Two-Gun & Sun (17 page)

Now, players and musicians ducked through the tent flaps, carrying their luggage and instruments inside.

What do you think, Meena asked me. Have they come from an afternoon performance somewhere down the coast? They're still in their costumes.

It is strange, I said. The show doesn't start for two weeks.

I struggled out of the pinned fabric, until Meena rescued me. I agreed to return to have my hem properly lengthened and, in my own clothes at last, limped out the door and into the street, elbowing through the gathering crowd, movement easing the swelling around my stitches.

I slowed as I passed the tent, craning my neck, but pushed forward to inspect their vessel. I lurched along the wharf where the water churned in oily bubbles around a wooden tramp steamer, hull peeling, trim missing, and listing to one side. I backed up when the crew lashed several trunks and suitcases together and let them tumble down a ramp and onto the ground.

A voice shouted from the deck, Clear a path! and a group of men on the ground shoved cargo to either side of the walkway from the dock to the street. Then, a sight that sucked the air out of the crowd—a horse, shiny and black.

Several ropes jerked steadily as the shrieking beast was swung over the railings. It grew deadly silent as it was lowered to what must have seemed its death. As soon as it touched ground it was kicking and rearing up. The same group of men that had been tossing cargo converged to calm the animal, and loosen its belly harness. It snorted fiercely, its eyes rolled, its haunches gleamed.

A handler led the dancing hooves away from a black hole and down the street, disappearing into the mist, calling as he walked, his words garbling into the distance, Toooooogaw. . . Misssscon.

I had no idea what the words meant, but I hesitated. A horse, here. The opera troupe back up the street. Which one should I follow?

While I longed to touch that horse, run my palms over its flank, tug at its mane and rub its muzzle, I recognized that I was longing for the familiar, for the horses I had cared for on our orchard, Ruby especially, but also Star and English Bay. I knew exactly what it would feel like to grab that mane and launch myself up and onto its back, feel its ribs between my knees, how to nudge and steer with them, propel a thousand pounds of muscle thundering across a field or down a road. So I chose the unfamiliar, instead, the actors and the world of theatre, the dome with its edges tied down and the entrance flap constantly snapping with performers coming and going.

I bent my head and stepped through the canvas. Inside the tent that was propped up with the arching iron girders, was the closest thing to light I'd seen in this town. Buttery light, and the blaze of colourful silks.

No stink of coal and oil in here. Not yet. Old makeup cracked on their necks and cheeks and I breathed deeply, its perfume the smell of roadside dust on wild roses. They stripped with abandon as though I weren't walking among them, notebook open. The one in jade green sang deeply as he sat, grabbed the toes of his tights in each hand, head of thinning hair bobbing at his knees, and gave a yank, brandishing them high and exposing a tumble of flesh. The one who once wore yellow bent over, bare-cheeked, his sex dangling darkly between his legs as he dug in a trunk for his blasted pair of trousers. The woman sang as she powdered her bare breasts and underarms, tool belt tossed to the ground.

I'm from
The Black Mountain Bullet
, I called out. Who has a minute to talk to me about your opera?

My pencil hovered over my notebook. Preferably someone fully clothed, and there he was, leaning against a trunk, the one in the brown pin-striped suit. It was worn, I could see now, and the same brown as the fringe of hair below the brim of his bowler hat, framing a light brown face. He was reading a novel. I couldn't quite make out the cover, just splashes of browns and reds, but it was either about a ranch or a murder. I'd seen enough of them in Pete and Pat's hands.

You, I suggested brightly. Care to comment?

Here, he said, and tossed the wad of pages to the balding man seated to the right of where I stood, the one who had yanked off his tights.

Cover yourself, he said. Then he tipped his brown bowler at me. Don't mind my old friend, he said.

How can I? It's me who has invaded your dressing room.

The man in the bowler hat grinned and said, That's the spirit.

That book's not enough to provide coverage anyway, I began.

The old friend boomed his appreciation at my unintended compliment.

