The Amber Photograph

by Penelope J. Stokes

  "Seattle?"

  Vesta stroked her hair. "That's right, hon. Seattle."

  Diedre turned to the other side of the postcard and squinted at the faded postmark. December 12, 1989. Her heart hammered painfully. "Six years ago?"

  "She's a long ways away," Vesta said. "But she ain't dead. I can feel it in my bones. She's alive."

  Part 2

  Soul's Journey

  A voice calls us out,

  beyond the well-lit path

  into the darkness.

  We follow, trembling,

  or trembling stay behind.

  But whether we heed the call

  and launch into the dim unknown

  or cling to the familiar,

  we are changed.

  8

  The Artist

  KITSAP COUNTY, WASHINGTON

  Amber Chaney lay in the darkness, waiting. What she was waiting for, she couldn't have articulated to save her life. Awareness, perhaps. Some flashing lightning bolt of insight that would finally make all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Some word from On High interpreting her emotions, sorting things out. Putting a name at last to the emptiness and longing that opened up in her without warning, a worm hole sweeping her soul into another dimension, a different time.

  Sleep was out of the question now. She got up, pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans, and moved silently along the worn footpath from the house to the old barn. Even in total darkness, she knew the way well enough that she could have negotiated the path without stumbling, but tonight she walked by nature's lamplight. Except for a few wispy clouds, the sky was clear. A full moon hung over the Olympic Mountains and painted the snowy caps with a whitewashed blue.

  A perfect color for a pottery glaze, Amber thought idly. Her imagination drifted toward the idea, and she could see in her mind's eye a zigzag pattern on a dinner plate, mimicking the jagged peaks of the familiar mountains that rose up behind the Hood Canal.

  With a sigh she sank into one of the Adirondack chairs in front of the barn and stretched her legs out in front of her.

  Nature was putting on quite a show tonight. The setting moon, a perfect circle of silver, had paused in its descent to admire itself in the calm waters. A reflection of reflected light, she mused, twice removed from the source. Down the ragged slopes of Mount Constance, over the lower hills of the Toandos Peninsula, and across the silent depths of the Hood Canal to the shoreline, moonlight flowed like melted asphalt.

  Amber sighed and raked her hands through her hair. When she had first come to Washington State, she had let herself believe that a continent would be sufficient to distance her from her pain. The move did prove to be a turning point for her, Amber had to admit. The misty serenity of the Northwest's woods and waters had wrapped like cotton wool around her soul. Old razor-sharp barbs of outrage and anguish ceased to tear at the wound. Daily torment softened to a muffled, persistent ache.

  For a while, she thought she had forgotten. And then the dreams had returned, jolting her awake with heaving breath and a racing pulse. The black hole had opened up again.

  Amber Chaney knew a thing or two about dreams—how certain dreams raised messages from the subconscious, an attempt to release something buried or hidden, something she had tried unsuccessfully to contain or deny. That in order to free yourself from a dream, you had to find a way to bring that reality to the surface. That healing could only begin when a wound was exposed to the light.

  Amber assented to this, and more. She also believed that a dream could be a gentle nudge, a hint of direction or guidance—an assurance that, whatever dark reality lay hidden in the deep recesses of her soul, she was probably strong enough to face it and deal with it.

  It was not strength she lacked or faith or even imagination. It was courage.

  She knew what she ought to do. She needed to let the truth come out and have its say. She needed to mold it into reality—to cast in clay, in the strong light of day, the images that haunted her by night. A creative outlet, that's what she needed—dancing or writing or painting—a way to put into movement or words or visual forms the feelings and memories that emerged.

  But Amber was no dancer. And her attempts at keeping a journal turned out flat and superficial. She had discovered, instead—using popsicle sticks and children's colored modeling clay—that she had a gift for sculpting.

  Earth and water, blended and shaped into something useful, something beautiful. The primal elements submitting to the skills and gifts she possessed. From the first moment her hands touched clay, Amber knew she had unearthed something totally unexpected. Not only did sculpting lead to understanding and healing, but it also sustained and nurtured her soul. It filled some of the empty spaces inside, as if she had been waiting for it her whole life.

