Lorna Sinclair was late. Not that her partner, the tall, muscular Sam Murphy, minded. Greenland was her passion; he was just along for the ride. But what a ride. Standing on a wooden dock in the old part of Nuuk, Greenland’s capital city, Sam lifted his square chin to face the onshore wind. He shivered a little as the cool wind blew in off a couple of large icebergs just beyond the pleasure boat harbour. Icebergs were a seldom sight in the Bitterroot area of Montana. The very thought brought a smile to Sam’s lips as the sun reflected off the icebergs, of which there were several more of various shapes and sizes further out to sea. If he squinted and stared at the bergs through his eyelashes, Sam could almost convince himself that he was looking at woolly maggots, his word for the sheep that had infested much of Montana. But of even more interest was the man working on an outboard motor in a dirty and patched narrow boat at the end of the dock. Not one to ignore someone in need, Sam strolled down the dock towards the man and his boat. Lorna was late, after all. And, knowing Lorna as he did, Sam figured he had plenty of time.
“And she knows where to find me,” Sam whispered, smiling at the thought of helping someone out in Greenland, just like he did back in his hometown outside of Missoula. Sam waved when the man looked up, suddenly curious that the man wore a police jacket, albeit a dirty one. “Do you need a hand?”
The man tilted his head back to look up at Sam. Never mind that Sam stood on the dock. At six foot six he towered over the Greenlander in the boat. Sam waved again and then pointed at the outboard motor the man was working on.
“Do you need a hand?” he said. “I’m pretty good with engines. Actually, I can fix most anything. If you like…” Sam paused, remembering that the man might not speak English. “I can help.”
“It’s almost fixed,” the man said in halting English.
“Okay.” Sam looked at the man’s boat and said, “What about the rest of it?” He pointed at the bow. “You’ve got a split in the hull right there. And…” He pointed at another spot, closer to where the man sat on the stern seat. “Another. Just there. It wouldn’t take much to plug them before you head out.”
“Plug them?” The man frowned, and Sam used his hands to explain.
“You know,” he said, pressing his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Stuff something into it to stop the water coming in.”
“The water does not come in,” the man said.
“You’re sure?” Sam crouched on the dock and reached out to steady himself on the bow of the boat. He looked at the water sloshing inside the boat and then lifted his head to catch the man’s eye. “You’ve got about an inch of water there, friend. If the sea didn’t come through those holes, then I’d say you’ve got another leak somewhere.”
The man shrugged and said, “It will not sink.”
“Maybe not,” Sam said. “But we could drag the boat up on the beach over there.”
He turned to point at a small sandy beach beneath a rack of Greenland skin-on-frame qajaqs in front of an old yellow building with a black roof. Sam remembered that Lorna had told him yellow buildings were medical centres, although Sam didn’t think the building was a hospital any longer, and that it hadn’t been for some years. The area was like a living museum, with the famous, if not infamous, statue of the Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede, founder of the city. Sam shook his head at the amount of information he had gleaned and remembered from the flyer he picked up in the hotel lobby and then turned back to the man in the boat.
It was, Sam admitted, difficult for him to just ignore the simple things that could be done to fix the man’s boat. And neither was it in Sam’s nature to not offer his assistance when someone so clearly needed it. Another look at the man – as casual as Sam could get away with – revealed deep brown eyes set in a slightly weathered face. The man’s hair was thick and black, but flecked with salt, as were his clothes and boots. He had, Sam guessed, returned from the sea when the outboard engine began to fail. And, on closer inspection, Sam could imagine why it had failed. It was all he could do not to tut when he saw what looked like bailing twine wrapped around a sawed-off broomstick handle used to extend the tiller, and stiff metal wire securing the cover on top of the motor.
And then he spotted the rifle.
It was all Sam could do not to curse.
The rifle – a small calibre .22 saloon rifle – had a rusty barrel, a battered stock, and the sling was made of… Sam shook his head when he spotted even more bailing twine. He started to speak, lips moving, only to stop when he caught the man looking at him.
