by Ash Davidson
Scout cocked his head at the question.
Rain rolled down Rich’s slicker, creeks rushing headlong in the morning dark. Water: always looking for a way to the ocean. Still an hour until dawn. He’d be on the crummy by the time the sun rose, the old school bus jolting along rutted logging roads—just another Monday—but for now, the woods were his. The trail was a tunnel; the deer weren’t cropping her back like they used to. Rich’s caulk boots were good and damp, flexible. He’d set them in front of the woodstove to warm up last night; the secret was to never dry them out completely or they’d turn stiff as rawhide. Could use a new pair, but it would be cheaper to get them re-spiked.
In his mind, he’d been chipping away at Jim Mueller’s price since he’d named it, the notion foolish but irresistible. Timber was a young man’s game. At fifty-three, Rich had already outlived every Gundersen on record. Yesterday, Chub dozing against his back, a warm weight, he’d felt a surge of hope so alarming it had taken a moment to realize nothing was physically wrong. Rich’s mother had died in her sleep at thirty-six. Valve in her heart just gave out.
He climbed the second ridge and from there it was up, up, up the steep rise of 24-7 Ridge. It would take every cent he had. A hell of a risk on paper. But stopping to catch his breath and looking up at the old-growth redwoods near the spine, the tallest the 24-7 herself, three hundred and seventy feet if she was an inch—the worry evaporated. A monster, the tallest tree for miles, dwarfing even the giants of Damnation Grove. Goddamn, he could sing. Scout nosed his knee. Rich sniffed: wet wood, needles rotting to soil.
Smell that, old man? That’s the smell of money.
Rich inhaled deeper. He’d never have to work another day for Merle Sanderson, as he had for Virgil Sanderson before him, as Rich’s father had worked for George and his granddad for Victor, all the way back for as long as men had felled redwoods.
The one time Rich remembered his dad taking him up here, his dad had stopped at about this spot, hitched a boot up on a fallen limb. There she is. Twenty-four feet, seven inches across. Someday, you and me are going to fall that tree. His dad had just turned thirty, but they’d lived harder and faster in those days, smoked, chewed, drank like mules. When they’d gotten up to the 24-7, his dad had pressed a palm to her bark: fireproof, a foot thick. A week later, he’d be dead, but that day he’d looked out over the ridges, dark with timber, one behind the other like waves in the ocean, breathed it all in. Someday. That breath swelled in Rich’s chest now. His whole life he’d wanted her, and here she was.
Jim Mueller was right. Sanderson would have to run roads down into Lower Damnation Grove, if not to the creek itself, then close enough to spit across at the foot of 24-7 Ridge. All Rich would need to do is lay the big pumpkin down and truck her out. That, plus the two hundred other redwoods—close to a hundred million board feet, grand total. Even after the equipment, the crew, the mill taking its cut, it’d be twenty years’ salary for a few months’ work. Pay the land off free and clear. Rest would be gravy.
Forget her nails, Colleen would bite her fingers off to the first knuckle if he told her he was even thinking about it. Seven hundred and twenty acres. His dad had worked six days a week from thirteen until the day he died and never owned more than a damn truck.
Rich sidestepped down the ridge to Damnation Creek, low this time of year. He cleaned a few dead leaves out of the screen catch at the mouth of their water line, snuffed his nose on his arm, slicker spreading the wet around. He whistled for Scout, sweating by the time the yellow square of kitchen window finally reappeared below like a beacon. Winded, he stopped to catch his breath. Something glinted under the sweep of his headlamp. He stooped, picked it up: a red pinwheel mint in a clear plastic wrapper. Scout butted his leg, looking for an ear rub.
Come here, you mutt.
Down in the yard, he hooked Scout back onto his chain, got his caulks off before the pegs driven through the soles for traction tore the hell out of the kitchen linoleum. Inside, Colleen turned bacon with a fork.
“Smells good.” He draped his wet socks over the handle of the woodstove and padded down the hall for dry ones, the red tail of Chub’s rocket night-light glowing in the morning dark.
Colleen set his plate on the table, eggs steaming.
“I might stop by and see Lark after work,” he said, testing it out. It didn’t sound untruthful. He tucked into his eggs so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eye. He rarely lied to her, usually only to play down an injury.
