Sarah Canary Read online

  And then she couldn’t watch anymore. She went to rescue the flea with the tip of her pen, but the movement of her arm knocked the gun from the desk to the floor, where it spun like a bottle and came to rest, pointing back at Adelaide. Lydia jerked at the sound. She seemed to wake up, kicking off the blankets, although the room was very cold without them. Then her breathing evened again.

  Adelaide was immobilized within the cocoon she had made. She would have to unwind herself in order to retrieve the gun. Then rewind herself into the blanket. She sat still and stared instead.

  I did love you, he said. I hope someday you’ll believe that.

  So Lydia shot him three times, because things had changed for him, but nothing would ever change for her and she needed to know that he would never change again. She needed to make him as permanent as she was. She pillowed his head, because she loved him. She cut the lock of his hair to have something she could keep.

  Adelaide began to write again, punctuating one of her sentences with the body of the flea. She was not going to argue that these were the actions of a normal woman, only that they might be a little less abnormal than everyone else seemed to think. Since Lydia’s disappearance, any number of experts, from alienists to phrenologists to clergymen, had been questioned and they had all agreed that suicide or prostitution were normal female responses to betrayal. Three bullets in the abdomen could not be considered part of the natural order. Lydia was either monstrously evil or she was mad.

  There was little pity for her either way. Even if it was madness, the men in San Francisco were in a frenzy to find her. Even if it was madness, it could not be allowed to spread. Last year in Brooklyn, there was Fanny Hyde. And then Lydia. And only this month, again in Brooklyn, Kate Stoddart. It could not be allowed. It could not be. It could not. It could . . . not . . .

  From the downstairs saloon, Adelaide heard shouts and then shots and breaking glass. She opened her eyes with a start. Her head was on her papers. Her back ached and her throat was dry. The fire was out. She had fallen asleep in her chair. She tried to stretch but was too tightly wrapped in the blanket. The rain had stopped and dawn, she guessed, was maybe an hour away. The noise downstairs grew louder, as if a door had been opened. Adelaide thought she heard footsteps on the stairs. Suddenly she was frightened. ‘Get up,’ she whispered to Lydia. She tried to stand, but the blanket prevented her. ‘Get up,’ she said, more loudly, struggling to free her arms, working herself loose. Definitely footsteps, closer now. The hissing sound of drunks trying to talk quietly. A spill of laughter. It was a party. The men had spent the night drinking and now they were coming, drunken and hilarious, for the great magnetic doctress. To show her the finer points of female sexuality.

  She thrashed about in the blanket until it fell away. She should never have stayed here at the Bay View, isolated from Seabeck proper by the stream. She had been told very clearly that the United States Hotel was the place for ladies. Right in town. Clean. No saloon. No squaws. But she had been too proud to stay in the proper place for ladies. She had wanted to make a point. She always wanted to make some point.

  Adelaide stepped over the blanket, scooping up the gun and running to the bed. ‘Lydia,’ she said, grabbing Lydia by the shoulder with her free hand and shaking her. ‘Get up. Now. We’re leaving.’

  Lydia’s dark eyes opened uncomprehendingly. ‘Now!’ said Adelaide. She would not go without Lydia. She would never lose Lydia. She ran back to the door dragging the chair, wedging it against the knob. She grabbed her coat and the bag with her money, glanced at the pen and her lecture notes. There was no time to take anything else. She returned to the bed, where Lydia’s eyes had already shut again. Adelaide took hold of her arms and pulled her upright. She kept on pulling until Lydia gave her a drowsy sort of cooperation, getting to her feet, allowing Adelaide to direct her. Adelaide unhooked the window’s catch and swung it open. She dropped the gun into her pocket with her money. The window looked out on a wide, safe expanse of roof and, beyond that, the branches of a large tree. She pushed Lydia through the window ahead of her.

  Lydia hovered for a moment, half in the room and half out in the bitter darkness, like a plug in a bottle’s neck. ‘Go on,’ Adelaide pleaded. She heard the doorknob rattle, pulled the gun from her pocket, and fired a single shot in the direction of the door. Then she shoved Lydia from behind as hard as she could. ‘Ump,’ said Lydia. Her body tipped forward; her toes caught on the windowsill. Adelaide unhooked them, flinging Lydia’s feet through the window after her. Putting the gun back in her pocket, she hoisted her own skirts and climbed out. The window swung shut again.

