The Law of Dreams (46 page)

At twilight the cabooses were fired. They sat on coils of warm rope and
ate stirabout. Martin Coole had kept to his berth since his release, not saying a word,
eating only what his children spooned him, taking water only if their hands held the
cup. “Is there a potion you can dose him?” Mrs. Coole had asked the old
woman. “Something to deliver him back — he's no man at all
now.”

“Get him on the ground. If he can walk on ground he'll be
cured, if you can keep him alive so far. I want nothing but ground myself.”

They anxiously waited for the inspectors. Since Cape
Race everyone had been alert for the coughs, blushes, and headaches that might signal
fever. No one wished to be taken off the ship, though the island looked pretty enough,
birches growing down to the shore, bright and fresh, without the darkness of
Anticosti.

At dusk the sun was red and fat. When it grew dark, Fergus heard
uilecan
laments, funeral cries, drifting across the water from the other
ships. It seemed there was fever on the anchorage.

THEY LAY
spooned on the bare boards of their berth.
Molly slept after a while, but the stillness kept him awake, listening to the anchor
chain gnash at the hawsers.

Finally he swung out of the berth and climbed out onto the main deck,
where the air was a little livelier.

The sound floated across the water, so low and soft he thought it was an
owl. Somewhere on the anchorage a woman was keening.

The sound cut off abruptly, as though someone had shushed her. A moment
later he heard a splash. He couldn't see anything but knew it must be a body going
into the river from one of the ships near them, getting rid of their dead before the
inspectors came out from the island.

He spent the rest of the night moving around the main deck and foredeck,
sleeping in snatches on various coils of rope. When dawn showed, he headed for the
galley, intending to trade tobacco for a mug of coffee.

“Laramie! Salût, Laramie!”

He looked over the side. The boatman who'd bartered with Ormsby
stood in his scow, which bumped lightly against the ship. Seeing Fergus, the boatman
threw a line, which Fergus caught and made fast as he had seen the sailors do.

“Prenez garde, Michaud.”
Ormsby had appeared on the
afterdeck, wearing rawhide slippers. “Keep everything quiet, I warn
you.”

The bosn'n appeared with three sailors, who began quietly passing
Ormsby's trunks, casks, and wooden crates down into the scow.

“I'm glad to see you — I have something for you. Come
with me.” Taking Fergus by the arm, Ormsby led him to the other side of the ship.
There were
swans clucking in the river. Ormsby took out a purse and
snapped it open. “Hold out your hands.”

“What for?”

“Just do as I say.”

Ormsby turned out the purse, and the coins tumbled into Fergus's
hands, clicking and heavy.

“What is it?”

“Eight pounds. It's yours, I believe.”

“Mine? You stole our stake? You?”

“I won it. Fairly, mind you.”

“You won it?”

“Ask your girl.” Ormsby clicked the purse shut. “That
morning you went up, she asked if I thought you'd make it down alive. I said you
weren't the first passenger to climb a peak — I'd done it myself, half
a dozen times.
Then
, she said,
we must make a wager on it, for I believe
he'll fall and break his head
.

“
What makes you think that?
I asked.
A feeling
,
she said.

“
You'd bet against your own man's life?
I
asked.

“
I'd better get something out of it
, she replied.

“I thought this very cold.

“
Eight pounds even money
, she said.

“Done,
I said. That evening she had the money wrapped in
handkerchiefs.” Ormsby hesitated. “It is strange winnings, I feel.
It's your blood money. Better you should keep it.”

Suddenly turning away, Ormsby crossed to the other side of the ship, where
they were still lowering his baggage into the scow. “Easy there, men,” he
called softly. “There's beauty glass sunk in them tubs.”

Betrayal tastes cold on the tongue, but you don't feel it so much,
right at first; you're trying to pull yourself inside.

IN THE
dimness of the 'tween deck, a few mothers
were nursing their children, but most people still lay in the berths, with their
curtains drawn open in the breathless heat.

