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Curios. Scientific instruments. Musical Apparatus. Ingenious Devices & Novelties. All Fit for the Most Discerning of Customers. Mr. Obed Kines, Proprietor & Expert.
Boston waits nearby until the shop opens for the day. It is new. A raw wood smell overlays that of peppermint and cigar. A flag with stars and stripes hangs overhead, proclaiming Mr. Obed Kines as an American from the Union States. He wears a paisley waistcoat and a tight high collar. He is red-faced and nearly bald and he rests his fists on the glass case as on something he has conquered.
The local curios are on a table by one wall. There is an entire tea set woven of birch bark, arrowheads with symbols in ochre, and argillite carvings made by the Haidas in their island strongholds to the north. Boston has heard that the Whites buy these carvings for their mantels. But she would not have a mantel, only a stove. For her windowsill then. But what would she make of such dark things? There is the beaver, the whale, the eagle. They glare and snarl. There is the carving of a man. His hands are shoved in his breeches, are close in upon his crotch. His features are that of a Whiteman, his expression one of idiocy.
“Pretty things I like,” she said. “And novelties. Not that I have such things in my home. No indeed.”
He peers into a stereoscope, into a miniature tinted scene of two women on the edge of a cliff. One is standing on the shoulders of the other, her arms held out for balance. The illusion of depth is so strong it seems she might at any moment tumble into the abyss. The Dora woman spoke of stereoscopes, said that Mrs. Jacobsen kept a lovely one in the parlour of the Avalon Hotel.
He straightens. Better to buy something she has not seen before, else she might wave the gift aside as she did the offering of the marten pelt, else he might have to start anew.
The brass ball fits into the palm of his hand. It opens to show a globe. The concave side of its casing shows the constellations, the starry arch of the heavens.
“The saviour of many a mariner,” Kines calls. He is attending to another customer, is wrapping a many-handled thing in swathes of brown paper.
Boston closes the brass casing and puts it down. She is not a mariner. It is a novelty, certainly, but a gift should be of some use. Now these.
Kines is at his elbow. “They do not come cheaply, sir.”
“That one.”
The music box is disguised as a prayer book. Kines demonstrates its repertoire of canticles and hymns. Church is not something the Dora woman mentioned with any enthusiasm. Boston points to an harmonium. Kines turns the crank. Boston knows the tune, Illdare having hummed it once.
“Bach,” Kines says, “a damned Kraut, but what of it?”
An assistant enters from a back room. He is a young man with freckled arms and teeth lapping his lower lip. He busies himself with checking through a sheaf of accounts that bear Kines’ signature in a large, square hand. Customers come and go. Boston studies another music box, from which a porcelain lady slowly rises. She revolves on a velvet platform to a tinkling tune. Her infinite doubles, reflected in the mirrors behind and below, stretch back to a vanishing point. He has seen such things before; no doubt the Dora woman has as well. It would not be long before she tired of it.
“Are you searching for an item for yourself?” Kines asks.
“No.”
“A friend?”
“That one.”
“Ah, my most valuable item. It is an automaton. Direct from Europe.”
Kines places it on the counter. It is a hand’s span wide. The dome arches over trees fashioned of what might be clay. Painted on the inside of the globe is a waterfall and a distant hill with a castle. Inside the globe is a couple in clothes the likes of which Boston has never seen. The woman’s hat is a high cone; the man has shoes curled up like fiddleheads. They wait amid the trees, one opposite the other. Kines turns the key and they twirl about each other to a stately tune that Boston has never heard. A swan glides by, then vanishes behind the waterfall.
“It was wrought by a master Venetian craftsman for Duchess Saphina herself, a woman of gross appetites, as are all aristocrats. The dancing woman is in her likeness, down to her dimpled cheek. The man is Antonio, one of her many lovers, a captain of the guard who was banished when the Duke became suspicious. Lovesick Saphina ordered the automaton made so that each night she could see herself in her lover’s embrace, so that each night she could relive the night they first met, when first they danced to the strains of the very music that you hear now.”
