West of Here (50 page)

“Proud?”

“It took courage to tell me. And you’re sure, Hill?”

“I’m sure, Mom. I like women.”

“No, I mean about being pregnant.”

“Positive.”

Bev opened her purse and started fishing around for her lipstick. “Oh, honey, it’s so exciting.”

Hillary was stunned by her mother’s reaction. So that was it? Everything was hunky-dory? She was gay and pregnant with a black man’s child, and her mother was proud of her? Had Port Bonita come that far since the day Kip Tobin started calling her Lesbo?

KRIG TOOK HIS
stool at the end of the bar opposite Jerry Rhinehalter, who was slumping even more than usual.

Molly soon emerged from the kitchen, glancing in turn at Jerry, then Krig. “Bookends,” she said.

Jerry Rhinehalter gave her the finger.

“No more Kilt Lifter, Dave,” said Molly. “You were the only one drinking it. Bonnie switched it out with Alaskan Amber.”

“Ech,” said Krig. “What are my other choices?”

Molly heaved a little shark sigh and cocked a hip. “Sierra, Bud, Bud Light, Manny’s, Hale’s Pale, and Port Townsend IPA.”

“So, nothing dark?”

Molly rolled her eyes and cocked her other hip. “Alaskan Amber’s the darkest.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Krig.

Krig scanned the bar for a sports page or an auto trader but found only the business section and the technology section. “Workin’ for a Livin’” was playing in the background. It reminded Krig of the 1980s. He found himself tapping his foot, and thinking about that first summer after high school. Good times. Tobin and the gang. Parties at the icehouse. Life was like a highway leading in every direction back then.

Krig took a chug of his Alaskan. Too rich but in a dull way — not enough umph. The thought of no more Kilt Lifter pissed him off, and soon he was shining this bitter light backward into the past.
Highway leading in every direction
— ha! When had Krig ever done anything but spin his wheels? Tobin and them had always made him feel like an outsider, plus the icehouse was a dump. And hadn’t the eighties actually sucked? Sure, he had youth on his side, and while the future may have been elusive, at least it seemed far away back then. But with twenty years and an unsentimental gaze, Krig could see now that it actually sucked. Without the benefit of nostalgia, Huey Lewis sucked. The summer of ’84 sucked. Krig’s prospects sucked hard after he passed up the scholarship. Isn’t that when Krig started cashing in his dreams and
workin’ for a livin’
? Isn’t that when Krig’s life jumped the shark? Peering across the bar at Jerry Rhinehalter, Krig couldn’t help but wonder when Jerry’s life jumped the shark. Probably when he started squirting out kids and selling cars. And hanging out at this place. But somehow the knowledge that Jerry Rhinehalter endured was both comforting and disturbing. Who was he kidding feeling sorry for a guy like Rhinehalter? At least Rhinehalter had a wife and family. At least Rhinehalter had a purpose.

Krig could see Rita was losing interest in recent days. The more she trained her focus on the future, the less she seemed to notice him. Daily, that focus seemed to sharpen, and the more it sharpened, the blurrier Krig became. Sooner or later they’d have the
friends
talk.
There would be boundaries. And the more he tried to cross those boundaries, the further away Rita would move them. Looking around the bar distractedly, Krig’s eyes landed on Hillary Burch. Second time he’d seen her in here. He nodded at her, but she didn’t see him. He remembered how everyone had started calling Tobin Happy Meal after she’d almost bit his dick off after that fiasco at the dance. Guys were afraid of her after that. Whoa, was that her mom? Damn, kind of a cougar. Rhinehalter was checking her out, too.

When Beverly felt Krig’s eyes upon her, she gave her tits a hoist and cocked a questioning eyebrow at him.

Krig turned away immediately and could feel himself blushing. He glanced at the television, then the window, and finally across the bar at Rhinehalter. “How’s the family, Jerry,” he said.

“Fuck off,” said Rhinehalter.

