She thought of Jojo and how brave he had been and how grateful he was to receive from her the ability to read. She believed the leverage such a commodity would provide to him was a fair exchange after all.
They found his father, MaNuitu ’sta, gravely ill when they returned, but Jojo had been able to read to him before the old tyee died. She knew she had fulfilled an important promise to MaNuitu ’sta—for the time being the best she could do in return for all he had done.
She wondered if she should do more for Jojo, perhaps help in his education?
Would she ever return here? Would her children come back here someday, to this raw and savage land that seduced one with its beauty but tested one so severely with its moodiness? The terrible changes in seasons constantly reminded her she was alive but mortal. She wondered what it would be like if she were to live in a climate where the seasons were less dramatic. Would that cause her to become tepid and complacent and forget about death? Would that be fair?
And what should she tell her family in Boston? What should she write about her own thoughts and memories? What could she preserve for others that would be an adequate mark for her time, her family’s suffering, and everything she felt so deeply?
All so real and yet, all so unreal.
All so painful, and all so much at rest now. All at rest . . . and with her duty done.
Could she ever come back? Could she ever will herself into that time and make things right somehow, the way they had been before Isaac had been killed? So much was buried here. But so many people were arriving now and building over it all that soon it would not matter what rested here from before.
The reality, she knew, as she reflected on her journey here in this big Northwest, is that our finite time in life does not allow us to really go back. The biographies and autobiographies, based on the exploration and interpretation of the notes we have saved and the markings shaken loose from the corners where we have tucked them, most often stay unwritten. Thus, the memories and mementos become encumbrances, if not for us, then for the family, friends, and strangers who must clean up afterward. Instead of them being loving presences with fragrances that grace a room, they become pale pieces of paper with words that no longer echo and move mountains and souls. A pity, she thought. But there was still much to see in this life, and that was good.
She would accept that and move on.
Epilogue
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Isaac, Anah
Out of darkness . . . and suddenly he was a leaf on the porch pushed across with the yellow and orange ones, blowing across the stoop of this home that was his. It was west to east, this wind from the strait below, and he couldn’t be angry with it as he had in the past for pushing him so, because then he was part of it, this wind.
Now he finally understood why it had howled when it found tunnels to whistle itself through. He finally understood that it was a joyous cry because the sound gave him a voice that lasted for just a bit as he buffeted about.
He found a place, a little tube from a broken bottle stem, and he dove into it, and its glass walls vibrated, and he heard the echo of the yearning whistle, a whoop and a warning, and as he swirled up out of it, he was borne up again and he was flying high above what had been his home but no longer was. And as he swooped above, he was in control, and by leaning to the right, he soared high above the beachhead and homestead and saw it all, with its time passing below, all the elements, waiting for their time to fly like him.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
He hovered out above the sliver-moon bay, above the tall, empty ship with ragged sails, and as he landed on its mossy deck, he found scratches on the walls left by sad creatures in sad pain. He hopped along the gangway and saw the drops of blood, long dried and faded, that told some other tale that he could no longer remember.
In an empty, dusty room below, next to a broken chair, he found a globe of glass, and inside was a snowing scene with a bright shiny pin inside. He picked it up in his beak and pushed himself aloft and out above the dead ship.
He took himself to a shoreline where he saw a rocky beach to drop his prize, burst it, and get the shiny pin. And as he let go, as he had always done so cleverly, something came from out of nowhere, and his catch was gone. And he was wandering again, and his shore and ship and moon were gone, and he was in darkness without a bearing.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
Widow Walk is a historical adventure novel depicting real and fictionalized characters and events.
Isaac and Emmy Evers. The fictionalized characters of both Isaac and Emmy Evers of Widow Walk is partly derived from the 1857 diary entries of Isaac and Emily Ebey.
Like so many other enterprising speculators in this turbulent era, Isaac had emigrated from the Midwest with his skills to California in search of quick fortune. He found none. Luckless and frustrated, he turned his entrepreneurial hopes to the Oregon territory.
When he arrived in the Puget Sound area in 1850, fewer than 1,500 white settlers had settled there. With the discovery of gold on the Fraser River in 1858, all of that changed and a great booming migration began, with settlers moving northward by ship into the
