The Law of Dreams (42 page)

“You had better play fair. If I hear of you sharping on my ship,
I'll drop you on the loneliest rock of Newfoundland, miss, and you can cheat the
bears.” Mr. Blow turned and left the cabin.

Another punter had already sat down, but Molly shook her head and began
sweeping up the cards.

“Come along, miss,” said the bos'n. “Don't
fold now.”

“There's money in the house wants to play,” Nimrod said.
“Play it out, miss.”

“No, I've had enough. You fellows have ruined me
nearly.”

“Come along, miss,” said the bos'n. “Say
there'll be a few hands tomorrow.”

“Here.” She offered him the deck of cards.

“Don't dip your colors, miss. You'll win
tomorrow.”

“You may have the use of 'em — they won't work for
me.”

“No, it's not the same — we like a girl to deal. If you
are hard up, we will play very light, a penny or two. Come miss, say you will deal us
another day.”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “Oh, very well.”

“Tomorrow?”

“If you like.”

“
I
let
them win a little extra today,” she told him.

They were lying in their berth with the curtain drawn and the stick
between them. “Did you expect me to clean them up in a day? A ship is not a fair,
Fergus. I can't clip them and disappear, can I? These sailor men would cut my
throat, yours too, if they thought we were sharping them. No, no — when you start
a house game, you feed the fish some line at first. Work 'em slow! It's good
business! Don't worry, man, I'll tighten up.”

“You're cheating —”

She put her hand over his mouth. “I ain't! Don't even
say it. The deck's not marked; there's no cod, nothing up my sleeve.
I'm just letting the cards work for us, Fergus. I'm house — and the
cards is always in favor of house, if you play long enough. That's the sweet thing
about Pharaoh: If you're house you don't have to clip 'em, and
there's no way to lose. We'll do well by Pharaoh, don't
worry.”

And she was right.

Over the following days the game became a fad on the ship, with sailors
from both watches and most of the male passengers who had a few pennies to spare
crowding into the galley each evening to play. After a second day of losses, Molly began
winning, slowly, and never by a large margin. Some days she fell behind, but most days
she came out ahead.

He seemed to have left the weight of fear behind, along with so many
vicious dreams, killing dreams. He slept clear of terrors, clear of the fights, and when
he came on deck in the mornings the emptiness and radiant light
of the western ocean struck him as a surprise and a joy.

Winnings were adding to their stake, which she counted every night,
wrapping the coins in a handkerchief, tucking them into the sea chest. By the time they
encountered the first ice castles, the stake had grown to nearly eight pounds, and
Pharaoh was popular still.

“Mouse,”
she said, looking across at Fergus. They
were sitting in the lee of the deckhouse and she was reading from a list of words in
Coole's
Dublin Universal Speller
. Every morning they took a lesson with
Coole, and in the afternoons, basking in sunshine, they practiced. The schoolmaster gave
them use of the speller in exchange for a thumb of tobacco.

Fergus began scratching at his slate with a stub of a chalk, making one
letter, erasing with his sleeve, making another, pausing to consider, moving ahead with
yet another. At last he held up the slate, frustrated that it had taken so long.
“MOU-S-E, it is — ain't it?”

“Ach, yes. Brilliant.”

Fergus rubbed out the word. “Next, Moll. Fire away.” Looking
up, he saw she had shut her eyes and turned her face to the light. She seemed to need
the coaxing of the sun to feel well again.

“Sun's as good as butter,” she said sleepily.

“Come, Moll. Throw me another word, if you please.”

She sighed and opened her eyes. Glancing down at the speller she read the
next word.

“
Flour
. The eating kind, not the blooming.”

He began scratching. Spelling was easy enough. He had memorized the
alphabet in the first few days and was beginning to grasp the composition of
words, which were nothing but little hulks of letters, growling
and shifting together. Sentences were another matter. Reading a sentence was the very
hard ground.

Molly had picked up reading especially fast. Scanning a sentence and
reading aloud, she would plunge ahead boldly, not afraid to guess at words she
didn't recognize, laughing at her mistakes.

