West of Here
Page 13
George was eager to relay his recent adventures, but before he could even begin, Ethan informed him of the chaos that vandals had visited upon his cabin, and George nodded gravely, the lines of his forehead gathering. He took flight without a word, a rifle that Ethan didn’t recognize slung at his hip.
Ethan turned and walked right past the warm glow of the cabin to the edge of the bluff with Jacob in tow. The two men peered down into the narrow chasm. A silent moment passed as they watched the river roar through the chute.
“We’ll transform this place, Jake, for a hundred miles in every direction. Our dam will be a force of nature.” Ethan unpocketed his pipe and tobacco and packed a bowl and puffed, relishing the endless possibilities of progress. “A glittering city will take shape along that strait, Jake, you wait and see.”
And standing there on the lip of the gorge with a stiff wind rocketing past his ears, his arm draped over the shoulder of the man whom he hoped would soon be his brother-in-law, Ethan envisioned a glorious future for Port Bonita, twenty, thirty, a hundred years and beyond.
onward
kid stuff
JUNE 2006
Though the strait was still a vaporous wall of white beyond Ediz Hook, the fog had broken inland but for few wisps and tatters, and the sun angled in weakly from the southeast, illuminating the Red Lion Inn, where a UPS truck was idling out front and an old fellow with a walker and a blue windbreaker was inching his way across the parking lot toward the stairs to Hollywood Beach. At Front Street, Curtis felt a little pang as he passed Anime House. He didn’t bother checking the alley to see if the box was still there, where he’d abandoned it three days prior. Curtis had attempted to sell his comics to Anime House in an effort to finance an eighth of weed. The whole thing turned out to be a colossal hassle. He’d hauled the cumbersome white box all the way to school on the bus. It wouldn’t fit in his locker, so he had to empty the box of its contents, stacking the entire Marvel Universe individually, vertically, and in reverse alphabetical order, from X-Men to Avengers, in his locker, amid a corridor bustling with morning traffic — the squeaky shoes, the jostling, the stray knee in the back. Now and again, he paused in his duties long enough to consider an issue.
Here was John Proudstar as Thunderbird — he of the long black tresses and blood red headband, pictured boldly on the cover of X-Men #95, the very issue in which Thunderbird dies in the exploding plane of Count Nefaria. Here was Chris Bachalo’s X-Men #193 cover, awash in golden hues. The issue in which another Indian hero, the Apache Warpath — looking suspiciously like Thunderbird sans headband — comes to avenge his brother’s death. Only now could Curtis see they were just making fun of Indians. The ubiquitous feathers and tomahawks, the bright red skin, all that spiritual garbage. As much as Curtis despised them all, the truth was that up until a few short years ago, he had loved them, too: Exiles, Alpha Flight, X-Men. Curtis had liked the idea of outcasts banding together. He had liked the idea of turning misfortune into strength. He had liked the idea that the imperfections of history could be repaired. He loved the heroes for being bigger than life, loved them for saying the things people never said, taking the actions people never took, but ultimately, he identified with them for their superhuman weakness more than their strength. For in their weakness, he recognized himself.
Curtis couldn’t throw the stupid box away after he’d unpacked the comics, because he still needed it to haul them downtown, so he’d been forced to drag the empty thing with him to lit and consumer studies (both of which he was nearly failing), where, try as he might to keep the box tucked under his desk, it invariably stuck out into the aisle, arousing curiosity from every angle. He bailed on driver’s ed third period. He’d never have a car anyway, so what was the point? He stole away down the empty hallway to his locker, reorganized the Marvel Universe, shouldered the box, and walked it in the spitting rain all the way to Lincoln and Front.
He could not deny a certain nostalgia upon entering the shop, with its glass cases smelling of Windex, its store-length rows of countless titles scrupulously organized in their wooden bins. He could do without the Warcraft posters and the game rentals, but otherwise it was the same: everywhere color and the competing odors of dust and newness.
Flipping through Curtis’s collection, the counter guy, a dude about forty, could not disguise a certain nostalgia of his own. “Ha! Rom Spaceknight — a comic based on an action figure nobody bought. No way, you gotta be kidding me, Luke Cage, Hero for Hire? Hmph. Look at that afro. Micronauts — another comic based on an action figure nobody bought. Boy, kid, you’ve got some real turkeys in here.”
