Thing With Feathers (9781616634704) (19 page)

“Got it on the back seat. Have yourself a look, El.”

The two men raced like kids back to the convertible, and Elrod reached in and touched the ham radio with awe.

“Say, Sean, she’s a beauty. Is that why you’re late getting here? I have never seen you late to a get-together where food’s involved.”

“Well, and you know I’m double hungry now, so I’m gonna have to eat twice as much. That salmon better be good, El.”

“Hey, Marshall, you might be the master of the shortwaves, but I’m the master of bounty from the waves. Don’t you forget it, WP.”

“How can I when you keep reminding me? Say, we could try it out this evening. I mean, I know it will work, but I’m always anxious to christen ‘em.” He looked around the small beach. “Rebecca’s not here?”

“Oh, she’s here. She ran up to the house to get a salad. It’s almost dinnertime.”

Sean surveyed the friends and neighbors milling around the day camp. Their little community had been holding those annual picnics for more than a decade; in early May, if the weather was dry, or at the end of summer, like today, if they had a soggy spring. Most of the guests had been like a second family to Sean. It stung him that the preacher’s gossip had made more than a couple of them question Sean’s character.

“Seems we lose a couple every year, doesn’t it, El? I mean, first my pa and then yours. Then Blair…” He trailed off. The pain was still fresh more than a year after she had abandoned him.

“I take it your ma wasn’t feeling up to it, Sean?”

“Naw. She wanted to come, but she don’t hardly get out of bed anymore. Ever since that sickness got her chest, she just can’t seem to rid herself of it. It’s worse mornings and nights, but the coughing leaves her tired the rest of the time. I was hoping I might get a plate to take home to Ma, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. Rebecca will wrap something up for Mavis. You be sure to tell her she was missed.”

“I will. She’s been knitting up a storm to keep her from boredom, so act surprised when you get a sweater for Christmas this year.”

“I can always use a good sweater.” Elrod smiled wide.

Sean laughed. “I didn’t say nothin’ about it being a good sweater, but, heck, she’s enjoying herself. Anywise, you Tjadens seem to be making up for our declines. How many kids does your sister Ellie have now?”

“Five.”

“And how many do
you
have?” Of course Sean knew the answer to his own question, but he could not pass up another opportunity to needle his best friend about the business of growing a family.

“None, and don’t you get started on that and ruin a perfectly good clam bake.”

“I won’t say nothin’ about how glad it is to become a father, Elrod. Didn’t plan to say a thing about how your children can give you an enthusiasm for living you didn’t even know you were missing.”

That made Elrod fidget uncomfortably. “Say, Sean, kind o’ along this line o’ conversation now…my Rebecca invited the preacher here today. She was hoping to get you in close proximity to Victor. I just don’t want you to be taken by surprise if he decides to show.”

Sean squinted up at the blue sky and sighed. It had been more than two years since he’d been close enough to talk to his son. Seeing the boy without the luxury of touching him had not grown any less painful for Sean. But building radios, keeping his hands and mind busy, gave him less time to think about his loneliness.

“Do you think he’ll come, El?”

The naked hope poked at Elrod’s heart. “Well, this smokin’ is tantalizing enough to reach all the way to his cabin. And we both know the man is a glutton to the point of sin. I think maybe he will. You know, I think I best check my piles of chips. I’d guess we got a half hour more to go ‘til eats. Come watch a master at work, Marshall.”

They ambled over to the smoking area, where Will was nosing around, mentally noting how Elrod had set the fish up. El had learned from his father, and Angus Tjaden had learned from a Siletz Indian many years back in return for bags of his kelp-ore. That was during the seven-year itch that raked the coastal region, and it turned out that soaks in tubs with the ore stuff took away the itching discomfort for days at a time.

The men paid attention as Elrod basted the long, skewered salmon and then checked the depth of the smoking alder chips at the bases of the stakes. He’d started the smoking early in the morning of the day before, he explained to the watching men. It took about thirty-six hours or so to get the flavoring and texture just right. He’d camped on the shore of the bay the night before to keep night vigil over the fire. He withdrew his pocket knife and sliced a portion off the side of one fifty-pounder. He tried it himself, smiling hugely, and then passed the sample and the knife to the next man, all of them took their turn groaning with pleasure at the first taste.

