The Tinsmith (25 page)

The girl did not look up. Her fingers twitched a little, as if the last of the music was dying out in sparks.

“Prodigy, I suspect,” Anson said.

The boy nodded excitedly.

“And I suppose this is why there's a piano on the wharf?”

Neither child responded. Very gently, the boy had taken hold of one of his sister's hands. The tenderness of the gesture moved Anson deeply. These children had lost an older sister the summer before, their mother, still grieving, was clearly not well. Edward and Louisa, he saw at once, were close in a way that Anson, without siblings, had never known.

He smiled. “Your parents have recognized your talent and are encouraging it?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Edward said. “I don't believe so. Mother doesn't like her to play and Father thinks it will be good for her to play hymns in the house. Mrs. Parmiter wants to give her lessons, but I don't think Lou will be allowed.”

Anson nodded slowly. He could almost feel the sadness seep back into his face. To combat it, he put as much cheer as possible into his voice.

“Well, now, something will have to be done about that. Louisa, surely you wish to take lessons?”

“Oh, yes! More than anything!” The girl pulled her hand free, then clapped both hands together. The sound sent all the notes she'd played whirling starward again.

Anson, who had almost forgotten the infectious sensation of joy, suddenly recognized the oddity of the situation. “Why on earth is this piano on the wharf? Why hasn't it been taken indoors?”

The children blinked, as if they found the questions silly.

“But, doctor,” Edward said, looking toward the cannery buildings, “it's the salmon season.”

Anson frowned. “Yes, I know, but why does that . . .”

Louisa, in a peevish voice, explained, “Father and Uncle have no time for anything except work when the salmon come.”

Feeling sorry for the children, and the girl in particular, Anson sought to recapture the joy of the moment before. With careful diplomacy, he thought he might be able to arrange piano lessons for the child.

“Perhaps I can help,” he said. “I will see what I can do. No promises, but a talent such as yours, Louisa, is a very rare and special gift. You understand that?”

The girl pushed her long hair back and revealed a hopeful smile. Anson could not see the tears in her eyes, but he knew they were present.

“But the Chopin?” he said, suddenly curious. “Where have you heard Chopin before? Does your family have a gramophone?”

The girl shook her head and replied in a trembling voice. “At the Parmiters. Mrs. Parmiter was playing it. From a book.”

From a book! Anson cupped his chin with his hands and murmured a brief paean in Latin. Finally, noticing the children's confusion, he laughed and pointed at the piano.

“Well, Louisa, I cannot be satisfied with such a brief concert. Will you do me the pleasure of playing that piece again? I don't know when I'll have another chance to hear something so lovely.”

God truly works in mysterious ways, Anson thought, and as the music rose again, like a spring rain reversed and returned to the heavens, he could almost forget the murderous ways and the bloodied path he'd been forced to walk, away from the softly tolling certainties of his own childhood and youth.

V

The only thing interesting about a sunset, J.H. Craig mused as he stood on the wharf outside his New Westminster cannery, watching the agent's dainty approach up the gangway, is that it tells fools to stop working. A seagull flapped out of the red sky and unfolded like a dirty newspaper on the planks a few feet away. It screeched and started to peck at something. Briefly admiring of the bird's industry, Craig caught himself. He snarled at the bird and stomped toward it, waving his arms in small circles. Screeching louder, the gull flapped away. Craig bent to the red pulp of salmon flesh, disgust turning his lips thinner. Goddamned waste. Such a firm piece of fish belonged in a tin. He stood, gingerly brushing dirt off the piece, and watched the agent almost tiptoeing toward him. Belvedere Smith. A ridiculous name, but it suited an English gadfly more interested in fancy clothes than in the workings of a cannery. Still, he could be useful.

The agent's orange suit in the red sunlight made Craig wince. He did not wait for any pleasantries. “Well? Who is he? What's he here for?”

The agent wheezed a laugh out of his pasty, sparsely whiskered face. He looked like an underfed fox that the hounds had cornered, except that he was too stupid to even realize it. “Having your supper, Craig? I trust I'll merit something better.”

Craig whistled sharply at a Chinaman lazing against a piling fifty feet away, and the toothless old man, wearing the usual blue smock, shuffled over.

