Snow Falling on Cedars

by David Guterson

  ‘You haven’t done anything illegal,’ the Jap replied. ‘Wrong is a different matter.’

  Etta blinked. She stepped back and put her hand on the doorknob. ‘Get out of here,’ she said.

  ‘You sold our land,’ the Jap continued. ‘You sold our land out from under us, Mrs. Heine. You took advantage of the fact that we were gone. You – ’

  But she’d shut the door so as not to listen. Carl made such a mess, she’d thought. Now I have to clean it all up.

  ‘Mrs. Heine,’ said the prosecutor, Alvin Hooks, when she’d finished telling of these things. ‘Did you see the defendant there-after? Did he approach you again about these land matters?’

  ‘Did I see him?’ asked Etta. ‘Sure I saw him. Saw him in town, saw him at Petersen’s, here and there … I saw him now and again, yes.’

  ‘Did he speak to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There was no further communication between you?’

  ‘None I can think of. ’Less you want to call dirty looks a way of speaking.’ And she glanced at Kabuo again.

  ‘Dirty looks, Mrs. Heine? What exactly do you mean?’

  Etta smoothed the front of her dress and sat more erectly in the witness stand. ‘Ever time I saw him,’ she insisted, ‘there he’d be with his eyes narrowed at me. You know, watchin’, glarin’.’

  ‘I see,’ said the prosecutor. ‘And how long did this continue?’

  ‘Been going on ever since,’ said Etta. ‘Never stopped. I never saw a sociable look from him, not once in all the times I saw him. Always narrowin’ his eyes at me, giving me his mean face.’

  ‘Mrs. Heine,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Did you ever have a conversation with your son about the defendant in this regard? Did you tell Carl junior that Kabuo Miyamoto had come to your door and argued with you about the sale of your family’s land?’

  ‘My son knew all about it. When he got back, I told him.’

  ‘Got back?’

  ‘From the war,’ said Etta. ‘Couple months later, ’bout October, I think it was.’

  ‘And you told him then the defendant had come to your door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you recall his response?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Etta. ‘He said he’d keep an eye on it. Said that if Kabuo Miyamoto was giving me dirty looks he’d keep an eye on him.’

  ‘I see.’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘And did he?’

  ‘Yes. Far as I know, yes.’

  ‘He kept an eye out for Kabuo Miyamoto?’

  ‘Yes, he did. He watched for him.’

  ‘To your knowledge, Mrs. Heine, were the two of them on unfriendly terms? They were both fishermen, they shared that in common. They were, as you have said, neighbors in adolescence. And yet there was this … dispute. This family dispute over land. So were they, the defendant and your son, on friendly or unfriendly terms from 1945 on?’

  ‘No,’ said Etta. ‘The defendant wasn’t no friend of my son’s. Isn’t that obvious? They were enemies.’

  ‘Enemies?’ said Alvin Hooks.

  ‘Carl told me more ’n once he wished Kabuo would forget about his seven acres and stop lookin’ at me cross-eyed.’

  ‘When you told him the defendant had given you dirty looks your son reacted exactly how, Mrs. Heine?’

  ‘Said he wished Kabuo’d stop doing that. Said he’d have to keep an eye out for Kabuo.’

  ‘Keep an eye out,’ Alvin Hooks repeated. ‘He saw some danger from Mr. Miyamoto?’

  ‘Objection,’ cut in Nels Gudmundsson. ‘The witness is being asked to speculate as to her son’s state of mind and his emotional status. He’s – ’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Tell us what you observed, Mrs. Heine. Tell us what your son said or did – was there anything to suggest he saw some kind of danger from Kabuo Miyamoto?’

  ‘Said he’d keep an eye out for him,’ repeated Etta. ‘You know, he’d watch out.’

  ‘Did your son say he felt he had to watch for Mr. Miyamoto? That there was danger from him of some kind?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Etta. ‘He kept an eye on him. Every time I told him that man was glarin’ at me, that’s what he said – he’d watch out.’

  ‘Mrs. Heine,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘Do you think that the term “family feud” could be accurately applied to the relationship between your family and that of the defendant? Were you enemies? Was there a feud?’

