West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

  “Good day,” Ethan said, doffing his soggy hat to the boy. He then turned and began trudging east down the squishy path toward the colony.

  THOMAS FOUND HIS MOTHER seated alone by the fire at the mouth of the creek. The rain had let up, but the fire still hissed, unfurling a ribbon of black smoke toward the shoreline. Thomas sat beside her. His lips stopped moving. His mother did not look up but out across the strait. Thomas scooted closer, but still she did not acknowledge the boy. Upbeach to the east, a chain of six fires at roughly even distances unfurled their own black ribbons into the wind. Thomas could hear, just above the lapping shoreline, the low chatter of his people and occasionally the shrill voice of a white man in their midst.

  an honest woman

  DECEMBER 1889

  But for the cedar placard reading LAMBERT, and the lone decorative flourish of a holly wreath fastened to the door, Eva’s plain white house, quaint and ugly, was all but indistinguishable from the thirty small houses huddled around it. Nothing Utopian about it, to Ethan’s way of thinking. The thought of the place made him restless.

  The Eva who greeted Ethan at the door, just as he was straightening his waterlogged salmon pink tie, was clearly not the bustle-and-petticoat Eva who had abandoned him in Seattle, but rather a new incarnation, replete with divided skirts and a hard little bun atop her head, and a floppy hand-painted tie. However, it was apparent at once, as she stood fiercely in the doorway, jaw set, with one hand on her hip and the other on the bulge beneath her white blouse, that she was the same hardheaded Eva Lambert who had twice refused his hand.

  “Oh, Ethan, no,” she said, blocking his way. “Do you never learn? Have I not been brutally honest with you?”

  “Brutal, yes,” said Ethan. “Are you going to let me in?”

  “What happened to your eye? You look awful. You’ve been drinking.”

  “I had a skirmish in Seattle. Now, may I come in?”

  “You’ve always been less of a physical coward than a moral one.”

  “I’ve changed,” he said.

  “I’ve not,” she said. “But come in if you must.”

  Eva led him to a cluttered sitting room, where Ethan sat himself down. He commenced rolling up his muddy trousers, removing his squeaky shoes and wet stockings, and setting his feet on the quilted pad of a sizable divan, where his toes set to wiggling, as he finessed his wilted mustache back into shape.

  The room was populated by an upright piano, a pair of balloon-backed chairs upholstered in red velvet, and no less than three curios, riddled with bric-a-brac ranging from exotic butterflies and souvenir spoons to gleaming silver urns and porcelain gravy boats. It occurred to Ethan that the room’s tumultuous decor was probably not so different from the furniture of Eva’s mind. There was nothing plain about Eva. No tight hair bun could belie the frazzles; no high-necked blouse could button up her spirit.

  “All right, Ethan, what are you doing here? The condensed version.”

  Ethan could not look at her. His eyes sought the clutter all about him and lit upon a little cluster of porcelain figurines arranged in a half circle atop a tasseled runner: a man, a woman, a boy, a dog, and two penguins. “There’s an honest woman in you somewhere, Eva, I just know it.”

  “Ha! An honest woman! Really, Ethan, what have you been reading? And just what is an honest woman? One unburdened by initiative? One without opinions, one without—”

  “Damn it, I mean it! It’s time to put aside all the rest of it and get serious.”

  “The rest of what? The rest of me? The rest of my life? Why is it every time a woman gets serious, she has to set something aside?”

  “It’s not like that! I’m not asking you to give anything up. I’m not asking you to come back to Seattle. I want you exactly as you are, not one bit different. I just want to join you, to make a life with you. The life we set out to make when we left Chicago. Be sensible, Eva. You could use a man around here.”

  Eva turned toward the window. The rain was coming harder. “Even if that were true, you’re too late. We’ve sold the cows. The brickyard has closed. The opera house sits half finished like a monument to our failure.”

