Widow Walk

by Gar LaSalle

  He had lied to Emmy about her husband and son because she needed to sleep through this infection. The searchers hadn’t found Jacob, and now they were walking through the underbrush in the west evergreen woods near the Evers house to see if he turned up or was dead.

  A day after the attack, Tom Iserson had emerged from the woods and came walking up to the Crockett’s cabin, naked except for his right stocking, babbling biblical verses and profane curses.

  It took a full two days to find his wife, Rebah, cowering under a fallen tree, crazed, bawling her eyes out, broken down. The men had to talk to her for an hour before she would come out. But Jacob was nowhere to be found.

  Edwards, watching Emmy struggle with a fever that most likely would consume her, decided it would be best to order the burial of what remained of Isaac Evers. He would keep Emmy heavily sedated and deal out the terrible news when she was strong enough to receive it. His lie would not matter if she passed on, and he would be spared the pain of telling her the truth.

  Edwards officiated over Isaac’s burial the next day, Sunday, November 15th. Islanders had come from Whidbey’s four corners, arriving with gifts and condolences for Sarah and Emmy.

  By the time the ceremony started shortly before noon, a near freezing rain blew its bitter bite across the fertile homestead that Isaac and Emmy had so successfully developed. Winfield and Ben brought the cedar plank casket up from the Evers home, then all the men who had been standing by waiting moved over to help lift it off the carriage and lower it into the drenched grave.

  Corrine Evers, Isaac’s lame sister, and Missy Crockett, placed a large wreath of rosemary onto the casket as it passed by.

  After the men pulled the ropes out from the grave, as the cold rain started pounding the earth and water pooled around the edges of the coffin, they picked up shovels and covered it. When the last shovelful had been placed, Edwards stepped forward to speak:

  “We all knew Colonel Isaac Joseph Evers. He was a handsome, hardworking, visionary man. He helped all of us settle in this rough land. He and his wife, Emmy, created a homestead that is the envy of everyone here. It is a tragedy that his great effort and love have ended in this way. God has a purpose. Dear Lord Jesus and God Almighty, watch over Isaac in his journey and take care of his family, in your wisdom and mercy. Amen.”

  That was all. No one else spoke.

  The cold rain was fitting to the horror of the past several days, and the neighbors and friends had already said to each other what needed to be said. Those who knew Edwards expected no more words.

  Sarah left with Corrine across the plateau to stay with Isaac’s brother and wife.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  After the mourners had departed in their carriages, Jim Thomas stepped out of the cedar pine thicket north of the gravesite. He carried a small bundle to Isaac Evers’ grave and pulled back the loosely packed dirt near the grave’s marker. He unwrapped the woven bundle and placed its contents into the hole. It was a head, roughly carved out of cedar, its eyes painted in with blackberry juice.

  As he covered it up, he sang a little song in Salish: “Go into the dark place with these eyes open. With these eyes open.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Emmy

  Was it Isaac?

  She heard him first before she saw him, and as she got closer, walking through the Madrona saplings through a fading light, he made a raspy sound that reminded her of his sighs when he had expressed his most desperate doubts about his life.

  Each step toward him made him seem to move farther and faster away. When she pushed aside a low-hanging deodar branch, she was in a dark clearing about fifty feet at its widest.

  She saw his back moving out and away, deeper into the woods. He was weeping, she could hear.

  As she crossed the pine needle floor to follow, she heard a cry from a long way off to her right: “Mama!”

  Was that Jacob?

  When she turned to locate the sound, she saw a black-red shadow emerging from the clearing not far behind her, close enough that she could hear it panting and smell its fetid exhalation.

  She stopped, hoping it would pass by her while she held herself motionless. But it stopped too, and she could see it was watching her from its cover.

  Then the cry again. Her eyes moved in the direction of the sound, and she forgot for a moment that she was being stalked.

  When she looked again, the shadow was gone.

  Had it swept by? Where did Isaac go? Why was he crying and running away?

  Where was Jacob?

  Sarah, go get your brother, she struggled to say, but the words wouldn’t come out.

  She woke for a moment and found herself in the still of a dark room. It wasn’t hers, and then she remembered she was in Missy Crockett’s home.

  She was dripping wet; her nightgown was soaked. She pushed the light cover off and lay there exhausted, looking up at the pine wood ceiling, its rough textures becoming clearer as her eyes accommodated to the early morning light. It felt like a big coffin.

  Why was she here?

  Where was her family?

  She tried to get up from the bed, pushing herself up by the elbows, but the room faded away again.

  She was on the shore looking out at a gray chop, peering into the northern horizon, up past the huge snowcapped Olympic mountain range to the west.

  What was she looking at? She knew it was out there, whatever it was that had brought her down here, facing the chill and cut. She knew she had been watching for it for a long time, and yet, she understood that she had just gotten down to the shore a few moments ago.

  She saw it coming toward her place, getting bigger against the dull whitecaps, and as cold as she was already from the icy-angry gusts, a chill drove deeper straight through to her backbone.

