“For Christ’s sakes, man,” he shouted. “That’s no way to pitch fish! Give me that pick!”
Several other men standing nearby grinned. One yelled, “Atta boy, Tom, you show him!”
Anson watched in amazement as Thomas Lansdowne threw himself off the wharf and onto the sloppy pile in the scow. Immediately he found his footing, yanked the pick away from his slack-jawed worker, and set about pitching fish. The result was impressive, at first. Anson couldn’t even see the pick as the Englishman wielded it, the hook barely puncturing the head of each salmon, a steady stream of the silver fish leaping as if brought back from the dead and landing with a slosh on the mounting pile on the wharf.
The young man’s jaw dropped farther. The men watching cheered and clapped; a few others emerged from nearby buildings to take in the scene. The fish continued to fly through the air. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty.
My God, Anson thought, enough. A strange silence descended. Only the slapping of each dead fish on the pile and a quick, harsh grunt from the thrower—who now sprayed sweat from his head, which swung like a mallet—sounded along the river. Even the cannery had fallen quiet, as if sensing its own workings to be inadequate. And still the fish rose and slapped down, rose and slapped down. The spectators looked apprehensively at one another. The young worker tentatively reached to take the pick back, and he must have said something, for Thomas Lansdowne whirled and cursed, the action only the briefest pause in the fierce rhythm of the pitching.
Eighty, ninety. At last the speed slowed. A couple of fish hit the side of the wharf and splashed into the river. Thomas Lansdowne’s face blazed like the sun, which hung high above him and was gradually sapping his strength. But the man did not stop. The fish must have seemed as heavy as bars of lead to him now. He laboured up from the bent position, the veins swollen in his neck, and heaved each time as if forcing something through a stream of molasses. And as his energy weakened, his grunts turned to cries. Now more fish splashed in the river than hit the wharf. He fell, got up again. The pick waved like a divining rod. The young worker had backed away as far as possible without jumping overboard.
One of the spectators said quietly, “All right, Tom. You showed him.”
The great head lifted, dripping with sweat. The white shirt was drenched, as if he’d just been swimming. His chest moved like a bellows. He squinted into the sun, then lowered his eyes and, very slowly, levelled them at each man on the wharf. Finally, the eyes came to rest on Anson.
As the two men were thirty yards apart, Anson could not be certain of the expression on Thomas Lansdowne’s face, but he detected a general air of blankness, as if the man had not come fully out of the dream of his own physical strength. Gradually, the blankness lifted, replaced with a deeper worry than usual. He raised a finger, which Anson interpreted as a sign for him to wait. Then the Englishman scrambled over the fish, stood on the scow’ s edge, and, reaching up, hoisted himself onto the wharf.
“Doctor! She hasn’t… she isn’t…” He struggled to catch his breath as he walked. A trail of bloody boot prints stained the sun-baked wood.
“No, no,” Anson hurried to reassure him, realizing that each of his sudden departures from the house was a potential death knell. “I have come out only for a rest. Louisa is…”
“Unchanged.” The panic had gone from the Englishman’s voice, but the one word fell heavily.
“Not exactly, no,” Anson said. “The disease is progressing. I have no doubts now that it is typhoid.”
The Englishman’s shoulders slumped. His dark eyes took on the querying quickness of a child’s. But it was not to Anson that the questions were directed. To whom, then? God? Conscience?
“It would be best to keep people from her room,” Anson continued. “Be sure to keep her brother clear.”
“I have sent him away. To a neighbour up the slough. With my wife tending to Louisa and the cannery in full operation, I could not leave the boy on his own. And Edney will not leave, of course.” He sighed, pushed a blunt, slime-wet hand through his hair. “Edward has been insistent. He blames himself, you see.”
Anson nodded. It was not the boy’s fault, of course. No one could have kept the girl from the piano, but Anson was weary of explaining that to her father.
“It is very warm, doctor. Shall we move to the shade?” He held one arm out, indicating that Anson should proceed to the side of the nearest cannery building.
The coolness was indeed a relief, but Thomas Lansdowne seemed no more comfortable. Indeed, the tension of his business and domestic responsibilities had begun to take a noticeable toll; he had lost weight and there were dark rings beneath his eyes.
“I don’t wish you to think,” he began softly, “that my absence from her bedside is a choice I’m free to make. This work I’m doing here is for her, for all of them. And she’s in God’s hands.”
The shade and the contrite tone of the man’s voice gave Anson the uneasy sense that he was hearing a confession in a church. But a sudden violent keening of gull cry destroyed the impression.
“You have been too many hours in the room as it is. You can do little for her now and you will only damage your own health. You are wise to tend to your business affairs. When the crisis comes, I’ll find you.”
Some of the sweat had pooled in the hollows under Thomas Lansdowne’s eyes and glistened in his scale-flecked beard. He might have just finished weeping. But Anson knew that such a man would never cry; when his grief became great enough, the blood inside him would burst. Anson could almost smell its heat, almost believe that this was what sent the gulls into a renewed frenzy. Yet the Englishman seemed weaker now too, not quite the force he’d been only days before when Anson had come upon him in the field removing stumps. It was becoming easier to pity him. But, as if he recoiled from pity as though it were a form of violence, Thomas Lansdowne changed his manner abruptly.
“It wouldn’t be so difficult, doctor, if my business affairs were not continually threatened. Your friend, Dare, is back on the river.” The Englishman’s tone had become cold, his eyes took on their more characteristic probing quality.
Surprised by the sudden aggression, Anson merely replied that he had heard as much.
Thomas Lansdowne did not relent. “Louisa’s illness is not the sole reason I have sent Edward away.”
Anson had no interest in this subject and took a step toward the sunlight. “I am well aware of your disagreement with my friend. I would have thought, under the circumstances, that you would have set it aside.”
Thomas Lansdowne scowled so fiercely that he almost bared his teeth. “How can I? It’s as great a threat to my children’s future as any plague! Don’t you understand? I work not for myself, I work for them. And because I work for them, I have a responsibility, a moral responsibility, a responsibility to God that binds my hands in any fight. What does he have? What does he work for? Nothing but his own will to succeed at any cost. You claim he is a friend of yours. Well, what drives your friend, doctor, to work against everything that we’re trying to build here? Why doesn’t he co-operate with us? He has no family, he attends no service, he associates with no one. It’s easy enough, then, to compete without scruples, easy enough, then, to ruin another man.”
Halfway into the sunlight, Anson felt that his body had split into the grave-dark past and the dawn-bright future. He balanced uneasily there, as the Englishman continued his tirade.
“And since I cannot explain to myself how any man of decent upbringing can conduct himself in such a manner—nay, sir, don’t interrupt! You have not been witness to his actions!—I can only conclude that the information lately received is true.”