  Etta looked directly at Kabuo. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re enemies all right. They’ve been botherin’ us over those seven acres for near ten years now. My son was killed over it.’

  ‘Objection,’ said Nels Gudmundsson. “The witness is speculating as to – ’

  ‘Sustained,’ agreed Judge Fielding. ‘Witness will confine herself to answering questions put to her without further speculation. I hereby instruct you jury members to disregard her last words. Witness’s comment will furthermore be struck from the record. Let’s move on, Mr. Hooks.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alvin Hooks said. ‘But I can’t think of anything else I want to ask, Your Honor. Mrs. Heine, I want you to know that I appreciate your coming down, though, what with this weather we’ve been having. Thank you for testifying in a snowstorm.’ He swiveled, now, on the toe of one shoe; he pointed a forefinger at Nels Gudmundsson. ‘Your witness,’ he said.

  Nels Gudmundsson shook his head and frowned. ‘Just three questions,’ he grumbled, without getting up. ‘I’ve done some calculating, Mrs. Heine. If I’ve multiplied correctly, the Miyamoto family purchased seven acres from you for forty-five hundred dollars – is that right? Forty-five hundred dollars?’

  ‘Tried to buy it for that much,’ said Etta. ‘Never finished their payments.’

  ‘Second question,’ Nels said. ‘When you went to Ole Jurgensen in 1944 and told him you wanted to sell him your land, what was the price per acre?’

  ‘A thousand,’ said Etta. Thousand per acre.’

  ‘I guess that makes what would have been forty-five hundred dollars into seven thousand dollars instead, doesn’t it. A twenty-five-hundred-dollar increase in the land’s value if you sent the Miyamotos their equity and sold the land to Ole Jurgensen?’

  ‘Is that your third question?’ said Etta.

  ‘It is,’ said Nels. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You done your math right. Twenty-five hundred.’

  That’s all then, thank you,’ Nels replied. ‘You may step down, Mrs. Heine.’

  Ole Jurgensen came out of the gallery leaning hard on his cane. Alvin Hooks held the swinging door for him, and Ole shuffled past with his cane in his right hand and his left at the small of his back. He shuffled half sidewise, an injured crab, making his way toward where Ed Soames stood proffering the Holy Bible. When Ole arrived he hobbled his cane from hand to hand before settling on the expediency of hanging it from his wrist. The stroke he’d suffered in June caused his hands to tremble. He’d been out among his pickers, sorting berries in a bin, when the sensation that the earth was tilting under his feet grew on him out of a more general dizziness and nausea that had inhabited him all morning. Ole reared up and made a last desperate effort to shrug off what was happening, but the sky seemed to crowd around his head, the earth buckled, and he keeled over into a strawberry bin. There he lay blinking up at the clouds until two Canadian Indian pickers pulled him out by the armpits. They took him up to his house in the tractor bucket and laid him on his porch like a corpse. Liesel shook him until he grunted at her and drooled, and in the face of this she began a hysterical interrogation into the nature of his symptoms. When it became apparent he didn’t intend to answer she stopped talking and kissed his forehead. Then she hurried in and called Dr. Whaley.

  Since then he had withered rapidly. His legs were stilts, his eyes leaked water, his beard ended in wisps at the third button of his vest, his skin appeared pink and chafed. He perched in the stand, both hands wrapped around the head of his cane now, a tremulous and gangli
ng old man.

  ‘Mr. Jurgensen,’ Alvin Hooks began. ‘You were for many years a neighbor of the Heine family in Center Valley? Is that correct, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ole Jurgensen.

  ‘How many years?’

  ‘Yust always,’ said Ole. ‘Why, I can remember back fo-forty years to when Carl – old Carl – cleared his land next to mine.’

  ‘Forty years,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘For forty years you were a berry farmer?’

  ‘Yes, sir. More than forty.’

  ‘How many acres did you own, Mr. Jurgensen?’

  Ole seemed to think about it. He licked his lips and squinted at the courthouse ceiling; his hands roamed up and down the length of his cane. ‘Thirty-five, start out,’ he said. ‘Then I ac-acquired thirty more from Etta, you see, like Etta tell before when she was up here. So that brought me up-up to sixty-five acre; big farm, it was.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘So you purchased thirty acres from Etta Heine, then?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I did so.’

