Wild Wind Westward

by Vanessa Royall

  Eric’s expression of disgust must have been very clear, because she immediately added: “I’m sure Liz just wanted the property. I’m sure she didn’t mean to—”

  “Of course. But whatever became of the money Liz had?”

  New tears pearled on the ends of Joan’s long lashes. “We don’t know. Liz kept it hidden and we can’t find it.”

  Eric could barely keep a smile off his face. How fitting. The Leedses had been caught in their own shivery web.

  “Where’s Mick?” he asked.

  “He’s been drafted into the army, and sent south to Maryland for training.”

  “Perhaps it will do him some good. You must be lonesome.”

  “Oh, Eric!” she cried, remembering what he’d seen. “That night…you don’t think…oh, Eric, no! That was just one time. He was frightfully drunk. There was nothing I could do.”

  Her eyes showed such purity and innocence that Eric, against his will, wanted to believe her.

  “Have you been ill?” she asked, either to show concern for him or to change the subject.

  “I’m getting better.”

  “Where are you staying now? Do you have a job?”

  He told her of Goldstein’s rat trap, and his former job on the docks. “I’m going to see about that now.”

  “May I come with you?”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Eric. Oh, Eric. There’s nothing left here for me. The new owner will arrive presently to take over the house, and I’ll…I’ll be alone. Please let me come along with you. Just for a little while. I promise I won’t be a bother.”

  What harm could come of it? Eric thought. Joan read his expression before he told her she could walk along with him if she wanted. “I must go back inside the house and fetch my cloak,” she said.

  In a moment she was with him again, holding on to his arm as they walked down along the cobblestone streets of lower Manhattan. When they reached the wharves, the shuddering sight of a vast, swirling mob greeted them, the great hue and cry of angry men.

  Joan clung more tightly to Eric’s arm, but not from fright. An unusual, recondite gleam came into her eyes: her response to, and acceptance of, danger and violence.

  The mob was blocking entry to Lapin’s warehouses and offices. Eric approached a man at the outskirts of the crowd and asked what was happening.

  “What d’ye think?” the other returned, his tone as coarse, bitter, and full of futility as the expression on his unshaven face. “We caught us another one of them niggers, an’ we’re burning him.”

  “Ohhh!” exclaimed Joan.

  “Where are the police?”

  “Safe and out of here. They took ’em a beatin’ at the draft riot just this mornin’. They won’t be wantin’ ’em another beatin’ over one dumb darkie slave.” He scowled suspiciously at Eric. “Hey, you wouldn’t be one of these here abul-eesh-unists, would you? That support the darkie against decent white men like me, looking for work?”

  Before Eric could answer, Joan pulled him away from the man. To his surprise she drew him into the crowd, pushing her way with a strength born of strange, fierce desire.

  “I have to see it,” she kept saying, “I have to see it.”

  A great, bloodthirsty howl arose from the mob then, and the smell of firesmoke drifted over the crowd. It was followed by a shrieking, hopeless plea for mercy, then by a savage, unearthly howl, as fire found flesh. Joan pulled Eric into the very heart of the crowd, right to the inner circle where hard men stood watching a black man tied to one of the great wooden pillars upon which this section of the wharf was founded. All around the pillar were bundles of kindling and shafts of firewood, already aflame. Tongues of fire lanced upward, swirling around the Negro, flashing and shifting in the harbor wind. The man was screaming at the top of his lungs, calling upon gods unknown to men of the West. His rude garments were aflame. Still fie might be saved if…

  Eric sprang forward, and began to kick away the burning pieces of wood. He managed to dislodge several of them from the burning pile, kicking them from the pier. He heard them hiss in the water below. He felt the blow on the back of his head, but that was all.

  “When you going to wise up, hey? This is America, dammit. You’re no knight in shining armor. You almost got yourself killed, you know that?”

