The Law of Dreams (44 page)

He was unused to reflecting on his own inconsistencies but there suddenly
seemed something so shameful in this one — so cold, weak, and unprocessed —
that he sat up, bumping his head on the underside of the Cooles' berth.

“What are you doing, man?” Molly whispered.

Without answering, he pushed the curtain aside and swung his legs out,
finding the deck with his feet. In the pitch of light from the one oil lamp hanging on a
beam he saw the man circling the girl, who cowered with her legs drawn up and head
tucked between her knees while he lashed her with a belt.

“Here, take this.” Molly held out the blackthorn and he took
it and started toward them, both hands gripping the shaft. Every curtain in the tiers
was drawn shut but he knew the people must be awake. The stick had flex and felt light
in his hands. With a blade fixed to its tip it would have made a passable pike.

Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, the man paid no
heed as Fergus began prodding him with the stick, trying to drive him away from the
girl. His eyes were embedded in yellow fat and his clothes stank of
poitin
and
sweat. Suddenly he dropped the belt and grabbed the end of Fergus's stick, holding
on to it with fists tight as gnarls, like deformations on the wood. Fergus tried to
twist it from him then shoved it straight at him and speared him in the belly. He
released his grip, and Fergus began striking him with flurried blows, beating the backs
of his legs as he flung himself up the ladder and disappeared on deck.

The girl's mother and sisters crept out and half carried the
whimpering creature back to their berth.

Are you a part of the world, like a bird, an apple tree, a fish, or the
sea itself? Or are you here to judge it, everything in it, yourself included?

He had snapped the blackthorn stick with the last flurry of blows. He
picked up both pieces and returned to the berth. Molly was sitting up, clutching the
German blanket around her shoulders.

“There it is, your keep-away magic, I've bust it
now.”

He dropped the broken pieces on the bed, then climbed in.

Reaching across him, she drew the curtain shut, and he felt her breast
touch his arm.

“He'll come after you, you know. You'll have to look out
now.” She stretched out on her side, pulling the blanket over herself, facing
away.

He could feel the sick, wild heart bumping in his chest, an engine of
grief. Why had she offered him the blackthorn, why had she placed it in his hands if she
didn't wish him to break down what was separating them?

PASSION. HE
awoke in the dark with her fumbling at the
buttons on his shirt. She began pulling her gown over her head, then her shift, and he
sensed the heat of her skin. Then she was naked. He touched her slowly, soft breasts and
rough nipples. Her kisses were delicate, then hungry. Her teeth were wet and cool. She
undressed him roughly, hauling his shirt over his head, tearing buttons from his
trousers, dragging the trousers off his legs, grasping his prick with her fist, kissing
the anguished tip of it. When he was inside her, she was
whispering, touching his back with light, fluttering fingers. Pressing teeth on his
ear, biting gently, and moving her hips with his.

Is this what it feels like, holding life in your hands?

As near as you'll get.

Practically everything.

HE AWOKE AT THE SOUND
of the ship's bell, lay
listening to the sailors' feet scraping on the deck overhead as watches changed.
Weak daylight and a tang of smoke filtered down through the open hatch. Molly was
asleep, her body pressed close. Her delightful warmth and scent carried a charge. He
felt a responsibility but it was unclear. Something he owed, but what and to whom?
Without awakening her, he pulled on his clothes, swung himself out of the berth, and
climbed up through the hatch.

Laramie
was slack in a chill calm, making very little way. The
man he had chased from the 'tween deck was sprawled by a bulkhead. Someone had
thrown a blanket over him. Perhaps he'd come seeking vengeance. Or perhaps when
sober he was soft and mild, like so many drinking men on the mountain.

Ormsby, swaddled in his fur coat and peering through a spyglass, was the
only other passenger on deck.

Gripping a shroud, pissing over the side, Fergus stared at the slurry of
ice and water rubbing along the hull.

Don't send me down to the fish.

