A World Elsewhere (14 page)

He would search the house, put the hat in a potato sack and leave without so much as looking at anything else.

Leaving the attic, he would have to get past Hogan, and again on the way back in.

If he was lucky, the Tuesday he chose would be a windy one and whatever sounds he made would be masked by those of the wind and the trees.

Landish had a hunch about where in the house the hat was located. He doubted the nobleman would keep it in the attic, which was full of dust and mould. There was no basement or cellar. The problem was that if the nobleman had put it inside a lockable piece of furniture such as a sideboard or a wardrobe or a study desk, it might take hours to find. Landish knew that he could smash his way into almost anything, but the noise he made might be overheard by neighbours or passersby, or drown out any sound of the nobleman coming up the steps.

He went to bed but didn’t close his eyes. Deacon said he couldn’t sleep until Landish closed his eyes, so Landish turned and faced the
wall. He thought of the box, its inner walls upholstered like a casket’s. What would he do with the box from the time he took it to the time the ship departed?

If he was caught, caught in the act while still in the house, or caught in possession of the hat, he would go to prison for a term that he would likely not survive. He would never see the boy again. The boy would go to Cluding Deacon and never leave alive. But though he dwelt for hours every day on the folly of stealing from the nobleman, he dwelt as much or more on the unfairness of having to forsake the hat to such a man, to leave Newfoundland without it and never set eyes on it again, leave it in the house and hands of a man who would never have to answer for the crime of getting rich by extorting money from the poor.

His father had done worse things to get the hat than the nobleman had. In which case, why not renounce the hat, be satisfied that it had found just the home and owner it deserved? But even as he thought these and many other things, he went on devising plans.

“Where are you going, Landish?” Deacon said.

Landish said there were still a few more arrangements that needed to be made before they left. “I just want to say goodbye to some grown-ups you don’t know.”

“Fair ladies.”

“No. Just some men I haven’t seen since my last trip on the
Gilbert
. No more questions, now, all right?”

Deacon stared at him. He thought Landish wasn’t going to the taverns. But he was making things up. He looked as scared as he had the day he nearly drowned. Landish knelt in front of him and hugged him until Deacon’s feet came off the floor. Deacon thought about not hugging back, just hanging there. But he hugged him and Landish kissed his neck.

Landish stood up. “I won’t be long,” he said. “Lock the bolt this time.” Landish closed the door behind him. It sounded like he ran downstairs. Deacon wondered if Hogan would have time to reach the kitchen first. Then he heard Landish say, “I don’t want to see you in this kitchen when I get back tonight or when we come and go tomorrow. If you know what’s good for you, this will be the last time I ever see your face.” Deacon slid the bolt closed.

This was a strange way to be occupied on the night before you left your lifelong home for good. One last stroll about the town for old times’ sake it should have been, with Deacon on his shoulders. And after that a fret-free night, not one of waiting for the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

He took a route that brought him to the street just west of the nobleman’s. He walked down the tree-lined alleyway that ran between the nobleman’s house and his uphill neighbour’s. The nobleman’s house was dark but for the front porch light.

He unlatched the gate that opened onto the side of the house and stepped into the yard. He went round to the back door, took the ring of keys from his pocket and climbed the steps.

He tried the key. It turned. The nobleman had left
everything
the same, even the locks. The door creaked when he opened it, exactly as it had throughout his childhood. He went through the porch and into the kitchen. The front porch light, the street lights, the lights from neighbouring houses allowed him to see just enough to keep from knocking into something.

He made his way through the kitchen, certain the hat would not be there. In the front room he saw the piano that his mother used to play. He glanced at the Druken china cabinet, dining room table, buffet and sideboard.

He went upstairs to the master bedroom, his parents’ room in which he had not set foot since his mother died, noted the armoire from the landing, but bypassed it in favour of the closet in which it was
so dark he had to feel his way about. He started with the upper shelf, just inside the door.

