West of Here

by Jonathan Evison

  Dalton’s doughy face reddened. He was stuck in place momentarily, as though he didn’t know how to proceed.

  Jacob shot Ethan a look.

  Silently, Krigstadt turned. Jacob stepped aside to accommodate his passing, and watched him cross pitifully over the threshold and down the steps.

  Jacob turned his critical gaze back at Ethan, who met him with icy determination.

  “There was no call to treat the fellow like that, Ethan.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ve developed a mean streak.”

  “Nonsense. Jacob, as my business partner, I should think you would understand better than anybody the demands on my time. Look around you. I clearly haven’t got time to hear the scatter-brained contrivances of every laborer that passes through my door. You know that! And yet you encourage him. Is it not crueler to give the man hope?”

  “You’ve changed,” said Jacob.

  “I’ve adapted, Jacob. There’s a difference.”

  EARLY IN THE EVENING, when the dredging had ceased for the day, and the hammers were silent, and the dust was still settling, Ethan strode across the empty clearing to the makeshift nursery, where he stomped his boots clean on the doorstep before entering. The young nursemaid was seated on the rug with Minerva, a line of wooden ducklings between them. The young woman stood to greet him, straightening her skirts, but Ethan paid her no mind and went straight for Minerva, scooping the child off of the ground with steam-shovel hands. Immediately, his whole manner slackened, and he did not feel at odds with the world, at least for a moment. The girl squealed and giggled in his arms. Ethan noted the dark crescents under her eyes with a nagging concern.

  “Has she napped?”

  “For two hours, sir.”

  Ethan playfully pinched the girl’s distended belly. The child squealed with delight and immediately went for his mustache with her fingers.

  “How is the rash?” said Ethan.

  “Almost gone, sir.”

  “Good.”

  Ethan carried Minerva in his arms to the edge of the canyon, as he did every evening. The child was asleep before he was halfway there. Jacob was right. He had changed, along with the playing field. The impatience that had once stirred his dreams, pushing him ever onward into the arms of his destiny, had hardened into a different sort of impatience. For the first time, he felt the world owed him something. The tightness returned to his shoulders as he peered down into the gorge, beneath the bridge, where the scaffolding on the far side spiderwebbed its way up the cliff face. Gazing down farther, a hundred feet to where the dredging continued below the riverbed, Ethan felt his stomach roll. He could practically see the dam as it would look finished; its completeness was now strongly suggested by the shape of its surroundings, from the tapering depths of the channel to the broad expanse at the lip. Yet Ethan found himself unable to revel in accomplishment. The world seemed to be pulling him in different directions. From all quarters he felt the tug of opposition. From Eva, who was no longer content to merely vex him but seemed intent upon ruining him. From Chicago, who defied his every advice, resisted his every judgment, and finally usurped his executive power and undermined his vision. And now resistance from Jacob, whose opinions grew stronger every day, whose judgments of Ethan seemed to grow harsher by the hour.

  The only person in the world who didn’t seem to oppose Ethan’s very existence anymore, the only person who seemed to accept him unconditionally, to trust his every judgment and consent to his every decision faithfully, was his daughter, now asleep in his arms with her downy hair swept sideways over her face.

  still port bonita

  AUGUST 2006

  “Happy hour’s over,” said Krig as Jared plopped down in the adjacent stool. A flotilla of appetizer boats lined the bar in front of Krig: artichoke dip, buffalo wings, shooters in the half shell, all of them half eaten — exactly half eaten.

  “Sorry, bro. I had to drop by the house first. Janis made Thai. She’s convinced it’s my favorite. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah,” said Krig, harassed by the knowledge that he should be happy for J-man, heartened by the recent turnabout in the Thorn-burgh home, and above all, gladdened by the news of Janis’s pregnancy. “I know how it is.”

  Molly arrived immediately for Jared’s order, something she never did for Krig.

  “Kilt Lifter, J-man?” she said.

  J-man? Did she call him J-man? WTF? Krig couldn’t suppress a little burp, that is, he couldn’t resist not suppressing it. It smelled like roasted garlic. Molly nearly gagged.

