Reckoning of Boston Jim

by Claire Mulligan

  “What are dregs?”

  “Dregs? They are the bottom of the barrel. The sweepings from the floor.”

  Boston scowls at the table. “How can a person be a dreg?”

  “It is a manner of speaking. A metaphor.”

  “You not a dreg.”

  “And how would you know? What have you to compare it to, eh?”

  Twenty-Four

  Eugene rushes to the window of Tang Lee’s store. It was he. Eugene knows that coat, that manner of strolling as if he were on a leafy Paris Boulevard and not in some slapped-together town in a valley of ravaged hills and heavy clouds.

  “I shall return directly, Mr. Lee.” He pushes the sack of beans back over the counter and elbows past several men who threaten him absently in broken English. The Judge must have been coming from Richfield a mile or so on. The courthouse is there. And the Judge’s abode. Twice now Eugene has attempted to call on him, but that ungrateful scrivener Arthur Bushby seems to have forgotten how Eugene saved him from a thrashing in Yale. Certainly this Bushby was quick to tell him that the Judge was busy indeed with disputes of all kinds.

  Eugene runs past a Tong house, past a Chinaman carrying a vast back-load of vegetables. Spies the Judge towering over all others in the narrow gauntlet of Barkerville’s main street.

  “Sir! Wait!”

  The figure does not turn. Eugene bounds up the steps to the boardwalk, narrowly misses toppling a stack of barrels, clips his head on the low-hanging sign of a livery, and then, cursing, blunders into a gang of men who are singing drunkenly and off-key. It is not, it seems, a boardwalk for pursuing old friends. It is not a true boardwalk at all, but a series of rough porches of varying widths and heights protruding from structures built on stilts in defence of the spring floods, the tailings that slide into town from the nearby mines, though to a green hand’s eye the purpose of such building techniques might be to avoid the refuse, the offal and manure, the all-prevalent mud. And what would a green hand make of the flumes crossing over the town, sometimes at a height of fifty feet? They bring fresh water from the hillside springs, though some (not Eugene) famously believed they were filled with liquid gold, as were all the streams about.

  The sidewalk ends abruptly before a grog shop set back from the main street. The door is accessible only by a propped-up plank. Eugene crosses the street and heaves himself up onto the other side. Dammit to hell. He has lost sight of the Judge. He cannot have turned a corner, nor gone down a side street or alley. There are no such things. There is so little flat land in this narrow valley that the peak roofed buildings are squeezed against each other tight as the keys of an accordion, and the sparks from the tin chimneys swarm together like fiery flies.

  No sign of the Judge in Wake-up Jake’s. Nothing there but the smacking of jaws, the clink of cutlery, the guffaws of satiated men. Nothing but odours at which Eugene’s mouth waters and his belly seethes. He lingers by the stove. It is in the centre of the room, as all stoves are in the gold towns. It is as large as a hog, has ornate carvings on the door and plates, and has a boot rail gripped with tiny nickel-plated hands. A canister for hot water fits over the drum, a tap on one side. Here in this distant, frigid place such a fine stove is a measure of wealth, carted as it is over hundreds, even thousands of miles, each mile compounding its worth.

  “Pleasance!”

  A well-girthed woman nods at him. In one hand is a pitcher, in the other a platter with a steaming roast. She drops the platter at a table of four men who cheer her as if she has performed some feat of magic. Points toward the one free table.

  “Not today, later perhaps,” Eugene says, than asks if she has seen the Judge. She has not. He lingers. Perhaps she will say: “Come, Mr. Hume, it will be on the house.” Perhaps his hat will turn into a beefsteak, perfectly fried.

  No sign of the Judge in the butcher shop. Nor the tin shop. Then, in the crowded murk of the Denby Saloon, Eugene smells the heartening waft of an expensive cigar. An imposing figure by the roulette wheel lifts a hand in greeting. Eugene steps closer, arms outstretched: “My friend, so excellent to . . . to . . .”

  “What’s the matter, Hume? You look fit to sob. I’ll give you some comfort. Fair price for it, too.” Miss Anna wears the tight breeches of a man as if born to them. She wears a bowie knife and a revolver. Her blouse is opened to show the moon-risings of her breasts. She is no beauty, true, is tall and raw-boned, has a paucity of teeth and manners, but her charms, Eugene has been assured, defy description.

