The Shadow Catcher

He would be just fine without her for a while, she sensed, for the time it would take her to secure a job and housing for them in Seattle — but, still, the pleasure of his company and the towline of her duty to him kept her wavering in her decision through the next few days. That, and the fact that in some recess of her mind she still believed that she had forged an understanding and a bond with Edward. He would come back and they would continue to grow closer, in both mind and body. Or so she hoped.

But he did not come back and his not-coming-back became more than a constant ache, a wound that wouldn’t heal: it became the truth she had to live with, the truth about the man. He would always go, she realized, like that idealized photographer he’d read about when he was ten or twelve in the Christian Weekly, the one who had gone out to map the West with nothing but a camera and a mule. Like Hercules with horses, Edward had found his first romantic love at a young age and nothing in his adult life was going to stand between himself and that first love — not his family — not a woman — not her — and she understood that, now, and, in fact, drew courage from it.

If he could go, then she could, too.

At the end of the week, she sought a private conversation with Asahel. “I’m going to Seattle,” she told him.

“Clara, the fire’s out—”

“I’m not going for the fire.”

“The city is in turmoil, wait a while and then we’ll go—”

“I’m going there to look for work. To live. To make a livelihood.”

His brown eyes swelled with color. “Have we not been good to you?”

“Can you drive me to the ferry in the morning?”

His lips parted but he couldn’t speak.

“Don’t do this,” he finally said. “What about Hercules?”

“I’ll come back and get him when I’m settled. Meanwhile you’ll look after him. He’s happy here.”

She told the lies she needed to tell to Ellen and to Eva and she said what truth she needed to say to Hercules. And as farewell he handed her a book. “The History of the Horse,” he told her. “You’ll learn from it.”

She put on the traveling suit she hadn’t worn for more than half a year, the one she’d worn on the train ride west, she closed the Icarus chest and packed a small valise and put on a hat and gloves. She had seventy seven dollars left of the eighty dollars Lodz had given to her and she gave five of them to Hercules, telling him, Don’t spend it all on clothes. She hugged her brother, climbed onto the buckboard next to Asahel, waved good-bye to the Curtis women and set her eyes on the road ahead. Asahel drove in silence, for which she was grateful.

“It’s not far,” he finally said.

“No,” she agreed.

“I could be there within hours. If you would ever need me to.”

She made no response.

On a stretch of open road, with the proximity of the harbor in the air, they saw a single figure in the distance, with a mule, approaching. The man, bearded, was limping slightly and leaning on a walking stick.

“Speed up,” Clara said.

Asahel held tightly on the reins.

“Speed up,” Clara said again.

As they drew nearer to the figure in the road it was clear to both of them that the man they were approaching was Edward and that he, in turn, had recognized them.

Clara seized the whip from Asahel and beat the horses once, then twice, into a gallop, overtaking Edward in the road and speeding past him, before Asahel had the chance to grapple tack and team from her and bring them to a stop.

“—he’s my brother,” he objected.

“Then get down,” she told him, taking the reins from him and pushing him onto the ground. She was standing in the buckboard with both leathers in one hand, whipping with the other, when she heard the shout behind her—

“—Scout!”

She urged the horses forward, his voice ringing in her ears—

“—Scout!”

And then, unmistakably—

“—Clara!”

She stopped. The road ahead, its vanishing point, beckoned to her like the dark back of time, like the unknown space a figure in a painting faces when it turns its back upon the present, turns its back upon the viewer, on their shared experience. Behind her, someone whom she knew she loved was calling out her name. Behind her, his blue eyes.

And so she turned.

lights out for the territory

We turn, we are a turning tribe — born into, borne by rotation — earth propelling us around its axis once a day, like a revolving door, while gravity deceives us into thinking that the sky is moving, we are standing still.

When Edward Curtis died he had gone around the sun eighty-four times, eighty-four revolutions — my father, fifty-three. Another trip around the sun — another turning — is what we’re really celebrating when we celebrate an anniversary — another journey of 574,380,400 miles. In his lifetime my father journeyed thirty billion miles through space, without noting it — Curtis, almost fifty billion.

Those are major road trips, when you think about it.

Which puts this haul to Vegas in perspective: just a little run around the neighborhood.