AUGUST
2006

The old man was patient with you. Even when you refused to listen, or hammered your fists in your lap, or hurled your mashed potatoes against the wall, the old man was unperturbed. When you flung the checkerboard across the room with such force that checkers rained down in every corner, he waited out your fury, nodding his head ever so slightly beneath the weight of his big white hat, as the checkers tinkled and rolled and settled to rest all about him. Sometimes he smiled at your outbursts. Sometimes he hoisted a playful eyebrow. When you refused to speak, he made you draw what was inside of your head. But you could not draw the many worlds, even with my hand. You could only scratch out erratic lines and bubbles of white space, and you scratched so hard that sometimes you tore through the paper. And as you scratched and scribbled your chaos, the man in white talked and talked, and you let his voice wash over our senses like the burbling of a stream.

MARCH
1890

Mather’s overland route had led the expedition through some twenty miles of the roughest country the Olympic interior had to offer, at the cost of their last mule, the morale of the party, and three weeks of precious stores. Mather’s decision to leave the Elwha had delivered them to the brink of starvation, four thousand feet above the very river they thought they’d left behind. For, indeed, the overland route had merely rejoined the Elwha, intersecting eight miles from where they left the river, a distance they might have snowshoed in three days.

The party retreated into a chilly state of silence as they set off from what would later be named Deception Divide and began the steep descent back into the depths of Press Valley. Plunging in a ragged single file through the soft snow toward the Elwha below, Mather’s nerves were set further on edge by the fact that he could often hear water running beneath the crust. A half-dozen times in the afternoon, the men were stopped in their tracks by the rumble of avalanches, and on each occasion Mather could do nothing to prevent himself from looking back at the unstable ridge looming in their wake. With each footfall came the certainty of a slide. Mather was afraid to stop and let his weight settle and afraid to move forward lest the ground disappear from under him. He would have welcomed cloud cover, even driving snow and ice but for a little stability.

Falling to the rear in favor of his customary post behind Mather, Haywood kept a considerable distance from Cunningham, who never seemed to master his snowshoes — plodding forward as though each step were an assault on the mountain.

Slowly and irrepressibly, like a lava flow, a searing hatred was welling up in Haywood.

30 March 1890
He has led us in circles and in doing so led us straight to ruin. I could just as well blame myself for permitting it to happen. Cursed am I for being loyal, for never voicing my dissent. I fear we shall not live to see the Quinault.

With every agonizing step, with each rumble from the bowels of the earth, Haywood cursed himself for being a follower.

Cunningham did not associate the distant rumblings with his own predicament, as he pushed forward dazedly, his sights locked between Reese’s shoulder blades. The present moment was as distant and elusive as a dream. Indeed, he no longer knew whether he was asleep or awake, whether he was moving himself or being pulled along by Reese.

Outwardly, Reese’s set jaw and squinting eyes projected the same dogged determination as ever, but his steps, unlike Cunningham’s, were tempered by extreme caution as he negotiated the steep terrain. With his squinted eyes alternating between his footsteps and the lofty ridge across the valley, where a stiff wind was kicking up snow flurries and blowing them sideways off the peaks like streamers, Reese longed for the shadowlike presence of a confidant, the sturdy guileless companionship of a mule.

Late in the afternoon, without mishap, the party arrived with a palpable but unspoken relief at the timberline, where the slope began to ease into the wide valley floor and the roar of the Elwha could be heard in the distance. They trudged through snow five feet deep in places, wending between trees that increased in size as they drew nearer to the bottomlands. At last they met the Elwha where she was running wide near the head of the valley. On the right bank, with a clear view upriver into the gap, they shoveled a flat swathe clear of snow and began to set up camp. Mather could not ignore the tension as the men went separately about their tasks.

“We’ve been here before,” Mather said to Haywood, setting a canvas aside and turning his attention to Haywood. “Recall the Liard in
the dead of winter. Or the Yukon in ’eighty-six, right smack in the middle of —”

“Damn it, it was never like this!” snapped Haywood. “Not on the Liard, not on the Mackenzie, not anywhere! This ceased being an expedition sometime back and became a fight for survival. And we’re losing, Jim, we’re losing.” Immediately, Haywood regretted the reckless impulse to give his desperation voice. So much so that he was almost relieved when Mather met him with contempt.

“Is that what you think, Charlie? If that’s the case, then I’ve sorely misjudged you for a lot of years, my friend. This
remains
an expedition, not some whimpering fight for survival. These are the lessons explorers must learn, the perils explorers must face, so that the rest of the world can enjoy free passage. I suggest you get to mapping this wilderness instead of surrendering to it, Charlie, or I’ll have to set my own unskilled hand to the task. There’s an hour of good light left, and I’ve got a mind to fish. Anyone else who’s hungry ought to strongly consider doing the same.” With that, Mather seized his whipsaw and his tackle off of the ground and proceeded on an upriver course along the bank. Runnells was the first to follow.

