A Gift Upon the Shore (4 page)

Mary's fear dissolved as it would if she'd met a friend of many years on this remote, forest-girded road. She didn't understand that, but neither did she question it.

The woman knelt beside her, regarding her with concern but no surprise. She asked, “What happened to you?”

Mary didn't try to answer that. She wanted to say, I
know you
. Instead, she asked, “Who are you?”

The woman answered, “I'm Rachel Morrow.”

—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,
TO FLUSH, MY DOG
(1844)

S
hadow stretches every fiber for her tumultuous runs after gulls, unaware, apparently, of the insurmountable advantage wings give them. At the end of each chase she returns to me, pattering along on the delicate feet of her mirror image in the sea-wet sand, and I remember the first Shadow. Rachel's Shadow. Like her namesake, this Shadow is mostly black, a silky black like the waters of the night, with white stockings, belly, and ruff, white at the tip of her plume of a tail. Russet marks the divisions of black and white, forms expressive commas above her eyes. She is a replicate of the first Shadow, and from the moment I saw her as a blind, wavering pup, I claimed her as my own and named her for her ancestor, the good mother of our canine tribe.

Topaz would have been a good mother, too, but there are no throwbacks to remind me of her.

How many generations did the first Shadow and Sparky beget? I can't remember, and the bloodlines were muddied—or invigorated—by feral dogs and by Agate, whom Rachel and I stole as a pup from a feral bitch. The dogs at Amarna now—there are only six since Desdemona died this winter—tend to pointed noses, long hair, upright ears, with black the predominant color, although Agate's genes manifest themselves occasionally, as they have in Stickeen and Diamond, in a leggy sturdiness and tawny coat. Sparky was a mongrel, part spaniel, part terrier, black except for the white locket on his chest; he had the tenacity typical of terriers. I see his personality in his descendants more than his physical attributes.

Is that anthropomorphism, to think of personality in animals?

Perhaps. But I've lived too intimately with animals not to recognize in them the existence of unique characteristics of mind.

I look down at the sand, at my tracks: drag lines between each print, the holes made by my cane like periods punctuating terse sentences. Then I look ahead and choose a log as a convenient resting place. I make my way up the slope of the beach and ease down on the weather-polished back of the log. To the north looms the dark, basalt wall of the Knob, at its base a tumble of rocks terraced by the sea that even on this calm day strikes with white detonations and rains spray into the tide pools.

Shadow is sniffing about in the rocks, and I reach for the silent whistle on its chain around my neck. What she might find to eat on the beach can harbor salmonella and prove a deadly repast. I blow at the whistle, hearing only a faint wheeze, but Shadow looks up and lopes toward me. The whistle was Rachel's, and it has served well through all the generations the first Shadow and Sparky begat.

When she reaches me, fur beaded with water and sand from her futile pursuits of gulls, she lies down at my feet and smiles at me.

Anthropomorphism again?

I am the alpha in Shadow's mixed species pack. She trusts me and lets me dominate her and seems to enjoy physical contact with me. She moves closer, presses her forehead against my leg, and she knows I'll stroke her head, scratch her back. It's bonding behavior, I suppose, and it works. I'm bonded to her as I seldom was to humans.

But she stiffens now, looks intently to the south, gives a sharp bark, then catapults into a run toward the figure walking up the beach.

Stephen. I told him to meet me here this afternoon. I watch, laughing, but a little envious, as he runs exuberantly, with the unaware grace of youth, to greet Shadow, then runs with her until they reach me, waiting inert and weary on the log. He isn't even panting.

“Good day, Mary.”

“Good day to you, Stephen. You and Jeremiah and Jonathan certainly did yourselves proud on your fishing expedition.”

He nods, grinning proudly. “The salmon run's the best I've ever seen. We could've brought back more than the one wagonload, if we had a way to take care of them. Jeremiah says we should build a bigger smokehouse.”

Jerry and the boys were gone for two days collecting their bounty. They returned with it yesterday evening, and this morning the women and girls were busy cleaning the fish and hanging them in the smokehouse.

I remember a time when Rachel and I wondered if we'd ever see another salmon running the Coho River.

Stephen sits beside me, legs stretched out, heels digging into the sand. “Are you going to tell me more about your story, your . . . Chronicle?”

His interest pleases me, even if it's still only curiosity. “Yes, of course. But most of this part still has to come out of my memory. I hadn't begun my occasional diary yet.”

“How can you remember things that happened so long ago?”

“Sometimes—at least, at my age—things that happened long ago are more vivid than things that happened just yesterday.”

He seems to consider that, then: “What happened after Rachel found you?”

I look out at the tumbling breakers and back into memory. “Well, she went to get Jim and Connie Acres. They were her nearest neighbors. Jim brought his old brown Dodge van. He was a big man, hair like those clouds, white on top, gray on the edges. I remember when he carried me to the van, I held on to him like a frightened child, and he smelled of soap and . . . it seemed like sage. He reminded me of my father, and that made me cry.” Now I can smile at that memory, at Jim assuring me I was safe. He didn't understand why I was crying, and I was too weak to explain.

Stephen prompts me. “Did you come to Amarna then?”

“Yes. When we reached the house, Jim carried me inside and put me in the bed in the spare room. Well, it's Jeremiah's room now, and it was mine until after Rachel died. Anyway, once I was in bed, Connie took over. She was a paramedic. A doctor of sorts.”

“What did she look like?”

