Reckoning of Boston Jim (19 page)

The dock is stuffed with men in their sartorial best. Some row alongside the
Tynemouth
and attempt to clamber on board like lovelorn pirates. Unfortunate that the Widow Dall, who has been saying a long goodbye to her three gnarled admirers, has to be carried off reeking of gin. Dora's turn and she steps onto the dock in her damask dress of green and yellow stripes. Hands reach out. There is the odour of peppermint and sweat and the distinct smell of land—earth after rain, horse droppings, the scent of flowers held tight in the fists of the hopeful. She tries to ignore the faint buzzing in her ears, the failing of heart. How Isabel would have loved to see this. Dora looks through the crowd. A dozen pairs of eyes catch hers. Hat are swooped off, great smiles given. She cannot help but smile in return. It is like she is royalty arriving. When will she, the daughter of a costermonger, when will she ever again be so cheered and heralded? The order of things is easily scrambled in this place. That much is already clear.

≈  ≈  ≈

They stay that night in the Marine Barracks. In charge is a young naval officer with a chin beard and a high broad forehead. She is reminiscing about the voyage with Miss Joanna when he calls for attention, standing before them as ramrod straight as if he were clasped between two boards. “Welcome to Victoria, ladies. I am Mr. Edmund Verney, the head of the female immigration committee. Please, I must begin with a warning: this is not London. You will find that masculine manners here need some refinement. I must beg you not to wander from these quarters. This is for your own safety. Some of your number have already gone into their situations and within a few days you will all be placed. Now, you will be pleased, or rather I am pleased to inform you that a Regatta will be held in your honour on the morrow. There will be boat races and prizes, refreshments and victuals.”

“What about our rich husbands, then eh?” shouts the Widow Dall.

Mr. Verney turns a pinkish hue. “Please, ladies. I hope you have not been led too far astray in your hopes. There are more poor men here than rich. More vulgar than refined.”

“What about you?” Miss Finch calls out. “You're a handsome one. You needing a wife, then?”

The women laugh and crowd in closer to Mr. Verney. Mr. Verney steps back. He might be a cat in water, so completely is he out of his element. “Let's give a hand clap for Mr. Verney,” she calls. “And three cheers for the committee and all their work!” The women obligingly clap and cheer. Mr. Verney bows and then hurries out the door, knocking his head on the transom as he does so, to the great merriment of the Misses Finch, Hutchins and Law.

Dora is about to take her rest when Mrs. Farthingham approaches her. “I retrieved these from Mr. Scott as you asked, dear. It wasn't easy. He kept saying as how the girls were his charges and his responsibility. Do you know, I believe he feels a little badly. Ah, well, I enlisted the Captain in the campaign and was at last successful.”

She hands Dora the bundle of Isabel's things. Inside is a night shift, a comb, and a round flat shell, cool and polished, with a star pattern upon it. It is the very shell that Captain Gringshaw gave Isabel and that she treasured. Dora remembers that now. She stares at the shell. Hefts it. Yes. It is the size and shape of a watch. It is a mistake that anyone in a fever could make. It is a mistake she will never forget.

June 12, 1863

Dearest Dora,

If by chance a century or two hence travellers on this road should stop at the thriving village known as The Forks over which the flag of the French presides & if they should seek respite from the frowning sun at the meeting of the impassioned noble Fraser & the calm beauteous Thompson & if they were to sit amid the smiling grass, under the embracing branches of a great, gnarled pine & if these denizens of the future (let us make them lovers) should glance upward they will see, carved into the trunk of the aforementioned tree, the names of Dora & Eugene, the E of which is hooked artfully through the D, & beneath the date, the year of our Lord June 12, 1863, & they will then gaze again upon the Fraser River, so brown & muscular & then upon the phantasmagorical blue of the Thompson & see how it is like a vast shimmering ribbon in this tableau of hot sands & wind-swept ochre & they will see in this meeting & mingling a uniting of the power of their own love, which is inspired by ours, lovers of a century past, & thus carry onwards, ennobled!

“Not finished?”

“A moment more, I beg you, monsieur.”

“Perhaps more ink?”

Mr. Barnard holds out a small glass pot. He is a handsome well-attired Québécois with a neat beard. Nearby a sorrel horse noses the sparse grass, its hide agleam with sweat.