  “Another for me, too,” said Krig. “And could you box up this crap? J-man already ate with his wife.”

  Watching Molly gather up the boats without bestowing so much as a glance at Krig, Jared felt — as he’d often had occasion to feel in recent days — more than a little sorry for Krig. The guy just wasn’t good with signals. His intentions were golden, but … but what? Was it his complete lack of self-awareness? His inability to step back? Or step forward, for that matter? In so many ways, Krig seemed completely undetermined. And yet, there he was, as constant as the tides. His attendance was perfect. The problem was, he just stood there at the starting line, apparently unaware that the gun had sounded. What if Jared could light a fire under Krig’s ass, offer him some incentive, a promotion, or something?

  “You see what Texas did to Cleveland today?” Jared ventured.

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn. Talk about a beating.”

  Both men cast their eyes vaguely on SportsCenter. Stuart Scott looked smarter in glasses. Felix Hernandez left the M’s game in the fifth with a sore shoulder. WNBA news started scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

  “So, I’m gonna do it,” Jared said.

  “Do what?”

  “Write that stupid speech for Dam Days.”

  “What are you supposed to do — apologize or something? Little late, don’t you think?”

  “Jesus, I have no idea of what I’m supposed to say. Who the heck am I, anyway? Why do they even want me to speak? It’s not like I’m some pillar of the P.B. community or anything. I don’t even have a library card. We shop at freaking Wal-Mart most of the time — which makes me a big fat traitor as far as half this town is concerned. My dad, I can understand, my grandfather, sure — but me?”

  “Beats me,” said Krig.

  They fell silent for a long moment, turning their attention back to the TV, where a Powerade commercial was unfolding. Krig drained his beer.

  “So, I watched that Manitoba video last night,” said Jared.

  “And?”

  “Meh. I’m just not convinced. The footage was sorta lame. It was just kind of a blob moving along the shoreline. It could’ve been anything — a fisherman in dark clothes. And why is the video always blurry? Always. Don’t most cameras these days have some sort of auto focus or whatever?”

  “The footage is totally bunk,” said Krig, draining the last of his Kilt Lifter, even as Molly approached with their pints. “I could’ve told you that. That’s why I wanted you to watch it.”

  Molly was all business when she delivered the beers. She didn’t even look at Jared this time. Krig didn’t look at Molly, either, which Jared supposed was a good sign. At least maybe Krig knew how to give up.

  “First of all, the gait is all wrong,” Krig said, once Molly was out of earshot. “If you watch the Patterson-Gimlin footage, you’ll see the carriage is lower. That blob in Manitoba isn’t bending its knees. The anatomical proportions are all wrong.”

  “How can you even tell from that crappy footage?”

  “Dude, I’ve been studying Cryptoids — specifically Bigfoot — for twelve years. The P.-G. footage is the real deal, I’m telling you.”

  “But they already proved it was a hoax.”

  “The hoax was a hoax. If you’re talking about that BBC baloney — everyone knows that’s crap. There’s been a busload of guys over the years who claimed to be the guy in the suit. So where’s the sui
t? Tell me that.”

  “I still think that shiny thing is a zipper.”

  “That’s just reflected sunlight. They proved the bell was a load of crap. Dude, did you watch Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, or what?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I gave that to you two weeks ago.”

  “Janis won’t watch it, Krig. You’ve gotta understand. We’re on a steady diet of Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes. I’m lucky if I get to choose one movie a month, and I’m not going to pick Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. I just can’t do that. She’s still giving me shit about Behind Enemy Lines, and freakin’ Owen Wilson was in that. What is she going to say when I put in a video — a video, no less, not even a DVD — where they keep playing the Patterson-Gimlit foot —”

  “Gimlin.”

  “Gimlin footage over and over and —”

  “So you did watch it, then?”

  “Just a couple seconds. Look, the only reason I could watch the Manitoba thing was that it was sixteen seconds long.”

  Krig gave his beer a little swish. “I’m glad I’m not married. That would suck.”

