The Tinsmith

by Tim Bowling

  “I don’t care what you think about that. Just tell me about this doctor. You think he’s a friend of Dare and that he’s here to help him?”

  “I don’t see any other reason for him to be here. And he did ask a lot of questions about the canning business. About the salmon too. Seemed to expect me to know why the damned things come back to the river when they do.”

  The agent wheezed out another laugh; it ended in a snivelling gasp.

  Craig had had enough. Dare on his own was already a problem that had to be removed. And Dare with help? Well, that meant there was no waiting for Owen’s canny bribing of a magistrate. A more direct means of elimination would be necessary. And there were plenty of shiftless failures around who’d rather earn a dollar with a gun than with a set of oars and a net.

  The white sails of the skiffs drifted closer. Craig could almost hear the lusty voices of the men crying out for a higher wage. Even the sun seemed to stick its bloodied hands into his pockets. He turned and started to stride away.

  “Wait a minute,” the agent said. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

  Craig turned slowly back, one eye narrowed to a slit. “You’ve been paid. And too well for the service.”

  The agent tossed his cigar into the river. His skinny face was like a bairn’s about to blubber.

  “You promised me a meal, Craig. That was agreed upon.”

  “So I did.”

  Gleeful, Craig reached into his coat pocket. He could not believe he had almost forgotten. He pulled out two oat biscuits, dry as navy hardtack, and handed them to the peevish agent. The fool’s face looked as doughy as the biscuits. But before he could even protest, Craig suppressed a chuckle at the base of his throat and walked away, already wondering how little he could pay a lazy Irishman to get rid of a nigger.

  VI

  Anson had no way to reach Victoria unless he waited for a steamer to stop at Chilukthan or else rowed himself upriver to New Westminster to board a Victoria-bound vessel there. While he seriously considered the latter option, he knew his health would not allow it. He had to accept the unpleasant fact: he was stuck at Chilukthan.

  But stuck did not have to mean purposeless. Anson was determined to be of some use while he waited for the steamer or Dare’s return. As long as Thomas Lansdowne’s wife remained inadequately attended, the family’s gifted daughter would suffer, perhaps would suffer all her life if a domestic tragedy destroyed her chance of realizing her talent. The very thought of such a desecration urged Anson over the fields with no break in his stride. Elizabeth had not given him a child, and the Lansdowne girl was no replacement for that loss, but if the years weighted a man’s spirit, they also made clear his responsibility to his own character. He had come to the Fraser River to help William Dare. Before he left, he would do what he could to help the girl too.

  He found the Englishman a considerable distance from his house, beyond the woodlot. Emerging from the trees, Anson felt as if he dragged the forest’s intimate darkness with him, as if the trees themselves housed human aspirations.

  Thomas Lansdowne was even more violently red in the face than usual as Anson came up. His horse, yoked to a massive stump, pulled so that its eyes were moon-wide, and the Englishman, on his knees in the wet earth, grunted as he heaved his body against the black, sodden, many-rooted weight, trying to dislodge it from the mucky ground. He did not appear to notice Anson’s approach. So Anson waited, staring across the flat, unvarying distance that hardly merited the name of “field.” This was no easily broken soil. It was, in fact, hardly soil at all. Obviously the Lansdownes, in their diking and stump removing, were engaged on the noble work of the future. Anson respected them for it, but the future could not, should not, come at the expense of the present. If a man laboured for the sake of his children, he ought not to be allowed to neglect the wife who carried his child. Simply put, that went against nature.

  With a grunt that was almost a shout, the Englishman threw his body against the stump just as the horse gained its position on the slippery surface. The stump shifted, a foot, two feet. Then it lodged firmly in the mud again. Thomas Lansdowne did not curse, he did not shake his fist at the heavens or slump down on his knees in defeat. Instead, he said, “Good girl” and marched up to the horse and slapped its glistening flanks. Still he did not appear to notice that he was no longer alone. He wiped the sweat from his face with a bare, ruddy forearm and squinted at the sun.

