“Your friends are stronger, your rivals weaker, and not a drop of blood is shed. It’s a weak nation that chooses killing.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, why should we give him or even sell him what gives us power? But I noticed Grandpa’s arm was thinner than it used to be under his green-and-blue calico work shirt, and there were streaks of gray in his short black hair that were not there a summer ago.
I slipped my hand into Grandpa’s and gave it a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry. I’ll make your guest welcome, the way my mama would have.”
As I walked up to the summer lodge, I stroked Mama’s abalone shell in my pocket. Would she have made a collector welcome? I wondered.
Susi was there unrolling a blanket on the table. There was a green cotton dress inside. Susi gave it a shake.
“I haven’t worn this in years,” she said. “Your mother picked out the fabric for me. She would want you to have it.”
I took the dress, relieved that Susi had found a way to make it look as if I was obeying my mother and not as if I was taking charity.
“What did Uncle Jeremiah want with a newspaper?” I asked once the dress was folded and set aside. Susi glanced around the room for listeners. Ida had taken the maddening habit of following me everywhere that summer. I heard her screaming and splashing in the lake with Charlie. Susi turned to me looking grim.
“He hasn’t said, but I know that the Friday paper has advertisements for lumberjacks and mill hands, some local work and lots of ads for Alaska and Montana. Loula will be looking at the canneries.”
“Do girls work in canneries?” I interrupted. “I mean, girls my age.”
Susi put a hand on my shoulder. “Look at you, you’re as tall as a grown woman. Taller than some. They would never ask your age.”
“What about Charlie?” I asked. “Charlie’s too little for lumberjacking.”
“I’ve heard the mining companies are looking for boys his age.”
We could hear Charlie laughing and splashing Ida. Susi was about to cry.
“It’s not settled, is it?” I asked, to comfort me as much as her. “We’ve worked hard all summer and there is leather, buttons, baskets.” I paused. All that work, there must be more than that to sell, but most of our efforts had gone into smoking and drying food for the winter.
“What we need,” Susi said, dabbing her eyes at the corner, “is something white people need, like whale oil for their machines. Or something they think they need, like jazz or rouge.”
She walked to where the newspaper sat on the table. The front page showed a fancy man and lady aboard a steamship. Susi flipped a few pages in, where another picture showed a couple eating at a San Francisco restaurant. Susi tapped the page.
“Oysters,” she said firmly. “Oysters Rockefeller and Manhattan clam chowder. It’s all the rage in San Francisco. The showy types buy it at five dollars a plate.”
I calculated prices in my head. Aunt Loula and Grandma and I always took a couple dozen pounds of shellfish in the fall, but if the men worked too, we’d have a hundred pounds—easy.
“Fresh is the thing,” I pointed out. “Unless we’re going to smoke them, we want to sell the day after we catch.”
Susi turned to the shipping schedule on the back page. “A steamer leaves from Aberdeen next week. If we could get the clams there alive, they’d put them on ice.”
I thought over the times I’d dug clams. Usually, we only took as many as we could smoke the next day, but once we gathered extra and kept them fresh in a box full of seawater. I looked out the door at the lake. The uncles were putting the finishing touches on their canoe. It was a beauty, a ten-seater with plenty of room for cargo.
“Susi, do you think we could put my little fish canoe inside that one and still have room to paddle? We could keep two hundred pounds of oysters and clams fresh in a canoe full of water.”
“Do you think the men will agree to dig clams?” Susi asked. “What would your dad say?”
I tapped over the outside of my dress pocket looking for something—my father’s sharpening stone, a gold button from his Russian Navy coat, the baby spoon he carved for me. Nothing was there. I couldn’t think of what he would say to me. I knew what Uncle Jeremiah would say, though. He was Grandpa’s twin in keeping the old ways. This was not going to be easy.
I paced a few laps around the floor and swallowed back the lump in my throat. “If my father was alive,” I said, “we would have our whale and not be in this trouble. It’s my choice now, and I choose not to be poor. I choose to stay here, to live on my land.”