“Ah, quite so, my thanks. It is no simple task to write upon a rock.”

“Perhaps you need assistance in composing? I have good skill and charge a small fee only.”

“I believe I can manage. Merci, and such.”

Barnard gauges the sun against his pocket watch. Nods, pleased, as if he and the heavenly bodies have some mutually profitable contract.

Eugene rereads his paragraph. Yes, he can see the tree as clearly as if he had indeed spent the afternoon inscribing it like a ham-fisted monument carver.

Dearest Dora! Remember our tree! Remember that your love is a beacon that holds me safe until my return!

Your dearest, most loving, Eggy.

Barnard folds the letter expertly and slides it into a gummed envelope and then into a bulging saddlebag at his feet.

“That is a quarter dollar for the paper, another quarter dollar for the envelope. Two dollars for the delivering of it. The ink is gratis, sir. And so, altogether it is $
2
.
25
.”

“What? For a missive? I could purchase a meal, a brandy, a crock, no several crocks of grog for such a price.”

“Ah, but is price of the Cariboo. And I, sir, I am the Cariboo's only postman.”

Eugene counts out the coins. He should have shrugged in incomprehension when Barnard rode toward him and called out for letters in four languages. Astonishing how quickly money can be spent on the road. He has sworn to be more frugal, but it is not easy. A man must have food and refreshment. A man must have a place to sleep. True, he need not have spent the entire Lord's Day eating and drinking at the Globe Hotel at The Forks, but the food of the sad-eyed Madame Hautier was famous and justly so; he could hardly pass it by. He congratulates himself for not writing of it to Dora. For she might see in his rapturous description of Madame Hautier's cooking a sly attack on her own, which, in truth, was abysmal. Her butter is nothing but runny gobs, her flapjacks hard as flagstones.

≈  ≈  ≈

Barnard mounts his horse with a parade ground flourish. “Trust in the
BX!
” he calls out and leaves Eugene in a shroud of dust.

≈  ≈  ≈

The dust subsides. Eugene mops his brow. Ariadne nibbles fastidiously at a sagebrush. It is mid-morning and already it is a glaring, un-English hot that is melting his patience, his good humour. There are sparse glades of pines, clumps of cactus, and tumbleweeds made animate in the crosswind. There is the blue of the Thompson below, an uncertain breed of carrion bird above, and all about, bare and dun-coloured hills that look to have been newly poured from the sky and left to bake and crack open in the sun.

Eugene feels himself recede. He is at the vanishing point, not the centre. Nothing is the centre here. He hauls at Ariadne's bridle, suppresses an urge to pound her. Since leaving Yale, they have been passed by all manner of travellers—innumerable miners with barrows and rucksacks and mules, the precarious ox wagons, a mule train, a battered horse-drawn carriage, stuffed to its roof with cargo and men, even a one-legged, scurvy-mouthed man who hobbled past Eugene on his wooden leg and spouted prophecy and doom. Most astonishing, however, were the two women of late yesterday afternoon. One had skin black as ebony and wore a broad straw hat aflutter with ribbons. The other had rouged cheeks and plaits of ashen blond. They were riding astride sturdy horses, a sole male escort. Their skirts, free of crinolines, rampant with colour, flared out as their horses trotted by him. Such a delightful contrast in the dull landscape, alike to a stained glass window in a stone church where a parson is droning on.

“Come to see us in the gold towns!” they called.

Eugene raised his hat. “I may indeed,” he called, but his voice was caught by a gust of wind and he was left jawing in their wake.

≈  ≈  ≈

Ariadne stops, twitches her ears. Clang of a bell mare. The clanging increases and now comes the mule train, the largest Eugene has yet seen. The mules carry boxes marked “Dynamite,” “Champagne.” They carry sacks of flour, sugar, salt, a stove, a door, even a plate glass window held steady by a Chinaman. There are three well-armed Indians and a second Chinaman, an older man, walking alongside a sixth man who is the famous packer, Cataline the Basque: of this Eugene is certain. He has long moustaches and long black hair, wears a clean collarless shirt, a thick belt and high black boots. He greets Eugene in a mixture of bad French and worse English. Ariadne nuzzles his chest. He strokes her neck. “Zuri,” he says with an expression that is both surprised and pleased. It is, Eugene thinks, as if he has come across a beloved elder relative who should have died years before.