Nimrod Blampin poured a shovelful of smoking coals into a caboose.
“Look at him,” the sailor said, nodding at the man under the blanket.
“He's got the sweats, the florids — face all black — been
barking all night. That's Irish fever, Michael. You better hope we raise Quebec
before it spreads. I seen
Wandering
Jew
run aground at Mobile Bay with all aboard dead —
passengers, master, and crew.” Nimrod called to Ormsby, “What do you see
there mister? Is it Cape Race?”

“Cape Race is out there.” Ormsby lowered the glass.

“Can you see it?”

“No, but you might from up high.”

“America, is it?” Fergus asked.

“Nearly enough — Newfoundland,” Ormsby replied.
“Captain Blow ought to send up a lookout. If I was ten years younger
—”

“I'll go.” Fergus spoke quickly, eager for the first
sight of America.

“A lubber like you?” Nimrod said. “You'd fall and
break your head.”

“Wants a light foot up there. You won't need boots.”
Ormsby was already shucking off his rawhide slippers. “Here, you can wear
these.”

The wind was coming up, pressing like a weight at his ear as he knelt to
untie his boots, a little stunned by how readily his offer had been accepted.

Your life doesn't weigh so very much, not for others.

“Your girl won't like it when you're smashed like a bowl
of eggs.” Nimrod sounded peevish. “You're a lubber, you've no
business up there. You'll be feed for the birds. Takes a hand to go
aloft.”

The promise Molly had extracted.

Her lack of trust.

There was a piece of anger, he knew exactly where it was, like a splinter
of glass.

“You'd better rub your hands with pitch. And take care where
you step your feet,” Ormsby said. “Don't trust the rungs; they look
rotted through, half of them. Keep your grip on the shrouds, not the rungs.”

Fergus slipped his feet into Ormsby's thin rawhide slippers. Fear
was twisting in his stomach but it was too late now, he couldn't shame himself in
front of Ormsby.

“Give me your hat, it'll only get in your way up
there.”

He handed it over — would he ever wear it again?

“You can't stop once you get started,” Ormsby was
saying. “Rub some tar. Avoid looking down.”

Nimrod kicked the tar bucket. Fergus dipped his hands.

“Go now, go quickly,” Ormsby said. “See what you can but
don't stay too long or you'll freeze too numb to climb. Up and down while
the sea is calm.”

Light-headed and queasy, he crossed the slippery deck. The first ratline
was seized to shrouds running from the starboard bulkhead to the main mast, just below a
circular wooden platform the crew called the
top
though it was only the head of
the mainmast, halfway to the peak of the ship.

Hoisting himself up onto the bulwark, he grabbed the shrouds and swung
out. His body hung out over the water for a moment, then his feet found the rungs and he
started climbing quickly, hand over hand.

The mainmast top was a wooden platform, size of a carriage wheel, braced
to the mast by iron struts — the futtock shrouds. He could feel tension of wind
singing off the mainsail. Reaching the underside of the top, he stopped, too disoriented
to make the next move. Getting around the top meant letting go of the ratline and
grasping another, seized to the futtocks, then crawling out, upside down, his back to
the deck forty feet below.

His fingers were clenching onto the shrouds with a will of their own, and
he stared at them and cursed them. Finally he was able to uncurl them and for a
sickening instant held nothing, then grabbed the ratline seized to the futtocks. He
started crawling out, hanging upside down. Reaching the rim of the top, hooking his
right foot around a strut, he seized the topsail shrouds and dragged his body over the
wooden rim, wriggled himself aboard the mainmast top.

The ship was rocking stem-to-stern, trying to throw him off. Hugging the
mast, he forced himself to stand on the top. He looked down and saw Molly down on deck,
in her blue cloak, standing next to Ormsby, the old man pointing up.

Above, the topmast was doubled to the main for six feet or so, hooped with
iron, then the main ended and the topmast arose until it was doubled to the slender
topgallant mast, which was doubled to the royal mast, which looked no thicker than a
stick.

He could feel the mast trembling with energy humming off the sail. The
golden wood was greasy from the buckets of tallow the sailors slushed on it continuously
so yardarms could always be smoothly raised or lowered in their collars.

