White Whale

by Rose Christo

  I kissed my way down the front of his throat, the sharp slopes of his neck, the beating, erratic pulse. He shivered under my mouth and I had no choice but to kiss him harder.

  "Wait," Fox tried to say. Something was wrong with me, I thought, because even his stammering sounded enticing. "Someone--someone could--"

  "Who?" I asked. The street was empty.

  "Someone," he said. But I guess he didn't care all that much, because his head lolled on my shoulder and he kissed me there, his mouth fluttering in butterfly wings. I buried my face against the side of his head, the clean, sandy brown hair, held his hips steady in my palms and his arms went around my neck.

  It was weird how unafraid I felt. I'd never kissed another man before. I'd never wanted another man before. Humans are smart enough to know when something is bad for them. Murderers know that murder is wrong; that's why they don't rally together and protest for their right to take lives. Kissing Fox, wanting Fox, it didn't feel wrong. It didn't scare me.

  I pulled back, took his chin in my hand again and he looked scared enough for the both of us. I'd never seen him like this before. I wanted to stroke his hair, his cheeks. I wanted to calm him down.

  "Why are you hiding?" I asked again.

  "I'm not," Fox mumbled hoarsely.

  His mouth glistened, moist and red. It needed to be kissed. I kissed his bottom lip. His arms went slack around my neck.

  "The adjutant," he managed to say.

  It took a lot of willpower to let go of him. He unwrapped himself from me. He slumped against the door and I thought he was going to fall. I wanted to take him in my arms. I don't think I'd ever wanted anything as much as I wanted that.

  Fox's hands shook when we walked back to the Service Annex. Three blocks down, past the bricktown buildings, the Ginza Line, he wouldn't so much as look at me. He had two secrets, Fox, and I knew the both of them. I didn't know which one scared him more.

  * * * * *

  In November we packed our bags for the last time and boarded the RTP. I could hardly believe this was our last day as soldiers. Two-Ply ran up and down the aisles of the airplane, waving a shirt over his head and shouting farewells.

  "Sit down!" Pogue yelled after him.

  "Can't kick me out of the army now!" Two-Ply yelled back.

  I sat between Milk and Irish and strapped myself into the bulky brown seat. Milk turned around in his seat and chatted up a storm with the guy behind him. Irish was fuming. I decided not to ask why.

  In front of me Fox's head was bowed, the back of his neck exposed. I saw the plastic red rosary in his hand, his fingers moving from one bead to the next. My chest tightened. He was afraid and I couldn't help him. I wanted to help him. I wanted him so much I didn't understand it. It was like I'd woken up one day and up was down, blue was red. Nothing about him was any different than it had been months ago. The only part that was different was that I couldn't stop thinking about him.

  "Sit down!" Pogue yelled for the millionth time. Two-Ply finally slumped into his seat.

  When we landed at Fort Lewis it was night already. The change in timezones was disorienting. The whole company crowded around the tarmac and clapped one another emotionally on their shoulders. For most of us this was our last day in the Third Army. Some of us were never going to see each other again. The lieutenant tried to make a heartwarming speech. No one really listened.

  "I can't believe it," Milk told me. "I can't believe I didn't die."

  "Me neither," Irish broke in. He slapped Milk on the back. "There's always next time, eh?"

  We turned our weapons in at the armory. We changed out of our fatigues and into our civvies. Our squad went to the commons for a last chat.

  "Christmas in Salt Lake City?" Milk asked.

  "Not on your life," Irish said.

  "I'll come," Two-Ply said brightly. "Bet you I'll have me a geisha wife by then."

  "Listen," Fox began. "Working with you guys has been--"

  None of the others liked it when he got emotional. Pogue waved a dismissive hand and Irish blew raspberries. Two-Ply pretended to play a violin.

  "I know," Milk said kindly. "It has."

  Irish took off at the first opportunity. Two-Ply announced that he'd misplaced his zoot suit. He said his goodbyes and retraced his steps back to the armory. Pogue wiped his eyeglasses on his cotton shirt. I think he was feeling just as emotional as Fox was, except he didn't express it all that well.

  "College boy," I said.

  He acknowledged the gibe with the smallest of smiles.

