The Coves

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  A strong hand grasped Sam’s neck, drew him close, the dog scratching at his ribs. ‘Welcome to Sydney-town, California, son. This place will dirty your mind and sully your virtue. She’ll teach you things you wished you didn’t know. She’ll steal your maidenhood. My name is Patrick. Let me stand you a drink.’

  5

  Sam watched the steam rise off his trousers and sleeves. His feet were cut and stank of the sewage slime in the embayment shallows, but at least they were warm beside the pot-belly stove that pulsed heat into the crowded groghouse. Patrick—the man who had brought him to the tavern, his great hot hand never leaving the back of Sam’s neck—left and returned with others from the whaler, easily noticed in the dawn streets on account of being sodden. One by one the number increased and the space around them grew larger as the drinkers who plied them with rum and porter stood back and tossed them questions from behind crossed arms, thick beards and sceptical eyes, as though the whaler refugees carried the plague.

  Perhaps it was the shock of the icy water, or the new world of the San Francisco shore, but the numbness that blighted Sam’s feelings was gone and now he was alert to every sight and sound. He couldn’t put a name to it, but felt like he was being watched. Once or twice he glanced over his shoulder at the screen of hung carpet, which trembled as he did. He stared at his bony fingers coming out of blue, avoiding the eyes of the Dempsey gang who spoke furtively behind their hands. At Sam’s feet, the dog looked warily to the growing crowd of men and women who caroused in the cinder-coloured shadows. The low roof of the tavern and the roughly milled pine-plank walls made him feel like he was inside a coffin. Rain started to fall outside, and the man Patrick returned a final time with Dempsey in a jolly embrace. The two men were of equal stature and the easy look on the Irishman’s face disappeared at the sight of his gang crowded into a corner of the tavern like they were returned to the chain. He looked at the man Patrick for an explanation and reached instinctively for his cruel-hooked knife, but was greeted instead with a broad grin and mug of rum, and the offer of a chair dragged from under an old man with a tattered cabbage-tree hat who fell onto his arse. The ensuing laughter seemed to put Dempsey at his ease, and he turned to his men and toasted them, and the new country, and all his new friends. As he spoke, he ran a hand through his sodden hair and opened the pale slice on his forehead that began to bleed into his eyebrows, down his nose and into his beard.

  Sam had the feeling of being watched again and bent into himself, having caught the sneer from Dempsey, who leaned toward him and hissed, loud enough for the mutineers to hear. ‘I know it was you that betrayed us. Let the raiders aboard. Freed the American. I advise against breaking your fast, for shortly I’ll be opening your guts.’

  Dempsey dragged the stool into the middle of his people who looked unkindly at his profile, remembering his snaky protestations to the tall man on the whaler, avowing himself a peeler and them just lags. He sat there like a king, his legs stretched out, steam rising off his back. He drank the rum in a gulp and stood and strode toward the low bar made of roughly hewn boards, behind which stood a whiskered ancient in a tattered redcoat and black tricorne hat. When Dempsey placed his tankard on the wood, the tavern fell silent.

  The old man shook his head and indicated with his chin that Dempsey should return to his seat. Dempsey nodded in assent, before snatching at the old man’s jacket, taking for himself the small revolver at the ancient’s belt. This was an opportunity for Sam to escape. Dempsey was occupied and Sam made to stand, but Dempsey turned and smiled. He thrust the old man away, and took the bottle of rum back to his party, holding it aloft before filling their wooden mugs and pewter tankards, placing himself back on his throne, reading the tense silence and staring faces of the natives for threat. Satisfied, he threw back his head and emptied his rum, poured himself another.

  The crowd was stood back for a reason, but that only became clear when the old man in the tattered redcoat came round the bar with a bucket made of shiny pressed tin, shuffled into the space and waited with his face down until the giant Patrick claimed from behind the bar a double-barrelled fowling piece that he cocked twice and pointed at them all.

