West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

  Jared listened to Krig’s receding footsteps in the gravel until the spillway drowned them out. After a long pull, he set his fresh beer down by his feet and squatted. Clutching the chain-link fence, he peered down beyond the spillway into the chasm, where he could see the powerhouse partially obscured by undergrowth. How many times had he stood in this very spot, awed as a toddler, curious as a boy, proud as an adolescent? But never had he stood there like this, frightened and ashamed of the thing. How many times had he been reminded of the dam in the years since he started avoiding it? Only to find that there was no avoiding it, that he forever lived in the shadow of this obsolete dam, his fortune linked inextricably to its hulking existence, its legacy of ecological menace. Though he had no vested interest in its fate, no real interest at all, still its presence was inescapable. And why? Because it bore his name. Such were the trappings of history.

  “Tear the damn thing down,” said Jared Thornburgh aloud to nobody. “See if I care.”

  ’bout fuckin’ time

  JULY 2006

  The first night Curtis failed to come home Rita managed to convince herself that he was probably at a friend’s house. But had Rita really wanted to be honest with herself (and later she would), she would’ve had to admit that there was absolutely no evidence — no phone calls (he didn’t event want a cell phone), no instant messaging, no mention of so-and-so to suggest that Curtis had any friends at all. Never a ride home from school, never the whispers of a conspirator from behind his locked door, always two eyes, never four, peering into the empty refrigerator. Aside from Dan, and to some lesser degree herself, Curtis had scarcely ever connected with anyone in any substantial way. He was a loner, he’d always been a loner. Only in recent years, though, had he become a brooding loner. As a boy, he was content in his aloneness, deep into his distance. He could sit for hours with little occupation. He could literally watch the grass grow. For a time, Rita thought he might be developmentally impaired. Now, he was anything but calm; now, it seemed he was perpetually agitated.

  More than Curtis’s whereabouts, Randy was concerned with the whereabouts of his “hundred bucks.” Settling comfortably back into civilian life, in spite of the fact that he was down to $180 with no foreseeable employment (the muffler shop had been a bust), Randy would have just as soon been without the kid anyway. Christ, even if the little shit stole a few bucks, it was worth it to have him gone. But he knew the kid would be back soon enough, glaring at him from behind those greasy bangs, filching his Salems, basically just being a little shithead all the time.

  “He’ll come back when he’s hungry,” Randy insisted.

  Rita was more than ready to accept this proposition and did so for the better part of two days. By the third night, however, she required a bottle of Chablis and three beers to ward off her mounting uneasiness, until she finally fell asleep watching an infomercial.

  The police phoned at 8:00 a.m. The instant the officer identified himself, Rita felt the unexpected weight of panic like a bowling ball in her stomach, and his voice came to her as though from some great distance. The more the voice explained, the less she understood.

  “Found your boy last night in Circle K clutching a bag of M&Ms and some kind of dead fish with no eyes. Stunk to high hell. Wouldn’t let go of the damn M&Ms. Got burns on his arms, blood on his shirt. Pupils like saucers.”

  “But how — what happened? Is he … ?”

  “He won’t say a word. Found a half sheet of Barney Rubble in his coat pocket. Must’ve been selling the stuff. That’s probably at the root of our problem here. Sending him to Olympic Medical Center for psych evaluation … Tell me, does he normally, you know, talk? Any kind of verbal communication at all? … Hello? Are you there?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m here. He talks. But not a lot. Is there something wrong? Did something happen to him?”

  “We don’t know anything. He won’t talk. It’s like he … well, like he can’t. Moves his lips to beat the band, but nothing comes out. Best get down here, ma’am.”

  By the time Rita hung up the phone, all the warmth had drained out of her.

  Randy could see something was wrong. “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “The police picked him up.”

  “Pfff. Figures.”

  “They’ve taken him for some kind of psychological evaluation.”