  It wasn't always comfortable, this process of uncovering the truth that lay buried in the clay. But it was her calling. Her gift. Her destiny.

  And maybe, God willing, her way out of darkness into light.

  9

  Blindness and Sight

  When Amber began working on a new sculpture, she was never quite certain where she would end up. It was like taking a journey blindfolded, feeling your way along one step at a time without the benefit of visual clues. You only knew what your destination was once you had arrived.

  She closed her eyes and ran her hands over the damp clay figure that lay on the sculpting table in front of her. For some reason she had never quite ascertained, she could always "see" a sculpture better with her hands than with her eyes. She had learned to read the form with her fingers—the fluidity of a body in motion, the graceful turn of muscle and bone, the fine detail of facial structure and proportion and balance.

  Once, long ago, she had read an arresting story about a man born blind, who had his eyesight miraculously restored through experimental surgery. Everyone told him how blessed he was to be able to see for the first time, but in private moments he would shut his eyes and feel objects around him, as if shutting out the distractions of sight enabled him once more to "see" in a way that made sense to him.

  Amber had never been blind, but she could almost understand. In the past, the ability to withdraw into herself had been a welcome and necessary escape—a safe, sightless cocoon. And darkness certainly had its benefits. But these days she found herself less and less adept at shutting herself off from the truth, with its blinding lights and shocking verities, its inexorable pull toward reality.

  Emotional health, Amber thought wryly, is vastly overrated.

  She sighed, opened her eyes, and looked around at the barn that housed her sculpting studio and served as a storehouse for her work. Dawn had broken more than an hour ago. Beyond the open door, she could see an expanse of blue sky, studded with a scattering of clouds; and below, in mirror image, the blue reflected in Hood Canal, with small choppy whitecaps stirred by the wind. In the distance, on the other side of the canal, the Olympic Mountains caught the early sun and cast back colors of pink and gold and lavender. Amber paused for a moment to let her gaze absorb the ever-changing beauty of the view. Her soul might be in turmoil, but the mountains stood firm. Solid. Immovable.

  Inhaling fresh resolve on the cool morning air, Amber swiveled back to the sculpting table, narrowing her eyes at the image that lay before her. With these two small figures, no more than ten inches high, she was casting a new light on her dream. The forms were coming along—the flow of the skirt, the arch of the little one's neck as she raised her face toward the sky. She had almost captured the ecstasy of a child's abandonment, but the expression wasn't quite right yet.

  "Nice," a voice murmured behind her. "I like the smaller one's laughing eyes." A square brown hand reached over her shoulder and set down a steaming mug of coffee. "Someone you know?"

  "I'm busy, Twojoe." Amber realized too late how curt her response sounded, but she swallowed down an apology and threw a damp rag over the sculpture to hide it from his scrutiny. She and Twojoe had been friends for almost a year, but his p
resence—especially when she was working on a new project—made her feel exposed and a little vulnerable.

  "Not much sleep last night, huh?" He chuckled. "Maybe the coffee will help." He patted her amiably on the shoulder. "Don't mind me, but you've got another visitor."

  Amber turned and found herself looking into the soft, liquid gaze of an enormous chamois-colored male llama. "Lloser!" she reprimanded gently. "What are you doing in my studio?"

  "He thinks it's his studio," Twojoe chuckled. "Poor fella prefers your company, it seems, to ladies of his own kind. He keeps wandering up here. Be nice to him, now. I think he's in love with you. Not that it would do him any good."

  In spite of her initial irritation at Twojoe's interruption, Amber laughed and reached out to stroke the llama's velvety face. "Don't listen to him, you darling big old baby," she cooed at him. "Mean old Twojoe thinks you're good for nothing if you can't produce a whole herd of little Llosers. But you're still the best pack llama in the bunch, and the sweetest-tempered, too."

