What is it about her that drives him to distraction? She is not a great beauty. And she can barely manage the rightful exchange of conversation, has to be guided with interruptions that would be appallingly rude with anyone else. For Dora talks unrelentingly, her round eyes barely blinking, one story transforming into the next without a breath to allow a comment, a change of subject, a chance to escape. Indeed, Mrs. Jacobsen was correct when she said once that Dora could pinion people with her chatter as expertly as those naturalists pinion insects on a board.
The best explanation for her appeal, Eugene decides, is that her clothes always seem to be slipping from her, as if nudity is her natural state and her body is always straining toward it. It is her barely laced corsets, the flush to her cheeks, the dramatic panting after exertion, the perpetual half-pinned state of her hair, and that way she comes so close to people and peers into their eyes. She looks, in fact, as if she is forever hurrying from one liaison to the next. She is shocking really, deliciously so.
How is she faring? At this moment he feels near sick with worry. She had wanted so desperately to join him, but his reason prevailed. They would lose the land if both of them were gone. Squatters would take it. And the goldfields, by all accounts, were no place for a woman. And he would never forgive himself if on their journey they were attacked by a pack of bears. “Do not worry, my love, I will write each and every week,” he promised. “And you must write to me.”
“Ah no, no. You haven’t taught me the letters yet. I can’t write proper, Eggy, I can’t.”
“Mrs. Smitherton will help,” he said. “Though I beg you, dearest, do not use that moniker in your missives.” Do not use it ever, he would have said, but by then she was in his arms, her breath warming his neck, his chest, and so forth.
“I will return, my darling, with fortune in hand. Do not trouble your heart.”
≈ ≈ ≈
Eugene raises an imaginary glass to Mary and Jeremiah who, though Catholic converts, have both been well vouched for. To the Smithertons, who have sworn to look in on Dora each and every day. They are an older, childless couple, both tall and thin and beaming with brotherly love. They are friendly with the Indians to the point of asking them to tea and serving them platters of vegetables from their very hands. They are friendly with the young pastor also, and come on occasion to his services at the butter church. When the pastor sees them there, as gravely polite as two children, his face lights up with the joy of the hunt and he expounds on the divinity of Christ, the vast evidence for it all, for they, being Unitarians, do not believe in such things. The eschewing of all meat but fish, however, seems to be their own peculiar affectation.
“Trust only the Smithertons, and Mary and Jeremiah,” he told Dora time and again. It is not that she is a bad judge of character. She does not judge character at all. She sees a halo of good around everyone. He gathers that her father was the same. Certainly she speaks well of Thomas Timmons. Eugene wishes he could speak so well of his father. But no, his father, Sir Alfred Hume, had the rude, bleary stare, the rumpled clothes, the general ill temper of one rousted rudely from sleep. He was from a line of sons who had steadily milked the family fortune, leaving Eugene with nothing to rely upon but his wits and fine bearing. Thank Christ for Aunt Georgina, the forgotten widowed sister to his long dead mother. After visiting her countless times she gave him five hundred dollars as well as the idea that the colonies would be a fine place for a man such as himself. “I suggest that you stay and never return,” was her sage advice.
He leans against the door, opening it with his weight. His supplies are heaped in one corner of the small, gabled room, are soon to be packed in his three trunks and good sized rucksack. He has a linen shirt and one of blue serge, a pair of moleskin trousers, and one of wool, socks, collars, an anorak, a blanket coat, a broad-brimmed hat as well as a top hat with hat box, a bed roll, a canvas tent, a compass, a barometer, a leather-bound notebook for the writing of his memoirs, a sketch pad (for he had some talent at sketching as a boy), a rifle, a new revolver, a matchsafe, a knife, a kettle, a fry pan, a folding candlestick, a leather drinking cup, three jars of antimacassar oil, good wax candles, a book jack, a lantern, a portable writing set with desk, a travelling games board, a moustaches comb, a clothes brush, a kerosene lantern, a brass telescope, a stout walking stick, and several books of poetry, as well as other sundries. Most importantly, he has several copies of his letter of introduction should he meet with the scions of the goldfields. The letters, impressively affixed with a large red seal, outline his three years at the college of Oriel, his year as a commissioned lieutenant, his posting in the Crimea. They extol his character, mention that his father was knighted for service to the Queen, and hint that an Earl lurks somewhere in his family tree. Every time he handles them he is glad that he found that out-of-work clerk. The man had such a fine hand and such a way with signatures.