  Randy burped. “Yeah, well, ’bout fuckin’ time.”

  the leap

  JULY 2006

  As she watched him square the tab, Hillary willfully ignored an ambivalence that extended far beyond Franklin Bell. What was this impulse to act? Why, when it was crystal clear that she and Franklin had no future, when she felt little attraction toward him sexually, was she compelled to prove something? It was the sum of these nagging uncertainties, and her inability to silence them, that finally drove Hillary to the edge. Not two steps into the gravel parking lot, she took the leap.

  “How about your place?” she said.

  Abandoning the Silverado — along with all contingencies — in the Bushwhacker parking lot, Hillary accompanied Franklin in his green ’88 Taurus wagon. The car looked new in spite of its age. The interior smelled like a rental. Hillary liked the car immediately for its sheer lack of pretense. It was quiet and smooth — a gazelle trapped in the body of a warthog.

  Having relinquished all preconceived notions the moment he popped in a Neil Sedaka CD, Hillary tried to imagine what it would be like to be with Franklin. He seemed totally at ease at the wheel in spite of the fact he could barely see over it. Piloting the Taurus past Circle K, Murray Motors, and KFC, he hummed along quietly and unashamedly to “King of the Clowns.”

  From the passenger seat, Hillary scanned Franklin’s profile, her eyes straying down to the jelly roll beneath his green-shirted belly.

  Feeling her eyes on him, Franklin smiled. “That’s my twelve-pack,” he said.

  That’s another thing she liked about him: he was unapologetic. There was so much to like about him, really. She appreciated all the things he didn’t say, all the sage male wisdom he didn’t dispense, all the tiresome opinions he didn’t solicit, even when she tried to draw him out. She liked his short answers. There was nothing ambivalent about Franklin, it seemed. As the Taurus crested Hogback to reveal the panorama of Port Bonita, all lit up from the tip of Ediz Hook to the mouth of the Elwha, Hillary wondered at the futility of her actions. Why did she persist? Why make poor Franklin an accomplice?

  “Do you think people are born a certain way?” she said, looking out the window. “I mean, like the people you work with — criminals? Or do you think people are made?”

  “People are habits,” said Franklin, without hesitation.

  “That’s it?”

  “Way I see it, that’s all that matters at the end of the day. What does a person do? That’s the thing that affects everybody else. Thoughts and intentions sure don’t go far, we know that much.”

  “What if people develop habits that aren’t true to their nature?”

  “So be it. As long as they keep their noses clean.”

  “What about people who aren’t criminals?”

  “Not my jurisdiction,” he said flatly.

  “Couldn’t a person become enslaved by the wrong habits?”

  “Hell, happens every day. Look at the way we live. Sometimes wrong is right, though. Sometimes people gotta think outside themselves for the benefit of other folks.”

  Franklin got surer and more decisive by the minute. Yet, as much as Hillary longed to lean into his self-assurance, as much as she yearned to feel some electrical attraction toward Franklin, she only grew less sure as his apartment drew nearer. She was determined, however, to forge ahead against her better instincts.

  Franklin’s apartment was a step down from the clean, aromatic roominess of the Taurus. A big step down: soiled furniture and dusty Levolors, a murky fishbowl, casino carpet. The fact that Franklin was unapologetic about any of it was almost enough to redeem the place.

/>   “That’s Rupert,” he said as the dog nosed Hillary’s crotch when she sat on the bile-colored sofa. “Make yourself at home.” Franklin took inventory of the fridge. “You thirsty? Beer? I got some Chinese in here if you’re hungry.”

  “I’m not hungry, thanks. But you might want to let those Chinese out. They’re probably cold.”

  Franklin guffawed. “That’s baaaad.” He snatched two cans of beer from the fridge. “Looks like Rupert is really takin’ a shine to you,” he said, setting the beers on the smoked glass coffee table.

  Gliding to the entertainment center, Franklin began rifling through CDs — pausing briefly to meditate on Steve Forbert’s Jackrabbit Slim before he found the album that best suited the mood he was going for: Bob Seger’s Night Moves. Classic.