  “Ah, Miss Anna. Indeed. Quite so. I am looking for the Judge. Have you seen him? He is a friend, you see.”

  “The Judge. A friend of yours? I’ll see him. I’ll see the both of you at the same time. Fair price for it, too, seeing as I only gotta peel down once.”

  “So you have not seen his face hereabouts.”

  “Truth is, I ain’t one for faces.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Eugene stands outside, not yet disheartened; it takes more than a small setback to dishearten a Hume. The door of Sin Hap’s laundry opens and the man himself emerges from the steam. A herd of cattle low through the streets, horns knocking on the high boardwalks. Great turds steam under their feet to be nosed at by the dogs and pigs. Indian packers walk by with their mules. Ah, Ariadne.

  He presses his hand to his brow to ease the thudding there. Napoleon’s willow bark tea, that is what he requires. It hardly helps that it is as noisy as only Sundays in the gold towns can be—is an orchestration of blacksmiths’ hammers and clanging bells, of emptying refuse buckets, and clunking billiards, of concertinas, fiddles, calls for patrons, drunken arguments, and in the distance the ever-present thump of the water wheels. What he does not hear—though this is one of the reasons he came to town—is the preaching of a Methodist who has offered twenty cents for every man who comes to service in the shack behind the Platonic Saloon, and fifty cents for every woman.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  A runner for the White Dove Lottery edges past him. Eugene catches his sleeve. “Mr. Tien!”

  “What bet, Mister?”

  “No bet today. I am looking for the Judge.”

  “No bet. No Judge.”

  “What? You devil.”

  Mr. Tien smiles.

  Eugene scowls and fishes in his pocket for coins. He has sworn not to bet on the lottery again, but it seems he has little choice. In any case, he might win this time. He has not given up all hope.

  “What number?”

  “1847.” It is the number he always uses. It is the year he first bedded a woman and is enshrined in memory as one of the finest years of his life.

  Mr. Tien hands him a paper marked with writings in English and Chinese then points to the pole wrapped in red flannel. Of course! A man such as the Judge would have himself barbered often. And where else but at Wellington Moses’s? The man is so deft with a razor it is said he could shave the whiskers off a mouse without the creature knowing it.

  The shop is small and neat. On a counter are rolls of ribbons and ladies’ gloves—an optimistic display, given that the manly population of the gold towns runs from 6,000 to 10,000, the vast majority of whom are destitute and struggling. It comforts Eugene not a little, this knowledge that he is hardly alone in misfortune. Of the women, he has heard estimates of 150, and this includes the Klootchmen who have married Whitemen, and the ‘dressmakers’ and ‘Judys’ such as Miss Anna, and the grass widows about whom rumours swirl like flies but never settle, for they could be divorcees, or women who have borne a child without wedlock, or women who have abandoned husbands and sought better, richer ones here. Would Dora bear the title of grass widow if he should perish? Would that he had married her properly. Would that she could properly mourn him.

  Eugene’s eyes water and smart. He curses Wellington’s Hair Invigorator. Bottles of it line the shelf behind the counter and a batch of it brews on the stove. Odour of lye and lavender and something else. Tar?

  “Good day, sir,” Wellington places his book on a lace-
covered shelf and stands up from his barber chair and motions Eugene toward it. He wears a striped vest over a white shirt that gleams against skin that is darker than Napoleon’s, darker than Lorn’s. His accent is not as theirs, however, but hovers somewhere between England and warmer climes.

  “Shall it be a full shave today, sir? Followed by a vigorous washing of the strands? I provide a discount for before-noon patrons.”

  Eugene glances at Wellington’s looking glass. His hair laps at his collar. His beard is a tangled mat, is seeming to grow more rapidly than usual, as if in defence against the damp chill that wraps Barkerville most days, though it is still August. He has lost so much weight that his clothes seem the worn-out ones of a larger man handed to him on charity. His blanket coat is frayed at the cuffs, the soles of his boots are near worn through, and his blue serge shirt is stained and stiff with use. None of his apparel has been properly boiled since he left Victoria. Instead he washes his clothes in the cold waters of Lickety creek, his hands aching as an old woman’s might. Yes. He would love to stretch out there in Wellington’s chair with a steaming towel draped over his face, blotting out all his disappointment, would love to hear the blade sharpening on the strop and then the clean edge of it against his throat.

