Sarah Canary (26 page)

Sam would not do this if he knew what he was going to catch. The Indians did not like to see anything odd - a white squirrel, for instance, or a frog with its head cut off. They thought such oddities were messages, were omens of evil. When an Indian saw something he had never seen before, it might mean a bad storm was coming or a bad illness or it might mean a death, which could always turn out to be your own. And the Indians put a great deal of faith in dreams, sleeping dreams and waking visions like the one B.J. had just had.

‘Ladies should be ladies,’ said Purdy. ‘That’s all I’m saying. Miss Adelaide Dixon wants to be treated like a lady, but she doesn’t want to behave like one. You know the type?’

‘Yes,’ said B.J., who hadn’t been listening at all but was still able to reconstruct the words after he realized a question had been asked and felt, in any case, that
yes
was generally the safest answer to anything. Behind them one cracker crested a wave and then disappeared suddenly, too suddenly, not as if the wave had simply curled over it, but as if something had come up from beneath and swallowed it. A moment later a second cracker vanished. B.J. could see none of the crackers now.

‘I was hoping to have a chance to talk to you alone,’ Purdy said. ‘After we’d left Seabeck safely behind.’ His voice was low beneath the sound of the rain on the mats. With a great effort, B.J. put mermaids out of his mind. He stopped watching for crackers. He moved closer to Purdy in the bow. He wished he could talk to Chin instead. Chin would know if there was a mermaid following them or not and why. Shouldn’t the mermaid be following Harold? Harold was the one who’d purchased her. Harold was the one who planned to exhibit her, breasts and all. What had B.J. done? He hadn’t known it was her blanket he was taking. He’d put it right back.

‘We left a bit of nastiness back in the Bay View Hotel this morning,’ Purdy told B.J.

‘We left a dead man, ‘B.J. remembered suddenly. ‘On the stairs. What did you leave?’ Ordinarily he would have said less and allowed Purdy to say more. He was upset. This made him thoughtless and reckless, and he recognized it, but too late.

‘You saw him?’ Purdy crossed himself with the remains of his potato and then popped it in his mouth. ‘Yes. Jim Allen.’ ‘Stabbed.’

‘Yes.’

‘Dead.’

‘Yes.’

‘The knife was the same knife Blair had in the kitchen,’ B.J. said. ‘I recognized it. Unless it was bigger.’ Probably the knife had told someone to kill Jim Allen. Knives were nasty things and full of their own suggestions. That didn’t mean you had to listen. What if everyone went around doing whatever knives told them to do?

‘I see where your thinking is leading you,’ Purdy said. ‘But you mustn’t blame Blair. He’s half white, you know. And he’s got his little girl, Jenny, to think of. He would never risk going to jail and leaving her unprotected. It would be different if she was married, of course. She
should
be married. Most Indian girls are married at twelve, and Jenny’s fifteen. Treating her like a white woman won’t make her one, will it, B.J.? More likely to make her dissatisfied and sulky. I’ve said as much to Blair myself. She’s got considerably less white blood than he does.’

B.J. began to chew on one end of the checkered handkerchief with which he’d bound his left hand. He hoped Purdy wasn’t hinting what he thought Purdy might be hinting. That was all B.J. needed. A wife. He undid the knot with his teeth, wiped his face with the handkerchief, and watched the trees sliding past on the shore. The canoe was farther out now and the shoreline was blurred through the curtain of rain, but he could see the tossing of the treetops. He looked over the murky water between him and the trees. He never looked down at all.

‘I don’t imagine the man who killed Jim Allen intended to implicate Blair,’ Purdy said. ‘I imagine he just didn’t have his own knife for some reason or other.’ Purdy looked straight at B.J. ‘I want to say something in defense of the men of Seabeck,’ he said.

He was quiet then, long enough for B.J. to conclude that while Purdy
wanted
to say something in defense of the men of Seabeck, he couldn’t, in fact, think of anything to say.

B.J. tried to help. ‘They seem to be very good shots,’ he suggested. ‘They got almost every window.’ Or maybe he didn’t say it, because Purdy cleared his throat and went on as if B.J. hadn’t spoken.

‘When the Indian Department issued their order for all the squaws to be taken from the white men and put onto the Indian reservations,
except
in those cases where the white men married them, I don’t know of a single man who put his faithful squaw away,’ Purdy said. ‘You hear these stories from other towns. Tragic stories. Tragic for the squaws. But not in Seabeck.’