  "He does have a sweet nature," Twojoe said. "I just wish he had turned out to be the stud he was reputed to be when I bought him. He eats more than Llarry and Lloyd put together—if he could reproduce himself, it would at least help to pay the feed bills. And we could use a couple more big packers like him."

  Amber pointed. "He may not be anybody's father, but Little Bit has certainly taken to him as If he's her daddy."

  Little Bit, the herd's newest cria, had followed Lloser into the barn and now ambled up to the sculpting table and dangled her snow-white muzzle over Amber's coffee mug.

  "Get your whiskers out of that," Twojoe scolded. "You're too young to drink coffee." Gently, he prodded the two llamas toward the door. "I'll take them out to the pasture and make sure the gate is latched so Lloser can't open it again. Be back in a minute to pack up your order for the Baxters."

  Five minutes later Twojoe returned as promised, whistling under his breath. He assembled a cardboard box from the stash under the loft steps and began to load it with the plates, cups, and saucers Amber had completed the day before.

  "So, are you going to tell me about this latest sculpture?" he asked over his shoulder.

  "No."

  "You're a hardhearted woman, Amber Chaney." He laughed lightly and went on working. "This is a nice glaze," he commented, holding up a dinner plate. "I like the mix of blue and purple."

  Amber said nothing, but watched him as he carefully nested the plates in shredded paper. Twojoe Elkhorn, half Suquamish, was a gentle, quiet man whose bronzed skin, high cheekbones, and animated dark eyes made him look younger than he was. A year or two older than Amber, Twojoe had returned to his childhood home on the Kitsap Peninsula a year ago to arrange his mother's funeral and had simply stayed.

  His grandfather, the original Joseph Elkhorn, had been something of a legend back in the thirties—the famed Jump-Off Joe, after whom a local creek was named. According to popular myth, old Joe had stationed himself in the creek bed and refused to move until local authorities refused a building permit to a small industry that threatened the purity of the water. But Twojoe had told Amber the real story.

  Once, in the early years of their marriage, Joe and his Norwegian wife, Simi Lundvig, had gotten into a terrible argument. When she threatened to go home to her mother, Joe got drunk, fell into the creek, and was still lying there, half-frozen and hung over, when the sheriff arrived to escort him home. Simi took him back on the condition that he never touch another drop of liquor as long as he drew breath, and evidently Joe kept that promise. He and Simi lived together for fifty-nine years, producing four children, nine grandchildren, and dozens of great-grands. In Amber's opinion the best of the bunch were Joseph Elkhorn II, the eldest grandson—called Twojoe since infancy—and his sister Meg.

  Amid marriages and divorces and financial catastrophes and people moving away, much of the Elkhorn-Lundvig property had been sold off over the years. Twojoe himself had left Kitsap County to get his education and had stayed away almost twenty years. But now he was back, for good. And he held the last forty-acre section of Elkhorn land.

  Real estate developers from all over the county and across the Sound in Seattle had long been badgering Twojoe to sell. The Elkhorn place wasn't a lot in terms of sheer acreage, but it stretched in a wide pie shape all the way from the Hood Canal to Clear Creek Road, a prime waterfront development site, with half-million dollar homes going up all around them. As Seattle's ferry commuters moved onto the Peninsula in droves, property values skyrocketed. Even the most dilapidated property was worth a fortune, if it was on the water. Twojoe Elkhorn was sitting on a gold mine. Just sign on the dotted line, and he would be a rich man.

  But even though making ends meet was often difficult, Twojoe wasn't interested in being a rich man. He had already made his choice, leaving a lucrative accounting business behind him when he moved back from California. He had abandoned the fast track for the more placid pace of life here in Washington, and he refused even to consider their ever-escalating offers. Instead, he had renovated the log farmhouse, handcrafted from second-growth Douglas firs a hundred years ago. Adding on a little apartment for himself, he turned the rest of the house over to Amber and his sister Meg, made some necessary repairs on the old barn, which Amber had taken for a studio, and purchased half a dozen llamas to breed as pack animals and wool producers.

