“Should we know this thing?” said Kabam, putting her fingers to her lips worriedly.
“It’s a chock pin from Pop’s boat,” I said obligingly. “It’s like a badge or a totem.”
“Does that mean you will hunt with Calagun and Warrain?” someone asked.
“What’s Calagun like? He’s a large bag of mystery to us,” said Corowa.
“He’s a right fine fella,” I told her, trying not to blush, “but a bit full of himself at times.”
“Did you uncork his balloon?” asked Merinda.
I couldn’t deny the girls their laughs so I told them a funny story that involved him. A few days before, I’d put bootblack on the eyepiece of my spyglass and asked Figgie to look at a whale I’d spotted, only Abe, Lon, and Ned grabbed it before he did. Everyone at the station was afraid to tell them. They walked around all day with black eyes until momma-girl yelled out how silly they looked.
The story caused much laughter and imitating of the characters.
“We ought not to waste our precious time talking about the lads,” I told them. “We should just do the things that we want to do.”
“I want to learn how to kiss boys,” said Kabam, smacking her lips together. She turned her back to us and pretended she was in the arms of an amorous partner. I must say that from my vantage point, it was hard to tell if she was alone, or in a fervid embrace. Her hands moved with a mind of their own—a mind not focused on friendship.
Upon my return, the station seemed unusually quiet. Figgie was gone, along with the others who worked the boats. All that remained was an agitated momma-girl patrolling her kitchen and two teams of hitched horses. Neither group appeared ready to answer my questions. I made my way to the storage barn to see if anyone was congregating there.
I stood for a moment in the outer room where Papa and Abe had their gam. The crates they sat on were against the wall. There was no echo of their words. Someone had taken the leftover boat paint and whitewashed the back wall. It looked so fancy and bright. And empty.
I rolled Figgie’s pencils around in my pocket. With time to kill, I grabbed a stepladder and began drawing. The dark line trailed rocket-like across the white board. My mind didn’t know what my hand was creating until the line fell straight. Why do this? I asked myself as I drew a fluke curled underneath a large body. The top fin and side flippers took shape as I left its gaping mouth open. It was Derain.
I added that mournful, penetrating eye—an eye I will never forget, its stare holding sway over me yet. It was as though that eye, somehow, now orchestrated my rendering. All the distinctive markings—gray cape, cloud patches, and white eye patch—burned from my memory to the wall. I shaded my three-foot-long whale darker on top and lighter toward the bottom, taking care in drawing her large belly as I knew now what it contained.
As I penciled the last strokes, I still couldn’t believe I had ever been inside one of those dead beasts. I hopped off the ladder to inspect the ferocious monster of my imaginings. Instead, I saw a creature lovingly drawn as if it were one of my cats. I wanted to paint over it and start again when the stable half-door swung open.
“Thought we heard something gnawing about in here,” said one of Figgie’s mates.
“This is a surprise,” said Figgie, glancing in. “We painted the wall to play darts and handball, but you have trumped our need with your portrait.” I offered to return their wall, but the lads would have none of it. “The crew is meeting with your father in the sandgropers’ bunkhouse,” Figgie said, swinging on the half-door.
“We’d better head over there then,” I said, making a move for the door.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” said Figgie. “It would look foolish and embarrass our captain.”
“He’s my da,” I protested.
“When you step off your porch, he is Caleb, the master whaler, our Captain Dawson,” said Figgie.
“Aye, you’re right,” I said, pulling the pencils from my pocket. “I guess I’ll go sharpen these.”
Walking back to Loch Bultarra, I spotted the glow inside the sandgropers’ bunk. A wee look-see couldn’t hurt, could it? I wondered. I couldn’t see inside from the ground, but I could perch in the tree next to the back window. A spot on the main branch would allow me to hear everything that was going on inside.
Not that I had ever done that before.
When I was sure no one was about, I hiked up my skirt and started climbing, until I was straddling a limb halfway up the trunk.
“If we’re serving with a Jonah it had better be worth our while.”
“There’s no room for padding the scales, vote as you must,” Papa said.
“She can swim better than any of you and might pull one of ya from the drink someday,” shot off Abe.
“Boss knows how to keep orcas happy,” boomed Warrain. “Happy orcas mean full pockets.”
“And a full dance card for you, ya scallywag,” someone hooted to general laughter.
Papa pounded his fist on the table to restore order. They decided on full and equal shares for the fifteen most senior men to go tree cutting. The rest, like Figgie, had to stay behind and wait for a whale.
“We’re agreed,” Papa said. “The next two days, we’re working along the new Harbor View Road straight to the Boyd rescue station. We’ll reconvene the vote on the other matter when we get back.”
I fought off sneezing and coughing from all the cheroots lighted under me. The crowd moved away as I inched out along the tree branch to fresher air.
Crack.
The branch splintered beneath me, sending me hurtling downward. Hanging on to the broken limb, I dangled in front of Papa and Abe as they exited the bunk.
“Just looking for some gum nuts to roast,” I said breathlessly as they passed in silence.
