Sarah Canary

by Karen Joy Fowler

  Behind the big rock was another stand of trees, whose tops were bent and tossed in the wind. Halfway past, B.J. saw a canoe lodged between two of the trees, the bow and the stem set within the two forks of four branches. The branches beneath it bent. Those above blew about. The canoe seemed to shake precariously in midair. B.J. turned, pointing to make sure that Chin saw it as well. ‘Rock-a-bye baby in the treetop,’ B.J. said.

  ‘How did a canoe get into a tree?’ Chin asked. B.J. wondered if Chin thought the canoe might have simply blown there on an earlier occasion when someone had been foolish enough to try to take it out onto the canal in bad weather. He looked that frightened.

  ‘The Indians bury their dead in canoes,’ B.J. told him, ‘since they don’t bury them. They put the canoes in trees or sometimes they build scaffolds if there are no good trees.’ When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

  ‘And sometimes when white men want a canim but do not want to give their chickerman to an Indian, they come and dump the dead man out,’ Sam said. The wind blew Sam’s voice up to the bow of the canoe. Sam spoke very little and always with an expressionlessness that suggested what he was saying was unimportant, but there was something important in what he was not saying. B.J. couldn’t imagine what this might be, but surely Chin knew. B.J. didn’t let it trouble him. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.

  ‘Bad white men!’ Purdy added in a shout over one shoulder. He swiveled around to address them head-on. ‘So now bad Indians stab holes in the burial canoes and cover the holes with mud and sticks. A man takes the canoe out on the canal and doesn’t know about the holes until it’s too late and the mud has washed off.’

  ‘The dead man’s canoe,’ Sam repeated. He said something else, something to Old Patsy, something simple and short that B.J. couldn’t understand. Something the wind blew away.

  13

  The Story of the Dragon’s Gate

  The Clouds their Backs together laid

  The North begun to push

  The Forests galloped till they fell

  The Lightning played like mice

  Emily Dickinson, 1870

  The trees stretched endlessly to the right and ahead. All their branches were empty now. It was early afternoon, although the sky was dark with clouds and the water was dark and clouded, too, having no sunlight to reflect. Small, child-sized pops of distant thunder came rolling across the choppy water from the mountains. B.J. was cold. He paddled hard to warm himself.

  ‘We’ve had a good wind,’ said Purdy. ‘We must be close to halfway there.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we be catching Harold soon?’ Chin asked anxiously. He had taken up his paddle again himself. Old Patsy paddled on the right. The men were arranged in the left side of the dugout. The canoe flew forward like a large bird with many wings, like a water bug with an asymmetrical number of legs. They reached another small point where the direction of the coastline changed. Now the wind drove the canoe out toward the deeper water. Sam worked with a pole against the bottom to prevent this.

  ‘We would be going faster if we left the coast a bit,’ Purdy suggested over his shoulder. ‘More in a straight line.’

  Sam used his pole to push them in closer to the beach. ‘Too dangerous,’ he answered.

  ‘That’s probably what Harold’s done,’ Purdy called back. ‘And then, he had a bit of a headstart.’ Purdy paddled vigorously, then twisted around again. ‘We may have already passed him. He might not have been able to hold a course, one man by himself. It took all of us to keep from being blown into shore back there.’

  They worked in silence. B.J.’s hands were so cold they wouldn’t tighten on the paddle, but his left hand, the one on the paddle’s throat, slipped up and down along the wood with every rhythmic stroke. His arms ached. Soon he would have blisters, a reddening just under the heart line on his palm. Suddenly his paddle grew enormous in his hands. He could still pull it through the water, but at the end of each pull, he could scarcely lift it to finish the circle. He let it drag a few feet, resting his arms and rubbing the painful spot beneath his shoulder blade. The paddle bounced over the waves, splashing him with water until he pulled it back into the canoe. He looked for something to wrap his hands with. Old Patsy had packed them a lunch in a basket. B.J. removed the lid. There was bread and cold potatoes and crackers wrapped in a blue checkered handkerchief. B.J. unwrapped them, sampled a cracker, and bound up his hand.

