And why, Ada asks herself, had Wesley been willing to risk everything as Bradley had done, why had he been willing to have her face a widow’s sorrow?
Obsessively, he speaks of how Bradley died from a gunshot to the abdomen. The hours it took him to die, his fearful groans, his raging thirst, how he begged for water, and how they had had to deny him it because of the nature of his wound. “I have imagined such a death,” he says, voice hushed. “But his agony was unimaginable. His face went grey with it. I did not think a black man’s face could turn the colour of ashes.”
“You must put your mind on other things. Do not let it fix itself there,” she tells him gently, again and again.
And his reply is always the same. “I can’t pluck it free,” he says.
In sleep, he is plagued by nightmares she can’t seem to rouse him from, it’s as if he doesn’t want to return to her, would rather face his gruesome dreams than look her in the face.
One afternoon when she came home from school, she surprised him reading some sort of dossier at the kitchen table, so absorbed in it that he was deaf to her footsteps. When he suddenly sensed her presence, he gave a mortified start, swiftly tucked the dirty bundle of foolscap down on his knees under the table, and sat waiting for her to dip herself a glass of water from the bucket on the counter and leave the room. She knew better than to ask him what he was up to.
Joe is as bewildered and worried by Wesley’s peculiar behaviour as she is. She knows he is concerned that his partner seems to have lost all interest in the ranch, and that a year of work and sweat may be coming to naught. When he comes to visit, McMullen suppresses his usual jocularity; there are long, awkward pauses when they discuss the work that needs to be done before winter comes. On the last such occasion Wesley said, “The journey to Cow Island wore me down a little. But tomorrow I’ll come by – we’ll make a start on hauling grain.”
But tomorrow nothing changes. Each morning when she leaves for school he is still in bed, staring up at the ceiling as if he were watching the progress of a comet overhead. Neither coaxing nor importuning can rouse him.
Then early one Saturday morning as she stands by the bed dressing, she gazes down on him, his arm flung over his eyes as if he is trying to blot out the world, and says, “I know how troubled you are, but I think you would do better, if instead of contemplating Mr. Bradley’s horrid death, you did something to alleviate the misery of his wife and child. He cannot be helped. They can.”
He takes his arm from his eyes, looks at her intently for a moment. “Let us go now,” he says. “Yes, the sooner the better.” Quickly he rises, goes to the dresser, jerks open a drawer. “I left a money pouch here – I meant to settle bills with it in Benton – but then the emergency arrived…”
It is perhaps too early to pay such a visit, the sun is scarcely up, but Ada decides not to point that out, fearing Wesley’s sudden resolve might stall if a delay is suggested. “I will pack them a hamper,” she says, “then make us some breakfast.”
“No, no breakfast. We must go to them directly.”
Standing in the pantry, Ada feels a lilt of relief. She stuffs a ham, jars of preserves, a loaf of bread into a wicker basket.
They set off a little after eight o’clock. A spell of warm weather has arrived. The morning holds the promise of a July day. When they reach town, none of the businesses along Front Street have opened yet; their shutters are down, their blinds drawn. Ada does not understand why Wesley is leading her this way. If he means to get them to the quarter of shanties and cabins where Fort Benton’s Negroes live, this is a circuitous route. When she asks him where he is going, he says, “To the barbershop.”
By then Foster’s Tonsorial Palace is only a few steps away. Wesley stops before it, puts his face to the window, blinkers his eyes with his hands. He gives a peremptory rap to the glass. Shortly, a lock can be heard turning. The door opens; Foster pokes out his head out and inquires tentatively, “Mr. Case?”
“If we may come in,” says Wesley.
Foster nods and they enter the barbershop. It glitters with nickel finishings, bottles of bay rum, unguents, and face balm. Wesley stands in the middle of the floor, hands balled tightly at his sides.
With the utmost reserve Foster says, “I disbelieve you come for a trim, Mr. Case. Not with the lady with you. How can I do you, sir?”
“I wondered – as a close friend of Mr. Bradley’s – would you be good enough to take his family a few things on our behalf?”
