Heartbroke Bay

by Lynn D'urso

  “Stop.

  “Hans, stop. We must stop this.”

  Hans is incredulous. “Stop? Damn it, Hannah. The man’s a coldblooded murderer. He killed Harky. He killed Dutch. And I’m going to kill him!”

  “No, you are not!” She glances at Severts, who lies curled and still at her feet. His face is swollen, black from the fury of Hans’s blows, and his mouth is a crimson pulp of blood. Hannah feels a knot cinch itself into her stomach at the sight of his destroyed, beautiful face. “You cannot kill a helpless man.”

  Hans sits back on his haunches, leans against his good arm, and a calculating look fixes itself in his eyes.

  “If we kill him …” Hannah gropes for words to explain what her desperate bones know. “If we kill a helpless man, we will be no better than him. We will be murderers, too. We must stop.”

  “Stop? Hannah, that man”—Hans points at Michael’s still body—“just killed in cold blood. What else will we do? Shall I call a policeman?”

  Hannah cannot respond. There is no answer in her mouth. There is no one to call, no way to change or affect what has happened. There is only this, the horror of all-come-undone, in the last place on Earth, in a land that feels the farthest any human can be from solace or safety. There must be a way to correct something, to bend things in such a way that will give them hope in this hell.

  “No, the killing is done. We’ll tie him up.”

  “Tie him up? Then what?” asks Hans.

  Again Hannah’s mind gropes for a solution, but there is nothing. There is only the smell of Harky and Dutch, whose bodies lie cooling as the blood-warmth of their lives soaks into the cold ground. There is the killer at her feet and the would-be killer she is looking at over the barrel of a gun. There is no order, only chaos. Another piece of the shell flakes away …

  “I won’t let you kill him. If you kill him …” She cannot think what to say. “If you kill him, I will see you charged with murder for killing a helpless man.” And as she says it, she knows it is true. She will fall back on the law, on the strength of that world that still exists out there somewhere that prevents this sort of madness, where men cannot kill without consequence.

  “I will see you charged, Hans. If you kill him, you will have to kill me, too. Will you do that? Will you kill me, too?”

  Hans lowers his face to glare at her from under his bruised brow, his eyes growing wary and unsure, as he senses her determination.

  “We must hold him until we are rescued and can give him up to the authorities. We don’t know why he has done this.” She swallows and moves the gun barrel an inch to indicate the dead. “Mr. Severts will be properly tried. Properly, not murdered by you.”

  Her voice trembles as the illusion of a way out rises before her. “We are not killers. We are not savages.” She can feel the ache of tears building in her throat. “We will keep Mr. Severts prisoner until he can be dealt with by the law.”

  Hans’s mouth turns down, and he growls, “Mr. Severts, is it? Mr. Severts?”

  Leaping to his feet, Hans bellows, “He called you Hannah! You called him Michael!” Hans charges across the room so swiftly it scares Hannah back against the wall. She screams in fear as he begins kicking again at Michael.

  “No, Hans! Stop it!” Pointing the gun at the ceiling, she pulls the trigger. The explosion stops Hans in midblow as bits of roof moss and canvas shower down from overhead.

  “I cannot let you kill him!” she screams. “We will not be murderers, too!”

  “Damn you, woman! I’m not killing him for being a murderer! I’m killing him for making me a cuckold!” He lunges as if to renew his attack.

  Hannah thrusts the shotgun out before her. “No!”

  “Will you shoot me, Hannah? Shoot me to save your murdering Irishman?” Hans spits.

  Hannah’s finger tightens on the trigger, even as she shakes her head in emphatic denial. “No. You’re wrong.” The lie springs easily to her lips, seeded by a wish to believe that chaos and horror can be corrected and ordered, a wish so fervent that she believes wholeheartedly as she is saying it that she has never committed adultery, that she could not possibly have given herself to a man, no matter how charming or beautiful, who is capable of murder. Wanting, she believes, and believing, she is sufficiently convincing to allay some part of her husband’s knowing outrage.

  The simplicity of her denial combines with a husband’s desire to believe, and a stalemate is reached. The shotgun comes down. The cold creeps into their bones. Hannah closes the door—open all this time—and kneels at Michael’s side, peering into his face, trying to discern how a man who cried at killing a seal could send two men to their graves.

