Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,85
and not visiting him for lessons or company when he was home in his cabin. His one attempt to go out for drinks—not at the Klondiker, never again at the Klondiker—was a sour and shortened evening at the Northern Light, a bar poorly populated as most carousers that night were already off celebrating with Pete Marliss, even though the banquet was still a day away. Even the patrons at this bar, though, were unwilling to come near him, lest he harangue them about the atrocities being visited on science and knowledge and their complicity in it.
The day of the banquet he had been out for another unhappy walk, and when he returned to the cabin he saw that two pieces of paper were nailed to his door. The first was a telegram, from a fellow at the Museum of Natural History, all the way down in New York City: Sending team from Edmonton to preserve/ship mammoth. Pls keep frozen. Advise of any problems.
He crumpled the telegram into a tight little ball and stuffed it into his pocket as he leaned back against the doorframe. Even if some miracle brought the team into town today, he could be sure the bones had mostly been picked clean by now, what with the banquet only hours away. He thought for a moment about heading back to the telegraph office and sending off a message telling the museum director to recall his team, but then he thought that they could at least recover the skeleton. He left it for the time being, figuring he could spare at least a day before he had to make a hard and fast decision.
The other piece of paper was a yellowed envelope. He opened it carefully and then blew into it to open it wide. Inside were a note and two small chits with numbers on them. He read the note first:
Samule, I know you dont want ta go, but i got theese tikets from a customer and need some one to go with. We dont have to eat the thing, but I figure we shold be there so you can no about it and tell about it. FA.
Samuel sat down on the porch, heedless of the cold wind blowing up the deserted street. Should he go? He knew that everyone important in town was going to be there and that most of them would be dressing up in their Sunday finest, or even nicer if they had it. He had no nice clothes to speak of, and Fanny Alice had known well enough to suggest that they needn’t eat the primeval stew. He sat there and turned things over and over again in his head, trying to find one good reason to go, and then, after finding that, searching for one good reason to turn down the invitation. By the time Fanny Alice came to collect him, he had come up with at least a dozen good reasons in either direction, the last being that it would at least be warm in the banquet hall of the Klondiker after all those hours spent sitting out in the wind.
She helped him pick an outfit that would at least not peg him as a grubstaker just in from the bush, and then they walked on to face the desecration of the past, her hand resting gently on his elbow. In another situation the looks he got when he presented the two tickets would have perhaps made it all worthwhile, but there was no way in hell he was going to grant anyone satisfaction out of this evening, especially himself. He allowed that he would be good company for Fanny Alice and that he needn’t harass each diner this evening—his presence here was scold enough, he felt—but that would be the outer limit of whatever good nature he normally had.
It turned out that Marliss had known, or at least hoped, that he was coming and had arranged for Samuel and Fanny Alice to sit at a special table up front, along with Mick and Temple as well as Marliss, his wife (who was decidedly uncomfortable in the presence of Fanny Alice), and the mayor. Upon hearing this Samuel had started to beg off and insist that he would sit in the back, but one look from Fanny Alice had quashed that attempt. She had a way of bringing out the meek in him, he realized.
Drinks weren’t a part of the price of the evening, but there was very little grumbling