“It’s not so bad,” Don said quietly, behind the struggling Germans’ backs, “at least you got all that morphine down there.  Maybe you can keep him out for the whole cruise.”

He thought that was hilarious and laughed openly.  “You karate chop him, or something?  Like, you know, the Karate Kid?”

I didn’t answer.

“You gotta stop beating people up,” he went on, “somebody’s going to get the idea you’re not an anthropology lecturer at all.”

When the Mate was isolated on his back aboard a gurney in the infirmary, I went to work.   The doctor watched, as closely as he could with his ancient eyes, my operation on the Mate, and then my sedation of the man.  Borman would wake the following morning with a bad headache and a bunch of poorly tied stitches in his skull.  With any luck at all, he’d also have little memory of what had happened.  And he would need somebody to take his stitches out.  At least that’s how I hoped it would all play out.

“We headed on into Providenya?” I asked the doctor.  He shook his head.

“No, we’re going into Gambell Spit first.  It’s on the tip of St. Lawrence Island.  Best carvings in the world are done there.  They harvest Baleen Whales.  The Baleen and the bones are wonderful.  Our passengers will want to buy stuff.  They’ll also want to see the dances.  Fake dances, or so everyone says you said.”  I washed up and dried my hands.  Russia just kept on eluding me.

“Not one item,” I snarled at the old kleptomaniac.  “Not one carving, reindeer skin, or anything else.  You understand me?” I waited.  He answered, his volume almost too low to hear.

“Okay.”

I was relieved at his response, although not filled with a sense of deep belief.

“And you owe that guy’s wife back on the island six hundred bucks.  You’re going to send it from Gambell, so make out a check.”  The doctor tightened up, as if I had stuck him with something, but he didn’t argue.

After changing in my cabin and checking for the gold nuggets, which were still there, I pocketed my Leica en route to the lower deck exit portal.  I tossed the mate’s knife on top of the gold before leaving. The passengers were already ashore.  I couldn’t find a life vest until Benito handed me one.  We squared off in the narrow loading area.

“Tonight,” she promised.  “I will see you tonight, in my cabin, after you finish your cute little speech to the passengers.  Not the bar slut’s cabin, but mine. We’ll discuss cruise business.”  I stared at her thick bulk, blocking my departure.

“I’ll be there,” I surrendered weakly, wishing I had the figurines from Marlys’ cabin, once more.   Benito was more threatening and more dangerous than a drunken first mate, and handling her would take a lot more skill.

Don showed up, huffing and puffing.  He had a life jacket.  I realized that the experienced pro kept his in his cabin.  Henceforth, I would do the same.  Benito gave way.  Filipe orbited and then came gliding into the side of the ship.  Once aboard, we sped toward a bleak shoreline, the waters flat because of our position in the island’s lee.

“How’s Dutch?” I asked, over the roar of the outboard.

“He’s recovering under feminine care,” Filipe answered.

I looked at him, my eyebrows raised.

“Don’t worry,” he laughed, “She’s mine!”  His assurance did nothing to calm my fears or assuage my misgivings about involving Dutch in anything regarding the mission.

Gambell Spit is made of stones.  The same horrid little stones we’d encountered along the shores of Aguiak Island.  This time, natives waited for us while sitting on four-wheeled ATVs.  The vehicles had great fat tires, which permitted them to ride atop the stones.  Nobody walked far on Gambell Spit, as the entire place was set atop a thick layer of stones.  ATVs were everywhere.  Gambell’s single unnamed town consisted almost entirely of metal shacks that all the inhabitants lived, worked, and carved inside them for most of the year.  Even the Russian Orthodox Church was made of metal siding.

Along one shore was a work-up of old whalebone shelters.  They had animal parts strewn all over them, left there to dry for later consumption, I figured.  Or maybe to make it look like that, for tourists.  In my life experience, native cultures gave very little reality to anyone not of their own tribe.  Don climbed onto the back of one of the ATVs and I on a second.  Our native drivers kidded one another, and then took off.

The ride was wild.  The vehicles careened over the tops of the loose stones, following well-worn trails.  Every once in a while, the drivers jumped the machines out of the ruts and into the air.  They found the exercise extremely gratifying.  I found it considerably less so.  As we plummeted down to the gathering of shacks and waiting clumps of passengers, the driver of my ATV veered off.  He headed for what looked like the most fortified building on the spit.  It was barely separated from the rest of the dwellings.  We skidded to a stop in front of the place.

A man stood outside its steel door.  He was wearing a uniform.  The door behind him was painted with the words “Gambell Sheriff,” in gold on a black background.  My ATV roared off, the native on it whooping and driving away manically.  I stood and looked at the sheriff.  He motioned me toward him with one curling index finger.  I noticed, when I got closer, that his name tag said ‘Maxwell.’

 “Oh shit,” I breathed.

Sheriff Maxwell and I sat on either side of his old cast-off military desk.  He laughed heartily when I inquired, nervously, about whether he was related to Customs Agent Maxwell of the Department of Immigration.

