West of Here (31 page)

“Do you think people are born a certain way?” she said, looking out the window. “I mean, like the people you work with — criminals? Or do you think people are made?”

“People are habits,” said Franklin, without hesitation.

“That’s it?”

“Way I see it, that’s all that matters at the end of the day. What does a person
do
? That’s the thing that affects everybody else. Thoughts and intentions sure don’t go far, we know that much.”

“What if people develop habits that aren’t true to their nature?”

“So be it. As long as they keep their noses clean.”

“What about people who aren’t criminals?”

“Not my jurisdiction,” he said flatly.

“Couldn’t a person become enslaved by the wrong habits?”

“Hell, happens every day. Look at the way we live. Sometimes wrong is right, though. Sometimes people gotta think outside themselves for the benefit of other folks.”

Franklin got surer and more decisive by the minute. Yet, as much as Hillary longed to lean into his self-assurance, as much as she yearned to feel some electrical attraction toward Franklin, she only grew less sure as his apartment drew nearer. She was determined, however, to forge ahead against her better instincts.

Franklin’s apartment was a step down from the clean, aromatic roominess of the Taurus. A big step down: soiled furniture and dusty Levolors, a murky fishbowl, casino carpet. The fact that Franklin was unapologetic about any of it was almost enough to redeem the place.

“That’s Rupert,” he said as the dog nosed Hillary’s crotch when she sat on the bile-colored sofa. “Make yourself at home.” Franklin took inventory of the fridge. “You thirsty? Beer? I got some Chinese in here if you’re hungry.”

“I’m not hungry, thanks. But you might want to let those Chinese out. They’re probably cold.”

Franklin guffawed. “That’s baaaad.” He snatched two cans of beer from the fridge. “Looks like Rupert is really takin’ a shine to you,” he said, setting the beers on the smoked glass coffee table.

Gliding to the entertainment center, Franklin began rifling through CDs — pausing briefly to meditate on Steve Forbert’s
Jackrabbit Slim
before he found the album that best suited the mood he was going for: Bob Seger’s
Night Moves.
Classic.

Franklin seated himself on the sofa, draping an awkward arm around Hillary. She could smell his spicy aftershave, and the rum on his breath, and she thought for an instant that maybe things would be different with Franklin. But even as she leaned in to meet his full lips, and he ran a strong hand down the small of her back, Hillary doubted it.

APRIL
1890

Tobin was even more impatient than usual the night he began to suspect Gertie’s betrayal.

“What’s got into you, whore?” he said, pulling out of her and pushing her into the headboard. “You’ve been skulking for a week.” He grabbed her shoulder and whipped her over on her back. “What’s this all about? Gotta case of the clap you’re not telling me about?”

Gertie got up on her elbows, and when she offered no reply, Tobin made as if to strike her but stopped himself short and smiled. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s on that feeble little mind of yours.”

“Well,” said Gertie, casting her eyes aside. “Who’s to say I’m not nervous about Peaches workin’ me out of a job?”

Tobin smiled again, although not as cruelly as usual.

“Ha! Is that it?” He laughed.

Gertie looked up at him hopefully.

“Well, I must say, this news comes as some relief to me, Gertrude. Considering the kind of subterfuge I’ve come to expect from ungrateful whores.”

He leaned down and took her chin in his hand and squeezed it, peering at her through slitted eyes, as his smile wilted.

“Just mind the fact that I hate to lose a whore, one way or another,” he said. “Even if she is used up.”

WHEN ADAM RETURNED
to Port Bonita on his rounds, checking into his regular hotel room at the Olympic, among the messages awaiting him at the front desk were directives from Cal Pellen to proceed directly to Skokomish, Puyallup, and all the way onto Colville in the eastern part of what Adam still conceived as a territory, not a state.
Adam received this news grimly, knowing that it could be months before he returned to Port Bonita. He should have checked on the boy.

“Bad news, sir?” said the clerk.

“Nothing catastrophic, Tom. And none of your business, besides. Is that it for messages?”

“Well, officially speaking, sir.”

“Nothing from Jamestown?”

