Ever After (32 page)

“Go to sleep, dear. And if you have any control over this Katiebird, would you please tell her to stop knocking so I can go to sleep.”

She kissed me, and we both lay back in bed. I listened until the knocking stopped. I shouldn't tell Rosemary these kinds of things. They don't seem to calm her at all, only scare her. Maybe we were told too many ghost stories when we were children.

After she fell asleep, I slipped out of bed, pulled out the pole from the corner and opened the window. I didn't want Rosemary to be shocked by the knocking in the morning.

Instead, I was the one who was shocked. I tend to sleep on my back with my hands folded across my chest. I also usually wake up before I open my eyes, enjoying the peace of non-vision before my mind starts racing.

That morning, I could feel something on my hand. I opened my eyes slowly, and saw Katiebird, less than a foot from my eyes. Rosemary was still asleep. I wanted her to see this. I knew she was supposed to. It was the way it was with Bill [Bert].

I nudged her gently; she moaned and slowly wakened.

“Don't move too quickly, dear. Just open your eyes, there's something you should see.”

She turned her head slowly, opening her eyes. At first she said nothing, only stared. Katiebird looked at her.

“What is this, Will, some kind of trick? Is this a bird you've trained? Isn't she beautiful?”

“It's no trick, this is a wild bird and I didn't train her. Her name is Katiebird as I told you, and she really is beautiful, isn't she.”

I slowly unfolded my hands and held out a finger for Katiebird to stand on. She hopped right onto it. It was a magic moment. Finally Rosemary spoke.

“It's a ‘visitation,' Will. I don't want to believe it, I can't, but it's the only way I can explain this.”

“It is the explanation. This is a visitation. I'm convinced Kate is worried about me with all this mess in Oregon, and wants to comfort me, and you, too. You don't need to believe, just enjoy, relax.”

I climbed out of bed with Katiebird on my finger. I walked her over to her chair at the breakfast table. She sang for us—she had a lovely voice, but only for two melodious notes.

We washed up and she watched. We ate and she watched. I was worried that she felt trapped in the house with us, and approached her with my finger out. She hopped onto it as before. I walked her out the door, then cast her away to the sky. She sang her simple song, circled the mill twice, and then flew off over the pond.

After that, every time we went to the mill, she was there. Maurice, our neighbor across the street, said he could always tell when we were coming because the yellow bird would come just before we arrived. The whole experience was so magical. And it lasted three years. Every morning as my wristwatch made its little ding at seven, Katiebird was there. She was there in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The second spring, she nested on a small outcropping of rock just below the window over our bed. I discovered it quite by accident, while washing the window. There were five eggs in the clutch. Will [Robert] wondered why five when there were only four of them. On a hunch, I said that only four would hatch.

And that's the way it happened. Katiebird wasn't frightened at all as we watched the babies grow. One egg didn't hatch, so Will [Robert] was impressed, and he's hard to impress. One day, the babies flew away, and the nest was empty. I leaned out of the window to rescue it and put it on the mantel of the fireplace in case Katiebird should want it again. But she'd given us her message.

Once the case was settled, we never saw Katiebird again. She'd come back for only one purpose, to comfort us in our distress, and it was finished. I knew she had a life of her own to live, or whatever it is that spirits without bodies do, and was not even disappointed when the spring came and she wasn't there. I know there are many logical explanations for this experience, but for me, the only one that holds is spiritual. We've been blessed.

My editor at Granta, Bill Buford, is convinced I wrote this book as therapy, to help rid myself of the pain, the agony of the trauma. I don't think this is so, but I'd be the last to know. He says: “Is it possible—looking back on this now—to say that, on some level, you may actually have needed a legal struggle such as this, that it became a way of deflecting you from feeling too much? (One of the benefits of the court action was that your daughter was no longer your daughter, but a fact in the lawsuit; it allowed you—I'm speculating—not to have to feel the full intensity of the pain.)”

