A World Elsewhere

by Wayne Johnston

  This was a strange way to be occupied on the night before you left your lifelong home for good. One last stroll about the town for old times’ sake it should have been, with Deacon on his shoulders. And after that a fret-free night, not one of waiting for the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  He took a route that brought him to the street just west of the nobleman’s. He walked down the tree-lined alleyway that ran between the nobleman’s house and his uphill neighbour’s. The nobleman’s house was dark but for the front porch light.

  He unlatched the gate that opened onto the side of the house and stepped into the yard. He went round to the back door, took the ring of keys from his pocket and climbed the steps.

  He tried the key. It turned. The nobleman had left everything the same, even the locks. The door creaked when he opened it, exactly as it had throughout his childhood. He went through the porch and into the kitchen. The front porch light, the street lights, the lights from neighbouring houses allowed him to see just enough to keep from knocking into something.

  He made his way through the kitchen, certain the hat would not be there. In the front room he saw the piano that his mother used to play. He glanced at the Druken china cabinet, dining room table, buffet and sideboard.

  He went upstairs to the master bedroom, his parents’ room in which he had not set foot since his mother died, noted the armoire from the landing, but bypassed it in favour of the closet in which it was so dark he had to feel his way about. He started with the upper shelf, just inside the door.

  He knew the instant he touched it that he had found the hat box. The nobleman mimicked both father and son. He had put the box where Landish had put it in the attic, where the two men who came for it must have told him Landish kept it—on the shelf in his bedroom closet.

  He slid it off the shelf. He left the closet and laid the box on the bed, eased it open just enough to satisfy himself that the hat was inside, then closed it.

  The box now held in front of him like an about-to-be-presented birthday cake, he left the room and went downstairs, where he paused, allowed himself a moment to imagine his father sitting in what had been his chair, which seemed not to have been moved an inch from its place before the fire. The scale model of the Gilbert stood where it always had, in the centre of the mantelpiece.

  He made his way down the hallway to the kitchen, the porch, the porch door. He put the box beneath one arm and with his free hand turned the knob. He nudged the door with his shoulder and stepped outside.

  A cat ran up the steps and into the house.

  He removed the key from his pocket and locked the door.

  He heard what he thought were raindrops on the box until he realized that beads of sweat were falling from his forehead. He removed the potato sack from inside his shirt, put the box inside it, knotted the sack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked without haste down the pathway of his father’s garden toward the gate.

  Deacon heard Landish ascend the lower stairs, then Hogan’s. Landish didn’t pause in Hogan’s kitchen, didn’t say a word as he passed through and climbed up to the attic door. Deacon unbolted the door and then returned to his chair at the table.

  “There, you see, back in no time.” Deacon looked at him. He was flushed and sweaty. He looked like he was decks awash, but Deacon couldn’t smell the grog. He didn’t have anything in his hands.

  “Did you say goodbye to everyone?” Landish said nothing. He sat at the table, on the other side from Deacon.

  “Did you take the hat?” Deacon said.

  “Yes,” Landish said. “I was lucky. It wasn’t hard to find. We mustn’t say a word to anyone.”

  “Where is it? Did you hide it?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re home free.”

  No one could prove that he took the hat. No one would find it. As long as the wealth inspector did his part.

  The wealth inspector had the hat and was going to hold it for him until he wrote to him from Vanderland. He had tried to talk him out of stealing it back but when he saw that Landish was going to steal it with his help or not, he told him he would help him, not for his sake but for Deacon’s. They agreed that if Landish were caught, he wouldn’t say a word about the wealth inspector; if he hadn’t met the wealth inspector when and where they planned to exchange the hat, the wealth inspector would simply have gone home.

  Still, the nobleman might soon arrive with the police or, worse, the men he sent before. In either case, what a scene might then play out before the boy.

  “If someone comes to ask us questions, tell them I went out tonight. Don’t lie about that, because Hogan knows that I went out. So do the Barnables. Tell them you’re not sure how long I was gone or else you’ll sound like I’ve been coaching you. Don’t say anything unless you have to. We might be long gone by the time the nobleman even notices the hat is missing. But we’re not home free.”

  Deacon nodded.

  Deacon knew they would think about the hat all night. They wouldn’t sleep. They would jump at every sound, even when they knew that it was Hogan. Sometimes, when tomorrow was the day you thought would never come, it was nice when you couldn’t get to sleep. The Big Day, Landish always called it. There had been many big days, but none like the one that was almost here at last.

  In the morning, Landish couldn’t keep still. The ship’s departure time was hours away. They went out for a long walk. Coming back, as they neared the last turn on Dark Marsh Road, Landish saw the nobleman’s carriage, parked, the nobleman seated up front, reins and whip in hand.

  “Remember what I told you,” Landish said, squeezing Deacon’s hand.

  Deacon had never seen the nobleman. He looked smaller and older than he’d imagined. The coats of his two black horses shone in the morning sunlight. They had feathers on their foreheads.

  “The cat was in when we returned home,” the nobleman said. “That’s how we discovered that our house was broken into. Think about that, Mr. Druken.”

