“But the important thing is this: you, and I, and maybe Clint know we did our best. We tried. We lost the war, but we won a few battles. We can live with ourselves. At least I think I can, and I want you to, too.
“I’d better make that phone call, let’s go inside.
“Mona, I’m going to ask Sampson for an additional $5,000 to compensate me for my expenses running back and forth from Paris to Oregon.”
Mona leans back from me. She stares into my eyes.
“Will, you can’t do that, it’s not ethical, probably not even legal. Sure you have them over a barrel in a certain way, but Judge Steiner did everything he could to help you. It’s not fair to him.
“I’m telling you now, Will, I won’t go along with this. If you insist on this idiocy, I’m no longer your lawyer, I disassociate myself, you’re on your own.”
I look into her eyes. She’s serious. She looks lovely in the reflected gleams from the streetlight, her face tight with concern and strain. I feel like a real shit.
“I’d better make the phone call now, Mona, or we’re liable to wind up in that ‘kangaroo court’ they have planned.”
We pull apart and go through the door into the living-room. Mona still won’t look at me. My hands are shaking as I dial. Quietly, staring me in the eyes now, Mona picks up the other phone. The phone on the other end is answered after three rings.
“Your Honor, this is William Wharton. I’m sorry to keep you up so late. But, I’ve decided at your advice to settle with Sampson for $120,000.”
Pause.
“Yes, I understand. My counsel, Ms. Flores, will contact everyone concerned.”
Pause.
“Thank you, Your Honor, for presenting your opinion so well. I disagree, but I agree to the settlement. It’s obvious I can never have the kind of public jury trial I want.”
Pause.
“I understand your position, Your Honor, and I’m sure you understand mine. I’m not happy, but probably this is the best solution available. Good night, Your Honor. Thank you for all your help.”
I hang up.
Mona is smiling with tears in her eyes. She puts down the phone. We stand looking at each other.
“I’m proud of you, Will. And I’m ashamed of myself for the pressure I put on you. But it had to be this way. It really is for the best.”
“I don’t think so, Mona. But I’m tired of fighting. It all gets to a point where the money, a trial, justice, right or wrong mean nothing. It’s all a technical exercise of experts, witnesses, lawyers, judges all. A dumb individual citizen like me hasn’t a chance. I’m not ready to spend the rest of my life trying to change the system. I give up.
“Despite the laws in our land, the inertia of the people of Oregon, the cowardice of its elected government, the evasions and deceits of political leaders and their minions, I still believe the obvious reality that our beloved family, Kate, Bert, Dayiel, and Mia, in their personal Ever After, have joined the vast legions of heroes; all those who have died rightfully, from firemen trying to save lives, to martyrs dying for their faith, to soldiers killed in wars for reasons they couldn’t comprehend, to babies dying from crib death, to all those who die young because of diseases such as cancer, leukemia, cystic fibrosis, yes, even those new killers of many innocents, drugs and AIDS. Are they the rightful dead? Is there such a thing as a rightful death?”.
Mona looks up at me, tears still in her eyes.
“No, Will, there are no rightful deaths.”
“Right.”
EPILOGUE
IT’S BEEN more than five years since the events described in this book. The pain fades with the overlay of our personal lives we must lead, but the memories, in some strange way, become stronger. All of our family, still living, are different than we would have been without that horror on 1-5 at four o’clock on a hot August afternoon in 1988.
Our only remaining daughter, Camille, is teaching UNESCO children in Hanoi, Vietnam. She has made four attempts to have a child by in vitro, without success. Now she is in the process of trying to adopt two little Vietnamese babies.
Our older son, Matt, is teaching in Ankara, Turkey. He and his wife, Juliette, have two daughters: Emilia, now five, and Clara, who is just short of two.
It’s almost as if they’re trying to fill the blank spot in our lives.
Our younger son, Will—Robert in the book—is taking a teaching credential and master’s degree at a university in New Jersey. I changed his name for the book because there were so many people named Will or Wills that it was confusing.
