The Tinsmith (18 page)

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said as he strode over to the table and softly, in that curious, lulled accent of a Southerner, so different from the harsh burr of Owen, asked Laidlaw to hand him one of the whisky bottles. Upon receiving it, the newcomer, with a practised flourish, took a swig, then appraised the company with an obviously superior air.

Craig swiftly read every reaction in the room but one. Most were perplexed by the stranger's sudden arrival. Henry Lansdowne was displeased, Ben Lundberg's face was as open and welcoming as a sunny morning in the heather, and Thomas Lansdowne remained locked in his own worries. Owen, of course, was granite. Craig could almost believe that Owen somehow knew what he himself knew—not only who the stranger was, but what important information he held. But it didn't matter. What mattered was this man's, Daniel Fayette's, background, and how his knowledge of race and blood would remove the one salmon canner, excepting Owen, who stood in Craig's way. If Owen somehow already knew the truth about the uninvited and unwelcome William Dare, he'd act on it in like fashion soon enough. But no—this was Craig's discovery, and he was going to enjoy revealing it.

He introduced Fayette to the company. The Southerner toasted the men's fortunes in the upcoming salmon season, then said, once the glasses were down again and he had settled himself in an armchair at the head of the table, that he was surprised that any of the men succeeded at all if they didn't do a better job of controlling the industry.

Blank looks all around followed his words, all except for one face that didn't alter. But wasn't there some slight stiffening of Owen's jaw? Craig allowed himself a sigh of satisfaction.

“Craig has informed me of recent conflicts here on this fine river,” Fayette continued, after licking the whisky off his lips with his tongue. “And I must say, I wouldn't have known how to advise you if we hadn't travelled to the Victoria waterfront a few days ago. Craig, you see, was in the midst of persuading me to invest in this canning business, but I'm a man who must know all particulars of a venture before I spend my money. This one particular, however, seems to have escaped your notice.”

Again Owen's chilling gaze probed Craig's face. All right, all right, Craig thought, let's get on with it. His impatience came as much out of embarrassment as anything. Did the damned fool American really have to talk so openly about investment? He cut in. “We happened upon Dare at the Kerr warehouse and—”

“Craig. If you please.” Fayette stood, hand on hips, and with a haughty gaze said, “I can't expect you British fellows to know any better. And God knows not all of my countrymen”—he spat the last word out, paused briefly, and continued—“are any less ignorant in these matters.”

“What's this about Dare?” Thomas Lansdowne said and rose. The river smell seemed to tightened around him. A powerful muscle in his neck throbbed.

Fayette curled his lip. “It's one thing if a man makes business difficult for you. That's unavoidable. In fact, as I see it, that's the whole nature of business.” He shook his head sadly, and looked at each man in turn, even Owen, whose coolness wore perhaps the slightest red tinge of temper. Did it? Ah, but he had a Scotsman's blood after all.

The night hovered at the open window. In came the long creak of tide against piling, the clotted mix of mud and brine. The shadow of someone's shoulder and arm shifted like a slow stain on the wood.

The curl in Fayette's lip grew more pronounced. “But it's something else when you let a damned nigger get the better of you.”

The ensuing silence was like a drawn breath before a shout. Craig scanned the faces; they looked as blank yet amazed as a caught salmon's—the same eye-gape, the same unhinging of the jaw, the same struggle to recapture their familiar element. Thomas Lansdowne's mouth hung wide open and his head swivelled quickly from side to side, as if to say, What? Who? But the other canners were equally confused. Most were clenching the arms of their chairs, and Lyon, the hatchet-faced American, sat so far forward he looked as if he were about to fall across the table. Even Owen's thick eyebrows had lifted slightly before he returned to his usual display of bored indifference, the digging under his fingernails with the blade of a tiny knife.

Not surprisingly, it was the Swede who shattered the silence with his damnably cheerful, thickly accented voice.

“A nigger? Billy Dare? Oh, dat's a good one you said dere. Dat man's trouble all right, but he's no more a darky dan me. Hell, he's almost a Swede!”

Laughter followed, but it was nervous, subdued. Fayette stopped it entirely with a short, harsh laugh of his own. “That's your problem right there. You think being a nigger's as simple as having enough black in your skin. If you'd ever lived among them, you'd know better.”

