by Ash Davidson
“They don’t have to spray the grove to cut,” Rich said. “Brush isn’t that thick.”
Eugene shook his head. “We’re in a war here, don’t you get it? They’re trying to take it all away.” Eugene dragged his fist across his mouth. “Merle’ll find someone else, you know. If she doesn’t get in line.” Eugene jutted his chin at the house, Colleen already inside. “He’s already got a climber down in Rio Dell ready to take over.”
“I bet he does.” Rich didn’t bother to strip the bitterness from his voice.
“Look, Gundersen, don’t make this hard on yourself. Sanderson gets its cut out, you get yours. Come on.” Eugene held up the paper. “This is embarrassing.”
There was Chub in the foreground in black and white, Rich and Colleen behind him in the parking lot outside the hearing, the three of them framed in the instant before Rich asked the photographer what the hell she thought she was doing.
“Colleen’s messing with your head.”
The screen door snapped, as though her name had brought her out.
“Go home, Eugene,” she said.
Eugene shook his head. “You’re un-fucking-believable. Both of you.” He flung the paper at their feet. “You better watch yourselves. You’re pissing off a whole lot of people. A whole lot of people.” Eugene climbed back in his truck, revved his engine, and peeled off with a spray of gravel.
Inside, Rich dropped the paper onto the kitchen table, nabbed what was left of the pie off the counter. There they were in the caption, if he squinted: Lifetime Sanderson Timber Co. employee Richard Gundersen, his wife, and his son, whose drinking water is threatened by the proposed Damnation Grove timber harvest plans.
He scraped his fork across the gummy crust at the bottom of the pan. Colleen leafed through, cleared her throat, and began to read aloud.
“A recent spate of mudslides, including this winter’s Last Chance Slide, which closed Highway 101 north of Klamath for nine days, has sparked debate over the timber industry’s slash-and-burn policies. The latest clash came Monday, at a public hearing on Sanderson Timber Co.’s plans to harvest two old-growth parcels known locally as Damnation Grove that drew over two hundred people. The logging heavyweight employs fifty-eight residents in its mill and logging operations, nearly a tenth of the population in a town without stoplights, a gas station, or even a pay phone—”
Colleen skimmed the next column.
“Among those affected by the plan are Richard Gundersen, a fourth-generation high-climber, and his wife. Their land, known as the 24-7 after the diameter of the largest redwood tree on the property, borders the lower section of the disputed grove. Earlier this year, vandals felled several dozen old-growth trees in a section of Lower Damnation Grove, resulting in a mudslide that temporarily dammed Damnation Creek and destroyed important spawning habitat for coho salmon.
“ ‘It’s common sense,’ one former logger said. ‘You don’t leave something to hold the ground, a whole mountain comes down on your head.’
“The sheriff’s office is still investigating the incident.
“Meanwhile, Gundersen’s wife”—Colleen’s voice cracked; she swallowed—“a midwife, has documented nearly a dozen cases of abnormalities in babies born in the area over the last six years, and has herself suffered several miscarriages, fueling worries that the aerial spraying of herbicides to control weeds may be contaminating local water sources. The couple and their son rely on Lower Damnation Creek, in the harvest area, for their drinking water.”
Colleen skipped ahead, turned the page.
“The timber harvest plans are expected to be approved next month, with cuts to begin later this spring.”
She pushed up, bashed the percolator into the sink so hard Rich thought it would shatter.
“What?” he asked.
“What do you mean, what?” She turned on him.
All the times she’d come home from a birth, carrying her sorrow like a package under her arm. She had a right to be mad at him. He could have stepped back off that porch, let her marry someone younger, someone who might have taken her away from here.
“Mama?” Chub stood in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Colleen forced a smile. “Mama’s just being silly.”
“Why was Uncle Eugene yelling?”
“Oh, you know. He loses his temper sometimes.”
“Why?”
“He forgets to count to ten.” She stroked Chub’s hair. “Could we sell it?” she asked.
“Who’d buy it?” Rich shook his head.
“Sell what?” Chub asked. “Sell what?”
“Celery sticks,” Colleen said.
Chub bunched his lips, aware he was being teased, and flitted back down the hall.
“You don’t think he’ll do anything?” Colleen asked.
“Eugene? Nah.” Eugene’s temper flared like a match, burned out just as quickly. “What would he do?”
“What about Merle?” she asked.
“I’m not married to Merle,” Rich said. He took the pinwheel mint—the first one he’d found on their hill, beside the man’s boot print—from his pocket. “Am I?”
