Envy

chapter 38

SOME BRIDGES, LIKE THE NEARBY TACOMA NARROWS or its far sexier cousin, the Golden Gate in San Francisco, are a marvel for their stunning beauty, arching over dangerous waters or defying gravity as they connect two high points over a deep chasm.

The Hood Canal Bridge is a marvel too, though not for how it looks. It literally floats atop the water for which it is named as it carries Washington State Route 104 across Hood Canal and connects the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas. At the time of its construction in 1961, depths of more than three hundred feet made it impossible for a suspension bridge to be built there. So it floats. Concrete pontoons hold up the roadway just above water level.

Fifteen thousand cars cross it every day, its drivers and passengers thinking nothing more than how beautiful the Olympic Mountains are, with the eagles soaring overhead, and the occasional submarine cruising for the navy base in Bangor.

A few families cross the bridge and remember the darkest days of their lives. The Ryan family was one of those. Valerie Ryan in particular couldn’t stand driving over the span. It was the primary reason why she went back to school to complete her psychiatric nursing degree. All of those jobs were on the Seattle side of the bridge. She didn’t want to find herself crossing Hood Canal for the mundane reason that her job was there.

The girls knew about the accident, of course, but traversing the bridge on those rare trips to Port Townsend or Port Angeles brought the occasional questions about what happened that rainy, windy March 21 years ago. For some reason, the girls sought clarity of only one detail—not of what happened but of exactly where it had been.

Taylor, in particular, seemed to hone in on the spot where the draw span connected with the main bridge deck.

“It was here,” she said when she was seven and they were heading home from a visit in Port Townsend.

“Somewhere around here, yes,” Valerie had said.

“No,” Taylor said, “it was right here.”

Hayley looked at the water. It was glass that late afternoon.

“She’s right, Mom. Right at that spot where those birds are floating. That’s where it happened.”

Valerie glanced in the direction of gulls bobbing on the surface as their car sped past. She didn’t like to think about it at all. She wanted everyone to just forget it.

“I don’t remember,” she lied. “But yes, right around here.”

Kevin’s eyes met his daughters’ in the rearview mirror.

“Look at the snow on the mountains,” he said. “Must have had a storm last night.”

The girls turned their attention to the view on the other side of the bridge. It was a distraction, and they knew it. Inside, both understood that their mother and father were as damaged by the events of the crash as they were.

FOR AS MANY PEOPLE WHO’D LIVED AND DIED in Port Gamble, the number of the dead buried in the Buena Vista Cemetery was exceedingly tiny. Among the more notable was Gustav Englebrecht, the first member of the United States Navy to be killed in action in the Pacific. His death was less heroic than foolish. He met his maker during an Indian attack at Port Gamble in 1856 when he hoisted himself up over a log to get a better view of the battle at hand only to be finished off by a young man from the S’Klallam tribe.

There were older graves there too. Early settlers, workers who died at the mill, and so on. And, mixed in among many, there was also a modest plaque—one so small, worn, and faded that unless one knew of the legend, you’d never be able to decipher the inscription:

PETER O’MALLEY, 15,

was interred in the sea on April 22.

He is now in God’s hands.

May he rest in eternal peace.

According to the story, which had been passed on for generations, poor Peter had died from cholera and was laid to rest in a salt-codcrate coffin that had washed atop a sandbar. However, when three young S’Klallams forced open the mysterious crate, all that was inside was a silver crucifix, a tornado of flies, and an acrid, hideous odor. The smell of death. Soon after, the oyster beds died and the seabirds stopped nesting there. People began to say that the site was cursed. They called the place Memalucet, or empty box. Those with a more twisted frame of mind called it Empty Coffin. Decades later Port Gamble was plotted there.

