Sarah Canary (20 page)

The three men walked together up the path to the Bay View Hotel, Purdy a few steps ahead, Chin just a few steps to the rear. B.J. twisted his head around to talk to Chin as he walked. ‘Oh, well,’ B.J. said around the gum. He was chewing with his mouth open so that Chin could see his teeth. B.J.’s teeth were always a surprise to Chin, white and healthy against his sallow skin. B.J.’s toe hit a fist-sized stone and he stumbled without facing forward again or appearing to notice his own clumsiness in any way. ‘We can worry about getting back later. Someday. At least we’re where we want to be now.’ He was about to walk into a tree. Chin grabbed his arm and pulled him sharply to the left.

‘Later,’ Purdy called back to B.J., ‘the creek will drop on its own. It’s tide-fed. When the tide is out, there’s still a creek, but not much of one. We’ll be able to cross without the bridge in a couple of hours. ‘Course the
Biddy’
ll be an hour up the canal by then.’

‘I thought you said it wouldn’t go without you,’ B.J. reminded him.

‘I lied. Sloops haven’t been used for the mail run for two, three years. The steamer picks up the mail. If Miss Dixon wants to rent the
Biddy
, she can go to Port Gamble or anywhere else on the canal, unless the captain figures the wind is too high.’

Purdy slowed their pace as they neared the Bay View, stopping at a bifurcation in the walk. Half of the stones led on to the main door. Half turned right and began a circle around the hotel.

‘What’s that?’ said B.J., pointing out a small wooden cross hammered into the mud under one of the trees.

Purdy moved his gum into one cheek to answer; Chin could see the lump that it made. ‘That marks the spot where William Gassey died.’ He touched his forehead, his chest, and then each of his shoulders with one hand. ‘William was a ticket-of-leave man from Australia, worked at the mill, used to come here drinking when the Cliff House went dry. Nasty creature, really. Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, of course, but there it is. One stormy summer night he’s put away more than a few; he’s one of those men who gets drunk by design instead of by accident. The creek is roaring up over the bank and we’ve all agreed to sit the storm out in the Bay View. No one can get home in that kind of weather. But suddenly William’s all afire, like he’s had a vision. “By God, Blair,” he says to the innkeeper. “I must be the luckiest man alive,” he says. And then he weaves out the door without saying good-bye to anyone and he’s struck by lightning, right there by the tree, right there where the cross is. There are designs
and
designs in this world,’ Purdy said, which is what Chin had always thought himself.

‘We bowl sometimes when it’s dry in that flat stretch of dirt past the cross.’ Purdy indicated the area with his hand, loudly sucking in the saliva that had collected around his gum. ‘I’m going to build an alley out by the mill this summer. Hire an Indian to stick up tenpins. Do you bowl?’

‘I play the violin,’ B.J. answered. ‘Is that story true? The one about William Gassey?’

‘May lightning strike me if what I’ve given you is not a true and faithful account of the events of the evening of July 3, 1870. I don’t blame you for doubting me, though. Not a bit. No offense intended, I’m sure, and none taken. If you’re staying in Seabeck and the rain lets up, I could teach you tenpins. Anyone who plays the violin would have the wrist for it.’

‘Thank you,’ said B.J. His gum chewing grew noisier. He was evidently pleased.

Purdy turned back to face the hotel, shaking his head. ‘Would you look at the poor old Bay View?’ Chin did so. He saw that the hotel had three chimneys, although smoke rose only from one of them. Chin was very cold. He stared at the smoke longingly.

‘It’s not enough that her bridge is out. She’s not got a window left in her frame.’ Purdy seemed to take a certain pride in the fact. He pointed with his finger to each glassless hole, one by one, until despite his words he came to the shut eye of a single intact window whose drapes were drawn. Purdy’s finger stopped at the undamaged glass. ‘Oh, well, there’s your Alaskan Wild Woman,’ he said. ‘Still sleeping the sleep of the innocent.’

Chin heard a man’s voice above them, somewhere on the second story. ‘Ho-o-w do!’ it said, thick with phlegm and elated. Chin had seldom heard a more unpleasant sound. The gum was heavy in his stomach. Chinese men were rarely safe when white men got drunk and happy together. Even without liquor, groups of the white demons were always much more dangerous than solitary white men. Chin wondered at this. Demons like B.J., who were essentially harmless unless you made them otherwise, had no friends. You found them alone; you dealt with them alone. But the dangerous and cruel demons were always together. The white culture rewarded cruelty with honor and friendship.

