Legends of the North Cascades

by Jonathan Evison

  Her dad flashed her a threatening look.

  “Not today, sweetie,” said Mr. Moseley. “I’ve got work to do. I just came to talk to your daddy.”

  “Well,” said her dad. “We’re done talking. Goodbye, Mr. Moseley.”

  “Daddy, stop being so rude!”

  “Look, Dave,” said Mr. Moseley. “There’s something you need to know.”

  “I know all I need to know, Mr. Moseley,” he said.

  “The sheriff’s office has been asking questions.”

  “About what?”

  “About you and Bella.”

  “And what’d you tell them?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything,” said Mr. Moseley. “Dave, look, they know you don’t plan on vacating this place.”

  “So, what are you telling me?” said her dad.

  Moseley looked down to his hiking boot, toeing the gravel.

  “I’m telling you that I think you should go back to town. To stay.”

  “Is that right? And what do you suppose is waiting for me in town? A parade?”

  “A house, for starters,” he said.

  “Wrong,” said her dad.

  “Some companionship for your daughter,” said Mr. Moseley. “Some support. Family. Friends, medical services, schools. You want me to keep going?”

  “No,” said her dad. “You’ve made your point. But you’re missing my point: there’s an awful lot that’s wrong with the world, a lot more wrong than right. Hell, it’s not even a contest. You, Moseley, you’re a do-gooder, that’s admirable—few are anymore. But you’re also part of the problem.”

  “Go back to town, Dave. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Safe journey, Mr. Moseley,” said her dad, spitting on the ground. “Sorry you wasted your time coming up here today.”

  “Think about it, Dave,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Moseley.”

  Clearly discouraged, Mr. Moseley turned and started down the incline.

  “Mr. Moseley,” Bella called after him.

  “Yeah, sweetie?”

  “Next time could you bring honey?”

  “I’ll see what I can do, sweetie,” he said.

  N’ka

  For two days, they’d progressed steadily, mind-numbingly, over the ice, passing nothing, encountering only the wind that ravaged their faces, the ice that threatened their footing with every step, and the weak sun that failed to warm, but succeeded in blinding them. They stuck to the scantily wooded edges wherever possible, though where could they be safer than the middle of the nothingness, where the element of surprise was impossible?

  This frozen wasteland could not go on forever. Somewhere the ice ended, surely, and the frozen world gave way to a more plentiful place. Squinting his eyes against the blinding glare, N’ka held a picture of the place inside his mind—green and gently rolling, mild in temperature—even as the icy wind stung his face.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day, having recently dined on the last of the squirrel, N’ka and his mother encountered a dark form huddled on the ice, some quarter mile to the west. Pausing in their tracks, they watched the dark mass for movement.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Is it alive?”

  “How should I know?”

  Only once it was apparent that the form was both motionless and defenseless did N’ka dare to investigate.

  “Stay back,” he told his mother.

  Armed with a spear, N’ka crept warily over the ice toward the unknown mass, awake to the slightest movement, his scalp tight, as though the temperature had suddenly dropped ten degrees. What if the beast was only sleeping, or lying in wait? N’ka clutched his spear tighter and forced himself to proceed.

  What he discovered on the ice was the bloody carcass of a wolf, singed by fire, a substantial length of broken spear sticking quill-like out of its neck. How hard had he struggled to break that spear? How far had he run in his desperation, nipping hopelessly at his flaming backside?

  But the gruesome scene was not a harbinger of death so much as it was a promise of life. Finally, other people amidst the boundless ice, humans undaunted by claw or fang. Perhaps, like N’ka and his mother, they were nomads, searching for a home.

  Though the blood was no longer warm, the carcass was not yet frozen. Surely, these others could not be far. But the further N’ka pursued his eager speculations aloud, the more his mother attempted to buffer his eagerness.

  “We know nothing of them,” she said. “Their ways, their natures. They could be violent. They could be cannibals for all we know.”