  “What do you want from us?” Landish said.

  “I searched the attic,” the nobleman said, “even though I doubted you’d be fool enough to hide it there.”

  “You entered my premises without my permission?”

  “I came to call, as landlords are allowed to do. You were out. I had a key. I locked the door behind me when I left. Everything is exactly as it was. I did everything as you did it. Almost.”

  “What were you looking for?” Landish said.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you stole it and destroyed it out of spite. Is that what happened, boy? Did Mr. Druken steal my hat and burn it in the fireplace? Or dispose of it somewhere, along with the keys to my house? Did you help him steal my hat last night?”

  “A man of your means should know better than to leave his doors unlocked,” Landish said.

  “You cannot break into my house at night, creep about from room to room, rummage through my private things, make off with something from the very closet of my bedroom and expect to get away with it. I will have my satisfaction one way or the other.”

  “Let’s go inside, Deacon.”

  “You’ll be back. It won’t take long for you to wear out your welcome. And you, boy, are now apprenticed to a cheat, a liar and a thief.”

  The Ship

  THEY BOARDED THE SHIP early in the evening, gaped at by the others who were boarding, recognized by most of them judging by how frequently he heard them say their names. Even as the seal hunt was getting under way, Landish Druken was leaving for New York with the son of the man his father murdered.

  They stood at the rail, waiting while the crew made their final preparations. Deacon felt the shudder of the ship as the engines started up and churned the water white along the side. A gap between the dock and the ship began to form. Deacon thought it was so wide that even with a running start, Landish would have landed in the water. And the people on the dock would have had to fish him out, and Deacon would have had no choice but to cross the Gulf alone and Landish none but
to turn and walk away.

  Having all his life seen the sea from St. John’s, Deacon was now seeing St. John’s from the sea. Everything was backwards. He saw things that had been hidden from him all his life, the sea-facing side of the lighthouse at Fort Amherst, the great bay that, mimicking the harbour, lay behind the Brow. Mesmerized, he all but pitched forward through the rails into the sea.

  Walking on the ship was like trying to walk on the bed in the attic while Landish bounced the mattress with both hands.

  They cleared the Narrows. The ship turned. He saw the sealing of the cleft between the headlands. It seemed that they had departed just in time, just as they were shutting up the harbour for the night. The rigging was traced out by lantern lights like the one that Landish hung in the window in the attic when it was dark enough outside to see the stars.

  To their left was a battery of cannons in front of a lighthouse.

  “The English put them there,” Landish said, “so they could blow the smithereens out of the French. They took turns blowing the smithereens out of each other. When the smoke cleared, the English had more smithereens left, so they got Newfoundland.”

  The cliffs to their right were too steep and sheer to support anything but small, gnarled trees whose roots were fastened to the rock like vines.

  “Well,” said a man standing near them at the railing, “at least we don’t live in this place.”

  Landish told him he had never understood why some people were cheered by the notion that however bad was their lot, someone else’s lot was even worse. “By that reasoning,” he said, “we should all be content to live anywhere but Hell.” He smiled. The man and woman moved further down the rail.

  Deacon could see other lights along the coast but not bunched up like in St. John’s—small clusters, lone lights further down, and one so dim that he wondered if the man who lit it even knew there was a city on the far side of the hill.

  A couple of hours into the voyage, Landish overheard a passenger talking to a steward. “They look like they escaped from steerage. He must have robbed someone. How else could he afford first class? God knows what we’ll be infected with because of them. Tell the captain I would like to have a word with him.”

  The boy, now almost seven, had never been in a vehicle of any kind. Landish was the closest he had come, Landish who conveyed him on his shoulders more often than he led him by the hand.

  He had never walked on a frozen lake or river.

  He had never gone swimming or skating.

  Except at tub time, Deacon Carson Druken had never been immersed in water.

  He had never been to sea or in any kind of boat.

  Their cabin was five times bigger than the attic, maybe ten. It had six portholes, not just one. Landish said the names of some things but he sounded like he wasn’t sure. There were several tables, but none were like the table in the attic. Landish smiled at how astonished and confused Deacon looked. It saddened him to think what the boy had grown accustomed to, what he thought was normal and didn’t know was even possible.

  “This is first class,” said Landish. “Steerage is worst class. And second class is in between. Enjoy first class while you can. They might put us in steerage once we get to where we’re going.”

  Landish said the passengers in steerage slept below the waterline. At night, the skylights and hatches and other points of access to the walking decks were shut. There were no portholes because you couldn’t take the risk that they would give way in collisions or in storms.

  He saw the look on Deacon’s face. “It won’t be steerage,” he said, “but it might be second class.”

  “That’s better than the attic.”

  Deacon asked Landish what you would see through an underwater porthole if they did have underwater portholes. Landish said that, in the daytime, especially if it was sunny, you’d see fish and long strands of seaweed floating by like bunting. The sun would shine through the water in shafts like it did through glass. In shallow water, you might see the ocean floor. In a storm, the sand on the ocean floor would be stirred up by the waves like the snow was by the wind. An underwater blizzard.

