West of Here Page 8

  George told the party also of Kwatee, and how Kwatee changed the world, how Kwatee had murdered Chief Wolf and wrote a song about it, and fled, and made the rivers and the rocks, and how he made deer and elk and beaver out of the early people, and how he had once killed a shark from the inside of its stomach. And when George spoke of Kwatee, his eyes were smiling in the firelight, and his hands painted pictures in the air, and the eyes of the white men were dim with confusion, though the smiles were still pinned to their faces.

  George told them of Wren, and how Wren shot a ladder to the sky to try to get the sun back from the man who took it away; so too did George shoot a ladder into the sky, and the white men couldn’t see it, though they all looked up anyway. But it was their nemesis Thunder-bird above all else that the white men wanted to hear about, Thunderbird, with his great curving beak and his eyes glowing like fire, and his breath that uprooted forests. Thunderbird, fire and rolling ice, clutching Killer Whale in his great horny talons, as he rocked the valley with his deafening war cry. And when George spoke of Thunder-bird, he still painted pictures in the air, but his eyes no longer smiled.

  When George finally took leave, long after dark, without the aid of a lantern, he clutched in his palm a lump of Runnells’s sourdough starter. When asked by Cunningham how he would see his way back in the dark, George explained, to the mild amusement of the party, that he’d already seen his way.

  That night in the tent Mather dreamed he heard strange voices circling his head, but he could not put faces to the voices, and he could not apprehend the words they spoke. He was awakened in the night by a powerful howling from the riverbank, which was unlike the howling of any wolf, or the lowing of any bull elk, or the drunken clowning of any man he had ever heard. And beside him on his back, beneath the patter of rain on the canvas tent, Haywood heard the wailing, too, rising like the lament of some grizzled bagpipe, punctuated by an owllike whooping. But neither man would ever speak of it to the other.

  In the morning, amid a light drizzle, they ate a breakfast of gilletes and salmon skins, and there was little conversation around the fire. They broke camp and hauled three loads to the head of the canyon, where they cached the supplies in Ethan’s cabin. Even as they jockeyed the parcels around, consolidating their loads, George was at work on the roof. Shortly before the party departed, the Indian enlisted their help in hoisting a crossbeam, which the men were happy to do.

  “This friend of yours is indeed a fortunate man,” said Mather to George, as he straightened the load on his back. “He’s made a fine companion in you. Give him our thanks. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

  But that was the last George ever saw of Mather. As the party set off, George watched their single-file retreat from his place on the roof. And the farther their figures receded into the little valley, the bigger the valley appeared, until the bigness of the valley swallowed them altogether.

  minerva’s feet

  JANUARY 1890

  Such was the brevity of Eva’s labor, so determined was she to deliver the child and be done with it, that by the time Jacob returned with the midwife, both parties panting heavily from having traversed the hogback and crossed the colony at a frantic pace, Eva had already birthed the baby and severed the cord. She propped herself against the larder, in the darkest, coolest corner of the kitchen, clutching the wailing infant lightly to her chest.

  The infant girl was ostensibly healthy and in good color, and she possessed a formidable set of lungs. Peering down at the crinkled face, Eva rested two fingers on the distended belly of the thing, which was warm to the touch. She was humbled and repulsed by the weakness of it. Its groping, helpless little hands, bunching themselves into fists, moved her to wish it was back inside of her, where it was merely an obstacle. Now, the complexities were manifold; now, the thing was no more a part of her.

  The appearance of the child inspired a striking turnabout in Jacob’s behavior. He relinquished all proprietary airs toward his sister. With motherhood, she had earned his respect at last.

  “You’ve done good, Eva. My God, she’s exquisite. What will you call her?”

  “Certainly not Ethan,” she said.

  By the end of the second feeding, it was apparent that something was wrong with Eva. She was on fire. She’d grown faint and blotchy. Her pelvis was in a vice. Once again, Jacob was pressed frantically into action.

