Heartbroke Bay

by Lynn D'urso

  “I’ve a wife,” he says.

  “All the better. Can she cook and keep care of a camp? That’d free men up for working, if laundering and such is done for ’em.”

  Hans nods proudly. “She’s a good wife.”

  The three lean closer together, heads nearly touching, and switch to whiskey to signify the advance from just talking to partnership. Dutch is cagey at first, but drink loosens his tongue, and he cannot hold secrets long. Two hundred miles to the north, the sands of Lituya Bay sparkle and flash with gold. It lies in buttery ribbons wherever there is bedrock under the beach, and all a fellow has to do is remove the overburden of sand and gravel and sluice the gold into a bucket.

  When pressed for details on his discovery—how long was he there? How much gold did he recover? Has he filed a claim in his name?—Dutch grows vague, closing his eyes and waving a hand in front of his face, saying only, “That’s where it’s at, all we need do is go get it.”

  A deal is struck. Hans, Hannah, and Harky will contribute tools, supplies, money, and labor. Dutch will lead the way. A boat must be hired to ferry them and their gear the considerable distance to Lituya Bay, which lies north of Cape Spencer and is exposed to the full fury of the gulf. In a month, the grip of winter will begin to ease and the cycle of storms and gales that rip the cold, angry seas abate. The prospectors agree; departure is set for the Ides of March, or as soon thereafter as the weather will allow.

  27 February 1898

  Thus far we have been unable to employ a ship to transport us north to Lituya Bay when spring arrives. The seamen are nervous about the Gulf of Alaska for its reputed terrible seas and weather, with many particularly superstitious of Lituya Bay. Those willing to make the journey at all offer prices for charter that are outlandish. Hans is beside himself, caught as we are in this cycle of rising costs, and becomes difficult when I suggest any alternative to prospecting.

  I must admit to “gold fever” myself, after seeing Dutch’s display of nuggets; there is an allure in that shining metal that is somehow beyond the regard for wealth. Little but gold itself would tempt anyone into a business venture with one of character so odd as that of the Dutchman.

  Hans sits slumped, twirling his hat listlessly on the upraised fingers of one hand, fired from the saw job for failing to grease the bearings in the mill. Things overheated and seized tight, shutting the entire operation down. The loss of wages has alienated the other workers from Hans, with the exception of Harky, who for reasons understood by no one, laughs out loud as the crew boards the launch back to town. After landing, Harky and Hans set course for an afternoon at the saloon.

  “Ma always said the boldest fighting cock was still just a chicken, Hans.”

  Harky’s meaning escapes Hans, who is intent on his brooding. Harky is as intently good-hearted and for one usually so truculent, quite wordy.

  “What do you really think of Dutch, anyway? That was nice of your missus to put up dinner for us all last night. I ain’t had fried chicken in a long time. Just get venison every night at the bunkhouse.”

  Hans examines the muddy toe of one boot. “Gas and feathers, mostly. But the gold is real enough. Problem’s just getting up there to get it.”

  Dutch had barked and chatted without ceasing all through the meal, spinning yarns of sailing the South Seas and the Sandwich Islands, talking about a wife and kids back home waiting for him to “bring home the bacon.” At various times he claimed to be from Ohio, California, and Oregon, with careers as a painter, a cowboy, and the owner of a race horse.

  Harky shook his shaggy head slowly and smiled, as if considering the humor in Dutch’s folly. “Closest he ever come to the South Sea is that ugly whore from Owyhee what works at the Bucket-o’-Blood.”

  “Let him rustle us up a boat. Then he can show us what a sailor he is,” says Hans.

  Three nights later, Harky bangs on their door with the news that Dutch has done exactly that.

  FIVE

  The next morning Dutch lopes ahead of Hans and Harky as they walk along the shore searching among the masts and hulls of the crowded harbor for a particular rig, much as a man scans a crowd for a face he knows only by description. A fine breeze scatters the sun’s reflection into diamond dust across the water and there is the warm, salty smell of seaweed in the air.

  Dutch walks with a peculiar bent-kneed stride, pausing often to point excitedly at one boat, then another, looking back over his shoulder at the men following behind. Harky steps carefully from stone to stone, balancing awkwardly on his scarred, odd-numbered toes.

