The Sea Runners

  "What do they taste like?" Braaf wondered in a whisper.

  Karlsson's shake of head confessed lack of acquaintance.

  "Pork," reported Wennberg. "The liver's just like a hog's."

  The other two looked at him. "Spend the years I did at New Archangel," Wennberg said, "a little of goddamned everything crosses your plate."

  The seals lay idle as anvils. Some had been lazing in the sun long enough that their fur had dried pale, others yet were damp and nearly as dark as their rock promenade. All of them were toward a hundred paces from where Karlsson lay sighting. He disliked the distance for the shot, but decided to amend what he could of ¡t by singling out a seal that lay a hit inshore from the others. A young bachelor, bullied into solitude by the older harem-masters of the herd.

  "Tickle luck's chin," Braaf said softly as Karlsson aimed.

  "Or it's smoke soup tonight," Wennberg muttered.

  Karlsson's shot struck the seal in the neck, not far beneath the base of its head.

  A lurch by the animal. Its foreflippers and tail Happed briefly. Then the head lowered as if into doze.

  ... Fetched him! Shot-and-pot, we'll surprise our bellies yet....

  Meantime, the other seals writhed rapidly toward the rock edge, were gone.

  "Square eye, Karlsson!" Braaf congratulated. He was first onto his feet, stepping to the right of the bump of rock Karlsson had shot from, Wennberg and Karlsson up now too, the three of them setting off io hurry toward the seal, the tide in mind.

  Of what happened next, only this much is sure. That amid a climbing stride by Braaf as he began to cross the wrist of rock, surf burst its power in front of him. That a startling white weight of water leapt, seemed to stand in the air. That it then fell onto Braaf.

  Comical, this ought to have been. A drenching, an ass-over-earhole tumble as Wennberg might have said, and there the sum of it, Braaf bouncing up now with a grin of rue. But the topple of water slung Braaf backward more than that and the hand he put down to halt himself met the wet slickness of brown rockweed.

  Braaf slid on into the tidal trough.

  Above, Karlsson and Wennberg, half-turned in stare to the crevasse water, were twins of disbelief.

  Braaf' was vanished.

  Then, and a long then it began to seem, up through foam hobbled Braaf's head. For a breath space, his eves held the affronted look they'd had when Wennberg's boot clattered the spittoon in the officers' clubhouse.

  Next the insurging tide shot him from view of Karlsson and Wennberg around the bend of the trough.

  ... Rifle, reach the rifle to him, only chance...

  Down toward the trough Karlsson clambered, Wennberg heavily at his heels and cursing blue. The footing along the top of the trough was treachery itself. Karlsson and Wennberg skidded like men on soapstone as they tried to approach the edge.

  The out-slosh of the tide brought Braaf whirling back below them, grabbing with both hands at the walls of the trough, barnacles and mussels denying him grip and costing him skin. This time it was around the trough's seaward bend that the riptide tossed him from sight.

  "Hold me," Karlsson directed Wennberg.

  The burly man clamped his arms around Karlsson's knees as Karlsson stretched himself flat, down toward the spilling water. Like a man peering down a well, Karlsson now. With both hands he held the rifle at its barrel end, thrust the stock into the channel as Braaf popped to sight once more.

  "Braaf! Grab! We'll pull...!"

  A wrath of water—it bulged a full three feet over all other froth in the channel, as if some great-headed creature was seeking surface—careened in. Surf spewed over Karlsson and Wennberg, both of them clenching eves tight against the salt sting.

  When they could peer again, Braaf bobbed yards past them on the landward side, his boy's face in a grimace. He scented to shake his head at them. Then the tide abruptly sucked back toward the ocean and Braaf was spinning toward his rescuers once more, his arms supplicating in search of the gunstock.

  But short, a hand's length short...

  ... God's bones, it never behaves the same twice. Need be quicker, make ready...

  "This time, Wennberg! Lower me more, there, now'll reach ..."

  The pair of them stared expectation toward the seaward corner of the trough, bracing themselves for the riptide's return and the hurl of spray over them once more.

  It arrived, crashing high along the trough walls, hard spatter, runnels down faces, now eyes could open again...