He knew the instant he touched it that he had found the hat box. The nobleman mimicked both father and son. He had put the box where Landish had put it in the attic, where the two men who came for it must have told him Landish kept it—on the shelf in his bedroom closet.

He slid it off the shelf. He left the closet and laid the box on the bed, eased it open just enough to satisfy himself that the hat was inside, then closed it.

The box now held in front of him like an about-to-be-presented birthday cake, he left the room and went downstairs, where he paused, allowed himself a moment to imagine his father sitting in what had been his chair, which seemed not to have been moved an inch from its place before the fire. The scale model of the
Gilbert
stood where it always had, in the centre of the mantelpiece.

He made his way down the hallway to the kitchen, the porch, the porch door. He put the box beneath one arm and with his free hand turned the knob. He nudged the door with his shoulder and stepped outside.

A cat ran up the steps and into the house.

He removed the key from his pocket and locked the door.

He heard what he thought were raindrops on the box until he realized that beads of sweat were falling from his forehead. He removed the potato sack from inside his shirt, put the box inside it, knotted the sack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked without haste down the pathway of his father’s garden toward the gate.

Deacon heard Landish ascend the lower stairs, then Hogan’s. Landish didn’t pause in Hogan’s kitchen, didn’t say a word as he passed through and climbed up to the attic door. Deacon unbolted the door and then returned to his chair at the table.

“There, you see, back in no time.” Deacon looked at him. He was flushed and sweaty. He looked like he was decks awash, but Deacon couldn’t smell the grog. He didn’t have anything in his hands.

“Did you say goodbye to everyone?” Landish said nothing. He sat at the table, on the other side from Deacon.

“Did you take the hat?” Deacon said.

“Yes,” Landish said. “I was lucky. It wasn’t hard to find. We mustn’t say a word to anyone.”

“Where is it? Did you hide it?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re home free.”

No one could prove that he took the hat. No one would find it. As long as the wealth inspector did his part.

The wealth inspector had the hat and was going to hold it for him until he wrote to him from Vanderland. He had tried to talk him out of stealing it back but when he saw that Landish was going to steal it with his help or not, he told him he would help him, not for his sake but for Deacon’s. They agreed that if Landish were caught, he wouldn’t say a word about the wealth inspector; if he hadn’t met the wealth inspector when and where they planned to exchange the hat, the wealth inspector would simply have gone home.

Still, the nobleman might soon arrive with the police or, worse, the men he sent before. In either case, what a scene might then play out before the boy.

“If someone comes to ask us questions, tell them I went out tonight. Don’t lie about that, because Hogan knows that I went out. So do the Barnables. Tell them you’re not sure how long I was gone or else you’ll sound like I’ve been coaching you. Don’t say anything unless you have to. We might be long gone by the time the nobleman even notices the hat is missing. But we’re not home free.”

Deacon nodded.

Deacon knew they would think about the hat all night. They wouldn’t sleep. They would jump at every sound, even when they knew that it
was Hogan. Sometimes, when tomorrow was the day you thought would never come, it was nice when you couldn’t get to sleep. The Big Day, Landish always called it. There had been many big days, but none like the one that was almost here at last.

In the morning, Landish couldn’t keep still. The ship’s departure time was hours away. They went out for a long walk. Coming back, as they neared the last turn on Dark Marsh Road, Landish saw the nobleman’s carriage, parked, the nobleman seated up front, reins and whip in hand.

“Remember what I told you,” Landish said, squeezing Deacon’s hand.

Deacon had never seen the nobleman. He looked smaller and older than he’d imagined. The coats of his two black horses shone in the morning sunlight. They had feathers on their foreheads.

“The cat was in when we returned home,” the nobleman said. “That’s how we discovered that our house was broken into. Think about that, Mr. Druken.”

“What do you want from us?” Landish said.

“I searched the attic,” the nobleman said, “even though I doubted you’d be fool enough to hide it there.”

“You entered my premises without my permission?”