  She stepped back across the beach, unable to pull her gaze away, and then stumbled back onto a barnacle-encrusted rock, cutting the heels of both her hands.

  It landed on the shore a few feet away from her and began chopping with its large beak, a massive black crow that floated halfway into the water.

  It hovered over her for a moment, dripping salt water and saliva, and then swept past her up the track to her home.

  She pushed herself up, tried to cry out: “Run, kids, run!” but nothing came forth. Ran up the path but could not get her footing and kept falling backward, backward again and again, back onto the stones below.

  Where was Isaac?

  She clawed her way up the pathway, one agonizing pull after another, and when she got to the top, she saw that her home was gone. It had never been there.

  She wiped the sand off the cuts with one quick swipe and ran back down to the beach. The specter had receded and was moving away along the coast, back north. It was carrying something on its back and in its beak, and she knew they belonged to her.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  On the third day after Isaac’s burial, Emmy’s fever broke. She slept heavily for two more days, intermittently waking, alternating between delirium and mute silence. Missy Crockett, Corrine Evers, and an Indian woman named Princess Susan attended to her, bathing her and changing her linen.

  Missy and Corrine brought Sarah in with them as often as possible. She was old enough to see someone struggling with a horrible illness, and the women had agreed that Sarah’s constitution was much like her mother’s, so she would only grow stronger with witnessing something as difficult as this, whether Emmy lived or died.

  Edwards instructed Missy to gradually start reducing the laudanum. He had seen many women die during postpartum fevers and, believing that Emmy had a chance to survive, had kept the women working the poultices, mustard plasters, and cooling baths, watching and logging every change in her movement, color, and excretions. Emmy had lost enough blood in the miscarriage that Edwards did no
t believe additional blood-letting was wise or necessary, and he had been pleased that the discharges from her private areas had never changed to the sulfurous smell that usually preceded a terminal change.

  So, he let her rest.

  The next day Emmy woke for a few minutes while being bathed and brightened when Sarah came into her view.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Emmy was on the plain overlooking the pastures and farmland. She wore the breeches she used when working the cattle in the pens below. A cooling breeze swept up her legs and pushed orange-red maple and yellow aspen leaves swirling about her knees.

  Across the plain and into the sunset, a tall man walked toward the western beach landing and disappeared over the cliff. She was now there at the embankment’s edge overlooking the shore where she had previously seen the raven specter.

  The man was Isaac. But it wasn’t him. And then he was gone.

  She looked northward again.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Emmy awoke the next day, and after eating a few bites of her first solid food since the night of the attack, she asked Missy to take her outside.

  Doctor Edwards and Ben carried her to the porch and set her on a chair prepared with blankets and a comforter. It was a warm late autumn afternoon. She could hear the cattle braying in the distance and saw a big eight-point buck walk down across the plain and back up into the woods that bordered her fields.

  Corrine and Missy fussed and talked about doing a press of cider from the apples. She saw Sarah crossing the pasture with Winfield.

  Edwards was watching her. He pulled her lower eyelids down, looked at the creases on her palm, felt her pulse, and stepped back, hesitating.

  Emmy looked up at him and at Missy.

  He stepped forward: “Emmy, Isaac’s gone. Jacob’s been taken.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Three days later, Emmy was strong enough to walk about, and the next day she asked to be taken to the gravesite.

  Edwards and Crockett lifted her off the buckboard, and Missy accompanied her and Sarah halfway, then stepped back when Emmy waved her away.

  Emmy stood there for half an hour, holding Sarah tightly and peering south across the hillside resting place onto the magnificent gently rolling homestead below. She knew that Isaac had died protecting her and her children. All the suffering and success from hard work and vision, the discipline to fashion chance and opportunity into a measurable and sustainable fortune, the heritable hope for her family—all of it had been destroyed in one night by cruel acts she still did not understand.

  Who were these people?

  What was God saying to her by this event?

  Why did Isaac fight instead of run?

  Did he know he was going to die?

  Was it a sacrifice?

  And why hadn’t she helped him?

  Why had she been so cross with him for awakening her and fumbling around in the dark?

  Why had she run and abandoned him?

  Her thoughts circled back again to Jacob. Why hadn’t she kept Jacob by her side? Where was he? Was he hurt? Did he know about his father’s death? Did he know she and Sarah were alive? Was he hungry? Was he cold? Was there someone in that savage crowd who would care for him?

  She wept. And for the first time since she had surmised from her dreams the dimensions of her personal tragedy, she felt a release that cleaned out a muddy confusion about what she could have done to protect her family. She looked west, out toward the strait, remembered the dreams about herself on the shore, then pulled Sarah closer.

  It rained for five straight days and nights.

  One week later, word came from Port Townsend that a British provisions ship had sighted two long boats heading north near the Campbell River. They had veered course and closed on the ship.

  The crew braced for an assault, but the long boats kept out of range of the ship’s small cannon and ran parallel to the ship’s course.

  The captain reported that through his telescope he glassed ten men in each boat and a small white boy in the second canoe.

