West of Here (7 page)

“Maybe one day you’ll meet the shark that’s missing this tooth. Or maybe it’ll be another. The shark is the truth.”

The boy hardly seemed to notice when George strung the necklace on him.

NEAR DUSK, ETHAN
set out from the little bluff to scavenge windfall from along the edge of the wood line. It was cooling down again, and the trees no longer dropped snow pats in the meadow. Ethan passed once more the spatter of blood left by the doe that morning, and he felt a pang of hunger. The heat of the blood had left small craters in the snow.

It took Ethan less than fifty yards of scavenging along the wooded fringes to fill his arms. Just as he was about to circle back to the bluff, something caught his eye in the meadow to the south, a dark figure sprawled in the snow, about halfway to the head of the canyon. He set his load down where he stood, and set off to examine the figure.

The doe was still breathing after all those hours. The breath bubbling from her nostril had tunneled a hole in the snow. Dark blood had coagulated around the ragged edges of the entry wound, where the shot had shattered her shoulder, exposing the bone.

She’d lost a lot of blood. It spread out around her in the snow in the shape of a bell. Ethan could not gauge the extent of her suffering, nor did he wish to. The look in her eye was weak and placid.

He went for his rifle.

When he returned, he put the barrel to her temple and could not help but look into her eye once more, and when he did the trigger seemed to resist his pull.

He dragged the carcass all the way back to the cabin, leaving a bloody swathe in the snow as he progressed. He returned for his wood, tended the fire, and dressed the doe according to some vague notions. He found the hide to be tougher than he anticipated. The work was messy, and Ethan discovered that the job did not entice his appetite, and he wondered at his own vitality. But later, forcing himself to eat, he found that the fresh meat put his stomach at ease, and not long after dark he was heavy with sleep.

DECEMBER
1889

Hoko knew that Adam would have questions because he always had questions; it was not only his job to ask questions but his line of defense, too. In his days with the census, his inquisitive nature had earned him the name Potato Counter among the Klallam, for he had counted everything under the sun, every chicken, horse, and potato, it seemed.

Hoko watched him, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his forehead as he strode down the beach toward her with the heavy determined steps of a white man, as though the ground were not there to accommodate his steps but only to slow his progress. When he drew near, she could see the cruelty in his blue eyes without looking up, she could see his set jaw, and his straight upper lip, and feel the rock hard stubbornness of his will and know that it was etched in the lines of his stubbled face. Hoko also knew, however, that something soft in him still remained, where she herself had hardened. She knew that Adam would not sit by the fire, he would stand, because he always stood.

“Where is the boy?” he said.

“Around,” she said.

“Around the school?”

“Yes,” she lied.

Adam peered east down the shoreline past the long line of canoes and fires. Maybe a hundred Indians were scattered up and down the beach in groups. There were a few civilized faces among them.

“You haven’t been about the Belvedere with a bucket of clams, have you? Because I’ve heard talk. And I need no more proof than the drunkenness up and down this beach to know that whiskey is in good supply.”

“I have no thirst for it,” she said.

“Has the reverend been about?”

“I don’t know. I have no thirst for that, either.”

“Hmph,” said Adam, looking back down the beach. “Well, this is no good. This is no damn good. Look at you people.”

Hoko said nothing. Out beyond Ediz Hook, she saw the gray black plume of an approaching steamer, even as the wake of the last passing steamer was still lapping at the shoreline.

Without the census on which to hang the information he collected, Adam discovered the realm of general inquiry was an uncomfortable one for him, especially with Hoko.

“Yes. Well. How are you, then?” he said, finally.

“I am the same.”

“And the boy?”

“He is the same.” Hoko did not look into his eyes but kept her gaze locked on the blurry outline of Vancouver Island. The place had once seemed so close.

“What do you do for money?”

“Things for white women.”

“What things?”

“Tend to their children and laundry.”

“Well, try tending to your own.”

The words hardened in Hoko’s ears like wax.

“I have something for the boy,” Adam pursued. “Back at the hotel.”

“He needs nothing.”

“It’s a book of lists, he likes lists. It’s bound in leather.”

“I know the book,” she intoned.

Adam glared down at her, and something in him tightened. “Don’t act superior, woman. Because we both know the truth.”