Coole lay on his side. Mrs Coole was asleep. The old woman was snoring
like a frog in the uppermost, with Carlo and Deirdre snuggled beside her.

Molly was wrapped in her cloak, her mouth slightly open. She looked
peaceful. She looked happy.

As he began laying out coins on the berth, she stirred, sighed. He added
coins softly. A carpet of metal. A shield. He knew he was letting go of something but
didn't know what it was. The lightness was making him dizzy.

You betray only yourself, you turn away from yourself.

He wanted to touch her neck, spine, hip, buttocks. Reach between her legs
and open her up.

Her eyes opened suddenly. She gazed at him.

He turned and headed to the ladder.

What does it matter, the souls of others? Inside your head you're
alone. Nothing's real but your own brain talk.

He heard the coins jingling as she sat up. “Fergus!” He
grabbed the rungs and ran up the ladder. The last load of Ormsby's goods was being
passed over the side as he came out on deck.

“I'd like to go with you.”

Ormsby looked at him keenly for a moment, then nodded. “Your baggage
— fetch it quickly.”

“There's nothing. Let's go.”

A minute later he was sitting in the scow with the river breeze on his
shoulders. He glimpsed her at the rail wearing her cloak and heard her calling his name,
but he looked away. He didn't wish to feel anything; he was tired of feeling. He
wondered if there were salmon in the river and how to catch them.

CANADA, MAY
1847

THE CANADIAN BOATMAN
was shouting in his peculiar tongue
as their little vessel bobbed and smacked against the current.

“Michaud says
les Irlandais
are dying like shad flies, this
year.” Ormsby was studying the quarantine island through his looking glass. Fergus
saw long, low whitewashed sheds in a clearing, iron roofs glinting in the sun.

“Lazarettos. Fever sheds.” The old man lowered his glass.
“Don't feel feverish, do you? Got the shakes? Moldy tongue?”

“I don't.”

“The flush? Any bones aching?”

“No there isn't.”

“Good. Michaud is taking us direct to the point on the island where
the Montreal steamer puts in. Quarantine never was intended for gentlemen.”

MICHAUD PUT
them ashore at a little cove. There was a
wooden jetty, and dozens of emigrants scrubbing their clothes in the shallows.

“Michaud says these have all passed their quarantine.
William
Molson
's due in an hour. We'll see Montreal tomorrow.”

The boatman quickly unloaded Ormsby's boxes and trunks.

“Sure you don't want to come with us, Michaud?” the old
man teased as he paid the Canadian. “We'll find you a pretty Blackfoot wife
up the country.”

Michaud shook his head and bit the coins before
wrapping them in his handkerchief. Fergus helped push the boat off the beach. The line
of ships riding at anchor stretched as far as he could see. He couldn't tell which
was
Laramie;
they were all three-masters and looked alike from this distance,
and he wasn't accustomed to seeing her from without.

“My legs want a stretch,” said the old man. “If we walk
up around the point, we might see the Montreal boat coming in.”

Another town hard as Liverpool would smash you.

Didn't have the wire for it, did you.

HE KEPT
stumbling and tripping, his legs not adjusted to
the buck of solid ground. The old man walked serenely. It was raining. Ormsby seemed
younger, more limber, now, in his own country.

To get around the tip of the island they cut in through a thicket of fir,
red willow, and birch not yet in leaf, the old man slashing at branches with his stick.
There were fiddleheads waiting for the sun to open and lumps of grainy blue snow in the
deepest shade.

They finally came out to a little headland with a view upriver. He could
no longer see the ships downstream. Ormsby hoisted himself onto a boulder and began
striking a steel to relight his cigar.

The green St. Lawrence seemed electric and forceful, flaunting a sense of
hazard.

All she is, is a parcel of information traveling inside your brain.

You could always find another girl couldn't you? Buy yourself
another girl.

Pulling off his boots, rolling up his trousers, he waded out a few feet.
The water was terribly cold.

What happens to the dead dropped into this river?

What he'd enjoyed was her smell. The sweet smell of her neck, nose,
and lips. Also, her toughness; and her wicked determination to stay alive, which had
been so powerful, and capable, he had believed, of carrying both of them through.

The bottom was pebbled and sandy. He made himself stand quite still while
the water was numbing his feet and shins.

What you must do: Struggle. Watch. Proceed.

When he looked straight down, the water was a dozen shades of green.

He kept still, waiting for a fish.

After a minute or so, he saw one swimming. Almost near enough to scoop
with his hands if only he were quick enough.

A fish knew what it wanted. A moving case of hunger.

Wading ashore, he began searching for a stick that was supple enough and
sufficiently long for a lister.

“May I have use of your knife?” he called to Ormsby, perched
on the boulder, puffing his cigar.

The old man dug into his pocket and tossed him down a clasp knife, and he
began peeling the stick to the bright green underneath, then the heartwood. In a couple
of minutes he had whittled one end to a sharp point.

You do not want feelings, but emptiness inside. Resilience, poise. No
attachment.

Gripping the springy lister, he waded out until the water reached halfway
up his thighs. He waited, letting the cold bite.

A kill is patience.

He saw a flash, and then the salmon rose almost to the surface, writhing
through the water with a couple of elegant twitches.

A fish was always hunting.

He could feel Ormsby observing from his perch.

That old man knew enough to be silent.

Come, sweetheart. I will treat you nice.

Was Molly sleeping? Dreaming? Was he part of the dream?

Ought not think of her. Ought to turn her off.

Get another. Sure.

Feelings weigh nothing. Sorrow is a vapor.

A girl gets inside, though, just as a thief does.

Men get hard, don't they? They coarsen.

He raised the lister and was about to thrust when the silence was broken
with the shriek of a whistle. Glancing up, he saw the Montreal steamer, perhaps a
quarter mile off, water cascading off her paddle wheel.

Even as he plunged the spear he knew he'd missed his chance. The
fish touched him, writhing between his legs and swiftly out of reach.

FROM MONTREAL IT WAS SEVEN
weeks' journey on to
Rupert's Land. “Make the trip with us and you shall have your
apprenticeship,” Ormsby promised. “Apprenticeship leading to clerkship.
Clerkship to factorship. You'd count for something then. Men get rich in the
trade, see if you don't.”

The old man had paid for a cabin with two neat berths. It was two days to
Montreal by steamer, with stops at Quebec and Three Rivers. Emigrants slept on deck, and
the only other cabin passengers were two pink-cheeked English officers traveling to join
their regiment at Montreal, and willing to play cards all night with Ormsby in the
captain's saloon while Fergus lay in his uppermost berth, unable to sleep, aware
of the seethe of
William Molson
's boilers, the machinery of iron arms and
gears turning her paddle wheel, stroking them upriver.

What would you feel in the heart of a fire? The roar of the blaze
hammering your ears, smoke packing your throat, flames dabbling at your skin. What would
you feel as everything was collapsing? Whom would you see in those flames?

A THUNDERSTORM
shook the sky after midnight. He heard
rain beating down and knew it must be soaking them out on deck under their little
shebangs
of blankets and baggage. The old man's berth was
empty; he was still at cards, with the pair of shiny soldiers.

Men get rich in the trade.

He wouldn't mind being rich. Being noisy in a carriage. Feet in
glossy boots.

Shea's gentlemen, in beautiful clothes, selecting girls.

Shea's kindness to him. The memory of which would die with him. The
world buries everything.

He did not wish to review the dead; it was painful sorting, no use.

He was for entering a trade.

Luck had kept you alive so far, and was holding.

A girl climbs inside your skin, though. It can be difficult to
breathe.

Never very good at holding on, was she? Not constant. Didn't have
that in her.

ORMSBY RETURNED
at dawn, red with victory. Sitting on
the edge of his berth and counting his winnings, he was full of plans.

“We'll find you a wife up the country. Fort Edmonton, the
Christmas dances, Blackfoot girls on the hop — how they dance to a fiddle —
you'll not see a foot touch the ground. Passion is necessary, man! Nothing like
warm feelings!”