The Law of Dreams

by Peter Behrens

  “What happened then?”

  “What happened? My life happened. Everything up until then, I can hardly remember. Everything after I cannot forget. I took her with me over the pass, made it to the boat encampment, and traveled down the Columbia without losing a man. We wintered in the Oregon country that year I remember. In the spring a Company ship arrived at Fort Vancouver, and I was ordered to sail for the Sandwich Islands — the Company wished to open a post. She came with me. She delivered our child on the island of Maui, but it did not survive. Three more babies, all sickly . . . none of them lasted. We were at Maui two years; then back to Oregon; over the mountains again in fall; into the Athabaska country. I became factor at Fort Edmonton. Daniel we bought from the brave dogs — Many Gray Horses, the Bloods called him, and his Crow name was the Constant Sky, though one must not speak it, now he is dead, and generally I don’t — he became our son, our love, our child. Six winters past, he was killed on the buffalo hunt. On the Pembina Plains — the party was attacked by Sioux. Then my woman had a cancer in her heart, and after she was dead, that was when I went home. Home to Ireland.” Ormsby scowled.

  “We have had different kinds of life,” Molly said. “I like yours better.”

  Ormsby rubbed his face briskly with both hands then looked at her. “You ain’t had yours yet, miss. It is still coming at you.”

  Tenderness and Violence

  A DRUNKEN PASSENGER was beating his daughter. No one interfered — they lay in their berths, listening to her bleating.

  Outside Muldoon’s door with a loaded pistol it wasn’t fear that had stopped him from interfering, though fear was part of it — everyone in the shanty had been afraid of Muldoon. What had held him back was a sense that interfering between a man and a girl was trespassing. Though when it came to horses he’d have interfered, gone at a fellow with anything — fists, a knife, a gun.

  He was unused to reflecting on his own inconsistencies but there suddenly seemed something so shameful in this one — so cold, weak, and unprocessed — that he sat up, bumping his head on the underside of the Cooles’ berth.

  “What are you doing, man?” Molly whispered.

  Without answering, he pushed the curtain aside and swung his legs out, finding the deck with his feet. In the pitch of light from the one oil lamp hanging on a beam he saw the man circling the girl, who cowered with her legs drawn up and head tucked between her knees while he lashed her with a belt.

  “Here, take this.” Molly held out the blackthorn and he took it and started toward them, both hands gripping the shaft. Every curtain in the tiers was drawn shut but he knew the people must be awake. The stick had flex and felt light in his hands. With a blade fixed to its tip it would have made a passable pike.

  Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, the man paid no heed as Fergus began prodding him with the stick, trying to drive him away from the girl. His eyes were embedded in yellow fat and his clothes stank of poitin and sweat. Suddenly he dropped the belt and grabbed the end of Fergus’s stick, holding on to it with fists tight as gnarls, like deformations on the wood. Fergus tried to twist it from him then shoved it straight at him and speared him in the belly. He released his grip, and Fergus began striking him with flurried blows, beating the backs of his legs as he flung himself up the ladder and disappeared on deck.

  The girl’s mother and sisters crept out and half carried the whimpering creature back to their berth.

  Are you a part of the world, like a bird, an apple tree, a fish, or the sea itself? Or are you here to judge it, everything in it, yourself included?

  He had snapped the blackthorn stick with the last flurry of blows. He picked up both pieces and returned to the berth. Molly was sitting up, clutching the German blanket around her shoulders.

  “There it is, your keep-away magic, I’ve bust it now.”

  He dropped the broken pieces on the bed, then climbed in.

  Reaching across him, she drew the curtain shut, and he felt her breast touch his arm.

  “He’ll come after you, you know. You’ll have to look out now.” She stretched out on her side, pulling the blanket over herself, facing away.

  He could feel the sick, wild heart bumping in his chest, an engine of grief. Why had she offered him the blackthorn, why had she placed it in his hands if she didn’t wish him to break down what was separating them?

