To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

  As it turns out, I might as well have gone. It has been especially windy along the river, so that the nest bobs on its thimbleberry cane and I can take no pictures. In the end, I am left alone in the house. Charlotte is away with her own family. I spent a few hours in the dark room, experimenting with the new printing solutions Mr Redington supplied me, yet it could not hold my interest.

  During these past few weeks, an anxious loneliness has grown within me that not even the distraction of my camera can ease. Against my will, I watch the wharf as men disembark the ferry, and I think, can that be him? It changes nothing, this desperate watching, yet I am provoked by the knowledge that he might well appear one afternoon, without warning, for he will have no way of sending word from Alaska that he is on his way.

  I have done my best to resist, but yesterday I visited the department headquarters yet again and asked after Allen, a futile endeavor though I know it is.

  Tonight I straightened the dining room and put on my best dress, thinking that it might cheer me, but instead it only served to sharpen my heartache.

  July 14

  Dear Allen, do you know why I persist in keeping this diary? My field journals, my photography notes, those I keep for myself. They are the mode with which I am most at ease. This diary, however, is something different; I would not place all these emotions on the page for my own sake.

  Despite the gloomy letter I sent to you, despite my hours of anguish and worry, each time I take up this diary and put pen to paper, it is with the hope, no the faith, that you will someday come home to me and want to know how I have spent my hours.

  Each entry, every word contained here, is devoted to you.

  July 18

  Today the mother bird perched at the side of the nest, the two tiny beaks opened up at her. The exposure is fine enough; one can distinguish birds and nest from foliage. Yet when the shutter clacked, the mother bird startled, and so her image is blurred.

  And still I am not entirely pleased with the angle of light.

  July 20

  It was a risk, yet it had to be done. With Charlotte’s assistance, I moved the camera tent so as to better position myself to the arc of the sun.

  We made a comical pair, the two of us. We stood inside the small structure, each lifting a side, and shuffled awkwardly, slowly, foot by foot, like two actors doing a pantomime of a horse. Because we were trying to be as quiet as possible, we were all the more pressed toward laughter. By some blessing, however, we were able to make the change with only the two wide-eyed chicks observing us, as the mother bird was out gathering food. By the time she returned to the nest, we were quietly in our place as if we had never been elsewhere.

  This evening I officially promoted Charlotte from housemaid to photographer’s assistant, although I can only afford a small raise in her salary. She positively beamed when I presented her with a handwritten business card:

  Charlotte MacCarthy

  Photography Assistant

  For at home photographs, landscapes,

  and ornithological portraiture

  Vancouver Barracks, Washington Territory

  July 23

  I confess that my most recent print of the humming bird at the nest is lovely, with the sunlight fast upon her, her two chicks beneath her, beaks open, the background in shadows, the nest and birds in lit clarity. It is perhaps my best photograph yet. I mounted it with parlor paste to cardboard and placed it in a simple gold-leaf frame I had purchased in Portland.

  When I presented it to Evelyn, wrapped in a set of white linen pillowcases that Charlotte had embroidered with Evelyn’s initials, I was not sure how she would respond.

  “Is this my wedding gift? It is, isn’t it! Even so, I won’t wait to open it.”

  She then fell silent as she held the photograph, and I could not read her expression. I asked her finally if she did not like it.

  “Sophie, it is beautiful . . .” Her voice was quiet and I saw that she might cry, all of which took me entirely by surprise.

  “I will deny it!” she said as she wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief. What would she deny? “That your little picture made me teary. Word must not get out that I am tenderhearted after all.”

  She says we must see each other again soon, that I will have to come to San Francisco once she and Mr Harvey are settled into their domesticity. Yet I am already nostalgic for these days I have shared with her at Vancouver Barracks, for I do not think they will likely return.

  I will miss you, Evelyn. Let tomorrow be kind to both of us.

  July 27

  I am filled with a terrifying hope. Can it be that at last I have a worthy photograph?

