Agviq

by Michael Armstrong

  And that’s the way it is, Cronkite said in her mind.

  * * *

  A few nights later some noise woke Claudia up. She sat up on her mattress. Tammy snored next to her, a gentle rumbling more like the thrum of a fan than the roar of an engine. In the darkened corners of the qaregi the people of Malgi’s house slept, Masu and Paula with their husbands, Tuttu and the rest of the men on the other side of the house. One of the puppies slept at the foot of Puvak’s mat; Puvak had gotten permission to start bringing one puppy at a time into the house, to get them used to people. A log popped from inside the stove. Claudia nodded, and thought, A log cracking, that’s what the noise was.

  Still, awakened, she couldn’t go right back to sleep. From the pile of boots and mukluks by the fire, she found her own boots, put them on, and went up the roof hatch. The sun had dipped low over the horizon, of course, but did not set. Utqiagvik spread around her, smoke rising from houses the main indicator of what was occupied and what wasn’t. Many of the abandoned houses poked through the melting snowdrifts, and some of the garbage in the streets had begun to reappear. Bodies might reappear, Claudia thought, shuddering at the thought. Summer might be gruesome, if they survived to summer.

  She stared out to sea and the wind blew the loose hairs at the back of her neck around and into her face. The ice ridge seemed to grow higher in the low sunlight, and a fog bank hovered between it and the sun. Claudia sucked in her breath, touched the loose hairs with one hand, shaded her eyes with the other. She looked again. Fog between the sun; wind at her back. The wind had shifted. Steam hung over the ice. The lead? Had it opened?

  Someone lifted the trapdoor at her feet, and she looked down to see Puvak climbing up, the puppy in his hands. “Dee-Dee was whining to go out,” he said. “I heard someone up here.”

  “Puvak—go get my binoculars. They’re hanging by my mat.” She reached down to take the puppy, and Puvak popped back down into the house. Claudia stroked the little dog, felt it squirm in her hands. She set it down, and the pup waddled over to a corner of the platform, peed in a patch of snow.

  “Here,” Puvak said, coming back up the ladder. “You see something?” He handed her the Nikons.

  “The puyugruaq,” she said. Claudia looked through the binoculars, focused beyond the ice pack. Ah. It is open, she thought. She could see the water gleaming, a narrow band just beyond the ice pack. Steam above, sky water in the clouds: the uniniq.

  “Go,” she said to Puvak. “Wake your father, tell him you’re going to the ridge. The lead—it should be open. Take these”—she handed him the binoculars—“and get a CB from Natchiq.”

  “Wake Natchiq?” Puvak asked. She knew what he thought: the harpoonist hated to be woken.

  “Wake the house! The wind’s shifted! The lead’s opening! The whale . . . agviq may be coming!”

  Puvak grinned, slipped the Nikons around his neck, and went down below. Claudia picked up the puppy, held her close to her chest. Dee-Dee whined, nestling its nose in her breast. She stroked the dog’s back. Maybe. Maybe they would get one more chance.

  * * *

  Someone had stoked the fire higher, and the warmth seemed to revive them, restore their spirits. Masu stirred a big pot of oatmeal, next to a pot of water boiling on the stove. The whalers got ready. While Claudia tied up her boots, Tammy braided her hair, nothing fancy, just two braids over her shoulders. Malgi sat next to the CB, tuned down to squelch. Low static hummed from the radio. Amaguq had told his son to report when he got to the lead, about a half hour walk, maybe. Malgi glanced at Tuttu’s watch, looked up, shrugged.

  Natchiq sat on the bench next to Claudia, a harpoon laid across his lap. In his hand a file flew over the edge of the iron, quick strokes going down, down, a whitt, whitt noise blurring with the hum of the radio. As Natchiq worked, a line of clean metal crawled up the edge of the blade. Natchiq looked up, saw Claudia looking at him.

  “No one will go swimming this time,” he said, looking over at Malgi. “The iron will go in deep and straight.”

  Right, she thought, and smiled at him. They had decided to set a harpoon first, to a separate line, and follow up with a darting gun with no iron. The harpoon will attach a line to it, the gun will wound the whale. Grigor had said he made the bomb less powerful, but they cannot risk it, cannot allow the possibility of losing this whale, of the charge destroying the line. Set the iron; wound. That will be the way.

