Written in Stone Read online

  We wound uphill around dead falls and outcroppings of rock. When we came to the top of the headland by Shipwreck Cove, the smell hit us. It was like rotting flesh, but more bitter. I drew back a few steps. Henry shook his head and motioned me forward. If the smell bothered him, he didn’t show it. I could think of nothing but the stench. As we inched toward the treeless acres of burned stumps, meadow grass, and shoulder-high columns of mud in the saddle of land above the cove, the smell made my eyes water. Maybe I was smelling the rotting souls of the pirates that had died in that ship on the sand.

  At the edge of the burn, Henry and I hid behind a cedar as broad as a barn door. The side of the tree that faced the ocean was blackened from its roots to fifty feet up, but the landward side was green and growing.

  Down in the open area, Mr. Glen had put a red bandanna over his face train-robber-style to cut the foul odor. He approached a mud chimney, walked all the way around, measured it with a marked string, and took a picture. Then he held his hand over the top. Whatever he found in that chimney, it made him very happy.

  Next, he moved to the rock wall at the north end of the meadow.

  “An earthquake sometimes raises up a wall,” Henry explained in a whisper. “And a mud chimney grows when there is fuel underground.”

  I nodded, remembering that Grandpa had showed me the layers of rock on a different wall years ago. He’d said each color stood for something.

  Mr. Glen had apparently heard the same thing because he was digging a sample rock from each layer in the wall. He wrapped them in muslin and placed them in his sack, making notes on each one. Then he circled around closer to us, to the part of the meadow where the grass had gone yellow in a long oval patch.

  Henry and I drew back behind the tree so he wouldn’t see us, and turned our ears to listen. We heard Mr. Glen grunt and squat down. We heard the clack and thud of rocks being lifted and rolled out of the way.

  “Eureka!” The museum man laughed aloud. He took something from his backpack, replaced it, and then walked out the way we came.

  I was bursting with questions, but Henry held his hand up to silence me until long after we could no longer hear Mr. Glen walking away.

  “What is this place?” I asked. “What makes that smell?”

  “Grandpa would call it a power of the earth,” Henry said. “A power the museum man wants for himself.”

  “But he only took rocks,” I said. I walked carefully up to the cone of mud to see what Mr. Glen was looking at. The stench was definitely coming from in there.

  “This is the place where the power under the earth breathes,” Henry said. He took a yellow-and-brown speckled maple leaf and held it over the mud chimney. The leaf fluttered up as if a gentle wind had caught it. A chill crawled up my back. I imagined some hideous creature breathing down in a stone chamber underground.

  Henry walked slowly around the mud chimney, bent over to search the ground.

  “And this is what he was looking for,” Henry said.

  He picked up a fist-sized black rock that was smooth and had a bit of luster to it, but it was not the mirror shine of black obsidian. Henry put the rock in his pocket and walked to the patch of yellowed grass.

  The ground was steeply folded there. At the bottom of the crease was a black puddle. Henry dipped his finger in the puddle, and when he lifted his hand, the black liquid coated his finger. It was thicker than paint but not so stiff as glue. It smelled sharp and sour, but it didn’t make my eyes water the way the mud chimney did.

  “What could he possibly want this stuff for? It’s ugly and smelly and—”

  “And it burns,” Henry said. “It’s like whale oil but not so clean. I’ll show you.”

  He scooped up a bit of the black oil with a shell and took me away from the burned area. Back in the trees, we found a moss-covered log. He set down the shell and the black stone and took a matchbox out of his pocket. When he touched a lit match to the oil in the shell, it burned with a blue flame, yellow at the edges, and gave off a thin black wisp of smoke. Then he took a knife and shaved a few crumbs off the black stone. He had to coax that one along, but after the third match it burned.

  “Listen to me, Pearl,” Henry said. “This coal and the oil and the natural gas that comes out of the chimney are all the same thing, and the gas catches fire most easily. You must never, never come here with fire.”

  “Is that why the ground is burned back in the clearing?”

