Sundry Days (11 page)

Chapter 19

David

Change of Plans

We can’t sail to Thunder Bay like we planned.  Elizabeth sometimes goes to the registry office in London. She’s required to register the home births she attends. And she saw a poster of Rebekah on the wall.

It wasn’t prominently displayed, she says.  Just stuck up there with lots of official notices and some other posters, mostly of Lost Boys.  But it means there will be people on the lookout for Rebekah. And me.

Rebekah is almost well enough to travel. But our false identification documents aren’t going to do us any good now.  Officials at shipping checkpoints—at any checkpoints—will be on the alert for a girl posing as a boy.

“We’ll just have to go by land and stay away from any towns big enough to have anyone official living there,” says Rebekah, who really has no idea how difficult that would be.

I don’t either.  But I can imagine.

For one thing, the sun-cycle can only go so far on a charge. I doubt there are charging stations in the wilderness. Plus the weather is turning colder. Winters aren’t as terrible as they were before The Great Flood. The climate has altered considerably.  That’s what we learned in school. But winter is still winter. There’s always snow. Which is good if you want to play in it. Not so good, I assume, if you have to travel long distances through it on a sun-cycle, freezing your extremities in the process.

“Have either of you ever been on a horse? Ever actually seen a horse, up close?” Keira asks, as we sit at her kitchen table trying to puzzle out what to do.

I have, a few times. Not Rebekah. There’s a stable on the outskirts of Seneca Falls that I’ve been to with Simon.  Simon loves horses. He obsesses about them as much as he does sun-cycles.  We went there courtesy of Papa Andy, who considered such outings hands-on history lessons.

Long before The Great Flood, long before there was even any advanced technology, people relied on horses for transportation. Even now, they’re used by some farmers to bring produce to market. But you hardly ever see them in the cities.

“When I was still in the pleasure shop business,” says Keira, “I had some clients who were from Harriston, which is too small to have its own pleasure shop. They were brothers, nice boys, whose family bred horses and built wagons.  They would come by horse-drawn wagon and they liked to tell me that it’s the most reliable form of transportation there is. Much better than rovers or sun-cycles. I never took them seriously.  But maybe they had a point. Not that I’d ever want to travel that way.”

Horses are something I’ve never considered. But we’re getting desperate.

The way things are now, we can’t leave Keira’s apartment. Rebekah can’t, anyway. And she’s going stir crazy.

We thought about getting her a robe, having her be a woman again. But that wouldn’t work. Our fake documents identify us as a homosexual couple. And even if we could somehow get new ones, how could we explain ourselves—a woman with just one husband, who doesn’t even look 25, wanting to cross both Lake Huron and Lake Superior? For what purpose? That’s what we’d be asked. We’d be caught.

“We have to try the horse idea, David,” Rebekah announces, not knowing anything about what that involves. “You could trade the sun-cycle for horses.”

She’s very headstrong. Very impetuous.  If Rebekah were a boy she’d never make it through the marriage evaluation process. She’d probably have to become a Lost Boy. The thought amuses me, but I don’t share it with her. I’m glad she’s not a boy and I don’t need her getting mad at me. We’ll think of something.

Rebekah has given Keira back her bed and bedroom. At night she lies with me on the floor, since we both won’t fit on the couch. Rebekah has decided she’s healed enough to have sex. I don’t argue. But I try to be extra gentle and careful.

She likes to straddle me. I like it, too. A lot. I stroke her breasts and belly as she moves. Her scar is still raw looking, though it doesn’t seem to bother her. I grab her behind and make her go slower—then faster, deeper, rising to meet her, forgetting to be as gentle and careful as I should. But she’s obviously not hurting. She bites her lips to avoid calling out when she comes.  We don’t want to wake Keira.

“I’ve never ridden a horse, but I’ve ridden you, David,” she teases afterward, nibbling my ear as we cuddle.

Horses. The more I think about horses and wagons, the less sense the idea makes. How would we find our way? Would there even be a trail we could follow? I know that long ago there were paved roads from one end of the continent to the other. But they must be all grown over by now. I’ve never heard of anyone doing what we’re thinking of doing. There must be rivers and lakes along the way. How would we cross them?  What would we do when our supplies ran out?  And, if I’m honest, I know absolutely nothing about horses.

Shit. What are we going to do?

It’s Elizabeth who saves us.

“There’s a way,” she tells us, when she comes a few days later to check on Rebekah. “I know someone.”

Chapter 20

Rebekah

Lost Boys

Elizabeth is a private woman. She doesn’t have to bare her soul to us. She doesn’t have to go out on a limb again to help us. After all, she’s already saved my life.

