Guardian

by Joe Haldeman

  “You have other children?”

  “Two daughters, both married. Two grandkids—had to get out a there, makin’ me feel old.”

  We had to leave the dining car so others could have the table, but we moved into the lounge car for coffee and talked for a couple of hours about the world they were going to and the worlds we had left.

  That was strange. The man and his son were direct, simple, honest folk, their life stories predictable and uncomplicated. Daniel and I had a life story that was a carefully woven fabric of lies, often rehearsed and elaborated on.

  Doc’s father had not served in the War Between the States, because of bad eyesight. Being half blind hadn’t kept him from homesteading, though, and his small farm prospered and grew as his family grew. Except for his stint as an unsuccessful Indian fighter, the Missouri farm was almost all that Doc knew of the world. He had been to St. Louis a few times, and his experiences in that metropolis did not leave him looking forward to coping with San Francisco and Seattle. I promised to help them negotiate with merchants in putting together their “kits.”

  (Doc got his name by virtue of having taken a mail-order course of instruction in veterinary medicine. It was what we’d call a “degree mill” now, but I was to find out that he had a way with animals, and was intelligent, and knew his limits.)

  We returned to our sleepers, but the coffee and excitement kept me awake for a long time. The last quarter moon rose into the clear night, and gave the snowy mountaintops an ethereal blue glow. I realized that hours had passed without my having thought about Edward or his Pinkerton men.

  We had planned to get off the train as widely separated as possible, since the Pinkerton men would be looking for a young man in the company of his mother. It was possible they would have photographs.

  I was thinking of how to explain this odd separation to the Colemans, and came to an obvious solution: we would get off with them, instead; a rustic family of four. I would let down my hair, and wear my plainest dress, with no corset. Daniel had jeans and a disreputable work shirt.

  We played cards with them the next day, and chatted, as the train worked its way down the western slope of the Rockies, across a stretch of desert, and then through the riot of green that irrigation had brought to the California desert. Before we even got to Berkeley, Doc suggested we ought to get all our luggage in one place and try to stay together.

  We had no idea what to expect. Wagons would transfer us and our baggage to a San Francisco ferry, where anything could happen. Assuming Daniel and I even made it off the platform.

  The train squealed to a stop in a cloud of dust and smoke and steam, and if any of Edward’s agents were looking for us, we gave them the slip. We put our things aboard a wagon and elected to walk alongside it.

  It was a refreshing walk, July in Berkeley like May in Kansas. The streets were muddy ruts but there were boardwalks and, farther into town, sidewalks of brick and stone.

  The ferry was crowded and slow, its steam engine hissing and clattering so loud we had to yell to converse.

  The San Francisco dock was a crowded bedlam. Doc and I left the boys to stay with our things while we went to inquire about passage to Seattle.

  An interesting thing happened while we were gone. There were lots of soldiers and sailors in the area. Daniel saw a Kansas flag and left Chuck to go talk to them.

  They were headed for the Philippines, following the 20th Kansas, to which Daniel would have been attached in Topeka, had I signed for him to join underage. So he wouldn’t have gone to follow the Rough Riders to glory in Cuba, after all. The Kansas troops were shipped overseas to, as the man who talked to Daniel put it, “go kill niggers in the Philippines.”

  Thank God Daniel hadn’t gone with them. The truth of the Filipino insurrection was decades in coming, mainly because the truth was too horrible to accept: American soldiers killed at least 200,000—women and children as well as soldiers—and Kansas was at the front of the slaughter.

  Pressed into my diary at this point is a later article from the Anti-Imperialist League Journal. Yellow and crumbling, it dropped into two pieces when I unfolded it. It quoted letters from the 20th Kansas: a captain said, “Caloocan was supposed to contain 70,000 inhabitants. The 20th Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native.” A private under him repeated that he himself had torched over fifty houses, killing women and children.

  Twenty-two Kansans died there, out of more than a thousand in the regiment. Four deserted somehow. I wondered what Daniel could have done—what he could have become—faced with that scene of hellish extermination. And then six more months of slaughter.

