Eutopia - A novel of terrible optimism

by David Nickle

  Louise Butler pursed her lips and shook her head. “Really,” she said.

  “No,” said Ruth. “It is true. The fact of the matter is that until now, dear Father could not be certain that regular traffic through his community might not pollute it. Why—if the land were not so well-prepared, venal men might arrive and bring with them their terrible vices! Things such as cards—hard liquor—low women—”

  “Ruth!”

  She waved away her friend’s objections without even looking at her.

  “—and worst of all: dancing!”

  Jason laughed and shook his head. He didn’t have much experience with young women, and at first Ruth had sure thrown him. But it was like learning a fancy a dance step, talking with her. And he thought he was beginning to get the rhythm of her humour.

  “Sounds like your pa has some definite ideas,” he said.

  “Oh, only good ideas. Resolutely, unwaveringly good ones. For the betterment of all mankind.”

  “That so,” said Jason. “Then he and my aunt have something in common. Hello, Aunt Germaine.”

  Germaine took her seat beside Jason and straightened her skirts as Ruth Harper went on.

  “For instance: do you know that Eliada, which has just a few hundred men and their families living and working there, boasts its own hospital?”

  “That,” said Jason, “I did know as a matter of fact.”

  “Well. Here is something that you do not know. Any man or woman needing a doctor’s attention may receive it free of payment. At first, the hospital was only for those men who worked directly for my father, cutting trees or milling them. But in the past year, why—anyone in need is seen to. There are doctors and a surgery and many clean white rooms. And it is not even affiliated with a church! But financed from Father’s own purse!”

  “Fancy that,” said Jason.

  “My father is very enlightened. You need only ask him. Or failing that, his investors back in the east. They will tell you he is enlightened to a fault.”

  “Providing free doctoring for folks that need it? There’s not much fault in that.”

  “Except,” said Ruth, “when commerce is involved. Father says that by doing this, he is forestalling any of the ugly labour conflicts that beset so many of his competitors. The others are not so convinced.”

  Sam Green shook his head, which caught Ruth’s attention.

  “Why, just ask Mr. Green,” she said. “He supervises the Pinkerton men who keep the peace in Eliada. Not that they have much to do. Father does frown on violence so, and the men who work for him are not at all prone to it. Tell him, Mr. Green: all is well in fair Eliada, now and forever, and never must you so much as raise a fist to keep it so.”

  Sam Green made a fist and cleared his throat into it. “Miss Harper,” he said, looking at them from under his bowler hat, “talk like that is a good way to make the Devil laugh.”

  Ruth stifled a laugh herself.

  “What are you saying, Mr. Green?”

  “Only that things are not so peaceful as you might think.”

  Ruth frowned. “Pray tell—?”

  Sam Green gave a long sigh. “I am in dutch with your father, I fear.”

  “Oh no! Why is that? Tell us your tale.”

  “Well. I suppose that you will like the story better than him,” said Sam Green. “Just two days ago I shot three men, me and my fellows did—men dressed in sheets, in the manner of the Ku Klux Klan.”

  “They were not merely impersonating spectres? To cause you and your men to take a fright?”

  “Ruth, this sounds to be serious,” scolded Miss Butler.

  Green shook his head. “They were readying to string up a nigg—a Negro.”

  “A Negro.” Ruth’s eyebrows raised. “Do we have any of those?”

  “Yeah,” said Sam Green. “One, anyhow. He’s a doctor, too. Saved him. That’s why your father hasn’t run me and the Pinkertons out of town yet. The saving balanced the killing. But I’m not sure that is going to do the town much good. Dr. Waggoner’s going to make trouble in Eliada. Once he gets to his feet, he’s going to make trouble.”

  Ruth smiled radiantly. “Splendid!” she said. “Trouble in Paradise! Made by a Negro doctor hired by Father! And Mr. Thistledown, who is not a famous gunfighter’s son, here to witness it all with us! See, Louise? This will not be a wasted summer after all.”

