transcended the simple need for food, a hunger Mary knew to be beyond appeasement, and perhaps the girl knew it, too.
They stared at each other through the empty window, each looking into another plane of existence, and all that stood between Mary and that hungry-eyed, feral creature was a distance of a few yards.
Then abruptly the squatters turned, ragged clothes flapping, and they disappeared.
And at that moment the dream died beyond hope of resurrection.
The wreck of the house might be repairedâif she had the tens of thousands of dollars to spend on itâbut the squatters, the wild geese, would still be here, waiting. The deed that had been the lucent focus of all her hope was only a scrap of paper. This house was theirs now.
Rachel and Captain Berden were waiting for her when she returned to the living room. They didnât speak, nor did she. She was looking for something, although she didnât understand what, not until she found it. A memento of the dream.
It was on the mantel. She wondered how sheâd missed it before, howâand whyâit had survived.
The old Seth Thomas clock.
It was made of quarter-sawed oak, its design stringently simple, the face set in an arch from which the sides fell straight to a curved base. The wood and glass were coated with grime. Mary opened the small door on the front panel. The hinges were stiff, but nothing inside seemed to be broken. She pushed the pendulum. It swung, ticking at a stately pace.
Aunt Janâs great-grandmother brought this clock with her when she came west as a bride, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, by ship around the Horn. Aunt Jan had told Mary that long ago in the summer of her childhood, when she let Mary wind the clock.
Now Mary picked it up, held it against her body, saw her tears fall onto the begrimed wood, and she knew it would have been simpler if the Rovers had killed her, too. Like Laura and her baby. That had seemed so cruelly meaningless, but death has no meaning if life is meaningless. And her tears were equally meaningless, but she couldnât stop them. She knew the feel of these tears. Grief. She grieved again for her father, even for her mother. Grieved for Aunt Jan. Grieved for that feral-eyed girl.
Grieved for a dream.
She felt Rachelâs hand on her shoulder. âMary, letâs go home.â
Chapter 5
Earth knows no desolation
.
She smells regeneration
In the moist breath of decay
.
âGEORGE MEREDITH,
THE SPIRIT OF
EARTH IN AUTUMN
(1862)
S tephen latches the east gate, then, with Shadow sniffing out the way, he walks ahead of me north up the alder-shaded quarry road. Itâs little more than a footpath now and wouldnât exist at all except for our continued use of it. In dry summers we grow corn in the shielded bowl that was once a gravel quarry. Stephen stops about a hundred feet up the road, then turns east through a break in the foliage. He looks back, patiently waiting for me to catch up. Then again he leads the way, following a trail I first walked with Rachel forty years ago.
The trail winds up the valley of the Styx. The sound of water rushing over its stony, brown bed is constantly at my left, yet I seldom see the creek; itâs too densely curtained with foliage. Weâve entered a world that seems far removedâalthough itâs only half a mile awayâfrom the world of the sea and the littoral. This is the forest primeval. The rain forest.
This is, Rachel told me, climax forest, the kind of forest common in the Coast Range before European immigrants razed them for houses and toilet paper. Sitka spruce and hemlock dominate here, thrusting thick boles over a hundred feet skyward. I canât see the top of them, only the fretted pattern of twigs and needles that makes up the canopy, a pattern of exquisite complexity thatâs only a blur in my old eyes.
At the feet of the giants grow thickets of thimbleberry, salmonberry, elderberry, and salal, all
They stared at each other through the empty window, each looking into another plane of existence, and all that stood between Mary and that hungry-eyed, feral creature was a distance of a few yards.
Then abruptly the squatters turned, ragged clothes flapping, and they disappeared.
And at that moment the dream died beyond hope of resurrection.
The wreck of the house might be repairedâif she had the tens of thousands of dollars to spend on itâbut the squatters, the wild geese, would still be here, waiting. The deed that had been the lucent focus of all her hope was only a scrap of paper. This house was theirs now.
Rachel and Captain Berden were waiting for her when she returned to the living room. They didnât speak, nor did she. She was looking for something, although she didnât understand what, not until she found it. A memento of the dream.
It was on the mantel. She wondered how sheâd missed it before, howâand whyâit had survived.
The old Seth Thomas clock.
It was made of quarter-sawed oak, its design stringently simple, the face set in an arch from which the sides fell straight to a curved base. The wood and glass were coated with grime. Mary opened the small door on the front panel. The hinges were stiff, but nothing inside seemed to be broken. She pushed the pendulum. It swung, ticking at a stately pace.
Aunt Janâs great-grandmother brought this clock with her when she came west as a bride, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, by ship around the Horn. Aunt Jan had told Mary that long ago in the summer of her childhood, when she let Mary wind the clock.
Now Mary picked it up, held it against her body, saw her tears fall onto the begrimed wood, and she knew it would have been simpler if the Rovers had killed her, too. Like Laura and her baby. That had seemed so cruelly meaningless, but death has no meaning if life is meaningless. And her tears were equally meaningless, but she couldnât stop them. She knew the feel of these tears. Grief. She grieved again for her father, even for her mother. Grieved for Aunt Jan. Grieved for that feral-eyed girl.
Grieved for a dream.
She felt Rachelâs hand on her shoulder. âMary, letâs go home.â
Chapter 5
Earth knows no desolation
.
She smells regeneration
In the moist breath of decay
.
âGEORGE MEREDITH,
THE SPIRIT OF
EARTH IN AUTUMN
(1862)
S tephen latches the east gate, then, with Shadow sniffing out the way, he walks ahead of me north up the alder-shaded quarry road. Itâs little more than a footpath now and wouldnât exist at all except for our continued use of it. In dry summers we grow corn in the shielded bowl that was once a gravel quarry. Stephen stops about a hundred feet up the road, then turns east through a break in the foliage. He looks back, patiently waiting for me to catch up. Then again he leads the way, following a trail I first walked with Rachel forty years ago.
The trail winds up the valley of the Styx. The sound of water rushing over its stony, brown bed is constantly at my left, yet I seldom see the creek; itâs too densely curtained with foliage. Weâve entered a world that seems far removedâalthough itâs only half a mile awayâfrom the world of the sea and the littoral. This is the forest primeval. The rain forest.
This is, Rachel told me, climax forest, the kind of forest common in the Coast Range before European immigrants razed them for houses and toilet paper. Sitka spruce and hemlock dominate here, thrusting thick boles over a hundred feet skyward. I canât see the top of them, only the fretted pattern of twigs and needles that makes up the canopy, a pattern of exquisite complexity thatâs only a blur in my old eyes.
At the feet of the giants grow thickets of thimbleberry, salmonberry, elderberry, and salal, all
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