Order of Good Cheer

by Bill Gaston

  “I’m not sure, but I think you should go right up,” the nurse said, meeting his eye significantly, and what worse words could there be?

  If he really had been related to Marie Schultz, he should have been able to fly to her. It surprised him that the elevator still stopped at each floor to let people on and off, the doors opening and closing with no attitude of hurry. Above, through concrete, something unknowable and life-changing was taking place, and here people chuckled, debating snow. Andy replayed his mother’s words from the phone call, and how the thing she’d said first was, “I didn’t want to disturb you right after work,” her tone almost cheerful, her good friend dying or dead yet her worry was that Andy’s routine might be disturbed. Her news came more quickly then —“We don’t know if she’s actually passed” and the words massive stroke — and hearing this Andy had found himself wondering why massive was the adjective they always used. Did it have to do with the physical mass of the heart, or the brain, or did it just mean big?

  Here was Rita, almost blocking the entrance to the room. Rita loomed large and red-faced, her shoulders up, and she didn’t appear to be breathing. Beside her hovered Doris, blinking and birdlike, unable to stop moving her hands. Beside her, his mother stood with hands folded at her solar plexus like a singer in a choir. The look on her face was placid, even pleased. Not even this had ruffled his mother’s poise. It looked for all the world like she was giving her friends — Mrs. Schultz on the bed in particular — a lesson in how to be dying correctly.

  Laura’s mother lay dressed not in hospital garb but her pale rose nightgown. The covers were up to her armpits and her hands folded on her stomach. Morning light streamed in, its intensity and mood for some reason reminding Andy of Easter Sunday. The room was marked by its absence of emergency: no machines were blinking, no tubes ran from Mrs. Schultz, no doctors or nurses worked. The room smelled faintly of women’s florid toiletries, and an earthier sour of something else. Mostly, the dominant sense in the room, and one reflected by the posture of everyone standing within it, was that there was suddenly no longer any hurry. It wasn’t the lack of medical machinery but rather a palpable feeling, that time itself had been shocked and now moved in an immense new way, that told him this person was dead.

  Andy went to Mrs. Schultz. He touched her bare forearm with his fingertips but quickly withdrew them because her arm was sinewy and discoloured and somehow private for that.

  He thought of hugging his mother then, but didn’t know if he should, or if she would not like the look of it. He was aware of how stiff he felt, and how angry, but in confused directions. He hated this woman, but that body on the bed was this woman no longer. But he was angry at her still, and for new reasons, one of them going something like, Now you’ve messed up Laura’s plans. And another, for making him recall when he was in a room like this, death’s white noise in the air, and how he had fallen beside his father and felt the clumsy bones of his own arms hugging that body through the blankets, and his fourteen-year-old voice breaking in his ears as he moaned, Aw? Aw?

  Andy stared at Mrs. Schultz’s face. Someone had tastefully removed her pink eye patch and it lay beside her pillow, within reach should she need it. She still looked stern. A hard woman, fortified against any threat. They shouldn’t use fluorescent lights in hospital rooms, it made human skin a horror. He wondered, as one must, about the span of a human life, and what it meant, if anything. And then in the midst of this ripe room, and out of his own chaos of voices, one of his mother’s sayings came to him, intoning Disney-like and corny in the air. He heard, “When you judge someone, you have no time to love them.” If you’re doing one thing you can’t do the other. And though it was Mrs. Schultz he stood beside, he hoped that, from now on when he visited his mother, who was posed helplessly in choir position behind him, he’d remember the saying and understand it.

  A SMALL CAR FERRY ran from downtown Prince Rupert across the harbour to Digby Island, or “the airport island” as it was called. Scheduled for every flight, two buses crossed to pick up passengers and bring them back as part of their airline ticket. With buses on board there was deck room for only four or five cars, and this evening there was no room for a black Mustang. A smaller car could’ve fit. The loading guy joked that “a Smart car would’ve been smart.”

  Nearly missing the ferry to greet Laura — which would have been absurd — Andy parked and ran back to walk on and board one of the near-empty buses, joining the scatter of other greeters. He closed his eyes. He tried a deep, calming breath and was instantly dizzy. But he thought that maybe he could finally sleep, here of all places, sitting up in a bus seat, on board a boat, going to meet a plane.