  This time the tide had not brought Braaf back with it.

  "Braaf!" demanded Wennberg. "Braaf, where the hell—?"

  Karlsson scrambled wildly for the ocean edge, banging knees and hands on rough rock, Wennberg lurching after him.

  The coastal afternoon's same royal colors of blue and brown were all about the two men, the horizon brow of the planet untroubled out there in front of them, the Pacific's flume of surf flowing as ever to their left and right; the single absence was Braaf.

  In the surf's froth, very white beside the rock shelf, Karlsson and Wennberg scanned frantically for other color. Occasionally they glimpsed it, as you might see a bright-headed dancer a quick moment across a crowded room. The straw yellow of Braaf's hair, all but concealed in the tumult of the water and being banged north along the jagged rock shore.

  SIX

  Two now. But why that. God's bones, why, why? Why one slip and Braaf's gone from life? That how it'll happen, each by each of us? This coast snare us each like that? But Braaf. Braaf, oh Christ, Brant I'd give half my life to have it not happen, what did. Gone, though. Taken water for a wife, (die schooner met! say of it. Why. And pair of us now, we're not much better off than him. You were the tip weight of us, Braaf, kept us level. Turn on me, Wennberg had you to worry about. Go for you, there'd he me sharp on him. Hut now ... Wennberg'll he trouble's trumpet now. Can hear him over there, what must be whispering in that head of his. "Oil Christ—the doom on us—the fish-fuckers shot Melander, Braaf tumbles in a millrace—now just the pair of us and I can't trust this Smålander any farther than I can fart—not after the maps—not after this—" Need to tamp him. Someway, Else we're dead men too, Waiting to fall. Not the way of it, this shouldn't be. We've done the work of the world, since New Archangel. Done Melander's plan this far, every hair of it. Ought he enough, lint always more, Wennberg, he's the first work now. Working slow. Braaf told of that. Braaf, Braaf, Swimming the air with Melander, I hope to Christ you are. And now I go over to that bull and work slow, ...

  "I should've. Oh, I should've done you the other night. Slit you loose from life. Braaf and I'd kept on somehow, we'd've managed. But you, you're black luck if there ever was. The maps, and then those Kolosh whale hounds, now this—"

  "You do me, Wennberg, and you've done yourself. Fed yourself to ocean or Koloshes, choose your devil."

  They were either side of the canoe, the afternoon graying away, the coast gone somber. Tide was still high, covering the point where Braaf had been lost—and the seal as well, slosh up to the knees of Wennberg arid Karlsson when they struggled toward the animal, before they saw a retreating wave swash the gray form back into the ocean. Then the wrangle, on and on—"fucking squaw rider you, if you'd had the maps none of this"—"maps are wish, Wennberg, miles arc what we need, so just"—until every word seemed to be out of t)ie both of them. They were weary, groggy, lame in the head. Being deprived of Melander had been like the stiffening of an arm or leg, they somehow learned to function in spite of it, gimped their way onward as they had to. This loss of Braaf was more a warp of the balance within the ear. Nothing stood quite whore it had before. And when the lurch of argument and temblors of predicament at last shook the two men silent, Karlsson knew he needed to begin his true labor. And so did.

  "Can't paddle in daylight, you say yesterday," Wennberg had responded somewhere between bafflement and fury. Beware the goat from the front, the horse from the rear, and man from all sides, ran a saying of the New Archangel Russians. Everything
of Wennberg recited this caution into Karlsson now. Yet Wennberg had to be worked back to the journey, into the canoe, brought around from Braaf's ... "Now it's can't paddle at night. Tell me this one thing, Karlsson. This one goddamned sideways thing. Where're you going to find us hours that aren't one or other, day or night? Whistle up your ass for them, arc you?"

  "Dusk." Karlsson had repeated it carefully, "Dusk, Wennberg, We need make a short run of it, until we figure we're clear of any Koloshes along here. Just the two of us paddling now, we've got to learn about that, too. So we need do it. Steal enough twilight to paddle an hour, maybe two, we can. Whatever we make is gain toward Astoria,"

  Now, the day stepping down toward dark, Wennberg sighed dismally, squinted to the ocean, gray and steadily grayer, as though it were dishwater and lie were being asked to drink it at a swallow.

