The Sea Runners

by Ivan Doig

  "Right fit or not," Melander assured him, "you're the only fit."

  And so Karlsson began to increase his frequency of visit to the native village, and by lingering on after the other visitants, to stretch each stay deeper into dusk. Eventually he was nudging regularly against the second curfew, much to the discomfiture of the night watchman at the gate of the stockade, Bilibin.

  Bilibin was one of the longest-serving of the Russian indenturees who had been funneled out through the Siberian port of Okhotsk and across the northern seas to New Archangel. Peg him, perhaps, somewhere amid the milder miscreants, without doubt having skinned his nose against one law or another but not the most hellhound soul you can call to mind, either. Simply a burden bearer of the sort life always puts double load onto: in this era when it was said, "Better even to go to the army than to Russian America," Bilibin had ended up at New Archangel and shouldering a musket as well.

  For purpose here, however, which is that of Karlsson and Braaf and Melander, Bilibin's significant earmark was his longevity at New Archangel. Like many another, he had stayed on and on in the employ of the Russian-American Company because he was in debt to it deep as his eyeteeth. He also was sufficiently a scapegrace to have exasperated a generation of superiors, so that he now stood the least desirable of shifts, the gravy-eye watch, those heavy hours spanning the middle of the night. Turned about, the matter was that Bilibin's superiors over the years had sufficiently knouted and berated him that he took some care not to rush from under his canopy of dark into their attention.

  Thus: the first time Karlsson arrived back to the gate past curfew, Bilibin blustered a threat to march him double-quick to the sergeant in charge of the sentries.

  "He'll knout you red, Viking. My scars ache to think of those he'll stripe on you, oh yes ..."

  But did nothing. Boosting out a sergeant because a Swede couldn't finish his rutting on time, well, now...

  The next time, having conferred beforehand with Melander, Karlsson staggered later than ever from the Kolosh village to Bili bin's gate, singing. Reedily, but singing.

  The fruit of the heart-tree,

  do not eat,

  for sorrow grows there,

  black as peat.

  Also, he carried a jug of the native liquor called hoot china. Which without undue difficulty he persuaded Bilibin to swig a reviveful mouth's worth from: "Have fifteen drops, Pavel, it drives the snakes from one's boots, ..."

  That his gate performances were credited by Bilibin without more than a first squint of suspicion astounded.

  Karlsson. Was the world so bait-hungry as this? Was lie, Karlsson, so deft of deceit? Well, fair must be fair: the fact here was not hunger but thirst, and the hootch deserved at least equal billing with Karlsson. Under the New Archangel allotment of fifty cups of rum per man per year, Bilibin was a man perpetually parched. "The old sirs up there in the Castle," he groused to Karlsson between swigs, "might's well be spooning out dust to us."

  By autumn of 1852, Verstovia now in a yellow-orange bodice of deer cabbage, Karlsson was not departing the stockade until nearly dark.

  "Come along and dip your ladle in the kettle," the slim Swede would invite.

  "No, no, no," Bilibin would splutter back at him, "I'm limber as a goose's neck, no more women for me, you can have mine as Well."

  And the gate would wink open.

  And wink again, far into the night, when Karlsson returned with a proffer of the hootchina jug.

  In early November, Melander announced in his procedural way that the time had arrived for Braaf to acquire the coastal maps by which they would navigate south.

  "It'll be the Tebenkov maps we want. One Russian who had something other than cabbage between his ears, Tebenkov was. Made his captains chart all of this coastline when he was governor here, and there's a set aboard each ship. I bad a look at the steamship's while Rosenberg was bathing his bottom at Ozherskoi. Those we'll take, they won't be missed until spring or whenever in hell's time the steamship gets fired up again. Read Russian, can you, Braaf?"

  Braaf shook his head.

  "No? Well, less matter, we need the ones from latitude 57° as far south as 45°, and you'll see they're marked like this."

  NW be per a Amepuku, Melander printed carefully. NW coast of America.

  The theft would be tricky, Melander cautioned, because Braaf would need to sort rapidly among all the maps in the steamship's chart room and—Melander stopped short as Braaf wagged his head again.

  "Aye?" Melander demanded. "What is it?"

