West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

  In his station behind the bar, John Tobin, the Belvedere Man, smiled at his own good fortune. At the behest of said proprietor, a line of stools was vacated. All eyes were on Mather and his men as they approached the bar.

  “We’ve been expecting you,” said Tobin.

  “I can only hope we don’t disappoint,” Mather said, claiming a stool.

  “All around?” said Tobin.

  “The house,” said Mather gesturing grandly.

  When Haywood cocked a dubious brow, Mather patted him firmly on the back. “Not to worry, Charlie. You can thank the Press.”

  Following a round of whiskeys that took nearly a quarter of an hour to procure, Mather and his men, aided by a handful of volunteers, shuffled several tables about, fashioning a makeshift interview station in the far corner of the bar, where a crush of men began to form. The din of the bar soon proved to be a distraction, so for a small price, Tobin was persuaded to grant Mather use of one of the upstairs rooms, normally reserved for the carnal pursuits of his patrons. A tired mattress was condemned to a corner, and a desk was moved in from the office. A line of men soon formed up the stairs. For the remainder of the afternoon and deep into the evening, Mather and Haywood conducted interviews.

  Tobin himself was among the first to volunteer.

  “Whatever you find beyond those mountains, I hope it ain’t more Indians.”

  “Not likely,” said Mather.

  “Not likely at all,” Haywood concurred.

  As the evening progressed, no less than two dozen young men pleaded their cases to join the expedition. They hailed from Pennsylvania and Nebraska and Indiana and Ohio; tradesmen, cattlemen, and miners, and even an out-of-work dentist with three fingers on his right hand. Too, there were men who were born and raised in Port Bonita, and New Dungeness, men who’d spent their lives hunting and trapping and logging the hill country from the Elwha to the Hoh. Some of them purported to possess firsthand knowledge of the interior, though invariably upon further inquiry revealed themselves to be ignorant of the mountainous terrain that lay beyond the foothills.

  And not all of the men were young. A trapper by the name of Lofall, a West Virginian by way of Missouri, the owner of a dilapidated set of teeth and a gray beard of remarkable proportions, bigger in fact than Mather’s, claimed to have navigated the Elwha to its point of origin. When pressed for further information, however, Lofall professed to know the circuitous route to the origin of every river and the least resistant path over every range. It was Lofall who would eventually convince Mather that the Elwha was navigable by flatboat, a conviction that would greatly alter the course of the expedition. For all his enthusiasm, the trapper could not, however, allay Mather’s incredulity upon hearing his tallest tale of all.

  “When I come out onto the bank — like I say, the river is running low and she ain’t too wide, it being late summer — I see it there on the other side, howling like the devil himself. Holding two big river rocks and crashing them together like cymbals. At first I figure it for a bear, standing on its hind legs. But I’m telling you, this was no bear. Didn’t howl like any bear, that’s a fact. And it didn’t have a face like no bear. This was half a bear and half a man, God as my witness.”

  “Were you armed?” inquired Haywood.

  “Yes, I was. And, to be truthful, I can’t say why I didn’t go for my rifle. I suppose because … well, to be perfectly honest, I was scared stiff. Didn’t know what exactly I’d be shootin’ at.”

  Later, Mather and Haywood would question the Indians about Lofall’s alleged bear-man, and the Indians invariably smiled knowingly but claimed to know nothing. The Klallam, he learned, were a tribe at odds, having splintered in two tribes, neither of which were to be trusted. The Siwash Klallam, wintering at Hollywood Beach, were said to be drunk and unreliable for the most part, while the Klallam at Jamestown, some twenty miles east along the strait, were said to be religious zealots, blinded by temperance and a hatred for whites. Mather opted to question the Siwash Klallam because of their proximity. Their camp was strung out for a half mile or more along the strait east of the harbor, comprising a loosely knit webwork of sagging tents, lean-tos, and odd ménages of shake and tin and canvas that defied classification. Among these habitations, a number of wooden frames had been constructed, festooned with laundry and cured fish carcasses. The gravel shoreline was littered with canoes, heaping from bow to stern with all manner of worldly possessions, from nets to baskets to iron skillets. Fires burned, or rather smoked, in uneven intervals up and down the beach, around which old Klallam women hunched to no purpose, and an occasional drunk was sprawled out.

