Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  Pete himself was nowhere in sight. Rich cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Ho!”

  Pete hooted back. Rich caught up to him, standing at the roots of a wind-fallen big pumpkin, dry-rotted to dust.

  “Imagine if I cut the face on that?” Pete asked. Could have killed him.

  “You heard it out by you?” Rich asked.

  “Nah,” Pete said. “But that wind.”

  Eugene walked the log, measuring her. “Two eighty.”

  “Could have told you that by looking,” Pete said.

  “I’m working here.” Eugene adjusted his rifle strap.

  “Watch you don’t shoot yourself in the foot,” Pete warned.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Rich ribbed.

  “You’re a pair of assholes, you know that?”

  A horn blared.

  “Porter,” Pete and Rich said together, but it was Merle’s gold Cadillac, idling in the fog below.

  Pete spat a steaming leash of juice. “Checking on his fatted calf.”

  Eugene went down to meet him.

  “You see the paper?” Merle asked after Eugene explained the rotted tree gone over. “Stop by when you’re done here,” Merle told him. The Cadillac’s tires threw fans of mud in its wake.

  Rich followed Pete back down to the road.

  “What did he want?” Pete asked.

  Eugene shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Pete scoffed. “Since when did Merle ever want nothing?”

  “Hey,” Eugene called after Rich. “Take this mutt with you.” Scout shot out from the brush, tracking a scent. “Dog thinks it’s a pincushion.”

  Rich felt light with relief the whole way back—his timber still standing. He ducked into the house, snagged his keys from the burl bowl.

  “Where you going?” Colleen asked.

  “Get the paper.”

  * * *

  “Hey, Rich,” Dot said, bell tinkling over the Beehive’s door when he came in. The bear claws were golden, just out of the oven. “How many you want?” Dot asked.

  “How many you got?”

  Dot smiled. Her cheeks were painted pink and she wore a sweater so full of sequins light bounced off her like off a fresh-caught trout.

  “Better make it four,” he said, handing over the money.

  “When are you boys going to get back into that grove?” she asked.

  “Not ’til spring, looks like. You spare a couple dimes?”

  “It’ll cost you.” She punched a key and the drawer rolled out. Kids and drunks all knew Dot would slide an ugly—a bear claw whose filling had run out between its toes—across the counter for nothing. What are we running, a soup kitchen? Lew would grouse.

  “Tell Lew I charged you double,” Dot said, handing Rich his change.

  The metal jaw of the newspaper dispenser screaked: log-splitting contest down in Orick, photo from low to the ground so the ax head looked larger than that of the man swinging it. Rich tossed the paper onto the seat, settled the sack beside him, and folded pastry into his mouth.

  * * *

  “Look at this.” He tossed the paper onto the table for Colleen to see, setting the white sack of bear claws—an innocent three—beside it.

  Chub rammed into Rich’s side, reached into the sack.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” Colleen scolded. “Plate, mister.”

  Rich handed him one. Colleen wiped a palm across the ad. The whole back page, where the fishing report should have been, was redwood trees.

  WE ARE THE LUNGS OF THE PLANET SAVE DAMNATION GROVE

  November 17 COLLEEN

  Joanna thwacked a soaked shirt over the side of the washtub. The girls spilled down the cabin’s front steps. Even Judith seemed eager.

  “It kept trying to stand up, but it couldn’t,” Judith said. “Its back end didn’t work.”

  “We lost a calf,” Joanna explained.

  “Oh,” Colleen said. “I’m sorry.”

  Bossy stood dumb, tail flicking.

  “They say animals don’t grieve.” Joanna sighed and led the way to the coop. “How many?”

  “Two dozen?” Colleen handed her the empty cartons. “I thought I might try making noodles.”

  “How’s Chub like school?” Joanna asked, ducking inside the henhouse.

  “He loves it. He’s in the same class as Helen’s—” The meal train hadn’t started yet. Helen and Carl were camped out at the hospital, waiting for the baby to die. Joanna reemerged.

  “I heard about that.” Joanna handed down two full cartons and rested a hand on the swell of her belly protectively.

