The Sea Runners (25 page)

"On a forge by thirteen, I was," Wennberg was saying. "Apprenticed, so I had to hammer out plowshares. Thought my arms'd break off. Bad as this bedamned paddling."

Wennberg when young—he was the fifth son, the last and stubborn and brawlsome and least schoolable one, of an inspector of mines in the Nordmark iron district—Wennberg when young already was a figure that might have been knocked together in one of the red-glowing forges of Värmland. Who can say how it is in such instances, whether the person simply has chanced into the body that best fits him or whether the body has grasped command of that mind: but Wennberg as boy looked just what he was, a blacksmith waiting to happen. A beam for shoulders, arms plump with strength; A neck wide as his head. Very nearly as thick, too, in all senses.

"At least there's an end to this paddling."

"Maybe. Could be wrong kind, though. Melander's had his end, and Braaf his."

"And chewing over their deaths doesn't undo them. Wennberg, each day We pull ourselves nearer to Astoria."

"Or to drowning or to Koloshes or to Christ knows just whatever, I ought've taken my death and been done with it, the day somebody spoke 'Merica to me."

Of that continent which had begun to pull Swedes as the moon draws the tides, the young blacksmith knew only the glittering pun its word made against the Swedish tongue. America, 'Merica:
mer rika, more rich.
That there somehow was a Russian 'Merica besides the one that the Swedish farm families were flocking to mystified Wennberg only briefly. He imagined the Mericas must be side by side there the other end of the ocean, that the ship made a turn like going down one road fork instead of the other. Then word arrived to the Nordmark region, in the person of a merchant over from Karlstad, that the Russians were recruiting blacksmiths to work iron in their America. Wennberg's father, heartily weary of a son with temper enough in him to burn down Hell, managed to see to it that Wennberg was one of the three smiths chosen, and that Wennberg went off south across the Gulf of Bothnia with the others to meet the Russian ship at Sveaborg. They were joining the voyage of Arvid Adolf Etholen, a naval man of
Finnish-Swedish lineage serving as an officer of the tsar and now to become the new governor of Russian America. Wennberg never worked clear how it was that Etholen could be simultaneously Swede and Russian and captain and governor, but then Wennberg had ahead of him years of finding out that double-daddle of such sort was not rare where the Russians were concerned. A Russian system, at least as he found it practiced in Alaska, did not need make any too much sense, it simply needed be followed relentlessly and the effort pounded into it would eventually force result of some sort out the far end.

"You can't close your cars always," Karlssoil said.

"Maybe not," concurred Wennberg. "The trouble is to know when the devil's doing the talking."

Finns predominated in the number that voyaged for Russian America during the term of Etholen; weavers, masons, tanners and tailors, sailmakers, carpenters. But for ironwork a Wennberg was wanted. The forge must have been the cradle of these Värmland Swedes. So Wennberg was shipboard with new governor Etholen's entourage those nine months from the Baltic to New Archangel in 1839—4)0. Etholen with his prim little divided mustache and those hooded eyes which seemed to see all over the ship at once; he was said to know more of Alaska than any of the tsar's men since Baranov. And Etholen's big-nosed young wife, pious as Deuteronomy recited backwards; and Pastor Cygnaeus, and the governor's servants, and the naval officers; oh, it was high carriage and red wheels too, for a blacksmith to be journeying in company with such as these.

"Tell me truth, Karlsson," Wennberg blurted now. "How many more days d'you think it can be? To Astoria?"

Karlsson, carefully; "There's no count to what you can't sec, Wennberg. I'd give much to put a finger a place on Braaf's counting board and say, 'Here. Astoria day, this one.' But we can't know that. We can just know tomorrow will carry us closer to it,"

Wennberg shook his head. "I've played cards against men like you, Karlsson, They count too much on the next flip from the deck."

"While your style won you the world?"

Wennberg's embarkation to Russian America carried him to a fresh corner of the planet, a familiar livelihood and religion, and a doom. At first, curiosity was all there was to it, a way to ease hours—watching the cardplayers. Then he edged into the gaming, merely an evening now and again, which in a feet-first fellow such as Wennberg truly shows how guardful he was being. Some money vanished from him in the first years but not all so much, no amount to keep a man awake nights. Besides, Pastor Cygnaeus was one to inveigh against waywardness, the devil's trinity of drink and cards and the flesh; and as it is with those who have some of the bully in them, Wennberg by close-herding could be bullied in the general direction of moderation. But came the spring of 1845, Pastor Cygnaeus departed New Archangel, sailed back for Europe with Etholen at his end of term as governor. Wennberg yet had two years of indenture and during them his gaming, and all else, changed.

