The Whaler's Daughter

by Jerry Mikorenda

  The boats lay there belly up on sawhorses like corpses in a morgue. It was our job to bring them back to life. I scraped paint off the hull, paying extra attention to cleaning between the planks. Large leaves of white paint pulled off the cedar boards. The seams came clean as I tapped out what was left of the old red putty with a chisel and wooden mallet.

  Between the tapping, I heard the village children squawk as they approached. Figgie was with a group of boys, bringing up the rear like jackaroos pushing sheep. A fair amount of horseplay preceded them.

  I recognized some of the girls from last fall. A few had grown and a few others carried their own babies. Corowa helped me arrange the group in small circles around the older girls who remembered the way we did this in past years. Figgie and the boys took over my work with the mallet. I was none too happy about that, but the job had to be finished with the folks we had to do it.

  So I swallowed hard and bit my lip.

  There was no fun in spinning out oakum. You roll it, stretch it, and ease it into thin lines to stuff between the boat planks to seal them. I showed our group how to pull the stringy hemp over their legs. They say the oakum picked in Australian prisons kept the British Navy afloat for a hundred years. I didn’t doubt it one bit. I tried to make a game of it by getting the group to sing “The Dying Stockman.” Each new chorus reminded us it was time to stretch and ease out the oakum again. We sang an old bush tune, “Click Go the Shears,” and a shanty, “The Female Rambling Sailor,” along with some chants and songs from the village.

  All the time I kept my eyes on those lads smirking at us, our thighs and fingers rubbed raw from the burred hemp. Their mallets stopped as one of the fellas shouted. He saw the green sail on the horizon.

  Everyone knew McMahon had a standing pledge to let the first swimmer who reached his deck steer the hoy to the pier. The four boys and Figgie rushed toward the shoreline, followed by two red-haired lads. I stood watching them laughing and running carefree from their posts.

  None of them looked back at us.

  “These boys always find a way to leave us for their adventures,” said Corowa, tossing her pile of oakum into the sand with disgust.

  I watched the giggling pack dive into the surf. Figgie charged into the water without any concern for the rest of us. I grabbed Corowa by the shoulders and shook her.

  “I’ve watched you swim,” I said. “Let’s show those blokes a thing or two.”

  “I can’t. I must stay and watch the young ones,” she said, turning away.

  “They’ll be fine for a—”

  “You race,” she said, with a sad look, “for all of us.”

  As the boys swam past the breakers, I could no longer hear their squeals and laughter. “Hold this,” I shouted, pulling off my jumper and handing it to her.

  I bounded toward the breakers. At first, I just wanted to yell something clever to give the girls a laugh, but instead I jackknifed into the water. I was four lengths behind the last swimmer and six behind Figgie.

  I was just about to give up when those demons started nipping at the back of my neck. With their anger coursing through me, I laid into it, passing two boys bobbing in the waves. Pulling even with the next one, I hit the crest of a whitecap. When I came down on the other side, I could see Figgie smiling as he sliced through the broiling swell. In another minute, he’d be on board. McMahon ordered a rope ladder tossed off the side with a hearty laugh.

  “Ease up or you’ll both pass me,” he chuckled from behind the wheel.

  I summoned one final surge. As I thrust through the waves, my hand slapped against the hull. My fingers slid along the planks to the rope ladder. Grabbing it, I felt the rope tug away from me.

  “I’d say we have a draw,” yelled Figgie with a wide grin. “I slowed down quite a bit.”

  “Nor was I really trying to break stride either,” I shouted, pulling back on the ladder.

  The two of us dipped up and down in the sea like a couple of tea bags as the hoy lurched and rip-sawed its way portside. We decided to jump on deck at the same time.

  “Welcome aboard, Calagun,” called McMahon waving to us. “Savannah, I didn’t know you could swim like that. For a moment, Connor here imagined a mermaid was approaching.”

  McMahon’s other apprentice reported that we were in a close and proper fetch to pull in. Along the way we scarfed up the four bobbing heads, who eyed us suspiciously from the aft deck.

