There was trouble at Bessy’s. Jimmy Jacob brought the yellow “hully-up paper” the last lap of its journey by canoe. His lean, brown hand put it into the hand of Jenny Smith, which was plump and old—also Indian.
It was the first wire Jenny had ever seen.
Having delivered the paper, Jimmy Jacob sprawled upon the wide uneven planks in front of Jenny’s door, settled his back against the cedar shake wall, and gave himself up to the sun and to his pipe.
Jenny looked at the wire with slow wonder. “What’s it say, Jimmy Jacob?” she asked.
“Some trouble come your Bessy. You got to go quick hully-up,” he said.
“Who tole you?”
“Letter-house woman say,” replied Jimmy.
Jenny bent. They held the wire between them, upside down, scanning the words they could not read. Jimmy had spoken their meaning in English because they were written so. Jenny, having married white, spoke white from habit.
Jenny put the wire back in its envelope and looked a long moment at the splendid typed address: “Mrs Jenny Smith, Mussel Creek.” She was very proud of her name; it was the only thing she knew in print. Her white husband had taught her that.
A white girl may adore her “Smith” husband, but it is safe to say she is not crazy over the name “Smith”. Jenny had both loved her husband and gloried in his name. It was infinitely finer to be “Mrs Jenny Smith” than to have her name hitched to an Indian man’s and be “Jenny Joe” or “Jenny Tom”.
Her pride changed swiftly to anxiety. There was trouble at Bessy Joe’s.
Bessy Joe was Jenny’s only child and a bitter disappointment. She had longed to see the blue eyes of John Smith reproduced in her baby, but Bessy was all Indian, dark and strong like her mother.
Jenny had given the child a white name, had insisted that English be spoken in the home, and hoped Bessy would marry white. Bessy had married “Charlie Joe, the Indian”, and gone to his people. Her children would be all Indian too. This, and John Smith’s death, had swept Jenny’s life clean of joy.
But now trouble had come to Bessy, and the love that had congealed during the three years of Bessy’s married life poured molten-hot into her mother’s heart.
She buttoned the yellow slip under her dress-front, knotted the few bits of food that were in the cupboard into a handkerchief, turned the cat and fowls out to shift for themselves, and took her shawl from the peg. “Get up,” she said, prodding Jimmy Jacob in the ribs. “Paper say ‘hully-up’.”
No breath was wasted in words as they tramped over the half-mile of brush trail that led to the spot where Jimmy’s canoe was beached.
She joined her weight to Jimmy’s. The canoe crunched gravel and met the waves. Kicking off her shoes, Jenny tossed them into the canoe and waded into the icy water holding her full skirts high till she was safely settled in the stern; then she tucked the folds of pink calico about her, brought her arms up above her shawl, and, with a dexterous twist, bound it about her body.
Dip—dip—dip! The paddles cut the water, hers keeping Jimmy’s up to time. The breeze fluttered the handkerchief that bound Jenny’s head, Jimmy’s old felt was jammed down hard. Jenny’s every thought was dulled—all but one, the one buttoned up on her bosom.
The canoe shot across the leaping waves; Jenny gave herself to them—they were carrying her to Bessy. Her eyes, soft and motherly, gazed straight ahead as though they would bore through the darkening night into the very heart of her child’s trouble.
There was velvety blackness under the wharf when they reached the perpendicular fish-ladder at Hardy Bay. Jenny shook the drops from her paddle, grasped the slimy green rungs, and climbed doggedly towards the dim lantern dangling over the edge. She was not young. The ladder wrenched her rheumatic joints, but she said, “I got to, some trouble has come to my Bessy.”
The journey from Jenny’s home to the village where Bessy Joe lived was tedious rather than long: a canoe trip—a wait—a drive through virgin forest—a wait—the little gas mail-boat up Quatsino Inlet, passing but not pausing at the village of Koskimo where Bessy lived. There was more waiting than going but Jenny took the waiting as part of the going, and the only way to reach Bessy.
Her broad figure, framed in the doorway of the Hardy Bay store, left little empty space. “That boat for Quatsino—when she come?” she asked. A black silhouette against the coal-oil lamp, with shadow hands weighing things into paper bags, replied, “Tomorrow afternoon.”