  Tuttu held a clipboard in his lap and drew figures in it. Claudia tried to see what he wrote, but could only see the outline of an umiaq and words next to the drawing. He scowled, crossed something out, wrote something in. “Anaq,” he muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” Claudia asked. Tammy pulled the braid tighter, jerking her head back.

  “We’re short one paddler,” he said. “Look”—he showed her the plan—“there’s Natchiq in the bow, the harpoonist. Puvak and Amaguq behind him. Grigor and Aluaq in the middle seat. Malgi with you next, then me at the stern. But Malgi”—Tuttu looked away as his grandfather glanced up at his name—“can’t come. We need someone with you.”

  Tammy pulled her braid tighter once more, and Claudia’s neck jerked back again. Claudia laughed inside. “Why not Tammy?” she asked. “She’s been hunting with us. We could take her.”

  Tuttu stared over her shoulder at Tammy. “The woman who loves women? Another woman on my crew?” He snorted. “I’ll find some boy, don’t worry.”

  “If one woman is okay, why not two?” Claudia asked. Tammy finished braiding her hair, and set her hands on Claudia’s shoulders. She reached up, took the Inupiaq woman’s hands in her own. “Why not?”

  “Grandfather?” Tuttu asked.

  Malgi looked up from the CB, stared with his hard blue eyes at Tuttu. He smiled. “Would it please the whale?”

  “Would it please the whale?” Claudia repeated. “I do not know. Why did you let me hunt before?”

  Tuttu grinned. “You’re a good shot. Is little Nuna a good shot?”

  “Qavvik,” Tammy said. “If you’re going to call me an Inupiaq name, call me the right one.” She ran a hand through the bristle at the crown of her head, bleached redder by the sun. “The wolverine.”

  “Claudia is the anthropologist,” Malgi said. “We need her to advise us.” He looked at her. “And she is a good shot.”

  “Should little Nuna come along?” Tuttu asked. He spat out the name, glaring at Tammy.

  “Would it please agviq?” Malgi looked at Claudia. “Anthropologist?”

  “Women have hunted before,” she said. “They have been on whaling crews before. I interviewed a woman who had been on a crew back in the 1980s.”

  “Should this woman take my place on the crew?” He glared at her now, and she knew the question he asked. “Would having her on the crew please agviq?”

  “No woman could take your place, Grandfather,” Claudia said. “No man could possibly take your place. You will be on the ice, if we can use the sno-go again”—she looked over at Natchiq—“and your spirit will be with us on the water. Can this woman help the crew?”

  “Yes, that is the question,” Malgi said. “Can she help the crew better than someone else?”

  “I was an Olympic kayaker,” Tammy said. “Would have been in those Olympics we boycotted.” She squeezed Claudia’s shoulders, and she felt the strength in her hands.

  “She is my partner,” Claudia said. “She is my sister.” Claudia crossed her arms across her breasts and took Tammy’s hands again. Then she smiled. “And, as Tuttu says, she is a woman who loves women. Doesn’t that make her something like a man?”

  “Do you love her like a man?” Tuttu asked.

  And Claudia saw it then, saw the source of his displeasure. He was jealous! He saw the closeness between them, knew that Tammy could love Claudia like Claudia could love Rob—or Tuttu. She nodded her head. She saw it. Tuttu wanted to know. She looked at Tuttu and he looked at her and blushed.

  “I love her like a man loves his broth
er, or his cousin, or his fellow hunter,” Claudia said. “I sleep next to her but I do not sleep with her, much as she might like that. I would sleep with a man, if I could find a man I was worthy of.” There! she thought. Let him know!

  Tuttu smiled, and he nodded. “Perhaps it would be okay. But does Tammy still bleed?” He glared at Claudia. “You know we cannot have women in their period on the ice.”

  “I am beyond my period,” Tammy said. She pinched Claudia slightly. “All of the women are beyond our periods.”

  “So,” Tuttu said. “Well. I don’t know . . . Perhaps it would please agviq to have such a strong paddler on our crew then.” The young umialik grinned. “I know it would please me to have two such fine women in front of me.” The men laughed at that, even Claudia and Tammy giggled a little. “Qavvik, you may crew with us. Perhaps you can teach your partner how to paddle!”

