Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  “Keep your damn birds,” somebody called out.

  “Let somebody else talk already,” another voice yelled. People stood up, booing.

  The man and the woman raised their voices in song. Mr. Miller came up behind them, took his handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped off the microphone.

  “Don’t want to catch what they have,” he said. People laughed. He looked around the room, his black eyebrows raised so they almost touched his white hair. “My name is Lew Miller. I’ve been a yarder operator for twenty-some years. I started out setting chokers, same as everybody else. Roughest work, lowest paid. I worked with a lot of guys you see here today, and some you don’t. They worked hard and when their number came up, it came up.” Mr. Miller put his chin to his chest for a moment, out of respect. “We might seem simple to you. And I guess, in a way, that’s true. We believe a man ought to have the right to work for a living. If your family’s hungry, you work. We’ve always done that, around here. Then you people come in”—he gestured at the longhaired singers—“start nosing around, trying to blame this or that. Well, I got news for you. We didn’t have no problems around here ’til you people showed up. Hell, they spray right over us when we’re working and you don’t see us complaining. I’m not afraid of some weed juice. I support the timber harvest plans.” People clapped.

  Mr. Porter came next. “Most people”—he brushed the wart under his eye, like he could flick it off his face—“when they look at a redwood board in the hardware store, all they see is a good piece of lumber. They see a picnic table, a deck, or a fence that’ll hold up. They don’t see the blood and the sweat. They don’t see getting up at four in the morning, working in the cold and the rain, fingers so locked up it’s hard to press ’em straight at the end of the day. They don’t see the cuts and the bruises, the broken bones, the mother’s tears when a guy like Tom Feeley—remember Tom?—a good guy, a family guy, gets up one morning and goes to work and never comes home. We’ve got Tom’s son working with us now. Quentin, where are you at?”

  Across the aisle, a skinny man shifted in his seat.

  “Guys like Quentin and me, we risk our lives every day so that people can go to the store and buy their fence, or their deck, or what have you. And we’re proud of that.”

  Chub squirmed in his mom’s lap and she held him tighter.

  “These woods aren’t just a place we work,” Mr. Porter said. “They’re our playground. They’re our pantry.” Mr. Porter patted his big belly. “My wife makes a mean blackberry pie, if you haven’t noticed. We care about this place. We take care of it. And we support the timber harvest plans.”

  People clapped. Uncle Eugene strode up to the microphone next, like the clapping was for him.

  “You all work in offices?” Uncle Eugene asked the men behind the long table up front. “Well, let me tell you about my office. It ain’t got no desk. No chair either. It ain’t even got a door, but it opens at five a.m. Some days it don’t close until dark. Summer, you might work ’til seven, eight, nine in the evening. You work, you go home, you sleep, you get up and do it again. You don’t got a choice. You’ve got half a dozen other guys depending on you. No such thing as calling in sick. If you can walk, you can work. I got six kids at home, five of them girls, and they’re depending on me too. Their dad never finished school, but you take a good look at them—Marla, Agnes, Mavis, Gertrude, stand up there, let them see you.”

  Heads turned, and Chub saw Marla, looking sick to her stomach, baby Alsea on her hip.

  “Those girls are going to graduate high school,” Uncle Eugene went on. “Every last one of them. And it’s one logging job paying for all that. Every old-growth redwood tree we lay down, that’s enough timber to build how many houses? We’re contributing to society. We’re paying our taxes. We’re following the rules, no matter how fast they keep changing them. Please.” Uncle Eugene took off his hat and held it to his chest. “These groves might not seem like much to you, but to these girls, they’re everything. It’s their future. Don’t take it away from them.”

  “Thank you,” the man said from up front, nodding once at Uncle Eugene.

  The singers started again.

  “You people don’t want to listen,” someone complained. “This right here, this is opportunity. This is the American dream.”

  “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” a man shouted from the back. “You want to cut it and then sell the land to the park. It’s all money, money, money.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s true,” the man insisted.

  There was a tussle. A chair fell back, cracking against the floor.

  “Back off,” someone said. “Harvey! Where’s Harvey?”