B.J. watched Chin paddle so as not to look back at Purdy. He was more and more certain what Purdy wanted. He could only pretend he wasn’t. He waved the handkerchief at Chin. There was no response. Chin was soaked with rain and shivering violently. His paddling was frenzied, completely unproductive. His mouth was still open as if he were out of breath. ‘Many half-breeds resulting from these unions, like Blair, have risen to positions of responsibility in the community and in the Company,’ Purdy said, dropping all pretense of subtlety. ‘But I cannot say that I have seen any full-blooded Indians rise in similar ways, and I think we must credit the success of the half-breed to the blood of the father rather than that of the mother.’

That was all B.J. needed. Children. He tried to say something that would make his feelings about marriage clear. ‘Women are crazy.’

Purdy pointed back down the canoe past Chin to where Old Patsy squatted in the rain working steadily with the bailer. ‘Take Old Patsy. Refuses to learn English. Refuses even to learn Chinook.’ He shook his head sadly and lay back against the bow, closing his eyes.

B.J. had suddenly lost the thread of the conversation. Why were they talking about Old Patsy? She was already married. He didn’t know how to respond, so he repeated himself. ‘Women are crazy,’ he said again, but he put more stress on the last word so that maybe Purdy would think he’d said something new.

‘The Indians have a legend,’ Purdy told him, ‘about an earlier time when the white men and the Indians and the animals were all the same. Then Do-ki-batl, the Changer, came. And he changed flies into flies and minks into minks and blue jays into blue jays and he made Indians dark-skinned and ignorant, but he gave white men books and learning and a light skin, and that’s just the way things are.’

‘I know this story,’ said B.J.

‘There’s a lot of truth to these fanciful old legends,’ Purdy said. ‘Not on the surface maybe, but underneath.’

B.J. looked over the surface of the water, avoiding any possible truths underneath. He wondered why Chin had not waved back at him. Had he done something to annoy Chin? B.J. walked without straightening his legs, down the belly of the boat to Chin, taking his mat along like an umbrella and holding the handkerchief balled up in his other hand. This prevented him from gripping the gunwale, and made him proceed sideways, cautiously balanced on the balls of his feet. ‘Chin,’ he whispered. ‘Chin. Are you mad at me?’

‘No,’ said Chin. ‘What’s that?’ Chin sprang to his feet so as to see over B.J. and his mat. The canoe rocked violently. B.J. dropped the mat and grabbed Chin’s sleeve to keep him from pitching over the side. Chin swung in a half-circle at the end of B.J.’s grip, shading his eyes from the rain with one hand.

‘Sit down,’ said Sam sharply, but Chin didn’t appear to notice.

For a moment he had stopped shivering. B.J. looked where Chin was looking. A distant, dark shape rolled in the waves before the bow. ‘Is it Harold?’ Chin asked. ‘Paddle out that way.’

‘You don’t stand up in a canoe,’ Purdy said, turning to look ahead.

Sam shifted course.

‘It’s just a log,’ Purdy told them. ‘It’s floating deep, like a log.’

B.J. hoped it was a log. There was nothing upsetting about a log on the canal. There were lots of logs. No one could think a log was an evil omen.

Chin began to shake again, uncontrollably. The movement of the canoe pitched him from side to side. ‘He’s about to fall in and take all of us with him,’ Purdy said. ‘Over a log.’

‘Make
him sit down,’ Sam told B.J. in a hard, important voice. B.J. pulled on Chin’s wet sleeve until Chin sank to his knees. Not once did Chin look away from the object as the canoe approached it.

‘It’s a log,’ Purdy called back. B.J. took three deep breaths to celebrate his relief. He gave the checkered handkerchief to Chin, who used it to wipe rainwater from his face. Then Chin tied it low around his forehead, just above his eyes. His teeth were clicking together. He picked up his paddle.

B.J. rejoined Purdy in the bow. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

‘Not at all,’ said Purdy. ‘I was wandering anyway. I didn’t mean to go on and on about Jenny. I didn’t think you knew about Jim. I just wanted to make sure you understood that you can’t go back to Seabeck. Not with your Chinaman.’

So he didn’t want B.J. to marry Jenny. B.J. had misunderstood. He was relieved but not surprised. B.J. misunderstood things too often to be surprised. ‘What’s Chin done?’ B.J. asked.