  The canoe tipped, throwing him sideways and forward against the thwart, scattering the crackers into the bottom of the dugout, and sending Purdy sprawling onto his knees in the bow before him. They were about thirty yards out now, too deep for poling. He heard the sound of Sam’s paddle hitting the water. B.J. forced himself to lean back, to counter the tipping dugout. He thrust his body far out over the gunwale into the spray of the waves. The water beneath him was murky. Somewhere below B.J., below the waterline, was a darkness shaped vaguely like their canoe. B.J. might have been imagining it. It seemed to slide along beside them, pacing them, like the boat’s own shadow, only unattached. There was a second slap as Sam struck the water. Their shadow disappeared.

  ‘I think we’re going to get some rain!’ Purdy called down to the stern. Even as he spoke, the first few large drops hit the inch or so of water at the bottom of the canoe. The drops punched holes into the water and then filled the holes with themselves. The rain stopped.

  When it started again, it came in a downpour, slanting in slightly from behind them. Purdy set his paddle aside. The wind was more moderate now that it was raining. Purdy unrolled one of the mats that had been stowed next to the lunch basket. He unrolled a second mat, held the first over his head to cover himself, and gestured for B.J. to join him. ‘Take a break,’ he suggested. ‘Come in out of the rain.’

  B.J. slid forward in the dugout and slipped under the second mat. The two of them were faced backward now; the rain drummed steadily above their heads. B.J. sank down so that the sides of the canoe provided some shelter from the wind. The crackers he had spilled floated at his feet like tiny rafts.

  The two Indians wore coats woven of cattail rushes and fastened at the sides. These coats seemed to shed the rain so that only the Indians’ heads were unprotected. Chin’s clothing was quickly soaked. His queue drew whatever rain fell on his hair, gathering it into one stream of water that ran down from his shoulder.

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Purdy. ‘Cursed luck. Of course, bad luck for Harold, too, wherever he is.’ He lowered his arms so the mat rested directly on his hair. His curly beard was spangled with drops of water. Drops dangled from the hairs above his mouth. ‘That he would threaten a defenseless woman. It’s unthinkable.’ Holding the mat on his head with one hand, he wiped his beard dry and then reached for one of the cold potatoes. He chewed on it reflectively. ‘I tried to tell that to Miss Adelaide Dixon,’ he said. ‘She was in no danger last night. Not that I would have had a lady stay at the Bay View, if the choice had been mine. Certainly, a great deal of drink was consumed, and certainly, the fun was a bit on the rough side. A sort of chivaree almost, only without the bridegroom, and, of course, that’s always been Miss Dixon’s choice.’

  He took another bite of potato. ‘I’m not trying to excuse anything, but we’ve had a spot of trouble at the Washington Mill Company recently and a great deal of stress for the men. Still, the fun was of a rough sort and nothing a lady needed to witness. It was my intention to escort her out of there myself. But she was in no actual danger. Out here in the west, women are like precious jewels. Out here in the west, a woman, any woman, is a queen,’ He called against the wind, down to the stern of the canoe. ‘Sam, Old Patsy is going to have to start bailing soon.’

  B.J. fetched a potato for himself. He chose a large one for Chin since it was past lunchtime. He put his mat down and slid forward without lifting his feet while the crackers danced about his toes. B.J. walked like a duck with his knees bent, one hand on the gunwale for balance, the potatoes cupped against his chest, back to where Ch
in was paddling steadily if futilely. He tried not to make the canoe rock. Raindrops pounded on Purdy’s mat behind B.J. They dripped down to the canoe floor below. Rain fell into B.J.’s face and onto the potatoes. Chin put his paddle down to eat. He took big bites. He looked unhappy, but when didn’t Chin look unhappy? The moment he stopped paddling, Chin began to shiver. B.J. went back to the bow and picked up his mat. Chin finished the potato and picked up his paddle.

  The water around their feet was rising. B.J. leaned out over the gunwale again, holding his mat carefully above his head. He got wetter anyway. The spray around their boat was only half made up of water falling down from the sky. The other half was water tossed back up by the wind and the paddles. B.J. couldn’t really see into the water with all the disturbances on the surface, but he thought that their shadow was back. Chin’s paddle appeared to be chasing it, hovering in the air just above it, but always cutting into the water a foot or so behind.

  In China, dragons control the water and the rain, Chin had told B.J. on their long trip into Seabeck when the wind was against them. The shen lung rule the sky and the sea and the marshes. In China, Chin said, there is a certain waterfall in a certain western mountain stream, which is named the Dragon’s Gate. If a carp is able, as few are, to jump from the lower pools beneath the falls to the higher pools above it, then the carp has passed through the Dragon’s Gate and is rewarded for its strength and its bravery. It is transformed into a spirit dragon.

  B.J. liked this story particularly because of its democratic message. Any ordinary carp has the chance to become shen lung. Chin agreed, and told him about another category of dragon, the lan lung, the lazy dragon. Lazy dragons hid when it was time to make rain, sometimes in people’s clothing. When a man was hit with lightning, the way William Gassey, Purdy’s ticket-of-leave man had been, it was usually because the Thunder God had hurled it at the lazy dragon sleeping in his sleeve. Chin’s mother had called him lan lung sometimes and so had his uncle, Chin told B.J. And Chin said sadly that this was partly an evaluation of what they thought he could do, and partly a statement about what they thought he would do. The Dragon’s Gate, said Chin, was sometimes used as a metaphor for the Imperial Examinations. Chin had studied for the Imperial Examinations; his mother, like all mothers with clever sons, had hoped he would become a mandarin. But Chin had ended up in Golden Mountain instead.

  B.J. raised his mat to look back at Chin, who was paddling hard, breathing through his mouth sort of like a fish. B.J. didn’t have a mother or an uncle himself, but Chin’s story had reminded him of another story he heard once, so he had told his to Chin in his turn, only instead of a carp, B.J.’s story had been about an ordinary mortal, and instead of jumping a waterfall, the mortal had to be kind to an annoying old woman who was really a beautiful fairy in disguise, and instead of becoming a dragon, the mortal had been granted three wishes. He thought that Chin had liked B.J.’s story as much as B.J. had liked Chin’s. Chin had said that he, too, knew stories where ordinary mortals were rewarded for their kindness to annoying old women. Chin had appeared quite cheered up by the exchange, wearing a completely different expression for a while, until B.J. had made the mistake of telling him that here in Washington the Indians said that the Thunderbird controlled the rain, which gave Chin back his thinking-of-Indians face.

  ‘Have you ever seen a dragon?’ B.J. had asked Chin, who said no, but he knew a man who knew a man who’d seen a dead one once, washed up on the beach in his village. It was fifteen feet long, blue in color, with eyes like a cow and four legs and scales all over its body.

  B.J. searched for the shadow. He tried to gauge its size, but the water was an unsteady lens and B.J. was not good at sizes. It might have been fifteen feet. It might have been smaller. It might have been blue.

  It might not have been there at all. B.J. didn’t really believe that a Chinese dragon would be out here on Hood Canal. He wasn’t that crazy. He wouldn’t have believed in Chinese dragons at all if Chin hadn’t known a man who knew a man who’d seen a dead one. Chin hadn’t lied to him yet, not as far as he knew.

  ‘Mind you, some women take advantage of their position,’ Purdy said. ‘I’ve seen women smoking cigarillos. Out in public. I’ve heard language you wouldn’t expect from a miner. If I told you some of the things Miss Adelaide Dixon said in her lecture, you would refuse to believe me. I’ve seen women ride with the horses right between their legs.’

  B.J. sat back in the canoe. ‘Like Belle Starr,’ he agreed. ‘But you mustn’t make too much of the horses. Not when the women have access to pens and knives as well. Although I’ve done this myself,’ he added generously. ‘Until Dr Carr explained things. Anyone could.’

  ‘I don’t know much about Belle Starr,’ Purdy answered. ‘But Miss Adelaide Dixon certainly has access to both. Adelaide Dixon has my knife, if we want to get technical about it. And I miss it sometimes.’

  Old Patsy squatted, rocking from side to side, the bottom of her coat just touching the floor of the canoe. She had a bailer with a handle about six inches long and a cup about five inches deep. Old Patsy worked to scoop water out, tossing it cupful by cupful into the ocean. Without the rocking, she could have been digging in her spring garden. The motion was very much the same. The water in the canoe didn’t diminish, but it stopped rising. She harvested the sodden crackers that had floated into her reach and bailed them out with the rainwater. B.J. watched them dotting the waves behind the canoe like a trail of bread crumbs. He felt anxious suddenly. He wouldn’t have believed in mermaids either until he had seen a dead one himself. What if, in spite of what Burke had said, they existed in places other than Australia? What was to prevent it? The ocean was the same, wasn’t it?

