Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  “I need to go to the store,” Joanna said quietly.

  They wove through the bends. The girls lay across the backseat, but it felt like Colleen and Joanna were alone, the baby asleep in Joanna’s arms.

  “Jed got fired,” Joanna confided.

  “When?”

  “After that newspaper thing.”

  Sanderson has long thumbs. And long arms, people said in town.

  “What’s he going to do?” Colleen asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s at my aunt’s in Medford. He’s looking.”

  When they got to the Safeway, Joanna took out a change purse.

  “Could you hold her, while I go in?” Joanna asked, twisting for Colleen to take the baby. Joanna climbed out, careful of her belly. The girls dropped out after her. The perfume of Dot’s clothes lingered in the cab. Camber fussed.

  “It’s okay, sweet pea.” Colleen rocked her, the baby’s warm weight pressing against her chest. “You’re okay.”

  Colleen startled when Joanna climbed back in with her groceries. It felt like she’d only been gone a minute.

  “All set?” Colleen asked. It hurt her heart, to hand the baby back. She felt the sadness even after she’d dropped Joanna and the girls off at the cabin and headed back to town alone. She idled at the stop sign, deciding.

  She drove along the north side of the river, searching the brush for the turnoff, slowing a few times before she found it. She swung in. Weeds and berry canes blocked her view, branches sweeping the truck’s roof, driveway dipping downward so suddenly Colleen worried she might be driving into the river itself. Brush whipped the windows and suddenly she emerged into a flat expanse ringed by trees. A few sheds and a smokehouse were still clustered at one edge, a stone’s throw from the tidy cedar-shingle house, its new corrugated-tin roof shining. She wondered if Daniel’s mother was inside, Dolores Bywater sitting perfectly still in her tinkling white earrings, cancer spreading inside her.

  She heard a motor. The nose of Daniel’s van shot up out of the brush that hid the driveway and pulled up behind her. Daniel got out, tucking a clipboard under his arm. She rolled down her window. He looked off toward the house, scratched the back of his head.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Did you test it?” she demanded.

  He narrowed his eyes, as though he suspected this was not her real reason. “Not yet,” he said.

  “I have more.” She handed two jars out the window, but he didn’t move to take them.

  “It’d be good to get some samples this spring, when they start spraying aerially again. That’s when the levels will be highest.”

  “We got a filter,” she explained. “So I took one from there, and one regular. I labeled them. Could you test these too? Please?”

  He nodded, accepting them.

  She looked across the clearing at the house, remembering his uncle’s bookshelves lining the walls. She’d only ever seen shelves like that in the library, never in a person’s house. The uncle, when she’d met him, was gruff and serious like any other fisherman, speaking to Daniel in a way that sounded clipped, even in a language Colleen couldn’t understand. As though he knew the album of recipes with the red and white checkered cover was the only book in her mother’s house, and that Colleen would grow up to keep no books in her own. Aside from a few cookbooks and bedtime stories, he had been right.

  Outside her window, Daniel cleared his throat, shifted the clipboard to his other arm.

  Colleen fumbled for her purse. The list was in her pocketbook, shoved behind her driver’s license: a yellow square. She watched him unfold it.

  “That’s every birth I’ve been at in the last six years where something wasn’t right.” Her eyes slid to the clipboard. “I don’t know if they’ll sign, but they won’t shoot you.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, half joke, half question, one last chance to back out.

  She wasn’t sure, but there they were, ten names, already in his hand.

  January 28 COLLEEN

  Light filtered through the curtains, nightstand littered with bloody tissues. The rocker dipped on its runners when she pulled her sweater off the back.

  Eugene stood in the kitchen, shoveling in hotcakes. Rich tipped the pan by the handle. Butter sizzled, batter slicking to the side. The kids sat at the table, their plates sticky ponds of syrup. Colleen kissed the top of Chub’s head.

  “There’s sleeping beauty,” Eugene said, as though he had nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Who wants more?” Rich asked, flipping silver dollars onto plates. He slathered an unclaimed cake with jam and folded it into his mouth before he and Eugene disappeared up the hill with their saws. She finished the dishes, the kids migrating to the living room, petting the brass rabbit.