She looked down at it, bit her lip. “He asked me to collect some water. Out of our tap.” She kept her voice low, not wanting Chub to hear. “So I did.”
“Is that all it was?” Rich pressed.
Colleen pushed air out her nose, heat rising on her cheeks, splotching red across her chest. “Are you really asking me that?”
March 3 COLLEEN
They sat down to dinner, the same tomatoes ripening on the table that had been ripening there for days. If she used them up, she couldn’t buy more. She’d avoided going anywhere alone—to the store, even into the Beehive for bear claws—but she felt the looks in the drop-off line when she took Chub to school in the morning, and in the afternoons, when she picked him up. Not liar or traitor. Whore. Though no one said it to her face.
Across the table, Chub picked at his carrots, mashing one flat with his fork until she told him to go run his bath. She reached to clear Rich’s plate.
“Did you?” Rich asked.
“Did I what?”
“Sleep with him.”
A relief, in a way. The question had been hanging in the air all week. Water splashed into the tub on the other side of the wall.
“With Daniel?” She laughed, turning on the tap. “We were teenagers.” The sink filled.
In eight years of marriage, Rich had never asked. He’d run his hands up her thighs, buried his nose in her belly button. She was his. He didn’t need to know who there had been before. Now she saw him slowly retracing his steps, holding the question up to the light bulb of his memory.
“What about since?” he asked.
“Since when?”
“Since whenever he showed up.” Rich’s voice was level, but she heard him struggling to contain it. Her heart pounded in her ears. Chub chattered through the wall, water slopping.
She nodded.
He pushed up from the table, smacked his palm against the side of the refrigerator. She flinched.
“Only once,” she said.
He shoved the fridge again and a ceramic magnet flew off, appliance settling with a heavy metal jostle. The valentine Chub had made her swished to the floor.
Dear Mama. I hope the day is sunny and you are as pretty as a rose.
“Damn it, Colleen!” Rich yelled.
She stiffened.
“Mama?” Chub called from the bathroom.
“It’s okay, Grahamcracker,” Colleen called back.
“What do you mean, once?” Rich demanded, not bothering to lower his voice.
“Shh. It just happened.” Colleen shook dishwater off her hands. He was the one who’d refused to touch her. He was the one who’d turned his back. “It was wrong, I know that. I’m sorry, all right? But I can’t make a baby on my own, Rich.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what i
t means,” she said. “You barely even look at me.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’re not even looking at me now. You show the dog more affection.”
Rich shook his head, stooped to collect the magnet pieces, pulled out the junk drawer, rifled through, tossed the tube of superglue onto the table, and shoved the drawer closed. It jammed. He banged it.
“Goddamn piece of—” he muttered, shoving a hand in to figure out what was stuck, then flinging open the cupboard to try from underneath, and there, like rows of crystal, were the jam jars, half a dozen more already filled and labeled, the rest waiting for spring. Rich stared at them, like this—not the arch of her back as she pulled another man into her, or her hands ripping grass from the ground above her head, but these jars—was the worst secret she’d kept from him.
Rich squatted, then sat back on his butt, staring at them. With one sweep of his arm, the jars clattered out onto the floor.
“Rich—” she stammered. “I—”
He picked one up and tossed it in his hand, contents sloshing. He threw it against the wall and it shattered: a spray of water, a burst of broken glass.
“Mama!”
Rich picked up another jar.
“You’re scaring him,” she hissed, and hurried out, her own heart galloping. She heard the second jar hit the wall just as she rounded the corner into the bathroom, Chub slipping over the side of the tub with a look of alarm. She shut the bathroom door behind her.
“It’s okay, Grahamcracker,” she said, assurance punctuated by a third burst of breaking glass. Would he break them all? She wrapped Chub in a towel and rubbed his arms, his back, his shoulders. “Where’d you get these beautiful elbows?”
“I got them at the elbows store.”
She toweled off Chub’s hair, listening with one ear for Rich. A door slammed and then, after a minute, came the steady thunk and clatter of the ax splitting firewood. She helped Chub into his pajamas, into bed. She turned on the rocket night-light.
“Can you stay until I fall asleep?” Chub asked.
“Sure, Grahamcracker.” She lay down beside him, breathed in his clean smell. “Where’d you get these beautiful ears?” she whispered.
“I got them at the ear store.”
She listened to the thump of the ax, blow after blow. When she started awake, Chub lay fast asleep beside her. She no longer heard Rich outside. The house was dark. She got up, tiptoed out into the hall.
