He covered his face with his neckerchief. Walked on. The corpses lay between the houses and in the houses themselves. There was the sound of the wind and surf and that of dogs and carrion birds quarrelling and feasting. And there was an odd, absolute stillness that did not mark the absence of the living, nor even the presence of the dead. Boston wasted no time, took four seal skins and a beaver skin and two sea otter pelts that he found at the bottom of a great wooden chest. He took also a carved wooden ladle and a carved wooden bowl. He took nothing more. The sea otter pelts alone were worth the trip, so rare were they by then that they commanded twenty times the worth of other pelts. In exchange he left the goods he had brought—chisels and pots and a bolt of plaid cloth—in the house of the headman and his wives and clan. Left them beside a corpse that wore the otter and cedar bark cloak of a headman. He did not recognize the man, however, and would not have, even if it were the same headman as when Boston left, he who had offered to let Boston stay with them and be one of them, since Boston helped them so. The pox had so melted his countenance into a mass of pus and lesions that even Boston could recognize nothing of what he had been.
He camped a good distance off that night. Decided that, in all, he had received just value for his goods. True they had not been of the finest quality, but then he had walked for two weeks and the rain had dogged him, and there had been the stench to contend with, and all this added to their worth.
He traded the furs in Victoria that summer for a new stove, nickel-plated and steel-bound. He paid for its passage to the Cowichan and from there spent a week hauling it to his cabin with the help of a hired Comiaken who alone of all his family had been lanced against the pox.
Why had he bothered trading with the dead? Do they take a reckoning? No, the dead have no use for possessions. He could have taken as much as he could carry, could have left nothing in return. Ghosts could haunt him all they wanted. They did, in fact, and a few more leering on the periphery would not trouble him. No, it was that strange stillness in the village that prompted him to leave the goods. It was the stillness of a cycle broken, of nothing owed and nothing offered. He’d left the goods behind not out of fairness, but out of a sense that if he did not that strange stillness would hound him until he, and all the world as well, might cease to be.
His food arrives, steaming and brimming over the plate. He eats morosely. Pushes the plate aside, then takes out his latest purchase: good unlined paper and a portable inkwell. He writes the letter carefully to better mimic the angular manner of Kines’ handwriting, seen briefly on a bill of sale during the occasion of Boston’s false accusation. He is nearly finished when he looks up and sees the satin wall of the landlady.
“You are writing letters to Miss Timmons? Is that it?”
“Not to her, no. Going now.”
“It is not that I mind if a woman, married or otherwise, has admirers. It is not that I mind if she makes conquests here or there. Only that it all remain honourable, above reproach, only that her reputation be kept spotless. And so if you must persist then I suggest flowers. They are the simplest way to show regard. Yellow roses would suffice. They imply friendship. Either that or marigolds. They mean health. If you wish to express gratitude as well, arrange them with a spray of sage. Place them on her doorstep and then quickly leave. For it is best the admirer remain unknown so that she may imagine at her leisure.”
She speaks loudly enough so that all the men about can hear. They glance over; some smile; some nod.
The flowers must be boxed, she tells him. The stems must be wrapped in sodden paper. Boston says nothing. After a few days the stems will be rotting, the petals brown. In any case, the Dora woman could grow flowers. They are the free bounty of the earth. It would be a worse gift than the paltry marten pelt he had offered in the first place.
Boston thanks her gruffly and concentrates on folding the letter. She eyes him, then turns to the next table. She says good afternoon to a man there, all abruptness gone from her manner. The man wipes his nose, then grasps her hand and kisses it.
Boston puts the letter in his pocket, pays his bill, and then manoeuvres past Mrs. Jacobsen. He is not looking at her, but of a sudden she cries: “I recognize you now! Yes, I knew I had seen you before. I have a good eye. I have a fine memory. The chain gang. They worked on the street outside my door on several occasions.” She directs her voice to the diners. “I finally had to send Mr. Vincent out to tell the guard to move them on, to tell him it was bad for business. That I do not want thieves and criminals eyeing up my establishment. No indeed. I have guests to think of. I have my honour to think of.”