  Franklin seated himself on the sofa, draping an awkward arm around Hillary. She could smell his spicy aftershave, and the rum on his breath, and she thought for an instant that maybe things would be different with Franklin. But even as she leaned in to meet his full lips, and he ran a strong hand down the small of her back, Hillary doubted it.

  on your back

  APRIL 1890

  Tobin was even more impatient than usual the night he began to suspect Gertie’s betrayal.

  “What’s got into you, whore?” he said, pulling out of her and pushing her into the headboard. “You’ve been skulking for a week.” He grabbed her shoulder and whipped her over on her back. “What’s this all about? Gotta case of the clap you’re not telling me about?”

  Gertie got up on her elbows, and when she offered no reply, Tobin made as if to strike her but stopped himself short and smiled. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s on that feeble little mind of yours.”

  “Well,” said Gertie, casting her eyes aside. “Who’s to say I’m not nervous about Peaches workin’ me out of a job?”

  Tobin smiled again, although not as cruelly as usual.

  “Ha! Is that it?” He laughed.

  Gertie looked up at him hopefully.

  “Well, I must say, this news comes as some relief to me, Gertrude. Considering the kind of subterfuge I’ve come to expect from ungrateful whores.”

  He leaned down and took her chin in his hand and squeezed it, peering at her through slitted eyes, as his smile wilted.

  “Just mind the fact that I hate to lose a whore, one way or another,” he said. “Even if she is used up.”

  * * *

  WHEN ADAM RETURNED to Port Bonita on his rounds, checking into his regular hotel room at the Olympic, among the messages awaiting him at the front desk were directives from Cal Pellen to proceed directly to Skokomish, Puyallup, and all the way onto Colville in the eastern part of what Adam still conceived as a territory, not a state. Adam received this news grimly, knowing that it could be months before he returned to Port Bonita. He should have checked on the boy.

  “Bad news, sir?” said the clerk.

  “Nothing catastrophic, Tom. And none of your business, besides. Is that it for messages?”

  “Well, officially speaking, sir.”

  “Nothing from Jamestown?”

  “No sir. But some whore’s been asking after you.”

  Adam shot him a look. “Is that an attempt at humor?”

  “No, sir. See, I couldn’t rightly tell her as to when you’d be back, so she’s been in here nearly every afternoon asking after you.”

  “How do you know she’s a whore?”

  “Well, with all due respect, Mr. Gunderson —”

  “How did you know she was a whore?”

  “Well, sir, aside from the fact that I gave her a throw as recently as last month, there was the fact she had a black eye, and of course there was just the plain fact that she dressed frilly like a whore, and if there’s one thing about whores in general that gives them away, it’s the fact that —”

  “Enough. What was she after?”

  “She wouldn’t say, sir.”

  “What was her mood?”

  “Jumpy.”

  Adam figured on it, and came up with nothing. “If she comes again, don’t send her up, you understand? Just send for me.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Gunderson.”

  Retiring to his room, Adam dropped his bag at the foot of the bed and moved to the new mirror above the basin, where he was displeased with the unshaven state of his reflection, and the crows feet creeping downward toward his temples. He thought about cleaning up, but found himself lacking the energy. He plopped down on the bed instead, hoping that a short nap might improve his prospects. But his conscience wouldn’t allow him to rest. He should have made the stop at Jamestown and checked on the boy. He’d blamed his fatigue this time, along with the late hour, as his carriage rattled past the settlement at dusk. But what of the last three times he’d neglected to make the stop? As ever, he failed the boy, and though it shamed him, he still did not act upon it, which made him exactly what his father had always accused him of being: a coward. For the first time, it occurred to Adam that in spite of his father’s intolerance of Indians, he might actually have respected him more if he’d owned the truth all those years ago, a realization that washed over Adam like a wave of nausea.