Rosemary, my wife, pretended for a long time that what happened hadn’t, and buried herself in reading. She’s retired from teaching and seems happy. We can now talk about our lost loved ones with comfort, and often do.
The monument we ordered from Capitol Monuments still hadn’t been completed and erected at last hearing. Perhaps they don’t want to admit the inadmissible either.
But we have our own personal family monuments: two sundials, built from millstones we extracted from our water-mill in France. One is perched on the edge of the millpond. We hang our towels from the gnomon when we dive from the stone into the pond. It’s as if Kate and her family are still there, playing with us, and it helps me feel they aren’t gone.
Inside the millstone we’ve placed the ashes of our departed family. Over the top of them, we’ve built a small pyramid supporting the gnomon. Each of the quadrants has one of their names and a single letter spelling L-O-V-E. Around the outside of the stone is lettered the small poem we used at the funeral in Oregon.
The other monument is up on the land we gave Kate as a wedding present. It’s a matching millstone and is mounted on a platform of native Morvan rock. We try to keep flowers at the base when we’re there.
My experience with Bert (whose real name was Bill), the dream, visitation, whatever it was, has made me much more sensitive to my own spiritual identity and that of everyone else. I’ve become convinced the physical life we must live out is but ephemeral. It gives me much comfort and has allowed for new experiences of a spiritual nature I’ve never had before.
This is an example:
In the spring after the accident in Oregon, I returned alone to our mill in Burgundy to paint. It’s a lovely time of year there, with lambs gamboling in the fields beside calves cavorting and feeding from their mothers. It’s a time of ducklings and chicks hatching in the midst of an increasing haze of greens and yellows over everything. The hills are punctuated by flowering trees and hawthorn. I had a devouring hunger to paint this proof of continuity.
The second evening I was there, after a day’s painting, trying to capture the magic of wild flowers in the shade of overhanging trees, I went to bed while the sky was still light—the sun doesn’t leave the sky until almost ten o”clock at that time of year. I was falling asleep, when I thought I heard knocking. At first I was convinced it was at the door. I rose to check who could be there at that time, but there was no one. I went back to bed, but the knocking began again. It seemed to be coming from above me, from directly over my head, but that was impossible because the stone wall is high and two feet thick, with only a small ventilation window set under the peak of the roof. Eventually the knocking stopped, and I fell asleep.
Three days later, as planned, my very good friend Jo Lancaster, another artist, arrived. He’s the one who called us at six a.m. the day after the tragedy, the one we cried with long distance. I found out later, he was the first one Camille had called; he’s been a friend of the family a long time, and has five children, several matching our own in age.
We share a studio in Paris. He had come down to paint with me and keep me company.
We had a wonderful day painting. We’re both figurative artists and we discovered a barn of weathered wood with bundles of yellowing hay hanging through the cracks in the boards. It made a stimulating subject. Painting is a lonesome art, but it’s great to share the experience, the process, with someone who has the same reasons fo
r painting as you.
We ate a simple dinner early, and again were ready to sleep before the light had gone from the sky. We also wanted to make an early start the next day.
Jo was sleeping up in the loft, the place usually reserved for our son Will [Robert], who lives at the mill more than the rest of us. Early the next morning, Jo called down to me: “Hey, Will. There’s some kind of crazy bird doing a dance outside this window up here. It’s beautiful, yellow, with a long body and a long tail. It’s acting as if it wants to come in.”
I climbed out of bed and went part-way up the steps to the loft. Sure enough, just as Jo said, there was a bird jumping up and down on the outside ledge of the window. It was pounding its head against the glass, and looked as though it were dancing.
I didn’t recognize the bird although I have a strong interest in ornithology. My first book, Birdy, was about an intimate relationship between a small boy and his canaries. I’ve kept birds most of my life, they mean much to me. Their ability to fly, to sing, to have a broad view of things, has always entranced me. Each bird is something of an angel to me.
