Aaron Elkins - The Dark Place

"Is he sick?" I asked.

One-ear looked confused, and I thought maybe I hadn’t used the right words. "Not sick," he finally said. "We have to go away."

At that Denga started to cry. "I have to go to the Dark Place," he said.

One-ear kind of shook the boy’s shoulder to make him stop blubbering, and just then Father came to the back door and called One-ear to help him with something. The old Indian went to the door, dragging Denga by the arm, but Father separated them and took One-ear inside. Denga just stood by the door, trembling and miserable. I ran right up to him and asked him what in the world it was all about.

That started him crying again. "We’re never coming back here. We have to go away forever."

"But where is the Dark Place?" I asked him, thinking maybe he meant they were going to die. "Is it Heaven?"

He looked sideways at the ground. That’s the way they said no. Then he said, "It’s far away, on the other side of Mount Lassen. There are no people, and the ferns are as big as trees, and the trees are as tall as mountains, so tall that you can never see the sun, and day is the same as night. And the air is made of water, and it rains all day long."

It sounded awful. "But why do you have to go there?" I asked him.

"So the saltu can’t find us."

Saltu was their word for white people, and it was the first time I’d heard that the Yahi had any reason to be afraid of us.

Of course, later on I found out that they had plenty of reason.

One-ear came out then and glared at Denga; he knew he’d been telling tales. He stared hard at me, with a strange look on his face, as if he wanted to ask something, but then he just took hold of Denga’s arm and dragged him away. Naturally, at the time I didn’t believe the story of the Dark Place, but then Denga didn’t ever come back, and neither did the others. Father must have thought I knew something about it, because he kept asking me where they’d gone, but I remembered that last begging look of One-ear’s and held my tongue. Until now, fifty-two years later, I have kept that story locked in my heart. The Dark Place no longer sounds awful to me. It sounds like a good place to be, cool and dim and calm. I like to think of my little friend Denga there, and ugly old One-ear, beyond whatever earthly or heavenly mountain range it lies, enjoying the tranquil, halcyon days denied them in their ancestral homeland.

With an odd tightening in his throat, Gideon closed the book and laid it on the rim of the tub. He stepped out of the cooling water, put on a warm velour robe, and went into the kitchen to prepare another pot of tea, but changed his mind. Turning up the robe’s collar, he opened the cottage door and stepped into the night. There was no wind, but a cold, velvety mist, smelling of the ocean, drifted in the air. The night was at its blackest and most silent, so that the gentle hissing of the tide on the pebbles of the beach forty feet below seemed much closer, like old leaves rustling a few inches from his ear. Far away a night bird, an owl, hooted twice, mournful and hollow. Much nearer, in the water, there was a sudden small splash, and then a scrabbling sound. Then the slow flapping of big wings. Another night hunter, this one finding its prey.

His hair was wet with mist, and droplets had collected on his eyelids. He stood looking down at the black water he could not see. The Dark Place. The name echoed in his mind, doomful and sinister, melancholy and strangely beautiful. He shivered again, not from the cold this time.

Tranquil, halcyon days. He smiled grimly to himself. Over a hundred years of self-imposed isolation, over a century of fear and loneliness and privation. He tried to imagine the appalling significance of the new trail to them. To what horrendous proportions must the stories of the saltu have grown in four generations of retelling? What must have gone through their minds when the snorting, snuffling bulldozers and shrieking saws came and cut a swath along Finley Creek, perhaps within sight of the village that had been their home beyond the memory of many of them, or of their fathers’ memory?

The machines would have gone away after a while, but then the walkers would have begun to come, not with frightening monsters that ripped the trees groaning from the earth, but alone and vulnerable. And the Yahi had killed in desperation and killed again. The walkers had stopped coming. Then the girl had somehow stumbled onto their little territory, and once again they had killed. And now, after over a hundred years, the saltu stalked them again.

This time, however, there would be no bloodshed and mutilation. Not if he and John got there before the reward-seekers and the Bigfoot hunters. And they would, because Gideon knew where they were.

He went back into the cottage but stood at the open door to inhale the misty, salt-laden air one more time before he finally lay wearily down. He fell asleep quickly and slept through the gray dawn and long into the drizzly morning.

When he awoke at ten he called John’s number in Seattle, but the FBI agent wasn’t in, so Gideon left a message asking him to return the call. It was raining-not heavily, but steadily, as if it were going to go on for a long time. He stood at the window awhile, sipping hot coffee from a mug and wondering what it would be like to huddle over a primitive drill trying to light a fire in weather like this.

He scrambled three eggs, fried some bacon, and toasted a few slices of bread in the oven. Then he sat down at the table, trying not to feel guilty, and propped the Yahi dictionary in front of him.

"Ya’a hushol," he said between mouthfuls of eggs and bacon. "Hello." He shook his head and tried it again. How were you supposed to pronounce apostrophes? The dictionary had been prepared before the invention of the international phonetic alphabet, and the explanation-"apostrophes may represent any number of concurrent glottalizations"-wasn’t much help. "Ai’niza ma’a wagai," he said, trying to glottalize concurrently. "Me friend." Verbs, cases, and other nonessentials he could do without.

The telephone rang, and John was already speaking as Gideon got it to his ear. "What’s up, Doc?"

Gideon washed down a piece of toast with a gulp of coffee. "Ya’a hushol," he said.

" Yakahooshle to you, too. That was a good report on Hornick. Thanks. What did you want me to call you about?"

"When you come down to Quinault, you’re planning to go in after those Indians, aren’t you?"

"Sure. First thing I’m going to do is check out that ledge."

"I want to go with you." But they’re not at that ledge, he almost added, then thought better of it. It would be best to see where John stood first.

"Doc, I can’t do that. You know that."

"I can speak their language," Gideon said, feeling that a certain amount of overstatement was excusable under the circumstances. "And I know something about their customs."

"No, Doc, no way. These guys are killers. I’m not taking you along. What would be the point, anyway?"

"I could talk to them, kind of ease the way, make sure there isn’t any shooting-"

"Who’s talking about shooting? This isn’t cowboys and Indians. We’re just going to bring them in. If we find them."

"And if they don’t want to come? If they start throwing spears? These are people from the Stone Age. They’re not going to understand who you are, or what you are, or what you want to do to them, or why you want to do it. You’re going to need someone-"

"For Christ’s sake, Doc!" John was annoyed. "Do I tell you how to do your job?"

"Every goddamn chance you get."

"Goddamn it…!" Then, as Gideon knew he would, John burst into his easy, childlike laughter, melodious and infectious. And as always, Gideon couldn’t help smiling himself.