That Deadman Dance

by Scott, Kim

  There was an estuary, barred from the sea by only a narrow strip of sand. Among the paperbarks Bobby thought of his family: Manit and Wooral and Menak and others. He thought of a dry creekbed, how speedily he could travel its path of sand, and the trees leaning over him for shade, sheltering him from the wind. He thought of the pools of water whenever you wanted one pretty well all along its length, and then the slope of red rock humming, the pools there welling, brimming …

  Tears in his eyes thinking of it. He even pulled at Chaine’s sleeve, saying, This way, we go this way, follow the creek away from this spring and this estuary.

  But Chaine insisted they keep near the coast all the way to King George Town, keep near enough to a straight line, so he could catch sight of the sea every now and then.

  Dolphins rolled and waved. Further to the horizon gannets plummeted, smashed the ocean’s surface and then—as if ocean spored—rose again into the sky. Lines of swell followed one another to shore, crumbling as they approached.

  Sunlight splintered Bobby’s vision. A djitty-djitty waved its tail, jumped sideways, flew a short distance, looked back over its shoulder at him. A koolbardi tilted its head, warbled. Bobby closed his eyes, felt the wind tugging at his hair and rushing in the whorls of his ears. Breathed this particular air. Ngayn Wabalanginy moort, nitjak ngan kaarlak … Home.

  What this? Out on the ocean, not gannets, not whale or dolphin. Light flickering, something splashing white in the sun.

  Boat! Bobby called, pointing.

  But there was nothing to see, nothing at sea. Spoke too soon. Chaine wanted boats, he was lonely for them, Bobby knew it and thought he’d found him one, but … Imagined it? He looked out over the ocean for a sight of sail, for a white tick, a mere nick in the texture of ocean. They gone sunk maybe?

  *

  Chaine’s head lifted at Bobby’s call, as might his heart and spirit, too. As if just hearing that shout—Boat!—brought a moment’s respite from a relentless dreary wilderness and the sick man dragging behind who would not leave him be. Flies and birds following, following.

  But he saw no boat. And now neither could Bobby.

  With no boat Chaine felt his loneliness; this despondency and being driven and led all at once. It was land he’d hoped for—pastoral country, with good water and close to a sheltered anchorage. But he had tried and been disappointed. It deflated him. At least on the coast he would not be confounded by forks and tributaries and the way these creeks slipped underground to continue who knows where, or ceased to flow altogether, oozing away into stagnant swamps. He’d hoped for river mouths, but creeks stopped short of the sea, barred by banks of beach sand.

  He ascertained their bearings. Soothed himself, as any observant bystander could see, in the handling of compass and paper. The oilskin wrapping and journal.

  Again they came over a headland, and there was yet another crescent of sand between granite outcrops, the bright turquoise sea advancing, retreating, its white foamy edge moving to and fro on the sand. His eye, as is wont to happen, followed the curve of sand. Halted. He reached for the telescope in his saddlebag.

  Boat! called Bobby again.

  Chaine swung the telescope across the sea then back to the curve of the beach. At the far end, where the beach turned and began to follow the headland so as to face both them and the rising sun each morning, there were thin upright posts.

  No, not posts: ship’s masts. But yet, if masts, they leaned at an extreme angle and were bare of sails and motionless.

  Boat, Bobby said again. Kongk, boat.

  Dammit man.

  But Bobby was pointing. Chaine swung the telescope out to sea. A whaleboat, with its one small sail up, reached the headland, then seemed to enter and disappear into it. Chaine cursed his confusion.

  Island there, close to shore, Bobby told him.

  Chaine realised there must be deep water between the headland and an island very close to it. The whaleboat had joined what must be a ship anchored there. The mast tips he saw were visible over one end of the island, but now even more dangerously tilted than before. Why?

  Chaine slid down the dunes and onto the beach, Bobby and the horse more slowly behind. Having reached the open sand, he lifted his legs and stamped his feet, suddenly energised. Tolerably firm, he said, and looked to the island and headland which he could distinguish from this distance, the one in front of the other. Tolerably firm, he muttered again and led the way around the curving beach.

