Dungeness

by Polinsky, Karen;

  Xwelas, by now in her thirties, married a gold-rush profiteer from Alabama named William King Lear, who kept a shop and dispensed land titles. To her household she added a third son, Will Jr. Lear received word of a relative’s death and returned to the East Coast to claim his inheritance. Possibly Lear returned later to follow the Alaska gold rush. It’s unlikely that Xwelas or his son Billy ever saw him again.

  At forty, with three sons by two different white men, Xwelas returned to her relatives in Port Townsend. In the winter of 1873 she married George Phillips. This third and final liaison with a white husband would prove intolerable.

  Phillips, a laborer, was well-known for his bad temper. Once, an eyewitness saw Phillips strike Xwelas with a canoe paddle. On the night before he died, Phillips and Xwelas attended a party at the house of their neighbor William Shattuck. Phillips gambled and drank while Xwelas tended to their baby Maggie. At the time Xwelas was pregnant with a second child by Phillips.

  According to witnesses, when they left, both were intoxicated. When they reached their home Phillips broke down the door with an axe. He grabbed two rifles off the mantel and loaded them. He then called her names and threatened to kill her. At that point, Xwelas told the court, she decided it was safer to sleep in the woods. With the infant Maggie on her back, she left, taking with her a double-barreled shotgun. According to her testimony, Phillips, still inebriated, went after her.

  Xwelas testified that she had acted in self-defense. The fact that she ambushed him while hiding in the brush undermines this claim. The range and direction of the shot suggests that Xwelas had, at least to some extent, premeditated the decision to put an end to her ordeal.

  Xwelas never denied shooting her husband. This admission alone could have earned her a death sentence. Instead, the white male jury accepted her plea of insanity.

  They may have believed that Xwelas, a Native American woman—and violent, to boot—was not mentally competent to stand trial. Perhaps they subscribed to the popular view that any marriage between a white settler and an Indian was destined to go bad. Or they felt the circumstances mitigated her crime. Maybe, they just pitied her.

  Xwelas probably did not spend more than a few months in jail. What became of her and her five children after the trial is unknown.

  31

  Chinese Medicine

  c. 1890

  “Edith! I’m back!”

  Though long past suppertime, the kitchen stove stood grimly monolithic and cold. The parlor hearth, colder. I threw down Edith’s cloak, speckled and streaked with mud. Without stopping to unlace my boots hurried up the stairs.

  Her head had fallen forward on the pillow. I lifted the stringy curtain of hair. With trembling hand I soaked my hanky (hers.) with cologne and pressed it her forehead, cheeks, and chin.

  Not a word, a cough, or a sigh. I shook her, kissed her, and cried out.

  I moved the lamp nearer. Through her white blond hair, parted with sweat, the white glow revealed the curve of her skull. For an instance it seemed as if I had glimpsed her corpse. A dark thread of blood crawled out of her nose.

  I shut my eyes, squeezed out one tear, and lifted my gaze to the cross and the portrait beside it. “Don’t let her be dead. Save her, Adele.”

  On the top of the night table, a round mirror. I held it up to her gently parted lips. Nothing.

  With my thumb I pressed down on her wrist.

  Nothing.

  Then, a faint throb.

  My own heartbeat, or hers?

  Help was required and quick. At this hour, what to do?

  The Reverend and Chris, on their real-estate tour, would not be back until the next day. I could go for the doctor who was a member of the paris, and a near neighbor. I rejected the idea. The doctor would surely ask, “How long has she been like this?” Also, “Where were you?” Eventually, the truth would come out. If Edith died, the Reverend and Chris would believe, rightly, that I had murdered her.

  I’m not proud of what I did.

  Sometimes the selfish desire to survive is not brave. Sometimes you’re required to go the whole way, to confront the essence of the fear. What that meant for me was to expose my true self to those who were sure to judge me. I wasn’t ready. One day, I would be called to account. That night, Edith would pay the price.

  Unwilling to call the doctor, I knew of only one place that I could go for medicine. Open for business at all hours, in stacked canisters and jars behind the counter of the Zee Tai Company, on the waterfront, with goods and wares from the Far East, with the cure for every ill, including those inflicted by the addictive narcotics available at Zee Tai.

