Reckoning of Boston Jim

by Claire Mulligan

  “What? For a missive? I could purchase a meal, a brandy, a crock, no several crocks of grog for such a price.”

  “Ah, but is price of the Cariboo. And I, sir, I am the Cariboo’s only postman.”

  Eugene counts out the coins. He should have shrugged in incomprehension when Barnard rode toward him and called out for letters in four languages. Astonishing how quickly money can be spent on the road. He has sworn to be more frugal, but it is not easy. A man must have food and refreshment. A man must have a place to sleep. True, he need not have spent the entire Lord’s Day eating and drinking at the Globe Hotel at The Forks, but the food of the sad-eyed Madame Hautier was famous and justly so; he could hardly pass it by. He congratulates himself for not writing of it to Dora. For she might see in his rapturous description of Madame Hautier’s cooking a sly attack on her own, which, in truth, was abysmal. Her butter is nothing but runny gobs, her flapjacks hard as flagstones.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Barnard mounts his horse with a parade ground flourish. “Trust in the BX!” he calls out and leaves Eugene in a shroud of dust.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The dust subsides. Eugene mops his brow. Ariadne nibbles fastidiously at a sagebrush. It is mid-morning and already it is a glaring, un-English hot that is melting his patience, his good humour. There are sparse glades of pines, clumps of cactus, and tumbleweeds made animate in the crosswind. There is the blue of the Thompson below, an uncertain breed of carrion bird above, and all about, bare and dun-coloured hills that look to have been newly poured from the sky and left to bake and crack open in the sun.

  Eugene feels himself recede. He is at the vanishing point, not the centre. Nothing is the centre here. He hauls at Ariadne’s bridle, suppresses an urge to pound her. Since leaving Yale, they have been passed by all manner of travellers—innumerable miners with barrows and rucksacks and mules, the precarious ox wagons, a mule train, a battered horse-drawn carriage, stuffed to its roof with cargo and men, even a one-legged, scurvy-mouthed man who hobbled past Eugene on his wooden leg and spouted prophecy and doom. Most astonishing, however, were the two women of late yesterday afternoon. One had skin black as ebony and wore a broad straw hat aflutter with ribbons. The other had rouged cheeks and plaits of ashen blond. They were riding astride sturdy horses, a sole male escort. Their skirts, free of crinolines, rampant with colour, flared out as their horses trotted by him. Such a delightful contrast in the dull landscape, alike to a stained glass window in a stone church where a parson is droning on.

  “Come to see us in the gold towns!” they called.

  Eugene raised his hat. “I may indeed,” he called, but his voice was caught by a gust of wind and he was left jawing in their wake.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Ariadne stops, twitches her ears. Clang of a bell mare. The clanging increases and now comes the mule train, the largest Eugene has yet seen. The mules carry boxes marked “Dynamite,” “Champagne.” They carry sacks of flour, sugar, salt, a stove, a door, even a plate glass window held steady by a Chinaman. There are three well-armed Indians and a second Chinaman, an older man, walking alongside a sixth man who is the famous packer, Cataline the Basque: of this Eugene is certain. He has long moustaches and long black hair, wears a clean collarless shirt, a thick belt and high black boots. He greets Eugene in a mixture of bad French and worse English. Ariadne nuzzles his chest. He strokes her neck. “Zuri,” he says with an expression that is both surprised and pleased. It is, Eugene thinks, as if he has come across a beloved elder relative who should have died years before.

  “Am I to understand that you owned her once, sir? If so, perhaps you could enlighten me as to her age.”

  “Zuri. Ah.” Cataline says and runs his hands over her knees, lifts her hooves, shakes his head in wonderment, now points up the road and mimes a vast load.

  “She is managing fine. I am carrying no more than others are. Indeed I had to sell much of my supplies in Yale. I received nearly nothing for them.”

  Cataline looks at Eugene as if he doubts his intelligence, then adjusts Ariadne’s straps, strokes her muzzle, walks on with his tireless walk. The mules crowd past Eugene. Several nuzzle Ariadne. She haws mournfully as the last dust from their hooves disappears into the funnel of the road.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  For the next three hours he does not see a living soul except a red fox and some creatures that might have been a species of giant rat. His shirt is stained with sweat and his feet ache hotly in his boots. He looks down from the height of a great bluff to the swale below. Sees the frothy blue of the Thompson, a semblance of green along its banks. Before him is a crude gateway formed by two great rocks on either side of the road.