  The roof was iced like a cake with rain. A wet wind blew over it. ‘Come on,’ said Adelaide, letting go of the window frame and edging carefully around Lydia. The branch of a tree grew alongside the eaves. She stepped onto it, holding herself steady with a parallel branch higher up. Both branches dipped under her weight and then rebounded. Her fingers tightened frantically when she felt herself dropping. It was a horrible sensation, like being bounced. Adelaide moved as quickly as she could toward the thicker, steadier wood by the tree’s trunk. The wind whipped her with dead leaves. She walked hand over hand, foot over foot. When she was as close to the trunk as she could get, she began to descend. Her hair fell into her face and she stopped once to flick it back, looking back up to where, against all her expectations, Lydia was following her. ‘Hold tightly,’ Adelaide whispered. The bottoms of the branches dripped water. First Adelaide’s hands and then her skirts grew damp. Once she was forced to sit astride a branch. Her skirts bunched about her and the wet cold reached into her thighs. Her fingers began to stiffen and to ache with the effort of hanging on. The branches came at safe, reasonable intervals until the very end. From the last branch to the ground was a distance of perhaps seven feet. Adelaide hung from her hands and prepared to drop.

  ‘“You won’t find many women in Washington,”’ someone to the right and below her said. ‘That’s what they told me when I wanted to come here.’ Adelaide turned her head to look. A man stood and watched her, his arms across his chest. He was tall and thin, dark and bearded, warmly dressed, self-satisfied. ‘It was one of the things that appealed to me most. I figured it’d be so quiet. But here I stand, minding my own business, and the women are falling out of the trees.’ He removed the hat from his head with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Miss Dixon. I’m Will Purdy. Postmaster here. At your service.’

  Adelaide tried to pull herself back up onto the last branch. She kicked her legs and strained her arms but was not strong enough. She tried to hold on to the branch with one hand only, fumbling inside her coat for her pocket with the other. Opening her fingers proved just as painful as keeping them clenched. ‘I have a gun,’ she said, although she couldn’t produce it.

  ‘So do I,’ he told her. ‘Fortunately, neither one of us is in any danger.’

  Adelaide felt her grip on the branch giving way. She reached frantically upward with her free hand. Too late. Her heels hit the ground first, her legs folding so that she sat. The man – and she recognized him, he’d been at her lecture – offered her a hand, which she refused, standing up without his help. There was a litter of glass around her. What remained of the windows in the Bay View saloon hung and dripped in their frames like icicles.

  The branch over their heads shook down a shower of rain. Adelaide looked up. Lydia sat above them, swinging her legs. Her skirt was bunched beneath her, her shoes and ankles were completely exposed. ‘And here’s the other one,’ Purdy said.

  ‘My traveling companion,’ Adelaide said tightly.

  ‘Absolutely enchanted.’

  Lydia jumped, plummeting toward them, skirts flying. Purdy moved out of her way. She landed lightly on her feet beside Adelaide, who now grasped the gun but did not display it. ‘If you’ll just excuse us,’ Adelaide said.

  ‘I’d like to. But Bill Blair is a personal friend of mine. Very popular man. Very generous with the drinks. I can’t help wondering if, in your h
aste to leave by way of the Bay View roof, you mightn’t have forgotten to pay your bill. It’s so hard for Blair to make a living when guests do this.’

  ‘Mr Blair can expect his money when he manages to guarantee the safety of his guests,’ Adelaide told him. There was a crash upstairs and more breaking glass. Someone shoved the chair from Adelaide’s room through the window. It bounced on the roof and flew over the edge, landing on its back in the mud.

  ‘Did you see that?’ The voice from the bedroom expressed drunken exultation. ‘Did I tell you? It skipped. Just like a stone. I skipped it.’

  An empty bottle skidded across the roof and stuck in a branch of the tree. ‘Two skips.’ The second voice was higher and steadier. A man leaned out the window to look, and Adelaide stepped in nearer to the hotel, out of his sight.

  ‘Miss Dixon!’ someone called. ‘Miss Dixo-o-on.’

