Reckoning of Boston Jim

by Claire Mulligan

  The two men stopped when Eugene stopped. Boston stopped also. For a moment all four were stock-still, as if waiting for some cue, and then Eugene swung his lantern this way and that, searching for the path, as if he’d never been that way before.

  The two men were whispering together when Boston came upon them. He hit the large man on the back of the head with the butt of his revolver. The large man thudded to the ground and as he did Boston clamped his hand over the other man’s mouth, pressed his revolver to his head.

  “Who’s there?” the Hume called.

  “Don’t make a fucking sound,” Boston whispered. “Kill you if you do. And stop squirming.”

  The Hume called out again and then blundered off. Boston waited until his singing faded, then released his hand from the man’s mouth and searched him for weapons. Threw an old pistol and a knife into the ditch.

  “Damn. I think you killed Jevowski.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “You a constable? Christ, how’s a man supposed to get by around here?”

  “Leave the Hume alone, hear?”

  “Whaddya care about our business?

  “Nod or I’ll blow your head off.”

  “I’m nodding. Ouch! Fuck Christ. Easy now. Hume owes me, the fucking idiot. Interfered with me when I was trying to make a living. Harmless game it was. And here he comes along and calls me a sharper, a cheat. I never cheat at Find the Lady. He set the Judge on me and poor Jevowski here. Damnation, now you.”

  “Get going. Kill you if you bother him again.”

  “Oh, fucking hell, fine, fine. I’m going. I’ve had it for tonight. What about Jevowski?”

  “He’ll live. Get going, that way.”

  “Christ, I don’t get it. Like they say, Hume must shit out horseshoes.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Another week passes and now the days are rimmed with frost, spiced with cold. On the tenth of September Boston wakes to snow, to an unasked-for remembrance of Kloo-yah lifting her face to a thick snowfall. The snow dissolved on the wet ground, showed white against the dark gloss of her hair. A raven on the roof of their cabin dislodged a piece of bark the size of a plate. The bark plunked on the woodpile and the raven flew into the sixth branch of a spruce. Boston had seen snow eighteen times before in his life. And yet it did not seem familiar, not with Kloo-yah standing in its fall.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Boston crawls from his bower. From his chosen vantage he peers through the telescope. The Hume and his partners come into view. The Hume is safely above ground. He is gesturing at the snow and scuffing at it with his boot. He looks surprised, as if just aware that winter is coming on. The Hume, to Boston’s relief, has not been to the towns since the night he was nearly set upon.

  It is now just past nine. The Hume and Napoleon Beauville have been working a sluice together for four hours. Two whiskey jacks flit from branch to branch. One alights on Boston’s boot and pecks at the straw and mud caked upon it. Boston pays it no attention. The second bird careens down to the mine workings. Its partner soon joins it. The Hume smiles at the birds, as if they were a rarity, as if they were anything but a nuisance.

  Thirty-Four

  Addendum to the Second Edition

  While working assiduously at pulling riches from the earth the Gentleman will no doubt often be assailed by the cheeky whiskey jack who is always to be seen with its mate twirling about in skyward dance & who is bold enough to snatch food from one’s very hand & who is ever together with its mate, ever plotting thievery, ever playing the coquette. One assumes the bolder of the birds is the male though in truth which is male & which female is impossible to tell for any but the most enthusiastic naturalist. Consider, Gentleman, how would the world figure if women and men were indistinguishable? Would one be wracked with indecision if one female were exactly like another in form or in temperament or in speech? Would life be simpler or merely dull?

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Hume?” Napoleon asks.

  “Salubrious. Fit as a fiddle. Merely pondering some philosophical ideas. Is it not warm today?”