 “You’re supposed to be the anthropologist, and you can’t tell the difference between an Aleut and a Yupik?” he scolded.

I knew Immigration Agent Maxwell was not of visible Eskimo heritage, and I said so, knowing that the sheriff was toying with me or manipulating me to gain control of the conversation.  As with American Indians, many Eskimos look completely Caucasian. His next question moved us beyond small talk.

“Where’s the doctor?   He always comes ashore.  Why’s he still on the ship?”

I looked back at the man, not answering.  Benito was the cruise director; she was responsible for who went ashore, and the sheriff would know it.  Why had I been smuggled off to his office for questions about the doctor instead of normal inquiries being directed to her?

“Do you need medical care, of some sort?” I asked, innocently, emanating as much concern as I could generate sitting in a law enforcement officer’s cubicle on a throwaway Alaskan island, where he had the power of some old country king.

“Coffee?” the sheriff said, evading my question.  I nodded with a smile, going along with the strange communication exchange we were engaged in.  He poured two cups of thick black ‘cop’ coffee, which I knew to be bad without even tasting it.  I sipped anyway.  Normally, I took cream, and some of that fake yellow sweetener, but I didn’t want to break away from our stilted exchange.  So many complexities had arisen during the expedition cruise; I needed to figure out which part of that amorphous mess I was now entangled in.

We silently drank coffee together.  I knew that the one of us who spoke first would place himself in a weaker position.  I wondered if he knew that and was waiting as patiently as I was.   A full minute passed.  He was the one who’d called me in. He needed something from me.  I might need something from him, but that would come along later, if at all.  I was willing to wait all day.

“Where is the thieving bastard?” he finally ground out, his voice low in whispered anger.

I hoped my relief was not visible.  I sipped more of the terrible coffee, as I wasn’t done stonewalling.  Sheriff Maxwell lowered his own cup to his desk, and then leaned forward, much as Kessler had done during our meeting earlier.

“He stole at least ten important carvings on his way through here a month ago.  These are poor, trusting people,” and he waved his arm to take in the community.

I didn’t mention anything about such a small native village of less than four hundred people being able to afford a full-time uniformed sheriff with his own equipment and facility.

“Why am I here?” I asked. “There are Yupik on Little Diomede Island. They’re the majority of the population.  Do you have relatives there?” I inquired, poking as any anthropologist might.

“We want him,” he replied, ignoring my question.  “He’s been thieving up and down these islands for most of the season.  These are poor people.  They’ve been violated for years by white men, and they need the money those carvings bring in.”

At that, I put down my cup.  “At nearly fifty grand a year, for each one of these ‘Natives,’ from government and the state oil revenues, they must have terrific expenses, I mean… to be so poor.”  I picked my coffee back up, as did he.  We smiled in unison.

“How much do you figure the missing carvings are worth?”

I couldn’t afford to keep paying off everyone damaged by the doctor’s stealing. But I knew I couldn’t afford to lose him either.  The entire cruise would come to a screeching halt while the ship docked to await another.

“Five thousand should cover it,” he said, once he realized that I fully understood what his intent was and why I was there.  “Usually, the cruise director handles the affairs of the ship.  How come that responsibility’s been shifted to you?”

It was a fair question, and an accurately uncomfortable one.  Benito had been behind my deviation to be confronted by the sheriff, not the man himself, as I initially feared.  Her knowledge of what had gone down on Little Diomede was only to be expected aboard the encapsulated social structure located inside the ship’s hull.

“Our cruise director’s indisposed, so she sent me,” I replied, while I pictured Benito sitting across from him before going berserk after being hit up for thousands of dollars in outright extortion.

But there was no risk of that; she had figured out she could simply send me in her place.

“I need to get back to the ship for supplies,” I announced, standing up.

“I have your word?” he said, holding out his hand.

“Honor among thieves?” I responded, taking his hand.

Maxwell didn’t reply, instead reaching for a portable radio on the bookcase behind him.

“One to the Zodiacs,” he said, and then put it down.  He motioned me toward the door, through which I heard the nasty high-pitched wail of one of the ATV’s pulling up outside.  He was done with me until I returned with cash.

I dismounted from the uncomfortable four-wheeler at the beach and rode with Filipe out to the Lindy.  Nobody bothered to ask what I was doing.  The passengers and crew were running around Gambell proper, like large, doubled ants aboard the nasty buzzing ATV’s.

I’d uncharacteristically locked my cabin when I’d gone ashore.  I unlocked it and stepped inside, breaking a length of thread someone had run from my bunk to the small dresser.  I leaped backwards when I felt the pressure, but it was too late, as it always was with such nearly invisible trip wires.  There was no explosion.  The ‘device’ turned out to be my own CD player.  The tripped thread turned it on before breaking.  A song began to play.

I sat on the bunk to recover from the load of adrenaline flushing itself from my system, and to think.  I recognized Johnny Cash’s voice.  “And I heard as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying come and see and I saw, and behold a white horse about a man going around taking names.”