Foster moves behind the barber chair as if putting a barricade between himself and Wesley. He is a frail-looking man, extremely dapper in an immaculate striped shirt with red velvet garters at the elbows. His hands on the headrest of the chair make light, caressing passes on the leather. “Maybe you ought to deliver them things your ownself, Mr. Case,” Foster suggests politely.
“I think not,” says Case. “I am reluctant to face Mr. Bradley’s child and widow.” He hesitates. “Due to the circumstances of that day.”
Foster’s fingertips nervously skip about on the headrest of the chair. “Because we done left him behind? There was no help for it, Mr. Case.”
Wesley stands there silent, shaking his head.
Foster turns to Ada. “That’s the way Mr. Case put it at the time, Missus. Left behind. But you see, it was nothing but a body we left. Bradley’s soul had already gone over. But Mr. Case, he was dead set against leaving him. He carried on something terrible. ‘Can’t leave nobody behind!’ That’s what he kept hollering at us. But Mr. Ha#x2019;s horse was kilt dead, and he needed Bradley’s horse to ride himself out of that mess. Mr. Hale dragged Bradley’s poor corpse off his horse where Mr. Case had laid him, flung him to the ground and clumb up in the saddle. And then Mr. Case here, he said he’d pack the corpse out on his own horse, and he slung it up across his saddle, but Major Ilges wouldn’t hear none of it. He said Mr. Case would get us all kilt, trying to pack that damn body out of there. And then Donnelly and one or two of the others laid hands to Mr. Case and held him tight, and Major Ilges pulled Bradley down once more and laid him out on the ground again and –”
“And I gave way,” says Case. “I left him there.”
“Had to, Mr. Case,” says Foster. “The Major was right. If ’n you hadn’t agreed, you wouldn’t be standing alive today before me. Them Indians would have catched you and snuffed the light out of you, too.”
Case passes a hand over his brow. “If you would be so good as to express my condolences to the widow and see she gets these things, I would be much obliged to you, Mr. Foster.” He sets the money pouch on the seat of the barber chair and gestures to Ada to place the basket down beside it.
Foster gives Ada a pleading look. “I wouldn’t left Edmund neither, Missus, but I was thinking they meant for us to go back later, bury Edmund when them Indians was gone. But they was having no part of that. Wouldn’t hear of it. But Mr. Case, he come with me, he come right along when the others wouldn’t. Helped me bury poor Edmund Bradley right and proper.”
“I recall your moving display of sorrow at his death,” remarks Wesley. To Ada, it sounds a brusque, discordant thing to say.
Foster’s face crumples. “Well, I had reason for it. I tole Edmund we coloured men needed to show the white folks we got some sand. I tole him we’d get credit by it if we rode with Mr. Donnelly. I says to him, ‘Edmund, a natural man ought to get up on his hind legs from time to time.’ I pestered and picked at him until I got him kilt.” He appeals to Case. “But Edmund didn’t get no blamed appreciation for riding out with Mr. Donnelly, did he? Them others thought so well of him they was ready to leave him out there in the sun to go high.”
“A damnable business – all of it,” says Wesley, “through and through damnable.”
“Truer words never said.”
In the silence that follows, it gives Ada a fright to catch Wesley staring into the barber’s mirror as if it were a window, as if he cannot see himself there, as if his gaze was boring clear through the b
lindly staring man in the glass to some point hidden from her sight. A little panicked, she reaches out to touch his sleeve. Wesley’s shoulders give a jerk; he gestures awkwardly to the money pouch and hamper posed on the barber chair. “If possible, I’d like to see his wife gets these things today.”
“Yessir, Mr. Case. Before I take one customer.”
“I thank you again.”
When they step out into the street Ada laces her fingers into his. “Poor Mr. Foster,” she says.
“Yes,” he answers. Then, as an afterthought, he turns on her a hesitant, tortured smile that twists her heart. Wesley, it seems, is still trapped somewhere behind the surface of that glass. The attempt at a smile was the best he could do, an appeasing reflection of what he thinks she wants.
Sept. 28, 1877
Fort Benton
Dear Maj. Walsh,
Calico flapping in the breeze, tins of peaches and beans scattered over the hills, black, oily smoke – there’s a picture of my mind right now. A mess and a muddle.