Rebecca walked up to the circle of men around the smoking pits. “I’m glad you could make it.” She smiled at Sean and Will.

“Me too!” Sean exclaimed. I just tried a taste of that fish, and it is at least as good as I remember Angus making it. Ya married well, Rebecca.”

“Happy you approve.” She laughed. “That is why I married him, after all. You know I can’t cook.”

At that, all the men laughed since rumor had it what Rebecca claimed about her cooking was true.

Suddenly Sean’s jaw muscles tensed and his body went rigid. His gaze was somewhere out on the bay. “He’s here, isn’t he?” He said to no one in particular.

Rebecca turned around and surveyed the partygoers on the beach. Sure enough, the preacher had arrived, leading Victor by the hand.

It’s funny,
she thought,
that he should come to a clam bake in the middle of August wearing his black suit.
It occurred to her she had never seen the preacher in anything but that austere black suit with the wide-brimmed hat that cast his features in shadow. “He is, Sean. I’m sorry if his being here upsets you. I did the inviting. I did it so—”

“El told me. It was good of you, Rebecca, for you to think of that for me.”

“Sean, how did you know he had arrived? I mean, how—”

He interrupted her. “I could feel him. It comes on like a weight. Actually, I feel the air get hefty when he’s around. Then I get this icy cold sensation that starts around my hairline and shoulders. The iciness crawls real quick-like, straight to my heart and squeezes it like a death grip. Then I know he’s around.” He looked at her and saw how his words disturbed her.

Her expression looked both shocked and remorseful. The others, too, were staring at him.

He tried to laugh it off. “I guess evil weighs heavier on a man than virtue is all. Anyway, you asked how I knew, and that’s how. I’d really be beholding if you’d approach Victor with me, Rebecca.”

“I’m right beside you, Sean.”

They walked slowly through the sand toward the little boy. He’d grown so much. Sean stood two feet away from the boy. The preacher did not pause even a moment in his conversation with Charlie Berklund, the husband of eldest daughter Ellie Tjaden. The small boy sucked his thumb. He was a beautiful, plump-faced boy, nearly six years old and losing his baby fat as his limbs took length. The little boy just looked at Sean but made no move to go near him.

“Victor, my boy. I’ve missed you, son.”

The boy said nothing but kept his thumb in his mouth and tightened his grip on his grandfather’s hand.

Sean dropped to his knees before the child, trying to let the boy see him at his own level. His voice was shaking now with the fear that the boy had forgotten him. But it was so much worse than that. “Victor? Can you…do you think you could give your ol’ pa a hug?”

“No!” The little boy snapped and plopped the thumb back in. His eyes held Sean’s steadily.

The preacher’s conversation came to an awkward halt. Charlie found an immediate excuse to visit with someone farther down the beach.

Sean looked helplessly up at Rebecca, who wanted to cry but dared not.

“Son, maybe you don’t remember me too good, huh? That’s okay. It has been a long time since I’ve seen ya. But, do you remember me?”

The boy just continued to stare at him, all the while clutching his grandpa’s hand. The preacher pretended to ignore the scene below him.

Rebecca tried. “Victor, do you remember living in the big house with your pa here and your ma?”

The boy looked up at her with a gaze that held little but annoyance, and still, the child said nothing.

“Do you remember that your ma and pa loved you…love you very much, Victor?”

The boy glared at her. He took his thumb from his mouth and pointed right at Sean’s face. He screamed, “You made my mommy go away!” Then he turned his face into his grandfather’s pants leg.

Sean was shocked by the emotion in the boy’s words.

“No! Victor, I didn’t! I swear to you, boy, I didn’t make your ma go away. Victor, will you look at me?”

The boy would not take his face from the folds of black fabric. “No! Go away! I don’t like you!”

Nothing could be said that would console Sean. “Rebecca, my boy hates me. How did that happen? My own son hates me.”

Rebecca patted his shoulder.

“I’ve lost him forever, haven’t I? My son is dead to me.” Sean sobbed quietly, breaking Rebecca’s heart not for the first time or the last.

She looked over at her husband, and her eyes begged for his help. Elrod came over to the broken man, about to invite him for a stroll down the shore, when his eyes located an orange glow in the distance, crowning northeast above the trees of Gales Creek.

