Two-Gun & Sun (26 page)

What makes you think they were plotting? You don't know their language.

That's what I hear.

I assumed that was another dig at me and my article, but he was smiling mysteriously.

I said, You have spies, you mean.

I'm not about to tell the newspaper publisher if we do or if we don't.

Neither was I about to tell him that I knew there were Chinese who wanted Sun dead, and that I had seen mysterious figures about town.

Your printer, he repeated.

I repeated, I don't know where he is. He's free to come and go as he pleases.

A little too free if you ask me. Ah, he added, here it is.

Two bowls were placed on the table, the lids removed at once. I fought to stay composed, to keep my eyes from widening, my mouth from opening, my face from flaming. I took measured breaths.

It was fish head soup, with the severed head set just so, its eyes aimed at mine, its mangled mouth gaping, its skin blistered. Prepared just for me, to remind me of the fish on my doormat and the fish nailed to my door, of what all of these meant, this one in particular, that I had employed a Chinese, had followed one to a meeting attended by many more, had done so dressed in one's clothes, had written about their dead. The increasing violence of each fish's appearance, from simply dead, to nailed, to decapitated, was a message for me.

From beneath my lashes I could see the deputy moving. He stood in the corner behind Drummond's back, rounding his lips and opening his mouth like a fish, his hands in his pockets, jiggling. That again.

I raised my face to Drummond and said, As I told you, not hungry, thank you.

I knew my cheeks were on fire but I held his gaze. At last he scraped his chair back and called over his shoulder as he stood to leave, Deputy. Escort her home.

He looked directly at me next, said, Just remember, I can shut you down any time I like. I own this town.

Drummond closed the door behind him without looking back.

I told the deputy, I can make my own way back.

I was about to push my chair away from the table when his dirty-hair smell swamped me.

Nothing scares you, that right? Not even this?

Not the one nailed to my door, either.

I turned my head to stare him down.

He was standing beside my right shoulder, undoing his trousers, the stink of him up my nose. This time he got the reaction he was after. I made a sound that wasn't a word, a gargle of a scream matched by the table and chair legs scraping on the floor where my face landed next when I fell in my haste to leave. He roared with delight as I crawled out from under the table and ran to the door, checking over my shoulder to see if he was following me.

His meaty paw scooped up the fish head. Run all you like, he called. Dressed like a fucking fish. I'd rather hump this.

I wrenched the door open. I ran past Silver who stood, startled, as though about to enter the room, ran, across the office and down the stairs, though I knew from his words the deputy wouldn't be following, could see with my eyes that he wasn't, ran anyway, along the filthy creek, cursing Vincent with each step, his lousy loyalty to that leader, because yes of course he had to protect him, but did that have to mean abandoning me during the speech, during the raid, leaving me to this, this! I ran and stumbled, and hid, in the shed behind the newspaper shop, hid though there was really no need but hid until it grew dark and no one could see me from those windows, until I could creep up the stairs to my rooms, undetected, wash and strip myself free of the whole day, of Vincent's clothes, his comb, his scent. Him.

I found my dress at the foot of the stairs, neatly folded inside a wrapping of newsprint.
The Chinese Times.
He must have dropped it off, and then left. I kept telling myself he'd had no choice but to help his leader, yet still my face and neck flamed with indignation over yesterday's events. That horrible man and then before him, the raid, the speech. Sun. The same name as that great orb in the sky, the thing that never shines in this place.

When I scored through 27 on the calendar, I pressed so hard I tore the page.

All morning I had wondered what I would say to Vincent when he arrived, but it seemed he had wondered the same. He hadn't stayed. I left his jacket and trousers folded on a stool beside the press, his socks, boots and his father's hat on top. Then I scribbled a few words and tore the page from my notebook:
Careful. We must speak. L.
I might be upset but I wouldn't want to see him hurt. Drummond seemed far too interested in him—my printer. And my news coverage had led to the raid. I couldn't forget that.

