Reckoning of Boston Jim (30 page)

Now on what passes for the main trail he holds his rifle at the ready, for Lorn has warned of bears and of men less charitable than themselves. He stops and listens closely. Hears nothing but birdsong, water song, and then the poplar leaves softly clapping in the breeze, as if in gentle mockery at his endeavours.

For over forty miles the road runs straight as a needle through the high plateau. Offers no corners to hide attackers, human or otherwise. No precarious bridges. No falling rock. Is monotonous in all. And yet Boston walks more rapidly than ever before, keeps his rifle ready, keeps a watchful eye. It is the peculiar density of the place that makes him wary—the clouds of mosquitoes so thick they seem one presence, the warm heaviness of the air, the fetid odours of swamps and rotting things, the wall of stunted trees on either side of the road, the sodden sky that presses down, and the way the daylight dies so quickly, as if night grows from such a place. He was caught yesterday in utter blackness. Not so tonight. He stops at mid-afternoon, finds a decent sized clearing in the woods not far from a roadhouse. Makes a fire of green boughs to ward off the mosquitoes. Shoots a duck in a nearby marsh, roasts and eats it. Now walks to the edge of the roadhouse yard. Lanterns burn in the windows. Smoke curls thickly from the chimney. The door swings open and shut as men piss outside, as they smoke and spit and hold up mosquito-haloed lanterns to latecomers. Laughter. A harmonica. A man stumbles outside. Exclaims “Capital View! Bloody marvellous!” The chasm is perhaps a mile deep and many more miles long, is layered with shades of ochre, brown, and dun. The lowering sun fires it red and gold. Why is it that the Whitemen choose such foolish places to build their dwellings? A hard rain could easily tear both the rim and the roadhouse away; easily the drunken man could tumble into its depths, his cry echoing those of the birds wheeling there.

The man steps back from the edge of the chasm. Calls to his companions to come see, but they laugh and beckon him inside. He throws up his hands and strolls back to the roadhouse, as certain of his welcome as if it were his home entirely.

Boston walks back to his camp. Builds up the fire, and as he does Fort Connelly builds itself—stone by stone, plank by plank. Like the nearby roadhouse the fort is likewise foolishly situated. Has been built on a shoreline promontory, as if safety could be found in proximity to the sea from whence the builders came. During the highest tides the waves lap at the fort's western wall. During high winds they bang like a giant demanding entry. When the tide recedes it leaves slime and amber jellyfish and great nests of sea kelp. A weak tide also leaves, or fails to carry away, refuse from the village, those who built the fort not having realized that this is near to where the People come to shit, and to dump animal remains and rotten oil. Except for this unfortunate positioning and its small size Fort Connelly is a trading fort much like any other, has four bastions and an eighteen-foot high palisade, has a great gate inset with a postern, has an armed night watchman to toll the bell and call out the hour and announce that all is well.

Nootkans, the fort men call the People of the nearby village, as they call all those who live on the northerly west coast of the Island. The People, however, is what they call themselves. Their village begins some five hundred yards off, is built higher up on the sandy shore of a long bay. At the far end of this shore three pillars of rock rise from the crash of waves and act as a barrier against the northern winds and as nesting grounds for seabirds. These are the three sisters—the guardians of the village.

The village was smaller when the fort was first built. Now, because of the trade, it has grown to several hundred strong, more in the winter months, less in the summer months when the People go to their harvesting grounds. Others come to trade as well—the Kwagu'l, the Haidas, the Tsimshians—but all must pay the People to do so.

The Indians are allowed only in the trade room, and then only in groups of no more than three. They trade furs of seal and sea otter, of beaver, mink, bear, cougar, deer and racoon, as well as venison and dried salmon and oolichan grease. In exchange they receive molasses and iron tools, mirrors and beads, sheets of copper, lengths of rope, red baize and buttons, and blankets, most of all.

“This is the fort's purpose,” Illdare tells Boston. “Good trade. Fair. The company is fair. We bargain hard but our goods are of quality. Unfair trade brings only an upsetting of the balance, and oftentimes, disaster. Remember that, lad.”