  Anson took in the greyly smoking pile of already-dislodged stumps a few rods away and the three other giant stumps rising like whaleback from the ground just beyond Lansdowne, and his respect for the man’s strength of purpose increased. It would be years before the plough would drag as smoothly through this earth as a whale fin through the ocean. No wonder Thomas Lansdowne worked such long days and looked so exhausted in the evenings. The farming, alone, would have defeated most men. But he was also heavily involved in the salmon business, which, Anson could already tell, was a risky venture replete with both expected and unexpected difficulties. On top of all that, the man’s wife was in no condition to help him.

  “Is there something I can do for you, doctor?”

  Surprised, Anson understood that he’d been staring at the Englishman without really seeing him. The voice, therefore, was like a handful of gravel tossed lightly in his face.

  “Yes. Yes, there is.” Anson, thinking of the girl and the music she had played, gathered his resolve once more. He spoke directly, his eyes catching and holding the Englishman’s sun-reddened attention. “Your wife, sir. It’s my opinion as a medical man that she’s seriously ill and in need of considerable rest before the arrival of your child. I tell you this only because I realize that you have many responsibilities and demands and might not recognize certain symptoms of her condition that lead me to speak with you on the matter.”

  “I see.” The Englishman again rubbed his forearm across his brow. Then he squared himself on the wet ground, his gumboots squelching softly. From downriver came the familiar, repetitive sound of the tin press punching out cans. It was like the throbbing of the sun or of the blood in the body, a common pulse mostly unnoticed but integral to all else. “Last night, doctor, you claimed that, in your opinion, men take too great an interest in the affairs of others. Isn’t that so?”

  Anson conceded the fact with a scowl but was not cowed. He was, after all, a medical man sworn to take an active interest in the health of others. If they chose to disregard his opinion, that was certainly their prerogative.

  “I did say that, yes. But in this case I am not seeking to know anything. I am simply advising you, out of concern and experience, that your wife’s in greater danger than you might realize.”

  Thomas Lansdowne spat on the ground. His shadow lay like a burnt trench behind him. “Danger?” The word hung heavily in the air, and it seemed to Anson that they both stared at it, as if it was a bird one of them was about to flush. He waited.

  At last, the Englishman made a guttural sound of dismissal and crossed his thick arms across his chest. “And what do you know of danger, exactly? The east’s a settled land. Many things that are commonplace here will appear dangerous to you, doctor. My wife is stronger than most men.”

  Anson understood the insult but let it pass. He knew it was a delicate matter to discuss another man’s domestic affairs, and he and Thomas Lansdowne were not exactly on friendly terms to begin with. Even so, he had to quell the urge to scoff at the man’s arrogant assumptions. Farming along the Fraser River might be hard work, but it was hardly dangerous in the way that Bull Run and Antietam had been dangerous. In any case, Anson realized that the discussion was not about him. And when he remembered that the gruff, forceful farmer had, in the midst of all his other responsibilities, been responsible for the piano’s miraculous presence on the wharf, it was easier to remain calm. A man who would do that for his child clearly had more to him than the unyielding English coldness suggested. Before Anson could respond, in fact, Thomas Lansdowne spoke in
a different tone, one verging on disbelief.

  “Indeed, my wife is much recovered this morning. I left her in the company of your countryman. It appears his conversation has had an invigorating effect on her.”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” Anson said and recalled that Ambrose Richardson had wanted to assess the cannery operations this morning. Surely he and Thomas Lansdowne had not done so at daybreak? But Anson felt the need to defend his medical reputation; he could not believe that the woman he’d seen in such distraction and distress the evening before could have recovered so quickly, no matter the excellence of the Virginian’s talk. “However, I would not think that your wife can be out of danger without a considerable amount of rest.”

  “Ha!” The explosive laugh seemed to tear a scar in the sky, but it was only the sudden keening arc of a gull. “She’ll have rest enough with all the chatter going on.” Then, as if aware that he’d revealed more than was proper, he spat again and hitched his belt up with a firm yank. “We didn’t come here to rest, doctor. My wife no more than I. If you’ve not noticed, this is rough country. Rest, when it comes, will come after.”