Curtis could have done without all the commentary. He just wanted forty bucks. Maybe fifty, so he could buy a pack of smokes, some Doritos, and an Excalibur down at Circle K.
“Twenty bucks for these,” the counter dude said, peering over the rim of his reading glasses, clutching a stack that included most of the Fantastic Fours, X-Men, some Daredevils, and the crown jewel of his collection, Marvel Two-in-One annual #1 (featuring the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing and the hopelessly gay and outdated Liberty Legion).
“That’s it?”
“Look, I just don’t move a lot of this seventies stuff, kid. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire? Rom Spaceknight? Sorry, but I couldn’t give that stuff away.”
As it turned out, neither could Curtis. He tried to give the rest of the box to the guy for free, so he wouldn’t have to lug the thing back to school. No dice. Begrudgingly, he salvaged all the Native American crap and left the rest in the alley by the Dumpster.
The day had only gotten worse for Curtis after abandoning the comics. Still twenty bucks shy of that elusive eighth, he’d returned to school, stashed what was left of the Marvel universe in his locker, and proceeded to Coleman’s office to deal with the stupid job shadow bullshit he was getting roped into in order to pass Gerke’s class.
“What about shadowing one of the elders?” Coleman had said. “Or somebody from the Tribal Council? Or the Jamestown Heritage Museum? They might even have an internship for you down there.”
Coleman wasn’t even Indian. He’d just married an Indian so long ago that he’d managed to convince himself he was Indian by association. The ponytail, the politics, the ugly sweaters. On his desk, a leather stitched pencil cup with beads and tassels.
“Why not keep it local?” Coleman persisted.
“It is local,” Curtis observed impassively from behind a curtain of black bangs.
Coleman frowned his guidance counselor frown.
They’d never let him forget it — Coleman, the elders, the guy from the fry bread stand at Sunday market. They were always ennobling the tribe, clinging to the past with a grip so tenuous it was almost silly — potlatches, totems, canoes. Please. Like he was going to carve a totem or ferry people around in a canoe? Why couldn’t his people just adapt? And what were they trying to sell him, anyway? Curtis was no dummy. He’d done his research. He’d read the history books. He knew that being a Klallam back in the day wasn’t all communing with nature and dancing with spirits. He knew about the slave trade. He knew about the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the Dungeness Massacre. He knew about the violence and hatred the Klallam had visited on the Tsimshians as well as the whites, how they’d burned them and decapitated them. Funny, but you never heard the elders singing that tune. They were always trying to get you to succeed, to do the tribe proud, give back to the community. Give what? For what? The stupid casino?
Coleman was pensive. He picked a ball of lint off his ugly sweater, considered it, lobbed it over his shoulder, and scratched his ear with a sigh. “All this acting out — the bad grades, the skipping, the attitude — is this about your dad?”
Curtis heaved his own sigh and looked out the window. “Why does everything have to be about my stupid dad? Ancient history — there’s a class I could pass.”
“I was just wondering whether —”
“No, okay? No.”
“But maybe if you just —”
Why was it that somebody was always there to offer unsolicited advice? And they always wanted to talk. Let’s talk, they’d say, tell me about it, you’ll feel better, but mostly they’d ask, Why are you angry?
“What are you angry about?” Coleman wanted to know.
“I’m not angry. I’m annoyed.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Of course I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk at all. I just want to not talk, okay? Do we have to talk? Couldn’t I just listen? Couldn’t you just tell me a bunch of stuff about how it’s going to be for me if I don’t get my grades up, and how I ought to embrace my heritage and take responsibility for myself, and I’ll just sit here and listen? Or maybe you could just not say all those things this time and just give me all the papers and stuff I’ll need to fill out for the job thing.”
For once, Coleman didn’t say anything.
