West Of Here Part 25

Later, Rita would wonder how she managed to hold out so long. "You know what," she said. "You're right."

"f.u.c.kin' a right, I'm right. Hey, you're burnin' that s.h.i.t - watch what the f.u.c.k you're doin'."

Rita snapped the front burner off, pushed the sizzling skillet aside carelessly, tore the fire extinguisher off of the wall, unclamped the hose, clasped the trigger, and began firing it with a spate of forced air directly into Randy's face. He jumped up from the table and began backpedaling. His feet got tangled in the chair legs.

"What the f.u.c.k?" he said, shielding his face.

"Thank you," she said. As he tried to right himself, Rita moved in closer. "And Curtis thanks you."

"Holy s.h.i.t, you crazy f.u.c.king Indian! I'm gonna ..."

"What, Randy? You gonna bounce me off the walls? Bust my lip open?" Grasping at her blindly, he got hold of her sleeve and went for her neck with his other arm. The instant she felt his fingers around her neck, a lightning bolt ran up her back, and Rita snapped. Later, she would remember this instant as a hot suffusion of joy, a blinding red flash, and a flood of adrenaline. The very thought of it would cause her knees to weaken. Famished for violence, she swung the tank at Randy with all her might. The canister offered a sickly thud and the faintest of reverberations as it connected with the side of his head. Rita would remember thinking Randy's head felt a lot softer than she might have guessed. Randy reeled backward into the refrigerator and almost lost his footing. He didn't look angry anymore. He looked stunned. Too stunned even to cover his head for the next blow.

"Fuuuck, babe," he said groggily.

Had Rita's rage allowed her to see him clearly, Randy might have looked pitiable with his dull eyes and wounded expression. She saw only confusion on his face - and the fact that any of this should confuse him drove her rage to new places. She swung the canister again, grazing his shoulder, only to connect with his cheekbone. She paused long enough to watch him slump to the floor and reel around on the linoleum trying to get his bearings. He managed to prop himself up with his back against the fridge, deliriously. He started bleeding from the nose and tried to dab at the blood, but his fingers missed his face completely on the first pa.s.s. When he managed to b.l.o.o.d.y his fingers, he stared stupidly at them, then, swooning, looked up at Rita just in time to see black.

When Randy slumped to the floor and stopped moving altogether, Rita set aside the canister and instinctively stepped away from his body. But almost immediately, she was on her knees, nudging his arm, tentatively at first, then earnestly. His eyes were as lifeless as a mannequin. He was still bleeding from the nose. Looking upon her work, the cold crippling reality of it spread through Rita like numbness from her chest to her fingertips, until she was frozen in place, unable to move. It was the slowest panic she would ever know. She knelt there on the warped linoleum, watching through her haze of panic, as the blood pooled. Finally, she noticed, ever-so-faintly, the rise and fall of his chest.

Rita would later wonder what she might have done if she'd actually killed Randy that evening in the kitchen. G.o.d knows, a couple more shots to the head, a few more delirious seconds of hot red joy might have done the trick. She might have staved his skull in had she managed to land a square shot. In retrospect, it was terrifying to think how close she had come to that reality, bewildering to think how many things had conspired to save Randy, how many velocities and angles and height differentials figured in his favor. If she hadn't killed him, it wasn't for lack of intent. And that was the most difficult thing for Rita to reconcile.

What would she have done if Randy hadn't regained consciousness after the third or fourth nudge, if she hadn't called the cops and the paramedics, if reality had taken that hard left turn? Would she have turned herself in? Disposed of the body? Dug a grave in the back yard in the middle of the night? Bewitched by the dumb luck that had prevented her from murdering Randy, Rita was nonetheless grateful that reality hadn't taken that hard left turn. This time.

a reunion OCTOBER 1890 1890.

While Dalton Krigstadt recognized the man behind the desk by his formidable mustache and his silver eyes, he was also quick to notice certain changes in Ethan's manner since the day he met him nearly a year ago in the Belvedere, when Ethan was still just an idea man with moth-eaten trousers and a thirst for conversation. The man behind the desk looked tense and distracted. He seemed to have no idea that Dalton even stood before him.

