Agviq

by Michael Armstrong

  Most of the villagers had been for hunting seals, and small parties had gone out, with a little success. Others had been for using what fuel they had left, exploring the outlying villages, and seeing what food remained—raiding other villages, if there were people still there who would resist sharing their food. Malgi had been firm. He and his partners would prepare to hunt for whales. Igaluk and a few had gone along with him, but most had given up the idea. Too much work for too little a chance.

  Now the whales had come. And everyone wanted to join Malgi’s crew. He would have none of it.

  He stormed off down the street to the Public Safety Office, Claudia hurrying to keep up with him. Puvak laughed and talked with the villagers. He turned and saw Malgi walking away, the bright orange float bobbing on his back. The boy waved off a question, and ran to follow Malgi and Claudia.

  Malgi burst into the PSO garage, where Tuttu and Amaguq worked on the umiaq. The final coat of fiberglass had been applied the day before, and the room still reeked of the bittersweet-smelling paint. Tuttu wound a length of rope along the gunwales while Amaguq lashed the seats tight to the frame. Malgi threw the big float into the umiaq, then wandered over to the pile of whaling gear laid out on a pallet.

  “Load the umiaq, Tuttu,” he said. “We must hurry.”

  “Grandfather,” Tuttu asked. “What . . . ?”

  “Agviq!” the old man said, whirling to face him. “Puvak saw the whale! Two of them, well south of the point. We must hurry! Who knows if there will be other whales?”

  “Agviq!” Amaguq asked. “It is true?”

  Puvak had come inside, practically dancing with his excitement. Claudia had not seen him as proud since the time he had killed his first seal. “I saw the whale,” he said. “Out in the lead, a narrow lead.”

  Malgi frowned at the boy, quickly glanced at Claudia, giving her that inquisitive look again. She would see that look often, she thought. She could almost guess his question.

  “Should we be so proud of that which the whale lets us do?” Malgi asked.

  Claudia did not bother to answer directly; it was another of his damn rhetorical questions. “Agviq honors those who are worthy,” she said. She noticed her voice had that tone it would get when she had taught Anthropology 101, a sort of snotty teacher tone that did not altogether displease her. “Perhaps someone should not boast about such honor.” Malgi glared at Puvak, and Claudia looked over at the young man. She smiled, nodded slightly, encouraging him.

  Puvak blushed, looked down. “Agviq let someone see him,” he said. “Someone is honored that he should be granted this blessing.”

  Good boy, she thought. Refer to yourself in the third person. Good boy.

  “The whale,” Tuttu whispered. “Grandfather, is it time then? Are we ready?”

  “If we are worthy,” he said. Malgi bowed his head for a moment, then looked up. “Get the gear and umiaq ready, Tuttu, and pull it down to the bluffs.” He turned to Claudia. “Go find that young hunter, Aluaq, and the Russian. Meet us on the beach.” The old man opened wide the garage doors, and the bright morning sun shone on the gleaming white boat. A chill breeze tickled at the ruff of Malgi’s hood. He turned into the wind, facing Claudia by the door. “Agviq!” he said. “We will get a whale.” He caught Claudia’s eye, grinned, and shook his head. “If the whale so blesses us.”

  * * *

  The whaling and camping gear had been piled inside the umiaq, and the umiaq strapped to the heavy kamotiq sled. Natchiq and Tuttu jogged ahead to clear the old trail through the ice ridge, while the rest of the crew pulled the sled down the bluff and onto the flat sea ice. Puvak had argued for harnessing the young pups, to get them used to pulling with the big dogs, but Malgi gently dashed his enthusiasm. “Plenty of time for the pups to learn next fall,” he said, “and we don’t have enough big dogs anyway.” So Claudia, Puvak, Grigor, and Aluaq became human sled dogs. Again, Claudia thought, thinking of the pulkka sled she had dragged while sealing. Half my life feels like it’s been spent walking, hauling sleds like a dog.