  “He said it was a white hull, cutter rigged. Maybe that’s it there, that handsome one,” says Dutch. Unclear as to the details of a cutter’s design, he knows only that the word sounds fast, and points to a well-kept sloop with the slim lines and graceful shear of an ocean dancer.

  Hans shakes his head and points beyond the sloop to a plug-shaped hull with a cobbled rig. Bits of canvas tacked to the cabin top tell of humdrum efforts to stop random leaks. The only neat thing about the vessel is the lettering across the stern, which gives the name of the boat as the Tara Keane.

  “There’s your cutter. That’s a sloop you’re pointing at,” and under his breath mutters, “If it wasn’t for the gold …”

  Harky shrugs, says, “Someone’s aboard,” then points at a dinghy bobbing astern of the cutter on a rope. Dutch cups his hands to his mouth and shouts a long, “Hello, the cutter!” as if he were the admiral of a fleet signaling a man-o’-war. After a moment the cutter rocks slightly and a sliding hatch is thrown back.

  The face that emerges is bleary-eyed and tousled. Michael Severts had been three sheets to the wind the night before when he met Dutch in a saloon and the two had bragged and told yarns deep into a bottle of whiskey. By the time a second bottle was breached, Dutch was playing rich man with his shotshell of gold and offering Severts a full share in the partnership in exchange for the contribution of his boat, which Severts described as the “slickest kind of cutter, built of Port Orford cedar and stout live oak.” This morning, his memory of the arrangement is vague.

  Severts gives a brief wave and disappears below deck for a moment, then emerges clad in wrinkled denim pants and a sweater blown out at the elbows. He looks around at the day, which is unseasonably warm and seductively bright, before climbing into the dinghy without hat, coat, or gloves. As he rows, the oars dip and shine in unison. When he comes alongshore, he pulls and backs expertly, turning the tender sideways to nudge lightly against the bank.

  In spite of the hangover that throbs between his eyes, Severts balances neatly against the rocking of the dinghy, reaches for the bow line, and steps over the side. He is twenty-seven years old, athletically slender and wide across the shoulders, with curly, blue black hair that needs cutting. The sun glints on a peppering of fine gray at his temples. He is clean-shaven, but his face and chin are darkly shadowed for want of a recent razor.

  Hans feels a worm of doubt as Michael steps toward the waiting trio, a slight, unnamed hostility of which he is only vaguely aware. If asked to explain the source of his distrust, Hans would claim to be a natural judge of character. But the true cause of his unease is this: Michael Severts is beautiful.

  Blue eyes paled from staring into fires of Irish peat look out from an open and friendly face. Michael’s nose is straight, finely proportioned, and his features perfectly balanced. His lips are full and red as a girl’s, and there is a slight, smiling lift to one corner of his mouth that implies a scoundrel’s charming willingness to laugh at himself. The only imperfection in his appearance is a tendency to hold one shoulder a bit higher than the other and a slight cock to his head, the result of a back injury that has plagued him since an accident with a jumpy cart horse during his early years. Rather than detract from his looks, the imperfect stance serves only to give him a slight air of vulnerability, which makes women want to draw him to their breast.

  The sum of his looks and movements is such that he draws the attention of wom
en wherever he goes, and men find themselves buying him drinks. Hans, having the experience of his own good looks, has some understanding of humanity’s ever-willingness to impute unlikely virtues to the attractive. And it is this that imparts a small cock of suspicion to his eyebrows as he looks the mariner over.

  Michael is equally cautious. He celebrated Dutch’s possession of gold because he has none of his own and nights are for fun and whiskey. The drunken idea of partnering with the odd Dutchman was simply bar talk, a way to keep the drinks flowing. Now the uneven fellow is here shouting, accompanied by a glowering giant and a man giving Michael the skeptical up-and-down appraisal of a policeman.

  Dutch launches in, oblivious to the awkward silence, pumping furiously at Severts’s hand, saying, “Hiya there, Captain,” and “Meet yer new partners.” Turning to the others, he pulls them forward by their sleeves. “Harky, Hans, this here’s Michael, fellow I was tellin’ you about.”