  Killam turned his face to the waves. Smelled ocean? Felt it? The crows came no further than the foredune.

  Still only the tips of the ship’s masts showed over one end of the island and now they rocked wildly from side to side. Chaine reached for his telescope. As he watched, the masts slowly moved from the vertical to an extreme angle, and then suddenly jerked straight again. But the ship must surely be in shelter, could not possibly be rocked by waves, and waves could not be large or so close together to cause a ship to rock like that. As they approached, Bobby and Chaine observed it happen several more times: the masts slowly lean over to an acute angle, and then suddenly jerk upright, and rock to and fro. As they proceeded around the beach their angle of view opened so that they saw the ship, floating in deep water between the headland and island, heeled over and with her masts slowly moving closer and closer to the water. And then, released, rock violently from side to side until seized and slowly begin to lean to one side.

  At one stage, the boat leaned so far away from them they could almost see its keel. Something, some power, was pulling it toward the water, mast tips first. Something was trying to upend and drag it into the water and each time, at the last moment, it escaped and righted itself. And the ship seemed to be winning, because the movements—the angle to which it tipped, the extent to which it rocked to and fro on release—was becoming less violent.

  Closer still, they realised the ship leaned toward something large right beside the hull, that the mast tips were drawn toward this as it was lifted partially out of the water, and then when it fell and splashed, the ship again sprung upright and rocked violently.

  Eventually they stood on the beach in the shade of the great headland of granite and trees. The late afternoon sun, blocked and splintered by the granite behind them, gave an almost twilight quality to the scene: white sand, deep blue and turquoise water, the island close to shore, and the ship tearing blubber from a whale beside it.

  Chaine noted the details: a hook inserted into the whale’s blubber, a cable running from it into the mast, a pulley, a winch on deck. As the cable tightened the whale began to lift, the ship heeled over until—suddenly—the blubber peeled away like rind from an orange, and the ship sprung upright, masts madly waving.

  Between mainland and island the light was soft, strange; and the dark, purple water had an oily sheen. Two boats moved away from the ship, towing the peeled whale carcass. The men in the boats and Chaine called to one another, their thin voices bouncing off granite and water, and then one of the boats headed for where the two figures and the horse stood on the gleaming white sand. Blue light now, the sky smeared red behind the headland, behind the island, all along the sea’s horizon.

  Bobby glanced at Killam’s pale and lined face, his blinking eyes. Bobby wriggled his toes in the wet sand, anticipating.

  Firelight in an eye

  Menak had walked to the ocean, had come down from beneath a jutting shelf of rock and old voices still echoing in the gorge, left his camp with its scent of sandalwood and jam tree ash, come through the peppermint trees and past the pool of the rivermouth over the last white and sandy dune to the ocean.

  On this beach, here, they sometimes lit fires and painted themselves up to sing in the dolphin, have them bring salmon massed in the shallows and sometimes leaping onto shore. He walked the couple of hundred yards of beach to a rocky headland, his little dog Jock trotting after the retreating water, running as it rushed back again, splashing in the bubbles of foam.

  Menak walked out to the
end of the point and began collecting crabs, crushing and grinding them in a tiny hollow in the granite rock below his feet. The rock sloped into the sea, and a headland and another rocky shelf protected him from the swell, but seen from a distance it seemed that he stood among crashing waves. But no, there was deep water right at his feet, and the fragments of shell and flesh he tossed there glinted like motes of dust in sunlight as they descended, disappeared.

  Shafts of sunlight at this time of day penetrated deepest, but even so the ocean, shifting restlessly like thick smoke, absorbed and blunted them before they had gone very far at all into that vast beneath and beyond. Who knew how far it continued? Far as the horizon, further? But of course this was inner distance; deep, not far.

