Landfalls

by Naomi J. Williams

  The chief Snow Man stood up from the rock, turned the other man around by the shoulder, and started walking away. The new man did not follow, though, until the chief turned back and said something short and sharp, like a bark.

  Now that they were leaving, I was suddenly very afraid, afraid of what might have happened to me, stuck out on the spit with five Snow Men between me and our village, and I hid myself among the trees. My aunts would say, See, there you go, you always think afterward about what you should have done, when it is too late and no good. This time they would have been right.

  The first Snow Man turned around once when he got near his canoe, and I thought he looked surprised not to see me anymore. I wondered if I should step out from behind the tree so he would know I was alive and not a spirit. But that might look like an invitation, and then maybe he would come back. Still, I was disappointed when I lost sight of him. This is what is wrong with me—I am always wanting and not wanting something at the same time. Like wanting to marry my handsome cousin, but also not wanting it. No one else ever seems to feel this way. But I saw it in this Snow Man, the way he leaned over the dead gull, hoping it was one of his men and also hoping it was not.

  Then I noticed, on the rock where the man had been sitting, his flask of water. Had he forgotten it, or was it a gift? I picked it up—it was round and hard, cold to the touch, and closed with a stopper made of some kind of soft wood. I could see my own reflection in the side. It was like looking into really smooth lake ice. I was pleased to have it. I had never had anything so wonderful in all my life, not for myself.

  Then I heard a familiar cough behind me. It was my little cousin. I could tell without looking. They are gone, I said, you can come out. I could have killed him, he said, I could have killed them both. How? I said. With your bow and arrow? I was sorry as soon as I said it. His aim is terrible, but it is not his fault. He is too sick to practice much. I was still watching the Snow Men, who were now getting back in their small canoe. I couldn’t see their faces anymore, but their bodies still looked sad. They had not found any of their people. Would they worry now about bears or about Land Otters? I wish I could have asked them.

  What do you think happens when you drown? I asked my cousin. He cleared his throat. I don’t know, he said, but sometimes when I cough and I can’t stop, I think it might be like that. He had not understood me, but I said nothing. I felt sad all over again for the cousin who drowned. I knew my little cousin was thinking about his brother too, and I wondered if love could start like that, with two people feeling sad about the same thing. I turned around to look at him.

  I should not have laughed. But I could not help it. He looked so serious with his bow and arrows, which were so big on him. I am glad you did not try shooting, I said, You might have killed me too. His face turned muddy-red with shame and anger. I felt sorry right away, and was about to offer him some of my berries, but he pointed to the flask in my hand and said, You should not have that. Why not? I said. Everyone will say you are like the Eagle women who go into the woods with the Snow Men and come back with gifts, he said. I looked down at the shiny flask, then back at my cousin. He was still looking at it, not at me, looking at it with wide-open eyes, panting a little. I walked forward and thrust the flask at his chest, hard enough to make him stagger. The flask fell to the ground.

  What is the matter with you? he cried. You were here, I said, You could tell everyone it was not like that. I picked up my basket and started back toward our village. Wait! he shouted, then started coughing, but it sounded like he was making himself cough. Wait! he said again, and then he called out my name. I stopped. I will turn around, I thought. I will turn, and if the flask is still on the ground, I will wait. If he picks it up and holds it out toward me, I will wait. If he says, I know you are not like the Eagle women, I will wait. But if he has the flask in his hand, if he is wiping it clean against his clothes, if he looks happy to have it for himself, then I will run home without him, no matter how angry my aunts or father or brothers will be. I dug my heel into the ground a little, to spin on it, then looked out across the bay. The Snow Men were in their small canoe, rowing back toward the island, but rowing slowly, hugging the coast, still looking for their lost people. Still hoping to find something, yet also hoping not to.