  Mather found the Indians to be every bit as forthcoming, if no more helpful, than the whites. An old woman wrapped in at least four shawls told Mather of a central basin awaiting them beyond the divide, surrounding a vast alpine lake, into whose chill waters all rivers flowed, an idyllic portrait soon corroborated by a half-dozen Klallam. They told of a wide fertile valley brimming yellow with mountain lilies. A land teeming year-round with elk, deer, and all manner of game. However, it was also noted upon nearly every occasion that the natives dared not venture into this paradise. Most were wary to even speak of the reason why. A Klallam elder calling himself Indian George was finally persuaded to explain the matter of a certain fire-spewing bird god who nested there.

  “Many years ago, too many to count, the hungry Siwash sent a hunting party deep into the mountains in search of ranging elk,” the old man explained. “The hunting was good there. The elk were plenty and offered themselves to the hunters, who were very grateful. But when Thunderbird discovered that the Siwash had entered his home, he grew angry, and he descended screeching from his snowy perch, and swooped down on them, and the beating of his wings uprooted whole forests in front of him. And when he arrived with his deafening caw, the earth heaved. He opened great chasms in the earth, which swallowed the hunters. And Thunderbird dumped mountains and rivers upon the Siwash. And they did not die courageously, our hunters, but begging for their lives. Only a few managed to survive the wrath of Thunderbird, and this they did not manage on their own — they were spared by Thunderbird as messengers to warn the Siwash.”

  Apparently, the message was still alive and well in 1889, though Mather paid no heed to this warning, nor the bulk of the information he collected at Hollywood Beach, reasoning that the natives were dangerously susceptible to parable and could not be trusted to provide any credible information about the lay of the interior. Mather did, however, find their stories entertaining and judged the Klallam at Hollywood Beach to be in every way superior to the Crees and half-breeds he fought in Manitoba.

  AFTER TWO DAYS of inquiries, the party found their guide in the person of a twenty-eight-year-old Klallam named Abraham Lincoln Charles. Charles was said by a number of his people to be an excellent hunter, fisherman, and tracker, with an impressive knowledge of the Elwha and the surrounding valleys.

  It was observed by one elderly Klallam that Abe Charles was “the best hunter of all the Siwash” and that he never got lost, not even in the driving snow.

  “Even if he doesn’t know where he is, he knows where to go. The Little Earths live inside his head.”

  The young Klallam struck an impressive figure. At six foot three, he was nearly Mather’s height but leaner and harder. He wore a Mackinaw jacket of Yukon wool and cut his hair short like a white man. Abe Charles was soft-spoken and measured in his delivery, two qualities that never failed to engender confidence in Mather, probably, he was willing to admit, owing to his own vociferous and impulsive manner. Moreover, Abe Charles did not drink. The young Klallam promised to be a welcome addition to the expedition.

  Upon the eve of the party’s initial push into the interior, however, Abraham Lincoln Charles would stealthily pack his bag by the light of the dying fire and steal quietly downriver into the night.

  port bonita

  DECEMBER 1889

  On the afternoon of December 14, in the year of our L
ord 1889, the good steamer George E. Starr chugged around Ediz Hook in a driving squall, her bowels belching hemlock and cedar, as she pulled into ragged Port Bonita. When she landed at Morse Dock, nobody clamored to greet her. Only a few tatters of wet silk bunting were left to mark the occasion when young Ethan Thornburgh strode off the George E. Starr onto an empty dock, clutching a lone leather suitcase, with the wind at his back and his silver-eyed gaze leveled straight at the future. He might have looked like a dandy to the casual observer, a young man of some distinction, all buttoned up in a brown suit with tails, freshly coifed, smelling of camphor and spices, his cleft chin clean-shaven, a waxed mustache mantling his lip like two sea horses kissing. But upon closer inspection, visible through the shifting mothholes in his wool trousers, a trained eye might have observed the shoe polish daubed on his underwear or the fear in his silver-eyed gaze. One might even have glimpsed the yellow blue remnants of a shiner beneath his right eye.

  Ethan stood tall and lean on the dock, flattening his lapel, as he gathered his bearings. This did not take long. The town ran only one direction. Indeed, it had nowhere else to go, hemmed in as it was by heavy timber and steep inclines. There was only Front Street, a ragtag row of structures running east to west in an arrangement that suggested jetsam spewed on the shoreline.

