Reckoning of Boston Jim (23 page)

The smell is of something ripening. The man's new-shaven cheeks are pressed against Eugene's. His rotund belly has a womanly softness. His limbs have a peculiar heaviness, as though filled with clay.

Mr. Mactavish the Live shouts and struggles to rise from his chair. But he cannot move forward. The vomit pooling all about his boots seems to have ensnared him. He sits back down heavily and is not heard from again.

Eugene hauls Mr. Mactavish the Dead about the room, knocks over chairs, bangs against a table. Bottles smash to the floor. The other men are cheering, huzzahing, calling: “Amos, Amos, Amos. Back to life with you!” What splendid affairs, these popish wakes and lyke wakes, these attempts to roust the dead, to ensure they are not merely sleeping deeply, playing a trick. How much better than all the weeping and vast expenditures of his experience, the hired mutes and mourners, the women so decked in black mourning apparel they seem like macabre Christmas trees.

Eugene drops the man and trips over him, hauls him upright. He has never felt so alive, so certain of his own strength. It wouldn't surprise him in the least if those feet started tapping on the floor, if those filmy eyes sparked with life. Injun Hank and his evil eye be damned. The ghoulish Barrymores be damned. There was enough life and hope emanating from Eugene Augustus Hume to animate the dead man's limbs long enough for one last dance.

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Eugene now sniffs his lapel and detects a rotting, sweetish odour. Finds a grey hair and then another. His gut churns. He'll throw the coat out. Or have it washed in lye. And, oh, for a tub of steaming water, a scrub from sympathetic arms.

Mrs. Mactavish is in the kitchen plating flapjacks, looking older in the hard light of full morning. Two Chinamen stand guard over the stove. The younger one takes a step back as Eugene comes closer. The older one makes an intricate motion with his hands and mutters what might be a protecting spell, as if before him stood not a proper Englishman, but some foreign devil.

Eugene places his hand on his heart, begins his apology. Without a word, Mrs. Mactavish brushes past him to the common room. Eugene follows close behind. No vestige of last night's festivities remains. The men at the long table look up in expectation, though whether for the food or for the spectacle of Eugene with his hat in his hand is not clear. The Spaniard is picking his teeth. The French fiddler is holding onto his mug with both hands, the way an orphan might.

Mrs. Mactavish slaps down the platter of pancakes.

“Madam, I meant no disrespect.”

Still she says nothing.

Eugene joins the others at the table and does his best with the fried eggs and meat pasties and coffee, all of it settling poorly in his belly. Afterwards he makes his way to the anteroom to settle his bill with Mr. Mactavish. He waits patiently in line, barely hearing the talk all about him. These Catholics should be more forgiving. It is not that unusual to dance with a corpse. He has heard of worse, lyke wakes where the corpse is taken out for a spree, or sprung-wrapped so as to leap out of the coffin, or used as a table for cards. No, he has not lost face, perhaps, hah, merely a nose, or an eyelid. He was not alone in his carousing, after all. Still, what was he about? He is not a grave robber, not one of those physics who hack open the dead for experiments and grotesque proddings. He is not one of those men who are spoken of in hushed voices in the lower taverns of London, men who love only the passivity and carnal coolness of a corpse, male or female, it matters not.

Mr. Mactavish hands Eugene a lengthy bill in an illegible hand. “Ten pounds or fifty dollars. What ye prefer?”

“Ten? Fifty? There is a mistake, I . . .”

“Ye smashed twenty-two glasses and fifteen plates. The coffin's wrecked. Ye ripped my brother's suit and gashed him plenty. Need to get him plastered up so he looks fit to bury. And here, two kegs o' ale and ten bottles o' whiskey. ‘Put it on my bill. I'll pay in the morn, ye said.' ”

“On my bill? You there, Larky-boy, is he correct? Two kegs? Ten bottles?”

“Name is Evans, but Larky is what they call me, true enough, and that's right, meant to thank you, sir.”

The Spaniard, the Frenchman, the assorted Yanks and Canadians, the Norwegians, the Balkan, all voice thanks. Some slap Eugene on his back. His head is pounding. His underarms are sticky with sweat. He must smell as wretched as these others. He must look as wretched as well.

“I must protest the bill. It is outrageous.”

The men are now hurrying off with barely a sympathetic glance. Mules are being loaded. A whip cracks in the yard. Mr. Mactavish calls out the window and several farmhands promptly enter. They smell of manure and hay and are standing about with an air of cheerful menace.