  Malgi held up a hand, quieting them, and he fiddled with the dials of the CB radio. He turned the volume up, adjusted the squelch, and they heard Puvak’s tinny voice coming from the speaker.

  “Grandfather, Grandfather!” he shouted. “I am sorry to not call sooner but I had to shoot a polar bear!” Claudia shook her head at the boy’s luck.

  “Go ahead, Puvak,” Malgi said.

  “Grandfather, the lead has opened but it is narrow. It extends to Walakpa, maybe farther. And Grandfather, I saw plumes, six of them!

  “Agviq,” the boy said, “the whale has returned!”

  Chapter 20

  AND so the whalers set out on the ice once again. No one knew how many whales would pass or if there would be any left by the time they’d dragged the umiaq and gear back out. They had to hurry. Natchiq consented to letting them use a snowmachine—and a few gallons of gas—to drag the kamotiq and skin boat to the lead. Malgi said he’d walk out on his own, despite his bad knee and broken arm, and the whalers said, no, he’d ride. They boosted him up into his boat. With his crew guiding the sled over rough ice and the sno-go moving slowly, Malgi sat in the center of the boat, proud and beaming.

  A quick camp was set up again, the sled parallel to the edge, the umiaq bow forward—darting gun and harpoon pointing to sea—and the tent back from the ice. Puvak greeted them as they came over the ridge, and dragged his father to see nanuq, the polar bear.

  Puvak said he hadn’t wanted to shoot the bear—“I didn’t want to scare off agviq, if he was there,” he said—but had to when it surprised him. Amaguq’s son had rounded a boulder of ice on the trail, and there the bear had been, coming toward him. “I didn’t think, just brought my rifle forward and fired.” His .22, Claudia noted. He’d killed the bear with two perfect shots to the heart and lungs.

  The boy had already skinned out the bear and eviscerated it. With the skin off, the bear looked like a man, a tall man. Nanuq had already begun to regain his summer fat; his flanks had some marbling in the muscle, and a layer of fat spread across the bear’s pelvis. Death had caused the bear to ejaculate, his penis engorged and poking out of its sheath. Definitely male, Claudia thought. And it had survived the winter. Probably, it had been feeding on carrion—maybe dead whales, seals. Nanuq, like the whale, had survived. Would survive, though Puvak had killed this one.

  Puvak helped Malgi out of the umiaq. He had scraped the hide clean of blood and tissue, and laid out the skin fur side up on the sled. “Sit, Grandfather,” he said. “This hide, the bear, is for you and Masu.” Malgi smiled, let the boy help him sit down, and grasped Puvak’s shoulder firmly, the way he would a man.

  Malgi gestured for the whalers to come stand before him. The six men and two women moved over to the old man, stood in a semicircle before the sled. “We must do this right,” he said. “We need a ritual. Anthropologist?”

  “What kind of ritual?” Claudia asked.

  “Something to honor the whale. I don’t know . . . Something.”

  Claudia glanced at Malgi, turned, looked to sea. There were so many rituals, so many things they could do. What did the Utqiagvik whalers do in the past? she asked herself. What would be proper? She touched the ivory whale around her neck.

  “We must give the umiaq a drink,” a woman said from behind them. They turned. Masu had followed them out, carrying a small wooden bucket. She held the bucket up. The wood of the bucket was old and glossy, the way wood got when it had been handled and rubbed by many hands. “I forgot to give the umiaq a drink. My mother used to do that for my father’s boat, and agviq honored him many times.”

  Claudia smiled. She had forgotten that, then thought of it when they struck the first whale, and had forgotten it again. Malgi looked at her and she nodded at him.

  “Pull the umiaq out,” he said to them. “Pull it onto the ice.”

  Natchiq went to the bow, lifting the darting gun and harpoon out very carefully. They dragged it back from the edge, toward where the old woman stood with her bucket.

  “I forget the words exactly,” she said. “But I think it goes like this”—they bowed their heads—“ ‘Umiaq, carry these whalers safely over the water. Help them honor agviq so that agviq will honor us. We thank the skins of the animals that gave us their parkas for this boat, and we offer them water so that their thirst will be quenched.’ ” Masu raised the bucket to the bow of the umiaq, and poured it on the thick hide stretched over the forward part of the keel.

  “I must go back now,” she said when she was done.

