Heartbroke Bay

by Lynn D'urso

  Yesterday Hans wasted the last two shotgun shells on long shots at a sea lion drifting offshore, firing senselessly at an animal that could not have been retrieved through the breaking surf, even if his aim had been good. There is no more ammunition, and the snares have been unproductive. There is only the tide to feed them and what roots or garbage Hannah digs from beneath the snow.

  Hannah puckers her mouth and shakes her head. “No. No more killing.” The sounds and smells of Dutch and Harky’s dying flash across her mind at regular intervals. Sleep is a time of screams and red specters, and she often wakes shaking with fear, her ears ringing from the roar of dream shotguns. They live like animals, gnawing at hides and stinking, but she hangs her sanity on a scrap of illusion that there is still some hope of decency, of civility somewhere in the world. Hannah knows that taking Michael’s life now would be an act of selfishness, to save their own lives rather than an act of right or justice, and that to do so would surely unhinge her, slipping her into a mad, dark place from which she might never return.

  “No,” she says, surprising herself with the determination in her words. “We will not do it.”

  That night Hannah warms a pot of water, gathers a blanket, and carries both outside, intent on reducing her body’s musky smell. Peeling down her filthy top, she works hurriedly against the cold, scrubbing at her armpits and torso, wincing at the soreness in her nipples. Shivering, she reclothes herself, folds the blanket on the ground for a place to stand, and removes her boots. Stripping out of her undergarments, she shudders at the soiled, greasy feel of the shimmy’s cloth before wringing the scrubbing rag in the now-tepid water and rolling her skirt up to her waist. At the sight of the pale, goose-fleshed skin going slack over her diminishing calves and thighs, she sucks in her breath, lifts the bundle of her skirt to her ribs, and runs one hand across her swelling belly.

  I presume it to be January. The days seem to be slowly growing longer. I caught a large hedgehog—Hans called it a porkapine—with the ax yesterday while searching for wood. It is the first thing I have ever killed. Surprised to feel nothing in doing so.

  Dreadfully tired. Mr. Nelson has frozen a finger, and it was very painful in thawing. Michael often unconscious.

  “Please.” Michael’s voice is gentle and reasoned, as if negotiating with a child. “Hannah, please. I can’t take this anymore.”

  The irregular thok of the ax comes from outside the cabin, where Hans cuts listlessly at a frozen log. Hannah sits beside Michael, huddling beneath a blanket, watching the fog of her breath curl in weak, lazy spirals before her face, daydreaming of Dutch’s Sandwich Isles. Owyhee, with its fruit, soft breezes, and the scent of flowers in the air. Michael has been pleading all morning to be put out of his misery, and she cannot look at him when she replies, her voice flat. “I cannot allow it, Michael. We must wait. Spring will come, and we will be rescued. Mr. Witt will surely send a boat from Sitka as soon as the weather allows.” Severts groans softly.

  “It hurts me to see you suffer so, Michael, but we must hang on. It is all that will save us.”

  The door knocks back, and Hans enters, carrying a small armload of ax-shattered wood. “Damnation, Hannah, be sensible. We won’t make it till spring.”

  Sitting up straight, she lifts her chin. “I cannot see a helpless man killed. We are not animals.” She slumps again and sighs, “We have already talked of this too much. It is a matter for the authorities, not us.”

  Hans shakes his head at the persistence of his wife’s fantasy, her obsession with laws and judges. He will not say the words loose in his brain, but he sometimes sees the Irishman as meat—a roast, slices of steak, a stew. “Tide’s dropping. I better go before it gets dark.”

  After Hans gathers the forage sack and leaves, Hannah feeds the stove and sits down again, eager to return to Hawaii. She often imagines herself in a particular corner of a lawn overlooking a stream bordered in wild, fragrant flowers, a green swath of neatly trimmed grass where there are no clouds between her and the sun. Her clothes are clean and neat, and the regular sighing of blue and white surf mixes easily with the rustling sound of the palms. She is just beginning to feel the heat on her face and the texture of the clipped grass beneath her thighs when Michael’s voice breaks into her reverie: “Hannah, I love you.