AMBLING DOWN THE sunny side of Front Street toward the center of town, in no hurry whatsoever, Curtis took a small comfort in knowing that whatever bullshit awaited him at High Tide Seafood that afternoon, it couldn’t be as bad as three days ago. He passed the boarded storefront that was once Pop’s Restaurant and, before that, Charlie’s. The only thing left now were the big brown letters RESTAURANT, partially obscured by a FOR LEASE sign, and in the window, hanging crookedly, half of a waterlogged menu. Prime-rib dip $7.99. Surf-and-Turf $9.50. Curtis paused briefly at Coho Unlimited, Port Bonita’s premiere tourist boutique, with its regionally famous window display: an explosion of stuffed giraffes and ceramic chickens, and faux-Indian art, phony muskets, and wooden seagulls, and mermaid-encrusted fondue bowls. There was a five-foot chainsaw-sculpted salty sea dog captain named Old Ned, smoking a pipe by the door. There were racks and racks of postcards near the front entrance. Gateway to the Olympics. Hurricane Ridge. Thornburgh Dam. And though there were no tourists about, a four-hundred-year-old poster in the window boasted 30 PERCENT OFF OF ALL STOCK! Next to this hung a yellow flyer:
Dam Days, September 2–3!
Come celebrate over 100 years of Port Bonita history!
Featuring Live Music, Logging Competition, Chainsaw Carving Contest, and World-Famous Salmon Bake
Proudly presented in part by your neighbors at Wal-Mart.
Fucking Wal-Mart. They killed everything. Curtis could hardly recognize this place anymore. He was almost embarrassed to admit that as a child, Port Bonita had seemed like a glorious place, the center of the universe, and Dam Days had seemed a grand occasion marked by fry bread tacos and brass bands. Now it seemed stupid: a bunch of fat whites and sad-looking Indians mulling around Lake Thornburgh as if there were anything to see, anything to celebrate but a hulking mass of useless concrete and a lot of chain-link fence. As if Port Bonita were anything else but one big fucking Wal-Mart.
A half block later Curtis passed Gertie’s, where even at three in the afternoon, a handful of sketchy-looking dudes and one old lady with yellowing bleach blonde hair stood out front smoking cigarettes. She looked like Skeletor. They all looked like Skeletor.
Curtis fired up a Salem. Deadsville, that was this place.
Sasquatch Field Research Organization
Report 1017 (class B)
Year: 2006
Season: Spring
State: Washington
County: Clallam
Nearest town: Port Bonita
Nearest Road: Elwha River Road
OBSERVED: The following events happened roughly two miles above the Thornburgh Dam along the Crooked Thumb trail, the first week of April 2006. This area has had a lot of sightings (mostly class B) over the past several years, so I was not completely surprised by the events of that night. In fact, my purpose out there was to call-blast after dark (using uncompressed digital recordings of the Snohomish Whoop-Howl and Del Norte calls), employing a Peavey JSX 212 cabinet and a 120-watt Joe Satriani Signature Head. Loud as hell. I used a 12-volt marine battery with 300-watt square-wave inverter for juice. I had to make three wheel-barrow trips in with all my gear, which I could hardly fit into the Goat (my ’73 GTO 400ci sport coupe).
My plan was to get in early and stay put, hunker down, and drink a few brews in the dark (but I wasn’t drunk during any of what transpired; with the amp and everything else, I could only carry four beers on the last trip — I can’t even feel four beers). I’m an experienced hiker with a lot of cryptoid-tracking experience (I had a class C encounter off of Highway 112 near Joyce 7/6/99, as well as a possible class B near Hoko River 9/11/2003. Both sightings, nos. 0645 and 0914, are in the SFRO sightings database). I am also very familiar with the area, having lived my entire life here (Bucket Brigade class of 84!). Lastly, I know what a bear sounds like. I’ve hiked Crooked Thumb many times. Above the dam along the western shore of Lake Thornburgh is a lot of second-growth fir and hemlock, which has seen a little harvesting in recent years, but most of it is protected, or supposed to be. I parked at the slab and hiked to just shy of mile marker 2. I employed the use of a scent mask (Dave’s Pop-Up Scent Canisters combo kit with detachable wick — got it at Big Five). I also hung pheromone chips around my encampment. These I acquired via a guy on the Internet and are supposedly the same chips utilized in the Quachita Project in 2001, made of part-human and part–great ape pheromones. They don’t really smell like anything, but I’m not a Bigfoot (although I wear a size 13).
