Reckoning of Boston Jim (8 page)

“Ah, no, I take them to goldfields. No, not I, a pack train. I sell there.” With the flourish of a conjurer the Prussian takes a silver case from out of his vest pocket. Opens it to show Eugene a row of stuffed paper cylinders. “You have tried the Turkish smoke?”

Eugene grimaces. “I do not indulge in tobacco, sir, I find it dulls the senses.”

“Ah, no, it sharps them. It make the breath!” He beats his own considerable chest. “Think it as good thing from your war in Crimea. They are, so, what is the word,
gelegen
, ah, yes, convenient, a convenient invention. Think, hah, all the stupendous inventions that come next from this American war!”

Eugene shrugs, is barely listening while Herr Schultheiss expounds on some outlandish plan to make Turkish smokes of his own and sell them in neat little boxes. He will have his name embossed on the cover. “Like to the old Kings. I am to have my names and symbols in all places, so that always the people think, aha, I know the name. It is good name.”

Eugene finds the idea completely vulgar but at the risk of encouraging further talk says nothing more to this man who is not a gentleman down on his luck at all, but a scheming merchant. At least he can stop Dora's talk with kisses; at least she knows he rarely has the heart for conversation in the mornings, and only a half-heart for it during the day. He is an evening talker. Surely that is obvious. The paddlewheeler shifts. Reverses. Drifts sideways. Now what is Herr Boots saying? Eugene glances over. The Prussian is pointing straight ahead, his mouth open, letting out a deafening roar.

In Rupert's Land Jedidiah Coom has seen how sled dogs find their hierarchy in the trace. He allows the chain gang to do the same, watches with implacable good cheer from the back of his horse, Kingdom Come, as the prisoners emerge blinking and stiff-legged from their cells at dawn and arrange themselves with growls and shoves at the line of waiting leg irons. Coom nearly always guesses the end sequence of the chain gang correctly.

The leader is Claude Dupasquier, a mixed blood of labyrinthine ancestry. Directly behind him is his younger brother Marcel. They are fierce, green-eyed men with shanks of black hair. Coom treats them with some respect, allows them a larger cell, extra rations, easier tasks, and when they speak in their odd patois—no doubt mocking him, no doubt plotting—he resists the urge to whip them. They once, after all, belonged to the Voltiguers, a regiment that kept the peace in '
58
during the Fraser Rush when a canvas town erupted out of the mud 'round the fort and the Americans swarmed like bottle flies. The Dupasquier brothers wore extravagant uniforms then and one of them always walked three paces behind the Governor. Three months for them this time for brawling in a saloon.

Next in line is the coloured man Enoch Handel. He is a tinsmith and former member of the African rifles who is serving a month for throwing night soil into his neighbour's yard. Next is the new man, Boston Jim, a mixed blood as well, by the look and manner of him. Coom has heard this Boston Jim speak only once or twice and though of average height and build he has a way of keeping to himself, not out of fear for the others but out of a kind of disdain. Coom has seen the like. Men who hoard words like they were precious coins, who prefer the middle ranking of the chain gang so that they may watch both ends, so that they may remain unnoticed. They are the most unpredictable, these men who care little for status, and the most vengeful. Did not this Boston Jim smash the property of the curio dealer Mr. Obed Kines, and then the nose of Kines himself when payment was demanded of him? He was fortunate the justice gave him only six weeks, that he did not order him to pay for the replacement value of the curio. But then the justice had no love for Mr. Kines, known for his insults to the monarchy in general and to the Queen in particular.

The Russian Ivan Petrovich is next. By some accounts he deserted a trading ship some thirty years previous. He is stick-thin and grizzled and ties his spectacles 'round his head with a grimy red ribbon, wears a battered top hat, a frayed silk cravat. Not only for such pretensions does Coom despise him. Petrovich is a bootlegger. He sells tanglewood to the Indians though such trade is clearly outlawed. Spirits are a vice that Coom once indulged and has since foresworn, along with tobacco and cards and all women except his blessed wife.

Behind Petrovich is one Tom McBride, a stunted lowland Scot. His voice is high-pitched and nasal. “Been punched once too often in the face?” Coom asked him, jovially enough. This McBride is the very neighbour who accused Enoch Handel of throwing night soil into his yard. Much to his chagrin, he has been given a week for lighting Handel's fence on fire. Much to Handel's satisfaction.