The memory is poignantly clear. Constanza Jensen Acres, of mixed ancestry that combined so beautifully. “Well, she was tall and thin, Stephen, and her hair was salt-and-pepper gray. She moved like a dancer. An amazing woman. And within an hour she had me numbed with a local anesthetic and the wound cleaned, sutured, and bandaged. She plied me with antibiotics and gave me a tetanus shot. The wound wasn't serious, but I'd lost a lot of blood. Anyway, I went to sleep, and it was a long time before I woke up enough even to know where I was. I remember lying on that narrow bed wondering what kind of hospital they had in Shiloh where the walls were wood-paneled and lined with bookshelves. Then it began to dawn on me that I wasn't in a hospital at all when I saw the paintings on the wall across from me. They were all abstracts: amorphous forms and colors that seemed to glow. I thought I saw images in them I recognized, yet when I tried to name them, they vanished.”

Then I look down at Shadow. “I was
sure
I wasn't in a hospital when I saw Shadow asleep at the foot of the bed. The first Shadow, I mean. As soon as I moved, she jumped off the bed and started barking, then Topaz appeared in the doorway, barking too. Finally, Rachel came to quiet them. She sat in a chair by the bed and answered questions for me. You know, where am I, what happened, that sort of thing.”

Stephen leans down to stroke Shadow's head. “You knew then you'd come home, didn't you?”

I consider his question, knowing that to him it is rhetorical. He doesn't understand that I lived in a world of myriad alternatives, that I had another vision of
home
.

“No, Stephen, I only knew then that I'd found a friend. That was miracle enough.”

Nor does he understand how rare it was then, finding a friend. I wonder if he really knows what the word means. There are so few people in his world, and they're all family, all part of his tribe.

He turns, studying me intently. “Mary, what was Rachel like? I mean, you talk about her all the time, and you showed us the pictures of her, but I don't really know what she was like.”

I nod, pausing before I answer. “Well, the first thing you should understand about Rachel is that she was an artist. Her life centered on art. Sometimes people bought her paintings. Not many by the time I met her. Most people didn't have the money to spare for what was considered a luxury. Yet art was one of the first expressions of our humanity, Stephen. Cro-Magnon didn't consider it a luxury. Anyway, Rachel was fifty years old when I came to Amarna. She'd lived alone here for twenty years and never married or had children.”

“Why didn't she have children? Was she a Barren?” Stephen doesn't ask why she didn't marry. That institution means little to him.

“No, she wasn't a Barren. She chose to remain childless because at that point in our history, she considered bringing more children into the world a crime against humanity.”

His dark eyes widen. “A
crime
?”

“Yes. I've told you about the billions of people burdening this small planet, but I know it's impossible for you to imagine them. Rachel said that nature wouldn't tolerate too many of anything, wouldn't tolerate imbalance. The scales were shifting even then. She didn't have children because she was too capable of loving them, and she'd seen the writing on the wall.”

“Like Daniel.
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin
.” Then with a perplexed frown: “But what writing did Rachel see?”

“A balance
will
be struck. That's what she saw.”

The breakers turn slowly like liquid green glass, crash into white froth, and I remember the seas of years past, remember watching them with Rachel. The balance was indeed struck. But waves have broken on this shore for millennia and will continue to do so for millennia to come, whatever humankind's fate. Rachel understood that splendid indifference, and she wasn't afraid of it.

“And yet . . . she hoped, Stephen. She always hoped that humankind would learn tolerance and kindness and restraint, that we wouldn't throw away everything we'd learned and built. I think painting was her way of expressing her hope and her amazement at the world. And painting gave her sharp eyes.” Stephen smiles tentatively at that, and I add, “It trained her to see things most people missed and in ways most people wouldn't think of. Yet she also approached the world as a scientist would, and she never considered that a paradox.”

“What do you mean, as a scientist would?”

Do I detect an edge of suspicion in spite of all my teaching? Perhaps. I'm not his only teacher.

“I mean Rachel wanted to understand the world around her as it really is. She thought it was magnificent and wanted to know about it. Of course, no one can understand everything there is to know about the world, even if everything were known. She said reality is always in the process of being defined. But she learned everything she could.”

Stephen picks up a strand of sea grass weathered to translucent fibers and absently wraps the pale ribbon around one finger, while I wait for the question he hasn't yet decided to ask.

In time, he puts it into words. “Miriam says there are some things people can't know.
Shouldn't
know.”

No doubt she would add, some things people must take on faith.

I ask, “Do
you
believe there are things people shouldn't know?”

He unfurls the ribbon of grass. “Miriam says it's written in the Bible.”

“Maybe it is. That doesn't answer my question.”

He looks at me, and the grass slips from his hands, snakes along the sand with the wind behind it. Perhaps it's because we're alone and away from Amarna—away from Miriam—that he considers the question carefully and at length answers, “I don't see why it should be wrong for me to know
anything
.”

And I close my eyes, let my breath out in a long sigh.

“It isn't wrong, Stephen. Don't ever let anyone make you think it is. Anyway, I was telling you about Rachel. She wasn't doing much painting when I came to Amarna, but the house was still more a studio than a home. The big workroom in the center—that was a living room before she bought the house, but she made it into a studio for encaustic painting. Those are the ones done with wax and heat. And she made the dining room into a watercolor studio. Sometimes I still call it the north studio.”

Stephen is intrigued. Perhaps it hasn't occurred to him that the house wasn't always exactly as it is now and has been all his life. “What else was different?” he asks.

“Well, nothing, really. Before she bought the house, the living room was a sort of sun porch, I think, but when I came it was much the same as it is now, except we replaced some of the furniture.”

“Was the fireplace still there?”

“Oh, yes. Rachel heated the house entirely with wood. That was the cheapest source of heat for her since she had plenty of trees on her property. In fact, the old wood cookstove in the kitchen—well, it was an antique then, but she used it. I remember how amazed I was at that stove when I took my first look around the house. But the thing that amazed me most was the books. Nearly every wall had bookshelves, and more books were stacked on every table and even on the floor. I knew then I'd found a kindred soul.”