  And just like that, her gloomy forebodings cut his youthful confidence down to size. For all his vigor and enthusiasm, for all his yearning and desire, hunger and curiosity, for all that he presumed to know, he had little experience in this world beyond the shelter of the mountains. Not like his mother: abandoned and forsaken, raped and left for dead.

  Still, N’ka could not help but entertain his yearning to be part of a clan, to belong to something bigger than himself. And there was something else, too: a strange and unfamiliar sensation that churned deep within him when he imagined a mate, a stalwart companion to walk beside him, who looked in his mind’s eye something like a younger version of his mother. For who else had he to compare this other person to?

  “What is it like to be with somebody?” he said, huddled over the coals amidst the reeds, where the great cloak of night was sprawled out above them.

  “You are with somebody,” she said.

  “Not like that,” he said, stirring the coals. “To . . . have somebody. To choose somebody, like you chose father.”

  “He chose me,” she said.

  “What was it like to be chosen?”

  She looked up from the fire, engaging his eyes for an instant. Then, abruptly she looked back into the flames.

  What had she seen in his eyes? Had she recognized something there? Hope, fear, vulnerability?

  “Spare yourself,” she said.

  But N’ka was determined not to spare himself any consequence if it might make his life fuller.

  “You’re a coward,” he said, regretting his words immediately.

  “How dare you,” she said.

  N’ka hid his eyes in the fire.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Bah,” she said, looking away. “Sorry for what? You don’t know any better. How could you?”

  “You’re right,” said N’ka. “I know nothing.”

  And it pained him to admit it. Between what he wanted and what he knew to be true lay a world of ice.

  “Don’t listen to me,” said his mother, waving him off. “You’re right to call me a coward. I would have the whole world suffer for my misfortunes. And just to tell them I told them so. You have courage, child. Trust your vision.”

  Clipboard Jesus

  The day, which started clear and sunny, which seemed to promise a respite from winter’s onslaught, soon wrapped its hands around Dave’s throat. At midday, Bella called him out to the bluff, where he emerged just in time to see a lone figure striding through the meadow below. Not ten minutes later, the same ranger, his pocked face patchy with a week’s growth of beard, scrambled up the incline, clutching an aluminum clipboard box, a Glock holstered at his waist.

  Dave met him near the edge of the bluff, close enough to finally read the nametag on his green jacket: Paulson.

  “Mr. Cartwright,” he said, none too brightly.

  “Mr. Paulson,” said Dave, spitting on the ground.

  “We talked about this, you and I. I’m gonna have to ask you to move on,” he said.

  “Oh?” said Dave.

  “That’s one option, anyway,” said Paulson.

  “And what’s plan B?”

  Paulson glanced at Bella, then back at Dave.

  “We’re not there yet, son,” he said. “For now let’s just call this a friendly nudge. We went over the rules last time. There’s a limit to how lo
ng you can squat on this land. You hit that limit weeks ago.”

  “You still haven’t told me about plan B,” said Dave.

  Paulson held Dave’s eye steadily, until he couldn’t anymore, at which point he promptly flipped open the lid of his silver clipboard, unfastened the pen, and began scrawling.

  “Ah,” said Dave. “Paper.”

  “Bit more than that,” he said. “It’s what we call a consequence, Mr. Cartwright.”

  Paulson finished scribbling in a flurry, ripped a yellow slip from his clipboard, and foisted it at Dave.

  “A consequence of what exactly?” said Dave.

  “It’s all right there on the paper.”

  “Save me the time, will you?”

  “Class B misdemeanor,” he said flatly. “We went over this. I issued a warning and told you I’d be back. Well, here I am.”

  “We left before thirteen days,” said Bella.

  “Come again, darling?” says the ranger.

  “We left before the thirteen days were up,” she said. “Last time. We left for like a bunch of weeks, and we just came back four days ago.”

  “She’s right,” said Dave. “We’ve only been here for a couple days.”

  Paulson looked him in the eye again, briefly.

  “Well, your beard, and about a half dozen folks down in Vigilante Falls say differently,” he said. “It’s a known fact you’ve been up here since spring.”

