by Tim Bowling
A good man. What was he? Not vengeful, not remorselessly responding to misery and pain by inflicting it on others, most of whom, like most people, were innocent. The smell of charred wood on the air was suddenly the burnt evidence of an ideal Anson could no longer carry. To accept this revenge as an extension of the mutilation of the corpse almost twenty years before was to do more than allow his old friend to disappear without explanation of either the present or the past; it was to know himself, at last, for a fool, naive as those Southern planters had been in their romantic attachments to a non-existent code of chivalry. Now he had to accept what all the years of graft and scandal and retribution after Appomattox had held out to him, that the achieved glory was cold, blunt, and efficiently ruthless. Even so, it was not an occasion for tears, even if he could shed them: if he had not cried over the operating tables of the war, he would not cry over this final failed surgery of his antique values.
The wind blew over the ruined cannery and the battlefields of the slain. The pup wriggled in Anson’s hands. He gazed into the dark and let the small animal’s warmth sink into his chest.
Crescent Slough
Dare directed the horse over the marshy ground and let the briny air dissipate the smells of wood smoke and his own sweat. But if he breathed too deeply, he began to cough from very deep in his chest, so that he had to pull up on the reins and lie gasping along the horse’s neck for several seconds before he could continue on his way to Chilukthan.
He did not have a clear purpose. The Lansdownes were not the real enemy; he knew it was the Scots canners, Craig or Owen. They were certainly behind the current plotting against him; one or both of them were responsible for the shooting of Thomas Lansdowne, just as they had almost managed to block him from hiring another canning crew in Victoria. If he hadn’t been willing and able to pay twice the going wage, if he hadn’t made his own connections in the city, he’d not have been able to put up a pack at all.
But it didn’t matter now. The fact that the Lansdownes—and others—believed he was a nigger, and a violent one, only hastened the end that had to come. But the end could be different. It would have to be. Even if the words were the same. Goddamn ignorant. More of a slave than any nigger.
But a slave was not free to leave a place, and he had left many. A slave did not have property to sell, and he would sell. Or, at least, the doctor, his friend, would sell for him. And a slave did not have white friends. So Orlett was as much of a liar as ever.
Dare urged his horse along the slough bank, and thought, I will go to the house of Henry Lansdowne, I will tell him that I did not shoot his brother, that I will agree to sell at a fair price and leave the delta. Because he could not stay. There always came a point when the world required his hands on the throat of something that couldn’t be killed even if he used all his strength. That point had come again. It was no use fighting beyond it. There were always other places. But this time it had to be the last place, the piece of isolated California land he’d bought ten years before. He was dying from the poisons in his lungs. How long it would take he did not know; perhaps he had no more time than the salmon who struck into the river from the sea, perhaps more than that, but certainly not enough to waste.
The narrowest portion of slough approached in the dim starlight. Dare kicked the horse’s flanks and circled away from the bank, preparing for the jump. As he rode, the motion confirmed his decision, cleared him of all doubts and worries, as motion always did. He saw Daney’s face before him, Caleb’s eyes, he saw his own branded cheek.
As he moved, he felt his skin darken. Perhaps if he moved fast enough and with enough purpose, he’d grow so dark there’d never be any question of it. Then he could walk comfortably among men, his head raised, his whole scar open to the air, then he could lay to rest the ghost of the overseer’s grinning face.
By the time the horse lifted from the ground, Dare was hardly even flesh and blood; he was pure black and free even of memory and time. And when the horse landed softly on the far bank, Dare knew exactly what to do: he would wait for the doctor and tell him that he was leaving the delta, that he would contact him when he could. No matter the wrenching cough from his lead-filled lungs, he was still strong enough to move clear. A slave who had moved clear, who could move, was a free man. And a free man could choose his own place to die.
