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Deleted Scene: British Camp

(Formerly in Chapter Six)

In the year 1859, a young potato farmer chose himself a few acres of land in the middle of a wide green pasture. His name was Lyman Cutlar, and he was devoted to his crop. He had actually rowed the entire forty mile round trip across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to buy seed potatoes. I like to think that there must have been some woman involved – a beautiful girl who was the apple of Lyman’s potato farming eye, and whom he was trying to impress. I mean, there aren’t a lot of guys who would row forty miles just to buy potatoes. Of course, for all I know he might have been already married or even a misogynist – the historical information I’ve read is lacking in details. (To be honest, I even made up the part about him being young. I’m basing all of this off of a very short plaque.)

Anyway, the youthful Lyman rowed the entire way across the strait, visited the lovely young woman, proposed to her, got married against her father’s wishes, bought a sack of potatoes, and rowed all the way back to San Juan Island. He showed her his humble farm, and they both muttered a few desperate words of good luck as they planted – they knew that they couldn’t head back across the strait, because her father, who was the captain of the local militia, would be waiting to throw Lyman in the stocks. If these seed potatoes didn’t produce, Lyman would have to support the lovely young Mindi (that’s what her name was) by working on a fishing boat, whereupon he would fall into the sea and get eaten by a sturgeon.

That last paragraph was all lies. But the following paragraph is all true.

As it turned out, Lyman had built his farm in the center of grazing land used by the Hudson Bay Company, a business that had its fingers in every pie on the island, from livestock to timber to fish, and that had claimed the island in the name of Queen Victoria (they being British). A Hudson Bay pig, who was a long time resident of that particular grazing land, would regularly break into Lyman’s farm and dig up potatoes. Lyman, an American, warned the Hudson Bay Company to keep their pig out, and notified the local authorities. Unfortunately, nothing was done about the frequent pig invasions until one day Lyman snapped, and shot it.

If Mindi’s dad hadn’t been happy with his new son in law before, he was probably furious after. Because frankly, if there’s one thing he can’t abide, it’s for his son in laws to start intercontinental wars.

You see, back in 1846 a treaty had been signed, which indicated that the British got everything on one side of the strait, and the Americans got everything on the other. The problem was that there is more than one strait, and the treaty wasn’t very specific. In fact, it referred to the entire area merely as “worthless islands”. The Americans and British both settled, each groups thinking they were correct and that the other would eventually leave.

Well, the Hudson Bay people, now short one pig, complained to their tea drinking superiors, who called their friends in jolly old England, who immediately dispatched ten thousand Royal Marines. The Americans responded in kind, sending ten thousand of their own men, who were all extremely grateful to be headed away from the Civil War – not only is fighting Brits better than fighting other Americans, but, as it turned out, no one ever did any fighting at all. For thirteen years all the soldiers sat on the island, enjoying the mild weather and eating pork and potatoes, until finally, in 1872, Kaiser Wilhelm the First (a German, because politics were weird back then) decided that the San Juan Islands officially belonged to America. The troops all went home, none the worse for wear, and the island ended up with a National Historic Park.

And it was the San Juan Island National Historic Park where Rebekah and I began our sight seeing tour of San Juan. The tour was self guided, and since I wasn’t carrying any cash I couldn’t pay the dollar twenty five for a visitors’ guide, which is why I had to make up so many little known facts to the preceding historical account – there was only one plaque describing the event.

Rebekah didn’t seem nearly as interested in the history of the place as she was in simply being outside. Twice, on the short downhill walk from the parking lot to English Camp, she commented on the smell of the trees, and she pointed out at least half a dozen birds.

“Have you noticed,” I asked, “that the air doesn’t smell salty?”

She paused briefly and sniffed the air. “Should it?”

“You always hear about how the sea smells salty. Here we are, on an island surrounded by water–”

“All islands are surrounded by water,” she corrected, with a grin.

“Not islands in the street.”

“Isn’t that a Dolly Parton song?”

“Or islands in the kitchen.”

We emerged from the shade of the pines, and Rebekah pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes. “It doesn’t smell salty because this isn’t the ocean?”

“Is that a question?”

“I thought you were going to explain why it doesn’t smell.”

“No – I don’t know the answer,” I said. “I was just commenting.”

“Oh.”

“You’d think, even though Puget Sound isn’t the ocean, it’s still salt water – it ought to smell salty.”

“There aren’t a lot of waves,” she offered.

“Does that matter?”

Rebekah shrugged, and pointed to the historical buildings appearing before us. “This would be a nice place to camp for thirteen years.”

“Maybe it’s because there isn’t much wind,” I said, more to myself than to Rebekah. It sounded like a good answer.

The camp was as green as the rest of island, looking much more like a park than a military camp. Granted, the war had been one hundred and fifty years ago, and a lot had probably changed, but it appeared as though the army had planted and maintained a formal British garden, complete with a hedge maze. You can take the Marine out of England, but you can’t take England out of the Marine.

Along with the garden was a small, wooden blockhouse, looking far too small to provide much protection to so many troops. Likewise, a white ramshackle barracks stood in the center of the camp, and I guessed it could hold, if tightly packed, less than one half of one percent of the soldiers. So the marines were either in tents for thirteen years, or a lot of buildings had fallen down.

“How’s your hotel?” Rebekah asked, as we walked slowly across the grass.

“Fine, I guess,” I answered. That didn’t sound happy enough, so I added: “It’s fun to be in such an old building.”

“Sorry I got the house.”

“Are you kidding? The hotel’s great. Teddy Roosevelt stayed there once.”

We paused to look at the blockhouse. A plump woman, standing near us, was reading to her children from the guidebook, and Rebekah took an inconspicuous step toward them to listen. I didn’t, because I’d already made up the history of the place in my mind, and didn’t want to spoil it with facts. Instead, I looked at the water and the blockhouse and Rebekah, and made a moderate effort not to gaze too long at the tiny dimple in her cheek, or at the eight inches of smooth, creamy skin between the cuff of her capri pants and her shoe, or at the way her tendons moved as she craned her neck.

She scratched an itch on her elbow, and managed to make the action look both sophisticated and alluring.

I like Rebekah.

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