The Tinsmith (43 page)

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.

Owen reached for his coat on the back of his chair. “When you have a reasonable price in mind,” he said, “I'll join you for another drink.”

“I wouldn't drink with the likes of you if I was dying of thirst,” the doctor said and turned his back.

It was a handsome and noble gesture, Craig had to admit, as useless as it was foolish, as such things generally were. But just perhaps it left an opening.

When Owen had gone, Craig cleared his throat and threw a low number at the doctor's back. If the man was indeed lovesick and needing funds to get away, he'd be apt to accept anything that wasn't an outright insult. Dare's pack would be large. Nigger or not, he'd built the biggest packs on the river over the past three seasons.

The doctor turned slowly as if caught on the breeze of rotted fish guts blowing through the open window. His face was haggard but fortunately not livid. Craig believed that he had just won himself a significant gain in his battle with Owen. It hardly seemed possible.

“I must thank you,” the doctor said. “You have made matters very clear for me. If the choice is between the desperation of a good man and the snivelling, underhanded grasping of those for whom goodness doesn't even exist, I know where I stand.”

Ah, well. Craig slid his toothpick back to the safe side of his mouth and watched the American stride out of the bar. Salmon have gone bad in their tins before. And the English market, while not exactly glutted, was tight. Besides, men who make grandiose statements about goodness usually come back to earth once their tempers cool and the realities of the world press in on them. If they don't come back, they lose. Simple.

Craig dropped the toothpick from his tongue into his palm, then carefully pocketed it for later.

Chilukthan

The riverbank was a gruel of rotting guts. Anson no longer took much notice of the loud smell or the mizzling layer of flies heavy on the mud as a matted scalp. He had the crushing weight of leaving upon him, which was not simply a matter of place but of time. And leaving time—or at least a particular inflection of it—was a more painful and palpable death than what the summer and the river had strewn around him.

Downriver the rebuilt cannery continued to pound, as if rendering the ghosts of all the flesh it had consumed. Anson blinked toward it, the cry of gulls washing lightly against him. He could hardly imagine that he had searched for Dare in such fierce workings, just as he could hardly recall his own right arm sawing off the limbs of a thousand soldiers. Everything he had lived, including his love for Elizabeth and his grief at her dying, shimmered with the same urgent unreality as the crimson, sunlit landscape. Yet the present was forceful enough. It still had the strength to pain him when he resumed his place there.

The other canners had frozen Dare out, even in his absence. They weren't content just to ruin a man, they had to destroy whatever good his wealth might do for others. Well, Anson wasn't about to let that happen. He wasn't without means—if he couldn't sell Dare's property, he'd see to it somehow that Louisa would have the money for proper music instruction.

As always, the thought of the girl cheered him. She had recovered well. And it even seemed that the trial of the illness had deepened her musical talent, as if the nearness of death had imbued her with an even greater responsiveness to life. Every day she practised. And though Anson had left explicit instructions for her to rest, he knew that the parents were too busy with the new child and the cannery to pay much heed to Louisa's care. But it didn't much matter. The child's health lay in her music; the more she played, the better and faster she'd recover.

He walked along the wharf slowly, to avoid bringing on another coughing spell. The mountains to the north shone luminous in the bright sun. With his eyes fixed on them, Anson could almost forget about the killing that continued on the river, continued despite the inability of the canners to process the catch. It was little wonder that Henry Lansdowne's cattle were dying from the contaminated water. Anson suspected there'd be fresh cases of typhoid fever before the summer's end too. The whole coast was awash in an indolent sensuality; it lay like an infected film upon the mud and the guts and the slowly blinking eyelids of the Indians who no longer even bothered to go out in the skiffs, but instead sat, hour after hour, gazing northward, no doubt thinking of more familiar, less repellent waters. Anson felt that he stood on the threshold of a brothel after a busy night's debauch; the slack, flesh-drugged quality of the air and the overwhelming presence of something noble and precious bought cheaply sickened him and turned his thoughts also to home.