  The nest is empty; both young birds fledged this morning and the mother is gone. They have become unobtainable vibrations of color and feather among the branches.

  And I am left with two exposed plates. What will they hold? Can it be that I have caught something at last? Yet I will not risk any drop of sunlight that might ruin them in developing. I must wait for dark.

  Lieut. Col. Allen Forrester

  August 14, 1885

  St. Michael’s

  Bradley Tillman is dead. It does not seem possible, yet it is so.

  At 5 this morning, I woke to shouts, then gunshots. Tillman’s voice. — Come on, there. We’re all having a good time here, aren’t we?

  I could tell from his speech that he was drunk, as were they all.

  I hurried to pull on my clothes when I heard Tillman’s voice again. I have come to know Tillman well enough to guess that events might get out of hand.

  Yet he was not the one looking for a fight this time. He was drunk & happy. As I approached the trading post, in the gray morning light I saw a man pointing a rifle at the crowd that had gathered outside. Before I could speak, Tillman step towards him with a friendly hand out. The man shot him just then. Tillman slumped to the ground. He was not to be revived. The crowd broke into confusion. The shooter dropped the rifle & ran.

  I have only come to understand the details as this day progresses. It was Mr. Jacob Wheeler, the one who had scuffled with Tillman aboard the steamship. It seems Mr. Wheeler spent this past evening drinking more than he should, fuming over the incident. At some point, he perceived that he had been slighted by Tillman, who had jostled into him during the dancing. Mr. Wheeler retrieved his rifle from his tent, began to shout & fire rounds outside the trading company.

  The noise brought many of the revelers out of doors, who thought the shooting was part of the night-long festivities. Tillman seems to have been the first to notice that the man was in a bad temper. Tillman approached, hand out in reconciliation. Like a child who steps thoughtlessly into the street to retrieve his toy even as a carriage bears down upon him. The man shot him once in the chest.

  Mr. Wheeler was later found hiding beneath one of the Innuits’ skin boats on the beach. He will be taken by the revenue cutter to stand trial in San Francisco. For now he is locked in a closet in the trading post under guard. It is as much for his own protection, I suspect. I would have delivered upon him considerably more than a bloodied face if Mr. Troyer had not interceded.

  There is no counting the deaths of my comrades, yet it does not lessen my grief. Tillman was never measured in his ways, but he possessed a kind & self-less nature. That is a rarity amongst men. The General was right to appoint him to my party. I am sorry beyond words that I do not bring him home to his family.

  I have written dozens of such letters. This one will be no easier, though they have most likely expected such news for some time. Bradley Tillman was never one to stick to safer trails.

  August 16

  Nat’aaggi left this morning at dawn. I watched as she & Boyo disappeared into the willows. She carried her bow & quiver of arrows; she & the dog both wore their packs.

  I do not know what to make of her journey. It is impossible, of course, but if one allows that it might be, then it is a noble & terrible thing. For myself, I would not willingly enter those mountain
storms again.

  Despite my reservations, if I had known she would leave today, I would have arranged transport for her up the Yukon. I would have provided her with supplies.

  She will need boat passage along the way, but she knows where she can find safe help — Pruitt, Mrs. Lowe, the friendly camps we encountered. Perhaps she can travel quietly & unnoticed through the more dangerous territory until she gets to the mountains.

  When I saw her go, I wanted to call out to her. I wanted to tell her it’s no use, but what do I know?

  She sang a song over his body yesterday in the Russian church, before we had built a coffin, so Tillman was wrapped only in fabric. She knelt by his body & sang. Her words were both English & Midnoosky, but still I could not make out all she said. I had a senseless & fleeting thought — Where was Tillman to translate for me?

  I understood only this much:

  We walk by the river.

  Not the same words.

  Not the same [ — ]

  We walk beside the river.

  My friend, my [ — ]5

  My friend

  I cry to you.

