by Ferenc Máté
The porpoise vanished. The salmon jumped one last time when the old killer whale signaled with a splash, and two of his herd shot forward, throwing swells. The porpoise now made a final leap, but fell between the killer whales, and the water turned a foamy red. The herd stopped in an arc and seemed to take turns tearing it to shreds. We didn’t see the salmon again; he must have sensed his escape and made off toward the deep.
Charlie had watched it all and now stood shivering beside me.
Nello yanked a piece of line from the lazarette, grabbed him by the arm as if to shake off what he’d just seen, and said, “C’mon, Charlie, I’m gonna make you a real sailor. Teach you the bowline. The most important knot. You can tie it with one hand and untie it with a thumb.” He wound the line around the base of the mizzen, talking all the while. “First you make a loop we call the hole, then you take the end of the line, that’s the fox, and he comes up the hole, around the tree, and down the hole. You savvy, Charlie?” And then he untied the knot with a flick of the thumb and handed him the line.
Charlie took the line cautiously as if it were a snake, held it waiting for some miracle to come and tie it for him, glanced back to where the killer whales were feeding, then with a couple of soft Chinese words handed Nello back the line. Nello tied it again, slowly, patiently. “Okay, now. You try. Step one. Make the hole.”
Charlie looked at him, took the line, whipped it around the mizzen, bent the loop, shot the bitter end around the tail, then down the hole, and made the most perfect goddamn bowline you ever set eyes on. “Charlie okay?” he asked nervously. Nello looked at me, looked at the knot, looked at the kid. Finally he said something in Italian or Kwakiutl, then came back to the wheel and told me to have a rest; he was anxious to steer again.
Hay, who had been watching all this, shook his head. “It would take me a year to learn that,” he said.
“It took me two,” I said.
Charlie kept tying bowlines like there was no tomorrow.
THE WIND PICKED up some more. By midafternoon the rail was steadily under foam, the ketch struggling, so I let the main off some until a counter-curve billowed at the head, then the ketch stood up and plowed firmly through the seas.
We were coming up on the dogleg island—the cut was still a few miles ahead. I went below, washed up and shaved just in case, as nervous as a kid. When I went back up, Nello smiled. “You got it bad, Cappy.”
“Because I shaved?”
“No. Because you look bewildered.”
I wandered around the deck, checking blocks and leads that didn’t need to be checked, made sure the anchor was lashed, gazed at the sails as if there were something there to see. To calm myself, I sat down in the cockpit and studied the chart without seeing a thing. When I finally looked up, I had no idea where we were. If I’d been at the helm we would have been on the rocks.
12
UNDER THE KELP
They are doomed to extinction…. At almost every gathering, where chiefs or leading men speak, this sad, haunting belief is sure to be referred to.
—JAMES TEIT (1910)
Rocks littered the glittering sea ahead, their size and distance impossible to tell. They vanished behind waves, rose, loomed, then, as if falling backward, disappeared again. To starboard, the sandy tip of the island shoaled and the water paled with silt. Nello studied the chart as if trying to memorize each fathom mark, then he went to sound the bottom with the lead line but the speed of the ketch, the slant of the line, and the deep, hard pitching of the bow made it impossible to feel when the lead touched bottom. The wind rose; we pitched more. He coiled the line and went below, and plotted course lines on the chart.
The heaves and wallows of the hollow seas were much too much for Hay. He lay limply behind me on the narrow aft deck, where I told him he’d feel the least motion, lay there pale, eyes closed, looking ready for the grave.
We sledded down one wave and slammed into the next, and the ketch yawed and green water surged on deck. Hay, lying athwartships with his head high, on the windward side, had one foot wedged between the cockpit coaming and the toerail; other than that, he was free. Spray washed over us. The varnished toerails were as slippery as ice. I quietly cranked the winches, tightened the genny, then the main. The ketch pointed sharply into the wind and heeled some more. The rail stayed under. We slammed into a wave so hard the ship’s bell rang and the whole ketch shuddered. I fell off a bit to pick up speed so I could bring her over quicker. We plunged, then hit with such a slam I thought I’d pop the masts right out of her. The decks were awash; the air dense with spray.
