West of Here (43 page)

“I see, Mr. Dalton.” Ethan turned his attention back to the
Register.
“And now that I’ve harvested
mountains of ice
and stacked it neatly in my warehouse, what then? What am I to do with it? Build igloos?”

“Well now, sir, for starters you could sell it to cold storage houses in San Francisco.”

Ethan left off rubbing his thumb and looked up from his paper, a little stunned. For an instant he felt in his bones that Dalton had hit upon a great idea. But another look at the man and his overall lack of detail was enough to convince Ethan firmly otherwise.

“Perhaps you should stick to hauling furniture, Mr. Dalton.”

Jacob mounted the steps and filled the open doorway behind Dalton, blotting out his squat shadow.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir,” said Dalton.

“Jacob, come in, come in. Meet Mr. Dalton. Mr. Dalton has devised an ingenious plan by which mountains of ice can be transported right here to our little outpost, then on to San Francisco, a thousand miles away. Tell us, Mr. Dalton, the length of the western coast aside, just how do you propose to haul that ice thirty miles down the mountain? Float it? Haul it by the wagon load?”

“Wooden flume, sir.”

“Ha! The world’s grandest wooden flume! And how, Mr. Dalton —”

“It’s Krigstadt.”

“How, Mr. Krigstadt, do you propose to get it to San Francisco? Another flume, perhaps?”

“Ship it, sir. Or send it out from Port Townsend by rail — that is, when the railroad’s finished.”

“Possibly viable,” said Jacob, nodding his head and looking slightly impressed.

Ethan scoffed. “Ridiculous. The whole plan is ridiculous.”

“This from the man who conceived of the electric stairs?”

“The electric stairs will be a reality, Jake, wait and see.”

“And what of
Will-o’-the-Wisp,
your delightful comedy of manners?”

“Fair enough, Jake, though I’ve seen worse at the Lyceum Theater. Perhaps best to leave literary pretensions aside. However, I really should’ve got a patent on the electric stairs, Jake, because somebody is bound to beat me to them. On the other hand, this scheme with the ice is nothing short of preposterous. A thirty-mile flume wider than the Elwha? Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“Mr. Thornburgh, if I may say so, when I first heard how you was scheming to dam up the Elwha with all that concrete, I thought that was the damnedest thing I ever heard.”

Jacob smiled. “He’s got a point, Ethan.”

Ethan narrowed his silver eyes. “Mr. Krigstadt, I hardly think our plans are the least bit comparable. As you can see, mine is becoming a reality before your eyes. Whereas this daydream you’ve hatched up is doomed from the start. In your naive optimism, you’ve completely overlooked the fundamental problem with this operation of yours. Hauling ice is all well and good. But how do you turn a glacier into slabs of ice? Certainly not manpower, because this is ice we’re talking about, not gold. There’s not enough ice in the world to sustain the labor force it would take to chop up those glaciers. So then, dynamite, is it? Liable to be an ungodly mess, don’t you think?”

Dalton straightened up slightly and could not suppress a grin both bashful and proud. “Heated electric wires, Mr. Thornburgh. Me and another fellow has got a patent.” Silence. For the second time in the conversation, Ethan was certain that Krigstadt had stumbled onto a grand design. Glancing at Jacob, he could see that his partner was also struck. But the moment that Ethan ran his tongue over the words “heated electric wires,” he saw more clearly than ever the plan was ridiculous.

“Ha! Heated electric wires. Giant flumes. Cold storage in San Francisco. Jacob, if you wish to indulge this man further, I’ll ask that you take the conversation elsewhere. I haven’t time for daydreams. Goodbye, Mr. Krigstadt. Good luck with your scheme. I’d warn you to look before you leap, though. Take a good hard look at your future. I suspect you’ll see yourself hauling furniture there. Perhaps that’s your destiny, Mr. Krigstadt. We’re not all made to move mountains.”

Dalton’s doughy face reddened. He was stuck in place momentarily, as though he didn’t know how to proceed.

Jacob shot Ethan a look.

Silently, Krigstadt turned. Jacob stepped aside to accommodate his passing, and watched him cross pitifully over the threshold and down the steps.

Jacob turned his critical gaze back at Ethan, who met him with icy determination.

