The Whaler's Daughter

by Jerry Mikorenda

  “The mountain water will be used to irrigate the deserts to grow cotton and tobacco,” he said proudly.

  “Lot of that is sacred land,” I said, touching the gritty surface of his model desert.

  “There’s nothing sacred about sand, sweetheart,” he said, patting my shoulder.

  “Where’s the whaling station?” Papa asked, looking at me concerned.

  “This is the beauty of it,” said Bittermen, directing us to a big brick box with smokestacks. “Notice how clean and efficient it is.”

  “Nothing clean about whaling,” growled Papa, folding his arms across his chest. “It’s a dirty business all around.”

  “Precisely. This is the twentieth century, the age of automation,” Bittermen replied. “Machines will do our bidding.”

  “Machines can’t tell you when enough is enough,” Papa said. “The Law of the Bay isn’t to be trifled with.”

  “Law of the Bay?” sneered Bittermen from his gormless maw. “There’s only one law—supply and demand. An efficient modern factory could process thirty whales a month all year long compared to, what, your eight for an entire season?”

  “We take enough to feed our people, pay our crew, and meet our obligations,” said Papa.

  “You rely too much on those lazy scavengers to find your prey,” Bittermen said, pointing at Papa. “Those killers scare away thousands of whales and fish from my bay.”

  “It ain’t your bay, and you might want to think twice about who you’re pointing at,” Papa said, in a tone that sent chills down my spine.

  Bittermen leaned over his Lilliputian model on both hands like a tired Gulliver. He apologized to Papa and me for badgering his guests.

  “I know how hard you work; I hate to see you pass up a golden opportunity,” he said, putting both hands on Papa’s shoulders. “Germany needs high-quality whale oils for its military equipment, which means the Brits, French, and maybe even the Americans need it too. Every country has an army today.”

  Papa shook his head no faster than a tub line leaving a whaleboat.

  “Let’s not make any hasty decisions,” Bittermen said, backing off. “Maybe I need to further evaluate the situation.”

  Everyone relaxed for a moment. Arizona slipped her arm through Bittermen’s.

  “Please, Mr. Dawson, father means well, he truly does,” she said. “Do forgive our American improprieties.”

  “It would do me good to learn more about your bay,” said Bittermen, nodding. “Let me make amends. We need good people like you to be part of the town’s future. Savannah, you seem to know an awful lot about those—”

  “I know everything about the orcas,” I said, jumping in. “I’ve drawn their pictures and see them all the time.”

  “How would you like to share what you know at an exhibit during next week’s Harvest Festival?” asked Bittermen excitedly. “We’ll call it ‘Life of the Orcas.’”

  I was so thrilled; I didn’t pay much attention to the rest of Papa’s conversation with Bittermen. They talked about the Jumps Race. The next thing I knew Papa was making a wager with Bittermen. Double the £٦٥-pound purse if Papa ran that white town horse against his. Even I gulped at that bet. The town horse can barely walk without tipping over. Some folks even shot at him for eating their apples and grass.

  When we walked out that front door, I was relieved to hear the aches and pains of the village again. I told Papa I felt like a python had just swallowed me whole and I had come out the other end. He laughed loudly, which wasn’t so remarkable anymore, and rubbed my neck. He felt a bit squeezed too, he said.

  “You look pretty in that gown,” he said. “We ought to buy more things like it.”

  “Not if it means leaving Loch Bultarra for that factory place,” I said. “Is that what he wants you to do? I don’t think I could ever use silverware again.”

  “Sure, I could be president of something or other,” said Papa, digging his hands into his dyed trousers. “Get rid of the killers and the villagers—they could only work and live on those cotton ranches of his, you know.”

  “Papa, you wouldn’t. What about Figgie and all our friends?” I said, alarmed. “You don’t have to listen to him, do you?”

  “Last I looked, I’m still a free man,” Papa said, pulling on his jacket lapels. “He’s not the first to challenge us. Pop Alex dealt with some grizzly ones too.”

