“For what?”
“Me. What else?” He took my hand. “You don’t need to know the details. I’ve got it all worked out. Don’t worry, I’ll find you. Okay?”
“Uh. Sure. All right.”
How long? A week? A month? More? George was seventeen, I was twelve. Surely, he didn’t expect me to keep my word for more than—a season, or two?
“Yes,” I said, “I promise.”
I tipped up my chin, hoping that he would kiss me again.
He didn’t.
Lifting the blanket off of my knees, he said, “It’s time for you to go.” He arranged it around my shoulders with care. “Shall I go with you?”
“Why?”
“To make sure you’re okay.”
Now that he liked me, was I suddenly less tough and more fragile?
“What, I’m not a baby,” I whimpered as I crawled out of the shelter on my hands and knees.
Outside, I stood. An aural mist sheathed me. Though the rain and the wind had ceased, there was a death chill in the air. Rafts of wet driftwood covered the beach right up to the garden gate. For balance, I thrust out my arms.
An owl said, Ku ku kkkk ku.
A shadow—cold, swift, and terrible—passed over one shoulder. No, not a shadow, but something else with weight and heft and sharp claws.
I screamed.
Talons scratched at the blanket that I threw over my head to stave off the attack. I tumbled back onto the piled-up driftwood. The thing, whatever it was, stepped on top of my chest. It flapped its shawl. A claw reached down and lifted me up by the roots of my hair. Up and up, into the bleak night.
Was this the vision I had prayed for? The spirit I invited to enter me? If so, I rejected it now, with all of my heart and soul.
I had nothing. No one to protect me. No weapon to lash out and defeat the thing. Still screaming, I fell. Through the blanket I noticed a flash of fire, the stars popping—or was that the sound of hollow driftwood against my skull?
When I came to, one cheek was pressed up against the piece of driftwood. The cold wet wind gnashed at my scalp. When I touched my cheek, my fingertips came away bloody. The right side of my face was incised by two slender lines. I found my feet, and made for the garden gate, which was wide open.
Once more, I felt a certain vibration; then, a terrible sound: scritch scritch scratch. I turned around. There she was.
An old woman with a purple forehead. Round black eyes and white eyelashes. With or without hair, I couldn’t say. Wrapped around her head, George’s wool blanket with the single red stripe. One curled claw held it in place. With the rusty tip of her index finger she beckoned to me to come nearer.
Entranced, I complied.
Then, as if to say “stop!” she held up her right hand.
When she unfolded the fingers and flattened her palm, what did I see?
Through a hole in the middle of her right hand, a silver dollar of daylight.
Her spell, for now, was broken. I whirled and fled, passing through the gate to the sheltering eave of the mystic lighthouse that glowed candle-white. I seized the latch. My last chance to save myself, bolted shut.
The next instant, the green door creaked open.
Blake.
“Oh, sweetness and light,” he exclaimed. “What has happened to you? You’re bleeding.”
I was about to concoct a fib, something imaginative, when, just then, knee-high, something from outside roiled my skirt. In the crotch seam of my pantaloons, a claw raked the tender flesh of my inner thigh.
I shouted like a demon possessed.
Blake, like an apocalyptic preacher, chimed in with, “Maldita. She-devil with claws. Beelzebub.”
Had Blake, in the deepest, darkest weather, the only living, breathing human, witnessed her too: the crone with the purple brow?
Just then the lighthouse keeper’s cat dashed out from under my skirt. She wound herself around Blake’s wool trouser leg until he scooped her up and pressed her to his chest. Delighted with the mayhem she inspired, the cat purred.
“This scratch on my cheek? Last night in my bed I was ambushed by your cat. After that account of the massacre at dinner, and the surprise attack by your adorable feline, I couldn’t sleep. At dawn I went out to see the sunrise.”
“A creepy dark tale,” Blake rejoined, “but, unfortunately, not true. A little after midnight, I noticed your bedroom door ajar. Up in the tower, with my spyglass, I’ve had an eye out for you . . .”