“Get this into a tin,” Craig said and handed the piece of flesh to the coolie. “And tell Kwan I don't want to see waste like this again. Or I'll deduct it from the contract.”

A sharp pain flared along Craig's gumline. He glared at the agent, but the man was too stupid and too English, which amounted to the same thing, to take the hint.

“A week from now,” Smith said and nodded southwest in the direction of the rivermouth, where the dingy sails of the returning skiffs could just be seen, “and you'll be up to your knees in fish that you won't be able to tin. That's what the Indians are saying.”

“Whose Indians? Did you talk to Dare's? Goddammit, man, I'm not paying you for your predictions on the next run.”

“All right, all right, just let me have a smoke.”

The agent delicately bit the end off a cigar, lit a match and held the flame to the tobacco, and was about to fling the match away when Craig grabbed his arm.

“Not on the wharf. Can't you tell it's like tinder in this heat?”

The agent shrugged, inhaled deeply, and blew out a puff of smoke.

“Well?” Craig said. “Did you learn anything or not?” He sucked at his molar and tried to shut out the shuntings of the cannery and the gurglings of the tide so he could better focus on the agent's answer.

“He's American, a doctor from the east. Doesn't talk much, but he's definitely come to meet with Dare. And I don't think it's to discuss whether he should set up practice at Crescent Slough either.”

“How do you know that?”

“Henry Lansdowne asked straight out. They wouldn't mind having a doctor at Chilukthan, you know. The Landing's large enough to support one.” Belvedere Smith shook his head. “But not this doctor. He's not thinking of his prospects. At least that's what he told me, and I believed him. Worn-out chap, really.”

Craig closed his eyes against the pain in his mouth. A doctor? Perhaps he was the source of Dare's financing? Somehow or other, the damned nigger had the means to hire a new crew of coolies in Victoria. Now it looked as if he'd be ready for the big run after all. Owen, for all his shrewdness, hadn't been able to stop him. Then again, Dare hadn't been seen for days. Craig cursed under his breath. Not knowing what a rival was doing pained him more than any tooth could. He pushed his tongue hard against it and thought, Maybe this doctor doesn't even know Dare is a nigger. Inspired, he phrased the thought into a question and asked it aloud.

The agent smiled through the grey rings of smoke. “I never brought it up. I could tell it wouldn't have mattered. The doctor's one of these noble chaps, you can tell just by looking at him. A good American. Apparently he saved a bunch of Dare's coolies from drowning the first night he arrived.”

“Yes, I know about that,” Craig said. “So the Lansdownes didn't mention that Dare was a nigger either?”

The agent guffawed. “Henry Lansdowne? He takes the Lord's view of such things. And his brother, whether he likes it or not, follows suit. Anyway, I'm not so convinced that Dare is—”

“I don't care what you think about that. Just tell me about this doctor. You think he's a friend of Dare and that he's here to help him?”

“I don't see any other reason for him to be here. And he did ask a lot of questions about the canning business. About the salmon too. Seemed to expect me to know why the damned things come back to the river when they do.”

The agent wheezed out another laugh; it ended in a snivelling gasp.

Craig had had enough. Dare on his own was already a problem that had to be removed. And Dare with help? Well, that meant there was no waiting for Owen's canny bribing of a magistrate. A more direct means of elimination would be necessary. And there were plenty of shiftless failures around who'd rather earn a dollar with a gun than with a set of oars and a net.

The white sails of the skiffs drifted closer. Craig could almost hear the lusty voices of the men crying out for a higher wage. Even the sun seemed to stick its bloodied hands into his pockets. He turned and started to stride away.

“Wait a minute,” the agent said. “Haven't you forgotten something?”

Craig turned slowly back, one eye narrowed to a slit. “You've been paid. And too well for the service.”

The agent tossed his cigar into the river. His skinny face was like a bairn's about to blubber.

“You promised me a meal, Craig. That was agreed upon.”

“So I did.”