“Up . . . up . . .” Nimrod's shouts came at him all
disjointed, like the wails of seabirds.

The next climb was thirty feet of narrowing and
nearly vertical ratline seized to the topmast shrouds. Many rungs were broken and one
snapped underfoot, but he clung to the shrouds and kept climbing.

He reached the topsail yard and stepped on it gingerly. The honey-colored
wood was glazed with ice. The sail was bent to an iron rail along the top of the
yard.

Ice sheathed the upper shrouds, but when he beat them with his fist the
ice crumbled in his face. His face felt thickened and stiff from cold. The wind droned
as it was forced off the sails.

He scrambled up the next twenty feet on a ratline seized to the topgallant
shrouds. The rungs were hardly wide enough for his foot. From the yard he swung onto
another ratline and kept climbing. Now there was just a toe-width to the rungs. He
looked down at the deck, one hundred feet below, trying to catch a glimpse of her but
could not.

He sat out on the royal yard clinging to the ludicrously slender royal
mast, which rose another eight feet as narrow as the whip of a young tree and was topped
with a round hardwood knob — the peak of the ship. To kiss the peak he would have
to stand on the frail royal yard and shinny up the last couple of feet.

Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have
intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed? That there is a path to be
followed, literally to the death? Awareness is harsh but better than being unaware,
never sensing a path. Better than a life of stunts, false starts, dead ends. Better than
the irredeemable ugliness of the halfhearted. Better than feeling there is no shape to
anything — there is. The world knows itself.

He stood up slowly, balancing on the narrow yardarm, clinging to the frail
mast. He began shinnying up, the wind whipping his hair. He kissed the cap, then clung
to the mast as
Laramie
heeled to port. Letting go he'd plummet straight
into the sea. Through low-slung clouds, he caught a glimpse of rocky headland. An image
of his father's face — cheekbones, lips, blue eyes — came before him,
and he began shouting “Land ho! Land ho!” into the hustle of the wind.

AIRS IN THE ST. LAWRENCE GULF
were cold and thin as
Laramie
worked her way cautiously, keeping south of a mottled plain of pack
ice.

Each night in their berth Molly came up out of herself as if she had never
before tasted joy. He found he could stir her up easily. She didn't seem to care
what anyone overheard.

They lunged at each other and he felt the ship moving underneath.

Passion was charged and disorienting, like banging on the door of the
world.

FOUR DAYS
past Cape Race,
Laramie
dropped
anchor in a cove on the south shore of Anticosti Island. Three sailors and the
bos'n rowed ashore to fill water casks while passengers along the rail peered at
slabs of ice lying on the beach like wrecked ships. A sour aroma of fir reached out
across the cove.

“Where are the people, man? What's become of the
people?” Molly demanded.

There were no openings in the curtain of evergreen forest, no smoke or
animals. Mrs. Coole wept at the bleakness of it.

The water casks were slung aboard and the passengers jostled to fill their
pots and kettles. The water's stinging coldness made him think of Luke.

Astringent water squishing out of the turf as they
walked.

Filling his mouth again, he felt the cold water tear at his gums. He
splashed his face then reached out, dribbling water on Molly's head.

“What's that?” she cried.

Passion drives you forward. The future is available and you order yourself
to relinquish the dead.

NEXT DAY
the gloomy gulf clouds lifted, and cooks
stirring porridge at the cabooses glimpsed the snowy mountains of Notre Dame on the
Gaspé coast. The schoolmaster insisted they would be raising Quebec itself in a
matter of hours. Passengers spent the day packing then sat up all night guarding their
baggage, but the next morning there was nothing to see except the endless forest along
the north shore.

He kept going to the rail. Where were the emigrants who had sailed this
way before them?

It was as if the country had consumed them, but he didn't feel
discouraged by the emptiness. There was something in it that he trusted. The pleasing
glitter of the daylight.

Of course, light didn't matter, it was only light. It was the
absence of darkness; but you couldn't eat it.