  “No need to worry,” said Figgie, taking the wheel. “I’ll observe all caution.”

  “In a pig’s eye,” I shouted, grabbing one of the wheel handles.

  “A two-headed captain is harder to handle than steering between rocks in a crosswind,” said McMahon.

  “Savannah, this isn’t the place,” said Figgie, pulling the wheel starboard. “I will show you another time.”

  “My place is where I am, and I’ll learn as we go.”

  Figgie glanced at McMahon for support, but he just laughed. “Can’t help you. “Yer on your own, laddie.”

  “I’m in charge, but I will allow you to help,” Figgie said, with a glint of anger in his eyes.

  “Allow me?” I growled. “Why don’t I take over, and you can go be the figurehead on the prow of the ship?”

  “Best decide before we drift off course,” said McMahon, his hands clasped behind his back.

  Figgie gripped the handles harder as I did the same. The two of us tugged at the wheel while Figgie looked at his mates shivering behind us.

  “Very well, we shall share the task,” he said.

  “Equal.”

  “Equal,” he said, loosening his grip.

  “See, didn’t hurt that much,” I said, with a wide grin breaking across my face.

  “Says who?” Figgie remarked glumly.

  I told him to pay his friends no mind as McMahon and his crew coached us on the finer points of bringing a ship dockside. Figgie didn’t fight for the wheel when I pulled on it. He released his grip as I turned the wheel half-portside to feather the sails. Figgie pointed off the starboard bow. On the horizon, five black top fins drifted lazily by as if amused by our squabbling.

  “Steady as she goes,” said McMahon. “You’re doing just fine.”

  Across the way, I saw Papa perched on a piling like a pelican waiting to grab a fish at low tide, his face as rigid as a mountainside. I held the wheel with one hand and meekly waved with the other. Abe nodded, stroking his beard as he mumbled and looked skyward. McMahon ordered his crew to toss the hawsers onto the quay. A couple of whalers grabbed the heavy ropes and secured us. Once we docked, McMahon blew his boatswain’s pipe and his crew assembled the rails. As we disembarked, they gave us a nice Jack Tar salute, tugging their forelocks with tipped caps and huzzahs.

  McMahon told Papa it would be best to bring the boats on board for the repairs. That’s when I noticed the deck was set up for surgery like a city hospital room. If only people repaired as easily as these boats, I thought.

  Figgie thrust his hand out as we disembarked. “Perhaps one day we’ll have a real race with a more definitive outcome and I shall steer alone.”

  “Alone is easy to arrange,” I replied with a firm grip. “I’ll miss having you by my side.”

  “Well, there it is,” he said. “Tomorrow we paint.”

  I veered off the path home toward my still-cheering group of girls. Corowa hugged me around the neck and whispered in my ear. I nodded in agreement when a commotion behind the whaleboats startled us. A gaggle of brightly dressed village women carrying baskets of fruit and iron pots on poles pushed toward the bunkhouses.

  “I cook for my son, no other,” a woman shouted, chasing a young man with a long stick to much laughter.

  “Okay, momma-girl,” the lad yelled. “You’re camp cook, no other.”

  She came up to me and stabbed the stick in the ground, as if she
were Captain Cook claiming the land for the king himself.

  “You get no argument from me,” I said, hoping against hope this passed muster with Papa.

  She marked her territory with the stick and began creating her own kitchen far away from my ash pit. “I cook,” she proclaimed one last time, as all those within striking distance agreed.

  

  The next morning, just as the sun caught sky, I shot out of bed. The bay was as flat as last night’s pea soup curdled in the kettle. Out the porthole and down the tree, I snuck over to the float dock. I rowed slowly through the lagoon toward the location that Corowa had whispered to me the day before. Two salties looked like lost luggage tucked in the tall grass. Their heads bobbed up and down like logs as they crawled onto the beach to sun themselves.

  That was when the remembering began.

  The snouts of two killers bobbed and thrashed while my brother’s hands reached for me on shore. The screams grew louder, chasing me as I ran for help. Help that never came.