  ‘Lady and gents. This is a civic ordinance required by the owners of this here groghouse we call The Stuck Pig. For your benefit as well as our own. If you’d be mannered enough to sit there quietly until the gunpowder burns and the cleansing is done.’

  They all looked to Dempsey, who stared into the octagonal eyes of the shotgun like he was newly sighted. Shrugged as he watched the old man circle them while pouring a line of gunpowder until they were all contained. Patrick laughed.

  ‘No, lads, we’re not setting you aflame. Some recent boats have brought the fever and the white-curded shits. Take a deep breath of air while we purge the miasma.’

  At this the old man struck a match on the floorboards and tossed it to the line of powder, which fizzed and burst into a shearing orange flame that billowed around them an acrid black smoke. The flame died down and the stench of gunsmoke settled, and only then did Patrick lay down the mighty fowling piece whose stock was newly varnished and barrels tended with oil. Dempsey cleared his throat and spat, eyes watering with the effort of staring at Patrick amid the vapours of war.

  ‘I take it that we freemen now have your permission to avail ourselves of the hospitality of our own kind, and the unearned riches of those parasitical upon the poor white man. For I have heard this town is rife with Indian, Spaniard, Russian and German, Jew and nigger.’ The small revolver was in Dempsey’s hand, and the smile on his face was cruel.

  ‘You have heard right.’

  The Australian voice came from the edge of the room, where the rug-curtain dropped. Into the booming voice walked a man whose giant oiled boots made the nails in the floorboards complain. He stood at six feet, without a hat. A longhair with a black beard and blue eyes in a pale and unweathered face. Pinstriped blue suit and waistcoat with fob watch. A revolver in a holster both thickly belted at his narrow waist and strapped above his knee. On his fingers jewelled silver rings, moving to his grim mouth.

  Dempsey laughed, but there was nerves in it. ‘I was waiting on a rooster, so I didn’t expect a maiden-hair. Imagine my surprise.’

  The man nodded in mock-admiration at Dempsey’s wit, his eyes alive with the same dark humour. ‘I see there are some among you who, like myself, having been prison-barbered, have vowed never to suffer the shears.’

  ‘Then you have been free long enough, I can see from the length of your flower-scented locks, to have forgotten the temper of men such as my band, newly free, and it would seem constrained here at your orders.’

  The tall man nodded. ‘Your freedom is of no interest, and you are not constrained. But a pirated ship aflame mere yards off Sydney-town? That is a matter of regret. That is the kind of trouble that brings neither wealth nor opportunity. Explain yourself and you may leave unmolested. You and your band’

  It was the hint of mockery that set Dempsey’s shoulders tighter in the wet shirt, some weight now on his planted feet. The revolver still pointed at the stranger’s belly, who appeared unconcerned, looking out over the gathered heads and reading their faces, and understanding. Turning again to Dempsey.

  Dempsey chuckled. ‘I won’t be stood-over in a bowsingken by a pretty mort such as yourself, or be shifted into the darkmans—’

  ‘Don’t indulge your Egyptian Cant with me, Tinker. For I see that you have fashioned yourself into a leader, and that you fear me. Why do you fear? The only gun drawn is in your shaking hand.’

  And it was true. The faces of the others in the shadows. The red-glimmer off the iron stove. The stink of the foul-water on them. And Dempsey’s hand, shaking. ‘But we are both sons of Cu Chulainn are we not?’ the Irishman said.

  ‘I’m Parramatta born.’

  ‘Then our language remains brotherly.’

  The tall man put his hand on his holster-belt. ‘It’s true that in the Old Country there was nothing
beyond the liturgy of the Crows. And that your kind have survived by casting dark spells, inverting. But that is also a failure to see outside their circle of darkness. This is a new country, and we have no need of arcane wordplay. Or the performance of ghoulish mask-wearing. Speak plainly, or I’ll take your head off your shoulders.’

  With that the tall man drew out the giant revolver that had weighted his leg. It was like nothing Sam had ever seen. A six-shot chamber whose mouths were sealed with lard. Walnut handle visible even in the giant hand of the gunman. Its weight not a burden on the wrist that held the gun steady.

