David Nickle - Eutopia

“Providing free doctoring for folks that need it? There’s not much fault in that.”

“Except,” said Ruth, “when commerce is involved. Father says that by doing this, he is forestalling any of the ugly labour conflicts that beset so many of his competitors. The others are not so convinced.”

Sam Green shook his head, which caught Ruth’s attention.

“Why, just ask Mr. Green,” she said. “He supervises the Pinkerton men who keep the peace in Eliada. Not that they have much to do. Father does frown on violence so, and the men who work for him are not at all prone to it. Tell him, Mr. Green: all is well in fair Eliada, now and forever, and never must you so much as raise a fist to keep it so.”

Sam Green made a fist and cleared his throat into it. “Miss Harper,” he said, looking at them from under his bowler hat, “talk like that is a good way to make the Devil laugh.”

Ruth stifled a laugh herself.

“What are you saying, Mr. Green?”

“Only that things are not so peaceful as you might think.”

Ruth frowned. “Pray tell—?”

Sam Green gave a long sigh. “I am in dutch with your father, I fear.”

“Oh no! Why is that? Tell us your tale.”

“Well. I suppose that you will like the story better than him,” said Sam Green. “Just two days ago I shot three men, me and my fellows did—men dressed in sheets, in the manner of the Ku Klux Klan.”

“They were not merely impersonating spectres? To cause you and your men to take a fright?”

“Ruth, this sounds to be serious,” scolded Miss Butler.

Green shook his head. “They were readying to string up a nigg—a Negro.”

“A Negro.” Ruth’s eyebrows raised. “Do we have any of those?”

“Yeah,” said Sam Green. “One, anyhow. He’s a doctor, too. Saved him. That’s why your father hasn’t run me and the Pinkertons out of town yet. The saving balanced the killing. But I’m not sure that is going to do the town much good. Dr. Waggoner’s going to make trouble in Eliada. Once he gets to his feet, he’s going to make trouble.”

Ruth smiled radiantly. “Splendid!” she said. “Trouble in Paradise! Made by a Negro doctor hired by Father! And Mr. Thistledown, who is not a famous gunfighter’s son, here to witness it all with us! See, Louise? This will not be a wasted summer after all.”

Louise blushed and looked to her lap. Jason felt the crimson coming on as well. He looked to the riverbank, which was devoid of any sign of human touch. They were in wilderness altogether.

And the further they got, the more came Ruth Harper into her element. Jason wished he could say the same for himself. He found himself wishing again that they’d stayed put in Bonner’s Ferry. Klansmen and Negroes and gunplay: Eliada sounded like more of Cracked Wheel again, in its own particular way, and Jason was not sure he was ready for that.

Eliada came upon them late in the day. The rains had stopped, and the cloud was beginning to clear as they rounded the bend in the river that hid Mr. Harper’s grand town.

It was not a peaceful arrival. The river ran fast at the bend, and The Eliada rode it hard. They had been through a few of the Kootenai’s rapids by then so Jason was more used to it, but he still hung on tight as the boat pitched side to side, veering through white foam and close past shallow rocks.

He was not alone; even Ruth Harper, who was so clever and brave, so up for trouble at the start of a dull summer, sat clutching the edge of her seat as the water sprayed up high alongside and the beams of the boat complained.

“Huzzah,” she exclaimed weakly when the river deepened and the boat became more steady. “Are we home now? We are!”

Sure enough, there it was—contained as it was in a tantalizingly brief glimpse: a collection of rooftops and chimneys that peeked between a now much-thinner growth of trees lining the bank. The boat turned then and Eliada’s rooftops swung from view, so Jason made his way to the bow, and up a steep stair he’d found earlier. That stair took him to the top deck where the pilot worked his craft and he could get a look.

The early evening sun showed the town to good effect. It was built on a flat stretch of river valley so behind it, the hill and forest rose to a chain of peaks that were not quite high enough for snow and bare rock. Crawling up those slopes, Jason could make out plots that had been cleared for agriculture—even what looked like some young orchards, their little trees all planted in tidy rows. Closer, the gold light caught taller wooden buildings like the ones in Cracked Wheel—general stores and hotels and such. There were more of them, though. There were even a couple of whitewashed church steeples, climbing a bit higher than the roofs of the businesses.

They were all made insignificant by the sawmill. Near the water at the north end of town, the mill dominated all. It was not as high as that in Bonner’s Ferry. But it was high enough; and it sprawled all the way down to the water and its own set of docks—off which floated a wide crescent of logs, crossing all but a narrow channel of the river and chained in against its fast current.

“That will be all our travelling for a time, Nephew.”

Jason turned to see Aunt Germaine climbing out the hatch to join him. He reached down to help her. Her hand was icy cold.

“It sure is a pretty little town,” said Jason, “although I wouldn’t call it Paradise like Miss Harper seems to think.”

Aunt Germaine shook her head. “She is a horrible girl.”

“She is all right.”

“No. There was no need to press you on that ridiculous legend.”

Jason shrugged.

“The legend of your father, I mean,” said Aunt Germaine.

“My father’s no legend,” said Jason. “A name’s a name. But my pa was no good. Simple as that.”

“Well,” said Aunt Germaine, “now that we’re here, you shan’t have to consort with Miss Harper any longer. Our business is with Dr. Bergstrom. Hers—well, girls like that do not have any business with serious folk. She is but a silly…”

She stopped then, perhaps noting that Jason had some time ago stopped paying any attention. He was listening to something else. Something that carried across the water with a strange and compelling urgency.

“Jason? Nephew?”

“What’s that birdsong?” he asked her. “Sounds like a fellow whistling who forgot the tune.”

The whistling carried like a scream across the fields—it passed across the land like a wave of wind through long grasses, from the base of fresh-planted crop, through gaps in the roofs of barns, and finally, into the crook of some tree roots at the very base of the Selkirk Mountains—where it paused.

That crook had been home to all sorts of creatures—some squirrels, one time a fox and, as evidenced by the sneers of half-collapsed holes, an entire brood of rabbits. Centipedes too. They had all come and gone, though. All but the centipedes.

Right now, the baby lived there.

If it were in the habit of naming things, the baby would not have picked “baby” for itself. It was, in fact, feeling pretty grown-up, inasmuch as its limited experience would allow. Not long ago, it had separated itself from the parent and its servile brood. In so doing, it finished dealing with a good many of its contemporary siblings, who were all of them nearly as tough and determined as it was. The cuts were healing, and the teeth and nails it had lost in that struggle were coming back in.

Pretty soon, it figured it would be walking upright again, marking its territory—making its own brood. It was getting a coalescing sense of just how grand it could become as it curled there in the crook, munching on bugs and watching the world turn. The last thing the baby wanted to hear right now was that whistling. It wanted no part of the things that whistling told it to do.