Indeed, Ethan was distracted and tense, not himself, and he had become increasingly so in the weeks since Eva left the child, weeks in which the days grew shorter and shorter and pressure from Chicago continued to mount. Fussing absently with his crooked thumb, Ethan scanned the Commonwealth Register Commonwealth Register spread out on the desk before him. Shipping news from Port Townsend, a scathing editorial on railroad promoters, but still no byline reading Lambert, a fact Ethan noted with both disappointment and relief. spread out on the desk before him. Shipping news from Port Townsend, a scathing editorial on railroad promoters, but still no byline reading Lambert, a fact Ethan noted with both disappointment and relief.

Finally, Dalton cleared his throat. "Mr. Thornburgh, sir?"

Looking up, Ethan did not recognize the dough-faced man with the shabby work clothes - garb that seemed all the more tired from having apparently submitted to laundering recently. "Yes, what is it?"

"Krigstadt's the name, sir. Dalton. We met the day you came to Port Bonita."

Ethan was drawing a blank.

"At the Belvedere," Dalton pursued. "You thought it should be called something else. We drank whiskeys. You said I was the first person you'd met."

"Ah, yes, the mason."

"Nope."

"The woodsman."

"Nope "Railroad man?"

"Nope. I haul things, sir."

"Well, sir, I came because of an idea."

"Yes, yes. The hauler, that's right." Ethan turned his attention back to the Register. Register. "What is it I can do for you, Mr. Dalton?" "What is it I can do for you, Mr. Dalton?"

"Well, sir, I came because of an idea."

Looking up from his paper, Ethan made another skeptical appraisal of Mr. Dalton, whom he reasoned to be a brute of a man - hewn from the raw materials of flesh and bone with little attention to detail. This Dalton was not a man of angles. Framed in a rectangle of sunlight, his very silhouette was amorphous. His shadow on the dusty floor may well have been the shadow of a whiskey keg. "I thought you were a hauler, not an idea man."

"So did I, sir."

Ethan did nothing to disguise his impatience. "Very well, then. What sort of idea, Mr. Dalton? Briefly."

"You see, Mr. Thornburgh, it's about ice."

"Ice."

"Yes, sir."

"And how is that?"

"Well now, first let me explain how I came upon the idea, sir. See, I started thinking how you had all this work going on up here, and all these workers to house, and so forth. Then I was thinkin' how you've got that road extending way up the mountain, well past the clearing and into the high country."

"And?"

"And there's bound to be mountains of ice up there."

"One would presume, Mr. Dalton. And no shortage of snow either. What good is it to me?"

"Well now, if you had you a great big icehouse up here, I'd say you could lay yourself into a pretty good store of ice."

"I see, Mr. Dalton." Ethan turned his attention back to the Register. Register. "And now that I've harvested "And now that I've harvested mountains of ice mountains of ice and stacked it neatly in my warehouse, what then? What am I to do with it? Build igloos?" and stacked it neatly in my warehouse, what then? What am I to do with it? Build igloos?"

"Well now, sir, for starters you could sell it to cold storage houses in San Francisco."

Ethan left off rubbing his thumb and looked up from his paper, a little stunned. For an instant he felt in his bones that Dalton had hit upon a great idea. But another look at the man and his overall lack of detail was enough to convince Ethan firmly otherwise.

"Perhaps you should stick to hauling furniture, Mr. Dalton."

Jacob mounted the steps and filled the open doorway behind Dalton, blotting out his squat shadow.

"I'm afraid I don't follow, sir," said Dalton.

"Jacob, come in, come in. Meet Mr. Dalton. Mr. Dalton has devised an ingenious plan by which mountains of ice can be transported right here to our little outpost, then on to San Francisco, a thousand miles away. Tell us, Mr. Dalton, the length of the western coast aside, just how do you propose to haul that ice thirty miles down the mountain? Float it? Haul it by the wagon load?"

"Wooden flume, sir."