  “You’re lucky,” lied Jared.

  Both men took a couple of silent pulls off their beers, and gave SportsCenter a glance. It was the debacle in Cleveland.

  Nursing his Kilt Lifter, Krig felt the heat of a familiar shame. “You think I’m full of shit,” he said. “Admit it. You don’t actually believe me about what happened. You think I’m just making it up to get attention.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You’ve been totally skeptical all along.”

  “You yourself said it was pitch black. You even thought you might have dreamed the whole thing. What am I supposed to think? I totally believe something happened to you up there.”

  “Something?”

  “It’s all so unclear to me, Krig — to you. I just think whatever. People see what they want to see. And I’m not saying you didn’t see anything.”

  “Why would I want to see Bigfoot? I mean, if I can see anything I want to, why don’t I see Gwyneth Paltrow rubbing my feet every night after dinner? Why don’t I see myself playing two-guard for the Spurs? What, I want to see myself damn near shitting my pants in the woods in the dead of night, cowering like a fucking rabbit under a bush, clutching an aluminum bat?”

  “Well, admit it, Krig. You want Bigfoot to exist, right?”

  “Yeah, okay, fine. So what? What’s wrong with that? I think all kinds of stuff exists that we haven’t discovered yet. Look at the panda bear — for hundreds of years everybody thought they were a myth. Look at dark matter, or black holes, or all those weird-ass glowing jellyfish and stuff they’re discovering at the bottom of the ocean. It’s not like I’m fooling myself by thinking that there’s still stuff to be discovered. Even if they do have Wi-Fi in Papua New Guinea.”

  “I’m just saying — shit, I don’t really even know what I’m saying, Krig. You probably did have an encounter. Let’s just say that I’m not overwhelmed by the Peterson —”

  “Patterson.”

  “The Patterson footage, that’s all. That big clump of fur on his face —”

  “Her.”

  “It looks fake. It looks like a novelty beard. And he’s got —”

  “She.”

  “She’s got a weird mouth. Those lips look like hot dogs. And there’s no hair in that one little strip around the eyes.”

  “Duh.”

  “It’s just too boxy. The hair would thin out or whatever. It wouldn’t just stop in a perfectly rectangular strip. It looks silly to me. And isn’t six foot seven kind of short for a Bigfoot? I thought they were like eight feet tall.”

  “Just watch Legend Meets Science, dude. The whole thing. They address all that stuff.”

  “All right, okay, I’ll watch it in my office on Monday.” Jared checked his watch and downed the rest of his beer in a single long gulp. “Shit, gotta go.”

  “You just got here.”

  “I know, I’m supposed to be at the video store. Fucking Jane Eyre or some shit. I just popped in for a beer. Sorry, man, you know how it is.”

  “Yeah,” said Krig. “I know how it is.”

  “See you Monday.”

  “What about the M’s game on Sunday?”

  “No can do. We’ve got a baby shower.” Jared fished out his wallet and dropped two twenties on the bar. “I got this one,” he said. “Sorry about bailing.”

  Once Jared made his exit, Krig finished his beer and fidgeted restlessly with the glass for a few minutes, half watching SportsCenter, which had rolled over and begun repeating the same highlights from the five o’clock hour. Molly had disappeared into the kitchen a good ten minutes ago to box his food. Probably out back smoking. The Bushwhacker felt dead. Even Jerry Rhinehalter wasn’t around. Just as Molly reappeared with Krig’s boxed appetizers, Krig dropped an additional twenty on the bar and walked out without a word or glance at Molly. Who the hell wants leftover oysters anyway?

  The stars popped cold and white, but Krig paid them little notice as he ambled across the parking lot toward the Goat. The crisp bite of fall infused the air, but Krig hardly noticed that either. When he guided the Goat north onto Route 101, without the accompaniment of Van Halen, or the Stones, or even Billy Squier — indeed, it felt as though his life no longer had a sound track — Krig didn’t leave any rubber in his wake. The traffic was light. All of Port Bonita was dead. Krig slumped lower than usual in his seat as he proceeded over the hump past KFC and Taco Bell. To his own surprise, he crawled right by the hallowed lights of Circle K without getting his customary six-pack for the bluff. His senses were dull enough already.

