The Sea Runners Read online

  Gravely Melander congratulated him on entering the spirit of their enterprise.

  "There, Braaf, he's made you amends. You'll need to pluck only five firepieces when the time is ready."

  Braaf said nothing.

  Karlsson too stayed unspeaking, but he had begun to have a feeling about Wennberg. There was something not reckonable, opposite from usual, about this blacksmith. As when the eyelid of a wood duck watching you closes casually from the bottom up.

  Wennberg was not done with the topic of weaponry.

  "Just where'll our little storekeeper get these guns, anyway?"

  "You do take three bites at every berry, don't you, Wennberg? But since you bring the matter up..." Melander turned his long head to Braaf in the manner of an indulging uncle. "Braaf, what of it? Where can the guns best be got on our night?"

  "The officers' clubhouse," Braaf responded with entire matter-of-factness. "The gun room."

  For the single time in all the unfolding of the plan, Melander blanched. Karlsson pulled once at his thin nose. And sardonically, Wennberg: "Next, Braaf, you'll want, to parade up to the Castle Russians and ask can we have their underwear for warmth on our little journey."

  Braaf shrugged. "Sauerkraut is in the smelliest barrels, guns are ¡11 a gun room."

  Melander found voice, restrained Wennberg, chided Braaf, and the matter began to be argued out.

  It emerged that Braaf likely hail it right. That the collection of rifles racked like fat billiard cues within the officers'gun room—on one of his invented errands that wafted him into all crannies of the settlement Braaf had spotted the weapons—and which were used for shooting parties when the governor's retinue went downcoast to Ozherskoi, this small armory was New Archangel's richest trove of firearms unguarded by sentries.

  But, as Wennberg demanded, not without suspicion, why unsentried ...?

  "Because of the padlock 011 the door and the chain through the trigger guards?" Braaf suggested.

  This silenced even Wennberg.

  Karlsson at last spoke up.

  "There's a second stick to this cross. The officers and company men coming and going. They flow in and out of that place day and night."

  "I can mark us a safe time," Melander mused. "But snatching those guns loose..."

  "Wennberg," murmured Braaf.

  "Mister Blacksmith!" Melander proclaimed.

  "You squareheaded sons of Chores," Wcnnherg said unhappily.

  The waiting became a kind of ghost attaching itself within each of their lives, as if a man now cast two shadows and one somehow fell into his body instead of away. The outer man had to perform as ever—do bis work, eat, sleep, carry on barracks gabble—while inside, this sudden new shadow-creature, the one in wait, bided the next six weeks and six days wholly in thought of the immense voyage ahead.

  Melander as he waited studied the Tebenkov maps ever more firmly into his mind. Before long, their descending coastal chain of islands Could have been recited out of him like Old Testament genealogy. New Archangel's island of Baranof would beget Kuiu Island, Kuiu beget Kosciusko, Kosciusko Heceta, and Heceta Suemez, south and south and south through watery geography and explorers' mother tongues until the eventual rivermouth port called Astoria. Perhaps it was because Melander had in him the seaman's way of letting days take care of distance, the necessary nautical faith that there is more time than there is expanse of the world and so any voyage at last will end, that these stepping-stone details predominated in his thinking about the escape. Rarely, and then never aloud to any of the other three, did Melander mull the totality of the coastal journey ahead. This made a loss to them all, for Melander alone of the four had traveled greatly enough on the planet to understand the full scope of what they would he attempting. To grasp that their intended ten or twelve hundred miles of canoeing stretched—wove, rather, through the island-thick wilderness coast—as far as the distance from Stockholm down all of Europe to the sun coasts of Italy. Each mile of those hundreds, too, along a cold northern brink of ocean which in winter is misnamed entirely. Not pacific at all, but malevolent. And too, each mile maybe—or maybe not, this was the puzzle of ocean and oceangoer—each mile maybe working away at this three-man crew of his, Braaf and Wennberg and Karlsson. Thief and oaf and clam: or acquisitionist and draft ox and canoe soldier; whichever each was now, he perhaps had sea change ahead of him. The great over-water passage between one life and another, Melander in his sailoring had been at an edge of the nineteenth century's immigration tides, the tens of hundreds of thousands who were the forebears of us, and so knew how voyage could tower in the mind of a first-timer. It couldn't not. Treadle of the waves week on week, the half-coffin berth to try to survive in, reliance for that survival on sailors who flew in the mast trees like clothed monkeys; a compressed existence, the voyage of a ship, like a battle or a hard illness or a first failed time in love, lodged in the memory at an angle not like that of any other set of days. And that was shipboard; this would be canoe, splinter of a true vessel. Sea change could come all the more intense. But then sometimes it never came at all, or again it simply made a man more of what he was, carved the lines of him deeper. You never knew. Not even a Melander had the how of sea change. Vet ¡11 this season of wait Melander might have hinted toward what lay in store when one went out to live on waves. His knowledge of water enwrapping the world, the canny force of its resistance to the intentions of man, he might have used to put a tempered edge on the escape plan. To have said, in his silver style of saying, "Hear me on this, heart's friends. Things beyond all imagining may happen't" us down this coast, aye? But we'll have gone free into our fate, Resides, a man draws nearer to death wherever he strides..."

