Reckoning of Boston Jim (37 page)

Sweat trickles down Kloo-yah's cheek. Her wrists show red marking where her bangles have rubbed. Her arms and hands are scratched. She smells as all the People do, of salmon and cedar, and of the grease they use in their hair. She does not seem about to fade, not at all.

Boson gives his formal farewells. Gestures to Kloo-yah. They are nearly out the door when the headman calls to Boston.

“Can she hear you when you speak?”

“Can. Yes.”

“Then tell her I will see her soon. Tell her that I am old and that soon I, too, will make the journey. Tell her I will bring her that which she loves—a young dog and the ladle carved by her brother, and berry cakes and vermilion paint.”

Once within the fort walls Kloo-yah shows him the pulse of veins at her wrist. “I am not dead.”

“No.”

“I will stay here. I will cook for you and lie with you.”

“Don't like pointless talking. Should know that.”

“Nor do I,” she says and places her hand on his arm.

≈  ≈  ≈

Later Illdare says: “You know how I feel about consorting with the women of the Village. It leads only to trouble.”

“Kloo-yah not like others.”

Illdare snorted at this. “No. But neither is she your wife. No formal exchanges have been made.”

“Can't. The People don't see her.”

“Yes, the circumstances are unusual. Damned superstitions. Look, Jim, I will allow this as a favour to you, but only if you and your concubine live outside the fort walls. Is that clear?”

≈  ≈  ≈

It is as if the world were holding its breath, not only him. He lies very still at first because it is possible that she is one of the dead as the People claim. To embrace her would be to embrace death. He has heard the stories; he knows as much. She will lull him to sleep and feast on the marrow of his bones.

She smoothes her hand over his chest, as if to wipe it clean of the scars. What does it matter if she is something not entirely human? There is some comfort in knowing she is different from all others, as he himself is, that she, too, by some turn of fate, has been exiled from the human realm. In the nights that follow he studies the seams of her hands and feet, the arc of her brows and the shape of her ears. He studies them closely because, unlike most things, he wants them etched firmly in his memory.

Mary. A whiskey. For me. I friendly.”

“
Kah
Madame Blanc?”

“
Pus iktah?
”

Boston tells her why. The woman flounces out her dress of crimson and black. She once was a woman of status; the tattoos on her hands tell of it. She was once possessed of beauty; the pox marks on her cheeks cannot wholly destroy it.

“
Klootchmen kimta kloshe, wikna?
” she says loudly, as if daring any man to refute her saying that Indian women are better than white.

“
Kunje yahka chahko,
Madame Blanc?”

“
Nekhwa
buy me whiskey, then tell you.”

Boston buys her a whiskey and she tells him that Madame Blanc will come when she pleases, then laughs and moves off to more welcoming customers. A large woman in breeches slaps a hand of cards on a table. The men haul back as if faced with a venomous snake. She is Indian as well, or partly so. Of the Tlingits, Boston guesses, as her broad gestures, her straight stares, are common to their women.

Faces turn upward. Madame Blanc descends from the stairs behind the bar. She is corpulent and coarse-featured. Her dress is of gauzy yellows, purple lace, and silky greens. Her hair is a golden construction of loops and waves, is a beacon in the overall drabness of Barkerville's Denby saloon. She sits laboriously at a table in the corner from which the shifting clutch of men can be best surveyed. She notices Boston's stare, does not shift her eyes from his, nor blink. Does not, unlike most, seem uncomfortable under his full gaze. She smiles knowingly, lifts two beringed fingers.

Boston approaches, takes off his hat. “Ma'am.”

“Please, dear boy, sit yourself here.” She has small red-painted lips. Her voice has the cadence of the Southern States.

He sits with his hands on his knees. Madame Blanc glances at his fingers. They are stained with ink. “You are interested in Mary? I must tell you she is not the most tractable. I do have also a Mabel and a Mavis. Clean girls, none of them cannibals.” She smiles sweetly.

Boston lifts his chin to indicate Madame Blanc herself.