Gleeful, Craig reached into his coat pocket. He could not believe he had almost forgotten. He pulled out two oat biscuits, dry as navy hardtack, and handed them to the peevish agent. The fool's face looked as doughy as the biscuits. But before he could even protest, Craig suppressed a chuckle at the base of his throat and walked away, already wondering how little he could pay a lazy Irishman to get rid of a nigger.

VI

Anson had no way to reach Victoria unless he waited for a steamer to stop at Chilukthan or else rowed himself upriver to New Westminster to board a Victoria-bound vessel there. While he seriously considered the latter option, he knew his health would not allow it. He had to accept the unpleasant fact: he was stuck at Chilukthan.

But stuck did not have to mean purposeless. Anson was determined to be of some use while he waited for the steamer or Dare's return. As long as Thomas Lansdowne's wife remained inadequately attended, the family's gifted daughter would suffer, perhaps would suffer all her life if a domestic tragedy destroyed her chance of realizing her talent. The very thought of such a desecration urged Anson over the fields with no break in his stride. Elizabeth had not given him a child, and the Lansdowne girl was no replacement for that loss, but if the years weighted a man's spirit, they also made clear his responsibility to his own character. He had come to the Fraser River to help William Dare. Before he left, he would do what he could to help the girl too.

He found the Englishman a considerable distance from his house, beyond the woodlot. Emerging from the trees, Anson felt as if he dragged the forest's intimate darkness with him, as if the trees themselves housed human aspirations.

Thomas Lansdowne was even more violently red in the face than usual as Anson came up. His horse, yoked to a massive stump, pulled so that its eyes were moon-wide, and the Englishman, on his knees in the wet earth, grunted as he heaved his body against the black, sodden, many-rooted weight, trying to dislodge it from the mucky ground. He did not appear to notice Anson's approach. So Anson waited, staring across the flat, unvarying distance that hardly merited the name of “field.” This was no easily broken soil. It was, in fact, hardly soil at all. Obviously the Lansdownes, in their diking and stump removing, were engaged on the noble work of the future. Anson respected them for it, but the future could not, should not, come at the expense of the present. If a man laboured for the sake of his children, he ought not to be allowed to neglect the wife who carried his child. Simply put, that went against nature.

With a grunt that was almost a shout, the Englishman threw his body against the stump just as the horse gained its position on the slippery surface. The stump shifted, a foot, two feet. Then it lodged firmly in the mud again. Thomas Lansdowne did not curse, he did not shake his fist at the heavens or slump down on his knees in defeat. Instead, he said, “Good girl” and marched up to the horse and slapped its glistening flanks. Still he did not appear to notice that he was no longer alone. He wiped the sweat from his face with a bare, ruddy forearm and squinted at the sun.

Anson took in the greyly smoking pile of already-dislodged stumps a few rods away and the three other giant stumps rising like whaleback from the ground just beyond Lansdowne, and his respect for the man's strength of purpose increased. It would be years before the plough would drag as smoothly through this earth as a whale fin through the ocean. No wonder Thomas Lansdowne worked such long days and looked so exhausted in the evenings. The farming, alone, would have defeated most men. But he was also heavily involved in the salmon business, which, Anson could already tell, was a risky venture replete with both expected and unexpected difficulties. On top of all that, the man's wife was in no condition to help him.

“Is there something I can do for you, doctor?”

Surprised, Anson understood that he'd been staring at the Englishman without really seeing him. The voice, therefore, was like a handful of gravel tossed lightly in his face.

“Yes. Yes, there is.” Anson, thinking of the girl and the music she had played, gathered his resolve once more. He spoke directly, his eyes catching and holding the Englishman's sun-reddened attention. “Your wife, sir. It's my opinion as a medical man that she's seriously ill and in need of considerable rest before the arrival of your child. I tell you this only because I realize that you have many responsibilities and demands and might not recognize certain symptoms of her condition that lead me to speak with you on the matter.”

“I see.” The Englishman again rubbed his forearm across his brow. Then he squared himself on the wet ground, his gumboots squelching softly. From downriver came the familiar, repetitive sound of the tin press punching out cans. It was like the throbbing of the sun or of the blood in the body, a common pulse mostly unnoticed but integral to all else. “Last night, doctor, you claimed that, in your opinion, men take too great an interest in the affairs of others. Isn't that so?”