Sarah Canary

by Karen Joy Fowler

  ‘Who is the Biddy?’ Adelaide asked. Her heart had still not settled back into its usual rhythm. Perhaps it never would. Two more men who wanted Lydia. For what purpose? What was she to do?

  ‘The Biddy. She’s a sloop.’

  ‘A what?’ Adelaide was having trouble hearing him. She thought he had said something rude.

  ‘A sloop. The Biddy!’ he shouted. ‘You have ink on your cheek. Did you know that? It’s a word.’ He moved closer and bent over the gun as if he didn’t even see it, to get closer to her face. ‘It’s a word, but it’s in code.’

  On the other side of the creek, Purdy got to his feet, wiping off his knees. Adelaide pushed the pale man away, swinging around again so that the gun was leveled at Mr Purdy.

  ‘Don’t you move!’ she screamed over the water to him. ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘Are you talking about the Biddy?’ he called back. ‘The Biddy’s the mail sloop. In and out of Port Gamble. I was just on my way to her.’

  ‘When does she leave?’ Adelaide asked the pale man.

  He was still squinting at her face. ‘It’s the word someday. You have the word someday written backward on your cheek.’

  ‘When does she leave?’ Adelaide shouted to Purdy.

  ‘She leaves when I get there.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Adelaide. She took a deep breath to clear her head and calm her heart. ‘All right.’ She moved the barrel of the gun in a repeated semicircular gesture between the pale man and Will Purdy. She was telling the pale man to cross the bridge.

  He was too busy reading her face to notice. ‘Someday what?’ he asked. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘The Alaskan Wild Woman is in that hotel,’ Adelaide shouted. ‘Over there. I want the two of you to cross now. Go stand next to Mr Purdy. Do it as quickly as you can.’ She made the gesture with her gun again, a smaller, more hurried semicircle.

  ‘It’s a message for you,’ the pale man told her insistently. ‘It’s on your cheek. And it’s backwards. You’re supposed to read it in a mirror.’ The Chinese man sidled past with his pinched unhappy face, dragging the pale man along by his sleeve. ‘Don’t you wonder what it means?’ the pale man asked. ‘Yes, Chin. I’m coming. Don’t you wonder what it means, Chin?’ Every time the pale man took a step, the bridge threw the smaller Chinese man a few inches into the air. He clung to the ropes at the side, dancing desperately to keep his balance. When they were both across, Adelaide began using Purdy’s knife to saw through the ropes that held the bridge.

  ‘Wait a second!’ the pale man called back in surprise. ‘We may want to get back.’ The Chinese man spoke to him, said something Adelaide couldn’t hear. ‘But, Chin, she may not even be the right Alaskan Wild Woman. Then we’ll want to get back for sure.’

  ‘You’re making a big mistake here!’ Purdy shouted. ‘The sloop won’t leave without me. When I do get to the shipyard, you’ll still be sitting there, waiting, and sorry to see me again. Trust me for it.’

  ‘You may want to get back,’ the pale man pointed out. ‘You may have left something in the hotel that you need. Did you ever think of that?’

  Adelaide cut the last strands of the knots. Her end of the bridge fell away, landing in the water, dipping underneath, and then rising to the top, riding out its length, but held back finally by the ropes, which still anchored it on the other side.

  The sky was beginning to lighten in the east. Adelaide put her weapons into her coat pockets and ran in the opposite direction, through the trees and toward the bay. Occasionally she saw part of a footprint, the cast of Lydia’s heel in the wet ground. To the best of her recollection, the shipyard was about three quarters of a mile away. Lydia seemed to be heading straight for it.

  Adelaide caught up with Lydia in front of the Washington Mill Company lumberyard. A white seagull flapped through the air above her. Lydia was gazing up at it, her naked neck stretched and exposed. She seemed to be speaking. Adelaide could not hear it, but she saw the movement along Lydia’s throat. The rain had melted but not obliterated the lines of a baseball diamond.

  The sun came up. Adelaide was filled with joy. She stood over the bare patch of ground that marked home plate, her hair wild about her face, her nose and fingers stinging with cold, and imagined she had hit a ball straight out at Lydia, straight out toward third. It touched down in left field, just where Lydia was, just barely fair, before it rolled underneath the pile of logs in the lumberyard and was lost.