  I was never happier to leave a place. I was grateful for the late afternoon breeze taking us back, even if it wasn’t compressed air. Arizona was still a shark, but they only bother you when hungry. After Arizona was done gnawing on me, I wondered when she would feed next. Whatever came of this, I had a chance to explain the orcas and that made it a risk worth taking.

  Streaks of orange covered the sky as I stood on the bow, feeling the cool freshness of early fall. I turned and looked out at the ocean. “What’s that off the port side?” I yelled to Papa, pointing.

  He swung the shad to the east so we could get a closer look. Two of our whaleboats were on a hunt. Lon was leading the crew in one boat, Abe in the other. Lon shouted they were down two men. Papa readied to drop anchor as we made our way to the boats.

  “I need an oarsman,” said Lon. “We can’t keep up with them. There are three heading due north ready to rise in ten minutes.”

  “The orcas aren’t with us!” shouted Abe, “but they’ll show.” I lifted my gown high enough to step into the whaleboat, exposing more calf than I intended. Lon wiped his forehead with a kerchief as I passed to hoots and catcalls.

  I locked my oar in place.

  And settled into my seat like any other member of the crew.

  23.

  Lon gave the order for both boats to “toss oars.” All twelve of our sculls stood upright at attention. We looked like a floating forest. Papa passed across our boat to Abe’s, and Abe came back to us. Now we had Ned and Papa in one boat and Abe and Lon working in ours. I was the only one out of place, in more ways than one. Scanning both crafts, I didn’t see Figgie among any of the crew. Papa lobbed his jacket to me, rolled up his sleeves, and wrapped his necktie around his head like a bandanna.

  “Boss, that’s my lucky kissing tie!” bellowed Warrain.

  “Not anymore it ain’t,” said Papa, to belly laughs all around.

  “Oars fall,” shouted Lon, still laughing, “and give way together!”

  I couldn’t have been farther from the Bittermen place on Cornwallis Street if I’d been standing on Granite Beach in Tasmania. More than anything, I needed not to be thinking but doing.

  “Pick up the stroke on the starboard side and ground those oars if we’re gonna have a fair go at catching this carpenter fish,” yelled Lon, with no trace of humor in his voice.

  It was my side of the boat he earbashed. I forgot to roll my wrists after pulling my blade from the water. With the flat spoon of the oar against the wind, it slowed us down and made it harder for me to row. As much as I hated to admit it, Lon was right and I had to listen to him. I picked up my pace.

  “Put yer backs into it,” shouted Lon, hands cupped around his mouth. “Needs must when the devil drives.”

  “Ol’ Lucifer might be forcing us to row, but he’ll not be getting a pinch of my share,” one of the crew called out.

  “He got all my money Friday night,” shouted another crewman to more laughter.

  “Pull harder, mates,” screeched another voice behind me. “We can’t let that boat full of old men beat us to the spot.”

  I was taking shorter, quicker strokes when I looked up at Lon, standing tall and holding the steering rudder with a firm grip. Our eyes met unexpectedly. Usually, I glanced away whenever that happened. This time I gazed back. His hair, the color of rust wheat, blew across those hard-gray eyes softening that glare. His square jaw quivered as if he was about to say a few words. I waited for him to say something awkwa
rd, but no words were forthcoming. Lon pulled hard on the rudder and pointed two hundred yards, due east off the horizon.

  “There’s our mark,” he said, pointing so we all could see. “They’re heading into the deep water for the night.”

  We glided like butter across a skillet and went into silent mode. Abe ran a sharpening stone over the tip of his iron for good luck. We were two good pulls away from laying into the whale when my oar hit something hard. I pulled up as all the others did.

  “Mother of mercy,” Lon mumbled.

  Dozens of leatherback turtle shells popped to the surface. They looked like bottles floating up from the bottom of the sea. A few of the crew grumbled that the comet’s vapors were seeping into the atmosphere, causing this odd behavior.

