Reckoning of Boston Jim (21 page)

He pours whiskey into Mrs. Barrymore's outstretched glass. She asks for the story again, and then again. And so again and again Eugene tells it, adding details until the palace is fit to bursting with luxuries and the Queen is as garrulous as a fishwife, until Mrs. Barrymore has fallen asleep in her chair, her face nearly peaceful. Eugene covers her with the quilt from the trunk. Stokes the fire then clears the bench of books and settles in his bedroll. Mrs. Barrymore faintly snores. From behind the curtain Mr. Barrymore breathes as if each breath was his last. The Puma has a banshee wail. Tonight is not the night he would want to hear it. He does not sleep. He scratches and shifts. Bad enough that he has seen Injun Hank, now he has partaken of the food and drink in this necropolis. He knows of Persephone and the grapes, or was it plums? How she ate of them and so was condemned to live on in Hades. There are warnings in these old tales.

Ah, Dora, Dora, Dora. Not for her these morbid rituals, these ghoulish half-lit rooms. Damned if he doesn't miss her, like an ache, like he's been stripped to the bone.

Ma'am, you the Mrs. Jacobsen?”

“I am. Yes? What is it I may do for you? Are you wanting a room? Victuals? Come into the light and shut the door behind you. Drafts, sir.”

She looks Boston over with suspicion even though his hair is now short to his ears, his beard trimmed. She stares pointedly at his hat. He takes it off reluctantly and holds it tight in his hands as if it has a will of its own and has to be kept down.

“Asking about your painting.”

“My painting? Are you indeed? Which one? For what purpose? I do not understand. Not at all.”

Boston motions to the parlour off the entrance. “The one over the sideboard there. What you take for it?”

“For the Picnickers? You are asking to buy it? That I part with it?

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Have you been drinking? Have you been taking opium? Because I do not tolerate such indulgences in my establishment. Not at all.”

“Haven't been doing that. It's just . . .”

“Just? Yes? I am listening.”

“Need a gift, that's all, to even it out.”

“Have you stayed here, sir? You are familiar. Have we been introduced? What is your name?”

“Name's Jim. Boston Jim some call me. Not staying here. No. But . . .”

“Well, that painting, Mr. Jim, is a cherished heirloom. Have you heard of the French Revolution? The rule of the unwashed mob? That is my family, as it once was. They had their heads removed. Guillotined. Unjustly so. And so you see, I would rather sell my soul to the devil than sell that painting.”

Boston is considering whether to argue the worth of such a trade when pots crashing in the kitchen take up Mrs. Jacobsen's attention and she leaves him abruptly. Boston peers into the parlour. It is much like the Dora woman described it, is a jumble of tassels and drapes and furnishings, is awash with ambers and clarets and purples of all hues. There on the mantel is the golden clock and there the stereoscope. There on a table the Wardian case, ornate as the cage for some foreign bird, its ferns and odd pale flowers pressing at the misty glass. The Dora woman spoke of it: “It's a strange and lovely thing, it is. When you peer into it you'd half expect to see a naked jungle savage peering back at you. I'd never know how to care for such a thing.”

She did not speak, however, of the many doilies and antimacassars. She should have, for they festoon the backs and arms of every chair and every surface and bring to mind the skeletal remains of some delicate sea creature.

That is not all that is amiss. The windows are large, but not large enough, as she had proclaimed, to drive a carriage through. The piano is not the size of a Cathedral organ, and there is a sweetish odour she forgot to mention entirely.

A wan light struggles into the room. It is a damp afternoon at the beginning of July. Two men sit near a low-burning fire, periodicals propped before them. They are well-dressed, big-bellied men about whom pipe smoke lingers as if in some kind of homage. Neither look at Boston and he has that feeling, as he has from time to time, that he is not quite real.

He steps into the parlour to get a closer look at the painting. He holds his hat close to his chest so as not to send crashing the many gimcracks. “It's an astonishing picture,” the Dora woman said. “It's like they're inviting you in. Like they're saying come and laugh with us now, and eat grapes with us. I could look at it all day, I could, and did, too, when I should have been dusting.”

