Jake held up his carving and blew on it to clear the dust. “That’s not why I was sent to fetch you.”
Perspiring I waited.
“Your father is dead.”
From my cramped toes, creeping dread oozed upward to my heart, poisoning my brain. I wasn’t surprised because I already knew. How? In a dream-vision, in the delirium of fever.
Carl was the person who kept me safe. Even in Port Townsend the image of his green troller out on the water reassured and sustained me. As long as I could picture his little boat rocking, I felt safe. He was my guide on the mountaintop. Without him there, how could I climb to the top?
I wanted to sob.
But not now.
Not with Jake watching me.
I asked, “How did it happen?”
“We were out gill fishing. Carl was cleaning the net. He hurt his hand.”
With his penknife he indicated my injury, almost as if one thing had to do with another.
“It bled a little. He didn’t think much of it. Odd accidents like that happen every day. The doctor offered to amputate. Carl said: ‘Who wants to be a man with one hand?’ ”
Jake took a long pull at the canteen. “He had a show-down with a dead starfish. And lost.”
“That’s funny?” It was becoming more and more difficult to hold back the tears. “You were his partner. His friend.”
Jake whittled. “Carl and I had an arrangement: I did the work and he spent the cash profits.” He smiled piercingly. “Friend? Not by a mile.”
He paused. “Carl was Carl.”
I pondered this.
Charley, wide-eyed, perceiving the charged atmosphere inside the tent, stared at us with an addled expression akin to disbelief. He opted for some fresh air, though in this dank place there was as little outside as within. He gathered up the empty cups, with a few metal spoons rattling inside, and crawled out. Through the tent flap I watched him drop a log on top of the fire. Charley grabbed the canteen and headed toward the black trees to fetch potable water for our camp.
As the rainy day became a stormy night, the heavy air inside the tent browned.
Jake had more to say. “I have more bad news. Ready?”
I nodded.
“As you know, your father hated paperwork. Bureaucracy, he called it. Swan pestered him to file a land claim, but Carl kept putting it off. Said he didn’t have the cash. Hjalmar Henning offered to do it for him. His best friend registered that land in his own name, not Carl’s. That means that now according to the law, Hjalmar owns it. All of it.”
Throughout this narrative, he never once glanced up. The death of my father, the loss of our land, the demise of Annie’s children, apparently meant very little to him. Did he have a heart, or was he a hollow drum?
Jake went on. “Henning needs a wife. He offered to wed Annie.” He hesitated one instant, then smiled. “When she refused, he generously offered to take you.”
Me? With Hjalmar? That rusty tool? An ox had softer hair, and better breath and social skills. If I refused, did that mean my mother . . . ? I was about to object, when a black-and-red piercing pain in the center of my hand caused me to inquire: “Where’s Charley?”
“At the creek—” And stopped. He realized it, too. Charley had been gone too long. Without a word, He threw on his boots and disappeared.
For the first time I noticed that I was wearing his wool socks, from Jennie, his only pair. I recovered my own boots from underneath a heap, laced them up, and followed. Until now I had not stood up on my own accord.
Dripping boughs opened up to a trail that was greasy with mud. As we entered the forest, a mossy silence gave way to the murmur of a waterfall, half-a-mile away. Jake looked back to see me chasing him and kept on. Underneath lifting boughs with their swinging beards of reindeer moss, over roots and rocks, I followed the paler elbow patches on his dark wool shirt. A barn owl, surprised, let a mole go. Berry bushes clutched at my skirt. In the rain the mud pulled me this way and that.
Suddenly, as if the grasping hands of a spruce had tossed him, Jake veered, and slid into the creek. He shouted. A cry for help, or a warning? His words were stifled by the wet wind. The pool beneath the waterfall served as a spawning ground for salmon; the moist air smelled like rotting fish, even more putrid than at the camp. I gulped, and followed.
There was Charley, sitting with his knees up in the stream. His stiff black hat at a bemused angle. Forehead muddy, his lips and chin bleeding. Between his scraped knees the overflowing canteen.
