Chain Locker

by Bob Chaulk

  “You think so? With no ice, we could worry about drownin’ instead,” said Henry.

  “Oh yeah. Good point. I guess we’re stuck with having it in the winter, then.”

  “It’s not us that picks when the hunt will take place; that’s up to the seals. They decided to have their pups in the middle of March, so that’s when we got to go after them, simple as that. No point in goin’ huntin’ when there’s nothin’ to catch. And, I’ll tell you, they’re around today. I just saw another one pop up. Keep a sharp lookout, now, to see if one comes aboard, and never mind the gabbin’.”

  “Why aren’t they around at other times, like in the summer?”

  “The seals don’t actually live around here. They come down from the Arctic and they’re around in the winter but then they head back north in the spring. So you only get a short time to hunt them and then they’re gone again. In a couple of months there’ll be no seals around until next winter. If they lived around here you’d see a scattered one on the rocks or hanging around in the coves, but you only ever see them in the water. As far as I know, the only time they get out of the water is to have their pups. If there was no ice I’m darned if I know what they would do.”

  “It’s too bad we have to kill their babies.”

  “You didn’t like that, eh?”

  “I guess I never thought about seeing them look up at you while you’re killing them. I heard about whitecoats, but when I saw that little guy there it was the first time I realized he was just a newborn. Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Nah, I don’t much think about it anymore. Anyway, when you’re with a gang of sealers you never talk about that kind of thing; you got to act tough, right? Everybody’s puttin’ on to impress everybody else.”

  “Same as at school.”

  “Same thing, exactly. It doesn’t change when you grow up. You just harden yourself to what you got to do. We got to live, so something else has to die; it’s the law of nature. All creatures eat one another. You just have to be bigger or smarter. We’re not the biggest so I guess we’re the smartest—athough I have to wonder sometimes.”

  “It’s hard to believe that that little guy you killed would grow up to be so big and mean.”

  “Oh, they’re not so mean. They’re just tryin’ to look out for their youngsters. Hood seals, now, they’re a different story.”

  “When will we see some hoods?”

  “We might not. They’re not so plentiful as the harps. I don’t care if we see either one at all.”

  “Maybe I was thinking about hoods, then. Mr. Crowe says they’re pretty big and cranky.”

  “A dog hood is the surliest thing you ever want to come across. He’s got a long snout with a big bag of skin on top of it—looks like a hood. When you go after him, he blows it up full of air and you can pound on that thing until you fall down; he won’t feel a thing. Your gaff’ll just bounce off. An old male can get to be eleven or twelve feet long and be up to, I dunno, nine hundred or a thousand pounds, I suppose.”

  Jackie whistled. “Man, I wouldn’t want to meet one of those in a bad mood.”

  “No, you wouldn’t—not unless you got a rifle with you, ’cause you’re not gonna find one in a good mood. You might as well spit at him as bat ’im with your gaff. They hunt them later in the spring, after the whitecoats are gone. Sometimes, when the goin’ is good, you get a pile of gunners out there and it almost sounds like when those bullets were goin’ off aboard the Viking. When they’re in the thick of the seals, a gunner has to knock off every so often to let his rifle cool down. He’s so busy shooting and he goes through so many shells that he even has a feller to carry his ammunition. They call him the gunner’s dog. You didn’t like being called the galley-bitch; how would you like being called the gunner’s dog?”

  “Sounds to me like there’s not much difference,” said Jackie. “They’re both dogs, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. You know, the dog has to carry so many shells that he won’t hang the bag over his shoulder, in case he falls into the water. The weight of all that lead would drag him under.” Henry shuddered at the thought. “He carries the bag in his hand so he can let it go.”

  “You cold?” asked Jackie.

  “No,” said Henry, looking morose. “You’d never catch me carrying anything that could drag me under. I was just thinkin’ about Darmie. Sorry, Jack.”

  “That’s all right. You don’t have to act tough for me.”

