Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  Scout was barking now, lunging as though to drive Eugene back. Rich held up a hand and Scout stopped, trotted back to his side. Men’s eyes darted from the dog to him.

  “We did you a favor.” Eugene spat.

  “We never asked you—” Colleen said.

  “You never asked.” Eugene looked to Rich.

  “Harvey, aren’t you going to arrest them?” Colleen demanded. Guys shifted, a few tipping their heads back, ready to fight.

  “Yeah, Harvey,” Eugene said.

  Rich touched her arm. She shrugged him off. Chub dug his fingernails into Rich’s neck.

  “Hey, Harvey, remind me,” Eugene asked, “what day is it today?”

  Harvey consulted his wristwatch. “January thirty-first.”

  “January thirty-first,” Eugene said. “Well, how about that.”

  “What’s January thirty-first?” Colleen asked, searching Rich’s face. He gave a little shake of his head. No idea.

  “I’ll give you a ride home,” Harvey offered.

  Colleen snorted, backed up, turned.

  “Colleen,” Harvey called after her. “Don’t go walking through there!” He shook his head at Rich. “Roll some of those logs over with one finger.”

  “Tell Colleen she can thank me later,” Eugene said.

  “Tell her yourself.”

  “I ain’t scared of her.”

  “That’s one of us.”

  “See, that’s the problem, Rich.” Eugene smacked mud off his pants. “That right there is the problem.”

  * * *

  Chub’s cold fingers played up and down Rich’s throat, timber creaking, Colleen’s fury gusting like her own wind. Rich stumbled after Scout, Chub strangling him to hang on. When they got to the house, Eugene’s truck was still parked out front. Rich clipped Scout back onto his chain, pulled Chub’s boots off first, then, with an effort that brought a flush to his face, his own. The bronze rabbit’s ears stood rigid, listening. Down the hall: the rush of the shower.

  Rich cleaned ash out of the woodstove, teepeed kindling.

  “You know how tall the 24-7 tree is?” Rich asked Chub, holding up a match. “This here is me.” Rich crouched beside him, stood the match on the floor, a man in miniature, as his own father had done. “Now, see the top of the doorway there?” Together, they looked up. He couldn’t summon his father’s face with any clarity, but he could still see that match, its candy head. Rich struck the match, held the flame to newsprint until it caught.

  “Is there poison in our water?” Chub asked.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Pancakes?” Colleen asked from the hall, towel turbaned around her hair. In the kitchen, eggs rang against the metal lip of a mixing bowl. He closed the damper. Chub lay down on the couch.

  “Did you know?” she demanded when Rich came into the kitchen.

  “Of course not.”

  “They think they can get away with anything. That dirt and whatever they spray on it will wash right down into the creek now. It’s not right.”

  “Right. Not right. It’s done.” Rich sighed. “The past isn’t a knot you can untie.”

  She clattered the skillet onto the stove.

  “What?” he asked.

  She turned and he saw: Colleen in that hospital bed, listing all the things she’d done wrong. If only she’d rested more, kept her feet elevated, if only, if only. It’s not your fault, he’d said. The past isn’t a knot you can untie.

  Rich sighed. “I didn’t mean—I’ve got a lot on my mind, Colleen. I don’t see what I can do to fix it now, anyway.”

  “I’m not asking you to fix it. But would it kill you to just take my side for once? Why can’t you just be on my side?” She was waiting for him to say it—I am on your side.

  “Colleen. Come on. You know it’s not that simple.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said.

  February 4 CHUB

  Wyatt dropped down from the tree with the nest in his hands: three bluish-white eggs, small as candies. Chub felt the strange urge to pop one in his mouth.

  “No touchy.” Wyatt elbowed him.

  Chub followed him over the soggy ground, big burls wrapped in blue tarps at the side of the trailer house. They turned the corner by the chopping block, Aunt Enid knee-deep in a mountain of firewood, more cut wood than Chub had ever seen at Fort Eugene. She tossed a stick onto the pile nearest them.

  “What are you doing?” Chub asked.

