“Ole and Sven are at a funeral. But Ole can’t remember the name of the deceased”—I stumbled on the unfamiliar world—“so he says, ‘Sven, who died?’ and Sven says, ‘I don’t know, but I tink it was da guy in da box.’” I waited for my father to laugh. Instead there was a sad, pained look in his eyes. “It’s funny, Daddy!”
“You are not one of the crew, Fern.” My father balled his napkin and laid it on the table. “The only reason you’re aboard is that your mother is sick.”
“Then I’m glad she’s sick,” I said.
His face turned so severe I thought he meant to spank me for saying such a terrible thing, but instead he said, “No, you aren’t, and you mustn’t say so. Your mother has had a very bad time.”
“I know it,” I said, though I didn’t, not exactly, not then.
“And I can guarantee she would not want you sitting at a table with the crew listening to their jokes. It was my mistake ever to allow it in the first place.”
“But I want to be a sailor when I grow up.”
My father’s shoulders sagged. “It’s the Halvorsen blood, I’m afraid. Never could see another life for myself. But it’s a curse for a man to pass down to a daughter.”
“You told me to be nice to Alv. You said he could look out for me.” I was wheedling now.
“So I did.” He shook his head. “With all this ice you’re in for a long trip, and I know there’s not much to keep you entertained. It’s all right to pretend you’re a sailor. But when we get back and your mother is better, you’ll have to do your pretending on land. Your mother can teach you”—he seemed at a loss for words—“something more appropriate for a girl. She can show you how to sew. You could make clothes for your dolls. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I was quite certain I wouldn’t, but we still had to free the Ashley, and after that there would be the trip across the lake and back. So all that mattered to me was that day and the next and the miles and miles of lake that lay between me and having to become a lady landlubber stitching up clothes for stupid dolls. How could I bear to spend those precious days eating in the dreary silence of the officers’ mess while the crew laughed it up and razzed one another in their own?
Later, after my father had gone back to the bridge, I heard Alv open the big refrigerator that was in the passageway between the galley and the passengers’ quarters to get something for Whispers, and I followed him to the car deck.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said as he crouched with the saucer.
“My father says I can’t eat with the crew anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, but his voice was toneless.
“I just wanted the bosun to stop picking on you.”
“I know it.” At last he stood to face me. “I know you were trying to help. It’s just that you can’t, don’t you see?”
“Are you mad at me?”
He tried to smile, but his mouth was sad around the edges. “No, I’m not mad.”
I wanted to be relieved, but everything had changed, and there was no way to change it back. So we left it at that, but as I climbed the steps of the companionway, I wondered what would happen if I asked the ghost to make the bosun stop.
31
But I didn’t do it right away because as soon as the ghost took hold of my toe that evening I lost my nerve, and the next morning I took breakfast with my father, all the time listening for the noise from the crews’ mess, though breakfast was never as lively as dinner or supper because the men were always so sleepy, the ones who were tired because their shifts had just ended and the ones who’d just gotten up but weren’t awake yet. And then, sometime between breakfast and dinner, we stuck in the ice again.
We still hadn’t reached the Ashley, though we could see it in the distance, as if both ships had fetched up on a vast white desert. We were just off Pyramid Point, where the land turns east to skirt Good Harbor Bay, then points a gnarly finger north into the lake, crossing the forty-fifth parallel at the knuckle. The Point looked a lot like Sleeping Bear, streaked with sand and snow because most of the snow blows off those perched dunes, which are so majestic and stark alongside the snowcapped shadows of the woods that grow all the way down to the shore in the places where the dunes aren’t quite so exposed or so steep.
I was in the observation room, playing with Manitou. We had scattered the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle across the floor and were pretending they were islands. I had drawn a face on a wooden clothespin Dick Butler gave me, which was just the right size to be a giant jumping from one island to the next. When I looked out the window one of the trees seemed to have separated itself from the woods and begun to walk out onto the ice, away from the Point, and even from such a distance I could see how deliberately it was moving, whatever it was, so I put on my coat and went up to the pilothouse, but my father wasn’t there. The second mate, Otto Andersen, was in charge, and Odd was behind the wheel even though there was nothing for him to do while we were stuck.
