Reckoning of Boston Jim (15 page)

≈  ≈  ≈

“And so you see Hank?”

“Is that his name? Then, yes, I saw him just several miles back. I saw an Indian graveyard as well.” Eugene says this to Gerald Duteau, the caretaker of the Spuzzum roadhouse. Duteau glances to his wife who is busy at the stove. She ladles out a plate of stew and hands it to Eugene, instructs him to eat.

“My thanks, madam. I have never smelled anything so fine,” Eugene says. He is not exaggerating. He has never been so ravenous. Still, he must concentrate on each bite so that he is not tempted to push the stew aside, so that he does not think of the half-decayed skulls, that sweet and sickening odour.

The roadhouse is a one room affair of whipsawn logs caulked with manure and straw. A greased cloth serves as a window, beaten earth for the floor. A fire cracks at the far end and throws shadows over the men already in their blanket rolls. The other men make room for Eugene at the sawbuck table. They are twelve or so all together, Oswald among them. He is picking his teeth with his knife. His boots sit beside him and his heels are bound with bloodied cloth.

“Fucking blasting,” he mutters. “Fucking boots.”

“It is not always meet to be in a great hurry,” Eugene says. “You are familiar with the tale of the tortoise and the hare?”

“No I god-blamed ain't,” Oswald says and spits into the fire.

“Ah, quite so, in any case . . .”

Duteau hands Eugene a glass of grog. “On house,” he says, and then, after a pause: “And he look at you?”

“Who? Ah, the strange Whiteman. He stared straight at me, sir, but said nothing though I called to him. I said I was a friend in various tongues, but it was as if I had disappeared. Should he be rescued? Brought back to the fold of civilization.”

“Christ's balls! He don't need fuck-what rescuing. He's gone Indian,” Oswald says.

Duteau agrees that the man has. “He is from New York, this Hank. He came up in '
58
, with maybe eight more, all green hands. Maybe he was clerk or scholar. I don't know. But his friends, they leave him behind. That in '
59
. It different then. Not like now. Now it easy. Then we have no roads, no roadhouses, no good cooking like this. And in '
58
, it worse. Some Whitemen rape the Indian women and the Indians they chop off heads and send the bodies back down river, until us men, we march up river with guns and we make a peace. And in '
59
we make own trails. In spring we go along the canyon walls like lizards because the water it toss a canoe like a leaf. The Indians they make boards narrow like hands and hang them along the cliff with the ropes of deer hide. So it is, what? A ledge, yes? But one time it break and a Mexican he fall long time, and the water swallow him and we never see him more. But of this Hank and his friends, they stay too late and winter coming. And this Hank he is sick and his friends they think he die so they leave him with a gun and water and food and go back with the not much gold they have. If they carry him they all die, maybe that what they tell him. After days the Indians come and these Indians pity this Hank and take him to their place. And this Hank he hate his friends for leaving him and he loves Indians now and he marry to one of their women and dress like an Indian and worships the spirits like an Indian.”

“And what of his eye? And their eyes?” Eugene asks.

“That winter the pox it come and kill off half the tribe and Hank he take care of them, and some live, but near all have only one eye now and some are blind and most are scarful and ugly. And they put the muck-a-mucks high up with their goods and that is what you see, their graveyard with the old dead and the new. And they say it Hank's fault and that he make a spell because only he not getting sick. I suppose he have pox before or he lanced. And so they going to kill him or send him away—I hear two stories there–but he swears he an Indian and that he not speak English again and he not look at Whitemen again and he take a hot stick from the fire and he cut out his one eye, and now he think that he like to them and one to them.”

“He is mad, poor man,” Eugene says, and the other men voice agreement.

Duteau shrugs, says: “Now this tribe, none look at a Whiteman now. They say we ghosts, evil spirits, and if they not look at us we go away.”

“A tribe of one-eyed men,” Eugene says. “Better than Ulysses and the Cyclops.”

“I never heard of him and a, whaddya-call-it, Cyclops,” Oswald says.

“A Cyclops is a one-eyed giant. His name was . . . was. . . . Ah, it has slipped my mind.”

“Whaddya blathering about, one-eyed fucknit giants.”

“Ulysses.”

“Grant's killing them whore-son rebs. He ain't fighting no one-eyed monsters.”