Dare noted the fire glow on the horizon and slowed the horse. He watched, unsurprised, for five minutes, ten. Once, a long time ago, the crackling fires of a burning nation had been at his back, and almost three years of hard survival had been behind him too. Somehow he had survived the worst of the fighting and the diseases and had even come slowly to a greater understanding of himself and of the nature and purpose of the war. But though he had witnessed many terrible things, nothing ever touched him as deeply as the sight of Daney dragging her daughters and the coffle of women to their deaths. The man couldn’t shake the image the boy had seen; it haunted him more than the overseer’s revelations about his parentage. But the war cured him also of any illusions about seeing the world in so simple a fashion. Blood was well mixed in America, and suffering wasn’t limited to those of a single skin colour, no more than were the nobler qualities—a poor white farmboy, after all, a shy and gentle soul with some learning, had taught Dare to read on the dreary, dull bivouacs of the seemingly endless campaigns.
For he had no intention of failing at the war’s end, that much he knew almost from the moment he marched out of Sharpsburg with a new name. And with that conviction, pressed continually against the image of Daney’s final act, came the desire to prove himself against white men, to better them simply by escaping their traps again and again. Each time he moved on from a place, taking his tinsmithing skills with him, the smell of solder like a shield, he moved farther away from the burning brand that had left the scars of the insulting letters on his face. Now the final move had come, and he was not even sorry for it, as long as he could leave as a free man, with the money his skill and sweat had earned, with the knowledge that he had escaped the closing trap of the overseer’s grin once more.
The fire widened like daybreak down along the river. Dare lightly tapped the horse’s flanks with the heels of his boots and continued on toward the Lansdownes’ cannery. As he rode, shouts rolled up from the riverbank and across the flat ground and died. Approaching the Englishman’s house, he saw a dark shape move against the darkness. At the same time, a dog began barking. The sound chilled him. He dismounted and tethered his horse to a stump, vowing that he would not see the overseer’s grin, not look over from the smell of wet dog to Daney’s iron face above the trader’s wagon, not watch the black flies lift again from the bloodied muzzle.
But before he came close enough to see the live animal, the barking stopped. Somewhere in the dark a horse whinnied low.
As soon as he had made the connection between the fire and the shouts and the horse, Dare sprinted back.
He untethered and mounted, his blood pounding to join the hoof beats that came rapidly his way. He waited until the rider was nearly upon him before he kicked the horse forward and blocked the path. The other rider reined quickly, his head dropping. Dare jumped off his horse and, in seconds, grabbed the rider around the midsection and threw him to the ground. The horses neighed wildly and galloped into the darkness.
The man, pinned on his back, cried, “Who are you? What do you want with me?” His small eyes swam in his doughy face.
Dare pushed his knee down into the man’s chest and placed one hand near his neck. “Who are you working for?”
The man’s eyes filled with knowledge. His nostrils dilated. “My God, it’s you.” His voice shared the horses’ wildness. “What are you going to do to me?”
Dare closed his fingers slightly. The man began to choke. He tried to buck but Dare held firm.
“Who is it?” he said.
“Craig. It’s Craig.”
He could do it this time. He felt the will in his hand but even more in his blood. He tig
htened his grip. The man gave a gargling sound, like that of a salmon strangled in a net. Dare stared at him. This man had plotted against him for money, he had set a fire and had probably even shot Thomas Lansdowne, and all for money.
The letters on his face burned under the old scars. As if he were still property, still a nigger. But the burning meant slavery; why should it burn? He was not a slave. He had a home, on his own land. He had a place to die free. He pressed down until the man’s eyes fluttered and the choking sounds ceased.
At last he stopped and stood, his chest heaving, the fingers of his hand tingling, his cheek aflame. He could not kill when he was a slave, so how could he kill now? As a free man, a dying man? The idea froze him. He looked down. The man’s jaw worked slowly, his breath came in rasps.
“Please,” he said. “My child . . .”
The man touched his throat in wonder.
Dare gaped at him, at the naked word on his mouth. “A child?”
“A boy. He’s just nine. Please. I can’t leave him alone. His mother’s gone already.”