Would the lighthouse keeper tell Carl? If my father realized that I had left my bedchamber to meet George, there would be the devil to pay. I had had my share of supernatural encounters for one night.
Blake, no fool, nevertheless, was an incurable Romantic. I concocted a lie more to his taste, and in doing so (as novelists will tell you) discovered that it was absolutely true. “Actually, I went out to meet . . . a boy. I know it was wrong. But it was my very last chance to uncloak my heart.”
I held up a scraped palm. “Returning to the lighthouse, I slipped. In more than one way. Mr. Blake, take pity. Don’t tell my father.”
Fondling his cat, Blake pondered. Finally, he grinned. “Go inside and wash your face. I’ll make coffee.”
Good fellow. I thanked him.
A new thought occurred. From the lighthouse tower, I might be able to glimpse the old woman in her rags lurking about the shed. I doubted I had enough energy to make it up the fabled 74 steps.
I pointed. “May I? One last look at the sunrise on the day that love dawned?”
Blake shrugged. “Why not?”
I was so tired I could hardly lift up my boot sole. I can’t recall climbing the seashell stair, only the weird sensation that its mirrored light was calling me.
Third order of a Fresnel lens. Like an underwater diving helmet, with a magnified eye in the middle of its cut-glass body. I touched the magic lantern; it was hot. A genii’s lamp, I could see why the romantic Blake had dedicated his life to its care.
I made my way around it to the east side of the round tower, and, leaning on the island rail, looked down.
Up in the tower, I took in the view from every angle.
Across the twinkling Strait, the British city of Victoria. On the tip of the spit, an elephant seal in repose. On the south side, in a hectic pile of bleached drift logs, I re-discovered George’s hut. Inside Cline’s Spit, an infantry of great blue herons guarded the bay. Turning to the northwest, the mercury of the Strait, unbroken.
I had returned to the place where I began.
Of the old woman, no sign. Perhaps she had crawled back into her muddy lair underneath the shed?
Then, I noticed something.
On top of the flat water, in the distance, a streak of black, dashed with red. A canoe, perhaps? More than one? A fleet of five canoes?
The first canoe crested on a wave. It lifted, tipped up. And went down.
Raise an alarm. I was about to cry out for Blake and stopped. The scene shimmered. It vibrated, so that I began to doubt my senses. For one thing, not one canoe in the fleet created a wake. They seemed to float above the water. Also, just one minute before, when I had studied the water from the exact same angle, I had not seen even one canoe.
An optical illusion? A fold in time? Vision of the past? Waking dream?
I noticed Blake’s spyglass on the sill. The lens misted and then cleared.
What is it?” I asked out loud, to no one.
Nada, as Blake would say, nadie.
No one. Nothing
The fleet of canoes?
IMAGINED?
DEAD?
BOTH?
The 100 foot tall Dungeness Lighthouse tower taken in 1898. Courtesy of the New Dungeness Light Station Association.
Part 4
Whiskey City
View of Port Townsend from the Bluff. Photo courtesy of the Jefferson County Historical Society.
24
Carved Doll
c. 1889
About twenty-f
eet long, painted red on the inside and black on the outside, the Nootka-style canoe clung to the current. Jake’s paddle was made of big leaf maple. It had a crosspiece on top and a bell-shaped bottom. The narrow tip made it easy work to shove off, pry the canoe from the mud, or glide through the water without making a splash. A weapon for the S’Klallam warrior, a pointed paddle stupefied victims.
Below the bow, I squatted on top of a rolled cattail mat, amongst the bulging baskets and sacks and crates tumbling over with red, yellow, and brown vegetables destined for the Port Townsend market.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
I leaned forward slightly, to catch his profile: his broad brow, strong nose, and raised chin. His hands were scarred from work at the lumber mill. The scraped knuckles seemed an essential part of him: we are what we experience.
As the bluffs and shoreline slipped by, I watched his smooth and muscular shoulders dip and pull, dip and pull. Each pull of the paddle, like a firm handshake, was a deliberate assertion of character.
