Marianne Wiggins - The Shadow Catcher

“—you’re a very special boy, is why. And we’ll have to find a way to make sure that doesn’t change.”

“—even if it means we have to be apart?”

That was a condition Clara did not want to have to think about — because unlike Hercules, she had not found an entity, other than herself, to act as a repository for her sorrow or in which to store the memories of what their parents were in life, the space that they had filled, the way they’d sounded. It had not yet been a year since their deaths and yet she found she had to struggle to recall the fleeting things about them — the shape of her father’s hand, the timbre of her mother’s laughter — and she needed Hercules at hand to validate the little she remembered and the sum of what they’d lost. If Hercules should be parted from her, if he should ever go from her daily life — as almost certainly, some day, he would — her diminishment would double.

But she was also on the brink of an enriched life, a potentially growing family, rather than a decreasing one, and she could not allow a yearning for the past to sabotage the happiness that was her future. Besides, she was not convinced that Seattle was the less enlightened choice than this backward rural one for Hercules’s education and well-being — until Mr. Silva, the farrier, paid her a visit two days later, bringing with him a tall stranger.

The Curtis women had, oddly, treated her marriage with gloomy passivity, Eva showing signs of nervous curiosity only when Clara told her of Edward’s partnership with Rothi. She gave scant notice to Clara’s wedding band and seemed interested only in knowing if this Mr. Rothi was a single gentleman. Asahel had made himself invisible ever since her return so she was alone, without counsel, when Mr. Silva stepped up on the porch and rapped on the screen door, his hat in hand, and introduced the stranger.

“This is Mr. Touhy, miss, he’s from Tacoma.”

Clara held her left hand up for the gentlemen to see and said, “It’s missus , Mr. Silva. Mr. Curtis and I were married just two days ago.”

“Which one, ma’am?”

“— Edward .”

“—oh well congratulations, I didn’t know. Mr. Edward, he’s a fine gent. Mr. Touhy, here, breeds fancy horses.”

“You’re a long way from Tacoma, Mr. Touhy. What brings you to the island?”

“Actually miss— missus —he’s come to take a look at Hercules.”

Clara asked the gentlemen to sit, which they did, not comfortably.

“I don’t know if Hercules has told you, but I’ve been coming by most every week to give him skills.”

“He has told me, Mr. Silva, and I’m grateful to you.”

Nevertheless, she kept her eyes on Mr. Touhy.

“Hercules is very fond of horses,” she explained.

“Well that’s an understatement,” Silva grinned. “I’d say, frankly, Hercules is one in a million.”

“…and what would you say, Mr. Touhy?”

Touhy ran his hat brim through his fingers and told her, “I would say the boy has got the touch.”

“He talks to horses,” Mr. Silva chimed in.

“—yes, I know,” Clara told them.

“Well do ya know nobody does that?”

“What do you want , Mr. Touhy—?”

He wanted to apprentice Hercules to his breeding ranch. Clara’s instinct was to forestall making a decision until Edward had returned so he could advise — she knew nothing of the kind of life they were describing and Edward, after all, had been apprenticed to his father from the age of six and seemed to have come out the better for it in terms of working for a living and being trained in many skills. But when she called Hercules from the barn to join them it was clear the boy knew what he wanted. Asahel could not be found and rather than allow Hercules to leave with Mr. Touhy, as the gentlemen suggested, Clara agreed that either her husband or her brother-in-law would deliver the boy, pending an inspection and approval of the site, itself.

That night Clara sat up waiting in the kitchen in the dark for Asahel to finally come to get his supper. She struck a match and startled him and said, “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Call it what you will.”

She lighted the lantern and told him, “A man named Touhy came to visit me today.”

“…the horse breeder.”

“—you know him?”

“He has a reputation. — a good one.”

“He wants Hercules.”

Asahel sat down across the table from her with a plate of cold ham and cold potatoes, and began to eat.

“I’ll miss him.”

