To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

   — You think so?

  I see little hope that the woman or dog could have survived, but I did not say it.

  As for us, for good or ill, our entrance is sealed. Until now, we might have turned back, gone home the same way we came. No longer. We now belong to the Wolverine.

  Wolverine River, April 1885

  Dear Mr. Sloan,

  I can’t tell you what a kick I got out of the photograph of the canyon that you sent. I have it up on my refrigerator, and I like to see it every morning when I go to get the orange juice. It’s hard for me to imagine what it must be like to step out your door and into that country every day. I do believe it’s one of my greatest regrets, that I never made it up there. I should have thought some of that over better when I was laying out my life. But I suppose that’s always going to be the case.

  Good to hear you are still plugging away at the reading. There are more than a few mysteries in those pages, some that I’ve worked out over the years, and others that I’ve just settled with. You best read on and come to your own conclusions. When you’re done, we’ll compare notes. I will say that I, too, have wondered about the irregularities in the official papers versus my great-uncle’s private diaries. I suspect the Colonel was too proud to admit he had witnessed such bizarre occurrences. Or he was wary of how it would be received by his stalwart commanders.

  The advertising clippings, greeting cards, and all that must have come from a scrapbook Sophie kept. They were a popular pastime with the ladies back then. Someone in the family saw fit to dismantle it years ago, and I never did find the original book. I don’t know if someone was high grading them for profit, though I can’t see there would be much money to be made in trade cards and Christmas greetings. More likely a child in the family was using it for art projects. At least some of it remains.

  My favorite is the card with the polar bear looking as if it’s about to make a meal of a man. It was from the Colonel’s brother Harry, the Christmas before the expedition set out. Interesting story about Harry — he and the Colonel were at West Point when the Civil War broke out; my grandfather, the youngest brother, was still just a small child. The cadets were all chomping at the bit to join the fight, so they petitioned the academy and eventually were allowed to graduate early and enter the war as officers. All too quickly Harry landed in a hospital bed with battlefield injuries. He lost both his right arm and right leg. No antibiotics or much for anesthesia back then — they must have knocked him out with chloroform right in the field, sawed off the bloody limbs, and hoped for the best. Tough to imagine how he survived. He was the oldest of the brothers, and from the letters I’ve read, I think he was the one expected to do great things in the army. Instead that fell to the Colonel.

  I’m sure you’ve also found the few photographs that managed to survive the expedition. The plates must have been left at the bottom of the crate when the Indians were exposing most of them. I wish there were more.

  As for the medical references, those are from my sister Ruth’s research. She knew I had the Colonel’s old papers, and when she was visiting a few years back, she asked me about them. Come to find out, she’d never actually read any of it, so I got the boxes out, and she and I spent the next week or so poring over the letters and diaries. She got so interested, she started looking up information on 19th-century obstetrics and field medicine. Next thing I knew, she was headed out to Portland, Oregon, and visiting Fort Vancouver. The old cabin the Colonel and Sophie lived in is long since gone, but a lot of the other barracks buildings are still there in a historical park. Ruth brought back a bunch of photographs she’d taken. And while she was in Portland, she went through microfiches of old newspaper articles. I’m glad she dug those up — I’ve always thought Mr. Jenson’s fate on Perkins Island was fitting.

  With all that happened to the Colonel in Alaska, though, it was our great-aunt Sophie who really got hold of Ruth’s heart. She always said someone should write her biography, and I think she was working the nerve up to do it herself. At one point she marked everything with little yellow sticky notes, about a hundred of them, and had it all laid out in my back guest room, but it seemed to me she was just shuffling everything around and around. It was about that time she came down with the cancer, and she was gone before I knew it. That’s how it goes when you get to be my age. Makes me see that there might be some sense to having children after all, just so your entire life and all your family’s contributions aren’t relegated to Goodwill in the end.

  I enjoyed your story about the raven. They do have a comical way about them. They like to harass the dogs, too. I had a golden retriever years ago. The ravens would steal food from his bowl a piece at a time while he was barking and trying to chase off one bird, then another. It drove the dog crazy, and amused me.

  One time, though, I watched a raven snatch up a baby rabbit, carry it off into a nearby field, and rip it to shreds. It changed the way I see those birds. They are crueler than you might suppose, or maybe not cruel so much as self-serving.

  I didn’t mean to end on such a grim note. But I do hope you’ll write again when you have the chance and let me know how the reading is going.

  With regards,

  Walt

  December 22, 1884

  Merry Christmas to Allen & Sophie.

  Allen — stay warm and safe in the Far North & don’t let the polar bears get a hold of you. Your brother, Harry

  Col. James Forrester

  Fort Independence, Massachusetts

  17 November 1860

  To Allen Forrester, 2nd Class Cadet

  West Point Academy, New York

  Dear Son,

  Your mother has informed me of your intention to study toward joining the Corps of Topographical Engineers. I cannot fathom such a decision. You and I have already thoroughly laid out a strategy for your future, and I wonder that we are discussing it again.