  PASSION. HE awoke in the dark with her fumbling at the buttons on his shirt. She began pulling her gown over her head, then her shift, and he sensed the heat of her skin. Then she was naked. He touched her slowly, soft breasts and rough nipples. Her kisses were delicate, then hungry. Her teeth were wet and cool. She undressed him roughly, hauling his shirt over his head, tearing buttons from his trousers, dragging the trousers off his legs, grasping his prick with her fist, kissing the anguished tip of it. When he was inside her, she was whispering, touching his back with light, fluttering fingers. Pressing teeth on his ear, biting gently, and moving her hips with his.

  Is this what it feels like, holding life in your hands?

  As near as you’ll get.

  Practically everything.

  Kissing the Peak

  HE AWOKE AT THE SOUND of the ship’s bell, lay listening to the sailors’ feet scraping on the deck overhead as watches changed. Weak daylight and a tang of smoke filtered down through the open hatch. Molly was asleep, her body pressed close. Her delightful warmth and scent carried a charge. He felt a responsibility but it was unclear. Something he owed, but what and to whom? Without awakening her, he pulled on his clothes, swung himself out of the berth, and climbed up through the hatch.

  Laramie was slack in a chill calm, making very little way. The man he had chased from the ’tween deck was sprawled by a bulkhead. Someone had thrown a blanket over him. Perhaps he’d come seeking vengeance. Or perhaps when sober he was soft and mild, like so many drinking men on the mountain.

  Ormsby, swaddled in his fur coat and peering through a spyglass, was the only other passenger on deck.

  Gripping a shroud, pissing over the side, Fergus stared at the slurry of ice and water rubbing along the hull.

  Don’t send me down to the fish.

  Nimrod Blampin poured a shovelful of smoking coals into a caboose. “Look at him,” the sailor said, nodding at the man under the blanket. “He’s got the sweats, the florids — face all black — been barking all night. That’s Irish fever, Michael. You better hope we raise Quebec before it spreads. I seen Wandering Jew run aground at Mobile Bay with all aboard dead — passengers, master, and crew.” Nimrod called to Ormsby, “What do you see there mister? Is it Cape Race?”

  “Cape Race is out there.” Ormsby lowered the glass.

  “Can you see it?”

  “No, but you might from up high.”

  “America, is it?” Fergus asked.

  “Nearly enough — Newfoundland,” Ormsby replied. “Captain Blow ought to send up a lookout. If I was ten years younger —”

  “I’ll go.” Fergus spoke quickly, eager for the first sight of America.

  “A lubber like you?” Nimrod said. “You’d fall and break your head.”

  “Wants a light foot up there. You won’t need boots.” Ormsby was already shucking off his rawhide slippers. “Here, you can wear these.”

  The wind was coming up, pressing like a weight at his ear as he knelt to untie his boots, a little stunned by how readily his offer had been accepted.

  Your life doesn’t weigh so very much, not for others.

  “Your girl won’t like it when you’re smashed like a bowl of eggs.” Nimrod sounded peevish. “You’re a lubber, you’ve no business up there. You’ll be feed for the birds. Takes a hand to go aloft.”

  The promise Molly had extracted.

  Her lack of trust.

  There was a piece of anger, he knew exactly where it was, like a splinter of glass.

  “You’d better rub your hands with pitch. And take care where you step your feet,” Ormsby said. “Don’t trust the rungs; they lo
ok rotted through, half of them. Keep your grip on the shrouds, not the rungs.”

  Fergus slipped his feet into Ormsby’s thin rawhide slippers. Fear was twisting in his stomach but it was too late now, he couldn’t shame himself in front of Ormsby.

  “Give me your hat, it’ll only get in your way up there.”

  He handed it over — would he ever wear it again?

  “You can’t stop once you get started,” Ormsby was saying. “Rub some tar. Avoid looking down.”

  Nimrod kicked the tar bucket. Fergus dipped his hands.

  “Go now, go quickly,” Ormsby said. “See what you can but don’t stay too long or you’ll freeze too numb to climb. Up and down while the sea is calm.”