Finally, for his adventures as a gold miner he has brass tweezers for plucking gold, a tin pan, a pickaxe, a magnifying glass, and a magnet, which the provisionist told him he would surely need, though for what purpose Eugene did not ask, not wanting to prove himself a green hand. The tome on alchemy, though not useful exactly, will no doubt provide him with amusing anecdotes with which to regale companions. Food and shot he intends to purchase in Yale.
And thus he is ready, is he not? There is no reason to delay. He has been newly shaved, his boots newly blackened, has had himself photographed at Fardon, Maynard and Dalby in full miner’s garb. He has not neglected his soul, either. He went last Sunday to the Iron Church, famously sent over from England, each piece ready to fit with the other as if it were a giant child’s toy. A wonder, all agree, down to its iron pews and iron staves. Unfortunate that it made rain sound as gunshots and the rustling of garments like sails cracking on the high seas. Indeed, on the morning Eugene was there he heard not a word of the Reverend’s blessing.
He nudges the pile with his boot. The room is not as large as the one he had previously. If it were then he would be able to organize his supplies properly. But no, in this room the roof slopes so sharply he must get on his knees to perform his morning ablutions at the wash basin. But the lesser space was to be expected. He doubted the wisdom of staying at the Avalon at first. Mrs. Jacobsen’s fury when she discovered Eugene and Dora embracing in the pantry—perhaps more than embracing—had been positively Shakespearean. Except for the odd retort, however, she has come around. In any case, it is difficult to have a grievance with a woman who adores you. And where else can he stay for such a pittance? After buying his supplies he has one hundred and seventy pounds left to his name. This hundred and seventy pounds seemed a goodly enough sum until he learned, to his astonishment, that it would be just enough to travel to the goldfields and set himself up. He considers again that Mrs. Jacobsen’s offer is not in any way possible. Not that it would be the worst of fates to have such employ. There would be some dignity in it. But how the tongues would wag! He is thirty-one. By no means a stripling, but hardly doddering either. And Dora. It is soothing, at times, to listen to her talk. It is like the burble of water over stones. And what a relief to not have to be the fulcrum upon which a gathering balances, as he is often expected to be. But other times her talk becomes tiresome, yes, tiresome. It is as if she has the souls of twenty women and they all must have their say. Often he is certain his future does not contain her, and then she looks at him in just such a way and they tumble into their bed and he hushes her quiet, laughing as he does so, insisting that the Smithertons a good mile off might well come running to save her from marauding Indians. And thus he falls in love with her for the hundredth time, the thousandth.
He draws the lace curtain aside. The dawn sky is the shade of an old bruise, the street a mess of mud and animal droppings. A thud, and a cur comes yelping out of a tin shop. Someone shouts in Russian. He pushes the window up, leans out. No, not Russian, but something like it. Were you in the Crimea? Were you at Sevastopol? He is often asked this
when he makes mention of his soldiering. Yes, indeed, he was Lieutenant Hume for nearly a year. Sometimes he also mentions that he had a splendid uniform. He should boast more of his soldiering adventures. Colour them in mightily. In this place it seems de rigueur. He has met a man who sailed with Sir John Franklin, another who escaped from South Sea Cannibals, another who discovered a new species of beetle. Everyone here is a Darwin, a Byron, a Wellington. But, no, he does not boast of that time. For it only brings back the disorienting roar of the cannons, the gun smoke, the reek of spilled bowels and guts, all of which made for the understandable error of running to the left instead of the right. Once separated from his battalion what else was he to do but take cover under the masses of the newly dead? Should he have stood up, shouted and so been shot through the heart? Ah, but no matter how he justifies, no matter how he re-imagines the scene, he has to admit some lack of foresight, courage even. Yet he survived, did he not? He was encouraged to sell his commission shortly afterwards, which he was glad enough to do, a Lieutenant’s pay being meagre at best.