His manner, his dispassion, seemed as cold to her as his plate of food but she chose to let it ride and said, instead, “I need your help,” then tempered the request by adding, “Hercules and I do. I trust you. You know I do. Will you take him out to Tacoma and tell me what you think?”

“Why not ask your husband?”

“Because I’m asking you.”

“—or because you know Edward wouldn’t do it?”

“Edward’s busy—”

“—when is Edward not ?”

“Are you angry with me, Asahel?”

“Let’s just say I know my brother. Better than you do. He takes what he wants, when he wants it, as if it is his due. As if all the years at Father’s beck and call earned him the right, now that he’s free, to finally be the selfish cur he was cut out to be—”

“—he puts food on this table, Asahel, and a roof over your mother’s and your sister’s—”

“—and you think I don’t ? — is that what he’s told you?”

“He hasn’t ‘told’ me anything about you, your sister or—”

Asahel threw his fork down, pushed his chair back and stood up. “That’s because he’s a kingdom of one, Clara.”

He picked up his plate, left it in the basin and started for the door, not meeting her eyes.

“—and I’ll do anything for you and Hercules. Anything you ask.”

He turned and finally looked at her.

“—forget what I’ve said. I haven’t slept for two days. I’m working double shifts at the sawmill…mine and Edward’s.”

Still, she sat in judgment of him, and he felt it, so he told her, “Maybe you will change him — maybe love will change him,” then he left.

Love, she couldn’t tell him, the word love , had never been spoken as an avowal between herself and Edward — nor did it need to be, she reasoned. They had an understanding, a workable arrangement, shared interests, a sympathy and need for each other, an enjoyment in the other’s company: but, foremost, they had Edward’s work . And Edward’s work was all-consuming. Once they were situated in their first residence in Seattle — four rented rooms in a brick Georgian house on 2nd Avenue — Clara rarely saw him. He never ate at home. He hardly slept. If she woke when he came into bed in the middle of the night then she struggled to wake again to see him off before the dawn. She had read of ancient Spartans’ regimens of work but she had never known a single man to set himself the task assignments of a regiment: he was teaching himself to become a master printer, and at the same time he was teaching himself to become a master engraver, setting for himself levels of perfection that he, alone, could judge. He was joining Clubs, appearing in public to lecture with his signature gold nugget tie pin: he was lobbying for influence. He was leading the Mazamas Club, after only one meeting with them, up Mt. Rainier, following in John Muir’s renowned footsteps but also making innovative forays of his own. Within the year he had outgrown his use for Rothi, sold off his share at profit and entered into a second partnership with an established photoengraver by the name of Thomas Guptill, becoming the most sought after engraver north of San Francisco. He persuaded Asahel to leave the sawmill to come and learn darkroom techniques and by the spring of ’93, when Clara first suspected she was pregnant, Edward had sold the homestead on the island and all the Curtises — Edward, Clara, Asahel, Ellen and Eva — were reunited under one roof once again, this time in Seattle. Hercules had long since gone to Touhy’s ranch in Tacoma and although she saw him several times a year, especially at Christmas, Clara thought a great deal more about him once her own son was born, that November. They named him Harold, after Clara’s father. Edward lavished his attention on him and Clara believed the child’s birth might be a turning point in Edward’s emotional devotion, that following on the birth of their son, he would forswear some of his projects to stay at home more often. But his reputation as Seattle’s first-rank society photographer was just coming into bloom, even as his scenic landscapes of Puget Sound and the Cascades were gaining notice in national publications. He won a competition with his studio portrait of Princess Angeline in her faded bandanna, and his moody studies of the Suquamish clam diggers were the favored wall art in Seattle banks and law offices. For her part, Clara had learned early in her history with Edward that if she was going to capture his attention she had to do it on his terms, putting herself somewhere he would be reminded of her, somewhere he could see her and that meant putting hours in at his place of business, catering to clientele, overseeing the employees, holding up her end of the social ladder he was so determined to climb. She was active in the Arts Club, active in arranging musicales , even active, for a while, in his mountaineering outings until successive pregnancies and the effort of the frosty climbs with ice picks in those mandatory skirts exhausted her.