All Those Drawn to Me
Christian Petersen
stories
Caitlin Press
Copyright ©2011 Christian Petersen
First print edition ©2010 by Caitlin Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].
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Text and cover design by Pamela Cambiazo.
Cover photo by Vici Johnstone.
Epub by Kathleen Fraser.
Printed in Canada
Caitlin Press Inc. acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishers Tax Credit.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Petersen, Christian All those drawn to me / Christian Petersen.
Short stories. ISBN 978-1-894759-67-0
I. Title.
PS8581.E83A75 2010 C813.54 C2010-904460-6
For Mom and Dad
Give me a horse and a truck
A half-ton of luck
And I’ll be halfway there
— Tom Salley, “Barntop Rooster”
Paddle away
Leave your troubles behind you
Paddle away
To the distant shore
— Murray Boal, “Paddle Away”
Aurora
All Those Drawn to Me
Horse from Persia
Tents of Flame
Caretaker
Laketown Breakdown
Tires & Repair
Nine Pound Lake
Two Sundays at Soda Creek
Acknowledgements
Aurora
The fire started in Barry & Adler’s Fashion Saloon, on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 16, 1868; by the chill wind of midnight the greater part of the boom town of Barkerville was blown ash and glowing embers. Details of the cause of the blaze were never revealed, exactly, but it is believed to have begun in the midst of a frisky backroom tussle between an unknown man and a “hurdy-gurdy” gal. This kindles the imagination. Apparently only one eyewitness description of the fire was written, that by Frederick Dally, who was a photographer, and a man with a visual memory. It is interesting that he begins his account with mention of a spectacular display of northern lights that occurred the evening of the fifteenth, the night preceding the disaster.
the girls with feathery eyes and long legs who pranced to the tinkle of coins and who pressed rouge like punctuation marks into their cheeks.
— Florence McNeil, Building Up
September 4, 1868
The still peak of the day’s warmth awakened Anneke, and though she kept hugging sleep with her eyes closed, with a blind thrust she slid the top sheet from her sweaty back. She rolled onto her side, raising one knee to prop the weight of her large white body. Salty droplets escaped from underneath her arm, seeping into the wet fold beneath her breasts, and tracing tiny arcs of light across her skin where her ribs submerged with each breath expelled. When she opened her eyes, for a moment they retained the innocent green of Friesian fields — but she awoke in a distant, much different territory. Sadly she faced the dry timber walls of the tiny room, the side table cluttered with toiletries and coloured stones she had collected, the small window which was not square, and the limp beige burlap curtain.
She had dreamt of her favourite half-wild pasture way at the outskirts of Oofterend, of the flowered knoll from which just the brick steeple of the village church was visible. And there lay Karl-Maria, the traveller boy from Bohemia, in his coarse linen shirt and wool trousers, wooden shoes cast off and overturned like skiffs in the clover surf, his hair short, bright black, his wide smooth lips gently consuming a green stem, and his own dreams bounding sunlit in those grey coltish eyes.
“Anneke, schoonheid?”
“Ja?”
“Hmmm?”
“Ja, hmmm,” they roll together, “hmmm …”
Her neck cradles in his hand and they sink as one thing in sweet waves of May green heat. She feels the grass between her untouched thighs, and then, then the warmer, tender blades of his fingers parting the grass. Half-frightened, gently seeking, so young, so present to each other.
It was said among the miners that Annie was the girl with the lucky gold-flake hair, and how they crowded the smoky Fashion Saloon every evening, each man scheming greedily to claim her time.
Now Anneke sat up on the edge of the narrow bed and felt new lines of sweat fall like soiled tassels on her skin, and the stinging rash which had reddened her. It seemed unusually quiet below on the street, a static afternoon, still enough that she heard the feeble clip-clop of hooves and the approach of a single cart. The floorboards creaked beneath her bare feet as she stepped to the window.
The mule was soaked blue with sweat, thirstily scuffing its dark hooves up the crooked street, while the big man sat straight and stern on the seat of the cart, wearing a stovepipe hat, black beard, dusty dress coat and a preacher’s collar. It was the still middle of the day, with only the slow, faint clank of picks working the creekside claims. Entering town, the stranger felt the grasping of curious citizens’ eyes, heard footsteps halt along the boardwalk, caught the swift drift of their attention. Broadside on the cart they read his sign:
Reverend Rudyard Calevack
FIRST UNIVERSALIST CONGREGATION
(Tongues, Pyrotechnics, Salvation)
“Faith Remedy” 6 oz./$1.00
The summer of ’68 was the sluggish tail end of the boom. Now that it was September, more and more often the miners had it in mind to head south before the freeze. Just a few more days they panted, as if, with the very next swing of the pick, they might yet open the brilliant seam at the centre of their fantasies. So madly they kept shovelling gravel, watching the rainbow of wet stones rattle over the grizzly, through the sluice, sometimes only for the hell of it. The stream was muddied by their efforts and tailings piled up as they made their rut in the earth.
