The Law of Dreams

by Peter Behrens

  “No.”

  “I come out four years ago with my father and brothers. Taken up farms on the front, they have.”

  “Is it good land?”

  “Good for bears. Did you have a rough cross? They say it’s always rough, so early in the season.”

  “I don’t know, I suppose it was.”

  “Fever aboard?”

  “There was, yes.”

  “They dropped them into the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s the old fellow?”

  “I met him on the ship.”

  “He’s money, he is. Are you going for the states?”

  “For the fur trade. For Rupert’s Land.”

  “What is it? Do they pay wages?”

  “I reckon so. If your people have a farm, why aren’t you with them?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “None I suppose.”

  “I could tell you a dozen different stories,” she said, beating the pillows with her fist, “and most of them would be true. I’ll tell you this. My father, the old pincer, wasn’t the man to leave alone what he could easily take. What he figured was his own. Do you get me?”

  “He was jumping you.”

  “I was nine years old when we come out of Fánaid. Our mother died on the crossing. That was leaving me with three caustic brothers and Father, who is just a big jug-eared dish of a man. They’ve been hacking, chopping, and sawing for seven years up there on the last range, in the township of Rixborough, country of Megantic. You’d barely call it a farm.”

  “What would you call it then?”

  “Sheer Hell is what I’d say. I quit last spring, soon as the roads were fit to travel, and I won’t be going back. I’m for the Boston states. Here, look.”

  Taking a piece of paper from a pocket of her apron, she unfolded it carefully before handing it to him.

  OPERATIVES WANTED

  Young persons of Respectable Character

  seeking Employment at GOOD WAGES

  enquire at the York Manufacturing Co.,

  at Factory Island, BIDDEFORD, MAINE, U.S.A.

  GIRLS & MEN needed

  GOOD WAGES

  He read slowly, parsing each word until he had the sense of it, then he handed it back and watched her fold it and tuck it away in her apron like something precious.

  “They say you can walk there from here. They say you might meet a bear along the road. Are you sure you don’t want your fire lit?”

  “No.”

  As soon as she left, he fell back on the soft, clean bed and lay with hands clasped under his head, staring at the high ceiling, which like everything else in that room was painted white.

  How do men speak of women who have betrayed them? Whom they have put aside or left behind? He tried to imagine that language.

  That little piece. Dodged her.

  She weren’t respectful.

  Oh I dropped that cunt.

  Only a railway wife, man, they count for very little.

  The windows facing the river hung on the wall like silver blocks of light.

  Pulling off his boots, he dropped them on the floor. He had never lived much in rooms. Up the mountain, a cabin had no rooms, nothing private. Nothing solitary, except what was in your head.

  His attic room at the Dragon, Bold Street; he’d felt safe there. For a while. Women fussing, and the scents of butter toast, oranges, and honey. Black Betsy, carefully varnishing his nails.

  I come across on the sugar ship Angel Clare.

  Burnish fading slowly from the windows.

  Life honed to the very edge. Sharpened on the whetstone. Chopping through the days. Working time like it was a sweep of hay.

  Feeling restless, he arose and went back to stand at the window, peering out at the narrow slice of river. He remembered seeing Farmer Carmichael shoot a bird from the sky, a merganser. Wing shattered, flapping on the surface of a little lake, waves of madness rippling across the calm.

  I have eaten too much the world. I am not hungry no more.

  HE KNOCKED on the door of the old man’s room. When there was no answer, he went inside to find Ormsby lying helpless across the great black bed where he had collapsed without removing his coat or his beaver hat, which had rolled onto the floor.

  You could smell fever in the room.

  The baggage was in the box room downstairs except a single trunk carried upstairs and left at the foot of the bed, unopened.

  “Fergus? Is it you, Fergus?” The old man stirred, licking his lips.

  “It is.”

  The eyelids fluttered. Any light was most painful, to a fever.

  “What will you do with yourself?” His voice was papery and thin.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re walking like a ghost, an mhic.”