“What is it?” I asked and pointed out the window, but the dark splotch was still too far away, and so the mate took a pair of field glasses from the chart desk drawer.
“Is it the snow wasset?” I wondered what a snow wasset would do to a ship that was stuck in the ice. We wouldn’t sink, but we wouldn’t be able to get away.
Odd snickered. He hadn’t made the fuss over me that some of the crew had, but I liked him because he always seemed to be in a good mood. “Got a snow wasset fixing to eat us. Better fetch the bosun. Must mean we’re getting ready for his blow.”
The mate lowered the glasses from his face. “It’s a moose.” He didn’t sound too sure.
Odd took the binoculars. “What the . . . ?”
They passed the glasses back and forth.
“It’s a moose,” Mr. Andersen repeated, and this time he was definite. “You ever seen a bull with a rack in February?”
“Devil’s horns,” Odd said, a little pocket of surprise inside his voice. “Heard of it but never seen it.”
“Let me see,” I begged, but when they handed the glasses down to me everything looked so blurry I gave them back and pressed my face to the window instead. It was still a ways off but close enough now that I could see it wasn’t a tree, it wasn’t tall enough, the body was too thick, and it had legs but was too big to be a deer. It was walking very slowly, but there was no mistaking that it was coming toward us.
“Is it the snow wasset?” I asked again, because in the wintertime when the lakes froze up Bosun said the snow wasset grew legs.
“It’s the mark of Satan,” Odd said.
“Mark of a bull been castrated,” Mr. Andersen corrected. “See how the rack’s misshapen? Bull gets castrated he grows a new rack, but it’s deformed, and he doesn’t ever shed it.”
“Devil’s horns,” Odd insisted. “I guess you ain’t heard the stories.”
“Can’t say I have.” The mate’s mouth twitched like he meant to smile. “I don’t sit around drinking with the injuns like you do.”
“Learn a thing or two if you did,” Odd said. I was still watching the moose and wondering what it wanted, because nothing with devil’s horns and the mark of Satan could be good. “Get an injun drunk he can tell a damn good story.”
“Stories is right.”
“Maybe.”
Mr. Andersen took another look at the moose. “Look at the poor devil. Everything’s froze up. Got no fat reserve left.”
The moose was close enough now that I could see the crooked rack, the antlers that didn’t match, and the clumsy face with its big donkey nose. There was a moose’s head mounted on the wall in the log cabin restaurant that was on the way to Benzie State Park, and it had a proper rack, which looked like two tractor seats with big claws on the sides because even a moose that’s made right looks stupid. I felt sorry for the one on the wall, there among the deer heads with eyes so dark and alert they seemed startled to be dead. The moose didn’t look surprised
as much as embarrassed.
“A moose wouldn’t eat you, would it?” I asked.
“Moose with devil’s horns?” Odd said. “No telling.”
Mr. Andersen shot him a sharp look. “Moose don’t eat meat,” he said to me. “This time of year boats get stuck, sometimes a deer or a moose comes out looking for a crew to feed it.”
“I seen a wolf once,” Odd said. “Sailor shot it off the stern.”
I felt my eyes grow big. “Was it hungry? Why didn’t he feed it?”
“Cause it was a wolf,” Odd said, and that made sense, because the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” ate the grandmother and the girl, and the only reason they didn’t die was the woodsman who came along and cut open the wolf’s belly. I wondered if there had been a pair of wolves on Noah’s ark, because if there were, the wolves probably would have eaten all the other animals and Noah too, unless the lions ate the wolves first, and that was something I had never thought about, all those animals that wanted to eat each other cooped up together forty days and forty nights on an itty bitty ark. They didn’t talk about that part in Sunday school.