  Doc and I found a freighter willing to take us to Seattle for seven dollars apiece, though with absolutely no amenities. We were to come aboard immediately and wait until their holds were full and they could steam.

  I stayed on the deck and guarded our things while the men went out for supplies. They came back with more beer and whiskey than I would have, but they also brought plenty of water and food and blankets, which would come in handy.

  The men played whist while I wrote in my diary and read, and just before sundown the steamer’s whistle screamed twice and she cast off. Once we were under way, it cooled off immediately, and clouds began to gather. We improvised a shelter in the last light, using one of the blankets as a sort of tent roof and cargo crates as walls. It began to rain, but we were dry and almost cozy, sitting around a candle, the men drinking whiskey while I made sandwiches and drank a whole beer. I even had a cup of water laced with whiskey, which tasted awful but warmed me inside.

  After a while the first mate came down and bade us put out the candle. I pointed out that it would be difficult to sustain a bonfire in this rain, and he admitted that was so, but he had regulations to enforce. So we surrendered to darkness and wrapped ourselves up in blankets, using bundles of clothing as pillows.

  My diary makes no note of this, but I well remember that after the boys were sound asleep, Doc came to me, and we gave each other some comfort, stopping short of actual adultery.

  The next morning he tried to talk me into coming along with them to the Yukon, and a part of me was tempted, but I demurred. This was Daniel’s adventure, and having his mother along would spoil it for him.

  (“Adventure” is how I saw it; the physical challenge would be salutary, I thought, and I reluctantly admitted that it was time for the apron strings to be cut. Far better this than war.)

  Seattle was even busier and more chaotic than San Francisco had been. None of the hotels near the water had any rooms vacant. Stampeders usually had to wait a week or more before finding passage north. After a long search, I found a room in a private home, a half mile from the outfitting stores on First and Second Avenues. The woman who rented it to me advised me to check with the Chamber of Commerce downtown, which maintained a Woman’s Department for female prospectors. I didn’t bother telling her that I was only going as far as Skagway.

  I did have time to go by there before meeting the men at one thirty. It was interesting. They were basically set up to talk you out of going, but if you have to go, be prepared for this and that. They gave me a list similar to the one Doc and Chuck had, with a conspicuous addition: “a small revolver, to be carried on your person, with a quantity of appropriate ammunition.”

  The men were waiting for me in front of Nell’s Chowder House, with the pushcart piled high with sacks of flour and beans and tins of bacon, coffee, tea, sugar, and so forth.

  We had good chowder, keeping an eye on our things while exchanging stories about our morning’s adventures. When I told them about the revolver, Doc got serious, and said he’d overridden his boy on that one, as well; they only carried a rifle, for game. Carrying a pistol would more likely get you into trouble than out of it, he said, echoing my sentiment.

  Writing that down, I have to wonder again whether that was the turning point of all our lives. Everyone on this planet.

  Doc and Chuck went of
f with an empty pushcart and the list while I took Daniel and his heavily laden cart to our new home. I offered to help him push it up the hills, but he good-naturedly declined, saying there would be nothing but hills from Skagway on.

  We unloaded the cart into our room and relaxed in the parlor for a while, having tea made with an electrical kettle. I realized it was one of the last times I would have alone with Daniel, and although I tried not to be sentimental, he sensed my natural anxiety and nervously tried to make light of the dangers he was facing.

  He looked fit and strong. For years he had been working summers and weekends at the press room, and much of that was heavy lifting. He also lifted weights and wrestled at school, an enthusiasm that had left me both surprised and relieved.

  We finished our tea and pushed the cart back down to the hurly-burly near the docks, where Doc and Chuck were waiting at the Chowder House. To our surprise and Daniel’s delight, they had secured us space on a Russian steamer, the White Nights, leaving for Skagway the next day. Our accommodations were the same as we had enjoyed on the trip from San Francisco, a tent on the deck, but this time we had a real tent. And over a ton of food.

