Ice Brothers (77 page)

The wardroom was the last compartment Paul inspected. The table there was covered by a tangle of soiled blankets. In a starboard bunk a body lay completely covered by a rumpled sheet. That must be Seth, Paul thought, but had no inclination to make sure. Jesus, he was a good man—old enough to be the father of all of us, and never a word of complaint. I guess I should write to his wife …

And Sparks's wife, and Blake's mother—I should write them all, he thought. All the women should get letters telling them how brave their brave men were …

Paul put his hand on the wardroom table to steady himself. The tangle of blankets there stank. They should be thrown overboard, but then there would be no blankets. They should be washed and dried in the engineroom. First thing in the morning, as soon as the men got some rest.

Without thinking Paul began to pick up the blankets and fold them neatly, then carried them to the well deck and shoved them under a tarpaulin. Staggering a little, he went to the bridge and tapped the barometer. It was still falling. Soon it would snow and blow like hell. Stepping to the wing of the bridge, he looked at the sky. Clouds had already obscured the moon. They better hurry with their medic, he thought. I ought to tell them, but hell, they have more weather reports than I do.

The thought of a big blow coming made him get a flashlight and check the ship's mooring lines. They should be doubled up, but everyone was too tired. The manila was still fairly new and should hold.

He walked slowly back to the bridge. Guns, his wrist wrapped in a bandage, was talking to Flags about the girls in New Orleans.

“Skipper, we're just about out of ammo for the three-incher,” he said, perhaps to find out if he had been forgiven, or to prove that he was ready to forgive.

“I'll get some as soon as I can,” Paul said. “You did some good shooting, Guns.”

“I shouldn't have taken so long to get on target, but with a short-barreled gun like that—well, hell, we won. That's the important thing, isn't it?”

Paul went into his cabin and shut the door. Suddenly he wanted a drink and wished he hadn't thrown out all the booze he had found in the drawer under the bunk. There were a few bottles of sweet liqueurs still locked in the lazaret, where they were being kept for a beerbust ashore. Now on this night of victory he should get them out and share them with the crew. The trouble was he was too tired to get out of his bunk and all but the two men on watch were asleep anyway. Victory made a man very tired.

Paul slept for more than ten hours. He was awakened by Nathan.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Nathan said, “but a hell of a lot has been happening.”

“What?”

“They got a medic in.”

“Has he looked at Cookie?”

“I made sure that Cookie came first. He's a living pin cushion, but it looks like he'll make it.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“A little. Look, we've got orders.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

“We're to take aboard all the worst wounded who can make it and bring them to Narsarssuak. Also, all the most able-bodied prisoners who might make trouble here.”

“We'll be loaded like a slave ship.”

“GreenPat knows we can't take everyone. The number is up to you. He'll send another ship to get the rest as soon as he can.”

“He'll probably have us going back and forth all winter. How the hell are we going to handle able-bodied prisoners?”

“Boats is making the hold into a brig. He'll be done in a few hours.”

“I'll sail as soon as you're ready. How are we going to guard prisoners in the hold?”

“I've made up some stuff that will act as tear gas. If they act up, we can drop some in.”

“Keep their hands tied anyway. I don't want to take a cruise to Germany. And don't take too many. Leave enough men to guard the rest on the island.”

“Boats will take care of that … Brit wants to see you—”

“Why? You're taking care of her, aren't you?” He couldn't keep an edge from his voice.

“I'll pretend you didn't say that.”

“You're trying to get her out of here. Well, don't ask me to take her without authorization—”

“She's changed her mind about that. I better let her talk to you. She's in the forecastle now.”

“Send her up.”

“Paul, I don't know how things are between you and Brit, but she's been a hell of a big help. She's been running everything ashore. Without her—”

“I know, you don't have to tell me about her. Just send her up.”

When Nathan left, Paul went to the head and washed his face in cold water. He did not have time to shave but combed his hair and put on a less rumpled blue coat. Soon he heard a light knock on his cabin door.

“Come in.”

She was wearing her green skirt and the reindeer sweater. She had recently brushed her short hair but her face looked exhausted, her eyes dark and enormous. She shut the door behind her and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“I won't pretend,” she said. “I've come to ask a favor, a big one.”

“Nathan says you've changed your mind about wanting to get out of here.”

“There's too much for me to do here now. With Swan gone …”

“What do you want?”

“What are you going to do with Carl Peterson?”

“He's a prisoner. He can stay with the others.”

“He's a Dane!”

“He was working with the Germans and still would be if we hadn't captured him.”

“He had no choice. He has a family in Denmark. Do you know what the Germans would have done if he hadn't worked with them?”

Paul sighed. “That's not my business. Somebody else will have to figure that out. To me, he's got to be just a prisoner.”

“We need him here. Why can't you just leave him with us?”

“How would I ever explain that?”

“Who would ever ask for an explanation?”

“I should report that I captured him—”

“Why? They could keep him locked up for years until they figure out what I know now. If I thought he was a traitor do you think I'd beg for him?”

“Have you known him before now?”

“Yes. He taught courses about Greenland at the university. He's a fine man who got dragged into this war like everybody else. Can't you just forget you ever saw him?”

There was a pause before Paul said, “All right, Brit. Carl Peterson will be my sort of a going-away present to you …”

“Don't say it like that.”

“I feel it like that!”

“Will you always be bitter about me, your whole life?”

“No. Hell, I don't like to lose you. I can't share you. Can't you understand that?

“We don't have any choices. Can't
you
understand that?”

“I guess … Brit, am I any different to you, or are we all just men who happen to need you?”

“You are the only man I ever knew who I think will somehow always win …”

“Win
what?
”

“Anything. And winning is important, believe me … you have to lose to learn that.”