“ 'T'ain't outrageous. It's what you owe, damnit.”

The farmhands move in closer. Mrs. Mactavish comes in from the common room. “It's the mess I kinna abide,” she says to no one in particular. “I like a place spic and span.”

“I apologize for the mess, madam. If I may assist in any way.”

“You kin pay, that's what,” Mr. Mactavish says.

“ 'Tis better now. 'Tis clean and fit for anyone to see,” Mrs. Mactavish says.

“Ten pounds. You're lucky I dinna charge ye more . . . well?”

“Mr. Mactavish. May I ask? Do you intend to expand? Provide separate rooms at some future date?”

“What in damnation business is it of yours?”

“I am only asking because I am writing a guidebook.”

“A what?”

“A guidebook. Surely you have heard that coaches will be in use as soon as the road is fully complete. Soon there will be many more travellers and, if I may say, of a higher quality and with thicker purses than the ones to which you are accustomed.”

“I heard that, Pete, 'tis true,” Mrs. Mactavish says.

“And in this guidebook I could most certainly include your establishment. Your meals, madam, are the finest I have yet had. Finer than Madame Hautier's, if I may say. My God, I can still taste those meat pasties! Those sausages!”

“Oh, 'tis nothing. But you're not the first to compliment them. No, sir.”

“And your raspberry cordial. It is ambrosial. Nothing less.”

“My grandmother's. I make blackberry as well.”

“And your preserves! They are as sweet as sunshine.”

“Losh! I make five kinds. I only had three on the table this morning. The mess, ye see. Usually we have five, nothing less.” She pats her hair and gives a dimpled smile. “Pete, get yourself into the common room for a minute.”

While the Mactavishes confer, Eugene congratulates himself. A guidebook, indeed, why had he not thought of it before? Good then that he so often stops to refresh himself and rest Ariadne. He will warn of dissembling blacksmiths and vicious camels. He will clarify the confusing mileage. He will write of the Cornwall brothers and their hunts that make use of Indians got up in red coats and a coyote instead of a fox. He will write well of
47
Mile House in the Cut-off valley, for it had pulu mattresses free of vermin and a fine bar where any manner of spirits could be purchased. He will write well of Pollards, just north of
47
Mile House. He will reserve his highest recommendations for Saul, the kindly proprietor of
59
Mile House at the Painted Chasm. Such a vista. The chasm, blued into the distance, was layered with rustic colours like some tertiary pie. Once he has finished his guidebook he will write of this Painted Chasm to some geological society or other. By then he will have the money to take up a hobby or two. Why not geology? Rocks have the advantage of being sedentary, of not taking one on a merry chase as might beetles or birds. No more merry chases for Eugene Augustus after this. No indeed.

The Mactavishes have returned. Mrs. Mactavish's hand is on her husband's elbow. He looks well and truly defeated. Already he is folding the bill and putting it away.

“What ye ginna call this book, then?” he asks grudgingly.

“Ah, quite so, sir. It will be called
A Gentleman's Guide to the Goldfields of the Cariboo Including Recommendations and Advice on Supplies, Most Favourable Routes, Modes of Travel, Hunting, Dangers, and a Full Description of Creatures and Natural Wonders as well as Colourful and Informative Descriptions of Way Houses and Settlements, and in Which of These the Discerning Traveller May Find the Finest Meals, the Cleanest Beds and the Trustiest Proprietors
.”

“ 'Tis a mighty long title.”

“Well, my good sir, 'tis a mighty long road.”

The shacks on the inner harbour are braced partially on stilts and stand one apart from the other. They have verandas of driftwood, chimneys of tin. Two fly the union jack. A seal heaves itself onto a rock then flops back into the waves as Boston comes near.

The shack he stops before is mere detritus arranged into a semblance of a dwelling. Boards protrude at odd angles. Tin siding faintly glints. No windows, not even one of greased paper. The doorway is torn burlap arrayed with mud and mould. Boston brushes it aside. The warmish light of the afternoon vanishes. A whale oil lamp gutters in the dimness. Inside, smells of spilled whiskey and spoiled milk, of damp, unwashed wool and rotting, un-dried fish. A place, in all, of Whitemen.

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“Ah, Mr. Jim? Yes? The terror of shopkeeps. I did not much recognize you. You look a gentleman. Trimmed so, and cleaned. Compared to you we must appear as vagabonds or cannibals, yes? No matter. I am glad you have found us. Not difficult I trust. Sit with us. A drink, yes? Whiskey? A glass. Where's a fucking glass?”