  Faces wavered in and out of Eric’s field of vision; his head pulsed and pounded with currents of pain, woefully enhanced by the thundering sounds of the words being spoken to him. He squinted and focused: Dockmaster Sam Lapin was looking down at him. Behind Sam, spinning into view, came Joan’s face, and then the faces of other men. Joan appeared concerned, but the concern was tinged with lingering, subdued excitement, such as might be present following some strenuous contest, or exciting activity, or lovemaking. In contrast the faces of the men showed little but disgust.

  “You dumb bastard,” Lapin was saying, mopping Eric’s face with a cold, wet rag. “What the hell did you think you were doing out there?”

  Memory drifted back as Eric’s head cleared. The pain receded a little. The image of the burning black man came to him, and he recalled kicking at the flaming logs.

  “Lucky that Irishman thought he killed you with one blow of cordwood,” Sam said. “Even luckier this girl here”—he jerked his thumb in Joan’s direction—“dragged you into the office.”

  Eric sat up and shook his head.

  “What a goddamn dumb thing to do,” Sam pronounced yet again.

  “But they were burning that man.”

  Sam’s dockworkers drifted off to their tasks, convinced now that, while the big dumb foreigner might live, he would never develop even half a brain.

  Sam Lapin was shaking his head, wringing out the rag above a bucket of water. “Look, I’m going to give you some advice you should have had when you first got off the boat. This is, as I’ve said, America. Fight your own damn battles here. ‘Not everybody else’s. What the hell did you think you were going to prove out there? By saving that nigger? Hell, them Irishmen burned two yesterday, three the day before, and likely they’ll burn some more tomorrow. Every freed nigger that Lincoln and the damned abolitionists send north takes the food out of a white man’s mouth. Why, you’re lucky they didn’t decide to burn you. Probably would have if they hadn’t figured you were already dead.”

  He stood up, lending a hand to help Eric to his feet.

  “How are you feeling?” Joan asked, as Eric stood there, swaying unsteadily.

  “Awful. I just came down here to see about…”

  “The job?” Sam finished. “Forget it. Did Bobby find you? About the draft?”

  Eric nodded, winced. “Yes.”

  “You going to do it? Take his place as a substitute? Jesus, I hope they don’t reject you now, because of health reasons.”

  “You just told me not to fight anyone’s battles but my own.”

  Lapin threw up his hands in exasperation, and looked at Joan. “Are you his girl friend? Can’t you teach him something?” Then, again to Eric: “What I meant was, do things to your advantage. It’s to your advantage to take my boy’s place in the ranks of the Union army. It’s to your advantage because there are no jobs for you here, and you’ll starve to death if you don’t somehow first contrive to get the brains kicked plumb out of your head. You got that? You see what I mean?”

  Eric didn’t speak. A wave of uneasy self-realization came down upon him, like the assault of a dark, accusatory conscience. The events of the past years flashed along the gray, furrowed curves of his brain. Everything—almost everything—that he had done since the glorious day with Kristin at Sonnendahl Fjord had been misguided, or disastrous. He had been true to himself, yes, but how worthy, how applicable, were the old ways, the ways of a country freeman in the old world, to the harsh, complicated requirements of this new land? How applicable were those ancient values, in fact, to the assurance of his own survival? Kristin had asked him not to change, had asked him to remain strong in the ways he
had been strong, and to retain the virtues she had admired. He wanted to do this, because he was those virtues, they were his. His attempt to save the burning Negro proved that. And yet what had his persistent devotion to the cause of truth gained him? He was as penniless today as he had been upon fleeing the Anandale. Moreover, his health was threatened. Could he offer Kristin naught but poverty and illness?

  “I’ll be all right,” he told Lapin, with as much certitude as he could muster. “You’ll hear from me regarding substitution for the draft.”

  Leaving Lapin’s office, he tried not to stagger. Joan helped him, and he leaned on her, grateful for the support, but wondering about her motives.

  “It was wonderful!” she said. “You were splendid. I love action. Bravery. I love to watch it. Somehow I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  He stopped walking and looked at her. “Why didn’t you think so?” he demanded.

