?—?I’ll hazard she knows better than us what we’re getting into, Tillman said.
June 7
We camp at the mouth of the west fork. Large bear tracks mark up the nearby sand bars, though we have not seen any animals. Brown bear meat is said to be rank, but in our current condition, we would not turn up our noses. For that reason, as well as our own protection, we will keep a man at guard through the night. I take the first shift.
I think on it more often than is good for me, especially when I’m alone at the campfire like this. Sophie a mother. Me a father. A family together. At the last Indian camp, I obtained a gift for her?—?an infant strap made by the Midnooskies. The women use the decorated leather slings to secure their babies to their backs as they work. This one is ornately decorated with flattened & dyed porcupine quills. I do not expect Sophie to use it, as I’m sure she will prefer a baby carriage, but I believe she will enjoy this souvenir of my voyage.
I still carry with me the Old Man’s silver comb, though I do not know what to do with it. I consider throwing it into the river, or offering it to the Midnooskies. Yet I cannot seem to part with it. More than once I have taken it from my pocket, tried to polish it with my shirt sleeve to see if I can determine any sign of its path to Alaska. The Old Man could have picked it up on Perkins Island, where soldiers & white men come with some frequency. Surely it can be explained.
We learned at one camp that the Old Man remains in our proximity. The Indians were lamenting his theft of fish from their drying racks. They said he was later spied on the riverbank, sleeping with his hands on his fat belly.
Sophie Forrester
Vancouver Barracks
June 6, 1885
“Why didn’t you have hired help when you were a little girl?—?was your family poor? You don’t talk like you were raised poor. What do you mean Friends? What’s a Quaker? I don’t like church a bit. Mam makes us go but I think it’s just because she likes that we all have to sit quiet. What about your da, was he Quaker too? We don’t have marble or sculptures around here, just trees and hills and more trees. And you can see the mountains on sunny days. No, I’ve never seen a sculpture before.”
In such a way, as we walked today in search of nests, Charlotte drew to my attention the false-fronted and thin nature of civilized discourse. She speaks forthrightly, without guile or manipulation; she means no affront and only asks what any rational person would. Yet how do I answer her honesty? I simplify, even outright lie, all to keep the conversation light and moving forward. Each time she spies a gap, however, the child does not skip over it as expected, but instead pauses at the edge and peers down fearlessly.
“How did your father die, was he old or something? Who lit the barn on fire? Why didn’t anyone put it out?”
If only I possessed Evelyn’s ease with banter. I have watched how, when it suits her, she deflects and distracts and only talks of that which amuses her, never with sign that there is anything concealed.
I told Charlotte that my father died in a barn fire when I was about her age, and it was not a lie.
I did not say that the quarry boss had long ago sent him away because he fought with the other workers and behaved strangely, nor did I describe how he took to stealing his marble in the night and slept like an animal in the barn and often did not seem to know the faces of his own wife and daughter. I did not share my most fearful memory: the night I looked out my bedroom window to see him standing bare-chested in the rain, how he roared at some invisible entity, his long beard and hair matted like the fur of an unwell animal.
I ran out with a blanket that night, to wrap around his bare shoulders, but he only cast it off so that it lay wet in the yard.
I was there, too, the day he took the sledgehammer to the bear, and when I tried to stop him, he struck me with a blow that knocked me to the ground, but who would dare to speak of it? When he hid away in the barn, I continued to bring him food each day, but I was too frightened to get near, so would push the tray through the barn door with a broom, and it filled me with shame.
The day after Father went into a neighbor’s home and was nearly shot as a thief, a doctor came to our house to say that he should be committed to an asylum, as he was becoming dangerous and his demented brain was beyond healing.