Page 36 of South of Nowhere

“But…” The woman’s stricken face looked at a wedding photo on the wall. Her husband was in uniform.

Dorion said, “It’s okay. You can take the picture.”

Then she was outside and headed up the street. She suddenly got it. Hinowah. Hi-nowah.

Nowhere.

She looked around her at the town. Modest, rugged, rustic, scuffed.

Dorion allowed herself a rare moment of the sentimentality that was virtually unheard of in the Shaw household. She thought:

But it’s somewhere to me.

And I’m doing whatever I can to save those who call it home.

—

Mrs. Petaluma’s house was an old hewn-log structure, much like the others surrounding it, though it was more ornate. And there were two stories. Most of the others in downtown were one.

The style was what Dorion’s mother, Mary Dove, called “gaudy gingerbread.” Wooden scalloping and frills and ornate frames surrounded the door and windows. The house itself was dark red, the trim yellow and green. The porch sported a number of hanging flowerpots in bloom. They rocked in the wind. Some beer barrels, cut in half, rested open side up and were filled with dirt. Flowers grew in these too. This was the largest lot in this portion of town—about a half acre—and the entire backyard was devoted to a garden. Now, June, some of her spring sowing was showing results as rows of green sprouted up, ankle high.

The Compound featured a similar garden, though bigger; it provided vegetative sustenance for the family all year long. Their father was insistent they stay true to the spirit of his favorite book,Self-Relianceby Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Shaws lived primarily off the land and streams. Pike, trout, bass for fish. Venison from the fields and forest—the term usually was taken to refer to deer, but in fact it meant the meat of any game: deer, elk, moose, caribou, antelope, pronghorn, for instance. They had a small cornfield and Ashton ground meal for bread that he himself baked. Dorion recalled the first time she ate a piece, covered with unsalted butter, declaring it the best thing she had ever tasted. And since then, few delicacies had come close.

Dorion approached the woman’s house and rang the bell, which sounded inside, suggesting the young neighbor’s thinking that the woman might be hearing-impaired was wrong, although some systems for the hard of hearing include a light as well as a bell to announce visitors.

A moment later a slight woman in her mid-sixties opened the door and looked at Dorion with an expression that was, she decided, unfathomable. Not hostile, not curious, not suspicious, though hardly welcoming.

“Mrs. Petaluma?” Dorion looked past her at the unlit interior of the house, filled with pictures of family and largely Native memorabilia and artwork, much of it cloth.

There was Indigenous blood in the Shaws. Mary Dove’s ancestry traced back to the Ohlone, who once inhabited California from San Francisco down to the Monterey Peninsula. Their mother was fluent and had passed a few words on to the children but Dorion had forgotten every one of them.

She said, “I’m working with Mayor Tolifson, the police and fire department. The levee’s in danger of collapsing and we’re evacuating the town to Hanover College. On Route Ninety-four, west of town. Do you know it? We need you to get there now. Is that your truck outside?”

Still no word.

The woman leaned forward and looked toward the waterfall of the levee without a hint of reaction. Then she eased back.

So language and hearing were not issues.

“I need you to leave now. I can help you pack.” She stepped inside.

Mrs. Petaluma drew back her apron revealing an old-time pistol in the waistband of her skirt. It was a cap-and-ball model, a muzzle-loader. The gun didn’t use brass shells, but round balls were squeezed into each cylinder from the front and sat atop a charge of gunpowder.

A Colt Dragoon, Dorion was pretty sure. A classic.

And extremely powerful.

A moment of silence.

The woman simply stared.

Dorion said, “You have a nice day now.”

And returned to the sidewalk to continue her role as town crier.

15.

Inside their coffin, black as black can get.

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