‘Nothing. As far as I know. It’s unfortunate that Chin’s sudden flight looks so suspicious. But if he’d stayed, they would still have lynched him.’

‘He didn’t stab Harold. It wasn’t even his chopstick,’ B.J. said. ‘And he didn’t kill Jim Allen. There would have been blood in the bread.’

‘Look,’ said Purdy. ‘When a murder takes place in a small community, everyone is happier to think that the murderer is someone from the outside. Could have been Harold. That would have been fine. But your Chinaman is even more outside. Your Chinaman is perfect.’

‘I don’t think that Harold killed Jim Allen either,’ said B.J. He might have, though, B.J. supposed. He might have snuck out into the hallway while Chin and B.J. were trying not to look at the woman’s clothes. All those undergarments laid out on the bed. B.J. had
heard
someone in the hall when he was trying not to look. So then Harold could have stabbed Jim Allen and hurried back into Sarah Canary’s room and slumped against the bed so as to be there when Chin and B.J. came through the window. Except that the knife had been in the kitchen with Purdy. So Harold could have snuck out into the hallway and gone down the stairs and past Purdy and snuck into and out of the kitchen and past Purdy and climbed back up the stairs and stabbed Jim Allen and hurried back into Sarah Canary’s room and slumped against the bed so as to be there when Chin and B.J. came through the window. It could have happened that way.

The canoe tipped sideways. This time no one was moving around. It didn’t feel like the wind or like a wave. It felt like a hand had come up underneath the canoe and was steadily pushing it over. B.J.’s heart squeezed into a little ball between his lungs. Sam hit the water with his paddle. The hand released them. B.J.’s heart pumped slowly back to normal size.

‘He had money,’ Purdy said. ‘Suddenly. Jim Allen. He had lots of money.’ B.J. looked over the side of the canoe. No shadow. He leaned forward, around Purdy, and looked over the other side. No shadow. He sat back against the bow again, under the drumming of the rain on the mats.

‘I shouldn’t tell you this,’ Purdy said, which, of all the ways to begin a sentence, was B.J.’s absolute favorite, ‘but last year in San Francisco the Hood Canal lumbering interests entered into an agreement to keep up the price of lumber.’ Purdy was biting with his top teeth beneath his bottom lip into the sparse hairs that began his beard. He counted on his fingers. ‘Port Gamble,’ he said. ‘Port Ludlow, Port Discovery, Tacoma.’ He came to his thumb. ‘And the Washington Mill Company, too, of course. Seabeck. Only’ - Purdy closed his fingers into a fist with the thumb on the outside - ‘the Washington Mill Company has been discounting its bills. The books look regular, the initial price charged is according to agreement, but then adjustments are made. Very profitable for Seabeck, of course. Disastrous, though, if it should become known throughout the rest of the Concern.’ Purdy opened his fist and reached into Old Patsy’s basket for another potato. ‘Jim Allen sold the Company out,’ he said. ‘Everyone thought so. Straws were drawn to see who would kill him. You couldn’t shirk the short straw, now could you? Even if you’d known him a long time? It’s a Company town and we all live there together.’

Purdy skinned the potato with his teeth, bit into the white flesh. ‘I don’t suppose the original agreement was strictly legal. Still, it was nasty to break it. And nasty to tell for money.’

‘And nasty to kill the man who told,’ suggested B.J. ‘And nasty to blame Chin.’

‘This way, nobody else gets hurt. As long as you keep your Chinaman away from Seabeck, nobody else gets hurt.’

‘What’s that?’ Chin shouted.

‘Nobody else gets hurt!’ B.J. called back, but Chin was pointing again with his paddle out over the canal. B.J. turned. A dark, loglike shape rolled in the wind and waves and the rain far ahead of them. ‘There!’ said Chin. ‘Take the canoe that way.’

‘It’s a log,’ said Purdy, not looking, not taking his eyes off B.J. He lowered his voice. ‘Now. We never had this conversation.’

B.J. was alarmed to hear it. Who
had
had this conversation and what had he been doing while they had it?

Sam turned the canoe away from shore. ‘More,’ said Chin, taking four long, deep strokes himself. ‘Turn us more.’ They paddled farther and farther out. The trees shrank in the distance behind them. The loglike object grew.