  “Sorting. The ends are different colors, see?” Aunt Enid held two sticks next to each other. “This one’s light. Here, let’s find…” She rooted around for another. “Here, this one’s medium.”

  Wyatt crossed his eyes, like Aunt Enid was retarded. A gold car came struggling down the muddy hump into the driveway. The door opened and Agnes spilled out.

  “That one of yours?” Mr. Sanderson asked, getting out. His purple hair was combed back to cover his bald spot.

  Chub crawled inside the empty washer-dryer box, hiding, a squeeze of excitement as Agnes walked by.

  “So they tell me,” Aunt Enid said.

  “Found her by the turnoff, hunting frogs. Not shy of strangers.”

  “Should she be?” Aunt Enid crossed her arms.

  “Make you sick what some people will try to get away with.” Mr. Sanderson stared at the blue tarps. “These are all off Damnation?” he asked. “That grove’s a goddamn goldmine. Where is he?”

  “Doing his rounds.”

  “He comes back, tell him I’ve got a buyer waiting on him.”

  Chub peered through a crack in the box, watching Mr. Sanderson get back in his car and drive off. He twisted a stick, boring a peephole through the cardboard, then another.

  * * *

  “Chub?” He hadn’t heard his mom’s truck, but there it was in the yard now. She frowned. “Where’s your coat?”

  “Inside.”

  “Go get it, please.”

  When he came back, his mom was talking to Aunt Enid, who stood admiring her stacking job.

  “You’re just going to burn it,” his mom said.

  “So? You see it, Chub?” Aunt Enid asked.

  He stared at the wall of wood. At first, he saw nothing, then two light circles with brown cores, two big eyes staring out.

  “It’s an owl.” Chub walked toward it, the face disappearing as he got close.

  “See?” Aunt Enid smiled. “You heard Last Chance slid out?”

  “Again?” his mom asked.

  “Worse than last time. All that rain.”

  “That whole road is going,” his mom said.

  Chub pushed his jacket onto the truck seat and climbed in after it. “Where are we going?”

  “Home,” she said. “Where else would we go?”

  February 5 COLLEEN

  She flipped it back and forth in her mind, watching Rich work through his eggs. His cheaters slid down to the end of his nose.

  MASSACRE AT DAMNATION GROVE! the newspaper headline shouted, photo of an old-growth tree busted into pieces taking up half the front page.

  “Unknown vandals,” Rich announced, skimming Merle’s quotes. “ ‘We’ve been trying to do this the right way, following the laws. We’ve had to let a lot of guys go, waiting. I guess somebody got tired of it.’ ”

  Rich cleared his throat.

  “Two human skulls whose discovery in Upper Damnation Grove last fall halted two proposed timber harvest plans have been determined to have originated from another location. The skulls, locals speculate, may have been planted to delay the contested harvest of old-growth redwoods in one of the largest remaining unprotected virgin stands in the area, near Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park.”

  Rich took off his cheaters. It had poured for days. Their creek line had stopped running and now their tank was nearly empty. Rich said part of the lower grove had slid out—with the trees down and the ground torn up, there was nothing left to hold the dirt in place—and Damnation Creek was backed up. It would take weeks for it to
get itself flowing again. If they wanted running water, they’d have to clear the mud themselves.

  “Eugene’s poaching burls.” There, she’d said it.

  “About the one thing he could poach.” Rich smeared a potato around in yolk.

  “I’m serious. Chub saw him. Plus there must be fifty cords of firewood. He’s just helping himself.”

  Rich shook his head, like he didn’t believe her.

  “There’s a new washer-dryer,” she said. “And a new TV.”

  “Maybe they got them on credit.”

  “What credit? Rich, he could go to jail.”

  She’d thought she’d feel better once she told him, but she felt worse.

  You’ve only got one sister, Mom used to say when she and Enid fought. Both of you. Remember that.

  “It keeps raining, we’ll need a backhoe,” Rich said, setting his plate in the sink.

  Colleen slid sandwiches into a canvas bag. Rich carried the shovels and both sets of waders. Scout, let loose, rocketed up the path. Chub slipped his hand into hers.