  “No, I thank you. Another time. The Judge, have you seen him?”

  “Indeed, I often have the pleasure of his patronage.”

  “When?”

  Wellington heaves out an enormous journal. He flips through muttering “no, not it.” Eugene shuffles from foot to foot. The wall clock ticks over to nine o’clock. He looks over to Wellington’s book, there on the lace covered shelf. Bleak House. At one time he would have found such a novel fascinating, but these days he has troubles of his own aplenty without needing to read about the maudlin denizens of Mr. Dickens’ imagination.

  “Ah, here, the 10th of August. The Judge came in at 2:30 sharp. He said ‘Hello Mr. Moses, the weather is peculiar today, is it not?’ I said: ‘Indeed it is, sir, more peculiar than usual. I saw a rainbow over the white-dressed mountains in the North though it was that the rain still drove.’ He said he wished he had seen such a splendid sight then asked to have a trim of his moustaches. I said . . .”

  “Quite so, but have you seen him today, just recently.”

  “Today? Well now, no, I could not say that I have.”

  “My thanks, my thanks. If you see him again tell him his friend Mr. Eugene Augustus Hume is seeking him. Tell him I can be found at the Dora Dear, formerly the Praise to God, formerly the Highstakes. It is out on Lickety creek. Tell him . . . well, that is sufficient.”

  “The Highstakes? Did not the Greek and Holy Dunmore own that one?”

  “Yes, quite so.”

  “And it is now in your possession?”

  “Not just in my possession. I have shares in the claim. I have partners.”

  “Well now, sir, well. I wish you luck.”

  “Thank you. I have been hearing I shall need it. Now if you will excuse me,” Eugene says, for he feels an abrupt need for air.

  He leans against the wall of a tin shop over which the flag of Prussia flies. Indeed, the flags of all nations crack high on poles over the bakeries, liveries, blacksmith shops, supply stores, and stables. The flags are the only bright colours in his view besides that of the blood of freshly slaughtered pigs. Valley of the Flags, some romantic soul has dubbed it. Valley of the Fools more like.

  Again the disappointment. Like a knocking in his gut. It was not that Eugene expected much. Not that he had believed the oft-repeated line that Barkerville was the greatest city north of San Francisco. A mere glance at a continental map would disabuse one of that notion. What of Seattle? Of Victoria, in fact? Indeed, crap-heap was the only description that came to Eugene’s mind when he first saw Richfield, then Barkerville, then Maryville, then Camerontown. Do the others notice? They seem not to. They are too busy peering into the gaping holes left in the earth for that one golden vein, that one spark of beauty. It is up to Eugene to notice. To point out that the environs look as if they have been pillaged by a marauding tribe, or ravaged by a volcano’s fiery blast. The once merry Williams Creek beside which the towns are strung is now dissected and butchered, made filthy with refuse and tailings and drained to a trickle by flumes and ditches and troughs and shafts and by those great clunking water wheels of which the Cornishmen are so proud. And in the surrounding hills not a tree is left standing, nothing to offer respite from the rain, nor from the occasional ragged blasts of sun. It is a landscape of jagged stumps and smouldering slash piles and stagnant cesspools; it is a breeding ground for the massive horsefly, the cunning mosquito. It is avarice given a home.

  Enough of this. Enough. Eugene presses his brow. If he were the Judge where would he be off to on such a morning? The Occidental Hotel? It has true glass windows, a grand piano that was hauled famously from San Francisco. There are further attempts at gentility—velvet embossed wallpaper, a chandelier, a carved billiard table, a gilt mirror behind a lustrous bar. There is an elaborate gilt scale as well. It is the largest in all of Barkerville and is said to be able to weigh, not just the largest nugget a man can offer, but the value of a man’s word.

  The Judge is not in the Occidental’s saloon. Nor is he in the reading room just beside it. A fire burns lonesome in the grate. An unironed copy of the Colonist is open on the card table. It is over six weeks old. A headline proclaims the victory of the Union Army over the Confederates at Gettysburg. War. Battles. Is there nothing else to discuss?