“Leaving now,” he says, and surveys the seated men. None seem about to challenge him.
“Oh, the lot of you are useless,” Mrs. Jacobsen sighs.
≈ ≈ ≈
Boston makes his way to Poodle Alley. Waits for the diminishment of light. Obed Kines will be coming this way as he does every day on the way home from his shop. For now Boston has time to think and think some more on what gift would satisfy the Dora woman. Round and round the thoughts go, clattering relentlessly like iron wheels over stone.
Sixteen
Eugene wakes to the crowing of the roosters, a view of table legs, a floor that is a landscape unto itself—swamps of ale, rivulets of tobacco, ridges and valleys of crumpled tablecloths, a leaf-scattering of playing cards.
He crawls out from under the table, hauls himself upright, neither sways nor stumbles. Hah. Not every man would manage so well after a night of such liberality, of such, such . . . the word fails him, as, in truth, does the remembrance of the night itself. He surveys the common room: two long tables pushed beneath gingham-curtained windows. A long bar with a locked spirit cabinet. A spinet with a sampler and crucifix above it. Plates roughly stacked and food-streaked. An army of glasses and bottles, mostly fallen or smashed.
The room shifts abruptly, like the backdrop in a pantomime. Perhaps he should retire again beneath the table. Let the morning sort itself out. Let him hear all about the heroics over breakfast. Remembers now the room spinning in a reel-de-deux, a galop, a cotillion. No wonder he has blisters blossoming on his heels. Remembers some cordial, bright as new-pricked blood, strong enough to fell an ox. No wonder he has a mighty desire to piss. Just before he reaches the door he glances at the bar mirror. His hair is in disarray; his moustaches and beard bristle like a scullery brush and his half-buttoned shirt shows the pale flag of his underclothes. In this state he would terrify small children. Are there small children about? He has some vague image of two boys running through a forest of booted men. He pats his hair. Where the devil has his hat gone? Halts in mid-motion. The coffin is half-propped against the far side of the bar. The lid is askew beside it. It is lined with a sheet and contains the carcass of a chicken. Eugene would dearly love to turn away. And yet the enigma of the night insists. Cautiously he approaches the bar; cautiously he leans over it. The corpse is seated on the floor, his back against the far wall, his filmy eyes fixed on the ceiling. In the stiff spray of his fingers is a bottle, in his lap a few stained playing cards. He is a small man. His hair is thick and grey and dishevelled, his belly rotund. At his temple is a bloodless gash.
Eugene stumbles over an upturned chair. “Christ and damnation!” he shouts, and then composes himself. The previous day, at least, has now returned. He left Lac La Hache house—owned by a rule-spewing former steamboat Captain—near the crack of morning. Delightful country. Delightful day. Golden plains dotted with cattle and wood groves and, the long glittering waters of Lac La Hache itself. A breeze sprung up ’round the noontime and dispersed the mosquito haze. He and Ariadne made reasonable time. The air must have agreed with her, the succulent grasses.
Late in the afternoon he came upon the Mactavish roadhouse. It was a fine establishment—two stories of well-chinked logs, three gables, and a freshly painted fence about a thriving garden. There was a large barn, and several tidy outbuildings, and at least twenty people bustling to and fro. He h
ad not planned to stop so early. He was making admirable time. But how could he ignore the certainty that a splendid party was at hand, one that could not be missed?
He was correct. The Mactavishes were preparing for the lyke wake of the brother of Mr. Mactavish, one Tricky Ole Amos who laid his head on the table while playing at poker. The other players carried on, thinking this was merely a bluff. Only when he repeatedly refused to take up his hand did they become alarmed.
Eugene hobbles into the grey light, curses the blisters on his heels, the constant itching of mosquito bites. He pisses by a pig trough. A thought chills him. Perhaps the man in the front room is not the only one dead. Perhaps all the others are dead as well. Poisoned by Mrs. Mactavish’s meat pasties. But then he, too, would be cooling his heels in purgatory, as he had eaten six early in the evening, and in record time, and for this won a silver dollar from a Spaniard who had breath to make a dragon cower.
