He heard the racing of an engine behind him, and then a crew-cab pickup pulled in, a little fast, raising dust. A man got out, big, in his fifties, gray and weather-furrowed. He wore his hair cropped close to his head, suspenders over a sweatshirt, stagged logging jeans, and worn boots: the steel toes showing through the leather. In one hand he carried a power drill, in the other a leather carpenters belt and a plastic bag of nails. Walking, he spat into the grass.
He had taken ten steps toward the maintenance shed when Ben struggled out of the car awkwardly, stood in its door with his arms around his gut, and called to him, weakly, by name. "William Harden," Ben said.
Harden turned and looked at him. His eyes were small, his shoulders sloped, his face tense, pale. "What the hell?" he said.
"It's me," said Ben. "Remember me? The hunter you stole the Winchester from a couple of nights ago."
William Harden spat again, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "'Stole' ain't the right word," he said.
"I came to get my gun back," said Ben. "But I've changed my mind."
Harden snorted. "Good," he said. "Then get the hell out of here."
Ben walked toward him, limping. It was hard for him to walk. He came close enough to see Harden clearly through the old, steel-rimmed glasses. Hardens eyes were uncertain, but he held the power drill firmly, like a weapon, something to club Ben with. He set down the nails and the carpenter's belt. "It's your call, old man," he said.
"My call is this," said Ben. "That gun was in my family sixty years. My father used it before I did, hunting birds. He killed a lot of birds with it. After him, I killed my share, too. But you know something about that gun? It was never anything but bad, really. A bad thing, that gun."
Harden didn't answer. He wiped his mouth instead.
"That gun is cursed," Ben said. "All guns are cursed."
He moved closer, pulled off his glasses. Harden raised the drill. "You go ahead and take it," said Ben. "I pass that gun on to you, Harden, and wash my hands of it."
Bea drove the El Dorado upriver, and they crossed the Columbia at East Wenatchee, There were apple trucks going both ways on the road. There were pickers working the last of the fruit. Bea drove past Rock Island and came down into the country Ben had lived in as a boy, orchards spread out on both sides of the wide water, sagebrush and groves of Russian olive. "Where was your place?" she asked.
He pointed it out when they came to it. The apple trees fell in a sweep toward the riverbank, the tan hills rose in the west. The new house sat behind willows grown to splendor with the passing of the years. Bea slowed and sat on the road shoulder. "It's pretty," she said. "All those poplars."
"Things have changed. A lot of things."
"It's good to get to see it anyway."
"It's still beautiful."
"That it is."
They lingered there a little too long. Bea made no move to drive on. "Let's go," Ben said finally.
In Quincy they picked up Rex at the clinic. Ilse Peterson was occupied, but the horsewoman at the reception desk promised to relay Ben's gratitude and brought the dog for him. Ben checked the staples, stroked Rex's coat, and carried him outside. He arranged the dog across the backseat, on a blanket. "We're going home," he whispered.
The road to George, at noon, was sunlit, and the big irrigators sat in the fields. The vacancy and magnitude of the land struck Ben, and its fertility—false—struck him, too. The edges where the fields met the desert were sudden: clean lines of de marcation. Whatever was not cultivated was steppe, haunted and beautiful. The arid plateau lay under the fields. The sage had been pulled out whole, by the roots. When the water no longer arrived here, the fecund crops would die of thirst. The land desired dryness.
Long before George, Bea asked about his eye, and Ben began at the beginning. Rachel's death, first of all. His daughter and his grandson. He didn't go into the details, but he did tell, in linear fashion, the story of how he had come to this pass, his shotgun lost, his dog wounded, his eye blackened, his transience. It felt good to speak of it all. She seemed the right person, a stranger.
"Suicide," Bea said when he was done. "I couldn't imagine it."
They passed a feed lot, peppermint fields, a walnut grove, a new orchard. Ben, experimentally, pressed on his eyelid. "I didn't want to burden my family," he said. "Put them through nine months of it. I didn't want to make them miserable."
"It isn't a burden," Bea said firmly. "Think what they'll learn from it."
