Reckoning of Boston Jim (25 page)

Now all this disturbed Mouse Woman mightily, as you might suppose, for she loved a balance to all things and hated what the foolish Chief had done and though she tried to warn him many times he always thought she was just chattering and so chased her off.

Raven, he can help, Mouse Woman decided. But she knew it might not be easy to persuade him because he was selfish himself, and vain and a glutton, too, and often up to no-good tricks. Still, he was the most powerful being about and so she went off in search of him. After many days she found him high in a cedar. He was grooming his feathers and looking proudly all about him.

“Raven, have you heard of the three terrible sisters? They are walking all over the land and draining the streams dry and using whole forests for firewood and eating whole villages of humans and animals both, and they say they are going to eat you, too, because you are said to taste better than anything.”

“Who says I taste so good? Who says? No one has ever eaten me before!” Raven cried.

“Oh, but they can just imagine! And why wouldn't you taste good? Look how handsome you are and shiny and large.”

“That's true, I probably taste delicious, but they'll never know, will they?” And off he flew in search of the three sisters. He searched and searched until finally he saw them roaming around a valley, picking their teeth with trees and scratching their asses with boulders and nearby were shit-heaps the size of mountains and all was quiet because they'd eaten all the birds and anything else that made a sound including the wind.

“Hey, you three! Hey, you three,” he called and they looked up and saw the largest, choicest bird they'd ever seen. The eldest one reached up to catch him. Raven flew just out of her grasp. Now the second eldest leaped up. Now the youngest. They missed him every time and so in this way he led them back to their home village, them jumping and jumping and him bobbing just out of their reach. In fact, they jumped so much that they threw up all the People that they had eaten and all the animals and then all the water from the rivers they had drunk. And they became skinnier and smaller so that by the time they reached the bay of their home village they were only half the size they had been, which was a fair size still. And then Raven turned them to stone. Even now you can see the three sisters, standing in a row out in the waves on the edge of the bay. They must act as guardians of the village for all eternity now, and no thanks do they get for it. That is the price for their greed and gluttony. And every time the People see them they remember to give to the Animal People and to make sure that all is kept in balance. But even so the People were never as rich as they once had been, because that was the price for their foolishness.

Boston falls quiet. His throat is dry from talking. Never has he talked so much at once. But it has worked. Girl has fallen asleep, is wrapped in Boston's coat and huddled in the grass.

Boston does not sleep. He sits with his back against a stump, his revolver on his knees. He positions himself so he can espy people passing in the street. It was near here that Boston saw the Jesuit, Father Gaspar, give Christian names to three Samish in the Spring of '
52
—John, Joseph, Jeremiah. Father Gaspar was missing the middle finger of his left hand and the sun gleamed through the gap as he blessed them. Would that things had not changed. It was simple enough once, Fort Victoria abuzz with trade, the rules of the company clear, Douglas ruling it all. One thing was given for another. Everyone's function was discernible—the blacksmith's, the cook's, even the priest's trading reverence for salvation. But now? What to make, say, of these loud revellers sauntering down Government Street, illuminating their way with no less than four lamps, the three women in bright swishes of dresses, two of the men in regimentals, the third in a top hat and black jacket that forks like a swallow's tail. They are off to a night of dancing, on one of the Navy ships, perhaps, or at one of the houses of the wealthy. The two men in uniform are Navy men, certainly, but of the women and the other man, who can say?

The men begin singing. Boston knows the song. It is “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” He heard it eight years and ninety-five days ago. Another trapper, distant from him, sang it as he skinned a beaver. And so Boston could sing it, certainly, if he were one for singing.

The song crescendoes, then transforms into laughter. Singing was the first sound he heard when he awoke at Fort Connelly. The memory comes unsought. Boston scowls. Others complain of memories springing up unawares, but this has not happened to Boston since he was beardless and had not yet learned how to keep the myriad images and words trussed until called upon.

He lies on furs on a narrow trestle in a narrow room. Through a doorway he sees an old woman tending a pot. He wonders if he is dead. It seems heaven enough to be warm, to have the smell of food nearby. The woman's song is a chanting refrain. He did not understand the meaning of the words then, but he recalled the sounds of them, as he was to recall everything he heard and saw from that moment forth.

