The boy soon found himself slipping into a routine. Though he had not yet touched a knife and the sight and smell of butchered whale still troubled him, he gradually became accustomed to working on the deck. He still hated the job, though. Each time a new whale was brought on deck he felt such sympathy for the carcass it was difficult for him to just stand there as Dan sliced out the eardrum and his father winched off the blubber. Each time a piece was ripped from the belly the boy winced and pictured the winch attached to his own stomach.
He kept a constant eye on Harry, who usually worked on the opposite side of the deck. He kept the whetstone he’d stolen in his pocket and whenever his eyes met Harry’s he would think of it. If his father asked to use it to sharpen his blade, the boy would feel sick with anxiety as he held out the stone, sure his father would discover his deception. His father and Harry avoided each other as much as possible and the whole deck seemed thankful for it. Still, the boy dwelled on how quickly the violence had escalated before, and feared Harry would approach him and simply swipe a flenser across his stomach and watch his innards pool near his feet and laugh. Nothing his father could do would stop such swift retribution and he would be dead with his mother in the afterlife.
On the deck the boy watched the horizon as a breeze struck. A hand rested on his shoulder and the boy turned. ‘Here,’ his father said, and handed the boy a knife. It was sticky with blood and looked razor sharp up close.
‘What do I do?’
‘I want you to help Marshall here cut up the blubber.’
‘Into squares?’
‘Yeah.’
The boy nodded and regarded the blade. He kneeled beside Marshall, careful with his knife, and Marshall said, ‘You know what you’re doing?’
The boy shrugged. ‘I’ll just copy you.’
‘You gotta be quick about it, the pace we work.’
‘I know,’ the boy said.
When the next piece of blubber was peeled from the whale they shuffled over to it and kneeled before it as though in prayer. The boy watched Marshall work. His movements were quick and deft as he sliced each piece into precise squares. Before the boy could say a word, Marshall said, ‘Get in here. Start on the other end.’
The boy complied, but he was much slower than Marshall, and he had to keep looking up to make sure he had estimated the dimensions correctly. He had never touched the blubber before. It was like jelly: slimy, smelly, wobbly jelly. Hard to pin down, like eggshell in yolk. He made only a few cuts before Marshall had reached him from the other end and finished his work for him. He hadn’t managed a single square. Marshall said nothing, but the boy could read the contempt in his eyes as he shoved the squares he had formed into the boiler hole.
While he worked the boy thought about Albert and how the dog might fare on this island. He also thought of how he had changed since coming to the island and wondered if his mother would have still recognised him. When he looked up from his task he noticed Melsom had appeared on deck and was standing next to his father chatting. He was wearing tan shorts the same as his father’s and gumboots. He was pointing at the boy. The boy felt his stomach drop at this and knew he had been discovered: they’d seen the whetstone, his father had figured it out, he was to be cast out.
The boy stood, terrified, and walked over. Melsom greeted him with a smile that warped his beard. ‘You on the knife now?’
The boy nodded and then noticed his father’s narrowed eyes. ‘Dad just gave it to me today,’ he said. ‘To learn. I only just started.’
‘Right,’ Melsom said. He looked at the boy’s father and raised his eyebrows. ‘You sure about putting him on the knife, Walter?’
His father nodded, which lifted the boy’s heart. ‘He’s been doing well, helping with the bones. He had a few weeks on the hose. Thought it was time to start him on something small.’
‘And Marshall’s double-checking everything?’
‘Yeah,’ his father said.
‘Well,’ Melsom said, ‘best get back to it, son. Keep up the good work.’
The boy, dismissed, returned to his task. The knowledge that his theft remained undetected did nothing to silence the churning of his guilt. Like choppy water in his gut. Despite Melsom’s praise and his father’s pride, the blubber became even more sticky, trickier to handle. The boy exerted what remaining energy he had, and finished his shift with the other men. He ate and showered and tried his best to fall asleep quickly.
The next day the men were eating in the mess hall, the noise so loud the boy had to crane his neck to better hear what his father was saying. His father leaned forward and shouted something about the boats and Phil, across the table, sat back in his chair and nodded solemnly.
