25 Elle To Shop #2
I run down to the docks before dark. The harbor safety society’s building is small.
A place for hardened men of the sea and their meager wages.
There should be a collection of Douglas’s earnings waiting for me.
I’m careful not to ring the bell beside the door when I slip in.
The inside is unimpressive. Empty tables and chairs at the front, a few posters advertising opportunities for wickies and sailors along the walls, a wall behind the counter full of labeled cubbyholes, and a door to a back room. No one’s seen me yet.
I slide over the counter and gently set my feet on the other side. The labels are ordered alphabetically by location.
I don’t need the money. I took enough before my escape to ensure supplies for years to come. What matters is that, on written record, a living Mr. James Douglas took his earnings.
I find the Devils Island–labeled cubby. It’s empty. I peer deep into the wooden hole in the wall. Not a letter, not a cent. Nothing but cobwebs.
Disappointment cools me. I examine the counter.
There are books of record underneath. I peer over to the back door, but there’s no sign of life.
I may be alone, but I won’t act as such.
I remove the top ledger, marked Records of Payment, 1861–with a blank for the year to be filled in at the book’s completion.
I heft the tome to the counter, setting it down quietly, and flip through the transactions until I reach October.
The scrawl is hard to read, but I find the payment line.
Oct. 20, ’62 | Payment to James Douglas | Devils Island | Sole Keeper $325 | Approved HC
HC ?
Hugh Croxton. He conned me.
I stifle a laugh as I put the book back.
He didn’t come to the island worried for Douglas’s health or spurred by the wanted posters.
He saw that a line in the book he kept hadn’t yet been claimed and took advantage.
When he found me, he must’ve seen through my disguise and known something was afoot but not the whole picture.
I sneak out of the harbor safety society office, renewed in hope.
Mr. Croxton was never interested in coming back.
He can have Douglas’s money for the rest of his life as far as I care.
It benefits him not to ask questions. Thirty years of earnings would rival the poster’s reward, though I’m sure he hasn’t put those pieces together yet. Otherwise, wouldn’t he collect both?
I head back to the inn, hungry for the first time in ages for a good meal.
I order the dinner special of veal cutlets with rolled bacon slices paired with a winter salad and carrot pudding.
I indulge in a glass of port with a small selection of chocolate squares, watching the parlor fill and empty around me.
It’s a busier spot lately, and the food has a kind of savory I can never get in my own cooking.
The people don’t set me on edge as they once did.
On my first few trips to the mainland, I nearly starved in my room.
I ate only a slice of bread sacrificed from my purchased supplies, terrified to show my face anywhere unnecessarily.
But I’ve learned that gender is a tricky thing, malleable to my will yet complete in its concealment. Anyone who’s taken notice of the posters is looking for a young woman, and the teenage photograph of me shows a girl with none of the muscles I’ve developed since.
As a young man, there’s no issue in me sitting alone at my dining table, eating my fill and reading the newspaper.
I cut out the wanted poster and a few articles on the war that Liney would find disturbing.
Details of the past few months are sprinkled throughout the paper.
State governments defecting, towns falling prey to ransacking, battles and skirmishes across farmers’ land and the wilderness.
The death of a Union colonel gets a half-page feature and a footnote about his soldiers drowned in the frigid Potomac.
The rest of the page is a mixture of poetry, literature reviews, and the beginning of the business directory.
The letters in my father’s study I found before escaping detailed ship commissions, past and future.
I fear I know which side had the funds and which he’d have connections with through the Seymours and their Virginia coal mines.
It curdles my stomach to consider where the money that would’ve fed and clothed us was planned to come from.
His dealings with the Seymours were only the tip of the crooked iceberg that C.
J. Forsyth Shipbuilding Co. dealt in. While Nova Scotia under British rule may be a neutral party, his company picked a side.
My father was prepared to tack toward whichever way the tides of power shifted throughout the decades.
Crafting low-cost fishing ships and transport steamers wasn’t enough.
Having happy daughters matched to gentle young men without consequence was unthinkable.
When that portrait used to condemn me as a kin slayer was taken, while my sister gulped down cheap, anointed wine, my warmonger father conspired.
Everything he did was a stepping stone toward the next greatness he was destined to capture. Greatness churned in blood.
My own failings reflect his: self-importance in the guise of protection, ambitions to outplay everyone I cross paths with. What did he shape in me?
I lived under his blood money my whole adolescence, never questioning what made our family so rich, so quickly. Within my childhood, our status changed with every passing season. I was proud of our name on ships around the world. I pictured thankful fisherfolk and travelers.
What’s happening to the business now in the absence of any heir?
We were a small family. My father’s siblings died in their infancies, and the far-flung cousins on my mother’s side in the Old World were never present.
But the shipyards won’t sit barren. Not with so much money to be captured.
Given his mention on the poster, Thomas Seymour may be managing the business until Liney and I are found.
His claim to the business would be in question, given no marriage took place.
So he flames public interest in my parents’ murders.
But why not go after an easier target? Perhaps he has.
Another young woman, another opportunity wrapped in chiffon.
I toss half the newspaper into the fireplace when I finally rise. The fire crackles, as though the weight of the words gives the pages the substance of a whole log.
It’s well into the evening now. The few remaining guests are either drunk or have arrived from out of town, road-weary. No one notices me stealing a handful of salt from the nearest shaker.
I head upstairs for my final task. It’s been a successful trip so far. I might return home early.
I should be nervous. Instead, though my arms and back ache, I stand at the threshold of my room at my full height, spread a circle of salt around me, and knock on my own guest room door.
“Come in.”