To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

  One of the men seems to serve as a kind of traveling priest among the Midnooskies. While most of the Indians keep their hair neatly cropped & brushed with bone comb, this man’s hair hangs in a three-foot tangle down his back. He is adorned with many necklaces, teeth, & claws, so that he makes a rattling noise as he walks. Equally disconcerting is his lazy eye that rolls upwards so that it is difficult to know where he is looking.

  When this shaman overheard my story of the infant, he asked a question, repeated it many times as we tried to comprehend.

   — I think he’s asking if you are a father, if you have children back home, Tillman said at last.

  The question was unexpected.

   — Soon, I answered.

  Tillman cradled his arms, rocked them as if he held a baby. The shaman nodded.

  Sophie Forrester

  Vancouver Barracks

  May 7, 1885

  What is it that causes us to fall in love? We are met with those first, initial glimpses — a kind of curiosity, a longing for that which is both familiar and unknown in the other. And then comes the surprise of discovery; we share certain aspirations, certain appreciations, and that which is different excites us. Before each other, we are moved to bravery and we come to reveal more and more of ourselves, and when we do, those very traits that caused us some embarrassment or shame become beautiful in ways we did not understand before, and the entire world becomes more beautiful for it. There are, too, those intimate and nearly primitive stirrings, the scent at the neck, the delicious tremble of skin and breath. Yet for all their pleasures, they are as tenuous as light and air, and demand no fidelity.

  And then there is this: Does not love depend on some belief in the future, some expectation beyond the delight of the moment? We fall in love because we imagine a certain life together. We will marry. We will laugh and dance together. We will have children.

  When expectation falls to ruins, what is there left for love?

  May 9

  My words were so poorly framed, and I am sure now I have done wrong. It would have been better to have deceived. I should have written to Allen of tulips and blossoms in the apple trees, the comforts of this small house, what good company I find in Charlotte and the women of the barracks. Or perhaps it would have best to have not written at all.

  Yet it cannot be undone, as the letter is already sent to the USS Corwin as it patrols Alaska’s coast. It seems impossible to imagine, but there is some chance it will find its way into Allen’s hands, and I am sorry for it.

  “You’d do best to keep your letter uplifting,” Mrs Connor said when she came to tell me of the revenue cutter’s return to Alaska.

  I had all intentions of following her advice, until I set pen to paper.

  My dearest Allen . . . with those words, it was as if a brittle dam gave way within me. How could I not tell you of my broken heart? These weeks I have held myself together, I have not wept in front of Mrs Connor or Evelyn or even Charlotte. But oh Allen. I see now that you are more than husband or lover, for you are my dearest friend. I have a freeness of emotion with you that I have never before experienced. It frightens me to think that the very thing that would ease my pain — your love — might be endangered just when I am most in need of it. What if your affection falters, knowing that I cannot have children and that the life we imagined is no longer to be? Worst yet, what if you blame me? Maybe there was something I could have done to save our little one. I was too eager to be out of bed, too insistent on going for walks. Petty little walks. Is it possible that our child would still be alive within me if I been more patient? Perhaps you will wonder the same.

  And then, in a last great torrent of emotion, I wrote of my worst fear — that you will not return home from this expedition.

  Mrs Connor had brought me the recent edition of the Portland newspaper. Did she do so in full knowledge that I would see the article? The bodies of Commander Goodwin and his polar crew have been found on a remote island off the coast of Siberia. They were starved and frozen to death, their ship long lost to the ice, but through all their suffering, the commander kept his log books and papers safe. “His private diaries were found at his side and will be delivered to his wife.”

  I cannot help but think of this poor woman, who for three years did not know the fate of her husband. Now she will read of his last days in his own handwriting. I wonder — did he leave her some final farewell, and would it offer comfort or only be a new kind of torture?

  It is a possibility that I have endeavored to put out of my mind, that one might exist in a state of unknowing for years, only to be delivered the worst news in the end.

  Yet, for your sake my Allen, I should have remained resolute.

  My thoughts are soaked in guilt; the wretched letter I have sent, the death of our unborn child, the afternoon I stole the book and the moment I read of my deformed womb, the day I wrote to Mother wishing she would not come and the days I did not write to her at all, and all the way back to when I saw Father standing with his lantern, raging at the night, and I pretended not to hear his cries.

  Ah, Mr Pruitt, you are not alone with your blame and loathing. I wonder that any life has ever been confined to golden dances and fine stitches and silk, for it seems to me that suffering knows no class or rank, gender or age, and we each of us brave our own darkness.

  May 10

  Sweet Charlotte. All this time I have tried to shield her from my bleak mood, but today she caught me at my worst. My hands and feet are swollen, my body so waterlogged and wretched from my failed maternity so that I can barely stand and tend to the simplest of chores, but I was determined to do one useful thing. She found me cursing and weeping as I tried to thread a needle to mend a tear in my nightgown. I did not know she was behind me until I felt her small hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s all right, ma’am. I can sew that all right.”

  I did not have the strength to conceal my emotions, so I kept my eyes down on the needle and said I would manage, and promised I would compose myself in time. Yet then I did quite the opposite, and began to sob openly. Charlotte’s arms were around me and she patted me gently all the time I cried.