  Henry nodded. “When Grandpa’s father was a boy, lightning struck one of those mud chimneys. There was an explosion they heard miles away and a pillar of fire taller than any tree.”

  “So it’s not a monster?”

  Henry smiled but not to mock me. “I don’t believe in the old monsters, Pearl. Sometimes I wish I did. Is it worse to be swallowed by a demon or a fire?”

  I thought it over and poked at the smoldering ashes with a twig.

  “Monster,” I decided. “With a monster, you always get a chance to trick your way back to life. At least you do in the good stories.”

  “We had better hang on to those good stories then.” Henry took a wet piece of moss and dabbed out the last sparks. “When Grandma’s gone there will only be you and me and Ida and Charlie to keep the old stories.”

  “Yes, and what if …” My mind jumped from sickness to war to logging accidents. “I’m going to write them down,” I said firmly. “All of them.”

  “That’s your father in you talking. He wasn’t afraid to try new things.” Henry laughed a little. “It drove my dad crazy, Grandpa too. But I admired that about him, and so did many other young men. When there was trouble in town or a dispute with a neighbor, Victor was the man people turned to.”

  “People always told me how brave he was,” I said. “But I thought they were talking about whaling.”

  “Oh, he had the courage from the strength of his body,” Henry said. “And so does many a fool who can’t imagine his own death. But your father had courage from the strength of his ideas too, and that is what made him a leader of men.”

  The strength of his ideas, I thought. Now that’s something of my father’s I want to keep in my pocket.

  “I wish he was here,” Henry said. “I’d give a hundred coppers to know what he would have done about our museum man.”

  “What is Mr. Glen going to do?”

  Henry shrugged. “He’ll need investors in order to buy drilling equipment.”

  “They can’t just drill. It’s our land. We have a treaty to say so.”

  “Seems like a treaty doesn’t count for much when you’ve got oil or gold or some other thing white people want on your reservation.”

  I nodded, looking at the ground. My friend Anita from Nitinat had cousins in Montana. They used to live in the Black Hills, but gold miners came and now they live in a rail-yard shack in Helena with strangers all around them and no clean water or view of the mountains. The schoolmaster called it assimilation. He called it admirable. I knew piracy when I saw it.

  15

  The Poker Game

  That night at dinner, Mr. Glen was more cheerful and talkative than he had been all week. He complimented Grandma and Aunt Loula extravagantly on their cooking and tried to make jokes with Uncle Jeremiah.

  At the end of the meal he gestured for silence and announced, “Simon, Jeremiah, I have decided to buy the totem pole you are working on. It will be a fine addition to the Art Institute.”

  Aunt Loula gasped with pleasure, and Ida actually jumped up and clapped. I looked down at my hands and wished with all my heart for the Pitch Woman to swoop in the door and devour that man. There were smiles and handshakes all around. I noticed Henry making a charade of pleasant congratulations, so I did my best to disguise my feelings.

  “A down payment of one hundred dollars. No, one hundred twenty,” Mr. Glen went on. “And then another three hundred dollars when you deliver it in six months. How does that sound?”

  Uncle Jeremiah smiled, and Grandpa nodded. Aunt Loul
a tapped her fingers to calculate.

  “That’s forty dollars a foot,” she whispered to Grandma.

  “And that’s only the beginning,” Mr. Glen said. “When my patron sees your fine work, your exemplary work, I’m sure he will offer you a commission every year.”

  It was as if he knew exactly what they wanted to hear. I kept stealing glances at Henry, but he was determined to play along.

  “We should celebrate,” Henry said.

  “Yes, yes, a toast to our bargain.” Mr. Glen scuttled off to the room where his boxes were kept and came back with a bottle of whiskey. There was a moment of quiet, and everyone turned to look at Grandpa.

  He stood up with his fists clenched behind his back, weighing the duties of hospitality with moral obligation.

  “Come now,” Mr. Glen said in a meeker tone. “A drink to our partnership. It’s only a custom.”

  Grandpa made the briefest of nods, and Mr. Glen poured whiskey for himself, Grandpa, and Uncle Jeremiah.