Elrod tried to think. Didn’t Elmer Lyda say he couldn’t come today because their logging company had won the Gales Creek bid? He searched the ridge for sign of flames and, within seconds, received his awful reward. Licks of flame could just barely be discerned. They were leaping through the treetops and building on their own updrafts. Elrod realized that in that hot, dry weather, a fire in the canyon could become a holocaust. And it would. August 14, 1933, would be known as the fateful day of the Great Tillamook Burn.

“Horse pucky!” Elrod shook Sean’s shoulder urgently. “Sean! Look! I think that’s Lyda’s camp. Holy cow! I think fire’s broke out up there!”

Sean lifted his eyes from his hands and blinked the moisture from them to see the unsettling sight.

Though it was still in its infancy, radio would grow quickly, being fed largely by the natural isolation of rural Tillamook County. For Sean, shortwave radio, what was technically known as low-frequency transmitting, was his salvation. It didn’t take long for him or others to realize that he had a natural gift for building the transmitting and receiving handsets. He was already receiving checks in the mail from folks who wanted their shortwave radio built by Sean Marshall, a.k.a. WP, or as some of the radio enthusiasts called him, ‘The Whip.’

The
Radio Act of 1912
required all amateur radio operators to be licensed; this was done as much to protect commercial radio stations from interruptions to their broadcasts, as it was to protect military wavelengths from being infiltrated for nefarious purposes (during the Great War, amateurs on shortwave radio sets had been found forging naval messages and faking distress calls). The United States Department of Commerce and Labor was the empowered branch that oversaw the Act’s administration, including the imposing of fines on those who broke the new federal law. Sean had made a friend in the state office in Salem. Before he knew it, he had the first call number in the region.
Within months of that, he became known to a fast-spreading number of comrade voices in the night as WP7E.

When Sean’s eyes found the fire on the ridge, he realized that his assistance would be needed for the conflagration. And he just happened to have Elrod’s new ham set in the backseat of the car. Somehow, Sean needed to get that radio to the watch tower on the north side of the canyon.

“C’mon, Elrod. It’s time for you to learn just how to use that radio I built for you. But first, we’d better stop off and switch vehicles for the farm truck. And we can pick up my radio and the one I built for the Bell farm in Blaine. That way at least three towers will have communications. Ha! I guess this is going to be your baptism of fire, El. Literally!”

Elrod kissed his wife quickly. “I’m coming!”

He hollered back at Rebecca that the food was ready, if she could get Charlie and some of the others to dig up the pit and take the fish off of their stakes. Then the two men ran slapdash for the car, leaving a frightened Rebecca to stare after them.

Chapter 43

T
here was a tug at her pedal-pushers that took her completely by surprise. She was watching her husband and her best friend drive away, into just what she did not know, but it frightened her; and then the boy was at her side, tugging, and she was startled.

“Oh my, Victor. You surprised me.”

At first, the boy just studied her, and then he pulled his thumb from his mouth and said, “Where was that man going?”

“That man, Victor, is your father. I believe he is going to try to help fight the forest fire. See?” She pointed to the ominous orange light becoming steadily more visible as the afternoon grew late and the sunlight shrank from the horizon.

“Are you scared?”

It was her turn to study the little boy. When she answered, she could not still her bottom lip from quivering a bit. “Yes. Are you?”

“He made my mommy go away,” the boy said without hesitation, seemingly by rote.

That was too much. She didn’t care if she was butting into Sean’s personal business or not; it was just too much to take, letting the boy go on thinking that the loss of his mother was somehow Sean’s fault. She knelt, took both his hands in hers and looked into his eyes. Somewhere in those depths was the happy youngster she had known years before.

“I don’t know why someone told you that, Victor. It is simply not true. Your father loved your ma. They were very happy together, more so when you came along. You can remember how they loved you, can’t you, Victor?”

The boy just stared at her.

“Victor, do you remember going on a trip with your dad to get a red tricycle?” She saw a flicker cross the boy’s face, and she knew she was getting to him. “When you and your dad got back home, your ma had disappeared. He doesn’t know why she left. He misses her badly. Victor, your pa misses you something terrible too. He loves you, boy. Believe me.”