  The religious reference irritated Anson more than it should; he was long since sick of piety. “After will come sooner than you expect if she is not unburdened of at least some of her daily labours. I’ve seen it before. In their grief, women will often work themselves into the grave. I go so far only out of concern for your family, you understand?”

  “No. I don’t understand.” His tone grew decidedly colder, his eyes hardened. “Who are you to us? You claim to be here because you are a friend of Dare. Well, where is he? He’s gone and you’ve taken his place. But you don’t live on Crescent Slough, you don’t work at your own affairs. Instead, you meddle in mine. What’s worse, you expect me to be grateful.”

  “Not grateful, only sensible. I’m here because I have no reason to be anywhere else until my friend returns. Naturally, as a doctor, I notice the condition of those around me. I would no more let your wife work herself to death without saying anything than I would have let those Chinese drown without trying to help. It’s not in my nature to be a passive observer of life when I can help someone.”

  “It is in your nature, it seems, to offer help where no help is required. The Chinamen no doubt screamed to be saved. I’m not aware that my wife has made any such plea.”

  “No? But you were at the table last night, you saw her distress. What was all that if not a plea for help?”

  Thomas Lansdowne grinned unpleasantly. “Ah, well, it’s obviously never occurred to you that my wife might have a very good reason for her behaviour last night. Perhaps you did not hear the dog barking? A dog does not bark like that without cause, just as a woman does not react as my wife did without cause.”

  Anson spoke quietly now, for the subject was delicate. “You and your wife lost a child recently, yes? In my experience, a woman’s grief runs deeper and lasts longer. That is cause enough to account for her behaviour at the evening’s end, as well as for her obvious fatigue and distraction throughout.”

  Thomas Lansdowne’s eyes opened wide. His jaw set and his neck tensed. “You would speak of my grief! Mine! What gives you the right? I’ll speak plainly, since my brother is not present to check my tongue. You’re not wanted here. You’re a friend of Dare and he’s no friend of ours. You wanted to know why I should insult the man? Because he’s a damned scoundrel without morals or religion or family, a man who’d stoop to anything to achieve his ends. And you give his name to us as a recommendation? On that basis you expect me to stand here wasting time when there’s work to be done, listening to you, a stranger, tell me how much grief I’ve felt at the loss of my child. It will not do!”

  His chest rose and fell in great heaves. But he did not shift his braced legs. He lowered his voice, but the tone remained hostile.

  “I would advise you to leave, doctor, on the next ferry. In the meantime, stay out of my business. Dare has not heeded this advice and he’ll be sorry for the lack. You’d be unwise to join him in his folly.”

  With that, the Englishman stepped forward and smacked the horse on its flank, setting the animal straining at the ropes again. Then he squelched back into position behind the stump and threw his weight against it as if it was, in fact, William Dare, and he was trying to hurl the man into oblivion.

  Anson was still reeling as if struck by a fist. It was not the Englishman’s anger that shocked him, but the wholly unwarranted and violent attack on Dare’s character, an attack that he now felt unable to repel. William Dare without morals? A scoundrel? The man who’d risked his life repeatedly in battle to save his comrades, who’d nursed the wounded until he himself was but a shadow on the tent walls? It was as close to blasphemy as Anson had ever experienced.

  He stood on the wet earth under a blue sky alive with only the occasional bird and the dull echo of the tin press and felt as if he’d been reduced to the same level as the horse, struggling in vain to free itself of a burden it could not even begin to comprehend. At least it was obvious that Thomas Lansdowne had attempted to reduce him to that level. It was a vile attempt, and all of Anson’s sympathies for the man evaporated.

  “I’m not done, sir!” Grabbing the bridle of the horse, Anson stopped the animal’s efforts. As the ropes slackened, he turned and faced the furious Englishman, who had clambered out from behind the stump, breathing raggedly, his cheeks blood-full. “I don’t know how such matters are conducted in your country, but in mine, when you attack the character of a man’s friend, you attack the man himself. You’ll have the decency at least to stand up behind your words a moment before returning to your work.”