I spun the wheel.
The ketch stood suddenly upright, swung violently to starboard, and, with the genny still sheeted tight, she went down on her other side, burying the rail, and Hay—now nearly upside down—began sliding headfirst, flailing but grabbing nothing, steadily overboard into the churning sea. I lunged for the genny sheet to try to free it but we were already too far over and Hay kept going down. His head skimmed the waves, his left hand tried in vain to grip the rail, and his right reached up as if trying to catch a cloud. He never uttered a sound. Just kept sliding down—then was gone. In the cold water, he’d be dead in twenty minutes.
I released the genny and was sheeting it in starboard when the life ring flew by my head and then Nello was on the bridge deck yelling, “Charlie! Get up here! Charlie!” He lunged to release the sheets while pointing at the dark receding speck, that kept vanishing in the heaving, blinding sea. “For chrissake, Cappy! Turn back!”
Charlie came as best he could up the viciously heeled ladder, his feet catching the sides more often than the rungs. Nello raised Charlie’s arm and pointed it at the dark speck.
“Point, Charlie! Point! No matter how the boat turns, point, ‘cause once we lose him, we won’t find him again.”
I grabbed Nello’s shoulder and spun him around. “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed.
The ketch teetered on a wave, then tumbled down into a trough, and we scrambled for footing. “I’m saving your fucking life.”
“Who would convict me?” I retorted.
He looked at me. “Untie the rope ladder, would you,” he said.
He pushed me aside, turned the wheel, eased out the genny and main, and the ketch turned slowly downwind, south, and now sailed on her bottom toward the distant speck.
With the waves on the stern quarter pushing the keel about, we slipped and rolled like a drunk on a greased floor, the genny collapsing, the main boom pumping, and all the while we hurtled violently ahead. The speck grew. It was a while before I could make out Hay’s head and the life ring right beside it.
We had to swing west and loop around so as not to run him down. We threw off all sheets and let the sails rattle, and the ketch stopped broadside to the wind. We drifted down on him. Acting as a breakwater, the ketch smoothed the seas between us. Hay bobbed, his face contorted from the cold. He was slipping away.
Nello loosened the spare halyard from the mainmast, cleared it past the shrouds, unlashed the rope ladder, and kicked it overboard. “He’ll never climb up on his own,” he said. “I’ll go get him.” We were less than a boat-length from Hay. If we missed fishing him out, we’d run over him and drown him.
I took the halyard out of Nello’s hand. “I got him in there,” I said. And without letting him answer, I kicked off my boots and jumped in. The heat trapped in my clothes kept the cold away for now but I had to hurry. I swam to Hay. His grip was frozen on the life ring. I wasn’t sure he was alive. I slipped the halyard under both his arms—he didn’t seem to notice. The ketch loomed over us. I felt the halyard tighten and grabbed the rope ladder and, as they pulled, I pushed Hay, stiff and waterlogged, up along the side. My teeth chattered and my foot cramped. Then my right hand cramped. I tried to shake out the cramps but I was shivering too hard; my grip slipped on the ladder. The ketch rolled hard and its bilge pushed me under. Then the ladder pulled me up. “C’mon, Cappy!” I heard Nello roar. “Hang on!�
�� But we rolled and the bilge pushed me under again.
The harder I gripped, the worse the cramps got, and my hold slowly loosened. The ketch was crushing me.
There were no more sounds. I let go of the rope.
I SAW CLOUDS like angel wings spread across the sky. In between them, so close I could touch it, was the face of a cherub smiling a gentle smile. “Cappy,” said the cherub softly, “Cappy.” Then something crushed my chest and I coughed up sea water, the echo bouncing down from the sails. Charlie leaned over me. Nello crushed my chest again and I coughed some more but this time there was no water, so he pulled me up and leaned me against the cabin. Charlie wrapped a blanket around me. Hay lay nearby on the deck, barely breathing.