“Should I pack him something?” she asked.
“Nah, I’ll stop at the Only.” His back tooth throbbed with the coffee’s heat. He pressed his tongue to it, mopped up the last of the yolk, brought his plate to the sink, lifted his slicker off the hook—rain puddled on the linoleum below—and grabbed his thermos and lunch pail. Colleen turned the lamp on so he could see to fish his keys from the burl bowl, half-filled with the pea-sized beach agates she collected, bright as candies.
“Gloves?” she asked.
“In the truck.”
When they were first married, she would inspect his body at night, feeling along his neck, his ribs, his abdomen, until his heart was pounding. When she found a new scrape, a bump or a scab, she’d cup her hand over it, as though it were an insect she’d trapped there.
Now she pecked him on the cheek—I choose you—in a better mood since she’d started helping out the Larson girl, pregnant again, and still too poor for a hospital birth. It had taken her mind off it, finally.
“Want anything from the store?” she asked. “I have to take Enid down to the clinic. The kids need their shot cards before school starts.”
“She can’t drive herself?” he asked, pinching a toothpick from his front pocket.
Colleen shrugged, Enid more her child than her sister. She stood out front, hugging herself for warmth, watched him climb into his truck. Over her shoulder, the wooden plaque he’d carved and mounted on the door shone with mist. HOME IS WHERE THE IS.
“Be careful,” she called.
His denims were cut off two inches above his ankles to keep a Cat tire from catching the hem and pulling him under, mashing him like a potato. But there were a hundred other ways to die in the woods. He’d seen a three-thousand-pound haul block land on a man’s chest, choker chains snap and send logs as big as school buses bouncing downslope, felt their shadows pass overhead when he dove below an old stump for cover.
Don’t ever leave the house without kissing that woman goodbye, Lark had said, knotting Rich’s tie tight enough to hang him, on his wedding day, advice tinged with his own regret.
Rich thumbed the blower on full blast and cracked his window down a half inch. Rain tapped the hood. Up valley roads, across creeks, in town and the glen, men walked through this rain to their trucks, wives looking up from the dishes, pausing the length of a prayer. Be careful. What besides prayers kept any of them alive? Luck, the steady hands and quick judgment of men he’d known all his life, men who swung an arm up over the seat back, reversing down their driveways as Rich did now, fog eddying in his wake, rain-beaten yard sign listing below the weeping willow:
THIS FAMILY SUPPORTED BY TIMBER DOLLARS.
COLLEEN
The rifle wasn’t the first thing she noticed when she bounced down Enid’s muddy driveway. What she noticed was Tice Whelan’s tow truck, gleaming black with its bright blue hook. She set the parking brake, Chub’s cue to undo his seat belt, and before she could register the rifle Enid held loosely at her side, a crutch too short to lean on, Chub was scampering across the yard, hopping the creek, and disappearing up the steps into the trailer house.
Growing up past the last telephone pole, Enid had always sworn she’d move down south, beyond where the redwood curtain parted, someplace you could buy a hot dog on the street at midnight or one of those big doughy pretzels that looked like it should hang on a door like a Christmas wreath. But here she was, way out Lost Road. She had a telephone that worked half the time, when she paid the bill and
a tree hadn’t fallen on the line, but otherwise it was about as far from San Francisco as you could get.
Tice Whelan didn’t appear to have noticed the rifle yet either. He crouched, fitting a tow trap around the front wheel of her sister’s new Wagoneer—red with veneered side panels.
“You’re making us late,” Colleen said, as though Enid could hear her through the windshield. The runaway roses were blooming, pulling down the fence meant to pen the climbing goats, who balanced in the branches of their tree, watching Tice Whelan work. Colleen’s mother’s old Mercury was a mound of blackberry brambles, unrecognizable except for a side mirror that hung limply, like the fin of a lethargic fish. She knew she should get out of the truck before Enid did something stupid, but first she wanted an apology.
They’d agreed to meet at the Beehive, but this morning Colleen had found the gravel lot empty except for the sweet scent of the blackberry bear claws Dot pulled from the bakery’s oven. Colleen had even gone inside to check.
