Sarah Canary (27 page)

‘It’s a canoe,’ said Purdy. ‘By God. It’s Harold’s canoe. He’s capsized.’ Purdy crossed himself. ‘Can he swim? Can he swim in rough waters? How close to the shoreline do you suppose he was? Look for a body,’ Purdy said quietly.

‘Look there,’ said Chin. A small object glittered suddenly in the sunless water by their dugout, but it wasn’t nearly large enough to be a body. B.J. was sure. The rain struck the object, making it bob first this way and then that. Chin reached for it with his paddle, trapping the object underneath the blade, pushing it down into the water, and then losing it. It popped back to the surface, where it began to float past Chin. He reached again. He cut into the water with the paddle blade about a half-foot behind the object and batted it clumsily closer. It was Harold’s whiskey flask. Still capped, and filled with air, it bounced just out of arm’s reach. Chin leaned. The dugout leaned with him.

‘Don’t,’ said Sam loudly, pounding with his paddle. The side of the canoe continued to drop until B.J. lay stretched out over the waterline. He still held the mat on his head, but what was up and what was down had shifted faster than B.J. could shift his thinking to compensate. The rain fell on him sideways. Sometimes the waterline was beneath him and he was in the air. Sometimes the waterline rose up to meet him. Purdy landed on him from behind.

‘Lean!’ Sam shouted. ‘Lean against it.’ But B.J. was pinned beneath Purdy and couldn’t.

B.J.’s face was on a plane with Chin’s face, which was on a plane with Chin’s fingers as they opened and closed over the air, under the water, around Harold’s flask. He saw Chin’s hand. He saw the reflection of Chin’s hand in the dark water. Five fingers reached down to the surface; five fingers reached up. In another moment they would have met, joining Chin to his other self, like Siamese twins, but the water rose instead, eating Chin’s hand away to the first knuckles. The water dropped. Chin’s fingers were whole again.

B.J. looked down to find his own reflection. The proof of him. Sometimes bigger than he was, but sometimes smaller. Reaching for him when he reached. Leaving when he left. But never leaving him first. Never.

The water was too agitated to hold an image. The sky was too dark for reflections. Puzzled, B.J. looked back toward Chin’s hand. Nature was fond of pairs and partial to symmetry, Burke had told him that night in the little cabin, but the Wild Woman did not see herself in mirrors. What a sad way for Sarah Canary to live. All by herself.

Purdy struggled to right himself. He pushed B.J.’s shoulder. He kicked B.J.’s knee. His elbow went between B.J.’s ribs, removing all the air from B.J.’s lungs. As B.J. drowned there just above the waterline, his eyes dark with breathlessness, he thought he saw the hand beneath the water break through. It groped for Chin’s hand and missed, grabbing the gunwale instead. The canoe went over completely.

B.J. fell deep into the canal. It was shockingly cold, but windless beneath the surface. It was quiet. There were other legs and arms about him, kicking gracefully in the black water. He saw a curtain of dark hair, which made him think frantically of the mermaid, although it was only Purdy’s beard, floating in all directions, his cheeks above it puffed with air. B.J. felt something scrape by his back as he fell. He twisted around. There was nothing, only Chin, blurred in the distance and too far away to touch him. B.J. squinted. Chin’s braid stretched up in the water behind his head, above the checkered scarf, like a snake rising from a basket. Old Patsy shed her cattail coat like last year’s skin and swam away from it. B.J. saw the overturned canoe receding from him in the ceiling of water with the blades of the paddles floating around it. He saw the bottoms of Sam’s two boots, together beside the canoe in the water above him. B.J.’s empty lungs burned in his chest. They tried to make him open his mouth.

B.J. was kicking back up to the dugout when a cooked potato fell past him like a thrown stone. He was rebounding to the surface himself at such a speed that the potato shot by. B.J. was going too fast. Rebounding into the air, he struck his head on the carved, upside-down nose of the frog on the canoe’s bow. He heard the sounds of the wind and the rain come back, but only for a second. He took one breath before he sank again, his ears filling with water.

Then he was being pulled like taffy in two directions. Something had a grip on his ankles. Something else had him by the wrist. He was stretched out between the two, one grip drowning him, one grip rescuing him, but he was too disoriented to know which grip was which.

