Contents
Cover
Title
Dedication
Contents
A Brief History of the North Cascades
I. The Book of the Dead The Time Before Everything Changed
When Everything Changed
Holding On
Fortifications
One Crummy Backpack
A Hole in the Sky
The Only Hospitable Place
Home
S’tka
Honey, I Can’t
Dark All the Time
A Very Brief History of the Clan
Signals
Gordon “Gordy” Prentice; Football Coach
Barely a Sniff
Coach “Gordy” Prentice
Grander Things
The Otherness
Deb Coatsworth; Public Librarian, Vigilante Falls
This Many
Little Black Lies
Beyond Earshot
S’tka
Nothing or No One
S’tka
A Sticky Burden
Underdogs
Faint Traces
Third Time Is the Charm
Refuge
U’ku’let
Gently in the Darkness
S’tka
Salty Sweet
A Real Home
II. The Book of Doubt Sean Halligan; Bartender, Doc’s
A Real Home
S’tka
U’ku’let
Castoffs
Untethered
S’tka
Don’t You Even Care?
Where I Should Be
S’tka
But Not for Me
N’ka
The Toll
S’tka
First Offering
Travers Cartwright; Brother
Estimates
A Different Life
S’tka
The Stranger
S’tka
The Law of Diminishing Returns
Counting Days
If Not Remote
S’tka
The Damage
Reacting and Pretending
Jerome Charles; Brother-in-Law
N’ka
A Big Pat on the Back
N’ka
III. The Book of the Living Darla Dayton; Dale’s Diner
The Pull of the Unknown
S’tka
Precious Oil
N’ka
This Time
Various Discomforts
N’ka
The Right Thing
N’ka
Clipboard Jesus
Ed Paulson; Ranger
N’ka
Travers Cartwright
Almost Perfect
S’tka
No Quit
Snags
N’ka
Duane Barlow; Marine
Dale Duvall; Owner, Dale’s Diner
IV. The Book of Healing Tristan Moseley; Caseworker
Exposed
N’ka
Miss Martine; Second-Grade Teacher
No Small Wonder
N’ka
Extremities
Sheriff Harlan Dale
N’ka
Mercy
Ranger Ed Paulson
Lights in the Sky
A Prayer
Sean Halligan; Bartender, Doc’s
A New Coat of Paint
No Place Like Home
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Jonathan Evison
Copyright
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LEGENDS of the NORTH CASCADES
A novel
Jonathan Evison
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2021
For Jean Paul Pecqueur, poet, prince, and pal for life . . .
Contents
A Brief History of the North Cascades
I. The Book of the Dead
The Time Before Everything Changed
When Everything Changed
Holding On
Fortifications
One Crummy Backpack
A Hole in the Sky
The Only Hospitable Place
Home
S’tka
Honey, I Can’t
Dark All the Time
A Very Brief History of the Clan
Signals
Gordon “Gordy” Prentice; Football Coach
Barely a Sniff
Coach “Gordy” Prentice
Grander Things
The Otherness
Deb Coatsworth; Public Librarian, Vigilante Falls
This Many
Little Black Lies
Beyond Earshot
S’tka
Nothing or No One
S’tka
A Sticky Burden
Underdogs
Faint Traces
Third Time Is the Charm
Refuge
U’ku’let
Gently in the Darkness
S’tka
Salty Sweet
A Real Home
II. The Book of Doubt
Sean Halligan; Bartender, Doc’s
A Real Home
S’tka
U’ku’let
Castoffs
Untethered
S’tka
Don’t You Even Care?
Where I Should Be
S’tka
But Not for Me
N’ka
The Toll
S’tka
First Offering
Travers Cartwright; Brother
Estimates
A Different Life
S’tka
The Stranger
S’tka
The Law of Diminishing Returns
Counting Days
If Not Remote
S’tka
The Damage
Reacting and Pretending
Jerome Charles; Brother-in-Law
N’ka
A Big Pat on the Back
N’ka
III. The Book of the Living
Darla Dayton; Dale’s Diner
The Pull of the Unknown
S’tka
Precious Oil
N’ka
This Time
Various Discomforts
N’ka
The Right Thing
N’ka
Clipboard Jesus
Ed Paulson; Ranger
N’ka
Travers Cartwright
Almost Perfect
S’tka
No Quit
Snags
N’ka
Duane Barlow; Marine
Dale Duvall; Owner, Dale’s Diner
IV. The Book of Healing
Tristan Moseley; Caseworker
Exposed
N’ka
Miss Martine; Second-Grade Teacher
No Small Wonder
N’ka
Extremities
Sheriff Harlan Dale
N’ka
Mercy
Ranger Ed Paulson
Lights in the Sky
A Prayer
Sean Halligan; Bartender, Doc’s
A New Coat of Paint
No Place Like Home
Acknowledgments
A Brief History of the North Cascades
Eight million years ago these mountains began pushing their way through the earthen crust of the continent, born hundreds of millions of years earlier as a jumble of tertiary rock, sediment, and basalt from beneath the ocean floor, all of this castoff material trucked along upon the shifting plates of the earth until it collided in a geological mosaic here, on the northwestern edge of the North American continent.
