Strong Heart

by Charlie Sheldon

  Sarah held the atlatl close to her eyes, turning the shaft.

  “Buckhorn wants to extract erbium, Tom,” said Myra. “This land may be a national park, and 30 miles from the nearest road, but no way can a few small tribes stop a corporation from mining a mineral that their experts claim can clean up coal. They’ll argue they can do this safely. The mining won’t last long. Not much volume, just a few thousand tons. They’ll tell everyone they can build then decommission a road, return everything to the way things were. I can hear the arguments now. We’ll get screwed again, like always. But this artifact, Tom, this could stop them.”

  “I’ve heard their logic,” Tom, leaning forward, was shaking his head. “We had a briefing in executive session last month. No roads. Minimal impacts. They plan to use helicopters; two seasons only.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it isn’t, Myra. Ever seen a freight helicopter, two big rotors, looks like a banana? They use them to do selective logging in California, haul whole trees.”

  “So, great, people come in here hiking, have to listen to those damn things clattering overhead?”

  Tom pointed south to a ridge barely visible through the trees. “They’ll run the ridges. No roads, no damage, and they’ll work far from trails. Heck, helicopters already come up here for search and rescue, firefighting, to haul out containers of poop from backcountry privies. You ever see one? I didn’t think so.” Tom leaned back.

  “You think these marks mean anything?” Sarah was tracing the dots and lines inscribed on both sides of the atlatl shaft with a finger.

  “Tom,” Myra said. “This is an artifact. Very old. I think it’s fossilized.”

  “I don’t even know if Henry David or Bob-Bob found this here.”

  “Come on, Tom. Obviously it was found here. Point is, it’s already been removed from wherever it was resting. The damage is done. If you leave it here, never seen publicly, Buckhorn will get their permit. But if we take the thrower back with us, inform the park service you found it here, then this place becomes an archeological site. All sorts of different regulations apply, regulations that could stop Buckhorn in its tracks.”

  “These dots look like landmarks.” Sarah was sketching the atlatl. “An outline.”

  Myra, I’m going to leave this spear thrower here. It’s a promise I made to myself and Bob-Bob.”

  Myra straightened. “You think this mining can happen without causing harm, don’t you?”

  “Maybe. Hell, I don’t know, Myra. I just know this thing needs to be left here, and that’s what I plan to do.”

  Sarah pointed at one side of the atlatl. “I think that’s the sun, between some mountains.” Suddenly, she took the atlatl and her sketchbook and thrust both beneath her sweatshirt.

  “Nice place for a camp, but why not be under the overhang back there?” The voice was low, steady, calm. Without looking, William could tell this was the same man who’d told the younger surveyor to get going back at the trailhead. Now he emerged with another man from behind some trees. They carried tiny flags and complex sighting scopes. Both wore sunglasses. Myra was rigid next to William, alert.

  Tom rose, relaxed, friendly. “Little late in the day to be up here working, isn’t it?”

  The two men stopped a few feet from them, looking around.

  “Thought we’d stop by. See how you were doing. There’s just us few up here, nobody else in miles and miles. Early in the season to be up here.” The man speaking was about 50, fit, tall, in command. His companion was nearly as tall, with a weak chin and the hint of a tattoo above his collar.

  “I’ve been here before,” Tom said, still friendly. “We’re just showing my granddaughter here some of the back country.”

  “Anything happens, long ways for help.”

  Even with sunglasses hiding his eyes, William was sure the guy with the tattoo was staring at Myra. Now the man in charge addressed Sarah. “You having fun, little girl? You don’t look too happy to me. I’m Roger. This here is Raymond.”

  “What do you know?” Sarah would not look up at Roger.

  “Well.” Roger smiled, cold. “We won’t trouble you folks further. We need to get back before we lose the sun. Just wanted to say hello. I expect we’ll see you around tomorrow. We’ll be running sightlines to the south for a bit, then we’ll be headed back. You stay careful. This is a long ways in, people your age.”

  They walked away, their boots rustling leaves and snapping twigs. Raymond lit a cigarette. Then they were gone.