"Back there at the tide trough."

Karlsson waited, impassive.

"If I'd been to the right of you and Braaf to the left, I'd've gone into that millrace instead of him."

... If that'd been, my ears would get rest this night.... Aloud: "If the moon were window we could sec up angels' nighties, too. Lay it away, Wennberg." Less than anything did Karlsson want to discuss the perishing of Braaf. "Tomorrow paddles will still fit our hands, and the canoe will still fit into the ocean. Live by that,"

Wennberg moved his head from side to side. "You can wash your mind of such matters, Karlsson. I can't. Death this side of me and then that, I need think on it. Sec through to why I was let live."

"Maybe God's aim is bad."

"No, got to be more to it than that." Wennberg would not be swerved. "Maybe like sheep and goats. 'And He shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left—' No, Braaf was to the right—"

"Wennberg. Stow that."

Wennberg peered earnestly through the firelight to Karlsson. "You know what the pastors'd say, about all this."

... No, and I damn well don't give a...

"They'd say I'm being put to test. All this, bedamned coast, you other three, Koloshes—" Just now a thought could he seen to surprise Wennberg: "Maybe even you, too, Karlsson ! Being put to test 1"

Proclamation of his eligibility did not noticeably allure Karlsson. "Wennberg, I know at least this. We're not playing whist with God along this coast. Either we
paddle to the place Astoria or die in the try. One or other. Just that."

Wennberg shook his head. Not, as it turned out, against Karlsson; the pastors. "But they don't know a thumb's worth about it either. Found that out, I did, when it happened with—with her."

Karlsson looked the question to Wennberg.

"Katya," the blacksmith said.

"Katya?" Karlsson echoed.

"My wife." Wennberg wiped the back of bis hand across his mouth, as if clearing away for the next words. "Think you're the only one ever looked at a woman, do you? You've fiddled your time, north there. You know what the Creole women can be, the young ones. Black diamonds, the Russians call them. Katya was one, right enough—But why'd she die?" Wennberg's look was beseeching, as if Karlsson might be withholding the answer. "If she hadn't, I'd not be in all this. God's will, the pastor said. God's swill, right enough, I told him back. What kind of thing is that to do, kill a man's wife with whooping cough? Didn't even seem ill at first, Katya. Just a cough. And then—'() satisfy us early with Thy mercy,' that clodhopper of a Finn preaching when we buried her on the hill. Mercy? Late for mercy on Katya. And me. How's I to go through life with her grave up there on the hill from me all the while? If I could've bought my way out of that Russian shit pile, back to Sweden. If the gambling'd worked—"

Evenings, that summer of 1845, a particular plump Russian clerk sat into the barracks card games. Three times out of five now, when this clerk departed the table
he look with him just a bit more of Wennberg's money than Wennberg ought to have let himself lose. Nor was Pastor Cygnaeus' successor any help as a vigilant; he too suffered from that same soul sweat, New Archangel ague, the fever of cards at night and clammy remorse by day. Before Wennberg quite knew any of it, then, the fetters of debt to the company and of more years in Russian 'Merica were on him, and Wennberg had turned with fury against a God who let such chaining happen and a God's man who stood by mumbling while it did. Against, it might be said, life.

"—but no, oh no, and God's little Finnlander telling me, 'Steady yourself, Wennberg, keep from the cards,' and himself squatting at the table with the Russians half the night. Man of God. God doesn't have men, he has demons of some kind to strangle women with the whooping cough and blast the back of the head off Melander and drown Braaf like a blind pup—"

Wind flapped the shelter cloth behind Karlsson's head, rain still was pelting. He and Wennberg in shared life those hundreds of days at New Archangel, now these dozens in the narrow canoe and beside the campfires, they had wrangled and come to blows, might yet come to worse, how was it you could be wearily familiar with every inch of a man and know not much of him at all? Unexpected as winter thunder, something like this, and as hard to answer.

"Wennberg, I—"

"What you said, just then." Wennberg was looking harshly across at Karlsson. "That about the cards. More than style is in it. Luck. Luck I haven't had since Varmland, except the goddamn black sort that ended me up w ith you."

