Sarah Canary

by Karen Joy Fowler

  ‘Louis Bergevain,’ said B.J. He took the keys from the Chinaman’s unresisting fingers. He opened the gate and dropped the keys on the walkway. ‘We’d better run,’ said B.J. ‘Can you make her run?’

  But Sarah Canary was already gone. She favored her right shoe slightly, like a dog that has picked up a thorn. Even so, B.J. had a hard time keeping up with her. Her black skirts fluttered ahead of him. She ran eastward, in and out of the shadows of trees, and away from the town of Steilacoom. B.J. was panting and had to stop often. Whenever he stopped he looked back, but no one was following, except the Chinaman in his awkward boots, his bedroll in his arms. The asylum gate remained open and empty behind them for as long as B.J. could see it.

  iii

  In 1870, an excessively introverted six-year-old boy named Benjamin MacDonald disappeared from his family’s farm near Winnipeg. He was found by his older brother two months later, emerging from a hole in the ground, filthy and thin, but unexpectedly alive. He had been fed and cared for by a female badger who followed him home, watched his tearful reunion with his parents somewhat protectively, and moved into his bedroom.

  The experience left Benjamin with a sort of ambidexterity. He could function quite well on all fours as a badger, but he was a more successful human as well. Prior to this experience, his shyness had been so pronounced, his parents feared he was mentally retarded. Now he was companionable and outspoken.

  In 1871, Champion Ira A. Paine and Captain A. H. Bogardus shot a match of one hundred birds each at the Long Island Pigeon-Shooting Club. Henry Bergh, president and founder of the SPCA, objected to the event. Why sacrifice a living creature to mere marksmanship? he asked. Were people aware that the birds were often tortured before they were released – stuck with pins or blinded with turpentine and cayenne pepper to make them whirl around and around before the gun? He was accused of sickly sentimentality. Roosevelt’s Citizen and Round Table said Bergh was ‘the best intentioned and least practical man in the community. The idea of cruelty in field sports has long been exploded, and now it is admitted that no persons are more tender in protecting and preserving game that they pursue, and small birds that they do not, than sportsmen.’

  In 1872, an aquarium for the study and preservation of marine life was built in Brighton, opened to the public, and named the Crystal Palace. Octopuses were admired, dolphins adored. Southport was seized by a sudden rage for the baby alligators sold in the aquarium gift shop. The ladies in Brighton let them sleep on the parlor hearth like puppies, fed them table scraps, and it was absolutely unfashionable to be seen on the promenade without one.

  The Victorians studied nature through the lens of morality. What is God’s purpose for animals? they asked themselves. Are animals good? Are some animals good and some not? Geese, for example, but not tigers? Earwigs, who were argued to be tender mothers, and pigeons, who were monogamous and missed their mates, but not foxes or carnivorous plants? Why would God create animals that were not good?

  Are animals happy? they wondered. In George Johnston’s book, Introduction to Conchology, he says of oysters ‘in due season, love visits even these phlegmatic things, when icy bosoms feel the secret fire,’ but others in his field had doubts, the happiness of oysters being so hard to ascertain.

  Despite such concern and controversy, the result for the animal seems to have been curiously invariable. Benjamin MacDonald’s badger mother was shot and killed by a hunter in the MacDonalds’ front yard. Champion Ira A. Paine won his match by eighty-eight pigeons to Bogardus’s eighty-five. And the great advantage of baby alligators, as Frank Buckland pointed out, was that when they died, usually within a few weeks of purchase, the pet could be stuffed, gilt, and put on a hat for an ornament.

  ‘I have just now killed a Large New Falcon, yes positively a new species of Hawk,’ Audubon exulted in a letter to Dr Richard Harlan. ‘. . . I will skin it!!!’

  In 1873, the word ecology (spelled oecology) appeared in print for the first time.

  5

  The Story of Su Tung-P’o

  We like March

  His Shoes are Purple—

  He is new and high—

  Makes he Mud for Dog and Peddler,

  Makes he Forests dry.