Odd crouched down. He had a thin, oily smell like paint, but it wasn’t paint, it was the firewater that gave him overfondness. “Don’t you worry, because that is a very nice moose, and devil’s horns to some is just a halo to others.”
“Is that true?” I wasn’t sure whether he was making fun or trying to be nice.
Odd straightened up. “What do you say, Matey? You think that’s a nice moose?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Andersen said to me. “Why don’t you run down to the galley and tell Sam we got a starving moose out there, see if he can’t find a little something to spare for it?”
I ran so fast I didn’t even close the door when I tore into the passenger lounge, yelling, “Sam, Sam!”
“What’s this?” Sam turned from the stove. In the prep room Billy Cooke had left big lumps of dough to rise, and the yeasty smell along with whatever soup Sam had in the big pot made my mouth water, and all of a sudden I felt as hungry as the moose, even though I was almost too excited to notice.
“There’s a moose, it’s out on the ice and it’s starving, and we have to find him something to eat!” I was hopping in place. “Oh, please, Sam. It’s got devil’s horns, but it’s really a nice moose, and if we don’t feed it it’s going to die.”
I wondered if we would take him aboard, but he was too big to climb a ladder and there wasn’t enough room on the car deck, which was too bad, because I thought it would be fun to feed him out of my hand and have him nuzzle up against me and lick my face with his big moose tongue.
Sam’s grin bared his big, square, yellow teeth. “Is that a fact now?”
“Mr. Andersen said to tell you. We saw it from the pilothouse, but I saw it first. I thought it might be the snow wasset, but the mate had binoculars, and it’s a moose.” I wondered if I’d made a mistake telling Sam that it had devil’s horns. “What’s castrated?”
Sam seemed taken aback because he didn’t answer at first, and then he said, “Accident, most likely. That or a fight. Poor critter. Been a cold winter.”
“Winter’s always cold,” I said.
“So it is. But some’s colder than others.”
And then, because I must have sensed some connection, I said, “What’s a faggot?”
“Lordy, miss!” Sam’s face turned bright red. “Nothing you need to concern yourself about.”
“Because . . .”
“See here,” he said quickly, “we got an emergency on our hands, moose starving out there on the ice, can’t let that happen, now can we?”
I must have been satisfied or completely distracted by the situation because I said, “But what will we feed it? Mr. Andersen says mooses don’t eat meat.”
“And Mr. Andersen’s exactly right. So we’ll just get him some carrots.”
“Can I help?” I began to hop up and down again. “Oh, I want to feed the moose.” I remembered how the men had come up from spudding with their saws and poles, singing merrily, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” Maybe Mister Andersen would let the crew get one of the ladders from the lifeboats, and Sam and I could go down on the ice to feed it out of our hands.
Sam winked. “Sure you don’t want to take him a saucer of milk?”
I froze. I couldn’t think of a single lie to tell, so I looked down.
“Got a little stowaway, do you?”
“Oh, Sam, you won’t tell, will you? Please. Because the bosun . . .”
“Oh, I know about the bosun.” Sam stooped to pat my shoulder. “It seems to me a growing girl needs a lot of milk. Don’t you worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”
I was so relieved I almost cried. “Oh, thank you, Sam!”
“So how about we find a meal fit for a moose.” He opened the walkin refrigerator and came out with a couple heads of cabbage and some carrots that he put in a mesh bag that he handed to me, then ducked inside his cabin to get his heavy jacket, and we went down the passageway through the crew’s quarters to the afterdeck. The moose had come much closer while I’d been inside the galley, so close I could see his patchy coat.
“Holy cow!” Sam said.
“It’s the devil’s horns,” I said.
“Poor critter.” Sam reached into the bag for a cabbage, but I tugged on his sleeve.
“Let’s get one of the ladders from the lifeboats. I want to pet him. Please.”