  “It’s the third one.” Colleen had been thinking it, but this was the first time she’d said it aloud. Fourth, if the rumor about Beth Cooney’s baby was true. “It doesn’t seem—”

  “Mama! Ma-ma! Camber has a bloody nose!”

  The girls crowded around the baby. Blood dripped down her chin. She looked more terrified by her sisters crouched around her than by anything happening to her own body.

  “Tilt her head back,” Joanna instructed. “Pinch it. I’ll get a rag.”

  The baby wailed.

  “It’s okay.” Colleen pressed her index finger to the bridge of the baby’s nose, bone barely there.

  “It won’t stop,” Judith said.

  Camber’s eyes crossed on Colleen’s finger.

  “It will.”

  Joanna returned with a wet towel and whisked the baby up, tilting her head back.

  “She’s fine,” she told the girls. “It doesn’t hurt, you know that.” Joanna turned to Colleen. “They sprayed a couple days ago. Again. Lucky I heard the helicopter coming this time, got the bathtub filled up. You should see the creek. Just a bucket of milk with oil scum on top. You can smell the diesel.” Joanna rocked the baby in her arms.

  The motion made Colleen’s chest ache with longing. She took up her eggs.

  “Good luck.” Joanna lifted her chin at Colleen’s stomach—no, at the eggs she held against it. “With your noodles. Tell Helen we’re praying for her.”

  November 19 RICH

  Scout raced up the hill, Chub chasing him down the other side to the Little Lost. Chub flung a stick in, watched the wild runoff carry it. Rich pulled his waders on, tucking the foil-wrapped cookies inside, then hoisted Chub up. Scout launched himself into the water beside them, paddling madly. The big pumpkins of 24-7 Ridge loomed dark with moisture. When they finally reached them, Rich pressed a palm to the 24-7’s berth. Chub squeezed between him and the trunk, pressed an ear to the bark, listening.

  “You’re not one of those tree huggers, are you?” Rich teased.

  “No.” Chub twisted in place.

  “You go first.” Rich nudged him along. “In case we meet Bigfoot.”

  “There’s no Bigfoot.”

  “You sure?” Rich asked. “I don’t want to share these cookies. Think you can find our pipe?”

  Chub took off down the east side of the ridge after Scout.

  Rich remembered watching his father’s truck pull away; didn’t want a kid slowing him down. Eugene was that way with Wyatt. But Rich took Chub along to Whitey’s for chain oil, down to the old Lumberjack Hotel in Orick when they were tearing it down, to salvage the redwood to repanel the bathroom, Chub holding the coffee can, collecting the square-headed nails.

  Now Chub stopped at the edge of Damnation Creek, across from their intake pipe.

  “How’d you find it?” Rich asked.

  Chub held up his palm and pointed to the spot on his map.

  “Pretty good, Chub,” Rich said.

  “Can I help?” Chub asked.

  Rich surveyed the fast, cold chop. “Not today.”

  “I never get to do the fun part.”

  “Water’s too strong today. Dunk you under before you yell ‘help.’ ”

  Chub took a step back, as if the creek might reach over its bank and grab him by the ankles. Rich stripped to the waist and sloshed in. He windmilled, rocks rolling underfoot. Chu
b wandered downstream, poked a rotting salmon corpse with a stick.

  Rich plunged an arm into the water, felt around for the pipe’s mouth, removed the screen, cleaned it out, and waded back. He rebuttoned his shirt and they sat on a rock and ate the cookies. Rich dug two toothpicks from his front pocket and they cleaned their teeth.

  “Let’s go take a look at the spring,” Rich said.

  The rain had finally quit. Runoff thundered down from the culvert. Together they scrambled up across the road into the upper grove. Chub hid.

  A gust washed through the canopy. “Chub?”

  “Boo!” Chub jumped out.

  Rich gave an exaggerated start, Chub’s satisfaction lasting all the way up through the tattered yellow tape still fluttering from the stakes the state archaeologists had left.

  “Why do these trees have potbellies?” Chub asked. Lark had taught him the expression, and he found it funny.

  “They’ve got burls.”

  “What are burls?”

  “You know. Tree tumors.”