  “Are you sick, Aunt Colleen?” Agnes asked, her lazy eye lolling.

  “No.”

  “Your hair’s messy.”

  “So is yours.”

  She undid Agnes’s barrette, swept up her bangs—how natural it felt, to fix a little girl’s hair. She sent them out to play. They flapped Scout’s ears as though trying to figure out how he was sewn together, features twisting shut when he licked their faces. Alone in the house, Colleen dozed, startling when Eugene and Rich came in, shrugging off the cold.

  “You keep driving that bitch around, people are going to start wondering whose side you’re on,” Eugene said, dropping onto the couch.

  “Don’t call her that,” Colleen snapped.

  “You don’t pull that shit on Sanderson and get away with it. Merle—”

  “Merle can go to hell,” Colleen said. “And so can you, letting a baby get sprayed with that poison.”

  She went out the back door. Scout lifted his head. She was shaking. She rubbed her nose, loosing a rusty fleck—it had bled off and on since yesterday. She heard Eugene around front, calling the kids, then his truck sputtering away. Rich came out the back door.

  “They’re gone,” he told her.

  “He’s a coward,” she said.

  “He may be,” Rich acknowledged. “But he’s not wrong.”

  January 29 RICH

  Lark sat on the throne he’d carved out of a stump the size of a kitchen table, fishing, saw cane leaned up against one side, rifle cane on the other. Rich sidestepped down the bank, toothache radiating, and looked out at the water.

  “What happened to you?” Lark asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Yeah, looks like nothing.”

  Rich nudged the bucket with his toe. A few lampreys sloshed around, dead or close to it.

  “I knew a guy got an abscess off a sore tooth once. Ate the brain right out of his head.”

  “You been talking to Colleen?” Rich tongued his gum, rot so strong it soured his stomach.

  Lark shook his head. “Keep going like you’re going, I’ll have to take you around back and shoot you.” He reeled in empty.

  Rich picked up a handful of rocks and skipped one across the river.

  “Yancy’s old man was a hell of a shot,” Lark said after a while. “I seen him hit a cherry pit at a hundred yards once, drunk off his ass.”

  “What happened to him?” Rich asked.

  “Mainline snapped. Cable cut through his neck like hot wire through a slug. Pretty ugly, but it was quick.” Lark wrinkled his nose at the memory. “Man alive, could he snore. One-man dogfight—shook the whole damn bunkhouse.”

  “What made you think of that?”

  Lark held out a cherry, spat a stone. “Marsha thinks I’ll get scurvy. How’s that alder coming?”

  “Grows back about as fast as I fall it.” Rich thumbed the scabbed gash in his forehead, itching now that the skin was tightening up, healing.

  Lark recast, hook plopping short, below the riffle. A throttle in the distance.

  “What the hell does he want?” Lark asked. “Hear that piece-of-shit Chevy from the Oregon line.”

  Eugene’s truck burst through the brush.

&
nbsp; “You sonofabitch,” Eugene yelled, hopping out and charging down the bank. “Nice toilets,” he said to Lark. “I got to get me some of those.” Eugene turned on Rich. “You goddamn Weyerhaeuser. You bought that ridge?” Eugene swiped a Tab off the ground, popped it, grimaced at the taste, like he’d expected beer. “You sneaky bastard.” Eugene shook his head in jealous admiration. “You believe this guy? Whole 24-7. He owns it.”

  “I heard,” Lark said.

  “You heard?” Eugene turned to Rich. “I ask Merle what the odds are on Damnation Grove, he says ask you, you’re the one’s going to bring it home for us; you got your whole damn future riding on it. Made me look like a jackass.”

  “Since when do you need any help looking like a jackass?” Lark asked.

  Eugene ignored him, crumpled Tab can smacking Rich lightly in the back. Eugene toed the bucket of lampreys. “What’s with the eels?”

  “Stick around, we’ll fry them up,” Lark offered.

  “No thanks. Damn you, Gundersen.” Eugene shook his head as though realizing he’d come all this way just to say that. “Well, you know where to find me when the time comes.” He turned to Lark. “You know Rich needs a good hooker.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  Eugene loped up the steps to his truck.

