West of Here (46 page)

“Report filed last week by a group of elderly hikers. Said the man in the sketch harassed them. Can’t go into details. It’s under investigation. But one old lady had a heart attack.”

“Heart attack?”

“Couple days later, guy from Kirkland — kind of a jerk, if you wanna know the truth — reported a theft up near Whiskey Bend. Over a thousand bucks worth of gear. But that could’ve been bears. ’Course, we notified the sheriff’s department. They sent a couple fellas up there, but they didn’t turn anything up. Guy could be long gone by now. If they’d have known he was jumping parole, they’d have probably —”

“Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What’s that mean, harassed them?”

“Can’t go into it,” said the clerk.

“Listen, I ain’t — I’m not just anybody, here. I’m his parole officer.”

The clerk looked around and seemed to consider. “Well, I suppose in that case — okay, look: I don’t know the whole story. Apparently, he’s some sort of”— here, the clerk leaned in close, and Franklin thought she smelled like a man, like liver and onions — “some sort of sexual predator.”

“Say what?”

“Old lady says” — the clerk leaned in even closer, and Franklin thought he saw an Adam’s apple — “this fella assaulted her with his penis. They got a name for it — I heard the young one from the sheriff’s department call it a”— now, the clerk leaned in so close that Franklin caught the full force of her breath. Definitely onions — “a
cock-slap,
he called it.”

Franklin knew criminal behavior. He knew more criminals than most men would ever care to meet, from his father on down. Most of them were pretty consistent at the end of the day, and none more so
than the repeat offender. But this was straight out of left field. What the hell was Tillman — breaking-and-entering, criminal-trespassing, drunk-and-disorderly Tillman — doing cock-slapping old women? It just didn’t add up. Nothing in his profile about predatory behavior, sexual deviancy, Catholicism. Nothing about the man himself to suggest anything of this nature — and Franklin knew there was a big difference between robbing a pharmacy and cock-slapping an old lady.

“As for the theft complaint,” pursued the clerk, interrupting Frank-lin’s meditations, “like I say, could’ve been bears. Wouldn’t be the first time. We had a female black bear two summers ago up by the hot springs kept stealing people’s skivvies. Took one woman’s purse. She tried to pin it on a couple of gay guys — hot springs are full of them — but we found the purse a quarter mile down trail, stuff scattered all over the place, lipstick half eaten.”

“Listen,” said Franklin. “A few things about all of this don’t add up. I gotta get that boy back in here.”

“I’m no cop,” said the clerk, “but if this fella’s a parole jumper, I’d say —”

“Easy now. No need getting the law involved again. I can handle this guy.”

OCTOBER
1890

Adam dropped his nine-page report, months overdue, on the white tablecloth just in front of Cal Pellen’s heaping plate.

“Sit,” Pellen insisted, gesturing with a forkful of steak.

Reluctantly, Adam took a seat across from his supervisor and cast a look around the gilded interior of Delmonico’s — airy and soft around the edges, lamplit, even by day. The dining room, half empty, redolent with cooking smells, had no trace of the oily smoke that hung in the air at most of the establishments where Adam took his meals. Delmonico’s was brass and polished wood, sturdy high-backed chairs and large immaculate windows. The two men could have been sitting in Chicago or New York or San Francisco. But Adam preferred rugged Port Bonita with its splintered wood and lack of airs to the cosmopolitan charms of Port Townsend. He preferred men who worked with their hands to men like Pellen, who worked with their guile.

“And how goes it with our squatters along the Elwha?” Pellen inquired.

“It’s in the report.”

Pellen smiled and raised his fork. “Not a chatterer are you, Adam? Not like your father. Now, there was a man who understood the benefits of conversation.”

“Well, I’m not him.”

Raising a brow, Pellen masticated for a moment before wiping his gray mustache with a cloth napkin. “No, I suppose not. Eat, eat,” he said.

“I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“You look pale, Adam. Hard to trust a man without appetites.”

“Hard to trust a man either way,” Adam said.

Outside, behind the glass, the bustle of Water Street unfolded in
silence. Pellen called for the waiter. “A steak for my associate.” Then, to Adam: “What are you drinking?”

“I’m not. And hold the steak.”

