Floating City

by Kerri Sakamoto

  “I can’t promise anything,” Frankie told one or two of them, “but I got a tip.”

  “Ahh,” they nodded, their weathered faces brightening as they dug deeper into their pockets.

  They trusted Frankie. So he let them bet on races that had already been run or had never taken place at all. Frankie felt good letting them win, though it was always less than what they lost. The men—Japanese, Chinese and Indians from India—worked and worked with no one to go home to; they worked on the logs, or inside the mill cutting or loading them up until they lost a finger or hand or got too old. But they never blamed Frankie for their bad luck. They squatted on their haunches outside the bunkhouses, smoking and clucking their tongues, telling him to try for a better life.

  Frankie waited for word to reach Taiji of his bet-taking, waited for a scolding. At least a look cast his way—something of a father’s disapproval for swindling the bachelors. Maybe even grudging approval for making his own way. But no, nothing.

  Still, Frankie had his retort for Taiji: What good is money if you don’t know what to do with it? Frankie was fourteen now, almost fifteen, and he knew. He knew not to do what Taiji did: waste a paycheque on whisky. Keep doing the same thing and never try for something better. Why swim upstream with an anchor at your waist? At least Mr. Fung was making an investment so that his wall of coins would grow along with the walls of the floating hotel.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Koga grunted as he hammered down a plank across a row of logs assembled on the shore.

  “Shush!” Mr. Fung waved his arms emphatically. He feared someone stealing their big idea before they could get it off the ground and onto water. Mr. Koga resumed with a timid tap-tap-tap, but before long, his hammer was slamming down anew, echoing across the inlet. Sweat began to stream from his head. Mr. Fung slunk away.

  “Give me a hand, boy!” Mr. Koga yelled. Frankie scrambled over to hold the plank in place.

  Frankie took up a hammer and began pounding away beside Mr. Koga, the force of his blows vibrating up his arm through his body.

  “Are you sure this won’t sink?” Mr. Koga asked.

  “Sure.” Frankie pointed to his house down the inlet. How puny it looked alone on the water. Far below the grand house with the turret and its neighbours.

  Up there lived Mr. Bloedel, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Welch no doubt, owners of the mills. High in the sky, with a view of all who laboured on their behalf: the office men who made sure the logs kept coming and the buyers kept buying, who wrote the cheques though it wasn’t their money. The foremen who were told what to do, and told others below them. Down lowest were those who were told what to do and did it. That was Taiji and Mr. Koga, the boom men who might slip from their logs, or saw operators who might lose an arm to the blade. Frankie and his family lived at the bottom of the valley, holding tight to Taiji, swinging like monkeys from his shirttails.

  Frankie was born in the Year of the Ox, but his mother claimed he was a monkey, a good climber.

  If the floating hotel was to float and stay afloat, the visiting lumber buyers, charged a lower rate, might sleep there instead of the Arlington. People would travel from miles around to stay in their hotel. And come spring, the Rose Queen might let down her golden stair and bid him climb up to her turret.

  * * *

  —

  At Weaver’s Dry Goods store, Frankie pored over an inch-thick seed catalogue from Victoria. Page after page of flowers. Who knew there could be so many? So many roses: red, coral, yellow, peach, pink, white. Climbing roses, hybrid tea roses, grandiflora roses, bred hundreds of years ago, with names Augusta would have a dance or a song for: Buff Beauty, Ballerina, Floribunda, even Kerria Japonica, the rose native to Japan. Mr. Weaver totalled his order and showed Frankie what he owed.

  He didn’t have it. Nowhere near. Who knew mail-order seeds could cost so much? Frankie fingered the coins and bills in his trousers. For all his wheeling and dealing, the earnings still fit into one pocket.

  Mr. Weaver turned a few pages and slid the catalogue across the counter. “Here’s what you need.”

  Flower seed for seaside planting. Pacific Beauty. Bronze Beauty. Victoria Sunset.

  Not roses, but flowers still, in all colours and petal shapes, small and full. Snapdragons and others in the mystery language of flowers: calendula, verbena, impatiens.

  “For ten dollars, you get thirty packets of seeds.”