On a day that many also consider cursed, Buena Vista Cemetery received a row of little girls’ graves, under a gigantic maple tree at the edge of the bluff looking toward the floating bridge across Hood Canal. Christina Lee was first, then Sarah Benton, Violet Caswell, and Emma Perkins. Other than the obvious differences of the dates of their births and their names, all gravestones were identical in their design. Carved in relief from the black and white granite was a sleeping lamb and a phrase in simple script:

Only a Short Time Here

With God Forever

For years after, visitors came to the cemetery and left toys and flowers for the little girls. One time, someone left a complete Barbie dream house and a Ken doll. Another deposited a tiny porcelain tea set. All of those things were gathered up and stored in the museum’s archives, with the understanding that no display would be made until the youngest of the survivors turned twenty-one years old. History was full of tragedy, but, as the archivist pointed out, it didn’t need to be shoved into the faces of the living.

Although it never faded from the memory of those who lived in Port Gamble, people did find ways to move on.

Visitors who came to the Buena Vista Cemetery to pay their respects never knew that one of the little girls’ graves was empty. Kim and Park Lee refused to bury their daughter Christina there. It was too cold and windy, and its location was too much of a reminder with that awful bridge off in the distance.

Instead, they had Christina cremated and kept her ashes in an urn in their living room.

Park Lee was among those who could never forget the loss of his firstborn daughter. The mill supervisor died when shrimping in the choppy waters of Hood Canal the year after the tragedy on the bridge. The sheriff’s investigation closed the case as an accidental drowning. His wife, Kim, knew better. When the county authorities returned his personal effects, Kim noticed something missing from his wallet—Park’s fishing license. She knew there was no way he’d have gone shrimping without that. Park was very strict about doing things the right way, the legal way.

At thirty-four years old, Park Lee simply could not face his hurt anymore.

Kim arranged photos of her husband and daughter on a shelf above the TV in the living room. On either end of the shelf, she placed two turquoise and gold cloisonné urns. One held the remains of her daughter; the other, her husband.

They’d been up there so long that Beth no longer begged to spread the ashes on the shore because she thought it would be fun and dramatic. After a time, weeks would pass before she even noticed that the urns were there.

It was just her and her mom and that was all it was ever going to be. And while Kim tried hard to make her daughter feel special, Beth never really felt it.

Once, in a moment of deep introspection and personal clarity, Beth admitted to Hay-Tay that the reason she never stayed with anything very long was because “none of it seems to work.”

“What do you mean?” Taylor had asked as the three of them walked across the field by the wedding pavilion. It was summer and a bridal party was being photographed along the edge of the bluff overlooking the water.

“I’m not blaming my mom,” she said. “I guess I get that the love she has for Christina and my dad is stronger because they’re dead. It isn’t like she gets any do-overs with those relationships. She can fantasize and romanticize.”

“People do that, sure,” Hayley said as the girls sat in the freshly mowed grass, not caring that their butts would turn green.

“Sometimes I just want to tell her, ‘Hey! Look at me! I’m still here!’”

Taylor touched Beth on the shoulder. “She knows that, Beth,” she said.

They watched as a young eagle tussled with a gull overhead.

“On some level I get that,” Beth said. “It’s just hard when half your family’s in urns, you know?”

THE PARENTS OF THE DEAD GIRLS and the husband of the bus driver received financial settlements from the state, though each of them would have traded the money for their loved one’s life any day of the week. After lawyers’ fees, the sum was nowhere near the hundreds of thousands reported by the Seattle media.

Kim Lee put the money into CDs and watched it grow, like the accountant that she was. She could have cashed it out any time she wanted and moved away. Anywhere—even Fiji. But she stayed put because Park and Christina considered Port Gamble home. Though they were completely portable, they weren’t going anywhere.

The Berkleys used their windfall to finance and refurbish the Timberline, a restaurant that they’d never own because no historic buildings in Port Gamble could be sold to anyone.

When Katelyn was in seventh grade, Sandra and Harper confessed to her that the college fund she’d thought she’d have for her pain and suffering had been spent on a new car and the first restaurant.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Sandra said. “Your grandparents are going to take care of your college education. They’ve promised.”

The disclosure had brought some relief. Katelyn was sure Starla would get some fabulous scholarship to a top-tier school, while she’d need to pay her way to get there.

“I trust you, Mom,” she had said. “I know you’d never let me down. You or Dad.”