  "I'm gonna look for the sergeant," Milk said. "Do you want to come, Chief?"

  "I'll pass," I said. If I never saw that guy again it would be too soon.

  Pogue and Milk walked off together. Fox stared at the picnic table. He pulled his sleeve down over his elbow.

  "Where in Montana do you live?" I asked him.

  "Whitefish," he told the table.

  Fox wore a tweed vest, black slacks. It was the first time I'd seen him out of fatigues.

  "When does your family expect you?" I asked.

  "They don't," he said.

  His fingers twitched. His nails were starting to grow back. If I wasn't there to cut them I didn't know what he would do.

  "Look at me," I said.

  Fox’s jaw tightened. His eyes slid over mine and they were bloodshot. He looked like he could burst out crying. I knew he wouldn't. I'd never known him to cry.

  "Don't hide," I told him.

  "I have to," Fox said.

  I drew closer. I wanted to touch him but I knew I couldn't, not in a place like this. The way his hand moved, I thought he might touch me himself. He caught himself at the last minute. His fingers curled shut.

  "If my boss knew," Fox said, "he'd fire me. If my landlord knew, he'd kick me out."

  It wasn't long ago that every storefront in America read, "No Dogs or Indians Allowed."

  "You're not Italian," I said.

  Fox smiled grimly. "You don't know that."

  "Don't get caught," I warned him. I worried for him. I couldn't even put it into words.

  Fox swallowed an inaudible sigh. He rubbed the crook of his elbow with the heel of his hand.

  "I want to see you again," I said.

  His eyes jumped. He reached for me again. He stopped himself again. Everything in me told me that I should hold him, that I should take his face in my hands. I considered giving in.

  "Bye, guys!" Two-Ply shouted.

  He breezed past us, his zoot suit over his shoulder. He woke me from my reverie.

  "Bye," Fox mumbled.

  It was Two-Ply he was responding to; but it was me he was looking at.

  * * * * *

  When I got back to Wapu Island it was too late for me to storm Fawn's house, no matter how badly I wanted to see Rabbit. Sweetgrass lanterns decorated the wharf, mirroring the stars. The icy sea breeze raked across my hair, mourning its shortness. The Northern Lights danced over my head in blue and purple ribbons. The ancestors were welcoming me home.

  "Wawatao," I muttered.

  An unbearable, unprecedented sadness settled on my shoulders, bogging me down. I couldn't figure out where it had come from. I walked past the faded wooden signs with their Cree syllabics. I walked past the misting, cold-water geysers, soul-bright and blood-blue. The farther I walked the slower my footsteps fell.

  After the Rabbit flooded the earth Sister Sun was the one who had to dry it up, so we could inhabit it again. My people were sun people. The bones in our bodies, the hair on our heads all came from the sun.

  That evening I felt so remote, so cold, I could only have come from the dark side of the moon. I didn't understand. I didn't understand why I felt so heavy. I was home now, and the war was over; and I felt like it had just begun.

  I went east down the caked and muddy incline. The birchbark houses were dark, the windows unlit. If not for the moon, the Northern Lights, I would have lost my way. I found my way to the frozen coastal inlet. I treaded carefu
lly over the icy ground and unlocked the door to my house.

  The house was already warm on the inside. Birchbark heats itself. I closed and locked the door behind me. I felt my way to the kitchen counter. In the drawer there was tallow. I ripped a clump of sweetgrass off the braided carpet and put it in a bowl. I lit the bowl and the kitchen flickered to life, the silvery fishing nets dangling overhead, the planks in the walls and the nails in the planks. The sweetgrass stalks colore red in the tin bowl. Cinders broke off from the stalks, crumbling, and turned gray. The scent of sweet smoke and ageless earth filled the air.

  I took the bowl in my hands. I sat down on the floor and balanced it between my knees.

  When my mother passed away four years ago my cousins and I built her a traditional burial scaffold. We sang peyote songs for her parting. Waniwaciyelo, omakiyayo iyana he ne. May you live on in the next life. Oshiyalalo iyana he ne yo wa. May the spirits have compassion for you.