  Napoleon looks at him curiously and says he finds it quite brisk. Eugene nods and comments on the paucity of gold this day. Napoleon says “patience.” Simple enough for him to say. He is the most patient man ever born, never raises his voice, never looks to his pocket watch. He unnerves Eugene at times, but then so does Langstrom heaving on the windlass. By the warmth of their new stove he is often polishing his new revolver with the same look of expectation he gives to his cooking. At the moment he is singing tunelessly in Swedish, a habit Eugene does not find as soothing as he once did. As for Lorn, he has made Eugene uneasy since the day they met. It is that perpetual false sneer, his slurred speech, as if his mouth were filled with bile. It is his comments that could be taken this way or that. At the moment he is below, overseeing the hired men, a task to which he has taken with considerable relish. Who can blame him? The world is inverted here. Eugene must emphasize this in his guidebook, or at least direct his secretary to do so. As for Young George, he is bringing over endless buckets from the shaft. Bringing them their fortune. Dear George. He heaves a bucket into Eugene’s sluice, bellows: “Number 103!”

  Yes, dear George. He has hummocks of dark flesh under his eyes. A manic cheer that has manifested itself in the last week or so. What has happened to the wide-eyed young man, diligently rereading his mother’s letters? Diligently praying by his bunk? He has been transformed by wealth. They all have, certainly, but none more than George Bowson. In truth, it is somewhat disquieting. For George has developed a taste for unwatered whiskey, for chewing tobacco, and smoking cigars, for dancing the hornpipe until all hours, for shouting and singing himself hoarse, and for the ladies of the Denby saloon, Mariette in particular, said to be the daughter of an Indian woman and a Jesuit priest, said to be able to turn any man heathen. If these were his only pastimes, Eugene might console himself that George is merely a young man testing the waters of life. George, however, has recently acquired a taste for the Chinamen’s opium. It was not just Eugene who suggested sampling it. Langstrom by his gesturing seemed to have some expertise in the matter. It was a mere lark in any case. He, Langstrom, George, and Miss Anna. The three of them in a small room that smelled foreign and acrid. On a square table were numerous gaming tablets inscribed with the Chinamen’s fanciful writings. On the floor were straw mats. They stretched themselves out. Tang Lee’s assistant took a pin and poked the sugar-brown chunks into the long pipe, then lit the pipe with a practiced hand. The opium bubbled in the small bowls. Ah, so this was what blue tasted like. The room melted, expanded. A flow of colours, a sense of half-dreaming. Joy, then, was not some philosopher’s concept that Eugene secretly doubted. It inhabited his body. His bones. It had form and shape. It was lavender and white as well as blue. An age passed. And then, the following day, a sore throat, a headache which has plagued him since, a weakness in his limbs, and worst of all a melancholy and loss of appetite that had no place in the breast of a wealthy man. George, however, was barely afflicted. In fact, he was agog, and became distressingly poetic as he described how he had communed with angels. Now he smokes a portion each night and each morning drinks whiskey to combat the ensuing lethargy. Eugene’s insistence that opium is an invention of the devil, his tales of sordid opium dens, white slaves, rotting skulls, have not deterred young George in the least.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Eugene straightens laboriously. His head pounds and there is a swath of pain in his lower spine, a swath of sweat on his brow. The droplets reach his eyes and the gold particles for which he is so keenly searching disappear in the swim of brown water. Absurd, this thought that it is all an illusion, a spell, this idea that the gold does not exist at all. It is only that the day is surprisingly warm, no matter what Napoleon says, only that he is surprisingly tired. Come now, Eugene Augustus, you are no longer young, that is all. True, true. Time was he could sleep for two or three hours and wake refreshed by the noontime chimes a
nd the shouts of friends at his door. Time was he could drink prodigiously and awake with only a gentle throbbing in his temple, as if some disapproving teetotaller was tapping him with her fan. Now when he imbibes it seems a drummer has taken her place. And his throat. So parched come the unwelcome mornings, such a longing for simple water. It is as if he has dragged himself through the Sahara instead of the saloons and gambling dens of the town. Come now, has it not been worth it? Of course. Most certainly. Already one of his exploits has been put to song—the footrace between Miss Anna and a boasting Oregonian. He, Langstrom and Young George bet on Miss Anna, out of loyalty, out of show, and were astonished as any when she won by two strides. Later she accompanied them to the Occidental in a dress patterned with dots, a cigar still firmly between her teeth. Miss Anna tromping about in a dress! What magic had they worked, or rather what magic had Langstrom worked, for it is his side she never leaves as they make their way through the towns, betting on the roulette, the blackjack, the dog fights, the bare-knuckle fights. They come away, roaring with laughter, marked with droplets of blood. Win or lose, it hardly signifies. Lucky Hume he is being called, and not just by Langstrom now. He could sell the buttons on his coat, clippings of his hair, certainly his advice. Even the Judge hinted he would like to question Eugene on one or two matters, a roulette game, for example, in which the wheel kept responding to his number. The Judge approached Eugene as he was scraping up his winnings. Arthur Bushby, nearby as usual, was humming some annoying tune. The Judge complimented Eugene on his good fortune, then posed his questions with impressive tact. He nodded at Eugene’s explanation of astounding luck at work, gave his good day and turned to leave.