Petrovich stands up from the lopsided table where two other men sit sprawl-legged. One is Tom McBride from the chain gang. The other is a thick-armed Kanaka with wisps of black moustaches and an inscrutable gaze. All three are armed. On the table is a bottle of murky green glass, a rind of bread, a mess of cards, and a chicken carcass without a platter.

“Like cannibals. Hah, good one, Petrovich,” McBride says, chuckling.

“You recall Mr. McBride, yes? Tommy, we call him. And this is Lano from the Sandwich Islands. He was telling us of a black bird that can speak like a man, and a lizard that can walk in the air. Remarkable. Yes?”

“Forty-five dollars. Here for that. That's all.”

“Ah, a man of few words, so it is not just the sorry victuals and melancholy decor of our Majesty's hotel that makes you so . . . so . . . taciturn. That is the word, yes? Compared to you we must be as chattering monkeys.”

“Chattering monkeys, that's right, hah,” McBride says. Lano thumps his glass on the table and McBride falls quiet.

“Took a thrashing for you, that was the deal. You paid fifteen. Agreed on sixty. Makes forty-five more.”

“Mr. Jim, you have been free for only a day or so, yes? And so, please, take a drink. Our finest.”

“Don't drink fucking tanglewood.”

Petrovich sighs mightily. “Would we serve such a thing to a guest? For the Indians, it is elixir, for us we keep the Scottish whiskey.”

“Not here for drinking or talking, for dealing neither. Forty-five more. That's what we agreed on.”

Petrovich chews the stem of his pipe. McBride nervously runs a finger across his teeth. Lano yanks out a chair and gestures to it. Boston considers, then sits, keeping his knees free from the edges of the table.

Petrovich says: “We have a fine business here. Yes, boys?”

“That's right, Ivan, that's right,” McBride says. “Just like you said, if it weren't for the son of a bitch bluejackets we'd be so rich we'd be wiping our asses with money.”

Lano rocks back in his chair. Boston gauges him as a man who plots and patiently waits, who gives no warning before an action, as indeed, the most dangerous of the three.

Petrovich is nodding sagely. “You intrigue me, Mr. Jim. And thus I have inquired about you. And I was told many things. You understand the languages of the Indians, yes? And you have many dealings with them. And they have some trust in you. What else have I heard? You are a likely half-breed of some kind, though one who lends himself to neither side. And you are a man who would uphold a bargain to the death, but who must not be crossed. And I said, Petrovich, such a man may be interested in a business proposal, yes?”

“Who you hearing this from?”

“Different sources. You have some minor fame. A reputation. Yes?”

Boston has observed how others speak endlessly of this man's actions, that woman's proclivities. He understands it as their attempt to fix in their minds what has occurred as they are unable to conjure the past with any ease, and rarely with any accuracy at that. Yet he has never thought that when he leaves another's presence they dwell on what he has said or done. Whisper of it. He does not like the thought of this at all. Has the Dora woman spoken of him to the people of the bay? To the Smithertons, Mrs. Hickson, Mrs. Bell, and to others who come visiting to see how she is getting on? Has she called out his name through that bull's horn? “It booms over the bay, Mr. Jim. The ducks are scattering when they hear it. And then you hear an answer back on theirs. Without seeing the person, mind, because them are too far off. It's like you're winds calling to each other, or clouds, or spirits. It's queer, and marvellous, too. But it keeps the loneliness from eating at you, it surely does.”

“Not interested in your damned fool bootlegging, only the money you owe.”

Petrovich stares at the wall, says: “I heard of Mr. Obed Kines' misfortune.”

McBride snickers. “Misfortune. Hah, me too.”

“Shut your trap. I was speaking to Mr. Jim.”

“Forty-five dollars,” Boston says.

“Ah, then perhaps you have not heard. Perhaps I should tell you. He was found terribly beaten, in Poodle Alley, yes? A sacking was thrown over his head and so unfortunately he did not see his assailant. On his coat was tacked a paper and it read that he was a traitor to the Queen. A letter was in his pocket. And what was in the letter, Mr. Jim? . . . Ah, such silence. The details of a plot, yes, a plot led by him and his clerk to explode the Governor's mansion, to arrange a revolt by the Americans and so take our blessed isle for the American cause.”