  When Haw was summoned by the postmaster’s son from his tiny root cellar in New Dungeness, he was at work by candlelight, grinding tortoiseshell into a fine powder with a pestle. The young man told the Chinaman, whom he insisted on calling Huey, that a girl child had been born at the colony that morning and that complications had set in with the mother. Doc Newnham was unavailable. Haw collected a dozen herbs and several jars in his leather bag, tucked his braided queue beneath a wide-brimmed hat, wrapped his coat about his lean frame, and mounted the waiting carriage.

  The trek west up the peninsula was a plodding and muddy affair. On two occasions the wheels became mired, and Haw was forced to dismount the carriage and leverage the rear wheels out of their ruts as the young man drove the horses forward. In both instances, Haw emerged mud-spattered, much to the young man’s amusement. But for occasional speculation concerning the state of the road before them, both men were mostly silent throughout the journey.

  They arrived at the foot of the hogback shortly before dusk. A smattering of loosely knit colonists met Haw’s arrival in town. As the carriage rattled through their midst, Haw could hear the whispers of pig-tailed devil and Chink upon their lips, could feel their eyes burning holes in him, and tried his best to appear solemn throughout the procession, though a familiar panic was at work in him.

  Jacob greeted Haw at the stoop. “You’d think they’d never seen a Chinaman,” he observed.

  Haw liberated his queue from beneath his hat and stepped into the little house. “Or maybe too many,” he said.

  The midwife was cradling the infant before the hearth. The child fidgeted in her arms, whining and chortling at every turn. Eva lay propped up in bed, weak-eyed and feverish in the lamplight. In spite of her condition, she greeted Haw coolly, and would not look him in the eyes. Jacob had been nearly an hour in persuading her to see the Chinaman, whose filthy, ragged appearance did little to inspire confidence in either of them. His very presence seemed to alert Eva’s suspicions. As he readied himself, spreading a cloth upon the chest of drawers and scrupulously laying out his herbs on it, she scrutinized his every move for peculiarities.

  “Pot,” he said, at length. “Fresh water. Also, glass. Teacup.”

  Jacob set out for the pot and water.

  Eva noted that the Chinaman touched nothing nor performed any action with his right hand. Every task was executed with the left hand. He would sooner employ the use of his chin than the use of his right hand. His every move was deliberate, decisive, careful, and yet she distrusted him. The moment he drew close enough that she could smell him, she was surprised to discover that his smell was quite like that of a forest. She was further surprised by the lightness of his touch when, finally, he employed the use of his right hand, which he’d reserved for the express purpose of checking her pulse. First, he checked it at the wrist, then at the neck, keeping count silently with his lips. Eva shuddered inwardly as he set his right hand flat on the bare skin of her abdomen.

  Jacob returned from his charge. Haw took the pot of hot water and the glass from him and set them both upon the chest of drawers. He poured out a small glass of liquid and brought it to Eva’s bedside and instructed her to drink it, which she did hesitantly. He took the empty glass from her and set it back on the chest, then began sprinkling herbs into the pot of water: leaves and stems and roots, dong guai and shu-di-huang and dried rhubarb. He instructed Jacob to boil it on the stove and inquired about the whereabouts of the doctor. Jacob told him that Newnham had been summoned west of Joyce, where a logging mishap had occurred along the Hoko River.

  As Eva sipped the hot elixir, her ey
elids grew heavy. She was glassy-eyed and perspiring profusely. Finally, she slipped off into semi-consciousness. For the next two hours, she faded in and out of this state, plagued by feverish visions, ink blots and ghostly tracers in the lamplight. At one point it was snowing in the room, but the snow was black and sizzling hot on her skin, and the voice of her brother seemed to be coming from the mouth of the Chinaman. And the Chinaman looked in turns like the devil and the face of the moon. Mercurial thoughts flitted in and out of her head, impressions she could no more apprehend than she could stand upon her own strength and walk out the door. She sensed dimly that the world had lost all order, that she had no dominion over the events shaping her consciousness.