  Claudia had been the only woman allowed to come on the ice, not just because Malgi had decided she would advise them on the proper whaling methods, but because the men thought she was not menstruating. Malgi had been sure of that taboo, that women in the midst of their monthly bleeding could not be on the ice. It would not please agviq. In the close quarters of the qaregi, everyone knew that Masu and Tammy were in their periods. But she spotted only a little, and she hid her pads and tossed them in the fire when no one was looking.

  As she trudged across the ice, Claudia adjusted the padded rope that crossed over her shoulders and under her left breast, and leaned into the line. On the flat, smooth ice of the tuvaq they could get up some speed, keep their momentum going. But the winds had blown snow across their old trail, and hitting the packed snow was like wading through sand. As they came closer to the high ridge of ice that had been pushed up at the edge of shallow water, the tuvaq became buckled and rough. After a few steps, she realized that they also struggled uphill.

  Then, the movement of the kamotiq became not one smooth glide, but a series of jerks. Lean into the harnesses, yank the sled forward until some obstruction stopped them. Pause, take a breath, jerk the sled forward again.

  A hundred yards or so away she heard a chainsaw whine. Natchiq, eternal guardian of sacred petroleum products, had grudgingly consented to ration a gallon of gas so they could cut a path through the ridge with the chainsaw. His decision had been made easier when Malgi had told him he and Tuttu would be cutting the trail. As she helped pull the sled, Claudia wished Natchiq had been assigned to her duty. Perhaps he would have then consented to a few more gallons for a sno-go.

  Over the ridge ahead of her the steam rose, just as Puvak had described it, though the steam seemed wispy now. In the clouds a band of dark blue hovered almost directly overhead—the water sky, Claudia realized. The clouds reflected the lead below, and the nearness of the water sky meant that open water was just beyond the ice ridge.

  By the time they caught up with Tuttu and Natchiq, the two men still hadn’t opened the trail through the jumbled blocks of ice that formed the ridge. Well, Claudia thought, she couldn’t be too critical. Even with a backhoe it might have taken them days to make a perfect trail. The narrow trail so diligently broken through the winter had drifted over with blowing snow; in some parts, chunks of ice had broken loose and fallen on the trail. Too, the trail that had been just right for the smaller pulkka sleds was hardly wide enough for the big kamotiq. They rested at the crest of the ridge.

  From the top of the ridge they could easily see the open lead snaking between the flaw edge and the pack ice beyond. They’d been lucky: the uiniq, the lead, came close to the grounded ice, and they would not have to venture too far out on the ice edge. While thanking the luck, Claudia also considered the fickle conditions of spring ice. Another lead could lie beyond this one, and that might be the one the whales took. Or, the wind could blow, shutting off the lead, or breaking the edge loose.

  A couple of the men went down to help break trail. Claudia shrugged off her harness and started to help, but Malgi tapped her on her shoulder. “Let’s see those binoculars of yours,” he said.

  She reached beneath the folds of the white covering over her atigi, and fumbled for the Nikons dangling around her neck, underneath the atigi. Claudia pulled the cord of the binoculars over her head and out from under the two braids over her breasts. Malgi took the binoculars, squinted through them and scanned up and down the open lead.

  Claudia searched, too, looking for fountains of spray as the whales exhaled, or the splashes as they dove. Nothing. Malgi stopped for a moment, focused on something, then shook his head. He handed the binoculars back to her.

  “Agviq has gone on,” he said. “The chainsaws may scare the whales off. Maybe we shouldn’t run them . . . ?”

  Claudia shrugged. Of course they shouldn’t. But if they didn’t use the saws, it would take that much longer
to make a path. In any case, the whales had already been scared off, so they might as well finish. Still . . . She did not say these thoughts, though.

  “Well, the harm’s done now, anyway,” Malgi said, answering his own question.

  Natchiq cut the chainsaw off and waved up at them. The path was now clear enough down to the flat ice. Small chunks of ice still littered the trail, but they had moved away the larger boulders that could break the sled runners or grab at the fabric of the umiaq. Claudia put the Nikons back around her neck, inside their case, and shrugged on her harness.

  They swung the ropes around to the side of the kamotiq, in sort of a reverse fan hitch. Gravity pulled the sled down, they guided it. The hunters leaned back into the lines, kicking their heels in. Natchiq laid the chainsaw down and joined Tuttu at a line at the rear. The two men pushed at the back of the kamotiq, it slid forward, then everyone held on as sled, umiaq, and gear roared down the slope. And then they were on the flat ice.

  Camp went up quickly, because it had to be taken down quickly if the ice moved. Tuttu unlashed the umiaq from the sled and the men picked it up and carried it to the ice edge, bow forward. Claudia helped Malgi and Puvak with the sled, turning it so one side faced a northeasterly wind blowing up the coast, parallel to the lead. They set up a wall tent next to the sled, so the sled would make a bench and table for their camp. The other hunters carried boxes and bundles into the tent, putting a Coleman gas stove on the sled. Natchiq went and got the chainsaw. Quickly, under Malgi’s scowls, he cut a pile of snowblocks from a packed snowdrift. He and Tuttu laid the blocks behind the sled and around the lead side of camp—a blind.

  “To keep agviq from seeing us,” Tuttu explained.

  In the umiaq Malgi helped Tuttu arrange the whaling gear. At the bow of the boat would sit Natchiq the harpoonist. Malgi set the darting gun point skyward, the trigger rod well away from any accidental bumping. A line ran from the harpoon to a coil of rope behind the bow seat, and three orange fishing floats were attached to the harpoon line. One paddle lay across the bow seat, two paddles lay across each of the three middle seats, and an eighth paddle was set across the stern seat. Bailing buckets, extra paddles, more lines, a whaling iron, and a large canvas bag of miscellaneous equipment had been lashed or secured under seats or to the deck. Behind the harpoonist’s seat was a small ax hanging by a loop in its handle, blade and ax head resting inside a plastic bottle lashed to a thwart. The umiaq was ready.

  Claudia took out her binoculars, Puvak started melting a pan of blue ice on the stove, and the other hunters settled in to wait. Agviq will come or he will not, and all we have to do is wait, she thought.

  Just wait.

  * * *

  She did not know how long they waited, because only Tuttu had a working watch and he had left it on shore. Long enough for the cold to seep into her toes, Claudia thought. The sun rose high to the south and slid low to the west, so she knew it had to be getting late in the day. Such light made seeing better, though: the low light scattered flat across the open lead, making anything in the water seem to leap up from the slightly choppy surface.

  Her toes felt numb and her fingers felt numb but the spring cold did not pierce through her like the winter cold. It did not turn her into one seeming hunk of ice, and she knew that all she had to do to warm up was get up and walk around. Malgi said that if any of them got cold, they could get up one or two at a time and walk to the top of the ice ridge. If they were quiet, he said, they could even work on the trail.

  Claudia had gotten up to stamp the cold out of her toes and join Aluaq up on the ridge when the young man shouted down toward her. She yelled up at him, and then saw that he was pointing at something far out on the other side of the lead. Claudia turned, snatching for her Nikons. Twisting and turning the lenses, trying not to breathe on the binocs and fog them, she looked. And she saw it.

  A plume sprayed up from what at first seemed a small volcano on a black island of ice. Claudia focused the binoculars. The island undulated, rolled forward into a low hill, and disappeared. Next to it, another such island rose, and the whale exhaled a cloud of sea spray. And then a third whale rose behind the second, and blew.

  She dropped the binoculars as she ran to the ice edge. Her yells had merged with Aluaq’s and with Tuttu’s and the whole crew’s. Natchiq got into the boat first. Amaguq and his son jumped in behind him. Grigor had risen from a nap and was madly tying up his boots. Aluaq ran down from the ice ridge, still screaming “Agviq! Agviq!” Malgi slowly, gracefully, climbed into the stern seat, the umialik’s position, his face serene and composed. The old man rubbed the raven’s head around his neck, and muttered something as he waited for the crew to board.

  Grigor hopped over to the boat, one boot still untied, and leapt in. Aluaq hit the gunwale with his hip, swung his legs over with the momentum, almost kicking Puvak in the back. Claudia stood by the stern with Malgi and Tuttu, the two men on the starboard side, Claudia to port, and Grigor forward at the middle starboard seat.