The sun was behind us; we were heading for the pass again. I shivered myself warm in the sun. Once we were inside the islands, the wind eased, the sea calmed, and we sailed smooth and upright as if in a lake. A warm balsam fragrance drifted down from the forests below the snow line.
When Hay was breathing better, I told him to go below and put on some dry clothes. He stopped in the companionway, turned to me sheepishly, and said, “Thank you.”
“Skipper’s duty,” I managed to reply.
WE DROPPED ANCHOR in the lee of a lone islet just north of the Ragged Islands. The peninsula rose stark, steep, and featureless—except for a slender waterfall sparkling in the sun. This was the tip of the funnel; if the Kwakiutls took the best course home, they’d have to pass between the cliff and us.
Nello launched the skiff, saying he wanted to wash the salt out of the clothes under the falls. He took Charlie and the soaked pile, and a fishing pole to do a little jigging, and the rifle, just in case, he said, they tripped over a goat. They pushed off.
“Okay, Charlie,” Nello’s voice came drifting back. “Now I’m gonna teach you how to row.” And they glided across the waters with oars clattering and Nello scolding and the skiff trailing a snaking wake behind it.
HAY, IN HIS dry clothes, slept on the foredeck. I studied with binoculars the waters north and west, and the whole chain of islands right from the southern tip, nook by nook, up to the last island near us. There was nothing—no movement, no canoe.
At midafternoon they fished back and forth off the rocky tip of the northernmost Ragged Islands. Nello was showing Charlie how to jig in the confused waters of the current, where the fish lose all their bearings and snap excitedly at anything that moves.
It seemed they had caught something big, because I saw Nello lean back hard and bend the pole, the skiff tipping from his movements. He pushed Charlie down to get more room or to steady the boat, or to keep him from getting snagged as he brought in the fish. But the fish must have thrown the hook, because the pole went suddenly straight, and Nello sat down in a hurry.
They rowed slowly back and pulled alongside the ketch without a word. Nello helped Charlie aboard, handed up the clothes, but he kept the pole and the rifle, and he said with a forced calm, “Could I have another lure, Cappy? They’re biting like crazy there.” I got a lure and handed it down but, instead of taking it, he took my wrist and said so loud even Hay could hear him, “Why don’t you come and bring the boat hook, in case we land a big one?” He glared at me and motioned me to silence. I felt myself go cold in the warm sun. Don’t know why. Just didn’t like the look in his eyes. I clambered down. He rowed.
“You start a fire, Charlie,” Nello shouted back. “We bring back nice big fish.”
We moved in silence until we were out of range. He looked around worriedly.
“Did you see anything?” he asked.
“Nothing. Why?”
He didn’t answer, just gave some hard pulls toward the island.
We were half-way there when he looked at me and asked, “What color is her hair?”
“Auburn.”
“Nice,” he said.
At the spot where they had fished, he eased the skiff along the edge of the kelp bed that ringed the island’s tip, keeping watch over the side into the deep. Suddenly he stopped the skiff with the oars, turned it broadside to the wind, and created smooth water in its lee. The oar dripped, making rings, blurring the surface, so he shipped it and waited until the rings disappeared. Then he stared down. I looked down too but saw only kelp undulating in the current.
“I’ve never fished like this before,” I said.
“Me neither,” he said. He took both his oars from the locks, floated them in a V to stop the few ripples that the breeze sent across the water, then lowered his face almost to the surface.
“Cappy,” he said solemnly. “We missed them. I can’t figure out how, but we did. They must have passed this morning. At low tide.”
“How do you know?”
“They left something.” He straightened up. “How many people know we’re up here?”
“I don’t know. Hay swore that no one knew. Chow knows.”
“If Chow knows, all China knows.”
“He would never tell.”