Jenny skirted the wharf to a straggle of huts squatted above high-water line. She opened a door without ceremony and exchanged a greeting in the Indian tongue. They gave her a corner and a mattress. She ate, drew her shawl about her, and slept—deep, quiet, Indian sleep.
Hurry in the morning was useless. The bus did not go till the steamer came. It only seated six or seven. Many men went through to Port Alice. There was little chance of a seat for Jenny. She negotiated with the Indians to take her in their springless wagon. Perched heavily on a plank across the back and clinging desperately to the seat in front of her, Jenny rumbled through the forest road, her flesh wobbling with every jolt. Eventually the wagon drew up at the little float where the gas-boat lay moored.
Hour after hour Jenny squatted by the shed, hugging her knees, stolidly waiting. Night had come again before the little mail-boat chugged up the inlet. The water had an oily black smoothness, with treacherous little eddies and whirlpools here and there. Mountain peaks on either side of the inlet stuck up like jagged teeth. When they passed Koskimo, the village was all in darkness.
It was late when they tied up at Quatsino. Jenny took shelter among a pile of oil-barrels, crouching between them and taking what rest she could. She was grateful to the sun when he rose and warmed her cold, stiff body. As soon as whiffs of smoke trembled from the cabin stovepipes, she got up and made her way to a half-breed who owned a canoe. “No good going to Koskimo, old woman,” he told her. “The village is empty, everybody gone to the canneries.”
Jenny shook her head. “My Bessy stop,” she insisted. “She send me hully-up letter, she got trouble.”
The man shrugged.
Swiftly, steadily, the canoe doubled back through the inlet to Koskimo. From house to house went Jenny, peeping through blindless windows into disorderly vacancy. “Bessy! My Bessy!” she called, but there was no answer. The staring eyes of the big carved eagle on top of the totem pole told nothing. Jenny wrapped the wooden nose of the great squatting bear outside Chief Tom’s house impatiently, as if she thought he could tell if he would. The image of D’Sonoqua, the wild woman of the woods, was there too, staring from vast eyeless sockets. Doors were padlocked. Stinging nettles grew high. Jenny had to beat them down before she could look through the windows. The bruised stems gave forth a rank odour. A few cats, lean and shrinking, and a speckled hen were the only living things in the village.
The last cabin in the straggling row had no padlock. There was a blind which was not drawn. Jenny opened the door and entered. All was orderly, the bed neatly made. On the floor were a woman’s basket materials and a basket half-woven, lying there as if the worker had just gone. Yet the little pan in which the weaver moistens her strands was empty and rusted. On the stove stood a frypan containing a dried-up fish, and there was a cup stained with tea.
Jenny sat down on the cedar mat beside the unfinished basket, and closed her fingers tenderly over something. It was the knife John Smith had given the little Bessy when she made her first basket; later Charlie Joe had carved her name on the handle. Perhaps Bessy was hiding like she used to long ago. “Bessy!” she called softly. “Me come to help your trouble.” But she knew that no human being was there, nor had been for many a day.
Jenny got up. “Who send me that hully-up paper? I dunno. My Bessy know I can’t read and I got no one to say it for me.” She came out onto the board walk. Turning, she closed the door and waddled down to her canoe.
Two miles further up the inlet was another village. “I dunno—I dunno,” her paddle seemed to say as she made her way there.
The second village was almost as empty as Koskimo. There was an old couple there, but they had few wits and scarcely any hearing between them. One on either side of her, Jenny screamed into each of the four ears in turn to try and get a hearing. At last she found that she could dimly penetrate the woman’s left ear.
She learned that Bessy had not gone to the cannery with Charlie Joe and the others, but had remained in the village to care for Charlie’s infirm old mother. One night a gas-boat passed, going to Koskimo. Soon it returned. Two men came ashore in a small boat. They lifted Charlie Joe’s mother from the boat and carried her to the hut of this old couple. They left some money and bade them care for her; said they would come back soon and see about her; said also that Bessy Joe was out in the gas-boat, and that she was going away with them. That was all the old deaf couple knew. They did what they could for the sick mother, but she died two days later, just before the men returned. They took her body away.
Jenny Smith’s heart, new-melted with love towards her daughter in trouble, froze harder than ever before. Under the pretext of caring for her mother-in-law, Bessy had let her man go to the cannery alone, and then she had gone off with white men. Bad girls did that. Bessy had disappointed her mother in that she was too Indian; but Jenny had never suspected that Bessy was bad.
