Legends of the North Cascades

by Jonathan Evison

  These dreams, they were not normal dreams. Bella did not imagine them; it was as though she was remembering them. And yet how could she remember them? How could she possibly know what it was to be a grown woman living in the ice age, to have a baby growing inside of her, to understand a language she did not speak? If these were not memories, how could Bella comprehend with such clarity things so far beyond her experience?

  Bella did not linger on her bedroll that morning. Instead, she proceeded straight to the bluff, where she knew for near certain she would find her dad, tending the fire.

  “So, when the world changed, what do you think happened to the ice people?” she said, in lieu of good morning.

  “I don’t know, they adapted, I guess,” her dad said, presenting her a tin of clumpy oats, an offer she received with something less than enthusiasm.

  “What’s ‘adapted’?” she said.

  “It means they changed their behavior to conform to the new world.”

  “What’s ‘conform’?”

  Her dad set his oats aside. “Conform means to follow the rules, baby.”

  “What rules?”

  “In their case, the rules of the natural world.”

  Bella considered the explanation for a few moments.

  “Daddy, do you believe in ghosts?” she said.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Why?”

  “No reason,” she said, unconvincingly.

  “What is it, baby? Are you scared?”

  “No, not scared,” she said. “I just think this place may be haunted.”

  “Why is that?”

  Bella considered telling him about the otherness, but decided to talk around it instead.

  “I just do,” she said.

  “And that doesn’t scare you?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “Daddy, can I go explore?”

  “Just don’t go beyond the meadow,” he said. “Or out on the ridge.”

  “Can’t I please go farther?”

  “No, baby. No farther than I can hear you,” he said. “And bring the bear spray with you.”

  Unlike her dad, forever chopping, or digging, or planning his next move, Bella preferred to let her day unfold on its own. After breakfast, she wandered as far as she was permitted. A minute’s walk in any direction delivered her to the edge of somewhere entirely different. The forest, with its birdsong, and its playful sunlight, and the trickle of its streams, the craggy rim of the upper canyon, with its prehistoric-looking knobs and rocky outcroppings, the meadow with its shady willow, its whispering grass, and its birds of prey wheeling above, all of these places converged on their little bluff, though she never dared to venture beyond them on her own. But surely she would have, given the permission of her father.

  Unable to explore the world she lived in, Bella gave herself instead to the otherness, which filled her up like an empty balloon. Unlike the school bus, brimming with the noise of humanity, out here, in the silence and solitude, she was able to reach further, much further than Kirk Halliday’s anxiety about wetting his pants, further even than her mother’s voice. That afternoon, Bella lived again in the brutal but uncomplicated world of the prehistoric ice sheet, which seemed to demand her presence.

  At dinner that evening, Bella was compelled for not the first time to share her revelation.

  “I don’t think the ice people came here from somewhere else,” she offered, over a tin of rice and stinky sardines from a can.

  “There’s not really a definitive answer to that, baby. Eat up.”

  “What’s ‘definive’?”

  “Definitive means clear, reliable. Some people think the ice age people came over a land bridge fifteen or twenty thousand years ago from Asia, and some people think they came from the south. It depends who you talk to, I guess.”

  “I think once a thing is alive, it never goes away,” she said.

  Bella felt a little proud of herself when her dad lowered his fork, and gave her that blank look again, and began to shake his head as though he was stunned.

  “Baby, you are really something else, you know that?”

  And again, Bella felt pride coloring her face.

  Deb Coatsworth; Public Librarian, Vigilante Falls

  “I’m not at liberty to say what materials Mr. Cartwright checked out. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go back and find out—not if you put a gun to my head. Because no such history exists. As in, there’s no record of it.

  “And I want you to think about that for a minute.

  “In a world where everything is for public consumption, in a world where our every inclination is fastidiously catalogued and turned into algorithms, a world where our TVs listen to us; the poor, underfunded public library that turns away nobody is your last bastion of confidentiality. If you want to see liberty and freedom at work, go to a library.

  “So, the answer is no, I can’t tell you what he checked out. And I wouldn’t if I could. Knowing what little I knew about the man personally, it’s safe to say he liked his privacy. All I can tell you is that his materials were quite numerous, and he frequently brought them back wrapped in a large plastic garbage bag. On several occasions the materials were warped, or water damaged.

  “He was always polite, and quiet, too, which made him quite popular around here, in spite of the damaged materials. I will say that he had a smell about him like wet dog, though as far as I know, he didn’t have any dogs up there, only cats. And quite a number of them, from what I understand.”

  This Many

  Dave skirted past the platinum rewards members in his alphas, clutching his duffel, chin up, as the blood suffused his cheeks. He didn’t enjoy being a spectacle, but at least they didn’t bump him to first class. In spite of his upright posture, his damn shirt stays were riding up on him as he walked down the jetway alone, and rounded the corner, ducked into the aircraft, where the male flight attendant’s courteous smile morphed into something graver as he greeted Dave.

  “Welcome aboard, sir. And thank you for your service.”