It was clear what had happened. Leaning over the creek, Charley had slipped. The toe of his boot lodged underneath a rock, badly bruising his left ankle. Worse, he could not dislodge his foot. Now he grinned, in a goofy, hypothermic way.
Jake, in the current up to his thighs, was prying at the rock. He found a flat stick. The rock budge. Liberated. But Charley could not stand up. His numb right leg refused to take his weight. He sat back down in the water.
Jake had had enough. He slid his hands underneath his armpits and heaved. Charley cooperated, feebly. Somehow or other, he pushed Charley up the bank. I shoved Jake. The three of us, a mud creature.
At the top of the bank, as Jake set him down, Charley tossed his right arm over my left shoulder. Jake on his left. Without further mishap we made it back to our tent.
Jake hustled Charley inside. He peeled off his outer layers. With my loosely-bandaged hand I removed my boots to salvage the wool socks Jennie had knit for Jake, the only part of me that was still dry. I handed them to Jake. Charley needed them more than I did.
As he stripped him down, Jake ordered me out. “Get a bucket of cold, clear water from the creek. On the way, put a few sticks on the fire. Go quick. Be careful.”
I crawled out.
Who was Jake to boss me? The truth was that I was afraid. (I’d just learned that Carl was dead; now who would protect me?) If reentering the forest meant saving Charley’s life, I had to try. The wind babbled. (Leap up. My spirit said, Follow your body.) The rain abated. Without socks, my frozen feet would follow my instructions for only so long. Step by step, I made my way to the creek. I filled the canteen and ran back to the camp. With my bandaged hand I managed to balance a pot on top of the blaze.
Trembling, I rolled into the tent.
Jake was transformed. Naked to the waist, with his braid hanging down his long, lean, muscular back. His trousers were rolled up over his burled knees and knotted calves. He wore a woven-cedar anklet. If he noticed me, I could not tell.
Inside his blanket, Charley shook violently. Jake crouched down. He leaned in, and spread out his fingers on top of Charley’s iron chest.
Slowly, quietly, rhythmically, Jake sang. Though the words were strange, the melody was oddly soothing. As Jake chanted, Charley began rocking. Little by little, his breathing eased, rising and falling with the rain.
Just when his condition seemed improved, he collapsed. Charley rested, for a minute or less. Again, he gasped. In pain, worse than before.
Jake removed his hands and sealed his cupped palms. He ordered me to retrieve the blackened half-filled steaming pot on top of the fire outside the tent. Without spilling much, I set it down by his knee. Jake plunged his fists into the hot water. When he opened up his fingers, a tadpole current sizzled.
One more time, he placed flat palms on top of my brother’s chest. This time, he raised his cupped palms to his open mouth, breathing in deeply. Swallowing the deadly force inside of Charley would augment Jake’s ability to heal others. Either that, or it would kill him.
Never before had I witnessed a healing ceremony. Though not exactly illegal, the white government discouraged the practice of Indian medicine with vague threats and random arrests for unspecified crimes. Annie, true to her pledge to Carl, kept me away from the secret nightime rituals. In Port Townsend the Mathiesons had warned me off of Indian cures, as well as Chinese herbs. Swan, however, believed that the laying on of hands, shaman, and the medicines in the Far East, had the power
to relieve pain and save lives.
Jake Cook saved Charley’s from deadly hypothermia. I know because I was there. The color returned to his cheeks. He breathed deeply. Though once in a while he shivered, or restlessly tossed, mostly he just slept.
Jake put on his shirt, crawled out of the tent to roll a tobacco cigarette and smoke. I dropped the flap, removed my drenched outerwear, and nestled in beside Charley. Though I tried not to disturb him, even this small movement waked him.
Now it was my turn. I spooned up huckleberry tea from a tin cup. He finished it, and nodded off. While he slept, I stayed close.
Meanwhile Jake returned, his shirt steaming from sitting so close to the fire. He kicked off his boots. He stretched out and turned over to face the canvas.
Our muddy tent ebbed and sighed.
Though he spoke not one word, I sensed he was still awake. After what had happened, neither one of us could sleep. In a sense, Charley’s near-miss was nothing unusual, a typical camping mishap. Still, something between us had changed.