  10

  Morning at the Bay View Hotel

  Remorse – is Memory – awake—

  Her Parties all astir—

  A Presence of Departed Acts—

  At window – and at Door—

  Emily Dickinson, 1863

  ‘Would you like some chewing gum?’ Mr Purdy asked.

  Chin turned to look at him. Purdy had taken a handkerchief out of his pocket and was unfolding it awkwardly with his gloved hands. The gum was inside. He held it out to B.J. ‘Thank you,’ said B.J., taking a piece and passing it to Chin. Purdy was already refolding his handkerchief. He opened it again and gave B.J. a second piece. Chin sniffed at the gum, which smelled of pine trees. He bit off a piece. Saliva filled his mouth, but the gum grew harder and harder. Chin chewed it into a small pebble, which he swallowed. The texture was somewhat medicinal and he hoped it might ease the stabbing pain he had in his shoulder from sleeping awkwardly on the sloop and carrying the bedroll. He took another bite, swallowed it, and shifted the bedroll from one side of his back to the other.

  The three men walked together up the path to the Bay View Hotel, Purdy a few steps ahead, Chin just a few steps to the rear. B.J. twisted his head around to talk to Chin as he walked. ‘Oh, well,’ B.J. said around the gum. He was chewing with his mouth open so that Chin could see his teeth. B.J.’s teeth were always a surprise to Chin, white and healthy against his sallow skin. B.J.’s toe hit a fist-sized stone and he stumbled without facing forward again or appearing to notice his own clumsiness in any way. ‘We can worry about getting back later. Someday. At least we’re where we want to be now.’ He was about to walk into a tree. Chin grabbed his arm and pulled him sharply to the left.

  ‘Later,’ Purdy called back to B.J., ‘the creek will drop on its own. It’s tide-fed. When the tide is out, there’s still a creek, but not much of one. We’ll be able to cross without the bridge in a couple of hours. ’Course the Biddy’ll be an hour up the canal by then.’

  ‘I thought you said it wouldn’t go without you,’ B.J. reminded him.

  ‘I lied. Sloops haven’t been used for the mail run for two, three years. The steamer picks up the mail. If Miss Dixon wants to rent the Biddy, she can go to Port Gamble or anywhere else on the canal, unless the captain figures the wind is too high.’

  Purdy slowed their pace as they neared the Bay View, stopping at a bifurcation in the walk. Half of the stones led on to the main door. Half turned right and began a circle around the hotel.

  ‘What’s that?’ said B.J., pointing out a small wooden cross hammered into the mud under one of the trees.

  Purdy moved his gum into one cheek to answer; Chin could see the lump that it made. ‘That marks the spot where William Gassey died.’ He touched his forehead, his chest, and then each of his shoulders with one hand. ‘William was a ticket-of-leave man from Australia, worked at the mill, used to come here drinking when the Cliff House went dry. Nasty creature, really. Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, of course, but there it is. One stormy summer night he’s put away more than a few; he’s one of those men who gets drunk by design instead of by accident. The creek is roaring up over the bank and we’ve all agreed to sit the storm out in the Bay View. No one can get home in that kind of weather. But suddenly William’s all afire, like he’s had a vision. “By God, Blair,” he says to the innkeeper. “I must be the luckiest man alive,” he says. And then he weaves out the door without saying good-bye to anyone and he’s struck by lightning, right there by the tree, right there where the cross is. There are design
s and designs in this world,’ Purdy said, which is what Chin had always thought himself.

  ‘We bowl sometimes when it’s dry in that flat stretch of dirt past the cross.’ Purdy indicated the area with his hand, loudly sucking in the saliva that had collected around his gum. ‘I’m going to build an alley out by the mill this summer. Hire an Indian to stick up tenpins. Do you bowl?’

  ‘I play the violin,’ B.J. answered. ‘Is that story true? The one about William Gassey?’

  ‘May lightning strike me if what I’ve given you is not a true and faithful account of the events of the evening of July 3, 1870. I don’t blame you for doubting me, though. Not a bit. No offense intended, I’m sure, and none taken. If you’re staying in Seabeck and the rain lets up, I could teach you tenpins. Anyone who plays the violin would have the wrist for it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said B.J. His gum chewing grew noisier. He was evidently pleased.