  I thought about the little girl I'd carried back in Minato, the way she'd kicked and screamed and cried. I thought about those skinny, corpse-like bodies we'd pulled out of Buchenwald. I thought of the woman with the ruined face and the sticky back and I thought of the soldier with the blazing eyes, the one I'd sent off to his death. I thought about all the Jerries I'd shot to death. I saw their faces for the first time. Some of them were younger than me. That's when I realized we were the same, those boys and I. They didn't get to choose whether they were made into killing machines. They were forced into it. I was forced into it. I'd killed them. I'd killed six of them and they hadn't wanted to kill me. They hadn't wanted to die.

  I blew out the sweetgrass in a puff of air. The kitchen dipped in darkness. The room was heated but my hands felt chilly. I blew on the ashes in the tin bowl. I stuck my fingers in them and they were warm, stinging, soft as talc. I rubbed the ashes into my hands, my forehead and cheeks. I smudged away the bad medicine, purged away the bad energy.

  My face felt hot. My eyelashes were wet. I wiped them with my knuckles, my hands shaking.

  I never wanted to be this person. This animal. The human race was a race of animals. I didn't understand why we made up languages and countries. I didn't understand why we dressed in clothes. We were only pretending to be something we weren't. It was the cruelest, most elaborate hoax in the history of the animal kingdom. And that's what war is really about: learning how much you've been lied to all your life.

  5

  Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

  My cousin Inconnu came home from war the morning after I did. If I'd thought short hair looked weird on me, it was even weirder to see it on him. All my life this guy had worn his hair shaggy and scruffy; he'd never once taken a comb to it. But there he was, sitting across from me at the bone table in my kitchen, his eyes droopy and tired and his hair razor-short. He ate his snow quail eggs and his cubed potatoes in his usual disoriented silence.

  "I thought they might've left you behind," I said.

  Inconnu chewed so slowly I thought to check my wristwatch. I wasn't wearing a wristwatch. I'd given my watch to Fox the last time he broke his.

  Inconnu swallowed. "Wha?"

  I gave him a Look. He was unfortunately immune to them. He was immune to everything.

  "With the Allies," I said. "The Occupation."

  Inconnu mashed his eggs with his fork. "Do you have any pemmican?"

  I threw my hands up in surrender. Suddenly I could imagine exactly how Japan might have surrendered. All we needed to do was tote this moron and everyone ran screaming the other way.

  Later on Inconnu went with me to get riceroot by the warm springs. The sea lions jumped in and out of the steaming water, barking, splashing, and I laughed to see them. Inconnu wouldn't have noticed if they'd climbed up his back and screamed in his ear. The snow quails pecked at the permafrost and I tossed them some riceroot. They shrieked at me. Their speckled brown feathers had gone white already. It wouldn't be long before the first snowfall.

  "I'm going back to bed," Inconnu announced.

  He left his sweetgrass basket with me and shuffled away. I stared after him in disbelief. I picked up the basket and considered chucking it after his thick head. Only I've never been keen on wasting food.

  I went home and put the riceroot away. I put on a capote and went longline fishing on the wharf. From the darkly wooded docks I could see the mainland, a hazy blue smudge capped in white glaciers, dotted in silver houses. The ocean standing between us was glassy and smooth. I almost thought I could walk on it. The sky reflected opaquely off the water, every pregnant gray cloud, every streak of hidden white sun.

  The branchlines tugged hard and I pulled up three bluefish. A toothy little boy ran up to me with a jar of cranberries and I traded him a bluefish for it. I felt the frigid wind on the back of my neck, the backs of my ears. I wanted my hair to grow.

  The rest of the morning I spent wiring my father's old radio to the hydroelectric line out behind my house, something I'd only ever tried once before, and without success. The insulation had worn thin; I needed to replace it before the polar night. At afternoon I went inside and made cranberry soup and hominy for Rabbit. Fawn had said I could take him today.

  I went to the schoolhouse to the northeast, the squat little building with the aluminum roof. The door snapped open and the children milled out, some as young as five, some as old as twelve. A few lingered in the front yard to play kickstick. You could tell which kids had parents who had graduated from Anglican boarding schools. They were the ones wearing suspenders and neckties and cotton skirts instead of mukluks and ribbons and moccasins.