  He chose his flowers like an old bachelor picking his horses to win. But he wouldn’t be greedy. And very soon he would stop the betting and swindling too. Surely Taiji and others were beginning to think the worst of him.

  While he waited for his seeds to arrive, Frankie planned his garden. A pathway of planks from the road through the trees and across the water to the floating isle. He’d paint the planks white so you could follow the path even at night. As visitors stepped onto it from dry land, they’d pass under an archway of wisteria. There would be blossoms on all sides with labels for each kind. A parade could lead there; a Rose Queen could be crowned there.

  A floating garden. People from far and wide would hear of it and come sip fresh lemonade at a refreshment stand among the wisteria. He’d build a bench or two where people could sit and get comfortable so they’d buy more.

  Of course, he’d have to charge admission like they did at Butchart Gardens. Not too much; a discount for locals, maybe. Once he paid for the logs and lumber, the paint and nails and such, and upkeep—which wouldn’t be much because he’d be doing it himself—the rest would be profit. Then he’d build other floating gardens in Tofino, Ladysmith, Duncan; hire locals while he went from place to place, managing his enterprise. Who knew where else he could set up shop? Nanaimo and even Victoria.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Koga’s head and neck grew bowed and bent from hammering. He stood in water day after day constructing a sturdy dock for the hotel. His skin grew scaly, moulting in the sun. He could hold his breath longer than anyone. Mr. Fung, charged with overseeing finances, grew forgetful of words, while numbers he could swiftly add and multiply on his abacus. The bachelors—who now laboured on the hotel—he designated by number instead of name, from one to fifteen down his columns opposite the hours they worked and the dollars they were paid.

  Frankie worked on his garden early before school and late after. First he built three rafts atop old oil drums whose ends he’d sealed, then anchored and moored the rafts to the shore, side by side. Then he began laying down ten inches of soil in curbed beds he’d fashioned atop the rafts.

  Each afternoon he’d check at Mr. Weaver’s store. When Mr. Weaver shook his head through his storefront window, Frankie headed to the post office, just in case.

  He could hardly wait. Yet he did, all the while tilling the soil over and over. One still morning came an unearthly crack that was not from a hammer. A heavy splash and a howling cry from Mr. Koga. Frankie ran to the hotel where Mr. Koga cowered, lower than ever. Above him stood the frame of the structure, eight posts with crossbeams between. He was looking down into the water that sloshed at his knees and gesturing a few yards out.

  Fall down, Mr. Koga stammered. Down. He squeezed his head between his hands.

  Frankie splashed into the water those few yards to one of the bachelors, face down and lulled by the dark water lapping at the body, the hair.

  Frankie pulled the bachelor to shore. Mr. Koga was too weak to be much help. Out of the water the body was heavy—the skin slippery but warm. Shivering, Frankie squatted down.

  Fallen off as he was hammering, cracked his head on a beam, explained Mr. Koga. The bachelor’s neck was twisted and limp; his eyes were half-open, staring over Frankie’s shoulder.

  “Close!” Mr. Koga cried, turning away.

  Frankie touched his fingertips to the bachelor’s soft lids and drew them down.

  * * *

  —

  Why had there ever been a Bachelor #4? The bad-luck death number; the man had had no cha
nce. The other bachelors took his body to a clearing outside of town, blessed it, burned it, then collected some bits of bone to bury in a tin can. Frankie felt coins in his pocket, money the men had lost on horses that never ran. He’d never wipe his hands clean of bad luck.

  One by one, they abandoned the hotel, even when Mr. Fung promised two, three, then five times the pay. Only Bachelor #13, whose digits added up to four anyway, laboured on, having nothing to lose. In Mr. Fung’s ledger, he became Bachelor #1. When the outside walls were done, he went inside, dividing the space with Mr. Koga and Frankie, installing doors, nailing down floorboards and sanding them smooth. Whenever Mr. Koga left for dinner and Frankie went to build his garden, the lone, steady pecking of one hammer followed them into the evening.