Sam tried a different tack.
“Say, I was wondering, are you a hunter?”
“I hunt,” the man said.
Sam took another look at the man’s jacket, nodding when he spotted blood stains in the weave, as if the man might have butchered or dressed a carcass, or whatever the hell they did to game in Greenland, while wearing the jacket.
A police jacket.
It didn’t make sense. But, while the boat was clearly in need of repair, Sam could just about let that go, even though it bothered him when people didn’t take care of their property. He owned properties, and he took care of them.
The boat was one thing, but as a collector of firearms, of which Sam had more than a few, he simply could not let the rusty rifle with the bailing twine sling slide without comment. The man followed Sam’s gaze to the rifle and tugged a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He offered one to Sam, and then lit one for himself when Sam declined. Sam watched as the man rolled the cigarette into a gap between his teeth in the side of his mouth. The man stuffed his hands into his pockets, parting his lips once in a while to release puffs of smoke from his mouth as he looked at Sam.
“Do you hunt?” the man asked, cigarette still clamped between his teeth.
“I have hunted. I mostly just collect guns,” Sam said. “I have quite a few already, but I’m always on the lookout for something interesting.” Sam’s gaze drifted back to the rifle, and he pointed at it. “Erm, would you mind?”
“Hmm,” the man said, and Sam guessed that was a yes. And then the man plucked the rifle from where it lay on a coil of oily rope. He worked the bolt and ejected a small bullet, which he pocketed, and then again, to make sure the rifle was empty. He handed the rifle to Sam and then tucked his hands back into his pockets.
“You shoot much with this?” Sam asked, grimacing as he rubbed rust off the barrel with his thumb.
“Seals,” the man said.
“You can hit a seal with this?”
“Iiji,” the man said, which Sam also guessed meant yes. “Anything bigger and the sealskin will be ruined.”
“Right,” Sam said, wondering what the man meant by ruined. He tugged the rifle into his shoulder and stood, sighting on the nearest iceberg. “And how do you hunt seals?”
The man waited for Sam to lower the rifle and then explained about the need to empty the seal’s lungs of air, forcing it to surface often.
“When it comes to the surface,” the man explained. “You fire the gun and make the seal dive on a shallow breath. You keep doing this until you are close enough to shoot it.”
“Close enough?”
“Very close,” the man said. “You have to be fast to reach the seal before it sinks.”
“After you’ve shot it?”
“Iiji,” the man said, puffing another cloud of smoke out of the side of his mouth.
“And you can do that with this rifle? In this condition?”
“What condition?” the man said.
“Well,” Sam said, turning the rifle in his large hands. “The rust for a start. The barrel needs a bit of work. Then, it might be cosmetic, but really, the stock could use some TLC.”
“TLC?” the man said with a frown.
“Right…” Sam nodded. “Tender Loving Care,” he said. “TLC. A bit of sandpaper, some varnish.” He looked up and grinned. “Good as new in no time.”
“Hmm,” the man said.
Sam took a long breath and then sighed, louder than he intended. The man looked at him. Smoke from the man’s cigarette drifted up to Sam, tickling his nose as he wondered what else he had to say, or how differently he might say it to get the man to understand, or even just agree that, if not his boat, or the outboard motor, then, at the very least, his rifle needed some attention. Sam felt the familiar twist of something in his gut, that ugly thing that often caused him to say something that, while right and justified, wasn’t always appropriate. It wasn’t that he had a problem with people not being able to fix or maintain their equipment or possessions, but he quickly lost respect for those who ignored the need to do so.
But when it came to the man in the boat, there was something about him that made Sam think he had earned a certain measure of respect, even if Sam struggled to see why.
“There are whales out there,” the man said. He finished his cigarette and stuffed the butt back into the crumpled packet. “Would you like to see them?”
“Now?” Sam said.
The man nodded.
“In this boat?”
“Iiji,” the man said.