  ‘And when was that, Mr. Jurgensen?’

  ‘Yust like she tell. Nineteen hundred and forty-four.’

  ‘She handed over to you the property deed at that time?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In your mind, Mr. Jurgensen, did the deed read free and clear? That is, were there any encumbrances or conditions? Easements? Liens? That sort of thing?’

  ‘No,’ said Ole Jurgensen. ‘No ting like that. The contract was good. Every ting look right with it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘So you were not aware of any claim, then, that the Miyamotos might have had to any seven of your newly purchased thirty acres?’

  ‘Not aware, no,’ said Ole. ‘I bring it up with Etta, you see, because the Miyamoto family, they have-have a house on the property, I know seven acres has been sold to them. But Etta says to me they don’ make no payment so she is … to repossess. She don’ have any choice after Carl passed away, says she. Every ting looks good with the contract, says she. The Miyamoto family away in the camp, says she, maybe they won’ come b-back. She is going to give them their money, says she. They don’ have any claim, no, sir.’

  ‘So you heard nothing about any claim the Miyamotos might have had to seven acres of your newly purchased land?’

  ‘No. I hear no ting about it until that man’ – he aimed his nose at the defendant – ‘come round about and tell me.’

  ‘Do you mean the defendant there – Kabuo Miyamoto?’

  ‘Him,’ said Ole. ‘Yes, that’s right’

  ‘He came around when, Mr. Jurgensen?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Ole. ‘He come summer of ’45, he does. He sh-shows up at my place and say Mrs. Heine robbed him, Mr. Heine never would have let no such ting like that happen, he says.’

  ‘I’m not following,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘The defendant showed up at your farm in the summer of 1945 and accused Etta Heine of robbing him?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s what I remember.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I say no to him, she sell the land to me, and I don’t see his name any place on the contract.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He wants to know will I sell it back to him.’

  ‘Sell it back?’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘The thirty acres?’

  ‘He don’t want all thirty,’ answered Ole. ‘He just want the seven in the northwest, where his family was one time living. Before the war.’

  ‘And did you talk about that? Did you consider selling?’

  ‘He didn’t have no money,’ said Ole. ‘Anyway, I’m not thinking of s-selling then. It was before … my stroke. I had a good farm, sixty-five acres. I don’t want to sell one piece to anybody.’

  ‘Mr. Jurgensen,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘When you purchased Etta Heine’s thirty acres did you acquire her home as well?’

  ‘No. She sold it separate. Just the house, to Bjorn Andreason. And he is still living there now.’

  ‘And the house the defendant’s family had lived in, Mr. Jurgensen?’

  ‘This one,’ said Ole, ‘I bought.’

  ‘I see,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘And what did you do with it?’

  ‘I use it for my pickers, you see,’ said Ole. ‘My f-farm was so big now, I need to have a manager with me year around. So he is living there, plus room for pickers come picking time.’

  ‘Mr. Jurgensen,’ Alvin Hooks said. ‘Did the defendant say anything else to you during his visit in the summer of 1945? Anything you can remember?’

  Ole Jurgensen’s right hand left the head of his cane. It clawed its way into the side pocket of his coat and fumbled about for something. ‘Yes, one ting,’ said Ole. ‘He said some day he would get his land back.’

  ‘That he would get it back?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And he is angry.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said to him why is he angry to me? I don’t know any ting about this land, except that I don’t want to sell it to nobody.’ Ole lifted a handkerchief to his mouth and dried his lips with it. ‘I say to him go talk with Etta Heine, she is moved into Amity Harbor. I tell him where he can look for her, she is the person to talk to.’

  ‘And did he leave then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you see him again?’

  ‘I see him, yes. This island is small. You live hereabouts you see everybody.’

  ‘All right,’ Alvin Hooks said. ‘You’ve had a stroke, Mr. Jurgensen, as you say. And that was in June of this year?’

  ‘Yes, sir. June 28.’