  [ — ] in the mountains where kay’egay spirits walk & sing

  I go to look for you.

  Will you walk out of the clouds?10

  My friend, my [ — ]

  I cry to you.

  [ — ] in the mountains.

  That kay’egay place.

  I come to look for you.15

  I cry to you.

  I come to you.

  At times like this, I wish I were a praying man.

  I wonder that Nat’aaggi didn’t give it to me herself, but maybe she feared I would try to stop her leaving.

   — She says she made it for your wife. Something about putting some egg-shells into it, Mr. Troyer said.

  It is a basket made of birch bark & spruce root, much like the one I have seen Indian women use to hold food. This one, though, is small enough to fit into the palm of my hand.

  August 17

  We sat up late into the night, Mr. Troyer & I. By dinner, we were forced to light the lamps, as summer’s midnight sun has left this land. A strong rainstorm had moved in from the Bering Sea, so that the wind beat against the side of the house in the darkness. There are no trees or hills to slow storms on this barren island. For once I was willing to be confined indoors.

  When we finished eating, Mr. Troyer opened a fine bottle of Glenlivet. Perhaps it was the whiskey at work, but I was willing to sit through his talk. Mr. Troyer offered up his thoughts on death & mourning, how we suffer more because we have done away with the rituals that might otherwise comfort us. He is interested in the burial habits of the Innuits, the shaman practices of the Indians. He wanted to know more of what I had seen amongst the Wolverine tribes, so I told him best I could. I even described the infant I had cut from the bloody roots of a spruce tree.

   — My God! To witness such epiphanies! he said.

  He begged for as much detail as I would give, only to spend far too much time speculating aloud about the birth, what it might signify, who the child might be. A pointless endeavor. I said as much.

   — Yet you must desire to make some sense of it? he said. — An event of that magnitude must mean something.

  His zeal brushed me wrong.

   — Tell me this, Mr. Troyer, what meaning do you find in the death of Sgt. Bradley Tillman? An event of some magnitude, I’d say. You were witness to it as much as I. You tell me, what significance shall we take from it? What great knowledge does it bring us to watch him be shot dead by a drunken fool?

  I saw then just how young Mr. Troyer is, for I had startled & shamed him.

   — You’re right, he said. — There is nothing decent to be taken from that.

  He was quiet for a time, though not long enough to suit me.

   — But don’t you think, Colonel, that soldiers are strengthened by such grief? You all have been tested in battle. You’ve lived by your own wit & hands.

   — How old are you, Mr. Troyer?

   — 26 come December.

  I could not help but laugh. I could be his father.

   — So you have not seen war.

   — No, sir.

   — I would be careful, then. It is all too easy to love a thing you’ve never had to live with.

  Still, he would not leave it be. I was sorry to find he is a maudlin drunk.

   — You’re a great, great man, Colonel. I wish I could see the things you have seen. Surely you’ve learned so much from your journey.

   — Nothing I didn’t already suspect, I said.

   — What is that? What did you already know?

   — That it’s a d —— d hard life.

   — For the Wolverine Indians?

   — For any of us.

  August 18

  I cannot stop thinking on it. The day Mr. Troyer & I carried Tillman’s body into the old Russian church, a raven flew overhead as we walked. As we neared the church doors, the bird landed to perch overhead on the tallest cross. It turned its head down towards us, opened its black beak. Its sounds were uncanny, a gurgling, humanlike croak that rose & rose to a shrill cry.

  I am certain — in that bird’s strange call, I heard the voice of the Old Man. Yet I could not make out its meaning. Was it the sound of weeping? Or of laugher? Or was it only a raven’s cry for its next meal?