Boston has never seen the like. It will be enough, more so. It is an ingenious thing. Still . . . he lifts it to see the mechanisms beneath. Such things are plagued with rust, with delicate spokes and cogs that break at a nudge, or work only for the one who displays them.
“What’s the cost?”
“Ah, you must understand, given the story behind its creation . . .”
“Some story don’t make it worth more.”
“I should think it does.”
“Ten pounds. Give you that.”
Kines smiles broadly. “I do not accept pounds. A monarch’s head does not belong on a coin, nor a bill. It belongs on a spike.”
“Dollars then.”
“One hundred.”
“What fool do you take me for?”
Kines frowns and reaches for the automaton. Boston is handing it to him when the assistant, crouching below the counter, grunting over a crate, straightens abruptly and bumps against Kines. There is a fumbling as of three incompetent jugglers, and then a shattering.
Six
To gold by the fistful! The cartload! The motherlode!” Eugene calls and raises his glass to the other men clumped about him in the saloon of the paddlewheeler SS Champion. They are anchored in a sheltered bend of the Fraser River on an evening that is cool and faintly misty. Whale oil lamps sway overhead amid the pall of tobacco smoke. A night bird flaps against the window.
The men raise their bottles and glasses.
“Here’s to chasing, how it say, the Gold Butterfly!”
“Salud oro. Nada mas pero oro.”
“D’or! D’or!”
“To gold and the bleedin’ captain! He says this girl’s the fastest, if she ain’t we’ll use his bones for fuel!”
Laughter. Shouts. A dangerous edge to the whole gathering. But Eugene knows it will not turn, close though it may come. There will not be that sudden shift from joviality, sizing ups, verbal parlays, into accusations, flying fists, knives and pistols. It is his particular gift, this being able to predict the life of a revelry—if one is about to begin, how it will end, if it is possible to create out of sullen looks and tired companions an evening worthy of remembrance and retelling. He would rather, say, have the gift for poetry, be as Shelley, Keats and Byron and live passionately through words alone. He would rather, even, have the gift for mathematics and plumb the secrets of God’s universe, like Newton, or like that chap with the telescope. But, ah, one must make do with one’s own gifts.
Eugene looks to the two men who must be brothers, both being pale and thin-faced and both wearing near-identical apparel: fustian jackets and corduroy trousers and neat caps on black curls.
“Welsh is it? How do you say gold then, in Welsh?”
“Aur,” says the one. He is not smiling, nor is he drinking.
Eugene growls in imitation and the men about him laugh. He is speaking of the unnecessary difficulties inherent in the Welsh tongue when an American of some kind interrupts him. “If you say that word ‘gold’ too much it don’t make no whoreson sense. You start thinking maybe that ain’t the word. Could be any old fart-ass sound. Who decided it’d be that word, not something else?”
“Gold is our word, is German word,” a man says jovially. He is thick-bellied and dressed as if for a Sunday outing, has a great silk handkerchief with which he expertly blows his nose. Even Eugene, fond as he is of good apparel, had the sense to wear his blanket coat, his broad-brimmed hat. His checkered frock coat and trousers, his cravat and waist
coat, his collars and top hat, are all nicely packed, at the ready for a suitable occasion, which this, most assuredly, is not.
“Your word is it?” the American says, half rising from the table. He is a ludicrous specimen. Is a jockey-sized, arm-flailing, revel-wrecker who can barely sit still and have a civilized drink.
“Gentlemen! Friends! It scarcely matters. Words are the one thing shared by all. They are free. Ale, however, is not.” Eugene shakes the jug at an Italian who is dozing on the bench, nose buried in his beard. “You are standing treat next, sir. We agreed, a round each to wash down that abysmal feed.”
The Italian explains in broken English that he is tired, that he has had enough.
“Enough? Is that what you will say when you are digging for your gold. Enough! Oh, I cannot dig any longer. I cannot pan. I am so weary. And all the while the gold lies beneath your boots. All the while it shimmers just beyond your reach because you have had, what? Enough! Never!”
“That’s telling him!”
“Genugh? Nein!”
“Bastante? Nunca!”
