The Tinsmith (19 page)

He drew a deep breath of the brinish air and tried to orient himself. It was certainly a curious sensation to stand in the steady drizzle, inside the repetitive
whump-whump
of the large paddles, and to watch great black flocks of ducks and geese and other game birds rise with the boat's progress, like clouds of soot or dust, so silent as to be non-existent if you drew your eyes away. And then, on the river itself, the dingy white sails of dozens of small fish boats scattered here and there, apparently at random, contained their own unnerving silence, the silence of the memories Anson Baird could not repress, even though he tried, if only for the sake of honouring this beauty that was entirely new to him.

Once the rain had blurred his glasses and he had removed them, the rising flocks became shell bursts and the sails of the fish boats took on the same grubby white sag of the hospital tents at Antietam. It was no use. He had travelled this far from home because of the war, and no amount of natural splendour could divert his mind or his spirit from the fact. All the way up the coast on the steamship, as the green of the forests and the blue of the waters turned greener and bluer and then the rain ran the colours into dull greys and sharp blacks, Anson had not been able to lose himself fully in the observation. Not even over the past few days in the bustling city of Victoria, a port half-wild with frontier ambition and half-asleep with English gentility, could he step outside of the long, bloodied shadow of his nation's terrible conflict. Nor—and he had to face the truth again—could he step outside of the smaller and somehow equally dark shadow of William Dare, the man who had cabled to request his presence here, the slave boy who had looked white enough to pass for white but who never claimed to be anything but black and who, according to the telegram Anson had received a month earlier, needed help. The details were scant, but since William Dare had not asked before now, not once in almost twenty years, for Anson to come to him, it was easy for Anson to decide. A man was no friend, to others or to his own sense of loyalty, if he hesitated at such a summons, regardless of the unpleasantness, past and present, he might be forced to confront.

Now, with the sloppy mercury of the Gulf of Georgia at his back and the paddlewheeler's first port of call somewhere in the blurred murk ahead of him, Anson felt the war enter him physically, as it often did. He coughed violently into a handkerchief and clutched the wet railing with his bare hand. A sharp cramp under his ribcage bent him over slightly, and he almost squeezed his glasses, still held in his hand, hard enough to break them. By the time he had recovered, the paddles had stopped turning and the strange chorus of the ordinary world—rainfall, wind, the reel of gull cry, the trill of a songbird—brought him back to the present. Slowly, he positioned his glasses on the bridge of his nose and considered where he'd arrived.

The place had a peculiar name: Chilukthan. But it resembled any other landing the doctor had seen along the coast: several dark pilings and a wharf of lighter-coloured cedar planks, a few square, flat-roofed buildings, an A-roof barn and a house of rough lumber set just behind it, beyond it an earthen dike about fifteen feet high and a hundred yards long. A broad slough, fifty yards wide at the entrance and gleaming dull silver against the muddy flats, ran south from the deepwater channel of the river and disappeared beyond another dark house about a half-mile inland, if you could properly call the swampy morass “land.” Along the slough banks, ranged far apart, a half-dozen giant coniferous trees, their dark green boughs fringed with silver-black raindrops, stood forlorn, each somehow as dominant as the one shattered tree on the battlefield under which he and Dare had first met, before the boy had even become Dare. Anson shut his eyes and willed himself to leave the war in the past, where it belonged. When he opened them again on all the drizzling grey, he saw a rowboat approaching, a thin, dark figure pulling steadily at the oars. Anson shivered—the sight was grim, but at least the figure wasn't standing upright like Charon, with a long pole in his hands. Suddenly, from over the dike, a strange thunking sound began, harsher and less regular than the sound of the paddlewheeler.

Before Anson could think what the sound might be, a nasal voice made him turn.

“What do you think of the place, doctor? Only a dozen families, give or take a few, a couple of bachelors, but a man has prospects here.”

