The Boundless (5 page)

“If you're inclined to believe in ghosts,” Will's father says, “I can assure you, we'll have the most able-bodied and benevolent ghost looking over us. Now, if you'll excuse me . . .”

“Is it true his coffin carries the gold spike?”

“Thank you, gentlemen, and good day!”

“How's your boy feel about being on the maiden voyage?”

Will feels like all the air in his lungs has been sucked out. The reporters stare at him, silent and expectant. For what feels like a long moment, his mind is blank. Then he takes a breath and tries to smile like his father.

“It's going to be an adventure,” he says.

“All aboard, Ladies and Gentlemen!” his father says, guiding Will through the crowd.

His heart still racing, Will walks past the locomotive, and then the triple-decker tender, filled with the tons of coal and water.

“What's this one?” he asks his father, pointing at the small carriage coupled behind the tender.

“A bunk car,” he replies. “For the engineers and firemen driving the locomotive.”

Will doesn't need to ask what the next car is. There are so many people knotted around it, he can't get close enough to read the inscriptions on its black steel side. A portly guard warns the spectators not to touch.

Will was at the funeral. His father was one of the pallbearers, carrying the enormous coffin down the aisle. In the vast cathedral Will felt small and insignificant amidst all the dignitaries, politicians, and magnates. He'd liked Mr. Van Horne an awful lot. Many fine speeches were made about him, but they were all about his achievements and service to the nation, and they didn't seem to be about the person Will remembered.

“We're up ahead, just a few more,” Will hears his father say as they pass several plain cars that Will guesses must be for crew and cargo.

And then suddenly the train carriages become altogether different. Gleaming shells of mahogany and brass and spotless glass, they rise gracefully two stories above the track.

“This is ours,” Will's father says at the very first of the fine carriages. Will steps up the fancy iron steps to a small canopied platform. A white-gloved porter is waiting for them.

“Welcome aboard, Mr. Everett,” the porter says to his father; then he nods at Will. “And Master Everett. You're in the first stateroom to your right.”

“Thank you, Marchand,” says Will's father.

Will steps through the thick wooden door after his father. The car smells of new carpet and wood polish. On the left a narrow, wood-paneled hallway with large windows and a brass handrail runs the length of the carriage.

This is hardly his first time on a train, but when Will walks into their stateroom, he's speechless. He's used to a comfortable cushioned seat, but before him is a luxurious parlor with armchairs and sofas and side tables and electric lamps and fresh flowers in vases.

“Mom would like this,” Will says.

He can imagine her stroking the red velvet wallpaper, giving a delighted little sigh at the Persian carpet, and admiring the tasseled silk blinds, which are discreetly lowered to block their view of the rail yards.

“Oh, she was perfectly comfortable on the Columbia,” his father says.

Six weeks ago Will's mother went out West with the twins and their nurse, to get settled and organize their new home in Victoria.

Will opens a door and pokes his head into a washroom gleaming with porcelain and polished brass.

“Do our beds pull down at night?” Will asks, searching the walls for handles.

“No,” says his father, and he opens another small door, which Will assumed was to a closet. Instead it reveals an elegant wrought iron staircase. “Our bedrooms are upstairs.”

“Upstairs!” Will hurries up to a small hallway with two doors. The first opens onto what must be the master bedroom, for there is a large bed—not a pull-down like in the usual Pullman sleepers but a proper bed. The second door leads to his own room. It has a single bed, a night table, and a wardrobe.

Will sets about opening every drawer and cupboard. Everything is marvelously designed to make the most of the small space. It's a bit like being on a ship, he supposes, a very long and narrow land ship steaming across the continent. Best of all he has his own large window, which he'll be able to see through while lying in bed.

He feels a restless surge of excitement. He wants the train to be in motion right now. He wants to be going somewhere. But weirdly, even going across the whole country from sea to sea, starting a new life in a new city doesn't seem like enough. He has moved before, to new places, to new and bigger houses. What he wants is something else.