I tucked the note under the hat.

I stepped out the door, prepared to seek out Silver and lodge a complaint against the deputy. Was I hurt? No. Did he touch me? No. And yet I was, he had. I left the place humiliated, crawling like a bug, robbed of all dignity, and with his ragged laughter in my ears.

I had no sooner turned the key in the lock and spun around, than I found myself staring at the spectacle of an outhouse propped over top of what was one of the town's many black holes. Nailed to the door was a newspaper clipping. I knew what it was even from here because its headline cried out:

An urgent need for public facilities

Well, damn them all to hell if they think that's funny. I'd rather see a man pissing against a pole than this.

I heard the jangle of keys from the store behind me and, knowing it was Parker, composed myself before turning.

Afternoon, I said.

'Noon! he replied.

Locking up for a late lunch?

Nope!

Of course he wouldn't elaborate, and of course I wouldn't say what was really on my mind. I didn't give a damn about his lunch. But I refused to address the thing that riled me, though it squatted directly in our path. Out of pure contrariness, it seemed, neither would he.

I felt the air stirring, then, as agitated as my thoughts, and lifted my eyes to a sky that was growing brighter.

Parker, I said. Look! But he had already seen, and had slipped on sunglasses beneath his visor.

Atmospheric disturbances! he said. See? I told you! Now the wind's going to blow up the inlet and if we're lucky we'll get the sun.

I don't think I'd seen him smile before that moment. It was a grin, wide and giddy.

Just for a short while, he added, but we'll have sun.

And he began to scuttle along the buildings in a half-run.

Where are you going? I cried.

To the shore!

Parker hurried ahead, melting into the growing crowd. I followed. The wind was roaring up the inlet and already the fog had thinned. I had to shade my eyes with a hand against the unfamiliarity of brightness. A scattering of clouds ran like a filthy stream overhead and in the breaks we saw, sure enough, blasts of sunlight. Each brilliant beam caused an
ohhhh
across the crowd. Each time the light faded so did the exclamations. My hair was yanked one way and then another. Tin walls creaked and came loose, cart-wheeling across the street. All light disappeared then, and hailstones drummed on the tin roofs.

I stepped into a doorway, exhilarated, waiting for the fall of gentler rain. And then I heard the drone of motors, bleating and choking amid the building wind.

A crack of lightning lit up the sky, a yellowish grey, and then cries rose from the crowd. I couldn't see, but I could hear what they were saying: The airship!

It was the 27th, the day it was scheduled to arrive, but hours too early to attach itself to the midnight ship. It would have to be the coal hulk.

I could feel the lead plate in my hand, with its promise of tours for the modern traveller, the bullet shape pressing insistently into my palm that I should be one of them. I ran where they ran, arm flung over brow to protect my eyes from flying debris.

The rain was so heavy now I was soaked and so were they but still we ran to where the river met the ocean, a slice of gravel and rotted logs, ink-stained where the wind picked up the murky water and stirred it into the air. Above, a torpedo shape slipped in and out of the clouds, growing larger as it neared.

I stood on my toes and spotted Parker, off to the left, in his sunglasses and visor pulled low, standing alone. Everyone else packed together for the best view from the middle of the gravel. I waved but his eyes were on the sky.

A voice in my ear, then, What does that look like to you, darling?

It was Ben, come to gloat. I remembered what he'd said about airships: Nothing between you and death but a thin sheet of silver held up by wooden ribs.

Still, I leaned over to him and shouted, A crop-duster strapped to the belly of a whale!

He looked immensely pleased for a moment, then his face slackened. You just watch, he said. This is all wrong.

He was right. The storm had driven it here too soon for the midnight ship and too close in for the coal hulk that was filling its belly on the other side of the point.

I wondered, Why doesn't it turn back? But I could imagine what Parker would say to that: How? Through the storm?