“Sorry, hon, haven’t seen her. You want some coffee while you wait?” Dot had asked, circles of rouge making her look like an overheated doll in her sequined sweater, her hair a platinum beehive. She’d been a beauty queen young. Ms. Sanderson Timber. Ms. Del Nort County. Ms. Redwood Country. Sweet as sugar and slower than molasses, Colleen’s mom used to say.
Next, Colleen had driven up to the turnout where Mill Road met the highway—the way Enid would have to come. She’d left a hole in her crossword, clue stuck like a kernel in her teeth. Desires. Four letters. Loves, wants, needs—she couldn’t make anything fit. She’d picked at it the whole way, past Rich’s pickup lined up in the mill lot with the others; out No Name Road, gravel popping against the truck’s underbelly; past Damnation Grove; and down the steep hump onto Lost Road. And now here was her sister, holding the repo man at gunpoint.
Colleen sighed. Getting upset at Enid wouldn’t change her. She closed her eyes, wishing she could open them and see the yard tidy. No Tice. No tow truck.
Enid raised the rifle—thirty-one years old and still, here was Colleen, trying to keep trouble from crashing down around her little sister. Colleen climbed out.
“Hi, Tice,” she said.
“Don’t talk to him,” Enid snapped.
The Whelan twins were identical, down to the rattail Tice wore at the back of his shaggy hair, but Colleen could tell him apart from Lyle, who worked as a bucker on Rich’s logging crew, by the topless mermaid tattooed on his neck. The only marks Rich had on his body were scars, decades’ worth of nicks and gashes, hard white lines of healed skin like the skeleton of a fish on the inside of his forearm, where he’d been cut to the bone as a teenager, sewn up, and sent right back out to work.
“Take those things off,” Enid ordered Tice, who was already securing the second trap. Enid’s blue eyes flashed, her eyeliner making her short white-blond hair, long behind the ears, appear even whiter. Pretty, even in one of Eugene’s old undershirts, still heavy around the midsection, baby weight left over from carrying Alsea.
“Enid—”
“Stay out of it, Colleen. I mailed the check.”
Tice Whelan went around the other side of the Wagoneer.
“Whelan, I swear to God.”
Colleen felt the slide of the bolt in her chest.
“Don’t make me shoot you between your damn eyes,” Enid threatened.
“You going to load that thing first?” Tice asked.
Enid checked the empty chamber, choked up on the barrel, and started toward him.
“I’ll bash your skull in and eat your brain with a spoon.”
Tice backed up. He was used to having guns pointed at him, but the stock was oak, and though he was missing an eyetooth, he still had a good straight nose.
“Enid,” Colleen said.
“Over my dead body you’re taking this thing. You have any idea what it’s like to live out here with six kids? It’s not called Lost Road for nothing. Have You Lost Your Mind Road, more like.”
Three of Enid’s milk goats jumped down from their tree and loitered, chewing air, waiting for Tice Whelan’s answer. One bleated. Another nosed his bootlaces. Colleen thought he would finish the job, but instead he kicked the goat away, crouched down, and pulled out a pin, undoing the trap he’d just secured.
“All right,” Enid said, meaning thank you. A habit she’d inherited from their father, although only Colleen was old enough to remember it.
Back in his tow truck, Tice Whelan raised two fingers from the steering wheel. See you next time.
“Go screw yourself, Whelan!” Enid yelled, watching him pull away.
“ ‘I’ll eat your brain with a spoon’?” Colleen asked.
“He doesn’t have enough brains to fill a spoon. What are you doing here?”
“The kids’ shot cards, remember?”
“Oh shit, was that today?”
Enid hurried inside to get ready. Colleen peeked in the Wagoneer’s windows: seats already stained, though the thing wasn’t even four months old. Eugene had bought it after Rich got Colleen the fancy white crew cab—as if a truck could make it up to her—pulling the showy red thing to the curb when Enid came out with the new baby in her arms. He hadn’t wanted to be one-upped.
“Out of gas,” Enid called from the porch now. She traipsed across the yard to Colleen’s truck, Alsea swaddled in a tight bundle.
Wyatt streaked out of the trailer house, Chub in pursuit.
“Chub! We’re going!” Colleen called.
“Leave him, Marla’ll watch them,” Enid said.