  Louise blushed and looked to her lap. Jason felt the crimson coming on as well. He looked to the riverbank, which was devoid of any sign of human touch. They were in wilderness altogether.

  And the further they got, the more came Ruth Harper into her element. Jason wished he could say the same for himself. He found himself wishing again that they’d stayed put in Bonner’s Ferry. Klansmen and Negroes and gunplay: Eliada sounded like more of Cracked Wheel again, in its own particular way, and Jason was not sure he was ready for that.

  §

  Eliada came upon them late in the day. The rains had stopped, and the cloud was beginning to clear as they rounded the bend in the river that hid Mr. Harper’s grand town.

  It was not a peaceful arrival. The river ran fast at the bend, and The Eliada rode it hard. They had been through a few of the Kootenai’s rapids by then so Jason was more used to it, but he still hung on tight as the boat pitched side to side, veering through white foam and close past shallow rocks.

  He was not alone; even Ruth Harper, who was so clever and brave, so up for trouble at the start of a dull summer, sat clutching the edge of her seat as the water sprayed up high alongside and the beams of the boat complained.

  “Huzzah,” she exclaimed weakly when the river deepened and the boat became more steady. “Are we home now? We are!”

  Sure enough, there it was—contained as it was in a tantalizingly brief glimpse: a collection of rooftops and chimneys that peeked between a now much-thinner growth of trees lining the bank. The boat turned then and Eliada’s rooftops swung from view, so Jason made his way to the bow, and up a steep stair he’d found earlier. That stair took him to the top deck where the pilot worked his craft and he could get a look.

  The early evening sun showed the town to good effect. It was built on a flat stretch of river valley so behind it, the hill and forest rose to a chain of peaks that were not quite high enough for snow and bare rock. Crawling up those slopes, Jason could make out plots that had been cleared for agriculture—even what looked like some young orchards, their little trees all planted in tidy rows. Closer, the gold light caught taller wooden buildings like the ones in Cracked Wheel—general stores and hotels and such. There were more of them, though. There were even a couple of whitewashed church steeples, climbing a bit higher than the roofs of the businesses.

  They were all made insignificant by the sawmill. Near the water at the north end of town, the mill dominated all. It was not as high as that in Bonner’s Ferry. But it was high enough; and it sprawled all the way down to the water and its own set of docks—off which floated a wide crescent of logs, crossing all but a narrow channel of the river and chained in against its fast current.

  “That will be all our travelling for a time, Nephew.”

  Jason turned to see Aunt Germaine climbing out the hatch to join him. He reached down to help her. Her hand was icy cold.

  “It sure is a pretty little town,” said Jason, “although I wouldn’t call it Paradise like Miss Harper seems to think.”

  Aunt Germaine shook her head. “She is a horrible girl.”

  “She is all right.”

  “No. There was no need to press you on that ridiculous legend.”

  Jason shrugged.

  “The legend of your father, I mean,” said Aunt Germaine.

  “My father’s no legend,” said Jason. “A name’s a name. But my pa was no good. Simple as that.”

  “Well,” said Aunt Germaine, “now that we’re here, you shan’t have to consort with Miss Harper any longer. Our business is with Dr. Bergstrom. Hers—well, girls like that do not have any busines
s with serious folk. She is but a silly . . .”

  She stopped then, perhaps noting that Jason had some time ago stopped paying any attention. He was listening to something else. Something that carried across the water with a strange and compelling urgency.

  “Jason? Nephew?”

  “What’s that birdsong?” he asked her. “Sounds like a fellow whistling who forgot the tune.”

  5 - Baby Wakes

  The whistling carried like a scream across the fields—it passed across the land like a wave of wind through long grasses, from the base of fresh-planted crop, through gaps in the roofs of barns, and finally, into the crook of some tree roots at the very base of the Selkirk Mountains—where it paused.

  That crook had been home to all sorts of creatures—some squirrels, one time a fox and, as evidenced by the sneers of half-collapsed holes, an entire brood of rabbits. Centipedes too. They had all come and gone, though. All but the centipedes.