  Rich shot Lark a look. “Oh, you ‘heard,’ huh?”

  “What? I got big ears,” Lark said.

  “Big mouth too.”

  “Set ’em straight at that hearing,” Eugene called out his window. “And we’re back in business!”

  Rich grabbed the bucket by the handle.

  “Lampreys used to be thicker than maggots on a dead dog around here,” Lark said.

  “Little far upriver for an ocean eel, isn’t it?” Rich asked.

  “I pulled a sturgeon the size of a man out of this river once.” Lark took up his canes. “That kid come to see you?”

  “What kid?”

  “Dolores’s boy. College type we seen out by the grove.”

  “Yeah.” Rich switched the bucket to his good arm.

  Lark hobbled up the dirt drive. “What the hell good is a petition on private property? Hell, you can pour strychnine down your well if you own it.”

  “You sign it?” Rich asked.

  Lark farted with his lips. “Not worth the paper it’s written on.” He tilted his head, listening. “Aw hell. What does a guy have to do to get a little peace and quiet around here, die?”

  Sure enough, after a minute, Marsha’s car came trundling along the rutted two-track. Rich moved aside to let her pass, but Lark kept walking up the middle of the driveway.

  “Quit riding my ass.” He whacked her bumper with his cane.

  Marsha veered at the fork, got out, and beat Lark up the stairs, like it was a race.

  She peered into Rich’s bucket. “You want me to cook these, you kill them first.”

  Lark settled himself in a chair. Marsha went inside without wiping her feet.

  “Hey, can’t you read?” Lark called after her.

  “Why can’t you just keep the door closed? It’s cold in here,” she called back. She brought out a knife, stopping to read the doormat. “Come back with a warrant? You’re lucky I come back at all, the way you smell. You’d be eating cold baked beans for all three meals.”

  “Baked beans are better cold,” Lark grumped.

  Rich whacked the eels’ heads against a porch pole, slinging guts across the yard. The dogs stretched, arched their backs, and moseyed over. The hog got wind and lumbered up, snuffling.

  “You better watch it falling asleep out here,” Rich said. “That hog’ll eat you.” He ducked through the doorway with the eels. “Where do you want these?”

  “Table’s fine. You been smoking in here?” Marsha called out to Lark. “You heard that doctor.”

  Lark grumbled, stirring, like if walking were easier, he’d have gotten up and left.

  Grease crackled. Marsha brought out a plate, breaded eels shiny with lard. Lark picked one up by the tail.

  “You’re the only one who eats these,” she said.

  “Yurok eat them. Karuk too.” Lark drew his lips back from his gums at the heat.

  “Who got you in the habit?” Marsha asked.

  Lark coughed. “My wife.”

  “She was from here?” Marsha asked.

  “Upriver.” Lark reached for another. “That’s what ‘Karuk’ means—‘upriver people.’ But she grew up down here… Her grandma was washing one day—army was around then. Soldier come along, got some ideas. She brained the bastard with a rock. Come down here to hide. This was a good place to disappear in those days.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  Lark smiled. “Fishing.” He squinted, aiming a light down the long, dark tunnel of his memory. “She’d start yelling at me in her language. Hell, I didn’t know what she was carrying on about. Never argued when there was a rock in arm’s reach though, tell you that much.”

  “She pretty?” Marsha asked.

  “You bet your ass.”

  “How come I’ve never seen a picture?”

  Lark snuffed his nose on the back of his hand, as though to stop the rest of the story from leaking out. “Flood took care of all that.”

  January 31 RICH

  A horn blared. Rich tilted his head back on the pillow in the dark. “Who is it?”

  Colleen went to the window. “Who do you think?”

  “Rich!” Eugene bellowed, gave a two-fingered whistle. Scout barked. “Gundersen!”

  Rich felt his way into the hall. Eugene swung the front door open so hard it banged the wall.

  “Let’s go!” Eugene yelled, flipping on the lights.

  “Go where?” Rich blinked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Wait ’til you see it!” Eugene’s boots were caked with mud, but he came forward on Colleen’s clean carpet as if it were his own front lawn.