  Sarah removed the atlatl from under her sweatshirt and handed it to Tom. Once wrapped and back in the tube, he placed the thrower in his tent.

  “Tom, this is now your grandfather’s home,” Myra said. “If we brought back that artifact, we could insure that nothing happens up here, ever.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I sure hope I didn’t get your stubborn gene,” said Sarah. “Yours either, Myra.”

  After dinner, Tom and William washed the bowls in the stream.

  “What’s the plan, tomorrow, Tom?”

  “We’ll pile the stones on Bob–Bob’s grave, find his pack, burn it. I’ll have Sarah help me pick a place to leave the atlatl. We’ll head back after lunch tomorrow.”

  “You think bringing her was a mistake, don’t you?”

  “This was your idea, ‘Eye, and a bad one. But we couldn’t leave her in town, and I wanted to make this trip, so here she is. She hates this. She hates me, too.”

  “Tom, it was not a mistake to bring her. Bob-Bob had his grave tended by his great-great granddaughter. How can that be a mistake?”

  “Don’t go all shaman on me, ‘Eye.”

  When they returned to the fire, Sarah had built herself a seat from stones and logs. She was sketching Myra, who sat leaning against a log.

  “What did your mother tell you about growing up out here?” asked Tom.

  Sarah stopped drawing. “Not much. She ran away from Ruth and Fletcher when she was 15. She went to San Francisco, tried to be an artist, got married, was there a few years, no kids, got divorced, then moved to Miami, met my dad. My real dad, I mean. That’s what she told me.”

  “I thought your dad was in Europe.”

  “My stepdad is in Europe. My real dad got killed in a car accident when I was eight months old. My mom met Mitch later. Mitch and his creepy kid Little Mitch. Little Mitch is 17 now. I put a lock on my door, a big one, when I was eight, soon as my mom died.”

  “When did Becky get sick?”

  “I was six. First grade.” Sarah bit her lip as she worked on the sketch, shading Myra’s cheeks.

  “I should have done more for Becky,” Tom said. “I could have done more.”

  “She said you’d take her for ice cream; let her have whatever she wanted, as much as she wanted. She was real sick, at the end. Thin. Mitch put her in some kind of place, wouldn’t keep her home. I snuck over there to see her and she told me, then. Told me she’d run away, told me about Ruth and Fletcher, said she hadn’t talked to them since she left, said they didn’t even know about me. When big Mitch got this job in Europe he was going to send me to his nasty sister, that’s when I told him about Ruth and you. Maybe I should have gone to my step-aunt’s.”

  “Why’d Becky run off?” asked Tom.

  “She told me Fletcher acted wrong and Ruth wouldn’t back her. She said I’d understand some day. I understand now. That’s when I learned Fletcher wasn’t my real grandfather. That’s when she told me about you. About the ice cream. She liked you.” Tom fiddled with a pocketknife. “She told me your name, Ruth’s name, where she was raised. Said you were thin and kind of nerdy. She was right. She didn’t tell me you were a hard-ass. I had to find that out for myself.”

  “We could have taken you back to Ruth’s, Sarah,” Tom said.

  “What, so Fletcher ca
n chase me like he did my mom?” William realized Sarah was an orphan—both parents dead, her stepfather moving to Europe, travelling to a grandmother she had never met, unwanted at her grandmother’s, and now in the wilderness. Sarah turned the pad and held it toward William. The sketch was Myra. “After tomorrow we go back?”

  Tom rubbed his eyes. “We go back. We’ll get Bob-Bob’s grave well covered. Find his pack, burn it. Place the spear thrower in a safe spot. Then we’ll hike back out. This hasn’t been so bad, has it, Sarah?”

  Sarah said nothing.

  Myra moved over to sit by Sarah. “I wasn’t much younger than you when I met my great-grandmother. My dad here took me. Going up to see her wasn’t that different for me than you coming all the way out here to see your grandparents, I bet. We drove to Prince Rupert, up in British Columbia. Then we took the ferry out to Haida Gwaii. The whole trip from Sol Duc took three days. Once on Haida Gwaii, dad called his grandmother and then we drove 40 miles north to Massett, where we stayed.”

