That Deadman Dance Read Online Free Page A

the mouth.
    Bobby heard a repeated call, just two notes: Uh-oh.
    *
    Eventually, they sailed back to King George Town, Dr Cross’s cough as familiar as the creaking timbers, the slapping sail and rigging, the ocean’s foam and wash. That cough came on the wind, disembodied, like the calling of seabirds. That cough sought out Bobby, wound its way to him within whatever enclosure of the ship he had buried himself.
    A man joined them on their return voyage, Mr Geordie Chaine, a tall, stout man with buttons down his chest and belly, and whiskers either side of his face. He had a wife and two children—a boy and girl—who the mother shepherded close. The children and Bobby exchanged glances while Bobby roamed the boat as independent as the first mate. Twins, the boy and girl seemed sufficient unto themselves and did not speak to him.
    Compressing his lips, Dr Cross played the fiddle, and Mr Geordie Chaine skipped on the same deck Bobby roamed. The heavy Mr Chaine went up on his toes, lifted his feet and lightly stayed just above the surface of the deck, bobbing. Bobby had no match for it, had never seen a dance like this. He was still learning the rhythm of being on deck, the steps to take as the ship hurtled across the sea’s skin, bucked and fell, tackled each line of swell, was caught and released by the wind, again and again.
    The twins held one another, hand to hand, and skipped in circles to the music but they were clumsy, too. And the boy suffered badly from seasickness.
    Doctor’s cough kept on. In his sleep Bobby braced himself, breast foremost like a ship’s figurehead against the never-ending swell. And rose each time, buoyed above that persistent barking breath but the long call, the searching wailing of the fiddle remained higher still, somewhere among the clouds the sail or wind or whatever spirit propelled them.
    Dr Cross coughed. Dr Cross dabbed his lips. Dr Cross would bring his wife and family across this sea, to live where land enclosed a small part of this vast ocean and people had everything you might need.
    Dr Cross coughed.
    *
    Bobby liked being on deck: the smell of fish-soup sea, wet canvas and rope; the sound of waves slapping, of groaning timbers, and oh his bare feet treading the humming boards as he was buoyed along, looking up and thinking mast and sail cling to them clouds we trail sweeping the sky across.
    Sailors looked to the sky and sea, reading.
    Bobby wanted to read all things.
    Sailors went barefoot.
    Bobby liked being barefoot.
    Bobby was a sailor.
    His language grew and his thinking shifted the longer he was at sea. Gunnels and galley. Thwarts and ’midships. Tiller and keel; shrouds, mast, sail.
    Whales and dolphins slipped beneath the surface, waved as they rose again. Land lay like smoke at the sea’s edge, and then was gone. It formed and faded, reformed, rose and sank, as if not always remaining there just beyond his vision.
    Bobby learned the swing of a hammock, how to hold a plate or spoon on a table lest they slide across it … and look! The water in a glass made a tiny horizon, tilting with the boat.
    And the loneliness?
    He attended to his conversation and lessons with Dr Cross, but the older man’s cough kept him to his cabin and with no one to do introductions and help him make his way, few seemed ready to speak with Bobby.
    Because he was a black boy?
    Bobby pulled his cuffs, adjusted the buttons of his waistcoat. He rolled his trousers to his calves, simply to walk on deck like that.

Cross
    Dr Cross sat at his cabin desk, quill hovering. The pen lowered itself to the inkwell, rose into the air, lowered almost to the paper, rose again. Not an easy letter to write. How to tell a wife he had not seen for years that he had retired from service. That he was proposing to make a life for them here in this most isolated of colonies. That he could not promise to keep her as she was accustomed, that she might join him here with their children of an age to begin their careers,