“There was no call to treat the fellow like that, Ethan.”

“Like what?”

“You’ve developed a mean streak.”

“Nonsense. Jacob, as my business partner, I should think you would understand better than anybody the demands on my time. Look around you. I clearly haven’t got time to hear the scatter-brained contrivances of every laborer that passes through my door. You know that! And yet you encourage him. Is it not crueler to give the man hope?”

“You’ve changed,” said Jacob.

“I’ve adapted, Jacob. There’s a difference.”

EARLY IN THE EVENING
, when the dredging had ceased for the day, and the hammers were silent, and the dust was still settling, Ethan strode across the empty clearing to the makeshift nursery, where he stomped his boots clean on the doorstep before entering. The young nursemaid was seated on the rug with Minerva, a line of wooden ducklings between them. The young woman stood to greet him, straightening her skirts, but Ethan paid her no mind and went straight for Minerva, scooping the child off of the ground with steam-shovel hands. Immediately, his whole manner slackened, and he did not feel at odds with the world, at least for a moment. The girl squealed and giggled in his arms. Ethan noted the dark crescents under her eyes with a nagging concern.

“Has she napped?”

“For two hours, sir.”

Ethan playfully pinched the girl’s distended belly. The child squealed with delight and immediately went for his mustache with her fingers.

“How is the rash?” said Ethan.

“Almost gone, sir.”

“Good.”

Ethan carried Minerva in his arms to the edge of the canyon, as he did every evening. The child was asleep before he was halfway there. Jacob was right. He had changed, along with the playing field. The impatience that had once stirred his dreams, pushing him ever onward
into the arms of his destiny, had hardened into a different sort of impatience. For the first time, he felt the world owed him something. The tightness returned to his shoulders as he peered down into the gorge, beneath the bridge, where the scaffolding on the far side spiderwebbed its way up the cliff face. Gazing down farther, a hundred feet to where the dredging continued below the riverbed, Ethan felt his stomach roll. He could practically see the dam as it would look finished; its completeness was now strongly suggested by the shape of its surroundings, from the tapering depths of the channel to the broad expanse at the lip. Yet Ethan found himself unable to revel in accomplishment. The world seemed to be pulling him in different directions. From all quarters he felt the tug of opposition. From Eva, who was no longer content to merely vex him but seemed intent upon ruining him. From Chicago, who defied his every advice, resisted his every judgment, and finally usurped his executive power and undermined his vision. And now resistance from Jacob, whose opinions grew stronger every day, whose judgments of Ethan seemed to grow harsher by the hour.

The only person in the world who didn’t seem to oppose Ethan’s very existence anymore, the only person who seemed to accept him unconditionally, to trust his every judgment and consent to his every decision faithfully, was his daughter, now asleep in his arms with her downy hair swept sideways over her face.

AUGUST
2006

“Happy hour’s over,” said Krig as Jared plopped down in the adjacent stool. A flotilla of appetizer boats lined the bar in front of Krig: artichoke dip, buffalo wings, shooters in the half shell, all of them half eaten —
exactly
half eaten.

“Sorry, bro. I had to drop by the house first. Janis made Thai. She’s convinced it’s my favorite. You know how it is.”

“Yeah,” said Krig, harassed by the knowledge that he should be happy for J-man, heartened by the recent turnabout in the Thorn-burgh home, and above all, gladdened by the news of Janis’s pregnancy. “I know how it is.”

Molly arrived immediately for Jared’s order, something she never did for Krig.

“Kilt Lifter, J-man?” she said.

J-man? Did she call him J-man? WTF? Krig couldn’t suppress a little burp, that is, he couldn’t resist not suppressing it. It smelled like roasted garlic. Molly nearly gagged.

“Another for me, too,” said Krig. “And could you box up this crap? J-man already ate with his
wife.
”

Watching Molly gather up the boats without bestowing so much as a glance at Krig, Jared felt — as he’d often had occasion to feel in recent days — more than a little sorry for Krig. The guy just wasn’t good with signals. His intentions were golden, but … but what? Was it his complete lack of self-awareness? His inability to step back? Or step forward, for that matter? In so many ways, Krig seemed completely undetermined. And yet, there he was, as constant as the tides. His attendance was perfect. The problem was, he just stood there at the starting line, apparently unaware that the gun had sounded. What if
Jared could light a fire under Krig’s ass, offer him some incentive, a promotion, or something?

