The Snake River (16 page)

“But everything’s your way, your white-man way. Even ‘right’ means your white-man idea of right. You get what you want. And you want to rule.”

“Nay,” said Flare. “I want to live.”

“How are the Indians of this Pacific Coast living since you came here?” Palea said challengingly.

“They’re dying,” said Flare. “Just like the Sandwich Islanders. Hawaiians,” he corrected himself. He looked sympathetically at Palea. “Three quarters of those near Vancouver are already dead from diseases their bodies can’t withstand. I don’t know why.”

“It’s what you really want,” Palea said hotly. Sima was about to burst in, too.

Flare held up a staying hand. “What I want?” Flare chuckled a little. “Nay, not a bit of it. Think to the future. When the Indians and the wild lands are gone, there’ll be a world run by rich swells, tight-assed preachers, and power-mad sheriffs. They’ll put fences everywhere, tax our whiskey, and tell us no women without a bloody marriage license. No place to roam for the likes of me and Mr. Skye, come those days.”

He grinned at the youths. “In the meantime, we can waggle our tails and live.”

He chucked his horse and trotted ahead. He muttered to himself, “If we can stay alive.”

Palea broached the subject in a gingerly way, as if afraid of disapproval from even Sima.

It was the middle of the night. The two youths had drawn the midnight watch. They were careful to stay awake and keep their eyes working. Skye had threatened them with bodily harm if they fell asleep on watch, and they feared he meant it. Plus, he had a nasty habit of trying to sneak up on them during the watch and crack their heads with belaying pins.

“Among the Shoshones,” Palea began, “are there…?” The word he finally used was incomprehensible to Sima. Palea fidgeted, unable to plunge forward. Finally he said in his soft, melodious English, “Men who love other men.”

Sima looked at him big-eyed. “Yes,” he said simply.

Among the Shoshone there were
teni-wiaphs
, men-who-would-be-women. Men who lived entirely as women, dressed like women, used the language of women, performed only women’s tasks—and married men. They also had some sacred functions, a special place in various ceremonies. They lived as they were told to live in a dream. But Sima had been cautioned by Flare not to talk about men-who-would-be-women. The subject made white people crazy, he said.

“I am one,” said Palea.

Sima gawked at his friend. He thought of the two men-who-would-be-women in his own band. They acted like women. The white trappers who visited never even understood that they didn’t have women’s bodies. If Palea was one, why did he dress like a man, act like a man?

“I am in love with an older man,” Palea said sheepishly. “Very fat, very kind, a lot of fun. A generation ago, we would have been together. Now the missionaries forbid it.” He laughed ironically. “White people love to forbid many things, but this one…” He made a throat-cutting motion. “My father is dead. To avoid humiliation, my uncle sent me away with the Englishmen.” The youth was miserable, near tears.

Sima looked at his friend in the eyes. He didn’t know what to say. He tried at last, “It must be different among you.”

“Why?” Palea was anguished.

“Among the Shoshones,” Sima said carefully, “a man-who-would-be-woman follows his medicine. He has no choice. It is strange medicine, but it is his.”

“And people are not ashamed of him?” Palea asked painfully.

“It is his medicine,”
said Sima, emphasizing every word.

Palea nodded. He pondered a moment, biting his lip. “I had to ask. You’re the first person I’ve known well enough to ask who wasn’t a white man.

“My father’s uncle is also a man-who-would-be-woman. But he has to dress as a man and pretend to be a man. He hates the white men for that. Before the missionaries came, he says, only ten or fifteen years ago, Hawaiians honored their men-who-would-be-women. But the missionaries said it was worse than fornication, worse than stealing, worse than murder. Finally the people got ashamed of it.”

He looked at Sima crazily. “So I have no home there, either.”

“You must follow your medicine,” said Sima emphatically.

“The whites would kill me,” the boy said simply. “I like very big men, big or fat. Much older than me. Like Mr. Skye.” He shrugged. “Mr. Skye would probably kill me.”

He looked at Sima affectionately. “I just wanted you to know,” he said. “You are my friend.”

Sima was late, and it was dawn. Flare didn’t feel much like drinking the coffee in his hand. He could have used a brandy. He didn’t dare, but he felt the need of it. When he quit drinking, he told himself he’d have a cup of cheer on every St. Paddy’s Day, to honor his ancestors, and that would be all.

