West of Here (58 page)

Shifting to the left, Ethan was grateful for the instruction, grateful to be a cog in a machine greater than himself.

RIDING LOW AGAINST
the wind, Adam pushed the mare to her limit, and she was responsive to the reins, galloping gracefully on sure hooves through the long grass. Adam’s thoughts, however, did not gallop so gracefully but scrambled madly to order themselves. How was this happening? How did this come to be? He was almost upon the hounds now and gaining fast. He could see the shadowy mob strung out behind them in the purple moonlight. Even from a distance, he sensed the danger coursing through them and knew he could not reason with them, though he must try. When it seemed the mare had no more to give, Adam pushed her harder and she obliged in spite of the rutty terrain. He came up fast on the bluff side of the mob, overtaking them at the crest of a gentle grassy slope, where swinging the gray mare around in a half crescent, he stopped them in their tracks.

Sure enough, Tobin was among them with an oil lamp and a rifle. The Makah also had a rifle. He was sneering in the purple moonlight. As always, his tiny companion was there beside him. The tethered dogs were all but pulling over the postmaster’s son, who leaned back on his heels. Adam did not recognize the others. He spoke forcefully to be heard over the cacophony of hounds.

“Best leave matters to the law, John.”

“We’ll have justice, Adam. The boy started this, and I intend to finish it. Now, stand aside.”

“I can’t do that, John.”

Tobin smiled cruelly in the moonlight. The tethered hounds continued pulling at their leads, baying frantically.

“C’mon, boys,” said Tobin. “We’re losing ground.”

Adam leveled his rifle.

Tobin’s smile did not budge. “Somehow I don’t think you’ll be using that,” said Tobin. “That would be out of character for you.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Release the dogs!” Tobin shouted. And with that, the tall boy let go of the leads, and the hounds bounded off furiously down the hill. Adam gave chase on the mare and was soon running abreast of the pack, all but stumbling over themselves in their haste. At the bottom of the hill, the grassland leveled out for several hundred yards before diving into a wooded gulley. Halfway across the flat expanse, Adam caught his first glimpse of the boy bathed in the eerie purple light. Apparently, Tobin saw him, too, for a shot rang out in the night. Adam rode straight for the boy, and when he was beside him, he pulled hard on the reins with his left hand, and when the mare had managed a gait, Adam swung side saddle, sweeping the boy up in his arms. When he heard a terrible yelp, Adam knew he’d crushed one of the hounds, but still the others kept after them. The boy weighed little more than a sack of feed. Adam swung him onto the saddle front, just as another shot rang out. Without looking back, he drove the mare toward the tree line and blindly down into the gulley; to her credit, she didn’t balk or falter once. Within ten strides, they hit the creek at a trot and galloped up the far side of the gulley through dense brush. With the cold limbs stinging their faces like razors in the darkness, they thundered up the far side of the ravine and back into the moonlight. The boy could feel his father’s heart thumping between his shoulder blades.

SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT
the blaze jumped the break completely, and within minutes thirsty flames were consuming the clapboard walls of the post office, and the tower of flames reared to new heights,
and a plume of soot black smoke rippled a hundred feet upward before it began to mushroom. Within minutes the post office was a lost cause, and yet, to Ethan, the defeat proved nothing less than thrilling. That the heaving brigades did not surrender, that they did not step back awestricken into the muddy street and defer to the flames — did not, in fact, so much as break their rhythm — sent a noble chill running up Ethan’s spine. That’s when he knew all was not lost, that there was something to be gained by the fight itself. And Ethan crept closer still under the fingers of flame, threw himself that much harder into the fiery heart of destruction, as the dough-faced Krigstadt led the charge.

“Heave!”

The heat of the battle was glorious, the glow of the flames cleansing. The machine was unstoppable — feeding, it seemed, on the very flames themselves. Even the gritty spoils of defeat tasted sooty and delicious on Ethan’s tongue as he heaved, and heaved, and heaved, untold times, tired but unflagging. The heat melted in his mouth and ran down his throat like fuel.

“Heave!”