“I came to call, as landlords are allowed to do. You were out. I had a key. I locked the door behind me when I left. Everything is exactly as it was. I did everything as you did it. Almost.”

“What were you looking for?” Landish said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you stole it and destroyed it out of spite. Is that what happened, boy? Did Mr. Druken steal my hat and burn it in the fireplace? Or dispose of it somewhere, along with the keys to my house? Did you help him steal my hat last night?”

“A man of your means should know better than to leave his doors unlocked,” Landish said.

“You cannot break into my house at night, creep about from room to room, rummage through my private things, make off with something
from the very closet of my bedroom and expect to get away with it. I will have my satisfaction one way or the other.”

“Let’s go inside, Deacon.”

“You’ll be back. It won’t take long for you to wear out your welcome. And you, boy, are now apprenticed to a cheat, a liar
and
a thief.”

The Ship

THEY BOARDED THE SHIP
early in the evening, gaped at by the others who were boarding, recognized by most of them judging by how frequently he heard them say their names. Even as the seal hunt was getting under way, Landish Druken was leaving for New York with the son of the man his father murdered.

They stood at the rail, waiting while the crew made their final preparations. Deacon felt the shudder of the ship as the engines started up and churned the water white along the side. A gap between the dock and the ship began to form. Deacon thought it was so wide that even with a running start, Landish would have landed in the water. And the people on the dock would have had to fish him out, and Deacon would have had no choice but to cross the Gulf alone and Landish none but to turn and walk away.

Having all his life seen the sea from St. John’s, Deacon was now seeing St. John’s from the sea. Everything was backwards. He saw things that had been hidden from him all his life, the sea-facing side of the lighthouse at Fort Amherst, the great bay that, mimicking the harbour, lay behind the Brow. Mesmerized, he all but pitched forward through the rails into the sea.

Walking on the ship was like trying to walk on the bed in the attic while Landish bounced the mattress with both hands.

They cleared the Narrows. The ship turned. He saw the sealing of the cleft between the headlands. It seemed that they had departed just in time, just as they were shutting up the harbour for the night. The rigging was traced out by lantern lights like the one that Landish hung in the window in the attic when it was dark enough outside to see the stars.

To their left was a battery of cannons in front of a lighthouse.

“The English put them there,” Landish said, “so they could blow the smithereens out of the French. They took turns blowing the smithereens out of each other. When the smoke cleared, the English had more smithereens left, so they got Newfoundland.”

The cliffs to their right were too steep and sheer to support anything but small, gnarled trees whose roots were fastened to the rock like vines.

“Well,” said a man standing near them at the railing, “at least we don’t live in
this
place.”

Landish told him he had never understood why some people were cheered by the notion that however bad was their lot, someone else’s lot was even worse. “By that reasoning,” he said, “we should all be content to live anywhere but Hell.” He smiled. The man and woman moved further down the rail.

Deacon could see other lights along the coast but not bunched up like in St. John’s—small clusters, lone lights further down, and one so dim that he wondered if the man who lit it even knew there was a city on the far side of the hill.

A couple of hours into the voyage, Landish overheard a passenger talking to a steward. “They look like they escaped from steerage. He must have robbed someone. How else could he afford first class? God knows what we’ll be infected with because of them. Tell the captain I would like to have a word with him.”

The boy, now almost seven, had never been in a vehicle of any kind. Landish was the closest he had come, Landish who conveyed him on his shoulders more often than he led him by the hand.

He had never walked on a frozen lake or river.

He had never gone swimming or skating.

Except at tub time, Deacon Carson Druken had never been immersed in water.

He had never been to sea or in any kind of boat.

Their cabin was five times bigger than the attic, maybe ten. It had six portholes, not just one. Landish said the names of some things but he sounded like he wasn’t sure. There were several tables, but none were like the table in the attic. Landish smiled at how astonished and confused Deacon looked. It saddened him to think what the boy had grown accustomed to, what he thought was normal and didn’t know was even possible.