Two-Gun & Sun (21 page)

I flashed a smile, despite myself.

We had reached our destination, an old lopsided boardwalk, and reeled over the slats that dipped and groaned beneath the weight of each step.

The cantina shack was made from graying driftwood and other scavenged pieces. A window from a house, a wooden door from a boat that forced us to duck our heads. Over the door hung a lopsided sign:
The Lonesome Café
. Inside, two oil lamps glowered, one by a coal stove, the other over a long, wide board that spanned the width of the shack and served as a counter.

Several Chinese sat at the board, miners, perhaps. Some of the opera troupe were at the counter, too: Ben, once again, his old friend, the big-chested singer, and two of the men. The musicians, I presumed. They had discovered in mere days what it had taken me weeks to find. An establishment that served fresh food.

A large, brown-skinned man in knitted cap and sleeveless white undervest stood at the stove, spooning breaded oysters into a buttered pan. For an apron he wore a striped tea towel tucked into his trousers. The oysters sizzled as they landed and a smell of ocean filled the small room.

Sit, he said.

I did as Morris showed me, dragged a stump forward and sat at the board like we were at a café counter.

Our cook poured us each a mug of tea, then slammed a bowl of sugar and tin of condensed milk onto the board. The holes in the tin had congealed with old milk the colour of glue. He leaned over and aimed a yellowed fingernail at each hole, jabbing once to break the seal.

Wolf, Morris said, my lovely acquaintance here didn't know you serve delicious greens, or how you come by them. Go ahead and show her. I can see to the drinks myself.

I sat up, curious, imagining a giant warehouse of greens.

The aproned Wolf scooped fried oysters onto a plate, added a slice of buttered bread, a brilliant clump of green, like spinach, speared by a single blade of asparagus, and sent it sliding down the counter to someone who had just entered by way of a back door.

Marcel! I called out.

Mademoiselle!
he called back, doffing his cap.

I would ask why he cooked at the hotel instead of here, but we were shouting as it was, and I imagined his answer would be similar to Vincent's, that they paid twice what anyone in Lousetown would.

I bent my head in greeting to Ben and his old friend. Ben lifted his chin and smiled. The old one lifted his stem of asparagus and waggled it at me.

I turned back to Wolf. He finished smoking a stub of a cigarette till it was a pinch between his fingers, then dropped it and ground it into the boards with his boot.

You're the one who runs the newspaper? He leaned forward, his fishy tobacco breath and dark eyes roaming over my face. Thought so, he said. None of this goes in it. Agreed?

I sighed. Agreed.

He looked at Morris, and then raised his eyes to the shelves above the stove with rows of bottles of every amber-coloured liquid I could name, bourbon, rye, rum, tequila, brandy, and some clear ones as well, gin, vodka, schnapps. There was no attempt to hide spirits here. I knew what he was thinking, though, and soon he pointed a brown-stained finger at Morris.

I'm staying right here, he said, to watch my stock. You take her. You know the way. Take a basket while you're at it.

Morris rose, and I got up to follow him. Why were the best news stories unprintable?

*

The boat jerked with each dip of the oars, darting forward like a water bug.

We crossed what Morris described as cranberry flats. Beads of brilliant red bobbed in the cloudy water and tumbled against my fingertips as we glided over. The prow ground into gravel and Morris clambered out, lifted the basket and set it on the ground, then dragged the boat up onto the beach of an island of sorts, a mound of earth in the middle of the stream, hidden by the pithead, or I would've seen it from the top of the mountain. The wicker handle over his arm, he led me straight ahead to a gate of woven vines and branches within a wall of green growth. It swung open as though on oiled hinges.

We found ourselves in a fog thicker than any I had seen in Black Mountain, obscuring my sight until we shut the gate behind us and stepped through it. Directly before us, a fountain bubbled and steamed vigorously from a white bathroom basin on a gleaming white pedestal. A row of office fans on tall stilts spun their blades and aimed their silver snouts in a variety of directions, scattering the steam.