  Menak waited for a shape to form, expecting to lure a groper to spear. It was a slow job: gently, bit by tiny bit, crushing and tossing fragments of crab into the water. He was humming, occasionally voiced fragments of song. His hands were stiff with salt and gritty crabshell, and he dipped them in the water, singing, as the ripples made faint circles, and he saw—sensed?—a shape shifting in the water. The groper he sought? It was an evocative thing, such a shape in the dark blue depths; a nephew passed through his thoughts, a grandfather … The shape shifted: human, fish, nothing. Had gone away again, but not before Menak sensed something familiar with the depths of ocean, something hardly aware of its own self’s deep pulse until some melody and rhythm and baited light lured it up to air and sunlight and close to him.

  Menak swallowed, took a deep breath, bit his tongue lightly. Someone had called him back to himself, too; a frail and temporary, insubstantial self. Crouching by the sea he turned to look back along the rocks to where his family rested in the dense shade of that tree with its back bent to the weather. Their voices had called him.

  What?

  They waved, gesticulated.

  He turned to the ocean. A whale, almost touching the rock Menak stood upon, rolled to one side with its eye upon him. Menak heard its voice, its moist exhalation. Had he lured this? Crab and shell mean nothing to this one; this whale wants the company of people, wants to be ashore. But—he glanced at the sky, the sun so very, very low—there was not much left of this day. He called for a fire to be built on the beach around near the estuary, not far from the corner of the bay.

  Firelight reflected in a whale’s eye; himself dissolving there. Be the whale.

  Sunlight and a bloody groan

  Bobby was right to curl his toes in anticipation, because soon all his friends met one another. But first he had to meet someone else, someone Soldier Killam already knew and from whom Jak Tar jumped away.

  The men in the boat rowed the whale carcass from the ship and came back to those waiting on the shore. Behind them the pale body of the headless whale drifted slowly, shapeless flesh gleaming in the failing light. Dark bodies thrust from the water, struck the carcass, slashed like knives, splashed back again. Birds screamed and rose and fell.

  Bobby untied Killam from the crude stretcher behind the horse. He was covered in grease and blood caked his shirt. Unable to speak, he croaked, moaned; unable to stir his limbs, his eyes moved from side to side.

  The men in the boat were also not well. They tentatively leaned into their oars, and when the boat reached the shore they rose gingerly, as if each movement caused them pain. They hardly spoke; did they worry tongue and teeth might fall from their mouths?

  Bobby hobbled the horse and joined the others in the whaleboat once Killam had been loaded aboard. We have a surgeon among us, the men said, glancing at Killam’s grease- and pain-smeared face.

  And the captain was very interested in that face.

  Killam lay prone on the deck, breath rasping.

  I believe I know this man, said the captain. And asked was his back striped, not long healed? Well, yes, Chaine knew it was. The captain shifted on his feet and grunted.

  The man suffers more now than with what I did to him.

  Killam’s eyes were wide in a face that sun and grease and dirt had baked into a bearded mask.

  However, I blame the authorities in that port as much as this poor soul. We have a surgeon among us. I remember there were two black boys as well. And his gaze fell upon our Bobby who turned, deflected from Chaine’s flashing eyes, and went back to shore.

  Ah yes, said Chaine, they were with us when we began this expedition but alas absconded. Doubtless thought they would fare better alone.

  Bobby could not see the horse on shore. A dead whale was roped beside the ship and other dead whales floated in the bay, flags in their spouts. Each man was caked in salt and whaleblood, clothing and hair stiff and thickly matted, and hung glowing with the red light of a sunset that seemed to last forever …

  Chaine talked in that loud, cheerful way he had. Bobby caught only fragments before the men strode away with Chaine, enlivened, having taken hold of the matter and with the captain also in hand. No vegetables, you say …

  Scurvy, the captain told Chaine. But he could not let them rest from whaling, not now when they were again near land. We hope to grow vegetables on this island. Or perhaps you know there are vegetables here?

  Native potatoes, said Chaine. And fresh meat. And we will trade for rum and brandy and these other things, too.