  This afternoon he’d slept maybe a little in the bathtub, maybe twenty minutes if at all, because he was suddenly aware of lying in cool water. If it was sleep he’d been enjoying it was assaulted by the sudden dead face of Marie Schultz. He recalled how his father’s dead face had also haunted him, for weeks and weeks, snapping him out of a doze or, if he was awake, shocking him more awake than ever, the extra clarity a kind of hell. His dad’s face was yellow, almost canary yellow along the jawline, and charcoal blue around the sunken eyes, one of which stayed open just enough to give young Andy the steady glint of an eye, Dad’s dead eye, a silver crescent that shone crazily while telling him nothing. For months this face with its eye would ambush and impale him, until gradually the image softened and then faded so much that he couldn’t get a clear picture of it even if he tried. Though horrified to see it, he was sad when he no longer could, a link with his father gone.

  This morning, Mrs. Schultz had her eyes well closed, but through a parted frown you could see a bit of yellow enamel.

  Andy lurched from his seat and stepped into the aisle. The driver saw him coming in the rearview and hissed open the door and Andy stepped down into the rain to stand on deck. It was cold and the ferry’s speed made it colder. His clothes would be wet and look pathetic for it, but Laura wouldn’t mind because she wouldn’t notice, just like she wouldn’t notice his lack of a Mustang, or his decent waistline or expensive cable-knit sweater or anything else in the greet-Laura outfit — because her mother was dead. Standing with his face in the rain, Andy felt appropriately lousy for thinking, on this the day of her death, that Mrs. Schultz was doing it still, standing between them, that show of yellow tooth the hint of a fresh sneer.

  Andy hunched in the gusts and moved over to the two-storey pilothouse to see if the coin was still there. It was, an old American silver dollar Krazy-Glued to the deck years ago, the source of much merriment to the skipper and deckhand up behind that window. Andy hated it and what it said about Prince Rupert, and how some people will find any cheap route to feeling superior, even if for ten seconds. Andy had been on deck once to see it for himself: a tourist, enjoying the view of the approaching port city, spots the silver dollar, sidles over, and stoops to pinch it up only to find it glued down, then hears the hoots from the wheelhouse, good old boys having themselves a time behind the smoked glass. Welcome to PR.

  Andy nudged the coin with one of his new mahogany-brown casuals, which he was starting to like. The coin stayed part of the deck. He heard no hoots from behind the glass.

  HE WAITED IN a building of mostly unadorned cinder block painted in pale government greens. He heard the twin-prop plane land, then taxi up. At this noise, the first real proof of their reunion, Andy realized he had no idea where she was staying tonight, or if she’d arranged something, or assumed something — though there was small chance of that. It might be difficult to broach. He would wait until they were back across the harbour, off the ferry, off the bus and in his car before a Where to? Now the aircraft’s wing lights shone through the bank of plate glass. The engine roar ceased and he waited some more.

  And here she came. It wasn’t Laura, it was a woman. She had both breasts. She was dressed in a long black coat, old-fashioned looking to Andy but maybe stylish in Toronto. She was erect and buoyant in her posture, a dancer, and
her walk was still Laura’s, if anything more graceful, no longer in a hurry to be somewhere else. Her dirty-blonde hair was cut short, as per women of her age. She approached Andy smiling sadly, her face rich with her mother’s death. But the smile was also full of greeting, and of the irony — why was it ironic? but it was — of seeing Andy Winslow again. She had room for that, she had humour for that.

  They hugged. His cheek and jaw pressed her hair, and he could smell it, and her scalp, and it was Laura’s smell, which was cruel. It wasn’t nearly the hug he’d wanted it to be. How could it have been? He felt stunned from all directions, and he could feel her confusion too, could feel in the brief squeeze her tentative relationship to everything now. He could easily imagine her worried he was here, embarrassed for him, knowing she would soon have to turn him down — but maybe it’s only sad to have a mind that imagines so well.

  Andy heard himself say, “Sorry about your mom.” He was determined not to say, How was your flight? He would not say that, not in a million silences.