  “It wasn’t contiguously,” said Bella.

  Paulson hoisted an eyebrow and tilted his head like a terrier confronted with a wind-up monkey.

  “Say again?”

  “Contiguously,” Bella says. “We were never here for thirteen days contiguously. That’s what the rule is, right? You can’t be here thirteen days in a row. You didn’t say anything about not coming back again.”

  Paulson gave Bella a look that seemed at once admiring and pitying.

  “Sweetie, I think you mean continuous,” he said. “And you’ve been here a lot longer than that.”

  “You can’t prove that,” said Dave.

  “Look, you’re welcome to contest that citation,” he said. “Take a look at it and you’ll see I went awfully easy on you. Maximum punishment for this offense is five grand and six months incarceration. It’s time to think about relocating, Mr. Cartwright.”

  “Why is there a limit, anyway?” said Bella. “I thought everybody owned this land.”

  “I didn’t make the rules, darling,” said Paulson. “I just enforce them.”

  Dave forced a laugh.

  “I did three tours in the sandbox in the service of my country,” he said. “I still file my taxes. You talk to Anne Marie Wright down in Vigilante Falls about that.”

  “I thank for your service,” said Paulson. “I’m not from the IRS, Mr. Cartwright.”

  “How about you?” said Dave. “You ever put your butt on the line for your country, aside from the Smokey the Bear routine?”

  “I’m not trying to diminish your service or your sacrifice here, Mr. Cartwright, I’m just doing my duty. Duty, that’s something you understand, right?”

  “No sir, not like I used to,” said Dave. “My sense of duty isn’t as far reaching as it once was.”

  “Whatever the case may be, I’m gonna need you to move on,” said Paulson. “Pains me to say it, but looks like you haven’t been taking care of your business much, lately, Mr. Cartwright, with all due respect.”

  “You have no idea,” said Dave.

  “I see a sweet little girl living in a cave,” said Paulson. “And to my eyes, that looks like neglect. But again, that’s not for me to decide.”

  “Ask her something,” said Dave. “Go ahead, ask her. Then tell me if there’s something wrong with that sweet little girl living in a cave.”

  “Are you gonna arrest us?” said Bella.

  “He can’t arrest anybody,” said Dave. “He’s just a ranger.”

  “I’m not here to arrest you,” said Paulson. “You have sixty days to pay the citation. But in the meantime, I am going to need you to relocate. Look, Mr. Cartwright. Let me lay it out for you: we both know you’ve been up here with your daughter for at least eight months. I’ve talked to Fish and Wildlife, and they’re not convinced you haven’t been poaching.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Dave. “We take what nature gives us, and nothing more.”

  “Nothing natural about a man living in a cave with his daughter, Mr. Cartwright. Especially not in winter. But whatever the case, you’re gonna need to move on. That’s the law, and I’ll see to it that you’re in compliance.”

  “And if I’m not in compliance?”

  “Do yourself a favor, do your daughter a favor, Mr. Cartwright. Whatever it is that brought you out here, whatever life you think you’re gonna make for yourself, it’s not gonna work. Go home. The next time I come up here, it won’t be to write a ticket.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “That’s a warning, Mr. Cartwright, your final warning. I’m gonna leave you now, but I’ll be back, and when I come back, I can guarantee you I won’t be alone.”

  Ed Paulson; Ranger

  “I didn’t like it, not one bit. Seemed to me like we were headed toward some sort of standoff. It just felt that way. Something told me that Cartwright would never give in, no matter how hard anyone tried to force his hand. He was determined to have his way, no matter what the rest of the world had to say about it. It’s a quality I might have admired in a different situation.