I realized, physical attraction, like a plummeting piece of shooting star, breeched the clouds and entered my world. For the first time in my life, I felt a warming surge of desire, both thrilling and calming, ease through my veins like a rising tide, filling me up, and teasing my nose, my ear lobes, and my fingertips. I shivered, but not from cold.
I had been raised by two Native women, humorously direct about everyday biologic need, including sex. So, it wasn’t that I hadn’t been aware of the contortions of humans and other living creatures; I simply wasn’t interested.
Even at age twelve, I was far more eager to reach my hand in between the rocks of a whirling tide pool to pry out a burnt orange sea cucumber, cocked and ready to ejaculate its sticky insides, than curious about that secret male part to which it is so often compared. Often while exploring I happened upon a geoduck, like a pricked thumb. I might prod it with my big toe to make it squirt saltwater. I never pictured its long, leathery erect neck as other than what it was. To me it was just a clam.
That day, something inside of me changed, not just my thoughts, but also my senescent connection to the world. Suddenly, I wanted to touch that divet at the base of his skull and the top of his neck that gathered sweat. No, I wanted to lick it. Weird.
When it seemed that my fixed gaze would burn a smoking hole through his flannel shirt, he turned round. For one wing-beat his eye met mine. His gaze traveled to the train-track incision beneath my right eye and remained there for a full second.
George and Carl worked together to lift up the canvas sail, a trapezoid on a frame made of sticks, like a Chinese fishing junk, though smaller and less elaborate. Our wake spread out like wings. The day warmed and the fog lifted; the air, hard and delicious, scoured clean every rock, shrub, and drift log that hurried by. Meanwhile our canoe pursued the bluff coastline, with its rocky outcroppings known as Dead Man’s Point for the sea captain buried there.
My stomach thrummed a drum roll. I thought, “At this very minute Annie is simmering a stew. For the eleventh time Seya is reciting the tale of how the mink tricked a princess into marriage. It’s Charley’s favorite. He gets it, even though he’s deaf. Julia’s listening, too. So what am I doing here?”
I couldn’t envision Charley, baby Julia—for that matter, Annie or Seya—away from our half-crescent of purple marsh on the shoreline. I couldn’t imagine the people I loved the best in any other setting. I wondered if from time to time, my mother would mention my name aloud. But, after a few days, or a week, there would be no practical reason. When the family mentioned Millie, they would mean the goat.
The awful sense of loss was not just personal. It was both more and less than that. As I threw back my head to take the full measure of the crumbling bluffs, as I watched the periodic pocket of pines go by, I understood: nothing is permanent. Everything dies, and yet it lingers. Not long before, twenty-five S’Klallam townships dominated this waterway. Now, a village here and there, with ten houses at most. In the wind I could hear the laughter of the spirit-children who were no longer there. This mystical sensation made me feel sad, but also reassured and less lonely. The ghost fingers of the breeze twirled my braids and played with my bootlaces.
My father, with his white hair blowing about like a wet twig that had picked up a few strands of seaweed, had the air of an aged prophet. Carl, wiry but strong, might provide an artist’s model for the Norse god of the sea. This afternoon, however, even in the crisp autumn sunshine, he looked weary and old.
Did he regret his decision to send me to Port Townsend?
I moved closer. “Tell me the story of Njord. To seduce Skadi, he showed her his beautiful feet. But in the end she discovered that she could not love him . . .”
“Not now, Fishbait. Some other time.”
“Like, when?”
He could not mistake my desolate tone. I wanted to hate him but he looked so glum. I put my hand on his knee.
“At sea. What’s it like?”
Carl glared at the sun. He leaned over and stared down at a rust-colored jellyfish that hovered in the water. Finally, he said, “A ship is a kind of church. In a storm on deck you can shout into the wind a prayer, or a curse. You toss out a wish, float it on top of the water, and watch it disappear. It requires a fathomless courage for a man who shouts out his truth in the rumble of a storm not to throw himself in. Not just the dissolute ones. Sober men, too.