"Ha! The world's grandest wooden flume! And how, Mr. Dalton -"

"It's Krigstadt."

"How, Mr. Krigstadt, do you propose to get it to San Francisco? Another flume, perhaps?"

"Ship it, sir. Or send it out from Port Townsend by rail - that is, when the railroad's finished."

"Possibly viable," said Jacob, nodding his head and looking slightly impressed.

Ethan scoffed. "Ridiculous. The whole plan is ridiculous."

"This from the man who conceived of the electric stairs?"

"The electric stairs will be a reality, Jake, wait and see."

"And what of Will-o'-the-Wisp, Will-o'-the-Wisp, your delightful comedy of manners?" your delightful comedy of manners?"

"Fair enough, Jake, though I've seen worse at the Lyceum Theater. Perhaps best to leave literary pretensions aside. However, I really should've got a patent on the electric stairs, Jake, because somebody is bound to beat me to them. On the other hand, this scheme with the ice is nothing short of preposterous. A thirty-mile flume wider than the Elwha? Whoever heard of such a thing?"

"Mr. Thornburgh, if I may say so, when I first heard how you was scheming to dam up the Elwha with all that concrete, I thought that was the d.a.m.nedest thing I ever heard."

Jacob smiled. "He's got a point, Ethan."

Ethan narrowed his silver eyes. "Mr. Krigstadt, I hardly think our plans are the least bit comparable. As you can see, mine is becoming a reality before your eyes. Whereas this daydream you've hatched up is doomed from the start. In your naive optimism, you've completely overlooked the fundamental problem with this operation of yours. Hauling ice is all well and good. But how do you turn a glacier into slabs of ice? Certainly not manpower, because this is ice we're talking about, not gold. There's not enough ice in the world to sustain the labor force it would take to chop up those glaciers. So then, dynamite, is it? Liable to be an unG.o.dly mess, don't you think?"

Dalton straightened up slightly and could not suppress a grin both bashful and proud. "Heated electric wires, Mr. Thornburgh. Me and another fellow has got a patent." Silence. For the second time in the conversation, Ethan was certain that Krigstadt had stumbled onto a grand design. Glancing at Jacob, he could see that his partner was also struck. But the moment that Ethan ran his tongue over the words "heated electric wires," he saw more clearly than ever the plan was ridiculous.

"Ha! Heated electric wires. Giant flumes. Cold storage in San Francisco. Jacob, if you wish to indulge this man further, I'll ask that you take the conversation elsewhere. I haven't time for daydreams. Goodbye, Mr. Krigstadt. Good luck with your scheme. I'd warn you to look before you leap, though. Take a good hard look at your future. I suspect you'll see yourself hauling furniture there. Perhaps that's your destiny, Mr. Krigstadt. We're not all made to move mountains."

Dalton's doughy face reddened. He was stuck in place momentarily, as though he didn't know how to proceed.

Jacob shot Ethan a look.

Silently, Krigstadt turned. Jacob stepped aside to accommodate his pa.s.sing, and watched him cross pitifully over the threshold and down the steps.

Jacob turned his critical gaze back at Ethan, who met him with icy determination.

"There was no call to treat the fellow like that, Ethan."

"Like what?"

"You've developed a mean streak."

"Nonsense. Jacob, as my business partner, I should think you would understand better than anybody the demands on my time. Look around you. I clearly haven't got time to hear the scatter-brained contrivances of every laborer that pa.s.ses through my door. You know that! And yet you encourage him. Is it not crueler to give the man hope?"

"You've changed," said Jacob.

"I've adapted, Jacob. There's a difference."

EARLY IN THE EVENING, when the dredging had ceased for the day, and the hammers were silent, and the dust was still settling, Ethan strode across the empty clearing to the makeshift nursery, where he stomped his boots clean on the doorstep before entering. The young nursemaid was seated on the rug with Minerva, a line of wooden ducklings between them. The young woman stood to greet him, straightening her skirts, but Ethan paid her no mind and went straight for Minerva, scooping the child off of the ground with steam-shovel hands. Immediately, his whole manner slackened, and he did not feel at odds with the world, at least for a moment. The girl squealed and giggled in his arms. Ethan noted the dark crescents under her eyes with a nagging concern.