Weary and heart-sick, she paddled back to Quatsino, returned the canoe, then took the gas-boat back to Hardy Bay. “I got no more child,” she moaned. “I tell Jimmy Jacob, ‘Take me home—I want forget Bessy Joe.’ ”
But Jimmy Jacob was drunk and safely hidden away. So Jenny was forced to wait at Hardy Bay till he sobered. She slumped down on the boardwalk outside the post-office, a faded bundle of dumb misery.
The postmistress came to the door, shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked across the water to see if the southbound steamer was in sight. She saw Jenny. “Did you get your wire?” she asked.
The huddled figure straightened. “Who send me that hully-up paper and fool me?” she asked angrily.
“Don’t you know?” replied the woman. “Haven’t you been to her?”
“Jimmy Jacob tell the paper say hully-up quick, my Bessy got trouble. I hully, hully. I never stop. That paper fool me. Bessy not there. She quit Charlie Joe. Bessy gone with bad white mans,” she added miserably.
“Dear soul!” gasped the woman. “You don’t know what happened? I’ll tell you. Bessy didn’t go to the cannery with Charlie Joe, she stayed behind to care for Charlie Joe’s old mother. Then there was an accident at the cannery. Charlie Joe was caught in the machinery and horribly torn. The cannery manager sent at once for Bessy, but Charlie died before she got there. Bessie loved her man. She insisted on seeing his mutilated body. After that she was hurried unconscious to the Alert Bay hospital. Ten days ago her life was despaired of. The hospital wired her mother to come at once. Jimmy Jacob was despatched with the wire from Hardy Bay, but Jimmy got drunk and was discovered days later on the beach with the wire still in his pocket, was severely reprimanded and sent forward again.”
Ten days ago! Jenny sat stupidly staring. From across the water came a gruff “toot”. The postmistress stooped and put a gentle hand under the old woman’s arm. “Come,” she said, “the boat is here. You may be in time yet.”
Jenny scrambled up and broke into a loose waddling gait, jostling against the scant population of Hardy Bay, intent on the one thing they all had in common, meeting the boat. The gangplank rattled as she took it on the run, desperately intent on reaching Alert Bay and Bessy.
In a quiet corner between decks the sobbing heave of her haste subsided. She knew now what Bessy’s trouble was—knew also that ten days ago Bessy was near death. Perhaps now Bessy’s trouble was finished.
Carrying her shoes that she might walk quicker, she covered the mile from wharf to hospital with amazing rapidity. At sight of the building, her haste slackened to a crawl. Sinking on the lowest step, she drew her shawl across her face.
“You wanted something?” asked a nurse coming to the door. The trembling lips could scarcely frame the words, “My Bessy?”
“Bessy Joe? Are you her mother? She’s fine now, but how she has cried because you were mad and wouldn’t come when we wired!”
Dumb and shamed, Jenny stood beside the little white bed, knowing how she had wronged her child. Bessy’s great brown eyes, watching her mother’s face, did not read it right.
“Mother, you not be mad any more for me and Charlie Joe. Poor Charlie Joe dead.”
The bent head, with its heavy black hair bound by the gay handkerchief, shook vehemently, vibrating the chin and worn flabby cheeks. “My Bessy,” whispered the tired old voice. “You got big trouble for Charlie Joe, and I got trouble too for Charlie Joe. Too bad! Too bad!”
Bessy laid a pleading little hand, blanched by weakness, on her mother’s brown one. “Mother, you will love Charlie Joe’s little Injun baby?” she asked, drawing down the sheet.
The child had Indian hair and was brown and swarthy like his parents. The old thought stabbed at Jenny’s heart. If Bessie had married white, her child would have been three parts white.
Keeping her eyes steadfastly on her mother’s face, Bessy roused the baby. With a strangling gasp, the new-made grandmother folded her arms tight across her breast, as if something there were too big to hold without support—for Charlie Joe’s Injun baby opened eyes blue as those of his grandfather, John Smith.
Jimmy Jacob, sitting beside his canoe on the beach, sad and sober, received a painful jab on the shoulder-blade. “Get up,” said Jenny Smith. “My Bessy and me and Charlie Joe Smith want to go home.”
“Huh!” grunted Jimmy Jacob. “You always got hully-up, Jenny Smith.”
