West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

  Here, in the ruddy-faced reverend, with his high-minded moral vision and irrational fear of the natives, was Adam’s father revisited. And hadn’t Adam himself held these tenets of superiority to be true until he met Hoko? As a young man, hadn’t he felt that his father had been justified in reducing the chieftancy of Chet-Ze-Moka? Hadn’t Chet-Ze-Moka exhibited a dearth in the qualities of leadership? And didn’t this lack of leadership, along with the chief’s penchant for drunkenness, point to some weakness of character?

  Adam remembered the funeral, remembered his father slandering the chief under his breath, even as the eulogy was being delivered. And young Adam’s only objection to these slanders was that his father’s voice might draw attention. It wasn’t until later, until Hoko, that Adam understood the qualities of leadership, understood that these qualities were not universal, that chieftancy to the Klallam, from its very conception, did not adhere to the same perimeters as the Great White Father, did not impose its will with a heavy hand where matters of free will were concerned, did not always issue edicts or make decisions or speak on behalf of the speechless.

  The reverend was still talking when they came upon a lone figure walking east along the road.

  Adam called for the driver to stop, but the reverend, upon inspecting the traveler, instructed the driver to proceed.

  * * *

  HAVING SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED his herbal ministrations upon Eva, Haw was not afforded the benefit of a carriage ride back to his root cellar in New Dungeness. Instead, he set out on foot through the soggy snow, his herb bag slung crosswise across his shoulder, his queue tucked beneath his wide-brimmed hat, as he slogged through the muck. He had trekked roughly four miles east when he heard the rattling approach of the carriage at his back. The carriage slowed nearly to a stop, then started again with a lurch. Then stopped once more.

  Haw sat with his hands piled in his lap across from the two whites and did not venture to speak. The lean and rugged man wore a stubbled growth of beard and had an irritable gaze that forever sought freedom from the cramped quarters of the carriage. He wore his hat low on his forehead. He seemed to be holding in a sigh, as he peered out between the half-drawn curtains at the passing landscape. The portly one with the sweaty forehead was talkative to the point of distraction. This, Haw soon gathered, must be the source of the other man’s irritability. The fat one had a deep, productive cough, which frequently doubled him over and seemed the only thing capable of slowing down his opinions. In those rare moments of silence afforded by the fat man, Haw listened to the squishing progress of the horses.

  Throughout his ramblings, not once did the fat man condescend to address or even look at Haw.

  “… all this talk about nation building and industry, and they’ve left God right out of the equation. Now, that’s what I call arrogance.”

  Adam reckoned the miles to Jamestown to be about six by the time they passed the elk herd moving through Messing’s homestead.

  “… how does one build a nation under God, when all the work is being perpetrated by the mongrel races? … how can one possibly expect to fly the flag of heaven over this godforsaken outpost, when there’s a coolie under every rock …”

  The Chinaman looked impassive. Adam wondered at his English. He wondered also at the contents of Haw’s bag.

  “… the missionary approach is obsolete. At some point it becomes necessary to divide and conquer the spiritually bereft. At some point you can’t indulge them, at some point you’ve got to rain fire and brimstone down on the Sodomites of this world, Adam.”

  When the reverend surrendered to his most violent fit of coughing yet, when his face turned red as the rising sun, and his eyes looked fit to burst out of his head, Haw was moved to action. He pushed the doubled fat man upright and placed the palm of his right hand lightly upon the reverend’s windpipe, and the coughing decelerated almost immediately. With his free hand, Haw rummaged in the leather bag around his neck, producing a small brown bottle, which he opened dexterously with one hand and placed beneath the reverend’s nose, instructing him to breathe. A pleasant odor pervaded the carriage. The reverend soon gathered his breath, but before he could resume talking, Haw presented him with another bottle, this one a little larger, and instructed the reverend to partake of it. When the reverend declined, Haw encouraged him further.

  “Sip sip. No whiskey, no whiskey. Medicine.”