  “To a long and productive partnership,” he said, raising his glass and drinking. Grandpa raised his glass silently and watched Mr. Glen drink; then he threw his whiskey onto the fire in the middle of the room. A thin orange flame leapt up as high as a grown man and then sank down. It left behind a brief smell of burnt sugar.

  Ida gasped with delight as if this were part of a potlatch show.

  “It is our custom,” Grandpa said, and then retired to his own room at the head of the house.

  Uncle Jeremiah gave Mr. Glen a hard look, said “To long prosperity,” and did the same.

  I’d heard him say to his boys a hundred times, “Whiskey was invented for the purpose of stealing from Indians.”

  “Oh dear,” Mr. Glen said, looking rather forlornly at the fire and then at Uncle Jeremiah walking away from him.

  I gave Henry a satisfied nod. Whatever the museum man was looking to steal, he wasn’t going to get it from us with whiskey.

  “Come, Mr. Glen,” Henry said cheerfully. “They’re just being traditional. It’s bachelors’ night to wash up.” He scooped up an armload of dishes, and on the way past he whispered, “Charlie and I are going to distract Mr. Glen. You need to search his boxes while we do.”

  I nodded and went to work.

  “Ida, do you want a cribbage game or a story before bed?” I matched my cheerful tone to Henry’s. “Good night, everyone.”

  Grandma and Aunt Loula had followed their husbands to their rooms, so only the boys were left. Mr. Glen reluctantly set his bottle of whiskey on the table and joined Henry and Charlie at the dish tub.

  I knew better than to rush Ida to sleep. If she guessed I was up to something, she’d stay awake for hours and pepper me with questions. I unbraided her hair and gave it the gentlest brushing. I read a chapter of The Wizard of Oz in my slowest, most sleepy voice. I kept skipping sentences in the book because I was trying to listen in on the conversation in the kitchen, but their voices were lost in the washing and stacking of plates.

  I was nearly to the end of the chapter when Ida asked, “We’re going to be all right now, aren’t we? Now that Daddy and Grandpa can sell their carving.”

  For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t realized Ida had been worried all this time too.

  “I’m going to be an artist,” she said. “You’ll see. When I’m bigger I’ll do my fair share.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, stroking her hair. “We’ve got each other.” I blew out the candle and listened. The men were still in the kitchen. There was one lamp on the table, and the fire had burned low. I tiptoed softly around the edge of the common room in the middle of the house, keeping to the shadows. Mr. Glen’s room was a small rectangle separated from the rest of the house with a wooden screen and a curtain for a door.

  I was a dozen steps from it when the men came out of the kitchen. I froze and hugged the darkness by the wall.

  “Now,” Henry said briskly, “how about a card game?” He set down a deck of cards and two cups.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Mr. Glen said, sitting at the table. “Will you drink with me?”

  “I’m not bound by tradition,” Henry said. He sat across from Mr. Glen and dropped a dishcloth on the floor by his feet. Charlie, on the opposite side of the table, stared at Henry with his mouth hanging open. I couldn’t believe it either.

  “Charlie will deal,” Henry went on smoothly. “Would five-card draw be acceptable?”

  “Yes, perfectly.” Mr. Glen poured a generous glass of whiskey for both of them.

  “To partnership,” Henry said.

  “Indeed,” came the reply.

  Henry raised his glass. As soon as Mr. Glen tipped his head back to drink, Henry lowered his glass and quickly poured its contents onto the dishtowel. Charlie hid a smile behind a fan of cards and opened the bidding.

  As soon as all eyes were on the table, I slipped into Mr. Glen’s room. I propped open one of the curtains enough to let a narrow triangle of light fall on the floor. There were four large crates and two small ones, plus a large leather suitcase and the canvas knapsack.