Then Melsom stood up and shouted, ‘Right!’ and the men slowly quietened. He took a moment, looking down, before he spoke.
‘I’m sure by now you’ve heard the planes,’ he said, though the boy had not noticed them. ‘They’ve been doing their job, working hard, long hours, but there’s still less whales here than we would’ve liked. You may have noticed there’s been fewer coming in each shift.’
The men murmured then hushed again.
‘You boys haven’t been meeting your shift quotas, which hasn’t happened before. So we’re going to be lowering the quota to five whales per team per shift.’
Renewed murmurs at this, and it took some time before the men fell silent. His father said not a word but continued to stare at Melsom.
‘And we’re going to be sending out another plane. Now, I don’t care if you make that quota in the first hour. When you’ve met the quota, you clock off. I can’t keep paying you lot to drink coffee. Yeah?’ He paused, took a breath. ‘This season might last a little longer, so whatever you need to do to make allowance for this – call your family or whatever – make sure you do it. The phone in the office is always available. You need to be ready to stay an extra month this year, maybe two, which might lead right through Christmas. I know this bloody grates, but it’s the way its gotta be so we all come out with a decent cheque at the end.’
The men reacted to this with groans and angry mutters.
Melsom waited for quiet before he spoke again. ‘Keep a good attitude about it. This is the industry we work in. We’re doing our best. We’re going to have rough spots. Keep working hard and we’ll be out of here soon enough.’
He looked as though he might continue, but instead he sat down and stared at his empty plate.
The men resumed their chatter and it seemed as though the anger had dissipated, or at the very least been buried until a later time. The boy, at the mention of the season being extended, had started breathing harder. He knew his father had normally been away four or five months a year and already felt deeply afraid that he might not survive until that time. That his father would be travelling home on that boat with the boy’s own carcass towed behind. After his triumph at being able to last a whole shift, he had almost started to feel like he might make it through the whole season. Now, knowing the season might go right through Christmas, the boy knew for sure he was in purgatory. Each day the same. Each day. Not a single day of rest. The boy took a mouthful of the meat on his plate, still breathing hard, and looked up at his father.
Phil said from across the table, ‘Well, that’s a bugger, eh?’
‘It’s not that bad,’ his father said. ‘People acting like some bloke got shot. Could be worse.’
‘Never happened before, though.’
‘I know.’
‘So maybe that’s it? For whaling I mean. Maybe we’re done.’
His father shook his head and swallowed. ‘It’s just a mongrel season. If the numbers were dwindling, if there weren’t as many, it would’ve decreased gradually. We’ve had a sudden drop. So it’s probably something to do with the temperature of the waters. Or maybe the Japs have been getting more down in the Antarctic, scared the rest off. Who knows?’
The boy said, ‘The Japs?’
‘The Japanese hunt whales down in the Antarctic before we can get to them,’ his father said. ‘Bloody stupid, too.’
‘Why?’
‘The whales store up blubber while they’re down there for their journey north, to breed. We get ’em on the journey, so they’re as plump as they get. The Japs hunt ’em all through, so no telling how much blubber’ll be on them. Waste of good whale.’
The boy looked at Phil, who was cutting into his meat.
Phil said, ‘Normally plenty to go around but, hey, Walt?’
‘Yeah. Normally.’
‘Anyway. Who knows, right?’ Phil pointed at the boy’s plate with his fork. ‘How’s the whale, Sam?’
The boy looked down and swallowed the meat in his mouth. ‘This is whale?’
Phil laughed. ‘Tastes like steak, doesn’t it?’
His father said, ‘They serve whale steaks in here sometimes, just for fun. I’ve never liked the taste, myself.’
The boy looked at the meat on his plate and lifted an edge with his fork. It looked like beef. He cut off another bit and chewed. Before, in his ignorance, he had not tasted the ocean, but now he knew what it was the salt and brine of the ocean was more apparent. The steak was thick and chewy, but tasted okay. His new knowledge made it hard to eat, though. He pushed his plate away before he was finished.