  We examined the list and divided it in two, with the Colemans basically going after hardware and Daniel and I gathering medicine, cooking utensils, and all the clothing except shoes and boots, which each would try on himself. We would also pick up the remaining food, evaporated milk and dried fruit, adding from my Chamber of Commerce list crystallized eggs, if we could find them, and lime juice to prevent scurvy—and improve the flavor of the cheap whiskey.

  We would take our bounty directly to the ship, where there was supposed to be an armed guard for overnight security. Chuck volunteered to sleep with the goods, though, while the rest of us had one last night under a roof.

  All three men were about the same size, so buying clothes was a simple matter of Dan trying them on and buying three sets. It was a bulky lot, rather than heavy, but we managed by lashing the pile down on the cart. Daniel couldn’t see over the pile, so I had to guide him through the streaming crowd down to the docks and the White Nights. The gangway was steep and he did let me help pull the cart up.

  The Colemans weren’t there yet, and the officer on deck, a young man who seemed flustered by having a woman on board, spoke no English. He did respond to Daniel’s Latin—the first time he had used it outside the classroom—and led us to our cache, an area marked off with red ribbons and COLMAN/FLEMARION chalked on the deck.

  We stacked the bags and boxes and then took a tour of the ship. “Rust bucket” was the term that Daniel used, and I just hoped it had enough sturdy rust to keep us afloat as far as Skagway. A lot of it was leaving the ship via a steady stream of brown water being pumped out from below.

  The Russian ship had not been built with passengers in mind. It did have a large cargo area on deck, and that’s what we were. The only concession to the cargo being human was an outhouse rigged over the stern.

  We read and wrote until it began to get dark. I was starting to worry about the Colemans, when at last they heaved their way aboard, complaining that there wasn’t a pick to be had in all of Seattle, though they did find four pick handles. I supposed they would be easy enough to come by in Skagway, though at an inflated price.

  A Chinaman on the dock was selling fried fish and potatoes, so I sent Daniel down to get us some, while we settled accounts by candlelight. They asked me to do the addition and division, but I insisted we both do it, and compare results. After a couple of puzzling discrepancies were sorted out—Doc forgot to include the $120 he paid for the passage to Skagway—we came up with $1,833 divided three ways, with my giving the Colemans an extra fifty dollars for passage and my share of the food and drink going north. All told, we owed them $155, hardware being more expensive than clothing.

  I gave Doc a five-dollar bill and six golden eagles. He gave three to his son and both laughed, hefting and clinking them, thinking about gold to come. We sealed the deal with whiskey, mine with a good portion of sugar-water and lime juice. Daniel arrived with the fish and we had an amiable dinner party. Then the three of us repaired up the hill, Doc and Daniel carrying sleeping bags, which elicited some drunken comments, that I pretended not to hear, from a man sitting on the curb. Doc excused himself and fell back to kick the man in both shins. I whispered thanks to him when he returned.

  (I wasn’t sure whether Daniel, with his back to us, was aware of either the insults or the retribution. I had never given him instruction in sexual matters, and it’s possible he hadn’t understood the man’s innuendo.)

  The landlady was reading in the parlor when we came in. She gave me a stern look, but said nothing but “Seventy-five cents if you want breakfast.” We declined, saying we’d found a ship and would be leaving early.

  I was a little nervous preparing for bed, lest Doc expect a repeat of the previous night’s intimacy, which of course I couldn’t do with Daniel in the room. But both men were asleep and snoring, exhausted, minutes after unrolling their sleeping bags. I suppose I was both relieved and annoyed.

  We did have a hearty breakfast downtown, johnnycakes with bacon and eggs, which prompted Doc to go off in search of a couple of jugs of maple syrup. Daniel and I went on to the ship, so that Chuck could go ashore and eat before our ten thirty departure. Sitting on boxes, we played double solitaire and reminisced about Philadelphia and Dodge. As if by mutual agreement, his father’s name never came up.