I wouldn't call that a book, the young man continued. I found it lying on a train station bench. Someone paid ten cents for it, then tossed it aside.

A train station. Then you travel a lot with the troupe.

Always moving.

The metal plates I had just received in the mail returned to my thoughts and I asked, Ever travel by air?

No.

But would you want to?

It would scare the daylights out of me. Would you?

For the newspaper, I said. And maybe I would, anyway.

Really? Nothing between you and death but a thin sheet of silver held up by wooden ribs, same sort of ribs that must have braced the walls of galleons in the days of pirates? Only you're in a flimsy tube sailing in the clouds. No thanks, darling. We all know the principles of flight but can anyone really tell me how it is that thing stays afloat instead of splattering its contents over the mountain tops? I heard that the sides aren't even metal, but canvas painted silver and that the upper hull is filled with gas bags made of cow guts. No, I get all the action I need here on the ground.

Trains go off the rails and down cliff sides, I said. The ocean is no safer. Ships sink.

Then thank the gods our little boat hugs the coast. I can swim for shore. As for adventure, I shall seek it vicariously. That, and he nodded at his old friend and the opened book splayed across his lap, is about a man in buckskin creeping up on an army. All by himself! He'll take them single-handed. But as I was saying, I wouldn't call it a book.

My consternation showed all over my face, I knew.

That shouldn't upset you any more than seeing your newspaper at day's end, he said, torn in half and wrapped around a fish.

My uncle's words. But I flinched, seeing another sort of fish. And then another.

I moved in closer to the young man, careful to hide my limp, hoping to move the conversation as well.

Why two tents? What's in the other?

It's where we sleep. The performers and musicians. And myself, of course.

You're not one of the cast?

I'm a writer of sorts, he said. A behind the scenes man. Benjamin Gill.

Mr. Gill—

Ben.

Ben. So what are your duties, precisely?

He smiled, clearly delighted to be the subject of an interview for once.

Let's walk outside, he said, and raised the tent flap for me.

I adapt the script for each production, he said, stepping out beside me. Each new town requires a new set-up and new stage directions. Sometimes we have to cut entire songs, the arias. It's a costly business but we make do. No hotel rooms for us. We'll be performing our opera in your saloon. That's good because some of the scenes are set in a saloon. You know the story? I won't spoil it then.

I didn't say what Vincent had said about it. But I did tell him what Meena had told me about
The Saloon
renting its rooms by the hour.

Or less.

Ladies of the evening, Ben said. Where would civilization be without them? Then they'll be there to see our production?

I said I understood so, and he seemed pleased.

It ends with a nice example of dramatic irony, he said.

The audience knows what's going on, but the characters don't.

Very good, he said. Theatre background?

Teacher. Was.

Well, you are right of course. The audience is included in the performance. They get the joke while the poor character stands perplexed, scratching himself. But as I promised, I won't say more about this production. You'll see it for yourself.

In two weeks, I noted, remembering my initial question. You're here early.

Preparation, he said. We know the tunes all right but we need to go over the entrances and exits, where to stand. There are no curtains or stage in your saloon, and I hear the metal walls reverberate. It's a challenge for the musicians. The stage directions have to change. Everything has to shift in this place.

He looked around as he spoke, taxis roaring past us.

Also, he added, the little boat we hired needs repairs. We got a reduced rate if we didn't mind an extended stopover.

He paused for a moment, wrinkling the tip of his nose. An odd place, this, isn't it? The very sound of those blasted scooters.
Vespula vulgaris
. Wasps.

His comment startled me, because it had been my very own. I knew the sound of wasps well. In our orchard they covered the fallen pears like a carpet of nettles, and then lifted at once, should you have walked over them without looking, filling your ears with the piercing buzz. You could run and run and even if you outran them, slamming the screen door behind you, still, you could hear them nosing and buzzing at the metal mesh, hear it in your ears even if you clapped a hand over each. Horrible things.

I smiled deeply. I liked this Ben fellow.