  The blood drained from my head and my arms felt too weak to paddle. I drifted past the marshes trying to get my bearings.

  Soon I heard other voices, happy ones, beyond the dunes. I landed, shaking and wobbly-kneed, and walked unsteadily to the top of a sand hill. On the other side my oakum-rolling chums were doing the wash. Tathra, one of the younger ones, saw me standing there and ran for her sister Kabam, who shouted something I didn’t understand. Before I knew it, fifteen cheering girls surrounded me.

  “Savannah, we are so proud of you beating those wet puppy boys,” said Merinda, who lived up to her name, beautiful woman. “We want to be your—”

  “You’re already my cobbers,” I said. “There’s no reason we can’t be mates just like the boys.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder at the marsh and beach. All was quiet. We dragged the logs and driftwood to a small clearing where we sat in a circle, grinning and giggling.

  “What can we be mates about?” asked Corowa, kneeling as she ran her fingers through my stubbled scalp.

  “Whatever we want,” I said. “What’s wrong with losing control? After all, they reward young men for acting up all the time.”

  Why should we have to fit in a mold? Maybe the point of being mates was to have no point at all but to know deep inside that each of us will be there for one another. We just needed free time to do what we wanted.

  “We like to dance,” Ghera said, standing to burp her baby boy.

  She was stout and broad-shouldered, like momma-girl but with a wide grin that made you want to smile too. She was bound to a man almost Papa’s age because her older sister had died in Canberra while in domestic service. To honor her family, Ghera took her sister’s place. Now she had returned with her own brood.

  “Well, let’s give it a burl,” I said.

  We all crushed together in a circle, not sure what to do. So, we mussed up each other’s hair and jumped up and down. Tathra taught me a little step-dance she was learning, which evoked fond memories among the older girls. Soon we were all clapping, chanting, and dancing together. I tried to imitate their moves without stumbling. The girls didn’t mind. They enjoyed sharing something that was important to them. We raised quite a bit of dust.

  When we finished dancing, Corowa took me for a stroll. She told me the government planned to take ten more girls from their village and place them in missions far away. She cried, saying Tathra might be among them. We watched the wee girl running about, happily unaware. I wondered what she needed saving from.

  “Men wearing black robes have visited us,” said Corowa sadly. “They say we need protection from our own country and people. I do not think this is so.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Walking back to the group, we heard screaming and the pounding of horse hooves in the sand. We ran to the top of the dunes. Five men in blue uniforms charged through the salt marsh on horseback. I recognized them as the native police from the Chief Protector of Aborigines. They began chasing the girls the way rustlers round up cattle. The girls screamed and ran into one another, clutching together in a small circle.

  Corowa sprinted over to them, afraid the wee ones might run under the hooves of charging horses. “Don’t move,” she shouted.

  I stood on the dune, trying to figure out what these men were up to. Finally, a fella wearing gold epaulettes rode across the marsh and stopped to speak with me. “Explain yourself. Why are you here?” he asked, pulling up his horse in front of me. “We saw smoke and came to investigate.”

  As he advanced closer, there was something familiar about him. I didn’t pinpoint it until he removed his shako to wipe his brow.

  “Bardin, is that you?” I asked, squinting.

  “Haven’t been called that in years,” he said. “I’m Borbo Wilkins now and you are?”

  “Savannah Dawson,” I said, shielding my eyes from the sun. “Surely you remember me from Dawson Station?”

  “My word, you’ve grown and then some,” he said, scratching his head.

  “You were boatsteerer for Charlie Brennan’s crew,” I said.

  “Old Charlie,” he nodded, fluffing the plume on his helmet. “The crustiest salt took on the youngest crew.”

  “I don’t remember that,” I said.

  “I was sixteen when I was made harpooner,” he said. “Your brother Eli was to take my oarsman seat, but—”

  “My brother was working the boats?”

  “Both were set to,” said Bardin, circling with his horse to avoid my stare. “The accident changed many things. Made me realize that bay will always deceive you.”

