by Ash Davidson
Sixteen days since her cycle should have started, forty since Daniel, the radar station. What if? She barely dared to think it. A wave of nausea—what would Rich say? He hadn’t touched her in months—but, despite everything, there it was: the low, undeniable hum of excitement.
“You know clear-all-heart is up another thirty bucks?” Rich called from the front room, leafing through a lumber catalog. “Prices just keep going up.”
“Isn’t that good?” she asked.
“Good for us,” he said. “Bad for the guy building a redwood deck.”
“I’m hungry,” Chub said, climbing into Rich’s lap.
She should have started lunch half an hour ago. Rich let the catalog flip closed and glanced up at Colleen standing in the doorway.
“Let’s go see what Kel’s frying up.” He groaned, lifting Chub out of his lap and pushing to his feet. “Your mom doesn’t feel like cooking.” He took Colleen’s slicker off the hook and held it out.
What else could he read on her face?
CHUB
“The One and Only,” his dad said, picking up the menu. When their food came, Chub took his bun off to count his pickles, and his mom snatched one.
“Watch her,” his dad said, and the good mood got back in the truck with them.
“Fish Creek eats Fly, then pours into the Noose,” Chub recited. “Deadman spouts out…” He waited for his dad to teach him the next part.
“Rich…” his mom said.
His dad eased the truck onto the gravel shoulder, behind a pickup with a barking dog tied in back. Uncle Eugene stood with his baseball bat, yelling at a man with long blond hair. The dog perched on a pile of painted signs, barking. Eugene swung at the man and the dog jumped over the side, kicking air, strangling in its collar. His mom gasped.
“Stay here.” His dad’s door slammed.
Chub climbed onto his knees and his mom grabbed him around the waist.
“It’s okay. Your dad’s got him.”
His dad scooped the dog up under one arm and unclipped the leash, tugging its collar to loosen it. There was a loud crash. Uncle Eugene wrestled the bat from a dent in the man’s hood.
“Eugene!” his dad yelled.
Uncle Eugene swung again. Glass shattered out of a window. The dog barked. “Shut that dog up before I do,” Uncle Eugene shouted.
“Eugene!”
Uncle Eugene backed up, small compared to his dad. The man let the dog in the truck, climbed in after him, and drove off. Chub’s dad grabbed the bat from Uncle Eugene.
Uncle Eugene bent over, hands on his knees, getting his breath. He straightened up, reached back over his shoulder, and gripped his neck, like his head was on crooked.
“What’s wrong with these people?” Uncle Eugene asked.
“What’s wrong with you?” Chub’s mom asked under her breath.
October 22 RICH
Rich yanked the stuck ax, grunted, hitched a boot up onto the round. Too damn green. Blade would be duller than a doorknob by the time he got done. Nip in the air, season starting to turn, beard weather before long. They’d been working long hours on Deer Rib, racing to beat the rains. Rich’s back, his shoulders, his knees: not a part left that didn’t ache, burn, or creak.
Eugene’s brakes screeched—never slowed down in time—and his Chevy roared up the driveway. Rich had asked him to help trim the access path to his water pipe; the line had stopped running again and the tank was low. Could have done it himself by now, in the time he’d spent waiting, but Colleen wanted him to talk Eugene out of that winter crabbing gig, and, after the run-in on the road the other day, out of some other things too.
Rich kept a hand on the ax, not giving up, only taking a breather. Eugene climbed out. He reached into his truck bed—metal rusted to filigree—and tossed a doormat at Rich’s feet.
COME BACK WITH A WARRANT.
“Where’d you get that?” Rich asked.
“Whitey had them.” Eugene smacked rust off his pants.
“Lark’ll get a kick out of it,” Rich said. “What were you doing at Whitey’s?”
Eugene grinned. “We’re getting a deer this season, aren’t we? I needed ammo.”
“You put a deer in that donkey cart, it’ll fall through.”
Eugene jutted his chin at the stump. “What’s the problem there?”
Rich clamped one hand onto the round, rocked it, and wrenched the ax free.
Eugene yawned. “I’m so beat I sat down to piss this morning.”