7
The Clam Tide
It wasn’t easy to tell them my plan for gathering shellfish, not even with Susi beside me holding the facts: $3 a pound, Steamship Liberty, Slip 29, Aberdeen. Ida stared at me openmouthed, as if I had claimed whales could fly. Charlie matched his frown to Grandpa’s, shaking his head and puffing out his belly.
But Henry walked to my side, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “I’ll help.”
His father laid into him first. “Never been done! You’re old enough to take a wife, son. What will she think if you do her work?”
“She’ll think I’m not a whaler anymore. These are new times; I’ll take any work that helps my family.”
His words bit like frost. It was plain they had argued this matter before. Had I kicked the pebble that started a landslide?
Henry and Uncle Jeremiah stepped closer with their heads up and fists tight, the way men do before boxing. Grandpa stepped between them with a hand on each chest. I saw him gathering up words to pass judgment.
Grandma beat him to it. “I’ll need your help with the bargaining, Simon,” she said. “You know how a white man hates to talk money with a woman, especially an Indian woman. We’ll get a better price if you make the deal.”
Grandpa paused to collect a new set of arguments.
Aunt Loula took the hint and added a helping of sugar to her voice. “It’s a long way to paddle, Aberdeen.”
Uncle Jeremiah turned his scowl from his son to his wife. “You’ll not go without a proven navigator along.” He announced it as though the trip had been his idea from the start. “Our canoe is finished. It should have a first voyage.”
“We’ll wait two days for a better tide,” Grandpa added with a note of finality. “And I hear from old McCreedy who hears from the Tulalip who trade with the Skokomish in Puget Sound that someone sank a boat over the Hood Canal oyster beds. Oil and dead fish everywhere. Nobody’s shipping oysters out of the sound this year. We’ll get better than three dollars a pound.”
He gave a satisfied huff and surveyed his family. “Show me a man with a boatload of ice, and I’ll show you a man in a hurry to make a sale.”
Ida’s mouth was open so wide a squirrel could have crawled in and made a nest.
Charlie gave a short laugh of relief and said, “I’ll dig clams and stay in school this winter. Anything’s better than going down in a mine.”
So the clam digging was settled. Susi gave my hand a squeeze. Grandma kissed my cheek, and then gave me a long look as if she were seeing me for the first time.
When the tide was right, we took our canoes down the Quinault River and out to the ocean. We followed the coast south to the beach just past Taholah and made camp.
At dawn, the clam beach was cold, flat, and yards wider than usual with the minus tide. There were star prints in the sand from gulls and pelicans and the little hands of a raccoon along the edge of a shallow creek that emptied into the ocean. I walked slowly. The wet sand reflected the sky, and clouds rushed dizzy under my feet. I searched for bubbles that stood up enough to break the reflection. When I saw one, I dug as fast as I could with the stick to get the clam before it burrowed out of reach. It was tricky to get one. Whenever I was able to flip one out of its hole, I was tempted to shout with satisfaction like Ida did.
My family was spread out over two or three acres, walking, digging, and carrying clams to boxes full of
seawater. Three boxes were filled by midmorning. My hands were rough from sand and stiff from cold, but it was worth it. I loved all of us working together. In the rain. Here. On our own land. I thought of all the generations before me who had come to this place and collected this food. Before Spanish pirates and Russian traders and French trappers and American settlers, there was only my family, my people, and all the treasures of the ocean were ours to take.
For the flash of a moment, I saw a trail of children following Charlie, and five more clustered around Ida—their children, I was sure of it. I spun to look behind me. There was a crowd of footprints, long and little. One wave later, and there was nothing but smooth sand. My heart beat faster. It was the flicker of certainty I had secretly been praying for. I would not be alone forever. Someday I would have a family of my own.
The next morning, we made ready for our trip to town. Aunt Loula and Ida wanted to take the truck, but we could empty it completely and there still wouldn’t be enough room for the clams and oysters. And the road was so bumpy, we’d have to pack them up dry. They’d die on the way into town. The canoe would carry the clams in water and all of us together. The men packed rope around the fish canoe and its load of clams to keep it from tipping. I smoothed the pleats of my town skirt and turned up the sleeves of my blouse for the paddling. Ida hopped about waiting to put the bundle of deerskins in the canoe. Aunt Loula put lunches in a basket.