Have given up all pretense I can see anything clearly. Given the state of my head, I’m of no use to you or anyone else. You never wanted to be guided anyhow.
I’ve been drinking some. Maybe it shows.
Don’t know why I bother to write since Nez Perce are said to be threatening the road between here and Fort Walsh, and this is unlikely to be delivered any time soon.
Not long ago, Maj. Ilges received intelligence that Chief Joseph was about to invest the freight station at Cow Island. His command being under strength, he prevailed upon John J. Donnelly to raise a body of citizen volunteers. I joined them. War makes strange bedfellows.
Covered the 120 miles to Cow Island Landing as fast as our horses could carry us. Clerks and soldiers there had withstood seven attacks by Nez Perce during night of 23rd. Indians had raided freight depot. What they could not carry off, they destroyed. Hills were littered with calico bolts, tin goods, etc. Hundreds of sacks of bacon were burning, heavy, black smoke everywhere. The men there told Ilges that a Farmer & Cooper wagon train was scheduled to arrive soon. The Major led us into Cow Creek Canyon to escort them in. Arrived too late. Their wagons were burning, one teamster dead. The rest had hid in a thick stand of willows. Attempted to drive Indians off, but ground not in our favour. They kept us pinned down for many hours under constant fire from hills above canyon. Were lucky to have suffered only one loss of life, Edmund Bradley, coloured man. Died of a gut wound – you know what that means. Long, painful death.
Yours sincerely,
Wesley Case
TWENTY-TWO
WITH A CONVULSIVE JERK of the legs, Case wakes in oppressive heat and silence. His first
thought is, But we are not moving. Why has the train stopped?earches for a carriage window, hoping to see a patch of lightening sky, but finds nothing. Gazing down the length of the railway carriage, he can make out nothing – no soldiers sleeping humped on the floor, listing in the seats, nothing but blackness thick as pitch. He hears an indistinct rumble. Another train transporting militiamen coming up behind them? A scout locomotive edging ahead to ascertain if the track has been sabotaged?
While he slept someone had wrapped him in a blanket. In this insufferable heat? What was the fool thinking? He kicks petulantly at the smothering, clinging warmth.
Ada murmurs a protest in her sleep and he realizes where he is. Lying absolutely still until her breathing once again grows regular and even, he carefully untangles his limbs from the sheets, swings his legs out of bed, and sits waiting for the waves of anxiety to abate, for his heart to slow. Finally he rises, goes to the window, and pulls back the curtains. What he mistook for a train is a low, thick-tongued stammer of thunder accompanied by tremors of sheet lightning. The freak October storm enters the room to keep him company; light blinks intermittently on the walls, and the heavy air is saturated with electricity. Case draws up a chair to the window and sits, elbow propped on the sash, listening to the drum roll of thunder, his mind marching in cadence to it, a brutal, jerky gait that carries him back to that June night eleven years ago, the streets of Toronto echoing with bugles calling out the militia, NCOS hammering fists to doors.
Shortly after midnight, he stumbles down his mother’s staircase to the urgent clatter of a doorknocker and finds Sergeant Jimson on the doorstep. The Sergeant raps out his news in staccato bursts. “Reports that Fenians have crossed the border, Captain. Making for Fort Erie. Orders to muster at Front Street Drill Shed immediate. Colonel said to give you this.” He runs his eyes over the note and learns he has been appointed temporary command of the 2nd Company. Major Lewis is incapacitated due to an ulcerated leg. There is a sudden clutch to the heart, he feels himself break a light sweat standing there barelegged in his nightshirt. Doing his best to sound calm, equal to the task, he inquires if all the other officers of the 2nd have been located and have received their orders to assemble.
“Corporal Phipps couldn’t rouse Lieutenant Wilson, sir.”
“Tell him to go back. Set fire to his house if you have to. We can’t go short two officers.”