  Right now, the baby lived there.

  If it were in the habit of naming things, the baby would not have picked “baby” for itself. It was, in fact, feeling pretty grown-up, inasmuch as its limited experience would allow. Not long ago, it had separated itself from the parent and its servile brood. In so doing, it finished dealing with a good many of its contemporary siblings, who were all of them nearly as tough and determined as it was. The cuts were healing, and the teeth and nails it had lost in that struggle were coming back in.

  Pretty soon, it figured it would be walking upright again, marking its territory—making its own brood. It was getting a coalescing sense of just how grand it could become as it curled there in the crook, munching on bugs and watching the world turn. The last thing the baby wanted to hear right now was that whistling. It wanted no part of the things that whistling told it to do.

  It wanted no part of it; but neither could it refuse the call.

  So it rolled itself over, gathered its legs underneath it, and crawled outside. The ground was wet. It stank. There was no shelter, there was no clue here as to how one might find the bugs and grubs to which it had grown accustomed. Like all babies, this one was fundamentally selfish, and placed a high value on comfort and a full belly.

  But the baby didn’t have much say in the matter. The instruction spoke to something fundamental in it, below and beyond even its own unkind nature. And so: as the whistling scream had told it to do, the baby drew air in through its orifices, opened its tiny mouth, and repeated, as best it could, the message that had carried itself this far.

  Help, it whistled.

  Come, it screamed.

  And finally:

  Pass it on.

  6 - The Feeger Girls

  There was singing on the shore to send the Devil when the call came upon the Feegers of Trout Lake.

  It was the three Feeger girls, Missy and Lily and Patricia doing the singing. They stood in a circle, up to their bare ankles in the freezing water of the mountain lake, naked flesh creeping in the cold, heads turned high in the joy of their praising song. One time it had had words, but in the care of the girls those words had melted off and it was all melody and harmony and some splashing when Patricia, the eldest, set to stomping to bring their rhythm back in time.

  Day was finished—the sun long disappeared behind the bare peak of the Far Mountain, while before it the water glowed in the light of a splintered moon. All was still but for the ripples that Patricia’s foot sent to Trout Lake’s heart and all was quiet but for the sweet voices of the Feeger girls singing their song, when the call came wafting up the hill. Patricia let the song go on for what her grandmother might’ve called a couple of verses before she lifted her foot and pointed the toe so water drizzled from it, straight as a line of piss.

  Her sisters took the cue; Missy gasped and looked from one side to the other; Lily, three seasons older, shut her eyes and listened, sniffed. And Patricia held her stork pose, one foot drying in the night air, and paid heed to the call.

  “Help,” she said.

  “Come,” whispered Lily beside her.

  By the time Missy shouted “Pass it on!” Patricia was already splashing again. She splashed four more times until the water was deep enough that she could bend forward, put her arms out in front of her, and ducking her head into the icy water for just a moment, flutter her feet behind her.

  Patricia moved out bravely and purposefully; she would not let her sisters see anything but confidence. Yet inside, Patricia was filled up with a sharp, delicious fear. She had done this swim before, but never by herself—always bringing Offering. She supposed that was what she was doing now, bringing praise that had come across the land, but as their mother had told them many times: the Old Man hungers for our Love. Praise is fine—but it is not the same as Love and if you do not bring it to Him, why, He may just take it and then some.

  Was she bringing her Love now? She would say so to anyone who might ask—yet to herself, here in the cold lake? Truly?

  But as she swam, she knew one thing: she could not do anything but what she was doing now. She carried with her as much Love as there was. There were not many Feegers here to love the Old Man—not since the sickness had come upon them all a year ago. How many had they covered in stones, when they’d fallen down all poxy and coughing?

  How many were gone? Patricia was not much for counting past fingers and toes. It would be easier to count the ones left—for there were not many of those—scarcely enough to portion out their Love to the Old Man, whose hunger for it was swelling like waters behind a beaver dam.