We took our places, and Uncle Jeremiah launched us. Grandpa sat across from Charlie and taught him navigation. They read the weather first, then the currents. Charlie named each sea stack, headland, and freshwater creek in Makah, in Quinault, and in English if they bothered to name it. Grandpa explained how to keep track of time on the water and how to judge a storm. I took in all that information and set it firmly in my memory, but I was careful not to show my interest. It was enough that Grandpa agreed to men digging clams. Even I knew better than to propose women navigators.
When the fog lifted, it was a perfect fall day, cool wind and not a cloud for miles. Uncle Jeremiah put up the mast and set the sail. We moved with good speed south to Aberdeen.
Now that I could relax, I couldn’t help thinking how deep the water was beneath me and how dark and cold. I couldn’t help thinking, is he down there? The memory of that nightmare of looking for my father and trying to follow his voice made me shiver. To distract myself, I took a handful of pebbles from my pocket. I had been saving this trick to show Ida—how to call porpoises up from the deep.
“Look!” I said, and tossed the pebbles over the water. I waited a few minutes and tossed again. Ida looked, but she didn’t have the patience to wait.
“Look there,” Uncle Jeremiah said, pointing to a slight change in the ripples.
A porpoise burst out of the water, leaping in a rainbow arch. Three more and then another lifted their heads above the water. Ida gasped and clapped.
Grandma called, “Nah-gwee-nau,” and tossed bits of pilot bread. The porpoises snapped up the food. It was impossible not to laugh at their chubby, frowning faces.
All at once they dove, and my mind went down with them. What if he’s alive down there, I thought, hidden away or kept prisoner in the deep houses of the whales? What if he’s waiting for some sign or gift or sacrifice?
My heart raced, and I knew what I had to do. I took the piece of shell, my mother’s abalone from her button blanket, and I cradled it in my hand. I glanced around at my family. All of them were looking at the water, lost in thought. Even Uncle Jeremiah seemed not to steer.
I held the smooth, flat shell to my cheek. It curved just enough to perfectly cup my face. Then, when no one was looking, I let it go. For a minute, I could see it shine like the moon underwater, and then it was lost in darkness. As my mother’s last thing dropped away, I felt my body grow lighter, so much that I gripped the edge of the boat to keep from floating up over the mast. My head spun, and I squeezed my eyes shut. From far off, I heard Charlie sing. It was a child’s paddle song, and Charlie sang it pure and clear. There was no weight of age in his voice. I closed my eyes tighter and clung to that song.
We camped that night right outside of town. The next morning we were on the water at sunup. We turned into Grays Harbor and sailed up the bay to Aberdeen. We passed fishing trawlers and dories stacked with crab pots. There was a clatter of metalwork from the shipyards and the deep voices of longshoremen. A cloud of smoke poured from the railroad yard. We could smell tar and raw logs. A pilot recognized the design of our canoe with the head of Raven carved on the prow. He rang his bell and hailed us from the pilothouse. We lifted our paddles to our old trading partner.
When we pulled alongside the steamship Liberty, a redheaded man with tan spots on his face climbed down a pilot’s ladder and stepped into our canoe. He shook hands with the men and made a bow to the women that set our boat rocking.
Grandpa smiled at Uncle Jeremiah and said, “Cheechako.” Newcomer.
“Skookum Cheechako to you, Simon Carver,” the redheaded man answered. “You may not know O’Neil, but O’Neil knows of you. Newcomer indeed; I bought oil off your nephew Frank in Neah Bay three years ago and halibut from your cousin Solomon Jackson last month.”
“And you’ll buy clams from me today, Red O’Neil,” Grandpa answered back faster than I had ever heard him talk. “You won’t find better—not this year.”
“Is that a fact.” Red smiled. He plunged a hand into our catch uninvited, stirring through the shellfish all the way to the bottom.
“Alive-o. Well done, ma’am.” He bowed to Grandma and Aunt Loula again, who laughed openly at his extravagant manners. Red fished out a pair of clams and flipped them open with a knife. He poked and sniffed and swallowed.