  Blooms in his garden: that was all Frankie thought of amid Mr. Koga’s prayers to Buddha, and the click-click of Mr. Fung’s abacus beads tallying their debts. Up on the hill, beneath the turret, roses were blooming red, rooted, majestic, tended by gardeners—when they should’ve been down below, blossoming on the sea.

  Frankie could wait no longer. He made his way up from the water one night, up through the streets to the grand houses. He plucked those blooms, one at a time, roots and all, beneath the turret’s window. He filled in the holes and, by a full moon, he planted the roses in his floating garden.

  All morning Frankie gave the roses sips of water and spread fresh manure. By nightfall, he put down his tools and went home, exhausted. He huddled in his mother’s chair and slept.

  * * *

  —

  The house swayed and rocked and the water rose up, frothing at the window. It was almost June but snow bounded wildly outside. His mother watched the storm too. Stricken, she began to babble, then fell back in bed as if she’d never wakened.

  All night long, Frankie watched the snow whirl in patterns across the water and listened to the wind. He dozed in his mother’s chair as it inched forward and back with the waves. The wind became a rasping voice in his ears. Everyone else slept.

  In the morning, he pushed the door open and tiptoed out. Snowflakes melted under his bare feet; the air was already warming in the early sun.

  As he rowed toward his floating garden, he could make out the rose bushes dangling with tiny skeletons now; he swore he could hear the tinkle of the frozen petals like icicles. He climbed aboard. The soil crackled, laced with ice and melting snow. The pecking of Bachelor #13’s hammer echoed from inside the hotel thirty yards down the shore.

  “No good! No good!” Mr. Koga approached Frankie clutching the newly painted HOTEL ON THE SEA sign that he’d hung in anticipation just two days earlier, though the hotel was months yet from opening. The wind rose and seemed to bluster with him. The sign must’ve fallen to the deck in the night. The remains of Frankie’s pillaged roses and the ashes of Bachelor #4 now blew in their faces.

  Frankie looked onto his garden that was now no garden at all. On his knees with a hammer, he pounded the soil and then tilled and tilled, relieved that he’d never told his family of his foolish scheme. He could imagine Augusta’s giggles and his mother’s brow.

  A hand landed on his shoulder and he jumped: Bachelor #4 come back to haunt him?

  “It’s time to work,” Taiji said, carrying a hoe and spade in his other hand. His friend George, a chip-and-saw operator from the mill, pushed a wheelbarrow filled with plants: wildflowers. Wild roses, plucked from the roadside, roots and all.

  Taiji drove his spade into the flower bed and dug. He stopped for a moment and handed the hoe to Frankie. There was nothing to say. Frankie nodded without a word, like he’d seen Yas nod to Taiji on the logs.

  The three of them dug side by side. They planted the wild roses, small and low to the ground, setting them three deep in a wavy line—a river of roses crossing the island garden. The blossoms were wilted but sprang up with a watering, and their pink petals and golden yellow stamens brightened.

  At the end of the day, all three stood back on solid ground and gazed onto the river of roses swaying with the water’s rise and fall.

  * * *

  —

  Before long, the wildflowers were blooming wildly, each blossom jostling with three others for sunlight and sea air. Frankie rolled his sleeves up still higher, and so did Taiji. They worked a two-man saw back and forth, without exchanging a word. They built an arbour like he’d seen in Mr. Weaver’s catalogue. In no time, vines began to snake up with pink buds poking out every few inches. He built two more to frame the view of the water, a trellis and a giant basket brimming with more roses.

  For the first time, Frankie felt a sureness—not underfoot as Yas must feel, but in his arms and hands as he sawed. He felt Taiji’s shadow at his back.

  Frankie kept his garden shipshape, pinching back wilting blooms and leaves as Mr. Weaver advised, to make way for more. Just before sunset, the river of roses appeared just right, undulating and bobbing on the water, pink bits catching light at the horizon. For that view, he charged five cents’ admission. On the weekends, a small stream of visitors formed on the shore, waiting to set foot on the floating garden.