The coffee was ready. Where was Sima?

He’d promised the lad a treat, and a real treat it was. He was going to take him to Yves Balmat and buy the boyo an American horse to replace the decrepit Messenger. Old Balmat had some good horses, and Flare had more money, at the moment, than he knew what to do with.

Surely, St. Paddy’s Day. If he never drank at all, he’d have to look down on himself as a teetotaler, like Dr. Full. Flare had never met a teetotaler he could bear.

But here it was, dawn, and Flare was on watch. Sima must be preoccupied with that lass, because the lad was looking forward to his surprise. Flare raised his cup and sipped. Cold already.

Dr. McLoughlin had asked Flare to take some watch because Flare would be sober. The HBC didn’t trade liquor to its employees except from Christmas to New Year’s, but no one could control the whiskey, not really. Especially now, when a ship was in, and the sailors were celebrating a few days in port.

Flare remembered when he’d thought it was fun, all that boozing and brawling and gambling and whoring. To sober eyes, it didn’t look like fun. He was sure those who got bashed up, or knifed, thought it less than amusing. Not that Flare would mind a wager or two, for sport.

He’d best make some rounds. Flare got up and started walking. His legs worked stiffly in the cold. He’d walk through all the camps and clumps of huts and see who’d gotten half frozen and get them to a fire.

He’d taken care of his own before going to sleep. Mr. Skye had gone on one of his epic drunks and was now in the second day of an epic sleeping-it-off. The man got drunker than anyone Flare had ever seen—anyone who lived through it—and stayed drunk longer. And when he passed out, he seemed dead, and it took him longer to sleep it off. Then the hangover required longer to get over. Everything about Mr. Skye was double-sized.

Flare saw a figure huddled in blankets, stretched out on the ground. It was old Langlois. Flare stirred him with a foot. The old man slapped at the foot. Well, if he’d survived the night, the sun would bring him around. Good thing the winter here was mild.

Sima was in Flare’s lean-to with one of the Frenchie girls, which was no doubt why he was late. At least it wasn’t a whore. Flare had encouraged this liaison as much as he could. He’d even used the gift of red cloth and the lass’s parents to encourage it. Nothing to keep a young lad close to camp like a willing lass.

True, Sima had promised to go to the mission. Meant to go right after the new year. Meant most earnestly.

True, Flare had a sort of wager with Dr. Full about who would sway the lad, Dr. Full to the way of heaven, or Flare to the ways of the world.

What was more the way of the world than a lively piece of poontang?

And if Sima never got to the mission, why, perhaps one heaven would be lost but another found. Perhaps.

Flare thought it was a mountain cat crying at first, wailing its strange sound that parodied a baby’s cry. But it came from the dock. Then it grew, and grew, and became a series of raucous, hacking sobs. And then a scream. A bellow of wound and rage.

Then it scared Flare to his bones. The voice was Sima’s.

They were down by the pilings, in the mud.

Sima was on his hands and knees, like he wanted to touch the figure and couldn’t bring himself to do it. He sat back on his haunches and hollered at the sky.

The figure was Palea.

His skull was bashed in. It had bled quarts into the mud.

His face was cut and bruised, as from fists.

His cock was cut off and stuffed in his mouth.

“Aye,” said Skye, “bloody sure, one of their bloody sailors.” He threw it in McLoughlin’s face for no reason. The anger was only half volume for Mr. Skye, subdued by his hangover.

Sima sat and stared out the window, his face glazed.

Flare didn’t know what to do for Sima. Right now the only thing Flare could do was insist on an investigation, which McLoughlin was doing as well, so no point in pushing. The question was: What would Captain Plummer do?

Flare was already weary of it all. Weary of McLoughlin’s trying to overawe with his size and demeanor. Weary of having two huge men in one small room at the same time. Weary of the pitiful story told by a body found in the mud. Weary of trying to persuade the captain to do something and that hadn’t even begun yet. Plummer was taking his time, taking his bloody time, a way of saying, I’m the captain of a great ship, and you are nobody. Just like a stinking Brit.

Skye said he knew damn well what happened. The king’s Navy—no, queen’s Navy, he kept having to correct himself—was full of Rogers, which was nautical talk for buggerers. Jolly Rogers, indeed, Skye called them. One third of the seamen were queer, another third weren’t queer but weren’t too particular about what they fucked, and the last third spent their time fighting off the first two. Skye said this last with both his hands on his belaying pins.

