“She didn’t want anyone to come. But I thought if she met you, if she understood what this place meant to you and the work you have already done — and what drives you — she would change her mind.”
“Has she changed her mind?”
“About you, I think so. But she’s still worried about what publicity would do us. It might make things difficult for us, legally.”
“What do you mean?”
“Technically, we’re squatters.”
“But you have an agreement with Jacob Swenson?”
“Nothing in writing.”
“Nothing?”
She shook her head.
“Squatters have rights, Katie. Especially after so many years and so much investment in the property.”
“Right.” She nodded.
“With publicity, you might gain widespread support among activists, you’d probably get the attention of more donors…”
“Yeah, that was the thought. But there are complications with that.”
“Like what?”
“Like taxes. We haven’t been filing.”
“Okay. I mean, you could become a 501(c)(3) and file retroactively. There are tax lawyers who can fix these problems.”
“This just… it isn’t what we’re about, is all. We don’t want to be a business; we just want to keep doing what we’re doing.”
“If the park reopens, there will be a lot more traffic on the island, Katie. People are going to become more aware.”
“I think we just need time to figure out what we’re going to do. And it’s not the best time for us, at the moment.”
“Because of the dying woman?”
Katie nodded.
“I understand. I do. I guess I just don’t know what you want me to do with all this. It definitely complicates things for me, if I were to write about the Colony. I can’t tell the story you want to tell. I have to tell the story I see.”
“Let us get through Sarah’s passing. We’ll figure it out.”
I spent some time in the kitchen helping to prep vegetables for the harvest supper, until Jen shooed me out, saying I was a guest and I should enjoy the last of my time here before I left in the morning. The kitchen was bustling, and many had suspended their usual activities to help with the preparations. Katie had vanished.
So I set off for Fort Union. It was about a mile to the park through the trees to the northwest. I took my time, noting the way the landscape changed as I approached the western side of the island, how it dried out and the trees thinned, leaving wide-open spaces of mostly summer-spent grasses. But I also noticed how each step away from the Colony showed an island whose recovery was less and less visible. There were more dead trees, still standing, but leafless and gaunt, hollowed out. And the trees still living showed less new growth. They weren’t thriving like the trees around the Colony. This time I took pictures along the way.
Carey wasn’t in the old ranger station — really just a one-room hut near the shore; it was empty of everything but dust and spiders. There was a sturdier structure for the ranger’s quarters, a cabin up the hill past the barracks. The decaying building was uncanny, with nothing but trees and sea behind it. It seemed shrunken, with warped, peeling cedar-shingle siding, windows boarded up like empty, lidded eyes.
I was taking pictures when I heard footsteps behind me.
“You here for an official interview, ma’am?”
“I could be. I’m not sure at the moment.”
“Would coffee help?”
“You have coffee? Jesus, I’d love some coffee.”
“Come on.” He gestured toward his cabin.
He was cooking on a camp stove, so heating the water took some time. While we waited, we sat on the steps of the cabin talking. I asked how his assessment was going; he asked how my visit was going. Watching him pour the water into a cup of instant coffee, I thought about the well at the park.
“Have you tested the water here?”
He looked up at me, curiously.
“Haven’t yet. I’m just here to check out the camp and set things up so the biologists can come in and do what they need to do.”
“Did you filter that water?”
“Nope.” He handed me the steaming cup.
“What if it’s full of hexavalent chromium?”
He shrugged. “We’re not living here. Short-term exposure, almost twenty years after the fact… The human body’s pretty resilient.”
Not willing to wait much longer, I took a scalding drink from the metal cup.
I moaned. He laughed.
“Does it taste like poison?”
“It’s perfect.”
We talked more about the difference between remediation and restoration. Working for the Forest Service, Carey was more accustomed to restoration — after events like fires, floods, landslides — than remediation, which involves removing toxins from the ecosystem. It was one of the reasons — that and the remoteness of the site and the projected costs — that Fort Union had been closed for so long.
“That’s what baffles me about your friends over there at the Colony,” he said. “They’ve been exposing themselves to — whatever’s here — for a long time. Have they got million-dollar filtration systems? Did they have a barge unload a few metric tons of fresh topsoil to grow their food in?”
I took a mouthful of coffee from the bottom of the cup to buy myself some time. I didn’t know how much I should tell Carey, as much as I liked him.
“You can talk to them about it,” I said. “Or, once I figure it all out, you can read the article. If I write one.”
I spent the next couple of hours wandering around Fort Union — through the buildings, along the western shore of the island — taking pictures until my phone died, while Carey finished up some work. Then we walked back to the Colony together, for the harvest supper.
We talked most of the way, about where we had gone to school, where we had traveled, where we had lived, where we wanted to live. I told him about the situation with the cottage, my job, my finances. How I didn’t think I could live in Seattle anymore. He talked about growing up in Bakersfield, where his dad worked for an oil company, and knowing he never wanted to live in California again. The sun was setting behind us, casting our shadows onto the path before us. It started to feel like a date, and we fell into an awkward quiet as we neared the last hill down to the Colony.
The chapel below was lit up, with lanterns lighting the path to its doors. A procession of people carried dishes from the fires on the bluff and the various kitchens in the cottages. We passed the fires, and Andrew handed us dishes to carry, too.
The entire chapel was rearranged, set up like a banquet hall, with the old bench pews turned alongside the tables. Beeswax and tallow candles burned in the windows, on the altar, along the lengths of tables. Katie was there, setting dishes on tables, counting to make sure they were evenly distributed. Someone was in the corner, playing an old upright piano, and voices filled the room — as they always do in churches, the chattering voices of the congregation reverberate and hum. The room radiated warmth.
Sister J. touched my arm. Her eyes flashed in the candlelight, full of tiny flames.
“I am so glad you’re here,” she said.
She took my arm and Carey’s and led us to a table in the center of the room, seating us across from each other, near the head. The she slipped into the crowd and led others to their seats. Maggie entered, looking weary but dressed in a fancy blouse and flowy skirt, and sat near us.
“Maggie,” I said, reaching a hand across the table to her.
She grasped it in her left and covered it with her right. Her hands were as soft as kid gloves, with delicate wrinkles and bones like stays, thin and strong.
“Lucie,” she said, and smiled. “I’m so sorry I haven’t seen more of you.”
“This is my friend from the boat, Carey,” I told her.