  Rabbit was wearing an orange ribbon shirt, his hair pinned back at his neck. He saw me and dropped his schoolbooks. He ran at me like a wrecking ball and I caught him in tight arms, my heart singing.

  "You're back!" he screamed against my cotton shirt.

  "Pick up your books," I said, but wouldn't let go of him. "You don't want your friends to trip."

  "I don't mind."

  We picked up his books together. He tugged so hard on my arm I thought he was trying to pull it off.

  "You're back!" Rabbit yelled.

  "I noticed," I said.

  The teacher came out from inside the building. She didn't look at all surprised to see the cause of the commotion. She was in her fifties, Miss Theresa. She'd gone to boarding school with my dad, St. Verity's out in Juneau.

  "Bye, Miss Theresa!" Rabbit shouted at her.

  I took Rabbit home, the schoolbooks under my arm, Rabbit swinging my hand in his. He told me all about a girl he liked, Lisette, how he planned to marry her when he was older. I told him to wait a year or two.

  "I made you moccasins!" he let me know.

  I shouldered open the door to the house. "You did?" I asked, touched.

  We went inside and Rabbit ate his soup and his hominy. He zipped open his schoolbag and pulled out a pair of moccasins. I wondered why he'd been carrying them around all this time. I immediately knew he hadn't made them on his own. They were caribou fur with elk teeth, the pelt on the inside. I told myself to thank Fawn later.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "That's okay," Rabbit said.

  I'd gotten him a Daruma doll back in Ginza. When I gave it to him he took it on his lap and giggled at its brash face, its giant eyebrows. I showed him how to color in the missing eyes.

  "Do you have to leave again?" Rabbit asked carefully.

  "Nope," I said.

  "Really?" he asked.

  "I'm not a soldier anymore," I said. "Just a fisherman."

  "Me, too," Rabbit said. "I'm a fisherman."

  He set the Daruma doll aside, got up off his chair and sat on my lap. He burrowed into me like he was afraid to let go and I realized, not for the first time, that war's hardest on the children. I held him close, my Rabbit, combed my fingers through his scratchy hair and kissed the top of his hard, stubborn little head. The radio played Buck Rogers and I bounced Rabbit lightly on my knee while he sang the theme song.r />
  "Miss Theresa told me someday they're gonna go to the moon," Rabbit said. "I wanna go to the moon."

  "Sure," I said, and rubbed his little back. Crazy kid.

  * * * * *

  Rabbit sat scribbling in his homework book at the whalebone table. I made him candy bites out of chocolate lilies and he snacked on them and yawned, his full mouth wide open. Soon the lilies in the ground would curl up and wither and the wintersweets would take their place, a kind of candy in their own right. I needed to pound otter fat for pemmican. The tuna and the sea bass were about to go scarce.

  I looked out the window in the bedroom and saw the sun hanging low in the sky. I told Rabbit to close his books and I wrapped him up in his capote. We walked out to the wharf together and the sweetgrass lanterns were already lit. Men lined up with their wives and parents lined up with their children. A circle of men and women pounded on a birchbark drum. I picked Rabbit up and we danced the Owl Dance. It was the first time I'd ever danced before, my arms around my little boy, my cheek on his cheek. We danced until the Northern Lights came out in the sky, until the sun sank behind the horizon and the watery stars took its place.

  Inconnu wandered over to us when the drummers started playing '49 songs. He looked lost.

  "War's over," I told him.

  "What?" he said.

  Rabbit wrinkled his face. He looked remarkably like his namesake just then.

  I took Rabbit out on the pier and we sat together. The shallow water under our legs turned milky in the moonlight. A trout leapt out of the tide and plopped back in. A scant cluster of snowflakes settled on the lapping waves. They melted, and the water went clear again, the Northern Lights cracking across its surface in hyperviolet and hyacinth. Then came a sheet of snow, gentle, lazy, and it coated the ocean in Arctic foam. The waves carried the snow away like constellations on the spinning cosmos.

  "Your ancestors dance in the sky," I told Rabbit. I put my arms around his little body. I was home now; I didn't have to leave him anymore. "Every time you see the Northern Lights, they're your grandmother and your grandfather and all the Indians who fought for you. They're dancing because they love you. You were loved, so loved, long before you were born."