The speaker—short, thin, rat-faced, but exceedingly dandified under the circumstances (he reeked of hair oil and wore an expensive tailored coat over a bold orange suit)—never ceased to talk of finance. All the way from Victoria across the Gulf of Georgia until at last Anson had retired to the deck, this peacock of a booster had sung the praises of the new province of British Columbia. And why shouldn't he? According to his own proud song sheet, he was a fiscal agent for an English concern interested in expanding the salmon canning industry.

At first, Anson had welcomed the man's conversation. After all, William Dare was himself a salmon canner and it would be useful to know something of the challenges he faced. However, over the course of the three-hour journey, it became clear that the agent was obsessed with numbers and hardly interested at all in the practical details of running a cannery; he couldn't even explain anything about the salmon themselves. Other than mentioning, in a callously offhand way, that Thomas Lansdowne, one of the two brothers who founded this settlement, had lost a daughter of fifteen years to typhoid the summer before, the agent offered little useful information. Besides, he was pompous, and Anson's tolerance for pomposity had died, along with so many other things, a long time ago.

“I have no prospects in this place,” he answered. Taking another deep breath of the rich musk of mud and brine, he marvelled again at the distance he had travelled from Pennsylvania—by rail to San Francisco, then by steamer to Victoria, and now, at last, by paddlewheeler and skiff to his final destination.

The agent lit a cigar and drew on it in immense self-satisfied pleasure. “Come now, doctor. I've met a great many of your countrymen. In fact, British Columbia is as American as it is British, speaking purely from the perspective of business, not culture, you understand.” He exhaled an acrid little cloud, which dissolved his pinched features. “Americans, if you don't mind my saying so, have great instincts for prospects. That's what makes your country so successful.”

Anson resented the cigar smoke. The river smell was new, distinct, flavoured perhaps by the great salmon runs he had read about. Tobacco smoke was as common to him as the smell of blood.

“I do mind,” he said below his breath and thought, Did so many die in misery, attempting to tear our country apart or hold it together, only to have this preening, pale-handed Englishman blithely call us all the same? Anson stepped away from the railing, out of the cigar smoke.

The agent chortled, following. “Just you wait, doctor. A man of your education and talents, in a land like this, just ready to boom. Why, in a few weeks, I'll wager you'll have your hand in a dozen concerns. I might even be negotiating with you on the price of tinplate. Yes, sir, with your keen interest in the salmon, I'm certain you'll be pricing tinplate for cans soon enough.”

The skiff reached the side of the paddlewheeler and moved slowly along to the stern. At the deckhand's request, and with some difficulty, Anson descended the rope ladder into the skiff, the dark figure extending a long, narrow, and surprisingly firm hand to help him. Introducing himself as Henry Lansdowne, the man shook Anson's hand firmly but did not smile. His face was woe-heavy, much wrinkled, the eyes wet and black and about as sad as any Anson had ever looked into—only the wispy white smoke of side whiskers afforded any colour to the features. Anson understood at once that here was a more typical sort of Englishman, the sort who preferred to keep even his silence to himself.

As the agent struggled to board the skiff, cursing and gasping as his feet sought the next rung of the ladder, the day suddenly erupted in shrieks. Anson turned to face downriver. The whole horizon was blackened with birds winging rapidly over the marsh.

Once landed, the agent's mercantile bonhomie did not abate; he seemed oblivious to the violent din of the flocks, even though they filled the sky beyond his face and shoulders like a living storm cloud. He merely smoothed his ratty whiskers with his gloved fingers and proceeded to calculate the likely amount of cases in the coming season's salmon pack.

“I hear rumours of the run being very lucrative, Lansdowne. You'd best keep your Chinese busy at those shears. You can't have too many cans this summer.” Ah, so that was the sound coming from over the dike, the sound of tin being cut. Anson was about to inquire about particulars, even if it was only a matter of the agent rattling off more prices and statistics, but he didn't have the chance.

Henry Lansdowne, arranging luggage in the skiff, cut matters short. “It's my brother, Thomas, you're here to see. He handles the cannery business.” With that, he lowered himself behind the oars and pulled for the wharf. His expression did not change, but Anson noted the tautness in the jaw and neck muscles. Henry Lansdowne was not a young man—Anson reckoned him ten years senior to himself. Perhaps Lansdowne's three-score age, combined with the heavy sadness and welcome aura of silence after the agent's ceaseless chatter, made Anson favourably disposed to the man.