  Corowa charged back up the dune until she was standing between us.

  “Why are big men on horses attacking little girls?” she barked angrily.

  “We’re here for your protection,” Bardin said, pivoting his horse toward the sobbing girls. “You best be careful about your actions. Females shouldn’t display such boldness in public. I say this as a friend in country.”

  “A friend?” said Corowa, moving closer to Bardin. “You’re a traitor to your country. Your mother and uncles are ashamed of you for taking such a silly name.”

  “Come!” Bardin shouted angrily to his men. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Miss Dawson, perhaps you can explain proper Abo behavior to her,” he added, pulling on his chinstrap and visor, “and stick with your own people, for everyone’s sake.”

  “These are my people, Bardin,” I replied, “and always will be.”

  As they trotted off, the horsemen’s circling motions reminded me of the killers and my family’s uneasy reliance on them. My memory of the killers’ gnawing snouts still horrified me. I helped the girls gather their laundry and digging sticks. I picked up Tathra and carried her across the onyx stream toward the village.

  “I’m so happy we found ourselves to be mates, Savannah,” said Corowa, taking the girl.

  Rowing back to Loch Bultarra, I watched my new mates file home in silence, the songs of their youth stolen from their voices.

  10.

  I knew it was in the nature of young men to want to eye me as if I were a salted cod at the market. Others would try to corral me like the whalers galloping across Lorimar’s Ridge. Lonny figured things that way. Being six years older than me, he hoped to talk Papa into giving me up by showing he could rein me in proper. He had a Buckley’s chance thinking I’d put a quid on that horse.

  Figgie was another thing, a peculiar thing at that. I had known him only about a week, so it wasn’t a lot to go on. But he was as dinky di as they came. Figgie just didn’t seem so bunched up with the goings-on in the world as most lads were. Yet it irked me how cocksure he was about everything that had to do with the bay.

  The next morning, I stomped to where the boats lay stripped to the shallow like flensed whales. They weren’t boats so much as waiting to be boats again. Fig
gie and his swimming partners were already mashing red lead into the caulk. Nearby there were cans of white, blue, and yellow paint. Papa had already cleared the two boats McMahon had repaired for painting. I began cutting the burlap used to keep the oarlocks quiet during the hunt as I watched Figgie.

  His eyes and hands darted across the hulls as he caressed the planks to make sure the wood was dry. Figgie said he’d spent his last two summers working for McMahon in his boatyard.

  “They’re ready as ready can be,” I said, finishing my pin wrapping.

  “You must always check,” said Figgie, without looking up. “The late summer air is heavy with moisture from the bay.”

  “I reckon you would know, this being about the bay and all,” I said, sloshing two cans of white paint into the sand between his feet.

  “Savannah,” said Figgie, taking a can of white paint to the other side of the whaleboat, “you understand a great deal about the bay—the shifting winds, the tides, and where every snug, cove, and sand spit is located.”

  My head cocked to the left as I dipped my brush in the white paint. I said, “I’ve picked up a few things over the years.”

  “They’re important things to know, but they aren’t what the bay is about,” said Figgie, brushing the seams first. “It’s more than water, currents, and fish.”

  “Upon my word, you’re more confusing than a needle-less compass,” I said, shaking my head.

  Now Figgie was the one who looked like he’d just taken an oar to the head. He paused his painting for a moment and added, “Perhaps I should explain.”

  He told me that among his people there were many sacred stories about the bay. Some of these tales were only for the ears of a few; others were for the rest of the villagers and even outsiders to hear. What he was about to tell was a story for all to hear. I signaled for Corowa, Ghera, and the other girls to come over, too.

  Figgie began his saga while we painted.

  “Many thousands of years ago in European time,” he said, “the ancient peoples of the bay lost their Dreaming. The plenty provided them by their ancestors made the people sad with abundance. So much was available; no one cared what the village needed. Instead, they listened to false dreams about the plenty they had been given. They weren’t wise or humble anymore. They placed themselves and their shadow stories of wealth above the ancestors’ words.