Russian Amerika

The man regarded Grisha with baleful, piggish eyes. “That is against the Czar’s law, unless you have paid the duty, of course.”

“Of course!” Grisha suppressed a grin while stowing the tackle box, which he estimated at ten kilos, with his own fishing gear.

Like this walrus ever worried about duty taxes!

Maintaining a professional mien, he slipped over the side onto the dock. “We’re late. I’ll get us underway.” Quickly, he untied both lines and stepped back aboard.

Grisha edged the boat into gear and eased the throttle forward. “Do you have a name? Other than Pig-eyes?”

The boat gently left the slip and angled toward the channel. A warm breeze rippled the water and the sky stretched bereft of clouds as far as the eye could see. A charter skipper couldn’t ask for better omens.

“I am Karpov. How long does it take to get to T’angass?”

“Depends on how much fishing we do on the way and how fast we go.” Grisha snapped his head around and stared at Karpov. “Wait a minute, I thought we were going to New Archangel.”

“There has been a change of plans. I wish to go to T’angass.”

Karpov said. “We will fish on the way back. At maximum speed, how long will it take us to get to get there?”

“Today and two more days if we don’t run into bad weather. If you’re in a hurry, why don’t you fly?”

“I enjoy the sea air. Where is the vodka?”

“In the galley.” Grisha motored slowly past the harbor patrol, careful not to show any wake. So far he wasn’t making all that much on this run, and a fine would put him in the hole, as well as add stamps to his license. Collect enough stamps and the license disappears; he loved the symmetry of Russian law.

Karpov disappeared into the cabin. Grisha decided he had a smuggler on his hands. Smuggling paid a lot better than charter fishing trips, so he would patiently wait for the proposal.

A ruble was a ruble, what the hell. His wife’s face flashed through his mind and he slapped the wheel.

No time for that now. It’s either better when I return or it’s over. Small angry teeth bit inside his gut. They chewed at him a great deal these days. He felt pissed at himself.

“Sorry I slapped you,” he murmured to the wheel, “I was aiming for someone else.”

“Do you Creoles talk to yourselves all the time?” Karpov asked as he clumped up out of the galley. The bottle of vodka looked small in his wide, beefy hand.

“I talk to my boat when the notion strikes me,” he said, edging his words with a glint of steel. Grisha forced himself calm. This wasn’t the old days, even if Kazina didn’t want him anymore. But if this tub of suet kept up this” Creole” crap there would be trouble.

“You need some diversion on your boat for your passengers. Perhaps a Creole woman, heh?” Karpov laughed and drank from the bottle.

Grisha ground his teeth. It was going to be a long trip.

The boat burbled past the breakwater and into Akku Channel. He pushed the throttle forward, Pravda’s cutwater surged up onto the step, that portion of the boat where the vee of the hull flattens into a plane for moving at high speed, and raced cleanly toward the distant tip of Douglas Island.

Grisha thought it humorous that an island in Russian Amerika bore the name of an English religious leader. But custom in the old days of exploration decreed that all nations would honor the wish of whomever named it first. British Captain George Vancouver had accurately finished what his former skipper, Captain James Cook, had started, and charted the entire southeast Alaska coast in the 1790s before Imperial Russia completely dominated the region.

The constant rumble of stamp mills faded behind Pravda. They passed the whaling station on the island, scaring up part of the large flock of seagulls scavenging scraps. The station’s stench caught them for an instant before the boat burst through the invisible miasma.

“Smells like the Creole part of town,” Karpov said.

Abruptly Grisha pulled the throttle back to neutral and Pravda’s bow dipped with the sudden loss of power. The boat drifted.

“Why do you stop?”

“There will be an understanding before I go any farther. I am the captain and owner of this boat. You are my passenger.

“Despite the fact that my father was a poor Russian laborer and my mother was a Kolosh, you will show me the respect you would for any citizen, especially a boat captain. If you do not, I will return you to port so you can find a different charter to take you south.”

“That would not be a smart thing for you to do. You would miss making a great deal of money. Also, your license might be forfeit.”

“And your superior might ask many questions why I brought you back. Perhaps he has relatives who are Creole, or works with them. The Czar’s ukase of 1968 said there would be no more prejudice because of one’s birthright. That’s nineteen years also, you should have heard about it by now. I don’t want any more bigoted shit from you.”

Karpov’s squinting eyes receded even further into his face as he took another long drink.

“Drive your boat, I will say no more about your unfortunate station in life.” As the beefy Russian lifted the bottle to his lips, Grisha pushed the throttle forward. Pravda reared like a Cossack’s horse and charged across the water. Karpov rocked back in his chair and vodka spilled down his neck and jacket front.

“You dung-eating Cre—, you ass!” Karpov shouted. “I would punish you for that, but for the fact I need to get to T’angass as soon as possible.”

Grisha ignored him; a smile flickered at the edge of his mouth. More bullshit; if he wanted to get south as soon as possible he wouldn’t have hired a small boat. His practiced eyes swept over the instrument panel and his mind ticked off the levels, amperage, RPM, and hull speed without actually thinking about them.

Kazina’s face occupied his thoughts. Her dark hair framed the high cheeks and nearly jade eyes. Lilacs always attended her.

When they married just under six years ago he knew fortune had finally smiled on him. She epitomized the crowning accomplishment of his climb back from the lowest strata of the Czar’s American possession.

The illiterate son of serfs, his father married a Kolosh woman of the Kootz-neh-wooH people from Admiralty Island. As a Creole, a person of mixed race, Grisha found himself equally shunned by the children of low-caste Russians as well as by the children of the Auk and Taku Kolosh, including his own cousins.

At an early age he learned the three essentials of survival: a quick mind, lightning fists, and fast feet. After leaving the priest’s school at fourteen, he crewed on a fishing boat. At seventeen he developed into a handsome combination of the ethnicities he represented.

Grisha’s virginity went to a pretty barmaid during an equinox party. Women in every port of the Alexandr Archipelago watched for him. His other idea of a good time usually involved a drunken fight after which his opponent had to be carried away.

One night the fight was with his own skipper. Grisha won the fight but lost his berth. The next morning he joined the Troika Guard, the “Russian Foreign Legion.”

Originally all the officers were Russian, but that had slowly changed over the years. However, all the enlisted were either minority races from the vast Russian Empire or foreigners. Never before had he been challenged on every level of his being, nor felt the degree of camaraderie, as he did in the Guard.

The Russian Army was a political beast complete with intrigue whose genesis went back centuries. The Troika Guard was tough, demanding, and received all the hard, dirty jobs. In essence, they were mercenary troopswhich suited Grisha just fine.

He loved the Troika Guard. Starting as a sub-private he learned quickly and rapidly made his way upward to command sergeant in less than five years. His men loved him.

At the age of twenty-five he received a battlefield commission as well as the Imperial Order of Valor, the second highest decoration the Russian Empire awarded her soldiers and sailors. Four years later came French Algeria and dishonor.