  Content to raise his llamas and serve as accountant and general manager of their little cottage enterprise, Twojoe Elkhorn was a man at peace with himself. Between tending the stock and keeping the books, he worked day and night to hold the place together and keep them all warm and dry and well fed. Amber could barely remember how they had survived before he came and she couldn't begin to imagine what they would do without him now.

  To Amber's way of thinking, they made a strange trio: Twojoe, a dark-skinned, brown-eyed CPA from Berkeley who raised llamas; his sister Meg, a weaver of llama wool rugs who looked exactly like her blonde, blue-eyed Norwegian grandmother; and Amber, the displaced artist who had come to live with them. But nobody else in Kitsap County seemed to consider them the least bit odd. Amber supposed that over the last hundred years there had been so much intermarriage between the Norwegian loggers and the native tribes that no one thought twice about a brother and sister who looked as if they had come from different planets.

  Amber had met Meg during the early days of her sojourn at the Women's Facility, and the two had instantly become friends. Behind barred windows and locked doors, you didn't often find a kindred spirit, but Meg was different. For one thing, she was innocent of the drug charges that had landed her in the recovery unit in the first place.

  She had been convicted of possession with intent to distribute heroin. It was an open and shut case—an anonymous tip to the authorities about a stolen vehicle resulted in her being pulled over and searched at 11:30 one night. The state troopers found the drugs in the tire well of her trunk—a street value of nearly $70,000. The trial took two and a half days.

  It was her "first" felony conviction, and even though the circumstantial evidence stacked up against her, the judge, Meg suspected, was not thoroughly convinced of her guilt. Besides, the prisons were already crowded past capacity. Meg was sentenced to a minimum of five years in the Women's Psychiatric Facility, ordered to undergo drug treatment, psychiatric evaluation, and reparative therapy.

  Technically, the facility was a hospital, not a jail. But it might as well have been a prison, populated as it was by drug addicts, alcoholics, and a myriad of social misfits. All of them claiming they weren't junkies, weren't drunks, weren't crazy. The recovery rate was almost nil; recidivism was off the charts.

  Even though everyone in lockup said they were innocent as newborn babes, in Meg's case it turned out to be true. Still, it took three years and a passionate ACLU lawyer to get her sentence overturned. Her abusive and vengeful ex-husband, Bart, it seemed, had planted the heroin in her trunk and ultimately proved to be the "reliable source" upon wh
om the prosecution had depended. When he finally confessed, he said he did it because he loved her and wanted her back. The unimpeachable logic of an addict.

  Meg's three years at Raleigh, however, turned out to be a blessing in disguise—or if not exactly a blessing, at least not a total loss. She got a good deal of free therapy, dealt with the debilitating effects of Bart's abuse, and was emotionally healthy enough, by the time she left, to reclaim the Elkhorn name and sever all ties with him. When Meg was released, she shook the dust of North Carolina off her feet, and returned to Washington for good.

  Amber was happy for her best friend, of course, but devastated for herself. All that kept her going during those last two years were Meg's encouraging letters, and the invitation to join her here, at the far western edge of the country, where she could start over and build a new life.

  She just hadn't anticipated that the new life would eventually come to include Meg's older brother Twojoe.

  Twojoe had made it abundantly clear that he would like to be a more intimate part of Amber's life. At forty-two, he had been married once before, and although the relationship had ended in a divorce initiated by his ex-wife, Twojoe obviously still believed in forever.

  And he was good marriage material, as Meg reminded Amber at every opportunity. "He doesn't drink; he's funny and sensitive and intelligent. And he's got all his own teeth," she would say. "He only needs a little encouragement—he's half in love with you already."

  Amber was sure it was more than half. And the truth was, she liked Twojoe. She respected his values. She thought he was a fine, gentle, compassionate, sensible man. But no matter how much she appreciated Twojoe's good qualities, falling in love—with him or anyone else—was out of the question.

  She had tried it once, a couple of years before Twojoe came on the scene. Meg's mother was still alive, and the three of them were living in the enormous old log house together like spinster schoolteachers. Then Rick Knutson appeared in her life, with his "aw, shucks" down-home charm and his promise to love her forever.