by Alissa York
“What have you got on under there?” Hammer plucked at a protruding tuft of sleeve.
Dorrie misunderstood him. “Nothing.” She formed the word with some difficulty.
He twisted the pinch of sleeve, gave it a yank. “What’s this, then?” His knuckles came to rest on the pillow, inches from her eye. “Take it off, there’s a good girl.”
It was the next step. Dorrie wriggled beneath the covers, gathering endless folds, catching her thumbs in the lace. Finally, after a moment of near suffocation, she worked the nightdress free over her head. Rather than let him see it, she shoved the frothy thing aside, forming a legless lump on the far half of the bed. She needn’t have bothered. Hammer got a good look at everything when, with a snaking flourish, he hauled the covers down. It both helped and hurt that he appeared not to like what he saw.
Only Mama had ever seen her like that, and only on bath day. How Dorrie had dreaded that weekly stripping down. It was near torture to stand trembling in a foot and a half of hot water, lathered from head to knee.
Or no, not only Mama. There were the others, the women who took charge of her that endless day in the Endowment House—countless pairs of hands, or so it seemed, scrubbing every living inch of her, only to undo the clean with palmfuls of stinking oil. Dorrie knew now what harm such rituals could do. She had entered that ugly building a girl, but had walked out a woman. A woman could become a wife. Could find herself lying on her back before a man of parent age—a man she hadn’t so much as laid eyes on a fortnight before.
Pinned beneath her husband’s gaze, Dorrie knew a nakedness too vast to be housed in a single form. A host of thought-bodies radiated out from her own, each of them stripped painfully bare. Some, like Dorrie, lay on their backs. Others lay face down or curled pitiably on their sides.
Climbing onto the bed, Hammer forced her to scoot sideways and butt up against the nightdress. On his knees now, he fumbled with the front flap of his smalls. Dorrie shut her eyes a second too late, a moment after he’d drawn the thing out in full. She lay dead still. The pain was such that she could think only of cutting—and therein lay the idea she would cling to until he was done.
What if, by some miracle of doubling, she were able to stuff and mount herself? The notion was calming, almost soporific. She felt her limbs give up all resistance, felt her heart check itself and begin to slow.
What a thing to peel back her own thin skin, rid her body of its messy insides. To scoop the grey-blue matter from her own domed skull, peer into that pure space through sockets that once cupped her own eyes. What size eyeballs would she need? She could paint a pair for accuracy, human blackish brown, or she could do something daring—select a pair of deer eyes, perhaps. Such a gentle, forgiving gaze.
Other changes would be possible. She could bring the eyes—deer or otherwise—forward in their sockets, pad out the cheeks and nose. It wouldn’t be lying, only setting her specimen to best advantage. Hadn’t she mended the crook in the barn cat’s tail, set the bone in the hawk’s bent wing?
Another question. Her legs—held apart now by Hammer’s blunt knees—what size rods would they require? She searched her mind. Quarter-inch would do for a good-sized dog, but a deer took half-inch or better. Half-inch, then, especially if she was to be mounted upright. Not that she need be. She could mount herself crouching. Even flying, if she so desired.
If asked, the Tracker would be hard pressed to explain his nocturnal visits to Hammer’s yard. Last night he destroyed all traces of wolf sign he came across, even going so far as to grind a handful of sage into every discernible scent mark. Trees and fence posts, certain corners on certain barns. Tonight he finds the same spots redolent with urine, claimed afresh.
The Father is tempting fate. He’s dropped a goodly pile of scat by the corral gate—a pungent, moonlit message even the blue-eyed son couldn’t fail to remark. Like everything about him, the Father’s leavings are oversized. The Tracker squats and breaks one open between thumb and fingers. Downy fur, gentle bones. A cottontail. No serious hunting, then, just enough to keep his four legs beneath him. Even here, on white man’s land—the neighbouring property rich with helpless lambs.