  “Because you were always so…gentlemanly. Too…gentlemanly.”

  Eric remembered what a willing dupe he had been to the Leedses, running whiskey for them, believing Joan’s lies.

  “But now I can see you’re going to change,” she said, appraising him. “Let’s find a place to stay, and we’ll plan some things.”

  Ah, this time Eric would not let himself be gulled. She meant to use him for something; he knew it. She meant, again, to manipulate him for her own ends. Find a place to stay? The two of them?

  “I have forty-five cents,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “It doesn’t matter. My brother Mick went into the army as a substitute. He got three hundred dollars, and he left it with me. He said I had to have it because of what happened to Liz.”

  Eric could not help thinking that Joan had probably stolen her own brother’s money. Mick would have arrived at the training camp in Maryland, would have slipped the cachet out of his waistband or legging or pack or boot only to find…strips of newspaper. But he held his tongue. He would be one mite wiser than he’d been upon awakening this morning.

  “Just one more thing,” he told her. “I must check the registry of vessels.”

  “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Maybe I can get a job on one or another of them,” he lied.

  “But I have plans for you,” she said, her eyes narrowing slightly.

  He did not reply, but instead led her down the wharf to the building in which records of incoming and outgoing vessels were listed. A Mercator map of the world stretched across one wall in the main room of the office building, with all sea lanes mapped and charted. Joan was interested in spite of herself; her horizons, previously, had been limited to mother, brother, house, tavern, and the contours and parallels of the dollar sign.

  “Where did you come from?”

  He showed her Europe and Norway on the great map.

  “That long thin country way up there? Where are we now? Maps always confuse me.”

  He pointed to New York, the United States, America.

  “I can see why you left,” she said. “This is much bigger. And so where’s Mick?”

  Eric found Maryland on the map, and indicated its location.

  “Why, that’s not far at all,” she said, with a measure of delight that, Eric deduced, was somehow counterfeit. Perhaps she had really taken her brother’s money, in which case, given his personality and inclinations, he would certainly think of getting it back. Not to mention getting even.

  Eric’s head was fairly clear now, but he still had to make an effort to focus on the printing of the registry. Joan stood beside him as he went down the long list of vessels bound for New York.

  “How do you know from that list which ship might have a job for you?” she asked warily.

  “I speak Norwegian and English, so it seems intelligent to seek employment on—”

  “Back to the bottom again, is that it?” Joan was asking, while she watched Eric study the registry. “Didn’t you hear what Mr. Lapin was telling you? Can’t you make big plans? If you go back to some silly job, you’ll never get anywhere. Why, I’ve thought of something for the two of us…”

  She didn’t finish. She saw the look on Eric’s face, and knew that it meant much more than he had let on.

  And she was right. Because he had found the listing he sought.

  H.M.S. Valkyrie (Passenger Vessel)

  Departed Oslo: March 2

  Docked Southampton, England, March 12–14

  Estimated arrival, New York, April 18–22

  Kristin was on her way! Eric was so delighted, there was no way he could have held back his joy. Joan, quick and shrewd, wondered what could have made him so happy. In her experience, destitute people were not made happy except by an escape from their destitution. She followed his eyes to the registry listing.

  “That’s a passenger ship,” she said. “The likes of you, at least the way you look now, won’t get a job on a passenger ship.”

  Then her mind cast back over what she knew about him, and what he had told her.

  “So,” she exclaimed, with a smile of slow cunning, “don’t think I didn’t see the light in your eyes. Your beloved, the one you used to tell me about, is on that ship, isn’t she?”

  Eric looked at her. Joan seemed excited, even challenged, by the possibility. She was standing straight, breasts forward, displaying her womanhood. He was witnessing yet another facet of her complicated, unpredictable nature.

  Joan studied the register more closely. “April eighteenth to twenty-second, eh? Unless there’s a storm at sea, or something.”

  “I have no idea who will be on that ship,” Eric said.

  “Don’t he to me. You can’t he anyway. I swear, you’ll never make anything of yourself. Without proper training, of course,” she smiled, taking his arm.