  Let me be forthright — I will not allow you to waste your God-given talents as a soldier and leader so you can tramp about the country with a measuring stick. It has been my sincerest hope since you were a young boy that you would continue to carry the torch of honor and service that the Forresters have kept alight for generations. I am confident that between my own connections and the reputation you have already earned at the Academy, I will be able to secure you a worthy commission.

  If it is, in fact, adventure you seek rather than service to your country, I suggest you pursue it through some other means than that of your career. And I will tell you this: as an officer and leader, you will soon discover that adventure is a romantic notion, best left behind with childhood, and that you ought to be grateful for the opportunities allotted you.

  Your mother might be correct in her assessment. You are a different young man from what I was at your age. Perhaps you are not as ambitious or as desirous of a challenge. Perhaps you will be content to rest on the laurels of our family. I hope this is not so.

  I sharply advise you to reconsider your aims, and your duty to family and country, and I trust we will not need to speak of this again.

  Your father.

  Sophie Forrester

  Vancouver Barracks

  April 6, 1885

  I am convinced that all this laudanum and endless hours of sleep do my health no good. Such dreams. The worst woke me before dawn. Allen was there, but he was a stranger, and I was not myself. We ran through an old forest, and it was so dark and overgrown that the roots grabbed at our feet and the branches tore at our faces, and for all our effort, we could not make our way out. I could hear Allen’s hoarse breathing and struggle in the near shadows, but because he was a stranger to me, I dared not call out.

  April 11

  Mrs Connor and Mrs Whithers came for a visit today, but I asked Charlotte to please turn them away, tell them only that I am ill and will try to see them soon.

  I am so undone as to not be fit for company. When Charlotte brings me a basin of warm water to wash, I tremble and ca
nnot stand long enough to see to it. The girl is kind enough to help me wash my face and neck, but I know I must look a fright.

  A sickening lethargy affects me. It is the remnants of the sedative, I think, but also all these hours in bed. The sun shines through the curtains, and I lie here like a helpless invalid. It is tedious and fills me with shame, even if Dr Randall has ordered it. I no longer take the opium, as I cannot imagine it is any more wholesome for my child than it is for me, and the surgeon has agreed only because the bleeding has stopped. He takes it as good sign but says the danger is far from passed.

  There is some relief in being allowed to sit in a chair at the window for a short while each day. The nuthatches come now and then, and I caught glimpse of a hawk of some sort but could not see it clearly enough to identify. And always the chickadees find their way to our yard.

  Ridiculous it may be, but I am glad to not see that raven again.

  At last some small entertainment to report. I had moved to the front room to rest on the sofa for a change of scenery, when out in the yard, I spied two chipmunks scampering about. They chased each other, then both would be up on their hind legs, facing each other like boxers, one would hop over the other and they’d run up a fir tree, down again for another tussle on the ground. It was an amusing scene, and I thought Charlotte might enjoy seeing them. I called for her, and when she didn’t respond, I called more loudly, and I am afraid I must have sounded the alarm, for when Charlotte appeared, she had some kind of weapon in hand!

  “Good heavens, don’t shoot,” I said, only partly in jest.

  “Sorry ma’am,” she said. “Thought something was amiss.”

  I asked about the contraption, a Y-shaped piece of wood with a length of rubber tubing stretched between. She called it a “sling-shot” and with it she can shoot pebbles or small pieces of metal. And why would she possess such a weapon? Charlotte understood it was part of her employment.

  “Your Colonel wanted a girl who could cook, clean, and aim straight, just in case there was ever a need.”

  “But have you shot anything with it before?”

  “Nothing out of order,” she replied, “just a squirrel or game bird for supper now and then. But my brother Tom says it’ll drop a man at forty paces if your aim is good.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Nothing out of order indeed. Perhaps this West remains wild yet.

  We watched the chipmunks for some time out the window, but then the men could be heard going through their drills on the parade ground, and the animals were startled back into the woods.

  “I cannot tell you how much I long for the out of doors,” I said. “To feel fresh air on my face and hear birdsong.”

  True to her nature, Charlotte said nothing. I told her she had best put up her weapon, as there was no need for it now.

  Later in the day, however, she came to knock quietly at my bedroom door. When I called her in, she said in the smallest of voices, “Ma’am, I swear I didn’t tell Mrs Connor a thing. I don’t say two words to her ever.”

  It was clear she spoke the truth, and I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before — of course it was Evelyn who told the women! It is just the kind of thoughtless thing she would do.

  I thanked Charlotte, and apologized profusely for losing my temper over the matter.

  “I never seen you lose your temper, ma’am. You don’t even holler or throw any pots.” (Such a comment made me wonder about her home.)

  I teased that next time I call for her to come look out the window with me, she need not come shooting, but she remained serious and unsmiling, so I reassured her I was glad to be under her protection.

  April 15

  I exist in a suspended state between sleep and wakefulness, where nothing at all happens, yet all manner of possibilities exist. I wait to hear word of Allen. I wait to feel the quickening of life within me. I try not to dwell on the future, which seems a vast and unknown territory, but I cannot help but wonder — by this time next year, will I hold a plump, happy baby in my arms, and will dear Allen again be at my side?