“At least once in a lifetime each person should embark upon a quest to find someone—as unlike yourself as possible—to love. Old or young, high class or low, Indian or white; it doesn’t matter, as long as he or she is nothing like you. A lover, or a friend. Either way, as long as its love. If you do this, no matter what your past decrees or what the future holds, you will find out: Inside of you is something good.”
I curled up near to him, awash in a wistful affection for this peculiar man. Very soon he would no longer be there to protect me: from the silence of nature, the violence of man, and the destructive logic of my imaginative mind. A gust lifted up a flap of water. A salty droplet landed on the bridge of my nose, leaped, and skittered off my chin. I thought of Annie, pressing the baby to her hot cheek. Charley, hiding his face in Seya’s apron.
Swallowing tears, I reached for his dry hand. “Papa, why do I have to go?”
Carl sighed. “It’s not exactly a ‘have to.’ It’s a choice.” He added, “The most diabolic one in my life.”
He spread out my fingers and, like a fortune teller peering at the future studied my open, empty palm. “I’m not articulate, or well-educated, like Judge Swan. How do I say it, Millie? Life used to be simple. No, that’s not true. Things were more complex, but people preferred it. Then we became a nation. The government registered us, in order to show us where and how to live. The church does it, too. Now there’s a rulebook for who belongs, and who doesn’t.”
Carl’s gaze, opaque under dull skies, stared at mine until two sets of eyes became one. “Before, if a fellow—white, black, Mexican, or Native—took care of his brood well, folks asked for nothing more. If his wife, Indian or white, helped the family to prosper, she was deemed worthy. Now the church calls a marriage between a white and an Indian ‘unholy.’ Tell me, what has changed? Has God filed a land claim?
“These days, a fellow can mail order a European girl of the servant class, suitable to his wants and needs. These days, if a white man marries an Indian, instead of ‘wife,’ his neighbors will call her mistress, concubine, or worse. If the fellow beats her in the middle of the street at noon, no one will lift a hand. If the two of them are legally wed, he can beat her to death.”
Our paddlers pretended not to hear. At the end of each and every phrase Jake and George pulled. Their paddles steered our craft as Carl’s words filled the sail that carried us forth.
I pictured myself married to George. Could this ever be? In society’s view, if I became his wife, would I be viewed as his “property?” Or, because I could pass as white, would I “own�
� him? Is all romantic attraction a form of slavery? Did I want that?
Carl continued. “With training, you’ll become a fit companion for the preacher’s daughter. With minor education you’ll find a place in society. You can get a job. Or else, marry up. When you do, marry white. For your own protection.”
He lifted up the heel of the left boot. “Remember that time you tripped on that rusty hub of wagon wheel? You broke your ankle. After five weeks Seya removed the splint. You wept because—”
“—I was afraid my ankle would not take my weight. But Seya said because it was a clean break, the bone would be stronger than before.”
“Exactly.”
According to Carl, my future relied on one over-simplified choice: White or Indian? To what extent can a person choose his or her identity? If I pretended to be white, was I even pretending? If I chose to “blend in” I might thrive, but at what cost?
On the spit George had urged me to hold onto the past. Was he right, or Carl? Meanwhile, inside my mind my mother’s voice insisted, “Whatever you do, don’t take off the earrings.”
The day aged. Steadily Jake and George paddled across Discovery Bay, named after a British captain’s ship. Here, Vancouver noted shrunken heads on sticks, a S’Klallam warning to keep out. In the direction of true north, Protection Island rose up like a fortress wall. Both Natives and whites have tried to make a go of it on this lump of sand, awkward as a waving thumb. Both failed. Protection Island, one of the few local sites where seabirds nest, has no fresh water.
But here, birds prosper. Flocking gulls, cormorants, and terns vie for a place on the beach. An eagle, perched on a drift log, resembles the sculpted head of a king. Tiny holes pocked the steep wall of the bluff. The rhinoceros auklet, named for the small horn on top of its orange bill, drills a tunnel fifteen to sixteen feet long into the bluff walls to incubate her eggs. Hatching, the chicks face the back wall. This forestalls premature adventuring, worrisome to any parent, even those who recall their own youthful pranks.
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