  Dempsey whistled. ‘Cometh the hour; cometh the gun. What kind of country is this, that such a killing beauty might be conceived in evolution of the humble duties of the pistol? Are the men here giants or are there fabled beasts afoot?’

  Dempsey’s verbosity an obvious prelude to a sneak attack, and the tall man cocked his fearsome revolver.

  ‘It is the Colt Walker, sired out of a cannon and a lance. Born for the cavalry charges of the Indian frontier. Can kill a horse at a hundred yards, as I can attest. Of you, it will leave nothing but a red mist cast upon this company.’

  The men behind Dempsey began to edge away, and wisely so. Sam’s book-learned knowledge of firearms told him that the ball of such a weapon must pass through many bodies before it came to rest.

  Like the others, he stared at the mighty weapon and in doing so caught the eye of its owner, who held his stare. ‘Boy, you may stay around. There are few boys in this town and you’ll be useful, unless you have other designs. You, woman. The same invitation I extend to you. There are few women here and if it’s money and advancement you desire then you shall have both. You men, those not heading to the goldfields, must make your way in the streets of Sydney-town, as we call it here, although Patrick Ryan over there will school you as to the conventions of our society. In short, if you’re wise in your schemes then you’ll return a pinch of everything to my pocket. For I own the peelers of this town, and if you’re caught and working for me, I will protect you. If you aren’t, I’ll advise them to hang you as the kind of example that cheers the hearts of the local citizenry, and puffs the chests of the peelers. But you … your name.’

  ‘That was a fine leaders’ speech sir. A fine speech for a lag’s son born in Parramatta.’

  ‘I advise your return to my question.’

  ‘My name is Anderson Dempsey. And these here are my kinfolk brothermen, sworn in blood.’

  ‘And yet, I see you for what you truly are, Anderson Dempsey.’

  Dempsey smiled, scratching at his neck. ‘Many have made that claim, too late. But do you see me, for what I shall become?’

  A look of exhaustion passed across the gunman’s face. He said, ‘Alas, I do.’

  Pulled the trigger, levering into the room a spear of muzzle-flame and a brute roar whose shockwaves belted the organs in Sam’s belly and chest, filled his ears with a ringing silence. He sat stunned and looked at the place where Dempsey’s head used to be. Just the stump now of his neck and twin geysers of blood and two smaller vents spurting through. The corpse sitting straight up. Pistol leaking from slackened fingers.

  The gunman looked across them all, seated docile like the pious in chapel and he the minister, opening the chamber of the revolver like a priest checking a songbook, thumbing it closed and placing it gently into its holster. No pleasure or light in his eyes. A man who had killed many. Distant enough from Dempsey to have avoided the curtain of gore thrown upon them all. Looking again at Sam, and Sarah Proctor, and calling them out of the assembled felons with the barest cock of his head.

  6

  It was the shaking that awoke him amid squalls of lashing rain. Sam riding the crests and troughs of the vast ocean with the wood-bones groaning and his cot tossing and the dog jumping like it was ant-bitten. He saw his slops in the corner wet the edges of the earthenware jug and knew himself on land, and jumped to his feet, and ran for the door. The two-storey lodging-house jounced on its stumps, but fared better than the stone building alongside, that shucked nails from its shingled roof and sent them into the lane. Cracks appeared in the lime-wash render, and the mud-bricks jumped and spat dust. Out in the deep-water harbour, the dozens of ships and lighters sloshed about like leaves in a bucket. The denizens of the groghouses and brothels flooded into the street, leaning into the rain and making shelters of their jackets, keeping clear of the horses kicking at their tether-posts.

