A Gift Upon the Shore (6 page)

—GEORGE MEREDITH,
THE SPIRIT OF
EARTH IN AUTUMN
(1862)

S
tephen latches the east gate, then, with Shadow sniffing out the way, he walks ahead of me north up the alder-shaded quarry road. It's little more than a footpath now and wouldn't exist at all except for our continued use of it. In dry summers we grow corn in the shielded bowl that was once a gravel quarry. Stephen stops about a hundred feet up the road, then turns east through a break in the foliage. He looks back, patiently waiting for me to catch up. Then again he leads the way, following a trail I first walked with Rachel forty years ago.

The trail winds up the valley of the Styx. The sound of water rushing over its stony, brown bed is constantly at my left, yet I seldom see the creek; it's too densely curtained with foliage. We've entered a world that seems far removed—although it's only half a mile away—from the world of the sea and the littoral. This is the forest primeval. The rain forest.

This is, Rachel told me, climax forest, the kind of forest common in the Coast Range before European immigrants razed them for houses and toilet paper. Sitka spruce and hemlock dominate here, thrusting thick boles over a hundred feet skyward. I can't see the top of them, only the fretted pattern of twigs and needles that makes up the canopy, a pattern of exquisite complexity that's only a blur in my old eyes.

At the feet of the giants grow thickets of thimbleberry, salmonberry, elderberry, and salal, all leggy and sparse here, not the dense growth typical of the same plants in sunnier sites. And red huckleberry. It seems to be a native son of the rain forest. Its slender trunks are brown and smooth, its branches warm green, bearing myriads of tiny, oval leaves that arrange themselves in artful clusters. I know the only art in those compositions of leaf and limb is a strategy to catch the sunlight so precious here, yet I always see a self-conscious aesthetic in red huckleberry.

At the feet of the shrubs, ferns grow extravagantly, and in miniature marshes by the creek, the gigantic, ovate leaves of skunk cabbage spring incredibly out of the mud. The ground everywhere is blazoned with the torn umbrellas of coltsfoot, miner's lettuce starred with blossoms, oxalis like fields of shamrocks, and sweet-scented wild lily of the valley. And at every level is the moss. It furs the trunks of the trees, sleeves their branches in velvet, hangs in gossamer festoons.

The earth is rusty brown—burnt sienna, Rachel called it, verging into umber. Duff is its proper name, and if I step off the path, my feet sink into its spongy substance, and I wonder, as I always do: how many centuries of fallen needles, leaves, bark, and rotting wood, how many layers of moss, fungi, and lichen, has it taken to make the resilient texture of this ground? How many moles, worms, ants, and termites? How many billion generations of bacteria. That's the ultimate layer of life here. I can't see it, but I smell it in the moist, fecund air. In this context there is nothing horrific about decay. It's the source of the richness of life here. Nurse logs. They are peculiar to the rain forest: fallen trees dissolving slowly into green mounds, supporting colonnades of young trees. Nurse logs represent an essential of life: nothing wasted, nothing lost, however profligate death might seem.

Stephen is still ahead of me, expertly wielding a machete. He wears only short, buckskin breeches on this warm day, and as he strides down the trail, slashing at encroaching salal and fern, he is as graceful and beautiful as any young creature in its true habitat.

And I, neither graceful nor young, carry no tool to keep this trail clear, but I've put in my share of hours tending it; Rachel and I always kept it passable. Before the End this area was part of a national forest, and the trail was built by the Job Corps. There, around the next curve, is a cement slab inscribed with the names of the six youths who were plucked from the ghettos of Brooklyn or Chicago or Los Angeles to hack a path through this temperate jungle. I wonder if any of them survived, if any lived to teach their children what they learned here.

Stephen's machete whistles and chunks in the rich silence, while Shadow rustles through ferns, following her nose. The path angles up to its highest point, and my pace slows, my cane digs deep with every step. The light, tinted green in its passage through hemlock lace and garlands of spruce, through huckleberry spangles and veils of moss, all moving in the gentle breeze, shimmers, and it's much like being underwater. I seem to feel the drag of it. At last, the trail slopes downward, then, finally, rounds a curve, and suddenly we are there.

It always seems sudden, the arrival here at the end and destination of the trail. Even Stephen, who has been here many times, has stopped still, staring upward.

This forest is full of giants, yet this magnificent Sitka dwarfs them all. It is two hundred feet tall, ten feet in diameter at the bole, and over five centuries old. The Forest Service provided those statistics.