  April 16

  How sharply it returns, even after all these years, that old familiar horror. Heat that roars like a cyclone through the trees, throwing embers up toward the night sky. The hellish glow. And always, always that animal cry from within the flames. In my dream, I shouted to Father, only to wake myself with my own cry.

  For a fleeting moment I thought to turn to Allen in our bed and seek his comfort as I had in nights before, but it is the middle of the day, and I am alone.

  A lady at this time frequently either feels faint, or actually faints away; she is often either giddy, or sick, or nervous, and in some instances even hysterical. Although, in rare cases, some women do not even know the precise time when they quicken.

  The sensation of “quickening” is said by many ladies to resemble the fluttering of a bird; by others it is likened to either a heaving, or a beating, or rearing sensation; accompanied, sometimes, with a frightened feeling; these flutterings, or heavings, or beatings, after the first day of quickening, usually come on half a dozen or a dozen times a day.

   — From Advice to a Wife on the Management of Herself,

  Pye Henry Chavasse, 1873

  Sophie Forrester,

  Vancouver Barracks,

  April 17, 1885

  This afternoon the dreams were so vivid that I could smell burned wood, but it was only Charlotte stoking the cook stove. Hours have since passed, she has long gone to bed and it is dark outside, yet I know I will lie here awake for some time. A body can only sleep so much of its life away.

  I wonder what conjures these memories just now. I have tried to put them out of my mind to no avail. I suspect all this lying about and worrying allows the nightmares to grow stronger and more vivid, so that I half expect to see Father outside in the rain.

  I wish I could recall him in some other way, kind and laughing, as he was when I was very small, but instead I imagine him in the end, half-naked, his wild gray beard tangled with the mat of gray hair on his chest. Old and unkempt and mad, but his body still powerful.

  I am ashamed to realize it has been nearly five years since I returned home. Are there any remains of the barn? Even when I left for normal school, already the dandelions and nettles had begun to sprout in the ashes, so it has likely succumbed to the forest by now. What of the charred rafters, or the blackened door frame? I recall that it stood alone, like a ghostly entrance.

  And his sculptures? Father said the marble would harden with time and shed off the elements, yet I cannot guess how they have fared. Galloping horses, the women in their flowing gowns, griffins, angels, tragic beasts. The way they are littered among the trails and meadows, as a child I always pictured a giant letting them fall them from his pocket like pebbles as he walked.

  It was not entirely as magical as I should like to remember. All his wages spent on marble, even when we owed the grocer. Father carting the great slabs behind old Molly the mule as he searched for the perfect meadow or the precise light through the trees, so that even I had to fear for his sanity.

  Yet they are astonishing creations. Once the baby is born, we will visit Mother, and Allen will be able to see them at last. The paths are surely grown over, but I could find my way to the bear. He is dearest to me. Full-sized, taller than a man, so that I remember Father used a footstool as he worked. Such a dramatic pose, standing on his hind legs, roaring at the sky, teeth and claws carved sharply into the marble. I remember those summer days when Father was away at the quarry, and I would sit at the bear’s feet and watch the forest chickadees gathered atop his head. A mesmerizing kind of scene, for of course the little birds did not know to be afraid; the bear was frozen harmlessly in rock, but as they fluttered and landed upon him, I could see his ferocious agony.

  I am sorry the bear is broken now — I do not know if Father could have mended him if he tried. The sledgehammer had knocked away one of his front paws, and he was riddled with c
hips and cracks. Still, I should like to see him again.

  Even after all these years I can taste the air with its marble dust and green summer leaves. I can hear the echo of mallet and chisel and feel the sunlight that filtered down through the canopy. I was nearly as wild as Father those summer days, my legs bare, my hair untied, and my nose sunburned.

  There is a mythical element to our childhood, it seems, that stays with us always. When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear, and guilt. With the passing of the years, however, those memories become distant and malleable, and we shape them into the stories of who we are. We are brave, or we are cowardly. We are loving, or we are cruel.

  All my life, I have only considered this through the eyes of the child. Yet now, my view begins to shift. More than anything I want to hold this little baby, to feel his warm weight in my arms and kiss his small fingers. Yet, too, it is such solemn responsibility. To think that these next years, as Allen and I make choices that will seem to us so mundane and ordinary, we will shape our child’s vision of the world.

  April 18

  Father is very much with me just now. It is something of these dreams, but also the time of day. Such a warm and pleasant evening, even observed from the confines of this bedroom. For a few precious minutes as the sun descended, through the doorway I could see that the hall and kitchen was cast in a golden glow, and as Charlotte swept, the dust specks were suspended in the shafts of light. Father would have thought the scene very pretty. The fairy hour, the magical hour, when light moves from gold to silver. A bittersweet nostalgia settles upon me.

  Father once told me that every artist leaves behind a self-portrait, whether he intends to or not. In my childish imagination, I pictured a cool, white marble Father, standing silently in the forest. I asked him when he would carve it.