  Emily Dickinson, 1872

  Nature was everywhere Chin looked. He was trapped with no knife in an oecology of Douglas fir and hemlock. A dead squirrel lay beside a boulder on the path, its tail stiffened in a final gesture of alarm. Its body had become a village for ants, who settled in thickly, building roads over its back, bridges and homes in its cavernous eyes. Chin stopped, staring for a moment until the ants blurred into black lines that tightened and loosened and tightened over the squirrel. ‘Honorable ant,’ said Chin. ‘Unselfish ant. You build a dream on a dream.’ The trees might have said this same thing to the railway workers. The stones might have said this same thing to the transient trees. Chin looked upward, following the line of a trunk past the small isolated mistakes of lower branches into the full opening of higher ones and beyond, into the sky. The sudden movement of his head made him dizzy and the sky went black. He stumbled over his next step.

  He was a young man and his physical condition was very good. He had worked the rivers as a miner; he had driven steel. He could put in ten hard hours and he could do it on very little food. But in the past two days he had eaten almost nothing and thrown part of that up again; he had sustained a nasty head wound; he had killed a man and he had kidnapped a woman. He was tired. He told B.J. it was time to slow down. There were Indians before them and Indians behind. What did it matter how quickly they got to the nowhere they were going? Sarah Canary was so far ahead, he could no longer see her. B.J. responded with an ambiguous wave.

  Chin shifted his bedroll from one side of his body to the other, wishing he had two of them. With two, weight could be distributed evenly across the shoulders. Especially if you had baskets and a pole. Your balance was better. And, also, if he had two, then three people would not have to share one blanket when night came.

  ‘B.J.!’ Chin called out again softly. ‘Wait for me. Wait there for me.’

  B.J. turned around, smiling. ‘It’s sunny!’ he shouted back to Chin. His voice rang and echoed in the stillness. Anyone could hear him. ‘I smell moss. I smell a stream. It’s never going to rain again!’ B.J. brushed his limp, colorless hair back from his forehead and stood still inside a patch of yellow light. Closing his eyes, he extended his arms out from his sides, palms up. He began to turn slowly like a top. The light made his face even paler; it shone like a small moon as it spun by Chin. This was the color of lunacy. Chin had seen this color before. The Chinese faded in this same way when they lost their minds. Probably even the Indians became this bleached, bloodless color. Maybe even the black demons, the Negroes.

  He walked slowly up the path toward B.J. ‘I am hoping,’ he said, catching one of B.J.’s hands with a clap to stop him spinning, ‘that you have a suggestion as to where we can go now. Someplace where we can spend a night inside. I have the only blanket between us. I have the only coat.’

  ‘You can’t be certain they’re yours, all the same.’ B.J. was cheerful and matter-of-fact. ‘Just because you brought them. You learn that when you’ve been in a hospital as long as I have. Any time you start to think you own something, you should remember. Someone can always take it away from you.’ He hid his right hand behind his own back suddenly. ‘Then it’s theirs,’ he said. He laughed. ‘Not that I would. Take your blanket, I mean. Though if it were my blanket, I’d share it. But Sarah Canary doesn’t care. She’s got no scruples. She’s crazy.’ His voice dropped to a whisper as he looked from left to right for Sarah Canary, who was nowhere. ‘You probably shouldn’t let Sarah Canary even see that you have a blanket,’ he suggested. ‘You don’t tell her. I won’t tell her.’

  ‘B.J.,’ said Chin tiredly. ‘Do you know someplace we can go tonight? Someplace we can be safe and inside?’

  ‘No.’

  Chin stared at B.J., w
ho smiled more broadly. His back teeth were stained with something greenish. Boxty, Chin supposed. Boiled boxty. If Chin had stayed on at the asylum, he would have tried steaming it. Or frying it quickly in very little oil. Cooking food in this manner intensified the color. Chin imagined rows of inmates sitting down to the brilliant green of stir-fried boxty. ‘Where did you come from before the hospital?’ he asked.

  ‘Squak.’ B.J. said the word without moving his lips. ‘Squak, Squak. We’re going in the wrong direction. We couldn’t get there tonight anyway.’

  ‘We couldn’t get there tonight anyway,’ Chin agreed. He knew Squak. There were lots of Indians in Squak. Hop-pickers for the German farmers. Wrong season, of course. They were probably somewhere else now. They could be anywhere. A soft sound might have been the wind through a hundred leaves if it wasn’t a hundred voices whispering behind them on the path.

