Sarah Canary

by Karen Joy Fowler

  ‘That’s a lie,’ said B.J. ‘I was the last man up the stairs. I’ll tell them Chin didn’t stab you.’

  ‘Very convincingly, too,’ said Harold. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘They’ll believe me,’ B.J. told him calmly. ‘It’s not like it was Chin’s own chopstick.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Chin’s voice was as flat as a white man’s.

  ‘I want to know where Sarah Canary is. I’m going to stop her. She has to be stopped. Don’t try to stop me. Stop protecting her.’ Harold licked his fingers and used them to smooth his mustache.

  ‘This is code,’ B.J., told Chin in a whisper. ‘This is the way they talk on the telegraph.’

  ‘You worship her,’ Harold said penetratingly.

  ‘Stop,’ B.J. suggested.

  ‘Stop,’ said Harold. ‘Tell me where she is or I’ll shout for Blair.’ He opened his mouth.

  ‘Stop,’ said B.J.

  ‘She left with another woman,’ Chin told Harold. It was a betrayal, but what could he do? If this was another test, designed by the immortals, then it was a test too hard for him. His situation was exactly as Harold described it. What point was there in hanging Tom if he himself was only to hang later? ‘Miss Dixon. Miss Dixon was asking about the sloop B.J. and I came in on. It’s called the Biddy. I think she’s gone to Port Gamble on it. I suppose Sarah Canary is with her. I don’t know where they’ll go next. Really, I don’t.’ He kept his eyes down. He was hiding nothing, but the truth is no servant to man. You can’t make someone believe you just by telling the truth any more than you can make the truth false just by not believing it. ‘Really, I don’t,’ Chin said again. He remembered suddenly that white demons showed their truthfulness by looking at each other’s eyes. He forced himself to look at Harold’s face. He focused on the tip of Harold’s nose, looked up at Harold’s eyes once, quickly, but couldn’t sustain it and dropped his gaze to the wide wings of Harold’s mustache. Harold had obviously gone mad. Chin’s hands were shaking and he hid them in his coat sleeves.

  ‘Well, that makes sense,’ said Harold thoughtfully. ‘That she would leave with another woman. That’s straight from Carmilla. I suppose they struck up a rather passionate friendship?’ Harold closed his eyes, tipped his flask to vertical, and emptied it into his mouth. ‘She made me hit her,’ he said. ‘Did I tell you that?’

  Of course, Chin had hit her, too. That was why he was so eager to prevent anyone else from hitting her. Why he had removed her from the asylum when he had seen another woman hit. And then Harold had taken her and struck her anyway. Chin surrendered himself to shame.

  ‘She aroused unnatural feelings in me,’ Harold said. ‘She wouldn’t stop.’ He capped the flask, pocketed it. ‘I just hope I’m not too late.’

  One of the men further down the stairs stirred suddenly. He sat up. ‘Good God, Blair,’ he said. ‘You’ve forgotten to fill my glass.’ He closed his eyes and slumped sideways again.

  Harold turned to him and then turned back to Chin. ‘Give me the chopstick.’ He took it, smiling, sheathed it in the pocket of his coat. ‘Good fortune,’ he said, like a blessing. ‘Long life,’ he said, like a curse. He moved the plate of bread out of his way and put his foot in its place on the stair. His second foot hovered over the bloody pool; he could stretch it no farther and finally withdrew it again to the top step. ‘Well,’ he said. He put his first leg over the railing, swinging around so that he faced Chin and the upstairs hall, seated as if on a horse. Then he slid down, his face receding from them. The railing turned at the landing and they saw his profile slipping away.

  ‘He’s getting smaller,’ B.J. remarked. ‘Do you see that?’

  Harold disappeared from view. They heard a thump at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Would you like some breakfast?’ Blair’s voice floated upward.

  Harold answered, words Chin could not make out.

  ‘Have you heard that your Alaskan Wild Woman is gone?’ Blair asked. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry. It seems Miss Adelaide Dixon is to blame.’

  Another unintelligible response.

  ‘But you don’t have your bag,’ Blair pointed out.