Nine? Once he’d been that age too. A boy. A son. Dare tried to look far down into himself, but there was only darkness, a darkness that seemed to pull him in. He felt his body succumb to the warm pressure until he lost awareness of his surroundings. Vaguely he whistled for his horse. It trotted out of the field toward him.
Dare took a step, then looked at the stars. Once he had been both things. The idea was so strange that it stopped him from taking another step. The horse nickered softly, the musk of its damp flesh reached out of the dark. But very briefly a son. And it did not seem he’d ever been a boy. Perhaps, if he had become a father, his own boyhood would have grown clearer to him. But he’d never stayed long enough in one place, and how could he have risked a family, never knowing with certainty the colour he would pass on?
He lifted the well-worn pouch from under his shirt and carefully emptied the contents into one hand. They shone like a constellation, near and farther away than anything. His milk teeth. Not even an ounce worth. And yet what he held was all he really possessed. It didn’t even matter about his name or his skin. Not now. A man couldn’t own them. What mattered was that the blood had to be cool enough for a man to die properly.
The teeth were so light, as light as the past was becoming. Dare looked at the clustered stars. It wasn’t only the Englishmen who could plant themselves in this place. The teeth were as small as the stars; he understood that he no longer needed the guidance of either. With a graceful sweep of his arm, he sowed the teeth into the fields.
A second later, he heard the chilling shout of the past and the present—“Goddamned nigger!”—and whirled just as the near-simultaneous blast of the shotgun struck.
Then the earth rose rapidly to meet him and the darkness, no longer inviting, but cold and unyielding, rushed in.
EPILOGUE
New Westminster, British Columbia
Jacob Craig stood at a second-floor window of the hotel on Columbia Street and looked down at a drunken Indian weaving along the boardwalk. Near him, a grey mare tethered to a pole weakly flapped her tail at a cloud of flies, and two ravens pecked at a clump of dung. Craig counted carefully. Five seconds, six seconds, seven. Time enough.
He turned, slowly removing the toothpick from where it hung on his bottom lip, and took his chair again. He glared at the American doctor but immediately realized it was no use; he might just as well try to intimidate Owen sitting there across the table like some kind of statue filled with lava rather than stone.
“That’s a steep price for but a single cannery,” Craig said. He narrowed his eyes as the doctor blinked his heavy eyelids and smiled slightly. His lips were a red smear in his unkempt grizzle.
“That includes the pack. And you know how large that is.”
“Do I?” Craig reached for his glass and took a short swallow of whisky. “It seems to me that, with your friend gone and not likely coming back, there’d be some effect on production.”
The doctor hardly reacted. His face was loose-skinned above the beard, and his eyes had all the vitality of a whipped spaniel’s. He ought to medicate himself, Craig thought, then recollected the gossip that Smith, the agent, had passed on. The story was that this Yankee doctor had taken a keen interest in the Lansdowne girl, the one he’d carried through the typhoid. Smith said that with the mother nursing her sickly newborn and Thomas Lansdowne even more preoccupied with getting his cannery running again the doctor planned to take the daughter back east on the proceeds of the sale of Dare’s property and wait the appropriate four or five years until she was old enough to marry. Well, men had done stupider things, but Craig didn’t think this fellow, Baird, looked lovesick. In fact, he looked much the way a man does in a slump of the market when all his stocks prove worthless and he finds that he’s ruined. Then again, some men took love the same way, apparently. It’d be useful if Owen did, but Craig still hadn’t found a chink in that armour.
The doctor suddenly fell into a coughing spasm. His face reddened and he seemed to retch into the handkerchief he’d pulled from his vest. After several seconds, he stopped and, with a shaking hand, drank from his glass of water.
Owen spoke, his mouth hardly moving.
“How do we know he isn’t back already, Craig? He might never have left. Say what you will of his character, but Dare possesses a considerable talent for remaining unseen.”