The cur disappears into an alley. He will go to sleep when he sees a living soul. Ah, there, a cluster of Indians on the James Bay mud flats. The tide is low. They must be gathering clams or some such. And now two young swags coming from a night on the town, exclaiming about a Miss Frielan. “Imagine hitching yourself to a girl like that!” says the one.
“She’d be always floating off, wouldn’t she,” his friend says.
“True. And what’s bloody worse, she’d always know what you were thinking.”
Laughter and back clapping. Now a woman hurling ashes into the street. The first Whiteman then, not counting the town crier. There, Mayor Harris, all three hundred pounds of him, making his ponderous way over the James Street Bridge. He is on his way from his butcher shop to the so-called Birdcages, that tasteless conglomeration of architecture that passes for the halls of government. Eugene would even now be striding those boards if not for that damned dinner party, the one he attended in the spring of ’61, when first he arrived. Yes, if not for that he might even now be insisting the streets be wholly lit with gas, the spirit prices regulated, the bathhouses inspected. Why had no one forewarned him of the idiosyncrasies of the colony? Come now, Eugene Augustus, why had you not attended to your observations?
Consider. At that fateful dinner the servants wore morning suits when they should have worn black. One looked a half-breed; the other was a Chinaman whose long queue Eugene swore he saw dipping into the soup. The table was so full of epergnes and wilted flowers that Eugene soon enough gave up engaging the people opposite him in conversation, fearing for his neck. Behind him an unshielded fire blazed high in the grate. Governor Douglas sat at the head of the table. He was a burly man with the countenance of a drover. His dinner jacket fit him badly and was bristling with medals and epaulettes, lace and gold chains. His hair stood out on either side of his head like grey handles and at dinner he sawed at his bread with a knife, not once did he break it by hand.
Next to the Governor sat one of his lively, dark-eyed daughters (the Governor’s wife was indisposed, always indisposed) and then Arthur Bushby, the young, gladsome clerk of the High Judge. The High Judge, the much admired Matthew Baillie Begbie, was not in attendance, much to Eugene’s disappointment. Arranged down the table were the worthies of the town and their wives. The men had weather-battered faces, their wives unfashionable dresses. All ate with a gusto Eugene had not seen since his time in the army. Ah, but when in Rome. Thus he sampled every morsel offered, the clam soup, the roasted salmon, the saddle of mutton, the oysters and pigeon pie, the assorted creams and ices. He sampled as well as the sherry, claret, punch, champagne, port and Madeira. How could he not, given the numerous toasts to the Royal Engineers? They who were building such a splendid road, who have kept the colony from falling into American hands. Fortunate that a rebellion will soon be keeping the Yankees occupied. The guests looked vaguely downward when they spoke of America, as if America were a lesser form of hell. The absent High Judge was toasted also, such a remarkable figure, such a paragon of English justice, not for him the law of the bowie knife and the Yankee colt.
Then Eugene was asked his opinion on how the colony might attend to its future. He cannot recall by whom, but surely he was asked to stand and speak, surely. And so there he was, saying that in all his travels he had never seen a place where so many races commingle. He was inspired by the talk of the Judge and his law-making, as well as by the harangues of a barrister from Bath who he had met on the ship round the Horn. His theories stuck to Eugene, burr-like, almost without Eugene’s noticing, as certain facts and theories often seem to. The barrister disembarked at San Francisco and left Eugene with his preposterous ideas. If Eugene ever sees him again he might well thrash him. For there stood Eugene, telling how the progeny of commingling have peculiar tendencies, criminal and otherwise, and that laws must be applied to these progeny accordingly or else colonies such as Vancouver Island would not thrive. He spoke of how a white father and an Indian mother create a Mestizo or Mestiza. An Indian Father and a Negro mother create a Zambo. A Chinese father and a Negro mother create a . . . it slipped his mind that one. But, yes, and a mulatto mother and a white father create a Cuarteron; a white father and a Cuarteron create a Quintero. And a white father and a Quintero? Now what do you surmise?
