The Atlas

by William T. Vollmann

  Are you finished staring or do I have to go inside by myself? the girl said.

  He saw a big coconut like a skull. High on a palm-pole, fronds blew back from the skull's forehead like hair or warfeathers.

  I'm going inside, the girl said. I'm going in to my husband.

  His gaze wandered down.

  I thought you wanted me, the girl said, swallowing her tears. You followed me; you sneaked off from your wife—

  But I never expected this wind! he cried. This wind blows everything away—

  She had taken off her wedding ring and was squeezing it in her hand. Suddenly it escaped to the tiles by her feet, meeting them with a musical sound. Startled, he looked into her face. At once her expression changed. She glowed with a greedy ecstasy.

  So you love me, she whispered. Now I know you love me. Just keep looking at me. That's all I need.

  GOING BUBEYE

  Sacramento, CA, U.S.A. (1992)

  * * *

  Sacramento, CA, U.S.A. (1992)

  Sit back! Achilles, sit back! We're gittin' ready to go bubeye. I said jist wait a minute. Look around! Those are LIGHTS. That's fer the night time when people's readin'. Now sit back an' enjoy it! I said enjoy it! Isis, gimme the bag. Isis, I'm not playing. Isis, stop. Now eat your crunchies. That's it. That's a good girl.

  When's the light gonna come on?

  In a minute, okay? You don't want no more? Now eat 'em! Bus driver gonna come in a minute. Sit back in yer seat. He'll be there; now jist sit down. The man who took the ticket, the same one, he's the driver.

  Can you smoke up here?

  No.

  Why?

  'Cause it says don't smoke.

  The bus driver didn't scare me, Mama. He didn't scare me.

  Here we go. i

  How come the light don't come on?

  They don't put the lights on.

  Why?

  That's at nighttime, hon.

  Is this the freeway, Mama?

  Uh huh.

  Good morning, ladies and gendemen, and welcome aboard Greyhound's Oakland-San Francisco service. I'd like to thank you for travelling Greyhound. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Thank you.

  Is this where we went before?

  Shut up and eat. That's right. Have some more, hon.

  What's this?

  Just leave it. Leave it alone.

  Why?

  'Cause I said so.

  Mama, what's that?

  I assed you to sit back!

  What's that boy and girl doing over there?

  Sit back! Sit back and act like you don't see things!

  Is he helping her go to the bafroom?

  Shut up! Don't talk dirty.

  That boy and girl sure are fidgety. How come they don't sit back? How come that boy keeps pulling up that girl's dress?

  Uh huh.

  I'm hot. I'm gonna pull up my dress, too.

  You can't.

  Why?

  'Cause you're not supposed to. Pull down your dress. No more, now.

  Mama, is they going to the bafroom?

  Sit back! I'll whack you! Now REMEMBER that. Sit back. Just move yourself back. That's a boy. Sit back. I'm not telling you again. I'll knock you down.

  Ow!

  Leave 'em alone. That's a girl. There you go. What you got your hands up Achilles's pants for? Stop it right now.

  They was doin' it over there.

  I said take your hand out!

  Ow! Ow!

  You gonna remember now? Now shut up! I told you not to see things. What's over there?

  They's . . . He's helping her go to the bafroom. — Ow!

  Now you know what happens when you try to see things. What's over there?

  I dunno, Mama. Nothing.

  That's right. That's right. Don't you ever try to see things.

  AN OLD MAN IN OLD GRAYISH KAMIKS

  Coral Harbour, Southhampton Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (1993)

  * * *

  Coral Harbour, Southhampton Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (1993)

  An old man in old grayish kamiks set out to hunt walrus on a morning of fresh sea-clouds. He owned a Peterhead which he had purchased down in Halifax many yean before. He'd sailed her up through the Strait of Belle Isle and then northwest along the inclined coast of Labrador, careful of the treacherous Labrador Sea, and by degrees he'd come back into the country that is called Nunavik, which means The Great Land. Rounding the tip of the spearheaded peninsula, he sailed through the strait called Nuvummiut Tariunga until he made the town whose name means Floating Ice. He still had some distance left to go, but he was not tired. He went westward out of Nunavik, crossing Hudson Bay, whose mouth is narrow like the neck of a flask, and when he was almost entirely across he reached the large island that was his home.

  This island we ourselves call Southampton, after the third Earl after that name who was Shakespeare's patron. The old man in old grayish kamiks had never read Shakespeare and never would. His was a low flat world of green, blue, yellow and gray, with blue sky and white ice-horizons. He owned a great deal of knowledge about ice, clouds, the Bible, motors and animals. On this island at certain seasons the people stand with their hands over their eyes and scan for polar bears before they sit down. The old man in old grayish kamiks still had very good vision, or maybe it was just that he never stopped paying attention, but he often saw polar bears before his grandchildren did. Perhaps it was because they did not get to hunt very much. First of all, many of the new generation worked at desk jobs in other towns; and secondly, fuel for the Peterhead was very expensive. The younger ones had never been walrus hunting. He was the one who told them how, when and where.