Boston is healed enough now to partake in the rituals of the fort, to do his part in return for sustenance and shelter. The morning bell tolls at six. The engagés eat from their individual rations, then each begin their tasks—pressing furs, gathering seaweed to fertilize the small gardens, whitewashing the buildings, sawing lumber. And most of all, repairing and rebuilding, for the drizzle, the fog, the vegetation itself, eats constantly and moistly away at wood and steel alike.

In the evening the postern is locked and the keys given to Illdare who then eats alone in his chambers, the old woman Equata cooking for him. The engagés cook their own dinners. They help Boston at first, show him how to measure the cornmeal, how to keep bread safe from the wet. He learns quickly, without whining, and soon enough they leave him to his own devices. On Saturdays the engagés have the afternoons free to mend their clothes, to relax and drink their rations of rum, or to bathe if they are of the inclination. Sundays are a day of rest, a day when Illdare is to read aloud to the assembled men from the book of common prayer. It is a regulation of the company, and one that Illdare completes as quickly as he can.

Twice a year the supply ship comes. The outer gate, twenty feet high and twenty broad, is opened only at this time. The engagés row out to the ship, return with the barrels and sacks, visitors, news, letters. All day the loading and unloading goes on. In the evening Illdare allows a regale while he entertains the ship's officers or dines on board the ship itself. For at least a week before the expected arrival of the supply ship, Illdare is in a foul mood and the engagés avoid him as best they can.

Of the sixteen engagés at Fort Connelly eight are Kanakas from the Sandwich Islands. They were taken aboard en route by the supply ships and, though lured by promises of fortune, they know nothing of the fur trade and so have became the common labourers and are paid in half portions to the others. Of the other eight engagés, five are mixed-bloods from the east—Abenaki, Iroquois, and Snake—and two are Upper Canadians, one of English background, one of German. The Orkneyman, James McNeal, he of the yellow hair and rank breath, acts as the clerk. There are three Indian wives who live within the fort and five children. And there is Illdare, raised on the borderlands of Scotland and England, and the sole officer of the place.

≈  ≈  ≈

Boston listens and learns from them all.

The carpenter Kanaquasse Fleury tells him of Fort Edmonton. “Fifty men in all. And a great house for the gentlemen and another for the Factor, and a Bachelor's hall and a married man's hall. Here. Hah.” He waves his hand about the compound, complains of each in turn—the single hall for the married men and bachelors both, the damp storerooms, the damp trade room, the decrepit smokehouse and reeking outhouses, the paltry saw pit, the creaking fur press, the single forge under its shed, and most of all, the lack of dances and good Métis women.

“Only us dregs are sent here. It's alike to being sent to Botany Bay,” says James McNeal and adds that Fort Connelly is more an outpost than a fort and that Illdare for all his strutting, for all his glove-wearing like some Montreal gentleman, is more a postmaster than a Chief Trader, as he fancies calling himself. “He insulted Governor Simpson, I heard. Simpson! Hah! Illdare wouldn't take his gloves off to shake the Governor's hand. That's why he was banished here. I'd watch out for him. He's naught but bad luck, that man.”

“Rain,” the Kanaka Peopeoh says mournfully, and the other Sandwich Islanders nod. They speak little English or French, but “rain” is one word with which they have become distressingly familiar. For the rain turns the compound into a quagmire, beats on the roofs, leaves the stores mouldy, the blankets damp no matter how they are protected. The Kanakas trade their own provisions for the conical hats the People wear, and which the other engagés scorn, though these hats are so tightly woven of cedar bark the rain slides off them as if they were made of pure gum.

Anawiskum Tulane shows Boston the workings of the bow and arrow, of the musket and rifle, teaches him how to throw a knife and an axe. In return Boston beats the dust and dirt out of the furs and grinds the clamshells for whitewash. Both are duties that Tulane loathes. He would rather be hunting, or making more children with his wife. Not something Illdare would understand, he says, and calls Illdare a half-man, a dried corn-husk man.

“Why are we not allowed out at night, as if we are children or criminals?” ponders James Thomson, a blacksmith from Upper Canada. He hammers at a spike that glows red. Boston heaves more coal into the forge. The question does not need an answer. Thomson knows as well as anyone. Even Boston knows. The women. Wives are allowed; they bind the village to the fort, are an alliance the People recognize, but whoring and carousing, as Illdare calls it, are another matter entirely. At no fort are such things allowed. They lead only to disaster. “But then he's not one for women, is he? I'll agree with Tulane on that,” Thomson says. “Fact you never see him touch a living creature.”