“Which is why I don’t intend for you to end up dead in the near future,” she says.

The horse idea probably wouldn’t have worked. Even I have to concede that now, though I’d have been willing to take the risk.

“So what are we going to do?” I ask, feeling doomed. We’re all sitting at Keira’s table, after Elizabeth gives me a final examination and proclaims me sufficiently healed—but crazy for thinking David and I could cross the wilderness alone.

“You’ll become Lost Boys,” she says. “It’s not such a bad thing to be.”

This kind of shocks us. David and I look at each other wide-eyed. Keira scoffs.

But Elizabeth, it seems, knows a thing or two about Lost Boys—especially one Lost Boy who’s had her heart for more than twenty years. And he may be able to get us where we want to go, she says, provided we pretend, once again, to be something we’re not.

Captain Iain Blinn smuggles pharmaceuticals on a regular basis from Winnipeg to the Coalition, along with a crew of young, enterprising Lost Boys. He regularly bribes officials. Checkpoints aren’t a problem.

The drugs produced within the Coalition are pretty basic—analgesics, antiseptics, antipyretics, some antibiotics. Anything that alters mood, even to treat conditions like depression and anxiety, is considered unnecessary and illegal. Which is not the case in Winnipeg. Evidently there’s a lucrative black market here for what Winnipeg can supply and the captain can deliver.

“I met him when we were both quite young,” says Elizabeth. “Iain had been injured late one night when a rover deliberately rammed into his sun-cycle. I was the only doctor on duty at the medical center, and I treated him.

“I knew he was a Lost Boy.  But being a Lost Boy wasn’t quite the crime it is now.  And he wasn’t doing anything very wrong, in my opinion. He told me that he’d just acquired a small schooner.  That he planned to be captain of his own destiny. There was something about him that touched me.  He was big, strong, confident, even brash. But also gentle. Also kind. And so handsome. I was married by then, of course. Several times over. But I couldn’t get him out of my mind.

“He came to see me again, to check on his wounds, and we became lovers. Have been ever since. No one knows. We see each other whenever his ship is docked in Goderich. It’s docked there now.”

Goderich isn’t that far from here. We could easily get there on the sun-cycle. 

Elizabeth says we’d have to meet the captain first, to see if he’d take us on. He’d know I’m a girl. But to everyone else, David and I would be brothers.

“Do you think that’s safe?  For Rebekah, I mean?” asks Keira. “Could she get away with it?”

“I’ve gotten away with it so far,” I point out. “I’ve been living in an all-male dormitory for a year.”

“Yes, but homosexuals aren’t Lost Boys,” says Keira, who, I think, much prefers the idea of horses to Lost Boys. 

“She’d have to be careful,” acknowledges Elizabeth. “But I don’t think anyone would harm her on Iain’s ship.”

David seems to like the idea.

“I’ll protect her,” he says. “I won’t let anyone near her.”

“That’s not going to be easy. It’s close quarters on a ship. It’s a long journey up Huron and then Superior.  You’d both be expected to work like the rest of the crew,” says Elizabeth. “It could be dangerous.”

But we don’t have any other options.

“I think it will be exciting,” I tell David later, as I lay in his arms, on the floor. We’ve decided to go to Goderich in the morning on the sun-cycle. Elizabeth is going, too, in her rover.  She’ll take us to meet the captain, make sure there’s not a problem.

“Can’t say I really want another brother, let alone a runty one who has no option but to become a Lost Boy,” he teases.

I poke him in the ribs.

“I’ll have to block you from view every time you have to pee. I wonder if they just pee off the side of the ship. That’s something you won’t be able to do.”

I consider this as I snuggle closer, reaching for his penis.

“This is also something you won’t be able to do,” he says, moving my hand away, then putting it back. “None of this on the ship. Not with my brother.”

We make love slowly. Languidly. It will have to last us for a while.

Chapter 21

David

Shipmates

I’ll never make a sailor. The days are long. The work is hard. And for the duration, I can expect to be cold, wet and tired. But it’ll be worth it. That’s what Rebekah tells me on the rare occasions when we have a minute to ourselves.

She’s actually adjusted pretty well. Her job aboard The Lady May is to assist the cook in the galley, which is at least warm and dry.  My job, as novice seaman, is to do whatever anyone tells me to do.

The Lady May is small, as two-masted schooners go, but she’s a neat, well-made vessel that’s been outfitted to the captain’s specifications. The cargo hold is just big enough for all of our sun-cycles plus a big, sealed container for storing drugs on the return trip.

“The Lady is the sweetest thing to sail the Great Lakes,” attests Nick, a former Lost Boy from Buffalo, who serves as first mate. And he could be right.