But statistics don't convey the majesty of this towering column of living wood, thick sheathed in bark as impervious as weathered granite. Its roots flare from the bole, buttressing the massive trunk, then sink into the ground in brown hills and valleys. I must tilt my head far back to see the first branches a hundred feet above me. Beyond is the crown, its immense, mossy limbs spreading masses of needles to the sun. The light is trapped there, and little escapes to warm the foothills of the roots where Stephen and I stand in silence and constant shadow.

Running entirely through the base of the tree is a tunnel at most a yard high. When I was young, I crawled through that space. The earth within was lifeless and fine as powder. I lay surrounded by stony bark, and I felt an inexplicable uneasiness, not because of the impending tons of wood above me—the collapse of that tunnel didn't occur to me as a physical possibility—but because I sensed that I was in a place I shouldn't be: a womb to which I shouldn't be allowed to return.

That tunnel speaks of the beginnings of this giant among giants that seems immutable, something that has no end and no beginning.

It had a beginning. It was born on the mossy corpse of a nurse log. Its roots year by year grew down and around its source of sustenance until they sank into the earth. And in time the nurse log rotted away, leaving this tunnel, a negative space to witness its existence.

And this tree will have an end. It will fall, and what a sundering of sky and earth that will be, and it will in turn become a nurse log to nurture other giants.

Jerry has made a simple slab bench and placed it a few yards from the base of the tree. It replaced the one the Forest Service installed here, which has long ago rotted into duff. I ease down on the bench, smiling at Stephen, who sits down beside me, but doesn't speak, waiting for me to break the silence.

And finally, I do. “Rachel first brought me here the morning after I saw my aunt's house.”

He nods. “It's a place of healing, I think. Bernadette says some places are like that. They heal the mind, so it can heal the body.”

I'm surprised at that. Bernadette, our herbalist, healer, and nurse, seldom reveals her capacity for profound understanding.

“Yes, Stephen, it's a place of healing, but for me, Rachel was the healer.” I pause, considering what to tell him. There is so much he must understand about Rachel, yet there is one aspect of her I know he isn't capable of understanding. I doubt he can imagine a philosophy so inimical to the religious traditions he grew up with. The day will come when he must come to terms with that, but he's not ready now.

For now, I'll tell him only what he must know.

I look up into the sun-gloried crown of the tree, then down through all its green stories, down the stone gray trunk to the heart of emptiness at its base, and I remember; the images are haloed with my tears.

If this tree were capable of sound, it would resonate in harmonies of a minor key in the deep ranges beyond the edges of my perception.

Perhaps it does sing: centuries-slow songs that I will never hear.

—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
LETTER TO THOMAS ALLSOP
(ca. 1820)

S
he could taste the green air. Mary Hope stared up at the tree, her mind stretching to encompass its dimensions, its stunning presence. She turned finally, found Rachel sitting on the bench, watching her with a shadow smile that manifested itself primarily in her dark eyes. She had been waiting, Mary realized. Waiting for her reaction. She seemed satisfied.

Mary walked to the bench, leaning into the cane to keep her balance among the sinews of roots, and sat down next to Rachel. Neither of them spoke. Mary could find no words to express what she felt, and Rachel didn't seem to need or expect any.

This was the second gift Rachel had offered her today.

Mary had wakened this morning to be ambushed by memories of the ruins of Aunt Jan's house, the ruins of her dream. But no new tears came with the memories. It was as if the night and sleep had dropped the curtain on that act of her life. She wasn't yet capable of raising the curtain on the next act, or even imagining it. She lay in the narrow bed listening to the murmur of the sea. I
am here . . . I am always here
. . . . She thought about dreams. Dreams were hope specified. Fragile fallacies.

But at length she left the bed, dressed herself, took up the cane, and opened the door to music. The third movement of Beethoven's ninth. The Adagio. Shadow came trotting out of the south studio to greet her, and that made her smile. Sweet Shadow, so loving and fey.
Highstrung
was the old-fashioned word Rachel used to describe her. Topaz was the steady one, reserved and dependable.

Mary found Rachel in the kitchen stoking the fire in the old, iron cookstove. She shut the firebox door and looked around at Mary. “How are you?”

“I'm all right.”

Rachel studied her a moment. “Would you like some coffee?” Then at Mary's nod: “I'll bring it into the living room.”

Mary went into the living room, with its fireplace built of beach cobbles backed to the kitchen wall, a bamboo-framed couch facing the hearth. Two armchairs, their ochre upholstery frayed at the seams, flanked the couch. On the south wall a door opened into the greenhouse. The west wall was almost entirely glass, with a sliding door opening onto the deck. Bookshelves took up every remaining space on the walls except for a small section on the north wall left for paintings. On the small table in the northwest corner, two places were set for breakfast. Topaz lay on the Persian rug; she rose and came to Mary, waited for her to lean down and pet her. Then Mary walked to the glass doors and looked out at slow, white breakers under a clear sky. At length she turned. That's when she saw it centered on the mantel: Aunt Jan's Seth Thomas.