When he goes downstairs, his father is already sitting at the rolltop desk, writing. This image of him—his back, his powerful shoulders, head bowed, and the
scritch
of the nib upon paper—is all too familiar to Will from the past three years. When his father is home, that is, and not traveling.

“Is it in his coffin?” Will asks.

Distracted, his father looks up.

“The spike,” Will adds.

His father's smile is amused. “Planning a career in newspapers?”

“You must know,” Will says. “You were one of the pallbearers.”

His father looks at him carefully. “Well, I suppose you have a right to know. After all, you drove that spike.”

“And saved it after the avalanche,” he reminds his father.

He still dreams about that spike. He's always searching for it. He thinks he knows where it is. There are clues. People tell him it's just up the hill. People tell him it's just around the corner. If he hurries, he can grab it. But the dreams always end the same. He's about to turn that corner. He's about to climb that hill, but then he wakes up, unsuccessful.

“Yes,” his father tells him. “He wanted it buried with him. But that information is for you alone.”

“Of course,” Will replies. “Why would I tell anyone if I want to steal it myself?”

Will is never sure his father appreciates attempts at humor—he is a serious man—but James Everett chuckles briefly.

“I have some work to do. Why don't you go explore the train? Once we're under way, I'll join you in the Terrace car for the bon voyage reception.”

Will leaves their stateroom and turns down the hallway, pressing himself to the wall to allow the ladies and gentlemen and stewards to pass with their luggage. At the end of the corridor, he opens the door and is outside on a small platform. He walks across to the next car, where the door is opened from the inside by a waiting steward.

After ten minutes or so he loses track of how many stateroom cars he's traveled through. All of them have famous names: MacDonald, Crowfoot, Champlain, Brock, Van Horne. He wonders if someday there will be one named after his father.

Entering the Vancouver car, he finds himself in a cozy library, with long reading tables and green shaded lamps and floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves between the windows. A pretty librarian glances up. Will isn't saying anything, but she shushes him anyway.

Beyond the library the hallway takes him past a barbershop, where a man with excessive sideburns is tipped back in his chair, getting his nostril hairs clipped. Next door is a fancy salon, and after that a tailor's, and a shoe blacking stall, and a shop where you can buy anything from cigars to DeWort's sleeping powders.

The train seems endless, and Will knows he has hardly made a dent in first class. It's like a rolling city. In the next car he emerges into the billiards room. Two gentlemen are already strutting around the table with their cues, muttering about the despicable state of the stock market.

Down another corridor Will opens a door to a gymnasium tiled in blue and gold and resembling a Turkish bath. He goes in and sits atop a complicated exercise machine, pulling levers. He gets off before it can stretch him or break his legs.

The next car is an enormous lounge with leather armchairs, side tables, and thick rugs. Light slants through angled shades. Large ceiling fans silently circulate the air. Waiters in black vests lean over discreetly to take orders. In the corner a man plays the grand piano. There are a great many people here already, sitting in small groups, talking, drinking tea or coffee.

Will looks about hopefully for anyone his age, and is disappointed. He passes between cars and enters another lounge, this one with stairs.

So this is the famous Terrace car! The walls on either side are built entirely of reinforced glass, veiled right now by muslin curtains to hide the view of the rail yards. Behind an enormous semicircular zinc bar stands a uniformed bartender with smoke coming out of his neck. Will hurries closer. His father has told him about this bartender, for he is entirely mechanical and powered by the same steam that drives the Boundless's pistons.

The automaton is pouring a drink for a gentleman. He picks up the tumbler with mechanical fingers, tight enough for a good grip, not so tight as to break the glass. With a gasp of steam he lifts and extends his arm toward the gentleman.

“Whiskey, please,” Will says before the mechanical bartender.

The machine stands, motionless. It's disconcerting, for its head is plaster and is painted with a pleasant but immovable expression.

“Whiskey,” Will repeats.

“Maybe a ginger beer,” the machine says, and Will starts. Then he sees a human bartender farther down, wiping the counter. “Nice try, though, kid.”