  "I can't read anything," Braaf said.

  The single event certain to irk Melander was the unforeseen, and this incapacity of Braaf's he had not calculated on at all. Rarest annoyance crossed that elevated face. Then Melander swerved to Karlsson and his disposition righted itself.

  "So. It seems to fall to you. This'll at least make a change from galloping a Kolosh maiden, wouldn't you say? Now: the maps are kept—"

  Karlsson was shaking his head in reprise of Braaf. "I'm being sent hunting. Perhaps for as long as ten days."

  Now Karlsson looked steadily into Melander's eyes and for once, so did Braaf.

  Under the pressure of these gazes Melander grimaced. Scowled. Swore. "Jesu Maria. Need to become a common sneak thief next, do I? The pair of you..."

  The pair of them met Melander with the same square glances two weeks later.

  "I've done, I've done," the tall man affirmed edgily. "But a narrow enough matter it was. Christ on the cross, Braaf, how you go around like a cat's ghost I'll never know. I needed to sort and sort, paw through every bedamned scrap of sheet. Skimpy bastards, these Russians. Should have figured..."

  Melander opened his mouth as if to go on, but went into thought instead. After a moment:

  "Aye. Anyway, that's that. Let's get on with our enterprise. We'll need new sail for the canoe, can't trust the rotten cheesecloth these Koloshes use. You are able to recognize sail canvas, Braaf, aren't you?"

  It happened minutes after the next morning's work call. Braaf was making away with the sailcloth, the folded length cradled snug as Moses beneath an armload of hides he ostensibly was transporting toward the tannery, when a voice suggested huskily into his left ear: "Shouldn't 've skinned so deep this time, Braaf. Let's talk about the bottom of your cargo, there."

  Through the cold lightning of fright it did register on Braaf that the voice at least was Swedish rather than Russian. Leftward, he inched his head the fraction enough to test the wide sideburn-framed face beside him. Recognition unfroze his mind ... one of the blacksmiths ... vain bustard he is ... Wennstrom, Wennblad: "Wennberg:' Wait, listen now—"

  "No, don't stroll off and don't put them down." Not suggestion now: orders. "We'll have a visit till we see which happens." Wennberg planted himself in front ot Braaf as companionably as if he had every matter in the memory of the race to talk over with him. "Whether you spill that load in front of these Russians, or your long-ass friend Melauder lopes himself over here."

  With a lanky swiftness which to any onlooker would seem as if he had been beckoned over to consult with the pair', Melander arrived. His dark look met Wennberg's blandness like a cloud against a cliff face, but he spoke nothing. Nor Wennberg, Braaf was desperate beyond any saying of it. For a moment, there the three of them clustered, pegs of quiet centered in the long rectangle of parade ground between Baranov's Castle and the stockade gate as if time had snagged to a stop within their little radius, while around them morning life eddied, quartermasters and overseers and promyshlenniks and shipwrights and caulkers and brassworkers and sailors and Castle officers, New Archangel humanity in all its start-of-day seeps and spurts of motion.

  "So, Melander," Wennberg snapped their silence. "Braaf and I're just talking over how much heavier hides've gotten this year. A man can hardly hold a pood of them in his arms these days, seems like."

  "A man can carry as much as the world puts on him, it's said," Melander? responded crisply, still glowering at Wennber
g.

  '"You're always a deep one, Melander. Isn't he, Braaf?" The blacksmith stepped close and pressed his elbow slowly, powerfully, into Braaf's left upper arm, drawing a strangled gasp from the laden man. "Deep as the devil's pocket, isn't he, hmm?"

  "Let's give Braaf a rest, shan't we?" Melander offered rapidly, "Matters of weight can always be talked over."

  Wennberg hesitated. Cast a glance into the thinning stream of the workshift. Then as if Melander's words were the first coins down on a debt, nodded.

  Braaf lurched his way out of sight in the general direction of the tannery. The other two, Melander more toplofty than ever beside the wide-legged Wennberg, strode toward a building not far inside the stockade gate. The middle of this structure was transected by the smithing shop and within its open arched doorway stood three huge forges, aligned from the outside in like stabled iron creatures. The outermost of these dusky fire bins was Wennberg's.