Her breath caught, and she made her way to the mantel, mouth open in silent amazement. This couldn't be the grime-rimed clock she'd found in that ruined house. The wood gleamed like satin, the glass over its face was shining. And it was ticking steadfastly, the scrolled hands pointing the time as it was now, not a leftover hour marking the last pulse of its spent mainspring long ago. She touched the glowing wood, then looked at Rachel. She was standing by the fireplace, a mug of coffee in each hand.

“Oh, Rachel, how did you do it? How did you bring it back to life?”

“Well, it wasn't dead, Mary.” She handed her one of the mugs. “I just gave it a little wax and oil. It's a beautiful thing, and like they say, ‘hell for stout.' ”

Laughing because she was so close to crying, Mary embraced her. “Thank you, Rachel.
Thank you
.”

Rachel returned her embrace, but with a certain awkwardness, as if she weren't used to such physical displays. She cleared her throat and said, “Let's have breakfast, and after that I'd like to take you for a walk.”

And now Mary watched Topaz and Shadow sniffing out pathways of scent through the tunnel at the base of the tree, and her gaze moved up the scaly, granitic bole. She heard the impatient chirking of squirrels as she stared into the rose-window pattern of green and sky blue in the black fretwork of branches. “It's like a cathedral here.”

Rachel was looking up into the crown, too, and she seemed to find there both wonder and comfort. “Maybe cathedrals are like
here
,” she said. Then she turned to Mary. “This is a very special place to me.”

Mary nodded. “I'm grateful that you'd share it with me.”

“It's my pleasure. I don't have many friends—none left in Shiloh except Jim and Connie—so I enjoy having someone to share this with. Strangely enough, it's Jim who loves this tree almost as much as I do.”

“Why strangely?”

“Oh . . . because he's so thoroughly pragmatic. He's our resident survivalist, you know.”

“Survivalist? Jim?”

“Yes. He's a paradox, really. A
liberal
survivalist. He has a radiation shelter behind his house fully stocked for the end of the world.”

Mary felt a chill in the shadowed air. “I don't think that's something you can stock up for.”

“Maybe not.” For a while Rachel was silent. She seemed to be mulling over something, and Mary waited patiently.

Finally Rachel said, “There's something I want you to understand.”

That had a nearly ominous cast to it. “What, Rachel?”

“Well, just that you have a home at Amarna for as long as you need or want it. What I want you to understand is that you shouldn't feel any obligation to me. That's probably impossible, I know. I'm just saying that if you want to stay here, you can. At least, it's an option.”

Mary couldn't think of an adequate response. Rachel seemed oddly embarrassed, as if she were
asking
for something, not offering a gift—yet another gift—of great magnanimity. Her home wasn't just a place where she ate and slept; it was the context of her life.

Mary said huskily, “Rachel, I can't impose on you. . . .”

But Rachel only laughed. “It's not a question of imposition. If it is, then it won't work.”

Mary listened to the wind sighing in the harps of needles and remembered Rachel's words to her just before they retreated from Aunt Jan's house: “Mary, let's go home.”

Home
.

It was a word to make her weep. Yet she had lived too long in the city, too long among strangers who had never, with few exceptions, become friends; people whose minds she couldn't touch and whose motives she could neither fathom nor trust.

Why? Why was Rachel offering a share in her home, in her life?

Rachel leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I'm twice your age, Mary, and one thing I've learned over the years is that loneliness can be—sometimes literally—deadly. But on the other hand, I've learned that just having someone else around isn't the solution, not if you don't have some affinity for that person. I've learned to live alone. It's the price I've paid for certain things I value.”

Mary considered that. “What are you saying? That you don't need me? That you're not asking anything of me?”

“I suppose I am. And
you
don't need
me
. Well, at the moment you need a place to stay until you're fully recovered, but after that, you could go back to Portland, couldn't you? Back to IDA? The government has a hard time these days finding people who can read, much less write, and with its penchant for verbosity, it'll always need writers.”

Mary hadn't thought about going back to Portland or IDA. That was part of the next act, the one on which she hadn't raised the curtain. Yes, it was possible. And maybe that's what she should do. No more dreams.

Yet Rachel was offering another dream. Rather, the old dream in another setting: a house by the sea where she could write. And a home to share with a friend. A
friend
.