Another few weeks, the woods would be too muddy to work, whole operation shutting down for the season, as it did every year, winding to a halt in November and sometimes not starting up again until March. Then Rich could worry about the mortgage full-time.
“You serious about going out for crabs?” Rich asked.
“Enid says it’s a sure way to die.” Eugene rolled his eyes. Neither of them had known their father-in-law, but Rich could picture him: a speck on the sea, growing smaller. “See what she says when the money runs out.”
“You busting up hippies for free?” Rich asked.
Eugene shrugged. “Merle offered me twenty hours a week to keep an eye on the grove. Not enough to live off. You got a pair of waders I can borrow?”
“In the house.”
“Give me that, old man.” Eugene took the ax. “Before you hurt yourself.”
Rich went in.
“How’s he seem?” Colleen asked, chopping carrots. The scene at the roadside had spooked her, but she wanted Rich to try, for Enid’s sake.
“Same old.” Rich slung the waders over his shoulder, a rubber thunk. Going out for crabs was risky—not a lot of second chances in the woods, but on open ocean there were none. “He’ll need some kind of work for the winter.”
“Did your father drown?” Colleen demanded.
Rich wrapped his arms around her. He felt her stiffen, then relax into him. He breathed in the geranium scent behind her ear, gave her cold hands a squeeze.
“Be careful,” she said.
Outside, Eugene struggled to free the ax from the stump.
“Got your saw?” Rich asked.
“In the truck.”
Rich retrieved his own, pushed aside a sheet of warped plywood to reach Eugene’s forty-inch-bar Stihl, six months old, handle guard already cracked. Man, the thing was light, half the weight of Rich’s McCulloch.
Eugene jerked the ax, stumbling when it came free. It bounced off the round again.
“Sonofabitch.”
Rich kneed Eugene’s driver-side door shut.
“Hey, take it easy,” Eugene objected.
“You’re lucky that engine hasn’t fallen out. Enough damn rust holes to strain spaghetti.” Rich led the way up Bald Hill.
“We get into those big pumpkins this spring, I’ll buy a new one. Have to take us off day pay then, right? I don’t get my roof patched, it’ll piss through all winter.”
“You got the shingles?”
“Don’t worry. I got the winning numbers right here.” Eugene tapped the lotto tickets in his chest pocket.
The path disappeared into the brush and berry canes. Rich ripped his cord. The McCulloch growled to life.
“I need that fucking grove,” Eugene yelled, revving his saw. With both going, it was too loud to talk, about the only thing that shut Eugene up.
They cut a tunnel through the undergrowth until finally they were looking down from the steep prow of 24-7 Ridge at Damnation Creek. They killed their saws. The quiet took a minute to settle. The brush was thinner from here, blackberry canes dried to soft tan sticks where spray had drifted. And there on the overgrown path, like someone had left it there on purpose: a fresh sac, membrane slick with mucus, pink profile floating in fluid.
“Deer.” Eugene toed it.
Rich hocked phlegm, sidestepped down the loose duff of rotting redwood needles. Creekside, he laid his jacket over a rock and set his saw on it, got his waders on.
“Don’t look stopped up,” Eugen
e said, parking his saw on the wet ground.
“Not two drips coming into our tank.”
“Stinks.” Eugene covered his nose with his elbow, air ripe with the stench of rotting fish.
After the coho run had come through, Rich had spent a day tossing the carcasses above their intake pipe out onto the banks or into the current to be carried downstream so they wouldn’t taint the water. Eggs would hatch in the gravel beds. By Christmas, salmon fry would feed on each other.
Eugene stripped to the waist, wrangling the waders, hopping on one foot. Rich unsnapped his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves, and waded in. He let his balance adjust to the current, creek thigh-deep at the center, slackening when he reached the eddy. Eugene sloshed after him. Rich toed around underwater for the gravity line—usually when it stopped up it happened here—plunged an arm in to the bicep, maneuvered the latch that sprang the joint, and slipped his finger into the pipe, feeling for a plug of weeds, creek babbling in his ear. Clean.
“Must be farther down.”
Rich picked his way along the bank until he came to an orange ribbon—rocks rolled downcreek, but timber stayed put. He waded in, felt along the pipe for the release, ran a finger around inside while Eugene watched from dry land.