Words that gave up their meanings easily standing alone could conceal
themselves very deftly in the blur of a phrase. He had trouble when he couldn't
fix every single word perfectly — he didn't like to guess.

Coole's little children could rattle through paragraphs in the
Universal
without pause. Molly was catching up to them — he was the
only one who had to grapple.

His chalk broke as he was finishing F-L-O-U-R. Suddenly sick of the
business, he threw the bits over the side. “I don't care for spelling if I
can't read! Something's bust in my head.”

“There is nothing so. You're just rough, that's all. You
are spelling along quite nicely.”

“I feel poorly with it, feel small. I shall give it up.”

Molly had closed her eyes, leaning back against the deckhouse with the red
book open on her knees, her face tilted to the sun. “No, you'll pick it up,
it's dogged as does it, Fergus. Work them slow, man, they'll come out. Your
head ain't bust.”

She wore the blue gown bought in Liverpool, dye so leached now it was
almost silver. Her feet were bare — she disliked to wear her boots aboard ship.
She said she preferred the feel of
Laramie
's boards under her bare feet,
and boots were better saved for walking on the American ground.

Every night they lay in their berth with Brighid's blackthorn stick
between them. The stick he hated like bad music, like a killing, like the thought of
Muck, and the Belfast man, and Kelly whoever Kelly had been. All those men hammering on
her, wrecking her, making her tough but strange.

He wondered how long the
fianna
had been required to sleep with
their swords.

Looking up, he watched Nimrod Blampin approaching, holding something in
his hand, looking for a swap.

“Three old soldiers for a smoke?”
Unwrapping three oily herrings from his handkerchief, Nimrod held them out for
inspection.

With the shortage of cash and, lately, tobacco, the little herrings the
sailors received as rations had become a currency on
Laramie
.

Molly took out a bundle from her pocket, unwrapped it, and offered Nimrod
half a thumb of tobacco.

“The weather is sweet, ain't it, miss? You are lucky to have
such a run.” Stuffing the tobacco in his pipe, the sailor went off to the galley
in search of a light, and Molly handed one of the little fish to Fergus, wrapping the
others in a handkerchief.

“Aren't you hungry yourself?” he asked.

“Not so very.”

She sat back, closing her eyes.

“My head's not in order. I wish I could get the letters
faster,” he complained.

“You're saying you are stupid, but I don't believe
it.”

He heard the bos'n's pipe twittering. The wind had shifted.
Looking up, he watched sailors running up the ratlines. Looking at the men so high, he
thought of the weird, silver days high on the Pass, hiding from dragoons. The air had a
clean taste up there, when he'd lived so bare and rigorous; so narrow in his
thoughts. Sucking herbs in his mouth, until they were soft enough to chew. Not letting
his mind hold anything.

The sailors up highest, near the peak of the main, were bending royals,
the smallest, uppermost sails.

“A deck looks very small from so high.”

Fergus saw it was Ormsby who had spoken, the old man standing by the rail
in his velvet coat and rawhide slippers, carrying a cane with a silver knob.

“The sea seems enormous,” he continued, “and the ship
seems like nothing at all.”

“Have you been up yourself?” Fergus asked.

“When I was young.”

“Perhaps I shall.”

“No!” Molly said. “You'll break your
head.”

He looked her.

“I see it clear. I can! You'd fall and break your head and
where should I be then?”

“I won't fall —”

“Don't you even say it. You'd leave me alone,
wouldn't you? For the sake of nothing, for a stupid boy's game?”

He felt embarrassed in front of Ormsby by her passionate intensity.
“Molly —”

“Promise you won't try it. Promise me, man.”

“Molly . . .”

“It's no good, you should never have said it, you should never
have thought it nor looked at it — now you must promise. Swear it.”

“It really isn't so treacherous —” Ormsby
began.

She cut him off. “Swear it, Fergus, you must.” Reaching out,
she grabbed his hand.