Phil laughed so hard when he saw this that some of the men at a nearby table turned to see what was so funny. ‘What’s the matter, mate?’ Phil asked. ‘No good now?’
‘I was finished anyway.’
‘Sure you were,’ Phil said, and winked.
The boy still did not like being teased. He looked at his father for his reaction, but his father just chewed and said nothing.
The boy went to fetch a cup of coffee to escape further mockery, and took his time about spooning in the granules. When he returned, the conversation had shifted.
Phil was saying, ‘By the sound of things we might be getting a little more downtime this season. Might have to start hunting again. Can’t remember when we last had time off here?’
‘Normally too busy,’ his father said. ‘Four years ago?’
‘Yeah, maybe. You want to come hunting, Sam?’
‘Sure,’ the boy said immediately, then regretted it. He’d been so thrilled by the invitation he’d forgotten what hunting would actually entail.
‘Great,’ Phil said. ‘We just hunt pigs here, nothing serious. But it can be good fun in the dunes.’
His father said nothing but regarded the boy while chewing his whale, raising his eyebrows in question. The boy refused to answer.
The three men left the mess hall and stood out in the breeze beneath the cloudless sky and looked at the stars. His father turned to watch the men still working on the deck and said to the boy, ‘You want to see a movie? We have time before we start.’
‘Where?’ the boy asked. ‘Here?’
His father smiled. ‘They screen movies here sometimes. Let’s go see what’s on. You coming, Phil?’
‘I think I might try to fit in a nap, boys, but I’ll see you on the deck.’ Phil raised a hand and walked away.
His father put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and together they followed an old path around the mess hall. In the dark it was hard to see the leaves before they slapped into his face. They came to a room at the rear of the hall and entered.
There was a movie already playing, bathing its audience in a wash of light as they leaned back on plastic chairs. The air was cold and the boy saw an air-conditioner at the back of the room pumping chill despite the cool evening. They sat down beneath it, facing the screen. The movie playing was The Magnificent Seven. The boy had seen this film already the year before with his mother. He had never seen a film with his father before and found the man already removed from him. His mother had sat close beside him and whispered things to him, explaining the parts he might not have understood. His father maybe had more respect for him, or less empathy. In one scene a little boy told Charles Bronson that his father was a coward and Charles Bronson said all fathers were brave because they carried responsibility.
It was during this scene that his father leaned over and whispered to the boy, ‘Did I ever tell you how I lost my fingers?’
In the dark the boy shook his head.
His father leaned closer and whispered, ‘I lost ’em in New Guinea. Bloody stupid it was, too. Why I probably don’t talk about it much, I guess. It wasn’t during combat, or anything like that.’ He shook his head. ‘I slipped, fell, cut my fingers on a tree branch when I tried to catch hold of myself. And then I didn’t get it checked out. Bloody stupid. Just being stubborn. Cuts got infected and by the time I got ’em seen to they had to come off.’ The boy saw his father clench his broken hand.
His father looked up. ‘Thing is, mate, you don’t hear me going on about it. I could spend my time here complaining about my fingers, how it hurts to even grip the knife, but I don’t. I just get on with what needs to be done. That’s what a man does. Now I watched you when you started here, and before that as well, and you’d complain about every little thing. But here you’ve been keeping your head down, just doing what needs to be done, doing as you’re told. I wanted you to know I’d noticed.’
The boy knew that this was as close to affirmation as his father would come. He looked at the man, whose eyes were still fixed on the screen. In the flickering projector light his face looked monstrous as the shadows played across it.
After a moment the boy asked, ‘Are you going to lose your job because of the fight?’
His father shook his head almost imperceptibly. ‘Don’t be stupid, mate. We sorted it out. He’s not working our shift anymore.’
‘Does Harry hate you?’
‘Probably. It doesn’t matter.’
The boy thought about this. Maybe his father was right and it didn’t matter.
The two of them watched the rest of the film and enjoyed the final shootout, but the boy felt sad when each gunman passed. Giving up their lives for a cause was a noble but silly thing. No blood need be shed at all.