The Law of Dreams
Page 37
Deckhands were coiling lines. The master was nowhere in sight. A pair of mechanics were slushing buckets of grease on the iron machinery that turned the paddle wheel. He could hear wood being slung in the hold below.
The dead were in canvas shrouds sewn up with coarse sailors’ thread. He had come aboard to find out if she were among them, but now, standing over them, he had no wish to open any of the shrouds.
Your dead want an answer.
He understood then that he would never lay eyes on her again. She would have nothing more to do with who he was, where he was going, or who he would become. For the rest of his life, whenever he thought of her, he would insist to himself that she was still alive, one among his cohort, an old woman who had kept up with his years and remained in the tribe of the living, but she would have no hand on his destiny. He hardly had a hand on it himself, and just then it seemed to amount to little more than a string of half-broken horses, an instinct to keep moving, and a destination that was hardly more than a phrase to him.
When he stepped back onto the quay he saw the nameless boy had led the horses over to the ferry landing, where they were standing quite easy.
The boy raised his arm, pointing. Looking out, Fergus saw the little steam ferry thrashing its way across from the south shore.
Your dead want an answer and all you have is memory and the road.
“Are you after a good line of work?” he asked the boy.
“What is it, mister?”
“I want a hand, a steady hand, to help me move these beauties. We’re going along for the Boston states. Pay of three Yankee dollars per week, grub provided. Are you my man?”
The boy nodded. “I am.”
So Fergus spat in his palm, and the nameless boy spat in his, and they slapped their hands to settle the thing.
PETER BEHRENS’ first novel, The Law of Dreams, won Canada’s oldest and most prestigious book prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, for fiction. Behrens was a Writing Fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and held a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He is also the author of Night Driving, a collection of stories.
Behrens was born in Montreal and lives on the coast of Maine with his wife and son.
About the Publisher
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”