Pellen sawed off another mouthful of steak. “Suit yourself then. Have you been to Point Hudson?”

“I just came from there.”

“And what did you see?”

“Natives dressed up as whites. None of them fishing.”

“Sober natives, I hope.”

“As far as I can tell, they’ve got that going for them.”

“They’ve integrated rather nicely over the years, haven’t they? We can all thank the Duke of York for that. Your Chet-Ze-Moka left us quite a legacy, Adam. He was indeed a friend to the white man. Too bad about the drink. It made a great man small.”

“Not so small that they haven’t built him a statue, I see.”

“That’s true. Lovely, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.” It finally occurred to Adam to take off his hat, which he set on the table in front of him. Never had the hat looked so filthy as on the white tablecloth. “The Siwash are drowning,” he said.

“Pity they wouldn’t relocate. We —
your father
— did everything within his power.”

Adam did not disagree. He checked his pocket watch, though he had nowhere to be. It did not occur to Adam that the watch had been his father’s.

“Now, if we could only teach these Celestials how to blend,” his supervisor pursued.

“Don’t hold your breath, Pellen. There’s a reason people hold on to things.”

“And there’s a convincing reason why people let go of them. It’s called progress, Adam. Of course, the Chinese are beyond the agency’s influence, but is it any wonder that their storefronts are vandalized and their children pelted with vegetables, when they refuse to conform? Look around you. This isn’t some wild outpost like Port Bonita. We’ve got cobbled streets and masonry, streetcars and electricity. We’ve got six banks in Port Townsend. We’ve got the railroad.”

“And who’s building it?”

Pellen smiled. “You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you?”

“Ask enough questions and that’s what happens.”

“And what about Jamestown?”

Adam tensed at the reference but relaxed once he put the question in context. “That’s in the report, too.”

“Indulge me,” said Pellen, with a mouthful of steak. “Really, Adam, you’ve got to learn to be a little more forthcoming.”

Adam narrowed his gaze. “Jamestown is completely stable. Economically viable. No whites, no liquor, and no federal recognition.”

Pellen grinned again but could not belie his annoyance. “You know the score on that count. Our hands are tied. Jim Balch and his people knew exactly what they were getting into when they bought that land.”

“Did they?”

“They knew enough, Adam. I admire their initiative, I do. But there are laws.”

“The Great White Father.”

Pellen stopped chewing and looked at Adam critically for the first time. “Nobody’s taking sides, Adam, in spite of what you may think. The census, the agency — all of it was put in place for the benefit of the natives. Frankly, I don’t know where you get the gall to question that. Your father spent twenty years among the Indians, from Puyallup to Port Bonita. He dined with them, prayed with them, he did everything but conceive with them. And yet you continue to doubt him. What does it take to earn your respect?”

Adam had no answer. He lifted his dirty hat off the table and set it in his lap, and glanced out the window. The streetcar rattled by, bound for Kah-Tai Valley. He could feel it rumbling up through the floorboards. “I’m just trying to do my job,” he said. “I don’t mean to ruffle feathers.”

“I suppose it’s just in your nature, then.” Liberating a string of steak from between his teeth, before clearing his mustache once more, Pellen suddenly remembered something. “Ah, and speaking of Jamestown, what of Lord Jim’s health? It comes to me from the Indians that he’s fallen ill recently.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it. How ill?”

“That, I can’t say, though quite ill I’m taken to understand. I assumed you’d be able to tell
me.
”

Plucking his hat from his lap, Adam replaced it on his head. “I ought to go,” he said.

“Adam,” said Pellen, adopting a somewhat graver tone. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you ought to start a family. That’s what you ought to do. Quit eating in hotels. Settle down in one place. You seem to fancy them so much, you ought to find yourself a native woman.”

Adam felt his face color.

“My apologies, son. But a man is no different from a tree. He needs to lay down roots. All this moving around, it just isn’t healthy.”

“Did you learn that from the natives, Pellen?”

“If I’ve learned anything from the natives, Adam, it’s that one must adapt.”

