Wilderness (20 page)

My friend Harding who I wrote you of comes from the Oregon Territory and has been telling me about the Blue Pacific and the trees Out There. He says that everything is Green and Lovely and a man has only to rise up in the morning to feed from the Fat of the Land. And there are Mountains and Noble Indians and so few People that you could walk a full day and not meet your Naybor. I am thinking now that if the Lord in His Wisdom sees fit to spare me that we should Move There when I muster out. I don’t want to see these places I’ve been no more and these places are Everywhere in this country. Harding says the forests Out There are greener and bigger than here and the trees are Three Times as big as here and I surely would like to see Them. Harding says at night you can see stars forever. I surely would like to leave these places where wev been fighting so promise me youll think about it and write me soon with your anser. I so love your letters and never told you that I

Darling the officers are calling for us now so now your Husband has to go to work. Did you get the money I sent? With Gods Own Blessing I will be Home Soon and I Pray to Him everyday to watch over
you and the Baby. I think about you Every minute of Every day. I love you More and More Every Day. Kiss the Baby for me.

Your Loving Husband
Henry

And beside Henry Schwartzenbach, Abel Truman fisted up his good right hand and held it before his mouth and began to weep, and after a while he stood and left that place.

Chapter Seven

Time before Sleep

1899

The stink woke him before the sun did. In truth, the stench never really let him sleep much, and the sun that morning was nothing but dim gray light that shed no heat, yet Glenn Makers was surprised nonetheless to open his eyes blinking against pale slats of day seeping through the cracks in the outhouse roof.

Standing, he leaned against the door opposite the shithole and rubbed his eyes. The chain between the irons round his wrists clanked softly in the morning quiet. Makers muttered to himself and flapped his right hand about as though to shake the pain from it. A jangling, metal sound in the close, dim dark. Holding his right wrist with his left hand, he put his dark flesh into what light he could to study his fingers after the fashion of elegant women of society. The nail of his ring finger was torn out, snagged on a buttonhole or loose thread on Farley’s shirt when Makers wrestled the man before beating him senseless yesterday afternoon. His examination
of the soft, red pulp prompted further inspection of his various hurts, and Makers winced to touch pump knots at cheekbone and temple. He thought of Farley’s fat turquoise ring sparkling through the light and winced again.

But nothing felt broken, and Makers grunted and stepped to the hole to piss into the stinking dark. He heard it spattering not quite far enough down for his comfort and turned his face from the warm reek rising upward with the day. Other peoples’ smells, telling of strange foods and strange ways. Presently, his eyes began to burn, and he halfheartedly tried the door, but it was still locked. He briefly poked about for a sack of quicklime amongst the greasy rags and old paint cans, but there was nothing and so he settled down in one corner with both palms covering the lower half of his face.

He’d been awake for the better part of an hour when he heard the stamp, jangle, and creak of horse and wagon in the yard outside. He could tell by the gait that it was his own wagon, and the creak reminded him that once he was home he’d need to grease the axles before the cold came down from the mountains. When a key rattled the padlock and the door opened, Makers was standing athwart the jamb. He took a great, deep breath of fresh air and let it out again. Below him, Sheriff Henry Lee Jensen squinted up at him, then leaned to the side to spit a long brown chain of juice out from under his yellowy mustache. The sheriff put his bootheel up on the step to block Makers’s way and hitched his thumbs to his back pockets. Tilting his head farther back, he looked Makers up and down appraisingly. “You can be damn sure the only reason I’m letting you out already is I got to use the shitter,” he said good-naturedly.

“And you can bet that after a night locked in with your stink I’m a deeply remorseful man,” answered Makers. He raised his chained hands.

Jensen looked at the hands hanging fisted and huge in the air between them. The sheriff squinted again, unlocked the irons, and
stepped out of Makers’s way. “I guess I ought to tell you to shut your goddamned African mouth,” he told him. “But I ain’t got it in me to lock you up again if you react poorly.”

He’d brought Makers’s wagon with him, and Emerson stood quietly in the traces, his breath pluming against the morning chill. Makers walked over and let his hand trail along the horse’s neck and shoulder and stood beside its head so he could breathe in the animal’s exhalations. A good smell from another, cleaner world. He took in the earthy scent as though it alone could refresh him, then leaned to look into the wagon bed, scanning the boxes and sacks there. After a moment, he lifted out his coat.