  But no, and it may be necessity for those who choose vast riik, even Melander seemed not able to confront the thought of all the miles at once. Only those from island to island to island.

  In his waiting. Wennberg too spent lung spells of calculation. Turning and turning the question of whether there could be found a way to betray the escape.

  Certainty did not seem to be anywhere in the proposition. If the Russians could be convinced and then relied upon to reward him, say grant return to Sweden; but that the Russians would forfeit a blacksmith so readily did not seem likely, whatever they might promise. If he told of the plan but Melander persuaded the Russians there was nothing to it, Wennberg would never after be safe in New Archangel. Karlsson and perhaps even that stealer of milkteeth Braaf would be steady threat to his life. If he fled with the other three, into freedom—or perhaps into the bottom of that ocean like cats in a sack—

  All of it strummed a man's nerves, not to say what fret this place New Archangel played on you anyway. Example, the morning soon after Wennberg added himself into the escape plan. On the way to begin his day of smithing, he'd remembered leaving his new-sewn leather apron back at the barracks and there near Raranov's Castle reversed route to fetch it. Just then gulls on a breeze off Sitka Sound flashed across the breast of Verstovia. White as winter creatures they glided, as if shooed in from the other, snowier crags. Wennberg had cast them a glance—and up there the apparition reared, a Russian cross thrusting out of the dark north slope of Verstovia. A long minute Wennberg stared at this, Calvary arrived to the crest of Alaska, before he picked out that the cross was merely the Russian cathedral's topmost one, that in the morning dark the green-painted spire under it blended invisibly against the forest of Verstovia. As well as anyone, Wennberg knew that if you let yourself dwell 011 the menace of these mountains you would go around in terror all day every day, like a cowering dog. What jostled his frame of mind, though, was not just the surprise sky-planted cross, but that in his years here lie had never noticed this illusion before. Every morning now, despite himself, Wennberg found himself stopping at the spot and casting a look back up there.

  And all the rest of the day, if and perhaps. Coax at them how he would, Wennberg could make the pair do no more than somersault into perhaps and if.

  This, thi
s damned skitter of a matter—Wennberg did not at all have well-bottom faith in the prospects of Melander's plan, But neither did he see, now, any clear path out of it. What Wennberg imagined was going to be his say over Melander and the other two somehow, by some coil of the escape plan, was turning out to be their say over him.

  Since Karlsson went through life anyway in the manner of a man in wait, to him the space of weeks until the escape was simply one more duration, and not so long as most. Time passed, or you put it past. All in all, he showed a good deal less edginess about New Archangel existence than any of the other three. A man built smoke-tight, as Melander had said of him. What then held Karlsson into the pattern of the escape?

  Braaf too had wondered.

  "Why're you?"