“Am I to understand that you owned her once, sir? If so, perhaps you could enlighten me as to her age.”

“Zuri. Ah.” Cataline says and runs his hands over her knees, lifts her hooves, shakes his head in wonderment, now points up the road and mimes a vast load.

“She is managing fine. I am carrying no more than others are. Indeed I had to sell much of my supplies in Yale. I received nearly nothing for them.”

Cataline looks at Eugene as if he doubts his intelligence, then adjusts Ariadne's straps, strokes her muzzle, walks on with his tireless walk. The mules crowd past Eugene. Several nuzzle Ariadne. She haws mournfully as the last dust from their hooves disappears into the funnel of the road.

≈  ≈  ≈

For the next three hours he does not see a living soul except a red fox and some creatures that might have been a species of giant rat. His shirt is stained with sweat and his feet ache hotly in his boots. He looks down from the height of a great bluff to the swale below. Sees the frothy blue of the Thompson, a semblance of green along its banks. Before him is a crude gateway formed by two great rocks on either side of the road.

“Should we take a rest when we reach the bottom, eh, Arie? The current looks mild. We could swim, paddle about like ducks and such.”

Ariadne haws madly, rears up. The
aparejo
slides to her withers. Pans clank. A bottle smashes to the ground. Eugene grabs her bridle rope. It tears through his hands. The stench strikes him like a fist.

“What the bloody damnation!”

Nothing will surprise him now. Nothing. If Christ and his attendant angels walked by in miner's boots he would merely bid them good day. And if the sky rained peaches and cream, why, he'd merely help himself to a bowl full.

They barricade the road, as if doing so were part of their normal inclination. Their mud-shaded fur is sloughing off and dangles from their knobbly knees, their serpentine necks, their double humps. Bears he could understand, wolves, pumas, but camels? Why not elephants? Why not unicorns?

“Well now, beasties. This is desert-like country, true, but if I am not mistaken you are out of your geography. Have you escaped from your turbaned masters? Escaped a zoo?”

They swing their heads and stare at him like vicious dowagers. He had not realized camels were so large. Bigger than a horse, than an ox. They are, indeed, about the size that Cataline was attempting to express. Damn him. He could have given better warning.

The nearest one spits and a yellow-green blob splatters on Eugene's shirt.

Eugene steps backward. The camel advances. Eugene hauls again on Ariadne's bridle. Her eyes are wide as billiard balls and she is rooted to the spot. Two other camels appear behind him. To his right is a precipitous incline. To his left a steep bank. What is it about camels? Or are they dromedaries? Years without water. Ships of the desert. Something biblical, something about knitting needles and a rich man. Why didn't he write it down? Because he is not a naturalist. He is an adventurer, damnit, but camels were never in the plan.

The largest one lunges and snaps its yellow teeth a few feet from Eugene's chest. Eugene yells and staggers back. Ariadne now bolts up the bank, showing a dexterity at which Eugene will later marvel. He, too, clambers up the bank, loses his footing in the shale, slides back. Hauls out his revolver.

Eugene's appreciation for comedy stops short at the manner of his own demise. A taste of vomit is in his mouth, a flighty beating in his chest. Should he charge through them? Shoot the leader and hope they scatter? Yet that may provoke them to charge en masse. Better he walk through them iron-eyed. They might be like dogs, who won't chase the fearless. Great God! Is he afraid of camels? He who has braved the road alone for these twelve days? Who braved a sea voyage? The wilderness of the Cowichan? Who has fought in the Crimea, for Christ's sake!

He raises his arms. “Get thee gone, you wretched beasts!” It seems the right thing to say, seems they might even vanish in a puff. They do nothing of the sort. Their stench envelops him like a vile blanket. He is surrounded. He is aiming his revolver. He shuts his eyes, and as he does the shot resounds. The six camels are trundling off. The seventh, the largest, the most dastardly, lies thrashing in the road, a bullet in its neck, the blood forming a great pool. The revolver is hot and smoking in his hand. He is quaking. He has not shot a gun since the Crimean. He has not killed anything since then. Would that he had companions. Someone to joke away the incident. It is difficult to be brave alone. “Bugger it. Fuck it.” He walks closer to the beast, reloads with shaking hands. Eugene wishes the sound the beast is making could be called inhuman. But as he knows well enough, there is no end to the tortured sounds that humans can make.