He began to be dizzy, almost giddy. He began to blame his reflection, or Chin’s. Perhaps these other selves were not so benign. Perhaps they had tired of swimming along underneath the dugout. Perhaps they had overturned it so that they could ride inside for a while. Or perhaps his reflection had leapt up into the air as he had fallen and taken his place. How would anyone know the difference? Would B.J. even be missed? If B.J. drowned, wouldn’t his reflection wander about in his world in much the same artless, untethered, unconnected way Sarah Canary did?

Why
couldn’t the Wild Woman see her own reflection?

B.J. kicked frantically. The grip on his legs came loose, but he was still attached at the wrist to a second figure, which floated out from him, above him, like an angel in a mirror, kicking the same way he was kicking, looking back at him the whole time he looked. The second figure pulled him closer. B.J. resisted. The grip tightened. Closer. It was Chin or Chin’s reflection. How was B.J. to know one from the other, under water in the dark? B.J. saw Chin’s face just for a moment, then it passed through the waterline and disappeared, pulling B.J. with it to the surface and air and rain.

B.J. lay on his back in Chin’s arms, breathing. A salty wave broke over his mouth. B.J. coughed. Out of the corner of one eye he could see Purdy, Old Patsy, and Sam clinging to the sides of the large, upside-down canoe. Chin dragged B.J. by the armpits through the water to join them. He clutched along the wood for a handhold. B.J. did the same.

‘We could probably make it to shore!’ Purdy shouted. The trees were distant ghosts, gauzed behind the rain.

‘Probably,’ said Sam.

‘The longer we wait, the farther out we drift,’ Purdy said.

B.J. had no intention of going back into the canal. He tried instead to pull his legs completely out of the water. He couldn’t. He was too tired. The canoe rode too low. ‘Chin,’ he said. He coughed. ‘Chin?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why can’t the Wild Woman see herself in the mirror?’

‘Can we all swim?’ Purdy asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Chin.

Their paddles, Sam’s pole, Sam’s spear, the basket, the mats, and Chin’s boots bobbed about them, dispersing in a wider and wider circle. The bedroll sank. Something thin and white floated by. Chin picked it out of the water. It was a chopstick. Chin put it in his pocket.

‘We’ll freeze if we stay like this,’ said Purdy.

Chin’s teeth were clicking like the telegraph. B.J. shook with cold. He continued to cough, but in between he tried to listen. Chin’s teeth said that the Puyallup Indians could sleep in the woods at night without a blanket or shelter. Stop.

‘Some of us faster than others,’ said Sam.

An enormous wave covered and uncovered the entire canoe. Sam put his hand on Old Patsy’s shoulder and spoke to her. The two Indians slipped into the water, first Old Patsy and then Sam. They swam off in the direction of the tiny ghostly trees. On the way, Sam retrieved his seal spear.

Purdy took a deep breath, removed his shoes and dove, kicking against the canoe. His head resurfaced immediately. His beard floated out beneath his chin, his hands paddled furiously. ‘Come on,’ he said to B.J. ‘Come on! We’ll build a fire. We’ll get dry. We’ll find something to eat. Oysters! Clams!’ He offered another inducement, which the water swallowed. A wave moved him farther from the canoe. ‘Come on!’ he called insistently. B.J. didn’t hear him again. B.J. watched Sam and Old Patsy and Purdy’s progress for as long as he could. When he thought that they had probably made it to shore, he told Chin so.

‘You don’t have to stay here just for me,’ B.J. told Chin. ‘I’m probably going to be swimming in to shore myself soon.’

‘I know,’ said Chin. ‘I will, too.’

‘I’m just waiting for the trees to get a little bigger.’ B.J. tried to guess how far out the canoe was. Three hundred feet? ‘I’m just going to give Purdy and Sam time to get the fire started.’ He searched the water for signs of shadows and reflections. He searched the clouded sky for smoke. Nothing. ‘How long does it take clams to cook?’ he asked.

‘Not long,’ said Chin.

‘Of course, Old Patsy’ll have to dig them first,’ B.J. said. Raindrops puddled in the spaces between his knuckles and ran down his arms. They hung from the tip of his nose. ‘I’ll let you know before I go,’ B.J. promised Chin.

‘Thank you,’ said Chin.

~ * ~

vii

The routes of several steamboats known collectively as the Mosquito Fleet lay across the waters of Hood Canal and Puget Sound. The
Phantom
ran to Seabeck; the
Zephyr
between Tacoma and Olympia; the
Eliza Anderson,
whose deck was mounted with her own calliope and whose coming could therefore be heard for miles, ran the international mail route; and the
Enterprise
carried passengers between Victoria and New Westminster. The routes and functions of these boats changed periodically, but the boats themselves worked until they sank, and then afterward many of them were raised to work again.