“Hah, quite so. I see we are speaking at opposite ends. I am speaking of an ancient hero written of thousands of years ago. The hero was gone from his beloved wife for twenty years or some such and had many adventures in his returning. You, if I am correct, are speaking of the inestimable Ulysses S. Grant, hero of many battles against your Southern adversaries.”

“There ain't no one-eyed monsters in America, see.”

“Most likely not.”

“If there were they'd be in for a holy fucking thrashing.” Oswald says this as if daring Eugene to argue with him. Eugene chooses not to. Instead he calls for a toast. “For our first true day on this wondrous wagon road. What do you say, gentlemen? I am standing treat. Mr. Duteau, a glass of your finest grog for each of us here, and one for yourself and your lovely wife as well.”

They toast the road, and then an end to the blasting which is holding up their passage, and then to poor Hank. The conversation saws back and forth across the table. The men sleeping are oblivious. Twice Eugene catches Duteau and his wife glancing at him and then each other. It makes him uneasy. He is not so far gone yet. Not compared to some of these others who look and smell as if they haven't bathed in months, who have the look of men born under hard circumstances, their fists forever curled.

Mr. Duteau makes his bed atop the bar to insure that no one has a midnight thirst. Mrs. Duteau hands Eugene another blanket though he has not asked for one. She smiles and pats his arm.

He tries to sleep amid the snoring, his head on his rucksack, his supplies near at hand. What do the Indians expect their dead will receive after all the preparations? A great blue river? Woods of endless game? What, for that matter, is the reward for the Queen's Prince Albert, stuffed with spices in his marble mausoleum? What is the reward for Eugene's dead parents and his three siblings, dead at infancy or in childhood, buried in the family crypt? What will be his? Furniture made of puffy white clouds? God's rays? Winged cherubs? Would that he could believe it.

Another night in the Bastion Square jail and the men are snoring, the boy is crying in his sleep, and the idiot no longer seems a harmless presence, rather like a creature sucking marrow from fresh bones. How can the bastards sleep so easily? It is as if sleep were one of those small inconsequential actions, like pulling on your boots.

≈  ≈  ≈

“How'd I dare do it?” the Dora woman stared at Boston, as if he were to have some idea, some reply. The sun was behind her now. At least three hours had passed since she had given him back his pouch with the money. She took her bonnet off. Filaments of hair wavered 'round her head, caught in some imperceptible breeze.

“I'd seen the dead ones, nudging up against the wharves. You get just a glimpse of a shoulder like, or a hand, or a bit of skirt. The water ain't where people are belonging. Cobblestones is where we belong. So how'd I dare get on that ship? I hardly believed this island were real. So, how'd I dare? Where'd I find the courage?” She waited, round-eyed, for a reply. Boston said he did not know and felt that brief lurching, as he always did when ships were mentioned, the watery deep. That was when he should have left. But he could not, not with her voice wrapping 'round him like twine.

Why, the thought of that fine man on his knees, telling her to join him in the British Columbias, that was where she found the courage. His beseeching gaze drew her on like a horse in harness.

Mr. Haberdale the Younger tried mightily to deter her from the voyage. She would be worked to death in the vilest of conditions. She would be sold into a brothel. She would die of ship fever.

“You must, that is, you truly must not go. I care for you, I mean, I adore you, that is to say I love you, truly.” He gripped her hands. His face contorted, became uglier yet. And then, actual tears. It was a most unfortunate sight. He asked her to marry him. Yes, he would descend to it to please her. He loved her that much.

“But it were too late. I was already decided. I told him he would soon enough find himself a nice radical lady who wore bloomers and spectacles and was pleased to spend her time in low coffee houses. Ah, I was cruel, and I felt bad enough right after. But it were like he saw someone else and not me at all.”

≈  ≈  ≈

A fine spring day. Sixty-two women and girls walk two abreast through the parish of Wapping, past the leers and hat doffing of the sailors and watermen and sack sellers, past the mute glance of a mud lark or two, their kettles sprouting bits of wood and iron. They walk past shops that sell telescopes and compasses and coppery instruments meant for measuring stars and wind and the angles of waves. She told Boston this as if he had no familiarity with sextants, chronometers, and quadrants, though he had traded such devices before. Four years ago he found a ship's compass half-buried in the sand of a lengthy shore. Near the compass was a mast speared upright and nearby that, a drowned man. Boston traded the compass for a month's worth of bacon and lard. He was thinking of telling her all this, but she was still speaking of the shops, the endless shops. Of slop sellers with their dreadnoughts and pilot coats, of shops reeking of tar and festooned with ropes. Some shops had true windows that showed a ghostly version of herself inside. How easy, then, to imagine herself with a neat cap and folded hands and saying “Yes, assuredly, sir, whatever you wish. Please, may I direct your eyes.”