  Skirting the muddy creek that ran down the middle of Front Street, Ethan passed a feed store and a darkened real estate office before he came upon the Northern Pacific office. Smiling inwardly at the town’s prospects as he peered through the mud-spattered glass, he found the premises empty. Along the fringes of the creek, the street was heavily rutted and thick with the churned-up mud of wagon teams, though presently Ethan saw none about.

  At the Olympic Hotel, he came upon a rather rough looking gent with wild hair and a permanent scowl, who was leading two mules. When Ethan inquired as to the direction of the commonwealth colony, the stranger looked him up and down at length, squinting like a marksman.

  “What is it you want with the colony?” he said.

  “I want to locate it,” said Ethan.

  “Hmph,” said the stranger. He spit on the ground and jerked his thumb once toward the east. Ethan tipped his hat as he mounted the sodden boardwalk.

  Clomping clear-headed past the smoke and laughter of the Belvedere, Ethan was determined to pass without incident. He’d sworn off those immoderate houses of woe. What need of whiskey, he thought, drawing a deep breath, when the rare air of Port Bonita was free for the taking? With purpose and resolve, he proceeded for eight or ten strides before surrendering finally to temptation. Just a nip for courage, he assured himself. A little cheer to color the cheeks. A toast, as it were, to the adventure that lay ahead. Just enough so Eva wouldn’t notice.

  Ethan took a stool and, in spite of local custom, removed his hat and set it on the bar before him, revealing a head of straight dark hair parted cleanly down the center. Casting a look around the establishment, it occurred to him that the Belvedere did not live up to its name. In fact, not only did the saloon fail to offer the grand view its namesake promised, it conferred no view whatsoever, save for a partial vantage of the flooded street, obscured further by the mud-caked windows.

  The Frontier Room, thought Ethan. Now that’s the name for this saloon. Promptly he produced a small pad and the dull nub of a pencil from his coat pocket, whereupon he jotted his newest idea alongside two hundred other flashes of inspiration, including the Walla Walla chip (a variation on the Saratoga chip — made with sweet onion), the electric stairs, the electric pencil sharpener, the magnetic coat hanger, and a flatulent comic revue titled Will-o’-the-Wisp.

  Replacing pencil and pad in pocket, Ethan turned to the gentleman next to him — a dough-faced fellow of forty or so, with a steam-shovel jaw — and extended a hand.

  “Thornburgh, Ethan. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr…. ?”

  Dough Face eyed Ethan doubtfully. “Whatever you’re selling, mister, I’m not buying.”

  Undaunted, Ethan forged ahead. “You’re certainly not, my friend, because I’m buying. Barkeep! Two whiskeys,” he called out to Tobin.

  The pale man still did not offer a hand. “Dalton Krigstadt,” he said, as Tobin poured out the whiskeys.

  Lowering his hand casually, Ethan looked his new friend up and down: denim trousers, leather boots, coarse hands. “Let me venture a guess,” he said. “Woodsman?”

  “Nope,” said Krigstadt, staring straight ahead.

  “Mason?”

  “Nope.”

  “Railroad man.”

  “Nope.”

  “Hmm. Well, then, I’m beat. What’s your line of work?”

  Krigstadt suppressed a sigh. “Mostly, I haul things,” he said.

  “Ah, transportation! Where would we be without it? Especially here, where things are always moving. To transportation,” said Ethan, raising his glass.

  Krigstadt offered a less than enthusiastic nod and promptly shot his whiskey in a single throw. “What about you?” he said, wiping his mouth.

  “I, Mr. Krigstadt, am a businessman.”

  Krigstadt eyed him doubtfully, once more; the flashy mustache, the ill-fitting jacket, the moth-eaten trousers. “What sort of business would that be?”

  Ethan smiled and slid his empty glass forward for a refill. “Presently, sir, that remains to be seen. My background is in accounting. But I’ve come here to make a new start, Dalton. May I call you Dalton?”

  “That’s my name, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, of course. You see, Dalton. I’ve come west because I’m tired of toiling for others. I want to work for myself.”