Rachel straightened and turned to face her. “This isn't the time for you to make any major decisions. I just wanted you to know there's an option here. That's all.”

Mary felt the stifling approach of tears, but she kept them in check. “Thanks, Rachel. From the bottom of my heart . . . thanks.”

Rachel smiled at her, then leaned back and contemplated her surroundings, totally absorbed, and Mary knew she would speak no more of her offer. Jim Acres called her “damned independent.” But there was more to it. Maybe it was simply courage.

“Rachel, have you always lived alone at Amarna?”

“Well, I've always been the only
human
occupant, except when . . .” She paused, as if she weren't sure she wanted to go on. But she did. “About twenty years ago, not long after I moved to Amarna, I shared it with a young man. A lawyer.” She laughed as she added, “If you're going to have a live-in, pick a lawyer, a doctor, or a plumber. They're handy to have around. Anyway, that lasted two years, then Ben had a chance to join a law firm in Portland. Very prestigious and all that. So, that was the end of it.”

“He wasn't willing to join his prestigious law firm with a live-in?”

Rachel shook her head. “That wasn't the problem. Ben was willing to flout the stodgy mores of the firm. Or he was willing to marry me, if that's what I wanted. The trouble was, I wasn't willing to give up Amarna, to give up the sea, to give up my painting. It would've been a disaster, really, and I guess we both knew it.”

Mary was silent, watching Rachel. The years seemed to have smoothed out the regret, leaving only a patina of melancholy. “Haven't there been other . . . Bens in your life?”

Rachel sent her a bemused smile. “No. I guess I expected too much—or needed too little—of men. Anyway, Shiloh was always a small town, and now it's even smaller, so my choices have been limited. Actually, Shiloh attracted some very interesting people. You get odd demographics in a coast town. But I never met that interesting man who was also interested in me. That's one of the disadvantages of living here, and it's something you'll have to consider.”

Mary tried to consider it. But what had her choices been in Portland? Brief meetings and partings, firefly encounters that left her unchanged. Except for Evan. That was in her college days. Everything seemed to mean more then. And Dean. Yes, but that relationship always had its portents of disaster, however sweet it was to be so intensely in love. “It will not last the night. . . .” Dean made that his watchword. Yet it had, for them, lasted a year. Off and on.

She let her breath out in a long sigh. She would miss Dean, miss the constant shots of emotional adrenaline, the physical high he brought to love and making love.

Rachel said, “You're thinking of someone you left behind.”

“Yes. Someone who preferred it that way, I think. Rachel, don't you miss having a family, children . . . that sort of thing?”

“No,” she replied emphatically, “not children. I'd have been a lousy mother.”

“I don't believe that. The way you treat Shadow and Topaz—not many children get half that much love and care.”

“That may be true. Unfortunately, it probably is. But there are already too many children in this world. As for family—yes, I miss that. My parents are both dead and have been for over twenty years. Plane crash. They went down together. I was an only child, so I don't suppose I'll ever really understand—or miss—sibling relationships, and I have no other relations this side of the Mississippi. As for sex . . .” She glanced obliquely at Mary, a hint of irony in her eyes. “That's what you meant by ‘that sort of thing,' isn't it?”

Mary had to laugh. “Yes, I guess so.”

“Well, I don't miss that as much as you might think. It's one part of living, but I don't believe you
can
have it all. You have to consider the cost of things. I am a serious painter. Since I was a child, that's all I ever wanted to be, and that takes more than brushes and paint.”

Mary nodded, thinking of
October Flowers
, of the disks of short stories and essays she'd left for safekeeping with her mother. “I understand that.”

“Yes, I know you do.” Then she turned her absorbed gaze on the tree, letting the silence move in, and Mary accepted it, savored this silence that asked nothing of her, that sustained and healed her.

A rustling in the green starbursts of sword fern. But it was only the dogs still exploring. Mary pulled in a deep breath of earth-scented air and asked, “Wasn't it the Druids who worshiped trees?”

Rachel nodded. “I guess they thought some trees had godlike attributes or were the sites of gods. If you're going in for divinity, it seems like a good idea, spreading it around that way. I mean, investing plants and animals and natural phenomena with godhood. I think the people who put all their divine eggs in one basket lost something.”

Mary asked dryly, “What? Other than whole pantheons to keep track of.”

“Yes, well, monotheism
does
simplify things. But when people conglomerated their gods into one grand old man in the sky, they lost all respect for natural processes. It's a very dangerous philosophy, because we are not a special creation. We're products of the natural world, and if we're going to survive, we have to live by its rules.” She paused, looked levelly at Mary. “If you're a good literalist Christian, don't bother trying your evangelistic wings on me.”