He is naked but for the binding on his chest. The pain starts from his collarbone, radiates to his shoulder and down to his pelvis. In the old woman's fire are flames of blue and yellow. On the beams above hang ropes and traps and dried salmon. Stacked against the walls are furs, barrels and sacks. The room is white-washed, though streaked with soot, and it smells of smoke and fish and half-cured hide and of other things he has no name for yet.

The old woman sees his open eyes. She wears a labret and her lower lip juts out like a small shelf. He has never seen such a thing. He reaches out as if to touch her. “Equata,” she says, before she shuffles off, chuckling.

≈  ≈  ≈

“Can you speak English?” The man has a lean face and a sparse beard and a thick, incongruous nose. His hair is a thin net over his pale scalp. “I am Mr. Hiram Illdare, the Chief Trader. The leader here. Do you understand? Good. What do you recall? It is important you tell us. The Indians who brought you here spoke of a ship.”

“Yes.”

“Speak, lad, louder.”

He explains as best he can, with what words he knows as the fragments tumble one on top of the other. A great cracking. A rush of water. Immense cold. A battering of waves. A pebbled beach. A canvas overhead. A shadow figure of a man, cursing and weeping.

“A wreck then, not an assault by the Indians?”

“Wreck. Yes.”

“Do you recall any landmark or positioning? Anything that would help lead us to it.”

“No. no.”

“More survivors. Can you at least recall that? We could hunt for them. It is our duty to do so.”

He clenches his fist to his cheek.

“You believe yourself the only one?”

He nods and fire courses down his chest.

“Is James Milroy your name? Are you from Boston? Is the ship?”

“Forget.”

“Is Milroy your father, then, a relation?”

“No, no father.”

“Well, well. We have two Jameses here already. That's two enough, eh? We'll call you Jim, then. Jim of Boston. What of that?”

“Good. Yes.”

Illdare studies him with an odd expression, then abruptly reaches down and strokes the hair from his eyes.

“
Mort?
” A pockmarked face. Lashings of dark hair. Pale eyes. A coat worn over his shoulders like a cape.

Illdare straightens. His countenance changes, becomes stern as the others crowd in. Their faces are pale and dark. Curious and impassive. Scarred and smooth. They shift aside and the boy sees two women with white blankets around their shoulders, beads in their dark hair. One has a nose ring that glints in the guttering light.

“ 'Ere, now, sir, did he say where the wreck was? Did ya, boy?” The man has yellow hair, a face raked with lines. The boy cringes before the rankness of his breath, looks to Illdare.

“The Indians would have scavenged the cargo by now. Leave him, all of you. Now.”

The one with the pockmarks and pale eyes says: “Last rite, if die. It duty.”

“You are not a priest, Lavolier. You seem to have forgotten that.”

“He go purgatory.”

“And where do you think he is now, you popish ghoul?”

≈  ≈  ≈

The night is half gone. Boston watches Girl sleep. She is curled up in the grass, his coat covering her completely. She makes no sound. He crouches beside her and draws the coat back from her face. Her head is pillowed in her arms. Now he can hear her breathing faintly. Briefly he places his hand on her forehead, on her damp hair.

 

Addendum to the Gentleman's Guide

Should the Gentleman find that he is short of monetary accoutrements or, indeed, that he has been robbed most ignominiously while he peaceably slept at the way house known as Mrs. Jones House at the mark of 145 miles from the town of Lilloet of the Harrison route—a way house this author most strongly recommends avoiding like a house with the mark of the plague—then he may find that it is not unnecessary (unless he be one who can subsist upon berries and squirrels) to labour to thus have the means with which to eat & with which to later stake his claim in the goldfields which are so close they beckon like spirits in the mist.