  Lon ordered, “Stand by oars,” so we stacked them inside the gunwales for safe keeping. Mindful of our floating status, the crews of both crafts leaned over carefully to watch as the flotilla of hundreds of turtles passed below us. If they had a mind to, the whole lot of them could have done away with us. But they kept to their gentle task. Wasn’t a soul on board either boat who didn’t understand the grandeur we witnessed. Off in the distance, three water spouts shot into the air right on queue just where Lonny said.

  “Sperm whales, for sure,” shouted Abe to Papa.

  “Aye, about fifty or more barrels apiece judging body length to flukes,” Papa shouted back.

  The last leatherback paraded past us. It was the largest turtle I had ever seen. Abe said it looked well over a hundred years old. That meant Pop and Nana might have seen it on the bay, too.

  “All right, ya bottom feeders, back to your stations,” growled Abe in mock anger.

  There was no giving up a hunt on sperm whales, so I spit into my hands and grabbed my oar again. To stay clear of the leatherbacks, we looped out of the bay and headed for the neck past the Doddspoint Lighthouse. Any whale leaving the bay needed to get by us first. I pulled harder on that oar than I did anything in my life. Soon we were in the current leading out, and we put up sails to save our strength for the chase. We were out farther than the time Figgie and I had first met the orcas in his canoe. As we drew near the spot Lon had picked, Ned spied four top fins. There was none for the finding.

  “They’ll be surfacing again soon,” said Abe, “then all get-up will break loose.”

  Sure enough, the massive head pitched up and we were off after it. Abe and Warrain didn’t waste any time. I stole a look. They were still too far away for their irons to catch skin.

  “Put yer backs into it,” bellowed Papa for all to hear. “A dead whale or a stove boat!”

  A roar echoed from each crew as we laid into it. Abe stood, getting his footing and balancing the iron in his hands. He heaved it in a long arcing spiral as the whale swam underneath. Warrain threw a dart skimming along the wave crests. Both lines of rope whistled into the whale with a snap. Abe’s harpoon descended into the creature’s long head while Warrain’s iron lodged in its tailstock. The crews whooped and cheered at the lucky hits.

  I wet the line as it danced from the tub like a cobra leaping from an open basket. The whaleboat thumped across the tops of the waves. As we launched on a sleigh ride, the clips Frieda had put in my hair flew out and the men’s beards bristled straight behind them like tails from running foxes. The boat hit a deep shallow that nearly flipped it over. On another bounce, my pidgin full of water sprang up and smacked me in the chin. The jolt knocked me to my knees. Dazed, I staggered.

  “I’ve got you,” Lon said, gripping me firmly.

  I wanted to thank him, but the line finally strung out full, humming down the center of the boat. Lon carried his lance toward the bow like Caesar passing before his legions as he and Abe switched places. About a quarter mile off, the bow of Papa’s boat pitched into the waves as he hunkered down, ready with his lance.

  The boats pulled along this way until the sun lowered to the mountains. We slowed to the point where the lads hauled the line back in, drawing us closer to the struggling behemoth. I re-coiled the rope in the tub, nervous it might spring back to life at any moment.

  We were close enough to see the battle scars on the whale’s briny skin. I took a moment to absorb the magnificent beauty of this creature. From the small ridges on its back funneling to a tapered torso that flowered into the perfectly symmetrical curves of its wide flukes, the whale was bursting with life. Its rhythmic diving danced to the song of the sea, its rich dark skin alive, even as death was about to call.

  It occurred to me that I had never seen a live sperm whale this close before. I had only viewed them in dissected sections, compartmentalized and de-whaled.

  We came upon the frantic and exhausted beast bearing no mercy. Lance after lance pierced the defenseless creature. The crew stabbed and stabbed again, missing their mark, as if the whale were giving us a chance at redemption if only we stopped. Finally, an anonymous lance hit its spot, stabbing the beast through the heart. Choking on its own blood, the confused whale rolled on its side, curling into a near circle as it thrashed about pounding its tail and bobbing its massive head gasping for air. Its eye rolled up at me and seemed to ask why it had befallen such a fate. It had caused no man or creature harm or quarrel.

  “Chimney afire,” the men cried out.