  Deacon asked Landish what you would see at night through an underwater porthole. He said that if the lights were on, you would see your own reflection in the glass, just like they did now when they looked out through their own portholes. Deacon asked what the passengers in steerage would see if there were windows. He imagined: their noses pressed against the glass, hands flanking their faces as, in mimicry of their curiosity, an underwater-dwelling host of look-alikes peered in.

  He looked at the boy who, judging by his expression, was imagining something that would keep him up all night. Faces still pressed against the outside glass after all the lights had been turned out and the unsuspecting passengers had gone to bed. The windowless, subsurface confinement of the passengers in steerage after dark, separated only by the hull from water they couldn’t see and would only feel and hear if the hull gave way.

  The never-seen-by-human-eyes bottom of the mid-Atlantic had been the habitation of Deacon’s father for ninety days while the boy was in his mother’s womb and more than two thousand since he was born. His father borne about by the same storms that stirred up the sand like clouds of desert dust.

  The Gulf was the space between two things. Neither here nor there. A great gap. In this case, the sea. In other cases, empty space. That which engulfs. To be engulfed was to be swallowed up.

  “My father was engulfed.”

  At first by snow. And then by darkness. By fear. By sleep, deep and warm and treacherous. And finally by water.

  “Maybe,” Landish replied.

  “Will the boat pass over where my father was engulfed?”

  “No, it goes the other way. You know. Jonah was engulfed. It was dark inside the whale. The wolf engulfed Red Riding Hood. But both Jonah and the girl got out.”

  Deacon had never seen a bathtub that wasn’t round or made of wood. This tub was like a bed with walls. It made a funny, tinny sound when he struck it with his hand. “Porcelain,” Landish said. “Like the toilet and the sink.” Landish had to show him how they worked. Cold water came when you turned one tap, hot water when you turned the other. And when he pulled the chain, water rushed into the bowl as if the ship had sprung a leak. Deacon thought the bowl would overflow but smiled up at Landish when the water went back down.

  His pillow was so soft and deep it closed around his head, enfolding it completely as a pan of dough would do. He had to exchange it for a cushion.

  He had never slept in as cozy a bed as the ones in the cabin—or sat in as cozy a chair as the one that he needed Landish’s help to climb into. He had never seen a chandelier except from the street.

  “What’s it like on a sealing ship?”

  “You wouldn’t like the Gilbert. You wouldn’t want to cross the Gulf on her.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a lot like the attic, but worse. These cups and plates and bowls are known as Chinaware. They made such things first in China. The ones we had on the Gilbert are known as Everyware.”

  Landish told him that on this ship, the men in charge of engines had what were known as “engine ears,” which meant that they were deaf from the noise the engines made. Also there were pursers who made sure that no one’s purse was stolen. There were men called stewards who were in charge of serving stew. And other men called porters who were in charge of serving port. “I’ll give you my stew if you give me your port,” Landish said, but Deacon shook his head.

  After they put your port in front of you, Landish told him, they performed what was called the “port bow,” and then you performed it and they went away. Landish demonstrated the port bow, one arm across his stomach. He had Deacon try it. “Lower,” Landish said. Deacon tried again. Landish told him they would practise every day until he got it right.

  Landish told Deacon there was another bow that was performed on the observation decks at night. To signal to the other pass
engers that you had grown bored with looking at the stars, you performed what was known as the “star-bored bow,” then said good night and went downstairs. While doing or acknowledging the star-bored bow, you kept both arms at your sides and, your head upright, bent forward slightly from the waist. They practised the star-bored bow until Landish was satisfied that Deacon understood the subtle difference between the acknowledgement of the bow and the bow itself. The meaning of the former was: As I have yet to reach your degree of boredom with the stars, I will stay up top until I do, but do join me for a drink should we meet again downstairs before lights out.

  And, Landish said, there were petty officers, short, unhelpful men who were in charge of petty passengers and their complaints. The chief petty officer, the least helpful and shortest of them all, dealt exclusively with the least gracious and shortest of the passengers.

  “It might take you a while to find your sea legs,” Landish told him. “It means to learn how to walk straight even when the ship is going up and down or from side to side. I’ve got mine, but I don’t think I could keep you on my shoulders in bad weather. You never lose your sea legs once you find them.”

  Sea legs. He looked at the boy’s legs. As thin at the thighs as in the calves. Two hollow reeds interrupted by two knobby knees. He watched as Deacon tried to find his sea legs. He wobbled and swayed. He took a couple of steps with one hand against the wall like some convalescent infant. He ran towards Landish as if Landish was at the bottom of a hill so steep that to walk down it was impossible. He took dead aim at Landish and dove face first into his arms.

  There were two bedrooms in their cabin. Each room and each bed were big enough for both of them, so one bedroom went unused. It simply sat there as unchanging as a photograph from one day to the next.

  Deacon thought a bathrobe was a kind of coat. The smallest was too big for him and the biggest one too small for Landish. Deacon wore his anyway. Sometimes it became entangled in his feet and he fell down. Or it trailed on the floor behind him like a bridal gown.