  An mhic, my man, my fellow, my son.

  The old man licked his lips again. “You’ve had the fever yourself?”

  “I have.”

  “Black fever?”

  “Still here, aren’t I? You’ll come through.”

  “You were young.”

  There was a jug of water and a cup on the washstand by the window. He filled the cup, carried it to the bed. Sitting on the bed, he raised the old man’s head a little. “Here, take a swallow.”

  Most of it spilling down his chin.

  “Old,” the old man whispered, “too old, can’t go the fight.” He gripped Fergus’s wrist with surprising strength. “Don’t let ’em know downstairs! They’ll put me out. Don’t want to lie in the sheds.”

  “All right.”

  When he pulled off the old man’s boots he grumbled and moaned, the delirium of fever starting to bite. Unbuttoning the coat, Fergus found the purse, and his cigar case, and two leather envelopes heavy with money. He unrolled one on the dressing table and studied the rows of glinting gold coins arrayed inside.

  He closed it up again. Stripping off Ormsby’s, he began sponging him with a damp towel. His skin fluttering with heat. Mumbling nonsense, weakly thrashing.

  Quite thin he was.

  He dried Ormsby off and was trying to get him in between the clean, rough sheets when he heard a knock on the door and a girl’s voice “Shall you be wanting tea, sir?”

  He crossed the room to open the door a crack. A servant girl, a different one, stood with a tray.

  “Will your master take something for his tea?”

  “No, he don’t want nothing. He is quite tired from the journey.”

  “Does he want me turning down the bedclothes and making things nice?”

  “No, I’ll see to it, he’s a tired old fellow. He’d likely sleep through until morning if we let him be.”

  “I won’t be disturbing him. Will you take something yourself?”

  “I won’t.” He closed the door and went back to the bed, looking down at the old man.

  Lighting one of Ormsby’s cigars from the lamp, he pulled up a chair next to the bed, and sat down to wait.

  Everything ends in smoke.

  Men are born to get lost, it seems.

  “An mhic.”

  He had been dreaming, and awakened with a start, thinking it was his father, Mícheál, calling him, starting off for the north with a crew of cousins, the barn builders, the wall menders, and summoning Fergus to join him.

  “Daniel.”

  It was the old man gasping his son’s name. The noise as small as the last drop of water falling from a cup, in America, in the middle of night. It was quite dark in the room, and he could smell the fur trader’s fever breath and the sweet, salty scent of his hair pomade.

  “Daniel . . .”

  Fergus leaned over the bed. The odor dense and wicked.

  “Is it really you, Dan?”

  “It is. It’s me.”

  HE SAT up the rest of the night, watching over Ormsby, cooling his brow with wetted cloths. Giving him water when he would take a little.

  Opening the trunk at the foot of the bed,
he looked to see if there was more money, but there wasn’t. Sorting through clothes and linen, blankets and clocks and table silver, he tried on what might be of use, studying reflection in the window glass.

  Outlaw. Bog Boy.

  One of the houghers, come to open a vein.

  Where do they come from, thoughts?

  Like wrens, out of the sky.

  They arrive.

  Noisy, hungry, perfectly themselves.

  What about Luke? You don’t think of that now.

  THE OLD man lasted through the night but his face was quite dark, his tongue thick and stiff. He hadn’t much strength, really. There wasn’t a lot of flesh on him.

  “Hey mister,” Fergus said quietly. “I’m going to take your money.”

  Ormsby was twisting and grunting on the bed and didn’t hear, of course.

  He stopped breathing as soon as first light showed in the window.

  “Give me your hand, so.” Fergus picked the dead man’s hand up from the sheet, held it. Surprised how heavy it was, how warm. That wouldn’t last.

  What do you remember now? he thought, looking at the old man. Everything?

  EARLY MORNING in busy, noisy, narrow streets crowded with horses hauling loads of silver hay, last year’s cut, to the hay market.