“Sorry, kiddo. You need to keep your distance from a moose. Otherwise he might charge.” Sam hurled the first cabbage. When the moose reached it, his nose set to twitching as he chewed, and up this close he looked so massive it was hard to figure how anything could get so big just eating vegetables. Sam handed me another and boosted me to the rail. I threw as hard as I could, but the tightly bunched head wobbled to a stop just beside the hull. “That’s okay.” Sam set me down. “He’ll get it.”
By now the crew must have heard, because Roald and Axel were on deck, and when the moose finished Sam’s cabbage and came up close for mine, Sam boosted me again so I could see and let me throw a turnip that rolled across the ice.
“Good thing Captain’s daughter’s not pitching for the Tigers,” Roald said.
Sam set me down again. “Moose got legs. Far as he’s concerned that was right over the plate.”
“Got devil’s horns too. What are the chances?” Axel picked up a carrot, and then Roald did too, and it seemed like everyone wanted to get in on feeding the moose, but then there was a shadow to the side and a sharp crack that hurt my ears. The moose seemed to stumble, it was so fast you couldn’t tell what happened, but I swear he looked right at me before he fell. And this moose didn’t look like the one in the restaurant at all, not embarrassed or stupid, either one. Just sad.
Dick Butler was standing on the deck with a pistol in his hand and a big grin on his face. Bosun and Loke were there too, though I hadn’t seen or heard them come out.
“Now what did you want to do that for?” Loke said, and when I looked back there was blood starting to run out onto the ice.
“Don’t know about you, but I’m hungry enough to eat a moose,” Dick said, and I felt terrible because it was almost the same thing I’d thought back in the galley smelling Billy’s bread and Sam’s soup.
“Aw, can it, you just had breakfast,” Loke said.
Sam’s voice sharpened. “What’s the matter with you? Poor beast was starving, and the girl was feeding it.”
“It’s a freak,” Dick said. “Thing had devil’s horns.”
“Wasn’t hurting you.”
“It was too close to suit me. What if it charged?”
“Wouldn’t stand much chance against a 360-foot steel hull, now would it?”
“Says who? The hull is leaking, we’re stuck again, not even underway. Food’s likely to run out before we ever make port.”
“I never let you men go hungry yet.” Sam turned away.
By now my father had co
me down from the wing and around the deckhouse. He looked out at the moose and back, then at Dick. “You,” he said and held out his hand for the gun. The moose was trying to struggle to his feet, and I imagined a rank musk of game in the air along with the thick smell of blood, though there was an offshore wind, we were so high up, and it was so cold it’s likely the only thing I smelled was the brittle air. My father fired. The moose fell back, and this time didn’t move. “Next time you take it in your fool head to kill something, you kill it clean, you hear?” My father’s blue eyes turned to flint. “And you don’t go killing anything off my deck unless I say so, sailor, is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Dick’s voice was sullen.
Neither the bosun nor any of the men had said a word since my father appeared.
“Moose is the best game meat there is.” Dick’s voice rose to a whine.
“This isn’t a hunting party,” my father said.
“Yes, sir.” Dick looked around at the men as if to find support, but still no one spoke, and finally he walked to the hatch and went below. My father was still holding the gun.
“No sense letting the meat go to waste,” he said to the bosun. “Send a couple of the men down to dress it. We’ll wait to start the engines until they’ve got it up here.” Without looking at me, he strode back to the wing.
“Don’t know if I want to eat a moose with devil’s horns,” Axel said.
“You ain’t eating the horns,” Bosun answered, which surprised me, given how superstitious he was. “You and Roald, go fetch the Sami boy. You’ll need two sharp knives, two axes, and a saw. You can tell the little pussy what to do if he don’t know, but make sure he dresses it himself. Boy needs to grow a little fur on his balls.”
“It’s cold. Why don’t you come back inside?” Sam said to me as Roald went up to the boat deck for one of the Jacob’s ladders, but I didn’t move. I wanted to go down the ladder with the men, but I knew Sam wouldn’t let me, so I figured to go up to the boat deck and watch, the way I had when the men were spudding.
Across the Great Lake Page 16