  Bobby slept in a cleft on deck that night, but not until late. Left to himself, and weary, he was nevertheless thrilling with excitement. He knew ships, but he’d never known a deck like this; a blazing furnace the whalers called the try-works was its heart. Tongues of flame curled out from behind doors, licked two great pots and lit the rigging and furled sails of the masts so that shadows leapt and danced as men with huge forks flung long strips of blubber into the hissing pots, skimmed the oil with great spoons, stoked and fed the flames with scraps of dried blubber that clattered like dry leaves and old bones. Bobby moved among the men, deftly sidestepping their rush and enormous cutlery. Another dance. Smoke and the stench of burning flesh rolled across the deck. He climbed the rigging through the shifting light and shadows and smoke until he was secure and looking down upon it all below him, the choreography and spectacle of it.

  Later, descended once more, Bobby heard a flute of some description, sensed Chaine’s jig vibrating the floorboards. The old man had joined the captain in his cabin, had recovered surprisingly quickly. A few seconds later the dancing ceased. Maybe his body was not so resilient as his mind and spirit.

  Killam was stored somewhere below deck.

  Bobby slept cushioned on rope; timber kept the depths below and darkness thickened all around the ship.

  A few short hours later, Bobby was shoved awake to voices and rushing footsteps; boats being lowered, dark hummocks rolling in the dawn light, mist rising from the sea. The bay full of whales! Boats raced away from the ship, each with a man standing at the stern, and six sick men rowing. Each playful whale sank from sight immediately its would-be harpooner rose from his oar to grasp his great dart, and each boat, rather than waiting for the whale to rise again, rushed for the next whale in its path that was just there, there, but always out of reach. Too many whales for the whalers who, confused in the moving middle of this rolling abundance, lost focus and remembered their aching limbs and swollen joints, worried for their falling teeth.

  The sun rising above the land way across the other side of the bay showed a great many two-stemmed spouts blossoming and sparkling on a vast plain of rolling whale backs and sea mist. One moment the whales were gathered together close and touching, the next they were moving apart and leaving the bay. A harpoon struck a trailing calf, and immediately all oars in that boat rose from the water and pointed at the sky as the boat swung away. Bobby saw a whale detach itself from the pod, and come back to the already slowing boat and the small whale it had struck, now rising. A second boat’s harpoon hit the mother as she reached her stricken calf. The mother went underwater, the bow of the boat almost followed, but then just as suddenly lifted as the boat took off, skipping across the bay with a bow wave spla
shing before it. But then it slowed and came to a rocking stop.

  Dart’s out! said a voice near Bobby.

  A group of whales turned back to the bay; a third whaleboat rowed to meet them.

  Inside the bay, a man at the boat’s bow thrust his lance into the wounded calf. The calf’s tail rose and fell, the boat went back and forth to avoid its flailing, to drive the steel in again. The water frothed with blood; the mother whale returned, put itself between calf and boat. A second boat, another man, another harpoon. Now the mother dived, and taut rope sang and it seemed the two boats must collide, their lines entangle, but no; the boat sped toward the horizon. But as it left the bay it swung round in an arc and came back into the wind, leaping waves and with white water exploding around it. Harpooned, dragging a great weight of pain, the mother was returning to her calf.

  The silver spear at the bow of the boat stabbed again and again. Sunlight glinted on steel; thick, bright spouts of blood. The mother whale’s tail repeatedly rose and struck the water close to her dead calf. The men worked the oars to evade her blows, and each blow was less. The boat’s lifted oars were a row of spikes, and the man at the bow drove and twisted his steel spear into the whale.

  Bobby groaned, thinking he heard a whale groan, too, and thick hot blood rained upon the boat and upon the men, and in the water a red stain grew larger. The young whale, the mother: each had a flag flying from its spout, and the boat which had killed them was already after another pod at the mouth of the bay. Sick men seemed well again, come alive with whale blood. Whaleboats skipped across the waves, crisscrossed one another’s paths.