On the Rails

Twice a year the killer whales would migrate through Eclipse Sound, preternaturally detouring through the narrow waterway. In the spring, they moved south then west of Bylot instead of north and east around it into the open water of Devon Sound for here there was food aplenty for them. Seals, narwhals, fish and walrus in the sheltered strait. It was Sunday, a blazing sunny day in September when staring at the white snow would hurt. Michael woke to the terrible animal sounds. He scrambled to dress and in his doorway was stopped by the scene below him. From that small rise he saw only three colours, the blue of the sky and darker blue of the sea, the white of the Bylot’s snow mountains and the spreading blot of bright red in the water as the whales moved through the sound, killing all in their path. This was the best hunting for the settlement. Twice a year. The seals and walrus driven on shore were helpless and many. With lance or rifle, the natives could easily move among them for they would not return to the water under any circumstances and they moved so clumsily on land. Fergus had described the upcoming scene to Michael, told him that his new people would be at their happiest and most expansive any day now as they butchered and gutted and skinned and chewed and danced and laughed with shiny bloodstains at their lips and on their parkas. But this fall Sunday would be different. Michael woke to the yelps of the sea mammals. No gunshots, no shrill human giddiness. Fergus and he rounded the point and saw the natives lining the shore with rifles and spears in hand. In front of them, on the shoreline, Reverend McItrick stood, his arms outstretched, not welcoming but barring them from going to the water’s edge. Michael was dumbfounded. Fergus reached to grasp his arm but Michael slipped clear and strode towards the crowd. “What the hell are you doing?!” Michael demanded loudly of McItrick. “It is Sunday and this is work. They know they cannot work on Sunday.” “They will starve…you old fool!” Shutt cried. Michael grabbed a .22 rifle from Inukshuk and marched along the stony shore, the only sounds the clattering smooth stones as the worn sealskin boots slipped with each step. And the animals yelping on the shore “Corporal! I have no choice! These people need to understand the laws of God!” bellowed McItrick. Michael said nothing in return, instead focused on a large adult seal struggling up the rocky beach, heaving itself on the round rocks and sliding slightly backwards. Shutt got to within five feet, snapped the rifle to his shoulder, barely aimed at the animal’s head and fired. The shot echoed around the mountain bowl as life rippled out of the seal’s body. Michael looked back at the men motionlessly dotting the shore a hundred yards away. “And it’s constable!” he yelled back, then turned to the animals, walking and shooting ten or eleven seals, and walrus. So angry was he that it was only by the sixth or seventh kill that he realized how easily, how randomly he was taking life from those who thought they were safe. And his gun shook but he kept reloading the single shot rifle. One seal in front of him struggling out of the water, slithering and thrashing on an ice lip and he aimed again. Then the killer whale struck from that shallow sea, caught the seal in the hind, crushing the spine and gulped and one cry and the seal was engulfed and the black and white killer slid back into the red sea. Its dead black eye not twenty feet from Shutt. Michael returned to the village and the men and McItrick still standing on the shore. “Congratulations…constable. You have fed the dogs very well. These men will not dress the animals today and there will be little left of them by tomorrow. Go ahead…ask them.” There was a smugness in the old reverend’s voice and on his face that Michael wanted to dislodge with the smooth butt of his rifle. Michael tried to prompt the men, speaking his few words, gesturing with his knife. They shook their heads and hung them, pointing to McItrick. Finally, an idea. “McItrick. Is standing all night against God’s laws?” “No…of course not…” said the reverend whose eyes had started to brighten as Shutt’s plan dawned on him. “Then tell them!” McItrick spoke in their language, gesturing down the coast to where the animal bodies lay, then mimicking a sentry, standing stiffly at attention and slapping his sides with his sealskin mitts. One by one, the Eskimos brightened and smiles exploded on their faces and they trooped off along the shore, flapping their straightened arms against their hips. The two white men watched them disappear around the point then, together, turned back to their buildings “This old fool must write a report,” said McItrick. “So will this constable,” countered Michael quickly. “Let them say the same things?” offered the priest. “This day worked out alright.” “Yes, it did. But I’ll have to think about what I’ll say.” “Well, I don’t. Constable Shutt, understand me when I tell you that I could not care less about your beliefs or lack of them. But these people, they want to have faith. And faith is the same every day. You accept it all and at all times. Not when it suits you.” “They will not starve will I am here.” “Of course, they will! Or drown or freeze or be shot or die of white man diseases that we brought but can’t cure.” “Not today,” Michael growled and walked back to the detachment where Fergus was reading at his desk. He looked up, over his half glasses as Michael removed his coat. “Thanks for all the backing out there, Sarge,” Michael said. “You looked like you had the situation in hand.” “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” Michael admitted. “I said: you looked like you were in control. That’s usually enough.” Early Monday morning, Michael walked back along the shore to where the carcasses lay. The dogs had been kept at bay, not an easy task with the packs of howling, hungry huskies. The laughing and cutting had started. Blood and bluish white guts lay on the stones. The natives looked up at him and smiled. Inukshuk, kneeling over a carcass, deftly sliced into a bull seal and removed the animal’s liver, gave it to Michael. That evening the feasting was in full swing. The natives told stories of standing all night, one man for each carcass, spelled by their wife or maybe their children and they would imitate a guardsman as surely as any Beefeater. Stories that for years, maybe decades would be passed around, embellished. Michael, through Inukshuk, instructed the natives to store as much meat as they could ahead of the coming winter. But they didn’t. Michael would learn they never did.