Scooping up the pile in both hands, the Tracker carries it to a nearby mound of horse droppings and inters it within. Then stoops again, reaching through the corral rails to plunge his hands into the still water of the trough. Thinking of the horse that will first lower its head to drink there in the morning—nostrils wide, eyes rolling—he feels the tug of a smile.
He wipes his palms on his trousers, the right discerning the rise of the picture book. The Father’s freshest trail leads away from the yard—long back and tail hairs furring the underside of the corral’s bottom rail, a discreet belly-drag in the dirt. The Tracker takes a different path, following the fence’s arc around back of the child wife’s barn.
Her window spills gold through the mudded wall. Beneath it, a new set of prints overlay the ones he scuffed away. The Tracker crouches, erasing the telltale configuration of pad and claw. Then rises to fill his eyes. Again the child wife sits unmoving. Before her on the workbench lie scraps of wood, a block of paper, a single pelt. She is the very picture of isolation. Watching her, he feels memory overwhelm him, dragging him backwards into the life he left behind.
As had always been the custom among the People, the first-blood hut was built by the girl’s relatives, situated at a little distance from the main camp. She was to live alone there for four long days, after which she would emerge a changed being, no longer a child.
Even then he wanted her. Even then it was too late.
He didn’t know it yet, but she was Younger Brother’s from the beginning, the skein that bound them having formed when they were small, sending its first fibres out as they passed a clay deer between them, hand to hand. The Tracker was too busy hunting to take notice of her then, dreaming of the day when he’d claim a man’s privilege and lay his kill at the feet of his parents—or perhaps even those of a girl. When he would no longer be restricted to feeding the old ones, who took food because it was due them, never remarking on a young hunter’s skill.
He’d achieved manhood some years previous by the time the girl began to bleed, and had already established himself as one of the finest hunters in the camp—fleet of foot, steady of hand, clear of mind. The day her mother and the other women led the girl away, he happened to glance up from the rabbit net he was mending as they passed. Until that moment, he had sometimes wondered why no woman had ever caught hold of him in his dreams. Now all was clear. He’d been biding his time.
He could scarcely contain himself until dark. When the night finally came down, he crept from the camp to lie in wait among the sagebrush, not far from her lonely hut. One vigil became four. Each morning was the same. Just before dawn, she burst from the low dwelling like a cottontail flushed, her dark shape growing deer-like as she ran.
The Tracker came during daylight, too, whenever he could risk it. He watched the hut when she was inside it, imagining her confined within, going without meat, without salt, without cool water, even, to quench her thirst. Forbidden to touch her own scalp, her face. Lying stretched and sweating on the hotbed her relatives had built for her, live coals smouldering beneath a blanket of earth.
From time to time she would emerge from the mouth of the hut, all limbs and belly and breasts. Her face when it flashed his way showed ghostly streaks of clay, as did the dark cap of her hair. It only added to her allure. As though her head were even more naked than the rest of her, baring that which lay beneath her skin, her bright and lovely skull.
He wasn’t fool enough to approach her. To do so would’ve meant risking everything he had to offer—his strength, his vigour, his ability in the hunt. What kind of a husband would he have made for her then?
The question is painful to him, dangerous. He runs from it, returning to the scene before his eyes. Inside the old barn the child wife takes up her block of paper, stares at it for a long moment, lays it
back down. The Tracker drops in the breath before action, before she swivels her head his way.
— 16 —
JOHN JAMES WAS TOO THIN by half to act the part of a harbour seal, but he had the flippers down pat, and his flop-bellied shuffle made the show. Falling coins provided a low music. Those that landed on the frayed lining of his upturned cap sent a clothy thp resounding through the planking of the wharf. Those that struck other coins shivered and rang. One missed the mark, hit the wharf edge-on, leapt and wheeled. He could have snatched it back before it plummeted beyond reach, but to do so would have meant betraying his role. In the eyes of those watching, he was a creature of the sea. No need, no notion even, of money—a silky, brown-eyed baby for whom the glint of silver spoke only of a jawful of fish.