Hoko gazed impassively out across the strait. “Yes,” she said. “The truth.”

Adam’s hand shot up in a flash, but he caught it there before it could act further, and he lowered it slowly. As he strode past her, he gave her a push on the back of her head. “Just send the boy to me. I’m at the Olympic.”

At the third fire Adam came upon, two Klallam men were scuffling
on the ground, and a third was reeling drunkenly around the periphery of the action, shouting lewd encouragement at the combatants. All three wore flannel shirts. The face of the circling man was very dark and badly pitted, and seemed to be made out of stone. He reminded Adam of the Klallam chief Chet-Ze-Moka, whose funeral he had attended, a decent white man’s burial. Chet-Ze-Moka, who had seen the coming of the first white settlers and lived in spite of himself to see the death of the founders. Chet-Ze-Moka, whom civilization had baptized in rum, whom the white man called friend, then dubbed clownishly the Duke of York, whose proud chieftaincy was reduced by Adam’s father shortly before he died, some say stinking of liquor.

“Who sold you the liquor?” Adam asked Stone Face.

The Indian stopped circling, but his eyes did not stop circling in his head. “If I told you,” he said, with a smile, “I couldn’t get more.”

The two on the ground stopped scuffling, and looked up, beaming stupidly. One of them spit out a tooth and laughed.

Stone Face put his hands in the air, affecting his surrender. The two on the ground rolled over each other, laughing, whereupon Stone Face kneeled and pretended to pray. This brought more laughter.

In Salish, Adam said to the men, “You shame your fathers,” and continued on his way. He heard the Indians laughing as he went.

So thick was the Belvedere with tobacco smoke that Adam’s eyes began watering almost instantaneously. Even the Indians, he observed, in their crude structures, had enough sense to leave a hole in the ceiling. There were twenty or more men about the barroom and Adam estimated a dozen more on the mezzanine. He didn’t venture a guess at how many more might be debasing themselves in the flea-infested rooms up the stairs.

Nobody stopped talking upon Adam’s entrance, or paid him any mind at all, except for Tobin himself, who was behind the bar with his arms crossed. He sported a rather showy mustache, which struck Adam as too youthful for him.

“Well, well,” said Tobin. “Skokomish not keeping you busy, eh?”

Adam did not take a seat at the bar. He stood at arm’s length, frisking Tobin with his steady gaze. “I’m here to file a report.”

“Drink?”

“I’m working.”

“Didn’t stop your father, you know? And he did a hell of a lot of good work up and down this peninsula. Your father was a —”

“I’m not him,” said Adam.

Tobin uncrossed his arms and reached for a bottle. “That’s for certain,” he said. He poured out two glasses and pushed one toward the edge of the bar in front of Adam.

“John, I need to ask you some questions.”

Tobin emptied his glass in one pull, and wiped his mustache. “You just missed the good reverend. I believe he went straight to the top with his report.”

“Don’t try my patience, John. This is very serious. I want to know who’s selling these natives liquor. And I want straight answers.”

“Certainly not me. I don’t want their business. And I don’t want their filth around here.”

“There’s no room for more filth around here,” observed Adam, surveying the interior. For all its rough-hewn qualities, its rugged beams, its softwood floor, scuffed and splintered and buckling toward the center of the room, its burled walls and crude framing and dirty windows, it was always the frivolous touches around the edges of the Belvedere that struck Adam, the gilded mirror behind the bar, the velvet coat-of-arms tacked on the wall, and oddest of all, the yellow and green floral painted glass goblet atop the piano. The overall effect was that of a bear in lipstick.

“Fair enough,” said Tobin. “You and the reverend are welcome to agree on that count. But then, not all men are made of the same stuff.”

“You’ve got no holes in the floor I should know about back there, have you, John? No special buckets of clams?”

“Have a look,” said Tobin, reaching for the second glass of whiskey.

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Adam. “But remember, you’re not above the law, and they’re not below it. I intend to find out who’s selling them the liquor.”

Tobin set the empty glass down in front of Adam. “And how would I know that?”

“Because if it’s not you, it’s your competition, and I know how you feel about competition.”

“You know damn well it could be any Chink from here to Port Townsend. It could be a transient. It could just as easily be any one of these cranks from the colony. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’ve had it up to here with Indians. They’re a blight to themselves and everything around them. They should have left with the others.”

