Sarah Canary Read Online Free Page B

for a moment, just at the waterline, and was instantly followed by a black snout. Water rolled away and the entire head slid into the air, hairless, with a long nose and whiskers. He let his breath out. A seal stared at them. Its body twisted beneath the motionless face so that the seal now floated on its back, fanning the water into patterned waves with its flippers. Chin leaned down, scooping some of the lake water into his hand to taste it. There was no salt. He separated his fingers and let it drip through. The woman called to the seal. Her voice was happy, urgent. The seal stared at her impassively and then sank away. The ground at their feet trembled slightly. The waters of the lake rocked against the bank in waves.
     
    There was no time for safe, easy routes. Put your faith in your fate. See how it comes to you. Walk toward it. Walk away. See how it comes.
     
    They headed for the Sound and the landscape changed; the trees grew thinner and there were fewer of them. Suddenly it was hard to see. Not only had the sun vanished, but as they got closer to the ocean, there were patches of fog. One moment Chin would be there with the trees and the woman in black, the next he would be walking by himself in the clouds. He could have taken some comfort in his own blindness — if he couldn’t see, at least he also couldn’t be seen - but the woman continued her keening. Her speech was vowel-laden, one running into the next running into the next, like the noise at a hog slaughtering. The continual din obscured other noises so Chin was deaf as well as blind, but instead of cloaking them like the fog, the woman’s words exposed them. Chin could not be tranquil and accept his fate with this annoying vocal accompaniment. The thought of Indians panicked him; he could not control it. The noise was driving him mad. He felt the trees leaning in to listen to it. ‘Be quiet,’ Chin begged her. ‘Please be quiet,’ but she wasn’t.
     
    Chin stepped inside a drifting patch of fog and stopped. The world was shapeless and moved. The woman in black did not stop. See your fate come. See how it stumbles into you from behind, how it pushes you forward. Chin felt the woman’s teeth jar against his shoulder. Her mouth was loose, her jaw was slack. Her vowels continued. He turned around and hit her with his open hand. ‘Be quiet,’ he said and hit her again, across the mouth, slapping it closed. He was surprised and he was sorry to be hitting her; it was just the noise he couldn’t stand anymore. It was profoundly possible that she was just a crazy old woman, after all. That he was a fool to be taking her through the forest when railway work awaited every Chinese man in Tenino. That he would pay a fool’s price.
     
    Chin forced his hand shut and held it with the other hand against his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the woman. ‘So sorry.’ She had moved away from him so he couldn’t see her in the fog and she was quiet now, but he thought he could still hear her, a fruity kind of breathing that suggested tears. The dress rustled slightly as though she might be shaking.
     
    ‘Sorry,’ Chin said again. ‘Forgive me.’ He felt a wave of self-pity. ‘I am so far from home,’ he told her. ‘You can’t know what that is like.’ She couldn’t know how hard his life was, how it tried him. In none of the languages he spoke was there a word as vivid as his loneliness, and she wouldn’t even understand the pale approximations he could offer. He stepped in her direction, but she wasn’t there. He didn’t hear her at all now, put out his hands and groped through handfuls of cloud and found nothing. Whirling around, he felt through the fog in the other direction. His hand hit stone, a large, flat slab, sticking up from the ground with letters carved into it. The fog dispersed so that he could read the words:
     
    Chas M. McDaniel
    Born in Iowa, 1834
    and died at the
    HANDS OF VIOLENCE
    Jan. 22, 1870
    aged 36 years.
     
    The fog