  Krigstadt spun his empty glass. “Don’t anybody work for themselves when you get down to it. Less he can make money out of thin air.”

  “Exactly my point,” said Ethan. “You’re a wise man, Dalton Krigstadt. A wise man, indeed.”

  Krigstadt slid his empty glass forward on the bar just as Tobin replenished Ethan’s.

  Two more rounds ensued, during which Ethan elucidated at some length upon his status as an idea man. Krigstadt offered little encouragement beyond the act of sliding his glass forward each time the barman approached.

  After roughly an hour, Ethan, whose neatly parted hair was now mussed, referred to his pocket watch, plucked his hat off the bar, and stood to leave.

  “Well, then, Dalton Krigstadt. It’s been a pleasure. I trust in a town this size we shall soon meet again.”

  “Probably,” said Krigstadt.

  On his way out of the Belvedere, pleasantly flush from the whiskey, though not so flush, he imagined, that Eva would notice, Ethan stopped to inquire more specifically as to the colony’s location. On this occasion, he solicited a one-eyed gentleman with what appeared to be gristle in his beard, whom he found leaning against the splintered rail of the boardwalk, carving a naked female form out of a potato. The result was a decidedly stubby female form. The artisan paused long enough to subject Ethan to a thorough visual inspection, whereupon he gruffly issued the coordinates “over the hump.”

  Ethan trod onward in the pitchforking rain. His mustache took on water and began to wilt. His heel was squeaking and his suit was heavy with rainwater by the time he arrived at the foot of a stumped and muddy hogback on the east end of town. Twice he lost his footing clambering up the muddy path and on one occasion very nearly lost his suitcase down the stubbled hillside.

  As he crested the hump, he got his first look at the colony below. He took out his pipe, packed it, and attempted to smoke in the rain, as he looked down upon the Utopia for which Eva had abandoned him. The model commonwealth, free of working-class turmoil, free of labor strife, free of corporate tyranny, in short, the solution to the Chinese problem. A mill, a boat shed, a theater, a hotel, a schoolhouse. A cluster of little white houses huddled together like Indians on the shoreline. Doomed to failure, thought Ethan, all of it. Human nature would never allow for cooperation on such a scale. But it was nice to think so. How orderly the colony appeared clus
tered on one side of the hill, with the ragged outpost of Port Bonita on the other, how refined in comparison was its very conception. Yet, it was Port Bonita that called to Ethan, not the colony. Port Bonita, with its crude and youthful vigor, its laughing, belching, bawdy can-do spirit. A pugnacious town, Port Bonita, a fighter, and a damn good bet. It was Port Bonita into which Ethan would invest all his of faith and energy. And one day, God willing, he would invest his fortune there, too.

  A full two minutes passed in contemplation before Ethan took notice of the spindly native child standing downhill of him at a distance of some twenty feet, arms akimbo, impervious to the rain. Clearly, there was something odd about this round-faced boy, if indeed, it was a boy. His lips were moving silently. Odder still were the child’s glacial blue eyes, almost as pale as his own, which seemed to be focusing on some distant point beyond Ethan. Glancing back over his shoulder, Ethan found himself hemmed in by a muddy hillside.

  “Boo!” said Ethan, swinging around.

  But the child did not budge.

  “Don’t frighten easily, eh? That’s good. That’ll get you far, son. What’s your name?”

  The boy remained silently fixated on his distant point.

  “I see. Silent, too. That’ll get you even further. My name is Ethan. Ethan Thornburgh. Remember that name, son. One day it will mean something.”

  The boy tilted his head slightly to one side and squinted.

  “Not convinced, are you? Well, that’s okay. I should think you’re not alone there. No, I’m rather used to that by now. But let me tell you a little secret, boy. A man’s destiny is not in the eyes of others. It’s in his own. And that, my young friend, is as good as any bank note.”

  Covering one eye with his hand, the boy tilted his head to the other side.

  Ethan did the same.

  The boy took a step forward, and Ethan, too, stepped forward. When the boy stepped back again, Ethan followed suit. This dance continued for several minutes. When it became clear to Ethan that the boy would win any war of repetition, he emptied his pipe with a tap and replaced it in his hip pocket. Thumbing the thin roll of bills in his pocket, he surveyed the mud-spattered condition of his trouser legs and laughed.