Yana Land

MAXWELL YANA WHISPERED a story in my head, his lips so close my ear began to thaw.  Listen here, he said, the words rattling behind his mossy teeth. I tried to swat him away, but he advanced slow and deliberate. Once upon a time, he had been like a yellow dog, eager and jumping. Now this was Yana, draggin' himself in the skin of something, in what's left of it.

We were burnin' the last of the Faith, everything but the copper hull, a few stray timbers from the stern to feed a pitiful flame. Couldn't get no real fire from it. I thrust my dead fingertips into that orange heat, watched it dance and lick at the green flesh.  

Leave off, Yana, I said. Leave me some peace. Can't ye see I'm tryin' to get warm? 

There was no warm. I don' a remember warm now, anymore. Like some thing you had as a child, you could never have again.

I've found it, he slobbered, pointing a trembling finger. Aye, the land of wild horses and fresh rivers, with enough grass to fill our bellies for weeks! Trees so far as the eye can see, an' you know what that means, don' ye? Meat! Fire!

Leave off me, won't ye? I shoved him, I did. His chest sunk so as I coulda put a hole in with my fist. His breath, stinking of bird skin, hung as a mist beclouding us both. 

We got fire, Yana, fool! I saved the last of the top-mast, see.

Nah. T'wont last. An' then what? He chewed at his fingertips, a habit all the men had taken to with a fierceness.

Whaddye care, idiot. You'll be spookin' them birds with your trap. 

Ain't no more birds, Cap'n, he said. It was the first truth he told. 

For a month or so last December, Yana and Haines stood lookout for them snow geese. They'd nestle themselves in the ground like rats, wait for 'em to get tired and land somewhere, puffing out their feathers with a sigh. Then the men'd pounce. A snow goose may fill two stomachs, more if you stretch 'em out. But Yana was right, and they never came no more, like forgetful grandchildren. Now, we just watched the sky for their feathers, falling in them graceful circles.

Why 'ont you go and look fer some, then?

You ain't heard me out. He dragged his blackened leg behind him, almost in the fire. He didn't feel nothin'. I 'ave something to tell. 

It was the third story that day, an' I thought I'd slap his slab skull, were it not I felt sorry for the ol' mate, nothing else to do but jabber to keep his mouth from freezing. He had tried his stories on Nichol and Banks, an' they walked out on the floes to escape him. 

But you 'ave to hear it, he said, easing up to me like a baby seal, all slick with grease. You simply must.

His hair was fallin' out in patches, like a cat with mange, and he walked in that teeter-totter way all the men did now, listing starboard. There were feathers stuck to his lips.

So tell it then, I said. Tell them all. And if I fall asleep dead while you tell it, don't make a spectacle of it, just close my eyes, and shove me across, over there, where the water is blackish and deep. 

Yana the numbskull, disposing of my remains. Ah, what would Nell say if she saw her sweetheart skittered across the ice by a simpleton? I'd hate to feel her heart, all chopped up. Probably searching the face of the mailman for news, small hands playing across her mouth. At night, she'd be worryin' and twistin' the hem of her sleep clothes like she was trying to restore blood to some lost limb.

My words are no good to her out here. They sit flat, at the bottom of me. When one of them glaucous gulls blows by, I'd like to try an' catch it, have it fly on back to Nell. No use putting letters in a bottle. Bottle'll sink eight feet and freeze, suspended forever. Pains me to think of 'em letters, drawings too, all salty and blurred.

Cap'n, I think you'll be liking this story, Yana said. It'll give you something to tell them folks when we return. 

Don't be tellin' jokes, I said. I ain't in the mood for no jokes. 

What jokes, sir? Yana rubbed his stomach all round n' round like. 

That bird skin don't digest too kindly. I warned 'em all against the Greenland parrots, but they ate what they could find. They have such high hopes, these fools, like this place can't crush out. They're waiting for them snow geese like Santa Claus.

You know what jokes. Telling about return. Like 'en the other day, when you says you seen a schooner? Got everyone all excited, running to the edge of them floes? M'Clure almost killed ye. Aye, the fire's dyin' out. Christ.