  Hans shakes hands briefly, then stands with his arms crossed, unspeaking.

  Dutch points at Michael’s boat. “There she is, there’s the boat,” inaccurately parroting what he remembers of Michael’s description. “She’s the slickest kind o’ cutter, all orchard cedar.”

  Harky squints at the anchored cutter with the uneasy eyes of a landsman, rubs his nose, and says with succinct doubt, “Sorta small.”

  Like any good sailor, Michael bristles to the defense of his ship, forgetting for a moment his intention to scuttle any partnership agreement. “Forty-two feet. Plenty of boat. Got me here all the way from Oregon, didn’t she? In good hands, she’ll do whatever is needed.”

  “And you’re the good hands, are you?” asks Hans. “Think that boat’ll get us and all our gear up the coast?”

  “She’ll do anything I ask her,” replies Michael, forgetting in the senseless allegiance all boat owners feel for the imagined, feminine qualities of indifferent canvas and wood how a dozen nights of storm-inspired terror and exhaustion can make any vessel seem wildly inadequate.

  “And you?” asks Hans, lifting one eyebrow. “What is it makes you such a sailor?”

  Michael pauses at the question, considering if he wants to justify himself to this stranger, then shrugs, too hungover for the work of taking offense. “Learned the trade young on packets between Ireland and Scotland. Always figured if a man can follow the stars in the North Sea, he can sail anywhere. It’s not so different here.”

  “How’s about we take a look aboard?” asks Dutch, eager to pose with his hand on the tiller.

  Michael stalls. He is not eager to have this gang see the firm young woman—perhaps a tad too young—whose name he cannot remember, and who sleeps this morning beneath his blankets.

  “Well, it’s a bit of a mess now. I’ve got the head off the engine. The valves, you know.”

  Michael looks pointedly from Harky to the small dinghy, as if measuring his great bulk against the freeboard of the punt.

  “Maybe it’d be better if I get her cleaned up and move in to the dock. Save ferrying back and forth in the small boat.”

  Harky nods, imagining the wet rush of the delicate row-boat overturning. He has not swum since the Yankees turned General Hammond’s flank at Franklin’s Ford, and his tattered company was forced to swim for their lives, with the whip-crack and whine of bullets about their heads and the salt taste of blood in the water.

  “Tomorrow then?” asks Hans.

  There is agreement all around.

  Michael Severts sits alone in the cockpit of the Tara Keane over early morning tea and resolves firmly to decline incorporation into the company of miners. He is unafraid of hard work and enjoys well enough the fantasy of gold, but the prospect of summering far up the coast in some back bay, without the conviviality of women or whiskey is not attractive. He takes a last decisive swig at his mug and goes forward to haul the anchor. As Harky and Dutch lead the way to the dock, seaweed scattered along the edge of the tide glows in the morning sun. Hans and Hannah come behind, her arm linked through his on the dew-slicked stones. Everything is hazed in radiant amber light, coloring their faces warm and ruddy. Along the horizon, anvil-shaped clouds billow and swell like anemones on the ocean bottom. The air is cool in the shadows, warm in the light, and the long, buzzing trill of a varied thrush calls heed to the imminence of spring.

  Hannah wears a waist-length jacket over a white blouse of ribbed cotton and a skirt of light wool. Her hair, gleaming from the hundred brush strokes it receives every morning, catches Michael’s eye as he coasts the Tara Keane into the pier under jib alone. When close by the pier, he eases a sheet and throws the tiller hard over, and the cutter spins slowly round, backing the jib to take all way off the boat. The dinghy on its tow rope bumps against the broad transom as Tara stalls, stops, and begins to move broadside, slowly nudging into the pier as the tide sweeping along the beach eases her into place. His neat exhibition of seamanship brings a smile to Hannah’s face, but passes without remark from the others.

  Michael steps from deck to dock and passes a breast line round a cleat, securing the boat to the pier. Something stirs through Hannah’s veins at the lithe motion with which he bends to the line. She holds out a gloved hand as Hans introduces her. “Mrs. Nelson, my wife,” Hans says.