The Elwha might be dead below the dam, but above the dam it is still wild. I’ve been told by hikers it is some of the wildest and most rugged country anywhere. My theory as to why the Crooked Thumb trail is proven to be a hotbed for sightings in the past, and why I’ve chosen this area as the focus of my field research, is because it is heavily tracked by deer in all seasons. This allows the Sasquatch an abundant food source in the winter months. Also berries are prevalent (huckleberry, thimbleberry, salmon berry) and there is an accessible freshwater source via both Lake Thornburgh and the upper Elwha. The trail is broad and flat for the first few miles allowing for easy migration, but the lake is otherwise hemmed in by mountains.
After my camp was set up, I hunkered down until dark. The anticipation gets creepier the darker it gets and the less you can see. About an hour after dark I blasted my first call (a ten-second Del Norte). As anyone who has ever call-blasted knows, to hear these sounds amplified is incredibly eerie. It was extremely dark, and the moon was hidden deep behind cloud cover. I’m not afraid of the dark, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of this dark. This is a big kind of dark. I never get used to it. A third-generation NVD is at the top of my wish list right now. (I saw the Night Optics D-300G-3A goggles at Big Five for a little over 3K — I should’ve bought them!)
I waited nine minutes before my second blast (another Del Norte). I got no response to the vocalization, but I did hear something move in the brush uphill from me (probably a deer). I decided to try a few tree knocks on a nearby fir. For this purpose, I brought a 33-inch, 31-ounce Louisville Slugger Triton Softball bat (also a Big Five purchase). I wrapped the barrel of the bat in a half inch of duct tape so it would lose the aluminum sound and make a good thud. After a series of four syncopated knocks, I listened for a few minutes and received no response.
I waited seven more minutes before blasting a Snohomish Whoop-Howl. My neck hair stood on end when four seconds later I got a faint response from (I’m guessing) a quarter mile to the west. The response did not sound so much like a Snohomish as it did a Skamania Howl. It was the most chilling thing I’ve heard in my life. I suddenly felt extremely cold and I actually got the shivers and my teeth were chattering together. The other thing is that I suddenly felt like I had to go to the bathroom.
I waited about sixty seconds with my teeth chattering, when I heard another vocalization from the west. This was particularly alarming because this thing was moving pretty fast. The second vocalization sounded considerably closer. I immediately blasted another call and got a response seconds
later. The closest one yet. My hand was shaking badly. I could hardly press play. I’ll be honest, I was about ready to get the heck out of there. I didn’t like the way this thing was coming after me. Suddenly, from the east I heard the strangest vocalizations I’ve ever heard. It sounded like talking, like somebody speaking in tongues and it was very close, in fact it was all around me, as if I were being surrounded. I was so scared at this point that I almost blacked out. I huddled up in a ball, clutching the Louisville Slugger.
The vocalizations were really deep, deeper than anything human. They were fast. They kind of floated on the air. I can’t quite explain it. The smell was pretty strong, like skunk cabbage or rotting garbage. I couldn’t really tell how close they were because to tell you the truth even though my senses were sharp, I wasn’t sure I could trust them. My heart was beating in my ears, and that may have affected my judgment. I really cannot say how much time passed. I kept expecting them to walk right into the camp. In which case I would’ve probably had a heart attack. But at the same time (and this may sound weird) I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt before. My whole body was like one big nerve ending.
Finally, I got up the balls to turn on my headlamp and jump up and swing the beam of the light in a circle at the woods all around me. I can’t say for sure what I saw. All the shadows were disorienting. But there was definitely movement in the woods. I saw something big move behind a tree, and I heard brush snapping behind me. As I swung my head to the north, I thought I saw another big shadowy figure move through the beam of my flashlight, too quickly to identify but big enough that it could only be one thing. It was moving away from me, scrambling up a steep embankment. From west of me came another chilling vocalization that almost gave me a heart attack. It was more of a screech than anything else, similar to the Gifford Pinchot recordings from fall of ’96. After a minute, I began to realize that they had all moved off, and a few minutes later I heard another vocalization from the west, pretty far off. These things were fast. It’s hard to imagine anything moving quite that fast in the dark.