  Two hours later, Adam crossed the mucky street and strode tall into the Belvedere with business on his mind. He was not feeling patient, nor a bit rested, and his guilt over the boy still festered to the point of distraction. The blue haze and drunken discord of the Belvedere did little to improve his mood.

  “I see not much has changed around here,” said Adam, approaching the bar. Though he neglected to remove his hat, he observed his custom of standing at the bar.

  “Ah,” said Tobin, without looking up from his bar rag. “The White Knight returns. Might I interest you in something in the way of a refreshment — a sarsaparilla, perhaps?”

  “Whiskey,” said Adam.

  Tobin looked up from his rag and stopped his restless scrubbing. He straightened up, and smiled as he poured out two shots, and slid one across the bar.

  Adam tossed his shot off in a single throw. “One of your whores has been looking for me, John.”

  “Is that a fact?” said Tobin. “Whores, too. By God, there’s hope for you after all, Gunderson.”

  “I’m assuming you sent her, John. Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Splayed casually against the upstairs banister, making an effort to laugh at the vulgar musings of a butcher from Tacoma, Gertie snuck glances at Tobin and Adam talking. The more she observed of their conversation, the more she sensed with a chill that behind Tobin’s chattiness and nervous scrubbing, a dark realization had taken root. She needed to get to Adam before Tobin got to her. Breaking away from the butcher, Gertie slunk into her room and rifled through the drawers of her secretary for a pencil and paper. Her heart was racing when at last she scrawled, Under the back steps nightly.

  Gertie folded the note and tucked it away in her bust. Quickly, she checked her mascara in the lamplight and smoothed her hair around the edges before returning to the mezzanine and proceeding down the stairs, where she hovered in the general vicinity of the bar. When Adam made to leave, Gertie made her move across the room toward him. No sooner did Tobin register this movement than he broke from behind the bar and intercepted Gertie in the crowd. Seizing her by the wrist, he led her to the corridor and through to the back of the house, while Adam made his exit, unaware of the interference.

  When they reached the end of the darkened hallway, Tobin pinned her to the wall, forcing his knee up into her pelvis until her eyes began to water.

  “What did you tell him, whore?”

  She tried to shake herself loose.

  “I asked you a question!”

  Stiff-arming him in the face, Gertie eluded his grasp and darted toward the back door. Tobin got a hold of her dress long enough to spin her around and slug her squarely in the face, but when the fabric tore loose in his hand, Gertie scrambled out the back door and down the steps, and Tobin gave chase.

  the
devil’s backbone

  FEBRUARY 1890

  Onward Mather and his men trudged toward the Devil’s Backbone; ragged, but well fed, filthy, but organized, dragging what they could not shoulder across the hard snowpack. The ancient path promised by the natives was either a fiction or had fallen into such disuse that it was invisible, and so they blazed their own trail, and as always, the Elwha acted as their guide. Upward along the Elwha they traveled through the middle weeks of February, over saddlebacks, across creeks, through wooded canyons, naming all that they passed: Cat Creek; Goblin Creek; Dodger Point; Mounts Carrie, Fitzhenry, and Eldridge. They had put range after range of foothills behind them, and still they had yet to penetrate the alpine interior of the peninsula. However, the delays caused by the boat and the weather were probably a blessing. The weather had turned cold and brutal in recent days and could only get better. Haywood was increasingly of the opinion that had the party managed to penetrate the alpine country on schedule, it was quite probable that they would have found survival nearly impossible.

  One evening around the fire, after Cunningham, to the amusement of Reese and Runnells, had just finished his third retelling of a certain medical calamity involving a set of crushed eyeglasses and the derriere of a prominent industrialist’s wife from Portland (whose name Cunningham would not divulge, though he spared no detail in describing the glorious attributes of the derriere in question), Haywood suddenly looked up from his journal.

  “It is entirely possible, gentleman, that we’ve been purposefully lulled into this doltish condition of luxury,” Haywood said. The remark seemed to be pointed at Mather, who was sitting at some distance from the fire, at once alert and preoccupied.