“When’s that crab gig start anyway?” Rich asked.
“Lew’s brother’s thing? December.”
“Dungeness?”
“Yellow too. Maybe some slenders.”
“Speaking of good ways to die.” They walked downcreek, Rich keeping an eye out for the next marker. “What’s he paying?” Rich asked.
“Hundred fifty.” Eugene scratched his bare arms.
“A day?”
“A haul.”
Rich spotted another ribbon, waded in. Water lapped in his ear. He thumbed the release, pulled out the prize: algae tangled like wet hair. His soaked shirt sucked his chest, his skin itching, chill of the water exposed to warmer air.
“If somebody offered a better deal, I’d take it,” Eugene said. They trudged back upcreek. “Every time I turn around somebody needs new shoes. A washer-dryer. It don’t end.”
They rounded the bend and there was Dolores’s son, squatting in the gravel bed, scribbling notes. Snooping around about something—Rich had sensed it the moment he’d laid eyes on him with Lark.
“What the—” Eugene stopped short. “What’s that motherfucker doing? Hey, asshole!”
The guy raised a hand, as though accustomed to the greeting.
“You’re trespassing,” Eugene called, even with him across the creek now.
“So are you,” Dolores’s son shot back, sliding his pencil above his ear and tucking the notebook into his pack.
Eugene stepped into the water, slipped, the man already loping up through the lower grove toward the road.
“Next time I’ll shoot your ass, fucker,” Eugene yelled after him, clambering up the opposite bank. He picked something off the ground, waded back, and tossed it at Rich, who caught it against his chest: a pinwheel mint.
“Fucking unbelievable.” Eugene shook his head. Running the guy off had put him in a good mood.
Rich peeled his shirt off, wrung it out, stuffed it down inside his waders. Eugene snapped his closed, warm and dry, an old repair at the elbow ripping. Eugene twisted his arm to examine it. “Enid can’t sew worth a shit.”
They started back up the path.
“They keep fighting these harvest plans, somebody’s going to get killed,” Eugene said.
“Not by you.” Rich stopped walking, forcing Eugene to stop too. “You got Enid and the kids to think about.”
“I know.” Eugene pouted the rest of the way. Raised by a bunch of women.
At the house, Chub came barreling out the back door into Rich’s legs. He felt the tweak in his knee but kept his balance. Chub climbed onto his back. In the dim tank shed, Rich pulled them both up the ladder and leaned far enough forward for Chub to peer over the lip. A steady dribble ran into the tank. Rich let Chub slip to the ground.
“What’s that?” Chub asked, crouched over a fly in the dirt.
Rich picked it up, careful not to bend the wings, looked up at the ledge it had fallen from. Best trout fly there ever was—as good as the day Astrid gave it to him. Fish it dead drift, skitter it against the current, sink it, swim it to the surface.
“I’ll show you, someday.” Rich tossed the fly lightly in his palm. It weighed almost nothing, for all the memories it contained.
They found Eugene in the kitchen, hunched over chili with a hunk of corn bread.
“Back in business,” Rich announced.
“I’ll fix you a bowl,” Colleen said.
Eugene drained his, stood. “See you later.”
Chub crumbled corn bread into his chili and stirred the soggy mess around, spooning through the mush, like a jellybean might be hidden in it. Rich washed his hands.
“Well?” Colleen asked when Eugene was gone.
Rich shrugged. “Maybe Enid’ll drown him before the ocean gets a chance.”
“We could loan them,” Colleen said.
“Might as well toss your money down Lark’s shithouse hole.”
She tsked. “You know these waders have a tear?”
“Where?”
She rotated them on the hook beside the kitchen door, stuck her finger through a slit in the calf. Just like Eugene to snag them and not say a word.
“Bath time,” Colleen announced to Chub. “We’ve got water now, thanks to your dad.”
“Me first.” Rich pretended to rise. Chub raced down the hall and slammed the door. “Who knows? Crabs might not be such a bad idea.” Maybe he should try it himself, stretch out what was left of their savings.
Colleen clanked Chub’s bowl onto the counter.