“This is really weird, Jo. You’re right, it does seem to want to come in. From its sharp, pointed beak, it looks like some sort of insect-eating bird; maybe it’s picking bugs off the window.”
We watched a while, fascinated. The bird kept on with its wild gyrations. I have a long pole with a hook on the end with which I can open that little window. I went into the granary and brought it back into the main mill room. The bird was still there. I reached up and pulled open the window. The bird flew straight in and landed on the railing to the open loft. It didn’t seem frightened at all. It was giving me a typical bird checking-out look, tilting its head back and forth to see me with one eye, then the other. It was an exceptionally beautiful creature, its movement graceful and like a dance, with its long, dark tail dipping up and down on each change of direction.
When we were eating breakfast, the bird flew down and perched on one of the empty chairs at the table. Jo and I were having fried eggs and bacon. I tried feeding some bacon to the bird, but it backed off; it then returned, continuing its head-twisting movement as if to say “no.”
The bird hopped onto the table. We stared. “It must be tame,” Jo said in a low voice. “It’s probably escaped from a cage somewhere. It’s not afraid at all.”
“I don’t think so, Jo. A bird like this is impossible to cage. I don’t know why she’s acting so strangely, but she isn’t tame. Maybe she’s just curious, or maybe she likes us.”
“What makes you think it’s a ‘she’? Is it some kind of marking?”
I was surprised myself. I had no reason for calling the bird a she. It just came out that way. I didn’t answer.
We left it at that. The light was just right for painting. A low morning sun can create colors and shadows beyond human reckoning. As we left the mill, I pulled open the small, high window again. I also opened the door out onto the terrace. A bird can panic when it’s trapped in a house; in fact, it usually does. I figured when we came back for lunch, she’d be gone. And she was. But at least I now knew who’d been knocking.
To make things even more peculiar, from then on the bird arrived knocking on a window—any window—at exactly seven o’clock every morning. It was like a wake-up call. We came to expect her.
Jo had his opinions.
“Couldn’t she make it seven-thirty or eight o’clock? It’s like having a baby crying and waking everybody up soon as the sun rises.”
I was beginning to realize in a certain way that, for me, it was a baby waking me, our baby.
Jo and I painted for a week and finished three paintings apiece, some better than others, but all above our usual standards. The bird began swooping around us when we were out in the field painting, up and down, flying almost like a swift or a swallow catching insects. Once she landed on the edge of my canvas.
I began calling her “Katiebird.” It was a good feeling. I convinced myself she was trying to comfort me in the bad times. All this started at about the same time as the depositions in Portland.
In June, when school was out, Rosemary, Will [Robert], and I went down to the mill. I had a full roll of canvas, a good supply of paints, turps, oil, and varnish. I also had my computer. Things had been heating up in Portland, but here all was calm.
The first night we were there, just going to sleep, I was waiting. She came. I heard the knocking at the original window high on the wall. Rosemary was about asleep beside me. I waited. She didn’t seem to hear; could I be imagining the entire thing? No, Jo heard it. He saw it. I turned to Rosemary.
“Dear, can you hear that knocking?”
“What is it, rats or dormice doing some syncopated rustling in the hustings?”
“No, listen. It’s like someone knocking.”
She sprang up.
“Who could it be at this time of night? Do you think something could have happened to Camille or Matt?”
“No, it’s all right. It’s only a bird knocking at the window. It’s my Katiebird.”
“What Katiebird? What are you talking about?”
So I told her about the bird, about Jo hearing it and seeing it, and what happened.
She stared at me and listened. I knew she was worried about me now. Whenever you try to share an experience like this—such as when Bill [Bert] came to me in Oregon before the funeral—people think you’re either going crazy, are crazy, or are lying to them. No matter what, you can’t win. But I like to tell the truth, especially with an experience like this, and to the woman I love, the one I chose to live with. Rosemary settled back onto the bed.