As the brigade fought for precious momentum in the early morning hours, a sudden and fortuitous change of winds arrived from the west to push the flames back upon themselves. And emboldened by the wind, the brigades took the offensive, putting their shoulders straight to the flames and heaving, heaving, heaving with the persistence of a steam engine as they drove the flames back, hour after hour after hour, inch by hard-won inch, until shortly after dawn they had managed to contain it. From there, it was only a matter of hours before they had reduced the inferno to a broken patchwork of smoldering heaps.

And as the thinning mob spread out to wander amid the wreckage, Ethan straggled west down Front Street in the full light of day, with the ground smoking and hissing all around him. He gravitated toward Morse Dock, where he propped his weary elbows on the rail and gazed back toward the gutted center of town. All that was left of Port Bonita was a railroad office, long vacated, a sundries store run by
an old deaf woman, and two real estate offices — one of them bearing the name LAMBERT AND SON.

With a limp mustache draping over the corners of his thin mouth, and his shirt dangling in blackened tatters, Ethan knew in his bones that something had been born in the fire, though it was hard to pin down what, and harder still to measure. Perhaps Port Bonita was not an address, after all, not even a place, but a spirit, an essence, a pulse — a future still unfolding.

THE SKY WAS
the color of oyster shells at daybreak, and it was drizzling, and Thomas was cold, and a lone plume of smoke unfurled from Lord Jim’s chimney on the horizon. The mare beneath him was slick with rain and sweat, her gait a tired saunter. The boy’s eyes were burning, and a cool aching weariness dripped down the back of his throat. He knew beyond all certainty that his father was dead in the saddle behind him.

In a few minutes time, Thomas would bring the news of Adam’s death to Lord Jim, who lay pale and weak on the mattress on what would prove to be the eve of his own death. And Thomas sat with the old man late into the evening, by candlelight, as the wind off the strait rattled the windows, until Lord Jim said unto to Thomas the last words he would ever speak — words that Thomas himself would later say unto the people at Jamestown, as they laid Lord Jim to rest.

“We are born haunted,” he said, his voice weak, but still clear. “Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don’t remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly,” said Lord Jim, “we are haunted by ourselves.”

SEPTEMBER
2006

Silently, Timmon and Franklin broke camp shortly after dawn, amid a fog so thick that it clung to the forest like a cool curtain of mist. A fitful night’s sleep and one more night of hunger had left Timmon restless and precariously on edge, a state of affairs further aggravated by the fact that Franklin was forced to proceed cautiously over the bumpy path, lifting his knees ever so slightly with a grimace each step of the way. Progress was so slow that Timmon could hardly contain a frenetic impulse to forge ahead and leave Franklin behind. With a steady pace, he could be out of here in a day and a half tops. But with Bell holding him back, he might never get out of here. Hell, he might starve at this pace.

Two miles in, following a stretch of moguls on a downhill course, Franklin felt the cold tug of a rip cord beneath his lower spine, and progress was halted altogether as Timmon ministered for twenty minutes to Franklin’s knotted psoas. When at last they resumed the trail, Franklin was forced to rely heavily on Timmon’s shoulder for support, slowing their pace still further. Finally, resigning himself to the futility of his pairing with Bell, Timmon ceased wrestling with hunger and impatience and gave into his better instincts. What was an extra day? Hadn’t he decided that he would dare to give a shit? Why not start with Bell? Christ, the guy hauled his ass all the way out here to look for him, right? The guy was a Boy Scout.

Franklin’s condition only worsened as the day wore on and the terrain grew rougher. Stops became more frequent. Bell’s steps only seemed to get smaller. But Timmon remained steadfast in his patience.

“Hold steady, Bell. We’ll get you out of here, man. May take a while, but we’ll get you out.”

Late in the afternoon, on the backside of Deception Divide,
Timmon was forced to lift Franklin up and over a washout, sidling cautiously over the uneven grade, as he strained under the weight of his companion.

“Looks like I owe you one, Tillman.”

“Don’t sweat it,” grunted Timmon. “Call it even.”

In eleven hours, they covered just under eight miles, rejoining the Elwha in early evening at the head of Press Valley, where they set up camp beneath a stand of giant hemlock.