  ‘The window,’ Chin told B.J. as he pushed back past him. He hurried through Sarah Canary’s room and out onto the roof. A tree grew at the roofs edge. It would have been easy to climb down if Chin’s boots had not been so large. His foot slipped out entirely once, leaving the boot wedged by the toes in the joint between a branch and the trunk. Chin had to sit on the branch to pull the boot free. He put it back on his foot, and it fell off again when he hung from the last branch by his hands, dropping like a ripe apple when Chin swung out and down.

  Will Purdy was standing before him on the walk. He held out one hand, palm up as though he were checking for rain. ‘You’d think the Bay View didn’t have stairs,’ he said. Chin said nothing. What could he say? He stood on his one booted foot and thought that at least there was no sign of Harold. B.J. landed beside him.

  ‘I don’t suppose you paid Blair for breakfast?’ Purdy suggested.

  There was no way Chin could go back inside. There was no time to let B.J. handle this. ‘We could pay you,’ he said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. ‘You could give the money to Blair.’

  Purdy regarded him for a moment and then spoke to B.J. ‘It was a big breakfast,’ he said. ‘Won’t be cheap.’

  ‘A lot of eggs,’ B.J. agreed cheerfully.

  Simply getting away from the Bay View would not be enough. Chin needed to get out of Seabeck and he had only a few coins left. He was forced to bargain. He spoke to B.J. in a low tone, but calculated for Purdy to hear. ‘We can’t spend a lot on breakfast. We won’t have the money for more boat trips.’

  ‘How much money do you have?’ Purdy asked B.J., who looked to Chin.

  ‘Enough for boat tickets and a small breakfast,’ said Chin. ‘Nothing more.’

  Purdy thought for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you what. I figure the creek might have dropped now, enough for us to cross. You pay me for the breakfast, the big breakfast, and I’ll help you hire a hyas canim. An Indian canoe. That would be cheaper than the steamer and you might just catch the Biddy. Assuming that’s what you want to do.’ His hand was out.

  Chin dropped his money into it and went to retrieve his boot.

  The creek had fallen dramatically but still came to Chin’s knees in the middle, and then, just when he expected it to drop again, he stepped into a hole that, even walking on his toes as he was, sent the water alarmingly high up his legs. It reached his thighs but, much to his relief, went no higher. Purdy splashed straight across, leaning to the right against the current and passing Chin, who, being smaller and lighter, found it hard to keep his feet. Chin held on to B.J.’s arm and the two of them made a crooked crossing, scrambling up the bank slightly downstream. Water ran from Chin’s pants and spilled out of the tops of his boots. His feet were soaked. Chin’s teeth began to click together.

  He followed Purdy through a stand of trees, up a hill, down a hill, up a hill, grateful for the constant motion. At last they passed the Washington Mill Company lumberyard. The bay glittered behind it, crystalline, like the scenes that grew inside certain kinds of egg-shaped stones.

  Purdy stopped at a shanty, a building made of scrap lumber from the mill that slanted so far to one side, it might have just been something the tides left, except that it was placed too high. A small stretch of grass separated the shanty from the beach, and there was dirt, too, where someone had just turned the grass, preparatory to putting in a spring garden. Purdy chose a spot for the three of them, in the sun and out of the wind. Chin stood behind B.J. and tried not to draw attention to himself by shaking with cold. His pants had dried and they chafed him with salt when he walked or shivered, stiff as the sails of a boat. Inside his boots, his feet were as wet as ever.

  ‘Sam!’ Purdy called out. ‘Sam Clams?’

  The door to the shanty was a hanging blanket, which whipped about the empty space in the wind. An Ind
ian came out from behind it, holding it to one side in his hand. ‘Klaxta o’coke?’ he asked. He was missing one of his wolf teeth and his legs were bowed.

  ‘We want a hyas canim,’ Purdy told him. ‘We want to catch the Biddy. You come and paddle. Delate hi-hu chickeman.’

  ‘No,’ said the Indian. ‘You take the canoe. Buy the canoe. Pay me chickerman. But I’m not going. Too much wind.’

  ‘Mika wake tickery momak?’

  ‘Delate halo. Boston man wants cultus coolley in my canim. Boston man delate hyas pilton. Boston man can paddle his own canoe.’