“Go to sleep, dear. And if you have any control over this Katiebird, would you please tell her to stop knocking so I can go to sleep.”
She kissed me, and we both lay back in bed. I listened until the knocking stopped. I shouldn’t tell Rosemary these kinds of things. They don’t seem to calm her at all, only scare her. Maybe we were told too many ghost stories when we were children.
After she fell asleep, I slipped out of bed, pulled out the pole from the corner and opened the window. I didn’t want Rosemary to be shocked by the knocking in the morning.
Instead, I was the one who was shocked. I tend to sleep on my back with my hands folded across my chest. I also usually wake up before I open my eyes, enjoying the peace of non-vision before my mind starts racing.
That morning, I could feel something on my hand. I opened my eyes slowly, and saw Katiebird, less than a foot from my eyes. Rosemary was still asleep. I wanted her to see this. I knew she was supposed to. It was the way it was with Bill [Bert].
I nudged her gently; she moaned and slowly wakened.
“Don’t move too quickly, dear. Just open your eyes, there’s something you should see.”
She turned her head slowly, opening her eyes. At first she said nothing, only stared. Katiebird looked at her.
“What is this, Will, some kind of trick? Is this a bird you’ve trained? Isn’t she beautiful?”
“It’s no trick, this is a wild bird and I didn’t train her. Her name is Katiebird as I told you, and she really is beautiful, isn’t she.”
I slowly unfolded my hands and held out a finger for Katiebird to stand on. She hopped right onto it. It was a magic moment. Finally Rosemary spoke.
“It’s a ‘visitation,’ Will. I don’t want to believe it, I can’t, but it’s the only way I can explain this.”
“It is the explanation. This is a visitation. I’m convinced Kate is worried about me with all this mess in Oregon, and wants to comfort me, and you, too. You don’t need to believe, just enjoy, relax.”
I climbed out of bed with Katiebird on my finger. I walked her over to her chair at the breakfast table. She sang for us—she had a lovely voice, but only for two melodious notes.
We washed up and she watched. We ate and she watched. I was worried that she felt trapped in the house with us, and approached her with my finger out. She hopped onto it as be
fore. I walked her out the door, then cast her away to the sky. She sang her simple song, circled the mill twice, and then flew off over the pond.
After that, every time we went to the mill, she was there. Maurice, our neighbor across the street, said he could always tell when we were coming because the yellow bird would come just before we arrived. The whole experience was so magical. And it lasted three years. Every morning as my wristwatch made its little ding at seven, Katiebird was there. She was there in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The second spring, she nested on a small outcropping of rock just below the window over our bed. I discovered it quite by accident, while washing the window. There were five eggs in the clutch. Will [Robert] wondered why five when there were only four of them. On a hunch, I said that only four would hatch.
And that’s the way it happened. Katiebird wasn’t frightened at all as we watched the babies grow. One egg didn’t hatch, so Will [Robert] was impressed, and he’s hard to impress. One day, the babies flew away, and the nest was empty. I leaned out of the window to rescue it and put it on the mantel of the fireplace in case Katiebird should want it again. But she’d given us her message.
Once the case was settled, we never saw Katiebird again. She’d come back for only one purpose, to comfort us in our distress, and it was finished. I knew she had a life of her own to live, or whatever it is that spirits without bodies do, and was not even disappointed when the spring came and she wasn’t there. I know there are many logical explanations for this experience, but for me, the only one that holds is spiritual. We’ve been blessed.
My editor at Granta, Bill Buford, is convinced I wrote this book as therapy, to help rid myself of the pain, the agony of the trauma. I don’t think this is so, but I’d be the last to know. He says: “Is it possible—looking back on this now—to say that, on some level, you may actually have needed a legal struggle such as this, that it became a way of deflecting you from feeling too much? (One of the benefits of the court action was that your daughter was no longer your daughter, but a fact in the lawsuit; it allowed you—I’m speculating—not to have to feel the full intensity of the pain.)”