  "Wennberg, we need do it."

  As the two canoemen paddled they could make out that timber still spilled like a dark endless waterfall over the rim of the continent, but all else here looked more and more like old outlying ruins of the vigorous mountain coast behind them to the north.

  The growl of the surf was constant on their left. Ahead, a high-sided squarish island, like a fort just offshore, stood in black outline. Two big sharkfin seastacks guarded its oceanward side.

  "Country you wouldn't give the devil," Karlsson heard Wennberg say.

  Through the near dark they achieved a half-handful of miles, put behind them the fortlike isle, before Karlsson, hoping he was reading this scalloped shore aright, pointed the canoe in between two headlands.

  He strained now to pick shapes in the water before them, felt Wennberg ahead doing the same, heard him mutter.

  Three, four, half a dozen rocks humped to view in an area the size of a commons field—and none more.

  The route clear, the canoe drove in to one more haven of shore.

  The camp this night, without Braaf, was like a remembered room with one wall knocked out.

  Almost nothing was said during eating, and less after. Karlsson watched Wennberg occasionally shake his head and tug at his whiskers, as if in wonder at where he found himself now. Hut none of his usual almanac of complaints, nor any newly-thought-up blaze to hurl at Karlsson. Just those grim wags of head.

  Trying to hear into that silence, Karlsson knew, was going to be a long piece of work.

  The morning showed the two that they were on a beach as fine as velvet, gray-tan and nearly a mile long. At either end of the sand arc rough cliff's rose and pushed a thick green forest up into the sky.

  On the cliff rim directly over Wennberg and Karlsson one small tree stood alone in crooked dance, as though sent out by the others to dare the precipice.

  Here the surf was the mildest they had seen, only a single wave at a time furrowing in from the ocean. Yet the crash of the water came large, entirely outsize. And out on the horizon the Pacific was playing with its power in another way as well. There white walls periodically would fling up and at once disintegrate in spray—waves hitting on reefs. Unnerving, these surprise explosions as if the edge of the world were flying apart.

  This landing spot presented them what Karlsson had hoped profoundly for, a deep view of the coast ahead. What the two of them saw was a shattered line of headlands, shadowed by seastacks in shapes of great gray shipsails and dark tunnel mouths; sea rock various and jagged as a field of icebergs.

  "Not that jungle, Karlsson." Wennberg licked his lips, wiped a hand across. "Not in goddamn night nor even dusk, we can't."

  A pair of kingfishers eluded past, sent a jump through both men with their raucous rattle.

  Karlsson returned his look to the tusked coast ahead.

  ..."Chose wrong," Melander told the bastard a time. "Brought you instead of your forge and anvil, they'd been easier to drag along this coast than you." Still, Wennberg's right. Two of us can't handle the canoe well enough. And if there's luck at all in life we ought be down far enough from those whale chasers....

  The two were keeping obvious distance between one another this morning. And the dagger was a new feel along Karlsson's left side, inside his rain shirt where he had slipped it the night before; where lie would be carrying it from now on. He figured Wennberg was doing the same.

  "Then the other time is now," Karlsson answered the blacksmith.

  That day and all the next Karlsson and Wennberg pulled past shattered coast, watching into the seastack colonies and the warps of shore for Koloshes as boys would peer through a forest for sight of one another.

  ... Like trying to see through a millstone, this line of coast. There's this, the Koloshes don't seem to fancy the place either. Maybe better tomorrow. It's all dragging work, though. Hero on, just the two of us to paddle, thaf's what it'll need be. All dragging work ...

  And each dusk, came ashore like old women stiff in the knees. Wennberg encouraged a fire while Karlsson gathered mussels or clams, whatever could pass as a meal. Only after they had food in them were they able to face the chores of night, finding water, wood supply, putting up the sailcloth shelter, laying groundcloth and blankets, covering the canoe against possibility of storm finding their night's cove. And after those, face the loneliness which occupied where Braaf ought to have been.