The Governor said that ciphering was never his strongest suit. The tone of his voice alone should have discouraged Eugene. Some of the guests looked bemused; yes, bemused at a man digging his own grave. The rest examined their silverware.
“White! Ladies and gentleman! That is, it is possible to come full circle.”
The room was silent. His glass was unfortunately empty; his throat was dry, the room fuggy and hot. Certainly he should have sat down then. He is as bad as Dora at times, the way he speaks with such reckless disregard.
The Governor hurled down his napkin. Stood. What did he shout? Eugene cannot recall, only that the other guests joined in, only that he was soon being escorted to the door, and then a slap of cold rain, a lash of wind. In short order he learned that many of the guests were retired company men whose wives had Indian blood, some even had Indian blood themselves. And though the Governor’s father was a Scottish merchant, his mother was a Mulatta from Barbados. As for the Governor’s wife, Amelia, she was the daughter of a Cree princess and a Nor’Wester. And thus it did indeed become complex, particularly now that their daughter Agnes was married to the Judge’s English clerk Mr. Arthur Bushby.
≈ ≈ ≈
Eugene hauls off his boots and stretches out on the narrow bed, consoles himself with the thought that one day the event will sink beneath the surface of memory like the last vestiges of a shipwreck, until all that is left is a word, flung out like a faint call of distress.
Five
The shacks of Humbolt Street are a jumble of canvas and weather-beaten wood, of racks festooned with fish, of refuse. A boy chases a wounded gull. A patch of wild rose quivers with songbirds. The mud flats gleam just beyond, and from somewhere comes a funeral lament.
Boston is recognized by many. They invite him to buy clams, baskets, woven platters, blankets and mats, each tribe with its own specialty. Women name their price in shillings, dollars, or whiskey. Men offer for those women who stare out blankly, who have been captured in raids or bought. A few Whitemen also offer for Indian women, or suggest a look inside their ‘dance halls.’ This is a new trade, unheard of before the Whiteman came, and shared more or less equally by all the Peoples. Boston looks the women over closely, as he always does. He sees no sign of Kloo-yah, however, and so he walks west, past the Australia Hotel high up on its pilings and poles, then over the James Bay Bridge, and so onto Beacon Hill near where the horses race and the rich play their croquet and lacrosse and cheer mightily, as if a war were being won. There he makes a small fire and takes off his overshirt and sets out the needle and thread. He tucks the smoke pouch with its antique money into the torn pocket of his
overshirt and sews it over three, four times. Tests its strength, then puts the shirt on again, relieved to know the money, that money, is where it belongs. Only now can he stretch in his bedroll, his head against his rucksack. As always, he waits for sleep to find him. He needs only three or four hours a night. Once it gave him some small satisfaction, this knowledge that he has more hours in his life than most.
The moon rises, is full overhead. The stars fade. “I oftentimes dream of my father,” the Dora woman said. “He’s calling me, but I can’t help him. And you then? Are you ever plagued by nightmares, Mr. Jim?”
He said no, not mentioning that he has no dreams, bad or otherwise, and is glad of it, for he would not forget them as others claim to, once the eyes are washed, or breakfast taken, or once the forehead is exposed to the sky. At Fort Connelly, Lavolier scribbled down his dreams, seeing in them instructions from angels, warnings of damnation. The People near the Fort also saw dreams as full of meaning, as messages from the dead, as movements of vagrant souls. Kloo-yah dreamed of a woman with the head of a spider. She dreamed of it for many nights and said that the dream was for him, but how she could not say. She dreamed also of the wounds on his chest. It was as if they were her own, she said. She recognized the wounds as the symbols the Whitemen made and mouthed over, but she did not ask what the symbols spoke, and he did not tell her, fearing the power of the words as much then as he did now.
Reckoning of Boston Jim Page 4