Mrs. Farthingham, shepherding them from the rear, tells Dora to fall into line. She is a Hussar's widow, is hefty-shouldered and kindly-eyed and possessed of a voice that can carry cross oceans. Dora easily forgives her abruptness. Has a harder time being charitable to Mr. Scott, the head chaperone. He is a sour-faced, untidy man with a wayward eye that forces him to look askance. It is unnerving, as if he is perpetually suspicious, as if he is about to accuse them of following him and plotting misdeeds.

“And then we were on the docks. Oh, Mr. Jim, the people watch the comings and goings at the harbour in Victoria like it were their sole entertainment, but the London Docks, it's where the whole world is coming and going. I saw blacky men and Chinamen. I saw a bird green as lime squawking on a man's shoulder. And then a whole gang of giant men with hair pale as a fairy babe's. They were wearing great blue coats and smoking pipes bigger than their fists.”

Such clanking and groaning and shouting. Barrels stacked as high as a house. Vast warehouse doors with bolts thick as a man's leg. Odours of spices and coffee so strong one could live on the smell alone. Odours of rum so strong it seems there are underground rivers of it. And the vessels! Crowded all against each other as far as she can see. Masts high as Cathedral spires. Sails cloaking the sky and copper glinting and cargo swinging and gay flags cracking in the breeze.

They huddle near the dock gates while Mr. Scott exchanges gestures with a warden. The man holds out his hands to show his helplessness. Mr. Scott returns. Announces: “You cannot board until nightfall. The superstitious malarkey of sailors holds that spinsters are bad luck on board a ship. Thus it is best you not be seen parading about and causing trouble.” Mr. Scott looks at them, askance as usual, as if pondering whether the sailors might be not far wrong.

They are directed to the benches outside a warehouse that is pungent with the smell of hides. The men waiting there for a chance at labour stand reluctantly so they might sit.

“I've never been to London before. I'm from a farm in Wiltshire,” one Miss Joanna says. She has a large nose, a too-broad brow. She begins a jerky sobbing. Poor thing, Dora thinks, to be so homely and so alone. To comfort Miss Joanna, Dora tells of her own past, her family's lovely drapery shop, her days as a seamstress, now forever behind her. She speaks of the unsuitable Mr. Haberdale, of the suitable young man there on his knees in the brumous street, the absolute certainty that happiness awaits her, and awaits Miss Joanna as well. Dora's words are a success. Miss Joanna's sobs trail off. She begins looking about with great interest, then finds the courage to wander off and study a pile of tusks, and all before Dora can speak of the Antipodean twins. Dora turns instead to Mrs. Farthingham, but she is scanning the harbour with such a determined cast to her features it seems she might be seeing beyond the clamorous, seething wharf and so into their future.

They wait until singing from the public houses overtakes the shouts of the day labourers. In the dimming the vessels have become behemoths nudging against each other and muttering conspiracies. Dora's courage seeps away. “Look at our cargo of helpless women,” the ships groan and creak. “What fools they are. What fools.”

A cloud-striped moon is high overheard. Now they are allowed to approach the
Tynemouth
. The silhouettes of sailors shift and point. Keep a distance. Two lanterns shed a muzzy light over the plank.

“March across as if you are on a large plain, my dears,” Mrs. Farthingham says.

“Don't dawdle. Don't look down,” Mr. Scott adds.

Some of the women whimper. Not so Dora. She follows Mrs. Farthingham's example, holds her skirts high and plants one foot firmly before the other until she is on the deck. Helps coax the others across, watches the heaving aside of the plank, has barely time for a second thought before they are herded down the narrow hatch. At the suggestion of the Immigrant Ladies' Society Dora has left her hoops behind. She feels insubstantial with only layers of petticoats, and thoroughly unfashionable, but she is thankful for her decision now, watching as a mortified woman is squeezed through the hatch like dough being squeezed into a mould.