by Ash Davidson
“You two went to school together,” Rich said, repeating the explanation Daniel must have given him. Rich’s eyes lingered on her. She wished he would wrap his arms around her, hold her as he had last night, send Daniel away, but instead he went back to pouring coffee.
“Had a heck of a time finding this place,” Daniel said.
“Keeps the Bible salesmen away.” Rich turned, holding two more mugs.
“Why aren’t you at work?” she asked, her throat parched.
“Too muddy. Don called it.”
“For the season?”
“For the day.” Rich tipped his head toward the front room.
She sat in the straight-backed chair, the men settling onto opposite ends of the couch. Her hands trembled. She set her mug on a coaster. Rich sipped the top off his coffee, a slurp in the uncomfortable silence.
“You still do these things?” Daniel asked, studying the abandoned crossword pinned beneath the burl bowl, hole in its upper left corner. She’d forgotten it was there. “I remember this lamp.”
Rich looked at the brass rabbit, then at her. She felt herself turning red. Stop it, she wanted to hiss, though Rich couldn’t know that she and Daniel had knocked the lamp over once, fooling around in her rented room. Daniel turned to examine the painted saw.
The old crosscut had hung there every day of her married life: handles worn smooth, teeth resharpened so many times the points tapered to paper thinness. Some of the color had gone out of the red barn, and the emerald forest had dulled, as though the sun had set in the painting, a scene that had once taken place in late morning, the promise of a day ahead, passing into the low light of dusk.
“You a fish doctor for the tribe?” Rich asked Daniel. Rich gave everybody a chance. It was one of the things she loved most about him.
“No. I’m doing a postdoc. Fisheries biology.”
Rich nodded. “You all have the right to gill-net now, since that Supreme Court deal.”
“On the reservation we do. It’s Indian Country. We have federally reserved fishing rights,” Daniel explained.
Colleen saw the squint in the corners of Rich’s eyes, struggling to follow. “I hear some of the commercial guys aren’t too happy about it.”
“No, they’re not,” Daniel admitted. “Sports fishers aren’t either.”
“No more sneaking around at night,” Rich said.
“Still a long way to go,” Daniel replied, glancing at Colleen. “Between the dams, the logging, and the stuff they’re spraying—”
“Where you out of?” Rich asked. It wasn’t like him to interrupt.
“I’m working with a lab at Humboldt State for the year. You ever make it down to Arcata?”
Rich grunted. “Too many to-fu shops for my taste.”
“I hear you.” Daniel dug a mint from his pocket, offered it. Rich watched him unwrap it.
“Where’s Chub?” she asked suddenly.
Rich and Daniel turned, as though they’d forgotten she was there.
“Out back.” Rich took another audible sip. “What kind of fish work you do exactly?” More questions than Colleen had heard out of Rich in a year.
“Research, mostly.”
“You like to fish?”
“My uncle took me as a kid. You?”
“Sure. When I was younger. Used to be you could walk across some of these creeks—whole thing was fish. That what brings you up our way?” Rich asked.
“You could say that.” Daniel took a breath. It occurred to Colleen that he was nervous. “I’ve been taking some samples from your creek.”
Colleen shifted, her eyes darting toward the kitchen, the jam jars hidden in the cabinet.
“From all the creeks around here, actually,” Daniel explained. “The whole watershed.”
Rich tilted his head back. Daniel leaned in to close the distance.
“There are very high levels of two phenoxy herbicides—2,4-D and 2,4,5-T—in the surface water. They’re common defoliants they use around here. I can give you some literature—”
“Literature.” Rich set his mug on the burl table, beside the coaster, as though the moment for such petty precaution had passed.
“These herbicides they’re spraying—not just Sanderson, the Forest Service, the county too—it’s the same ingredients as Agent Orange, and they’re contaminated with TCDD, dioxin. They’re toxic, not just for plants, for animals”—Daniel glanced at Colleen—“and for people. They started spraying them in the fifties, and all this time they’ve been bioaccumulating, building up in the fish, in the deer, you eat the deer—”
“I’m going to have to stop you there, Mr.—”
“Daniel.”