IN LESS THAN
two years, the boom had transformed Port Townsend from a rugged little outpost scarcely bigger than Port Bonita or New Dungeness to a hive of industry, a bustling city of seven thousand, with all the hum and rattle of Tacoma or Portland. The landmarks of the Pioneers — those modest framed homes and quaint houses of commerce — had seen the coming of the demolition crews. Three- and four-story structures, no fewer than twenty in number — buildings of stone and brick and mortar — lined Water Street from Pierce to Jackson. To Adam, as he elbowed his way down a crowded Water Street, past the Columbia Saloon toward Union Wharf, Port Townsend was hardly recognizable. Sea walls had been constructed. The wharves had been extended to allow for further construction while grades had been cut through the high clay bluff that hemmed in downtown. Everywhere, it seemed, money was changing hands, deals were being cut, the future was being paved. Port Townsend had become everything Port Bonita ever aspired to be.

Chief upon Adam’s mind, as he drifted along Water Street, was
the health of his friend Lord Jim and, specifically, how it affected the boy’s fate. He knew he must pay Jamestown a visit immediately, yet he could not stop himself from wandering farther, as though something compelled him to do so. At Union Wharf, Adam came upon a group of black-hatted Chinese squatting around a game of fantan, and even as he approached, they scurried to pocket their beans and buttons and stood to disperse. But as soon as Adam passed, they settled back on their haunches and fished the pieces from their coat pockets. Adam found himself fascinated rather than repulsed by the Celestials, drawn toward the green grocers and spice dealers of Washington Street. It was here, before an open storefront brimming with delicate, exotic wares of staggering variety, that Adam chanced upon the only Chinaman he had ever had occasion to know personally, the very doctor with whom he and the reverend had once shared a carriage to New Dungeness. Was it fate that led him to the Chinese doctor? Among the throng of Chinese on Washington Street, only Haw wore his hair braided in a queue, a fact that distinguished him in Adam’s mind as a man of importance. Only later would Adam learn that the queue symbolized a three-hundred-year-old defeat. Curious to Adam was the fact that the Celestial touched nothing with his right hand, which hung at his side as though it were lame. His movements were methodical, measured; he functioned gracefully in spite of his apparent handicap, inspecting roots and vegetables with his good hand, fishing coins from his leather purse.

Haw did not recognize the white man but could feel his eyes upon him as he fingered the goji berries and inspected the rhubarb, could feel them still as he paid for the goods. Weaving his way through the crowd toward Madison, Haw’s heart quickened — though not his pace — when he sensed that the white man was pursuing him. Turning the corner, Haw’s relief was short-lived, as the white followed close on his heels. Finally, Haw turned to face his pursuer.

“Why you follow?”

“We’ve met,” said Adam, drawing a step closer. “The reverend? The carriage?”

Haw inspected Adam scrupulously. Though he remained perfectly straight-faced, Adam could see the Chinaman’s eyes smile in recognition. “Reverend get sleepy.”

Adam smiled. “Yes. As a matter of fact he did. I owe you one for that.”

“No owing.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“Not like white doctor.”

At Hudson Point, Adam secured the two-man canoe passage to Jamestown from a flat-nosed Indian in a rumpled top hat.

“Buchanan is my name,” their pilot informed them, pushing off.

The cedar dugout was perhaps twenty feet, bow to stern, sharp-ended and wide in the middle.

To Adam’s surprise, the strait was uncharacteristically calm and windless around the point. In spite of its weight, the canoe cut like a wedge through the flat water, much quicker than any skiff. The boat was far more stable than its shape would suggest. Unperturbed by the breakers, they glided west along the peninsula, several hundred feet off shore, past the mouth of Discovery Bay, where the green foothills reared up out of bottomlands and the tiny outpost of Gardiner revealed itself by a thin plume of smoke.

They proceeded silently but for an occasional, and invariably short, observation on the part of Buchanan, who spoke with all the tonality of a foghorn.

“Protection Island,” he would say. “Good hunting, once.”

“Smells like burned fish,” he observed on another occasion, sniffing the air.

As the journey progressed, Adam’s thoughts revolved around Thomas.

Even before Buchanan set the canoe ashore at Jamestown, the faint ringing of a dozen bells floated toward them from across the bay, accompanied by the chaos of seagulls feeding along the shoreline. Other than the bells — chiming no doubt from within the windowless church — and a few chickens pecking away lazily in the street, scarcely anything in the little town stirred.