She breaks out a fan patterned with Chinese palaces and trees in pink bloom. “Madame Blanc is retired, respectable if you please. If it is a white woman you require, Miss Anna, our splendid card player could pass well enough.”

Boston looks again at Madame Blanc. Unfortunate that her eyes are not in the same realm of blue as the Dora woman's. Hers are the blue of a summer sky. The eyes of Madame Blanc are the grey of wet slate, of winter clouds.

“And Mariette. She is occupied at the moment. She is the finest I can offer. She learned her skills as the mistress of a Montreal merchant. Her father was a Jesuit sent to convert her people to the book. Is not that an enticing lineage? Is not it enticing to imagine a conversion taking place between a savage and a man of the holy cloth? Though not the one the holy man intended. Not at all.”

“You.”

Madame Blanc strokes a stiff curl. She leans close to Boston, whispers in a tone that carries to his ear alone: “You flatter me. Prefer a woman of some substance do you? Or something motherly? Or perhaps something of a darker bent? Tell me, whisper it in your dear Malva's ear. Perhaps something can be arranged. Nothing will surprise Malva Blanc, I promise you that. And not to worry, dear boy, keeping secrets is my own personal commandment.”

A man bumps against their table. Apologizes in Dutch, stumbles on. Boston whispers in her ear though his eyes remain fixed on the wooden table, the lines in the grain indicating the uncountable passing of years. She smells strongly of violets.

“My dear boy, I am truly intrigued.” She cites a hefty price.

Boston counters. Madame Blanc mentions that in New Orleans in her days of fame she could ask five times such a fee and still be able to pick and choose. Boston holds. Madame Blanc offers a price slightly lower. Boston counters again, but she will no longer bargain. She looks over his head at the bull-necked man who has been awaiting her signal. Boston agrees to her price, knowing he has little choice, for she has seen a need in him as clear as if he has been branded.

≈  ≈  ≈

The room is plainly furnished and criss-crossed with drafts. A lamp has been lit though it is not yet dark. “Shall I sit here? Would such a position please you?”

Boston nods. Madame Blanc draws the curtains and settles in the chair by the window. She sets the lamp on the table near to it. Her hooped skirts are so voluminous that they hide the chair entirely, make it seem as if Madame Blanc is sitting on an uphold of air.

Boston hands her the pages and sits on the edge of the bed, there being no other place. She strokes the pages in her lap. “And these are your writings?”

“Thank you to read it quick,” he says and curls his fingers to hide the ink stains upon them.

“We have time.”

“Ain't that, it's the way she talked, see.”

“Yes, of course.” She takes spectacles from a beaded purse and perches them on her nose, tells him that she wears them only to see the small matters of the world.

Boston shuts his eyes.

Madame Blanc reads: “We had a flat above the shop. Did I tell you that, Mr. Jim? Oh, it were small, two rooms only, but lovely. We had oval pictures of my Mother's family and a chair with clawed feet and a sideboard with grapes all carved in it. Had a rug, too, that came from the Indies or somewheres and that Mother brought when she left her house to marry Father. And we had a real chimney piece. It was of the famous murderer, Jack Delane. He's the one who murdered his wife and made her into a stew . . .”

“Your accent. Thank you to make it a London one.”

“But I am not a Londoner.”

“Know that. But you can do any kinda accent, can't you?”

Madame Blanc looks sharply at Boston over the rim of her spectacles. “Ah, dear boy, no need to disrobe. We see through each other quite clearly, don't we now? Where was I? Ah. On an evening we'd sit 'round the fire. It were always warm in the times before Father was hurt so. He'd point into the coals and tell us what was there—rubies and Turkish delight, villages with glowing windows and doors and step-ways, dragons, and trees with magic birds. I could see it all straight away. My sister and my brothers couldn't so well. My sister even said it was a silly game, but I think she was jealous because, though he never said it, I know father loved me best of all his children. . . .”