  With Thomas Lansdowne glaring at him, hands on his hips, Anson forged ahead.

  “I would no more defend the character of William Dare than you would the character of your own brother. Dare is a business adversary of yours. I understand that. You do not know him as I do. I understand that as well. So I’ll put your attack down to ignorance and move on. Your wife, whether you wish to hear this or not, is in grave danger of harming herself and her baby. If a tragedy occurs, that will fall hard upon you. But I fear it will fall harder upon your other children, and one in particular.”

  Anson did not flinch as Thomas Lansdowne raised one great fist and stepped forward, spluttering rage.

  “Calm yourself, man, and listen! Your daughter, Louisa . . .”

  “Louisa? What of her?”

  “I said be calm. The girl is fine. Indeed, she’s much more than that. You know, of course, of her musical gifts. But perhaps you don’t fully grasp the extent of them.”

  The rage slowly drained from the Englishman’s face. He unclenched his fist and lowered it. “She likes music, yes. It’s a pleasing quality in a female.”

  Anson considered him at length. Ka-thunk-ka-thunk-ka-thunk. The tin press did not let up. Thomas Lansdowne’s face had softened and was now almost quizzical in its expression. But he did not speak.

  At last, Anson said, “Your daughter has a rare talent. Though I am no expert, I believe her to be a prodigy.”

  “A prodigy? Nay, she has but rarely touched a piano.”

  “This is why I call her a prodigy. The piano on the wharf? I came upon her playing it. And she was playing Chopin.”

  “Louisa?” His bewilderment was genuine, but Anson detected a small amount of pride and pleasure in it. The man might just have said, “My Louisa, my lamb,” instead of what he did say, which was merely a nod to social convention. “She’ll be of use at services, then. The Lord does not require Chopin for worship.”

  “Perhaps not. But beauty of any kind is a gift from God and is meant to inspire us to higher thoughts and feelings. Your daughter can be a servant of that rare kind, given the opportunity. At the very least, you could find the time to move the piano indoors for her.”

  Thomas Lansdowne’s round, wondering face resembled a clock missing its hands. Anson could almost hear the futile grinding of the works in the body.
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br />   The horse lifted its head and nickered. A dark flock rose on the horizon and fell away without sound.

  “You heard my daughter play? When was this?”

  Ah, now I’ve done it, Anson thought, I’ve made trouble for her. But it was too late.

  “Last night, on the wharf. She and Edward had removed the front board of the crate. It was to be expected. The child loves music as you love her. To know a piano is near and not be able to play it—you must allow her the impatience.”

  “Impatience is not a virtue. It’s to be discouraged.”

  “Yes, well, I ask only that the discouragement isn’t severe. I wouldn’t wish to be responsible for having the child punished for what is as natural to her as the song is in a bird.”

  “How I discipline my children is not your business.” But Thomas Lansdowne had more wonderment than severity in his tone now. Anson knew that the revelation about Louisa had unsettled him.

  “Of course it’s not, nor is your wife’s health. I ask only that you consider both matters carefully. You are, after all, a fortunate man.”

  Anson paused, embarrassed to find his voice breaking, his eyes watering. He composed himself and continued.

  “I have no family myself. Perhaps if you think me overly concerned with the welfare of yours, you might take that fact into account.”

  But Thomas Lansdowne appeared to be listening to the far-off sound coming from the direction of the river. It would have been almost an act of violence to disturb his silence. Anson felt he had done enough, in any case.

  “Good day,” he said and took a few steps backward before turning his back on the sky-searching fathom of the Englishman’s gaze and returning to his own solitude and unprofound meditations of the day’s slow light.

  VII

  July 1881, Chilukthan, British Columbia

  Sunlight rarely penetrated the parlour, or perhaps Edney had simply not noticed it doing so for many months. As she poured a fresh cup of tea for the American guest, the sunlight appeared to flow from her hand as well and descend to the bunched bottoms of the velvet drapes. Had she even parted them since May’s illness? Edney could hardly believe the room contained a window that looked out on something as ordinary as this world.