The captain makes the crossing frequently, even in the winter. And he takes good care of the crew.

Our sleeping quarters in the forecastle, inside the hull of the ship, are clean and well-constructed, if cramped. And there’s a small, if inadequate, battery-operated heater.

Rebekah’s bunk is atop mine, and not adjacent to anyone else’s berth. Which is the best we could hope for, I suppose.  Plus the head is a modern toilet—there’s a stall with a door that latches for privacy in addition to the urinal—so peeing and other personal stuff is not a problem for Rebekah. The captain has his own quarters and his own head.

So far, no one seems to suspect that Rebekah—christened Rob by the captain before we sailed but now called Red by everyone—is anything but a short, sullen boy.

“What happened to your brother? Did your fathers run out of juice by the time they got around to making Red?” cracks Billy, who’s a fine one to talk, with his big ears, big nose, big jaw, and small intellect.

He’s not a bad sort, though. In fact, we have no problems with any of the crew.  The captain, it seems, has been very selective in his choice of former Lost Boys. And they’re all extremely loyal to him.

Hearing their tales, when we’re off duty, gives us a whole new perspective.

Criminals in the Coalition for running off—rather than staying put in assigned jobs they hate and having no hope for a better life—they’ve never been rapists, murderers or thugs. Or met any Lost Boys who are.

The worst thing most Lost Boys do is steal to survive.

“Yep. We’re an evil lot, scaring the shit out of fine, upstanding citizens,” says Cal, the cook, who’s the oldest of the crew, as he sits knitting and reminiscing about his days on the road. “I bet Red here has terrorized more than a few helpless females in his time. Haven’t you, boy?”

Rebekah just smiles and rolls her eyes. She talks as little as possible.

Mostly, the crew likes to share stories about Winnipeg. If half of what they say is true, it’s no wonder that the distant city might as well be on another planet as far as the Great Lakes Coalition is concerned. There are no trade agreements, no communication, and all we’re taught in school is that there’s absolutely nothing of interest in Winnipeg.  It’s just an outpost in the wilderness.

“You’ll love it, Davey,” says Curly, who left Chicago when he was just 16, and has been smuggling with the captain for more than ten years. “Won’t want to leave Winnie, that’s for sure.  But the captain will find you, and sober you up, if need be, when it’s time to head back. We usually get a day or two there, while he’s negotiating and handling the business end. But it could be the best day or two of your life.”

“Hey, Red, you ever get laid?” asks Billy.

“Probably more than you,” she replies in her throaty voice.

“Well, I bet you never got any cunt like there is in Winnie. Whole different experience, my boy. We’re not talking dried up old pleasure ladies.”

The others chime in.

Hard to fathom what they’re talking about.  Seems that “Winnie” is very different, in almost every way, from the Coalition.  There are no restrictive ordinances, according to our shipmates.  The people are happier and more mellow.  They’ve become experts at making all kinds of pharmaceuticals, including recreational ones.  And, from what I gather, there are places where men can go to get a “full immersion” experience that doesn’t involve a real live woman, but is supposedly even better.

“Much, much better,” says Nick, with a wink.

You get in a bed, are given a drug, something is put over your head, wires are attached to your privates, and any sexual fantasy you’ve ever had can come true. For a price.

The only fantasy I have is holding Rebekah again, and doing what comes naturally when we’re alone and naked.

Rebekah and I aren’t planning to go all the way to Winnipeg, of course, although we don’t mention that.

When we went with Elizabeth to meet the captain, he wasn’t specific about when or how we would get to our intended destination.

Mostly he just made sure that the two of us could get away with sailing as part of the crew on The Lady May, got us the gear we needed, and instructed us what to say, and not say, to our shipmates.

The captain is a man of few words. But we trust Elizabeth. And she said he assured her he could probably point us in the direction of a monogamous settlement when the time came.

The monogamists evidently do some trading with Winnipeg. They’re mostly farmers and deliver produce to the city. But they don’t let outsiders on their land—except, we hope, newcomers like us who want to join them.

“My boys just want to get from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg as fast as possible,” the captain told us before we left. “They don’t know or care much what goes on in between.”

He himself has never had any dealings with the monogamists. No reason to.  And he thinks we’re crazy getting involved in something we  know nothing about. He’s just doing Elizabeth a big favor, he said, taking us aboard.

We encounter no really bad weather, which is lucky. It takes us four days to sail up Huron.  Navigating the locks at Sault Ste. Marie is tricky. But not a problem for the captain, who knows everyone involved, and makes sure to line the necessary pockets. Then it’s three days heading up Superior to Thunder Bay.