Craig felt the smart to his intelligence. Owen never missed an opportunity to belittle him. It would have been so much easier if Dare’s body had been dumped in the slough. But you couldn’t trust an Irishman to finish anything, except a bottle. For all Craig knew, the mick was even lying about shooting Dare. Well, better to be safe, then, and play along.
“What of it?” he said, staring hard at the doctor and feeling himself competing with Owen for whatever information was writ on the man’s haggard face.
The American blinked so slowly that his lids seemed to draw the blood up into his eyes, which were red and wet around each small circle of brown. “No more doubt his absence than God’s presence,” he said dully.
Craig felt Owen’s grey eyes settle briefly on him, but he could not decipher the message. He knew that Owen had no more time for God-talk than he did. It was no asset in business, except for the connections a man could make in church, but they were as easily made in hotels and saloons. Easier, in fact, since worship happened but once a week. Craig almost allowed himself a grin at his witticism, but he wasn’t about to give Owen any more advantage than he already had.
From the direction of the bar came a volley of laughter followed by a clink of glasses. Craig waited. Just when it seemed that no one was going to speak again, the doctor stood, one hand flat, the other limp at his side.
“It matters little to me, gentlemen, if you believe what I say about Dare, except as it interferes with our business here. He’s no longer on the delta, or indeed in this country. And it’s not likely he’ll return. He’s not a fool, nor is he a spirit able to remain unseen permanently, despite your appreciation of his talent. And, that being so, I have a responsibility as an investor to seek what compensation I can. Clearly you recognize that?”
Owen nodded and the doctor continued.
“I don’t know how you’ve kept the other canners from this meeting, but that means nothing to me as long as you meet my price. If you don’t, I’ll consult the others directly.”
Craig relaxed. Now the conversation was comfortable again. He replaced the toothpick in his mouth, probed gingerly near his sore molar, then said, “The market in England is glutted. You have only to smell the air to know why. I’ll be fortunate to sell my own pack, let alone whatever slop Dare’s squaws and Chinamen have managed to stuff into tins.”
The doctor shrugged and pointed the limp hand at Owen, who looked at it as if seeing a fish whose flesh had turned too ripe to be canned.
“Consult whoever you wish,” Owen said. “There’ll be no takers.” His voice fell like a
block of salted granite. If Craig hadn’t already known that Owen had pressured the other canners into keeping their hands off Dare’s holdings, the cold voice would have chilled him straight through. As it was, he shuddered a little as he studied the doctor’s reaction.
To Craig’s surprise, the man stiffened. Something of Owen’s hardness settled into his jaw and bloodshot eyes.
“So that’s how it is?” he said and turned to face Craig. “A blood bond, gentlemen, or just greed?”
Craig repressed the desire to tell the fool everything, that Owen had even paid off the steamships—Dare’s whole pack for this last big run would just sit and rust on the wharf.
Owen’s grey eyes iced over, but no flush came to his skin. It was always a disadvantage to show too much; his genius lay in knowing that even better than Craig himself did.
“What you call greed, sir,” Owen said, “is what we call business in this province.”
“Business?” The doctor convulsed into another coughing fit. He pulled a small bottle from his pocket, poured some pills into his hand, and swallowed them. Finally, he said, “You won’t get away with it. I’ll see to it that you don’t.” But his voice lacked conviction. After all, Craig knew there was little the man could do. He was only a visitor here, and a doctor, not a businessman with the necessary connections. And no doubt Dare’s disappearance had come as a shock, especially as it followed so quickly upon the revelation of his being a nigger. Of course, a sensible man ought to expect a nigger to run. Just as a sensible man knew that a nigger, once he’d run, wouldn’t turn and rejoin the fight. No. If Dare wasn’t, in fact, dead, he was as good as dead. It wasn’t even necessary to guard his pack. Even if the nigger did the unthinkable and returned, he’d have a hell of a time selling his fish with no buyers and no shipping companies willing to transport the cans.