  “I love you, and I can’t watch you go on like this. Let me up, and I will hang myself. You won’t have to do it.”

  She feels like a piece of old paper—delicate, dry, and brittle, being slowly torn down the middle. The image of herself clubbing Hans to the ground with the skillet as he comes in the door flashes before her, and she imagines the feel of the ropes in her fingers as she frees Michael’s bonds. Her blood burns with guilt and shame as she realizes how badly she wants to fulfill the fantasy: Hans gone, herself in Michael’s arms—it could work! No one would ever know; they could weave a tale of some sort to …

  Hannah realizes she is biting the knuckle of her thumb and pulls it from her mouth, then stares at the shape of the angry red tooth marks and moans.

  “God’s truth, Hannah. Seeing you waste away is worse than the torture of these boards. Let’s end this.”

  A single great, wracking sob rips from her breast, and she clutches her arms about herself. “It was self-defense, Michael. That’s what you said.”

  Severts shakes his head. “No, Hannah. That’s not true. I just wanted the gold. I wanted to go back to Ireland a big shot, a success, with enough to take my mother out of reach of my father. And I was so angry with you after we quarreled out by the woodpile before the storm.”

  “You are just saying that.”

  “I swear. It’s too late for me to try to save myself. I did wrong, and I’ve got to pay.”

  “My Lord.” Her voice knots, her mind spins and cramps. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? Either way, he is a killer; either way he might be doing it for her; either way, she wants him. Every way it is turned, there is no way out, no way to decide.

  “You want me to stand trial, I’ll stand trial,” says Michael. “I’ve been thinking about it, and there is no reason we cannot have a trial right here.”

  Hannah is sure Michael’s suffering has unhinged him; he is hallucinating, imagining them to be in Sitka or somehow otherwise back in civilization.

  “Really, we can do it, Hannah. There is no need to wait.”

  “Michael, please. Try to sleep. I will cook something.” There is nothing except some porcupine bones to grind and the hide to boil. Hannah imagines she can strain the crude bullion through a rag to remove the quills.

  “All we need is a judge and a prosecutor.” Michael laughs. “We’ve already got a prisoner. And of course, it would be a bit more proper to have a witness. Do you think you could send Hans to the Indian village to find that old man?”

  “A trial. It requires a jury, lawyers. You must have a defense,” Hannah protests. “You must have a fair trial. A fair trial is … civilized.”

  Michael rolls his head from side to side, dismissing her argument, then opens his hands above his head and raises them against the ropes. Since expending the last of the ammunition, Hans has rebound him tighter and tighter as his limbs waste away, arguing that they have no defense against his escape.

  “I’ll confess. I’ll sign a confession. Nolo contendere, they call that. No contest, no defense necessary. Please, Hannah. Please.”

  He begins to cry. Hannah goes to him, kneels, and cradles his head in her hands, while he sobs, crooning soft, meaningless words to him as if he were a child with a fright.

  The idea of a trial swells and grows like rising bread. All laws are simply an agreement among the members of a community, she reasons to herself, a consensus of what is best for all. Three is a small number, but they are still a community—fractured and tortured, but a community nonetheless. For that matter, she rationalizes, they might be all the people left in the world, and still no less responsible for seeing justice done.

  The night snaps with cold, and
the aurora plays overhead. From the darkness of the forest outside the hut comes the scream of something small dying. Over a spoonful of ground bones and skin-fat, Hannah says to Hans, “You must go to the Indian village tomorrow. Bring Negook back with you.”

  “All those in favor say ‘aye.’” Hannah utters the words in a monotone, looking down at the paper before her. Her fingers toy nervously, touching first the pen with which she writes, then the paper, then the meat mallet that serves as her gavel.

  We, the members of this community located at Lituya Bay in the Territory of Alaska, for the purposes of enforcing the law and attending to the welfare of the members of the community, do by this document create the community of Lituya Bay.

  From his perch on the edge of his bunk, Michael whispers, “Aye,” staring at his hands, which are crossed and tied before him. Nelson sprawls sideways at the table, the back of his hand propped to his mouth with one elbow. He breathes harshly through his nose as if angry, his eyes tracking back and forth between his wife and the prisoner. Negook squats on his haunches in the corner, a shadow caped in furs, head tilted, eyes closed, listening.

