Heartbroke Bay (21 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
“Ai-ya,” he says out loud. That might be what is happening, because there are certainly fewer animals and more white people every year.
Ai-ya, ai-ya.
Ai-ya, ai-ya.
Negook struggles to rise and sighs. His feet hurt to walk, and his ass hurts to sit. He knows he must die soon and fervently hopes his soul does not have to come back as a white man. But first he has to deal with the troubles at hand.
“There was a damn blanket-ass in this camp, and you didn’t signal us?” Hans is livid. A blue vein pulses in his neck beneath his skin. He is outraged that an Indian, just wandering loose, has come into camp where his jars of gold—and his wife—lay about unguarded. Back in Minnesota the damned Indians know enough to stay on their reservations. The fault must be Hannah’s, and he rails.
Today the men returned early from the diggings. For several days the take has been inconsequential, and now Michael’s back has been strained by furious, nonstop shoveling in pursuit of another vein. The Irishman is on the boat, in his bunk, being nursed by Harky and Dutch, and Hans worries that the reduction in manpower means even less gold if they do find another vein. He kicks at the table, sending it skittering across the floor.
Hannah assures him that there is no reason to worry, the visitor was a harmless old man. But she is overruled: The old man was likely a scout.
“They’ll be back,” insists Hans. “They’ll steal us blind.”
“They won’t,” she insists. “They know we are here, but ignore us. The old man just came to tell us . . .”
But flustered by Hans’s anger, she does not remember exactly what the old man said, except his suggestion that they leave. “He thought we should not stay here. He seems to think Lituya Bay is a dangerous place.”
Hans assumes an air of amazement, hands on hips, face caricatured in astonishment. “What did your sweet old man have to tell us? That now that we’ve done all the work we should just leave so he and his friends can come take everything? That may be fine with you, Mrs. Nelson,” he spits, “but no damned Indians are going to get my gold.”
Hannah draws back her shoulders, angry at being so abused. All of her stored-up anguish—her misery in Skagway, the discomfort of being a woman alone in the wilderness, and the drift of Hans’s passion from their marriage to the hunt for gold—boils over, and she stabs at Hans’s weakness. “What gold is that then, Mr. Nelson? Just what riches have you found that have made all this worthwhile?” She waves a hand around her at the crude furnishings of the shack.
Hans turns on his heel and storms from the cabin. Hannah is two steps behind him with more to say. The slamming door strikes her full in the face.
Overhead a raven screams, drops from its tree, and flees.
The next morning Hannah’s lip is cut and swollen. She stays in the cabin when Harky and Dutch row ashore. Hans has been solicitous since the argument and keeps looking back over his shoulder as the three men shoulder their packs and hike away. At noon Michael comes on deck, hollering for Hannah to row out in the skiff. His back feels better, he says, and he would like to go to work. She yells back, cupping her hands to her swollen mouth like a megaphone; he should continue to rest, she says. But he insists.
She can think of no way to put him off and tries to avert her face as he climbs down into the skiff from
Tara Keane
’s deck. Settling with a thump onto the thwart in front of her, he says, “Sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Nelson, but I’ve got to get moving. When my back’s out like this, after a while lying about gets to be worse than moving around.”
Tara Keane
’s deck. Settling with a thump onto the thwart in front of her, he says, “Sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Nelson, but I’ve got to get moving. When my back’s out like this, after a while lying about gets to be worse than moving around.”
As he reaches to take the oars from her hands, he starts at the sight of her swollen mouth. The image of his mother holding a bloody rag to her own fist-split lip leaps fully to mind, and the old urge to succor or kill uncoils inside him.
“Hannah?” he says gently.
“It was an accident,” she says. Tears begin to burn in her eyes. She feels as if the blow has fractured something, some connection to the world that is neither skin nor bone, but the severance of which has left everything full of sharp angles and dangerous; she feels alone.
“I’ll have his hide,” growls Michael as he reaches for her.