  I’m ashamed to admit, I was afraid to ask a Chinese person for help. I had been taught to distrust our Asian neighbors. Though Port Townsend relied on its Chinese workers—merchants, farmers, cooks, and handymen—the truth was that in two years, except in shops and in passing, I had no meaningful interaction with any Asian person, no real firsthand experience. Christopher referred to our neighbors from the Far East as “Orientals” or “Celestials.” According to the Reverend, the heathen Chinese also belonged to their own order of Masonic lodges, and prayed in Taoist or Buddhist temples, called Joss houses. But from what I could see, the Chinese were like everyone in Port Townsend, including me: trying to get by, and get along.

  From the frying pan to the fire, I had to try.

  For the second time that day, I descended, this time down the rickety stair to the murky maze beneath me. When at last I reached the street, rain, mixed with garbage, vegetable scraps, and equestrian and human waste, climbed my skirt and over-spilled my ankle-high boots. Peering into a flickering gaslight, which taunted me with more shadow than light, I careened into a sailor with a feathered escort, twice his age and half as tall, who corkscrewed her filthy neck rolls to scoff at me. A crowd of street urchins, in an evening match of “kick the can,” nearly knocked me in to a gutter. As I was about to fall down, I managed to grab onto the ornate brass handle that led into the magnificent portal to the Asian market. Saved by Zee Tai.

  Inside, the Chinese market was pungent and sweet. In the back, through a curtain, I watched as ghostly gentleman—many with brims and scarves to cloak their identities—went up in smoke. Nearer to me, a polished counter, long and wide, served as a barrier between the casual customers and the passage to the nether regions below, passages that smuggled drunken sailors, escaped convicts, and contraband to ships in the harbor.

  Behind the gleaming counter, a Chinese clerk, in a blouse and wide black cotton trousers. When I opened my mouth to speak, he turned away. Feigning not to notice me, instead he saluted a tall woman, dressed entirely in pink, who had just entered the shop.

  “Madam, as usual we are here to serve you, with medicinals from the Far East. Time-tested. Potent. Whatever you want, we can get it.”

  “Thank you, Bobby. I know I can depend on you.”

  Of a medium height, her proud aspect made her look taller. Though her wavy ashen locks were interrupted by white icicles—a premature frost in her—she could not have been more than twenty-five.

  She set down her little beaded purse. Her glove removed a folded packet of bills, old and new. “You know what they say: ‘One night with Venus, a lifetime on Mercury.’ One of my girls is down for the count. I sent for the doctor. He prescribed a powder. Potassium iodide, I think. She’s been vomiting for a week. And no better; the rash has spread. What can you give me, Bobby?”

  “Sarsaparilla root. Wait here while I make an herbal reduction for a poultice. Ten minutes or less, I promise.”

  He was about to disappear behind a lurid curtain when I piped up, “That’s not fair. I was here first.”

  His chin trembled. The Chinese herbalist stammered, and shook his fist. “Hooligan. Do you know who this is?” What I didn’t know then, and later learned she was known from Baja to Vladivostock. Her house attracted mariners from every corner of the globe seeking love. “Urchin . . . get out . . . and don’t come back.”

/>   The lady in pink, not at all perturbed, laughed. “Bobby, give the kid a chance.” In a low voice, she advised, “Don’t go at him that way, with hammer and tongs. Quickly now, Millie Langlie. Tell me. What is so urgent? What do you need?”

  I confided, “My mistress is ill. This winter she caught a cold, which in the past day has swept her poor ravaged body like wildfire. There’s blood on her pillow. At this very moment, she lies in her bed with no one to soothe her. If she doesn’t get help soon, she’ll die. It may already be too late.”

  She reacted warmly and at once. “It’s consumption. I’m sure of it. Don’t ask me how I know. Bobby, get her some medicine. As soon as it’s ready, deliver it to the Mathieson house. Hurry, Bobby, do it.”

  Instantly, he complied. From out of her purse she handed me a little package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “Take this, Millie. Brew it up, strong, and make her drink it down, even if she chokes. Now go.”