  ‘I see,’ said Alvin Hooks. ‘And it incapacitated you? So that you felt you could no longer run your farm?’

  Ole Jurgensen didn’t answer at first. His right hand, with the handkerchief in it, returned to the head of his cane. He chewed on the inside of his cheek; his head shook. Ole struggled to speak.

  ‘I – I … yes,’ he said. ‘I yust couldn’t do it, you see.’

  ‘You couldn’t run your farm?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I – I put it on the market. For sale,’ said Ole Jurgensen. ‘September 7. Yust after Labor Day.’

  ‘Of this year?’

  ‘Did you list your property with a real estate agent, Mr. Jurgensen?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘With Klaus Hartmann?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did you advertise in any other way?’

  ‘We had a sign on the barn,’ said Ole. ‘That was everyting.’

  ‘And what happened then?’ asked Alvin Hooks. ‘Did anybody come to look?’

  ‘Carl Heine came,’ said Ole. ‘C-Carl Heine, Etta’s son.’

  ‘When was that?’ Alvin Hooks asked.

  ‘That was September 7,’ said Ole. ‘Round about comes Carl Heine, wantin’ to buy my farm.’

  ‘Tell us about that,’ Alvin Hooks asked gently. ‘Carl Heine was a … successful fisherman. He owned a fine place on Mill Run Road. What did he want with your farm?’

  Ole Jurgensen blinked half a dozen times. He dabbed at his eyes with his handkerchief. The young man, he remembered, Carl junior, had driven into his yard that morning in a sky blue Bel-Air, scattering chickens before him. Ole, from his place on the porch, knew who it was immediately; he guessed what it was he wanted. The young man had come by each picking season; he’d brought along his wife and children. They’d taken their caddies into the fields and picked berries together. Ole had always refused Carl’s money, but Carl’d pressed it on him. When Ole shook his head Carl put the bills on the weighing table next to the scales, beneath a stone. ‘Don’t care if it was my father’s land once,’ he’d say. ‘It’s yours now. We’ll pay.’

  Now here he was, big, like his father, with his father’s stature and his mother’s face, dressed like a fisherman in rubber boots – he was a fisherman, Ole recalled, had named his boat after his wife: the Susan Marie.

  Liesel had given the young man a g
lass of iced tea. He’d sat down so that from where they looked the strawberry fields spread out before them. Way in the distance they could just make out the broad side of Bjorn Andreason’s house – where Carl junior had once lived.

  Small talk, Ole explained now to the court. Carl had asked about the strawberries this year, Ole had asked about the salmon runs. Liesel had inquired as to Etta’s health, and then she had asked Carl how the fishing life suited him. ‘It doesn’t,’ Carl had answered.

  It’d been, thought Ole, an odd thing for the young man to say aloud. It must have hurt his pride to say it. He’d been admitting something, Ole understood, and admitting it for a reason. He’d wanted to make a point.

  The young man had put his glass down, just in front of his rubber boots, and leaned toward them, his elbows on his knees, as if he was about to confess something. He’d looked at the floorboards of the porch for a moment. ‘I want to buy your farm,’ he’d said.

  Liesel had explained to him how Bjorn Andreason had the old Heine house – there was nothing to be done about it. Liesel had explained that she and Ole didn’t want to leave the farm at all – but there was nothing to be done about that either. And the young man had nodded and scratched the bristles along his jaw. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ he’d said quietly. ‘I feel bad to take advantage of your health, Mr. Jurgensen. But if you have to sell, I guess … well, I’m interested.’

  Ole had said, ‘I am happy. You have lived here, you know this place. We do what is fair. I am happy.’ And he’d reached his hand toward the young man.

  The young man took it solemnly. ‘It’s the way I feel, too,’ he’d said.

  They’d spoken in the kitchen of the arrangements they would make together. Carl’s money was tied up in the Susan Marie and in his house on Mill Run Road. In the meantime there was a thousand dollars in earnest money – Carl put it on the table. Ten one-hundred-dollar bills. Come November the boat would sell, then the house, said Carl. ‘Your wife will be happy,’ said Liesel with a smile. ‘Fishermen are always gone at night.’