  He and Karlsson were dutied, this day, to the warehouse where bundling was done. Beaver pelts had been brought in by the Koloshes. The light task Braaf took, folding each dried hide into a square, fur side in. Karlsson then stacked the bundled pelts into the big screw press, to be squeezed into bales for shipment to China. Quite why it was that Swedes had been brought half around the world to pile together animal skins that would then be cargoed half around the world again to adorn Chinamen, neither Braaf nor Karlsson grasped. But here was the habiliment of several dozen former beavers, and here were they.

  "Hmm, Karlsson? Why're you?"

  "Same as you, I suppose." Karlsson did not seem much disposed to talk about their leave-taking of New Archangel, which of course focused Braaf onto it all the more.

  "So then, why'm I?"

  "To kiss good-bye to the Russians, and five more years here,"

  "Good-bye kisses aren't always happy ones,"

  "Some truth to that."

  "I'll miss the snuffboxes. They hop into a man's hand, here. What of you? What'll you miss?"

  Karlsson shrugged.

  "What, can't put a name to her?" Braaf queried.

  Karlsson gave him a fast look. After a bit, said:

  "Maybe she has a lot of names."

  "All the more to miss."

  "Braaf, easy with this. We may be heard."

  "Only by heaven. The overseer's gone off to his bottle."

  "You'd know."

  "That iron puddler, Wennberg. Think he's to be trusted?"

  "Do you?"

  "I don't trust anyone whose cars arc buried in his whiskers."

  "Melandfer has put trust in him."

  "Melander isn't you."

  Karlsson straightened a bundled pelt into line atop the others in the screw press. "We need trust Melander."

  "Not much of a word spender, are you?"

  "Not much."

  "All right, try this hole: the voyage, can we do it strong as Melander says?"

  "Braaf, you've more questions than the king's cat."

  "Nothing knocks at the ear if it's never invited in. You still haven't said, you know."

  "Said?"

  "Why're you coining on the escape?"

  Karlsson gave attention to peltry and screw press again. When he turned hack, his lean face was as little readable as ever but he peered more interestedly at Braaf. The angle at which the sight of the young thief entered his eyes seemed to have altered. After a bit, Karlsson said:

  "Maybe to see how it'll be."

  Braaf was not entirely sure whether this constituted answer or not. lint lie nodded now, as though it did.

  The hardest wait among them was Braaf's. Melander forbade him from further stealing until the final flurry of muskets and food on the date of the escape. How, then, to keep his fingers busy?

  Melander had a part answer: a hank of hefty rope he passed to Braaf. "Work this in those lily hands of yours, as much as you can every day. Get calluses started, else you'll bleed to death through the palms once we begin paddling,"

  But a man can't twiddle rope al! day, and—

  "An Aleut calendar," Melander at last came up with, the fifth or seventh time Braaf asked him if there wasn't just one further item wanted for the cache, "Carve us one, so we can number our time on the way to Astoria, aye?"

  Braaf smiled like a boy given a second sugar cake. "I know where there's one, I can get it this after—"

  "No!" Melander swept a harried glance around, Braaf blinking up at him. "No, Don't steal one. Carve one. You may have never noticed, but there is a dif ference. Keep those damn fingers of yours at home, hear?"

  So began Braaf's pastime of car very, a fine Kolosh slat of red cedar—Melander would not have wanted to ask how it found its way to Braaf—about the size of the lid of a music box and a half-inch thick shaved and shaved by him. Then the twelve rows of peg holes across for the months, and in those rows one hole for every day of month, Braaf next discovered that on the best-wrought of these calendars—Melander had neglected too to forbid borrowing for the sake of a look—the Russians marked for their Aleut converts the frequent religious days, a cross-in-a-circle penciled around four or five of the peg holes each month; the notion being that wherever an Aleut huntsman might roam in his fur harvest for the tsar, lie would have along this steadfast guide to orderly obeisance. Lazily crude, though, this penciling seemed to Braaf. He incised his crosses-in-circles. Finally, there was the peg, to keep track of the day of year much as count is recorded on a cribbage board. Braaf made his of walrus-tooth ivory, an elegant knobbed sliver like a tiny belaying pin.

  "Aye, well," said Melander when Braaf shyly handed him the polished little board. "May our days be fit for your calendar, Braaf."

