The Law of Dreams (49 page)

“Where are you from, then?”

“I'm out of Ireland.”

Fergus looked at him hard.

“I can help you so, mister.”

Fergus stepped up, swung a leg over his saddle horse, and looked down at
the boy.

“I am very well with the horses.” The boy was squinting in the
sun.

“Then you may put yourself aboard one, and lead another.”

The boy considered the little string. “Does it matter which I ride,
mister?”

“Throw a leg over anyone you like.”

Taking the lead in his hand, the nameless boy threw himself up lightly on
the second-best animal, a clean young mare with a white star on her head. Fergus watched
him gather the reins in one hand.

Let him know you're up there.

Don't slump like a plowboy.

They walked the horses through the noisy streets, then out past the fields
scattered with huts and shebangs, approaching the point and the wide, breezy river.

In the field beyond the fever sheds, yesterday's trenches had been
filled and humped with soil. A pair of workmen were setting new whitewashed crosses
every few feet. Knocking them in quickly, using the pans of their spades.

The long ridges of fresh earth looked exactly like the ridges of the
lazy-beds where he had planted his potatoes on the slope of Cappaghabaun.

The nameless boy seemed to understand the handling of horses, how calm and
steadiness was everything to them, all they wanted of you. He looked a little like Murty
Larry, only younger.

Or was it just himself that was older?

A steamer was blaring in, emigrants jammed along her rails. He could hear
them screaming with glee.

Joy to the new country.

Her whistle gave a shriek as she bumped the quay.

Concerned that his horses might fluster in the rush, he signaled the boy
to stop, then swung down from the saddle. And watched the people spilling onto the quay
with their baggage. Hoping to see her figure — small, solitary, quick — in
that crowd.

She could have cajoled or bought her way off
Laramie
and out of
quarantine.

She knew how to get what she wanted.

He did not see her, but the passengers had come off in such an eager panic
— all at once, like finches bursting off a bush — that he could not be
sure.

He counted a dozen fever cases carried down the iron gangway.

After the last passengers had disembarked, firemen started up the gangway
carrying heaves of firewood on their backs in canvas slings, the logs bucked to
three-foot lengths, split yellow.

He scanned the faces on the quay, still hoping to see her.

The whistle gave a shout, and at that moment he noticed three bundled
corpses, lying on the main deck, by the starboard rail.

Firemen were trudging up and down the iron gangway, boots booming,
chanting in their Canadian tongue.

He could just feel the company of his dead.

What to say to them?

Your dead want you to answer for something.

He caught the boy's eye. “Watch over my beauties. Don't
let 'em flutter.”

Spilling a little feed in front of each animal, he left them munching and
crossed the quay. Dodging firemen, he ran up the gangway and stepped onto the wet wooden
deck with its litter of orange peels, old blankets, and scraps of newspapers.

Deckhands were coiling lines. The master was nowhere in sight. A pair of
mechanics were slushing buckets of grease on the iron machinery that turned the paddle
wheel. He could hear wood being slung in the hold below.

The dead were in canvas shrouds sewn up with coarse sailors' thread.
He had come aboard to find out if she were among them, but now, standing over them, he
had no wish to open any of the shrouds.

Your dead want an answer.

He understood then that he would never lay eyes on her again. She would
have nothing more to do with who he was, where he was going, or who he would become. For
the rest of his life, whenever he thought of her, he would insist to himself that she
was still alive, one among his cohort, an old woman who had kept up with his years and
remained in the tribe of the living, but she would have no hand on his destiny. He
hardly had a hand on it himself, and just then it seemed to amount to little more than a
string of half-broken horses, an instinct to keep moving, and a destination that was
hardly more than a phrase to him.

When he stepped back onto the quay he saw the nameless boy had led the
horses over to the ferry landing, where they were standing quite easy.

The boy raised his arm, pointing. Looking out, Fergus saw the little steam
ferry thrashing its way across from the south shore.

Your dead want an answer and all you have is memory and the road.

“Are you after a good line of work?” he asked the boy.

“What is it, mister?”

“I want a hand, a steady hand, to help me move these beauties.
We're going along for the Boston states. Pay of three Yankee dollars per week,
grub provided. Are you my man?”

The boy nodded. “I am.”

So Fergus spat in his palm, and the nameless boy spat in his, and they
slapped their hands to settle the thing.

P
ETER
B
EHRENS
' first novel,
The
Law of Dreams,
won Canada's oldest and most prestigious book prize, the
Governor General's Literary Award, for fiction. Behrens was a Writing Fellow of
the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and held a Stegner Fellowship
at Stanford University. He is also the author of
Night Driving,
a collection of
stories.

Behrens was born in Montreal and lives on the coast of Maine with his wife
and son.

House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish
Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has
branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press
immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret
Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi's
commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won
it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada's pre-eminent
independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed
authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage,
Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric
Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the
award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011
Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”