  A woman stood up. “Where do you think toilet paper comes from?” she asked. “What would people like you wipe your asses with if it wasn’t for people like us?”

  An old man raised his cane in the air. “You bunch of freeloaders go chain your skinny asses anywhere you want, from a Mexican cactus to a Canada goose, but not here.”

  Suddenly, Luke’s mom’s voice boomed from the microphone.

  “Good morning. My name is Helen Yancy.” The microphone squealed and Luke’s mom tilted her head back, until it quieted. “My husband, Carl, drove a spray truck for Sanderson for fourteen years, until they fired him. We had a baby in November. Eamon Paul. I was in labor eleven hours with him and when he came out, the top of his skull was missing. All these people here, they know. They came to see, like he was a circus animal. He came too.” She pointed to Mr. Sanderson in his bright yellow shirt. “He brought us this.” She held up an envelope. “He sat at our kitchen table and said he was sorry for our loss. Sorry. We can all see there’s hardly any fish left in our river. Maybe that’s the dams, I don’t know. Maybe it’s logging, or ocean fishing. Or maybe the sprays are killing the fish. Are they making us sick too? Are they giving people cancer? Are they eating the brains out of our babies’ heads? You’re all thinking it, but no one has the guts to ask.” She looked around the room, pushed air out her nose. “Whoever said you can’t buy loyalty never spent a day in Sanderson country. Well, you can keep your money.” She dumped bills from the envelope onto the floor. Chub’s mom hugged him tighter. “I may have buried my son, but his memory isn’t for sale.”

  Luke’s mom pushed up the aisle and out the doors. People whispered. Chub leaned back against his mom’s chest. Man after man went to the microphone. Chub yawned. He kicked his feet until his mom touched his knee to make him stop. He arched his neck back over her shoulder and stared at the ceiling, imagining what it would be like to walk on it like it was the floor. He wished everyone would stop talking, so it could be over.

  Then, at last, came his dad’s voice, echoey and strange. His dad tried to adjust the microphone, but it wouldn’t go high enough, so he hunched down and started over.

  “My name is Richard Gundersen. My old man was Hank Gundersen. He started setting chokers for Sanderson at thirteen. That was back in 1916.” Chub’s dad dug two fingers into his collar and looked down at the paper in his hand. “His granddad was a high-climber, homesteaded up on the bluff above Diving Board Rock, back when the old wagon road went that way. His son, my granddad, ended up a high-climber too. Died climbing. So did my dad. I’m the fourth generation. I’ve been topping old-growth since I was eighteen. Seen a lot of timber. This grove, it’s not like some of the big ones we worked. Those are all gone, except for what’s park.” Men nodded in their seats. His dad cleared his throat. “We’ve all got families. I got a wife and a son—they’re sitting right there.” Chub felt his mom shift. Heads turned their direction. “But you shut down that grove, it’s not just us you’re hurting. This town lives off timber. You might as well line us up against the wall.” His dad folded the paper back up, tucked it into his chest pocket.

  “Maybe there’s some truth to what they’re saying. Maybe the sprays are killing off some of the fish or the deer, I don’t know. When you lose someone, you look aroun
d for something to blame, that’s just human nature.” His dad looked at his mom. “Especially a baby, who never got a chance at life. I understand that. But let’s not confuse things here. I’ve lived in Klamath my whole life, never set foot more than a hundred miles from right here where I’m standing now talking to you, spent a good chunk of it up these sides. I’ve drunk out of these creeks for fifty years and never been sick a day of my life, except maybe once or twice, but that wasn’t creek water I’d been drinking.” People chuckled.

  “It might not be popular to say, but I’m glad the government saved some big timber for a park. It’s something to see. Ask any of these guys. You won’t find a guy that loves the woods more than a logger. You scratch a logger, you better believe you’ll find an ‘enviro-mentalist’ underneath. But the difference between us and these people is we live here. We hunt. We fish. We camp out. They’ll go back where they came from, but we’ll wake up right here tomorrow. This is home. Timber puts food on our tables, clothes on our kids’ backs. You know, a redwood tree is a hard thing to kill. You cut it down, it sends up a shoot. Even fire doesn’t kill it. But those big pumpkins up in the grove, they’re old. Ready to keel over and rot. You might as well set a pile of money on fire and make us watch.”