  “I don’t mean here. And I don’t mean in town, either. I mean out there.” He gestured vaguely toward the window. “Gads, look at it out there! It’s glorious, it’s endless. It’s up for grabs.” He reached up and grabbed two possibilities out of the air, and closed his fists around them. “Why not us, Eva? You’re a new woman, why not a new life?”

  “What do you think this is?” she said, clutching her swollen belly with both hands. “How many people do I have to surrender my will to?”

  “I’m not asking you to surrender anything, I’m asking you to be a part of something bigger.”

  “I’m leaving in two weeks,” she said. “I’ll not burden my child with any of this.”

  “For where? Seattle’s all but burned to the ground.”

  “Back to Chicago.”

  “You mean, back to Daddy.”

  “However you prefer to look at it, Ethan. It’s not my concern. Good luck with your new life.”

  “It’s not right, Eva! A boy needs a father.”

  “Who says it’s a boy?”

  “Whatever it is!”

  “And just what qualifies you to be a father?”

  “I’ve already qualified,” he observed, indicating her stomach. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Roses and moonlight are not qualifications, Ethan.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean? Just what do you think I’m doing here? Remember, Eva, it was you who walked away and turned everything upside down, you and all your new ideas. We were happy in Chicago.”

  “You were happy.”

  “We were happy in Seattle.”

  “You were, Ethan, not I.”

  Ethan jumped up from his place on the divan and did his best to pace about the little parlor. So crowded was the room that Eva was forced to press her belly against the window sill each time Ethan passed. She never got used to this thing out in front of her, this cumbersome otherness, impeding her movement, weighing her down. Darkness was beginning to set in over the colony. Eva watched as one by one the windows of the hotel began to glow with lamplight.

  “Look,” resumed Ethan. “You may think I haven’t any prospects. I know what your father thinks of me, and your brother, too. And I know what my own father thought of me, and I can still hear him laughing. Yes, I’ve made some rash decisions, some imprudent ones. Yes, I don’t always look before I leap. Yes, I nearly got jugged on account of some miscalculations, but that’s all they were, miscalculations, simple arithmetic. I was never cut out for the work in the first place.” Ethan abandoned his pacing and plopped back down on the divan with a sigh. His hands set restlessly to work in his lap. “But, Eva, you’re wrong about me, you’re all wrong. Just who do you think is going to civilize this place? Who do you think is going to roll up their sleeves and put this place on the map? Men like your father? Stodgy old capitalists with no vision, the bed partners of senators and congressmen? You think the man that’s had every break in the world, the man that’s been handed a life, you think he’s got the gumption to carve out a life here? You think he’s going to transform this place with the sweat of his brow? Isn’t that why you came here? A new start? A different kind of life? One that was equitable, one that offered a man the same opportunities no matter who he—”

  “Ech!” cried Eva, turning from the window. “Men, men, men, men, men! Did it ever occur to you for one moment that a woman could be more than a helpmate, more than some chicken-tending, child-rearing Madonna of the frontier, that a woman could roll up her sleeves? Who do you think built that schoolhouse? Furthermore, who do you think conceived of it?”

  “I didn’t mean —”

  “You don’t have to mean anything. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are. This is about convention, Ethan. This is about turning a blind eye to the obvious, something all men seem to share an astoundin
g capacity for. Especially here. If you think I’m going to settle for less than a new man, if you think I’m going to settle for a man who talks endlessly of prospects but can’t even see the potential of the woman he professes to love, a man who talks about changing the world but can’t even change his perspective, well, then, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ll no sooner put my faith in that man than in the bed partners of senators. This is not about what my father or anyone else thinks. This is about what I think. And do you know what I think? I think that you don’t inspire confidence. I think that you cast ideas out in front you like an angler, then fall asleep with your hat pulled over your eyes before you ever get a bite. I think you have the common sense of a puppy. I think you have the —” Eva stopped herself short when she saw Ethan slumping miserably on the divan. She turned toward the hearth and the light of the fire. “That was unkind,” she said. “Forgive me.”