"Has she napped?"

"For two hours, sir."

Ethan playfully pinched the girl's distended belly. The child squealed with delight and immediately went for his mustache with her fingers.

"How is the rash?" said Ethan.

"Almost gone, sir."

"Good."

Ethan carried Minerva in his arms to the edge of the canyon, as he did every evening. The child was asleep before he was halfway there. Jacob was right. He had changed, along with the playing field. The impatience that had once stirred his dreams, pushing him ever onward into the arms of his destiny, had hardened into a different sort of impatience. For the first time, he felt the world owed him something. The tightness returned to his shoulders as he peered down into the gorge, beneath the bridge, where the scaffolding on the far side spiderwebbed its way up the cliff face. Gazing down farther, a hundred feet to where the dredging continued below the riverbed, Ethan felt his stomach roll. He could practically see the dam as it would look finished; its completeness was now strongly suggested by the shape of its surroundings, from the tapering depths of the channel to the broad expanse at the lip. Yet Ethan found himself unable to revel in accomplishment. The world seemed to be pulling him in different directions. From all quarters he felt the tug of opposition. From Eva, who was no longer content to merely vex him but seemed intent upon ruining him. From Chicago, who defied his every advice, resisted his every judgment, and finally usurped his executive power and undermined his vision. And now resistance from Jacob, whose opinions grew stronger every day, whose judgments of Ethan seemed to grow harsher by the hour.

The only person in the world who didn't seem to oppose Ethan's very existence anymore, the only person who seemed to accept him unconditionally, to trust his every judgment and consent to his every decision faithfully, was his daughter, now asleep in his arms with her downy hair swept sideways over her face.

still port bonita AUGUST 2006 2006.

"Happy hour's over," said Krig as Jared plopped down in the adjacent stool. A flotilla of appetizer boats lined the bar in front of Krig: artichoke dip, buffalo wings, shooters in the half sh.e.l.l, all of them half eaten - exactly exactly half eaten. half eaten.

"Sorry, bro. I had to drop by the house first. Janis made Thai. She's convinced it's my favorite. You know how it is."

"Yeah," said Krig, hara.s.sed by the knowledge that he should be happy for J-man, heartened by the recent turnabout in the Thorn-burgh home, and above all, gladdened by the news of Janis's pregnancy. "I know how it is."

Molly arrived immediately for Jared's order, something she never did for Krig.

"Kilt Lifter, J-man?" she said.

J-man? Did she call him J-man? WTF? Krig couldn't suppress a little burp, that is, he couldn't resist not suppressing it. It smelled like roasted garlic. Molly nearly gagged.

"Another for me, too," said Krig. "And could you box up this c.r.a.p? J-man already ate with his wife. wife."

Watching Molly gather up the boats without bestowing so much as a glance at Krig, Jared felt - as he'd often had occasion to feel in recent days - more than a little sorry for Krig. The guy just wasn't good with signals. His intentions were golden, but ... but what? Was it his complete lack of self-awareness? His inability to step back? Or step forward, for that matter? In so many ways, Krig seemed completely undetermined. And yet, there he was, as constant as the tides. His attendance was perfect. The problem was, he just stood there at the starting line, apparently unaware that the gun had sounded. What if Jared could light a fire under Krig's a.s.s, offer him some incentive, a promotion, or something?

"You see what Texas did to Cleveland today?" Jared ventured.

"Yeah."

"d.a.m.n. Talk about a beating."

Both men cast their eyes vaguely on SportsCenter. SportsCenter. Stuart Scott looked smarter in gla.s.ses. Felix Hernandez left the M's game in the fifth with a sore shoulder. WNBA news started scrolling along the bottom of the screen. Stuart Scott looked smarter in gla.s.ses. Felix Hernandez left the M's game in the fifth with a sore shoulder. WNBA news started scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

"So, I'm gonna do it," Jared said.

"Do what?"

"Write that stupid speech for Dam Days."