  In the first long boat, a tall warrior, left arm in sling, stood facing them.

  In his right hand, he defiantly held up a severed head.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jacob

  The two long boats moved north, keeping close to the eastern shore of the sound. When they passed the first cluster of Lummi fishing houses south of Bellingham, they moved in closer, and Anah had his warriors push their way into the shallow harbor, which berthed a few lumber ships and small fishing ketches. Several Lummi canoes lined the shore beside racks of dried salmon and halibut.

  It was six a.m., and the water moved slowly with a mild outgoing tide.

  As soon as the Haida rowers got within hailing distance of the fishing village a mile away from the larger lumber vessels, they began chanting and beating their oars against the sides of their canoes. They fired two shots that rumbled across the still water, breaking the morning’s peace.

  Curious Lummi natives and white settlers emerged half awake from their shacks. The Haida began hollering and jeering.

  Anah, in the lead boat, held up Isaac’s bloodless head and screamed, “Tyee. Tyee.”

  The long boats then paddled out of the harbor moving northward. They repeated this at every village they encountered along their trek toward the rendezvous point near the mouth of the Campbell River.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jacob had fought his captors as soon as he regained consciousness on the first night and, despite being a small child, had doubled over two of the warriors with swift kicks to their groins.

  One of them, the younger of the two, pulled a knife, but Jacob saw the other Northerner, holding a bleeding wound to his chest, waive off the younger and give orders to the others in the encampment.

  Thereafter, Jacob was kept bound and slept during the journey north, drugged with a mixture of alcohol and herbs by Klixuatan’s wife.

  On the sixth night of the trek, he awoke to the old woman’s quiet, rough voice singing a song he did not understand. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness in the smoky tent, he heard the patter of rain hitting the lean-to’s sealskin covering and found himself next to another boy, a frail-looking towhead, possibly a year older than Jacob’s five years.

  The boy, also bound at feet and wrists, was coughing and shivering. “I’m sooo cold,” the boy said.

  Jacob looked about but could not make out much. He could see the flicker and shadow of a fire outside the tent, and he could smell meat roasting. He was hungry.

  “Please help me. I’m so cold,” the boy beside him said again.

  Jacob didn’t feel cold. He looked at the skins covering the boy and realized that he had more coverings on him than Jacob had himself and wondered how the boy could possibly be feeling cold.

  The boy started coughing again, and his teeth began chattering.

  Jacob wanted to say something but drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, it was starting to get light outside. The chanting had stopped. The boy next to him was breathing intermittently now with a wet, raspy gurgling choking with every inhalation. Finally, it quieted down and then stopped altogether.

  Jacob slept. When he woke up again, he was alone. Where had the boy gone?

  He came awake again with a bitter taste in his mouth and realized he had been fed. It reminded him of berries and salmon, but it was rancid and stuck in the back of his throat. He felt like throwing up.

  Now he was in the back of the long boat, facing forward for the first time, and could feel the rain and wind kicking up as the men rowing the boat quietly pushed steadily ahead.

  Where were his mother and father? Where was he being taken? He looked at the markings on the inside of the canoe. They matched the tattoos he had seen cover
ing the body of the old woman, now faded and sagging into an ugly indistinct story, that of beasts fighting and devouring each other, crows crowing, whales with big eyes and rounded teeth, animals with angry blank stares in the middle of a fierce battle.

  The old woman, wrapped in several skins and a wool blanket, sat next to him. She stared forward, singing to herself in a simple and repetitive chant. It was the same hoary voice he had heard when he was sleeping in the tent next to the boy who was coughing.

  Jacob dozed off again but awoke with a start as he heard hollering.

  The men were excited and talking loudly, pointing off to his left. He tried to sit up and saw several killer whale fins crest out of the water ten yards away. Dozens more crested on the other side of the boat. Some of the whales were small, while others were big enough to capsize the large canoes. But they just moved on.

  After a while, the men calmed down, and the silent paddling continued. It rained for what seemed like a terribly long time, and then it stopped.

  In another hour, the sun came out, and the clouds seemed to spread apart showing off the land to his right, and after another few hours, the boats moved into a small cove and beached.

  He slept in the boat.

  The next morning, he awoke to shouting as utensils and camp supplies were being thrown into the long boat. The early sunlight had just spread over the cove, and he saw the warriors looking past him out at the harbor.

  Jacob turned and saw a small ship flying a British flag resting at the south end of the bay.

  They shoved off and moved to the right of the harbor, heading north. He saw puffs of smoke from the ship, heard deep popping sounds, and then saw large splashes approximately one hundred yards short of the lead boat.

  The men in the canoes started jeering. He saw a warrior in the lead boat climb to the front and hold up a long pole. On top of the pole was a head.

  “Boston Tyee. Boston Tyee. Boston Tyee!” they all started hollering.

  The ship spread its sails and made way, and for a short while, it seemed to be gaining on the rowers. But the wind failed, and the ship fell back and began to recede from view. Soon it disappeared around the bend of the coast.