It had quickened past them, the moment. They were plowshare and rock again. Karlsson heard himself saying as stone will answer iron—

"... you've had some in plenty, recent days."

"What, dragging along this boil-and-goiter coast? You pall that luck?"

"The two of us who are dead, neither of them is you. There's your luck, Wennberg. Now shut your gab and get some sleep."

At morning, sky and shore showed hard use by the storm. Both were smudged, vague. The ram had dwindled and the wind ceased, but less than a quarter mile in each direction from Wennberg and Karlsson and the canoe, fog grayed out the beach.

... Fog ought mean the wind is gone, we won't swamp. But this cloud on our necks we won't sec along the coast, either. Stays sand beach, that won't matter. Rocks though. Rocks'd matter. Can't mend it before it happens. Rocks we'll face when they face us....

"Whyn't we go it afoot, here on?"

Say for Wennberg that in his tumbril way, he had come this far past Braaf's death, past the rock-spiked coast, past the end of regular food, before balking. Not that Karlsson could see any of the credit of that, just now. What he turned to face was an unsailorly weary man who did not want to set forth in a canoe into fog.

This new corner of reluctance on Wennberg took all
of the ear]y morning to he worked off. Karlsson's constant answer "¡is question hack: what when they hiked themselves to a river, or another sound, or headland cliff? Swim, Wennberg? Take a running jump at it? Fly?

"But goddamn, out into that cloud—beach here like a street, maybe there won't be water in the way—"

"Wennberg. Ever since New Archangel, there has been. Wish won't change that. There'll be water."

When at last the jitter wore out of Wennberg, he looked spent. So much so that Karlsson came wary that the man's next notion would be not to move at all. As wan as a man of his bulk could be, Wennberg this day. Plainly, the clam ration and the dreariness of hunkering in from the storm had exacted much from him.

Wennberg cast Karlsson up a look, though, and fanned enough exasperation in himself to blurt:

"Karlsson, one more time I hear 'need to' out of you and—"

"You'll be that much closer to the place Astoria each time you hear it. Off your bottom now. This's as close a tide as we'll likely get."

By the time they pushed the canoe the distance across the sand to the tide line, both were panting and stumbling. Wennberg hesitated, looked back at the beach. Then surf surged in, swirled up his shins. Wennberg shoved the canoe ahead, half-clambered half-fell into the bow.

The most wobbly launch of the entire journey, this one, the canoe nearly broaching into a wave before Karlsson managed to steer it steady.

Straight out to ocean they paddled, until Wennberg stopped stroking and turned to demand: "Where to hell're you taking us? Shore's almost out of sight."

"We need to stay out from those surf waves or your belly will be visiting your mouth again. I'll bead us by compass the way the coast has been pointing."

Wennberg could be seen to be choosing. Seasickness, or swallow Karls son's notion of voyaging all-but-blind.

He said something Karlsson couldn't catch. And dipped his paddle.

Fog, gray dew on the air. During a rest pause Karlsson touched a hand to his face and found that his beard was wet as if washed.

Fog, the breath of—what, ocean, skv, the forest? Or some mingling of all as when breath smoked out of everyone at New Archangel the morning after the December snow?

Fog, and more of it as the canoemen labored south-east. Through this damp sea-smoke the shore was a dimmest margin of forest, now glimpsed, now gone.

This day, different eyes had been set in the heads of Karlsson and Wennberg. Nothing they saw except the beak of the canoe had sharpness, definite edge to it. This must have been what it would be like to drift across the sky amid mare's tail clouds.

... Got to be near, Astoria. All the miles we've come. Can't have gone past. River mouth would tell us,
Melander said it's a river of the world, big as Sitka Sound. Can't have missed that....

In the slim space of the canoe the two of them now were the pared outlines of their New Archangel selves. The canoe, though, seemed to have grown; looked lengthened, disburdened, with a pair of men astride it rather than four.

As best they could, Karlsson and Wennberg settled to terms with the shadowless, unedged day. Their paddling was slow, with frequent need to rest. In what might have been the vicinity of noon they ate cold clams from the potful Karlsson had cooked the night before. Two-thirds of the total vanished into them, and each man could have immediately begun the meal over. But Wennberg said nothing to Karlsson's policy that they needed to save the remainder for midafternoon.