Instead he barked, a hard, carrying yelp that covered the coin’s small splash. The crowd let fall a brief metallic shower—a sweet sound trampled by a sudden din. John James felt the noise in his chest, a thunderous, building swell. In seconds his audience was gone. He flopped a tight semicircle, peering after them down the wharf. A shipment of mules was unloading—far greater spectacle than any produced by an eleven-year-old boy, even one with rubber for bones. He rolled onto his side and pushed up through a crouch to his feet. Scooping up his take, he hopped back onto the covered walk of a floating warehouse, leant on its railing and waited for the long herd to pass.
At its head a towering man stood in for a stallion, whip curled at the ready in his hand. To mules, men were the understood leaders, but the snorting train also showed an occasional flash of horse—black then red then grey. John James found himself tallying up their number. Seven. Nostrils stretched wide, ears swivelling, they called to one another across the thick brown backs of the mules. When the last of the animals was by, he found himself following in their cacophonous wake.
He kept pace with the herders, hanging back out of range of their whips. Coatless men in untucked, wringing shirts, they pumped their hard right arms, drawing leather S’s in the air. The herd made an open plain of the dockyard, forcing carts and their drivers aside.
John James had passed Wicklow Stables a hundred times, but never when the great front doors stood wide. The space breathed a deep welcome as it swallowed the snaking parade. Standing to one side atop a hay bale, a man with a gleaming pate and a thick blond beard oversaw the proceedings. Apart from the odd bellowed order, he stood silent, eyes roving, hands clasped at the small of his back. Drawing closer, John James saw he was bald in the purest sense, his scalp slick as a pickled egg.
“Am I blinding you?”
“No, sir.” John James darted a glance along the stable wall. A warren of feed bags and grey-green bales, countless avenues of escape. He let his eyes slip back to take in the last of the high, shining rumps and shivering tails. A pair of stable hands followed, each heaving shut an enormous door.
The bald man was Bill Drown’s age or older—a father’s age—but he hopped down from his platform with the keen-bodied spring of a boy. It made an impression, that youthful leap. John James found he was neither sidling toward the feed bags nor whirling and pelting away.
“Fond of horses, are you?”
“Fond?” John James echoed.
The man lifted two fingers, signalling to one of the stable hands to hold his side ajar. “Best come inside and find out.”
It was the beginning of a softer time. Robert Wicklow kept John James clothed and fed, and allowed him to bed down in one of the narrow back stalls. Clean straw, three walls, a door with an audible latch. John James wriggled himself a nest and slept more soundly than he had in memory. In exchange, he cleaned and cared for the stalls, then the equipment, and finally the animals themselves. It turned out he was indeed fond of horses, profoundly so. Mules too, though the feeling was blunter—strength and iron will paling in comparison with grace.
Wicklow worked him hard, but also took care to teach him a thing or two. Pressed side-on to the gunmetal flank of a mare, the stable owner ran both hands down her shank, several loving passes before he stooped to lift her foot. “Give her leg a little rub, get her used to the idea.” He began carefully to pick out the hoof. “They fear terribly for their feet.”
John James learned horses the same way he learned their tack—piece by piece. He’d been at the stables for nearly four months before the boss allowed him to saddle up and mount. Even then he scarcely got hold of the reins before Wicklow barked at him to get down.
“Clean your tack.”
John James opened his mouth to protest—what was there to clean? he hadn’t even made it to the stable door—but clamped it shut when he saw the look on Wicklow’s face.
Wicklow stood over him while he shined the bit. The moment he set it aside, the bald head tipped into his line of vision and a hand came forward to pluck it up.
“Open your mouth.”
John James felt the knot of his innards drop. He’d come to expect kindness from this man—the terse, distant variety, but kindness all the same. Sucker, he thought dully. Then closed his eyes and parted his lips.
Wicklow didn’t bother to fit him with the crownpiece. He let the bridle dangle loose, easing the bit between John James’s teeth, holding it in place with a light, even pressure on the reins. It was a jointed snaffle, designed to subdue a rising tongue while dragging icily at the corners of the lips. Wicklow held steady a moment, then gave the right rein the mildest of tugs. John James felt the bit’s message all down his right side. He braced himself for what was undoubtedly to come; Bill Drown tended to start off with an open hand, building his way up to boots.