“Convince him of that,” he said, and pointed past the guwale into the deep.
I leaned down and cupped my hands around my eyes to cut the light and slowly, slowly they adjusted to the dark.
The tip of the island was a long tongue of pale smooth granite, marked only by some gullies filled with crab claws and broken shells. The tide was in and even though the granite lay under six feet of water, its paleness lit the bottom of the sea. Both sides of the granite dropped rapidly away. On its slopes, near the low-tide line, grew forests of bottle kelp with their broad, brown leaves rippling on long tubers, waving like a drowned-maiden’s hair in the lazy current. And there, in a broad cleft, as evenly carved as the sides of a throne, sat a half-naked figure. His head bobbed lightly as if keeping rhythm with the tide and his long black hair streamed with the kelp. His arms were extended as if he were trying to get up but he couldn’t, because on his legs and propped against his chest, with a rope passing over it and around his limbs, was tied an enormous boulder. His shoulders were powerful Indian shoulders. The hook and flasher glittered in his arm.
I looked at Nello but he wouldn’t look up. He thrust the boat hook deep into the water and hooked it under the rope that held the boulder.
“He hasn’t been there long,” he said. “The crabs haven’t found him yet.”
Around the sitter, the water was empty; only a few shiners darted between his arms.
“A hell of a boulder,” he said. “Whoever put it there sure didn’t do it alone…. Hold this tight, would you, Cappy?” He handed me the boat hook. Then he undressed and slipped quickly over the side. I felt the pole sway as he pulled himself down.
I looked around. The sound was empty. Only the ketch lay peacefully at anchor, a tuft of smoke rising then drifting slowly south.
Nello’s head broke the surface. He slung his arms over the gunwale and hung there, catching his breath. His face was twisted from the cold.
“Its him.” He shivered. “The old man in the picture.”
He let go of the gunwale and the water closed over him.
The sun was low; the wind had died and the water was so calm, the reflections so still, that it seemed nothing could ever happen in the world. Only the current whispered as it hurried along the shore.
Nello burst out behind the stern and I helped him into the skiff. His teeth chattered. “Good shot…forehead…damned good.” He climbed, shivering, into his clothes.
A breath of wind passed over the water and the reflections blurred, and below the surface the kelp fronds and the sitter disappeared.
The sun settled blood red beyond the islands.
NELLO ROWED TO get warm but took his time. He pulled, then let the skiff glide.
“He’ll want a pillow,” he finally said.
“Who?”
“The one that’s still alive. For him,” and he nodded toward the dead man in the sea.
He held the oars and stared at them as if he’d never seen them in his life. When he spoke, his voice tremb
led. “Cappy,” he said, then held his breath.
We sat there, saying nothing. Then he lowered the oars gently into the water. “When a Kwakiutl is killed, he has to have…a ‘pillow.’ Another dead man for him to lie on. To comfort him. Anyone will do. Friend or foe. Anyone. Nearby.” He pulled and I watched him stir a ring of eddies. “Some even kill themselves. But I don’t think he’s the type.”
Somewhere near the islands a seal chasing a fish slammed the water with its tail, and the sound echoed like a shot from the cliff behind us.
13
STARS
If a warrior sat with his legs stretched out, nobody was allowed to step over them, because this would take away his strength. The beds of warriors were on a high platform so that nobody could step over them. After a warrior had killed several enemies, he was allowed to wear grizzly bear claws on a headdress.
—FRANZ BOAS
“Damn!” Nello hissed, and dug the oars into the water and held them still. The skiff stopped. “I promised the kid a fish.” And he spun us around, rowed back to the edge of the kelp, dropped the weighted hook over the side, and jigged. On the third stroke, he caught a good-sized snapper. It writhed and thrashed on the floorboards until I took the boat hook and drove the bronze end through its skull. The fish shook. I twisted the hook until it lay still. Nello rowed, but kept looking at the blood spreading on the floorboards and filling the white around the eye.