“You’re right about that, John. But they didn’t. They’re still here, and they’re bent on staying, and until the law says otherwise, I’m here to protect them. Whether or not that makes me popular.” Adam turned to leave. “If you think of something,” he said, over his shoulder, “I’m at the Olympic.”

“Sorry about your father,” Tobin said.

Adam turned back around and shrugged. “Had him for forty years. Some people get considerably less fathering than that.” Adam doffed his hat, and strode out the door. “Good day to you, John.”

DECEMBER
1889

Gertie McGrew gathered the folds of her generous skirt as she glanced down on the hazy barroom from the balcony. Governing her red tresses, she watched Adam take leave of Tobin, walking a little too tall under the weight of his burden. Among men, none were more complex than the ones she’d never slept with, and Adam was still among that dwindling number. Gertie could not be sure why she trusted Adam, but it had something to do with forsaking his father, who had exhibited an appetite for brutality that only the quiet ones seemed to possess. Tobin was also a quiet one. Descending the staircase, Gertie could feel his critical eyes on her and avoided his gaze.

“What are you looking at?” Tobin said.

“My feet.”

“The hell. I see how you’ve been lookin’ at me for weeks. The next time I catch you, I’ll skin you. Now, mind your business. That little waif from Dakota wouldn’t be on the nod, would she? Fell asleep under a stable hand yesterday afternoon.”

“Maybe the lumber camps have worn her out. She’s popular, if you haven’t noticed.”

Tobin spit on the floor and frisked Gertie with his eyes, head to toe. “If I find out you’re lying, I’ll have my pound of flesh.”

“You’ll have that anyway,” she said, the hem of her skirt dragging across the dirty floor.

Gertie crossed the threshold into the afternoon air and turned her coat collar up against the chill. Though it was reckless to test Tobin’s limits, and she knew it, somehow Gertie had convinced herself that she was at an advantage. It was true she ran a brisk trade, that she kept her girls clean, attentive, and clear of the opium. It was true that her sarcasm and her ability to absorb a punch inspired a sort of
frightened respect in Tobin, and even truer that Tobin had a weakness for her carnal expertise, whereas he never partook of the other girls. Lately, she was beginning to fear him, though. Lately, she was beginning to think about making a run for it. Not that she had a plan, like most whores who ever managed to get themselves free had, not that she’d set by a little money every week like a sensible whore would have. No, mostly she indulged San Francisco like a daydream in her idle moments. She liked to picture herself as a lady instead of a whore, walking cobbled streets instead of muddy sloughs. She knew it was silly, and she kept it to herself. Sometimes she liked to picture herself filling her days with whatever it was ladies filled their days with — she imagined museums, coronations, high tea. But her imagination could never go too far with this picture before she ran out of the ever important details to populate it. Usually, she fell back on images smaller and grayer: herself working in a laundry on Polk Street, living alone with a Siamese cat and a parakeet who knew her name. Gertie imagined herself cooking, growing herbs on her window sill, buying shoes with her paycheck, and eating in restaurants with checkered tablecloths. Maybe she’d allow some dark Italian to take her to shows on Friday night and steal a few kisses on her doorstep.

Raising her wide freckled face along with her tattered skirt hem, Gertie traipsed south down the boardwalk with her chin held high, past the realty office and the livery to the dry goods store, where dusting off a crude bench, she seated herself, crossed her legs a little less than demurely, and looked out over Front Street, wishing she had a bottle of whiskey. Across the street at the Olympic, a filthy old Indian was reeling in the mouth of the alleyway as though he’d been struck by lightning. His head lolled about dazedly as he took one step forward, then one back, then one to the side, and repeated the sequence again and again without making any progress. Within moments, a trio of loggers spilled out of the Olympic and clomped north down the boardwalk, pausing at the mouth of the alley to watch the old man flounder. They made crude sport of the Indian for a minute or so, mocking and taunting him, calling him Chief Firewater and the like, until finally the stooping man with the burned face gave
the old fool a push, forcing him backward into the mud, where he struggled miserably to regain his feet. The trio erupted in laughter. Gertie was glad Tobin wasn’t there to see it. Surely, he would’ve been amused.