Bright and Distant Shores (59 page)

He could feel something going out of him in these endless white days. Prospects and plans used to quiver at the edge of every thought; now he thought about fences to be repaired when spring came, of the way an entire year's harvest could be ruined with one night of unseasonable warmth. Like the icemen themselves, he had feverish hopes for dismal weather, even though it crushed him. The freezing jaws of winter were his closest ally, his livelihood, his camouflage. He felt the cold and his somber mood as defeat, a deflation in his chest and stomach. He thought about the kanaka boys in the sugar plantations of Queensland and the stories of them dying from homesickness. Actual death from longing. They would stop eating, work listlessly in the fields all day, speak to no one, then quietly slip away one night. Death of the soul, he thought. What good are we without a candle burning behind the glass? He wondered if it would come to this. He missed the islands and thought of them every time he looked at the tribal weapons locked in the trunk under his bed. But the Pacific came to him as a series of abstractions rather than volcanic atolls and reefs—the smell of salt in the aura of rain, the sound of surf reefing on coral, the languorous hum of the forest at night, the unbroken, warbling line of the horizon. These were bound up with his own sense of discovering God. When he looked out at the muted woods that rimmed the lake he knew that there was endless land and townships beyond, farther afield, that there were churches full of parishioners on their knees, repenting, an entire continent peopled and taken up. More than the two Davids, he thought about Peter in exile. Fleeing Jerusalem after imprisonment, Peter, the Reverend Mister had insisted, ministered in Babylon to Jews and colonists alike. It was here that he wrote his first epistles. He spoke of a holy nation and a peculiar people, praised the chosen generation. Argus leafed through the Bible to Peter's first epistle and bathed it in lamplight . . .
though now for a season,
if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations . . .
The ice gangs, sinners like himself, were caroling outside in the frozen dark, coming toward the bunkhouse in a dirge of drunken accents. He thought about his sister and wondered if she had forgiven him, whether she had gone back to the islands. He knew from the newspaper that Jethro Gray was alive and for this he was thankful. He thought about the trial of faith and read—
be sober, and hope for the grace that is to be brought unto you . . .
Holding the pigskinned scriptures up to the lamplight, he wondered, finally, what God thought of him and when his self-imposed penance and exile would be over. He had ruined his chances for a life in America and now he craved the islands. He wanted to redis-cover his place there, to forge an alliance with a mission and use his citizenship in two worlds to God's advantage. If Alice Binns still loved him he would ask for her hand in marriage and they would begin a life of service in Melanesia. These thoughts buoyed him through the dark days and cold nights. He glanced at the simple note he had written months ago and tucked inside the Bible—
Tikalia is no place for horses—
a cryptic message that would be carried by one of the icemen some hot day on a company wagon, trundling into the Near North Side, toward the resurrected house with the big church windows. Owen Graves would come for him, Argus knew, just as the lake would thaw in the spring. Argus tucked the note back inside the Book of Genesis and placed the Bible under his pillow. Outside, the men clambered up the wooden porch and someone missed a step in the dark.

Of the many books, archives, and resources consulted for this novel, I would like to acknowledge several in particular. My desire to devise a seagoing story was inspired by Charles John-son's wonderful novel
Middle Passage
and Barry Unsworth's beautiful and harrowing
Sacred Hunger
. In terms of research, the project was aided enormously by the collection of the Chicago History Museum and the digital archive of the
Chicago Tribune
. I consulted many texts about Melanesia, nineteenth- century sailing, natural science, and the history of architecture and demolition, but there were a number of crucial works—
Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition
by Jeff Byles,
The Rise of the Skyscraper
by Carl W. Condit,
Chicago 1890: The Skyscraper and the Modern City
by Joanna Merwood-Salisbury,
The Melanesians: People of the South Pacific
by Albert B. Lewis,
Growing Up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of Primitive Education
by Margaret Mead,
The Way of a Ship: A Square-Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail
by Derek Lundy,
We, the Tikopia
by Raymond Firth, the pamphlets published by the Smithsonian Institution under the heading
Instructions to Collectors of Historical and Anthropological Specimens,
and
A Handbook of the Melanesian Mission,
made available by the Anglican Church under Project Canterbury. I'm thankful to Jonas Collins for answering my emailed nautical questions whenever he came upon the Internet
while sailing a thirty-five-foot Pearson Alberg sloop solo around the world.

Thanks to Wendy Weil, Gaby Naher, Sarah Branham, and Jane Palfreyman for their encouragement and discernment.

Special thanks to my wife, Emily, for her patience and love, and to my daughters, Mikaila and Gemma, for their book hunger and loving support.

Also by Dominic Smith

The Beautiful Miscellaneous
The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Dominic Smith

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Dominic.

Bright and distant shores / Dominic Smith.—1st Washington Square Press
        trade pbk. ed.

p. cm.

Washington Square Press fiction original trade—T.p. verso.

1. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. 2. South Pacific Ocean—Fiction. 3. Oceania—Fiction. I.

Title. II. Title: Bright and distant shores.
PS3619.M5815B75 2011
813'.6—dc22

2011002995

ISBN 978-1-4391-9886-5
ISBN 978-1-4391-9888-9 (ebook)