Rich stood.
“It runs off into the water. Whatever they spray ends up right there in your coffee mug.” Daniel set his mug down.
“Sorry you can’t take that for the road,” Rich said, opening the front door.
“It’s nasty stuff. We’re talking birth defects, cancers.” Daniel’s eyes slid to Colleen. “There’s a cluster of miscarriages up in Oregon. They’ll tell you it’s safe, it’s safe. It only kills weeds. If they told you there was a safe kind of bullet, would you let them shoot your little boy in the head? I’ve seen your intake pipe. You might as well pour the stuff straight into your tank. There’s a petition you can sign. Look, I’m sorry. I know that—”
Rich shook his head. “You don’t know.” He held the door ajar.
“You’re private people, Mr. Gundersen. You mind your own business. I understand.” Daniel rose. His eyes tracked to Colleen and back. “But if it were me, I’d want to know.”
“You’ve got no right trespassing,” Rich said.
“Sanderson—”
“24-7 Ridge, down to Damnation Creek, is ours.”
Colleen frowned. It wasn’t like Rich to lie. A current of worry ran through her. What if Daniel wouldn’t leave? Would he say more?
“That’s our land,” Rich insisted, his voice tight. “We don’t want you on it.”
Daniel shot her a questioning look.
“Stop looking at my wife,” Rich said. “She’s got nothing to say to you either.”
“Mr. Gundersen, I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“You didn’t,” Rich said, standing beside the open door.
Daniel scooted the burl bowl a little to the right and tapped the blank spot in the crossword underneath. “Yens,” he said, and went out. Desires. Four letters. Starts with a Y.
Rich shut the door. Colleen’s heart pounded in time with her head.
“Shouldn’t have let him in,” Rich said.
“Why did you lie?” she asked.
Rich looked at her.
“About owning that land,” she prodded.
Rich dropped his eyes. “I was going to tell you,” he said.
“Tell me what?”
“I bought it.”
“Bought it?”
Rich swallowed. “I was going to tell you.”
“When?” Her raised voice reverberated inside her skull, her fear that Daniel would expose her, that Rich would find out what she’d done, still rattling her.
“Sanderson is going to put roads all the way down into the lower grove, to the creek.” He leaned over, drawing a map on the burl table with his finger. “We can use those to haul the timber out. I already talked to Merle about it. The old-growth alone will pay it off; we’ll make back four times what I owe in the first year. It’s seven hundred and twenty acres. The whole 24-7 Ridge.”
“How much was it?” Colleen asked.
Rich sighed and stood up. “You know this place isn’t ours, Colleen.” He flung his arm out, as though he could sweep aside the walls of the living room and see out. “We’ve got twenty-five years, or until you and me die, then the land goes to the park. Chub can’t inherit it. They’ll knock the house down. It doesn’t convey.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“We could move the house up. Onto the east side of
24-7 Ridge, once I get it cleared. It’s not that steep. It’d be dirt, up to No Name Road, but at least you wouldn’t have to drive the highway anymore. Or—” Rich cleared his throat. “We could buy a place in town, if you wanted.”
She knew he hated the idea of living in town, hemmed in by neighbors, cut off from his woods.
“How much did it cost?”
“A lot.” Rich rubbed the toe of his boot in the carpet, like he was crushing a cigarette.
“Rich, I’m your wife. I have a right to know.”
“I wasn’t sure the bank would even lend to me,” Rich said. “A thirty-year loan, at my age.”
He crouched beside her—his knee hurt him too much to get down on it. He took her hand, traced a slow circle in her palm. “I signed the papers in August.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“You never tell me anything.” Her throbbing head was making her sick to her stomach. “Sometimes I wonder why you married me.”
“Colleen.”
“Don’t,” she snapped, though she didn’t move. “What if it’s true?”
“What if what’s true?” Rich asked.