No jokes, sir. Not in my story. Why, don't ye want to hear? I'm talking 'bout, I found new land! Over there, where you see that ice. 

'Tis no land, imbecile. 'Tis a mirage. They call 'em fata morgana.

But I found it! I did! 'Tis the Yana Land, sir.

Ah, stop yer jawboning. I swear ye, that is an ice island. 

Yana was so excitable, the blood ran out his nose mercilessly. Clean yourself up, won't ye? I said. Yer a sight.

My head was splitting. The ice contracted, eatin' at the Faith's copper hull. Digging in. When the timbers broke, it made a terrible noise, like something tearing the world apart, and the men went out to get away from it. They kicked a ball around, or shot at bears in the distance. I had no such luxury, for a captain remains with his vessel. I stayed, and it felt like the ice was closing in on me skull.

Fire's dyin'.

It's something to draw on them maps. So as we didn't come out here for nothing. So as--

My fist slammed him down on its own. I swear to you, I didn't have the strength. Out it went, steady as a gun brig. When you hit a man who's half dead already, there's nothing at all to it. His mouth was mush, teeth loose from scurvy, gums bleedin' from before. There weren't no sound when he hit the ice.

Git up and tell it, then, I said. Tell like a real storyteller.

His face was turned away at an awkward angle, such as like he was looking for one of 'em sea pigeons. 

When I realized he was dead, I nudged him with what was left of my boot. I shoved him real slow over to the pile at the edge of the floe. I didn't say nothing-nobody said much anymore nowadays, except for Yana and his damn stories-but I looked up where the deck used to be, where there used to be a watchman, and I realized no one had seen.

None of us watched each other. They were free men, once the Faith was gone.

Yana, I thought. Ye are a lucky man. 'Tis over. But I admit a secret shame I never heard his story. 'Twas probably a better story than what has happened to us.

It's been two years since the ice stopped us, but I don't count no more. I go by absences. No more cheese. No beer, nor bread. The lemon juice ran out back when that white terrier of Finlay's disappeared with the wolves, weeks and weeks ago. I tried to grow some mustard in the hull, but it wouldn't take. In February, the salt beef was gone. In April, the first year, the dried peas. Them days weren't all that bad.

In t'beginning, we thought we had a chance. Patience. Wait out the winter, and the ice would shift. It did sometimes, bringing her up, taking her back down. Always wedged but good. We spent days chopping our way out, only to have our work undone the next morning, like 'en by some cursed ice fairy. The second summer, the ice lifted the Faith out of the water five feet, and then swung forty degrees to port. All our hopes were up. We were runnin' around a lot in them days, smashing into each other. Seemed like everything was so important, like every minute something was happenin'. I told the men to wear all their clothes, case 'en we had to leave the boat in the night, should the ice break it up. They've had on their clothes now for two years, what's left of 'em.

In this place, there is no such thing as time. You kill a walrus in the spring, eat what you can, and the rest will sit out there forever. I'm bettin' the whale that dies on the floor of this ocean is the whale who never goes nowhere. 

The first night when it happened, the men were running with their axes, and I was shoutin' orders. It got real quiet on deck, and I could hear everything. I was staring out, looking for the cracks, and I saw this chunk of ice, but it weren't no ice. Polar bear, just the head poking up, staring right at me. Them eyes, I'll never forget. Then he was gone.

Animals that used to come around got smart, got outta here. White whales. Unicorns, with them tusks poking out like corkscrews. We used to watch from the deck as they popped up through some small hole in the ice to breathe. They were so stupid they'd get themselves stuck, the hole smaller and smaller, smaller and smaller. We never could get to 'em when they drowned. Floated off somewhere, under the ice.

But we don't see nothin' now they've smartened up. Just Jimmy. 

Haines raised him by hand, from a skinny, mottled brown kit. Only animal left on this floe. You wouldn't know our straits, if ye saw that fox, scampering, biting off chunks of clothes, rotten flesh. He thinks it's all a game. He's lucky to have made it so long, with such fuzz in his head. Finlay ain't at all sentimental. He'll club him soon as he catches 'im.