  He jumped slightly when B.J. spoke. ‘Sarah Canary is happy to be outside. She’s talking to the birds.’ B.J. stood looking ahead of them, up the incline through the trees. Chin tried to follow his gaze. He couldn’t find Sarah Canary’s figure anywhere, just trees and trees and more trees. A sparrow dipped through the branches of one, circled Chin’s head, and went north. It was an omen, but Chin wasn’t sure if it boded good or ill. To see a sparrow walking was good luck. Chin had only seen them hop. To have a wild goose land in your courtyard was good luck. The year he left for Golden Mountain, their domesticated goose had joined the wild ones overhead and never come back. The geese were flying in formation that day; they wrote the character for man and took it east across the sky. It had made his mother cry with fear for him and for her own old age without him. Very bad luck. He thought of Tom’s owl. Very bad luck.

  ‘She’s waiting for us,’ B.J. said. ‘Maybe she knows where she’s going. Maybe she knows a place we can stay.’ He walked away and Chin followed, shifting the roll to his other, stronger shoulder again. It threw his weight to the side, making him stumble and hop. He was filled with self-pity. Poor little bird with one wing. Very bad luck, little bird.

  B.J. continued to look up. Chin watched B.J.’s back and then his heels and then looked down at his own feet. When a journey has no destination, progress can only be measured by counting steps.

  The path went down and then up and then down. The tree shadows shortened and shortened and disappeared. A stream appeared at their left, parallel to the path, masking the sounds of the two men walking with its own running commentary. The earth talks to us, but we don’t speak its language, Tom had told Chin. Chin listened harder. Fallen tree here, the stream said. Rocks. More rocks.

  B.J.’s voice was almost as incessant. Chin had not seen Sarah Canary since they left the asylum, but B.J., walking ahead, gave him regular reports on Sarah Canary’s activities. ‘She’s picking up leaves now,’ B.J. said. ‘She looks happy.’ Chin counted steps. The path ceased to be a path and became the ghost of a path. They stayed beside the stream. Chin stepped over a puddle. He stepped over a rock. He saw Sarah Canary’s heel-print in the crushed leaves of a fern. ‘She’s leaning against a tree and looking up at the sun,’ said B.J. ‘She’s hugging herself like she’s cold.’ The fir needles beneath Chin’s feet were bound together at the tops like miniature wok brushes. Chin walked in and out of the sunlight. He noticed that the pine smell was sharpest in the shadows. He noticed he could smell wet rocks in the stream.

  ‘She has a stick in her mouth.

  ‘She’s throwing a stone at a tree.

  ‘She’s stopped to . . . urinate.’ B.J.’s tone was hushed. He turned back, facing Chin with his eyes closed. ‘Into the creek. Don’t look.’ They waited a few moments and then began to walk again. The trail sloped downward and the trunks of the trees bent at identical angles, keeping the branches upright. Hemlock crowded out the fir, long cones abundant at the ends of the branches, the top shoots curving over in an arc of new green. Chin saw the scars of an old fire.

  ‘She’s caught a frog!’ B.J. said. ‘She’s getting smaller. Are we going down now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chin.

  ‘Oh, well, that explains it. I mean, she would then, wouldn’t she? Get shorter.’

  ‘I don’t see her at all,’ said Chin.

  ‘She’s just ahead. She’s putting flowers in her hair. Phlox. Pink phlox.’

  ‘Where is she getting the flowers?’ Chin asked. He saw no flowers. It was the wrong season for flowers. B.J. did not answer.

  The absence of a path led to a narrow gap between two rounded stones. The stream turned sharply to the left. B.J. chose the passageway. His shoulders were almost too wide for him to walk through squarely, and Chin had to hold the bedroll in front of his body. It was slippery underfoot; between the stones and the trees, no sunlight penetrated, so the ground was perpetually damp. As Chin passed through, the stones around him shuddered. A ripple of earth lifted Chin slightly and then set him down. He heard a tree crack. ‘Did you feel that?’ Chin asked B.J.

  ‘Feel what?’

  The passageway ended in the air. Chin stepped out beside B.J., who stood staring over the edge of the cliff. Chin’s next step would take him out onto the treetops. A cold wind blew the loose hair from his queue back off his face. ‘Where did Sarah Canary go?’ Chin asked.

  B.J. shrugged. ‘I’m hungry.’ His hands and knees were shaking. ‘I think it’s time for my medication. I feel kind of trembly.’