  “Wait,” Claudia said. She looked to Malgi. “There is another ritual I remember.” Malgi nodded. “We must put the boat back in the water and get in. Masu—the umialik’s wife—you stand at the ice edge.”

  The old woman nodded, her eyes flashing. She smiled. “I remember! Yes!”

  “In the boat,” Malgi said to them. “Go, go!”

  The whalers got in, Natchiq at the stern, the rest in their places. Claudia told Natchiq to get the harpoon, to stand ready with it. They paddled out, away from the camp, from the white tent and the kamotiq and Malgi sitting on the sled.

  “Tell them to head back in,” Claudia whispered to Tuttu.

  “Head to shore,” he said.

  Masu stood at the edge of the ice, slightly stooped, her gray braids hanging over the front of her atigi, a flowered cover over the hide parka. She held her hands at her sides, feet bowed slightly out.

  “Natchiq,” Claudia said, “when you get up to Masu, raise your harpoon to her, and get ready to throw it.”

  “You want me to throw it at her?” he asked.

  “No,” she shouted. “No. At the last minute, dip it into the water. It’s as if she’s the whale and . . . how do I explain it?” She looked back at Tuttu.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  The whalers paddled, the blades digging in, slow, smooth. Claudia glanced over at Tammy to her right, and saw her shoulder and arm muscles bulge through her atigi, watched the quick, sure movements. Not jerky, she saw. Like a machine. The umiaq came through the water, the sun now in their eyes, as they moved closer to shore. Natchiq raised the harpoon, pulled his arm back.

  Masu stood straight and immobile on the shore, staring at the whalers, at the glint of the steel point of the harpoon, a broad smile on her face. Natchiq let his arm fall and dipped the point of the blade into the sea, then raised it up. He sat back down, the paddlers pulled their paddles blade up, and the umiaq coasted up on the ice, stopping inches before Masu. As the umiaq came to her, she knelt down, head bowed before the whalers. Masu rose, turned her back on them, and walked back to the village.

  Malgi got up, hobbled over to the crew as they got out of the skin boat. They turned the boat around, setting it up as before. Puvak and Amaguq went to the old man, supported him on either side.

  “One more ritual,” he said. He pulled out the dried raven’s head from under his shirt. For the first time, Claudia noticed that the head had been wrapped to an old Christian cross, and she remembered that back before the war, long ago, Malgi had been a deacon in the Presbyterian Church. “We must pray.”

  Pr
ay to what? she asked herself. To the God that had been supplanted on the old Inupiaq belief system, or the beliefs that had been supplanted on the old God? “Was the Whale Jesus?” she had asked an anthropology professor once, and he had answered with a question, “Was Jesus the Whale?”

  They bowed their heads. Malgi said something in Inupiaq, but the words were clipped and spoken fast, recited, and she had trouble recognizing them. And then they came to her, familiar in their meter. Her Inupiaq had never been good, she had only passing knowledge of nouns—verbs baffled her—but this poem she remembered. How could she forget? And then, as if to confirm her guess, Malgi spoke the translation.

  “Our Father, Who art in Heaven.

  “Hallowed be thy name.

  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

  “On Earth as it is in Heaven.

  “Give us this day our daily bread.

  “And forgive us our debts.

  “As we forgive our debtors.

  “And Lead us not into temptation.

  “But deliver us from Evil.

  “For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory.

  “Forever.”

  “Amen,” Malgi said.

  “Amen,” the whalers said, even Grigor, the godless Communist.

  And why not? Claudia thought. Heaven was the sea and God was the whale and Jesus was the whale and the daily bread was the whale. If they spoke in the words of an ancient sect of wayward Jews, well, why not?

  * * *

  They waited again. Malgi lit the Coleman stove, using more precious kerosene, and they started a pot of tea going. The sun rose almost directly overhead. All eyes stared out at the lead, down the lead. Up on the ice ridge Puvak scanned with the Nikons. And they waited.

  Claudia imagined the whale coming up the lead, following its ancestral route. Agviq has always come north to the Arctic, come to feed on the plankton and krill, she thought. The whale has always come to breed in the Beaufort Sea to the east. It must round this point, must pass Nuvuk and Utqiagvik. The whalebones in the old houses, the huge harpoon points in the houses, offer proof of how long the whales have come. They have seen whales earlier, she thought, and the whale will come.