  Dave crammed his duffel into the overhead compartment, and slid into his window seat, where he gazed out across the tarmac. As the rear of the plane began to fill up, it seemed that every set of eyes found Dave on their way past: old and young, male and female. A few older men nodded meaningfully. There were a handful, too, who could not hide their disdain for Dave and his service. Either way, he would’ve done anything to get out of that uniform.

  Eventually, a somewhat frantic young mother, whom Dave put in her mid-twenties, clutching a wailing infant, and towing a curly-haired boy of maybe three or four, paused in the aisle at row seventeen. Dave promptly stood and assisted her with the two overfilled carry-ons threatening to slip off her shoulder, stuffing them in the overhead with his duffel, as the middle-aged couple in 16B and C winced at the caterwauling infant.

  “Would you like to sit by the window?” Dave said to the boy.

  In his final gesture of shyness, the big-eyed toddler with the curly hair silently nodded to the affirmative, whereupon Dave hoisted him over the high seatback and lowered him into the window seat.

  “Shush, now, it’s okay, sweetie,” the mother consoled the infant. “Thank you, that was very kind of you,” she said to Dave, as he slid past her into the middle berth.

  “Do you want to switch seats?” said Dave.

  She managed a beleaguered half-smile. “To tell you the truth,” she said. “I’d rather have you in the middle. He’ll just keep the baby awake, otherwise.”

  No sooner did the young mother take her seat and buckle in than she expertly emancipated one of her breasts from beneath her cotton blouse, and offered it to the infant, whom, much to everyone’s relief, stopped wailing.

  “There you go,” said the mother, stroking the infant’s downy head.

  When the mother caught Dave watching her sidelong, she only smiled sweetly, and Dave blanched as he turned his attention to the toddler, face pressed to the window.

  “Is this
your first airplane ride?” said Dave.

  “Yes, but I’m not scared,” said the child.

  “Well, that’s good.”

  The aircraft was still taxiing when the infant fell asleep, and the young mother extracted her nipple and replaced her breast in one fluid movement. Before they even reached cruising altitude, she fell asleep herself.

  Watching her almost-pretty face at rest, Dave wondered at the young mother’s story. She was wearing a wedding band, maybe she was flying to meet her husband. Was she a military wife? Why was she traveling alone? Dave imagined Nadene in the not-so-distant future, clutching a baby of her own. Maybe it would be a boy, and they could name it Gordy, after Coach Prentice, or Jerry, after Nadene’s brother. Already, he yearned for fatherhood, an endeavor in which he aimed to be everything his own father was not, to do all the things with his children that his father never did with him and Travers. Dave liked kids to begin with, but the thought of having his own someday was thrilling. Not right away, of course, not until he was ready professionally and financially. In the meantime, he still had some boxes to check: travel, save, plan.

  “Are you a policeman?” asked the young boy.

  “Nope,” said Dave.

  “Then why are you dressed like that?”

  “I’m a marine.”

  “Like an army man?”

  “Better,” said Dave. “But kinda like that.”

  “I’m gonna live above a gas station when I grow up,” the boy announced.

  “You might as well aim high,” said Dave.

  “I like the smell of gas,” he explained. “Don’t you like it?”

  “I kind of do,” said Dave.

  For the next half hour, Dave and the boy—mostly the boy—talked of many things; of the boy’s recent train ride. They spoke of the boy’s favorite colors—black and green, and blue and yellow; his favorite meal—chicken burritos with ketchup and no lettuce; and his favorite movie, Monsters, Inc., even though Sully still scared him sometimes.

  “Do you ever get scared?”

  “All the time,” said Dave.

  “About what?”

  “About the unknown,” said Dave. “The things I can’t see coming, I guess. Sometimes I get scared that my life won’t be everything I want it to be, that I won’t be able to do all the things I’ve planned out.”

  “Aren’t you scared of getting killed? That’s what I’d be scared of.”

  “Yeah, that, too, I guess.”

  At the end of the flight, Dave helped the young mother with her bags, the infant still fast asleep on her shoulder, as she shuffled slowly down the aisle. Halfway to first class, the young boy tugged on Dave’s pant leg.

  “Remember,” he said. “My mom says it’s okay to be scared.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Dave said, giving the boy’s curly head a final mussing.

  Little Black Lies

  Dave awakened at dawn next to Bella to find one of the tiny, black kittens pinned lifelessly beneath her sleeping figure. Carefully, Dave pried its oddly contorted body out from beneath her hip, and stole out into the gray dawn to dispose of it deep in the brush, beyond the ragged tree line to the south.

  Bella was still sleeping soundly when Dave returned. Still, he was ninety-nine percent sure she’d notice the missing kitten.

  Full morning arrived gray and cool, with their little perch above the canyon cloistered in the clouds. Though the peaks and high ridges that all but surrounded them were invisible, Dave could still feel the immensity of them there, lurking beyond the mist, buttressing him from the outside world. It was ten degrees colder than the previous morning as Dave busied himself with the cooking fire. Though he missed the vistas, in some ways he preferred the cloud cover. There was a sense of security to be enjoyed under a shroud. Among other things, it hid the smoke of his fire. Ultimately, Dave had not chosen this place for its grand vistas, or its spiritual benefits, but for its strategic sightlines, and its clear view of potential interlopers.

