West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Tillman. But first things first: Stop sayin’ ‘shit’ every other word. Because the man who says ‘shit’ every other word ain’t the man that’s gonna get ahead.”

  “Ain’t’s not a word.”

  “I ain’t ahead,” said Franklin, pausing to sip reflectively from his eggnog container. “Ever think maybe I’m just talkin’ to myself here, Tillman? Maybe you and me, we’re not so different. What you need, son, is a plan.”

  “Yeah, and what plan is that?”

  Franklin narrowed a steady gaze at him. “Got me. And it wouldn’t do you a damn bit of good if I told you. It’s gotta be your plan, on your terms. And plans you don’t talk about. Any fool can talk about ’em. I reckon you could go down to any bar on Front Street and find somebody willing to give you an earful of plans. I’ll bet you heard all kinds of plans in the joint. I’ll bet you’ve heard the same plans three, four times from the same guys. Real plans ain’t like that — and damn it you’re right, I gotta stop sayin’ ‘ain’t.’ Plans you decide. Plans you act out, Tillman. Slowly. Steadily. Plans ain’t — aren’t — gonna happen overnight. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  “Burned down awfully quick,” observed Tillman.

  “True enough, son. Takes longer to build a life than destroy it.”

  Tillman was a smart kid. A few warts on his personality, but nothing like Hobart. Kid like Tillman just needed a break. When the second session with Tillman wound down, Franklin had walked the boy to the door, and they’d talked about hobbies and interests with the sort of familiarity Franklin never shared with his parolees, because familiarity undermined his authority and sent the wrong message to guys who were always looking for access, particularly when it was easily gained. But with Tillman, Franklin had been familiar. He’d set the tone himself. He’d elicited familiarity. Tillman had said he liked camping. He’d said that it nearly drove him crazy in the joint not being able to camp. He said at night he would sometimes lie in his cell and stare up into the darkness, trying to summon the smell of a wood fire, a smattering of stars through the treetops, the grit of fish skin on a cast-iron skillet. Timmon was a poet when he talked about camping. And he didn’t say “shit” once.

  “What about you?” Tillman wanted to know.

  “Oh, no. Not much of a camper myself.”

  “How come you never see black people camping?” Tillman wanted to know. “I’ve been camping two hundred times at least, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black person camping.”

  Franklin laughed, and gave Tillman a warm, almost fatherly pat on the back. “Son,” he said, “we been campin’ our whole lives.”

  “SO, WHAT’S THE deal?” Hobart wanted to know. “Can I leave now, or what?”

  “Yeah, you’re free to go. And you best be on time next time, got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  Watching Hobart leave the office, with a sneer and a nod of his blue shaven head, Franklin knew Hobart would be back. Probably even on time. Guy like Hobart wouldn’t have the balls or the ambition to jump parole. Guy like Hobart would keep fucking up time and again but never on purpose.

  no handmaid

  AUGUST 1890

  The bumpy progress of the carriage inspired giddiness in the child. The world was brimming with endless quantities of sunshine — indeed, it tickled her face around every corner, set her eyelashes to fluttering. All around her were the stirrings of possibility, darting spritelike in and out of the shadows beneath the sunlit canopy. Whether or not she was coming or going anywhere in particular did not occur to the child. She had no thought of the future, no thought of the past. She was simply afloat in the sun-drenched forest.

  Hoko stroked the child’s forehead in a way she had never stroked Thomas as a baby — gently with the backs of her fingers. Minerva gave a coo and a giggle and flashed a wealth of pink gums. Her front teeth had broken through at last.

  As though the child’s mirth were some cue, Eva set aside her notebook — in which she’d been distractedly scratching out another false start on her story-to-be — and reached across the narrow aisle to scoop Minerva out of Hoko’s lap. Holding the girl aloft like a mirror, Eva felt the tears welling up once more and promptly manufactured the smile of a young mother. This was just temporary, she told herself, a few weeks at most.