  SIXTEEN

  When Michael awakens, he finds himself embroidered to the frame of a bunk with cords about his wrists and ankles. Spread-eagled on his back, he thrashes, pulling weakly at the ropes, but subsides as stabbing pains pierce his arms and ribs. Through blow-puffed eyes he sees that the cabin is dark. Listening, he hears silence. Tugging against the bindings, he feels the cold of a neglected fire stiffening his fingers and limbs.

  Outside, twin blazes rise up from ricks of burning hemlock spaced along the edge of the forest. Hannah huddles close to one fire, Hans the other. They stand with their backs to each other, tending their personal flames. The unwrapped bodies of their murdered companions lie on the ground beside the pyres, the light of the bonfires throwing an orange glow across the snow and high into the trees. Together Hans and Hannah dragged Harky’s massive weight to the gravesite on a tarp, while Dutch suffered the awkward indignity of being pulled by the arms. Dark streaks of blood mark the passage of the dead across the snow.

  As the ground warms, the Nelsons take turns with a shovel and pick, pushing aside the angry red embers to cut at the slowly thawing soil. Silhouetted by the flames, they hack an inch at a time into the earth, burning, shoveling, then burning again. Gradually, the dancing firelight reveals rude graves that gape dark and bottomless in the night. Progress is slow. Hans’s shoulder is stiff and painful. Hannah is numb with shock.

  Overhead, the sky clears and the stars take up their positions as first Dutch, then Harky are interred in the charred ground. Before rolling the dead into their graves, Hans relieves Harky of the pistol and Dutch of his boots, which are less worn than his own. The pathos of Dutch’s naked feet brings a pain to Hannah’s chest, and she cries, rasping in hoarse, angry sobs, aghast at the practicality of the robbery. From beyond the capering edge of the firelight, a pair of glowing eyes watch.

  The next morning a pale light kindles behind the peaks. The sky is clear blue, the color of ice, and a stream of air so cold and dense it has become a solid substance spills into the fjord. Between the smoldering graves, a line of small human footprints pass, gnarled and splay-toed in the snow. The tooth of a bear has been placed atop each fire-darkened mound. Inside, Severts is sullen and turns his face from Hannah’s questions.

  “Why, Michael? What reason can there be for this murder?”

  Michael jerks at his bonds, a frown on his bruised and swollen face. He glares at Hans, who holds a rag to the bite mark on his cheek and returns the scowl.

  “Doesn’t matter why, does it?” growls Hans. “He’s murdered them, and we ought to shoot the bastard.”

  “There will be no more killing,” says Hannah. The shotgun rests across her lap. Beneath her gray eyes are dark circles. Scribbled lines of fatigue plow her forehead and radiate from the corners of her mouth. “Mr. Severts is our prisoner until he can be given over to the authorities.” She shifts the shotgun, feeling the cold metal of its barrel and the warmth of the walnut stock in her hands, and neither man can tell if the unconscious gesture is meant for himself or his enemy.

  Michael hawks and coughs before breaking his silence. “I save your lives, and this is how I’m repaid.” He jerks one arm, pulling the rope tight. His voice is hoarse from disuse.

  Hannah and Hans exchange looks. Hers is surprised, his suspicious. Severts thrashes a m
oment against his restraints, then is still.

  Hans lowers the rag from his face and looks at the blood-stain before holding it toward Michael. “Saved our lives? By doing murder? And chewing at me like a dog? There’s a neat trick.”

  Severts fists the slack of the ropes in his hands and tests the knots before spitting in Hans’s direction. “They were planning to kill you. They tried to get me in with them.”

  “What?” says Hannah, startled. She knew Dutch and Harky were upset, but it is impossible to believe they could have been plotting murder.

  “Aye. They said we’d split the gold three ways instead of five, with a bit extra for the loss of my boat. I told them to go to hell.”

  Hans rumbles in his throat. “That’s a damn lie.”

  “God’s truth. That’s why I had to kill them. They were planning to murder you. And after I refused to join them, they would have had to kill me, too. There was no choice. I had to shoot them.”