  I clasped the package to my heart, and raced up a hundred-and-one rickety wooden steps that seemed to go nowhere, winding their way upward through that circle of hell reserved for the worst sinner of all: one who gives up a friend to save herself. I threw my whole weight against the front door, which I had left unlocked, and flew up the stairs.

  She was alive; just. On her chin, the pillow, and the coverlet: streaks of blood that went from bright red to gummy black. Her perspiring body shivered.

  I built up the fire in her bedroom. I placed a small chair next to Edith at the bedside, and waited for the kettle to steam. Soon the water was hot enough to brew the special tea. Try as I might, I could not get Edith to take enough of the scorching, bitter liquid. Edith’s face was an alabaster mask of her face.

  Frightened, exhausted, I stretched out beside her. Details of the eve threaded through my addled brain like ticker tape. The lady in pink at Zee Tai had called me by my Christian name. She had ordered Bobby to deliver his concoction uptown to this house. How did she know?

  I did not wonder for long. I dozed. Thirty, maybe forty minutes later, I awoke to the neighbor’s Boston terrier yapping frantically and a rapid knock at the front door. I roused myself, hurried down the steps and opened the front door.

  Shock of black hair and jet black eyebrows, cocked quizzically. Elegant features, including a straight nose, rosebud nostrils and delicate lips. He wore a silk scarf round the collar of his blouse with white sleeves that billowed in the breeze, on top of brown velvet trousers. Absurdly, he wore no coat.

  He bowed, so that the stray lock fell down. He had no hat to doff.

  “Oh,” I said, “it’s you.”

  The actor Thomas Astor.

  However, this was not the moment to get reacquainted. I showed him the way to her bedroom.

  Edith’s face was white, her lids swollen and bruised. Her aural gold floated on top of the white pillow. Astor grasped the thin, breakable shoulders. He lifted her off the pillow and shook her hard. The chalky lips parted.

  “Quick,” Astor urged. “Hand it over.”

  The bottle was midnight blue.

  I cried out, “If it’s poison?”

  “So what? If she’s dying, she’ll die. The elixir will quell the pain as she sachets off to the great inevitable. It might even cure her, but who knows?”

  Edith gagged and fell back on the pillow, insensible. He dropped the spent bottle on the end table and strode out.

  What could I do, except follow him? Looking back: a harbinger. In the future I would always follow Thomas Astor.

  Down in the parlor, with trembling hand I rekindled the fire as he fell into a chair. Now that we had a chance for us to talk more, neither of us had anything to say. Both of us were exhausted. The scene upstairs, appalling.

  I collapsed onto the sofa.

  The actor mused, “What was it that Bobby said? A few drops, a tablespoon, the entire bottle? I can’t recall.”

  I replied, “You have killed her. Or rather, I have done it, with your help.”

  He arranged his face into a pitiable expression. “Really, whenever I go out of my way to help, someone cries bloody murder. Why is that? Less than one hour ago I was up to my chin in a game of Double Ten. About to scoop the kitty. Instead, I was ejected from that pocket of warmth, into the cold night, in order to save lives. That’s not my style.”

  As he spoke, he rose and began pacing to and fro as if the hearthside were a stage. “Heroic exploits are not in my line, except in the climax of the drama. Though fine speeches are easy to memorize, they mean very little in reality.”

  He threw himself down on the camel-colored sofa beside me and sighed. “Why complain? You and I both know: what Mallory O’Quinn wants, Mallory O’Quinn gets.”

  Of course. The Irish servant girl, whose life had been saved by Adele. By tragic circumstance, transformed into the lady in pink. Once, long ago, I had called her ungrateful and wished her dead. All of a sudden I comprehended why she had stayed away. A lady of the night cannot leave a calling card at a minister’s house.

  From a respectable distance Mallory O’Quinn kept watch. Later I learned that Mallory knew everything about everything: in particular, the ups and downs of Edith’s illness, the exact minute I was called in as a housemaid and companion, as well as the dubious state of the Reverend’s finances. A word from Mallory O’Quinn had established Christopher in his clerkship at Rothschild’s Emporium. Now she had used her influence to procure rare and valuable medicine for Adele’s daughter, and called upon Astor, the New York gentleman who had ruined her, to save Edith’s life in payment for destroying hers. I could see how Mallory O’Quinn turned love into a commercial enterprise, but she still had a heart.