  The reverend conformed to Haw’s wishes, in spite of his own, and sipped from the bottle. Haw resumed his own seat, leaving the bottle to the reverend, who grimaced as he wiped his mouth and tried to pass the bottle back to the Chinaman.

  “Sip sip,” said Haw.

  The fat man complied, a little less than tentatively on this occasion, and soon resumed his monologue. “To begin with, we’ve got to level the Indian classes, roll up our sleeves and stamp out this potlatch business once and for all … burn this Babylon to the ground … obliterate this cesspool of iniquity …”

  But as the Reverend progressed his tongue grew heavier, and his opinions lost their razor sharpness, and Haw smiled inwardly. The difference in the reverend was not lost on Adam, who seemed finally to have released the sigh he’d been holding in for so long.

  Within a half mile, the reverend was awash in a dull silence, and his eyes were glassy, and he slumped so that his head and shoulder were pressed against the vibrating side of the carriage, and the smallest of smiles took shape upon his lips. And neither Adam or Haw could belie their own smiling eyes when their gazes crossed.

  jamestown

  JANUARY 1890

  The reverend, having slept through his stop at New Dungeness, was still out cold late in the afternoon, even as the carriage lurched to a stop in Jamestown. Adam tilted his hat to Haw, ducked out of the carriage, and hopped off the runner into the slushy road. He dug in his pocket, settled with the driver, doffed his hat once more, and began trudging down the squelchy lane toward Lord Jim’s house.

  Fifteen years prior, Lord Jim, refusing to accept the conditions of relocation, rallied a handful of Klallam to pool five hundred dollars for the purchase of some two hundred acres of cleared meadow and sandy beach along the strait east of New Dungeness. They left the lower Elwha and the Siwash behind and moved some twenty miles east. They burned the cedar stumps out of the ground; planted wheat, potatoes, turnips; began raising chickens and swine. They built a village facing the water of thirteen houses and a little white church, and they named it Jamestown in recognition of Lord Jim. They started a temperance society and collected signatures from every last denizen of the village. But in seizing their destiny, they had unknowingly surrendered federal recognition. It would take 107 years to win it back.

  Soon after the inception of Jamestown, Lord Jim brought the Shaker religion to his people, and they took to it, whole congregations of them signing the cross over and over, stomping loudly counterclockwise in a circle, shaking their rattles and ringing their bells, and trembling like oil on a hot skillet as they received their songs. Almost universally, the whites condemned them for these blasphemies, though Adam, having no misgivings with the Shaker church, was unique among his fellow agents. To Adam’s way of thinking, anything that inspired temperance in the natives was not to be discouraged.

  Perhaps of all the Indians Adam had encountered in his ten years of service, from Neah Bay to Puyallup, Lord Jim possessed the finest command of English and also the healthiest sense of irony. It was Lord Jim who, in the year of the census, dubbed young Adam “Potato Counter,” though in recent years, the old man had taken to calling him cayci, meaning “busy one.” It was also Adam’s impression that Lord Jim was, at times, in love with the sound of his own voice. And though the old man was still weak with fever as he sat across from Adam in his straight-backed chair amid the waning light of early evening, his voice was still strong.

  “My heart cries for the Siwash,” he said. “They know just like we know, cayci, about the futility of resistance. The Great Father has taken our shamans, taken
our right to fish.”

  Out the window, a wall of fog was creeping in steadily along the shoreline. The old man gazed at it as if he could see right through it. “The old ways are gone,” he observed. “And for this reason, we embrace change. Because we want a future, cayci, and we want to build this future ourselves. That is why we purchased this land on our own, so it could not be taken from us. That is why we plant potatoes and wheat. That is why you will find not one drop of whiskey in our midst, even as our brothers the Siwash are drowning in it. And that is why I brought the Shaker religion to Jamestown, cayci. Because my people need something to believe in besides the Great White Father. Because the Great White Father will not cure what ails my people, he cannot cure what ails us. He speaks volumes but doesn’t keep his word. He still does not honor the treaty that bears my father’s signature, the treaty to which your own father was a witness. And I realize this is no fault of yours, cayci. You’ve been a friend to the Klallam, even in the long shadow of your father. And whatever I thought of your father, still, I am sorry for your loss. And I wish his shadow had died with him. And like you defy your father, even in death, we defy the Great White Father. But we do not defy him with violence; we defy him with acceptance. We are impoverished, cayci, but we are sovereign. Maybe not as Indians, but as a people.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Jim.”