“It’s Lew’s brother,” Rich reasoned. “Those guys are professionals. They don’t take chances.”
“All men take chances.”
“Mom!” Chub called. Colleen went to help him.
Rich scraped up the last bite, corn bread lodging in the base of his throat. He held a glass under the faucet, drank off half. It flashed in his hand and he fumbled, set it on the counter, water sloshing: a tiny fish, small and silver, like someone had folded a dime in half and dropped it in alive.
October 26 COLLEEN
She read the clue again—“Pleasure is first found in anticipation” author—eight letters, ends in a T. She chewed the end of her pen, doing her best to cordon off her brain, ignoring the press of her bladder, resisting the temptation to rifle through her purse, dig out the kit, and rip it open. Not yet.
Seven weeks, each day another breath inflating the small balloon of hope. She hadn’t said anything to Rich; how could she? Don’t jinx it. She wanted to be sure.
She doubled down on the new crossword.
Fastest way. Three letters. Fly.
Quick to _______. Anger.
Head over heels. In love.
“Pleasure is first found in anticipation” author. F-L_ _ _ _R-T.
She filled the sink, scoured the milk pot, the press of her bladder almost painful now. She took the test into the bathroom and closed the door, even though she was alone in the house. You know there’s a test you can take at home now? the nurse at the clinic had asked when she’d called to make an appointment. Ten dollars, but it was worth it, to be holding it here in the privacy of her own bathroom. She read the instructions once without absorbing them, started over, tacking each word to its meaning.
After holding it all morning, it took her body a minute to comply. She slipped the urine-filled tube into the slot in the plastic box. She opened the medicine cabinet and set the test on the shelf, memorized the instructions, and dropped them into the woodstove.
The house was quiet but for the tick of the kitchen timer, the silent pulse of the test itself. Her heart thudded. She focused on slowing it, as if it might affect the results. If she was, if she really was—Rich would know it wasn’t his. Her cheeks burned at the thought of tel
ling him. She filled the kettle and set it to boil, watched the tiny silver fish circle the bowl, physical incarnation of the anxiety swinging around in her chest. She’d promised Chub. He’ll be right here when you get home.
Lying in bed last night, she’d felt the magnetic pull of the test hidden in her purse.
What’s wrong? Rich had asked, her restlessness keeping him awake.
Nothing. She’d driven all the way down to Arcata, to the drugstore near the university, to buy it. EVERY WOMAN HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW SHE’S PREGNANT! a poster had proclaimed. She’d taken a basket, built a small fortress—four boxes of Band-Aids, six rolls of toilet paper—but the clerk hadn’t batted an eye. With all the hippies on campus, she must have sold a dozen a day. Those hippies screw like rabbits.
She tried not to think of Daniel, but he might as well have been sitting here at the table, listening to the tick of the timer.
You sure? Rich had asked, turning onto his side, which she knew aggravated his back, sliding his palm down her stomach. She’d laced her fingers through his, worried he might feel it, might know without being told, the way she knew now, silencing the furious timer.
She touched her abdomen. Little speck. Little sunflower seed. Little grain of rice.
She could hear Mom. Maybe you’ll get one miracle in life.
Colleen’s father had been missing a week, truck abandoned near the beach in Crescent City where he took Colleen to hunt for agates. Colleen remembered her father driving them up and down the streets nearest the water, the big houses with their lawns, their widow’s walks, as though somewhere there was a house that was theirs, if he could only find it. Colleen had been sure he’d show up, eventually, which, in the end, he had. Not the miracle she’d hoped for, but then came Chub and now—the kettle screamed.
Charity, four letters. Alms.
Jury, undecided. Hung.
Warning, six letters. Beware.
Which came first? Egg.
“Pleasure is first found in anticipation” author. Flaubert?
Sunlight curved in around the geranium leaves, illuminating dust motes. Her blood sang in her veins, her chest full to bursting, as she met her own eyes in the medicine cabinet mirror. Her hand trembled. But she already knew. She was pregnant. She would have to tell Rich. She would have to tell him. She inspected the bottom of the test tube for the small brown ring the instructions promised. Where was it?