The next morning after I dropped in on Papa and Abe leaving the sandgropers’ bunk, rumors about what had happened at the meeting drifted through the station on cigar and camp smoke. I heard one of the gropers say we’d do better with fewer boats and a more experienced crew. Warrain and the villagers swore allegiance to Papa. The rest of them were hard to figure. I suspiciously watched a good deal of note-passing back and forth among the brekkie tables.
“As you might suspect, there is trouble,” Figgie whispered as we waved to the departing wagons. “Someone high up started a round robin that has many signatures already.”
“Who would do that,” I asked, getting jittery. “What have you heard?”
“I prefer not to say,” Figgie replied. I didn’t say a word. I just dropped my chin and, with raised eyebrows. I gave him the look.
“Very well then,” he blurted out. “Your father.”
“Papa?” I said, stunned.
“I do not believe it, and you must not either.”
I wasn’t sure which was worse, thinking Papa might do such a thing or believing one of the crew would lie about it. Were the troubles between us that deep? Trust was an oddity to dole out, I knew. It demanded that you retain as much of it as you gave away. Suddenly every glance my way seemed part of a larger sinister plot. I was uncomfortable speaking to Figgie within earshot of anyone else.
“Why don’t we go for a boat ride over to the salt marsh?” I said, quietly. “Think I left my drawing kit there.”
“Those pencils are getting quite a vigorous workout today,” said Figgie.
“Ah, be done with ya,” I said, gesturing for him to go in one direction while I left in another.
While Figgie got his canoe, I headed down to the beach and waited. Finally, he came paddling around the bend. “A body could putrefy waiting for you,” I said, jumping into the canoe.
“It takes time to plot your demise on such short notice,” he replied.
“Ain’t you one to be bringing the lollies,” I said.
&nb
sp; We sculled for a while, hugging the shore in conversation and location. I asked Figgie about all the scuttlebutt he was hearing.
“How would you vote?” I asked him finally.
“I told you, I support your cause,” Figgie said, cutting his paddle to slow us down.
“Is that my birthright cause, or my-being-a-girl cause?” I pushed further.
“I didn’t know they were separated,” he said.
“Maybe they are. What if I wasn’t a Dawson, just some sheila looking for a job?”
“But you are a Dawson.”
“And you’re a Prince.”
“Indeed. We have met before, have we not?”
“Sometimes I wonder, because to the girls of your village you’re a big bag of mystery.”
“Why such a concern about village affairs?”
“Because I’m starting to see the world differently, I guess, and if you’re going to be a leader you have to lead for everyone’s benefit.”
“I intend to, with my ancestors’ help.”
“It seems to me if we’re all one big crew, you’d want to put your trust in the best amongst you for rowing, or the best eyes for lookout, whether they’re male or female.”
“Does that trust extend to other beings?” asked Figgie, as he stopped paddling and looked back at me. “Would you put your trust in the eye of an orca, or are they excluded from your ship?”
“Animals aren’t people.”
“And yet our treatment of them defines who we are.”
We held our paddles as we drifted, the lapping water the only sound. Figgie tried to reassure me that the vote would go my way in the end. “Above all, whalers want to catch whales,” he said. “If they think a blind pelican can help them, it will be part of the crew.”
Papa and the wagons came in late and left early. When they returned, their pockets filled with new Federation tender, it was a happy sight indeed. We got enough firewood to last the winter and enough lumber to build a new root cellar. Even with the morbs lifted from the crew, I fully expected to see a scroll of a paper nailed to the door, sinking my candidacy.
I noticed a new lad taking up in the bunks. Figgie said he was drifter looking for a boat slot. I watched from my wondering spot as each man walked in one side of the gropers’ bunk to vote and out the other. Soon enough the doorway was empty and momma-girl’s shebeen was full.
Some time passed before Papa’s voice from the kitchen startled me.
“Savannah!” he shouted.
“Coming, Papa,” I croaked, jumping onto the porch.
I pushed through the damp fall air as if it were bales of stacked hay. When I reached Papa, he was sitting much as he had the first night we’d talked. Glumness hung over him, and I could tell by the expression on his face that things had not gone well. I fought back tears when he took the black rock from his shirt pocket and slid it toward me.
“Oh, Papa, I’m sorry I put you through this,” I blubbered.
“Sorry, I only show ya this so you’d know how I voted,” he said. “Seems everyone else voted the same way too.”
“You mean—?”
“I mean, you best be ready to hunt when those killers come calling,” he said, with a bit of laughter in his voice. “But you still got schooling to do.”
I wanted to scream and shout, but I held myself back. I gave Papa a peck on the cheek. We went into the parlor and I sat next to him on the arm of his chair. He said my family rendering would look fine above the fireplace mantel where Dodd’s Scudder Plug held pride of place.
Trust does have quizzical side effects.
16.
I had the yips.
Every splash from a fish or wave breaking caused me to fumble, stumble, or fall. Figgie amused himself by tossing stones in the water and watching me become discombobulated.
My mind was on the bay, not what I was doing.
“Don’t fret,” Figgie consoled, “your chance will come soon enough.”