  * * *

  ETHAN LEFT THE head of the canyon shortly after dawn, his spirit electric. He could not move nor even think fast enough to keep pace with the future as he strode down the mountain. He took no change of clothes on his journey, only his pipe, a bit of fish, and a crust of bread. The trail was fraught with calamity from the outset: washed out and riddled with downed timber. A quarter mile downriver from the head of the canyon, he turned his ankle on the rutty path, forcing him to slow his pace.

  By the time he rejoined the trail on the far side of the swamp, he had walked off the pain of his ankle, but he rolled it once more, not half an hour later, while fording the river. His feet were pulled from beneath him, and he reared backward in the current, jamming his crooked thumb upon the rocks. He watched helplessly as the river took his bread and fish. When he reached the far bank, he was forced to build a fire and dry his clothing by the heat of it. A light rain needled his naked back as he huddled against the chill for several hours.

  When at last Ethan stormed into the little white house an hour before dusk, he did so with a considerable hitch in his gait and his right arm pressed firmly against his stomach, as though held in place by an invisible sling. Upon confronting Jacob in the foyer, it was apparent at once to Ethan that something was wrong. Wrong enough to negate any unfinished business between the two men.

  Ethan bore little resemblance to the man Jacob had confronted in Seattle. The elements had beaten all airs of the dandy out of him. His face had not seen a razor in weeks. His cheeks were sallow, and filth gathered in the creases of his forehead. His hair was wild, his clothing was rough, soiled in patches, and the air all about him stunk like a dead campfire. But Jacob recognized for the first time some singularity of intent in that silver-eyed gaze.

  “Where is she?” said Ethan. “Am I too late?”

  Jacob rested a hand upon Ethan’s shoulder, and Ethan did not shrink from it. “She’s not well. We’re hoping her fever will break. But …”

  “What about the baby? Is the baby okay?”

  “The baby is fine. She’s sleeping in the parlor.”

  “She?”

  “Yes. Your daughter. She has no name of yet.”

  Ethan squeezed past Jacob to the sitting room, now further crowded by a white bassinet. He peered down into the blanketed nest, not quite knowing all that he was looking at, nor what course of action to follow. When Jacob entered the room, Ethan looked to him for instruction.

  “Should I let her sleep?”

  “She’s your daughter. Perhaps an introduction is in order.”

  Ethan lifted the baby from the bassinet with his good arm, cradling her head in the crook of his injured hand; the child did not awaken. Instantly, Ethan’s disappointment fled. He was overcome by her delicacy and diminutive grace; her tiny fingers clutching at his shirtfront, her dark downy hair and its smell of newness, the impossibly delicate veins ribbing her pink eyelids. He could not resist running his crooked thumb over her wrinkled forehead. She was everything the wilderness was not: delicate, vulnerable, small. And she was everything worth taming it for. It was no longer enough to prove something to the world, to distinguish himself for the sake of distinction, to conquer in the name of Ethan Thornburgh. Taming the Elwha was no longer a dream in itself but a means to an end, and that end was to bring civilization to the feet of his daughter, to ensure that she grew up in a world with electricity and a thousand other modern conveniences, so that she should never be forced to sweat and toil in the mud, never have to expose herself to the crushing forces of the wilderness, even to profit by it.

  “Minerva,” said Ethan. The word had just come to his lips. “Her name is Minerva, by God.”

  ETHAN AND JACOB sat vigil with Haw throughout the night, as the lamp burned low. Eva’s condition did not improve. All the color drained out of her. Her bouts with consciousness were infrequent. Her speech was a riddle. Haw alone held out hope. He checked her pulse obsessively, daubed the sweat from her forehead, and at one point administered a poultice of crushed herbs and tea on her forehead, neck, and wrists.

  When hunger awoke Minerva during the night, Ethan went to her, and gripped her softly with calloused hands and hoisted her from out of the crib, breathing deeply of her hair. He held her close and rocked her gently; he reassured her in low tones, all to no avail. He was powerless to soothe the child. Her cries were horrific, pinched and phlegmy, earnest beyond all proportion. It was agony to hear them. Finally, he put the child to her mother’s breast, and held her there, where she fed, unbeknownst to Eva.