Aye, the men are free men, to kill and be killed. A long time ago, they finished being themselves. Maybe when the vessel was gone. The last of the timbers. Back when they ate the dogs and the candles, and then the clothes. They walk away on the ice, and they could go anywhere, but they end up nowhere.

Fire's down to sparks. Last of the great ship, Faith of My Fathers. 

In t'beginning, I gave 'em all hard jobs. They took axes to the frozen condensation, where it'd build up from their cooking. Kept 'em filling the Faith's cracks with oakum. Put 'em in the harness and had them pull the sleds out for miles, pretendin' there was some way out. Jump jacks. Gave 'em a wolf pup to play wit.

I wish I had given something to Nell. Some baby, would grow up to be a strong man. Maybe come out one day to find me, bury me for her. Bury her one day. But she'll forget about me. It won't take long. Things happen faster there. Here, nothing breaks down.

It took a long time for the Faith to die, months on months. 'Twas not like I imagined it, from paintings and books: a great splitting of timbers, men screaming and tossed about. Nah, 'twere slow, an' we just one night walked away when there was nothing more to hope for. We just lifted our legs, calm as cranes, and abandoned her. From then on, we weren't men anymore. Just animals.

Yana started to tell his stories. Fattest woman in the world, what she has for dinner. Smallest man's shoe size. Not stories, really. He didn't know how to tell a story proper. He just liked to tell what he could, so as to feel he had something, some power. I've got one for ye! he'd shout, limpin'. Even when he fell out on the ice and got frostbite, we had to cut him, and he turned that into a story, too. One of 'em elephants got me, was what he'd say. Stomped me leg, see.

I remember one day, not so long after we got stuck, I was out walking alone on the ice, and I must 'ave had some kind of look on my face, 'cause Yana comes running out and says he wants to show me something. I thought it was another one of his stories, see. So I follow him, and he shows me this bear, a brown one, not more than fifty yards away. I got Nichol to bring the gun, and we all just lay there, bellies to the floe, with the gun on him. Must 'ave been hours. He just didn't move, I tell ye. Maybe he's dead, sir, is what Yana says. But then I look up, squint me eyes all funny like, and I realize it's a goddamn marmot, just a few yards away. It's all frozen, waiting to see what we're goin' to do. It could've waited for days like that, wonderin' if we were gonna eat it. Nichol jumped up and tried to grab it, but it was gone like that, tunneling off somewhere.

'Tis how it is here. You can't trust anything you see. I keep walking over to kick at Yana, see if maybe that's an illusion too.

Aye, Yana weren't so bad. A few months ago, I got real sick. It didn't matter to the men. They were drunk, burning off the foremast, spitting flames and blood. I thought it might be the end of me. I propped myself up against what was left of the forecastle, and closed my eyes. Tried to think of Nell, her face and feet. There was this low thumpin' sound, kind of spooky like them belukhas bumpin' their heads up against the ice to get air. I fell asleep listening to that sound. Then all of a sudden, that Yana is on top of me, dripping something on my lips. Blood from his sock. 

Drink it, sir, will ye? 'Taint your time.

It's all our time, I says. I licked my lips. The blood was warm.

How else we gonna get home? Yana asked. 

About broke my heart, poor fool. Yana had them stories. 

They say the Eskimo have stories, but I don't believe 'em. I saw them some time the first winter, and they had nothing to say. Five men Eskimos. Drifting off the floes in one of them skin boats of theirs, dressed in rags. Aye, would you look at that? I said to the men. They ain't even shipwrecked and they look as bad off as us.  

A few of the men went over to them, waving their arms. The Eskimos just stared, still as stones. Nichol took off his shirt and waved it around. 

Yana, oh he was always simple. Always had them stories that go nowhere, just fall down out of his mouth onto the snow. Don't even melt the snow. Yana kept shoutin' at 'em Eskimos, telling about his fat lady and the elephant that crushed his leg. Rainbows. He was all excited about rainbows. Triple one had arched over the boat a day before. So Yana, he just ran up and down, telling and telling.

Them Eskimos, they had nothing to say. They knew we weren't going nowhere. They just sat there in their rags, licking their red lips, chewin' their raw meat. They had them marble eyes, all glittering with light, and they watched. Just watched.