I agreed, to a point. With school bells aching to ring, my window of opportunity to go whaling was shrinking every day. The shares voted for the drifter and me weren’t worth mentioning. They staked me to a one-three-hundredth share of the catch while the bludger got one-two-hundred-and-seventy-fifth share, just because he was a lad.
I had other problems too.
There was no shaking Lon. He was as determined as a land-grant-seeking-railroad man, even if the mining couldn’t start right away.
“Savannah, why do you refuse to acknowledge my fondness for you?” Lon pushed when he returned from the clean-up detail. “We could start a life together and I could get you away from all this.”
I should’ve ended it right there, but I decided to run the line out and see if he tired. “I’ve read abstinence makes the heart grow fonder,” I said, hurrying into the high grass between the bunkhouses. “We should try it.”
Lon stood scratching his head as I climbed the tree to my bedroom, flipped open the porthole, and swung inside.
That night I dreamed I was alone in Figgie’s canoe. The water shimmered bright cups of sunlight ready for sipping with my eyes. I rowed out and kept rowing. After a while, I pulled up my paddle and glided, breathing in the crisp sea air. Over the port side, I saw two alabaster figures floating below the surface. Their eyes were red and their mouths open as they reached up for me. I dove into the water and stretched to meet them. Farther and farther I sank into the darkness, until I realized I was swimming in blood. I tried to escape but kept slipping downward.
My lungs seemed ready to burst as I sat up in bed, sweating. I felt as if I had just jumped off a merry-go-round mid-ride. I grabbed my pillow, waiting for the room to stop spinning. Humphrey nuzzled me with the back of his neck. I poured a glass of water from the pitcher on my nightstand and popped open my brass window. The glistening bay stretched to the horizon, placid and self-assured, taunting me to reveal its secrets. My brothers still cried for justice, but the answer had grown denser than winter fog.
The next day the sky was low and the air damp. We set upon the rocks, searching for kelp tangles. Old women wore layers of léine shirts, dirndl dresses, and woolen mantles against the raw winds. They looked more like rags blown about the jetties than people, as they scurried over the surf pulling their drags. Mounds of the long, leafy seaweed washed up on beaches after a storm. As surely as the white, pungent smoke from the kelp kilns was a sign of summer rains, gathering the rockweed was a signal that winter was nearing.
Abe asked me to come along to help haul the tangles to their drying place near the old kiln outside Doddstown. People say the fire there made its way from hell and will burn for eternity. Some claim the near-blind furnace keeper, Shadrick Drundel, skulks through those flames without a cinder scorching him or his long beard. Abe warned me to steer away from the sackclothed figure lurking in the shadows.
“He was captain of those plague ships holed up in Purgatory Bay,” he said. “Best be mindful.”
Our return trip was considerably lighter, with an empty wagon and a brighter mood.
“Is that what I think it is?” Abe asked, pointing to my chock pin.
“It is at that,” I said, with a hand on my collar, “and thanks for everything.”
“It was nothing,” Abe said, jangling the reins.
“It was something because it led to Papa showing me his Last Will.”
Abe stopped the wagon and put down the reins with a worried look his face.
“I’m fine,” I said. “The letter had some hard words to chew, but now we have an understanding.”
“And I brought you here to show you this,” Abe said, handing me a folded paper.
“What is it?”
“It’s the round robin,” he said. “Calagun told me it was bedeviling you.”
“Who s
tarted it?” I asked, looking at the crude penmanship.
“Does it matter?” Abe asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
There were a few scribbled demands about serving with a girl but not a signature on it.
“Look, but you won’t find one name,” said Abe, picking up the reins again.
“Why?”
“Your father,” said Abe. “He gave the crew a little talk right out on Harbor Road before we started cutting storm wood. He said being a good captain isn’t always about an iron grip and a set course. It’s knowing when to adjust, change direction, and try new ways, just as our fathers did befriending the killers fifty years ago.”
I finished putting the drags away as the moon rose in the late afternoon sky. I could see my breath while walking to the porch. I took Mum’s old knit quilt from my locker to keep warm. It still had her lilac smell on it.
I closed my eyes.
The hard, flat snapping sound of flags in the wind awoke me. I looked up.
Papa stood in my doorway, wearing his long red nightshirt. “They’ve come for us,” he said, his face glowing.
I jumped off my bunk and looked out the porthole. The moon was set high, beaming down. I could see four black silhouettes lobtailing, their flukes slapping waves of water in our direction. The clicks and chatter of the killers echoed off the walls and through my very bones. The lanterns in the bunkhouses and down the gully, where Abe’s crew lived, yawned with light. I ran up to the widow’s walk to get a better look. A trail of light snaked its way from the village toward us.
I had to hurry. I could hear the crews getting closer now. I went into the attic and saw the boys’ lockers lying there as gaunt as coffins. They never got to make this trip.
Until now.
I threw open the lids. Inside, Pop’s Greek fishing cap that Eli had worn lay atop all his things, right where Papa had placed it. I held it to my cheek, smelling the dried salt water and sweat. I remembered those swimming lessons and the way Eli had held me afloat.
“I’ll never let you sink, Savannah,” he had said.
The Whaler's Daughter Page 11