  FIVE

  CENOTAPH ISLAND

  Lituya Bay, Alaska, July 1786

  At dawn, Paul-Antoine-Marie Fleuriot, Viscount de Langle, stood at the stern gallery windows of his cabin and surprised himself by enjoying the view. To the east, the sun had already crested the great snowcapped mountains that overlooked the bay and gilt the edge of a glacier where it met the water. In the middle distance, standing like twin beacons, were the pine-covered promontories that guarded the entrance to the bay’s inner basins. Directly below him, small icebergs bobbed in the water; calved off glaciers in those inner basins, they were now reduced to a flotilla of rounded, melting ice. And overhead, suddenly, a bird—a white-headed eagle—raced its own reflection across the water.

  Only an anxious man would have chosen to see more peril than beauty in such a prospect. But Langle was that anxious man. Or had been. Every morning of the expedition Langle had stood alone at these windows and enumerated the myriad things that could go wrong that day—an outbreak of fever, an encounter with cannibals, uncharted shoals, winds that were too violent or too still. Water was always on his mind. It could run out. It could go bad. He was convinced stale water predisposed sailors to scurvy.

  But now he stood at the expanse of windows before him and felt no compulsion to inventory the day’s potential calamities. He knew why. They had nearly died yesterday, all of them—the men of his own frigate as well as the Boussole. Over two hundred men. Entering the narrow pass of this uncharted bay, the ships had been tossed around in a confusion of veering winds and crosscurrents. The Astrolabe had passed less than a cable length from the rocks on the southern headland; the Boussole, even closer. Then they had shot through the gap, and the stillness in the bay had been shocking. It was like the quiet after a death watch, only they were all still alive, hearts beating wildly in their throats.

  Today he understood: there was no benefit in the rote exercise of expecting the worst. Yesterday morning, his windowside litany had not included being dashed upon rocks entering an uncharted bay. Yet the danger had arisen—and been averted—without his anticipation. His anxiety had been irrelevant. It was such a liberating thought that he laughed aloud. His servant, François, knocked on the door, calling in his squeaky voice, “Sir? Are you all right, sir?”

  An hour later Langle left the Astrolabe and had himself rowed to the bay island beside which the frigates had anchored. It was a protected place, wooded and unpeopled—ideal for setting up an observatory for the savants and work tents for the sailmakers and blacksmiths. He intervened in a disagreement between the savants over the observatory’s location, then made his way along the bustling shoreline in search of Lapérouse. He found the commander surrounded by men and canvas and ropes, briskly creating order out of chaos, his genial Languedoc accent easy to pick out among the other voices.

  “Ah, Monsieur de Langle,” Lapérouse called out. He signaled one of his officers to take over the tent building and drew Langle away from the hubbub. “Come explore this excellent island with me,” he said.

  The island was dense with spruce, its shoreline rocky and strewn with fallen wood. Lapérouse, short and a bit stocky, made his way with an agility that always surprised Langle. There was something of the mountain goat in his friend and commanding officer. They rounded a point and could see, to the west, the entrance they had barely survived the day before. From this distance it looked altogether still and safe. With their visit, the bay and its island and glaciers would be measured and mapped and would enter the register of known places in the world. He turned to marvel aloud over their good fortune, but the commander was still looking toward the narrow pass, brows drawn together.

  “We had a very narrow escape yesterda
y,” Lapérouse finally said.

  “We did indeed.”

  “I could hardly sleep last night,” he continued. “I kept imagining what might have happened.” He squinted toward the pass. “I worry about getting back through when we leave.”

  “We’ll have to watch carefully for the slack tide,” Langle said.

  “I thought we had yesterday.”

  “But we had no notion of the place then,” Langle said. “Now we know something of its temperament, we shall manage better.”

  Lapérouse looked pointedly at Langle, as if searching for a shared anxiety and surprised to find none. “I hope you’re right.”

  “Think not on the morrow, sir.”

  “The morrow?”

  “For the morrow shall take thought for itself. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.”

  “Are you quoting scripture?”

  “Our Lord himself.”