  “Pleased, Mrs. Nelson.” Michael takes her hand briefly, squeezing lightly without shaking. There is a flutter under Hannah’s breastbone at the Irishman’s full, dark eyelashes. Michael’s decision to beg out of the deal wavers as he takes in the slope of Hannah’s bosom, her creamy skin and shining eyes.

  Michael invites them aboard, reaching out to Hannah, who gathers her skirt in one hand before taking his offer with the other. The deck tilts and heels under Harky’s weight as he clambers across, and he has to grab at a shroud for balance. Surprised at the motion, Dutch, too, is awkward, and teeters on the pier like a reluctant hound.

  Once aboard, the miners stand stiffly, as if attending a party where they are unsure of their welcome. But Hannah shields her eyes and looks about at the details of Tara Keane’s rigging. The child of a chandler, she has an understanding of the qualities that make a ship and takes note of its strengths and shortcomings.

  She notes a stretch of the bulwarks has been recently replaced, in a neat, workmanlike job that is in conflict with the general air of patch-and-promise that dominates the boat. The standing rigging is done up neatly, with splices and eyes well served with tarred twine, but the deck seams show crawled caulking that has been touched up rudely with pitch.

  Michael watches as Hannah takes inventory. He sees the approval in her eyes as she fingers a line properly coiled and hung from a belaying pin and bends down to give the bulwark repair an approving pat. The curve of her waist enthralls him.

  Hans paces the deck as if measuring it for cargo. Dutch peers about with what he assumes to be a sea dog’s squint. Harky perches gently on the low cabin top and looks concerned.

  Hannah turns to Michael. “Who is she named for? Tara Keane is an Irish name, isn’t it?”

  Michael is pleased by Hannah’s use of the feminine. The others—landsmen, obviously—are untouched by the rhythm of the oceans and refer to his boat as it.

  “Aye. It’s my mother’s name, Tara. She was Keane before she married Francis Severts. We’re from Inishbofin, a bit of rock off the west coast of Ireland.”

  “A salute to your mother, hey Michael?” asks Dutch. He looks to Hannah as he continues. “The Irish always love their mothers, don’t they, Mrs. Nelson?”

  “I’m sure they do, Dutch.”

  Severts holds Hannah’s gaze for a long pause, breathes a bit deeper, and his brogue grows thicker as he continues. “It’s an Irish name, but me mother is half English. Her own mother being from Coventry, that is.” His head cocks a degree to the left, and he stares at Hannah without blinking, as if waiting for a response to this miscegenation. Receiving none, he adds, “And that gives me own blood a pint of English, doesn’t it?”

  He cocks a crooked grin. “I
wrote her that I’d named a boat for her. Thought that might please her.” Then he kicks with his toe at a shaving on the deck. “Might’ve exaggerated some of this tub’s qualities a bit, I guess.” He leaves out that he writes her often, long letters full of fantastic promises to return home rich and pry his mother from the grip of his father, a violent, illiterate man who suffers a permanent hunch upon his back.

  The residents of Inishboffin had been used to seeing the faces of Tara Keane and her children decorated with welts and bruises, and it had been as much to escape the ravaging of their father as it was to earn their own way in the world that Michael and his brother had run for America. But Liam soon grew pale with homesickness and returned, while Michael stayed on, working his way across the country as far as Oregon, where he found himself tending bar when news of the gold rush broke loose. And when word came to Michael that an outraged husband had been seen buying a fresh box of shotgun shells, he briefly regretted entertaining the saloon’s patrons with the quip, “What’s another slice off a cut loaf?” That had so deeply bruised the cuckolded fellow, that Michael quickly allowed the threat of buckshot and the promise of gold to propel him out of Portland in search of a way north. Two days later, at the mouth of the Columbia River, a few dollars and a dollop of charm had won him possession of the long-neglected cutter upon whose deck they now stand.

  He goes on to explain, “She was wasting away with moss on her topsides when I found her. I fix a bit here and there as we go, but it’s a long race to the finish.”

  Harky thinks for a moment that Michael means his mother was growing mossy and old, then realizes his error and marvels at the foreign language of sailors.