  “But as it stood, it made me uneasy. For all I knew, he had a couple screws loose. He seemed pretty stable on the one hand, lucid enough. Didn’t display any behavior I’d characterize as too erratic. But to hear folks in town talk about him, you might have guessed otherwise. At the very least, he had some misgivings about many things in the world, and I was no doubt one of them. He wasn’t interested in the law, that much was clear. He was the law, so far as he was concerned. But I had a job to do, and when push came to shove, I knew I was gonna have to do it, and I also knew that the time to take action was approaching. I couldn’t risk letting the thing escalate, and I couldn’t let Cartwright dig himself in up there any deeper.

  “The troubling part of it was knowing he was armed. How armed, I couldn’t say, but I knew he was armed just as sure as I knew something awful was liable to happen to that little girl, sooner or later. We had to get them out of there.”

  N’ka

  The relentless wind blasted their faces raw, froze their eyes half-shut, and turned their feet to blocks of ice as they trudged onward, half-starved, N’ka’s mother growing weaker by the hour.

  On the seventh morning the wind finally subsided, and the sun managed to burn through the fog. They awoke on the ice, stiff and aching.

  “Are you okay, Mom?” said N’ka.

  “I’m alive,” said his mother. “Unfortunately.”

  With nothing to eat, and nothing to burn, they did not linger. They hefted their hides and resumed their interminable journey toward the horizon. A half-mile into their progress, N’ka spotted a small plume of smoke in the distance, trailing toward the north.

  “There!” he said. “There, what did I tell you?”

  “It could be anybody,” she said.

  N’ka hurried his pace.

  “C’mon,” he said.

  But his mother was unable to keep up with him.

  “You go,” she said. “I’ll catch up.”

  “I can’t just leave you behind. What if the wolves come slinking around?”

  “Bah. It would be a relief,” she said.

  A quarter mile later his mother was but a distant spot on the ice, as N’ka finally arrived at the source of the smoke: a flat, smoldering smattering of coals, recently abandoned. How long? An hour? Maybe two?

  He scanned the area for further evidence, finding the hollow point of a broken spearhead, a few measly bones which he recognized as squirrel, a patch of yellow snow, but no footprints, no further indication of whi
ch direction the mystery people had proceeded.

  N’ka swept the coals into a pyramid, then huddled over it, awaiting his mother. She arrived, hobbled and winded, squatting wordlessly beside him to warm her extremities.

  “We will find them,” he said.

  “Mm,” she said.

  By afternoon, the sun off the ice was blinding. N’ka and his mother were forced to shield their eyes as they plodded along into the glare. It was not long before his mother developed a piercing headache, and they were forced to pause in their progress, as she squatted on her haunches and buried her eyes in the crook of her arm, until N’ka could no longer suppress a sigh.

  “Oh, forgive me,” she said, registering his impatience. “I forgot. We’re in a hurry.”

  Before N’ka could defend himself, she was already upright again, still shielding her eyes from the light.

  “Well, c’mon, what are you waiting for?” she said.

  “Mom, we can rest,” he said. “If you need some more time to—”

  “Oh, no. No, no. You’re so eager to meet other people, why should we wait? Let’s go see what you’ve been missing your whole life. Let’s go see how your imaginary clan greets us. Maybe they’ll have a feast waiting.”

  “Or maybe we’ll be the feast,” he said wryly.

  She lowered her arm slightly to hide a grin.

  Hard and bitter old woman that she’d become, it heartened N’ka to know that she was still soft in there somewhere. For all that he didn’t know about her previous life, N’ka understood intuitively that his sustenance, his well-being, his very existence in this world accounted for much of what he considered her hardness. He suspected also that it accounted for the bulk of what he considered her softness. It seemed that she allowed N’ka to shape her. She had given the raw material of herself to his survival. For this, a debt he could never repay, he would forgive his mother anything.

  In silence, they maintained a brisker-than-usual pace, their breath sawing at the frigid air as the sunlight off the ice consumed their eyes. For hours they encountered no life along their way. But N’ka knew they would catch up to the others eventually, they must. If not in a day, in two days, or a week. Despite the lack of recent evidence, N’ka sensed that they were not so far off. He trusted that the route he forged was likely the same as theirs, for he imagined that they were on the same quest as him, the quest for a new world.