  Purdy turned back to face the hotel, shaking his head. ‘Would you look at the poor old Bay View?’ Chin did so. He saw that the hotel had three chimneys, although smoke rose only from one of them. Chin was very cold. He stared at the smoke longingly.

  ‘It’s not enough that her bridge is out. She’s not got a window left in her frame.’ Purdy seemed to take a certain pride in the fact. He pointed with his finger to each glassless hole, one by one, until despite his words he came to the shut eye of a single intact window whose drapes were drawn. Purdy’s finger stopped at the undamaged glass. ‘Oh, well, there’s your Alaskan Wild Woman,’ he said. ‘Still sleeping the sleep of the innocent.’

  Chin heard a man’s voice above them, somewhere on the second story. ‘Ho-o-w do!’ it said, thick with phlegm and elated. Chin had seldom heard a more unpleasant sound. The gum was heavy in his stomach. Chinese men were rarely safe when white men got drunk and happy together. Even without liquor, groups of the white demons were always much more dangerous than solitary white men. Chin wondered at this. Demons like B.J., who were essentially harmless unless you made them otherwise, had no friends. You found them alone; you dealt with them alone. But the dangerous and cruel demons were always together. The white culture rewarded cruelty with honor and friendship.

  Chin gave up his thoughts of a warm seat by a fire. He knew better than to enter a building where white men were shouting ‘Ho-o-w do!’ He would send B.J. to talk to the owner, just to the owner, nothing too tricky, and he himself would squat and wait for B.J. on the porch in the cold like a Chinaman.

  The main door to the Bay View opened and the bits of frosted glass that remained in its small ornamental pane fluttered and clinked like wind chimes. An Indian girl came out. She stood beside the doorjamb, brushing her hair. She might have been twelve years old or thirteen or fourteen; she was wearing a shift and had no breasts and her skin was as fresh as peeled fruit. She looked to the east and the sunrise. Chin wondered if there were more Indians about than just this girl. Drunken white men, drunken Indians, a solitary Chinese man, the creek up and the bridge out. Through the open doorway, Chin could just see the bodies of men lying on the stairs.

  ‘The bridge has been cut loose,’ Purdy told the girl.

  She had not seen them yet; she stiffened slightly in surprise, and the expression she had turned to the sun was not the expression she had for Purdy or B.J. or Chin. She smiled at them, but this was a calculated smile, like light stretching over a pool and making it shine so you could no longer see through to the rocks and the weeds and the fish. Not really a happy expression, merely an unrevealing one.

  ‘That suffragist cut the ropes on the other side,’ Purdy said. ‘That magnetic doctress. Blair will be so pleased, won’t he? With all his windows gone and the hotel full of drunken lumbermen? Would you like to tell him or should I? It might come sweeter from you.’ The girl turned and reentered the Bay View, walking stiffly, awkward because they were watching her.

  ‘Was that the Alaskan Wild Woman?’ B.J. asked.

  ‘That was Jenny,’ Purdy said. ‘Do you think she went to tell Blair? I think I’d better go tell Blair myself. He’s going to want to know exactly what happened. And the implications.’

  The edge of the sun had appeared over the mountains, but the moon refused to abdicate. It made Chin think of the Dowager Empress and the end of the Regency. Had it happened? Had the grasping big-footed Manchu woman really relinquished the throne? If so, his uncle would be pouring back the tiger whiskey in celebration. How long since Chin had read a Chinese newspaper?

  The Chinese character for bright was a picture just like this of the sun and moon together in the sky. Chin wished he had told Tom this when they spoke about the moon. Perhaps Tom would have been satisfied to hear something he had never heard rather than see something he had never seen. But surely not in the words of men. ‘The earth talks to us,’ Tom had said, and he had understood the owl. But if the world was a dream, then the words of men were only the memories of a dream. The moon grew paler. The wind stirred the dead leaves on the ground and the dying leaves on the trees.

  He followed Purdy to the porch. Beer had been drunk and beer had been spilled; Chin could smell beer even outside the door. Someone was snoring. Someone was dreaming. Chin spoke to B.J. softly so that Purdy wouldn’t hear him telling B.J. what to do. ‘Go and talk to the proprietor,’ he said. ‘This Blair. Ask if the Wild Woman’s manager is named Harold. Describe Harold to him.’ B.J. started to follow Purdy through the open door, but Chin caught him by the sleeve, holding him back.