Ironically, it was Haywood who enjoyed the most success fishing, albeit grudgingly, pulling in a sizable rainbow and a pair of early spring chinook before dusk. Mather added a small rainbow, and Runnells, fishing a dark gray channel along the far bank, added a pair of steelhead.

They ate silently by the fire, except for the dog, who enjoyed but a few precious morsels of fatty skin before traversing the circle, whimpering in an attempt to ingratiate herself. Finally, they were forced to tether her to a tree, where she lay wide-eyed and disconsolate as the men ate slowly in spite of their ravenous hunger. Only quietly did they lick their fingers, as Sitka began to whimper once more from her prone position in the shadows, where Mather could sometimes see her hungry eyes flash in the firelight. When the last greasy skin had been consumed, and the fire settled at last into a slow burn, the men crept off to their bedrolls one by one, and rousing herself in the darkness,
Sitka got to her feet and pulled vainly at her tether for the better part of an hour, if only to nose around the coals or discover some discarded morsel in the snow.

Morning broke crisp and clear and found the party refreshed. Even Sitka, who still did not begrudge the men their neglect, harbored a renewed optimism, sniffing furiously about the dead fire the moment she was unleashed. In spite of all appearances, the bedraggled expedition assumed an air of business as they readied themselves for the day’s journey. They traded their moccasins and snowshoes for boots as they were forced to kick steps into the snow up the steep incline heading into the gap. The dog exhausted herself in frantic bursts getting up the hillside, often slipping back as she pedaled furiously to gain purchase. There was still determination in her, but it was grim at its center.

By midday, the party had ascended nearly twelve hundred feet, from which vantage they could see almost to the foot of Press Valley, where everything had begun to unravel and continued to unravel until they arrived here, two weeks later, clinging to a crust of thawing snow high above the Elwha. And lest they forget their precarious plight, the warmth of afternoon brought a procession of rumbling reminders that they did their best to disregard as they trudged onward and upward. By three o’clock they had reached the pass. According to the aneroid, they had ascended just over seventeen hundred feet from the valley floor. From this vista they could see beyond the narrow curve at the foot of the valley to the very cleft that had first deceived them. To the northeast, the peaks of Mounts Mather, Haywood, and Runnells were visible in a cloud-broken line.

“It’s all downhill from here, gentlemen,” quipped Mather. “Home free.”

Scarcely had the words left Mather’s mouth before Haywood pounced upon him furiously and without warning, tackling the bigger man and pinning him to the ground. Before the others could pull him off, Haywood had his hands around Mather’s neck and bore down with all his might. But he was no match for Mather’s superior strength. Mather threw Haywood off and was about to launch his
own offensive when a deafening rumble like rolling thunder stopped them in their tracks. Dumbstruck, the men gaped across the valley to the northwest at the face of the very ridge that they had only yesterday descended.

“Good God,” said Haywood beneath his breath. “Look at the size of it.”

Each man stood frozen in place.

The whole face of the mountain seemed to be in motion, sliding in a great crust toward the timberline, its descent almost perpendicular. Snowballs the size of houses bounded down the mountain in advance of the plunging mass — sputtering, as Haywood would later describe it, like drops of oil on a heated surface. The timberline began to shiver well in advance of the descending mass. Within seconds the breath of the beast hit the tree line with a tremendous rush of air, rolling up the forest like a rug before it, uprooting a swathe of timber a thousand feet wide, snapping the mighty trees like matchsticks and hurling them hundreds of feet down the mountain. The slide gathered mass as it thundered toward the basin, pouring a dirty flow of snow and timber and rocks into the canyon, until the canyon was virtually no more, filled to the brim with hundreds of feet of rubble. When the rumbling ceased and the last of the rubble had sifted down the canyon, the ensuing quiet was almost as deafening. The men stood stupefied, gazing upon all that was left in the wake of the slide: splintered trees and great patches of bare earth and naked rock. And in his heart, every one of the men knew that it was only by some whim of fate they’d been spared.