"That sounds good, in principle."
"It is good," Bea insisted. "Seeing you die, it'll make them compassionate. It'll help them be more compassionate."
They came to the interstate and turned toward the Columbia. Bea kept to the right-hand lane, both hands high on the steering wheel. "What did your wife do?" she asked.
"My wife was a nurse. She started in the war. For thirty-four years, a hospital nurse. In a burn unit, for a long time. The worst cases. Burns."
"A doctor and a nurse," said Bea.
"She took off eight years when our daughter was born, but then she went back to work."
"She must have liked it."
"She did like it."
"I admire that," said Bea.
Ben fell silent. "I admired her, too," he said after awhile. "She was a better person than I am."
Bea nodded. She made a small adjustment to her rearview mirror and changed lanes to pass a truck. "Well, I don't really know," she said.
"She was," said Ben. "She gave everything."
"I guess you'd have to, being a nurse."
"A burn-unit nurse."
"It's so."
They came to the bend where the plateau broke, high above the Columbia. Ben looked toward the Frenchman Hills. A flight of ducks passed over them. To the south lay endless sagelands.
"So why did you change your mind?" asked Bea. "What made you change your mind?"
"Cowardice, mainly. Try shooting yourself. It isn't easy."
"There's sleeping pills."
"I couldn't do it."
"You didn't really want to."
Ben shrugged.
"Think of this," Bea said. "You saved a baby last night."
There were geese on the river, three dozen of them, down toward the Wanapum Dam. The wind blew north, up the canyon. The light lay bronze on the hills. Beyond rose the Saddle Mountains.
When they had crossed the river, Ben spoke again. "When we married, we made a pact," he said, "to bury our ashes together."
"That's very romantic."
"Well, we felt so."
"I like the idea."
"I like it, too. And if I'd gone through with shooting myself, it probably wouldn't ever happen."
"Coyotes and worms instead, you're right."
"So I'm going home because of that, too."
"I understand," said Bea.
They came up over Ryegrass Summit, into the Quilomene, then the Kittitas Valley. The trees along Manastash Ridge had gone russet red and yellow. "October," said Bea, "is a beautiful month on this side of the mountains."
"The fall is more vivid over here," said Ben.
"On the coast you just don't get the same colors."
"It's a trade-off," said Ben. "Our weather's more temperate. We don't have quite the extremes."
"There's a price for everything," said Bea.
They came into a country of evergreen trees and left the sage and canyons behind. The mountains rose in front of them, snow-swathed, in the west. Forests covered Easton Ridge; already the light had softened. They came up toward the Stampede Pass cutoff, between slopes of Cascade blueberries. There were fields of burnished, dying red where the berries grew among mountain heathers. The old clear-cuts were full of them. They made a kind of heath.
In Snoqualmie Pass—the crest of the mountains—they stopped at the Traveler's Rest. Bea had to use the rest room, she said. She was going to get a cup of coffee and a donut. She could bring him something, if he wanted it. He answered that he had
no appetite. He thanked her for her attentions to him, and thanked her again for her generosity in taking him back home. "It's nothing," said Bea. "It's useful to you, and interesting for me. I don't ask more from any day."
She went into the Traveler's Rest, and Ben turned to check on Rex. "You look okay back there," he said. "Better than me, really."
He rolled down his window with effort. He wanted to smell the mountains. It was getting on toward midafternoon, and an alpine chill was in the air. He remembered walking the crest of the Cascades from Windy Gap to here. Silver Peak was a few miles off. He thought of his promise to climb it with Chris. He would have to explain that now.
It was a long way down to the west side, home—almost three thousand feet. Bea drove with her coffee in one hand, a maple bar on a napkin in her lap. The sky here was a muted gray. There was nothing to see but mountains, forest. By North Bend, it was raining gently. Mount Si lay veiled by clouds.