  “And how is Mommy’s big girl? Does Mommy’s big girl like carriage rides?”

  As the child began to fidget in her arms, Eva quickly exhausted her store of placative measures: the tummy tickle, the nose rub, even the aching promise of the nipple, from which she’d recently weaned the child. But Minerva would have none of it.

  Something hardened in Eva’s stomach as she passed the infant back to Hoko, and the child calmed down immediately. Retrieving her notebook from the berth beside her, she set it in her lap but did not resume her writing. Instead, she looked distractedly up at the wooded hillside, as the valley unfurled behind them. One cannot provide what one does not have to give, she reminded herself.

  They came to the wide-plank bridge spanning the swamp. A single winter — the crossing of perhaps three hundred ox teams dragging a thousand chains, countless lengths of timber, a seemingly endless procession of carriages heaping with fortifications — had taken a toll on the crude structure. In a year’s time, the bridge would be replaced by a much larger bridge, one built of concrete. In a year’s time, steam would come to the forest, and the ox would become all but obsolete.

  The clearing at the head of the canyon had grown exponentially since Eva’s last visit, exposing stubbled hillside all around. The far bank of the chasm had been blown open well below the lip, and the canyon was now a good deal wider at the top. A huge timber scaffold was being erected up the canyon wall. The little valley was filled with voices. From a distance, Eva spotted Ethan among a small gathering of men. He seemed to be drawing elaborate plans in the air in front of them.

  The chaotic crisscross of furrows carved into the soft terrain by wheel and hoof and heel had hardened into gullies in the flat expanse of dirt that had once been the meadow. As it now stood, the clearing had the look of a battlefield, right down to the pitted earth and the smoldering stumps strewn along the edges.

  Taking the baby back from Hoko, Eva navigated the rutty terrain carefully on foot, clutching Minerva tightly against her chest in spite of the child’s protestations. Ethan was apparently unaware of their approach, standing near the edge of the chasm like a general, pointing this way and that, issuing directives, outlining stratagems, mobilizing his troops. But Eva knew the truth. He wasn’t really mobilizing anything anymore. They were, from a boardroom in Chicago, cigar smoking men, leaning back in their chairs with their bellies pushed tight against the waistline of their suit pants, men like her father, fat with prosperity, not babies, saddled with destinies, not diapers. And this, Eva was taught her whole life to believe, was her destiny: to marry right and bear children, to be a loyal unquestioning daughter, sister, mother, and wife. To subordinate her every whim and ambition. All of this strengethened Eva’s resolve as she marched toward Ethan.

  * * *

  TO HOKO, THE little cabin on the bluff seemed small and homely amid the ravaged valley. The huge timber scaffold straddling the gorge made her uneasy. It did not belong there. The very proportions of it were troubling. That the white man believed himself the master of the river was no small conceit. Hoko knew that eventually he would learn otherwise.

  She found Indian George on the stoop of the cabin. His yellow scarf was filthy, his small-brimmed hat misshapen. He did not seem his usual self, the way he sat with slumping shoulders and his calloused hands at rest in his lap, as though they’d given up on something. He nodded but did not smile upon Hoko’s approach. Never had Hoko seen George in such low spirits. She took a seat beside him on the stoop, where they sat in silence. Hoko took a slow panoramic inventory of the busy valley, fraught with tiny workers. They scurried around like ants — thoughtlessly, yet purposefully — bearing
burdens bigger than themselves.

  “If the river were meant to be stopped,” she said, “then it would not be a river.”

  George nodded his affirmation. “That is true,” he said. “But a river is easier to stop than a white man.”

  They both fell to silently watching Eva cross the rutted clearing toward Ethan.

  “How is the boy?” George said, at last.

  “The boy is in Jamestown.”

  “Abe Charles thinks the boy is a prophet.”

  “Abe Charles believes what he wants to believe.”