  ‘He’ll sell us the canoe,’ Purdy translated for B.J. ‘But he won’t rent it and he won’t paddle it. He’s being very insulting. He called me a hyas pilton. A big fool.’ He shrugged. ‘Indians. Nothing you can do. You just have to live with them.’

  ‘Do you?’ asked B.J., suddenly interested.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Do you live with Indians?’

  ‘Not right with them,’ said Purdy.

  ‘Oh,’ said B.J., turning back to Sam. The interest had faded from his voice. ‘I thought you said you had to.’

  ‘When did the Biddy go out?’ Purdy asked Sam.

  ‘Fifteen minutes ago. No more. Take the little canoe.’ Sam pointed down to the beach, where a small canoe was lodged on its bottom in the sand between two larger canoes, right at the waterline. As he gestured, he lost his grip on the blanket. It whipped about the doorway. B.J. gasped. Sam grabbed for it again, securing it in his fist.

  ‘He says we can have the little canoe,’ Purdy translated. ‘He says the Biddy went out fifteen minutes ago.’ He turned back to Sam. ‘Isn’t this canoe kind of small for the canal? I want the Chinook canim. The wind is too high for us to take the little one.’

  ‘Are you coming with us?’ Chin asked Purdy. He tried to decide if this would be good news or bad. In the distance, seagulls called to each other over the water.

  ‘Well,’ Purdy said. ‘Now the steamer has the boiler. I could sit there and get warm. That’s pretty tempting. But I’d like to see Miss Dixon again. She owes me a gun.’

  ‘Boston man hyas pilton.’ Sam stared unconcernedly off in the direction of the beach.

  ‘I know,’ said B.J.

  ‘Take the little canoe,’ said Sam. ‘I have crossed the canal in it many times.’

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Purdy.

  ‘I think it’s semaphore,’ B.J. said. ‘I’m getting most of it.’

  Chin ignored him, ‘The wind is so strong,’ he said carefully. ‘It is dangerous to be on the water when the wind is strong.’ Tigers controlled the wind. Dragons controlled the water. A wise man did not get caught between the two. A wise man did not get caught between the white men and the Indians either.

  Purdy nodded. ‘I want the Chinook canoe,’ he told Sam again. ‘The hyas canim.’

  ‘It’s not for sale. Just the little one.’

  Purdy was getting angry. ‘I don’t want to buy it. I just want to rent it. I’ve rented it before. Mika wake tickery momak? We have offered you much chickerman. Why are you wasting our time?’

  ‘Belle Starr lives with Indians,’ B.J. said. ‘I don’t know if she has to. She’s married to one of them.’

  Sam spat from between the gap in his teeth. He had to smile to do this. The wind carried the spit away. Then the wind dropped suddenly. The blanket barely shivered in Sam’s hand. It made a noise like a small clap. The wind came back.

  ‘Is this a good thing?’ B.J. asked. ‘Would Indians want this?’

  Sam stopped smiling. ‘Is that man with you?’ Chin turned to look where Sam was looking, down to the beach. Harold was there, standing in the space between the two larger canoes. He glanced up at them briefly. Then, as they watched, he began to push the little canoe out into the water, splashing along behind it.

  ‘Why is that man stealing my canoe?’ Sam asked, while Chin shouted at Harold to stop, but the words came out in Cantonese and Harold couldn’t have heard them anyway. Harold was knee-deep in the bay now, tipping the canoe almost horizontal in order to climb inside. Once he was settled, sitting toward the back, he pulled a paddle from the bottom. The wind was behind him and blew his hair into his face. It pushed the little boat quickly forward across the lines of the waves to the choppy circles of deep water.

  vi

  In 1854, the new governor of the Washington Territory, Major Isaac I. Stevens, stopped in Seattle village to address the Indian population. Good times were coming for them, he said. All the blessings of civilization plus free vegetable seeds from the Department of Agriculture. He invited Chief Seattle to respond.

  The chief, who was more than a foot taller than Stevens, made a very long speech, resting his hand the whole time on the governor’s head. According to eyewitness accounts, Stevens looked pained. The Battle of Seattle took place two years later.

  The original name of Seattle village was Duwamps. The early white settlers felt that this sounded too much like someone being sick to his stomach and did not want it on their letters and packages. They changed the name to Seattle in honor of the chief. It was a gesture that upset him enormously.