  “I swear babies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, ma’am,” she said. “They’re always hollering and wetting themselves and spitting up, and they won’t give you any blessed peace. Sometimes my mam says she’d like to run off and be a nun but she doesn’t think the church’ll have her.”

  For the girl to be so callous to my grief! Utterly oblivious, the girl continued talking, until slowly I began to find some unexpected humor in it.

  “It’s true,” Charlotte went on. “One time when my brothers got to fighting and the littlest was screaming like a banshee and I by accident burnt up my good shoes by the woodstove, Mam threw her apron down and walked right out of the house, left the door wide open, and she got nearly to town before Da picked her up in the wagon. He put her in a room at the hotel for the night, saying she could have it all to herself, with a hot bath and a new dress, if only she would come home the next day. She came back, and I’m glad she did, but I don’t think I would have, if I was her. I’m decided — I’m only having dogs and goats, but no babies.”

  I started to laugh then, and she did, too.

  May 12

  Only one of Father’s sculptures did I not like to see. His Pietà . The word was mysterious to me as a child, and I did not recognize the weeping woman. If only Mother had ever walked down the path into the woods and seen it, I like to imagine that she would have admired it, even with its Catholic effect.

  It frightened me, however, even more than his sculptures of pagan gods or the lion hunter that crouched in the densest part of the forest. It was the woman’s face, shaped into a melting and howling cry, that horrified me, but also something about the awful weight of the dead man laid out across her lap. He was too heavy for her, he nearly crushed her, and even though I could not understand it fully, it seemed to
me an unnatural scene.

  “It is her own son, her dead child,” Father said.

  He would not look away. Everywhere, even in the blackest abyss, he believed one might witness the divine. The shadows and contrast — absence itself — as important as the light and marble, for one cannot exist without the other.

  May 13

  Mr MacGillivray found me in the yard today, and I am afraid this time it was I who wanted to turn away and pretend I did not seem him approaching, but then he called out his friendly greeting.

  “How are you today, Mother?” And then, as he neared me, “But where is your chair, Mrs Forrester?”

  “I am no longer in need of it, I am afraid.”

  Such insufficient words. Yet he must have read in my expression the true meaning, for he did not ask anything more of me but only said, “I am sorry to hear that, my dear. Sorry indeed.”

  He offered his arm to me then, and together we walked back toward the house, fallen plum blossoms at our feet and the evening sun in our eyes.

  A miracle, it seems to me, that a man scarred by the cruelest of battlefields could harbor such compassion for my small loss.

  May 14

  I have been thinking of light, the way it collected in the rain drops that morning I was so full of joy, and the way it shifts and moves in unexpected ways, so that at times this cabin is dark and cool and the next filled with golden warmth.

  Father spoke of a light that is older than the stars, a divine light that is fleeting yet always present if only one could recognize it. It pours in and out of the souls of the living and dead, gathers in the quiet places in the forest, and on occasion, might reveal itself in the rarest of true art.

  The entirety of his life was devoted to the hope that someday he would create a sculpture so perfectly carved and balanced, set in just the right place among the trees, that it would be capable of reflecting this light. He had seen it in in the works of others, yet he believed he had failed in his own.

  I wish he could have known the truth. Just weeks after he died, I went to see the bear. It was the end of an autumn day, and as I stepped into the meadow, the light of the setting sun was cooling from oranges and reds to the bluer shades.

  He had never looked so alive; shadows dipped and curved along his outstretched claws, his fur and muscles seemed poised for life, and for a moment, the sun just touching the horizon, the marble seemed to be formed of translucent light itself.

  I had no doubt of what I was witnessing — this was not simply a flattering cast of sunset; this was the light Father had sought his entire life. The nearest I can describe is when Father took the back off a piano and showed me how a strong, clear note could cause other strings to vibrate without ever setting finger to them. He said the strings were resonating in sympathy to that pure sound. So it was within me.

  Shall I allow myself to believe in an immortal soul? If so, then I am certain it was Father’s spirit that gathered with the divine light of the world and radiated from that finely carved marble.

  He always looked to his angels and gods and his Pietà . He never thought to look so near.

  May 16

  There is not much time. I could run in five different directions, but today Charlotte and I began by removing all the dried goods from the pantry and then stripping the shelves from one wall, because it was all that I could think to do for now.

  “Ma’am are you sure you’re feeling well enough? Shouldn’t you rest a while? But ma’am, where are we going to put all this?”

  I had forgotten all about the crocks and jars and sacks — flour, sugar, rolled oats, coffee — that we had piled on the floor.

  “The dining room table,” I told her at last. We never use it.

  Next we set to taking down the shelves. A chill sweat plagued me from the effort, as I am still weak from my long confinement, but Charlotte is adept with hammer and pry bar. She hesitated at first, as if we did some reprehensible destruction, but I assumed full responsibility and I think she came to relish the task. (In fact, she spoke more words than ever I heard from her, mostly of a rough and colorful nature. “Sorry ma’am,” she said each time she cursed. “That’s why Mam’s always telling me to keep my mouth shut. She says blames Da and my brothers, but she swears just as good as any of them.”)