Chin gave up his thoughts of a warm seat by a fire. He knew better than to enter a building where white men were shouting ‘Ho-o-w do!’ He would send B.J. to talk to the owner, just to the owner, nothing too tricky, and he himself would squat and wait for B.J. on the porch in the cold like a Chinaman.

The main door to the Bay View opened and the bits of frosted glass that remained in its small ornamental pane fluttered and clinked like wind chimes. An Indian girl came out. She stood beside the doorjamb, brushing her hair. She might have been twelve years old or thirteen or fourteen; she was wearing a shift and had no breasts and her skin was as fresh as peeled fruit. She looked to the east and the sunrise. Chin wondered if there were more Indians about than just this girl. Drunken white men, drunken Indians, a solitary Chinese man, the creek up and the bridge out. Through the open doorway, Chin could just see the bodies of men lying on the stairs.

‘The bridge has been cut loose,’ Purdy told the girl.

She had not seen them yet; she stiffened slightly in surprise, and the expression she had turned to the sun was not the expression she had for Purdy or B.J. or Chin. She smiled at them, but this was a calculated smile, like light stretching over a pool and making it shine so you could no longer see through to the rocks and the weeds and the fish. Not really a happy expression, merely an unrevealing one.

‘That suffragist cut the ropes on the other side,’ Purdy said. ‘That magnetic doctress. Blair will be so pleased, won’t he? With all his windows gone and the hotel full of drunken lumbermen? Would you like to tell him or should I? It might come sweeter from you.’ The girl turned and reentered the Bay View, walking stiffly, awkward because they were watching her.

‘Was that the Alaskan Wild Woman?’ B.J. asked.

‘That was Jenny,’ Purdy said. ‘Do you think she went to tell Blair? I think I’d better go tell Blair myself. He’s going to want to know exactly what happened. And the
implications.’

The edge of the sun had appeared over the mountains, but the moon refused to abdicate. It made Chin think of the Dowager Empress and the end of the Regency. Had it happened? Had the grasping big-footed Manchu woman really relinquished the throne? If so, his uncle would be pouring back the tiger whiskey in celebration. How long since Chin had read a Chinese newspaper?

The Chinese character for
bright
was a picture just like this of the sun and moon together in the sky. Chin wished he had told Tom this when they spoke about the moon. Perhaps Tom would have been satisfied to hear something he had never heard rather than see something he had never seen. But surely not in the words of men. ‘The earth talks to us,’ Tom had said, and he had understood the owl. But if the world was a dream, then the words of men were only the memories of a dream. The moon grew paler. The wind stirred the dead leaves on the ground and the dying leaves on the trees.

He followed Purdy to the porch. Beer had been drunk and beer had been spilled; Chin could smell beer even outside the door. Someone was snoring. Someone was dreaming. Chin spoke to B.J. softly so that Purdy wouldn’t hear him telling B.J. what to do. ‘Go and talk to the proprietor,’ he said. ‘This Blair. Ask if the Wild Woman’s manager is named Harold. Describe Harold to him. ‘ B.J. started to follow Purdy through the open door, but Chin caught him by the sleeve, holding him back.

‘Describe Harold to me first,’ he suggested.

B.J. blinked several times and chewed. ‘A little man with a large mustache.’

‘Tell him what kind of mustache,’ said Chin. ‘Show him the . . . the wings.’ Chin was not sure of the word and drew the shape of Harold’s mustache with his fingers beside his own lips. ‘And say that he’s dark. Dark hair, light eyes. And if he asks why you are interested, just tell him you want to see the Alaskan Wild Woman. Nothing more.’

‘Maybe you’d better do it yourself,’ B.J. said.

‘Just ask if his name is Harold,’ said Chin. ‘And then come back out here.
Don’t go
up to see Harold yourself. If Harold should appear and you see him before you can talk to Blair, come back out here quickly and tell me. Don’t let Harold see you.’

‘I’m not going in.’ B.J. folded his arms decisively. ‘Not all alone. It’s too hard.’

‘Not hard,’ Chin said. ‘Forget everything else. Just follow Mr Purdy to Blair and ask if the Alaskan Wild Woman’s manager’s name is Harold. That’s all. Not hard.’

B.J. dropped his arms to his side. He chewed on his gum. Then he stepped resolutely into the Bay View. He pivoted immediately and stepped back out, pulling the door shut behind him. The door did not shut easily. He had to tug at it. The shattered glass jingled and a triangle broke loose, falling from the door to the porch. ‘There are bodies all over the stairs. It’s a message not to go inside.’

‘Those men are sleeping,’ Chin said, ‘because they are drunk. They are so drunk they wouldn’t wake up if you stepped on them. And you won’t step on them, because you won’t be going upstairs at all. You’re just going to find Blair’s office.’

B.J. sat down on the porch. ‘You go.’

‘Who-o-o-ee!’ the voice upstairs shouted. ‘Whoo! Whoo!’

‘Please, B.J.; said Chin.

‘You go.’

Chin squatted down on the porch beside B.J. He had done astounding things for Sarah Canary. He had taken her to Steilacoom. He had kidnapped her from the hospital. He had gotten on a boat to follow the Alaskan Wild Woman to Seabeck without even being absolutely certain she was Sarah Canary, and he had told himself more than once after his long, bitter, and involuntary voyage from Hong Kong on the
Ville de St Louis
that he would never board a boat again, never, never, never, unless he was returning to China, a rich man.

Chin had stopped asking himself why he did all this. The doing had become its own reason. And anyway, so much time had passed now, it would be difficult to go back to his uncle. His uncle must believe he was dead. His uncle had probably written his mother to tell her so. Great rejoicing when he reappeared, of course. Great, great rejoicing. And yet a lot of awkward questions. He had not been gone long enough to have been enchanted. He had made no money and had squandered much of what he had brought with him. His uncle would know just exactly how much. Squandered it pursuing a strange and ugly white woman while his own treasured mother sat neglected and mourning him. And after the great rejoicing, which would be brief, and the awkward questions, which would be long, would come the railroad work, which would be forever.

‘You are a free man,’ the Company had said when his contract was fulfilled and they returned it and he tore it in pieces and threw the pieces into the sky, where they danced like little kites, like snow, until they blew away. And so he was, as free as any man who had to eat and keep warm and send money to his parents. Could a man appear to disappear, the same way snow melts into the wind? Could he vanish into the forest around Fort Lewis and, dead to his obligations and responsibilities, walk out somewhere else? Someone else? It seemed to Chin that he could, and this was a tantalizing freedom that frightened even as it dazzled. Chin remembered how he’d stood with Tom, only a few moments before putting the rope around Tom’s neck, and looked out onto the peaks of Mount Rainier. He remembered feeling that a man could lose his soul to those peaks, so dangerous, so beautiful were they. That a man might even want to.

‘A ghost took my soul,’ Chin would tell his uncle if he ever saw him again, which might even be true. The ghost was Tom or it was Sarah Canary, seducing him with freedom, which was a thing so much closer to death than Chin had ever realized.

But however close it was, it was not death, and Chin had not lost sight of this. He would not enter into a hotel full of drunken white demons while the bridge was out. ‘I can’t blame you, B.J.,’ he said cunningly. ‘An old, dirty place like this. Probably filled with fleas.’

B.J. closed his eyes so as not to hear.

A man’s face appeared in the hole behind the broken door pane above Chin, looking to the right and to the left, unable to locate Chin and B.J. where they sat. ‘Gentlemen?’ the man asked. The door handle turned and the door opened. A light-eyed Indian stepped onto the porch, extending a hand to B.J., who still hadn’t opened his eyes and therefore did not take it. ‘Please come in,’ the man said. ‘Please. I’m Bill Blair, the owner of the Bay View. Will Purdy has been telling me about your ordeal at the bridge. You’re lucky to be alive. You’re a lucky man. Come inside and have a drink. The saloon is rather cold, but I can offer you a fire and a comfortable chair in the kitchen. Perhaps a bit of breakfast. Eggs,’ he promised. ‘And bread.’

B.J. opened his eyes. ‘That would be nice,’ he said, and Chin, too, thought how nice that would be. An egg, fried and then chopped into little pieces with perhaps some bits of mushroom. A little garlic for flavor and for health. Bread to fill the stomach. He had gotten quite used to bread. Blair led them past the stairs and into the kitchen. It was a small room. A rough wooden table and six chairs filled it. Purdy sat in one of the chairs.