form.
"Butchering it, looks like they are! Not going to eat that thing, can they he?"
"This is all Dutch to me. Just count it luck that they're busy over there, whatever the Christ it is they're doing."
Blocks of blubber began to be stripped from the carcass. The whale was open now like a hillside being mined; a few of the women disappeared entirely inside the carcass.
"Must have stomachs like leather," Braaf marveled. "I'm hungry as a hawk, but walking around in that thing and then eating it—"
Braaf was quiet awhile. Then confirmed: "So you'll stay to this coast?"
"This end of America, anyway. Across the world from Småland and out from under the Russians."
"Along here with these Kolosh whale hounds?"
"They can't he everywhere of this coast. It just seems so, today."
Braaf shook his head slowly. "Stockholm for me. These years away, they'll have forgot me, the shopkeepers and the high ones. There'll he my new land, their shops and purses."
The two men turned squarely to each other a moment, as if a good-bye was about to be offered. Instead, Karlsson gave Braaf the quick serious smile and said: "Life's harvest to us both, Braaf."
Meeting the ocean swell at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the brig rocked and dipped as though in introduction. A bob and curtsy, it may have been, for the vessel was christened the June.
A quick ship, the Jane, as a Cape May brig will be; but also being of Yankee registry, a working and earning one too. Within its hold lay eleven thousand feet of recent forest, freshly taken aboard at one of the sawmill settlements that were popping into existence along Puget Sound