  “I heard tell of a feller who shot a big hood one time through the head. He straddled the carcass with his knife in his hand and was just bending over to make the first cut when the damned thing made one last lunge upwards and got the guy between the legs.”

  “Oh, man!” Jackie closed his eyes and unconsciously crossed his legs. “Oh, man. What happened to him?”

  “He lost more than his dick, let me tell ya. Took the insides right out of him, like a gutted hen.”

  “Did he die?”

  “Oh yeah, he died.”

  “No wonder you don’t want to see any hoods.”

  “Now I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more of these little fellers,” Henry said as he looked at the miniature white pelt. “This one will barely make a small fire, but it’s probably better than the wreckwood because that blubber should make a bit of smoke to signal a ship. A few more and we can even light a fire to warm ourselves up.”

  “That’ll be the day, when you let go of some of your precious fuel,” Jackie replied.

  “Gimme a break, Jack! We got one lousy pelt. Nothing would make me happier than to have enough for a fire. Just be patient and if our luck holds we should soon have a few more. And when we do, maybe I’ll let you decide if we make a fire or make a bed outa them so we can cover up.”

  “Suits me.”

  “How are your hands and feet doin’?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “No signs of frostbite?”

  “Don’t think so. I guess I’m gettin’ used to the cold.”

  “Keep an eye on them because it can sneak up on you. It’s a miracle we haven’t frozen any fingers or toes yet. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any colder.”

  “Let’s hope we get some more seals,” Jackie said in an upbeat tone.

  “Amen, brother!”

  The afternoon dragged on. An occasional seal appeared but always out of reach. The lack of sleep and the cold were wearing on both of them. Jackie nodded off a couple of times, with his head on Henry’s shoulder. Good, Henry thought. Maybe he’ll stay awake during his watch tonight.

  “Henry?”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Are there cars in Cottle’s Island?”

  “No, sir. There’s barely roads, just wide enough for a horse and sleigh.”

  “You ever ride in a car?”

  “Of course I have. You think I never been out of Cottle’s Island? I dare say you’ve been in them lots of times, have you?”

  “I’ve had a few rides in my uncle’s. I’m gonna get a car when I’m old enough.”

  “Yeah, I’d have one if I lived in a place where there was somewhere to drive to.”

  “I guess there’s not much point in havin’ one if you can’t drive somewhere, eh?”

  “Heh, that never stopped Bob Hillier down in Campbellton,” said Henry. “He had a car come by train from St. John’s last spring. He keeps her in Lewisporte because there’s no road down to Campbellton. So all last summer he goes to Lewisporte by boat on Sundays, usually taking a crowd with him, and drives them around for a while and then everybody gets in the boat and goes back home.”

  “That sounds a bit queer.”

  “Don’t it? But he’s right popular when he comes to town, gives anybody a ride anywhere they want to go. He used to park her all week in Joe Goodyear’s garden, and always gave Joe the first ride. So, one day Joe invited him in for a drink of homebrew. Bob ended up drunk, and when it came time to leave, didn’t he shove her into reverse instead of low gear, let
go the clutch and backed her into the well.”

  “Wow! Did he drown?”

  “No, she was too big to go down the well, but he upended her just the same, with the two front wheels stickin’ up in the air. Joe’s brother-in-law harnessed up his horse and pulled him out—hey, what was that?”

  “What was what?” said Jackie.

  “I guess it was just a piece of ice bumping us; I don’t know what else it could…oh, my son!” he whispered. “There’s two seals driftin’ right alongside of us.”

  The wind pushed the small pan within a foot or two of theirs. Henry quietly got to his feet and crept towards it, but it was starting to drift away again. With no time to waste he started to run, leaping the gap and heading for the adult, who immediately bailed out, leaving her youngster to its fate. He killed the pup in one blow and glanced over his shoulder to find that the distance between the two floes had widened. He grabbed the seal and flung it towards Jackie. Then, with a running start, he stuck the point of the gaff into the edge of the ice, and vaulted across the gap, falling forward as he landed back on their floe. “Wooh, that was close,” he gasped, still on his knees. “Hey, where’s the seal?”