“No sir. But some whore’s been asking after you.”

Adam shot him a look. “Is that an attempt at humor?”

“No, sir. See, I couldn’t rightly tell her as to when you’d be back, so she’s been in here nearly every afternoon asking after you.”

“How do you know she’s a whore?”

“Well, with all due respect, Mr. Gunderson —”

“
How
did you know she was a whore?”

“Well, sir, aside from the fact that I gave her a throw as recently as last month, there was the fact she had a black eye, and of course there was just the plain fact that she dressed frilly like a whore, and if there’s one thing about whores in general that gives them away, it’s the fact that —”

“Enough. What was she after?”

“She wouldn’t say, sir.”

“What was her mood?”

“Jumpy.”

Adam figured on it, and came up with nothing. “If she comes again, don’t send her up, you understand? Just send for me.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Gunderson.”

Retiring to his room, Adam dropped his bag at the foot of the bed and moved to the new mirror above the basin, where he was displeased with the unshaven state of his reflection, and the crows feet creeping downward toward his temples. He thought about cleaning up, but found himself lacking the energy. He plopped down on the bed instead, hoping that a short nap might improve his prospects. But his conscience wouldn’t allow him to rest. He should have made the stop at Jamestown and checked on the boy. He’d blamed his fatigue this time, along with the late hour, as his carriage rattled past the
settlement at dusk. But what of the last three times he’d neglected to make the stop? As ever, he failed the boy, and though it shamed him, he still did not act upon it, which made him exactly what his father had always accused him of being: a coward. For the first time, it occurred to Adam that in spite of his father’s intolerance of Indians, he might actually have respected him
more
if he’d owned the truth all those years ago, a realization that washed over Adam like a wave of nausea.

Two hours later, Adam crossed the mucky street and strode tall into the Belvedere with business on his mind. He was not feeling patient, nor a bit rested, and his guilt over the boy still festered to the point of distraction. The blue haze and drunken discord of the Belvedere did little to improve his mood.

“I see not much has changed around here,” said Adam, approaching the bar. Though he neglected to remove his hat, he observed his custom of standing at the bar.

“Ah,” said Tobin, without looking up from his bar rag. “The White Knight returns. Might I interest you in something in the way of a refreshment — a sarsaparilla, perhaps?”

“Whiskey,” said Adam.

Tobin looked up from his rag and stopped his restless scrubbing. He straightened up, and smiled as he poured out two shots, and slid one across the bar.

Adam tossed his shot off in a single throw. “One of your whores has been looking for me, John.”

“Is that a fact?” said Tobin. “Whores, too. By God, there’s hope for you after all, Gunderson.”

“I’m assuming you sent her, John. Is there something you want to tell me?”

Splayed casually against the upstairs banister, making an effort to laugh at the vulgar musings of a butcher from Tacoma, Gertie snuck glances at Tobin and Adam talking. The more she observed of their conversation, the more she sensed with a chill that behind Tobin’s chattiness and nervous scrubbing, a dark realization had taken root. She needed to get to Adam before Tobin got to her. Breaking away
from the butcher, Gertie slunk into her room and rifled through the drawers of her secretary for a pencil and paper. Her heart was racing when at last she scrawled,
Under the back steps nightly.

Gertie folded the note and tucked it away in her bust. Quickly, she checked her mascara in the lamplight and smoothed her hair around the edges before returning to the mezzanine and proceeding down the stairs, where she hovered in the general vicinity of the bar. When Adam made to leave, Gertie made her move across the room toward him. No sooner did Tobin register this movement than he broke from behind the bar and intercepted Gertie in the crowd. Seizing her by the wrist, he led her to the corridor and through to the back of the house, while Adam made his exit, unaware of the interference.

When they reached the end of the darkened hallway, Tobin pinned her to the wall, forcing his knee up into her pelvis until her eyes began to water.

“What did you tell him, whore?”

She tried to shake herself loose.

“I asked you a question!”

Stiff-arming him in the face, Gertie eluded his grasp and darted toward the back door. Tobin got a hold of her dress long enough to spin her around and slug her squarely in the face, but when the fabric tore loose in his hand, Gertie scrambled out the back door and down the steps, and Tobin gave chase.

