Eighteen heads, all likely taken as retribution for miscellaneous grudges, had been brought in before the settlers realized the bounty had been a mistake. He had seen some of the heads returned to the families of the deceased. The headless bodies always seemed so much smaller and foolish looking.
This desecration was no different than others he had seen—thumb missing, a big hole blown out of Isaac’s back from a heavy slug, likely a .54 caliber.
The body wouldn’t have survived that wound anyway, so the missing head seemed irrelevant, except that it wasn’t.
When the burial took place on a body rotted away from a cancer or simply dwindled into a frail carcass, he always imagined the full person in good health, no matter what.
But this was so hard to put to rest.
By the time he got to the Crockett’s twenty minutes later, Emmy had collapsed, and Ben had carried her unconscious, upstairs.
She was bleeding heavily and had already passed the fetus, which Missy Crockett, a devout Catholic, had wrapped in new linen and placed next to a votive candle, lit she said, so the baby’s tiny soul could find its way to Purgatory.
Edwards inspected the fetus and saw that the small placenta had not pulled away intact from the uterus, which meant that Emmy would continue bleeding and die unless he could evacuate the fragments along with any large clots left.
He took a bottle of opiate from his bag and told Missy to mix a half bottle into a pitcher of water and then to arouse Emmy enough so that she drank a full tumbler.
After Emmy ingested the mixture, he soaked a handkerchief wrapped around a large cotton ball with ether and held it over her mouth and nose.
She didn’t struggle much. When she was limp, he began searching for the remainder of the placenta.
He had lied to Emmy about her husband and son because she needed to sleep through this infection. The searchers hadn’t found Jacob, and now they were walking through the underbrush in the west evergreen woods near the Evers house to see if he turned up or was dead.
A day after the attack, Tom Iserson had emerged from the woods and came walking up to the Crockett’s cabin, naked except for his right stocking, babbling biblical verses and profane curses.
It took a full two days to find his wife, Rebah, cowering under a fallen tree, crazed, bawling her eyes out, broken down. The men had to talk to her for an hour before she would come out. But Jacob was nowhere to be found.
Edwards, watching Emmy struggle with a fever that most likely would consume her, decided it would be best to order the burial of what remained of Isaac Evers. He would keep Emmy heavily sedated and deal out the terrible news when she was strong enough to receive it. His lie would not matter if she passed on, and he would be spared the pain of telling her the truth.
Edwards officiated over Isaac’s burial the next day, Sunday, November 15th. Islanders had come from Whidbey’s four corners, arriving with gifts and condolences for Sarah and Emmy.
By the time the ceremony started shortly before noon, a near freezing rain blew its bitter bite across the fertile homestead that Isaac and Emmy had so successfully developed. Winfield and Ben brought the cedar plank casket up from the Evers home, then all the men who had been standing by waiting moved over to help lift it off the carriage and lower it into the drenched grave.
Corrine Evers, Isaac’s lame sister, and Missy Crockett, placed a large wreath of rosemary onto the casket as it passed by.
After the men pulled the ropes out from the grave, as the cold rain started pounding the earth and water pooled around the edges of the coffin, they picked up shovels and covered it. When the last shovelful had been placed, Edwards stepped forward to speak:
“We all knew Colonel Isaac Joseph Evers. He was a handsome, hardworking, visionary man. He helped all of us settle in this rough land. He and his wife, Emmy, created a homestead that is the envy of everyone here. It is a tragedy that his great effort and love have ended in this way. God has a purpose. Dear Lord Jesus and God Almighty, watch over Isaac in his journey and take care of his family, in your wisdom and mercy. Amen.”
That was all. No one else spoke.
The cold rain was fitting to the horror of the past several days, and the neighbors and friends had already said to each other what needed to be said. Those who knew Edwards expected no more words.
Sarah left with Corrine across the plateau to stay with Isaac’s brother and wife.
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After the mourners had departed in their carriages, Jim Thomas stepped out of the cedar pine thicket north of the gravesite. He carried a small bundle to Isaac Evers’ grave and pulled back the loosely packed dirt near the grave’s marker. He unwrapped the woven bundle and placed its contents into the hole. It was a head, roughly carved out of cedar, its eyes painted in with blackberry juice.
As he covered it up, he sang a little song in Salish: “Go into the dark place with these eyes open. With these eyes open.”
Chapter Twenty-One
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Emmy
Was it Isaac?
She heard him first before she saw him, and as she got closer, walking through the Madrona saplings through a fading light, he made a raspy sound that reminded her of his sighs when he had expressed his most desperate doubts about his life.
Each step toward him made him seem to move farther and faster away. When she pushed aside a low-hanging deodar branch, she was in a dark clearing about fifty feet at its widest.
She saw his back moving out and away, deeper