  “He landed right here,” said Jackie, staring down into the water. “I think he sank…no, there he is! He’s up under the ice; you should be able to reach him with the gaff…come on, hurry up; are you gonna snag him or not?”

  Henry didn’t move.

  “Henry!” Jackie snatched the gaff from Henry’s hands and leaned out over the edge of the ice, plunging it after the seal.

  “Jack, get back outa that!” Henry screamed. “You could fall in.” He grabbed the tail of his coat and pulled him back from the edge of the floe.

  Jackie spun around and threw the gaff at Henry’s feet. “What’s wrong with you?” he yelled. “You just let him get away. You want us to starve to death?”

  Henry looked like he was about to speak but changed his mind.

  “You okay?” asked Jackie.

  Henry paused. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.”

  “Are you sick or something?”

  “Sorry, Jack. I just don’t know what’s come over me,” said Henry. “I don’t know if I got what it takes.”

  “What’s this all about? Of course you got what it takes.”

  “You gave me a bad scare there. If you went overboard, I’m not sure I…I…”

  Henry slowly ran his hand up and down the handle of the gaff as Jackie waited for him to finish the sentence. He seemed to have drifted away.

  “I got no intention of goin’ overboard,” said Jackie, “so you don’t have to worry about it. I’m not a kid, you know, so you can stop treatin’ me like one.”

  “I don’t mean to do that, Jack,” said Henry. “But since I got us into this mess, it’s up to me to make sure I get you back home in one piece.”

  “You didn’t get us into this. I told you, I did. If I could swim, we wouldn’t have drove away.”

  “No, my young friend,” said Henry. “With all my experience at the ice, I should have seen that lead opening up. I was too busy looking for Simeon until you finally noticed it. If it wasn’t for my stupidity, we wouldn’t be out here now and Darmy would still be alive. Didn’t you hear the way Simeon talked to me? He blames me and he’s right. I got us into this and I’m responsible for you, so I don’t want you taking any more chances.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Jackie dismissively.

  “Don’t you tell me what to worry about!” Henry snapped. “If you go into that water you’re as good as dead. You’ll end up like Darmy.”

  “Well, you’re the one who told me to swim across,” Jackie shouted back. “Even if I could swim, how in hell was I supposed to swim across if the water was cold enough to kill me? Make up your mind.”

  “Don’t argue with me. From now on, I don’t want to see you within ten feet of the edge of this floe. Okay?”

  Jackie rolled his eyes and stomped away. Like a quarrelsome couple, they kept their distance for the next couple of hours.

  chapter thirty

  Another floe eventually came by, bearing a couple of seals and an opportunity for them to work together again. They managed to kill one before the pan got blown out of reach. Jackie was less queasy this time and, in an effort to restore the relationship, paid close attention to the knife strokes as Henry skinned and butchered the seal.

  “Why are you so careful taking off the pelt if it’s only going to end up being burned?” he asked.

  Henry laughed with a little more gusto than the inquiry merited. “That’s a good question, Skipper. I learned from Uncle Levi and he used to beat it into my skull that a poor job reduced the value of the sculp. I guess I got good at it for fear of having Uncle Levi vexed at me and now it’s just pride in doing a good job.”

  “That’s pretty impressive, the way you get the whole thing off without leaving any fat on the seal,” said Jackie.

  Henry was nearly recovered, and responded to Jackie’s efforts. “It’s the blubber that’s worth the money, so you don’t want to be leavin’ any behind on the carcass. That would be money outa your pocket. Looks like we’re gonna get a bite of supper today, Jack, b’y,” he said cheerfully.

  “Think we should save it in case we don’t get another one?”