But the picnickers are not laughing. Grimacing perhaps. And their eyes suggest a warning rather than an invitation. As for the grapes, there are none in evidence, only the remains of some on the blanket. Flies hover near. A crow tears out the eyes of a half-eaten fish, and the juice of a hacked-apart orange stains the hem of a silver skirt. It troubles him that so many things are different from her descriptions. Mrs. Jacobsen, for example, though not slim, is not as wide as a wagon wheel. Her hair, though bright, he supposes, for a woman her age, is not the red of a peony. And he has yet to see her be swept up by gusts of rage, has yet to see her behave like a music-hall singer who has lost her stage and voice but not her grand entrances and exits.

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Mrs. Jacobsen returns with a rattling of keys. “Now who is this gift for? Who is asking for my painting?”

“She isn't asking . . .”

“She? Who? What are you talking about?”

“Mrs. Hume,” Boston says, though he had not meant to. He had meant to buy the painting and then leave. It was to be simple. But never has Boston encountered such an effective fusillade of questions.

Mrs. Jacobsen presses her hand to her chest. “Mrs. Hume? Do you mean Miss Dora Timmons? Is that who you mean? Is it?”

“Don't know about Timmons. Dora, though, that's her given name.” He has not said the name “Dora” aloud before. To do so now seems strange, as if he were giving up some secret.

“I am astonished. I am astounded. Understand that while she may use the name Mrs. Hume, society does not, the holy church does not.”

“What the church says don't matter. She worked here. Heard that.”

“Indeed. We had a contract and yet she left me. I was told. I was warned. Mr. Jacobsen said she'd be off with a fellow in no time. But what are you to her? Are you a friend? A relation?” She puts a hand to her chest. “Have you taken up with her? Is that it? And Mr. Hume gone barely eight weeks. Why am I surprised? Why did I not expect this?”

“Not like that. No. Just owe her, see. She liked the painting. Said so.”

“Did she? Did she indeed? Well, be assured, sir, the painting is not for sale. Not for any price, and certainly not for Miss Timmons. No, certainly not. Now, Mr. Jim was it? I must bid you good day.”

Boston clamps his hat on, but makes no move to leave.

Mrs. Jacobsen twists the keys at her waist. “Should I call for Mr. Vincent? Should I send for the constabulary?”

The bronze at the head of the stairway is of a woman twisting away from some pursuer. Her lower limbs are turning into a tree trunk, her fingers into leafy branches. The Dora woman described it briefly, but added that she had not liked it much. Fortunate. It would be heavy and difficult to pry from its place. Boston says: “The stereoscope then. What you take for it?”

“The stereoscope? It is for my guests. No, no indeed, this is not a shop. This is not a marketplace. There is nothing available here for Dora Timmons. Nothing.”

Boston tries once more. He describes the Dora woman as best he can, the bonnet slipping sideways off her straw-yellow hair, the blue dress, the pink cheeks, the blue rounds of her eyes.

“I am well aware of the woman's appearance. I had the pleasure of her face and company for the greater part of a month. Throw your love away on someone else. That is my advice. In any case, she has taken up with Mr. Eugene Hume, has she not? They are suited. Both have the most troublesome characters. What will he say, indeed, when I tell him anon that a disreputable man is trying to buy a gift for his woman, that is to say his mistress, his whore? Now good day. I am a busy woman. I have many people to attend to.”

She rustles off, calling to her servants, throwing an irritated glance back at Boston who is staring at his boots as if they have just appeared there.

Boston breathes in sharply. Love. The landlady spoke the word so casually. Was this love, then? This confusion? This sense of obligation? He considers hate. That is love's opposite and something he understands. Is what he feels for the Dora woman the exact opposite of what he feels for the man whose face is in shadow, always in shadow? This face that, with all his vast memory, he cannot recall. At first it was only an insistent pressure, a warmth even, then agony. What Boston knows, and knew then in that inarticulate, gut-certain way of children, was that the man was dying and did not want to be forgotten, that it was not enough to carve his own name and that of his city on some tree or rock. He wanted a living, walking testament to his time upon the earth. And so he carved his name on Boston and muttered some incoherent incantation and in doing so he worked a curse. Did he know he was working magic? Magic was often stumbled upon. One had to be careful. But that did not matter. What mattered was that only after the man had at him with his knife did memories begin imprinting themselves upon him, as indelible as the words on his skin. It is for this burden of memory that Boston hates him. When Boston is dead, the man's name will rot away with his flesh and so be forgotten as if he had never existed. Boston hates his scars and he hates the man, and the hate is like nourishment. But this love, if that is what it is, does not nourish him. He is weakened by it.