“I understand … Jesus, Brit—”

“I'll remember this cabin,” she said, “and laughing together, so silently, under that sword.”

“I'd give it to you as a souvenir, but I'm afraid it would make all your other friends jealous.” He didn't smile.

“Jealous men I don't want. I'd like to have your sword. I'd hang it on the wall to remind me that it's not always necessary to lose.”

He took the sword in its leather case from its brackets and handed it to her.

“Does this mean that you surrender to me?”

“I did that a long time ago, and you know it.”

“I have something to give you in return. I'll send Peo down to the ship with it before you sail, but I'll tell you about it now.”

“I'd like a picture of you.”

“I'll send that too, but my real gift is a narwhale tusk, the biggest I've ever seen. Do you know about narwhale tusks?”

“Not much.”

“The Greenlanders for centuries have sent them to Europe and Asia, where they think they come from a unicorn. Old men grind them and drink the powder as a love medicine.”

“You think I need that?”

She touched his face. “Not for sex, Paul, but maybe for love.”

“I guess you're right.”

“No, I don't mean that … Just take the narwhale tusk and hang it over your bed and if anyone asks, say it comes from a unicorn. And if anyone says that's a mythical beast, just say, ‘How could it be? Here's its horn.'”

He laughed, and kissed her, and then Guns was knocking loudly at his door and saying, “They're bringing the wounded aboard, sir, and Mr. Green is going to have funeral services for Mr. Farmer up in the chapel.”

Brit went with Paul to the funeral services. No clergyman was present, but almost all the members of the
Arluk
's crew were there and many Eskimos. The old woman played the organ while they sang “Abide With Me.” Mr. Williams read a service from his Bible that Paul somehow did not want to hear, and then Nathan said, “I think the men would like to hear a few words from you, Paul.”

He felt curiously weak as he made his way to the lectern. He looked at Brit's tired face, at Nathan's haggard one and at the exhausted faces of the
Arluk
's crew and suddenly he was terrified he'd break out into tears and not be able to say anything.

“I don't know what to say,” he began. “Seth Farmer died while he was helping to carry a wounded German below. He had a bad heart, and a great one. Most of you knew him as well as I did. He never complained …” For about five minutes he praised the old fisherman, but his words didn't seem to make much sense to his own ears, though they were all true enough. The church was much too hot … “What I guess I'm trying to say is that Seth was part of the
Arluk
and part of us, whatever we are. I think we're important, but I don't know how. We've been through a lot together, and now we're burying one of our own. May God have mercy on his soul and on all of ours.”

He paused and was grateful when the organ began to play “Rock of Ages.” He returned to his pew and stood beside Brit while everyone mumbled the hymn. Afterward he followed her out of the church.

“I suppose Greenland will preserve Seth forever, with all the rest of her dead,” he said of her.

“Nothing really dies here,” she said. “Nothing changes. I told you that.”

“After the war is over, will you stay here?”

“I don't know. I don't think ahead. Paul?”

“What?”

“I have to go now. I mean really go. And so do you.”

He nodded.

“It isn't only bodies that Greenland preserves. Memories too. Nobody ever forgets anything that happens to him here.”

“I believe that.”

She brushed his cheek quickly with her lips before turning and running toward her small ketch.…

When he got back aboard his ship Paul found that Peomeenie had delivered a magnificent narwhale tusk in a sealskin case. Over six feet long, it had been polished to the consistency of a candle, and the intricate spiral weave of the ivory was just as ancient writers had described the unicorn's horn. It exactly fitted the brackets which had been built for Paul's sword above his bunk.

The
Arluk
did not get stuck in the ice on the way back to the west coast, but an almost continuous gale and blizzard slowed her, and the voyage took two weeks. Because Nathan was occupied with the wounded and the other prisoners, Paul stood watch most of the time himself, snatching only brief naps while Flags and Boats took over the watch on the bridge. His exhaustion protected him from feeling too much as the ship crammed full of dazed sick and wounded men rolled and pitched in the endless darkness. Most of the time he had to navigate without a sun, without a horizon and without stars. But he still had radar, and with that he paralleled the coast, keeping a good thirty miles out, located the mouth of the passage which led across the tip of Cape Farewell and headed up the west coast When he finally gained the shelter of Narsarssuak Fjord, the rolling and pitching of the ship mercifully stopped, but the quiet waters of the inner fjord had frozen into smooth ice unlike the Arctic, more like a pond at home. It made a sound like continuously breaking glass as the
Arluk
ploughed through it and slowed her to a bare four knots. It was snowing, it was always snowing, and the steep white sides of the fjord were invisible. Flags gave Paul almost continuous radar readings, his voice so hoarse that he whispered.

“Get Nathan up here,” Paul said to the quartermaster.

Nathan arrived, so exhausted that he stood supporting himself on the engineroom telegraph. “When are we going to get in?”

“About four hours. Give GreenPat an ETA of six o'clock. Have ambulances meet us and trucks with guards for the prisoners.” There was a pause before Paul added, “I have an idea that old Mowrey will be waiting for us, all ready to take his ship back.”

Nathan smiled. “That's a private nightmare of yours, skipper. The old man was done when he left here.”

“Maybe,” Paul said, “and maybe I'd half like to see him come back. When the old bastard was sober he at least knew what he was doing.”

“You haven't done so bad,” Nathan said. “All you need is some rest—about thirty days leave. You'll be raring to go again.”

As soon as the ship was moored alongside a wharf at the base in Narsarssuak, Paul toppled into his bunk and slept for twelve hours. He might have slept much longer, but he was awakened by Nathan.

“Skipper, Commander GreenPat wants to see us.”

“Have the prisoners all been taken ashore?”

“Yes … the commander is here. He came aboard to see us. I think that's supposed to be some kind of an honor.”