“All right, all right,” he said peevishly. “Though I
tell you I could have —”

“It spooks me, man, it does. I wish you'd never said nothing
of it, that old stick, or looked up it, now we're so close. Now we're nearly
to the other side, and I won't have you fall. I won't.”

“All right, all right.”

She kissed his hand.

“Will you introduce me to your friend?” said Ormsby.

Fergus introduced him and the old man made a bow to Molly, tipping his
hat. “You run a very neat game, so I hear, miss.”

“Neat enough. Neat and clean.” She sounded irritated.

“Perhaps we might have a flutter sometime. Thirty One,
trente-et-un,
do you play?”

“You're a gentleman, mister. You're high stakes.
I'm not that sort of a game.”

“We might play a few hands very lightly. Just to pass the
time.”

She shrugged. “If you like.”

“Excellent.”

The beaky old man seemed to have nothing else to say, but he lingered by
the rail.

“Are you an American?” Molly asked.

“I'm not a Yankee, miss, but I've spent most of my life
on the other side.”

“Tell us what it is like, then.”

“What do you wish to know?”

“Can we get a farm?”

“That depends. Land can be cheap enough, rough land especially.
It's clearing it and farming it that requires capital.”

“Clearing?” Fergus said. “You mean drive the tenants
off?”

“No, no — clear the timber.”

“And the tenants? Are there tenants?”

“The tenants, if you call them so, are Indians of one kind or
another.”

“And they must be cleared? Is that what it takes to get a
farm?”

“Farmers will clear Indians, yes, or sickness does the work. Cheap
land is nightland, the backwoods of Illinois, or the Huron Tract. Pulling stumps and
getting in a crop to feed animals over the winter, even if it's just Indian corn.
You can acquire one hundred sixty acres cheap enough but you'll find it's
rough work to farm.”

“I don't want ground that's been cleared!”

“See how you feel when you have the cash.”

Was it true? It would be terribly easy to make any piece of ground seem
your own, by working it. It always had. As much your own as your hand or fist or
head.

“How much capital do you reckon it takes to go farming?” Molly
asked.

“Three or four hundred pounds. To start in a small way. My advice to
you, miss, is try the cotton mills. Lowell, Saco, Woonsocket, and Fall River — the
mills seem to have an endless appetite for hands.”

“I could have stayed at Derry to be a hand! I wasn't born for
mills, mister, I'd lose my mind.”

“Well, when we get to Quebec, you'll see ladies on the quays,
looking for girls —”

“Looking for slaveys?” she said bitterly.

“Yes — a lady's maid or some such.”

“And how much wages do they get?”

“Oh, a dollar a week, perhaps. A couple of
louis
. Three or
four shillings. German servants always preferred to Irish.”

“I'm not nice enough for a slavey! I want the sweet wide-open,
mister! I want land!”

“Then don't get snagged in the large towns. Start west, and
keep going. If you're far enough ahead of the crowd you've done well. Go too
far, of course, you stand to lose your hair.”

“Lose my hair?”

“The savages on the western plains count coup by lifting a scalp.
That lovely shade of yours would be valued considerable, so take care you keep
it.” Ormsby turned to leave, then stopped. “Shall we play a hand or two,
miss, tomorrow afternoon? Cards on deck, right here in the lee, if the weather stays
fine? I'd invite you both into the aftercabin, but Mr. Blow would make himself
disagreeable.”

“Here is good,” she told him curtly.

Ormsby nodded, tipped his hat, and resumed his strut around the ship.

“He's a funny little bird,” said Molly. “Lose my
hair, indeed! Never I shall. Sell it, more likely — I wonder what they'd
pay.”

“He says he will follow a river like a wide road to the west, and if
I go with him, I'd find a place in the trade, he says, the fur trade.”

She studied him. “And what did you say?”

“That I couldn't accept.”

“Why not?”

“On account of you. Because of you and me, Moll.”

She was stuffing the bowl of her clay pipe. Not looking at him, tamping
the tobacco with her thumb. Perhaps she thought him a fool for turning down
Ormsby's offer.