  “How do you vote, Hans?” murmurs Hannah.

  “Damn it, Hannah.” When Hans removes his hand from his mouth to speak, his lips are mottled and red. The first stage of scurvy is beginning to loosen his teeth, and the salty taste of blood oozing from his swollen gums is on his tongue. “Damn it, this is insane.”

  Hannah’s gavel bangs once against the table. “How do you vote, Hans?” Her stare is as flat as her voice.

  Hans sighs, tilts his head to cover his eyes with his hand, and mutters, “Aye. Aye, damn it.”

  The gavel bangs again. “So carried.”

  Negook smiles briefly to himself at the way the woman uses the wooden hammer to coerce the blond man. The Tlingit, too, use a talking stick in their meetings, a finely carved staff that gives the bearer the right to be heard uninterrupted. But the bulk of their unfathomable impulses and formal procedures are simply puzzling.

  The pen whispers, scratching Hannah’s signature across the paper before she pushes the document to Hans. “Sign it.”

  After Hans scribbles his name, she places the pen in Severts’s fingers, adjusting the instrument to rest comfortably in his lashed wrists, and holds the paper flat to the table. The Irishman’s grip is weak. The pen shakes as it forms his name.

  Hannah blows on the signatures, then lays the article of incorporation aside. From her journal she razors another sheet of cream-colored paper, slicing slowly along the book’s spine. After carefully aligning the paper before her so it lies square and straight to the edge of the table, she dips the pen into a concoction of lamp black and alcohol and begins to write.

  The pen catches, dragging at the parchment, and the nib spills a crude blot of the improvised ink. Hannah’s chest heaves at the ugliness beneath her hand, and she wavers, mouth gulping at nothing. Laying the pen carefully aside, she removes the defiled paper and begins cutting another sheet from the journal.

  “Christ, Hannah. What does it matter?” Hans’s voice is bewildered, taut with frustration.

  Hannah does not look up as she concentrates on the razor and the precise excision of the paper from its binding. “It must be proper,” she says softly. “It must be done right.”

  A quarter of an hour passes. Fifteen minutes of the pen hissing scritch-scritch between softly spoken questions, the answering “Ayes,” and long silences. The tense silences are punctuated by the subdued crackling of the stove and the kloonk-kloonk of ravens calling through the forest. Michael shivers and hefts a blanket stiff with grime around his thin shoulders. Hans crosses and uncrosses his legs, jiggles one foot, and rubs his chin. The shaman is as still as a stump. At the end of the quarter hour the single sheet of paper says:

  A RECORD OF THE ELECTION OF OFFICIALS IN THE COMMUNITY OF LITUYA BAY, TERRITORY OF ALASKA

  Winter of 1899

  All votes taken by outcry

  In the election of a judge, running unopposed, Hannah Butler-Nelson.

  Affirmative 3, in opposition 0.

  Hannah Butler-Nelson is hereby declared judge for the community of Lituya Bay.

  In the election of a prosecutor of the court, running unopposed, Hans Nelson.

  Affirmative 3, in opposition 0.

  Hans Nelson is hereby declared prosecutor for the court of Lituya Bay.

  The results of this election are hereby accepted and approved for the appointment of judge and prosecutor to Lituya Bay, and all powers of enforcement transferred unto the hands of those elected.

  “Michael Severts, you are charged with the murder of your partners, Harky and Dutch. How do you plead?”

  “Oh, guilty, your honor. Guilty as hell.” A small smile teases Severts’s lips, but his voice is serious. Hannah precisely and faithfully transcribes his words upon a fresh sheet.

  “The prosecution may proceed.”

  The whoosh-whoosh of raven wings beats through the stillness outside. The sound of first one, then another and another of the black birds pulses in until the noise of the dark congregation circling overhead sounds like the rapid panting of a large animal.

  Michael stares at the sagging canvas above his head. Hans darts a glance at Negook, whose lusterless black eyes are lost in the shadows, then sucks at his lips, tasting blood. Hannah repeats her instruction.