  Two evenings before, the ice had been coming in and people were out shooting narwhals—rare to see any in Coral Harbour; the last time had been seven years ago. Now a whole pod of narwhals was here, which was strange with pleasing and ordinary strangeness, like the adventures of the three children who squatted, catching bigheaded green minnows in the puddles at low tide, exulting over each: Little big big one! — Their fingertips went cold. It had been overcast, but at around nine that night the sun came out and gilded the boats where a crowd was winding a net with fish in it. The sky tanged with salt like a single harpsichord string, a taut clean note of smell, sea-smell, no chord of rot or musk. Mosquitoes jumped and crouched. And the grandson who always got in trouble went to the old man and asked if they would be going out for walrus tomorrow, but the old man looked at the sky and shook his head.

  The next evening three figures went poling very slowly out in an aluminum canoe, the nose tipping down almost to water level with every stroke of the tall one, and then they vanished behind a sailing ship in the middle of the harbor. A young woman rode a bike with her baby in the armauti of her parka. Her girlfriend came running after her, laughing. She swung off her bike and walked off beside her friend. Their footsteps were very crisp in the brown sand. That was when the youngest grandson went to the old man and the old man said: Tomorrow.

  So it was that on that subsequent morning of excellent weather the old man in old grayish kamiks throttled his Peterhead slowly out of the harbor. The blocky blind-windowed houses grew small. There was one roof that had a rack of caribou antlers on it. These silhouetted themselves into the stalks of some strange weed, blended with the power wires behind them, and vanished. The two fuel towers retracted into the wide low land, and the town became the merest cluster of pastel-colored protrusions. The young boys with dogskin-ruffed parkas lay dozing on the cabin hatch, while the grandson who always got in trouble helped the old man string wire. The old man called him "the bad boy" because his parents had named him with a white man's name and the old man hated to speak English. The bad boy was not so very bad. He used to cut holes in beached boats and smash the windows of shacks, but he was still trying to finish high school and he loved his grandfather very much. He called the younger boys, in ascending order of age, One-Nut, Two-Nuts and Three-Nuts. He was Four-
Nuts. He sat down among the bow's rusty chains that resembled guts.

  The old man sat on top of the pilothouse, letting his legs hang down and steering with the sole of one foot inside an old grayish kamik. His kamiks were made of sealskin, which is waterproof footwear and not too warm for summer, and the duffel liners rose up above the tie and went almost to his knees. He sat, and you might have thought he was resting, but he was not. His foot was steering, and his eyes were watching for animals and ice, and his hands were busy taping wire with black electrical tape. The young men strung this wire up the mast cables. They saw a seal, but let it go because they were hunting walrus first.

  Is this your seventeen magnum? one grandson called to another. — They were loading the rifles now. — Hey, what should I use, a softpoint or a hollowpoint?

  Near the boat the sea was as flat as a blue-brown lake, and the sun's white reflection flapped along in it. It was breezeless, but cold, and the grandson who always got in trouble buttoned his collar up to the neck. One of the grown men stood in the hatchway, chewing a mouthful of bannock, working his gloved fingers. The boy who hated white people sat sullenly with his back turned toward me and sighted in his rifle. I was only allowed along because I had paid three hundred dollars. No one else had to pay anything. This boy had threatened to shoot the white construction foreman for no reason, and the foreman, who was big and wise and tough, just told him: Go ahead. I'm ready for you anytime. — The boy who hated white people was very angry at me because I had only paid three hundred dollars and he thought that I should have paid five hundred. As for the old man, he did not dislike me very much, but he never smiled at me or said a word to me. I didn't care; I was used to it. The grandson who always got in trouble liked me well enough and sometimes came to my tent to eat some of my dried meat.

  Hey, let me see some of your seventeen bullets, said the grandson who always got in trouble. Then he started to go to the hatchway. He said to me: That's what we do, is sit with the old guy, take turns. Been doin' that ever since we were old enough to know the guy. Kind of a thrill to be sittin' next to him.

  But later they were admiring each other's guns, and the old man sat alone, watching ahead and steering with his feet in those old grayish kamiks.

  They crossed the floe-edge quickly, sighting through their guns. The old man had said that One-Nut could harpoon the walrus because he was the youngest. One-Nut looked proud and a little anxious, so the grandson who always got in trouble leaned toward him and said: My big sister harpooned a seal herself up by Repulse Bay, so she beat me! I was jealous, but so happy for her. Last time I tried, but then when the seal's head came up I got scared. That's why I've only shot them.