  Dismantling the pantry took much longer than I expected, and we were dead tired by the end of day. Tomorrow, I told her, we will plug any cracks with rags.

  We must get rid of the light. Every last bit of it.

  Lieut. Col. Allen Forrester

  May 15, 1885

  The Indians have become accustomed to our presence so even the young ones do not hide from us. Though it remains cold in the shade, with patches of snow in the forest, the children run about nearly naked. They are often joined by one or two of the many half-wild dogs that live with the Midnooskies.

  This midday I observed a group of boys playing a string game that reminded me much of cat’s-cradle. The string was formed from dried animal sinew which they had tied into a large loop. They wove it between their fingers to form different shapes.

  When they saw that I watched them, they held up each string picture so I could clearly see. The first was of a mountain. I recognized it even before they pointed to the range to the north.

   — Very good, I said.

  My tone must have been too stern, for they frowned, whispered to each other. Once I smiled, nodded to them, they continued with renewed excitement.

  Next they made a star. The horns of a tebay. Then came a complicated interlock of strings that I could not make out. When I shook my head that I did not understand, one small boy pointed to his own ribs. Evidently it was a rib cage. They continued for some time, weaving their pictures.

  There was one that was my favorite. I wish Sophie could have seen it. The string & hands formed the shape of a bird. Working together, two of the children were even able to make the wings flap.

  May 16

  Pruitt at last sits up, is aware of his surroundings. The woman who tends him seems to be an outsider among these people. She is well taller than most of the Indians, her skin a paler shade. She carries herself proudly, although I suspect by the way she is treated by the others that she is a slave. She is gentle enough with Pruitt, assists him in sitting up to eat. Yet she expresses no emotion in her dealings with him, neither fear nor affection, but rather complete indifference.

  Tillman causes me some anxiety. Already he has scuffled with some of the Midnooskies who have offended him in one way or another. This morning, he caught an Indian removing the artificial horizon from Pruitt’s belongings. Tillman yelled at him, yanked the instruments from his hands, shoved the man to the ground. The Indian jumped to his feet with ax at the ready. It only flamed Tillman’s anger. No doubt it would have come to dangerous blows had I not stepped between the two.

  Tillman is not cautious enough around these Indians, but dallies with the young women, throws himself headlong into confrontation. The Midnooskies seem peaceable enough, but I remind him to check himself — we remain at their mercy.

  Oregon Post

  MURDER IN ALASKA

  May 4, 1885 — News has arrived from Alaska that Indians have murdered the local trading man on Perkins Island.

  Mr. Wesley Jenson, operator of the Alaska Commercial Co. trading store at Perkins Island, was shot down inside his own bed in the early morning hours of April 30. This is not the first instance of hostility between Mr. Jenson and the local Indian population. Last month, the USS Pinta, under the leadership of Lieut.-Commander Daley, responded to an uprising on the island in which the trader shot an attacking Indian.

  According to reports from Sitka, Alaska, the murder of Mr. Jenson followed several days of mayhem. The Indians had accused Mr. Jenson of causing injury to a young squaw. Three days later, the woman’s husband and uncle confronted the trader at his store. It seemed violence was to be averted when Mr. Jenson told the Indians that they were mistaken and th
at they should go back to their own camp. In the early morning hours, however, the two Indians returned and shot Mr. Jenson as he slept in his bed.

  Commander Daley reports that the killers were eventually captured by Lieut. John Lowry. The Indians quickly declared their crimes, claiming the murder was in revenge for Mr. Jenson’s mistreatment of a young woman on that island. According to Daley, homebrewed alcohol and the supposed witchcraft of a medicine man on the island also contributed to the violence.

  The two Indians are in custody and being transported by steamer to San Francisco, where they will stand trial for the murder.

  61°36’ N

  143°45’ W

  Barometer: 29.18

  54°F, exposed bulb

  42°F, wet bulb

  Dew point: 20

  Relative humidity: 26

  I am weary of these days of my own mind. Not the disemboweled, disembodied, charred stumps, not the blackened fields that stretch to the back of my brain. These are mere wounds to flesh and memory that I might endure. I speak to the shadows. Here, and here again, beneath my very skin. They will not leave me be.

  I said kill the bawling newborn. What difference will it make? The Colonel would not meet my eyes. He feared the sight of my sick weakness but it is worse, Colonel, oh so much worse. I am worthless weak coward but more appalling I am only this: a true specimen of humanity.

  Once my heart was full and trusting. I believed. A soldier’s shot always true. A soldier’s ways steady and forthright. I would wear that code like a mantle. At Elk Creek, I came to a hard truth: the mantle is threadbare, the wind passes through it.

  I would believe again if I could. In goodness. In magnificence. In simple benevolence. Yet even in these far and ice valleys, mankind is no different, just more poorly armed. Strip away psychrometer and sextant, carbines and glass plates, skin shifts and quills and painted faces, and we are the same. Quivering maws. Gluttonous. Covetous. Fearful. We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods.