Two-Gun & Sun (24 page)

I dropped the mail onto the table and opened my newspaper bag to make room for it all.

What's that? He asked.
The Edmonton Journal?

Yes, I've been ordering different newspapers from all over, to see what they look like. But they keep disappearing. I had this one sent again by post to make sure I got it.

May I? And he snatched it up.

I suppose you'd like to brush up on the news business, too, I said. I just handed out our last newssheet. Did you see it?

They were remarks made hopefully, as a way of bringing up our partnership, but his nose was in
The Edmonton Journal
.

You can have it when I'm done, I said. You can keep it then.

No need. I have a brother living there. I like to keep up. But there's not much here. Ah, he said, fumbling around in his jacket pocket as his eyes darted about the room. Then he handed back the newspaper.

What news were you looking for?

Immediately I regretted my question, and braced for the long answer. There was an awkward break in our conversation then. He rolled his eyes upward as though the tin ceiling could provide the answer, then to each side, as though it were lurking in the potted palms and ferns.

At last, he said, Anything that might affect his tailoring business.

That's what you were considering, once.

Yes. He seeks my counsel from time to time. Fabrics. Threads. Colour—

We had our teacups now and he finished his in two gulps, raised a finger to order another.

Look inside, he advised.

I pulled my teacup closer, but he tilted his head toward the
Journal
.

For what? I opened it, and stopped asking. Inside
The Edmonton Journal
was a gaping envelope, thick with bills.

I slapped it closed as Ed leaned across the table to take the cup and saucer to the bar.

I waited until he returned it, and we were alone again. Morris! I whispered. How much is in here?

Hundreds, he said. I know, I know. Hundreds more owing, but—

No, this is, well, this is good. Quite honestly it's more than I was expecting at once, more than I ever thought I'd see. We struck that deal some time ago.

Three weeks ago. Well, now you can tell the whole world. Here's Two-Gun Cohen, my partner. Two-Gun Cohen, publisher. Just don't wrinkle up that freckled nose of yours when you say it.

It's not freckled, I said. Two-Gun, I added. Partner.

Two-Gun Cohen, Esq.

His words fought for my full attention. The things I could buy with that money! I could pay off much of the loan. Pay for supplies. Most importantly, pay Vincent. That would improve things between us.

While I considered, his focus had drifted toward the window.

This whole place, he said, looks like a battlefield.

You enlisted?

Indeed. I was a sergeant in the Canadian Railway Troops.

My brothers were with the expeditionary forces. All four of them.

That made me think of Will, and I shifted my focus.

But, earlier you claimed—insisted—that this place was no different than Manhattan or London. Why a battlefield, now?

I hadn't yet seen the other side, he explained.

Where we were shooting, I said, nodding. But this side as well, the place where you surprised me by popping out of that hole. The trees nothing but black limbs. Odd, isn't it, an orchard on either side of the mountain?

Then he said the most extraordinary thing.

It looks to me that those are coal leavings, dug out of the mine and dumped into the orchard. That's the black mountain, he explained. It covers everything in the middle and spoils much of what remained, creating two orchards at the same time that it killed them both.

I should have guessed that. It all made sense. More of a hill than a mountain, and filthy, but I assumed the town exaggerated its size to inflate its own sense of self, and that the filthy surface was nothing more than the coal dust that covered everything else, here.

We finished our drinks.

I was glad, now, that I had asked him to accompany me to the opera. He knew about mines, true. But he had also seen action, as had my dear brothers, and his money was pleasantly heavy in my bag.

*

The bank was about to close when I arrived, but my bag of money convinced them to stay open a few minutes longer. I kept a few bills for myself, as well as some for Vincent's wages. On my way back to the shop, both load and spirits lightened by the deposit, my eyes were drawn once more to the glowing opera tents, and I stopped in.

You are just in time for an impromptu rehearsal, Ben said. Have a seat.

And he shoved over to give me room on the clothes trunk.