And bloody sure the lad Palea had propositioned one of those seaman who fought. Since Palea was a wog, a nigger, an Injun, or some other inferior of an Englishman, as they considered it, the seaman did what was in his heart many a time: He murdered.

Captain Plummer rapped softly and came in without waiting for an answer. He was a ferocious-looking man of an imperious eye, a slash of beard, and a substantial belly. In full uniform, thought Flare, so he intends to overawe us, too.

McLoughlin made the introductions. He included Sima, but Plummer offered the lad just a nod, not a hand.

“What news, Plummer?” demanded McLoughlin. So the emp wasn’t kowtowing to the fellow.

The captain’s face went huge with pleasure. “Gentlemen, we have the culprit. The midnight watch noticed a scuffle”—the bloody bastard termed it a
scuffle
—“made note of the fighter’s name, and made a report. This morning the first mate and I confronted the man, an able seaman, with the facts, and pointed out the marks on his knuckles and the blood on his clothes. We have our methods. He’s confessed.”

“You’ll bring him here,” said McLoughlin with a snarl. “I want him.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Dr. McLoughlin.”

Now the lad will see British justice, thought Flare. No sea captain will turn one of his crew over to someone else’s justice.

“I’ll have him and I’ll have him now, Captain Plummer. He’s committed murder in the dominion of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which I represent.”

“Perhaps a word in private, Dr. McLoughlin,” suggested Plummer.

“These men will stay,” answered McLoughlin. “They were his friends, and want to see him get justice.”

“Yes, well,” said Plummer with affected breeziness. “Perhaps they want to administer so-called justice themselves. Perhaps they don’t know what justice is.”

Not being bloody gentlemen like yourselves, thought Flare, and one of us a wog, a nigger, or an Injun.

“He must be punished,” said McLoughlin.

“The Royal Navy will punish him,” said Plummer.

It was simple, Flare knew. The Hudson’s Bay Company would try the man and hang him, quickly. The Royal Navy would give him twenty lashes. Or forty, depending on the whim of the captain.

“He committed the crime on land, under my authority,” said McLoughlin.

Sima spoke up. “What is wrong? You know who killed Palea, yes?”

Flare smiled to himself. Good for you, lad. True, you don’t have enough coup to talk in council, but speak up for your friend.

Plummer got apoplectic-looking. Flare hoped for a stroke. Sima kept at him. “Now we must get rid of the murderer.”

Plummer burst out, “McLoughlin, this is intolerable.”

Dr. McLoughlin held up a flattened palm to Sima. “If I know the lad’s customs as I think I do,
Captain
Plummer,” began McLoughlin, stressing the title, “he does not mean hanging the seaman. Do you, Sima?”

Flare loved it. McLoughlin was insulting Plummer by inviting the Injun lad to talk.

Sima shook his head hard. “He must be banished.”

Flare excused the boy for the quaint pronunciation. He did that to words he’d only come across in a poem or a Scripture Miss Jewel read to him.

“I’ll be d-damned,” said Plummer, sputtering, “if I’ll let…”

McLoughlin held up both hands to silence everyone. “Yes, Captain Plummer,” he acknowledged, “this has gotten irregular. My friends are overeager in their pursuit of justice. Understandable. It is perhaps beneficial, though, to hear what local customs require. Indians generally banish those who shed the blood of their tribesmen. They do not kill them.

“Nevertheless, what I now ask from you, Captain Plummer,” McLoughlin went on smoothly, “is the person of this seaman, delivered in chains to me. Would an hour be too short a time?”

Ah, it warms the heart, thought Flare, to see McLoughlin insult the fellow. The Scots have a little of the Irish spirit.

Captain Plummer rose. He had no tolerance for affront, especially deliberate affront.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I advise you to be at the dock in one hour. You will see the culprit punished.” He eyed them one by one and gave a smile of pleasure. “It may interest you to know that since the victim was a Wog, the punishment will be reduced by half. Since he was a pervert, half again.” And he stalked toward the door.

“Captain,” called Flare. Plummer turned his head in his pompous way.

“I have something for you.” Flare stepped forward with his hand extended. Plummer looked at the hand, puzzled.