Will waits for the machine to pour him a ginger beer, and then takes it upstairs. The second level of the Terrace car has a vaulted glass ceiling, giving a panoramic view. There are only a few people here, maybe because it's a bit chilly. A man writes a letter on an elegant table that folds down from the wall. At the back of the car, a door leads to the sizable terrace. Will steps out and leans against the brass railing.

The train, he's surprised to see, has actually pulled ahead without his even noticing. All the first-class cars are now out of the station, to give the second-class passengers a chance to board from the platform.

He supposes the Boundless will have to pull ahead again for the third-class passengers too. And then there's the colonists, who don't even get to use the station platform. From his vantage point he can see beyond the station building, where the gravel sidings are thronged with humbly dressed passengers carrying odd, tattered suitcases and sagging boxes and bundled crying babies. Will's used to seeing them in Halifax. Every week ships bring them to Pier 21 from all over the world.

All around him in the vast railyards, more freight cars and baggage cars are being shunted about and readied to join the Boundless as it edges forward bit by bit.

Will chews on his pencil meditatively, then fishes out his sketchbook. It's a beautiful slim thing, brand-new for the trip. The pages are thick enough for watercolors—but mostly he just likes to sketch with pencil.

He spots a boy standing atop an old rusted boxcar, waving. And for a moment Will feels like he's waving at himself across time. Before he was rich, he was poor. And just three years ago he lived in a Winnipeg rooming house that backed onto the rail yards.

He doesn't miss their old apartment, with its splintered, cold floors, its mean windows, and the hallway smell of cabbage and wet sock. But he often thinks about what Van Horne said to him at Farewell Station. About how you need a good story, one of your very own.

That day, in the mountains, he was given a story, and a grand one at that. He felt then like his life was about to properly start—that he'd finally have adventures of his own, maybe with his father. But then almost right away his story got derailed and he was just watching his father's life trundle merrily along the tracks.

After the avalanche Mr. Van Horne promoted Will's father to engineer of the Maritime Line. Within the week they were moving—not out West as planned but back East, beyond Winnipeg, to Halifax. Their new apartment was clean and bright and spacious. Shiny store-bought furniture stood beside their shabby beds, tables, and chairs.

It was a big promotion, and Will's father said it was Cornelius Van Horne's way of saying thank you for saving his life. But it soon became clear that the rail baron wasn't done with James Everett. Van Horne said he showed unusual promise. Before long Will's father was promoted again, to assistant regional manager of the Maritime Line.

After that they moved into their first house, not far from Point Pleasant Park. It had a garden that belonged only to them. Will's shoes got shinier; his clothes got more buttons and fastened more tightly around his neck. He stopped going to the local public school and started at a small private academy.

Will liked that. He wasn't so embarrassed to be good at his studies. But he never felt like he fit in properly with the sons and daughters of wealthy businessmen and politicians. He stayed on the fringes.

Nonetheless there was an art teacher there who encouraged him and gave him extra lessons once a week after school. Drawing changed from being a hobby to a passion.

At home they got a cook and a housemaid. His parents began entertaining their new friends and going out to social events around the city. His mother seemed to slip into her new life as easily as into one of her new gowns.

And for the first time in Will's life, his father slept at home more often than not. But sometimes it was as if he were still far away. Mostly he was at his office, and when he came home, there was always work waiting for him, huge ledgers and books that needed studying.

If Will pestered him enough, he'd occasionally talk about his days laying tracks, or his adventures up in the mountains. When he did, Will felt like he had his old father back—the father he'd imagined from his letters, anyway. Will never tired of those stories. But they started to seem more like stories from books—and ones his parents were keen to forget.

After his father's next promotion they moved to an even larger house, with a manicured lawn that swept down to the water of the Northwest Arm. One day a piano appeared in the parlor, and with the piano came a little old lady with mothball breath who tried to teach Will how to play it. Will hated the piano, and no matter how hard he banged the keys, how much he mangled his scales, his mother would not let him stop the lessons. One day his father threatened to drag the thing out into the backyard and take a hatchet to it. Will waited hopefully,
desperately
, wanting his father to splinter the piano to kindling, but his father changed his mind and went back upstairs to his study.