Of course, Mr. Holt will again grieve the loss of his child. But he said it himself: If at any point you are faced with the choice of which to recover, the child or the book, choose the book. And returning the journal to Mr. Holt will go a long way toward setting things right with his former employer, which Lomax needs to do if he ever expects to reside anywhere on the Eastern seaboard in peace.
And the Greenwoods’ money will be more than enough for him to reclaim his house from the bank. No more mortgage. No more debt collection. And rather than wasting his energies shaking down deadbeats and tending Mr. Holt’s stable of girls, Lomax plans to seek training in a useful job, something productive, perhaps as a builder or tradesman.
After striking his lucrative deal with the Greenwoods, Lomax left skid row for a fine suite with a view of the snow-topped mountains and Vancouver’s dazzling harbour, and now sits leafing the journal’s pages, which teem with Euphemia’s graceful penmanship. He flips to the back of the book, to what must be her final entry, likely written the day he last saw her, after he returned to the estate to check on her condition, just hours before she fled into the woods with her child. Yet surprisingly, he finds nothing but poetic observations about the weather and how stunning the leaves of the oak tree are. To his relief, and despite what that liar Blank had told him, Lomax finds no mention of either himself or Mr. Holt whatsoever. In fact, if he weren’t so pleased to have secured the book and solved all his financial woes in one brilliant stroke, Lomax would almost be disappointed that Euphemia never thought to write about him at all.
His suite has grown damp, so Lomax proceeds to light a fire. And since he already has the matches out, he allows himself a celebratory ball of opium, his last—this he decides resolutely. Now that he won’t be stuffing himself into cramped train berths or pounding the pavement all day, he’ll have no more need for opium’s pain-dampening effects. The rich smoke sends him into a gorgeous stupor, and he slides through a series of blissful states, almost like rooms, each furnished with a new and singular pleasure.
By the time he returns to himself, the fire is spent and the room is too warm. He dresses in the new worsted suit, wingtips, and pork-pie hat he’d purchased earlier for his journey home. With the Greenwoods’ cash in his pocket, he saunters down to the street, intending to find a meal, perhaps a bit of beef Wellington to restore his strength, and spots a suitably appealing restaurant. But before taking a table he detours to the rail station and purchases a first-class ticket to Saint John, scheduled for tomorrow morning. He then cables Lavern, informing her that his job has concluded successfully, and that he’ll be returning in three days with the means to change their lives forever. His throat thickens when he signs the salutation: Undying Love, HBL.
That bit done, he starts back toward the restaurant he’s selected. To save himself some time, he takes a shortcut through a narrow alley that edges Chinatown, which, it turns out, leads him past an opium den housed in a run-down hotel called the New Sun Wah. With his train ticket tucked snugly against his breast, his jacket pockets stuffed with cash, and his triumphant journey home to Saint John assured, he allows himself just a peek inside the door.
GREENWOOD ISLAND
HERE FOLLOW THE sweetest months of Everett’s trouble-plagued life. Which isn’t saying a great deal, but that doesn’t alter the fact that during the coming decades of his penitentiary sentence, Everett will often revisit the splendours of his winter spent with Pod on his brother’s small, forested island. And he’ll be able to wring just enough joy from these recollections to face the treeless isolation of incarceration without submitting to despair.
“Now that you’re broke again, you can’t go setting up a syrup operation in the dead of winter,” Harris said the day after Lomax, in exchange for Everett’s inheritance and the bogus journal, agreed to lay the matter of the child to rest, providing Everett kept Pod as his own in some secluded place and didn’t stir up trouble. “I’m not using my retreat quite yet,” Harris added, “so you’re welcome to hide out there until spring.”
“And if Lomax isn’t convinced by our little scam and does come sniffing around again,” the Irishman added, “then fat chance of him finding you there.”
The truth is that Everett is tired of running. And he knows Pod could use some time spent in one place, especially now that she’s not so little a baby anymore. When the Irishman delivers them to the island the next day, Everett is pleased to discover the cabin is nothing like Harris’s mansion. Though finely built, with neat, tight-fitting post-and-beam joinery, there is little ornament to it. Well concealed from the water, yet still boasting a view of the bay, Everett’s guess is that Harris uses it to hide away with the Irishman, which explains why they speak so freely with each other. But none of that is Everett’s business. He saw it in the War, men becoming sweethearts, and it never bothered him a whit.
Each Tuesday, the Irishman—who, before becoming his brother’s describer, was a tug pilot who hauled booms for Greenwood Timber—brings the week’s supplies in a nimble wood-hulled skiff. Everett places Pod in crude crib he’s built her so she doesn’t crawl to the woodstove and scald herself, then hikes to the small jetty to collect the supplies from inside the insulated box where Feeney leaves them. Fuel for the lanterns, tins of matches, coffee, cheese, apples, canned corn and peas, sacks of cabbage and potato, sides of ham, butter, maple syrup, flour, Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup for Pod’s teething, and a huge jug of goat’s milk. Everett has never seen such a bounty assembled in one place, and keeps a rough tally so he can reimburse his brother someday, after his time here is finished.
As winter rains wreath the island, wet plumes of fern and softly needled hemlock stroking the cabin’s walls, Everett and Pod sleep together in the same bed beneath the upper floor’s tall windows. Pod has grown burlier, and now kicks him like a mule in her sleep. Still, Everett wakes rested in a way previously unknown to him. Here on the island, there’s no chance of being beaten by railway detectives; of tramps rifling his things or stealing his boots; of Mounties finding and razing his shack; of artillery shells screaming down upon his bed or chlorine gas seeping under the door.
Each morning he wakes to Pod’s babbling and carries her downstairs to fix breakfast: wheat porridge splashed with goat’s milk or flapjacks drowned in a maple syrup so inferior to his own that it’s a different thing entirely. After strapping Pod into a chair with his belt, he sits with an enamelled coffee pot all to himself, watching her miss her mouth with her spoon, and often finds himself smiling for no reason at all.
By February, she’s pulling herself to standing at the coffee table. Everett sets anything valuable up high so she can’t topple it over, and crudely sews canvas patches on the knees of her creepers after her scooting around wears them through. She fears the roar of the gasoline washing machine, so he sets their clothes out in the rain to wash, and when he folds their clean laundry into the closet, the sight of her flannels and creepers stacked up all fresh and orderly fills him with an almost impossible serenity.
At supper one evening, they hear the breach of killer whales in the pass and hurriedly wash up before hiking to the shoreline. There they stand among the flesh-like madrones that lean over the sea. And when the black fins pass, twelve or so of them, their calves dawdling behind, it is close enough for Everett to smell the fermented pungency of their spume. He clutches Pod tight as she strains against him, eager to join the whales in the grey water.