“Assez? Non!”
The Italian stares at them blearily, shambles now to the bar where among the men is a large quantity of Les Canadiens in scarlet vests, their boots on the rails, their faces veiled in pipe smoke, talking in the way of conspirators.
“What shall we call our mines then?” Eugene asks. “Ah, better. A contest. We shall ask the captain to choose the best. Each man put in a . . . a greenback is it? The winner takes all.”
The men debate, up it to two dollars each, then wrestle money from pockets.
The German volunteers to search for the captain. “Stupendous! Marvellous!” he says as he ambles off.
“And you, sir? What of you?” Eugene asks the sad-faced man who has just entered. “Shall we call your mine The-Close-at-Hand?” The man scowls, makes a rude gesture at which Eugene only laughs. Poor bastard. Apparently he had thought he would be let off directly at the mines. Did not realize there was a five hundred mile march before him. “Quite so, but one should be better informed. One should be better prepared,” Eugene says this quietly, so as not to be heard, not a difficult feat as words, unless loudly spoken, are being swept up in the general din of the festive.
The German returns with a man whose uncovered head shows a scalp afflicted with a rash. “The Captain not come. But Mr. Fere, he is the purser, he’ll make it for a dollar, to take out the winnings.”
The others agree and then the ludicrous foul-mouthed American shouts: “The Jessica Bell!”
Eugene stays with his original choice—The Croesus Cache. The Welsh brothers come up with Hawddamor. A Frenchman calls out Marseille. A Spaniard, Santa Maria. The German begs off, saying something about boots. He settles back with a cough and watches the proceedings with a lively interest, as if he had been the one to think of the contest entirely.
The purser stares at them sourly. Eugene knows he has lost already. He decided on The Croesus Cache in the assumption that the captain, teeth-picking aside, would have some education. But how would this grey-faced drone know of an ancient king said to have incalculable wealth? Ah, well, he’ll know less of some backwater French city trod on by history and happenstance. And he does not seem a religious man either, given the cursing Eugene heard from him earlier. The Spaniard is out, then. And by the way he stared at the Welsh brothers, Eugene doubts he has time for the delightful, mysterious rhythms of languages not his own.
“The Jessica Bell. I’ll be picking that one. Women’s what we’re needing ’round here. Not more men with their heads stuck in the clouds.”
“I knew it,” Eugene says. “To women. The lovely devils. Congratulations Mr. . . . Mr.?”
“Oswald. Ain’t Mr. Nothing. Oswald is god-blamed all.”
“Ah, then congratulations, Oswald.” Eugene raises his glass. The American takes little note of this sportsmanship. Instead he scoops up his winnings, nearly forgetting to give the dollar to the purser who is standing by with one long hand open.
“A song now, friends!” Eugene shouts.
Faintly as tolls the ev’ng chimes
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We’ll sing at ta da, ta da, Ah, hell
Row, brothers, row, the streams runs fast
The rapids are near, and the daylight’s gone, no,
past, the daylight’s past.
He sings the lyrics more or less on his own, though the others heartily join in the chorus. The German grabs one of the Welsh brothers and leads him in a dance. The Welshman grimly follows his steps. Puffs of soot rise under their boots. Les Canadiens thump their glasses, then join in the dancing. Oswald pulls out a mouth harp and plays, to Eugene’s surprise, not badly at all.
There are more songs, more drinks, more dancing. The saloon floor shudders, rocks. Eugene learns a Scottish jig, a Canadian reel. The German is his partner now. The man insists on leading, treads heavily on Eugene’s boots, smells of camphor and mint. Eugene begs off and grabs a jug that is being passed about. His glass. Damn. Where? Ah, well. He tilts the jug back, looks full into a lamp that sways as if in gentle disapproval. This night is nearly as splendid as that soiree aboard the SS Grappler. As usual, Dora cared little for propriety, nor did she notice the restlessness of her audience as she sang penny-sheet songs loudly and off-key, not minding that her hoops were hiked high to one side as if a great hook were attempting to hoist her into the sky. Ah, but then how they danced! She was not leaving his arms. Not ever. How sure he was! They kissed shamelessly. It was as if their love had woven a chrysalis about them. Her lips tasted of ginger beer, her throat of sea air, her hair of the precious, rare lemons he had given her earlier, holding one in each hand, his thumbs stroking their nubs. She grasped them and laughed and then sliced them full open and squeezed the juice through her hair to make it shine ever more golden. He had never thought of himself as lascivious until then.