The Reverend’s own work might have commenced at any one of a dozen establishments. There was a log trough in front of the Take Heart Tavern, and it was there that the tuckered mule determined to pull up for a drink. “Okay, whoa,” said the Reverend, after the fact, and then swung down his boots with dubious authority, muttering under his breath at long-eared Nahum. Right here, this was as far as he’d been from Kentucky, but he had a hunch he was finally approaching whatever it was that he’d always been after.
Across the street W.D. Moses stepped out of his barbershop wearing a hair-flecked apron. Quite a collection of folks had stopped on the boardwalk, and quietly they studied the newcomer. He stood in the street like a towering scarecrow, seemingly oblivious to their stares — but he did not rub his rump, much as he was aching to. He did nobly slap at the dust on his coat, lift his considerable hat and comb back his lank black hair with open fingers.
Going around behind the cart, reaching into the warm hollow shadow of its crowded bed, to himself he recited, “How is the gold become — how is it — how is the gold — dim! — How is the most fine gold changed! — and, hmmm, wonder if there’s any place to get bratwurst and sauerkraut in this town.” Reaching way in behind the seat Calevack grasped his hefty, hidebound Bible. Instantly he fe
lt the Fire, the Word, the archaic language and the fleshly denial that had aged him, yet, Hallelujah! With the Book firmly in his fist, he went up the tavern steps in two high, righteous strides. And it was then that everyone watching him widened their eyes, gave their heads a good shake. Surely it had not been, they could not have seen — like ripped ragged sock-tops surmounting his boots — blue flames — up from beneath his wide oily belt, out from the front of his black coat and raspy wool trousers — what? — spears of livid rooted orange fire? Ducking his hat he elbowed through the iniquitous bat-wing doors.
From her second-storey window on Back Street, a fifty-yard view, Anneke could not trust what she seemed to have seen. A trick of the light, she thought, it must have been. Yet she held onto the tall dark appearance of the traveller. Even at a distance she felt she recognized his eagerness, how it denied fatigue, or tried to, how it dragged his body forward, no doubt after some foolish male dream. It stirred her memory. Out of her own dreams she felt a tear form, threw down her hairbrush, swore sharply in the dry vacant space of her room.
1858 – 1869
From China to Ireland a mixed horde of men had hurriedly replied to the call of gold. They clambered up the trail laden with their provisions: rice and beans, rifles, blades and manuals on mining, secret maps purchased from strangers in Prague or Philadelphia, and rare daguerreotypes of certain loved ones left behind. They staked and dug, and largely wasted their strength. Day after day. And eventually, coyly, the evening would sidle up beside their starving hearts and whisper delicious threats, and it was then that dusk drove them madder than gold-dusty visions had. There were absurd diversions, wrist-wrestling tourneys, captured bears and boars in plank theatres, any brand of carry-on to vent their lust. Many among them, on any afternoon, might have stood up to a grizzly with just a shovel, yet they were dreadfully shy of fleeting female shadows, and petrified to face their own desires. But liquor loosened them, let all their want together.
“Oooh, ah Annie, Annie, Annie ah!!”
September 5, 1868
Summer mist lingered, limbs and fingers straining to gently retain the touch, the sleepy pulse of Sweet Creek. And the very next day, before the mist had cleared, Reverend Rudyard Calevack unlimbered himself from the bachelor bed of his cart and curtly bade Nahum the mule good day. Then he filed his axe.
A crude swath of slope surrounded Barkerville, long emptied of all firewood, and this extended up along the creek to the outpost of Richfield. So, axe in hand, Calevack had to climb a good way up the mountain to find poles to erect his revival tent. He was not as spry as a goat, and he stopped fairly regularly to regain his wind. Then, by turning his sweaty, writhen highbrow he beheld the town below him, and a great lonesome consternation filled his chest, and he loosened his wool shirt.
That first day the Cariboo Sentinel carried this advertisement:
Pray Thee Repent!
Living Proof of the Fire of Zion
Tomorrow, Sabbath Morning Sermon
FIRST UNIVERSALIST services daily 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Rev. Calevack’s Canvas Temple, top of the street
“Faith Remedy” 6 oz./$1.00
They danced at night in dresses light,
Frae late until the early, O!
But oh! their hearts were hard as flint,
Which vexed the laddies sairly, O!
— James Anderson, Sawneys Letters
Twenty-five past six p.m., September 15, 1868
“Alright!” relented Mr. Plimpton, the exasperated man who tried to manage the affairs of the saloon. “Take two hours, but mind you return or the men will get into unpleasant tempers.”
For several days Anneke had been pleading for an evening off work in order to attend Reverend Calevack’s service. He had been in town a little more than a week, and there were many fantastic rumours circulating. The big girl lunged up the plank stairs to her room, fumbling at the buttons of her coral bodice before she even had her door shut.