  I. Love. You, she squeezed.

  When they crested 24-7 Ridge, Colleen gasped. The steep slope of the lower grove, company timber a mess of giant pickup sticks, had slid out into the creek, damming it just upstream of their intake pipe. Water had backed up into a brown lake, runoff slapping the surface like faucets running into a tub.

  “Looks worse than it is,” Rich said. “We cut a channel, gravity will take care of the rest.”

  “What happened?” Chub asked.

  “Just water being water.” Rich started down, sidestepping. Chub ran ahead.

  “Chub, no running with sticks,” Colleen called.

  Chub stopped at the edge, watching Scout wade in to his belly.

  “How deep is it?” she asked.

  Rich got his waders on. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  There was a divot in hers, where Rich had patched the hole.

  “Chub, you’re our lookout,” Rich said. “Climb on up there.”

  Chub scrambled back up the ridge-side to a rock outcropping.

  “Farther,” Rich called. “Good. Now, when the water starts pouring, you shout, okay? Call Scout.”

  “Scou-out.”

  Scout raised his head from a decomposing salmon carcass and shot uphill.

  “Hang on to him.”

  Rich walked out onto the exposed gravel bed, slung the point of his shovel into the wall of the mud dam. Colleen looked back at Chub, perched on the hill, holding Scout’s collar.

  “You’re sure it’s done?” she asked.

  “Hasn’t moved in two days.”

  “Rich—”

  “Go up there and spot me, will you?”

  Colleen leaned her shovel against a tree and clambered uphill. He speared the shovel’s point into the mud. For a while he seemed to make no progress, sinking it, pulling it toward him, until finally he broke through. The lake poured out at his feet like water from a pitcher.

  Chub yelled.

  Rich raised his shovel in both hands.

  “Rich!” she shouted. But it was too late.

  Brown water swept him off his feet. He pushed up, still holding the shovel. For a moment, it was almost funny. Then, the mud: thick as wet cement, loud as a train.

  “Rich!”

  He went under, came up, and then he was gone, mudflow rounding the bend, out of sight. She screamed his name. Scout twisted loose, bounded up over the ridge. She swept Chub up and ran, struggling in the heavy waders. Chub’s body thumped her chest. Mud and snapped trees had lodged in the bottleneck of the gulch, forming a makeshift dam. Scout was down there, barking at the mess.

  “Rich!” She stumbled. Scout launched himself into the muck.

  “Scout!” Chub screamed.

  She hugged his face to her so he wouldn’t see Scout struggle, turning as though to paddle for shore, sinking, doubling back, clawing in circles, digging his own grave.

  “Rich! Ri-ich!”

  She tried to pray. Please, God. Please. God.

  A head shot up from the hole.

  “Rich?!”

  Scout clawed toward the bank, Rich dragging himself after him, vomiting. Chub slid down her side and she ran. Rich stumbled twenty feet and sank to the ground, scraping mud from his mouth. She dropped to her knees, grabbing his face with both hands. His shirt was torn, waders gone, one foot bare, eyes bloodred.

  “I thought—”

  Rich coughed, turned his head and spat.

  “Daddy?” Chub’s small voice asked behind her.

  Rich raised an arm and Chub slammed into them both. When Rich was finally okay to stand, he looked down at his bare foot.

  “Damn waders almost killed me,” he said, voice scraped raw.

  She squeezed his hand tighter. Three warm pulses. Scout snorted, pawing at his nose.

  “I’d still be under there,” Rich said, mussing the dog’s filthy fur and staring down at the mudflow, as though part of him still was.

  February 9 RICH

  Eugene loaded the shingles into the truck himself. About all Rich could do was limp the empty cart back to the front of the hardware store.

  “How many lives you got left?” Eugene asked when Rich climbed into the passenger seat.

  Rich sniffed, nose leaking. Nothing broken, but banged up pretty good. Rocks had played his ribs like a piano. Rich could still hear it, grinding, churning, like he’d fallen into a cement mixer. Mud was no joke.

  When they got back to Fort Eugene, piles of cordwood sat out in the rain. Eugene turned the truck off.

  “That’s a lot of wood,” Rich observed.