  * * *

  —

  Even with its balconies overlooking the water, Hotel on the Sea reminded Frankie of his own shabby house: a rectangular box, a two-storey stack of cubbyhole rooms nailed to a rickety raft, pitching forward and back, side to side. For all their labour, the handiwork was not so fine. The hotel’s wooden frame quickly grew warped. Its ceilings were high enough for Japanese, but no one else. It was nothing like the Arlington. When Mr. Fung applied to the City for a licence to serve beer, he was refused.

  At first, only a few Japanese and Chinese on their way to logging camps stayed at the hotel. Then Mr. Koga and Mr. Fung decided to let the bachelors live in the hotel for a cut rate. The white men who came to do business at the mill stepped inside for a look, bumped their heads on the ceiling, then went to the Arlington or the Somass or the Beaufort. Anyone who came to Port Alberni by boat was sick of the sea; they chose to gulp their beer and fall asleep in a bed on dry land. But they did pay to see Frankie’s floating garden of wild roses.

  The hotel grew dank and rundown, only a little less so than the bunkhouses. But at least each bachelor had a room to himself and a balcony to sit on in the evening. In the early morning, Frankie let the bachelors onto the floating garden for free; they fished from among the flowers and plucked roses past their bloom to brighten their rooms. Indian bachelors soon joined the Japanese and Chinese at the hotel. The Japanese held diving contests off the balconies and before long, others joined in to perform backflips and somersaults, vying for the most applause.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Fung had given up on his gambling ventures and so had Frankie. The bachelors had grown wise to their diminishing returns. Mr. Fung contented himself now with beating them at mah-jong. He slouched behind the hotel desk, watching his coins sink lower and lower. Fewer visitors came to Frankie’s Floating Garden. Julia and Augusta came by to sniff the flowers, and Aki to watch the sunset. But it was the same old view after all, and one look or two was enough, even with new pansies and calendula planted along each garden bed.

  Until one afternoon Frankie glimpsed a ship anchored in the harbour. Yas arrived fresh off the logs, all lit up, just as Frankie rowed alongside the house.

  “It’s a ship from Japan, Papa,” Yas called out. “The Toyama Maru.” Toyama was Taiji’s hometown.

  “Let’s go meet them.”

  Taiji shook his head.

  The sailors loaded lumber onto the ship by day and come evening they fished and dove into the ocean. Yas jumped in with them. Augusta and Julia joined them on the dock, shyly trying out their bits of Japanese and feeding the sailors some English. Sitting just outside the house, Frankie heard Augusta warble “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Taiji stayed inside alone, not drinking, though it was a Thursday payday. Was he afraid they’d carry news of him and his shabby family back to Toyama?

  O
n drunken nights, Frankie had heard Taiji go on to Mr. Koga about his rich samurai family in Toyama. If Taiji had stayed, he would’ve inherited it all, he said, being the eldest son. You were a fool to leave! Mr. Koga had snorted. Frankie had to laugh when he thought about what family fortune would be passed down to him now: a leaky home on water?

  With the last of his earnings jangling in his pocket, Frankie headed to Weaver’s Dry Goods the next morning. He eyed the suits and dresses for size and colour, following Mr. Weaver’s advice. After everything was packaged up and paid for, he rowed home, warm and giddy.

  “Oh, Frankie!” Augusta and Julia cried at the sight of their first store-bought dresses. They curtsied and sashayed across the room, admiring each other. His mother raised a brow at the money he’d spent but clucked approvingly when Taiji and Yas held their suits up.

  “Why?” Aki asked when he gave her hers.

  “Why not?”

  The next morning, Frankie led the family in their new finery along Argyle Street, past Weaver’s Dry Goods to Johnson’s Photography Studio. Yas lagged behind, tugging on his sleeves and crotch, chafing in his suit. Frankie picked the snowy Rocky Mountains as a backdrop. The photographer, mumbling under his thick moustache, bade them position themselves in two rows, the men at the back.

  “A picture to send home,” announced Frankie, not daring a glance at Taiji.

  “When the sailors sail to sea, sea, sea!” Augusta sang out.

  Early the next morning, Taiji boarded a trawler heading for open sea. He didn’t return until late that afternoon. He unloaded buckets of salmon, which he hung out to smoke, and seaweed laden with fish eggs, which Momoye pickled and dried.