  ‘Describe Harold to me first,’ he suggested.

  B.J. blinked several times and chewed. ‘A little man with a large mustache.’

  ‘Tell him what kind of mustache,’ said Chin. ‘Show him the . . . the wings.’ Chin was not sure of the word and drew the shape of Harold’s mustache with his fingers beside his own lips. ‘And say that he’s dark. Dark hair, light eyes. And if he asks why you are interested, just tell him you want to see the Alaskan Wild Woman. Nothing more.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better do it yourself,’ B.J. said.

  ‘Just ask if his name is Harold,’ said Chin. ‘And then come back out here. Don’t go up to see Harold yourself. If Harold should appear and you see him before you can talk to Blair, come back out here quickly and tell me. Don’t let Harold see you.’

  ‘I’m not going in.’ B.J. folded his arms decisively. ‘Not all alone. It’s too hard.’

  ‘Not hard,’ Chin said. ‘Forget everything else. Just follow Mr Purdy to Blair and ask if the Alaskan Wild Woman’s manager’s name is Harold. That’s all. Not hard.’

  B.J. dropped his arms to his side. He chewed on his gum. Then he stepped resolutely into the Bay View. He pivoted immediately and stepped back out, pulling the door shut behind him. The door did not shut easily. He had to tug at it. The shattered glass jingled and a triangle broke loose, falling from the door to the porch. ‘There are bodies all over the stairs. It’s a message not to go inside.’

  ‘Those men are sleeping,’ Chin said, ‘because they are drunk. They are so drunk they wouldn’t wake up if you stepped on them. And you won’t step on them, because you won’t be going upstairs at all. You’re just going to find Blair’s office.’

  B.J. sat down on the porch. ‘You go.’

  ‘Who-o-o-ee!’ the voice upstairs shouted. ‘Whoo! Whoo!’

  ‘Please, B.J.,’ said Chin.

  ‘You go.’

  Chin squatted down on the porch beside B.J. He had done astounding things for Sarah Canary. He had taken her to Steilacoom. He had kidnapped her from the hospital. He had gotten on a boat to follow the Alaskan Wild Woman to Seabeck without even being absolutely certain she was Sarah Canary, and he had told himself more than once after his long, bitter, and involuntary voyage from Hong Kong on the Ville de St Louis that he would never board a boat again, never, never, never, unless he was returning to China, a rich man.

  Chin had stopped asking himself why he did all this. The doing had become its own reason. And anyway, so much time had passed now, it w
ould be difficult to go back to his uncle. His uncle must believe he was dead. His uncle had probably written his mother to tell her so. Great rejoicing when he reappeared, of course. Great, great rejoicing. And yet a lot of awkward questions. He had not been gone long enough to have been enchanted. He had made no money and had squandered much of what he had brought with him. His uncle would know just exactly how much. Squandered it pursuing a strange and ugly white woman while his own treasured mother sat neglected and mourning him. And after the great rejoicing, which would be brief, and the awkward questions, which would be long, would come the railroad work, which would be forever.

  ‘You are a free man,’ the Company had said when his contract was fulfilled and they returned it and he tore it in pieces and threw the pieces into the sky, where they danced like little kites, like snow, until they blew away. And so he was, as free as any man who had to eat and keep warm and send money to his parents. Could a man appear to disappear, the same way snow melts into the wind? Could he vanish into the forest around Fort Lewis and, dead to his obligations and responsibilities, walk out somewhere else? Someone else? It seemed to Chin that he could, and this was a tantalizing freedom that frightened even as it dazzled. Chin remembered how he’d stood with Tom, only a few moments before putting the rope around Tom’s neck, and looked out onto the peaks of Mount Rainier. He remembered feeling that a man could lose his soul to those peaks, so dangerous, so beautiful were they. That a man might even want to.

  ‘A ghost took my soul,’ Chin would tell his uncle if he ever saw him again, which might even be true. The ghost was Tom or it was Sarah Canary, seducing him with freedom, which was a thing so much closer to death than Chin had ever realized.

  But however close it was, it was not death, and Chin had not lost sight of this. He would not enter into a hotel full of drunken white demons while the bridge was out. ‘I can’t blame you, B.J.,’ he said cunningly. ‘An old, dirty place like this. Probably filled with fleas.’