  “You know, it feels like she’s given me a gift,” Laura said softly, after a pause, and it sounded a bit rehearsed.

  She looked at him quickly and smiled. Other travellers milled about them in the sterile room, waiting for luggage to come down the chute. Laura appeared nervous in a wary rather than vulnerable way, the way he’d hoped for. Her nervousness spoke of, What is Andy Winslow going to ask? What is he going to ask, and when’s he going to ask it?

  “So,” said Laura Schultz, “it’s good to see you.”

  “We both look great,” Andy said back.

  Her glance up held his eye and joined him in his humour a little, but the Laura he knew hadn’t arrived, and he was still waiting for her.

  The Order of Good Cheer

  30 décembre 1606

  TONIGHT, ALL IS a frightened boat, drifting backwards.

  Samuel senses he is not alone in this unwanted clarity of mind. Even now, as his feet break virgin snow outside the walls, the sky so close with cloud and starless and black that he needs must keep one hand on the rough logs to guide his way, even in this quiet can he sense the minds and the open eyes of other sleepless men still in their beds yet as awake as he. This night-mind seems a mind more awake than that of day. Yet these other wakeful men — like his, their thoughts entangled willy-nilly yet cutting as razors — are more in need of sleep in this time than ever, what with the plague lurking at their innermost defences. They have six gravely ill for certain. Several more, their state still in question, share the same furtive eyes: either they are sick and not admitting it, or not sick but convinced they are. It is exceeding strange how many will search deeply in themselves for sign of sickness, and therefore find it, but not fall as truly ill.

  Why then is he walking tonight? One thing Samuel has learned is that the weak and the worn do invite the scurve more eagerly than the healthy. And what one could use most, in such a winter as this, is the healthful long sleep of the bear. So why then is he, why are any of them, so wakeful? What robs their sleep? Perhaps the Night Daemon walks hand in hand with this plague, helping its arrival. Or perhaps it is one of his conniving brothers, the Lunatic. It is not encouraging to envision the Beast with a family.

  He knows he should not have favourites amongst the stricken common men, but of course he worries most for Lucien. And, he won’t deny it, with some guilt. Indeed, guilt that owns both the heft and the colour of gunmetal.

  Clouds part and the half-moon appears, more than sufficient to light the snow and his way. Snow is silver-blue. Stumps are black. A simple landscape. In no more than fifty paces Samuel stops at the forest edge. The moonlight does not penetrate in there. He could go in, or walk the perimeter of their cleared land. He knows not what he’ll do. It takes all his courage just to succumb to this wakefulness, rise from a warm bed and go walking alone in the dark. He, a man who sleeps soundly through a tempestuous sea, who admires the shrillest tunes of wind in rigging and smiles at the shocked creaking of oak, who navigates the rocks, river mouths, and tidal chaos known only to local savages. What are the dangers of a small walk on New French land? The bears run at the merest breath of a man, and in any case they sleep. Wolves, which have been heard piping from their lofty slope, engorge come winter on the snowbound moose and deer. Lions may exist, but so far they remain a rumour. In other words, Nature offers no impediment to a midnight walk. A wayward savage, starving or enraptured with hate, might offer some cause for staying within walls, but there must be few of these kind around, thanks be to those same weakened moose and to the steady guidance of Membertou.

  He can admit it only to himself, but his fear caused him to place around his bare neck, right upon the skin so he can feel it sharply, the necklace of black bird bills he fashioned over the course of several months and many bad suppers. Truly, as he has overheard, in their curvature they do resemble a poor man’s idea of eagle talons; and the design does travel any way it wishes; still, he grew fond of it in the making. And it seems that, lacking any particular female friend back in France, or indeed even here, to whom he might give it — it seems he has given it to himself. He has worn it more than once now, and though it feels like comedy, it does give him courage. The fearlessness of a fool! All savages make their own talismans, or are given them, and could it be that they all feel strength in them?