  “Go,” Tuttu whispered.

  Grigor shoved the umiaq from his side, and the bow slid down the ice edge into the water. Natchiq held on to the darting gun, kept the point still straight up. As the white boat fell into the water, Claudia suddenly thought that they hadn’t even tested it. They had been so eager and excited they hadn’t even tried the boat to see if it floated. She bit her lip as the water rose up the sides of the skins, almost to the gunwales. The men clung to the rope around the edge of the boat, and it rocked as it hit the water. Grigor jumped in, and then Claudia and Tuttu jumped in as they gave the umiaq one last push.

  Malgi’s umiaq wobbled in the cold water, thudding against a small chunk of ice. She realized she had been holding her breath the whole time, from when they slid the boat into the water until she had jumped in. When she realized no water leaked through the seams and cracks of the old skins, Claudia let out her breath in a whoof like the whale, and smiled.

  “Azah,” Tuttu said, “it floats!”

  Malgi looked at his grandson, frowned at him, then laughed. “Fortunately,” he said.

  The crew took up their paddles and rowed quietly, softly, through the water. Natchiq lashed the darting gun with a slip knot, took up his own paddle, and directed them toward the whales. He pointed at the far side of the lead, at a point almost straight across.

  “The whales swim about four knots,” Malgi said quietly. “If we paddle hard and fast, we can intercept them.” He pointed at where one of the whales rose—with his left hand, at an angle to port—and then to a high ridge of ice across from them—with his right hand, straight on.

  It took some minutes for them to coordinate their paddling. Tuttu steered at the stern, paddling from either port or starboard, while Natchiq made slight course corrections at the bow. The rest of the crew stayed to their own sides, digging in with the paddles. Claudia tried to remember her old Girl Scout training, paddling canoes at summer camp. How did it go? Plant the paddle in, pull back? Amaguq and Puvak switched sides two seats ahead of her—compensating, she realized, for her weakness. She blushed. They couldn’t have two weak paddlers on the same side, could they? But she was glad to stay on the left, since her stronger arm was on the left.

  Old skin or not, the umiaq held together. It slid through the water like a dolphin, barely making a wake. They made no sound but a quite hunnh as each paddler breathed with each stroke: hunnh—breathe!—stroke, hunnh—breathe! —stroke. The water flowed through and around and behind them, as if they were pushing the open lead and the umiaq stayed still. Pieces of ice thudded against the skin of the boat, bumped it slightly, the skin yielding to the force and pushing the ice back and away. Natchiq pushed big chunks of ice out of their path, or steered them around larger bergs.

  Claudia kept her eyes on the prominent chunk of ice opposite them, across the lead, not looking. Natchiq would look, he was their eyes. She concentrated on paddling straight, on keeping the rhythm. She was a gear in the machine, a body and not a
mind. Dig and pull, dig and pull. It had the same beat as groveling in the soil, digging in the thawing permafrost.

  You slanted the trowel into the soil, pulled it to you, pushing the dirt up. Down, slice, pull, up. A good archaeologist made her hand a machine, the trowel gripped slightly, feeling with the edge of the steel. You felt for the things that were not dirt, not smooth and easy to push aside, or too easy to push aside, like rootlets clumped around a point. When you felt it, you stopped and looked to see what you had. Dig and pull.

  As she paddled, Claudia remembered what she had been, where she had been. She got that feeling she sometimes got, when you were in a place alien to what you were used to, and wondered to yourself how you had managed to be where you had come to be. She should not be there in the Arctic, Claudia thought, not in the spring. She never came to the Arctic in the spring. Archaeologists didn’t do that. They were summer people and they spent their springs planning for the next expedition, madly scrambling to line up money. She should be in Binghamton, she thought, defending her thesis. She would have written it up, would have passed it through Cassell, and now they would be fighting off the slings and barbs of the committee. She would pass. She would get her degree. And then she would come back here.

  But she was here, she thought. Binghamton might not be and Cassell might not be and nothing she ever had known might not be, but this ice, this water, this boat, her: this was now and she was there and that was all the to be in the world she could possibly know.