  Eventually, Bella emerged from the cave and sat by the fire, eyes downcast, as when she knew she was in trouble.

  “What’s the matter, baby?”

  “Daddy, I did a really bad thing,” she said, casting her eyes down.

  “What did you do?”

  “I let a kitty get away. One of the little black ones. I know it was bad, I’m sorry. I just . . . I couldn’t help it, Daddy, he was so cute. Now, I can’t find him anywhere. He’s so tiny, Daddy, he can’t take care of himself.”

  “It’s okay, honey,” Dave said without hesitation, even as his heart ached a little. “I put him back in the carrier with the others.”

  “But there were only two black ones when I checked, Boris and Sugarfoot. There’s supposed to be three black ones.”

  “You must have counted wrong, baby. Betty only had two black ones.”

  “No, Daddy, there were three!”

  “Well, all I know is, I put him back in there,” said Dave.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, baby.”

  But Dave was not at all certain that Bella bought the explanation. He knew it was probably a mistake lying to her. Instead of trying to protect her from the grim reality of her actions, maybe he ought to have been using this as a teachable moment about the fragile nature of life, about how everything died, and how it wasn’t always fair, and didn’t always make sense. But he couldn’t do it. God knows, she’d had enough reality already.

  “Baby, just wait until I say it’s time before you handle the kitties anymore, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Dave stirred the coals and repositioned the iron skillet at the edge of the pit, then patted Bella on the head.

  “I know it’s hard, baby. I never had any impulse control myself.”

  “What’s ‘impulse control’?”

  “Well, just, waiting is hard sometimes, even when you know you’re better off doing it.”

  “I love you, Daddy,” she said, crowding in next to him, and clutching his arm. “Thanks for putting him back in.”

  Every time she said “I love you,” it damn near broke his heart. But knowing he lied to her broke his heart even more.

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  Beyond Earshot

  With only the cats and thrice read library books to occupy herself, and with precious little freedom to roam beyond earshot of her dad, Bella lived outside of herself much of the time, escaping into the ancient, ice-strewn world which seemed to summon her with increasing urgency, as though it were her duty to host it.

  Lying flat on her back in the meadow, or seated upright on her rocky perch above the canyon, or huddled in the dreary depths of the cave on a rainy morning, Bella answered this call to duty, emptying herself so that the otherness could fill her up.

  “What are you thinking about, baby?” her dad said, startling her from one of her reveries in front of the dying fire.

  “Nothing, really,” she said. “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About different stuff,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t really remember.”

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Not right now. Unless there’s something you want to talk about.”

  In spite of the temptation, Bella had now determined once and for all not to share her secret life, for fear she might lose it. Then, there would be no adventure left, no escape, nothing of consequence to fill her days. What was more, her attendance in the icy past now seemed to be required, as though she were called there as a witness.

  “You sure you’re all right, baby?” said her dad. “You need anything?”

  “I’m okay,” she said, lying. “But Daddy, can I please go down to the river?”

  “Not by yourself, baby. But I can go with you a little later, after I’m finished with my work.”

  “How about the edge of the canyon, can I go there?”

 
; “What’s at the edge of the canyon?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just want to go somewhere, I want to do something different. Everything just feels the same, Daddy.”

  “You can go down to the meadow if you bring the bear spray.”

  “But I’ve been to the meadow,” she said. “Like every single day, I’ve been there. I’ve been to the smokehouse, and the little stream, and the tall grass at the edge of the woods.”

  “Baby, I’m sorry, but you need to stick close to home.”

  “Why does home have to be so small? What’s the use of living in the mountains if I can’t even explore them?”

  “We’ve explored a lot, baby,” he said. “You’ve been to the river, you’ve been up and down that canyon with me. Heck, you’ve been just about everywhere you can see from here.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Look, if you want, we can go somewhere together a little later. Maybe if we ate an early dinner we’d have time to hike up to the—”

  “Daddy, I wanna go places by myself. I want to be independent.”

  “Baby, you will someday. You’re seven years old.”

  “I’m almost eight.”

  She folded her arms, pouting.

  “If I was a boy, I’d be called Gordy, and you’d let me go, I know you would. You’d probably let me hunt, too.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “How would you know that?”

  “Because it’s always been that way,” she says. “Girls always get a crummy deal.”

  S’tka

  Oh, how they raged, the filthy hypocrites. Jumping up and down, thumping those hairy chests, foaming at the mouth, scratching their dirty nethers and armpits, then smelling their fingers when they thought nobody was looking. And the other women, they weren’t much better: retreating out of sight, skulking in the shadows with their animal skins and their suckling infants, as if they never would have attempted the same offense in S’tka’s situation: half-starving, her stomach feeding on itself, the thing growing inside her protesting at every step, stoop, or bend.