  Ethan saw her softening before his eyes; he could feel her caving. She took the two short steps to the divan and ran her fingers through his hair. “It was unfair of me to say those things. I could just as easily say that you’re as guileless as a puppy. Or as affectionate. And, oh, Ethan, I know you want to be an extraordinary man, and that’s admirable. I know you feel you have something to prove, but I’m not asking you to prove anything, not to me, or my father, or anyone else. I’m only asking you to understand. I just … oh, I don’t know … I want to make my way in this life on my own power — not my father’s and not my husband’s. The very idea of marriage seems so … I’m a journalist, Ethan. That’s what I do. A real journalist. I’m wedded to my work.”

  “But I’ve seen the clippings, Eva. ‘Cow Gives Birth at Megg’s Farm,’ ‘New Bridle Path Proposed for Ennis Creek.’ This is hardly the stuff of Helen Hunt Jackson!”

  “It’s a start, Ethan. An opportunity.”

  “You’re going to be a mother, Eva. I’m going to be a father. Does this not change things?”

  She heaved a sigh, and left off stroking his hair, and moved to the corner of the room and lit a lamp, whereupon she returned to the divan and sat down beside him. “Oh, let’s not talk about it. I’m famished,” she said. “Have you eaten?”

  crooked thumb

  DECEMBER 1889

  From the mouth of the Elwha to the base of the foothills, the settlers trail cut a muddy, circuitous path through a dark tangle of vine maple and alder. The path was rutty and obscure in places but relatively free of downed timber, and Ethan soon shook the chill of dawn as he scooted on his way toward the unknown. Occasionally he’d pass a claim, marked by a small clearing and a crude cabin, but never any sign of life. The land grab had begun. Men were claiming land but not making the requisite improvements, and Ethan knew well that he would have been within his rights to squat on these claims and call them his own. But he saw nothing in the periphery of these wooded bottomlands to inspire a claim. The timber was inexhaustible, and the river was close at hand to move it, but Ethan longed for something grander than timber.

  In spite of a rather limp mustache and a watch-sized blister on the ball of his right foot, Ethan met the first leg of his journey with the ease of a purposeful stride. Neither the dank light of the understory, sodden and brittle with winter, nor the squelchy ground beneath his feet could temper Ethan’s optimism. Twice the trail met with the confluence of a small stream, and on both occasions a tree had been felled for the purpose of crossing.

  At mile four, Indian George Sampson had a claim in a small meadow along the near bank where the river ran wide. Unable to ford the high water, Ethan drank coffee with the old Indian in the murky light of the cabin, where he soon deduced that Indian George did not share his love of easy conversation. But at the very least the old fellow seemed to endure it with a certain enthusiasm, frequently nodding and raising an eyebrow on occasion. When Sampson did speak, the Salish was to Ethan an indecipherable cascade of sharp syllables, mostly with qs and ks, and Ethan found himself nodding his own head and raising his eyebrows. In the end, resorting to crude pantomime, Ethan was able to elicit George’s aid in crossing the river by canoe, only to discover during their crossing that the old man was not only in possession of a considerable store of the Queen’s English but was in fact a formidable conversationalist, inquiring as to the progress of the opera house being erected next to the colony hotel, the railroad said to be soon arriving from the east (in spite of their vacant offices), and the great fire that was said to have consumed the white man’s settlement in Seattle.

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  George shrugged. The slightest of smiles played at the corners of his mouth. “You didn’t ask.”

  On the far bank, Ethan left George with a handshake and some soggy biscuits. The old Indian gratefully accepted this bounty, which he would soon pass on to the boy, who would refuse the boat and swim across the river clutching the biscuits above the water.

  With a final wave to George, Ethan reshifted his load, hefted his new rifle, and proceeded upriver along the left bank until he picked up the trail. As he began to gain elevation, the path diverged from the river and the ground was mottled with snow. The understory thinned out considerably, allowing the eye to penetrate further into the wooded interior up the hill. The sound of the river grew fainter as Ethan plodded on, preceded by the fog of his own breath.