  “The prosecution shall proceed.”

  Hans steeples his fingers, holding the tips to his mouth for a moment, then buries his hands in his armpits, crossing his arms on his chest. Arching his eyebrows, he sighs heavily through his nose, then asks, “So you confess? You confess to the murders?”

  “I do.”

  “And you’ll sign a confession?”

  “I will.”

  “Your honor.” There is fatigue in Hans’s voice. “Your honor, will the court instruct the stenographer to take down the prisoner’s confession?”

  Hannah makes a note on the paper before her, sets it aside, then slides an unmarked sheet into place in front of Michael. Holding out the pen, she says, “Please proceed, Mr. Severts.”

  Michael hunches forward, elbows on his knees, and stares at the floor, hiding his face behind locks of matted hair. After a moment he straightens, wipes at his nose with the fingers of his bound hands, then takes up the pen:

  I confess to murdering my partners Harky and Dutch. I killed them in cold blood, using a shotgun while they sat down to dinner. It was premeditated murder. I planned to do it, and I done it, and I won’t argue it. I was planning to kill everyone so I could have all the gold for myself. I intended to kill Hans Nelson and his wife, Hannah, as well, then make my escape by rowing in the small skiff to Sitka or Skagway, where I would blame the killings on the local Indians and claim to have barely escaped with my life, a story which would be easily believed.

  I am grievously sorry I did it. They were good men. I confess and ask to be hung for my crime.

  “Mr. Negook, will you sign as a witness to the prisoner’s confession?”

  Negook takes the proffered pen then is motionless as he considers. Maybe the paper is a Guski-kwan trick, a way of infecting him with their craziness. He has seen many papers, knows how the whites use them to do whatever they please, how they give lies power by putting them in writing. He wants to say, “Horseshit,” but holds his tongue.

  “What is this?” asks Negook, gesturing at the written confession.

  Hannah is patient. “This is Mr. Severts’s confession of murder. It requires the signature of an impartial witness to be legal.”

  “This is not the business of the Tlingit people.”

  “Nonetheless, Mr. Negook. we must have a witness, and there is no other. For a trial to be legal, neither a judge nor a prosecutor can act as a witness. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “And if it is fair?” asks Negook.

  Hans’s voice cracks loud and angry. “Then we’ll hang him and be done!”

  Negook burns Hans with a black-eyed
glance, angered by Nelson’s breach of manners. Why do these people bother having a talking stick if they do not respect it? And it seems they are asking his permission to kill the dark-haired white. They never once asked permission to dig at the ground, take fish from the rivers, or seals from the ice, but now they are asking permission to kill one of their own.

  “Aye,” he mutters. “Their strangeness never ends.”

  Hans glares at Hannah and hisses, “Christ,” wiping one hand across the tabletop as if sweeping crumbs to the floor. “What makes you think he can write?”

  At that moment a baritone rumble rolls down from the glacier, thundering in the distance like the cannons that burned Angoon. Negook’s hand darts forward, flicks twice above the paper, and the lean, sharp form of a bear’s tooth or perhaps a killer whale’s fin springs to life on the confession. The shaman points the pen at each of the whites in turn—Hans, Hannah, then Michael—while muttering an incantation of forest and water spirits to protect himself from whatever comes next, then says, “This is not the business of the Tlingit people. Kill him if you wish.”

  Negook’s choice of words—the unmitigated “kill him”—shakes Hannah’s bones, and her voice is husky as she lays the gavel aside. “Does the defendant have anything to say on his own behalf?”

  The smallest denial, a single side-to-side twitch of his head—“No”—then clearing his throat and straightening himself, Michael says, “No, I think not.” His voice is level, almost relieved. “There’s really nothing more to say, is there?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Whirlwinds of snow hiss and spin, dervishlike, across the roof of the hut, leap from the eaves, and dance away into the darkness. Ranks of waves charge out of the night to collapse upon the beach in thundering welters. Boulders the size and color of Spanish bulls glitter under opaque coats of ice. The ice grows thicker with every fusillade of spray.