“Your gear’s all there, don’t worry,” said the sheriff. “I know you’re laying in for winter and I don’t particularly want you back to town any faster’n need be so, just like you, I kept it all locked up last night.”

Makers nodded and pulled on the coat. “You could have at least given me this,” he said, fixing his shirt beneath and tugging down the sleeves. “It’s almost November. It’s not warm.”

Jensen shrugged. “I could’ve done a lot of things,” he said. “I could’ve been the sort of fella, the sort of lawman, that’d string a nigger up for beating on a white man.” He leaned and spat again, then plucked a pebble from the mud at his feet and absently rolled it between his palms. “Hell,” he went on. “I could’ve been the sort of man who’d cut the balls off a nigger just for looking at a white woman, let alone marryin’ one.” He shrugged again. “There’s any number of men like that around here.”

“Watch it now,” warned Makers. “How you speak to me.”

Jensen pursed his lips, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “All right. You’re right, I am sorry. But even though this ain’t Georgia or wherever the hell you come from, you don’t watch your ass and your mouth, Glenn, you’ll find out quick there ain’t a whole lot of …
What’s the word? … philosophical differences between here and there.”

Makers considered the sheriff a long moment before swinging himself up into the wagon. Wrapping a fist around the brake post, he asked, “Are you threatening me? Or asking me to thank you for locking me in the shithouse all night?”

Jensen spat and wiped his damp, brown-speckled lip with the back of his hand. “Neither,” he said, shaking his head. He hitched his thumbs to his back pockets once more and stood with his lean face tilted skyward as though to judge from the fog the character of the day to come. He looked back at Makers from under the round brim of his hat. “No, sir,” he said. “But I am saying you have congress with, you give ear to, ignorant folk, and you got to expect them to act ignorantly. To say ignorant things. And, mister, there ain’t a shortage of ignorance no matter where you go. Smart, well-read fella like you ought to know that.”

Makers put his feet up on the jockeybox and gathered the reins. Emerson stamped impatiently and put his ears up. Makers sat regarding his boots. “Those Chinese make it out all right?” he finally asked.

Jensen frowned and pulled a face. “Left town two days ago. Same day your sorry ass came in.”

Makers nodded. “Farley was saying something. I thought maybe he’d cause trouble for them.”

The sheriff grinned lopsidedly and shook his head. “After what you done to him? I ain’t heard yet that he’s even woke up. And without him, them other boys is just trifling.” Jensen’s grin faded, and he looked seriously at Makers. “I didn’t know you run into them Chinese.”

Makers shrugged. He picked a splinter off the brake post with his free hand. “I told them stop by the house before they tried the Pass.
Hoping maybe Ellen can talk some sense into them. If she can, you’ll see them back here in a day or two. Then you’d better watch Farley.”

Jensen nodded. “Snowing up there already?”

“Not at our place, but judging from the view from the porch, I’d say it’s come down into the tree line. And we’ve already had one hard frost.”

The sheriff bobbed his head. “They’d best not try it till spring, then.” He sighed. “That’ll make my winter busy.”

Makers pushed his tongue into the side of his cheek thoughtfully. After a moment of contemplation, he shifted about and said, “Well, maybe we can put them up. Depending on how well geared up they are, it might mean another trip back down here for me, though.”

“Well, whatever you think best,” Jensen said, then grinned wistfully. “My God, was that not a beautiful child?”

“Sure,” said Makers. “She was a pretty little thing.” He smiled broadly at the sheriff and said, “Listen to you. Who’d have thought it?”

“Fuck you,” said Jensen good-naturedly.

“How is Farley?” Makers finally asked. “I guess I didn’t kill him.”

The sheriff grinned and waved a hand through the air. “Shit,” he snorted. “You must have some deep goddamned faith in my peacekeeping abilities if you think I could stop you getting strung up and worse if you’d killed that fool.” He snorted again, hawked up a great gob of phlegm, and sent it spinning off into the brush. “Naw,” he went on. “Farley ain’t killed. Like I say, I ain’t sure he’s come awake yet, but he’s only a little torn up. Maybe a mite worse’n you. Still and all, I’m glad you’re not wintering over down here. Give him a chance to cool off and forget about it.”