  On the far side of the first rise, Ethan met with a swamp, where, from the higher vantage of a rotting cedar, he paused to smoke his pipe and chart the least treacherous crossing. Three days later, Mather’s mules, Dolly and Daisy, each cinched up to the tune of two hundred pounds, would bay miserably at the prospect of this crossing and would eventually become hopelessly mired, unburdened of their loads, and finally extracted, forcing the party to circumnavigate the swamp by a steep overland route, adding a half day to their journey. Ethan considered such an option but decided to meet the challenge head-on in spite of the chill.

  He removed his socks and trousers, replacing his boots on his bare feet. Shivering, he refastened his bundle, and set off in his underwear to conquer the soggy terrain. He soon found himself mired in bog water well past the knee, his boot heels heavy with the suck of mud, pulling himself along by the limbs of bare alders.

  As he mucked his way through the swamp, his body grew warm from the effort. He found his thoughts ungovernable. Flashes of Eva and the baby (a son, God willing, to whom he would assign the name Ethan Eben or perhaps Ethan Allen), flashes of a life yet to be lived, a bounty to be plucked out of the wilderness for the taking. And no rustic life, either — no buckskin jackets and boiled hams, but a life with electricity and running water and chamber music by firelight, a life of consequence, of virtue and good fishing, a life of ever-perpetuating golden opportunities. And maybe a saloon. Why not? Tasteful, of course, nothing Eva would object to. Just a piano player and a civil game of poker. And maybe the occasional pleasure of a whiskey or a half bucket of beer. Everything in moderation, of course.

  Ah, but who was he kidding? What did he know of moderation? When had he ever capitalized on opportunities? An inventory of his life would show that he’d squandered opportunities at every pass — his education, his trade, every chance he ever had of winning the heart of the woman he loved. Eva was right. He did not inspire confidence.

  This self-doubt was short-lived, as Ethan emerged from these ruminations at the head of a canyon in a small, clear meadow, just as the sun darted out from between clouds. From this vista he could see straight up the gut of the valley and over the foothills to the rugged snow clad peaks of the divide, where a marooned cloud bank unfurled its wispy arm into the valley. A hundred feet below him, the Elwha thundered through a narrow channel of mossy rock.

  Ethan stood in his boots and his jacket and his muddy underwear on a rock spur jutting out over edge of the narrow abyss, and the hairs of his legs stood on end as though electrified. Here was something grand beyond all expectation. Transfixed by the raging flash of the river, he felt the thunder of it in his chest as it
vibrated up through the rock. He felt the wild brute force of it in his spirit.

  * * *

  ALL AFTERNOON THE BOY could hear the determined thud of Ethan’s ax reports echoing through the little valley, along with the crackle and peel of felled timber and the snow-muffled blow as it settled to earth. He watched from the wood line as Ethan dragged each length across the meadow through the snow to the bluff, where he cleared a level spot of snow and began notching saddles in the wood. He worked like a white man. He threw himself headlong at a job as if were he to stop the job would throw itself headlong back at him.

  And it did. For Thomas heard the plaintive cries of agony and the tide of invectives aimed at heaven when Ethan crushed his thumb wrestling a log into place. The thumb began to swell immediately. Ethan packed it in snow as best he could and cursed himself at length as he leaned against his new home: half a cabin, twenty feet square, three logs high. The thunder of the Elwha was just loud enough to drown out the dull throbbing of his thumb, just hypnotic enough to set his mind wandering again into the future.

  Ethan Eben. Ethan Allen. A fine boy, either way. From good hardy stock. Thornburgh and Lambert. A boy to make his father proud, a boy to set upon his shoulder, a boy to watch him shave, to walk at his side, a boy with whom to fish the chill paradise of these mountain waters. A boy he could guide with the steady hand of experience, through the labyrinthine complexities of life, so that he could avoid his father’s folly, absolve his father’s failures, and rise to the top of the heap. And he would build that boy into a man, and nobody would ever call that man small or petty or mean.

  Compared to a son, a broken thumb was nothing.