Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

“Look,” he said, pulling the bunch of twigs from a woman’s hands and scrubbing furiously. Metal, copper. Erasmus ran to the other kettles: copper, copper, copper. A film seemed to drop from his eyes, and he looked around and saw that the wooden tray on which some of the meat had lain could not have been made from any of the scrubby vegetation here; that in fact it resembled a part of a writing desk. Tent poles suddenly resembled oars, wooden spoons might have been shaped from gunwales, parts of spears and knives might have come from barrels.

“They’ve found a boatl” Zeke exulted. “These things come from a ship’s boat.” He seized Joe’s arm and said, “Tell them I know.”

“Know what?”

“Just tell them I know.”

As Joe translated, Zeke seized a copper pot in one hand and a stirring stick that might have been made from an ash oar in the other. A hush fell over the camp. Oonali stepped forward.

“These things are from a fyabloona boat,” Zeke said. “Why didn’t you tell us before that you had found one?”

Oonali shrugged as Joe put Zeke’s questions to him. “You asked about ships,” he said through Joe. Joe looked mortified, as if he’d been the one caught lying. “And about the land across from the coast. Not a small boat found on an island.”

“What island?”

Oonali said something Joe couldn’t translate. After Zeke took out another of his maps, Oonali pressed his thumb down on a large island at the mouth of Back’s Great Fish River.

“Were there men?” Zeke said. “You told us we were the first white men you’d met.”

“I did not meet them,” Oonali said calmly. “They could not be met. They were dead.”

By now all the Esquimaux, and all the brig’s men, were pressed in a circle around Zeke and Oonali and Joe. Zeke offered axes, barrel staves, beads, and knives in return for any other items they might have picked up at the boat. In return for the story of how they’d found it.

Oonali said, “This happened some winters ago. On the island we found a wooden boat which was sheathed with this metal. Also the bodies of thirty or so men.”

There had been guns, Joe translated, just one or two, and a metal box with some papers in it, some clothes, some things they’d not known the names of. They had taken many of these things, guessing they’d someday find a use for them.

“Show me,” Zeke demanded. For a minute Erasmus thought all was lost. But Joe must have softened Zeke’s words and framed them courteously, because Oonali, after considering for a moment, spoke to the other Esquimaux gathered around. Some ducked into the tents, returning with full hands.

A prayer book, a treatise on steam engines, a snowshoe, and two pairs of scissors. More silver spoons and some forks. Dr. Boerhaave, holding out his hands, received a mahogany barometer case, and Erasmus’s hands filled with chisels and chain hooks and scraps of rope. Zeke stood open-mouthed, turning a broken handsaw end over end over end. “The boat?” he said. “Is the boat still where you found it?”

“We cut it up,” Oonali said. “It was of no use to those men. We cut it up and took all the wood and useful things. Some things we have cached at our other camps.”

“The bodies?” Zeke said.

“The sand has buried them. This was”—he paused to consult with two middle-aged men—”six winters ago. Or seven. We have visited this island since, and nothing is left of those men.”

Erasmus wrote down everything, piecing the story together as fast as he could scribble the words. Thirty men, at least one boat, a winter that might be either 1848 or 1849; an island some two hundred miles from the point at which Franklin’s ships had supposedly been beset. The men must have dragged the boat all that distance, perhaps on one of their sledges: and who were “they,” and had they been the only ones left? And how had they thought to get that boat up the river’s fierce rapids? In his rush Erasmus spotted his journal with caribou grease.

Someone sneezed, delicately; he looked up to see Oonali’s wife. The three young women who’d served him tea during his first visit had turned out to be Oonali’s daughters; this woman, their mother, had stood off to the side then, and he’d noticed her only when Joe pointed her out. She had a fine white scar running from the outside corner of her left eye into the hair at her temple, worn teeth, shy eyes. She was holding out something to him in her closed hand.

“For me?” he asked. But of course she couldn’t understand his words. She had her back to everyone else and her gesture was furtive. He tore off the last of his jacket buttons and offered it on his open palm. With one hand she scooped the button up, holding the other hand over his palm and then spreading her fingers. A scrap of dried and hardened leather, spiked through with bits of metal, dropped into his hand.

He thanked her, put down the scrap, and kept writing. Then a few minutes later thought to pick it up again. Once more that film seemed to drop from his eyes: part of a boot sole, he saw, the front part, from the toes to the ball of the foot. Seven short, wide-headed screws had been driven through it, from the inside out— a line of two, at the tips of the toes, then a line of three and another line of two. Wood screws, the sort one might use to fasten a cleat or an oarlock to a boat. The heads had been countersunk, set flush with the inner layer; the tips of the screws protruded perhaps a quarter of an inch.

Staring at those broken, rusted tips, Erasmus imagined the rest of the sole, the worn heel, the broken-down upper. The broken-down man who, trying to walk across the ice, perhaps pulling a sledge or a boat behind him, might have studded his shoes for a better grip. Without thinking he slipped the scrap into

his jacket pocket.

Across from him Zeke purchased every item brought for his inspection, naming each so Erasmus could note it in his journal. A riot of objects, an orgy of objects. Dr. Boerhaave bent over a mildewed black notebook. When he opened it, Erasmus saw it was only a shell, two covers with just a few pages remaining, all the rest torn out. “It could have been someone’s journal,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “Even Franklin’s.” But the pages still caught in the binding were blank, and Erasmus saw where the rest had gone: little boys, given this as a toy, had ripped the sheets out one by one. What could have been the words of one of Franklin’s crew sent sailing on the breeze. He stared, then turned back to his own journal: tidy notes, long columns aligned. Everything listed except that bit of boot.

Finally, with everything piled and noted, Oonali said, “Perhaps you will return to your own place now. We have given you everything we have.”

“I would like to buy some of your dogs,” Zeke said. “All your dogs, if you’ll part with them.”

The land between here and the river was a soupy, pond-riddled, hazardous place, nearly impossible to cross at this time of year; Zeke, Erasmus saw, could only have one thing in mind. He meant, if he could obtain enough dogs, to stay here through the winter and then travel, if not to King William Land, then across the frozen strait to the island. For a moment Erasmus gave in to a vision: he and Zeke walking side by side into the Academy of Sciences, bearing these relics and full of stories. How much more glorious their entrance would be were they to say: We saw men from Franklin’s ships. We gave them proper burial.

“It is impossible,” Oonali said. “We need the dogs to carry our tents and other things. We leave tomorrow. Already we must begin packing.”

As if to demonstrate, a woman began piling skins and clothes on a dog. The dog grimaced and drooped his tail, then turned to bark at a raven stealing some bits of fat.