  “Should we take a rest when we reach the bottom, eh, Arie? The current looks mild. We could swim, paddle about like ducks and such.”

  Ariadne haws madly, rears up. The aparejo slides to her withers. Pans clank. A bottle smashes to the ground. Eugene grabs her bridle rope. It tears through his hands. The stench strikes him like a fist.

  “What the bloody damnation!”

  Nothing will surprise him now. Nothing. If Christ and his attendant angels walked by in miner’s boots he would merely bid them good day. And if the sky rained peaches and cream, why, he’d merely help himself to a bowl full.

  They barricade the road, as if doing so were part of their normal inclination. Their mud-shaded fur is sloughing off and dangles from their knobbly knees, their serpentine necks, their double humps. Bears he could understand, wolves, pumas, but camels? Why not elephants? Why not unicorns?

  “Well now, beasties. This is desert-like country, true, but if I am not mistaken you are out of your geography. Have you escaped from your turbaned masters? Escaped a zoo?”

  They swing their heads and stare at him like vicious dowagers. He had not realized camels were so large. Bigger than a horse, than an ox. They are, indeed, about the size that Cataline was attempting to express. Damn him. He could have given better warning.

  The nearest one spits and a yellow-green blob splatters on Eugene’s shirt.

  Eugene steps backward. The camel advances. Eugene hauls again on Ariadne’s bridle. Her eyes are wide as billiard balls and she is rooted to the spot. Two other camels appear behind him. To his right is a precipitous incline. To his left a steep bank. What is it about camels? Or are they dromedaries? Years without water. Ships of the desert. Something biblical, something about knitting needles and a rich man. Why didn’t he write it down? Because he is not a naturalist. He is an adventurer, damnit, but camels were never in the plan.

  The largest one lunges and snaps its yellow teeth a few feet from Eugene’s chest. Eugene yells and staggers back. Ariadne now bolts up the bank, showing a dexterity at which Eugene will later marvel. He, too, clambers up the bank, loses his footing in the shale, slides back. Hauls out his revolver.

  Eugene’s appreciation for comedy stops short at the manner of his own demise. A taste of vomit is in his mouth, a flighty beating in his chest. Should he charge through them? Shoot the leader and hope they scatter? Yet that may provoke them to charge en masse. Better he walk through them iron-eyed. They might be like dogs, who won’t chase the fearless. Great God! Is he afraid of camels? He who has braved the road alone for these twelve days? Who braved a sea voyage? The wilderness of the Cowichan? Who has fought in the Crimea, for Christ’s sake!

  He raises his arms. “Get thee gone, you wretched beasts!” It seems the right thing to say, seems they might even vanish in a puff. They do nothing of the sort. Their stench envelops him like a vile blanket. He is surrounded. He is aiming his revolver. He shuts his eyes, and as he does the shot resounds. The six camels are trundling off. The seventh, the largest, the most dastardly, lies thrashing in the road, a bullet in its neck, the blood forming a great pool. The revolver is hot and smoking in his hand. He is quaking. He has not shot a gun since the Crimean. He has not killed anything since then. Would that he had companions. Someone to joke away the incident. It is difficult to
be brave alone. “Bugger it. Fuck it.” He walks closer to the beast, reloads with shaking hands. Eugene wishes the sound the beast is making could be called inhuman. But as he knows well enough, there is no end to the tortured sounds that humans can make.

  He shoots the second bullet between its eyes, looks away up the road, to the two great rocks that seem now like the sides of a giant vice, looks to the birds that are already settling in the nearby pines, eyeing the carcass.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The nearest roadhouse is owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore of Devon. They tell him, with little enthusiasm, that he is their first and likely only customer of the day. No wonder, Eugene thinks, what with only a small sign that points down a lengthy, rough path and no sign of life at the spartan building in the shadow of a barren hill. Only after several bangs did the door creak open to show Mrs. Barrymore, lantern-jawed, sun-browned, a blackish dress sagging on her frame. Not a young woman and never a beauty. Still, she is decades younger and far preferable to the white-haired Mr. Barrymore who is turtle-ish in his movements, laboured in his breath.