“Perhaps on the chain gang you two will learn some form of co-operation,” the justice reportedly said. Though Coom, having noted McBride's constantly aggrieved expression, does not share the justice's optimism.

Toolie is second to last. He looks mournfully at the others with odd eyes in a pale fat face. He purses his moist lips. “Good morning,” he says finally, and closes his eyes in exhaustion. Coom works up a Christian pity for him. An idiot, after all, cannot be held to the same standards as others. Still, Coom is determined that his chain gang be well-ordered, presentable, and useful; and thus he has warned Toolie that if he shits in public on his watch, he'll be forced to dine upon it, and if he exposes his privates he'll be heartily flogged.

The boy Farrow is the last. He is an Irish waif for whom Coom had to order small leg irons made. He stumbles often and holds up the work and lately has been given to fits of crying. For months he slithered unnoticed into the finer homes of the citizenry, causing alarm and a belief that a large gang of thieves was at work. The constabulary found him living in a driftwood shelter near the mud flats. He was surrounded by silver plate and small mantel clocks and a profusion of jewellery, most of which was returned to its grateful owners. Coom cannot recall the length of his sentence. Not that it matters. He is the sort who will spend half his life in jail. Bred in the bone, it must be, when one starts thieving so young.

≈  ≈  ≈

Today, the third of June, these eight are breaking rock. They swing their pickaxes in a sidewise motion so as not to split the skull of the man behind them. “It has happened before,” Coom warns, and chuckles at the remembrance. Later they use the rock to fill in the potholes that have appeared after the days of hard rain. Some of these potholes are posted with the warning bottom not found and are a mystery to learned men, though children say they are the wellsprings of the underworld, and play a game of leaping across, Indian and white children both.

Sunset and the hour arrives for Coom to escort them back to Bastion Square. “A little singing, boys, to lift the spirits of these good townspeople who have to see the sorry lot of you. Come on, boys,
Abide with me, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent
. . . .”

His charges, except for the Dupasquier brothers, except for Boston, join in half-heartedly, not wanting the whip on their backs.

“God keep you well,” Coom calls as the gates of Bastion Square close behind them.

“And goddamn you to hell,” the Dupasquier brothers say, once Coom is out of earshot.

≈  ≈  ≈

The cell of the Dupasquier brothers has rush mats and high barred windows and a table with chairs. Boston's cell is no more than four paces long and eight wide. It is dank. Rats rustle in the reeking straw. At least he does not have to share his cell, as Farrow and Toolie do. If he were forced to share with the likes of McBride or Petrovich he might well have to thrash them and so extend his visit. Even now Petrovich is lamenting for good whiskey and McBride is berating Enoch Handel, the black bastard prick, and questioning over and over what kind of justice would give him, a Whiteman, an equal sentence. Finally one of the Dupasquiers tells McBride to stop his whining or he'll cut his throat. At this Handel laughs, enraging McBride so greatly that he batters at the walls of his cell.

≈  ≈  ≈

The jailer snuffs out the corridor lamps. Boston paces, his legs light after the leg irons. Smashed Kines' tawdry automaton did he? Thrashed Kines with no provocation? It was the clerk's fault for rising so abruptly, and yet the clerk was the one who swore alongside Kines that Boston hurled the automaton to the floor. It was Kines who made to punch him; Boston only served it back to him. That, too, Kines and his clerk denied. Boston will seek his retribution when he is set loose. It will be the type of reckoning he knows, but this with the Dora woman, it chafes him constantly.

He settles at last in the straw. Sifts through her stories, her life, every word returning as clearly as the day it was spoken. A clue is within the stories as to what he should do; he is certain of it.

“Come in, good lady. Come in,” her father says to a woman. Assures her they can negotiate any price. The drapery is on a twist of a street not far from Newcut Market. It is small, but ah, what pride the Timmonses all take in it. They have cambric, baize, and muslin, printed cottons, worsted damask, French marino, linen ticking and bleached duck. They have cerements and swaddling, shawls and fans. Her father was a costermonger of renown before he married and well he knows the art of the sale. He stuffs handbills in letter boxes, announcing a sale on “infinitesimally damaged goods.” Proclaims that new stock is fast arriving, as for the old, “for you, ma'am, I'll make it such a price that you'll be wondering how it is I feed my five children.” He winks when he speaks like this so that his patrons might know it is only a game of which they are part.