Something else about the night. A Norseman squeezes an accordion. A crab-limbed Frenchman saws at a fiddle. A string snaps and he continues gamely on. The floor shudders with the stomping of boots. Eugene is leading them in song. He is leading Mrs. Mactavish in a reel. She is apple-cheeked and lively-eyed, her dark hair all scattered out from its pins. She is here, now, in the common room, picking up glasses. The coffin is flat on the floor, the lid in place.
“Good morning to you, ma’am.”
She glares at him tight-lipped and continues in her task. A door bangs open. Mr. Mactavish the Live stands with suspenders in loops against his thighs. He resembles his brother to a disturbing degree and is glaring at Eugene, though for what reason Eugene certainly could not say.
“Here’s the dancer, then.”
“Ah, yes. Good morning to you.”
“Think so, do ye?”
“I think it is good enough. Good enough. Pray, tell me, where might I find my rucksack and hat?”
“Pray? There’s something ye might wanna be doing.”
“Upstairs, the second room,” Mrs. Mactavish says sharply. “I’ll be donging the bell soon as this mess is cleared.”
“My thanks, madam. Sir.”
Eugene mounts the stairs. Walks as upright as possible, as if to deflect the eyes boring into his spine.
“Ye know, Violet, I’m thinking to get a trap door like the Pole’s at Horsefly. That way when the roustabouts get half-screwed I can spring it, and wham, they’re cooling their heels in the cellar.”
Eugene can hardly blame the man for this outburst. He, too, would be in a foul temper if another man had danced so enthusiastically with his woman, if his woman—if Dora—had looked at a man the way Mrs. Mactavish looked at him the night before.
≈ ≈ ≈
Nothing like the smell of a room crowded with at least thirty sleeping men, all of whom are in need of a bath, all of whom have been partaking in the joys of Dionysus. A few are belching and scratching their way to consciousness. Others are sprawled fully clothed on the floor as if dropped there from a great height. His rucksack is beside a bottom bunk where two men sleep head to toe. He picks his way over. Grabs his rucksack. His hat. His belongings are intact. Splendid. Excellent.
One of the men pushes the socked foot of his companion away from his cheek. He looks bleary-eyed at Eugene. He is a mere stripling, barely old enough to shave.
“Larky, you’re Mr. Hume. Morning,” he says, his accent that of a Londoner.
“Ah, Good morning, good morning.” Eugene cannot place him, but that is not what troubles him. What troubles him is the smirking and pointing in his direction that is going on as the men rise.
Eugene whispers: “Young sir, in your opinion, is an apology required?”
“An apology? Larky, it’ll hardly matter to the man.”
“Which man?”
“Which? Why the dead man. Amos was it? The brother of Mr. Mactavish.”
“Ah, quite so.”
“But to the Mactavishes, an apology there might be swell.”
“For anything in particular?”
“Anything in particular? For the dancing you were doing. You don’t recall? Larky, I’ll be.”
“I have been praised for my dancing. I cannot imagine it was so offensive.”
“You don’t remember?”
“It seems not. Humour an old man, will you?” But even as he says this memory’s door creaks open. Eugene stands on the threshold. The common room is crowded with men. The windows are white with steam. The men are dancing with each other, which is nothing unusual, except for the boisterous vigour with which they are conducting themselves, a vigour that only free liquor engenders. They are stomping about in the parody of a quadrille. A keg of ale on the bar dribbles out its last into the glass of the Spaniard who peers at the spout with a look of betrayal. From somewhere in the house a clock strikes three slow dongs. Mrs. Mactavish, the only woman there, looks distraught and defeated, does not even notice her two young sons drinking from abandoned glasses. Eugene rearranges his memory. He takes her elbow, bellows at the rabble to disperse, to give the lady some peace, to respect the dead. But, no, edit as he might, such is not the scene. She is on her own. As for Mr. Mactavish the Live, he is in a chair, his head in his hands. He seems incapable of movement, much less controlling the situation. Mr. Mactavish the Dead surveys the proceedings from his propped-up coffin. His hands are clasped on his belly. A glass is in one breast pocket, a pack of playing cards in the other. He is comfortable, no need to disturb him, his dancing days are done. So why, why does Eugene berate him for being so quiet? For looking so deathly tired? None doing, sir! He cannot but feel contemptuous of the man, as if dying were an expression of weakness, of lack of will.