  “Ah, I nearly forgot. I must warn you, Mr. Hume, that Kinnear and Jevowski are about.”

  “Kinnear? Jevowski?”

  “The sharpers from whom you rescued my clerk. In Yale?”

  “Ah, yes, quite so. Surely they cannot still hold a grudge. I shall buy them some champagne, yes. And you as well. Come, your honour, Matthew. I owe you. I have not forgotten your generosity.”

  “I would take up your offer, Mr. Hume, but I am occupied at the moment. And do not worry about repayment. The lunch was my pleasure.”

  Eugene watched him leave with something like exasperation. Felt much as a child might when given a bemused glance, a pat on the head.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  When the noontime arrives Eugene sets aside his portion of cold beef and settles against a stump. “I might take a nap, gentlemen, if that is acceptable.”

  “Rest all you want, Doc!” George shouts.

  Lorn scowls. Or is he deep in thought?

  “Is there something vexing you, Lorn?”

  “Not at all. Just seems that lately you’re doing a lot of napping and whatnot.”

  Eugene reminds him that it was he who realized where the gold could be found, he who encouraged them all to invest in the Dora Dear.

  “That’s true enough. Just worried you might be getting that sickness again.”

  “I am feeling fine, thank you. I apologize. I thought. . . . Well, shit.”

  Eugene closes his eyes, wishes away the thumps and slooshes. Only several weeks more if the weather holds. And then the mud and water will begin to freeze and he will return to her. Napoleon, Lorn, and Langstrom have agreed to stay on through the winter to watch the claim even though Eugene has reminded them that it is well-known that he is a friend of the Judge, that terror of claim jumpers.

  Ah, let them stay and shiver here then, if that is what they desire. Let them watch the mercury freeze. He will take Barnard’s new coach from Quesnel to Victoria. It seems years ago now that Eugene posted a letter to Dora by the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers while Barnard himself waited and offered unasked-for advice. Astonishing how quickly a letter carrier can become a man of substance. Astonishing how a journey that took five weeks now takes only a week or so. Yes, he must be frugal now. He must not go to the towns. He must be certain he saves enough for a pillared house, for silken dresses, for the wedding. He is a man of his word, a man of honour. He will buy Dora status. She will have lessons in managing servants, in dressing, in speech. Dora. Ariadne. His father. The Judge. They clatter through his imagination like bone puppets on a stage.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “Mr. Hume, can you hear me?” Napoleon is studying him with the same quiet intensity that he studies his drying herbs, his bottles and concoctions.

  “I am resting a little longer. I hope that it is not objectionable.”

  Napoleon’s voice booms in his ear. “The fever has returned.”

  “Nonsense, man.”

  “How is your throat?”

  “Sore, yes, sore, but only because my humours are balancing themselves out. I have not drank spirits for several days, you see.” He struggles to his feet, but it is as if Napoleon’s utterance of the word “fever” has brought it on in full. “Damn you,” he says. Lurches onward. Napoleon shouts to the others. The whiskey jacks hurl upward past the knoll. Eugene watches them. Imagines taking wing. A shadow on a rocky outcrop forms into the vague shape of a man. “You there!” Eugene shouts, desperate to ask the man a question, though what this question is he cannot recall, not for the life of him.

  The figure melts even as Eugene stumbles forward, even as the others catch him and lower him to the ground.