  As I pondered, Astor searched through his vest pockets, an assortment on the outside, half a dozen more stitched into the satin interior. Finally, he extracted a folded piece of red cloth or paper and tossed it onto the sofa.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Mallory again. It’s a paper lantern, to cover the lamp, so that the brightness won’t hurt Edith’s eyes. See?”

  He slipped the red paper over the kerosene fixture, which hung like an upside down jar, on the wall. The lantern made the parlor look like a bordello on fire.

  Astor took a pipe out of his pocket, as well as other apparatuses: a miniature oil lamp, a tin, and a golden needle, like a hat pin. He opened up the small metal box, and with the pin removed a gummy glob, which he began to turn inside the sputtering flame.

  “What is that? It reminds me of a toy. I know. A magic lantern.”

  “Better, and why? Instead of a translucent image on a plaster wall, you see only what you wish to see. Now that I think of it, what a perfect way to describe the actor’s craft. We all have nightmares. We all have dreams. My talent is to conjure waking visions and teach you to believe in them.”

  I nodded fiercely, though I wasn’t really listening. What I wanted was for Astor to stop talking. My head hurt. I was exhausted. Was Carl right? Was he a flim flam? The revelation about Mallory chastened me not to rely entirely on first impressions, on the other hand, hadn’t I seen enough to call him a cad?

  Yet, he had cast his spell on me again. As I mused, the sticky blob on the end of the pin began to squirm and then bubble.

  Astor put the pipe in his mouth. “Come. Next to me.”

  Outside the first hint of day was misting. My tired brain registered him sitting there, back straight and knees crossed like a yogi. I slid over next to him. He raised his pipe and handed it to me. I drew it in and coughed. His elegant hand gestured: Again.

  The sharp edges of my astute intellect blurred, submerging all anxiety and fear. All at once, I was a child, standing on the edge of the rocky shore at Dungeness. I curled up next to Astor. “Tell me a story.”

  He turned, and nudged me with his nose. “Okay. First, let me check on the monster in the bedroom closet.”

  I closed my eyes, drifting. A few minutes later Astor returned. “Don’t worry.” Obviously I wasn’t; I was d
reaming. “If anything, her fever is worse, but at least she’s still breathing.”

  He fell down beside me. Using a taper with the flame from the fireplace he relit the pipe. “A story? How about The Tale of the Magic Lotus Lantern?’ Know it? Of course you don’t.”

  Astor’s Tale: The Magic Lantern

  From the Song Dynasty

  On a mountaintop sat a perfect little temple dedicated to the Goddess San Shengmu. The deity, famed for her compassion, is often shown brandishing a magic lotus lantern.

  The young scholar, Liu Yanchang, journeyed to the capital to take his exams. On the way, he decided to divert his course in order to pay homage to the goddess. The journey took two days. At night, to stay warm, he piled leaves on top of himself. When at last he arrived, he went inside the temple and approached the altar. He bowed down until the tip of his nose met the cold stone floor.

  Yanchang asked the goddess, “Tell me, will I pass my exams?”

  No reply.

  The goddess of compassion was off, salvaging a village suffering from plague. Thus, she gave no sign. The youth sprang to his feet. Simultaneously he leapt to the conclusion that the goddess was a fraud, therefore he vandalized the temple wall.

  When San Shengmu returned, she was enraged to discover that her temple had been defiled. She pursued the young man down the mountain paths and unleashed a sudden wind that made the trees double over, depriving the youth of all shelter.

  Yanchang—cold, wet and tired—crumpled to the ground.

  Several days later, cruising down the mountain pass, the Goddess of Compassion discovered him, on the side of the stony path. Thinking that she’d killed him, she gently put a feather to his lips. He lived. Relieved and grateful, the goddess built a hut for him, carried him inside, and cared for him tenderly. Over time, she learned to love him.

  Yanchang recovered. As soon as he could speak, he asked the goddess to marry him.