That night, as the chill air of early autumn settled into the moonlit valley, the two men lay on their backs by the glow of the fire, staring up at the treetops while Rupert lay curled between them. Timmon found himself compelled to talk more than usual. Maybe it was the cumulative effect of being alone all those weeks. Maybe he was just warding off the hunger. Or maybe Frank Bell was just disarming — maybe something about his salt-and-pepper hair and his sad, slowmoving eyes inspired candor. Franklin, for his part, was more than content to listen.

“Yeah, well,” Timmon said. “Mostly, I was sick of shit comin’ down on me, you know? Shit I didn’t have any control over — other people’s shit — my old man’s, that idiot in the White House, some guy in a suit in Minneapolis.”

Timmon folded his arms behind his head and gazed harder than ever into the canopy, as though some answer might be waiting for him up there. “But you can’t escape it, man. Shit doesn’t just roll downhill, it rolls all over the place.”

“How’s that?”

Timmon shifted over onto one elbow and looked at Franklin. “Well, for starters, let’s talk about survival. Used to be that a guy could live off the land out here, just on fishing alone. And I know how to fish, Bell. I’ve been fishing for twenty years. I fished like hell out here. For weeks on end I fished — from the right bank, from the left bank, from the riffle. And I never caught a goddamn thing. Nothing. Zilch. And it didn’t occur to me once — not until maybe twenty minutes before I found your black ass out here in the woods — that it had nothing to do with my luck. It was because of that fucking dam down there. A guy’s
got about as much chance of catchin’ a fish in this river as he does of catchin’ Jennifer Lopez.”

“That right?”

“You’re damn right, that’s right. The real question is, why the hell didn’t I see that coming? Why didn’t I put two and two together in the first place? You see what I’m saying? I didn’t make the connection.”

“Forest for the trees,” said Franklin. “Forest for the trees.”

Both men fell silent. The fire was down to coals, now, hissing softly. The trees swayed ever so slightly above, swishing side to side with each breath of wind. Occasionally, a tree trunk issued a plaintive creak in the darkness. And each creak seemed only to make the silence more implacable.

Suddenly, the silence was shattered by an otherworldly howl. Both men felt their scalps tighten.

“What the fuck was that?” said Franklin, breathlessly.

“An owl,” said Timmon, unconvincingly.

Rupert began to whimper.

“That’s a loud-ass owl, Tillman. And Rupert ain’t scared of no bird.”

No sooner had they started speculating than another hair-raising series of hoots came from deep in the forest behind them.

“Okay, Tillman. If that’s an owl, it must have mated with a hillbilly.”

“That ain’t no owl. Shhh.”

“Well, it ain’t a bear,” whispered Franklin. “I been face to face with one of those, and he was —”

Before Franklin could finish, there came a series of four very loud whoop-howls from no more than a hundred yards away. Rupert began to pace the campsite nervously, whimpering.

When Timmon looked at Franklin in the darkness, he felt his skin crawl.

There came the slow heavy crunch of underbrush from behind them as the men leaned breathlessly against a tree, their shoulders grazing. When the crunching stopped momentarily, Timmon imagined some dark form on two legs, not four, sniffing the air.

Franklin felt a primal life force beating inside him, something ancient
and half remembered. Whispering voices began to circle the inside of Franklin’s head. Suddenly he was not frightened. He pushed away from the tree and let out a holler.

“Whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop!”
he called.

“What the
fuck
are you doing?” Timmon said, wresting him by the arm and pushing him back against the tree.

“Whoop-whoop!”
said Franklin.

“Shut the fuck up, you dummy.”

“Listen, Tillman. Listen to the voices.”

Timmon released his grip. “Shhh, you crazy motherfuck. Shut up.”

The crunching resumed. It seemed as though the beast had began to backpedal with measured steps.

“I think it’s leaving,” said Timmon.

“Did you hear the voices?”

“I couldn’t hear shit with you whispering in my ear.”

When it was apparent the thing had fled, they stoked the fire and huddled close to the flames, resisting the temptation to talk about it. Rupert had stopped his pacing, but not his whimpering, as he sat alertly in the glow of the flames. Finally, Timmon could resist no longer.