“I didn’t dare say, but we met before, you and me,” she told him that night. He said, yes, in his dreams. She told him, no, in London. He had been with some friends in Newcut market. He had dropped to his knees when he saw her and begged her to come to the colonies with him. Eugene said it was quite likely. He and the fellows often went slumming, begging kisses from comely girls in not-so-comely streets. It was what many students did.
She looked so disappointed that Eugene explained hastily that he was jesting. Of course he remembered her. He used the word fate. He used the word destiny. Even the phrase love at first glance.
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He takes another drink, stares at Oswald to erase the thoughts of Dora, to ease the hardness in his crotch.
The night wears on until Eugene is nearly alone in the saloon. He braces himself against the faint shifting of the paddlewheeler, plans how best to navigate the stairs to the bunks below. He has overdone it, will pay dearly tomorrow. But it was worth it, surely, to forge a few friendships on the way to the goldfields. The Italian would make a fine partner. See his hands? Size of shovels. As for the Welshmen, they look as if they were born underground. That makes four, himself included. Perhaps a carpenter or two. No more needed than that. Keep a balance between profit and practicality.
Eugene sings: “Dora! Dora! My adored, my adorable Dora. We’ll be rich as Croesus. We’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Midas. Oh, give me your golden heart.”
“Shut your bloody caterwauling!”
Eugene peers down the stairwell. “What, ho, a fellow Londoner is it? You’ve been hiding good man. Come up for a song.”
“You’ll be singing a fucking dirge if you don’t bloody well shut it.”
There is laughter, and hear hears.
Eugene settles for humming. Goes out on the deck, steadies himself and walks, hand on rail. Good that he is not as his father was. Eugene can hold his drink, does not transform from a quiet gentleman into a choleric, violent, incoherent lie-about. When in his cups, Eugene is merely more Eugene
-like—more talkative, friendly, more witty, more ready with songs and observations.
The ragged line of mountains is faintly agleam with snow. Eugene points, though there is no one to note, how the moon is cradled in the antlers affixed to the wheelhouse. On the foredeck the Indians, Coloureds, and Chinamen huddle among the cargo. Poor devils. The deck there was hot as pokers this morning what with the boilers beneath going full throttle. He had stood there for two minutes in his socks before jigging and cursing, much to the amusement of the Missouri men who had bet him a dollar that he could not outlast one of their own. He had, however, and has the dollar still in his pocket to prove it.
Chill in the air. Foredeck must be tomb-cool now, what with the boilers shut down for the night. He knows the feeling, hot and cold, hot and cold, never anything in between.
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Eugene wakes to a high-pitched whistle. A jarring sends him near tumbling to the floor. Whiffs of whiskey and malodorous socks.
“Scuse it,” says his neighbour, jumping from the bunk above, his boots grazing Eugene’s head. The man blurs, solidifies. The American. Damn him. Eugene’s head pounds and he has a raging thirst. Never again. Not that rotgut. What was in that jug, not tanglewood surely? He has vowed never to drink that insidious local brew. Ah, well, at least he drinks from a glass from time to time, not like these others sprawled about, snoring and gabbling, bottle suckers to the last.
On deck the air is hardly finer, what with the steamer billowing out smoke as it surges ahead. The men jar against him, drum their fists on the rail and call for greater speed. Eugene would rather they call for greater caution, has heard tales of boilers exploding, men and animals sent sky-high, the river stained with blood, choked with flotsam and gore. He sighs. The camaraderie of last night is gone. Each man is now a competitor of the other. Each man may stake the ground the other should have staked. Take his gold. Take his glorious future.
Reckoning of Boston Jim Page 5