  Hannah remembers the surprised look on Michael’s face as she flung the soup, and an inch of doubt worms into her stomach. Harky had once saved Hans’s life, but he had been dark and sullen lately. And gentle Dutch, always so eager for approval—surely he could not have been capable of coldblooded killing just for gold. Could he?

  “I do not believe you,” Hannah says.

  “It’s true, Mrs. Nelson. Yesterday, when I was leaving. Out there by the woodpile, they said they were going to do it last night while you slept.

  “You’re trying an innocent man here. It was self-defense, killing them like that.” Michael continues. “I saved your lives and my own. We’d be the ones freezing in the ground if I hadn’t done what I done.”

  Hannah’s mind whirls, spinning through the facts she knows and the intuition she had, her memory of Dutch, Michael, and Harky standing at the woodpile, stiff with the attitude of conspiracy; Michael, crying for the seal; his tenderness with her and his passion in the fields.

  Michael sees the doubt in her eyes and holds up his hands. “Let me go, Mrs. Nelson. There’s no need to make me a prisoner. After we’re rescued, we’ll go to the law, let them decide that what I done was necessary.” Lowering his voice, he adds, “I’m no murderer. I think you know that.”

  Hans bangs to his feet and throws the bloody rag at the prisoner. “Self-defense, was it? Killed them two for us, did you?” He advances on Michael with doubled fists. “You’re a lying murderer, Severts. You would have killed me, too, if I’d let you.”

  Hannah lifts the shotgun from her lap and points it at the floor—“Hans, stop”—and discovers the physical, unrefined authority of a gun, for her voice is firm, and her husband halts with one fist raised to his shoulder.

  “He’s lying, Hannah. He’s trying to save his neck, that’s all.”

  “No, Mrs. Nelson. It’s true, I swear. We’d be dead, I tell you.”

  Hannah wavers, struck between husband and lover, desperately wanting to believe Michael, because then he can be released and the first long step back to some order in their wrecked lives can be made. Her head shakes. “I don’t know.”

  Hans makes a noise like a bull deep in his chest, an ugly snort that is half laugh, muffled and distorted through the swelling of his broken nose. “True? Well, the only true thing is that Harky and Dutch are dead, sure enough.” He turns to Hannah with a sly look. “Why do you think the bastard was trying to reload the gun?”

  December 1898

  Terrible plight. Food perilously low as Hans has little success with hunting. Bitter cold. Nights much worse. Wood scarce near cabin. Snow covers everything. Hans and I guard against Michael’s escape by turns, day and night. Leaves no time for necessities. Very exhausting. Dear God, how have we come to this? I do not feel I can trust anyone. Even you.

  Nauseous every morning.

  Hannah strokes the green leather cover of her journal with a mittened hand and closes the book, too fatigued to be ashamed of how sloppy her handwriting has become. Besides, there is nothing to say, or at least nothing she wants to put into words. And the ink blots and skips in the cold. Her head aches from hunger, and she notices how thin her wrist looks where it emerges from the mitten. Hans hunts every hour of daylight, but is rarely successful. Yesterday he returned with a single ptarmigan, reduced by the large-bore shotgun to a fist-sized bundle of shattered white feathers and stringy meat. Stewed whole—head, feet, and organs—the bird fed each of the three survivors only a cup of weak broth apiece. This morning they had sucked at the slender bones.

  Without snowshoes, travel through the forest is too difficult, limiting Hans’s hunting range to a strand of wind-beaten beach beside the sea. He cannot duplicate Michael’s success with drifting the skiff down on the seals. Sylkie, the Irishman calls them, and he has known their habits since he was a boy. Hans grows impatient, moves too soon, and panics the herd before the shotgun can do its work. Then he returns to the cabin sullen and shivering, the skin of his face turning red with frost, peeling away in strips and patches.

  The cold is a mortal enemy, and without sufficient food they chill easily. When the wind is strong, Hans cannot stand the exposure for even the minimal hours of daylight at hand, and instead relieves Hannah from guarding Severts. They take turns digging at driftwood buried under the snowdrifts along the beach, skidding and poling the logs to the cabin, where they are laboriously hacked and sawn into pieces to feed the ravenously hungry stove, which eats continuously. So weakened, it is more than they can do to meet its demands, and every day the stockpile of wood dwindles.