In a more demure dress she slipped out the back door of Barry & Adler’s, surprised by the blue briskness of the air at dusk, which she rarely could enjoy. She tugged her shawl closer, stepping into the alley, into the moonlight, which spilt around her feet like cold milk. A furry hunger scratched in the garbage behind the saloon. There were sharp smells of roasting moose meat and woodsmoke, coal oil burning, emptied liquor barrels tossed outside. Rough cedar shakes glowed silver, orange sparks spit from the stovepipes, then a door swung open, half-lit, and harsh laughter stumbled outside, followed faintly by the jouncy tinkle of piano music. Anneke caught the whiff of urine, and from a wall’s dark lee a man’s eyes lurched after her. She quickened her step then, away from the town’s shaggy, bawdy life.
At the top of the street the Reverend’s tent was pitched, and appeared from out of the dark like a ship adrift with slack sails. Lamps glowed hopefully inside. Old Nahum played the role of lazy sentry.
May 6, 1866
Schoonheid, the sunlight is humid, here now
the air pure in the grass, touching our faces,
becomes the warmth of my care for you,
in our hurried nest of grass and wild blossoms
humming with honeybees,
what urgent sensations, you caress
this moment.
— Karl-Maria Thurn, Oofterend, 1866
Half past six p.m., September 15, 1868
With his charred-pipe hat on the Reverend was seven feet tall. He stepped in through a slash in the front wall and in three swinging strides placed himself squarely behind his makeshift pulpit. His black brows arched above his eyes, those eyes that seemed to prey upon the congregation, staring down to seek the scurry of guilt or madly hopping doubt. He had a beard and a bent-nail nose. Without a word he set down his Bible and briefly bowed his head. Then he turned and strode to the door of the tent, glimpsed the moon in a violet sky, looked for latecomers, quickly ran his fingers through his lank hair. There were still stirrings in the ragged assembly. The Reverend gave them a moment, checked his silver pocket watch in the palm of his big hand. Then he wheeled so that his arms and coattails whirled in the lamplight, and he grasped the pulpit and swung his gaze across the startled faces. He wore the countenance of a furious old eagle.
“How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of the street!” He pointed with his long arm, his voice gusting like the north wind, subsiding just a moment, shrewdly gauging the effect of these words. Then strong but calmly, “That, my friends, is from the Book of Lamentations, and I suggest to all this evening that it is a passage instructive to each of us.”
Thus commenced the sermon, for the miners and packers, the backslidden, the bored, Buddhists or Anglicans come to compare. This “First Universalism,” rumours had it, arose right from the inferno of troubled human spirit. Being camped in the context of the Cariboo, naturally Reverend Calevack alluded to the dire fortunes of other boom towns, Gomorrah, Ninevah and Virginia City for instance.
“All founded on greed!” he pounded his fist. “All wayward, rife with sin, led astray and to ruin by coarseness and common idolatry!” His voice swooped to a whisper, “Good citizens of Barkerville, look about you.”
Throats cleared in the little crowd, positions shifted, fingers were fidgety. The Anglicans exchanged hurried glances. For the Reverend was a man seething with a Spirit that scorched and wracked his surroundings. Gaping in wonder they watched as it burst in sharp curls from his boot-tops, out from around his belt, flashed above his collar as garlands of flame. It was his work. He diligently burned with intolerant rage, sundered the air with his arms, stomped back and forth at the front of the tent. (As an old Episcopalian once told him — the humble approach sold like cat crap.)
But though he had crossed a continent chasing his Vision, and though he had armoured himself with the Fire of Scripture, there were times when Rudyard was simply a lonely man. How many nights along the trail had he lain in the cold
bed of his rickety cart, with just his chipped mug of Faith, the distant Moon and the snoring mule for company?
In mid-sentence he lost his thoughts when a young woman wearing a green shawl entered the tent. Jumping Jonah, that Other Power! What’s next now — twenty-three years in the ministry — Merciful Lord.
Quarter to seven p.m., September 15, 1868
Anneke made her way along the canvas wall to the back of the tent and took a seat on the last bench. She blushed for being late, reading irritation and judgment in the townsfolks’ eyes. She felt the attention of the Reverend too, though in a different sense, one she puzzled over with her neck bowed for a good while.
When she lifted her head she leaned sideways, peered between the backs to gain a better view of the Reverend. She was struck again with a queer familiarity. It was partly how he spoke, his desperate eagerness, partly too his black hair perhaps, the silver glint in his eyes. Soaring back within herself she watched the motion of his mouth and jaws. And likely it was only she who cared to see behind the flaming exterior, behind the Vision to the beating heart. She listened to his words, quickly tracing them backwards through the tone of fire to the soul they rose from, and between the inflexible lines of his sermon, she could hear the simpler, softer ballad of the man.
The Reverend had been in town ten days, and despite his combustible energy, any more converts seemed hard to come by. At the end of the service, just one old prospector shuffled forward for his refill of Faith. Then the tent was empty, save for Anneke, who was waiting in the shadows. Calevack stood very still a moment, gazing at the luminous pages of Zephania, then he shut his Bible and began collecting the hymnals.
“Rev-er-end?” she whispered, now moving forward.
“Wha’?!” he gasped, then slumped against the centre post. “Heavens, you surprised me, child. Ah …”
She calmly touched his arm. They gathered the songbooks together.
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