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He makes his way slowly to the restaurant at the front of the Avalon. He sits at a table in the corner and orders a whiskey from the waiter, and then a steak with eggs and bacon for he has not eaten once this day. Next to Boston a boy is being applauded for the arrival of his seventh year. What happens on your birthday? Do the years turn like a great wheel inside of you? Is wisdom parcelled out? At Fort Connelly, Christ's birthday was celebrated with fresh-killed game and free-flowing rum. The men danced together until near to morning when they sprawled out where they had fallen. Lavolier told him that all were marked on God's calendar, that the Lord had decided in advance the day of one's birth, and that of one's death. Boston believed him. He had no reason not to then. But now it makes no sense that this Christ could trade his life for the salvation of all the living and all the dead and for all those yet to be born. For a hundred people perhaps, for a thousand even. But all exchanges must have a limit, even those with the divine. And certainly Boston can't believe that any greater power notices when another being slips into the world, or slips out, or visits for a fraction of time, as do newborns who open their eyes and then die as if they have seen all they wish to and have realized it is not as they were promised. Boston knows it is unlikely that he is accounted for. There is no record of his entrance into the world. No people who will mourn his death, pass on his name, pray for him to interfere in their worldly matters. There is only the Dora woman saying: “For your birthday, then.” There is only the Dora woman giving him a day in late spring, giving him back the one hundred and twenty-six pounds and ten shillings as if to remind him of the purpose for it. There is only the Dora woman telling him her stories so that he may step into them when he chooses the way one steps into a clear, warm lake.

When he finds the appropriate gift he will return to her cabin. They will talk again as she promised, sitting inside the cabin this time. Bread will be rising fatly by the stove. No one will come and go. She will ask for his life and he will give it to her. He will tell her of the scars, of Fort Connelly, and perhaps of its demise. He will tell her of Lavolier and of Illdare. He will tell of the village near the fort and of Kloo-yah, how she cooked his meals and warmed his bed in exchange for protection from her people. He will tell her how he spends his seasons hunting and trapping and how occasionally when he skins an animal and leaves its bloody carcass in the snow he shivers briefly, as one does when a door opens onto a warm room and lets in a fragment of brutal cold.

He will tell her, also, of how he once awoke and found himself floating near the blackened roof of his cabin, was able to see his own form sleeping on a bed of furs, the half-chewed bones on the table, the tangle of his traps hung on the walls and roof. He spent that day cleaning the floor planks and the table and the windows even, which were of true glass. His cabin was not like the lair of some animal at all.

Of what else can he tell her? Of the summer last, the summer of the pox. It had swept through before, but never like this. He headed for the coast. The Indians were not allowed to trade in Victoria unless they had the mark of the pox on them already, so it made sense that he would find good trading as a middleman.

Once he came near the salt smell of the sea he decided to head further north, curious of a sudden to see again the village near Fort Connelly. On his eighth day of walking along deer paths and trading paths, along the shore, he began to recognize the trees and rock formations. Saw an overhang with the carving of a square masted ship. It was a carving that Illdare had told him of, though Boston had never seen it. The moss thickened and deadened noise, the mushrooms pushed up through the earth like pale thumbs. Everything, even the light, seemed soft and slightly rotted.

He came upon the remains of the fort first. The moss and ferns had long taken over the charred logs, though the black still showed through the green. He studied a pail that was so rusted it seemed made of lace and then the lichen-encrusted skulls that were heaped where the gates once were. One of the skulls might well have been Illdare's, but it was impossible to tell.