The tent flaps had been pinned back to form a stage. We were seated just outside the tent, next to a fire that crackled. Again, a memory of smoke and heat and flame, though in this setting even the strike of a match would have ignited the sulfuric vision of that day in my schoolhouse back home. The players before me, half-nude as they struggled in and of costume, rounded out the recollection, and that drink, still warm in my guts, became a perfect lubricant for musing: working late, attempting to finish some ponderous marking, surprised at the heavy heat. A snapping sound that at first I did not connect to flames, until I smelled smoke. I bolted out the back door to see that the schoolhouse steps had been set on fire and there, just beyond the flames, a group of men and women in a state of rapture, arms upraised, voices rising, naked. Freedomites. Large and lumpy, rail thin and sinewy, their flesh licked orange.

I don't know why they chose my schoolhouse. It wasn't on Doukhobor land, and usually they targeted their own: retribution for those who had drifted from tradition. Perhaps it was because I taught a couple of students whose families had left the community. Or maybe my schoolhouse was conveniently in their path. Briefly, I was spellbound, and then I raced back inside.

This was one protest that never made the newspaper, because no one else knew of it. The bucket of water intended to scrub the desks easily extinguished the flames. Next, at least half of the tin of paint meant for whitewashing the walls went onto the steps, wet as they were. I worked furiously, determined to cover up their actions. For John, for what he had once meant to me, for what my father would have said. This was the very thing people in town complained about: Those Dukes! Yet I had never witnessed anything so strangely beautiful, a passion that transcended our sense of decorum and decency. They had a purpose, a conviction, and they didn't care what we thought. They wanted us to stop forcing our style of education upon their children, whose futures required knowledge of farming methods, not literature. And there I'd been, daydreaming about hot summers and time off at last from a tiresome year of teaching, a year that had lacked all sense of passion.

I handed in my notice the next day.

The players before me were clothed, now. I had lost track of what was going on.

What do you think? Ben asked, turning on the trunk to look at me.

Caught off-guard, I improvised.

Such passion, I said. Beautiful.

With great satisfaction he slapped me on the knee with one of my own newssheets.

*

The shop was silent the next morning when I came downstairs, the press, still. I passed the sink quickly, not bothering with the calendar. I was well aware it was the 26th and that we had three days to complete work on the first edition before we printed up all the pages. Vincent should be here.

I called out his name and indeed found him, straightening his collar in the metal mirror. I must have hurried right past him on my way to the press.

Why are you dressed up? I asked. Aren't we going to run the inside pages?

We. I meant him.

No time, now, Vincent said. He's here.

I swivelled around. Who? Morris?

No, he said. There was an edge to his voice, but he explained, Our leader. Everyone's going to see him, to hear his speech.

The awkwardness of the last few days vanished as I contemplated this great event.

Take me with you!

He shook his head. He's here to ask for support. Last month he had to escape to Shanghai, again. From the warlords.

I grabbed his arm. I remembered him speaking of warlords.

I should go, too, I said, don't you see? I've read his book. Now I want to hear him with my own ears.

His gaze locked onto my hand on his arm, and I pulled it back.

I'll only print what you agree to have printed. I'll check with you this time.

Uncle would never have consented to that, but I was determined to see this famous man under whatever conditions Vincent required. It meant him taking me to Lousetown, but no one there would object to seeing us together.

I waited for him to answer. I knew that Two-Gun would eventually introduce me to the leader. I had his money now. So this would not change our deal. All I wanted today was a glimpse, an opportunity to hear the man, to further familiarize myself with his beliefs and with his followers. If I listened now, I could ask informed questions, later. I could dig deeper.

I said some of this in a rush, and then I added, I saw someone, a dark figure in a long coat.

Again, I hoped this would improve my chances of going.

Where? he asked.

One of the alleys just off Zero. A couple of times, actually.

I expected him to refuse me, but as I'd hoped, my luck had risen with this information.