  “You’re telling me.” Eugene rubbed his shoulder. “Thirty-five bucks a cord, fifty delivered.”

  “Does Merle know?”

  “Know what?” Eugene asked. “That I’m hauling this shit out of the way? He ought to be thanking me.”

  “It’s company property,” Rich said.

  “If I want to use my truck and my time, I don’t see what the hell Merle has to say about it.”

  “If you were just using it around here, that’d be one thing. Soon as money’s involved—”

  “It’s just a little burnwood. What do you care, anyway? You’ve got your own deal.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is, if Merle’s going to hear about it, you want it to be from you.”

  “I can handle Merle.”

  Eugene got out and hoisted the shingles from the truck bed. Rich followed him inside. The buckets in the hall were an inch from full. Colleen got Chub’s coat on.

  “What’s the rush?” Eugene asked. “Stay awhile.”

  Colleen flared her nostrils. Rich tipped his head. A half hour. She released Chub, who slipped away down the hall. She hadn’t spoken to Eugene since that night on the road. Rich snuffed his nose on his kerchief. Colleen wormed her way in beside Enid, took over cutting onions.

  “You getting free garlic now, Colleen?” Eugene needled her.

  “Cut it out,” Enid said.

  Colleen tossed a handful of onions into the pan, an angry sizzle.

  “Hell, newspaper ought to do a story on how ugly that bitch—”

  Colleen spun around, onion knife in hand.

  “Whoa now.” Eugene spilled his coffee. “Gundersen, control your damn wife before she guts somebody.”

  “Cool it,” Enid said. “Both of you.”

  “She’s acting crazy.”

  “You stop baiting her and she’ll calm down.” Enid looked to Rich for confirmation. Blood leaked from one of Colleen’s nostrils. “Cripes.” Enid reached for a rag.

  “Maybe we should get going,” Rich suggested.

  Colleen pulled the bloody rag away, pressed it back. “You came to fix the roof, fix it.”

  It was dark when they finished, but at least the rain had let up. The trailer house smelled of stroganoff.

  “Didn’t turn out half-bad,” Enid said, handing Rich a plate.

  In the truck, Chub took Colleen’s h
and. Rich saw him squeezing, spelling out a message Colleen didn’t seem to hear.

  February 19 COLLEEN

  “Why wouldn’t we let him go?” Colleen asked, whisking cocoa into the milk pot.

  The invitation sat on the table, Helen and Carl’s address torn in half where Chub had ripped open the envelope in excitement. Rich picked at Chub’s sandwich crusts, studying the spread-out timber-survey map. The scratches on his face had scabbed, one eye still bloodshot. Usually she liked how a beard looked on him, but there was something unsettling about this one: dense, woolly.

  She whisked faster, raising brown foam. Rich sighed, picked up his coffee and took a swig. The top corner of the map curled where the mug had been holding it flat. The color, that’s what it was—his beard was dark, making the gray in his hair stand out, a contrast that made him look, suddenly, old.

  Rich drained his coffee, moved the saltshaker and the pliers off the map. It snapped into a roll. “You keep stirring that, you’ll get butter.”

  She stopped. “I don’t want us being part of it.” The eggs, the tires. The way the other mothers parted around Helen, as though she stank.

  “You bring Chub over there, we’re part of it, whether you want us to be or not.”

  “It’s just a birthday party. Anyway, it’s not ’til next month.” She turned the burner off. “It’s not right, going after them like this.” She dug a spoon into the sugar bag. “Chub! Cocoa!”

  “I’m not saying it’s right,” Rich said.

  Chub slid into the kitchen in sock feet. She set the mug in front of him. “Be careful, it’s hot.”

  “Let’s just stay out of it.” Rich pushed back in his chair, rising stiffly.

  “Out of what?” Chub asked.

  Rich bopped him on the head with the rolled-up map. “I’m going to get cleaned up.”

  “Luke’s having a treasure hunt!” Chub said.

  “He is?” Colleen asked, loud enough for Rich to hear down the hall.

  Chub blew a dip into the surface of his cocoa, slurped, sucked air. “Hot.”