  Eric thought of leaving her, and going off by himself. Surely he could make his way back to Goldstein’s tenement on his own, and by the time the Valkyrie docked, his health would be completely restored. Just thinking about Kristin had a recuperative quality. But, outside the building again, the cold hit him like a punch, his head throbbed, and he sagged. Joan was there, and he braced against her. He was vaguely aware that she was hailing a hack, and then he was inside it, she still there, and his head pounding with every rut and jounce of the carriage.

  “…time someone made proper use of you…” he thought he heard her say.

  Eric took fever again that night, and although he was not conscious of the passage of individual days and nights for some time thereafter, he did perceive, as through a dark glass, certain wavering, incandescent episodes: He was being helped into some hotel or hospital; an intelligent-looking man was bending over him, examining him; he was being fed; Joan was there next to the bed upon which he lay, alternately looking down upon him and talking to someone else who was outside Eric’s field of vision. Whether he was asleep and dreaming, or awake and hallucinating in the delirium of fever, Eric could not have said. High rock walls of the brilliant blue fjords swayed against the blood-red membranes of his affliction. Viking swords and axes marched across a landscape of sere and battered weeds. The port of Oslo sank into the sea as he left his homeland, and somewhere Captain Dubin was giving him advice. The face of Gustav Rolfson appeared in his trance, a livid scar upon it like the mark of original sin, and before Eric’s very eyes, Subsheriff Johanson’s skull parted like an apple halved by a paring knife, to reveal, within its gray and pulsing depths, the head of Gustav Rolfson once again, laughing. Trapped within the spell of his own delirium, Eric nonetheless fought against it, tried to swim upward out of its insidious depths, to attain clarity again. Then he was moving upward, dreamlike and borne upon water. It was as it had been in the icy blue pool at Sonnendahl Fjord, when he and Kristin had pledged themselves eternally to each other. He shot upward, upward, and all about him hung brilliant curtains of shadow and ice, but above, above, it was light, like the light of the Solstice suspended there evermore, and he swept upward toward it, toward Kristin, who was waiting fo
r him there…

  “I think he’s finally shaken the fever,” Joan Leeds was saying to someone in the room with her. “My goodness, Eric, my dear, you do look a fright. I shall send out for a barber.”

  Eric tried to speak, but his mouth and tongue were sawdust and sand. He was lying in a bed in a large room, a well-appointed room of high windows, long draperies, and two low couches. A man in a dark suit rose from one of the couches now, and walked over to the bed. By his very manner, Eric judged him to be a doctor, which the man proceeded to corroborate by giving Eric a brisk, professional examination. Joan stood by, watching. She smiled at Eric encouragingly, but, as always, there was on her face an expression he could not read.

  The doctor lifted Eric’s head, and let him sip a glass of water. He seemed satisfied that his patient was out of immediate danger. “Stay on the water,” he instructed Joan, “and try some broth later in the day. It’s very important that he get all the liquids he can take, and he must absolutely remain on his back. I’ll drop by tomorrow, midmorning.”

  Joan saw the physician to the door. Eric noted that she was dressed in a fine, floor-length gown of azure velvet, against which gleamed her shining red hair. He also noted, looking out the windows, that the room was high up in some building. He could see several rooftops and the steeples of a few churches. He must be in a hotel, and a good one at that. Joan certainly had not been shy about spending Mick’s draft-substitute money. Then he thought of something far more important.

  “What day is it?” he croaked anxiously.

  Joan came back to the bed and sat down beside him, smiling her dazzling, enigmatic smile.

  “Don’t you worry about time. Everything’s taken care of.”

  “But I must know if…”

  Joan’s face darkened as she guessed what he was thinking about: his beloved and the arrival of the Valkyrie.

  “I should think you might wish to thank someone before making inquiries regarding the news of the world.”

  “Oh, yes, Joan. I didn’t mean to…There is no way I can repay you—”

  “Perhaps I can think of something.”