  “Because the whites have heard our grievances at last?”

  “Because of a boy.”

  “And what boy is this?”

  “He lives among the Siwash at Hollywood Beach.”

  “Yes. I know of the boy. The spirit chaser, the Storm King. I’ve heard it said that he can produce thunder and lightning out of the air.”

  “You heard wrong. He’s just a boy.”

  “I’ve heard differently. I’ve heard he walks in two worlds.”

  “He walks alone in the world of his own head,” said Adam. “That’s all. But he’s a fine boy. Smart. Strong. I want him to come live here. In Jamestown, with you, or whoever you see fit.”

  “On whose authority does he come to live here?”

  “His mother’s.”

  “And where is she? What ails the mother that she can’t care for the boy?”

  “The boy is wild. He needs structure, or trouble will find him.”

  * * *

  THERE CAME A persistent rumble from above, but inside the big rumble were many little rumbles made of many different voices. There were thirty-one cracks of light, and one knot-shaped hole that danced with candle flame near the center. In the front, there was a great yawning mouth of light that opened with a groan and closed with a crash, swallowing the shadows within. The shadows had voices but no reflections, had footfalls but no faces. Sometimes when the shadows passed through the cracks of light, and the footfalls were heavy, a squiggle of light wavered in the mud puddle near the boy’s feet. The ground was squishy beneath his heels, and the wooden piles were blistered and sticky to the touch. The air was heavy with the smell of creosote. When the piano started playing, the rumbling only increased in intensity, and the wood planks issued sighs and creaking complaints from all about the flickering knothole. The reflections were invisible, as if they did not exist, but Thomas knew they were there, somewhere behind the implacable surface.

  Suddenly the piano rode out on a gaping beam of light, only to be muffled an instant later with a crash. There came three heavy footfalls down the back steps, and a dark form descended. At the bottom of the steps, the dark form crouched and concealed a wooden box beneath the foot of the steps. There followed a whistle, a cough, the acrid stink of tobacco.

  A moment passed in silence. The dark form broke wind, cleared its throat, and issued another whistle. Finally, it ascended the steps and was swallowed once more by the musical light.

  Soon there came footsteps in the slushy snow, and the light of a lantern approaching, and voices talking low, drawing closer. Indian voices.

  Suddenly there were upside-down faces, two of them floating hollow-eyed and ghoulish, melting like candlewax in the pale quivering lamplight.

  “I see only six.”

  The one holding the lantern bent nearer to the box, and the ghostly light caught Thomas crouching between the piles.

  “Hey!”

  Thomas made a break for the alley side, but one of the men caught firm hold of his ankle, and the boy slipped and fell, and he felt the cool sting of the mirror as it sliced open his palm. The light whirled around as though the world were turned on end and shaken, and an avalanche of shadows descended on Thomas as he scrambled madly to break free of the hand. The back door crashed again and harried boot clomps skipped the second step and rounded the corner at a trot, accompanied by a confusion of voices.

  “There!” said one voice.

  A rough hand wrested Thomas about the collar.

  “Got him!”

  Thomas bit into a line of fat knuckles. There came a terrible scream, and the grip relented, and the boy kicked his leg free and scurried out from beneath the Belvedere. Clutching his broken mirror in his bloody grip, he began to run.

  He fled the alley as fast as his feet would take him and rounded the corner. He slipped on the slushy path as he leapt for the boardwalk, and his chin struck the wooden edge with such force that his vision went inky and his ears set to ringing. A rough hand grabbed him by the collar and swung him around. The mirror slipped from Thomas’s grasp, careened off the boardwalk, and landed in the mud near his feet.

