Flames: Salt Summary & Analysis

At the same time that Levi makes the decision to build a coffin, Karl hurries up the beach toward his home, carrying his bucket, tackle box, and rod through a strong gust of wind. He spent his day on a rock, fishing with a rod, but he considers that “angling” instead of fishing: fishing means being on the ocean, with a spear and a seal, waiting for the sign of a Oneblood tuna. Men on the north coast of Tasmania have partnered with seals to hunt Onebloods since before people started keeping records of life on the island. The men consider their seals to be the other halves of themselves. 

Many years earlier, when Karl finds his seal as a pup, they lock eyes for what feels like months. He doesn’t know if he’ll see the seal again after their first meeting, but two days later, the pup finds his boat again. Their first year of eel hunting together, they don’t catch anything—they’re too young and small, and Oneblood tuna weigh around 450 kilograms. Though killing them seems impossible, Karl knows it can be done—he grew up seeing men bringing them back to shore. During this year, Karl earns money working on fishing charter boats helping tourists to fish. After one of these trips, he sees the “McAllister matriarch”—Levi and Charlotte’s grandmother—rising from the ocean covered in crustaceans.

The next year, Karl and his seal begin to give chase to young Onebloods. One day, the seal brings back a single tuna scale; three weeks later, the seal nips a tuna and draws blood. In their third year together, Karl and the seal begin to master the choreography of a hunt, in which the seal herds the tuna upward to the surface of the water for the man to spear. This year, Karl and his seal attempt this technique many times but never succeed. Meanwhile, the seal grows larger.

Karl meets Louise on the fishing boat he works on. They discuss moving to Devonport, where she runs her business. But when Louise realizes that there’s no way Karl will move from Hawley, she moves into the cottage with him. Karl knows he wants to “do something permanent” about their relationship, but first he needs to gain his seal’s approval, so he takes Louise out on the dinghy. When the seal emerges, he stares and barks at Louise. She reaches to him and cups his head, and after a few tense moments, he barks happily and swims away. Tears stream down Karl’s cheeks.

Three months later, Karl proposes to Louise with a ring he bought after selling the first Oneblood tuna he and his seal catch. (Though Oshikawa, a Japanese wholesaler, wanted the whole tuna body, Karl only sold him the meat; he knew that the other parts of the body belonged to his seal.) After Karl and the seal catch their third Oneblood, Karl quits his job on the fishing boat. The next year they catch four tuna, and the year after they catch six. Over the next decade, they average six a year. Louise’s tourism business grows enough to allow her to rent an office, so she and Karl turn her home office into a nursery. They have two daughters together. Karl notices they’re growing older, but he doesn’t mind. 

One day, just as Karl is starting to haul a speared tuna onto the dinghy, something bumps into him in the water. He first thinks it’s a shark, but its hide is smoother than a shark’s hide, and he realizes it’s an orca. Just one orca won’t attack a seal, but soon a second and a third orca appear, followed by a whole pod of orcas. Karl begins to panic. Each orca takes a turn charging toward the seal before breaking off. The seal moves toward Karl, who realizes he’s trying to protect him. An orca’s tail throws Karl backward. When he surfaces, he sees the orcas slamming the seal against the water, breaking his body into “ragged chunks of brown-red meat.”

For months after the attack, Karl keeps hearing the clicking sound of the orcas in sounds like light switches and snapping fingers. When he hears the clicks, he remembers his seal dying. He doesn’t try to find another seal: though he knows other hunters have found successful second matches, he doesn’t have the energy, and the idea of finding another pup makes him feel sick. His daughters often find him drunk, crying at the bay. He learns that the Oneblood stocks are the lowest in a decade, and Oshikawa tells him it might just be a bad season, though perhaps the water is getting warmer, or a monsoon messed up the food chain.

Karl and Louise survive comfortably on the money they saved from Karl’s tuna sales over the years. They send their daughters to a private boarding school in Launceston, a nearby city. To keep busy, Karl takes the family on holidays. Together, they hike Cradle Mountain where they stay in Oshikawa’s cabin and visit Melaleuca, a remote southern region that delights Nicola, the elder daughter. Still, Karl can only think of his seal dying. His daughters show no interest in learning to hunt Onebloods. They prefer to fish using frozen squid as bait. Though this kind of angling bores Karl at first, he begins to enjoy it and makes a habit of it.

Back in the present, Karl battles the wind as he walks up the beach toward the cottage. He sees a young man looking through a pile of driftwood. The man is tall and looks malnourished. Karl greets him briefly, stopping when he notices the man staring at him intensely. Karl says that the branch looks good, but the man says it’s “not right.” When Karl questions this, the man explains that the wood isn’t right for a coffin. Though Karl suggests it’d be hard to make a coffin out of driftwood, the man keeps sorting through the pile. Eventually, the man introduces himself as Levi McAllister, a name that feels familiar to Karl.

When Karl gives Levi his condolences, Levi explains that nobody has died recently—he’s just getting the coffin ready for his sister (Charlotte). Karl asks if she’s sick; Levi says she’s not. Karl remembers seeing the McAllister woman emerging from the ocean years ago. He asks Levi how old his sister is. The wind dies down suddenly. Levi says she’s 23.