The coal dust dries out the air, Morris explained, so some plants need misting. Others don't like it damp. They need it redirected. The gardeners have thought of everything.

Tomato plants were trellised over two car doors and an engine hood that leaned against the green wall. The gardeners had obviously visited the dump.

For added warmth, Morris said. The metal heats up and gives them a boost.

Heats up? How?

We get the morning sun, he said.

I nodded to myself, thinking of Vincent's rooftop dish.
The Times
must be close by.

A coal cart brimming with leafy greens and onions rolled past on a track.

Gents, Morris greeted as we walked. Two Chinese men pedalled furiously on stationary bicycles.

They give us a power boost, Morris said, along with that up there.

His fingertips indicated another solar dish like Vincent's, nestled amongst the green growth but pointed upward. Running out from below dish and bicycles were cables and wires that connected to black boxes, and from there more cords that appeared to stretch from one end of the garden to the other.

We could have light all night long if we wanted, he said. We could build a crystal garden for the winter. But either would give us away. You'd be able to see us glowing and twinkling all the way to Black Mountain, even through the fog.

So what will they do in winter? Close the garden?

Vincent's working on it. Radiators, he said. Over there.

Two cast iron radiators leaned against the green wall, waiting, as he explained it, to be hooked up to the existing pipe work that fed the fountain. I knew where they got at least one of those radiators. I'd just been there, looking around the abandoned house.

He's a goddamned genius, Morris said.

Yes, I said. He told me he likes to make things.

That chandelier at the hotel made of radio tubes? Most of what you've seen so far? All his.

Glorious heads of roses glowed in the evening air. I bent to breathe in their perfume.

These are lovely, I said.

Miners' helmets with headlamps nestled in the dirt of the rose bed, and lit up the blooms, turning the petals sheer as silk.

Like the tomato, Morris said, roses like a good drink of water, but need well-drained soil. Even tomatoes can't touch those heated metal doors, or they'll blister, but roses are even more delicate. We're experimenting with these lamps. I've also suggested a stone wall to retain the heat without hurting the blooms. An upcoming project.

And then he added, These roses remind Vincent of home. Shanghai.

These are his, too? I asked. I've never seen—

And then I stopped. Because why would I?

He sells them. Always doing something to make money. That's a secret, remember. He shot a dark look toward my pocket and the notebook it held. I nodded my understanding. Mostly, he continued, the girls at
The Saloon
buy them. Says it gives a boudoir smell to the place.

The word
boudoir
rumbled in his throat.

He
says that?

I couldn't contain the venom behind my question. My mouth filled with a bitter taste. I had literally spat the question at Morris.

No, he said. The girls do.

This is a secret? None of their customers demand to know where the flowers come from? They might want to buy some for their wives, too!

My temper scorched the very words that left my lips. I said the word
customers
as though it were a cuss word, and then stepped to the side to let a coal cart of rutabagas trundle past. My chest heaved and I could feel my cheeks flame.

Morris turned slowly, his eyebrows arched above the rolling mound of yellow roots. Perhaps my outburst was the last thing he expected from a newspaper publisher.

My dear, he said, anyone going there has other things to think about.

Up ahead, the bent backs of workers emerged, their straw hats bobbing like pinwheels in the grey air, illuminated here and there by embedded miner's lights. The sight soothed me and I felt my pulse slow. Rotten tomatoes had been thrown to the ground, a clotted carpet that stuck to the passing feet of the pickers, of each of us. I paused to wipe a heel against a rock, the pungent smell of tomato as rich as its colour, especially so, wrapped as it was in the damp, metallic grey of the air.

Morris knew his way around, stopping to comment on the positive effects of mounding the soil, and on which herbs kept what bugs away. He surprised me with his knowledge and I said so.

Gardening became my
raison d'être
in the wilds of Saskatchewan.

You worked on a farm?

I did. And because I had a talent for it I was assigned the task of keeping a garden to feed the hordes.

He was being obviously evasive.

You fed a village? I asked.