  Doc returned triumphant from his hunt with two gallon jugs of syrup and, from the same place, several jars of various marmalades. He wouldn’t take any payment for the addition to our stores. “Finally able to feed my sweet tooth,” he said.

  At ten, the first mate came around with his passenger list, checking us off like the items of cargo that we were. Then they got up a head of steam and cast off, five minutes early, and headed out into Puget Sound.

  We were blessed with fine weather, and the boat’s sway was not bothersome, at least to the human cargo. Some people had brought mules or horses, who weren’t taking well to it.

  Doc didn’t hide his contempt for their owners, who had paid at least half the creatures’ value for their passage. When they got to Skagway—if they survived—they would be weak and useless for days. Better to pay more at Skagway and get an animal that was proven and immediately useful.

  Taking horses was a mistake, anyhow, Chuck said, and his father agreed. They cost less than mules, but it was a false economy, given the harsh environment in the Yukon. They were relatively delicate and stupid. In fact, two horses would die on the voyage, to be laboriously and unceremoniously winched overboard, while the mules became accustomed to shipboard life, placidly converting oats into a hygiene problem.

  The scenery was beautiful along Puget Sound, fine woodland dominated by Mount Rainier. I sat and drew while the men joined a penny-ante poker game. (I thought of admonishing Daniel not to go in over his head, but kept silent.) The prospect of almost two weeks of doing nothing was pure balm after the past few days of frantic activity and worry.

  We had left Edward behind for good. I looked at Daniel, with his scruffy beard and rough clothes—his ridiculous floppy sourdough hat—and realized his father wouldn’t recognize him in a million years.

  A modest proposal.

  The steamer put in at Nunaimo as the sun was setting, to take on coal, and we were allowed a couple of hours on shore. The boys took the first hour, and came back merry from a pub.

  Doc and I walked into town, enjoying the neatness and quiet of it. Roses everywhere, their heavy perfume a welcome respite from the barnyard smell the deck had when the ship wasn’t moving.

  “Rosa, I have a matter to discuss with you,” Doc said, and from his evident nervousness I was pretty sure what it was going to be. “I don’t reckon you have to say yes or no now, but you know, when we get back from the Yukon, I might could be pretty well set up, and a woman could do worse than me.”

  “A woman could do a lot worse than
you right now, Doc.” The future, about which I had avoided thinking, whirled through my mind in all its permutations, mostly dismal. I was tempted to tell him the simple truth—that in the eyes of the Lord I was still a married woman—and not give him false hope.

  But we do live on hope, and he was headed for a burdensome time, and he was the protector of my child. A single thought struck me with electrical force, profound in its element of apostasy: If God is just He will forgive me.

  “Let me think for a moment.” We sat on a bench under a guttering gaslight and I took his hand in both of mine, a rash and forward gesture in that time.

  “People change over time,” I began.

  “Not so much at our age, Rosa.”

  “True enough. You may be gone for years, though, and we’ve barely had a week to come to know each other. Let me only say this: that I pledge not to marry any other man until we meet again. Then we can see. Will that do?”

  “More than I’ve got the right to ask.” He took my hand and pressed it gently to his lips, a touching courtly gesture from a rough man. A man I “might could” grow to love.

  We sat there holding hands for a few minutes, watching the lights of Vancouver coming on, across the bay. Then we wordlessly walked back down to the harbor, hand in hand.

  There is some world, I’m sure, where Doc’s vision of the future worked out. He made a fortune in the goldfields and came back to me; we married and were blessed with a late child, and lived happily ever after in Missouri. Not this world, though. This world I brought into existence by grieving.

  When we got to the dock, he unrolled his pipe from its chamois wrap, and tamped precious tobacco into it, something he did only a few times a week. I remember the smells—leather and the sulfurous match, coal gas sputtering in the dock lights, the sweet briar aroma as he puffed it alight—I’ve never liked tobacco, but whenever I smell a pipe I think of Doc, even today, and of the worlds that are and were and might have been.