Jess Traverse—Eula Becker

Jess Traverse and Eula Becker’s bond is the reason their extended family gathers for an annual celebration, and its enduring public image is the two of them seated side by side at the head of the table. The reunion turns their partnership into a shared family tradition: Jess recites Emerson, while Eula watches him, and the surrounding stories return to the old wrong done to him and the unexpected fate of the man held responsible.

The Bond at the Center of the Reunion

The family gathering explicitly honors the bond between Jess and Eula. Their kin come from across a wide region, from Marin to Seattle and Coos Bay to Butte, and include loggers, fishermen, street preachers, basket makers, elders, and younger generations. Amid the large gathering, Jess and Eula sit together at the head of the table, its focal point. The event makes their relationship more than a private attachment: it gives a far-flung family a reason to assemble.

A Repeated Act of Remembrance

At the gathering’s central meal, Jess performs a ritual repeated year after year: he recites a passage by Ralph Waldo Emerson that he memorized long ago. Though described as frail and speaking with a slight tremor, he makes himself heard across the tables. Eula keeps her eyes on him as he speaks. The annual repetition gives their shared place in the family a recognizable form, linking the present celebration to memory and to the belief, voiced through Emerson, that injustice cannot permanently escape correction.

The Past That Shapes Their Story

Jess connects Emerson’s moral argument to Crocker Scantling, known as Bud, the head of the Lumber Association. Scantling had gone unpunished for years after arranging the falling of a tree on Jess. Later, he died in a high-speed crash on U.S. Route 101, driving a newly purchased BMW into a truck carrying wood chips. Jess still found the outcome amusing years afterward and brought it into the yearly recitation. The story places the couple’s celebration beside a history of harm and belated consequence: the family honors their bond, while Jess’s performance makes that history part of what the gathering remembers.