  The envelope with Adelaide’s lecture notes fell past her face. Some of the pages spilled out and were caught and thrown again by the wind.

  ‘Two skips.’

  ‘But that was a bottle,’ the first voice said. ‘That was a bunch of papers. I skipped a chair.’

  ‘Fetch me a chair!’ the second voice shouted.

  One of Adelaide’s gloves dropped down, balled up like a fist. There was laughter. A third drenched voice. ‘Missed the roof entirely.’

  ‘Someone fetch me a chair!’

  Adelaide stepped forward carefully, watching the upstairs window. It was empty. She ignored the single glove and reached instead for the envelope, which had landed near her. It contained her pamphlets and whichever of her notes remained: her observations on the Fanny Hyde case, her thoughts on Belle Starr, her refutation of the points made in phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler’s recent treatise Science of Life. Fowler’s enormous book had sparked yet another round of controversy about the need for antiseduction legislation. His position toward women was sympathetic and protective and pernicious. Adelaide had outlined it and it came down to three simple points:

  One – the essential thing about women is that they are all seducible.

  Two – it is only natural for women to respond to men with devotion, and once a woman’s affections are engaged, she is bound to cling to the man with the unreasoning obstinacy of an oyster.

  Three – it falls to the man, therefore, to prevent the attachment, or to honor it with matrimony. Any other course threatens not only the happiness but the sanity, sometimes the very life, of the woman. There was no creature more vile than the seducer.

  Unless, perhaps, it was the man-hating woman.

  Lydia started down the stony path to the footbridge. Adelaide made a grab for her skirt, but the wind took it away from her hand. ‘Wait for me.’ She followed Lydia, sticking whenever possible to the windless, dark places nearest the trees. She heard Purdy’s boots on the stones behind her. ‘Don’t try to stop us, Mr Purdy.’ Adelaide turned. ‘I have a gun.’

  ‘I remember that. You’re rather tedious on the subject.’

  Lydia reached the bridge and began to cross. It was a suspension affair made of ropes and wooden slats. It swung in the wind even before Lydia stepped onto it. As she crossed, it bucked and plunged beneath her. Adelaide ran to catch up. Purdy stayed with Adelaide, matching her step for step.

  They paused, panting, by the stream, which was much higher and wilder than it had been the night before. ‘I’m escorting you!’ Purdy had to shout to be heard above the water. ‘As a gentleman must. Ladies, even such independent ladies, cannot wander about lumber camps. Call it protection from the elements, if you like. I never saw so many peculiar things falling out of the sky as I have this morning.’ He stood too close to Adelaide. His breath was soaked with whiskey.

  Lydia had long since made the other side of the creek and was loping away. Adelaide began to understand how Lydia had managed to elude the San Francisco police. She was so fast, moving in and out of the trees, with no hesitation.

  Adelaide watched, allowing herself to imagine how, having forewarned the press, she would appear casually on the docks in San Francisco with the woman no man had been able to find. How she would speak for poor Lydia at the trial. Adelaide’s eloquence and Lydia’s pathos would save Lydia from the gallows. Adelaide thought for a moment of Lydia’s neck, which led her to uncomfortable doubts about the missing locket. She ignored them. The whole affair would have front-page coverage from the moment they landed until Lydia’s release. The press might continue to call her the great magnetic doctress, winking, as if the needs of the body were a sort of joke played upon women, but, even so, they would have to take her seriously.

  ‘You don’t like men very much, do you, Miss Dixon?’ Purdy asked. His tone was accusing, but he had continued to smile. Did he really imagine that she didn’t remember how he had mocked her during her lecture?

  ‘I don’t like men like you very much,’ Adelaide said. ‘Why do you suppose that is?’ She didn’t bother to raise her voice. She didn’t care if he heard her or not. He wasn’t listening anyway. Adelaide decided to make him listen. She pulled the gun from her pocket and pointed it at him. The wind blew her hair wildly about her head, stinging her cheeks. She had to force herself not to close her eyes.

  ‘You have ink on your face.’ Purdy was still smiling. ‘Did you fall asleep over your love letters?’ He put his hand out as if he intended to wipe her cheek. ‘You’d be prettier without it.’