FEBRUARY
1890

Onward Mather and his men trudged toward the Devil’s Backbone; ragged, but well fed, filthy, but organized, dragging what they could not shoulder across the hard snowpack. The ancient path promised by the natives was either a fiction or had fallen into such disuse that it was invisible, and so they blazed their own trail, and as always, the Elwha acted as their guide. Upward along the Elwha they traveled through the middle weeks of February, over saddlebacks, across creeks, through wooded canyons, naming all that they passed: Cat Creek; Goblin Creek; Dodger Point; Mounts Carrie, Fitzhenry, and Eldridge. They had put range after range of foothills behind them, and still they had yet to penetrate the alpine interior of the peninsula. However, the delays caused by the boat and the weather were probably a blessing. The weather had turned cold and brutal in recent days and could only get better. Haywood was increasingly of the opinion that had the party managed to penetrate the alpine country on schedule, it was quite probable that they would have found survival nearly impossible.

One evening around the fire, after Cunningham, to the amusement of Reese and Runnells, had just finished his third retelling of a certain medical calamity involving a set of crushed eyeglasses and the derriere of a prominent industrialist’s wife from Portland (whose name Cunningham would not divulge, though he spared no detail in describing the glorious attributes of the derriere in question), Haywood suddenly looked up from his journal.

“It is entirely possible, gentleman, that we’ve been purposefully lulled into this doltish condition of luxury,” Haywood said. The remark seemed to be pointed at Mather, who was sitting at some distance from the fire, at once alert and preoccupied.

“And what is that intended to mean?” said Mather.

“That perhaps we’re underestimating our adversary. We may find that whatever lies beyond this Devil’s Backbone is something entirely unanticipated.”

“Like sunshine?” said Reese, eliciting a guffaw from Runnells.

“I’m serious,” said Haywood. “I think what we ought to do is expect to be challenged. To go forward diligently. Orderly. Not like a band of ruffians.”

Mather knew that he’d been an uninspiring leader in recent days, had not projected his characteristic vim and vigor, had not encouraged his men forward with his unwavering spirit of adventure, had led, in fact, only insomuch that he walked in front of them. He suspected that Haywood’s intention was less of a challenge to his leadership than an attempt to rouse the party’s enthusiasm for the journey ahead. But the fact remained that Mather’s thoughts were far from the future. He was still walking mentally backward through his life, trying to devise a way of thinking by which he could make the past big again.

“Yes,” said Mather. “Diligence is exactly what we’ll need.”

“See here,” said Haywood, rising to his feet and leaning toward the fire, illuminating that which had formerly been occupying him, a map in progress. He beckoned the men to gather round the map, and all but Mather gathered around.

“Here is where we’ve come from, you see?” said Haywood, tracing their path. “And here is where we’ve been. But you see,
this,
gentleman,
this
is where we’re headed. It’s blank. The trail ends. The river ends. I haven’t the slightest idea what goes here. Not the slightest. Should I venture a guess, I can guarantee you beyond all reasonable doubt that it shan’t be anywhere close to what we will actually find there.”

25 February 1890
While the mood of the party has been generally good as of late, with Runnells bagging a pair of elk just two days prior, our spirited leader has been more aloof than ever. His appetites cannot be
roused. He does not seem to be hungry for the challenge before us. He’s even lost the wild-eyed nervous energy that has marked so much of our recent progress. He has been more measured with his steps and with his words. He is, in a word, deflated. I suspect this has mostly to do with something left behind, rather than something ahead, although I am certainly no expert on matters amorous. In any case, I now fear less for Jim’s competence or judgment and more for his vigor and strength. The terrain promises, at the very best, more of the same. It remains to be seen if our leader will be up for the task, and I’m hoping that he will soon dispel my doubts.

Runnells’s good fortune in bagging the elk did not come without a cost. Heading the bull off as it thundered up the hill, Timber, the big dog, was struck by the beast’s forefoot, killing him instantly and leaving his body badly mangled. They buried the dog in the softest ground they could find.