Dinner. Wooden bread with butter and jam, washed down with a mug of strong tea. Even the contents of Parker's shelves were more appealing.

I stopped by the calendar and scored across the date: September 16. Past the mid-point. I left quickly so I wouldn't have to think about that, grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open.

What a stink in the air.

I slammed the door behind me and turned to lock it and there, nailed to the heavy wood, was a fish. The impact caused the slimy thing to come loose, the foul air growing fouler as it pulled apart. I watched, aghast, as it dangled by its twisted grin and then ripped free, sliding its blistered scales down the door and onto the boards. The same one I'd tossed toward the pithead? It couldn't be. The other would have rotted away by now. As rank as this one smelled, it wasn't that old.

I didn't hesitate. Full of fury and disgust I pulled back my leg and booted the mess into the street. The kick ignited each one of my stitches and I cursed my bleeding thoughtlessness twice over as I bent to ease the toe of my boot against the boards, and scrape it free of scales. Then I limped back inside and closed the door behind me.

For the longest time I sat at my desk, forehead pressed against the oak, unsettled, sickened. Of course the dirty deputy was behind the fish, but he might have convinced others to do it for him. That way he could remain guilt-free. I might have several people aiming to hurt me. Who in this town would do the bidding of that man? One of the other deputies? One of the miners?

I reached into the lower drawer for the bottle, put my feet up on the desk to ease the stitches, and leaned back for a slug.

*

The low moan of the approaching midnight ship roused me. I dropped my legs and stood, the pain in my neck far worse than in my leg.

Two rolls of my head to ease the kinks, a quick wash upstairs and then out the door, the headlamp dangling from my wrist as I limped.

The grey town was quiet. Even the opera players had turned in, their tents in darkness. But toward the docks the night sky was pierced by beams of light. There were shouts, too, and crates bouncing as they were flung from the ship onto the boards below. In minutes, before I had even reached the dock, the delivery was complete and the vessel had pushed off from the wharf. The beams clustered together around the cargo pile, creating a luminescent glow in the centre that, at first, I thought was Morris. I hadn't seen him since that brief moment at Meena's.

In my ear a thin voice that I knew right away to belong to Parker.

Got you a limp, there.

That I do, I said, and turned to him. Bicycle mishap.

He stared at me greenishly and for a long time from under his visor, lit up from above by his headlamp. At last he said, Mind the holes!

I nodded, and told him about the pigs in the dump, how wild they seemed, how they gave chase.

Pigs! He spat something into the dirt, and added, Shoot 'em and be done with it. Ed! Can you get this here crate to me in the morning? I'll be heading back, now.

Miss, Ed greeted. I can have this sent at the same time.

His headlamp beamed onto a package bound in rope and brown paper: massive and round and breathtaking.

What is it? I asked.

A roll of paper, looks like. Ordered by—he lifted the shipping receipt—a Mr. Cruz, V.

Of course, I said.

I had been expecting sheets of paper, but this roll would be for the large printing machine.

You can pay for it now, or later.

Later, I said.

This, too, he said, and his boot nudged a small bundle of newspapers.

I had ordered that one, papers from all over North America, and Hong Kong, too. There should have been more than this, but more must be on their way.

More money required, too, and I felt myself sigh with the realization.

I can take that now, I said, and to free my hands, I swung the strap from the lamp onto my head and jammed it down. Then I turned to him, still thinking about that disgusting creature nailed to my door this afternoon. I must have been banging things around in the pressroom not to hear the hammering.

Ed, I said. Have you noticed any strange-looking fish in the stream?

I suppose.

Do you know why they look like that?

He pulled his head back, suspicious, until his neck was full of chins.

Should I?

No, no, but I plan to write about it for the paper. What do you think about that?

Fish is there in plain view to be writ about.

Good. I will be sure to say that. And thank you for the delivery tomorrow.

I grabbed the bundle by the rope and dragged it along the dirt road to my shop, not realizing until I saw myself in the reflection of the window that I was headlamped, just like the rest of them back there.