  “See what?” Rich asked.

  “Rich?” Colleen asked, a hand on Chub’s head. Chub rubbed his eyes.

  “Come on, all of you.” Eugene flailed his arm. “Before Harvey tapes it off.”

  Rich cleared phlegm. “Let me get some clothes on.”

  Eugene went back out. They heard him pacing on the gravel.

  “What do you think?” Colleen asked.

  “Who knows,” Rich said. Who the hell knew what Eugene had gone and done now?

  “It’s a school night.” Colleen herded Chub into his room. Rich heard her getting him dressed.

  Rich tugged on yesterday’s denims, picked the alarm clock off the nightstand, squinted: 4:34—sleeping in, old man—and ducked out into the hall. Colleen led Chub by the hand, his slicker zipped to his chin.

  “The roads are fucked,” Eugene said. “Faster to walk.”

  Chub yawned. Rich stifled one of his own. He squatted for Chub to climb onto his back, let Scout off his chain, and followed the cone of Eugene’s flashlight up the hill behind the house.

  “Where’s Mama?” Chub asked. Rich looked back at Colleen’s bobbing flashlight, his headlamp casting ferns into relief.

  “She’s coming.”

  From the top of 24-7 Ridge, he spotted a wash of red and blue light pulsing in the mist. He took a step down, center of gravity shifting, caught himself, pounded downslope toward the swollen creek, Chub’s small body thumping like a pack. He loped upstream a few yards, looking for the best spot to cross, then waded in, water hip-deep. Scout bumped against Rich’s haunch, paddling furiously beside him. Rich set Chub down on the other side, then went back for Colleen until all three of them stood at the edge of the lower grove, on the farthest toe of company property. Scout shook. Damnation Creek thundered. Harsh pockets of gasoline fumes hung in the air. His headlamp slashed the dark, a spray of fresh sawdust, then a lens clicked one notch to the right and the whole side rushed at him in crisp focus: stumps, big pumpkins busted where they’d fallen, a sloppy maze of ruined timber. The ground was a muddy pulp of tire tracks and o
verturned boulders, a steep drop-off where the hillside had given way under the weight of the Cats.

  “What the—?” Rich asked. He hauled Chub up onto his back again.

  Colleen scraped mud off her boots on the sharp edge of a smashed rock. A laugh rang out. She started up toward it.

  “Colleen,” Rich called after her. “Colleen!” The downed logs were the size of school buses, but they could still roll. He counted five, ten, fifteen stumps, following her up.

  A beam of flashlight, then Harvey’s hat in the mist. “Rich?”

  Rich shielded his eyes. Scout climbed up ahead of him, Rich emerging onto the road to find Colleen already facing Eugene, flanked by the Sanderson kid, Lyle, a few guys from Bill’s crew Rich recognized from the crummy, a dozen others he didn’t. Even dropping the big pumpkins cold—no fall beds, no nothing, using the buckets of Cats to lift guys into the air instead of driving in spring boards, not caring how many other monsters the trees knocked down like dominos when they tipped—it must have taken them all night. At least two dozen big pumpkins lay wasted, millions of dollars in timber massacred so badly Sanderson would be lucky to salvage a quarter—it was criminal. Merle must have really backed himself into a corner if this was the last trick he had to force the board’s hand. Rich could hear him now. Those trees are down, boys. No use fighting over spilt milk. In the dawn light, the men’s eyes were bowls of shadow.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Colleen demanded. “You just do whatever they tell you?”

  “Works out pretty good for you, sugar. You sure you didn’t put us up to it?” Eugene turned to Rich. “Have to approve those harvest plans now. No use letting good timber go to waste. Roads are coming to you, Gundersen. Lay that 24-7 down, you can practically roll her onto the truck.”

  “All you care about is money and you still can’t poach enough to feed your own family,” Colleen snapped.

  Eugene did a phony one-two, bouncing like a boxer, getting too close. Scout bared his teeth, growling.

  “You think this is funny?” Colleen shoved Eugene, Scout snapping at his shins, and he fell backward, slung mud off his hand. Rich stepped between them. Eugene showed both palms: I’m fine and Get the fuck away from me.