  From where Wennberg stood day-long as he directed the heavy dance of hammer and iron Melander scanned out into the parade ground. All comings and goings there the line of view took in, and most particularly the route into Braaf's storage hulk just across the way.

  Rueful, Melander wagged his head in admission. Then proffered: "So?"

  "You've plans to crawl out of this Russian bear pit, and I'm coming with you."

  "Are you?"

  "I am. Else you and Braaf and Karlsson'll be in irons and off to pass your years in Siberia."

  "Tsk. Irons, you say, That'd maybe be more burden even than Braaf's armload, just there. More than Swedes ought to have to carry for Russians, aye? What makes you think we're kissing good-bye to New Archangel?"

  "Don't come clever with me, Melander, Been watching your trained pack rat Braaf, I have, these weeks."

  "Braaf is his own man, like any of us."

  "Braaf's operated by your jabber. So's that stiff-cock Karlsson."

  "Such powers I seem to have. You'll want to watch out I don't command your sidewhiskers to turn into louse nests."

  "You're not the high-and-mighty to command anything just now. You're down the toilet looking up, and don't forget it."

  "Come down with this often, do you, Wennberg? Say we wanted to flee, just how would we? New Archangel is the end of the tail of the world, and not much in between it and anything."

  "You'd yatter as long as maiden's pee runs downhill, Melander. Time we barter. My silence for your plan."

  "Silence I've never much believed in. But school me: why're you interested in notions of fleeing from here?"

  "My reasons're yours. Because I'm sick of life under these shit-beetle Russians." Grudgingly: "Because if anyone here is slyboots enough to escape, it's likely you."

  "Flattering."

  "Which doesn't mean I wouldn't laugh to see you suited up in irons and sent west into snowland, if that's your choice. High-and-mighty can't save you from this, Melander. Decide."

  Melander calculated Wennberg, Then the serious smile made its appearance.

  "First you preach to poor Braaf of too much weight, now you keep on at me about too much height. Wennberg, I think you maybe underestimate how far a man can stretch himself if he has to. Aye? Can you handle a Haida paddle?"

  Melander spent considerable talking that night to convince Braaf and Karlsson that the wisest choice was to shepherd Wennberg into the plan.

  Braaf remained indignant about the incident 011 the parade ground. He volunteered to convert the blacksmith into a dead man, if someone would tell him how it ought to be done.

  Melander agreed it to be an understandable ambition, and laudable too, but no. Through and through he had thought the issue, and the death of a valued smith such as Wennberg, especially when the killing would have to be achieved here within the fort, would breed more questions than it was worth, "Besides, he is a hill bull for strength—"

  "And stupider than he is strong," Braaf put in.

  "—and we can maybe make use of him," continued Melander. "Just maybe wc can,"

  Karlsson squinted in reflection, then said shortly that what galled him was to be tit Wennberg's mercy in any way. What if Wennberg took it into his narrow bull mind to betray them to the Russians for a reward?

  Aye, Melander concurred, that was the very problem to he grappled. "We'll need to set a snare for Mister Blacksmith."

  A few nights later, their first time as four.

  Karlsson openly appraised Wennberg as if the blacksmith were marrying into the family. Their newcomer was both hefty and wide, like a cut of very broad plank. An unexpectedness atop his girth was the fluffy set of sideburns—light brown, as against the blondness of the other three Swedes—which framed his face all the way down to where I his jaw joined his neck. Except for young dandies among the Russian officers no one else of New Archangel sported such feathery sidcwhi skcrs, but then ¡t could be assumed that no one either was going to invoke foppery against this walking slab of brawn. A time or two Wennberg had re-edged an ax for Karlsson, but Karlsson knew little more of him than those spaced hammer blows onto red metal. He seemed to find it of interest that the man was amounting to something more than arm.

  Wennberg meanwhile tried to reciprocate as much scrutiny as he got, but was at the disadvantage of having to share it around the trio of them: fancy-mouth Melander, this mute fox-nosed one Karlsson, Satan's choirboy Braaf.