  He wore a clean linen shirt, a fine suit of clothes that fit him pretty well, and his own beaver hat, well brushed. Ormsby’s boots sounded crisply on pavement.

  He carried a hundred gold sovereigns and another suit of clothes wrapped in the blanket roll slung from his shoulder. In his coat pocket, the purse with more sovereigns, and shillings, pennies, Yankee dollars, and French louis.

  The weight of solid money kept you in the world; Molly had known this.

  Farther along Notre Dame Street, past merchants’ coffeehouses, a morning girl stepped out of the blue shadows of an alley. “Come along, sojer, try a bit for a shilling?”

  Small white face, tartness of voice. Her feet bare on the cobblestones. “Come, follow me, ma chroi.”

  Perhaps you had to bang life just to know you were among the living.

  You needed to work yourself back inside.

  He let her take him by the hand and lead him into the alley between a livery stable and a church.

  “Now let’s see your ready.”

  He started to unbutton his trousers, but his fingers couldn’t locate the unfamiliar buttons.

  “Not your jerry!” the girl said. “Your money, sojer! Show your money first.”

  He fished a shilling out of Ormsby’s purse.

  “There it is. That’s nice. Now give it over.”

  He handed her the coin.

  “You’re just over, ain’t you, sojer? Where from?”

  “Mountain of Cappaghabaun, near of Scariff.”

  She quickly unbuttoned his trousers, fishing out his prick with her fingers. “There you are, sojer.”

  Crouching she took him in her mouth. His prick responded, stiffening.

  As she worked him, a set of bells began ringing Angelus from the church. He heard the shuffling of feet in stalls and smelled the horses in the livery stable. She was licking and rubbing him vigorously with her fist but it was no use, he could feel his prick weakening and shrinking. He pushed her away.

  “What’s wrong with you?” The girl, annoyed, gathered her shawl, scowling at him.

  “Nothing.” He began buttoning his trousers.

  “I’ll keep your shilling, I will. I give you a good blow, sojer.”

  “Keep it.”

  “Not my fault your old jerry don’t like it.”

  He shook his head. “Keep it.”

  “For sixpence, I’ll give you another go.”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself.” The girl flipped the shilling in the air and caught it. He watched her run back out to the street.

  Everything is strangers.

  AT THE hay market Canada farmers stood by their carts, wearing tasseled nightcaps, hands in pockets of long woolen coats, pipes jabbed in their mouths. Everything was for sale, the carts and wagons loaded with hay, with firewood, turnips, onions, maple sugar, crocks and bottles of syrup. Cattle, ducks, and chickens. Stone crocks of lard, butter. Barrels of salt pork. Enough food to make you jealous of the world. Sacks of wheat and wheat flour and Indian corn. Sacks of last year’s apples.

  Fifty-weights of moist black tobacco. Old clothes and furniture. Boots arranged on the pavement as if a company of soldiers were standing in them. A powerful stench of coffee, leaking from somewhere.

  The world was composite, various, and got along very well without you. It could sew you up with a couple of stones then drop you into the ocean. It would not remember your name.

  THERE WERE horses for sale at the market and at livery stables around the square. Dray horses. Plow horses and pullers. Singles, pairs, teams. A few carriage horses, not many. He liked the little black ones called Canadiens, smallish black cobs with deep chests and shaggy manes.

  The manner of buying and selling was no different from what he had observed at the fairs at Scariff. Men trying to get the best of each other, then spitting their palms and slapping hands to seal a bargain.

  Something in the loneliness of horses, their garish solitude; something he understood.

  Mares and early foals. Saddle mounts, young and old, some quite broken down. Long-legged animals with plenty of snort and clatter, and horses shaggy from winter. Springy little trotters, and cart horses galled from harness, gaunt and dry-skinned, showing too many bones. Ladies’ horses and gentlemen’s mounts. Nothing so big as an Irish hunter. Horses penned too long on wet ground, with troubled feet. Glossy coats and gorgeous manes, polished bridles. Ponies rough and ragged and cheap as those the gypsies drove out from Chester.