Henry Lansdowne stood, his eyes narrowed, his lips drawn tight. The grey streaks in his full but neatly trimmed black beard gave him the look of a prophet. But there was nothing rousing in his manner; he was too English for that kind of drama.

“I am no friend of Dare's,” he said. “But I do not like a man's character to be impugned on such thin evidence as you offer, sir. And even if it were true, not all of us have such an unchristian hatred of our fellow beings.”

“That's nothing to me,” Fayette said and kicked some mud off the sole of one leather boot with the heel of the other. “You can believe what I say or not. And you can act on it or not. All I know is, I watched this fellow, Dare, long enough to know him for what he is. It took but a minute. I don't care if his skin's lily white. Only a nigger moves like that, only a nigger posing as a white man acts as if the light of heaven's going to reveal the truth about him at any minute.” He jerked a thumb in Craig's direction. “And from what I hear about the habits of this Dare—living alone, won't co-operate with anyone, doesn't even build himself a decent house—well, I know a nigger for a nigger even if you gentlemen don't.”

Thomas Lansdowne whispered fiercely into his brother's ear as Marshall English gracefully excused himself from the table. The sound of his violent retching at the window seemed to clear the air of its shocked quality. When he returned, a little pale but not otherwise affected, he said with a shrug that there was no mistaking the colour of the night anyway. “It's damned black out there. I sure hope the fish can see where they're going.”

But the company was in no mood for jesting. Owen, his legs crossed, one hand stroking his chin, quickly put things into perspective.

“Doubtless this is all very interesting, Craig, and perhaps we can use the information. But white, black, or yellow, Dare is a problem. The question is, what are we going to do about him?”

“No difference!” Fayette's eyes widened as he leaned his sweat-slickened face forward. “Craig, you expect me to put money into an industry where a nigger can cause trouble and it doesn't matter that he's a nigger? Hell, even a well-behaved nigger'd be bad enough.”

Before Craig could respond, Ben Lundberg, who'd clearly had enough of the Southerner, said, with a grin like a carnival clown's, “Hey, how do dey make a white nigger like dat anyway? I tink somebody's maybe not minded too much about dat skin colour with his breeches down, hey.”

Fayette shook his head and sighed as the laughter ebbed away. “There was a time when a man could do what he would with his own property. I'm not denying a nigger wench has certain attractions.”

Henry Lansdowne's face flushed. His Adam's apple worked feverishly, as if something had lodged in his throat.

“We are not slaveholders here,” he said. “Your immoral appetites are your own affair and will be dealt with come the Day of Judgment. We do not welcome hearing of them.”

“Just a minute, Squire,” said Braddock, taking a plug out of his vest pocket and biting off a chaw. “We're not all quite so godly as you. If Dare is what this man says he is, then I think it does matter.”

“Gentlemen . . .”

The one word came cast in ice. Owen uncrossed his legs and turned his face slowly from one to another.

“I don't have time for discussions of the finer points of morality. But I believe there is a way we can use this information. Dare's backers will no doubt consider the matter of his blood to be a cause of some—shall we say—hesitation. In the event that this proves otherwise, I will see to it that Dare causes us no further trouble this season.”

Craig couldn't resist the bait. He felt uncomfortably like a boy in a schoolyard listening to an older boy talk about carnal matters. “And just how do you intend to do that, Owen?”

The grey eyes under the heavy eyebrows made Craig shiver; there was a quality of imminent predation about them.

“It's a clear matter of law and order. Of British law and order. Is this not, after all, British Columbia? Let's just say that I have a certain influence with the magistrate, a man who can have Dare locked up for a week or two.”

“Ye canny bastard,” McKay said.

Fayette scoffed. “Law and order? It's a wonder any of you can succeed at all in business. When a nigger causes trouble, there's no need for courts. A whip and a rope is—”

“A mere variation,” Owen said.

Now the shiver was a chilling ague. Craig swallowed drily.

“Enough!” Henry Lansdowne stood. “You would think the Lord had no senses for detecting such evil. I will be party to no such plan, Owen. Yes, Dare has been difficult. But I do not know that he deserves this uncharitable plotting. In any case, I will not be involved.” He turned and nodded at his brother, who sat, boulder-still, staring at the Southerner.