  Lapérouse shook his head with a bemused smile. “Pardon the irreverence, Monsieur de Langle, but our Lord could afford to ignore tomorrow better than we. He could come back from the dead.”

  “And walk on water.”

  Lapérouse laughed, then turned around to return to the camp. Langle followed, disappointed that their exploration should be so brief. It occurred to him that Lapérouse had sought him out expressly to share his distress over yesterday’s near-miss and the looming necessity of going back through the same treacherous pass. Langle’s composure had no doubt struck Lapérouse as a failure of understanding.

  “Sir,” he called out. “We’ll have time to study the pass more carefully before we leave.”

  Lapérouse stopped and looked back out at the water. The entrance to the bay was now hidden from view. “Yes,” he said absently, but the subject was now closed. He gestured outward. “I thought we might call this place Frenchman’s Bay,” he said. “What do you think? It might make an ideal trading post. I believe no one can lay prior claim to it.”

  “The name will make it clear enough,” Langle replied. “And what about this island, sir?” he said. “What will you call it?”

  “I may name it after d’Escures,” Lapérouse replied, referring to his first lieutenant. The day before, he explained, it was d’Escures who had taken the Boussole’s longboat and sailed around the island and found their current anchorage on its sheltered side. He had also sailed into the interior basins of the bay and reported them clogged with glaciers. The Northwest Passage, if it existed anywhere, was not to be found here. “But he did find waterfalls,” Lapérouse added. “Ideal for refilling water casks. Both ships can easily replace their water.” He turned to look at Langle. “It’s the best water I’ve ever tasted.”

  This was good news. Water had been a source of contention between the two captains almost since they left France. Lapérouse stubbornly maintained there was nothing wrong with stored water, that in fact water improved in quality the longer it was kept in barrels. Langle had nearly lost his temper over the manifest illogic of it.

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” he said now.

  “I thought you might be,” Lapérouse said, then resumed walking. He looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t say anything to d’Escures about naming the island,” he said. “He’s a good officer but apt to think too much of himself.”

  * * *

  Eight days passed. July 13 was to be their last full day in Frenchman’s Bay. At first light, Langle stood at his windows and reviewed the few official tasks that remained: fill and stow the last of the water casks; dismantle the observatory and work tents on the island; take soundings at the western end of the bay to complete the excellent map drawn by Lieutenant Blondela. It was not a fretful recitation; with sunrise so early at this latitude, clear skies today and no wind, natives who were inclined to petty thievery but not aggression, and competent officers overseeing each job, everything needful would be done by noon. Indeed, the commander had given most of the men the afternoon off to explore, hunt, fish, or trade with the natives.

  Lapérouse and d’Escures had been right about the water: the most delicious water any of them had ever drunk fell straight down the cliffsides into the bay. One had only to open the barrels beneath and they were filled within minutes. When the expedition set sail the next day, both ships would be laden with fresh water. They would also leave with a map of this coast; the naturalists’ descriptions of flora, fauna, and people; specimens of rocks and plants and native handiwork; artists’ drawings; a thousand sea otter pelts to sell in Macao; and a claim on this bay for French trade in that lucrative commodity.

  As to the otters, Langle had one of his own, destined not for commerce but for scientific inquiry. He turned from the windows and moved to the oak table that occupied the middle of his cabin. The otter, large and dead, was sprawled across it. He would skin the animal this morning. If he did well, he would send the fur back to France with the next dispatches, a gift for the queen. But the real goal was to have the carcass. He and the Astrolabe’s naturalists planned to spend the long summer nights ahead dissecting the creature. He sat down at the table and picked up his sharpest knife.

  By midmorning, however, he had freed only the hind legs. It was slow work. The connective tissue on the animal was strong; every few seconds Langle had to stop to cut it away. And he had been interrupted time and again. First it was Lieutenant de Monty, the officer assigned to the watering party, reporting his readiness to depart in the longboat with six seamen and twelve barrels. Then the surgeon, Monsieur Lavaux, to discuss a sick crew member. And after that, the two La Borde brothers. Langle had assigned the older one to take the Astrolabe’s double-masted pinnace out for the soundings work in the bay and the younger one to help dismantle the observatory. But the younger was dressed, like his brother, for an outing.