  What if – B.J.’s heart was sitting in his throat now – what if the Australian mermaid was a dwarfed variety and larger specimens frequented colder coasts? He had a sudden vivid vision of Sam, standing up in the stern and thrusting his spear over the gunwale and into the water. The head on a seal spear was made to detach from the handle but was wound with fishing line. In B.J.’s vision, Sam played the creature with the line, slowly and patiently, playing her like a big fish but always bringing her up closer to the surface and that inevitable moment when she broke through, the spear head deep in her womanlike neck, her tail thrashing, and her face the same eternity of agony he’d seen in Burke’s cabin. Only very much larger.

  Sam would not do this if he knew what he was going to catch. The Indians did not like to see anything odd – a white squirrel, for instance, or a frog with its head cut off. They thought such oddities were messages, were omens of evil. When an Indian saw something he had never seen before, it might mean a bad storm was coming or a bad illness or it might mean a death, which could always turn out to be your own. And the Indians put a great deal of faith in dreams, sleeping dreams and waking visions like the one B.J. had just had.

  ‘Ladies should be ladies,’ said Purdy. ‘That’s all I’m saying. Miss Adelaide Dixon wants to be treated like a lady, but she doesn’t want to behave like one. You know the type?’

  ‘Yes,’ said B.J., who hadn’t been listening at all but was still able to reconstruct the words after he realized a question had been asked and felt, in any case, that yes was generally the safest answer to anything. Behind them one cracker crested a wave and then disappeared suddenly, too suddenly, not as if the wave had simply curled over it, but as if something had come up from beneath and swallowed it. A moment later a second cracker vanished. B.J. could see none of the crackers now.

  ‘I was hoping to have a chance to talk to you alone,’ Purdy said. ‘After we’d left Seabeck safely behind.’ His voice was low beneath the sound of the rain on the mats. With a great effort, B.J. put mermaids out of his mind. He stopped watching for crackers. He moved closer to Purdy in the bow. He wished he could talk to Chin instead. Chin would know if there was a mermaid following them or not and why. Shouldn’t the mermaid be following Harold? Harold was the one who’d purchased her. Harold wa
s the one who planned to exhibit her, breasts and all. What had B.J. done? He hadn’t known it was her blanket he was taking. He’d put it right back.

  ‘We left a bit of nastiness back in the Bay View Hotel this morning,’ Purdy told B.J.

  ‘We left a dead man,’ B.J. remembered suddenly. ‘On the stairs. What did you leave?’ Ordinarily he would have said less and allowed Purdy to say more. He was upset. This made him thoughtless and reckless, and he recognized it, but too late.

  ‘You saw him?’ Purdy crossed himself with the remains of his potato and then popped it in his mouth. ‘Yes. Jim Allen.’

  ‘Stabbed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The knife was the same knife Blair had in the kitchen,’ B.J. said. ‘I recognized it. Unless it was bigger.’ Probably the knife had told someone to kill Jim Allen. Knives were nasty things and full of their own suggestions. That didn’t mean you had to listen. What if everyone went around doing whatever knives told them to do?

  ‘I see where your thinking is leading you,’ Purdy said. ‘But you mustn’t blame Blair. He’s half white, you know. And he’s got his little girl, Jenny, to think of. He would never risk going to jail and leaving her unprotected. It would be different if she was married, of course. She should be married. Most Indian girls are married at twelve, and Jenny’s fifteen. Treating her like a white woman won’t make her one, will it, B.J.? More likely to make her dissatisfied and sulky. I’ve said as much to Blair myself. She’s got considerably less white blood than he does.’

  B.J. began to chew on one end of the checkered handkerchief with which he’d bound his left hand. He hoped Purdy wasn’t hinting what he thought Purdy might be hinting. That was all B.J. needed. A wife. He undid the knot with his teeth, wiped his face with the handkerchief, and watched the trees sliding past on the shore. The canoe was farther out now and the shoreline was blurred through the curtain of rain, but he could see the tossing of the treetops. He looked over the murky water between him and the trees. He never looked down at all.