  “Burl clocks.”

  “You bet.”

  “What happened to that one?” Chub asked, stopping.

  “Which?” Rich asked, and then he saw it: the gouge in the base of a big pumpkin upslope, so deep it might kill the tree, a sunken set of poorly covered tire tracks, sawdust piled at the base. Must have been ten feet wide. It took some balls to steal a burl that size. Chub stared. “Somebody cut it,” Rich explained. He needed to call Eugene, make sure he’d seen this. Keeping an eye on the grove was his job. Merle would hit the ceiling.

  Rich spotted two more poachings by the time they got to the spring. Scout flopped down, panting. Chub slung an arm over his ribs, pressed an ear to the reassuring thump of his dog heart. Rich cupped his hands and drank, belched.

  “Ready, lumberjack?” Rich squatted, letting him climb on.

  Chub squeezed the knobs of his throat. “I feel your bobber.”

  Rich coughed, tossing his head to loosen Chub’s grip. Getting too big to carry. Yesterday Rich had come home to find Colleen packing up his baby clothes to give away.

  Shouldn’t we keep some?

  What for? Colleen had demanded, though he hadn’t meant anything by it, just nostalgia for the younger Chub who’d once filled them. The list of names had vanished from her bedside.

  Chub’s warm cheek settled against his shoulder. He weighed more, asleep. When they got home, Colleen stood at the stove with a blanket around her shoulders, watching the kettle. He laid Chub in his bed.

  “You okay?” he asked, coming into the kitchen. A sticky mass the size of a cabbage sat in a mixing bowl in the sink. “What is that?” he asked.

  “Egg noodles,” she said, her voice raw. “I can’t do anything right.”

  “That’s not true.” He put his arms around her, sour scent at her nape.

  “I don’t want Chub to be an only child,” she said.

  The kettle whistled. Rich reached and turned it off. He was an only child.

  “You don’t think I can have another baby, is that why you won’t make love?”

  “Colleen. That’s not fair.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, am I not being fair?” She poured a mug of hot water and slammed the kettle back down on the burner. “Enid uncrosses her legs for two minutes and a baby pops out.” She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “Since when is life fair?”

  November 20 RICH

  Colleen combed Chub’s wet hair down into his eyes while Rich shaved.

  “Hold still,” she said. The scissors snipped, hair falling to the floor. “Where’d you get those beautiful eyebrows?” she asked Chub.

  “I got them at the eyebrow store.”

  “Okay, Grahamcracker, all done.” She went to get the broom.

  Rich ran the razor under the tap, snapped up his good shirt, and held out Chub’s yellow one. Chub shook his head.

  “It’s too tight.”

  “Mom ironed it,” Rich countered.

  Chub held out his arms in defeat, but he was right, the thing barely buttoned. Colleen sighed.

  “He’s getting so big. I’ll have to make him a new one.”

  Colleen went to get dressed. She came out in a blue halter-top dress he hadn’t seen before, her back bare, soft corduroy cinched at the waist.

  “Where’d you get that?” Rich asked.

  Colleen looked down at it. “Enid loaned it to me. Is it too skimpy? I can change.”

  “No. Looks nice.” His hand brushed her shoulder blades as he helped her into her coat.

  They had to park on the grassy shoulder and walk up the road to the Only, Chub flying across the parking lot in the sudden freedom of the cotton T-shirt Colleen had let him wear instead.

  A roar of conversation and body heat hit them as soon as they opened the door, the Only packed so tight Rich put his arm around Colleen and steered her through the crowd, Chub worming through people’s legs to get to Agnes in the kids’ corner.

  It was a tradition, company night at the Only, the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Colleen set her purse on the bar. Rich pressed in behind her, people jostling on all sides.

  “What’ll it be?” Kel asked, pouring with both hands.

  Rich held up two fingers. It was hot.

  “Can you see Chub?” Colleen asked, packed too tight to even turn around.

  Rich turned his head. “Yeah. You want to take off your coat?”

  She nodded and he helped her slip out of it, geranium scent coming with it. He piled it over his shoulder.