You can't go like that.

If he had let me slip from his grasp before, he was reaching out again, and I, left dangling all this time, was scrambling up once more, grabbing hold with all my might as I rushed to the back of the room near the sink to step out of my coveralls. This time it was not a disaster that was bringing us together but a political event, an extraordinary one, and I was ready for it.

With a quick snap I straightened the coveralls and hung them on a hook. The cotton summer dress I had worn underneath was plain—and yes, blue flowers over a background of blue polka dots, which gave it a grayish look, but with a white collar, which I would point out to Morris if he were here—still, it was a good enough dress for a meeting. I stepped out, ready to leave.

Vincent said, I have another idea.

I reached up and touched where he looked, at the silver pin I used to hold my wild hair in place, my one feminine indulgence in the work shop. I could have pulled it out, but then my brown frizz would have come tumbling down and I'd look even more the part of what, I realized now, must have concerned him most: a woman, and a white one.

*

We hurried along the narrow streets between the shacks. This was a different route from any I'd taken before. The paths even narrower. More twisted. Dark as night, reek of urine, damp and cold in the deepest shadow of the crowded buildings. He slid a bolt and a door opened.

There were many reasons why a woman shouldn't be here. A man's room, an employee at that, and, as much as this woman might tell herself it didn't matter, a Chinese. And yet, this was Lousetown. Even the taxi drivers wouldn't come here. There would be no one from town to point a finger or ask, no one to stop me from stepping inside.

The space was so tiny I was ashamed of all my complaints about the bachelor room above the press, the tub sitting in the middle of the room, the missing sink. Here, there was just a narrow bed, a wooden pole suspended above the head of the bed, hung with shirts, trousers, jackets. A tiny window, cut in half by a curtained wall, let in a blade of grey light. On the other side of the curtain was an identical space, he said, on the other side of it, another, and then another. For now, unoccupied. The residents must be on their way to the meeting.

He pulled items from the pole, handed them to me, then stepped behind the curtain.

I pulled my dress over my head, rolled it into a ball and left it on the bed. The trousers were too tight in the hips, too large in the waist. But the jacket was long and hid the ill fit, while its looseness over the baggy shirt helped to flatten my chest. In his old clothes, I was wrapped in the odour that was him. Soap. Tobacco. A faint trace of solvent. And—? His skin. I breathed in deeply, then looked down at my footwear, a simple pair of heels that matched the dress. I had slipped into them before we left, a moment of vanity.

Shoes? I whispered.

He emerged, smiling slowly at my appearance. A pair of beaten boots from under his bed matched my look. They were too large, and he gave me an extra pair of thick socks.

Now your hair, he said, and put an old black hat over it.

We continued to talk in whispers, should anyone return.

It was my pop's, he said. For special occasions, Chinese ones.

And he grinned.

In the mirror, a bowler hat with a false queue dangling from the back, and my own hair that glowed beneath the brim.

Let's shave it.

His fingers grazed my to show me.

I shook my head.

Not much, he promised. Not like mine. A roll at the back, he said, like the French.

His fingers traced through the air a route along my jaw line to the nape of my neck.

I liked that. I pictured a French roll, the sides low enough to hide the shaved temples. And I felt his fingertips along my jaw, then pulling my hair into a knot, even though he was rummaging in a drawer, then sharpening a long razor on a strop nailed to the corner of the bureau. I watched, intent on the details that must be part of his daily routine, as though I were there with him first thing in the morning. A mug with cake of soap still damp from his shave, the same brush he must have used, whipping the soap to a foam.

He told me, Outside, keep your face down. This might help.

He pressed his thumbs against my cheeks, rubbed them with the coal dust that collects on every surface in this town, readily available for my unusual make-up.

I sat on the edge of the bed and then he came around and sat behind me, unpinning my hair, running his comb through the strands, leaving the scent of his hair tonic. He held the mug with one hand, brush in the other, and dabbed along my temples.