  Then he winked at his own fear, and One-Nut giggled.

  From a distance the edge of the ice was a series of black speckles in a line like rocks. Presently these resolved into a long slab of turquoise with darker pyramids and trapezoids on it. The young boys sat on the hatchcover, passing a scoped rifle from eye to eye.

  Hey, little brother, you want one of my seven-six-twos? — This was the grandson who always got in trouble, who owned a Yugoslavian rifle from which he'd taken the bayonet. One-Nut nodded.

  Now they were at the place of sharp ice-islets where it was sunny and cold. The old man sat smiling slightly, steering through them with barely perceptible motions of his foot on the wheel.

  In a place where the water was so shallow that they could see the rocks and blackish algae on the green bottom, somebody pointed. There was a piece of brown ice in the distance. A bearded seal might have shed his winter coat there, or walruses might have shat there.

  The old man said one word and throttled the motor down. Everyone was standing, looking. Hunters' faces swooped from side to side. They stepped up onto the gunwales and watched. Only the young children moved or talked, and these did so quietly.

  Then the old man pulled the throttle open again, and they went on and on in that sunny world of ice-islands.

  A seal came up for breath very close, and the grandson who always got in trouble chambered a round and went to the side. But the old man, who could kill a beluga whale in one shot, did not stop, and the seal disappeared.

  The water kept getting deeper and shallower. Dripping white blue-shadowed ice-beasts hid their blue bulking underwater. Some ice was low and broad like a crab's back. Some was canted.

  There were two grandsons sitting with the old man right then, and suddenly all three fired shots, then stood, rifle-points funning out.

  Ee-yah! cried One-Nut.

  Two-Nuts's spotted a walrus!

  Black shapes sprawled on the ice. The boat ran quietly in the blue-gray water between the floes. Everyone gathered round the old man in old grayish kamiks, who just smiled faintly.

  Three walrus!

  Where's my seven-six-seven? Gotta start putting my hardpoints in this thing.

  Bareheaded like the others, the grandson who always got in trouble fed the dull golden bullets in.

  My grandpa don't think they're walrus, said One-Nut. He think they're nothing.

  Seal, right there!

  Better not shoot it, or the walrus will go underwater.

  No. Those aren't walruses, said the grandson who always got in trouble. Just dirty ice. I should shoot it just for looking like that.

  Just then a shot pealed over the ice. The boat almost stopped.

  Fast bullet, eh?

  Why don't you use two twenty-two?

  Glaring ahead, they fired almost simultaneously, their barrels dark against the pale water. The boat moved slowly onward.

  Get the bullets for my gun, Three-Nuts. In the box.

  They fired again, the reports again almost simultaneous. The air smelled like gunpowder. There were three concentric ripples, very close, and the seal's head came up again, then ducked down too quickly, before the animal could draw breath. Again they shot, and the boat ghosted forward; again, and water leaped up around the seal's lurking-place. Suddenly the seal vanished. The boat slowed even more and everyone looked around on all sides.

  Then the old man in old grayish kamiks called, and started the motor, and they went on. There were sky-blue eels of light in the gunmetal sea.

  Well, that was fun for awhile, said the grandson who always got in trouble, but he wants to hunt walrus.

  A hunter was sitting with the old man. They both looked straight ahead, without talking. The old man kept the sole of his kamik firmly on the wheel. The older boys were teaching the younger ones the finger-signals for seals that their grandfather had taught them. A finger straight up was a ring seal, because those creatures tended to peer out of the water. A finger which went up but then crooked out straight was a bearded seal; they were usually seen swimming. A finger that crooked downward was a harp seal; they were divers.

  Indulging his grandsons, the old man stopped the boat and pointed one finger straight up. They looked, saw the ring seal's head, and shot.

  Oh, look at this! cried One-Nut in delight, gathering hot black cartridges from the deck.

  They shot again, just as the seal-head came up to breathe.

  Fuck, gimme the twenty-two magnums!

  Get ready, get ready!

  They were very close to the seal now. For the fifth time it surfaced without being able to breathe. On the seventh time a bright red circle of blood marked its surfacing, and with a splashing sound they stabbed it under its dark head with the old man's harpoon, whose point was made of caribou antler. The black flipper moved feebly.

  Grab it!

  They pulled it in, stabbed it once in the neck, and it died, lying there whiskers up as bloody water ran out of its head. The grandson who always got in trouble pulled the harpoon out and licked the blood off his hand.

  Ah, it must taste good! he cried. Wanna eat it right now!

  All bent over it in gladness and admiration, and then Three-Nuts rolled it into the hold.

  There's a bearded seal out on the ice, said One-Nut. My grandfather sees it.

&nbs
p; No! Walrus! Walrus!

  Hollowpoint!

  They rushed and aimed.