In the molten horizon a shot of flame as the tail end of the airship bucked and swung around, then dipped itself into the sea, dousing the fire but dragging its full grey length along the water's surface, then along the shore, its belly sliding over us, hanging so close I found myself ducking, the whole sky above us black with it, and then into the rocks on the far shore. Its ribs cracked on impact, a sound like rifles firing at once, and its sides deflated, collapsing in a spray of steam.

The rain stopped and the wind, in one final gust, cleared away the last of the clouds. Sunlight swamped the sky and reflected painfully off the water, a floodlight onto the sack of skin, withered, grey, on the tiny shore. Someone in the crowd cried out that it looked like a dead elephant. I'd never seen one. But I had a childhood recollection of a trip to the coast, all details lost but for the vivid image of a beached whale, ribs jutting out of the carcass, skin sagging between each rung, a filthy corset. And I was seeing it again.

I could hear men and women sobbing. Others ran toward the craft with ropes and nets. Passengers and then crew members emerged one by one, alive if not unhurt.

The outhouse, an afterthought of the storm, skidded past me on its side, the door wrenched loose by the wind, the three remaining sides wobbling violently until, at last, they collapsed flat into the dirt. And yet I felt no better at seeing the prank, made at my expense, crushed like this.

Parker and Ben and the rest of the crowd had swept along the gravel toward the crash site. I could see the women from
The Saloon
gathering, too, sheets and towels bundled in their arms, because who else in town had a constant supply, and I could hear the tearing of fabric, could see Doctor moving amongst them, tying the white strips into bandages about heads and arms and hands. I knew that I should move in closer rather than observe from afar. But to what end? No one had died. A single paragraph was all this would merit. What more could I offer? Those who wanted more were here to see for themselves.

I felt my throat swelling, and wished I could join in the sobbing. It was like seeing the future collapse in front of me, that's what I wanted to write about. Are we not modern, after all? Are we not
avant-garde
? It was a future of cocktail parties and opera gowns and a solar dish that could capture the precious rays and print the words, a place where for four hours a day I could feel the sun on my skin and I could grow food and flowers and be accepted as one of them, a place for me and maybe even for a modern couple, but with this crash a doubt that had been spreading for weeks was confirmed. Even before Sun's arrival, his words had Vincent reconsidering, shifting, examining. Each time I felt him draw near, he quickly pulled back, as though someone were whispering in his ear, counselling him, questioning whether this is how a good son of the revolution should behave.

The followers would now claim that the leader's words, calling for arms and railways, traditional things of substance, grounded in the earth, not frail and floating in the sky, had predicted this crash.

Gloom filled me, spreading much as the clouds above had, returning to streak across the weakening sun, cooling the air and filling the sky, further darkened by the plume of smoke rising from the burnt craft.

Even without the crash, this moment was worse than if the sunlight had never appeared at all. The light was taken back too quickly and its sudden absence, replaced at once by darkness and rot, offended my senses as only the mutilated fish and that indecent deputy had offended them before. And now an utter sense of loss. I had no one to share the thought with. I stood on the beach, alone, the lines in my notebook blurring as I wrote.

Mr. Bones delivered my dress early in the afternoon, sliding the box onto the counter. Tonight was the opera, the last story I would cover for our first edition tomorrow. One day left. I was alone, working on the copy, as I had been for much of the time since the crash two days ago and the ugly incident with the deputy the day before that. Was I the sort of woman who could be healed of such trauma by the sight of a black and white striped box tied with a silver ribbon? Apparently so. I couldn't pull my eyes from it, and didn't fully hear what Mr. Bones had started to say.

Riot, you should have seen the miners' riot. It was something. The regulars marching up Zero Avenue to the mine, the Lousetowners marching down, Silver and his deputies in the middle, waiting for them at the pithead. There was an agitator and he got the miners into a fury about Lousetowners working for less. Lousetowners were in a fury themselves that regulars got more and still complained. And then there were persons like myself who are neither of them, not mine workers of any sort, but we joined the crowd of gawkers because we knew that something of importance was about to happen. Your uncle was there, too.