  Then it stopped—the deluge and groundswell. The horses were first to settle, but glared at the people who wrung out their hats and stamped muddy boots on the plank thresholds and laughed in excitement and relief. A piano started to play scales, and a bugler began a morose parody of a battlefield rally, but Sam’s heart beat faster as he scanned the street. He thought it the confusion of his awakening, until he saw the picture of his mother clear in his mind, based on the Magistrate’s description of her—tall and thin with stooped shoulders. A milky face with pale lips and green eyes and dark red hair. An oddly high voice like that of a child. A voice suited more to singing than speech. The Magistrate bringing his description to an end because of a quiet shame in his eyes, as though his memory of her was somehow indecent.

  Now Sam looked for her in the street, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that the people around her would keep moving while she stood quiet and still as a daguerreotype image, staring back at him. But there was nothing of her there, and he turned away, the better to drive the picture from his mind.

  The sun was low, and Sam couldn’t gauge whether it was mid-morning or mid-afternoon because he didn’t have bearings. He had no idea how long he’d slept, except that nobody had disturbed him. Looking down the landing of the lodging house balcony, he could see the doors to the other rooms cast open and knew himself to be alone. The dog emerged from its hide under his cot and leant into his leg, shivering with fear. The building was unfinished, and in the muddy court were piled sawhorses and scaffolding boards and hand-fashioned ladders of unstripped pine and a sign painted crudely with the words ‘MRS Hogans Lodging’. There were many buildings the same nearby, and now that the rain had stopped the smell that arose from the damp streets was wood smoke and the blood-resin of unseasoned timber. To his right, a path led to the peak of a great bald hill upon which snapped a flag that he didn’t recognise.

  The lower hills were trodden bare with muddy tracks that became narrow streets cut through sandhills. In the interstices between the streets and the dunes were gathered great muddy puddles laid over with planking. Eager to take his bearings, Sam walked the length of the balcony, looking for the row of brothels he’d seen last night on an adjacent block. One of them now housed Sarah Proctor, and possibly his mother. He shielded his eyes from the weak sunlight, but he couldn’t tell at this quiet hour which of the timber shacks were the molly-houses. He’d seen no map of San Francisco because none existed in the Australia. He didn’t know east or west but only left and right, and beyond the first dozen blocks to his left the streets ran according to no plan, massing in canvas slum-shanties flattened by the quake that steamed as ant-men crawled over them. Some grander houses lined a track that rose to a terrace cut onto a great craggy hill covered by heath and saltbush.

  By Sam’s reckoning, San Francisco was near the same size as Sydney, with a similar harbour of bays and peninsulas and small islands, but in the brightening light reminded him more of the Swan River port of Fremantle.

  Down on the mudstone flats stalked the gulls he knew from home, and cormorants drying their wings on guano-basted rocks. Three pelicans sat on the deck of an unmanned lighter, although they were brown and not white. Some mallard-ducks slept beside, heads buried beneath their wings. Egrets and small brown grebes picked in the mud. The familiar raven sat newly returned on rooves down the shoreline street. And now, putting a lyric to the sunshine that bathed Sam’s face—the birdsong that had inhabited his sleep. He looked under the open eaves for the source of the warbling, and had to walk
several rooms along the balcony before he saw the flitting form of what sounded like a finch but looked more like a robin, with a bronze breastplate and yellow beak and yellow-and-blue underside tail-feathers. There was a pair of them and they were building a nest, the dun-coloured partner returning from the yard with sawdust strings while the other sang and looked at Sam.

  ‘Not a good place to nest, mother,’ he said, and the robin twitched its head and was silent. ‘This building’s so new that the wharf rats haven’t come. But they will come and eat your young.’

  She ducked back under the eaves and stayed quiet, and Sam grew uneasy because the picture of rats consuming the nestlings recalled last night’s dream of the black snake, its glowing red eyes watching from its corner. He tried to shrug off the dream but fear began pooling in his belly.

  Sam hadn’t slept deeply for many months, and had thereby eluded the snake dream that waited for him when he was most deeply asleep, and most alone. The weeks of pursuing his mother, sleeping rough and being woken by hunger and cold or the rough boot of a landowner or policeman, then the horrors of Dempsey’s reign on the whaler and his bloody end had doubtless roused the serpent that was more real than any waking vision.