  “It would only freeze before morning, so we might as well get as much of it inside us now as we can,” said Henry. “We should cut the blubber up into thin strips, too, to make it easier to burn, and lay the strips out so they don’t freeze into a big lump. We haven’t got any wood to get them going, so we’ll need at least some of it cut into really small pieces. Sometimes, when a crew gets caught on the ice overnight they got to burn a gaff handle or two to get the pelts going, but we haven’t got that luxury. We only got one gaff and, if we burn the handle, that’s it: we got no gaff at all.”

  As he patiently cut the fat into thin strips they sat and chatted.

  “I don’t know a thing about you, Jack,” Henry said. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Two sisters.”

  “How old, now?”

  “Margie is eleven and Alice will be seventeen, her birthday.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  “Why should I miss them? Al is a bully and Marg is a sook.”

  “I’m sure Alice would have a hard time bullying you around.”

  “She likes to try, just the same.”

  “And why do you call Margie a sook?”

  “Oh, she used to be sick a lot when she was small, so Mom always worries about her and babies her.”

  “You must be in the middle, then?”

  “Yep.”

  “So that would make you, what, thirteen or fourteen?”

  “Thirteen,” he confessed, admitting his age for the first time.

  “That’s how old I was when I first went sealin’ with my father and Uncle Levi and Simeon. Pop taught me how to bat the seals but I would say I learned more about how to use the sculpin’ knife from Uncle Levi. When we get some more seals I’ll show you, if you’re interested.”

  “Sure.”

  “You got a dog or a cat or anything?”

  “I got a dog.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s his name?

  “Wilf.”

  “Wilf, eh? I don’t think I ever knew of a dog called Wilf before.”

  “A lot of people think it’s short for Wilfred, but that’s not where he got his name. When he was a pup Mom says his bark sounded more like wilf than woof. So that’s what we called him, Wilf.”

  “Is he a big dog?” Henry asked.

  “Nah, just a little crackie. You got a dog?”

  “We had one for a long time, but he died last year. A big shaggy fella; he used to tow our firewood and I used to get him to drag me around on the ice when I was smaller. He loved it.

  “I expect your sisters are pretty upset that you’ve disappear
ed on them. I suppose now they have to feed Wilf.”

  “They won’t mind that, but they can’t stand me. I betcha Al is after movin’ into my bedroom already.”

  Henry grinned. “And what does your father do?”

  “He has a food store.”

  “A food store, eh? You must eat well.”

  “That’s what everybody thinks, but it’s not true. We have to eat all the stuff Dad can’t sell. He drags home the black bananas and dried up oranges after they’re so far gone that nobody will buy them. The day before I left he came in with a brin bag full of shriveled up potatoes: ‘Go through those now John,’ he says, ‘and pick out the good ones—and no complaining; there are lots that would be glad to have what we’re throwing away.’”

  “He calls you John?”

  “Sometimes. I hate it. I begged Mom to call me Jack but she always says, ‘Your name is not Jack and I’m not calling you Jack.’ At least she calls me Jackie.”

  “Sounds like a tough life you got there.”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “Where I live we would take all the dried up oranges and brown bananas we could get. I’d say a black banana would taste pretty good right now.”

  Jackie thought for a moment. “Yeah. Right now I’d give anything to be home in our kitchen eatin’ a slice of Mom’s lassy bread, fresh out of the oven. I’ll tell you one thing I don’t miss, though, and that’s cod liver oil. I burped up some of that seal we ate, and it made me shiver, the taste reminded me so much of cod liver oil. Mom makes us take a spoonful every day. Do you like cod liver oil?”

  “What kind of question is that? Nobody I know likes cod oil.”

  “Once we had a bottle that didn’t taste as bad as our normal stuff. It was called Scott’s Emulsion, but Mom said it was too expensive so she didn’t buy it anymore.”

  “Actually, Uncle Levi claims to like cod oil,” said Henry, “but I have trouble believing him. He keeps a barrel on the stage head next to his splittin’ table and every time he guts a cod, he hooks out the liver and tosses it into the barrel. The livers settle to the bottom and the oil comes to the top. Every now and then he dips up a mug of it and drinks it down. Says it’s good for what ails you.”