≈  ≈  ≈

Boston shuts his eyes again and Madame Blanc begins anew. Her accent is not quite like Dora's, but is passable. “It's my favourite story, it is. It's of how my father met my mother. He and his mates were putting on a play called The Widow's Return. For charity, it was. In the cellar of a church. Father was the widow because he was the tallest and the most manly and so the most hilarious. They decked him out with crepe streamers and ornaments and covered him up with a thick veil. Oh, I don't know how he could see a thing. You should have heard him wail! You should have seen the way he'd swoon into the men's arms, and how the men would be falling over because of the weight. He, or she I should be saying, was right upset about his small inheritance, and he was upset, too, because this husband had the bad manners to die in bed “while they were in the midst of making an heir.” That's what the line was. Oh, how the crowd laughed. After the play his mates dared him to go out in his widow's weeds, and he did, too, because he couldn't resist a lark, my father. They went into a right fine haberdashery near Regent Street and straight 'way he saw my mother Ethel sorting through buttons. He looked at her through his veil and it were like he was seeing her through a fairy mist. His mate said that this poor widow here has lost a button in a paroxysm of weeping and that she needed another like it, and then they pointed to his bodice that was stuffed up gigantic with a pillow. But my father, he lost the taste for the game. How could he be tricking this angel? He couldn't lift his veil, she'd scream for sure. Or she'd think him mad, or worse, this big man out dressed as a woman.

Oh, how my mother searched for the perfect match. Finally she found one. And, you know, she didn't charge him a farthing. She couldn't, see, because she felt so sorry for this big, blundering widow. She just held out the button. Her fingers were like lily stems, my father said. Their fingers barely touched. Oh, but it were enough. He was her slave for ever after. That's what he always said.”

Madame Blanc turns the paper over. “My mother didn't find out till her wedding night that father was the widow who needed the button. Ah, well and so, she thought it was terrible funny. Oh, she was always telling us how father made her laugh and . . . are you awake, dear boy, shall I continue? The tale is not bad, though certain details could be added, yes indeed. Shall I embellish for you?”

Boston opens his eyes. Madame Blanc looks at him coyly.

It is not working. Perhaps if he turns the lamp lower. Perhaps if Madame Blanc were not Madame Blanc. He has not fallen into the Dora woman's memories again. Has not stepped from the alley where he watched Dora and her mother and father embracing, has not gone further still and followed them up the stairs to their flat above the shop and sat quiet and unnoticed while her father told his tales and her mother looked on adoringly and Dora and her siblings grouped 'round, their cheeks reddened by the coal fire.

“Would you care to dress in women's garments?” Madame Blanc asks when the silence lengthens. “Is that it? Most men will take any opportunity to do so. The fee will change, of course.”

“No, ma'am.” He takes the letters from her.

She begins talking of New Orleans. How she ran away from the orphanage and lived on her wits until she discovered “the way.” How she would charge ten dollars to wear a habit and pretend to be seduced. For many men like to believe their charms are that great.

≈  ≈  ≈

It is all amiss. The portents are part of it. Normally he takes no note of them. Finds it idiotic, in fact, that others imagine them in spiderwebs, entrails, teacups, in the weather, the stars, that they believe they are singled out from the multitude by that nameless power that moves the world. And thus he has ignored up till now the obvious signs that the balance is threatened. That so much depends upon his actions.

He thinks of the three-legged dog he saw just yesterday, of a tree splintered by lightning and still smouldering though there had been no storms for days. Of a one-eyed, white-Indian who stared at him from a hillock near Yale. And of Girl, certainly. She crossed between the worlds to show him that much depended upon his actions. A curious ache when he thinks of Girl, of pulling the lice from her hair, the pattern of blood on her foot. It is as if he should have somehow stopped her from returning to her realm. What of these damned females? Kloo-yah. The Dora woman. Girl. It is as if they hold him up on one of those children's see-saws, each after their own fashion. It is as if they weigh more than he does, and thus he is high in the air, boots kicking futility in search of the ground.

He crumples the paper in his fist. He prefers the life he had before. Part of the landscape, part of the air, passing his time before the grave. He is strange. He knows that. But never had he imagined that this strangeness might have some purpose.

“Are you feeling badly?” Madame Blanc asks, without much interest.

Boston shakes his head.

“Then, dear boy, if you no longer want the pleasure of Madame Blanc's reading voice . . .”