I don't think this was the case. My prime reason for the maneuvering in Oregon, and it is said often in the book, was to stop field burning. It's the reason I started writing this book. I felt I didn't want anyone else to suffer what we were forced to experience. I don't have that reason now. If Oregonians, for their own reasons, want to burn down the barn, that's their business. As I say at the end of the book, the deaths of loved ones are sometimes meant to be. Maybe it's some kind of lesson to all of us not to hold onto life so ferociously, bitterly. It's been so for me.

Next year, I will be seventy. Soon enough I'll find out if Bert, Kate, Mia, and Dayiel will be available to me. There's no way of knowing except to die.

As to the others in the book, Mona Flores earned her partnership in the firm, divorced her husband, sold her house, started a legal practice with a good friend, and found a new man. I'm happy for her.

We hope to visit with our friends the Wilsons this summer. They're still living in Portland.

So life goes on. It does for all of us, longer than most of us permit ourselves to believe.

W
ILLIAM
W
HARTON
,

9
May
1994,
Port Marly

WILLIAM WHARTON
(1925–2008) is the pen name of a painter who launched a writing career after the age of 50, winning a National Book Award for his first novel, Birdy, in 1978. He went on to publish seven more novels
(Dad, A Midnight Clear, Scumbler, Pride, Tidings, Franky Furbo, and Last Lovers)
and two memoirs
(Ever After and Houseboat on the Seine)
.

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Praise for
Ever After: A Father's True Story

“William Wharton writes with the skills of a born storyteller …
Ever After
reads like a grippingly dramatic novel and its blend of sorrow and a healing anger has a bracingly cathartic effect.”

—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“While Wharton is an accomplished storyteller, this is not a story. This is not a novel, not even a memoir, this is a sort of prose documentary.... I was not aware of having developed any terrific attachment to Kate during the first five chapters. She seemed a decent, attractive young woman. Not Mother Teresa or Marilyn Monroe. But when Wharton hears she's dead, I burst into tears....I don't know how it happened, but this ordinary woman had become as real to me as most anything else in my ordinary life.”

—Benjamin Cheever,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“In
Ever After
, Wharton applies the same literary techniques that made his novels so emotionally compelling to tell a powerful story of devastating loss and spiritual healing.... No happy endings here, but two spiritual epiphanies give Wharton and readers a new understanding of life and whatever lies beyond death. Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal

“The central story is not of lives lost but of life reclaimed. It is, at its deepest, darkest level, the story of one man's transformation in the face of acute bereavement.... His testimony, this book itself, is too passionate, brave and moving not to count as a victory, however hard won.”

—Julia Glass,
Chicago Tribune

“Wharton's tone is modest and without sentiment. A portrait emerges of a strong, informed, competent hero who is also a father in unspeakable pain. The memoir ends on a hopeful note: Five years after the tragedy, Wharton and his wife feel a spiritual connection to Kate through an experience they share.”

—
Richmond Times-Dispatch

FICTION

Birdy

Dad*

Franky Furbo

Last Lovers

A Midnight Clear*

Pride*

Scumbler*

Tidings

NONFICTION

Ever After*

Houseboat on the Seine*

* Published by Newmarket Press

First Newmarket Paperback Edition 2009

ISBN: 978-1-55704-843-1

EPub Edition © JANUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062278340

Version 05312013

First Newmarket Hardcover Edition 1995

Copyright ©1995 by William Wharton.

Published in Great Britain by Granta Books under the title
Wrongful Deaths
.

This book is published in the United States of America.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[Wrongful deaths]

Ever After: a father's true story / William Wharton.

p.      cm.

Originally published : Wrongful deaths. London: Granta Books. 1994.

ISBN 1-55704 –223-3

1. Wharton, William – Trials, litigation, etc. 2.Oregon – Trials, litigation, etc.

3. Wrongful deaths – Oregon. 4. Traffic accidents – Oregon. 5. Grass seed industry – Oregon. 6. Burning of land – Oregon. I. Title.

KF228.W425W47             1995

346.7303'23 – DC20

[347.306323]

94-45326

CIP

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