  Light-headed and queasy, he crossed the slippery deck. The first ratline was seized to shrouds running from the starboard bulkhead to the main mast, just below a circular wooden platform the crew called the top though it was only the head of the mainmast, halfway to the peak of the ship.

  Hoisting himself up onto the bulwark, he grabbed the shrouds and swung out. His body hung out over the water for a moment, then his feet found the rungs and he started climbing quickly, hand over hand.

  The mainmast top was a wooden platform, size of a carriage wheel, braced to the mast by iron struts — the futtock shrouds. He could feel tension of wind singing off the mainsail. Reaching the underside of the top, he stopped, too disoriented to make the next move. Getting around the top meant letting go of the ratline and grasping another, seized to the futtocks, then crawling out, upside down, his back to the deck forty feet below.

  His fingers were clenching onto the shrouds with a will of their own, and he stared at them and cursed them. Finally he was able to uncurl them and for a sickening instant held nothing, then grabbed the ratline seized to the futtocks. He started crawling out, hanging upside down. Reaching the rim of the top, hooking his right foot around a strut, he seized the topsail shrouds and dragged his body over the wooden rim, wriggled himself aboard the mainmast top.

  The ship was rocking stem-to-stern, trying to throw him off. Hugging the mast, he forced himself to stand on the top. He looked down and saw Molly down on deck, in her blue cloak, standing next to Ormsby, the old man pointing up.

  Above, the topmast was doubled to the main for six feet or so, hooped with iron, then the main ended and the topmast arose until it was doubled to the slender topgallant mast, which was doubled to the royal mast, which looked no thicker than a stick.

  He could feel the mast trembling with energy humming off the sail. The golden wood was greasy from the buckets of tallow the sailors slushed on it continuously so yardarms could always be smoothly raised or lowered in their collars.

  “Up . . . up . . .” Nimrod’s shouts came at him all disjointed, like the wails of seabirds.

  The next climb was thirty feet of narrowing and nearly vertical ratline seized to the topmast shrouds. Many rungs were broken and one snapped underfoot, but he clung to the shrouds and kept climbing.

  He reached the topsail yard and stepped on it gingerly. The honey-colored wood was glazed with ice. The sail was bent to an iron rail along the top of the yard.

  Ice sheathed the upper shrouds, but when he beat them with his fist the ice crumbled in his face. His face felt thickened and stiff from cold. The wind droned as it was forced off the sails.

  He scrambled up the next twenty feet on a ratline seized to the topgallant shrouds. The rungs were hardly wide enough for his foot. From the yard he swung onto another ratline and kept climbing. Now there was just a toe-width to the rungs. He looked down at the deck, one hundred feet below, trying to catch a glimpse of her but could not.

  He sat out on the royal yard clinging to the ludicrously slender royal mast, which rose another eight feet as narrow as the whip of a young tree and was topped with a round hardwood knob — the peak of the ship. To kiss the peak he would have to stand on the frail royal yard and shinny up the last couple of feet.

  Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed? That there is a path to be followed, literally to the death? Awareness is harsh but better than being unaware, never sensing a path. Better than a life of stunts, false starts, dead ends. Better than the irredeemable ugliness of the halfhearted. Better than feeling there is no shape to anything — there is. The world knows itself.

  He stood up slowly, balancing on the narrow yardarm, clinging to the frail mast. He began shinnying up, the wind whipping his hair. He kissed the cap, then clung to the mast as Laramie heeled to port. Letting go he’d plummet straight into the sea. Through low-slung clouds, he caught a glimpse of rocky headland. An image of his father’s face — cheekbones, lips, blue eyes — came before him, and he began shouting “Land ho! Land ho!” into the hustle of the wind.

  The Coffin Ship

  AIRS IN THE ST. LAWRENCE GULF were cold and thin as Laramie worked her way cautiously, keeping south of a mottled plain of pack ice.

  Each night in their berth Molly came up out of herself as if she had never before tasted joy. He found he could stir her up easily. She didn’t seem to care what anyone overheard.

  They lunged at each other and he felt the ship moving underneath.