  “That’s right,” someone called.

  “It’s not easy to make a living around here. We don’t live fancy. But you grow up in redwood country, you learn how to make something out of nothing. We know how to feed our families. All we’re asking is you let us do that.”

  His dad came back and sat down. Noise rose in the room.

  “My name is George Bywater.” An old man stood at the microphone. “My father—Lester Bywater, some of you knew him—he worked at the mill, pulling green chain. We’re Klamath River people. First you killed us. Next you killed the salmon. And now you’re killing yourselves.” The old man’s voice rose. “When you poison the land, you’re poisoning your own body. The salmon come home to the river every year and you people, you don’t give thanks. To you, salmon, that’s just money, it’s economics. Well, our people have been eating out of this river longer than it took these trees to grow. We’ve been eating the same runs of salmon for so many generations, our DNA is intertwined. We’re part of the salmon and the salmon are part of us. Everything we have, it comes from the river. When the river’s sick, we’re sick, we’re part of that too. You disturb a burial site, you don’t care. You don’t see us digging up your cemeteries, sending your grandma’s head off to some museum.”

  “Those skulls didn’t come from here!” Uncle Eugene yelled. “Read the newspaper!”

  “No,” the old man agreed. “Somebody dug them up and put them there.” The man cast a long hard stare at Uncle Eugene. “You see, even our ancestors’ bones aren’t safe from you.” Slowly, the man turned back to face front. “Yurok people, we’ve lived right here, along this river, for a hundred generations—longer, even—and we’re still here. You hear about all these tribes that got moved off their land—but not us. Our reservation is right here: a mile on either side for forty-five miles up from the mouth of the Klamath River, that’s Yurok Country. A lot of that land’s been sold off now, but we still have our fishing rights. We’re responsible for our river, for taking care of it. We’ve always been here. We’ve always been fishers. Always, always. It’s like breathing air. If I can’t fish, I can’t live. My grandfather taught me that. Just like his grandfather taught him. I’ve had my nets seized by the game wardens. I’ve fished at night. I’ve been beat up, for fishing. I’ve been thrown in jail, for fishing. I’ve gone to the court in Washington D.C.—I’ve seen your Capitol Building, it’s nothing compared to a redwood—it’s just a little shrimpy, middle-sized tree.” The man held his hand up chest-high, measuring. “The court said it: this is the Yurok reservation. This is Indian Country; we can fish. And still you’re trying to find ways to keep us from breathing, from living our life here, caring for our river.” The man crossed his arms. “I’m old now. My kids are grown. But if it was me, if it was my kids being born without brains in their heads, I’d be asking myself: Is it worth it? Just to get out the cut? But no, you won’t rest until you’ve killed off every deer, every salmon, every tree, until you’ve poisoned all our springs. What will you eat then? Money? What will you build your house from? What will you drink when you’re thirsting?” The old man looked around, as though waiting for someone to answer, but the room was quiet. He said something in another language, then turned and walked out, the door swinging shut behind him.

  The man up front thanked people for their time.

  “Wait.” The man who had found Scout on the road stood at the microphone.

  “We’re done for today, son.”

  “My name’s Daniel Bywater.” The microphone gave a high electric whine. “I’m an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe.”

  “Okay, but you’re the last one.”

  Chub felt his mom’s body tense.

  “The herbicides Sanderson Timber is using to clear broad-leafed plants are toxic,” the man’s voice boomed. “The Forest Service is spraying them too, and the county. You’ve got healthy people getting sick, animals dying. You’ve got miscarriages, cancers. A lot of people right here in this room have suffered. We’ve got a petition here you can sign.” He held up a clipboard and read from it. “ ‘We, the undersigned, ask that the area known as Damnation Grove be preserved forever, free from chemical sprays that endanger our lives and the lives of the unborn.’ ” Boos skipped across the room. “Just ask Colleen Gundersen over there, she’s seen what these poisons can do.” The man held up a glass jar. “This is water from her tap. She collected it, and we had it tested. If you drink from a creek, and that creek runs downhill through sprayed land, I’ve got news for you: you’re drinking this stuff. Ask Colleen how many birth defects she’s seen, right here in this community. How many babies born sick, born deformed. Ask her how many miscarriages she’s suffered herself, drinking this water.”