A spike of irritation at the willingness of men to always offer violence as a solution pierces her blanketing misery for a moment, then fades as he draws her to his chest. “It was an accident,” she repeats, muffled by his shoulder.
“Shhh,” he says and soothes her hair.
The warmth and weight of his arms around her lets loose her sobs.
Michael does not go to work that day. Instead, he holds her and touches her while she cries.
Hans draws the towel from the bottom of the sluice box and lowers it carefully into a shallow pan. Swishing and squeezing, he washes the contents of the cloth into the dish and begins shaking it lightly from side to side. Dutch watches the cleanup carefully. A few fine grains of gold speckle along the rim. Harky probes at the take with a grimed and calloused finger, gives a grunt of dissatisfaction, and turns away.
This is the fourth site on which the prospectors have erected the sluice box since the height of summer, and none has given satisfaction in return. Each successive site is farther from camp; they must now walk more than an hour each day to reach their work.
They have shoveled, dredged, hammered, and panned for months, oblivious to the ripening of blueberries and the changing phases of the moon. They have labored, shirtless and sweating, while eagle chicks fought free of the egg, fledged, and began to consider their first dizzying step into space and freedom. Salmon have returned to their natal streams and begun the ritual of procreation, while the mountaintops turned from white to brown, then green as summer advances. To all of this, the miners are blind, impassioned only by the search for gold.
At mealtimes Hannah and Michael are cautious with each other, courteous and proper, though the intimacy of the cabin quickens their blood. Their fingers touch in passing dishes. Once Michael stands close behind Hannah as she brings a pot to the table and without thinking rests his hand on her waist; throughout the meal she is silent, afraid her voice will quiver with the trembling aroused by his touch. In the presence of the others they are careful to always address each other as “Mr. Severts” and “Mrs. Nelson.”
On a day of heavy rain, while a wind from the south cuts rags of cloud from the sky and slings them loosely around the mountains, Michael returns to the cabin alone, to fetch a forgotten tool. The tide is low, and the fine, strong smell of the sea blends with the delicate perfume of the dripping summer forest.
The canvas roof leaks in the wet weather. Pans placed here and there to catch the drips tinkle and plink, playing a sad, musical tune in the key of rain. Hannah sits beside the open door, darning a sock. The light inside the cabin is subdued.
When Michael’s shadow falls across her lap, her breath quickens, and she rises. There is a pause as the force of attraction freezes each in the realization they are alone. Michael is acutely aware of Hannah’s shape and her softness; she of his full lips and dark lashes above pale blue eyes.
Taking two steps back, she maneuvers to put the table between them, and the moment is broken. When Michael steps forward as if to come around the obstruction, she holds the sock and darning egg to her stomach. “No, Michael.”
He holds out his hands, palms raised. “Hannah.”
She shakes her head, closes her eyes, and keeps them closed until she hears the splash of his steps retreating through the puddles outside.
Dear Diary,There is difficulty among our company. The poor return of gold weighs heavily upon Hans, whose temper becomes virulent at times. Meals are often quite strained. Discontent infects Harky and Dutch as well. Mr. Severts remains of remarkable good cheer, but he, too, is sometimes reserved.The rains continue without cease. Everything is sodden; our clothing molders, as do some of the supplies. I was compelled to throw out half of our stock of potatoes, which had gone black and soft, and an entire sack of flour has clotted and smells so of mildew that I cannot believe it is safe to eat. We have enough dried food to see us through until September and our return to Sitka, but I fear coming to table will be an increasingly bland experience. There is no more sugar or molasses, and the pepper runs low.
Hannah pauses in her writing as the sensation of Michael’s hands on her returns, then she touches her fingers to her healing lip. Staring at the half-filled page, she considers what she might say of the pull she feels toward Michael or the tension and confusion that boil within her when she thinks of Hans. But to put words to paper is to risk setting them loose somehow. Feeling duplicitous, she distills the disarray of her feelings into code:
There was an accident with the cabin door, she writes. Grave concerns for this marriage.
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