  Thirty-Five

  The Hume has been ill four days now. He is kept in the cabin. Napoleon Beauville collects roots and buys powders from Tang Lee’s store. The others take turns at the sickbed. Boston sleeps only in fits. Eats next to nothing. Does nothing because there is nothing he can do and yet he is more clear in his understanding than he has ever been. He understands now why Kloo-yah returns to him unbidden each night. He understands why his ears have been ringing with the cries of Illdare and the fort men as the People overwhelm them. And he recalls, finally, the words of the man whose face is in shadow, always in shadow: “You owe me, boy. You owe James Milroy. I saved your worthless flesh, and now I’ll mark it like it’s mine. You’re the bad luck that wrecked us on this godforsaken shore, knowed it. Should have killed you when I found you stowed away in my hold, thieving my stores. Now you owe. You owe.” It worked some magic. For the sense has been growing all of Boston’s life, a great unease, as if the world itself is growing more and more unbalanced. The woman, this Dora, she is not of the spirit world herself. Spirits cannot manage the faint throb of a blue vein at the temple, the sweet stale odour of womanly sweat. But they are directing her, of that there can be no doubt. They sent him into her memories so that he might realize the importance, not only of her return of his money, but also of her stories, of her request that her husband be returned to her. The spirits sent the changeling Girl as well so that he might be set back on the proper path. They did all this so that he might know that all his fine exchanges cannot balance his poor ones. So that he would know that this is his reckoning.

  Thirty-Six

  Eugene’s eyes are as dry and raspy as balls of twine. His joints ache as if they have been nailed together. Night. The stove gives off a hellish heat. He is lying in a stew of his own sweat that is rank with sickness. The blankets are leaden slabs spiked with wire. His name floats just beyond his grasp. He hardly cares. What matters is this raging thirst. The heat. The wretched air. It is cutting off his breath. Is it the cholera he has? Ah, God. Has he returned to Sevastopol? In the harbour the corpses are as thick as schools of fish, but they are not turning as fish do, all at one mysterious cue, but bobbing senselessly this way and that, each in its own lonesome death.

  He twists his neck. A man sits at a table, sleeping with his head on his arms. He is young, blond-bearded, a long thin pipe near his hand. The place is empty otherwise. Eugene wishes to beg the young man’s forgiveness, but why? And why, for that matter, is he here? He should be with his wife. Her name? He has forgotten. Ah, his father is here. His hair is in frightful disarray, and he glares, how he glares. “Failed, have you, Eugene Augustus?
Failed is it?”

  Eugene gasps out an explanation. He had not wanted to be a soldier. It was just that the uniforms were so splendid, and the crowds cheering the departure were so jubilant and so certain of victory, so proud of them all. So proud of Eugene Augustus Hume.

  What does Eugene want? Truly want? He has forgotten. It was so clear once. No matter, all he wants at this moment is water. Coolness. He shoves the blankets aside. He is naked but for a night shift that hikes up and shows islands of curious rashes on his belly and thighs. Dora, that is the name of his wife. She is gay, robust. Her golden hair twists to her hips. She is standing at the fence of a stone house that is covered with flowering vines. Now only a silver light, a wind that fills his lungs. His feet are bare on the stones, on the layer of snow that is not enough to cool his tongue. Not near. He could drink a river dry. Some distance off lanterns hang in the black. A muffled thumping. Ah, but for silence, cool silence. The creek. Below. A mine. Companions. Wealth. The earth drops under him like a wave. He stumbles. Doesn’t fall. The embankment is impossibly long. He can hear the rush of water. Can see the stars spattered in the firmament. He falls before the creek. The stones burrow into his knees. His hands are shaking as he cups the water to his face. On the other side is a figure formed of shadows. A crashing of brush. Dora? She has come. She said she would not leave him, not ever. He is wading toward her, swimming. Small stones scrape his chest. Her face, silver and round in the waters of the creek, shimmers just beyond his grasp.

  Thirty-Seven

  They have him in a small room. He is tied to a chair, for he has given them considerable trouble.

  “Shall we start again?”