  “Ah,” Langle said. “You want to go with your brother.”

  The younger La Borde blushed as if surprised by his own transparency.

  “Please, sir,” the older one said, “the commander said we may all go ashore once we finish, and it may be our only chance to go hunting together.”

  The younger one nodded hopefully. He had turned twenty just a few days earlier. The brothers’ boyishness and obvious attachment to each other belied their aristocratic upbringing and their competence as officers.

  “Who’s going from the Boussole?” Langle asked.

  Lieutenant d’Escures was taking the Boussole’s pinnace, the older La Borde explained, and Monsieur de Boutin was rumored to be coming as well, in the Boussole’s small boat. A party of thirty in three boats, commanded by excellent officers. Langle stood and looked outside again. The sky was still cloudless, the water of the bay like glass. He turned back. “You may go, Monsieur de La Borde,” he said to the younger brother.

  The brothers were profuse in their thanks. “Maybe we’ll bring back a bear,” the older one said as they left the cabin. The younger one called back, “It’s a nice otter, sir,” and then Langle heard them laughing as they scrambled up the companionway.

  François accounted for four or five additional interruptions. He entered noisily with the breakfast tray, then returned to collect it, then came back again to ask, because he’d forgotten, what the captain wanted for the officers’ dinner that evening. On his way out he crashed so hard into the mizzenmast on the half deck that Langle left the cabin to make sure he was all right. And five minutes later he was back again, dragged in by the ship’s cook, Deveau, who demanded to know “what this worthless boy can possibly mean about having poached otter for dinner.”

  “It was salmon, poached salmon,” Langle said. He waved his knife at the pair to send them away.

  It was no wonder he had made so little progress on the otter. With the hind legs and tail free, however, he could now try pulling the pelt up and over the animal, like a dress. The creature was so small beneath its skin. Langle thought suddenly of his wife, Georgette. Every time he undressed her he’d been surprised by how small she was under her clothes, and then by her unembar
rassed carnality, so at odds with the proper Madame de Langle she was during the day. He shook his head. An unchivalrous train of thought: from dead otter to much-loved wife. Nevertheless, his hand shook with remembered desire, and he had to set the knife down for a moment.

  He thought he could hear men running and shouting somewhere above. And then a knock at the door. François, again. “What is it now?” Langle cried. “Monsieur Deveau box your ears again?” Later he would remember these words and his own exasperated laughter and the brief silence before François said, “I think something may have happened, sir,” and would feel a shamefaced nostalgia.

  “What are you talking about?” Langle demanded.

  “Please just come up, sir.”

  Climbing up the stairs, Langle guessed the natives had come back out in their canoes, hopeful of getting more iron, and that one or more of them had managed to clamber up onto the deck. Both he and Lapérouse had instructed the men to keep the natives off the ships that morning. While pretending to work out a trade, they would take things—axes, iron bars, rope, clothing, anything not lashed down. Too few men remained on board to guard against this right now.

  But once on deck, he saw that that wasn’t it at all. He joined a small crowd—everyone still on the ship—at the port rail and looked down. The Boussole’s small boat was pulling away from the Astrolabe. Langle recognized Lieutenant de Boutin. There were six other men in the boat with him, all of them soaked. Water sloshed in the bottom of the boat. Boutin had lost his hat.

  “The soundings expedition,” Langle said. “Back already?”

  For a moment no one spoke. Tréton de Vaujuas, recently promoted from ensign to lieutenant, looked around as if hoping to find an officer more senior than himself. Finding none, he cleared his throat: “Sir, Monsieur de Boutin said they were caught in a violent outgoing tide at the pass.”