These are the North Cascades, west of the Skagit River and east of the Puget Sound, extending north to the Fraser Valley, still volatile and ever changing. As recently as twelve thousand years ago, this entire wilderness was covered in a massive ice sheet, from the eastern divide, extending south and west to the Olympic Peninsula: a great, barren world of white, frozen and wind-ravaged. The people who lived here hunted mammoth and bison. They lived in caves and burrows, imprisoned by ice. Enduring the constant perils and malevolent moods of the shifting ice, they managed to abide in their small clans.
In time, the great sheet of ice retreated, freeing the rivers and exposing the waterways and marooned alpine lakes. Thousands of years before European explorers arrived to “discover” this new world, before the trappers and loggers came to impose their wills and claim their fortunes, before the corporations came to reap their profits, the Nooksack, and the Skagits, and the Wenatchis wintered on the banks of these waterways, fi
shing, and hunting, and telling stories by the light of the fire about the beginnings of the world, about The Time Before Everything Changed, and about the great spirits who lavished upon them all the natural wonders that sustained them through the epochs. And about the spirits who still walked among them.
I
The Book of the Dead
The Time Before Everything Changed
Maybe Nadene was right; maybe their marriage wasn’t worth saving. God knows she’d tried twenty different ways already. Dave couldn’t begrudge her now for wanting to throw in the towel after fifteen years. Still, lingering there in the driveway, five minutes after she’d sped off in the Dodge, leaving a rooster tail of gravel in her wake, Dave nursed a small hope that cooler tempers would prevail, and that she’d come around. This time would be different. Dave would quit running from the damage, and take ownership of his own shit, once and for all. No more excuses, no more obfuscation, no more avoidance. He’d finally get the help he needed. He’d go back to the damn desert and relive it all if that’s what it took to win Nadene back. He was ready for the fight.
Though it was hard to account for Dave’s optimism, there it was. Maybe it was that fine day. That first hint of spring warmth in the air, the mountains finally beginning to shed their snowy cover, bristling green with cedar and spruce in the morning sunlight. After a long winter, it was hard not to be hopeful under all that blue sky. He made a pot of coffee and began drinking it on the front porch, hopeful that she would return soon.
If they could not find another convincing reason to save their marriage, they’d save it for Bella. For all their failings, they’d always done their damndest to provide a good and stable environment for Bella. They’d fed and clothed her to the best of their means; they’d tried to nourish her burgeoning interests every step of the way, tried to allay her fears, and reward her enthusiasm, and instill Bella with confidence, and a sense of possibility. They’d always done their best not to argue in front of her. And mostly, it seemed, they’d succeeded. Bella was nothing if not bright, and curious, and quietly confident. Though she was only seven-and-a-half years old, she read at a fifth grade level. She communicated easily with adults. She had an emotional IQ higher than Dave, but she seemed to be taking the world more personally than ever.
In the truck after school Friday afternoon, on the way to drop her off at Nana’s, Bella had started in with the questions again.
“Do you still love Mommy?” she said from the passenger seat.
“Of course, I do, baby. I love you and Mommy more than anything in the world.”
“Are you gonna get separated?” she asked.
“No, baby,” Dave said.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Bella eyed him evenly. “I don’t believe you,” she said, turning to peer out the fogged-up side window.
Dave reached over and patted her on the knee.
“Baby,” he said. “Look at me.”
Bella complied, a little dubiously.
“Adults sometimes have issues they have to work through,” Dave said. “They have patterns that develop in their relationships, not-so-good habits, and sometimes they’re hard to break.”
“What kind of habits?” she said.
“Well,” he said. “Like a lack of communication, things like that.”
“Like how you never talk about Iraq?”
He winced inwardly, and patted her knee once more.
“Baby, I don’t want you to worry about anything,” he said. “Everything is going to work out fine.”