  Among Seattle’s early landmarks was the Mad House, a house of prostitution run by John Pennell. Although there were a few white women, most of Pennell’s prostitutes were Indians from the Dwamish tribe. Pennell had purchased the women from their chiefs with Hudson Bay blankets. The Hudson Bay Company wanted money and sometimes land for their blankets, so Pennell’s offer was a real bargain. The blankets were of the first quality, but Pennell did not even demand the most beautiful of the Indian women in exchange, although all the Dwamish had lush and glossy hair, an effect they enhanced, according to tribal custom, with frequent urine rinses and fish oil rubs, until they came to the Mad House and such treatments were forbidden. Pennell’s clientele was so squeamish.

  By 1873, the Mad House had closed and the Chinese occupied that section of Seattle. Most of the Puget Sound Indians wore white men’s clothing, lived in houses, and found employment in white men’s homes and mills and on white men’s boats. They had adopted white methods of fishing; they retained their own canoes but outfitted them with sails and oars; they played games of skill with bows and arrows, but baseball was a more popular pastime. Their condition was characterized by their white contemporaries as a state of half-civilization.

  In this same year, on the California-Oregon border, the Modoc War ended with the trial of Captain Jack and five other Modoc leaders. For six months, fifty Modoc warriors had engaged a thousand US soldiers in a conflict whose every twist was thoroughly covered for the Eastern newspapers by correspondents on the scene. These reports were a continual source of humiliation for the Army. On June 1, 1873, Captain Jack allowed himself to be captured, explaining that his legs had given out. He and the five codefendants were charged with the murders of two peace commissioners: General Canby, the only General to be killed in an Indian war, and the Reverend Mr Thomas. The trial was conducted without defense council and in a language none of the defendants really spoke. The sentence was death.

  Public opinion favored clemency toward Barncho and Slolux, the youngest of the captured Modocs. President Grant commuted their sentences to life imprisonment, stipulating that they not be told of this until the hangings one month later. Six men rode to the gallows seated on four coffins. Barncho and Slolux spent five years on Alcatraz Island and then were released. Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim, and Boston Charley were executed. Their Modoc names, the names they had in their own language, are not remembered.

  William Cody won his new name while working as a buffalo hunter for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. For eighteen months he supplied buffalo meat to the railroad hands. They called him Buffalo Bill, a title, he said in his autobiography, of which he was never ashamed. He had killed 4,280 buffaloes.

  In 1871, a small technological breakthrough in the process of tanning buffalo hides resulted in the final massacre of the prairie buffalo. By 187
3, a traveler to Fort Dodge described the north bank of the Arkansas River as ‘a continual line of putrescent carcasses’ so that the very ‘air was rendered pestilential.’ Buffalo hunter Frank Nixon boasted of having killed one hundred and twenty buffalo in forty minutes, an average of one every twenty seconds, and to kill one hundred from a single stand was not uncommon.

  The buffalo were not reproducing at the rate of one every twenty seconds. It was soon necessary to follow them into the Comanche lands of the Panhandle, a place where white men were forbidden to go. In 1873, the 7th Regiment, disassembled over the last two years and sent to protect the South against the Ku Klux Klan, was reunited to serve again on the plains under the leadership of George Armstrong Custer.

  Chief Seattle’s address to the territorial governor of Washington is supposed to have ended with these words: ‘. . . At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.’

  12

  A Rainy Day on Hood Canal

  Too distant to arrest the feet

  That walk this plank of balm—

  Before them lies escape less sea—

  The way is closed they came.

  Emily Dickinson, 1873

  The blanket in the doorway to Sam Clams’s house was made of cotton from fireweed, duck feathers, and the hair of a white dog. A Salish woman’s wealth had once been counted in these dogs, but the breed was extinct now and the blankets were rare. B.J. knew a lot about Indians, because the Indian agent had been interned periodically at Steilacoom. He had told B.J. that Indians were less sensitive to physical pain than white men; he had described religious ceremonies, ceremonies of black tamahnous, in which they cut and bit themselves, and he said that they could endure easily numbers of fleas that would drive a white man out of his mind.