“Dollar fifty a pound and not a copper more,” Red announced.
“Six dollars or I’ll heave you overboard,” Grandpa answered.
“Ooh, you’re a filthy pirate, you are. I’ll clap you in irons, but not before I offer a dollar eighty-five.”
“You’re a man with an empty hold,” Grandpa said. He pointed to the load waterline. “I’ll take six dollars firm.”
Insults and prices volleyed back and forth. It was better to watch than baseball. On cue, Grandma chanted a Quinault lullaby that Grandpa claimed was an ancient Indian curse. O’Neil responded by assigning us all to the deepest circle of hell. When it was over, we settled on $4.10 a pound. Red wrote it out in showy penmanship on the bill of sale. He passed out peppermints to Ida and me and called Grandpa a few more profanities, and we went to the scales to weigh and collect pay.
8
A Day in Town
We walked up from the harbor and into town. Each time we came, Aberdeen was larger. Houses sprang up along the edges of the business district like rings of mushrooms. A new three-level dormitory stood between the lumberyard and the railroad terminal. Charlie lingered by the door of every diner and pool hall with ragtime piano playing.
We stopped at the cobbler shops first. Uncle Jeremiah did the bargaining, but luck was against us. A new dairyman up in the hills had a contract with every boot maker in town. We finally found a glover to buy our deerskins, but he paid half of what we got the year before.
Still, we had made a good profit on our shellfish. There would be enough money for clothes and winter groceries. Maybe we wouldn’t need to sell ceremonial things when the museum man came to visit. I held my head up and perused the shop windows as if I had the power to buy anything they might have for show. A block before the department store, we passed the curio shop, and by unspoken agreement the entire family stopped. Grandma and Aunt Loula looked over the baskets for sale.
“Dora’s work,” Grandma said, pointing to an especially fine basket with a geometric pattern in brown and green, “from Neah Bay.”
“This is Annabelle’s favorite weave,” Aunt Loula said of another.
A cowbell jangled as the shop door opened. An Indian woman, older than Aunt Loula and younger than Grandma, stepped out onto the street. She had
an empty cloth sack under her arm and a small slip of paper in her hand. I didn’t recognize her, but Grandma seemed to know her well. Grandma greeted the woman in Makah, and she answered back in a language that was similar to ours but enough different that I couldn’t translate. It was probably basket chat anyway.
Grandpa and Uncle Jeremiah frowned over a Hamatsa mask displayed prominently in the window. It belonged to such a scary story, I didn’t want to look at it, but Grandpa was upset because it was a secret society mask. A man was supposed to guard it with all his honor and take it out only for the winter ceremonies.
“I think it belongs to the Raymond Sook outfit,” Henry said quietly.
I took a step closer to hear but pretended to be looking at the baskets on the bottom shelf of the store window.
“Did you hear about him?” Uncle Jeremiah said, still frowning. “Terrible fall.”
“He was a topper for that logging company out of Hoquiam,” Henry said. “Came down off the crown of a fir he was topping. Maybe a hundred feet. He hasn’t walked in a year.”
Grandpa turned to Uncle Jeremiah when he heard this, as though he had something to say, maybe something to whisper to him. But Uncle Jeremiah turned away, fixing his eyes to some empty spot down the street. He wouldn’t even look at his father. It was such a little thing. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been standing right beside them, but I could tell they had been fighting, the way Henry was fighting with Uncle Jeremiah over helping with the clams. Henry paused a moment longer, cleared his throat, and went on. “There’s only a brother and a sister left to look after Raymond and all those children and the grandparents too. They’ll suffer this winter if he doesn’t sell it.”
“He’d get a better price in Seattle,” Uncle Jeremiah said.
Two hundred dollars seemed an amazing price to me, but shopkeepers were a strange bunch. They didn’t care how long it took you to make a thing or how famous your family was for carving or weaving. They wanted a thing because some other shopkeeper had one or maybe because there was a nearly identical mask at the World’s Fair. I took a closer look and saw, behind the mask, a woven blanket and a price card that said AUTHENTIC INDIAN BLANKET, HAND-WOVEN, $200.
Written in Stone Page 5