Sam tapped the stock of the rifle as he thought about it. He looked along the dock, wondering how long Lorna might be, but, again, knowing that she could always call him if she needed him. He looked at the boat, stared at the inch of water beneath the thwart seat, and knew he had no reason getting into the boat with the man with the dirty jacket and the rusty rifle, even if he was a police officer, something Sam struggled to believe.
And yet.
Sam nodded as he considered showing the man why he might want to fix the hole in the hull, find the leak, and repair the motor. Clearly, he couldn’t convince him while standing on the dock, but the man would struggle not to accept Sam’s offer of help when he pointed out the leaks, or when smoke poured out of the outboard motor. It was, perhaps, the furthest Sam had ever gone to convince someone that they needed his help, but as Lorna was running late, and he had nothing better to do, it seemed like a good idea.
“And there are whales?” he said, and the man nodded. “Well, hell, let’s do it,” he said. Sam handed the man his rifle and then climbed into the boat.
The man secured the rifle beneath the gunwale on the port side of the boat in a sling fashioned with a creative twist of more bailing twine. But, before Sam could comment, the man put him to work, nodding at the painter securing the boat to the dock. Sam untied it as the man lifted the cover of the motor and replaced a spark plug with another from his pocket. The man secured the cover with the wire, and then, pulling the choke out just a little, started the motor with a single pull of the starting handle. He adjusted the choke, pumped a little more fuel from the bladder through the tube, and then clicked the motor into reverse.
“Sit there,” he said, pointing at the port side of the thwart seat in the middle of the narrow boat. “Don’t move.”
“I won’t move,” Sam said. Although when the boat heeled over to port, he wanted to.
The man stood in the stern, squaring his feet on the deck and shifting his balance to trim the boat as he gripped the broomstick tiller. Sam looked at the crack in the hull on the starboard side of the boat and realised it was far above the waterline. The man had used Sam’s weight to lift the crack out of the water. He grinned when he caught Sam’s eye.
“Yeah, okay,” Sam said. “I see what you did there.”
“Hmm,” the man said, which Sam guessed was a grunt of satisfaction, but without a trace of the I told you so he might have expected from someone else in the same position.
The man was a puzzle. He had accepted Sam’s criticism without comment while quietly declining his help. And when Sam persisted, instead of getting angry, he had invited him to sail out to see the whales, something Sam knew would cost him a pretty penny if he booked a whale safari through one of the tourist companies.
And then, as the sea became a little choppy, the man throttled up, lifting the bow, and ridding the boat of the inch of water as it escaped through a small valve at the stern of the boat.
“Clever,” Sam said as the last of the water drained away. He pointed at the rifle and said, “And I suppose if we see a seal, you’ll hit it in the eye with one shot. Am I right?”
The man shrugged, but the twitch of his lips was enough to convince Sam that the man was a keen shot and knew how to get the most out of his rusty rifle. Keeping a rifle clean at sea in a small open boat was a challenge, and Sam guessed it would take too long to pull the rifle from a scabbard if the man spotted a seal. Better to risk a rusty rifle than miss a meal, he supposed.
And there it was.
In the space of less than five minutes, the man had addressed each of Sam’s concerns, proving either through practical necessity, or superior boatmanship, that he knew what he was doing, and earning Sam’s respect as he did so.
Sam laughed and then stuck out his hand. “Sam Murphy,” he said, grasping the man’s hand in a firm grip. “And if you don’t mind me asking, who the hell are you?”
“Maratse,” the man said. “David Maratse.”
“Well, David,” Sam said, with a last, and respectful squeeze of Maratse’s hand. “I’ve got to hand it to you. Your rifle should be decommissioned, and your boat would never, and I mean never, pass even a cursory inspection from the Coast Guard, but you know what you’re doing, and…” Sam stopped talking as Maratse throttled back. He looked in the direction Maratse pointed and then took a long breath. “Whales,” he said, exhaling with a soft shush of breath.
“Iiji,” Maratse said, as he turned the boat to follow them.
The End