  William remembered that trip. He’d never been back since he’d left as a boy. When he saw the scattered and rickety buildings as they approached the ferry dock he’d started to cry. It had been years and years, yet the smell of the old pilings, the dead fish and salt brine, was exactly the same as the day he left for Kamloops with one other desperate, confused small boy.

  “When we arrived in Massett, dad’s grandmother stood in the rain, waiting for him, a scarf over her head, chin high, holding a carved wooden staff. When dad got out of the truck, she said ‘This was your great-grandfather’s staff. His father’s father before him carved it. I have held this for you ever since you were taken as a boy. Now that you have returned with your child I can give it to you.’ She handed him the staff. Then she said to me, ‘You are my great granddaughter.’ She was bent over, eyes clouded. She was 103 years old. As a child, she knew elders who had been alive before 1850, before white men came, before smallpox killed thousands, when life there was as it had always been. She said to us both, ‘Welcome. You are welcome.’ She says to me, ‘I am Mary.’

  “That entire evening people appeared, cousins, friends of relatives, strangers, to see us, to see my dad, to pay respects. They brought gifts, as people do. I felt as if I was at the absolute end of the earth. My great grandmother’s old dog started to bark softly in his sleep. Then Mary fixed me with her old eyes. She had no teeth and she was almost blind, but her voice was strong and clear.

  “She said, ‘I have waited for you. Your father almost waited too long. I hold stories. As a girl I was trained as girls have been trained forever. This story is short. This is the story from the time before there were people as we are people. The first story, this tells how we became people.’

  “‘In ancient times, the land grew cold, the sky dark. Living beings suffered. Nearly all died. Those animals remaining gathered in small places where water flowed, fish swam, where there was food to eat. The killer whale sang and hunted, close to shore, always able to sing, always able to kill. The great bear on land, thoughtful, could not sing, and hunted alone.

  “‘In those times the animals were close together, on land and in the sea, in those small places. If a bear was seeking salmon, a killer whale would charge the beach, tear the bear away. After so much dark time the bears were few. One day, a foolish young bear walking the shore saw a young female killer whale waiting for fish to come to the river. He began talking to her, as animals did in those days, being careful to stay back from the shore. She was hungry. He, being foolish, boasted how he could sweep fish from the river and gather them on the riverbank. The killer whale walked from the ocean and joined the bear on the land. Fish came to the river. The bear swept them onto shore. When the bear had caught many fish, the killer whale, being a killer, fought with the bear for the fish. The whale admired the bear for ignoring her sharp teeth. The bear admired the whale for withstanding his great blows. They fell in love. They formed a family, and in that small place under the dark sky they had children. In time other bears and killer whales met on the riverbank, fought, fell in love, and had children. The children were different, not whale, not bear, but both.

  “‘While the killer whale could sing and kill, and the bear could think but could not sing, their children could hold their thoughts and memories with song, tell stories, and so learn how to become people. They sang their lessons, they sang their memories. They sang their stories. Long ago, this is what made us people.’ Then my great grandmother began to sing. When she finished she raised her hands, palms up.” Myra paused and glanced at her father. “That visit, I received a great gift. Hearing her stories, that story especially, feeling her love, though we had never met before, being with my cousins, my people, my dad, taught me something.”

  “Taught you what?”

  “That I was someone able to hear truth, and to understand. In my great grandmother’s house I was made to feel like a full person among wise people. That was my gift. Now, that bear you saw the other day, Sarah, perhaps that was your gift.”

  Tom said something under his breath. Sarah turned on him.

  “You don’t believe I saw anything.”

  “You think you saw something. I know that.”

  “It was there. Close. I drew it, exactly.”

  “But that’s the point, Sarah. It looked like a bear but no bear looks like that. Not a black bear, not a grizzly. No, Sarah.”

  Myra faced Tom. “Sarah drew a short face bear, Tom. I’m sure.”

  “What the hell is a short face bear?”