Everything at home was as Ben had left it; nothing had gone awry. His neighbor had taken out the garbage that morning and had seen to the newspapers and mail. The VCR had made its recording of Great Railway Journeys. The bird plucker sat on the kitchen table; the recipe for quail on toast poked from the recipe box. There were four messages on the answering machine: Bill Wards nurse confirming an appointment, another doctor Ben sometimes hiked with, the auto shop that had towed his Scout, his car insurance company. He would have all these calls to return, but not now.
He fed Rex, and while the dog ate, he slumped at the kitchen table, his head against his arm. Through the window he could see the dog kennel and the Summer Damasks his wife had planted between the pad for the garbage can and the wall of the neighbors house. A few leaves were left on them, and the unpicked blossoms had turned to hips. The plants were tall now, profuse.
Ben turned up the heat in the house and made his way to the bedroom, where he had left the copy of Scientific American open on the side table. He pried off his boots, settled back on the bed. He curled up as comfortably as he could. His dusty hunting clothes smelled of sage. There were bloodstains on the front of his coat and feathers in his pockets.
Rex limped in, looked at him, and lay down on the throw rug beside the bed. Ben rested a hand on his flank. "I guess you can stay," he whispered.
After awhile he took the telephone receiver and punched in his daughters number. "Hello," she said. "Renee Givens-Kane."
"Its me," said Ben. "I'm home."
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For generosity in Washington's apple country, Doug and Sue Clarke, Ed and Virginia Clarke, Thyra and Doyle Fleming, Mike Robinson, Brian Vincent, Grady Auvil, and Mary Pat and Jerry Scofield. For assistance in historical research, Barbara Walton and Karen Ashley of the Denver Public Library, Moya Hansen of the Colorado Historical Society, Franco Polegato, Frank Chuk, Ken Hanson, Bob Ellis, Ken MacDonald, and Matteo Bavestrelli. For help with medical and veterinary questions, Will Toth, David Cowan, Bob and Bea Bourdeau, Mike Hobbs, Carol Riley, Laura Hoyt, and Mark Swaney. For expertise regarding medicine and war, Dr. Albert H. Meinke. For days afield east of the Cascades, Ralph Cheadle, Trip Goodall; Taylor, Travis and Henry Guterson; Ellensburg writer Joe Powell; Tess, Jack, Thorn, Gus, and Sam.
For kindness and help in Italy, Norbert and Pepe Cristofolini. For information on migrant workers, Victor Rodriguez and Dr. Patricia Ortiz. For assistance with Spanish translation, Sue and Luis Koch and Karla Sullivan. For help regarding birth and shoulder dystocia, Susan Anemone. For expertise on the flora of Central Washington, Bill Barker. For office help, Angelica Guterson.
I am grateful to Drenka Willen for her help in shaping this book and to Anne and Georges Borchardt.
Sources include Dr. Albert Meinke's Mountain Troops and Medics: Wartime Stories of a Surgeon in the U.S. Ski Troops; Robert Ellis's See Naples and Die; H. Robert Krear's Journal of a US. Army Mountain Trooper in World War II; Ken MacDonald's unpublished memoirs; Diane Burke Fessler's No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II; Barbara Brooks Tomblin's G.I. Nightingales: The Army Nurse Corps in World War II; Lt. Col. Marjorie Peto's Women Were Not Expected; Al C. Bright's Apples Galore; Isabel Valle's Fields of Toil; Ronald J. Taylor's Sagebrush Country: A Wildflower Sanctuary; Toby F. Sonneman and Rick Steigmeyer's Fruit Fields in My Blood: Okie Migrants in the West, and Daniel Mathews's Cascade-Olympic Natural History: A Trailside Reference.
To those I have neglected to mention from sheer failure of memory or character, please accept my apologies. I owe all a great debt.
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In addition to his phenomenally popular and best-selling novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson is the author of a collection of short stories, The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind, and of Family Matters: Why Home Schooling Makes Sense. For Snow Falling on Cedars he won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and an ABBY Award. He lives in Washington state.
Jacket photograph copyright © 1999 by Richard Villacrcs/Red Sky Photo
Author photograph by Chris van Houts
Jacket design by Vaughn Andrews
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David Guterson, East of the Mountains
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