“How did you learn to do that?”
He opened one eye. “What?”
“You know.”
Jake slowly rolled over, opened one eye, then shut it.
I sat up, folded my arms on top of my knees. “The morning we left Dungeness, I found that weird wooden figure inside my satchel. You carved it and put it inside my satchel. Why?”
Jake shrugged—not easy to do when one is lying down.
“Wasn’t me. Guess again. ”
“I know it was. George told me.”
“Want to know what he said about you?” He sat himself up, reached for his carving knife, and unfolded his blade. “You’re like a house-snake. You look innocent, but if you bury your fangs, you don’t let go. But I didn’t need George to point that out.”
Sighing, he began to whittle.
“The crone with the purple stain on her forehead? Some say she lives underneath the shed near the light station.” Jake made a scritch-scratching sound with his knife, “Yeah . . . I may have carved it. But then George hid it inside your satchel. To help you remember where you came from. Did it work?”
I felt a throb in the center of my right hand. “What about George? Did he ever make it to the east side of the mountains?”
“Yup. George is a full-fledged engineer in charge of an irrigation project in Eastern Washington. White men work for him. He may not be rich but give him time. One day, maybe, he may even find his way back home . . .”
With or without me, I was glad that George was on his way to achieving his vision. “One of the last times I saw George, he told me that you were there. At Dungeness.” Now or never. “What happened that night?”
His shoulders slouched. Silently, he reached and slid his hat onto his head, and pulled it forward. This was the old Jake, the one I knew so well, the one that wasn’t saying.
What he said is true: once I get a hook in it, I don’t let go. I had to know: how was my mother connected to the silver fish? I persisted, “How old were you? Twelve, thirteen? It’s not your fault. You were a kid, like Charley.”
He eyed me, and inquired bitterly, “A kid? What does that feel like? Because I’d really like to know. In Neah Bay? Half out of her mind with hunger, yet coldly aware that her kids were dying, my mother did what she could. After that, Dad and me, we wandered: the unholy ghost and his unholy son.”
“Jennie took us in. For no logical reason, she saved us. Why? That’s just how she is. She opened up her world to us so that we could all starve together. I was just shy of thirteen. It was my time to become a warrior. When Lame Jack gave the signal, I brought my club down.”
I felt cold all over. “And then?”
“Are you sure you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
Jake complied. “Asleep inside a canvas tent, a Tsimshian boy. A year or two younger. not as tall as me, but huskier all over. In a wrestling match he would have crushed me. It wasn’t a fair fight. Afterwards, I rubbed down his corpse with both hands. He was a kid. Like me, he owned nothing of value. See this? I still wear his cedar bracelet around my ankle.”
Jake, a carver and a killer, flipped open the blade, shut it, and snapped it open again.
“What about the silver fish?”
“I fought my way to the water’s edge. I tripped, and nearly fell on top of her. Half-covered up in sand, I thought she was dead. I grabbed her wrist, to check her pulse. Inside her cupped hand, swimming in blood, the earrings. Payment for her life.”
I cried out, “Not as a pay-off, but because you saved her. The girl, and her unborn child.”
Jake laughed. It was an angry sound. “Believe what you want. But remember this: it’s my story, not yours.”
That’s not true, I thought. It’s my story, too. “Why did you give the earrings to Annie?”
“Why? Because they were valuable. To prove that I was a warrior. I had no doubt that Annie wanted to be with me. But she was afraid. The earrings were the only way I could prove to her that I would keep her safe and never, ever let her starve. Let our children die. I would protect her, by any means necessary.”
He carved. “A day or two before, I offered her my canoe. The work of my hands. Not only useful. Elegant, too. Her reaction? She wasn’t impressed.”
“When I gave Annie the earrings, she stopped laughing. For a while, I made myself believe that she would stay.”
He bowed his head.
The rain had stopped. Through the tent flap, the dangling sickle moon, like a fox curled up in the sand.