“You see what Texas did to Cleveland today?” Jared ventured.

“Yeah.”

“Damn. Talk about a beating.”

Both men cast their eyes vaguely on
SportsCenter.
Stuart Scott looked smarter in glasses. Felix Hernandez left the M’s game in the fifth with a sore shoulder. WNBA news started scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

“So, I’m gonna do it,” Jared said.

“Do what?”

“Write that stupid speech for Dam Days.”

“What are you supposed to do — apologize or something? Little late, don’t you think?”

“Jesus, I have no idea of what I’m supposed to say. Who the heck am I, anyway? Why do they even want me to speak? It’s not like I’m some pillar of the P.B. community or anything. I don’t even have a library card. We shop at freaking Wal-Mart most of the time — which makes me a big fat traitor as far as half this town is concerned. My dad, I can understand, my grandfather, sure — but
me
?”

“Beats me,” said Krig.

They fell silent for a long moment, turning their attention back to the TV, where a Powerade commercial was unfolding. Krig drained his beer.

“So, I watched that Manitoba video last night,” said Jared.

“And?”

“Meh. I’m just not convinced. The footage was sorta lame. It was just kind of a blob moving along the shoreline. It could’ve been anything — a fisherman in dark clothes. And why is the video always blurry? Always. Don’t most cameras these days have some sort of auto focus or whatever?”

“The footage is totally bunk,” said Krig, draining the last of his Kilt Lifter, even as Molly approached with their pints. “I could’ve told you that. That’s why I wanted you to watch it.”

Molly was all business when she delivered the beers. She didn’t
even look at Jared this time. Krig didn’t look at Molly, either, which Jared supposed was a good sign. At least maybe Krig knew
how
to give up.

“First of all, the gait is all wrong,” Krig said, once Molly was out of earshot. “If you watch the Patterson-Gimlin footage, you’ll see the carriage is lower. That blob in Manitoba isn’t bending its knees. The anatomical proportions are all wrong.”

“How can you even tell from that crappy footage?”

“Dude, I’ve been studying Cryptoids — specifically Bigfoot — for twelve years. The P.-G. footage is the real deal, I’m telling you.”

“But they already proved it was a hoax.”

“The
hoax
was a hoax. If you’re talking about that BBC baloney — everyone knows that’s crap. There’s been a busload of guys over the years who claimed to be the guy in the suit. So where’s the suit? Tell me that.”

“I still think that shiny thing is a zipper.”

“That’s just reflected sunlight. They proved the bell was a load of crap. Dude, did you watch
Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science,
or what?”

“Not yet.”

“I gave that to you two weeks ago.”

“Janis won’t watch it, Krig. You’ve gotta understand. We’re on a steady diet of
Steel Magnolias
and
Fried Green Tomatoes.
I’m lucky if I get to choose one movie a month, and I’m not going to pick
Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.
I just can’t do that. She’s still giving me shit about
Behind Enemy Lines,
and freakin’ Owen
Wilson
was in that. What is she going to say when I put in a video — a
video,
no less, not even a DVD — where they keep playing the Patterson-Gimlit foot —”

“Gimlin.”

“
Gimlin
footage over and over and —”

“So you
did
watch it, then?”

“Just a couple seconds. Look, the only reason I could watch the Manitoba thing was that it was sixteen seconds long.”

Krig gave his beer a little swish. “I’m glad I’m not married. That would suck.”

“You’re lucky,” lied Jared.

Both men took a couple of silent pulls off their beers, and gave
SportsCenter
a glance. It was the debacle in Cleveland.

Nursing his Kilt Lifter, Krig felt the heat of a familiar shame. “You think I’m full of shit,” he said. “Admit it. You don’t actually believe me about what happened. You think I’m just making it up to get attention.”

“I never said that.”

“You’ve been totally skeptical all along.”

“You yourself said it was pitch black. You even thought you might have dreamed the whole thing. What am I supposed to think? I totally believe something happened to you up there.”

“Something?”

“It’s all so unclear to me, Krig — to
you.
I just think whatever. People see what they want to see. And I’m not saying you didn’t see anything.”