To All Appearances a Lady

by Marilyn Bowering

  There was a pause during which Jimmy examined the disconsolate figure before him. “Let’s change the subject, Mr. Haack,” he said, kindly, “let’s speak of my interests and not yours. Now how much do you think a pound of opium is worth in this city right now?”

  “About ten dollars,” said Robert.

  Jimmy nodded. “The duty on the American side is also ten dollars. Thus if all were as it should be it should cost about twenty dollars a pound across the border in Port Townsend.”

  Haack nodded agreement.

  “The trouble is,” said Jimmy, “you can get all the opium you want at the Port Townsend auction for fifteen dollars a pound, duty paid. It’s not worth the trouble to smuggle it. And they put you in jail, you know, if you get caught.” Jimmy grimaced, and Haack looked sympathetic.

  “I’m saying, if you’ve been listening,” said Jimmy very quietly, “that it’s not worth it if you have to pay for it in the first place.” He looked meaningfully at Robert.

  Haack rubbed his foot across Charlie’s back for reassurance. “I don’t know that I catch your drift,” he said.

  “Look,” said Jimmy, “we know that most of the opium made in this town crosses the border one way or another. I have a friend, a half-breed, who’s tried running it from here to San Juan Island. It is received there and stored until an opportune time, when it is placed on vessels engaged in carrying lumber. It’s not much of a trick to get away with it if a little common sense is used.”

  “Customs are on to that,” said Robert, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “The Americans check every vessel that goes in or out of San Juan Island.”

  “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” said Jimmy. “That’s my philosophy. You think about it, Mr. Haack. To be blunt, you’d have to get the opium for nothing and have a foolproof place to keep it until you could get rid of it.

  “My time is gone now. I’m getting on in life, and I’ve had my run at it. But I’d be glad to help a younger man get started.” He sat for a moment in thought. “If you had some place where the goods could sit, maybe for months, you could slip them over the border little by little. Customs would lose interest: there’s too much going over for them to keep track of where it’s all come from. It would work. I know it.”

  He smiled and snapped his braces. “Where there’s a will, my friend Robert! Don’t you forget it.”

  There was a feeling of companionship between the two men as they sat, stomachs full and appetites satisfied, while Jimmy paid the bill. They smiled at each other.

  But Charlie, operating within his own parameters, seemed to hold his breath. Flea-bitten, mangy, suspicious, a rubbish heap of a dog, but a friend to Haack when everyone else had left, the hackles slowly rose on Charlie’s neck.

  “The great trouble,” said Jimmy placidly while cleaning his teeth with a toothpick, “is that men who smuggle will get to quarrelling among themselves. That’s why you’ve got to know who you’re working with. Two weeks ago, for instance, a large shipment on the way to Portland had to be divided up before it got there amongst those employed to carry it. None of them would let the others out of sight so long as they had the cargo with them.

  “No,” he said, “my day is done. It’s up to you younger ones.” He slapped Haack on the shoulder as he stood up. “I’d like to think of you as a son,” he said. “I’d like to do what I could to help.”

  At which point Charlie, who had barked and snapped at Jimmy the moment Jimmy had entered the Johnson Street ravine to ask for Robert’s whereabouts, scrambled to his feet as well and bit Jimmy’s ankle.

  Jimmy shrieked, then kicked Charlie in the belly with all his strength. Charlie fell, rolled onto his back and lay still while a little brown liquid dribbled out of the corners of his mouth.

  Which brought Haack to his senses. For he hated viciousness. And he loved his dog. For there are few loyalties as profound as that between dog and master. It is more than a contract, it is a vocation, each taking upon himself the well-being of the other. As Charlie had fended for Haack throughout the winter, keeping him warm with his body, protecting him, sharing his bones, now it was Robert’s turn to stand up for Charlie.

  He said, “I’ll say thank you for the breakfast, Mr. Carroll, but don’t you ever touch my dog again or I’ll kill you.”

  Jimmy, clutching his wounded leg, bent double in pain, his eyes red with rage, said, “We’ll see, Mr. Haack. We’ll see, or I’ll be hanged. I won’t forget this.” He hobbled from the table.

  Robert stroked Charlie’s belly until Charlie wheezed, coughed up more liquid and struggled to his feet.

  It was a near escape. For both of them.

  —

  “It reminds me,” says Fan, as we prepare to go round the outside of Solander Island a mile southwest of Cape Cook, for it is too dangerous to pass between the island and the Brooks Peninsula, “of when I went fishing.”

  “You went fishing, Fan!” I say, surprised, looking at her long, slim hands and trying to imagine them baiting a hook. Fan and worms? Or Fan gaffing a grilse then clubbing it to death? It simply did not fit.

  “The trouble with you, Robert Lam, she complains, is that you have no imagination. You think everyone is like you, always the same. No wonder I never liked to tell you things.”

  “I’m sorry, Fan,” I apologize. “It’s just that you’re so—” I search for an acceptable word “—feminine.”

  She checks my expression to see how I mean it. Satisfied that I’m not pulling her leg, she goes on. “It is not your fault you have little experience with women, Robert Lam,” she says kindly. “I know that things have not always worked out for you. Women are different from men. They do not stay at one job like a man, they do many things. They learn about life in all its aspects. Sing Yuen knew that. But then he was my husband, and you are a bachelor.”

  “Tell me about the fishing, Fan,” I say, refraining from comment.

  “It was very long ago,” she says, “right after Sing Yuen had died and you had gone away. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I went out with a friend on his boat.”

  “Just like that,” I say.

  “Yes,” she replies. “He was a commercial fisherman. He knew I needed to get away, so he took me with him. He had known Sing Yuen and me for many years. It was only for a few days. We were fishing for halibut.”

  “Halibut!” I say, although I can’t think why this should surprise me particularly.

  “Yes,” she continues. “It is not a fish I eat myself—at least not since then. You may have noticed.”

  I think about it. It’s true. In fact I can’t remember Fan eating anything much but vegetables for years.

  “When you catch these fish,” she says, “you must be careful what you do. You have to calm them, stroke them on their bellies to soothe them. Otherwise they can be dangerous—even lying on the deck of a boat they can hurt you. They have strong muscles, and you cannot kill them outright. They take many hours to die.”

  I nod. I think I have heard this before from one of my colleagues. He is the only other pilot I know who has his own boat.

  “There is something else you must do,” she says. “You must place them on the deck so that their bellies are uppermost. This is not just so that you can stroke them, as I said, but so they cannot watch what else you do. Their eyes are on the dark side of their bodies. If you place them so they can see you as you are cleaning other fish, they will try to escape. They push themselves up from the deck. They cry out to each other. It is not a pleasant sight or a pleasant sound, Robert Lam, I assure you. They know what is being done to them, and they do not like it. They don’t want to die like that.”

  “And so, Fan?” I say.

  “So, Robert Lam? What do you mean?”

  “Why do you tell me this now? What is the point of it?”

  She looks at me as if I am an idiot. “One thing leads to another, Robert Lam, in this as in all else. If you do not know that a fish has feelings, you can eat him. But onc
e you see his anguish it is different. You cannot forget what you know, except at your peril. Your spirit will not stand for it.”

  “Fishermen manage, Fan,” I say.

  “Oh!” she says in anger, “you are truly hopeless. I don’t know why I bother. You do not see anything at all, you are so stupid!”

  And she stomps out of the pilothouse.

  But what have I done, I ask myself, except be what I am? If I don’t ask questions how will I know? How will I remedy my ignorance?

  Solander Island: rocky, treeless, desolate, storm-swept. As bleak as, and not unlike, Cape Horn; and home to hundreds of seabirds, including the tufted puffin; and sea lions; and with a light on top of its three-hundred-foot height. We are just over halfway home.

  —

  Something had happened to the weather. Overnight, almost, it had changed to spring. The trees were in bud, birds sang from the gutters, shoots pushed up through the mud. Doors were opened, front steps swept, windows washed. Even in the depths of the Johnson Street ravine the effects could be felt. Charlie lifted his head and sniffed, then set to grooming his coat. Robert Haack unbundled himself from the piles of rags in which he slept. He took off his hat, scratched his head, blinked.

  “Let’s go, Charlie,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. What are we doing here, anyway?”

  He packed up their few belongings. They went into the street and sampled the air. Then, putting one foot in front of the other, or two and two, in the instance of Charlie, they walked away from the town that had brought them nothing but trouble.

  They travelled east then northeast, past the market gardens and the peddlers, past the brothels on the frontiers of Blanchard Street, across rain-flooded fields in which ducks paddled, past milk cows and swine and knots of baaing sheep on the brink of lambing, all the way to the farms at Cedar Hill, then further. Charlie ran in circles, nose to the ground, then he dug up turnips and buried them, then abandoned these to chase some horses.

  They were running away and enjoying it. Waving at children who espied them from windows, shouting at wagoners: oh, the urge to keep moving once it takes hold! It won’t let you go, it pushes you forward, it pumps up the blood, loosens the muscles, rejuvenates the bones.

  (“For heaven’s sake, Robert Lam,” says Fan, who has entered the pilothouse, “keep an eye on your chart. There are reefs around here.”

  “I know, Fan. I am watching out. It’s just that I feel good. I want to get going.”

  “You are going,” she says scornfully. “You’ve been going all along but hadn’t the sense to know it. Don’t feel too good,” she warns crushingly, “I don’t think you’re built for it.”)

  Robert Haack and Charlie walked, ran, skipped, and ambled down paths and through meadows. Where bees were beginning to move and ants to venture afield; where lilies and trillium bloomed, and beneath the soil roots took hold. Travellers who arrived at the foot of Mount Douglas, one of the hills Haack had viewed from his Chatham Street house, and began to ascend it. A feature, a summit, rock-ribbed and ancient.

  (“Robert Louis,” says Fan impatiently. “Get on with the story.”)

  Robert threw stones and sticks of wood as they climbed, and Charlie fetched them; and the higher they ascended, the more distance they put between themselves and the town, the happier they felt. Since the whole complex of trouble—the gambling debt, the Association and Smiling Jimmy, even Haack’s thwarted affections for India—needed buildings of brick, wood, and stone to support it. As did his humiliation. And so shame was left behind, and with it poverty and disgrace. For these, as we know, are endemic to place.

  Up and up they went. A deer trail wound through the red cedars and hemlock. The upper slopes were covered in Douglas fir. The trail dipped through swamps clotted with skunk cabbage and fringed with spindly alders; it edged along cliffs and scrawled across boulders. It carried them out of the world of their worries, and at last, at the very height of the little mountain, it brought them to a cluster of oak trees. Where ravens croaked their laughter as Charlie, nearly crazed with the infinity of scents kaleidoscoping through his brain, rushed back and forth wildly.

  At the edge of a granite platform they looked eastwards to the ocean and the islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland. James Island, Sidney Island, D’Arcy Island near the border, and San Juan Island just over the border with the Americans, had emerged from a cloud bank and were treading water in the distance.

  Seeing San Juan Island brought the first unpleasant memory, since they had arrived, of Smiling Jimmy and his assault (for so Haack now saw it) on his conscience—for it was from there, Smiling Jimmy had said, that his friend had smuggled opium; but it wasn’t enough to spoil things. That world was behind them.

  Victoria, to the southwest, could stay lost within its muddy swath of smoke. It was none of their concern. There seemed no reason, none at all, that they should ever have to return to that olive-grey horizon.

  Falling and cutting logs. Collecting moss and mud with which to chink holes, cutting poles to weave a roof, laying and tying down sod. Smoothing the floor, making chairs, a bench and table. Lighting fires, hauling water, snaring rabbits and pheasant for food, stalking deer, digging for edible roots, noting the berry patches. Carpentering, cooking, planning, constructing. While the weather continued to improve and Haack’s clothes, rusty with wear, acquired the dignity of camouflage.

  They were a team, Haack and his dog. Charlie found a cache of flour left down the mountain by a squatter. Haack picked burrs and ticks from Charlie’s coat. They were free, self-sufficient. They could do what they wanted. And all their troubles were over.

  Except that what we are is also what we’ve been before, and a change in surroundings doesn’t alter that fact (though it helps). We cannot revise our biology, for instance, and we cannot order up the dreams we want. And perhaps that is God overseeing the line that we travel. It is God keeping us honest.

  Or so I was taught at the Chinese Christian School for Boys. And so, for a time, I believed.

  —

  Whale sound. Calling one to another as they swim away from the hunters. Travelling in families. Not lonely, like the boatmen are. Not part of a process in which magnificence is killed and dragged to shore: then stripped and cut and boiled. Not killers. And it is a funny thing, when I think of it, that the whale hunt ground to a halt during the war and was only started up thereafter. As if, as the doctor at Coal Harbour implied, we had come to the end of our instincts as we stood at the edge of the world, facing outwards, west, to where the last of the whales were. Facing what we had done in Japan with the atom bomb. Facing a mirror in which we had to look or perish.

  Ah, me. It’s not as if we waste them, Fan. We use up every scrap. For margarine, and perfume, and dog meat. It’s not as if there’s nothing to learn: the skeleton the doctor showed me had four-foot-long limbs. It was going somewhere, or coming from somewhere. It had a story to tell.

  And it’s not as if the men weren’t heroes, just like we were in the war: one killed three humpbacks, basking together, with one harpoon. And one of the skippers piloted his boat into Cachalot Station—where we are going—without looking where he was headed, by listening to his whistle and looking at his watch. He didn’t have to see; he could navigate by timing. That was something, Fan, there was achievement for you.

  I wait, but Fan makes no comment. She stands nearby, feet planted wide to take the rise and fall of the swell. We are going shoreward, through Checkleset Bay and the Barrier Islands, through Gay Passage between the two Bunsbys: where there are rocks visible and submerged, so many dangers that I dare not think of them singly; then hugging the shore of Vancouver Island near Malksope Point, running a course towards St. Paul’s dome, then into Nicolaye Channel and Kyuquot Channel, and thus to our anchorage.

  “Not so fast, Robert Lam,” says my stepmother. We are facing a rocky, broken landscape marked by high mountains. Colonies of sea lions plunge from
the reefy islands we pass as the engine of the Rose disturbs them.

  Mist rising as the afternoon fails. Midway between Rugged and Chatchannel points just entering Kyuquot Channel, in fact. The beacon on Rugged Point flashing its warning.

  “Not so fast, Robert Lam!” Fan repeats, crossly. “Why are you hurrying? You are like a tourist who spends all his money travelling, then when he gets to his destination is too tired to look around him and stays inside his hotel. You have seen nothing of this place, its wildlife, its beauties.”

  “I have to watch the charts, Fan. I can’t afford to get too interested.”

  She sniffs. “There are plenty of places we could have tied up earlier. Now we have to go to an anchorage that’s known for its winds. What kind of planning is that? What kind of a pilot are you?”

  “A tired one, Fan. I can’t seem to keep my eyes open, yet we’ve got to keep going.” It’s a feeling I’ve had before. Not just when I blacked out at the top of the island, but on the job. As if I didn’t know where the ship I was piloting was supposed to go, but had to guide her in anyway. As if all I’d learned in my life, in my profession, was, after all, guesswork. As if no one was in control. I didn’t think such thoughts for long, of course. I couldn’t have and stayed with the work. But it bothered me more than I cared to admit that I was that vulnerable. And what if something had gone wrong? For the waters were full of hazards. What if, in my care, a ship went down?

  “Wake up, Robert Lam!” Fan is shouting in my ear. “Wake up. You must not fall asleep.”

  “I’m sorry, Fan, I just can’t seem to stay awake.” I start to nod off, to dream the dream that I want to dream. But she pinches my arm.

  “Silly old fool,” she shouts. “It is not a time to be weak. You are a grown man. You can do better than that.”

  “Really, Fan,” I protest, “I can’t. I’ve known all along I wasn’t up to it.”

  She pinches and pinches and pinches.