  Length of bone was significant when you were trying to judge a horse. Teeth mattered, a horse’s life story being in its mouth. The eyes. How they take the halter, walking them out, pacing.

  By the end of the morning he had purchased four strong little black animals, Canadiens, along with bridles, a leather string line, a couple of sacks of grain to feed, and a saddle.

  He asked the liveryman who had sold him his fourth horse, a hardy little black with a cold manner and iron feet, where he might find the road for the states.

  “Go out to Windmill Point and take a ferry across the river. If you can walk these beauties to Vermont you’ll get a price for them, I suppose,” the man said. “They like a black horse down there.”

  WHILE HE was saddling his best horse, he noticed a boy loitering across the road, watching, with a hungry look.

  “Come over here, you.”

  The boy approached, eyes narrowed.

  “Are you willing to work?”

  “I am, so.”

  “I’ll pay you a shilling to help me walk these beauties out to Windmill Point.”

  “Where you taking them, mister?”

  “South. What’s your name? ”

  The boy shook his head. Fergus repeated the question in Irish.

  “Don’t have a name, mister.”

  “Where are you from, then?”

  “I’m out of Ireland.”

  Fergus looked at him hard.

  “I can help you so, mister.”

  Fergus stepped up, swung a leg over his saddle horse, and looked down at the boy.

  “I am very well with the horses.” The boy was squinting in the sun.

  “Then you may put yourself aboard one, and lead another.”

  The boy considered the little string. “Does it matter which I ride, mister?”

  “Throw a leg over anyone you like.”

  Taking the lead in his hand, the nameless boy threw himself up lightly on the second-best animal, a clean young mare with a white star on her head. Fergus watched him gather the reins in one hand.

  Let him know you’re up there.

  Don’t slump like a plowboy.

  They walked the horses through the noisy streets, then out past the fi
elds scattered with huts and shebangs, approaching the point and the wide, breezy river.

  In the field beyond the fever sheds, yesterday’s trenches had been filled and humped with soil. A pair of workmen were setting new whitewashed crosses every few feet. Knocking them in quickly, using the pans of their spades.

  The long ridges of fresh earth looked exactly like the ridges of the lazy-beds where he had planted his potatoes on the slope of Cappaghabaun.

  The nameless boy seemed to understand the handling of horses, how calm and steadiness was everything to them, all they wanted of you. He looked a little like Murty Larry, only younger.

  Or was it just himself that was older?

  A steamer was blaring in, emigrants jammed along her rails. He could hear them screaming with glee.

  Joy to the new country.

  Her whistle gave a shriek as she bumped the quay.

  Concerned that his horses might fluster in the rush, he signaled the boy to stop, then swung down from the saddle. And watched the people spilling onto the quay with their baggage. Hoping to see her figure — small, solitary, quick — in that crowd.

  She could have cajoled or bought her way off Laramie and out of quarantine.

  She knew how to get what she wanted.

  He did not see her, but the passengers had come off in such an eager panic — all at once, like finches bursting off a bush — that he could not be sure.

  He counted a dozen fever cases carried down the iron gangway.

  After the last passengers had disembarked, firemen started up the gangway carrying heaves of firewood on their backs in canvas slings, the logs bucked to three-foot lengths, split yellow.

  He scanned the faces on the quay, still hoping to see her.

  The whistle gave a shout, and at that moment he noticed three bundled corpses, lying on the main deck, by the starboard rail.

  Firemen were trudging up and down the iron gangway, boots booming, chanting in their Canadian tongue.

  He could just feel the company of his dead.

  What to say to them?

  Your dead want you to answer for something.

  He caught the boy’s eye. “Watch over my beauties. Don’t let ’em flutter.”

  Spilling a little feed in front of each animal, he left them munching and crossed the quay. Dodging firemen, he ran up the gangway and stepped onto the wet wooden deck with its litter of orange peels, old blankets, and scraps of newspapers.