  * * *

  THE INSTANT HE spotted Eva approaching with the baby, Ethan broke into a broad grin and abandoned his work. Eva knew in advance for whom the smile was intended, a fact that was confirmed instantly, when Ethan snatched the child from her arms. He swung her once about in a circle and held her above his head and looked up into her cherubic face before cradling her in his arms.

  “You ought to have sent word you were coming,” he said. “Just look at me, I’m a mess.”

  “I won’t be long, Ethan. I’ve come with a purpose.”

  Ethan smiled at her. “You always do, my love. I can only hope that you’ve finally seen clear to —”

  “I’m leaving Minerva,” she said.

  Ethan went cold. “What do you mean, you’re leaving her?”

  “I’m leaving her with you.”

  “But — what — for how long?”

  Eva could not bear to look at him. Swinging around to avoid his perplexity, her voice faltered. “Indefinitely,” she said. “However long it takes.”

  “It? What are you talking about?”

  “I need time to work unmolested. Perhaps a week, perhaps two.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Eva, look around you! What are you saying? You can’t possibly —”

  “I’ve contracted a woman.”

  “Certainly not that whore you’ve been keeping company with?”

  “That ‘whore’ was my friend. You should be so lucky. I’ve provided a woman to see to Minerva’s needs until such time that —”

  “A woman?” Ethan peered over her shoulder. “You mean to say that Indian on the steps there? She’s to be the mother of my daughter?”

  Eva strangled her grief and swung around to face him. “I’m the mother of your daughter! What’s more, you’re the father of your daughter, and I daresay you haven’t been acting it.”

  “Eva, this is no place for a child! Not yet!”

  “Then you’d best make it one,” she said. “If you can build a dam, then I should think a nursery wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  business

  SEPTEMBER 1890

  Eight days after she’d left Minerva, Eva was back at the construction site. Upon her arrival shortly before dusk, she proceeded across the muddy flat toward the office, at which point she was directed rather vaguely by a man with a broom to a location outside, where Ethan was most likely to be found. Eva set out to find him, her notebook clutched tightly against her cotton blouse and her chin thrust out above her collar and tie like the prow of a steamship. She resolved herself once more not to cave in to weakness, not to let her affections for Ethan or the child get the best of her. She must stay true to her course. She must bear in mind at all times the burden of responsibility placed upon her shoulders by the public interest. She must not waver in her beliefs, because beliefs were bigger than individuals, bigger than babies and husbands. Beliefs could do anything with enough steam. The evidence surrounded her. The unconditional surrender of the valley, once wooded and remote, now seemed complete. What remained was a ravaged landscape, scarred and splintered and blasted.

  Ethan stood with the baby in his arms on the near side of what was once a narrow gorge, gazing down at the dry riverbed, where day and night men hammered lengths of steel into the earth, and the great dredgers heaved and grunted ceaselessly, coughing out clouds of bitter steam. High-scalers worked the scaffold on the far edge of the canyon, now straddled by a great wooden bridge like a train trestle. One day, in the not so distant future, they could begin pouring concrete into the box molds, setting them in place. Soon the water would begin to rise on the upriver side, and Lake Thornburgh would begin to be a reality.

  When Ethan registered Eva’s approach, he bolted upright in a rush of gratitude and relief. Eva stopped well short of him, but Ethan soon bridged this gap, planting a kiss on her forehead, which she received with the magnanimity of a queen. The child did not stir.

  “Oh, Eva, thank heavens you’re back. I knew you’d come to your senses.”

  Looking at the baby, all wrapped up like something precious and delicate, Eva felt herself weaken. She ached to hold the child. She ached too for Ethan’s embrace. For all his rough edges, he looked handsome. But she fought the aching. “I did not leave my senses, Ethan. I merely left you.”

  “And your child, lest you’ve forgotten.”

  “Our child,” she said, brushing a maverick hair out of her face. “To whom I’ve devoted the lion’s share of my time and energy ever since the day you decided to build an empire in the middle of nowhere. Our child, I might add, who appears to be doing quite well asleep on your lapel.”