  “It’s a two-man job to keep us alive,” says Hans through lips cracked with cold. “Sitting nursemaid to this murderer is sure to starve us or freeze us. And it’s a race to see which is first.”

  “Let me go, Hannah.”

  Hannah jerks upright from her doze, clutching at Harky’s pistol in her lap. “What?”

  “Let me go. You know this isn’t right.”

  Her skull feels as if it is stuffed with cotton wool, and the pulse of her thin, exhausted blood beats behind her eyes. She answers Michael with a sharp shake of her head, but pain fills the void left by lack of sleep, and nausea rolls her stomach into an empty knot.

  Michael is silent for a moment, lying with his head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth agape. Hannah is slipping away, chin to her chest, before he speaks again. “Either let me go, or I will tell him about us.”

  Pulling herself back to consciousness, she considers this. Her eye sockets are sinking into shadows, and her eyes are bloodshot. When she blinks, it feels like they are filled with sand. “No you won’t. It would gain you nothing.”

  “I’ve nothing to lose, have I?”

  “You won’t do it.”

  Michael shrugs, then gasps as the motion cramps the unused muscles of his neck and shoulders. “Nothing to lose.” Sighing, almost wistful. “Nothing at all.”

  “He’d kill me. And you.” His voice is flat, just stating a fact. “You think he won’t?”

  Hannah shakes her head, eyes closed, willing Michael to shut up.

  “He’d have all the gold then, too. Wouldn’t he?”

  Michael closes his eyes, turns his face to the wall, and is silent for a long moment before saying, “The shotgun has two barrels, Hannah. Remember that.”

  “Hannah,” whispers Michael. “I’m cold.”

  Michael’s voice wrenches Hannah from a reverie by the fire, starting her upright in her chair. Resentment flashes through her blood. Adrift, she had been for a moment free of worry. Awakened, she is returned to the immediate hell of the hovel. The fire warms only a thin band of air near the ceiling; her feet are cold.

  “The ropes are too tight. See how my hands are swelling.” Michael raises his head to look at Hannah, holding up one hand. The flesh is puffy, the color of wax. He is trembling, unable to reach down and pull up the filthy blanket that has slipped to his waist. “And I’ve got to care for myself.”

  “I’m sorry, Michael. You will have to wait for Hans to return.” It
has become the routine for Hans to stand guard over Severts with the shotgun while Hannah slacks the ropes so Michael may attend to the chamber pot. Bedbound and unfed, Michael’s digestive system has crawled to a near halt, making elimination a laborious and painful process, during which Hannah is relegated outdoors to chop wood.

  Michael’s head drops back, and he sighs, “Jesus, Hannah, help me.” His pleading cuts Hannah like a saw. Helpless and powerless, he reaches out to her with his bound hands. “Please. Just loose enough to let my blood move. He tied me so tight.”

  Hannah comes to her feet and walks to the edge of the bunk, bends down to inspect Michael’s hands. His fingers are locked in a curl like a claw, the skin tight and swollen. The cord bites into the soft flesh of his wrists. He whispers again, “It hurts.”

  The lack of food has burned Michael’s face thin, accentuating his cheekbones, darkening his eyes. In the soft light of the cabin, he has the look of an Italian martyr in a Renaissance painting, beautiful in torment, and Hannah’s heart reaches back to the days of their passion.

  “Yes, very well.” She tries but fails to keep her voice businesslike as she lays down the pistol and reaches for a knot. Bending over, she hesitates, fearing for a moment that an act of human kindness will undo her resolve, and her fingers will fly to free him. Avoiding Michael’s eyes, she stiffens herself and slacks the cord around first one hand, then the other. Michael gasps and flinches as the blood begins to burn its way back into his hands.

  “Oh, thank you, my angel.” His brogue is soft with intimate gratitude, and Hannah rests her fingers for a moment on his shoulder. His bones announce themselves under her hand, and for a heartbeat he is not a killer, but a child.

  “How long has it been?” he asks, and Hannah is not sure whether he means the duration of his confinement or time lapsed since they last lay together. The first is safe ground, and she answers, “Three weeks,” then hesitates. “I think.”

  Michael sighs. “Three weeks. Jesus, Hannah. If only I could move about a bit. My back, it’s killing me to lie here on these boards.”