  “Dinner will take some doing,” Mrs. Barrymore says without a hint of apology, and so Eugene tends to Ariadne, cleaning her scratches and feeding her tender shoots of grass found thriving ’round a stagnant pond. She presses her muzzle to his chest. Eugene wraps his arms ’round her neck and they stay in that attitude, propping each other up until the mosquitoes become bothersome and a chill breeze cuts through.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Mr. Barrymore is at the table poking at a collection of feathers when Eugene returns. Eugene sits opposite him. Mrs. Barrymore stands rigid over the stove and throws bacon hissing into the pan. On the wall is a large portrait of the Queen in her mourning cap and widow’s weeds. On the table, floor, shelves and window ledges are heaps of well-handled books. Framed in the kitchen window are two small and well-tended graves.

  “Good you shot it,” Mrs. Barrymore says. “They’re evil, those beasts.”

  “Not evil, my dove, an animal cannot be evil,” Mr. Barrymore says without looking up.

  “They’re worse than evil. They’re always biting their handlers and terrifying the horses and the mules because of their evil smells and evil ways.”

  “One should blame Mr. Laumeister, my darling, not the camels themselves. He is the one who brought them here.”

  Mrs. Barrymore hands Eugene a plate with crumbling biscuits, burnt bacon, a round of fraying meat.

  “It’s all we have. I hope you’re not particular.”

  “On the contrary, madam. It makes me feel quite at home.”

  “That German, Lomister. He was the one who brought them here.”

  “Mr. Laumeister, my dear, and he is an American.”

  “That Lomister said they were stronger than mules or horses and they don’t need water, just air.”

  “No animal subsists upon air, my sweet, not forever.”

  “On air, and people’s shirts. They rip them right off your back.”

  “Ah, so they are not wild?” Eugene asks.

  “No, but Lomister’s letting them full loose soon enough.”

  “Laumiester!” Mr. Barrymore shouts. He hurls a feather, watches with dismay as it drifts leisurely to the floor.

  Mrs. Barrymore smiles faintly at Eugene. “Don’t trouble yourself, sir. We won’t say a thing if Lomister comes asking around. Evil beasts. Evil god-forsaken country.”

  She pours Eugene a coffee. Eugene looks hopefully to the door. The light is gone. A howling begins somewhere in the hills.

  “Aha, Canis latrans, the coyote,” Mr. Barrymore says, looking greatly cheered.

  A second howler joins then both cease abruptly as if embarrassed at beginning before moonrise. Mr. Barrymore’s enthusiasm vanishes. He stares at his feathers. His harsh breathing fills the room.

  “Madam, may I ask if you have any stronger refreshment? Claret? Brandy?”

  “All I have is whiskey, if you’re not too particular.”

  Whiskey. Again. After Yale he had sworn to avoid it at all costs. But he needs bulwarking if he is to survive in this cesspit of despair.

  Mrs. Barrymore fills his glass and sets the bottle before him. Eugene reiterates how the camels came charging at him like a herd of maddened bulls. “But I stood my ground, friends, and took down the leader with one shot between his eyes.”

  Mrs. Barrymore pours a small measure in her own cup, mentioning that it helps with sleeplessness and ague, then says: “I wish you’d shot the evil lot of them.”

  “I was fortunate that my mule was unharmed except for scratches from being entangled in the brambles. Still it took me several hours to coax her down from her hillside sanctuary. If she had been harmed I would have had to seek out this Lar, Lor, that German-American fellow and demand compensation. Yes.”

  At this Mrs. Barrymore bursts into sobs and rushes out. The door creaks shut behind her. Eugene sits wide-eyed and certain that he is far too tired for any dramatics besides his own. “I offer my apologies, Mr. Barrymore, and my . . . my condolences for whatever is the cause of her distress. I hope I did not speak wrongly. I do at times. Indeed, I do.”

  “They are from Bactria,” Mr. Barrymore says. “It is a country in the high reaches of Asia, and hence they are called Camelus bactrianus ferus. Of course, they do not subsist on air any more than we do, but they can manage for a year at a time without water. I have told Amelia this, but she forgets.”

  “Quite so.”