After that night, Jake had never left her side. My brother and my sister, for all I knew, baby James, had a tendency to look like him. A voice inside of me said: This man—a killer—could be your father.
Jake was right; I didn’t want to know.
Impulsively, in a menacing tone, I commanded him: “Stay away from Annie.”
Jake pulled down his slouch hat. Suddenly he seemed ordinary: a thin, weary laborer, trying to get by. He smiled, just a little. “Sorry, can’t. Too late.”
He slipped his hat off his head, and put his knife into its leather sheath, pulled the blanket over one shoulder, rolled over, and went to sleep.
When I opened my eyes the air was white.
Through the tent flap I noticed Charley tending the fire. He looked pale. For breakfast, we had burnt coffee. Jake untangled a line and prepared a hook. If we dangled it over the side of the canoe, we might have a meal at midday. If not, we’d sup at Dungeness.
As Jake and Charley decamped, I wandered down the bleak shore. I hoped to revive in the fresh air but there was no life to be had, not there. The fetid atmosphere oozed up from the sticky grass. I made for the black tree on top of a bald hill, the site of the plague-ship captain’s grave.
From the top of the rise, I lifted up my injured right hand to peer through the morning mist. Against the backdrop of Protection Island appeared a square-masted schooner, the ragged sails blowing in the wind.
A minute later, the vision turned to mist: the ghost ship disappeared.
Then I knew. The legend was real. Captain Thompson of the What Cheer, buried here in the putrid mud, just as the S’Klallam elders had described it.
A mottled rock, a moon snail shell, an iron hinge, tributes to the smallpox captain, marked the grave. Carried here by vengeful Indians noting the ironic justice of their fate? Or by folks—Native, white, or both—who understood that all suffering is shared suffering because it’s part of the human condition?
Little by little the tide crept up as I walked up to greet it.
The waves bubbled up over my bare feet.
Further along the beach, Jake raised his hand and waved.
My hand throbbed.
I had witnessed the past. How, I could not say. This time, I had no doubt.
It was time to leave this awful cove, a place of paradox, where, like merging rivulets of fresh and salt water, secrecy and revelation, sickness and healing, murder and love, all see
med to converge.
Fatal Injury By Starfish
By James Swan
c. 1890
A fisherman at Port Discovery, named Charles Lambert met with a singular accident which resulted in his death. A starfish got entangled on his hook, and while taking it off one of the sharp little spines or prickles pierced the skin of his left hand between the fingers. He paid no attention to it, but soon it festered, his arm began to swell, blood-poisoning ensued, and then died in the Marine Hospital here yesterday. It is the first time I have heard of such an instance. I know that the spines of the sea urchin will produce sores if they are broken off in one’s flesh, but for a flabby starfish to injure a person in such a manner seems unaccountable.
—James G. Swan,
Port Townsend, April 10
37
Lost and Found
c. Autumn 1890
Somehow, while in Port Townsend, I had consigned the childhood memory of my grandmother’s birdhouse shelter to the mystic realm of the long-dispersed past. As we drew near, the scene before me took on a more determined outline. Instead of front steps, an inclined plank. The front door, not a door, but a cedar panel. The house on stilts was sturdier than I had remembered and assumed. Even with Annie’s cooperation, she could not have constructed it without the assistance of someone strong enough to lift a beam.
Inside, one large room, with a tiny wood stove in the corner. Above it, shelves with various things, mostly dishes and tools. Against the right-hand wall, a low table. In the center of the room, but slightly to the left, a checker-board platform overlaid with cedar mats.
Stretched out on the platform bed, my grandmother. The only part of her I could actually see were the untrammeled soles of a new pair of sequined slippers. A gift from Swan, I later found out.
She was at the center of a unique ritual; surrounded on three sides by people in somber suits. On her right, a tweedy woman with big hips, swaying. To the left, a little man in a vest and shirt sleeves, his right hand cupped under my grandmother’s elbow. With pursed lips he was blowing on her wrist. At her feet, an oversized fellow with wide shoulders in a shiny vest and a stiff collar. When he turned around to greet me, I noticed his cornflower-blue necktie. He was ringing a bell.
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