  Suddenly, a spout of blood rained down upon us from its blowhole. Covered with a stinging mix of hot blood and stomach acids, both crews held their oars overhead and howled in primal guttural shrieks I had never heard before. They leapt up and down in triumph like apes in a zoo as blood doused us. We all looked the same covered in red. I stood alone in the aft of the whaleboat, my arms stretched upward, my hair, face, and dress soaked in blood.

  Tears streamed down my face, and I asked myself, What have we done?

  The whale swam in smaller and smaller circles in a ballet with death known as the flurry. Abe and Lon yelled, “Stern all, Stern all!” as we backed the boats away from the thrashing whale, which snapped bitterly at the air as it gasped for breath. It slapped its thunderous tail on the water, as if alerting the entire bay to its demise. Then, finally, it made several loud clicking noises, then lay motionless, its side fin hanging limply in the breeze.

  “Fin up,” one of the men croaked, wheezing with exhaustion.

  While we rowed toward the floating corpse, Abe stood next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him, the blood from my busted lip mixing with that from the whale.

  “The killing is hard,” he said, in a hoarse and weary voice, “but you get used to it.”

  With this haul, I heard some of the crew say I wasn’t such a bad luck Jonah after all. We pulled alongside the lifeless husk, poling our way down the sixty-foot-long body with our oars. Its dry skin reminded me of the Arve Big Tree in Tasmania.

  Now the two forests have met, and the battle had been won.

  I stared down at the poor creature’s eye, hoping it could give me some inkling about its life. Like a snuffed candle, it gave no light or hint of what had led it there.

  Papa and Lon took cutting spades to each of the whale’s flukes and ran the lines through them to the boats. It would take hours to haul the dead carcass to Dawson Station. I overheard one of the mates proclaim that we’d landed a cow carrying a calf—a few more barrels of unborn oil. My thoughts went immediately to Miah.

  To pass the time, Abe took punts on how many full barrels we were dragging back. Then he asked each of us what we planned to do with our share. Warrain was spending every cent. Ned was sending his take to his mum and two half-crowns to me for saving his arm, which drew foot stomps and huzzahs from the crew again. Before I could say anything, they had me down for a new fancy dress. The men drew lots to see who would retrieve the anchored shad. We tried racing the other boat but Papa said we should save our strength for the coming days. The lads, happy with their late day’s work, broke out in raucous whaling songs, trading
verses between boats. When I was sure no one was watching, I retched over the aft gunwales.

  I purged myself of the rich man’s food, but not the guilt I carried within me.

  24.

  We rowed the carcass back to the try works where the grizzly work of flensing took place. Despite their absence, the orcas claimed their fair share of the catch. Overnight, they feasted on the whale’s tongue and lips as the corpse lay on the bay floor. Derain received vital nutrients for Miah’s milk, while other bay life thrived on the dead animal, too.

  That Monday, Papa piloted the shad to Paradise to take me to school. He looked worn out from the hunt and allowed Figgie to steer while I did homework. After we’d left for class, the two of them planned to search for the town horse. Knowing Figgie’s way with animals, Papa recruited him to help train the white beastie for the Jumps Race. He wanted Figgie to jockey that animal if it could stay upright. I would never ask, but I think Papa regretted making such an outlandish bet.

  Even with a fast and steady wind to our backs, I was still nervous about getting to class before everyone else. Not because I worried about other kids gawking at my fat lip and bruised chin, but because I preferred to be alone while Mr. Davenport reviewed my artwork.

  I kept my illustration rolled tight with my tucker. I showed it to no one, especially Figgie. I didn’t need any more advice on what to draw, or how to do something better. Papa and Figgie left to go horse hunting while the younger ones played tag in the schoolyard. I slipped into the building as Mr. Davenport was busy at his desk.

  “Oh, Savannah. G’day,” he said, pulling on his vest. “You’re here early.”

  “We had a strong tailwind,” I said, rummaging through my tucker, “and I got this.”

  “Have this,” he corrected, clearing away his desk. “Excellent. You’ve finished the assignment.”