  Thomas recognized the Indian by his dark, pitted face. He’d seen his grandfather keeping company with the dark man in recent months. He was Makah, not Klallam. His breath was rank with fruit. He was called Stone Face.

  “Gotcha!” he said.

  A white man soon appeared over the Indian’s shoulder. He was the Belvedere Man, the one with the mustache. “What have you got here?”

  Stone Face laughed. But in a chilling flash he turned serious and shook Thomas violently by the collar. The white reached in and tried to wrest control of Thomas’s collar. “Gimme that,” he said.

  But Stone Face swung around and leered at the white. “Stay back!” he shouted, trailing a long strand of saliva. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You damn well better,” said the white.

  “Go!” said Stone Face. And he wheeled around and slapped Thomas across the face with the back of his hand, and only then did the white turn away and walk back down the alley.

  Stone Face forced Thomas into the alleyway. He slammed the boy up against a wall and shook him fiercely. Thomas did not cry out.

  “What do you think you’re doing under there, huh? Who said you could be there?”

  When Thomas did not answer, Stone Face doubled him over with a punch to the stomach. He straightened the boy up and leaned in so close that Thomas could not bear to open his eyes.

  “I asked you a question, boy!”

  But Thomas issued no reply. There were tears streaking down his face. His nose was running. His mouth was trembling as he struggled to gather his breath.

  This time Stone Face spoke in Salish. “What business have you got under there?” And when the boy failed to respond yet again, Stone Face slapped him. “Talk, boy!” He grabbed a fistful of the boy’s hair and shook his head violently. “Nex’ t’cuct!” He glowered at the boy, waiting for some reaction. But the boy only winced. Finally, the situation became clear, and Stone Face relinquished his grip. He smiled and pinched the fat of Thomas’s cheek. “Ha! Nac!” He pushed Thomas to the ground. “Couldn’t talk if you wanted to,” said Stone Face.

  littlenecks

  JANUARY 1890

  The clams were thin and watery this season, and Hoko knew the boy would not eat them, but she dug them out anyway. Ediz Hook was pitted with them at low tide; littlenecks squirted all about her. She worked with her sleeves rolled up past her scars, nearly to the elbow, and it was comforting to sink her wrists into the coarse sand and feel the suck of the water as it rushed in to fill the breach. After t
wo-dozen littlenecks and a handful of butter clams, Hoko paused where she squatted, and looked over the bay at the little town, smoking and churning, expanding before her very eyes. For weeks they’d been felling trees on the bluff above the town, and little cabins were popping up among the smoldering slash piles; it was as though the town were lowering its shoulder and pushing its way into the wilderness. And yet the bigger the town grew, the less room it afforded her people. As she walked down the spit toward Hollywood Beach, it looked to Hoko as though the town were trying to crowd the Klallam out altogether, push them right off the edge of the land into the strait. Their ragged little camp was besieged by progress, hemmed in, just as the town had once been hemmed in by the wilderness. But the Klallam were no longer lowering their shoulders and pushing back at their opposition.

  At Hollywood Beach, Hoko came upon Abe Charles sitting in his canoe, mending a net with the expert precision of a woman. He was still dressed like a white but not as much as usual. He was hatless. His rifle was nowhere to be seen.

  “I thought you took the whites into the mountains,” said Hoko.

  Abe did not look up from his work. “Something visited me up there. The spirits turned me back.”

  “Spirits,” she said flatly. “And where are these spirits now?”

  Abe shrugged.

  “How is it that these spirits will guide one man down a mountain but lead a whole people to ruin?”

  Abe remained intent on his labors, feeding out net with his right hand. “That sounds like the white God you’re talking about.”

  “What good are the spirits to us? The only spirit I see is whiskey.”

  Abe glanced up at her, his fingers continuing their work.

  Hoko pulled her sleeves down over her scars.

  “The spirits may speak,” he said. “But they don’t always listen.”

  Gazing out over the strait, a scowl took shape on her face. “Indian talk,” she said.