  Ethan could not disguise a certain pride in this fact, and a smile played again at the corners of his mouth. “At any rate, thank heavens you’re back.”

  Eva turned from Ethan and the baby. In that moment she very nearly caved in. The only thought that sustained her was that she needed just a little more time, and it would be better for everybody. “I’m not back, Ethan. I’m here on business.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes, business. That’s what you run here, isn’t it?”

  “See here, what is this all about, Eva?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out. For starters, I — we — should like to know just who you and Jacob are forging partnerships with. Honestly, Ethan, what became of ‘bringing hydroelectric power to the people’? What happened to ‘completely revolutionizing the economical industrial conditions’? I’m here for an accounting.”

  “You’re here to do a story? Surely, you’ve got to be joking.”

  Eva crossed her arms. “I’m quite serious.”

  “What happened to birthing cows and bridle paths?”

  “And I quote, Ethan: ‘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 — ’”

  “That’s not fair, Eva, and you know it.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “This dam can’t be built without money from the east. It’s just not possible, and all the Utopian rhetoric in the world is not going to make it possible. It’s simply a financial reality.”

  “Whose financial reality?”

  “Report what you want, Eva, but know that my hands are tied. If it’s a lamb for the altar you’re looking for, well, look no further. But why stop there? Why not sacrifice your daughter’s future while you’re at it?”

  “Sacrificial lamb. Ha! You’ve lost all sense of proportion, Ethan.”

  “Have I? This from a woman who abandons her child to write stories for a —”

  “Don’t be evasive, Ethan. You’ve been selling your dream to the people of Port Bonita since day one, selling them on equitable returns and convenience for all, as if they had some vested interest in —”

  “They do have a vested interest! How can we have growth with —”

  “With what, Ethan? With … with migrating capital? So that men like my father can —”

  “The resources are endless, Eva! Goodness, woman, look around you!”

  Looking around, Eva thought she saw the future.

  “It’s a wasteland, Ethan.”

  “Think of the future, I beg you.”

  “Whose future?”

  “All our futures. The future of Port Bonita — and yes, even your commonwealth. The future has already begun. Don’t you see, Eva — I don�
�t want to surrender control, but I can’t stop the momentum. And it’s actually a good thing, this outside money. It shows confidence in our economy. A hundred years from now this dam will still be the engine of Port Bonita.”

  Eva looked him squarely in the eye, and what she saw in his unwavering gaze was the very same determination that had driven him to this place, and nothing less. He still believes, she thought, he sincerely believes: in progress, in destiny, in his own place in history.

  chill waters

  SEPTEMBER 1890

  Minerva came to know the caress of rough hands, and the deafening crack of mortar blasts from dawn until dusk. She came to know the yellow light of late summer slanting through the window and how the dust turned somersaults in its radiance. She slept always with the orange pulse of candlelight behind her eyelids and the soft murmur of gruff voices beneath her dreams. And she slept well. And each time she woke, it was as though she had done so for the first time, and the newness of life was a thing to crawl up inside of, a thing to savor on her tongue, a thing to grasp with chubby fingers at every opportunity and not let go. She came to know a sea of voices and a sea of faces, and a thousand different smells, from the sweet spice of rough-hewn cedar to the chalky itch of basalt dust. And her favorite smell of all would become the acrid odor of her father’s neck, her favorite touch, his calloused hand. There were days in the waning summer and early autumn when he took her far from the clatter of the canyon, to the chill waters upstream, where she lolled on the riverbank beneath his delicious gaze, sharing it with no one, and she watched the endless stream of silver fish fighting their way upriver as though their lives depended on it, little knowing that they did. The silver fish were a miracle in the sunlight, a river running inside the river, a leaping, wriggling ribbon of life. And it felt to the child as though the whole world existed in the shade of an alder, on the bank of a river, beneath the gaze of her father.