What was their significance?  Had Botany Bay left it for me?  It might be his humor.  I hoped so, anyway.  I also thought about the chain of ‘smoke signals’ that ran up and down among the island tribes.  They knew about the doctor.  They knew something about me.  They knew about the money.  What else did they know, and what kind of problems could I expect when I tried to come home from the mission? I clicked the CD player off after the song had played, curious about what else was on the disk, but not wanting to deal with it just then.  The song was called “When the Man Comes Around,” and the words were all about vengeance.

I counted stacks of hundreds sat on my bunk.  The Agency was so bizarre sometimes.  Why new hundreds with consecutive numbers?  What kind of pea-brains were running the analysis side of that place?  I knew the answer.  Children.  Macho, attention-starved children with twisted senses of humor.  If the nation ever figured that out, there’d be more trouble than there already was.   I had to let go of that kind of thinking, for the time being, however.

I was running short of cash.  There would be no saving the doctor again.  I emptied out my little canvas bag, which I hadn’t taken ashore, and stuffed the bills inside. I thought about crinkling them up and then reflected on the man I had faced in that office.  He would see right through such an obvious attempt and only become more suspicious.  I took the small bag down to the portal where Filipe waited.  I motioned him over, grabbing one of the lines so he could approach me.  I gave him the bag with instructions. When I turned to go back to my cabin, Commander Hathoot stood blocking my way.

“Ah, the now famous anthropologist.  I would have thought to have been visited by you before now,” he said, in his smooth Lebanese manner.  I almost expected him to curl the end of his mustache, but he didn’t.

What was it about everyone with any contact with the Bering Sea?  Did they all require something from me, I wondered.

“Marlys works for me.  The entire lower crew works for me…. well, except for you staff people…you have your own problems there.  Marlys is indentured.  You understand that?”

I gave him nothing back.  No words.  No expression.  I just waited.

“She’s not going anywhere, no matter what she’s told you.  She owes twenty thousand, and she’s going to serve every bit of the three years she signed on for.”

I couldn’t help but smile upon hearing that.  On top of everything else, I was aboard a slave ship.  I wanted Hathoot to go away, which he did.  I leaned against the nearby bulkhead.  I now inferred what Marlys needed.  I had that kind of money, but it was in Kruggerrands, and they were indispensable for the mission.  I hated slavery and bondage.  I had seen so much of it in Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and even Venezuela, and had always found it abhorrent, practiced by humans who were not humans at all. They were primitive alien creatures disguising themselves as civilized. Hathoot had revealed himself to be one of those avatars. Of all on board the Lindy, he was now my lone sworn enemy.

I returned to my cabin, locked the door, and fell into my bunk.  I went to sleep instantly, not thinking of anything, not dreaming.  I awakened to the chain locker alarm, as usual.  We were pulling out of Gambell Spit.  We’d be running toward Providenya, finally, unless God had even more bizarre plans for me.  I showered and prepared to go up to the Lido, give my short lecture on the amazing Yupik culture, and begin my Mission Plan, which would start with our evening Mouseketeer Club meeting.  There was a knock on my door, hard and masculine.  I wrapped a towel around myself and then undid the deadbolt.  Dutch squeezed in.

“You’re not busy?” he asked.

I shook my head, having learned the arduous way that aboard the Lindy being naked and getting dressed were not considered ‘busy’ activities.  I went into the bathroom and shaved, for the second time that day, mostly in an attempt to wait the oversized boy out.

“You’re not mad at me?” he crooned, from his spot near my dresser.

“Nope,” I answered, shaving some cream off my face.

“I got some morphine to replace your other stuff, you know, that you had to use on that guy at St. Paul,” Dutch said, as if making an offering.

“Great,” I responded, waiting for him to get to his point.  “I’m in,” you know, “whatever it is you gotta do in Russia.”

I grunted my assent.

“Even if we have to kill somebody, I mean,” he went on.

I stuck my head around the door jamb and looked at him.  He was dead serious.  I was about to pass his comment off and then thought better of it.  The cruise had so far proved to be the stuff of a weirdly assembled B-grade movie.  There was no predicting what might happen or where anything would go.

“I understand,” I said, seriously, “I’m counting on you.”

Dutch missed my mildly sardonic tone.  People who did not or had not killed other people were notoriously good at talking about killing people but terribly bad when it came to actually doing it.

I almost fell out of the bathroom as the ship careened to one side.  I hung onto the doorknob with my shaving cream-covered hands.

“What the hell?” I gasped out.  Dutch, bracing himself with both hands between my dresser and bunk, thought my position was funny.

“We’re quartering the trough,” he laughed.  “Usually we move south, with the swells, or north against them.  The worst is riding in the trough between them.  It’s going to be a rough night.”

Between troughs I tried to get my clothes on.

“What’s on this?” Dutch said, more to himself than me.

He clicked the CD player on, then pressed rewind.  When the machine reached the end of the tape, it clicked.  The song played again, and Johnny Cash gushed forth…”There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names…and he decides who to free and who to blame.  Everybody won’t be treated all the same, there’ll be a golden ladder reachin’ down…when the man comes around.”