Lavolier teaches Boston the rituals of the Eucharist. Has Boston act as altar boy as he raises the cup of wine over a rough altar. He teaches Boston French, as well as phrases from the Latin mass, from the catechism, the Gloria. Lavolier himself does not understand all the words. No matter, they have the power of the holy spirit. “Repetéz,” he commands. When Boston does so without faltering Lavolier eyes him with suspicion and says it is remarkable how he can remember so, that God must have graced him, or perhaps the devil.

Ettoine Moreau grips Boston's chin. Presses his thumb into his cheek. Later, reeking of rum, he fumbles at Boston in the dark. Boston makes no move, no sound. Ettoine groans and hauls himself off and pats Boston's hair before he leaves. The next night an infernal screaming and the engagés crowd 'round the pallet where Boston sleeps. Candles are held up. Moreau dances and yowls. A small trap dangles from his bloodied hand.

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“The rats have indeed been a problem,” Illdare later says. “They came with the supply ships. They are able creatures that can live anywhere, eat anything. Much like men, eh, Jim?

Boston stares at the ground. He will be beaten, but that is of no matter, what matters is the displeasure in Illdare's voice.

Illdare sighs. “You should have come to me. For now Moreau cannot work, can he? His hand is crushed and likely maimed for the rest of his miserable life. He'll be sent off on the next supply ship, three months hence. As for you . . . you will stay. I can make much of you yet.”

They are in Illdare's sitting room. A kettle hangs over a fire and puffs out steam. On the floor is a rug of black bearskin. Boston sits at the table. His feet dangle just above the padlock of the strongroom below. On top of the table is a writing set and pipe rack and behind this table are three shelves stacked with books and journals and rolls of Protan charts. On the wall is the company crest and a rough map of New Caledonia with the name of Fort Connelly written, in Illdare's exact hand, high up on the island of Vancouver. “So I will not forget where I am,” Illdare explains and then chuckles dryly, as he often does at his own remarks. Boston smiles though he does not understand the jest. Still, more and more is becoming clear to him, the markings on the page, the habits of numbers and calendars, of cooking pots and rifles. Languages are becoming more clear as well—the language of the People, the trade jargon, the French and Kanaka and Gaelic of the engagés themselves, even the Latin of Lavolier. It is English, however, that springs most easily to his tongue. “You're an American, it seems, a Yankee,” Illdare tells him. “That cannot be helped. Be warned, however, that the Indians use the term
Boston men
for all the Americans, just as
King George man
is used for all the English. This is because most of their wretched ships are from Boston ports—as was yours, we presume. Best then that you introduce yourself to them as Jim, no matter what the others call you. The Indians do not like the Americans, the Boston men, you see. And why is that? You recall, do you not?”

“Bad traders. Bad goods. Not company men,” Boston says.

“Exactly, they are a lawless rabble who ply these shores like pirates. They take. They deceive. Sooner or later they pay the price. The Indians attack their ships, slaughter them all. You were lucky to escape.”

“Good here,” Boston says.

“Good? Hah! Well, let us see if you have earned your keep. Have you been my eyes and ears as I asked you?”

Boston nods. Recites what he has heard, how McNeal said he, Illdare, is a miser of the first order, that he measures out the grog rations to the drop, that he secretly trades with the Indians for rare goods, keeps hundreds of pounds stashed in the strongroom along with the rations and rum. For whether he can spend it or no, a miser without money to fondle will be as miserable as a baby without a teat to suck.

“McNeal, that Gaelic goat, he said that, did he? And Lavolier, what does he say?”

“That you give nothing to the Church and keep your soul for the devil. That is why you hate to read the Sunday sermons.”

“Hah, indeed. He is correct there, perhaps. Steer clear of him. He fancies himself a Jesuit though they would never have him. And Anawiskum, that black hearted half-breed, what does he say?”

“That you have nothing between your legs, that's why you won't take a woman. That you are a half-man.”