  “To our eye they appear ugly, but in the place where they belong, in their home. There, I suspect they are something quite remarkable to behold.”

  “Indeed, I . . .”

  “It did seem a good idea. Mr. Laumeister hoped to make a fortune, but their feet are too soft for the roads here, and the damp in some regions is enough to drive them to madness. But then one is often plagued with bad luck. The road is not built where one expects. The cattle do not arrive. The land does not thrive without great effort and much water brought by hand. One does what one can.”

  Eugene murmurs his sympathy. Suggests the hour is getting late.

  Mr. Barrymore lights a lamp. “May I show you my collection? Please, we so seldom have guests.”

  “Your collection? Ah, the feathers. Lovely. A fine array.”

  “No, the collection in the shed. Come, please.”

  “Ah, perhaps I should look to my mule again. And I am exhausted. The adventure of the day, and . . .”

  “It will only take a moment. It is a fine collection.” He grips the lamp and walks to the door. He is smaller even than Eugene had thought. Is slightly hunched, certainly forlorn.

  Eugene fills his glass. Soon enough wishes he had taken up the entire bottle. Odour of half-cured hide, of something like vinegar, of something fetid, musty. The feeble light shows jars in which float snakes, fish, a chick, its great eyes closed and blue-veined, its claws at the glass.

  Mr. Barrymore beckons Eugene along a narrow passage. The creatures could be out of a medieval bestiary; they are that crudely, that grotesquely stuffed. Their eyes are made of bits of bottle glass. Their hides bulge here and there as if possessed of cancerous growths, great boils.

  “I realize they are not the finest examples of the art. I have been experimenting with a sort of plaster and with a frame of wood, to create the greater illusion of life, you see.”

  Eugene swallows the last of the whiskey. “Splendid, now . . .”

  Mr. Barrymore holds Eugene’s arm. His grip is surprisingly tight. He leads Eugene to a squat creature the size of a large dog. Brown fur. Yellowish stripes from shoulder to tail. Lips pegged back with small nails. Great teeth. A heavy jaw. “Gulo gulo,” Mr. Barrymore says. “Or skunk bear. They are solitary animals that scavenge and hunt. They birth hanging upside down, like bats.”

  “Are they numerous?” Eugene asks, affecting curiosity, affecting something other than a desire to run.

  “I do not know. I am sorry. I have written many learned men on that question and
others, but none have replied. It is difficult living here. Now this.” He stands beside a catlike beast. From the seams in its belly stuffing spills like guts long atrophied. Eugene peers closer. “Puma?”

  Mr. Barrymore smiles. “Yes, you are absolutely right. A puma. Felis concolor. It is also called Indian Devil, Catamount, and Deer Tiger. It is the most fearsome of the cats about. Its young are born in winter storms and its scream is like a banshee. It is heard only in the night, however, and always at the time between waking and sleep, though why I do not know.”

  “Quite so, and now, I . . .”

  “And this . . .” and so it goes. Felis lynx, its paws as great as its head, its ears tufted so it may hear its mate’s cry at a distance of three hundred leagues. Erethizum dorstum, the porcupine, and naturally the most difficult to stuff. Marmota caligata, the easiest, being no more than a walking ball. Mr. Barrymore imitates its piercing whistle. Eugene gives an idiot’s smile. The spread-winged bird is Falco peregrinus, a bird that can live for weeks afloat in an updraft. A handful of red fur is Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, or a pine squirrel. A great skull is Ursus arctos, the largest and most vicious of bears.

  Mr. Barrymore casts the light on a mess of brown feathers, smiles modestly. “I cannot identify this one, not at all. I am hoping that it will be named for me, its discoverer. It is not much, I know, but it would create a legacy of a kind.”

  “Quite so. Did I not see the beaver? There, near the door.”

  “Ah, yes, good eye, the mainstay of the Company of Gentleman Adventurers. Is it still called that?”

  Eugene assures him it is.

  “We value only its fur, but look at its tail, how remarkable. It is used for trowelling the plaster over its home, which can have as many rooms as ours.”

  The moulting antler is Rangifer tarandus, the caribou. “The creature is most numerous where you are travelling; this is why the territory is named so. It breeds in the untold millions. The young are born near full grown and need no tending but bound off the very day they are born.”