  ... It needs to be the pair of us against this coast now, blacksmith. Ironhead. Just that, no other load on our backs. You're five kinds of an ox but that much you can sec, when your temper isn't in the way. If just Braaf..."If" is fairy gold. Make it past, what happened. Ahead, we need to point. Wennberg, though: can I keep you damped down....

  And again in the morning, nerved themselves and pushed the dark canoe into the surf of the North Pacific.

  "Beach!" Wennberg was pointing. "Beach like heaven's own 1"

  "What was that?" Night down over them now on this sand shore, Karlsson was at the fire boiling clams for supper when Wennberg came and tossed something into the flames.

  "That Aleut calendar of Braaf's, found it in the bottom of the canoe." Wennberg picked up a drift branch to add to the fire. "Won't be needing it in eternity, him."

  Karlsson reached, plucked the branch from Wennberg, with it flipped the little rectangle from the fire. Its edges were charred and the day-peg browned, but the wood was whole.

  "What's that for, then?" demanded Wennberg. "Every damned day along here is every other damned day. It helps nothing to keep adding them up. Why count misery?"

  "Maybe not. But this ought be kept." Karlsson set to shaving the char off the calendar with his dagger, then moved the peg the three days since Braaf had gone into the tide trough. A cross-within-a-circle. Russian holy day, Pure Monday or St. Someone's birthday or who knew what ... Karlsson realized Wennberg still was staring at him. "It's all we have of Braaf."

  "All we—? Of Braaf? That hive of fingers—?"

  Karlsson stopped work on the char but held to the dagger. He took long inventory of Wennberg. Finally, as if not at all keen on the result:

  "Braaf happened to be a thief, and he happened to be as high a man as any. I know there's little space in there for it, but try to get both those into mind,"

  "Karlsson, I'll never savvy you—" Wennberg's eyes slid from their lock with Karlsson's, The dagger had come up off the charred wood.

  It paused. Then the blade thrust under the bail of the kettle.

  The slender man hoisted the mealware from the coals and set it to the ground.

  "Food," said Karlsson.

  The coast uncluttered itself for them for the next three days. The beaches stayed steadily sand, and ample, while the oecan and continent margined struighter here, as if this ought be a careful boundary of truce. Waves ar rived eream-colored, then thinned to itiiIk as they spilled far up the barely tilted shore. Once in a while rocks ganged themselves along tide line, but nothing of the dour constant throngs of the days just past. The (lolloped stone islands quit off too, except the one early on Karlsson and Weiinbcrg's second morning of this new coast scape, a long stark bench out a few mile
s in the ocean.

  One last new reach of coast, then, and its visible population only these two ki lined against their will, the one family of tfie kind in all creation, slim Swede and broad Swede arked in a Tliiigit canoe.

  The beach at the end of the third of these days was widest yet. Wide as kingdom after the ledgelike Weeks to the north, somehow a visit of desert here between timbered continent and cold ocean. Five stints of pushing, each a contest against an ever more reluctant sledge, it took the pair of men to skid the canoe in beyond the last mark of the tide.

  Scoured shore, too. Between surf and high tide line no tiling but a speckle of broken clam and sand dollar shells, suggesting that only sea gulls prospered here.

  Inland, the sand began to rumple. Over the line of dunes, like the spiking 011 a manor wall the top of forest showed.

  "I ought go have a look," Karlsson offered.

  "Look your eyes out, for what I care."

  The dune grass poked nose-high to Karlsson and he climbed the crest of a sand wave for better view. Before him now, swale of more sand, a couple of hundred strides across. Then a second rumple of slope, scrub evergreens spotting this one. Tight beyond that, forest thick as hear hair.

  Southeast, though; southeast, the magnetic direction of this voyage: southeast the spikeline of timber barbed higher. Two plateaus of forest spread into the horizon.

  Karlsson hadn't the palest inkling of what would mark the river Columbia, whether some manner of Gibraltar attended it—from what Melander had told of the river's mightiness and to go by this coast's penchant for drama of rock, that seemed fitting—or whether sharp lower cliff, as at the Strait of Fuca, simply would skirt away and reveal Astoria. A considerable opening in the coast earlier this afternoon had shown the Swedes disappointment. Only bay or sound, not vast river mouth. Wennberg still was ¡11 a grump from it.