Scrimshaw

Some time back, I stumbled into a grim little shop in San Francisco. Windows painted black and peeling, the dusty hold uninviting. Cluttered, shadowed, it was not a place for uncertain intent. Alone in a feral display of meaningless things, I was drawn to an old glass cabinet behind the counter. On the top shelf, on black velvet gone gray and green, were two works of scrimshaw. The display, the work, the grime on the glass all spoke of years locked away. The price tags suggested generations.

A Walrus tusk carved into a storm at sea, the sound of the waves and wind nearly audible. It was lost in this dark place, unseen stunning work. Leaning behind, as much flotsam as art, fell a Sperm whale tooth lightly etched as a whale crushing a boat.

I gave twice its value against half that of my dust. Gold is the only thing that matters. Gold is the only thing that don’t matter.

If I close my eyes, there is life in the tooth. The delicate lines blind to my touch, but the sea fills my hands. This was an artist. It was not made to sell. This is his soul.

It was simple, graceful, disturbing. The marks that held the whale came from long hours of working the beasts, of running them down and taking their lives. Of pulling drowned shipmates from the wreckage. Of enduring. A whaler made this to remember who he was.

Take the hard of your life, wear down the edges, and carve what you understand into a telling shape. To remind yourself, who you are, who you were, as we also fall to the unseen.

The walls in the old Indian shafts speak as well. Where the shaft ends, a great bear rises, reaching for you. The flicking light of an oil lamp lends it life enough not to turn your back for long.

At too-low, a wolf leaps from the rock. The stone is warmer there, at the carving. Maybe nothing, maybe me, maybe something I don’t get to know, but it is warmer. I can’t say whether good or ill, but the bear spooks me more.

I can see a man cramped inside these shafts might grow fearful just trying to do his job. Close, dark, no fresh air, I’d find comfort in images I thought strong and protective. Underground, you need all the totems you can bear to keep your mind quiet.

As the oil lamp moves, the light flickers, catching on the marks, chasing shadow and light, building bits of faces from the past. All faces I know, some by their last breath. Old friends that dream with me, die with me. Maybe not just in my head. I trust what I see. They are here with me.

A hard journey through the dark, steals what normal calls a man. The ground is different. The air is different. The voices behind you mean more than you wish. Here is not here. You understand the lie of that, and the truth. No more real than a dream, and here, nightmares are real.

I set the lamp down. My hands dingy in the light, I turn them over and back. They are cracked, powdered gray, rough to the touch. Two little fingers on my right hand broke and crooked some. The first finger of my left hand, missing. Crushed and gone within the first month here. Just like the only other man I know to have stood in the Mine. The connection is not lost to me. That too is the Mine. Decades of hard work enlarged the joints and thickened the skin. Not the delicate touch needed for fine lines on a whale’s tooth, but enough to wound a rock wall bluntly.

The cramped space is uncomfortable to prospect. The low ceiling, not two steps upright for a 6-foot man, hampers movement, the mass of the rock a physical weight with every step. I see where they dug out a bit left and right, testing for copper maybe, or gold, something shiny and easy to shape. But they didn't find any. The rock don’t change here. No shifts up or down. No intrusions, no quartz, no space to gather or hide, nothing tells me to dig here. Yet they dug it all out, nearly a quarter mile all together.

Darker spots show now and again on the floor. Blood, from their knees, or their feet or hands, soaked in the rock, and turned black. They pounded for years to make this, bled for it, Why?

At the far end, my first shaft intruded, heading North from there. Where I broke into this one. Where I found this shaft. No history in the notes left behind and no name to give it save mine. Just inside the entry, heavy timbers cover an opening, a hole, a door to a place best served with ignorance. I set the timbers, biggest I had.

I count this ancient shaft new compared to what lay beneath the timbers. Maybe the Indians used it as a rite of passage. To grow from boy to man, you face fear and self and learn to walk upright as a man. To survive what lay beneath the timbers would steel your mind against the world…or break it into pieces.

I pry one timber up. Beneath is a narrow shaft that drops a hundred foot or so to rounded larger shafts…no, tunnel is better word, tunnels spreading out in several directions. Malice undirected, no voice, no eyes, no witness; as empty as my heart still beating.

I wipe the tooth clean. The splintered boat in distress, I drop the tooth down the shaft. I will call you one day Whaler.