I had a growing suspicion about what he would say next.

My fellow-sufferers in Prince Albert's least hospitable establishment.

You were in jail!

Falsely accused, along with my Chinese compatriot. I stood by him and he taught me to grow vegetables. My favourite was the eggplant,
aubergine,
such magnificent colour—

What were you accused of?

Ill-gotten gains.

Ill-gotten how?

What does it matter? I was innocent and yet I was thrown behind bars for a year.

Gambling, I suspected. Not so innocent. Picking pockets, maybe. I hadn't forgotten the sight of his probing fingers in the hotel restaurant.

He added, The only fresh air I got was when I worked in that garden.

The pickers in this garden must have seen us, certainly they heard us, but they didn't look up as we approached. At the end of the path we stepped over an irrigation ditch, and he handed me the basket. He lowered his hands to the ground and tugged, once, twice, and laid a bouquet of carrots against the wicker bottom, next, green onions.

Here, he said. And he leaned over the vegetables to clip a rose, the bud still closed tight. I could see from the others that it would be a blush-coloured bloom so pale it could be almost white, ghostly against the night, illuminated, as he held it aloft, by the miner's lamp below. He placed it in my free hand and I thanked him, though I wished it had come from another. A book and newspapers had been offering enough until I saw these blooms.

Aloud I remarked, I wonder why they didn't build the town here. Black Mountain, I mean.

We had stopped at a corner collection of old hip waders, an umbrella stand, and women's bloomers, knotted at the knees. They had been filled with soil and the tops of each sprouted green spears. Morris bent over them with his clippers.

My dear girl, he said, remarking as Parker might. The coal's over there! Why would they build here?

And he dropped a bunch of asparagus beside the onions.

These have long roots and like deep soil, he explained. Most asparagus have packed it in for the year, but the lamps have convinced these it's still spring.

The basket was heavy on my arm when he stopped and raised a hand and said, Ah, my blushing beauty.

An apple. He plucked it from the tree and was about to lay it on top of the mound of vegetables. I had seen an apple neatly sliced in two and now at last I had found where it had come from.

I put the basket down.

May I have it? I asked.

Why, of course. Would you like two? Ten?

I laughed. No. One is enough.

And I slipped it in my pocket before picking up the basket again. We were back at the garden gate, now. The fountain did double duty as a wash-up station, and as we passed it we stopped, as the pickers before us had, to clean our nails and knuckles in the hot water. Two headlamps glowed from the pedestal base, and when I crouched to look closer I noticed a brush stroke of blue on the porcelain base. It was the same blue that trimmed the hole in my floor. It was my sink.

Morris!

But he had pushed ahead to the rowboat, and I had to run to catch up.

I turned back to look one more time, but the sink was cloaked by the green hedge and woven gate as though it were exactly where it should be. And really, how could I demand that they return it when the sink could never foam and steam in my room above the shop as it did so gloriously right there?

The gardeners had filed out and around us, their route marked by bobbing globes of light from lanterns held discretely low, to conceal them from view of the distant town.

It was a short walk to the water. Surrounding this entire mound of an island, and the stream that forked around it, was Lousetown. It was well-hidden.

I knew I was right about the glimmer of light from a setting sun, because now it was completely dark.

Morris slung a lantern over the prow as he warned me again, No one in town knows of this place. They must think Lousetowners live on nothing but the sacks of rice that arrive by boat. They aren't allowed to shop at Parker's.

They are somewhat fortunate, then, I said.

He inclined his head and smiled as he rowed. From here, the green walls as well as the garden within had melted into the dark air, though I could still see the glowing image of my sink.

And what about you? I asked him.

Sometimes I'm one of them, sometimes not. It keeps me on my toes, trying to determine where and when I'm welcome.

I told Morris I'd tie up the boat while he carried the vegetables in. I stood on the wharf and turned in circles. I had hoped to be able to spot
The Times
from here, but it was too dark. I could see nothing except the dim lights from
The Lonesome Café
.