  One of the large crates was already open. I peeked in and found the owl mask, an old painted spindle whorl, a few of Aunt Loula’s baskets, and a large collection of rocks, each one labeled and wrapped in muslin. I lifted the corner of the other three crates and learned they were empty. One of the smaller crates was also open. It held rows of green bottles, twenty-three in all and a space for the missing one. Whiskey, and obviously he wasn’t drinking it himself. I moved to the second smaller crate, but it was nailed shut. I took out my folding knife and slipped a blade in beside the corner nail. I wiggled the knife to loosen the nail. It came up with a squeak like a mouse in a hawk’s claws. My heart hammered in my throat. Mr. Glen said, “Oh dear,” and stood up.

  Charlie laughed. “It’s only a mouse.”

  There was a clink and glug of another glass of whiskey being poured.

  “Try not to think about the mice,” Henry said.

  I heard a rather girlish giggle, and then Mr. Glen said, “To all creatures great and small.”

  “All creatures,” Henry replied. There was more laughing and the slap of cards on the table. Then Henry said, “You’ll be leaving tomorrow?”

  “Yes, yes, regrettable, but I must move on. I’ll see your two pennies and raise you a nickel.”

  “I’m out,” Charlie said, setting his cards down.

  “I’ll see your nickel,” Henry said, sliding his money into the pot. “Where will you go?”

  “North,” Mr. Glen said. Someone gathered in a handful of coins. “Whose deal?”

  “Mine,” Henry said. “Will you go to Neah Bay or across the strait to the Nootka?”

  “Both.”

  Cards slapped on the table.

  “Perhaps you would find a letter of introduction useful?” Henry asked.

  “That would be very decent of you,” Mr. Glen said.

  “You are far from home with no kin to defend you,” Henry said. “It’s only right that we assist you.”

  “How very kind. To friendship,” Mr. Glen said, and I heard the clink of one glass against the other.

  “I’m sure you’d do the same for us if we were guests in your home,” Charlie said. There was a less than polite pause in the conversation. Mr. Glen made another nervous giggle.

  “Yes, of course, I would do the same.”

  “Don’t worry,” Henry said. “I’m sure you will find generous hosts as far as your journey takes you. It is our custom.”

  “Wonderful news.”

  “Ante up,” Charlie said.

  Someone shuffled the cards and coins dropped on the table. I decided not to risk opening the second box. I lifted a corner to see if it was full and heard the muffled chime of glass bottles.

  What could he possibly need two cases of whiskey for? I went to the leather suitcase. It held two pairs of pants neatly rolled, the notebook Mr. Glen always wrote in, and a large sheaf of papers. I took b
oth to the parted curtain to read them. The notebook was all descriptions of land forms and rock types, a wildcatter’s notebook. I flipped back a dozen pages. He had been surveying the whole coast up from the Columbia River. I closed the book and smoothed the sheaf of paper on the floor.

  The first thing to catch my eye was the Washington State seal. I traced my finger down the page, reading as fast as I could: land lease … mineral rights … 50 years … exempt from all liabilities and damages …

  At the bottom of the page it said Ozette, Washington, 1923, and there were lines for signatures. So that was what the whiskey was for. The next page was identical except for the name at the bottom: Neah Bay, Washington. The following pages named Nitinat and Alert Bay, nine tribal lands in all. I reread the list twice to fix the names in my memory, and then put the papers back where I found them.

  I snuck back across to the room Ida and I shared, wondering how I could let Henry know I was done. I thought a moment and then poked Ida in the ribs. Nothing. I tried again. She let out a little groan and rolled over.

  “Go to sleep, silly. It was a dream,” I said in what I hoped was a voice that sounded sleepy.

  It worked. A minute or so later, Henry yawned loudly and said, “You’ll want to start early. Best get some sleep.” There were mumbles of agreement and the sound of cards and pennies being cleared away, and then the house fell silent.

  16

  The Letter

  The next morning, I woke up before Grandma did and found Henry at the table with pen and ink writing a letter of introduction. I hurried over and told him what I’d found the night before.

  “So he means to lease the land and tap oil.”

  “Yes, and there was a whole paragraph about liability and damages. It said there could be explosions, landslides, noxious clouds, and watershed poisoning.”