  “Bigger than a brown bear. Bigger than a polar bear. A short face bear could run 40 miles an hour; a total meat eater. Sarah’s drawing, the huge head, the long arms, exactly the same. For two million years, that bear was the biggest predator on land.”

  “I saw it,” Sarah said.

  “I’ve never heard of this bear.” Tom was irritated. “There’s only black bears in this park.”

  Myra spoke carefully. “The last short face bear died 12 thousand years ago, Tom. When the ice age ended. They’re extinct. Yet, that’s what Sarah drew. I know that’s impossible, but that’s what she drew.”

  “I saw it. Right there. Real.” Sarah opened her sketchpad. The bear loomed, peering, terrible. Tom glanced toward William for help. William said nothing, just grinned, wide. Sarah moved away from Tom. “You don’t believe me. You’ll never believe me. I saw that bear. Well, know what? You’re not my grandfather. I should have stayed at Ruth’s. She’s a jerk, but you’re an idiot.”

  “Killer whales walking? Short face bears from the ice age? You’re telling ghost stories, Myra. You should know better. Sarah, Ruth is welcome to you.” Tom rose and stalked to his tent.

  Sarah faced the fire, quivering. She struggled to bring herself under control. Finally her rigid posture relaxed. She took a breath and closed the sketchpad. “If what my supposed grandfather said is true, his grandfather’s grandfather had a native wife. Native, like you guys. Right? So I had a great-great-whatever grandmother who maybe knew those stories, too?”

  “And if your, let me see, great-great-great-great-grandfather’s wife was a member of the Sol Duc Tribe, you and I are cousins.”

  “I don’t want to be your cousin, Myra. You carried me over your shoulder, and your dad’s a slave driver like my supposed grandfather. At least you’re not totally boring.”

  Sarah and Myra went to their tent. William heard Tom rustling around, settling down. William stayed out by the fire, removed his boots, tended his feet. The night was utterly silent. Even the creek below them was quiet. Coals glowed, hot. Stars filled the sky. A fat moon had risen. The fire hissed. The air was cold. His feet, naked before the heat, ached. Tom began snoring. William could hear Myra telling Sarah another of his grandmother’s stories. He heard her low voice from their tent. Either he lost a lot of weight or he would have to give up wandering in the woods. This had been too difficult. It seemed so
easy for Myra, Tom, even Sarah. It wasn’t easy for him. At least the next day they would head back, mostly downhill. The walking would be easier, he told himself.

  Before breakfast, they went looking for Bob-Bob’s pack. Tom handed Sarah the headlamp to search among the rocks and crevices at the base of the cliff.

  Sarah turned on her headlamp and crawled in to the first niche.

  “Nothing here, ” she said as she backed out. “Dust and animal poop. Old.” She wouldn’t speak to Tom directly.

  After more empty cavities, Sarah crawled in one until just the soles of her boots faced them. She said something, then backed out of the hole, emerging with a canvas pack, rotten, filled with holes.

  “That’s Bob-Bob’s,” Tom said.

  Myra gathered debris that had fallen from the pack. It still contained a sleeping bag, some clothing, a knife and a hat. Tom carried the pack to the fire. William added wood.

  Tom pulled the tube holding the atlatl from his tent and placed it beneath his overcoat. Then he took some water from the water bag, filled the pot, and started the stove.

  This time they heard the surveyors approaching. The pack was on the fire, smoldering, throwing heavy smoke. It was the two other men from the Buckhorn group, Pete and a stout man, slightly older than Pete.

  “Morning,” said Pete “Heard you were up here. Saw your smoke this morning. I’m Pete.” Pete was speaking to Myra. “This is Bernie. We’re running a transit line east, from the saddle. Other guys are running one on the south side. We’ll be out of your hair by this afternoon.”

  By now the pack was burning and smoking.

  “Burning your gear?” Bernie asked.

  “Old pack, left up here long ago,” Tom said.

  “You up here for long?” Pete asked Myra.

  “Until tomorrow.”

  “We’re heading out tonight, we get done in time,” said Pete. “We’ve had decent weather this short trip. Been lucky. You guys are pretty far back in, pretty early, right? Looks like you know what to do, though.”