The smell is of something ripening. The man’s new-shaven cheeks are pressed against Eugene’s. His rotund belly has a womanly softness. His limbs have a peculiar heaviness, as though filled with clay.
Mr. Mactavish the Live shouts and struggles to rise from his chair. But he cannot move forward. The vomit pooling all about his boots seems to have ensnared him. He sits back down heavily and is not heard from again.
Eugene hauls Mr. Mactavish the Dead about the room, knocks over chairs, bangs against a table. Bottles smash to the floor. The other men are cheering, huzzahing, calling: “Amos, Amos, Amos. Back to life with you!” What splendid affairs, these popish wakes and lyke wakes, these attempts to roust the dead, to ensure they are not merely sleeping deeply, playing a trick. How much better than all the weeping and vast expenditures of his experience, the hired mutes and mourners, the women so decked in black mourning apparel they seem like macabre Christmas trees.
Eugene drops the man and trips over him, hauls him upright. He has never felt so alive, so certain of his own strength. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least if those feet started tapping on the floor, if those filmy eyes sparked with life. Injun Hank and his evil eye be damned. The ghoulish Barrymores be damned. There was enough life and hope emanating from Eugene Augustus Hume to animate the dead man’s limbs long enough for one last dance.
≈ ≈ ≈
Eugene now sniffs his lapel and detects a rotting, sweetish odour. Finds a grey hair and then another. His gut churns. He’ll throw the coat out. Or have it washed in lye. And, oh, for a tub of steaming water, a scrub from sympathetic arms.
Mrs. Mactavish is in the kitchen plating flapjacks, looking older in the hard light of full morning. Two Chinamen stand guard over the stove. The younger one takes a step back as Eugene comes closer. The older one makes an intricate motion with his hands and mutters what might be a protecting spell, as if before him stood not a proper Englishman, but some foreign devil.
Eugene places his hand on his heart, begins his apology. Without a word, Mrs. Mactavish brushes past him to the common room. Eugene follows close behind. No vestige of last night’s festivities remains. The men at the long table look up in expectation, though whether for the food or for the spectacle of Eugene with his hat in his hand is not clear. The Spaniard is picking his teeth. The Fr
ench fiddler is holding onto his mug with both hands, the way an orphan might.
Mrs. Mactavish slaps down the platter of pancakes.
“Madam, I meant no disrespect.”
Still she says nothing.
Eugene joins the others at the table and does his best with the fried eggs and meat pasties and coffee, all of it settling poorly in his belly. Afterwards he makes his way to the anteroom to settle his bill with Mr. Mactavish. He waits patiently in line, barely hearing the talk all about him. These Catholics should be more forgiving. It is not that unusual to dance with a corpse. He has heard of worse, lyke wakes where the corpse is taken out for a spree, or sprung-wrapped so as to leap out of the coffin, or used as a table for cards. No, he has not lost face, perhaps, hah, merely a nose, or an eyelid. He was not alone in his carousing, after all. Still, what was he about? He is not a grave robber, not one of those physics who hack open the dead for experiments and grotesque proddings. He is not one of those men who are spoken of in hushed voices in the lower taverns of London, men who love only the passivity and carnal coolness of a corpse, male or female, it matters not.
Mr. Mactavish hands Eugene a lengthy bill in an illegible hand. “Ten pounds or fifty dollars. What ye prefer?”
“Ten? Fifty? There is a mistake, I . . .”
“Ye smashed twenty-two glasses and fifteen plates. The coffin’s wrecked. Ye ripped my brother’s suit and gashed him plenty. Need to get him plastered up so he looks fit to bury. And here, two kegs o’ ale and ten bottles o’ whiskey. ‘Put it on my bill. I’ll pay in the morn, ye said.’ ”
“On my bill? You there, Larky-boy, is he correct? Two kegs? Ten bottles?”
“Name is Evans, but Larky is what they call me, true enough, and that’s right, meant to thank you, sir.”
Reckoning of Boston Jim Page 17