Wicklow let go the reins. John James felt the weight of them, slack against his jaw. He stood perfectly still until Wicklow took him by the shoulder and turned him round, holding his hand up like a dish beneath the boy’s chin. John James tilted his head downward, let the bit roll. His boss caught and held it in his open palm.
“It’s for talking. For telling them what you want them to do.”
John James nodded.
“And you were yelling at that old boy, weren’t you. Fair screaming in his ear.”
To his shame, John James felt his eyes—dry in the face of hunger, of beatings, of impenetrable dark—fill instantly with tears. A drop escaped the left one’s duct before he could blink it back. Wicklow had the decency to let go of his shoulder and look away.
Even after he’d proven himself competent in the saddle, John James rarely got the chance to break a trot—never mind feel the creature beneath him run. Once when he delivered a draft horse to one of the milk ranches beyond Leavenworth Street, once when he walked the toll road out past the Mission to the Pioneer Racetrack and rode back on a pregnant mare. These were exceptions. He counted himself lucky if an errand gave him cause to breach the business district, let alone the city’s ragged verge.
Wicklow took a similarly careful approach to acquainting him with the written word, beginning with A and inching forward from there. “Maybe one day you can help me in the office,” he murmured through his beard when, after several botched attempts, his pupil spelled Wicklow across a clean white page. John James felt a sudden internal swelling. For a moment he didn’t dare breathe, in case whatever it was might burst.
He felt it again the day Wicklow took it upon himself to keep Bill Drown at bay. The one and only time John James’s father set foot in the stables, he was fresh from the Monte table, where he’d heard over a particularly sour hand that his son had taken a job and, with it, a home. He’d been gone six months, breaking his back at a hydraulic operation in the foothills of the Sierras for precious little payout, only to return and find himself forsaken. When he shoved his way in past one of the other stable hands, John James was five stalls back along the western wall, saddling a placid mare. At the first familiar bellow, he dropped into a squat.
“John!” Bill Drown shouted, the truncated name more chilling than any threat. John James’s train of thought gave way to the dull surge of his pulse. He scuttled, reached for
the stirrups and swung, clinging to the underbelly of the mare.
“JOHN DROWN!”
The horse held steady. He pressed his cheek flat to her chest, listening to her heart thud while Bill Drown howled for him, lurching from stall to stall. More than one animal reared, a colt of no mean value bruising a foreleg, coming close to splintering bone. Wicklow led the pack that came hammering—men and boys armed with rifles, shovels, whips. John James let go and fell into the straw. Rolling up onto all fours, he pressed his eye to a knothole and watched his father run.
From then on, Bill Drown sent word for his son to meet him at his latest hotel or rooming house, or at the foot of Long Wharf, or at the barber’s, where John James would like as not find his father lolling in a big brass tub. If Bill Drown’s luck was running clean, they might meet up at Noble’s Coffee Saloon, where he’d stand his son a boiled egg or a hot roll, maybe even a black chaser of tea—paid for with a pinch of yellow grit.
John James didn’t always answer his father’s call. Early on, the pull was still strong in him, but by the time he’d been at the stables for a year, it had died down to a tug he could choose to ignore. He had responsibilities. He couldn’t go running off just because some bastard he used to know was tearing another strip through town.
John James was a young man of thirteen years when, once again, the docks of Yerba Buena Cove boiled with fevered men. Some were green, but most came bowed under the miner’s packs they’d been shouldering for years. Picks and shovels, dented pans. A scant decade and California was played out. British Columbia beckoned. Ho for the Fraser River, the promise of virgin streams.
Already five foot eight, John James was growing so the pains in his legs woke him nightly. He stood like a beacon atop a creosote barrel at the crowd’s edge, looking down over the swell of hats. One caught his eye, familiar in its battered slant.
“Father!” he heard himself shout.