  As always, the park gate was closed after dusk, so Krig parked on Kitchen-Dick Road, hopped the bar, and hiked the quarter mile through the grassy meadow to the bluff. The wind knifing in off the strait was so sharp that Krig couldn’t ignore it, and he walked with his arms folded for warmth. At the first turnout, he didn’t proceed to the high spot overlooking the slide cleft, as he normally would. Instead, he just stood at the split-rail fence in front of the darkened picnic area and stuffed his hands in his pockets, gazing west. The lights of Port Bonita — from the newly developed stretch east of town, to the hills west of Ediz Hook — burned cold and clear along the strait. The little lights filled the bottomlands: purple and yellow and green and white. They spilled over into the hollows, where they began a gentle rise up the foothills below Hurricane Ridge. There was even a smattering of lights on the ridge itself. Dead and still spreading.

  For nearly a half hour, Krig turned his face to the wind and endeavored to see the lights of Port Bonita as though for the first time, presuming by the sheer force of will to see in the distant winking lights an unfamiliar city, a whole new set of possibilities. But try as he might, Port Bonita was still Port Bonita.

  the river giveth

  OCTOBER 1890

  The child grew to trust her chubby legs, though they failed her when she gave the slightest pause, and pitching backward on her rump, she knew not frustration but only a fleeting impatience to move forward. She grew to understand that the scented breeze and the light of day were things outside of herself. She began to see the world as the world. Tiny birds flitted in and out of the brush, and the swishing treetops painted invisible circles in the sky, and the silver and white flashing miracle in front of her, with its rumbling and roaring, its hissing and tinkling, gave off a cool breeze all its own. All that fell under her gaze or touch, it seemed, was a revelation to the watchful eyes of her father, too, as he sprawled out on the bank with his papers and his pipe. With each discovery grew the irrepressible impulse to master all that was outside of herself. And so she touched and smelled and tasted the world, paused to inspect it, and spin it within her tiny fingers — the brittle husk of a pinecone, the peeling red length of a madrona limb, a flat rock worn as smooth as the skin of her belly. Things that sat still, and things that crawled, things that skittered across the sandy bar
in the breeze.

  FROM CHICAGO CAME improbable deadlines and a three-page letter from the board voicing their disapproval of the very cost overruns that Ethan had not only predicted and forewarned against but publicly condemned as well. The board even had the gall to insinuate that Ethan was not the man for the job — not committed to the job, were the words they used. What did they know of commitment? Ethan breathed the chalky dust of his commitment hourly, felt it drilling and blasting and hammering at his bones, while they sat in leather chairs, smoking. What did they know about unforeseen logistical hurdles, conflicted engineers, and squabbling contractors? What did they know of dredging a riverbed that refused to yield rock, shearing off cliff faces given to crumbling, taming a raging river that rose by the hour?

  Sprawled on the bank in his shirtsleeves, with his back propped against the mossy ledge, Ethan read the board’s letter for the third time with a bitterness rising in his throat.

  It occurs to the board that administrative and technical mismanagement may well have accounted for costly scheduling delays. Having taken the matter up with Mr. Lambert, the board is of the opinion that certain changes in administration may be in order.

  So, that was it? Jacob was to take charge? By what turn of events, behind which closed doors, by what plotting means had this decision come about? Why had Ethan not heard of these matters being taken up with Jacob?

  Irritably, Ethan looked up from the letter to check on Minerva and saw her lolling on the sandy bar, a safe distance from the bank.

  “I knew you were capable of a lot of things, Ethan Thornburgh,” came a voice from behind him. “But not this.”

  Ethan spun around to discover Eva, standing arms folded at a distance of ten feet. “Darling,” he said, climbing to his feet. “How did you find me?”

  Eva folded her arms tighter, as though fighting a chill. “Don’t you dare.”