  What if this child should have no mother? The thought was black and inescapable. That Ethan’s lover lay dying on the bed was of subordinate concern. Surely, no God would take this child’s mother. But as the night wore on, he began to reason that God had forsaken him and, worse, had forsaken his child. And so Ethan invested his faith by degrees in the one agency that might possibly exercise any influence over Eva’s fate. He watched intently each methodical step of the way, as the Chinaman attended her. He looked for signals in Haw’s concentrated manner, but he did not ask questions or try to impose reason upon the Chinaman’s methods. Whether it was rational science or devil’s magic, it was Eva’s only hope. And so he watched sleepily as Haw’s movements played shadows on the wall, listened to the soft patter of Haw’s feet across the wooden floor, breathed the fragrance of a dozen herbs, until at last, Ethan fell asleep in his straight-backed chair.

  Eva’s condition worsened as the night unfolded. Her pulse was wild with feverish rhythms, she twitched on occasion and issued plaintive moans, until suddenly, shortly after dawn, her fever broke in an instant. Only Haw was awake when she regained her senses, and only Haw watched a healthy color suffuse her face as outside the day broke cold and clear.

  the river

  JANUARY 1890

  The general consensus among the Mather expedition held that with each homestead the men passed on their way through the teardrop-shaped valley and into the next gap, they had for certain passed the outermost settlement. Time and again they were disappointed by a small clearing or a crude snow-covered structure. Not until they reached the foot of the second, larger gorge did they truly leave the last vestiges of white settlement behind.

  The snow kept on through the day and into the next, and the sound of their own plodding snowshoes was muffled, as were the echoes of their voices. There was five feet of accumulation in places, and for this reason Mather cut his blazes low on the trunks of trees, so that come spring the blazes would be at eye level.

  The party dug in a half mile beyond the head of the big canyon and chose a low sandy bench just below camp as the site for boat construction. From the felling of the timber to the caulking of her hull, the boat took them the better part of four days. The dogs got into the bacon the first night, making off with all but precious little of it, so that breakfast each morning thereafter consisted of gilletes and coffee. The weather was not cooperative. Each morning the timbers were heavy with ice, and it was necessary to thaw them for several hours over the fire. They smoked the green wood until it was light as cork. They curved the timbers at stem and stern by heaving them with a lever arrangement. They caulked the hull with oakum and pitch until she was watertight and dubbed her Lucy. She was thirty-by-five at the beam, two feet deep, and decke
d forward and aft for bowman and steerman.

  After the finishing touches were applied to Lucy, the men lowered the stores down the rutty bluff and packed them tight into the hold. Reese then persuaded Daisy and Dolly aboard with the butt end of his rifle before passing the reins to a waiting Cunningham. They dragged the boat into the riffle and held her fast by the towlines. They stood upon the bank amid a light snow, where Cunningham halfheartedly attempted to solicit heavenly intervention on behalf of the expedition, leaving Reese to roll his eyes. Finally, with considerable effort, they pushed off into the current.

  The boat took fairly well to the water, though she rode low beneath the weight of the stores, her nose cutting into the water beneath the rapids. Mather manned the bow pole, with Haywood at the steering oar, while Reese and Runnells struggled for footing along opposing banks with the tow line, accompanied by the dogs, who alternately bounded ahead and sniffed along the bank. The boat dragged against the swift current. Progress was extremely hard won, as the river proved itself to be a more formidable challenge than anyone expected. Surely, this was not the same river that ran flat and shoal at its mouth, the same river that promised smooth passage to the divide. This was a rock-strewn beast boiling with rapids, a heaving, roiling, serpentine devil. Where the river did not run wide, it ran braided in chutes and timber-choked shallows. Footholds were hard to come by on either bank. Reese and Runnells spent the better part of their time waist deep in the numbing current, the wind and snow in their face.