“A man like that doesn’t forget anything,” said Makers. He shifted on the seat and released the brake. Thumbing the bill of his hat,
Makers clucked his tongue and Emerson started forward, but the sheriff stepped up and took hold of the halter.

“I need to know, Glenn,” he said. “What started it? For my records.”

Makers raised an eyebrow. “You keep records? I didn’t even know they’d taught you to read.”

“All right, I’ll go on and say it then: Fuck you, you African bastard. There. You want to try and knock me down now?”

Makers shook his head and grinned. “Naw,” he said. “I’ll leave it go this time.”

“Then maybe I ought to say it again. Make myself feel better about letting you out so soon.”

“Fair enough.”

“Glenn.” The sheriff looked at him. “What’d that fool say to set you off like that? Something about them Chinese?”

Makers shook his head and looked down at him. He filled his cheeks with air and blew, then looked up the road where it ran dark and muddy between green trees toward the blue Olympics brushed with early snow. She was waiting for him, and he was late. He was always late, and she always suffered for it. Behind him, beyond the screen of forest, Makers heard the town coming to life—heard the soft sounds of mothers calling children from their sleep, of chickens clucking over morning feed, of hooves stamping muddy paths amidst the tangled green, and then, distantly, the shrill blare of the mill whistle out on the harbor. “He called her a mud shark, Hank,” he finally said.

The sheriff pursed his lips. “That it?”

Makers looked at him again, hard this time, with no trace of a smile. “It’s the same as those others called her.”

“Aw shit, Glenn,” said Jensen. “You know Farley had nothing to do with any of that. He’s a bully, sure, but he ain’t goin’ to do that to a woman.”

Makers pulled down on the brim of his hat so his eyes were shaded against a day that was still without sun. Said: “It doesn’t matter. I won’t hear it, Hank. I can’t.”

The sheriff stroked his mustache. He looked up at Makers. “How is Ellen these days, Glenn?”

Glenn Makers thought of her waiting for him. The bright shine of fear deep in her eyes. He finally shrugged and shook his head. “She won’t ever be the same,” he said. “She’s hurt too deep.” He took a deep breath and looked at the foggy sky. “Now let go my horse,” he said and clucked his tongue and the horse and wagon and driver started up the muddy road between the green trees.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Makers called just before he rounded the bend.

“What?”

“Start eating better, would you? Your shithouse is monstrous.”

Jensen favored him with a casually crude gesture, and Makers laughed and waved and presently was gone down the narrow, tree-bound road leading home. Where she was waiting. Where she’d been waiting two days longer than he’d intended.

Two nights after leaving the coast, Abel Truman crouched sore and cold in the dark forest amidst the dead branches of a fallen spruce some fifty yards from their fire. The raw, splintered stumps and snapped trunks of a wide tract of blowdown left in the wake of last year’s big storm lay without design through the dark wood. The downed trees were already jacketed with moss and studded with little seedlings as the wilderness worked to claim them back. Willis and the Haida squatted like apes on either side of their fire, forearms resting on the points of their knees, their fingers splayed toward the flames as though they’d grasp and hold what meager heat they shed. Their breath steamed, and for all his age, Abel’s eyes were good and he could see the play of light and shadow on the Haida’s long face. Occasionally they passed a word or two along with a bottle, but
Abel could not make out their conversation for the distance. And every so often he’d hear the dog’s low growl, though he could not see it for the shadows beyond the fire. Abel fixed its place back in the trees, in the dark of the nightblown forest. He wondered if it had smelled him yet, then decided it had not.

There was but half a moon now, and the night was clear, starry and blue. A bright silver cold lay upon the land. The flames leapt in their fire like the ghosts of flames and the pair were nothing but silhouettes in the dark. Bands of shadow cut slantwise down their faces, and witch hair moss hung in great hanks from the lower branches so they resembled trolls squatting in a grotto. Abel had been watching them since dusk, and it was getting on late now for an old man to be up and about in the woods in winter. He fisted his hand before his lips and blew warmth into his cold fingers. Every now and again a great nausea would surge through him, hot, salty waves breaking against the back of his throat, and he had to fight to keep from coughing. When he hung his pale hand in the dark before him, it trembled and he could not stop it. Abel sniffed softly and rubbed his prickly, hairless chin. Taking a breath, he softly blew and figured it was November.