“What if it is poison, what they’re spraying—” What if all the babies she’d lost, what if it wasn’t anything she’d done wrong? What if there was a reason beyond Just bad luck. It just wasn’t the right time. As if bad luck were a medical diagnosis.
“They’ve been spraying that stuff for twenty years.” Rich dismissed the idea. “Spray right over us when we’re cutting. Turns your eyes red for a day or two, that’s all.”
“But Lark has all those cancers.”
“He smokes like a chimney.”
“What about Helen? Or Melody? Or Elyse. Or Joanna’s chicks? What about—?” Me, she wanted to ask. What about me? She was crying now, braying sobs that made it hard to breathe.
“A chicken’s not a person, Colleen,” Rich said once she quieted. Her glasses were fogged. He took them off and began, slowly, to clean the lenses.
“If we own that land, couldn’t you ask them not to spray near us?” she asked.
Rich snorted, slid the glasses back onto her face. “If Merle ever found out we even talked to that guy, he’d make sure no mill between here and Canada would touch the 24-7. He’d put us out of business before we ever got started.”
“Mama!” Chub pushed in the back door. Colleen sniffed, wiped her eyes.
“That stuff is approved by the government,” Rich said, as though arguing with himself. “Why would they approve something if it wasn’t safe?”
“Ma-ma!”
“In here,” Colleen called.
“That guy could be making it all up,” Rich said.
“But what if he isn’t?”
“Scout ate a mole!” Chub shrieked, a streak of mud across his forehead.
“What if he isn’t?” she asked, sharper.
Rich bent over and kissed the top of her head, the way he might a child’s. He would have been a good father to their daughter. Patient, fair, forgiving.
“I’ve got chores,” he said, and ducked out the front door.
“What if he isn’t what?” Chub asked.
“What if he isn’t what-what, Grahamcracker?” she teased.
Chub climbed into her lap. “I heard its bones crack.”
“Yuck.”
“It was blind so it couldn’t see him. It just felt his big wet nose.”
She licked her finger, rubbed dirt off his cheek. Outside, firewood clattered, Rich’s blows coming one after the other. He’d pay for it later. She’d have to take off her socks and walk the knobby ridge of his spine.
“I’m thirsty,” Chub said.
“Scooch.” She tipped him out of her lap and he padded after her into the kitchen. “What do you want? Milk?” She took a glass from the drying rack.
“I’m really, really thirsty.”
She glanced out the back window at the tank shed.
“Juice?” She filled the glass to the rim.
Chub picked it up with both hands, orange pith floating at the surface, like he couldn’t believe his good fortune. A whole glass, undiluted.
“Not so fast, you’ll get a bellyache.”
Chub tilted his head back, tongue waggling in the empty glass.
“Better?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.” He caught his breath, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
She rinsed the glass, washing away the cloudy film, letting it fill and spill over. She dried her hands, but she still felt a residue where the water had touched. She had the urge to wash them again, to wash the water off.
November 22 CHUB
Chub bounced in place, wishing for his dad to come. Luke sat on the school’s low wall behind him, swinging his legs. The heels of Luke’s sneakers thunked the bricks. All day Luke had lied and now he felt bad. He’d been absent for eleven days. He said a water balloon had exploded out of his mom’s privates. He said his baby brother came out with the top of his head missing, that his brain got eaten.
Is she going to die? bossy Linda had asked, which had confused Chub because the baby was a he. Well? Linda asked, tall and a bully, the biggest kid in their class. Is she?
Luke had shrugged. Suddenly Chub understood she was Luke’s mom.
Maybe. Luke’s face had fallen, like he hadn’t realized she could die until he’d said it.
Then bossy Linda had pushed Luke and shouted Liar! and they’d run. Like a dying mother was a cootie anyone could catch.
Chub shivered. They weren’t allowed to sit on the wall, but there were no teachers to tell Luke to get off. Luke’s heels thunked the bricks guiltily. There was a stink coming from his lunch box—browned apple, baloney, soggy bread—as if his guilt had a smell.