  Back in the saloon he leans heavily on the bar. “Whiskey.”

  “No jawbone here, Hume.”

  He spills a few coins onto the bar. “What is that? Tailings. Lumps of coal?”

  The barkeep counts them with maddening slowness, then pours out a shot of the cheapest whiskey. Eugene gulps it down. Astonishing the flow of reason it engenders. With most people it is the reverse. For now he suspects that it was not the Judge. For he would have turned if he had known it was Eugene. Besides, Eugene’s senses have not been the most trustworthy of late—had he not smelled roast pork when it was only his boots being singed by the fire? Not felt, just before the unwelcome dawn, Dora’s minty kisses? Certainly the darkness of the mine has done nothing to invigorate the senses. It has a texture, almost, like damp wool, and an absoluteness that the merlin candles can barely challenge. If he is not on his guard he will become like that Finnish miner who started tearing off his clothes and raving in his own queer tongue. Disappeared to God knows where. Poor sod. Here’s to him.

  The saloon is becoming crowded, tobacco fogged. A man in his shirt sleeves searches through the song sheets atop the piano, settles at the stool.

  Then sleep, let her sleep in the grave we have made;

  From the cares of this World she is free;

  Then weep, let us weep, while the tall willows wave

  O’er the grave of our own Carrie Lee.

  Carrie Lee? Again? Why not Cariboo Cameron? Now there is a tragedy worthy of a song. Eugene has written Dora of the cautionary tale in case she is still wishing she had joined him. Women did not belong in the goldfields, as well he warned Dora, as someone should have warned Cameron. Instead he brought his wife Sophia and their little daughter who died before the goldfields were even reached. And then came a winter so cold that metal snapped like twigs. The Camerons stayed and worked the claim with partners. Sophia huddled in their tiny cabin. The fever was raging on the creeks that winter and it was not long before the lovely Sophia fell ill. How would the song go?

  He struck the lead, two months after she was dead

  Poor Cameron! Poor Cameron!

  A town with his name, but no wife in his bed

  Her last sweet request, to be buried in Ontario

  To be buried in Ontario, oh, ho.

  And so thro’ ice and snow, thro’ bitter winds and mountains high

  Twenty-two men did to Victoria her coffin take nigh

  To be buried in Ontario oh, ho.
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  Yes. John Angus Cameron. A high price for his riches. He now has three shafts and near a hundred men working for him and the gold is coming out by the bucket. The diminutive Billy Barker can be seen strutting about as well. He is a Naval deserter, a Cornishman. No price has he paid for his fortune.

  More men enter with much stomping of boots and much calling for coffee and grog. Eugene hunkers over the bar. Tips his hat over his brow.

  “Mr. Hume? Is you?”

  Eugene grudgingly admits it is his very self indeed. Manages a smile and a handshake for Herr Boots who wears a fur-lined overcoat and a voluminous green scarf, who no longer looks the shabby merchant, no indeed. Manages a nod and mumbled good day for Oswald who wears a towering top hat, a scarlet waistcoat, and an ill-fitting coat adorned with fat brass buttons, who looks, in all, like a well-dressed troll. Fortunate for Oswald that he arrived in the goldfields a good two weeks before Eugene, and thus before the opportunities were taken up. Fortunate that Herr Boots sold his gumboots for a staggering sixty dollars a piece and with that purchased shares in Oswald’s mine, The Jessica Bell. Fortunate that The Jessica Bell chanced to yield while all the claims around them yielded nothing. Expertise had some hand in their success. Eugene can admit that. But it was luck as well that led them to the pay dirt. The Jessica Bell now employs over twenty men who work ’round the clock and who thus leave the main shareholders—Oswald and Herr Boots, or Herr Schultheiss as he is better known—with leisure time aplenty to strut their wealth.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “You are liking this Sunday?” Schultheiss asks. He rubs his nose with a vast handkerchief and calls for the door to be shut against the dangerous drafts, mentions an ache in his neck that will not cease.

  “Yeah, how’s your Sunday, Hume?”

  “Swell, gentlemen.”

  “And what about that played-out hole you and them others bought, how’s that?”