  "We have a tiling to tell you, Wennberg," Melander set in at once. "Since you're new to our midst we can't really know whether your fondest wish is to go with us from here or to sell us to the Russians as runaways. Dance on one foot of that and then the other, a man might. So if you've had wavering, it'll be relief to you to learn we've made up your mind for you. There's no profit whatsoever for you to pigeon off to the Russians."

  Challenge of this raw sort was not at all what Wennberg had come shopping for.

  "Your goddamned tongue's fatter than your judgment, Melander," the blacksmith flared. "It's not for you to tell me who stands where. You forget. Walk straight out of here, I can, and show the Russians the hidey-hole in that hulk where you've had Braaf stashing, these months."

  "But Wennberg, heart's friend," Melander said with such politeness it seemed almost an apology, "there's nothing there."

  Wennberg stared at Melander as if the lanky seaman just had changed skin color before his eyes.

  "Since you've invited yourself along with us we thought we ought get ourselves a new hidey-hole," Melander went on. "Braaf has the knack of stumbling onto such places, aye? So this new cache now, you can know where it is when we load the canoe, and not an eyeblink before. Trot to the Russians whenever you feel like it, but you'll have nothing in the hulk to show them."

  "Except mouse turds." This unexpectedly from Braaf, whose gaze now floated steadily along three foreheads instead of two. Wennberg shot him a look which all but thundered.

  "Yes, except mouse turds." Melander chuckled. "And even the Russians might find it hard to believe that we've been busy storing away treasure of such sort. No, Wennberg, you against the three of us, that's the tilt of it, and we'll see who the Russians choose to believe. Our souls are fresh and there's spring green in our eye, so far as they know. Nor'd you be the first one here to he thought off his head, or a merchant of mischief for some other reason,"

  Melander paused, then went on in Ins know-all fashion: "You play a hand of cards now and again, don't you, Wennberg? I suggest you take a second look tip the queen's skirt before you wager."

  The blacksmith began to retort hotly: "Now listen, you walrus pizzles—" But Melander beat him to speech yet again.

  "Careful of your words, Wennberg. If you're coming with us, we have a lot of time ahead together and don't need a sack of bad feelings. If you're going off to the Russians"—an even more eloquent Melander pause—"you don't want your last sentiments to your own dear countrymen weighing wrongly on your soul, do you now?"

  Wennberg was boulder-still, in stare at Melander, Fury had him, but evidently something other, too, his
mouth now clamped until his lips all but vanished. Words were having their spines snapped there, the other three could see.

  Finally Wennberg broke his glower. Swung a heavy look to Braaf. At last, and longest, to the silent one, Karlsson.

  "You goddamned set of squareheads may be better at this than I thought," he rumbled. "I'm with you, Christ help pie. Now you've to tell me, as if you know down from up. How do we go be pilgrims in the wilderness of water?"

  Circle the plan as he would, like a farmer working at a stump, Wennberg found only a few questions to hack at when Me lander was finished.

  "Why all this fuss with old Bilibin? Whyn't we just cut bis stupid throat when we're ready?"

  This theorem shifted Karlsson forward in his seat a bit.

  "Because if we kill one of his men, Rosenberg will have to have his people chase us," Melander said instructively. "If we leave Bilibin alive, Rosenberg will take it out on him."

  "What of rifles? How many can Braaf here lay his fancy fingers on?"

  Melander replied that they had the advantage of two read}' at hand: Karlsson's long-barreled .69-caliber hunting rifle and the military weapon that would be plucked from Bilibin. Then on the night of the escape, Melander continued, Braaf would gather them a few more. "Six, to be exact."

  Braaf blinked rapidly and Karlsson looked mildly surprised, but it was Wennberg who blurted :

  "Great good God, Melander, eight guns all together? We're going in a canoe, not a goddamned man-of-war!"

  "Name me a better cargo, can you, Wennberg? Do you think the ravens arc going to feed us on this journey, and the bears will guard us with their kind teeth? We don't know what in hell-all we'll face, but I want plenty of ball and powder to face it with. Aye? If you wish to come along naked, so be it."

  Wennberg grumbled, then offered that if Melander was so fanatic on firearms, lie was willing to help out. A sentry's rifle had been sent into the smith shop for a new butt, plate; He could hold the gun hack by saying he hadn't got around to affixing the repair yet.