  Passion was charged and disorienting, like banging on the door of the world.

  FOUR DAYS past Cape Race, Laramie dropped anchor in a cove on the south shore of Anticosti Island. Three sailors and the bos’n rowed ashore to fill water casks while passengers along the rail peered at slabs of ice lying on the beach like wrecked ships. A sour aroma of fir reached out across the cove.

  “Where are the people, man? What’s become of the people?” Molly demanded.

  There were no openings in the curtain of evergreen forest, no smoke or animals. Mrs. Coole wept at the bleakness of it.

  The water casks were slung aboard and the passengers jostled to fill their pots and kettles. The water’s stinging coldness made him think of Luke.

  Astringent water squishing out of the turf as they walked.

  Filling his mouth again, he felt the cold water tear at his gums. He splashed his face then reached out, dribbling water on Molly’s head.

  “What’s that?” she cried.

  Passion drives you forward. The future is available and you order yourself to relinquish the dead.

  NEXT DAY the gloomy gulf clouds lifted, and cooks stirring porridge at the cabooses glimpsed the snowy mountains of Notre Dame on the Gaspé coast. The schoolmaster insisted they would be raising Quebec itself in a matter of hours. Passengers spent the day packing then sat up all night guarding their baggage, but the next morning there was nothing to see except the endless forest along the north shore.

  He kept going to the rail. Where were the emigrants who had sailed this way before them?

  It was as if the country had consumed them, but he didn’t feel discouraged by the emptiness. There was something in it that he trusted. The pleasing glitter of the daylight.

  Of course, light didn’t matter, it was only light. It was the absence of darkness; but you couldn’t eat it.

  Whales rose hissing in the river. Thousands of black-and-white ducks beat across the flat bays, their wet wings making a whirring, groaning noise.

  Sips of cold water bit the tongue.

  Finally they saw one cabin in a clearing, with a red cow and calf grazing around stumps and smoke curling from a heap of burned timber. A sort of púcán boat was drawn up on the beach where a man and a boy were repairing a fishing weir staked out into the river.

  “Is it Indiana?” Fergus asked Ormsby.

  “We’re coming into old Canada now.”

  But the clearing slipped behind quickly, and there were no further marks of settlement along the shore.

  In the lee of the deckhouse Molly, gorgeous and burnished, was basking in humid sunshine. He sat down beside her.

  “We can handle half a dozen horses, easy, on a string. One for you to ride, one for me, and four to tr
ade. We’ll tie flowers around their necks, water them at the river, and graze them along the road.”

  “No roads I see,” she murmured.

  This was true, but passion makes you hopeful and tough.

  “A horse wants open country and dry feet. I’ll make a world of this, Molly.”

  THEIR STAKE was kept at the bottom of their sea chest, rolled up in handkerchiefs. When she went to count it that evening, it was gone.

  “Sure, it’s there,” he insisted.

  “No, it isn’t I tell you, it isn’t!”

  “You might have missed it.”

  “I wouldn’t — I’ve missed nothing — it’s gone.”

  They turned out the chest and pawed through the contents: their steel knife, Molly’s boots, two last sprouting onions, blankets and woolen clothes he’d stolen from Maguire’s Germans. They couldn’t find the money.

  Standing on the edge of their berth, Molly pushed open the old woman’s curtain. “Where is our money?”

  “God help you. Are you asking for a look in my blue bottle or are you calling me a thief?”

  “You old poison cook, I know you took it. Tell me where it is.”

  “You are a bad girl. You haven’t a heart for them that has helped you.”

  Molly began poking and prodding the old woman’s straw pallet. Brighid climbed down with an air of injured dignity, drew on her shawl and headed for the ladder, leaving Molly furiously shaking potion bottles, searching for coins sunk in the fluid.

  Finding none, she confronted the Cooles. “You wanted money for your school.”

  The schoolmaster began turning out his pockets.

  “Stop it, Martin,” his wife said. “You humiliate yourself.”

  “I’ll humiliate him if he has my money —”