  He skirts the edge of trees, sometimes lightly touching these trunks that are the forest’s fence. If he can stay his thoughts — here, outside, tonight, is beautiful. The windless silence is purer than the crystal southern sea. He hears his breathing, and his small steps. His mind widens irresistibly beyond the confines of his skull. It feels like health itself to gain some distance from men’s walls, which hold within their ragged snores, smells, and idiots’ carnival of dreams. Last winter it was even worse in this regard — all too clearly can he hear the ghastly moaners. Most of those stricken, and no man knows why, chose the night to become vocal. Save for voluptuous breathing, they would lie silent through all the daylight hours and then come darkness their moans began, and gathered until the sickroom was so deep with moans that two healthy men trying to communicate between themselves would need raise their voices to be heard. Samuel doesn’t think he is exaggerating this memory. Why would he? But the thunder of moaning each night caused the other men some distress, rupturing as it did their healthy sleep, and threatening weakness upon them too and then perhaps, indeed, the scurve itself. Were it not for the chance that some stricken do find their way back to health, Samuel doesn’t doubt that the moaners would have been popularly dispatched with a midnight club. And he has even less doubt that, of anyone, it’s the moaners themselves who most want the silence that comes with death — which, to the dying, must beckon like the longest, blackest, and purest of nights.

  Samuel pauses and asks forgiveness of God for not instantly assuming Heaven for his men. It seems that these late hours fixed him with the bugging eyes that see only bleakly, and only inward.

  He has reached the slight promontory on the north slope of their cleared land, and the rise is enough to show him their inner courtyard from above. He fancies he can hear snoring, but this is impossible. The courtyard is a square of bright white, scored with darker pathways indicating their daily industry. Indeed it is strange to see the compound so: a square of walls enclosing all the labours, dreams, and delusions of near fifty men, and making all of it look easily held, and small.

  Though impossible because of the distance, what tries to catch his eye is the silver sovereign their Sieur had his boy attach to the post by pounding it through with a square nail, piercing it just above King Henri’s hairpiece. Poutrincourt, who’d had more wine that night than was his habit, mounted the coin there after the ceremonies of savage baptismal, and his logic escaped Samuel then as it continues to escape him now. For he’d proudly announced, speaking to the French and not the savages, and jabbing at the coin, “And now in this they can see the visage of their King!” Except that the savages of New France had alr
eady been made subjects of the King, whether knowing it or not, and becoming Christians had changed their state in this regard not at all. No, if they had a new status, and a new ruler to be reminded of, it would have made some more sense to install on the post the face of Jesus! But the coin remains glinting there still, and Samuel doesn’t know but that it isn’t a cruel temptation to the Mi’qmah themselves, for they know well what a silver coin means, and it would take little more than a good metal blade and ten heartbeats of privacy to pry it from the post. Still, what would they do, here, with a silver coin? They could not trade it back! Even if they took it by canoe to be traded many leagues from here, word would follow that it was Poutrincourt’s coin, and its ownership temporary, and injurious in the end.

  Samuel wonders if maybe Poutrincourt’s logic was to instill a reminder and a fear of the King in all of them. For the common spirit has slumped, and this in itself is, according to the letter of the law, a form of rebellion. So does King Henri’s profile inspire?

  No. Indeed it is not difficult for Samuel to envision one of their own men coming out in a night like this one and taking the coin for himself, even prying it with his teeth if needs be, and securing it in some nether place until he is safely home in St-Malo. Should that day ever come.

  But again taking advantage of the moon to gaze into what distance makes itself available — the two mountains, the gut of sea between them, the span of west beyond — Samuel has the notion that they will never live here. It is a notion he has had before, and it is daunting in its clarity. Sometimes he has it at sea, approaching a landform, scanning it for habitability. From such a vantage, nine times out of ten there arises the certain sense that no French will occupy the shore he now holds in his eyeglass. No French grandchildren will play amongst those rocks, that slope of pine. Tonight, similarly, the sweep of moonlight lets his eyes gaze west and he has the feeling again that, though they might occupy these lands, they will never truly live here, however far west they may go. They — French or English — would never rest, at home on these slopes or plains. He sees that they will explore farther and farther inland, denuding the place of fur, and somewhat of forest, as they go, but that, gaining as much western land as is possible, all the way to the next sea, they will look about them in anxiety, and always wonder about home. Some say that France was once all under forest. That is to say, it looked just like these dark, treed lands they gaze fearfully into here. One wonders if, when similarly surrounded by forest, their forebears also could not sleep.