The perils for the boats were frequent and varied. The
Fairy
was the first of many to sink when her boiler exploded. The
Sea Bird
was destroyed by fire. The
Peacock
ran onto the sands of Cape Disappointment. The
Zephyr
went under while in dock when a Swedish logger, recently hired as a fireman, left the hoses running to her water tanks and sank her with the weight of the extra water.

The
Capital
was returning to Olympia from the oyster beds when her chief engineer, Indian Vic, realized the injector was no longer operating.
Halo chuck skookum kettle! Alki hiyu pooh! Nika klatawa!
he told the captain. ‘There is no water in the boiler. Soon there will be a big explosion. I am leaving.’ He dove over the side, followed by the rest of the crew, but the explosion did not come. The unpiloted ship continued on, eventually running herself into the mud flats at low tide, very close to her home dock.

The
Eliza Anderson
floundered at Deception Pass. Her captain, Captain Fitch, ordered eight head of cattle thrown overboard and then dumped seven pianos until the steamer righted herself and limped into Seattle with all the passengers and a shipload of whiskey intact. The company agent questioned the decision to dump the pianos and save the whiskey. ‘Can you drink pianos?’ Captain Fitch asked incredulously.

The passengers retired to the nearest saloon to celebrate their survival. They drank a toast to the pianos and the music they made, hitting the water. ‘Like a host of angels was playing the keys,’ one of the passengers said, his glass raised. ‘And the wind blowing and the cattle all bellowing. By God, it was glorious.’

~ * ~

14

Emmaline Recites Lear

The Leaves like Women interchange

Exclusive Confidence

Emily Dickinson, 1865

The steamboat captains were the heroes this hazardous life required. They dressed the part: uniforms with epaulets, caps with gold braid, loud, loud voices, full beards or broad handlebar mustaches. Captain Wescott had all of the above and the command of the eccentric, tubby little steamer that ran between Seattle and Tacoma as well. The steamer was named the
Lotta White,
but she was known to the locals, affectionately, as the
Pumpkin,
because of her size and her speed.

Those boats whose routes confined them to the sheltered waters of the Sound tended to be flat-bottomed stern-wheelers, but the
Pumpkin
had side wheels and a walking-beam engine. Her colors were white and black and brass. When she ran, she poured black smoke and white steam into the air above her. Her paddle buckets roared, churning the black water to a white wake that followed her like a bright shadow as she pulled out of Port Gamble and throbbed her way toward the Pacific.
Adelaide Dixon
was written on the
Pumpkin’s
register in a slanting hand. Followed by an oddly shaped blot. A smear.
And nurse.
It was the best Adelaide could come up with. If Lydia was recognized as Lydia, of course, the game was up. If she was recognized as the Alaskan Wild Woman or if Adelaide was recognized, then considerable confusion would result, but some fanciful story could perhaps be concocted and then Adelaide’s own name, right there on the register, might ultimately satisfy everyone. And if neither was recognized, then Lydia could pass as Adelaide and Adelaide could be the nurse. This was what Adelaide anticipated. She had no illusions of influence or renown in this territorial mudhole.

Adelaide sat with Lydia in the captain’s own cabin. The communal passenger cabin was, of course, out of the question for Lydia. Adelaide had demanded a private space, which was provided for them out of deference to Lydia’s obvious frailty and, perhaps, an unspoken concern that whatever made her so odd might be contagious. Adelaide sat in their tiny quarters and sang to Lydia to keep her calm. Lydia did not seem to notice or, in fact, to be particularly upset. She’d drawn a great deal of attention to herself during the hours they spent in Port Gamble waiting for the steamer, and especially as they were crossing the gangplank onto the
Pumpkin.
She picked and fretted at the dark net Adelaide had made her wear over her face until her hands had to be held, all the while making throaty noises of displeasure and resistance. ‘Is she ill?’ asked a tall young woman on the deck, validating the ruse Adelaide had chosen to adopt. The woman stood under a black umbrella with a carved ivory handle. A pretty little blond girl, ten years old perhaps, or eleven, and obviously her daughter, held her mother’s skirt with one hand and felt outside the shelter of the umbrella for rain with the other. The raindrops sounded on the umbrella like the ticking of a clock.