The foreman bawls out eight o'clock and the road-clearing crew ceases their hacking of trees and brush. Eugene dumps his wheelbarrow for the last time, wipes his brow clean of the grime engendered by the burning slash. A horse is unhitched from a go-devil and stands ex-hausted in the waning light. Some distance behind, the road-building crew takes up their mattocks and pickaxes and hammers. All the men carry their own belongings, even the crew that builds the bridges and culverts and that is paid more than any, and certainly the crew of Chinamen and Indians that is paid the least and works apart from all the others entirely.

“No storm tonight,” the foreman announces with the certainty of a prophet.

Eugene rubs bacon fat on his mosquito welts until he feels fit for the frying pan. From his flask he dribbles water onto his hands that are admirably begrimed and calloused after only ten days of labouring like a convict. A week more by most calculations. Then the road will be built entirely to the steamer dock at Soda Creek. Then Eugene will have fulfilled his contract and will have his pay, though the $
1
.
50
a day will hardly make up for the £
50
the thieves took from his pocket while he slept. Thankfully it was not the entirety of his money. The piddling rest was lining his boots. Fortunate he often sleeps with them on these days. Only in the last few days has he been able to think of his misfortune and not grow near apoplectic with rage.

≈  ≈  ≈

From the back of a chuckwagon a stout Chinaman serves up stew, pigeon pie, beans, pemmican, bread, blueberry cobbler, coffee. Eugene is ravenous. Looks about for his tent mates—Young George Bowson and Langstrom the Swede. Spies Langstrom far up in the line, sidles next to him, tin plate used as a shield. Men mutter, too tired to protest outright.

“Are we ready for this evening, Langstrom? Ready?”

Langstrom vigorously nods, his ever-present pipe dangling from his lips like an elongated tooth. He has a perpetual squint, a heads-down walk, a beard that lies flattened against his chest. Seems in all as if he were raised in the brunt of a fierce wind. How he arrived this far and this alone is a mystery to Eugene, for Langstrom has barely any English and relies on energetic pantomime and gestures that might be taken for those of a madman. When Eugene asked after his family by indicating the shape of a woman, the low height of children, Langstrom gathered perhaps thirty sticks. Sticks ran away, lay with forbidden sticks. Sticks were born. Sticks were orphaned. Or abandoned. It was difficult to tell. Sticks fought. “Bad,” said Langstrom and snapped a stick in half and cast it into the fire.

“Quite so,” said Eugene, as if he understood completely, and perhaps he did. One story or misery and failed hope was, after all, becoming much like another.

They sit on rocks, their plates balanced on their knees. Young George joins them. Greets Eugene as he always does, as if he has not seen him for days. Mosquitoes settle on his thick shoulders like a mantle, on his flaxen hair that is already thin enough to show the vulnerability of his scalp. Poor bastard, thinks Eugene, not for the first time. It must be the young man's taut ruddy skin that attracts the damned bloodsuckers like beggars to a banquet. Unfortunately for Eugene and Langstrom, Bowson believes that unwashed skin and fervent prayer will keep the mosquitoes at bay.

“Have you said grace yet, sirs?”

Eugene, his mouth stuffed full, mumbles they have not.

George presses his palms together. “May I? Is it all right with you, Doc? You, Mr. Langstrom?”

The Swede shrugs. Eugene nods. He likes that George and some others call him Doc out of respect for his learning and gentleman-like ways. Professor would be preferable, mind, but when was Eugene Augustus Hume one to quibble?

George squeezes shut his eyes. Eugene and Langstrom put down their forks. “And God bless my mother and sisters, and my father who's in heaven and the cows and make it rain enough for them so as there's hay in Ontario and please, Lord, find cousin Adair a good husband. Oh, and God bless Mr. Hume for all his kindness and good advice, and keep Mrs. Hume safe for when he returns. And God bless Mr. Langstrom too. . . . Wait, sirs, there's more.”

Eugene puts down his fork again, says as jovially as he can: “I am sure there is, George, vast multitudes to bless. The food, however, is growing cold.”

“And God bless the Queen and all her children and help her in her sorrow for her husband, amen,” George says in a rush and then smiles.

“Amen,” Eugene says.

“Amen,” Langstrom echoes and touches the rough green stone about his neck.

“Are you prepared for this evening, Young George? I sense luck once again in the air, good clean luck.”