The drill shed at Front Street is a confused melee. Sergeants bellowing at rankers, officers bellowing at noncoms, much milling about as scanty equipment and arms are dispensed. No food, canteens, blankets, or bandages available. Weapons that are older than the men, antique Enfield muzzle loaders, ball and powder for them in short supply. A few Spencer repeaters are on hand, just sufficient to arm the 5th Company of the Queen’s Own, only forty cartridges to a man.
The first heat wave of the season and everyone is bundled up in winter uniforms because the commissariat has not yet authorized issue of summer kit. Tunics mapped with sweat, the drill shed hot enough to roast the Christmas goose. And into this bedlam, hours late, a nonchalant Lieutenant Pudge Wilson strolls, commandeers a chair, crosses his legs, and starts to trim his fingernails with a penknife.
But Cae overlooks this studied insouciance, this tardiness, pretends not to notice Pudge neglecting his duties as he bustles about, ensuring that the 2nd receives its share of ammunition, as he worriedly checks and rechecks the company rolls.
At six-thirty that morning the Queen’s Own Rifles, the 13th Battalion, the Caledonian and York Rifle Companies strike out for the harbour where the City of Toronto is waiting to transport them to Port Dalhousie. The streets are packed; astounding numbers have turned out to see them off, mothers, sisters, wives blotting tears with handkerchiefs, brothers, uncles, and fathers looking gravely proud. Politicians and newshounds who had sat up all night in newspaper offices receiving the latest reports telegraphed in have come down to the harbour to loyally applaud. Workmen on their way to jobs are pulling at sleeves and asking what the source of the trouble is, why the alarm? Soon there are patriotic outbursts, shaking of hats in the air, flapping of handkerchiefs, shouts of “Lay into them, boys!” “God Save the Queen” is sung, and like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes – where did they all come from? – a bounty of Union Jacks, tiny ones in the chubby fists of little children, big banners swaying on standards above the heads of the mob, flags the size of tablecloths draping lampposts.
Past the train station they tramp, arms swinging in unison, hobnailed boots cracking on the cobblestones, faces dripping sweat, heads steaming under shakos, the citizens of Toronto huzzahing until they’re hoarse.
They board the steamer in good order and smartly set sail. Off starboard the sun is a bonfire on the horizon; the choppy waters of Lake Ontario stab bleary eyes with reflected sunlight. The troops crowd the ship’s railings for a look at the smoke pluming Toronto, the shoreline slowly receding. A welcome breeze stirs. The sweat dries on their faces as the city dwindles, then is lost from sight. The men drift away from the bulwarks, settle down on deck, lost in thoughts of home and hunger.
No rations whatsoever had been stocked at the drill shed, so most knapsacks sag like empty socks. A lucky few have been provided by far-sighted mothers and wives with hard-boiled eggs, sardines, san
dwiches, bread and cheese, which they share with comrades. A short-lived picnic breaks out on deck. The 8th and 9th Companies of the Queen’s Own, fresh-faced students of Toronto’s University and Trinity Colleges, improvise a game of cricket with a ball of twine and a barrel stave. Some throw their arms over one another’s shoulders, sway side to side singing, “Tramp, tramp, tramp, our boys are marching, / Cheer up, let the Fenians come! / For beneath the Union Jack we’ll drive the rabble back / And we’ll fight for our beloved Canadian home.”
He is scarcely twenty-three years old but these exuberant lads make him feel ancient. The rest of the Queen’s Own are not much older than the university boys, a contingent of spotty-faced clerks, fledgling greengrocers, printers’ devils, drapers’ assistants, boys who have never fired a weapon at anything more menacing than a woodchuck. Looking at them, he experiences the sobering realization that these callow youths are now his responsibility. They are his to lead. And to do this to the best of his ability, he will need the support of Pudge, who is now his second-in-command. Some sort of understanding must be arrived at. After a short search, he find him enthroned on a coil of hawser, belly swelling out of his unbuttoned jacket like a batch of rising bread dough.
“A word, Lieutenant Wilson,” he says, “before we arrive at Port Dalhousie.”
“I trust a cold collation has been prepared to meet us there. If it hasn’t, we must take turns spanking the quartermaster.” Pudge sniffs conspicuously. “Nothing like the smell of marine air to give a man an appetite.”
A Good Man Page 34