  Chub’s mom dumped him from her lap. The man examined the jar. “It looks clean. Sure, it looks clean. But what is it doing to us? And how long will it take until you see it in your own house, in your body, in your kids?”

  “Hey, buddy. You’re done,” a man with a beard said, coming up the aisle. He shoved him away from the microphone, glass jar shattering, water mixing with a bright red worm of blood.

  “Hey now, let’s not—” a man said from the front, but it was too loud, everyone out of their seats, Chub’s mom dragging him by the hand, adults crushing him.

  “We’ll bury you!” someone yelled.

  “You tell ’em, Rich.” A man shook his dad’s hand, another clapped him on the shoulder, but others parted, staring.

  When they got in the truck, the air felt tight. His dad shook his head.

  “Goddamn it, Colleen.” So quiet he might have been talking to himself.

  “I told you,” his mom said. “I knew something wasn’t right.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Weren’t you listening?” his mom asked.

  Chub reached for her hand, but she snatched it away. His dad started the truck.

  “I’ve lost eight, Rich. Not one, not two, not five. Eight.” Her voice trembled. “Don’t you tell me what I don’t know.”

  February 28 RICH

  Eugene’s rust-shot Cheyenne was splayed crossways, gravel torn up where he must have hooked left just in time to avoid plowing through their front door. Eugene himself leaned back against a porch post, cords of his neck taut. Twenty-four hours gone by and still mad enough to kick over the wheelbarrow, judging by the arc of scattered firewood. Rich killed the engine and Eugene pushed off, bounce in his step. Colleen put an arm out in front of Chub, as though to shield him. Scout bayed from around back.

  “Here we go,” Rich said.

  They’d steered clear of Eugene yesterday, churned out with the crowd. Rich had felt all right once they’d hit Crescent City, put some distance behind them. They’d w
andered the supermarket aisles, Chub’s fingers hooked through the side of the basket.

  Only the finest, Rich had said, selecting a lemon pie. Chub had chosen a jar of fake cherries, sensing the normal rules had been suspended. It was better to be in a public place, Rich angry enough to clear a shelf with the sweep of his arm if he gave in to it. Colleen had walked ahead of him down the aisles, as she’d walked behind his back all these months. He’d waited for her to turn, to admit she still blamed him for the baby. To accuse him of being nothing but a bystander, a dumb witness to her grief. To say he didn’t know what it was to lose a baby because he hadn’t carried their little girl in his body, felt her move, because he’d gone on while some part of Colleen had stayed behind, trapped in that hospital room, feeling the warmth of her body heat on the child’s skin cool, as if that tiny heart might incubate, because what was hope but belief, no matter how rare the miracle?

  They’d gotten up early this morning and driven to the picnic spot on the Smith River, but the rain hadn’t quit and they’d ended up huddled in the truck with the blower on. Now Rich wanted to get inside, get the fire going, but here was Eugene, worse for having stewed a day.

  “What do you think?” Colleen asked, Eugene already at Rich’s window, so close Rich could bash him in the kneecaps by opening his door. Eugene stormed around to Colleen’s side.

  “Just get in the house.” Rich popped his door and went around, waiting for Eugene to back off enough for Colleen to get out, then putting himself between them. It felt good to protect her. Here, in the face of Eugene’s anger, he could put his own aside. “What’s the difference between a Chevy and a golf ball?” Rich asked, buying Colleen time to herd Chub inside. “You can drive a golf ball two hundred yards.”

  “Whose fucking side are you on, Colleen?” Eugene bumped against Rich’s chest, trying to get around him. Rich leaned into him, then pivoted away, let Eugene stumble forward. “You’re lucky Merle doesn’t fire your ass.” Eugene pulled the rolled-up baton of a newspaper from his back pocket and popped Rich in the chest. “You need this worse than any of us.”