  Vancouver Barracks

  July 29, 1885

  My dearest Allen,

  It with great and perhaps unreasonable optimism that I send this letter north in hopes that it, and the enclosed photograph, will reach you. I feel I might as well have corked it into a bottle and tossed it into the Columbia River, yet General Haywood has promised to dispatch it to Sitka on the very next mail ship, and from there he says there is a possibility it will find its way to the USS Corwin. I suppose I will not know for weeks, months perhaps, whether you have received it.

  I am armed, however, with renewed good cheer. Word came to Vancouver Barracks this week, on a long route among Indians and traders from what I understand, that you had passed safely into the Wolverine Mountains in June. If it is true, the general says there is some chance you will arrive at the coast by the end of August, just a month from now, and be home before winter! Oh please let it be true! I know the general was hesitant to say so much but wanted to give me some peace of mind, for I become more and more anxious about your welfare as the weeks go by.

  My dear Allen, I miss you more than I could ever imagine a heart could bear. Nearly half a year you have been gone from me. Again and again, I read the letter you sent from Alaska. I am sorry that all scent of wilderness and camp smoke is gone from it now, for I like to hold it to my face and close my eyes and picture myself beside you.

  You will be proud, I think, to know that I have not squandered my days in melancholy, however. In the spring, I purchased a camera and these past months have endeavored to photograph wild birds. I thought often of how you would counsel me, how you would say that I should step bravely, and so that is what I have done. Our ledger book, my housekeeping, and our little cabin at the barracks have all suffered for it, but I hope you will find it has been a worthwhile pursuit.

  I have been blessed with some praise for my work, and am astounded to find that an editor in Philadelphia has passed several of my photographs on to an ornithologist who is compiling a new book, and they have asked if I might provide them with at least a dozen more photographs of varying species from Oregon and the Washington Territory. I have not agreed yet. I have ventured no more than a mile from home with my camera, and I admit I am somewhat daunted by the scope of the request. I wonder if you will think it feasible.

  This particular photograph that I send you, however, I have not shared with anyone else. I took it just days ago, and I wanted you to see it first. It is, I think, what I have aspired to from the beginning.

  Look closely —�
�do you see? Is there not something to it?

  This is all that I can manage to write just now, as the messenger is at the door and I am out of time.

  Let this token of my love find its way to you, and bring you safely home again.

  With all my heart’s love,

  Sophie

  Lieut. Col. Allen Forrester

  August 20, 1885

  Aboard the USS Corwin bound for San Francisco

  Sophie, my dear, I am on my way to you at last. Your letter, dated nearly a month ago, along with your photograph, greeted me aboard the revenue cutter when it arrived at St. Michael’s yesterday. It was a most welcomed surprise.

  These words that I write in return will not be passed to Indians or mail ships, but instead I will deliver them to you myself, & then I will grab hold of you & never let go again. Now more than ever, we are in need of each other’s comfort.

  I come home without my men. After all that we endured, Bradley Tillman was killed in a senseless & drunken misunderstanding just days before our ship was in sight. Never is it easy to lose a soldier & friend, yet a man who dies in battle at least gives his life for some purpose, if only in protection of his comrades. This, this absurdity, is a blow. My task was to bring my two men safely home from Alaska, & I have failed both of them. It troubles me terribly.

  The loss of our baby, my fatigue, all that you & I have experienced in our separation — I am unkeeled by it. My emotions rise too quickly.

  Yet this alone cannot explain how your photograph has affected me. I have removed it from its wrapping many times to study it, & I cannot get my fill. It is stirring in a way I am hard pressed to describe. There is texture & depth to it that seems born more of brush strokes than camera work.

  You have an eye for the extraordinary, Sophie. It makes me wish all the more that you could have seen Alaska, only without our hardships, for I believe you would have spied something beyond what my poor senses could fathom. I found myself inadequate in the face of it. Only now, as I leave these shores behind, do I begin to try to comprehend: gray rivers that roar down from the glaciers, mountains & spruce valleys as far as the eye can see. It is a grand, inscrutable wildness. Never are the people here allowed to forget that each of us is alive only by a small thread.