  "Which is the one, now?" Braaf asked. "When we go?"

  Melander plucked out the ivory peg, counted briefly along a row with it, inserted it.

  "This one. Just here, Braaf. The day of days."

  Night, the seventh of January, 1853. By the Russian calendar, the night after Christmas.

  Karlsson staggered from the Kolosh village to the outside of the stockade gate, bounced hard against the wood, propped himself and threw back his head.

  "'Be GREETed joyful MORNing HOURR,'" he bawled. "'A Savior COMES with LOVE'S sweet POWERR ..."'

  "Shúsh! Christ save us, man, you'll have that sergeant down here," Bilibin called urgently, hustled from the hut sheltering him from the rain, and hurriedly worked the gate, "Quick, in, in ..."

  From the dark beside the blacksmith shop Melander watched the gate crack open ever so briefly, then close. Two man-shapes bobbed together. Karlsson's slurred mutter and Bilibin's guffaw were heard, Melander swiveled his head toward the end of the smithing shop farthest from the gate and spoke:

  "Now."

  A piece of the darkness—its name was Braaf—disengaged itself and instantly was vanished around the corner.

  Next Melander became motion. Across New Archangel for three hundred yards lie hastened, in black reversal of a route he roved one twilit evening a half-year ago. A different being, that Deacon Step-and-a-Half had been, not yet cumbered with a thousand miles of plan.

  Outside the Scandinavian workers' barracks Melander halted and drew deep breaths.

  For half a minute the rain ticked down on him.

  Entering, Melander clattered the barracks door shut behind him, began to shrug out of his rain shirt, mumbled this or that about having forgot his gloves in the toilet, and was vanished out the doorway again.

  A person attentively watching this arrival and departure would have had time to blink perhaps three times.

  Wennberg had been idly stropping a knife as he spectated the card game being played by three carpenters and a sailmaker. Now he grunted that he too was off to mount the throne of Denmark, if the Russians allowed pants to be dropped on such a festive night, and to the chuckles of the cardplayers pulled on his rain shirt and stopped into the streaming blackness beside Melander.

  The pair of them, tree and stump somehow endowed with legs, moved with no word through the night for two minutes, three. Apprehension traveled with them both. Apprehensions rather, for their anxieties were sized as different as the men.

  A several hundredth
time Mela rider retold himself the logic by which he had singled this night. Christmas Eve the Russians hail begun, all going around solemn as church mice, crossing themselves tint il it seemed they'd wear out the air, eating no lute until "the first star of evening." (Which baffled Braaf no little bit : "They wait to see a star over this place, won't they have a hungry winter?") Yesterday, it had been a morning of liturgy murmuring out of the twin-crossed cathedral and then the Russian men paying calls on each other, toasting at every stop until by nightfall the streets were full of crisscrossing bands of them shouting back and forth, "You beat to windward, we'll steer to lee!" Now, the pious and visitâtional sides of Christinas having been observed, certain as anything this would be their night of celebrating and carousing and dancing their boots off—up there in Baranov's Castle at the governor's ball they'd be, all the officers and any of the company Russians who frequented their clubhouse for card games and tippling and monotony-breaking argument, every breathing one of them. And when the escapees' absence was discovered, what Russian among them was going to be eager to dash from snug activities to chase Swedes through the damp black of Alaskan night? And meanwhile the Koloshes would he staying to their longhouses, leaning clear of drunk and boisterous tsarmen.... Confusion, alcohol, reluctance, Melander had them all carefully in rank as allies for escape. Iiut late-going Russians yet within the officers' clubhouse ... racket in the gun room carrying to a sentry at the eastmost blockhouse ... just here, on such points beyond logic, Melander's months of planning teetered, and the quiver of them touched him through the dark.

  Wennberg's perturbance was purely with himself. Until he stood up from beside the cardplayers in the barracks the blacksmith had not been convinced he would go through with the escape. Why risk the tumble, ass-over-earhole, down this bedamned coast? Why trust even a minute to Melander or Karlsson or Braaf, these three orphans of Hell? So how came it. that now lie was traipsing off with Melander into disaster's black avid mouth?