Even though the rain had stopped, the day's gloom deepened. Unable to push its light through, the little smudge of sun gave up and retreated behind the scudding grey. Other than the creak of the oarlocks, followed by the plash and gurgle of the oars, and every minute or so another punching thunk of the shears, silence descended on the river. Even the rat-faced agent fell quiet; he shrank into the tailored shoulders of his coat and stared at the afternoon's fresh pall as if it was a personal affront. He blew longer puffs of cigar smoke and tapped a gloved hand on the gunwale.

It was a short passage, the shortest of his whole journey, but the doctor crammed a wilderness of reflection into it. In a way, he had lied to the agent by saying that he had no prospects in this place. The truth was, he had helped to finance Dare's cannery operations from the first year, 1874, and he held shares in the venture, even though he did so out of friendship and not with any expectation of increased wealth. To date, the returns had been modest at best, but it was a young industry with a bright future. Anson's understanding, limited to what he'd overheard while travelling the coast and to the sparse information in Dare's rare correspondence, was that this year, the high point of the salmon's four-year cycle, should be the most productive yet.

But it didn't much matter to him, except in his sincere hopes that Dare would do well and perhaps make a permanent life here. Anson Baird prided himself on self-knowledge—to lie to yourself seemed to him the very height of folly. He was well into middle age, a widower with no children, and the illnesses that had ravaged him during the war would not grant him a long life. These were the facts. Others—especially that of Dare's most recent communication, a telegram reading, “Difficulties here stop come as soon as able stop,” explained merely his physical actions. The larger issues of his solitude and poor health had already made him a dispassionate observer of the various madnesses of men. The war had preserved the union and freed the slaves—Anson had done his part, and he did not lack for pride in the contribution. But all madnesses after the surrender at Appomattox seemed small and petty by comparison. What mattered now was what he had accepted as his purpose at Antietam—to preserve one good man's life in a world indifferent and even hostile to virtue.

They reached the wharf. As Anson climbed out of the skiff, another great clatter of bird-cry rolled across the southern horizon just beyond the dark, peaked roof of the house, which now looked to billow black smoke. Anson paused, stricken by the astonishing violence of the flocks. If he were superstitious, he might have considered the event a bad omen. But the sheer mass of dead flesh he had known left him more than skeptical of unbodied fancies, including God. Anson kept such doubts to himself, however. His patients would have neither understood nor appreciated them—and why upset a man who'd asked for your help?

As soon as the agent had set foot on the wharf, he clutched his collar around his throat and ducked his oily head. “I was told there'd be a hotel this time,” he muttered. “I'm accustomed to decent lodgings when I'm on business.”

“My wife keeps a good house,” Lansdowne said from the skiff. “You can board with us. Or you can return to the boat and find lodgings in New Westminster. I understand there are several hotels there that cater to those of more refined tastes.”

His scornful tone did not elude Anson, but the agent appeared not to notice.

“Perhaps. What time does the boat leave? I need to discuss business with your brother first.”

With impressive dexterity for a man of his years, Henry Lansdowne put his hands on the wharf and swung himself stiffly over the edge and into a standing position. Not even taking a deep breath, he immediately said, “My brother is working in the fields and will not stop until this evening. If you wish to talk with him, you must lodge here for the night. Or, if my wife's housekeeping is not to your standards, you are free to shelter where you can.”

The agent looked dubiously skyward and tugged at his lapels. The great clatter of bird-sound had faded almost as rapidly as it had come—now the trickle of tide below and the whisper of wings above brought the day more comfortably together. Anson looked at the house—dark, square, a short walk from the wharf down a tilted gangway through a field of mud and slickened grass. Just to the southeast carved the pewter slough. Another house, equally dark, rested squat on the slough bank a half-mile distant. The wind carried a sour, brackish smell off the muddy bank. It seemed an unlikely place for a man to make his fortune.