Colleen began to count. By four, Chub appeared, flushed, breathless, one overall buckle undone. She reached to help him, but he twisted away, turning circles after the overall strap like a dog chasing its tail. He hauled the buckle over his shoulder and fastened it with a satisfying click. His cowlick fell into his eyes, growing faster than she could keep it trimmed. He grinned, proud of himself, eyes turning from green to blue, Rich’s eyes set in a small, round face. He’d grown out of his pudge except for his cheeks, the doughboy dimples. Every night, after she switched on the rocket night-light, she pressed her thumbs into those dimples. My cookie-boy. My sweet Grahamcracker. She’d been trying to get him used to Graham in time to start school. Graham Gundersen, she’d printed on his registration form.
All set? Gail Porter had asked without looking up.
She’d been the secretary since Colleen was in school. That Colleen was thirty-four, with a child of her own, hadn’t changed things. She was still afraid of Gail Porter, a stern, no-nonsense woman whose raised eyebrow could lower the temperature of a room.
Colleen had hesitated, drawn a little caret. “Chub,” she’d inserted. Gail Porter had taken the form back without a hint of friendliness, though Don Porter was as much Rich’s friend as his crew boss; they’d shared a table at the company picnic on the Fourth. Colleen wondered if it was still the age difference Gail Porter disapproved of. It bothered some women, especially women Rich’s age.
Tell Enid I’m not letting hers in the door without proof this year, Gail Porter had said, handing back Chub’s shot card.
I will. Colleen had offered a weak smile that Gail Porter registered but didn’t return. In school, Colleen had always been “Enid’s sister.” As though she had no name of her own.
There must have been a time, when Enid first started kindergarten, Colleen already in the third grade, when it had been the other way around. But it wasn’t long before Enid punched a boy in the stomach so hard he vomited; threw wads of wet paper towels at the ceiling in the girls’ bathroom, where they gunked and dried like the muddy nests of birds; ate a cricket on a dare. For years, through high school, Colleen had slouched in a slick yellow bucket seat outside the principal’s smoked-glass door, the kind of chair it was impossible to sit up straight in, waiting while the principals—they changed every few years—paddled Enid. As though her sass could be dislodged. Colleen had flinched at the muffled thuds, but Enid never let out more than a gr
unt, the principals dog-panting. Mrs. Porter would scowl and Colleen would sit up, tugging her skirt down over her knees, as if her bad posture were the object of Gail Porter’s disapproval.
Chub clicked his seat belt.
“Let’s go,” Enid said, cramming her nipple into Alsea’s mouth. “You’re making us late.”
* * *
Colleen set the parking brake and looked up at the low brown building. She hadn’t been inside the Mad River Clinic since her five-month checkup, before Easter.
“Let’s get this over with,” Enid said.
Inside, the linoleum was pocked from the men’s caulk boots. Enid argued over their missed appointment, as if the receptionist were the one in the wrong, then joined Colleen and Chub to wait in the seats lining the wall. Sanderson didn’t give insurance, but so long as somebody in your family had worked in the woods, the clinic took care of you for life, however long that was.
“Which one of Gail’s bees flew up her ass anyway?” Enid complained, as though she hadn’t lost the shot cards to begin with. “It’s not like they’re rabid.”
A nurse came out, holding a chart. Colleen recognized her from last time.
“That baby’s still not crying?” she asked Enid.
“I wish I’d had six of her,” Enid answered.
“Every baby’s a miracle,” the nurse reminded her—their mother’s old line.
Their mother had never wanted children. She’d told Colleen flat out, near the end.
A cross-stitch of the saying hung in the little room at the end of the clinic hallway. How many times had Colleen sat staring at it, onionskin covering the exam table sticking to her thighs, where the gown didn’t meet in the back? EVERY BABY IS A MIRACLE. Somehow, when the door opened, it was always a surprise not to see her mother.
If Colleen had stayed pregnant this spring, she’d have been sitting there now, legs dangling beneath the swell of her belly, counting down the days until her due date—August 14. It still blinked like a light in her mind. Even the nurses—women trained to feel nothing—felt sorry for her. Colleen could tell by their phony brightness, the way they avoided her eyes. But even after the bleeding, after laboring to deliver a baby she knew would never breathe, after the steady stream of bills, the bitter glue on the envelope flap she licked closed with a check inside each month, a taste she associated now with the hospital—even after all that, Colleen still felt the longing for another baby, an ache lodged deep in her chest.