After several seconds of uncomfortable silence, Henry Lansdowne coldly bid the company a good evening and left the room.

Thomas Lansdowne cleared his throat and faced Owen.

“You mean to have Dare arrested when the season is at its peak? On what charge?”

“The man believes a large stretch of river is his own personal property. Now he's using a shotgun to keep other boats away. In most civilized countries, that's criminal behaviour.”

Ben Lundberg grinned and rubbed his close-cropped blond hair. “But maybe dis is not so civilized a place here, hey? You are always so civilized, Alex Owen?”

The Scotsman looked for an instant as if he might smile. Instead, he finished the whisky in his glass and said, “I come from a Christian country and was born of Christian parents. So indeed I must be.” He stood and it was like the easy uncoiling of a snake after a long bask in the sun. “Gentlemen.”

When Owen had gone, Marshall English scratched his head of tight black curls, then reached for a bottle on the table.

“It's all too involved for me. But I feel a little sorry for Dare, to be honest. With the likes of Owen and you, Craig, gunning for him, I don't see as he has much of a chance.”

“You're sure he's a negro, then?” Thomas Lansdowne said quietly, his broad hands, as if of their own will, forming a noose over his stomach.

“Tell me something. You ever had a real close look at him? Ever looked him in the eyes? No, I didn't think so. He won't let it happen. There's enough nigger blood in him to show if you had a good, close look.” Fayette cleared his throat and spat on the rough plank floor. “I noticed he wore a thick beard. And if his hat was pulled any lower, you wouldn't know he had eyes to see with.”

Lundberg's grin flashed wide and wet as a knife cut. “So Billy Dare has a beard? What does dat prove, hey? I see him close up one time, close enough to see how he's got this long white scar sticking out of the top of his beard on de one cheek. When I asked him about it, he looked straight at me, like a man should, hey, and said it happened in de war between the states. Didn't sound like a lie to me, and I'm used to hearing lies, especially in dis canning business, hey, Craig?”

As always, the Swede's jolly, insinuating tone crawled under Craig's skin. He sucked silently at his molar and said, “You can't deny Dare keeps to himself. Like he's got something to hide.”

The Swede clapped his free hand to his forehead. The force slopped the whisky out of the glass and onto his fist. He licked the back of his broad hand and laughed. “If every man around here who wanted to be left alone was a nigger, we'd have more niggers dan dey have way down south in Dixie.”

The joke fell flat. All the men stared at the thick air in front of them, as if Dare's face might emerge from the tobacco smoke at any time.

Finally, Daniel Fayette shrugged and placed his hands open on the table. “Believe what you want. But I know a nigger when I see one. Bring me a bible and I'll swear on it if that'll make you feel any better.”

Craig noticed Thomas Lansdowne's wondering expression, bald and pathetic as a newborn bairn's. But it didn't matter what Dare's blood meant to any other man; the fact was, Craig needed Dare to be more than white; he needed him transparent. He needed to see through him to imagine the field for the larger battle. And there was only one sure way to see through a man, and that was to remove him entirely. It didn't matter that Dare seemed to have financed his operations alone, that he was not beholden to Victoria or eastern interests. It didn't even matter that his blood was now certain to convince the others to drive him out. The point was, Owen had stolen the show again; it was as if he had brought the news about Dare being a nigger. Somehow Craig felt defeated at the very brink of triumph. He could no longer deny the obvious: Owen wouldn't hesitate to treat a fellow Scot any different than he would treat an Englishman or a nigger.

Craig lightly clenched his teeth and let the pain flow from the molar into his jaw. Now more than ever, he needed to clear Dare out of the way.

II

July 1881, the mouth of the Fraser River

Dr. Anson Baird stood on the wet, wooden deck of the sternwheeler slowly churning its way through the sandheads of a muddy, coagulant river and took in his surroundings. On the near bank, a low marsh of vivid green and brown rushes and grass and mud stretched away to the south for miles. In the opposite direction, to the north, rolled the broad expanse of the rivermouth so wide that not even a black smudge of treeline appeared to indicate the other bank. But beyond that, above the hidden trees, a range of deep blue mountains whose snow-clad peaks dissolved straight into the grey sky was almost striking enough to dwarf the powerful river. If he had been a younger man, Dr. Baird imagined that he could have tried his luck in this fresh, green part of the world.