  Adelaide stopped him by raising the gun. She resented his smile. She resented his hat. Most of all, she resented how safe he felt with her. She had a gun and she was still the one who was afraid. She had a gun and they were bouncing chairs out of second-story windows and she was still the one who was afraid. Men were dangerous and women were not, and when men loved women, women were still not dangerous to them, and when women loved men, then men were the most dangerous of all.

  She had no more time to waste getting rid of him. She was so cold. She was losing Lydia. She needed to find a way out of Seabeck for the two of them, and the sooner, the safer. ‘Take out your gun,’ she said. Her voice was too quiet. He didn’t respond. ‘Take out your gun,’ she shouted. ‘Carefully. Now throw it in the creek.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’ She aimed at his face. ‘Skip it if you can.’

  He stared at her for a moment, stepping back, the smile finally gone. Then he took out his gun and tossed it away, sidearm. She didn’t look to follow its movement, but she heard it hit the water. Once. ‘Now give me your knife. I know you must have a knife. Take it out carefully and throw it on the ground there. I will shoot if you do anything else. There is no one here to see.

  ‘Now!’ she shouted.

  He removed a small pearled knife, something for cutting his nails, from his breast pocket. ‘I’m sure you can do better than that,’ Adelaide told him, sighting down the gun. He reached into his boot and pulled out a second knife, which had a long blade and no mother-of-pearl. He lobbed it to her. It landed in a puddle. ‘You just hold still, Mr Purdy.’ She stooped to pick up the knife, keeping the gun level and steady the whole time. Then, with the gun in one hand and the knife in the other, she began to back carefully over the footbridge. She could never hit him if he moved now; the bridge swung with every step and she swung, too, hardly able to stay upright with both her hands full. He shifted his weight. ‘No!’ she said quickly.

  They stood watching each other, and the bridge swung less and less until it only trembled beneath her. She began to back up again. She was over half the creek. She was almost over the creek. She could see the white water in the spaces between the slats. The closer she came to the other side and the closer she was to making her escape, the more her nervousness grew. By the time she could see the other bank out of the corner of her eye, her tension was almost unbearable.

  Then she bumped into someone stepping onto the bridge from the other side. Adelaide screamed. Her heart exploded in her breast. The gun went off. Purdy dove for the ground. She had been holding the envelope with
her papers between her left arm and her body. Now it lay just past the bridge in the mud. Two more sheets of paper fell out, blew down the bank and into the creek.

  Adelaide turned around. She had backed into a Chinese man, very short, no taller than she was herself, his hair tumbling out of his queue. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you were somebody else. Please don’t shoot me.’ He had a blanket roll tied to his back and he held his two empty hands in the air.

  Behind him, back by the trees, was a second man, much taller, with pale skin and pale hair. ‘Has Sarah Canary stopped shooting?’ His voice squeaked with the effort to be heard over the noise of the creek. ‘Why is she shooting, Chin?’ He crossed the patch of bare ground that separated them, looking eagerly and then less eagerly at her face. ‘She is not Sarah Canary,’ he told the Chinese man in a tone that suggested he had been contending this all along. The Chinese man remained frozen and frightened. ‘Who is she? Is she the Alaskan Wild Woman?’ When the Chinese man did not answer, the pale man shouted at Adelaide directly. ‘Are you the Alaskan Wild Woman? I hope not. Chin and I spent the whole day and the whole night on the Biddy coming in from Port Gamble, because we didn’t think the Alaskan Wild Woman would be you.’

  A pamphlet had slipped out of the envelope at her feet, and muddy water was working its way through the cover to the pages inside. The pale man bent and picked it up for her, wiping it on the front of his coat. It was the popular tract entitled The Victim of Seduction: An Affecting Narrative of the Tragical Death of Miss Fanny Salisbury, A Native of New Jersey, Who, Having Been Enticed From Her Widowed Parents and Basely Seduced By a Young Man of the City of New York, After Enduring Incredible Hardships in That City, Terminated Her Own Existence By Hanging Herself In a Forest Near Newark, on the 23rd of January Last. He shook his head. ‘This is so sad, Chin,’ he said, putting the pamphlet back into the envelope and handing them both to her. ‘What are “widowed parents”?’