  Some nights, it was all they could do to make it up the ridge and sing the Old Man to sleep.

  And now—was she prepared to look upon him? With Love?

  Hesitation grew in her mind, fear expanded in her middle, the further she went; but when she finally paused, it was not to turn back. It was because she had arrived. The Father was near. She shivered at what felt like a branch brush against her ankle, another thing caress her hip.

  Patricia lifted her head from the water, let her feet fall below her, and gulped the lake air. The moonlight was dim, and not much good even to her night-accustomed eyes. She could make out the sky, its canopy of stars—and she could tell the line where the sky met the mountaintops. She could feel the water moving about her, the Old Man’s will working on it.

  She drew a shaking breath, and closed her eyes and pursed her lips. She did not so much recite the call as she allowed it to pass through her.

  And as she did, the fear slaked away. For in her halting whistles, the simple message she conveyed, was a kind of peace. It felt like forgiveness. She was in the Old Man’s hands, telling Him a message from His own child, the prodigal—a message that He was happy or at least anxious to hear. She looked at the sky, at the dark mountain, and even as the line between the two grew jagged, spires like tree trunks emerging from the lake around her and blocking off the stars, as more branches, more vines seemed to wrap her middle, she thought only of Love.

  When the water fell away from her sides and she felt herself lifting over the lake, her naked flesh shivering beneath the ancient gaze in the now-encompassing shadow, she thought: There is no need to take that Love.

  I give it. And there is plenty.

  7 - The Hippocratic Oath

  “Tell me about Mister Juke,” were not the very first words Andrew Waggoner spoke after the morphine haze passed. Those were French, almost certainly profane, and in their particulars a complete mystery to the nurses who tended the doctor as he returned to himself. But if “Tell me about Mister Juke” were not his first words, they were the first ones suitable for polite company; the first ones that got any kind of answer.

  Andrew was dozing in the mid-morning when the door opened and Dr. Nils Bergstrom stepped through, alone. Dr. Bergstrom was an exceedingly thin man, and recently so. When Andrew had arrived in the autumn, Bergstrom carried his weight around his belly, and his blond-frosting-to-white mutton-chop sideburns drew attention to thick jowls. He’d undergone some sor
t of a regime over the winter—although what, Andrew couldn’t say, for he always seemed to be eating—and now the sideburns hung like drapes. He stole close to Andrew’s bedside and bent down toward his face.

  Andrew opened his eyes.

  “Tell me about Mister Juke,” he said.

  Dr. Bergstrom did nothing more than blink, twice, to indicate his surprise. He stood straight, crossed his arms and smiled.

  “You don’t want to know how you are doing first?”

  Andrew looked down at his legs, lifted each one a few inches and flexed the fingers of both his hands. One of those hands was at the end of an arm splinted to above the elbow, and moving it hurt like a knife-twist.

  “Looks like I’m all here,” he said. “It’s pretty sore.”

  “I can give you another shot, if you like.”

  “Morphine? No thank you.” Andrew knew what morphine did for men, and he knew what it did to them. On balance, he disliked it. “Thank you for offering.” He sighed.

  Dr. Bergstrom harrumphed. “You are welcome, Doctor. Now—as to your health: although you did not think to ask, I will tell you.”

  “Thank you again.”

  “You have injuries of the ligaments in your left hip and knee. Bruising and strain is what it amounts to, but I do not recommend you attempt to walk on it for at least a few days—preferably longer. Doing so will change your mind on morphine.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  Dr. Bergstrom gave him a stern look. “I am concerned about your kidneys and bowel so will be watching your emissions in that regard. You have taken a blow to your skull which is not as bad as it might have been; you have avoided serious concussion. But the coincident cuts necessitated a good deal of stitch-work. As is the case with your lower extremities, it is only a matter of time and you should be as fine as you were before the . . . attack. The more serious injury is there.” He indicated Andrew’s right arm—the arm with the splint.