  ‘Where is Sarah Canary?’ said Chin.

  ‘Really. I feel sick.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’ Chin sat on the heels of his heavy mining boots in the small square of ground they shared and opened the bedroll. He had taken some of the asylum bread; he removed it now from his blanket. B.J. sank beside him, holding his legs with his hands to try to keep them still. Chin watched him. You’re an opium addict, Chin did not say. I see what kind of medication they had you on. ‘You’re just tired. You probably haven’t walked for a while.’ A second tree cracked behind them. ‘I don’t think we should sit on this ledge.’ Chin gathered up his belongings. ‘Just go back through the passage. Then we’ll eat. You’ll feel better.’

  Once B.J. had mentioned food, Chin became ravenous. He broke the bread with his fingernails. It was hard and had retained its shape. He tore off a piece for B.J., puncturing the crust and wedging his thumbs inside. The second piece came away easier. Chin went to the stream and bent over it, drinking water from his cupped hands to help him swallow the bread. He drank until he began to worry about stomach cramps. Later he noticed how tasteless and odorless the bread was. He noticed how much chewing was required. He noticed how wide B.J. opened his mouth for each bite and how loudly he chewed. He remembered with a start that he had lost Sarah Canary. He should have called to her. How could they follow when the path was no longer a path? Why hadn’t he called to her hours ago? The bread in Chin’s stomach turned as hard as the bread in his hand.

  Coward, he accused himself. He had not called because she had been so far ahead, he would have needed to shout, and he was afraid that someone else might hear. He had been prudent and now she was lost. Or he was. And everything she could have brought him was lost.

  Such a small decision, not to call to her. It had come to Chin ready-made. He had not thought about it at all.

  He folded his arms and told B.J. a story of despair. ‘In Penglai there is a statue of Su Tung-p’o. He was a poet in the Sung dynasty. One day, the eight Immortals appeared to him at the Marble Bridge disguised as eight blind beggars. He followed them to the pavilion of Shelters from the Wind and fed them food from his own hands. It was a great feast. There was duck and monkey brains and thousand-year eggs.’ Chin’s tongue coated with saliva. He broke off another ragged piece of bread and offered it to B.J.

  ‘Maybe they only looked like thousand-year eggs,’ B.J. suggested.

  ‘Then one by one, the eight beggars leapt off the cliff above the sea. “Leap out with us,” the last one said. Su Tung-p’o looked over the edge. He saw the eight beggars each on
a lotus throne. There was a ninth throne, which was empty. But below the thrones was a three-hundred-foot drop into the sea.’

  ‘Jump,’ B.J. encouraged Su Tung-p’o. ‘Jump!’

  Tears came to Chin’s eyes. ‘Would you jump?’ he asked. ‘Would you really jump?’

  ‘No,’ said B.J. ‘It would be crazy. Wouldn’t it? Unless it only looked like three hundred feet and was really a lot less. A lot less.’

  ‘I wouldn’t jump,’ Chin admitted. He remembered how, when he’d removed the chair, Tom’s boots had taken their last walk several feet above the ground. He thought again of the Chinese miners herded into the air by Indians. No illusion of thrones then. No leaps, no choice, just the unavoidable indifferent rocks of fate. Someday Chin would be pushed over that cliff. And who could say this was not what he deserved? How many mistakes could he expect Sarah Canary to forgive him? Assuming she really was an immortal, which Chin didn’t, in fact, believe anymore. Not that he believed otherwise, exactly. He allowed himself to occupy the narrow ledge of belieflessness. The tears disappeared back into Chin’s eyes without falling. ‘Su Tung-p’o didn’t jump. He was prudent. He was afraid of losing everything. How many people are offered a lotus throne? He waited too long. The Immortals disappeared and he kept on waiting. He thought they would come back and give him another chance. The statue is of him waiting. I have never actually seen it,’ Chin said. He redid the bedroll, saving the small stone of bread that was left, wrapping it up in the blanket.

  ‘I heard a story like that once,’ B.J. said. ‘Only instead of a poet it was a princess, and instead of eight Immortals it was seven swans, and instead of having to jump off a cliff she had to be silent for twelve years, and instead of immortality it was love she wanted. Except for that, it was the same story.’