“Is somebody coming to get you?” Ms. Schafer asked. She was young and smiled more than the other teachers. She wore her coat and carried a big bag.
“My dad.” Chub took a step away from Luke to show they weren’t together. His mom had nothing to do with Luke’s mom and her exploding privates.
“What about you, Luke, honey?”
“My dad.” Luke stopped swinging his feet.
“Of course,” Ms. Schafer said kindly, like she knew his mom was going to die. “Is there a phone at your house?”
Luke nodded.
“If he doesn’t come soon, you go inside and call. Mrs. Porter is still in the office.”
Fog swirled behind her station wagon. Now the parking lot was empty, except for one blue car. Luke’s front tooth dangled by a thread. He twisted it, his heels drumming the bricks.
“Did he have any hair?” Chub asked, which no one had asked during recess, or at lunch, or during library time.
Luke stopped twisting his tooth. “No.”
Chub backed into the wall and boosted himself up beside Luke, careful not to let their legs touch.
“Are you sad?” Chub asked.
Luke’s chin crumpled. He nodded. He stopped swinging his feet. Chub heard a rattling behind them, and even though it was coming from inside, he hoped it was Luke’s dad coming to pick him up first. But it was only Mr. Jorgensen, the janitor, pushing the rolling mop bucket down the hall. Tears rolled down Luke’s cheeks. Chub wished an adult would come give Luke a tissue and take him to wash his face in the bathroom. He kicked his own heels against the wall, trying to make Luke start again. Luke sniffled.
“Your mom’s not going to die,” Chub said.
“How do you know?”
“Off that wall, boys,” Mrs. Porter commanded. She nudged the wooden triangle loose with the toe of her tan old-lady shoe. The door banged shut.
“Both of you,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They trudged across the parking lot.
“My mom had a tiny baby that died,” Chub said. “But my mom didn’t die.”
Luke didn’t say anything, but Chub could tell he was listening.
“She was sad, but she didn�
�t die.”
Mrs. Porter opened her back door. Luke climbed in first. Mrs. Porter’s car smelled. The woolly fog was so thick, if Chub stuck his hand out the window, he could pull long white beards of it from the air.
“Look.” Luke reached his fist across the seat. He waited for Chub to cup his hands, then dropped the tooth in, slippery and warm, still alive.
COLLEEN
Helen and Carl lived in the glen, in a small, neat-kept house built after the Christmas flood washed out the old bridge, tore through two mills, and sailed most of the original glen houses downriver, like the whole neighborhood had decided to float away in a parade. Colleen hadn’t been inside since the year she delivered Luke, but as soon as she stepped out of the truck, she remembered how open and exposed it felt compared to the woods, houses one on top of the other in the clearing, river hidden behind the grassy wall of the earthen dyke.
Carl was a hard worker and it showed: house freshly painted, an add-on room—making space for the baby. Vegetables spilled over railroad-tie beds. The raised red fists of roses reached skyward with the showy confidence of people who owned their house and the land it was built on.
A meaty aroma rose off the pan of stroganoff, still warm. She’d heard the hushed voices of the mothers who had stopped by the hospital to gawk. Awful. I almost fainted. Her throat tightened at the memory of Melody Larson’s baby, the thrum of his little hummingbird heart—it was easier than thinking about her own. She closed the gate and the front door opened, as though connected by a string. She held the pan higher, barricading herself.
“Colleen?” Daniel asked, holding the screen door behind him to keep it from slapping.
“We—we signed up,” Colleen stammered, handles of the casserole dish suddenly slick. What was he doing here?
He stepped off the pavers onto the grass, a bruise at his hairline, like he’d walked into the corner of something. His swollen lip looked tender as a plum. The stroganoff dipped in her hands, suddenly heavier.
“Smells good.” He inhaled, then squinted upward. “You know, scratch a little gray off that sky, it might be blue.” He showed the slot between his front teeth, skin wan with the salt of dried sweat. A fleck of fresh blood showed at the corner of his mouth. He saw her notice it, touched the spot.