Her father is now laughing at a customer's jest. Now full of drink. Now spending lavishly, mutton and ale for all. Now cheerfully boasting that he can thrash any man. Wasn't he the best boxer in Newcut? Look here, he's stronger than a man half his age. Anyone wanting a gentle thrashing step his way.

He rubs his hands together as he often does, even on warm days. Dora watches intently, a mess of straw-blond curls falling over her cheek. Surely one day something will burst forth from his palms: fire, a bird, a sweetmeat, a coin. It is that aura of generosity he has. “You're cursed with it,” Dora's mother says and looks at him with adoration, nothing less. Dora's father spins Ethel in a tight embrace and continues to buy useless carnations from the flower sellers, continues tossing coins into the tin of old Hannah. He strolls through the market in the early evening. The street children bob toward him. They are the drownlings of the London streets and he, her father, is a great raft of a man.

Her mother says: “You give too much. We must think of the future, darling. The girls must have dowries, the boys apprenticeships.” Her father drops to his knees and begs forgiveness, spreading his arms wide, as if to encompass the world. Dora's mother laughs girlishly. She is blue-eyed and black-haired. Her hands are white and tapering and astonishing in their elegance. In contrast, Dora's father is a lion of a man—golden-haired, strong and tall. Their love is legendary. The beautiful Ethel could have had her choice of any respectable shopkeeper and instead chose Thomas Timmons, a costermonger with barely a farthing to his name. Ah, but soon they will have a shop on Regent Street. It is Thomas's constant promise. No longer will Ethel's family scorn her choice of husband. The Timmonses will have extravagant displays behind plate glass windows and five men clerks standing ready behind counters long as roads. They will have lace of such fine workmanship that a magnifying glass will be needed to show details hidden from less worthy eyes. No longer these coarse draperies. They will have lawn, glazed worsted, harateen, velvets, silks, and damasks. Dora can see it all so clearly. And are not they being prepared for this step upward? Dora, though she is fourteen now, is not yet to be married. Not for her the black-toothed, spindly boys who come to pay their respects. In their two room flat above the shop, Dora's mother is teaching Dora and her brothers and sisters to speak so they do not sound like gutter spawn. She is teaching them what she knows of reading and writing. Not for her children the ragged schools. She insists her daughters put aside knitting and devote their precious spare hours to needlework. Dora is not the most skilled at this art. Look at this sampler, at the letters slanting downward, tufted with broken thread. And look at this embroidered round of a girl on a swing. The girl's hands are marked with wayward stitches like so many wounds. No, what Dora loves is the clink of coins, the cutting and packaging, the exchange of news, the cajoling of a difficult client. She wishes to work in this “Ah, but soon shop,” and tells her father so.

“Who has ever heard of a lass waiting on customers in the finer stores?” her father asks and pinches her cheeks. “Promise me you'll marry some good man and become the angel of your house, and your old father will come visiting on a Sunday.”

Dora grabs his hand and promises. Promises that she would give up the very world for him, her darling father. He need only ask.

≈  ≈  ≈

Morning and from atop Kingdom Come Coom shouts: “March on, boys! Faster now, you are off to do God's work!” They shuffle through the streets in their leg irons, each of them carrying a shovel. A wind blows in fits and blasts, sends hats tumbling as if a hand has thwacked them aside, whistles through the slipshod construction of the town. McBride nudges Petrovich and tells him eagerly that this wind can flip crinolines inside out like so many cheap umbrellas. Petrovich ignores him, curses in Russian and English and stumbles against Handel. Petrovich's hands are shaking. Sweat drips from his chin though it is hardly hot. He has begged each of them to procure him a drink, has promised to pay handsomely for it. “I have money. I have it. Yes?”

To Quadra Street, to the Church of St. John the Divine. Coom stays so close behind them that Kingdom Come's hot breath ruffles Farrow's hair. The convicts are to dig the graves for twenty-odd Indians from this tribe and that. They were Anglican converts who died of some fever. “Sort of sickness that would make a Whiteman merely sniffle,” Coom says and then wonders aloud how the Indians have thrived for so long. He halts Kingdom Come outside the church. The horse paws the ground, snorts. “Easy there,” Coom says soothingly.