  Kel set two beers on the bar. The glasses were cold amid the heat of all these bodies and Colleen drank hers, foam cresting her top lip.

  “Can you still see him?” she asked.

  Rich searched out Chub. “Yep.” Her naked back pressed against him. Down the bar, men rolled the dice.

  “You made it,” Eugene said, shouldering through the crowd, doing a double take at Colleen’s dress. “Merle upped hours, thanks to you. As soon as I told him about those burls, thirty hours a week this winter, no questions asked. Said when I catch the bastards to nail them to a damn tree. I’m going to buy them a beer first. Whoever they are, they’re keeping me employed.” Eugene signaled Kel for two more. “Must be sixty grand worth of burls they poached out of Damnation Grove.” Eugene shook his head. “I almost admire the assholes.” The beers arrived and Eugene clapped Rich on the shoulder. “Kel, pour this old man another round. On me.”

  Kel changed out their empties and Colleen stopped asking about Chub. Her cheeks flushed with the alcohol. She’d told him how her mother used to get off the first shift at the cannery, glare at the clock like it had insulted her until the hands aligned at five, gin splashing into a mug. Colleen worried that itch might be in her too. She rarely drank more than half a beer in one sitting.

  A roar exploded down at the end of the bar, Lew holding the dice-roll jar up in the air like a trophy, then dumping the bills out on the bar to be counted.

  “What happened?” Colleen craned her neck, trying to turn herself around. He shifted to allow her a better view.

  “Five sixes. Lew just won the pot.”

  “Six hundred and eighty-eight bucks!” Lew yelled, holding the wad of cash in the air. He slapped it on the bar. “We’re gonna drink it!”

  Guys hooted and cheered, nobody talking about whether there’d be jobs next season, at least for one night.

  “He’s crazy,” Colleen said, smiling. It was strange, to be alone together surrounded by all this noise.

  Rich had to scoop Chub up at the end of the night; he was nearly asleep in his arms by the time they got to the truck, Colleen veering a little as she walked, waiting outside her door until Rich opened it.

  “What?” she asked, smiling, holding on to his arm as he boosted her up into the truck.

  “Nothing.”

  At the house, he put Chub to bed and came in to find Colleen topless, dress stuck around her waist. She puzzled over the zipper.

  “C
’mere,” he said, the teeth slowly unhooking until the corduroy fell around her ankles. She pulled the band from her hair and let it fall around her shoulders. He moved it aside, clearing the space behind her ear, and kissed her there, in the old spot. Once, twice.

  “That tickles,” she protested. Rain gusted against the window.

  His undershirt caught on his ear when she tried to tug it over his head. He felt colossal, her narrow body pressed into the mattress beneath him, her eyes squeezed shut, forehead creased, as though she was remembering something unpleasant.

  “Am I hurting you?” he asked, clumsy, winded after all these months.

  “No.”

  Her breathing quickened, fingernails digging into his back. She clung to him, cried out. Outside, rain drilled the roof. In the morning, the scratches on his back would burn where the shower’s hot water touched, veins of bare dirt in the driveway where gravel had been washed away.

  November 21 COLLEEN

  She heard the slam of a car door, squinted, confused by the daylight. Voices filtered through the bedroom curtains, a man talking to Rich out front. She felt a faint pulsing behind her right eyebrow and sat up. The pulse turned to pounding.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, head swimming. Out the window, the white face of a VW bus came slowly into focus. Rich stood before it, as though prognosticating over its mechanical future. She forced the window open, its damp-swollen frame resisting.

  “No kidding,” Rich said to the other man.

  Daniel. Her heart thudded. Rich tossed the rag onto the hood of his truck, beside a tin of wax, and Colleen shrank back, a splotchy heat on her chest—What’s he doing here? Their boots knocked the stoop. She pulled on clothes. The covers trailed off Chub’s bed, but his room was empty.

  “You know this guy?” Rich asked when she shuffled out into the kitchen.

  Daniel ducked his head over a steaming mug. A flush crept up her neck.

  “Colleen,” Daniel said. “Long time.” His eyes scanned the counter for cream. She saw Rich notice this, knew he considered a man adding milk to coffee a sign of weakness of character.