“Rich?” she asked the empty bedroom.
She turned on the kitchen light, linoleum a field of puddles and broken glass. She crossed the front room—still and cold. The fire had gone out. In nine years, Rich had never let the house go cold. Her keys sat alone in the burl bowl. She pushed aside the curtains and looked out at the empty spot in the driveway. Her breath fogged the chilled glass; her wet cheeks smeared it clean.
She curled into a ball on the couch, pulled the crocheted blanket over her head. Her chest ached. He was gone.
March 4 COLLEEN
Birdsong. She sat up, shivering. Weak gray light slanted in the front window. She pulled the blanket tighter, dug her toes into the carpet for warmth. Her eyelids were swollen. She stared at the cold woodstove. Finally, she stood and crossed the room to it, pulled out the ash drawer, and carried it outside, and there, in the driveway, sat Rich’s pickup. The iron drawer dipped in her hands. She set it down, approached the truck, and peered in. The cab was empty.
“Rich?” she asked, her voice hoarse. She swallowed.
Gravel turned to wet grass as she rounded the corner. Rich sat on the back stoop, hunched over Scout, his face buried in the fur of the dog’s back.
Colleen’s nose ran. She sucked it in. Rich lifted his head but didn’t look at her. She could see he hadn’t slept. She sat down beside him.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“Nowhere. Just drove around.” He pressed his palms to his eyes, rubbed the fatigue from them.
She owed him an explanation, and yet she waited, afraid he might stand up and leave again.
“When I was living in Arcata, before my mom got sick, I just felt so—alone,” she began finally. “Daniel—he had all these big plans.” She shook her head. “But I missed Enid. I even missed milking the cows, that’s how lonely I was.” She made a fist, released it. “After I came back, I still felt alone. I guess I always had, even as a kid.” She trailed off, realizing it was true. “And then you came along.” She reached for his hand and he let her take it, let her lace her cold fingers through his big, warm, rough ones. “Every day, you got up and you chose me. And every day, even when you were gone, working, I just felt this love from you, like there was a rope tied around your waist on one end and around mine on the other. Like wherever you went, your heart beat for me. You used to do that thing, you know, where you’d talk right here”—she touched the spot behind her ear—“until we fell asleep? Like you saved it all up. And then Chub came, and our life was so full. I never thought my life could feel so full.” She traced a circle on his palm. “I want to feel that again.”
Rich exhaled and disentangled his hand. She let hers fall back into her lap.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just—I wanted you to hold me and you wouldn’t. I was so mad at you, and then—I dropped Chub off at school and I just felt so—lonely. I wasn’t thinking.”
Rich stretched his legs out in front of him. She felt a pain in her chest, like if he didn’t raise his eyes and look at her, something inside her might snap.
“Do you wish you never married me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. He pushed a long breath out his nose. “I want a divorce.”
Her shoulders rose, then fell, the sob that had been clenched inside rising without warning or permission.
“Colleen, I’m joking. Don’t cry. Honey. Colleen.” His fingers were in her hair, his lips on her forehead, her nose, her eyelids, and she was in his lap, her legs wrapped around his waist, and she could smell his neck. She slid her hands down the collar of his shirt and he turtled his head. “Cold hands, warm heart,” he said. He took her face in his hands, pressed his forehead to hers. “There are some things I would do different,” he admitted. “But there has never been a day I wished I wasn’t married to you. Not one. You hear me?”
She nodded, tears streaming down her face.
“I’ll clean that up,” he said, tipping his head back toward the kitchen.
His warm thumbs were still hooked behind her ears. He looked deeper into her eyes.
“I’d do the whole thing over,” he said. “All of it, every damn day. There’s nothing—nothing—that’d change my mind about you. You hear me? You get a miracle in life, you take it. You don’t ask why.”
RICH
Lark’s hog wallowed in the middle of the muddy two-track.
“Is he going to move?” Chub asked.
“I don’t think so.” Rich jinked around him. The cabin door was propped open with an old lard bucket. Rich went up the steps, Chub stopping to pet the dogs. Lark slumped in a kitchen chair, chin to his chest. Rich banged on the door frame with his open palm.
Lark’s head bobbed up. “What the hell do you want?”
“I thought you’d be out catting around,” Rich said. Better than Shit, I thought you were dead.
“Depends. That redhead still up at the Widowmaker?”
“You seen her lately?” Rich asked, steering Chub inside.
“You get to be my age, you can’t afford to be too choosy.”
Chub scooted onto a chair. Lark extended a mitt.
“Hey there, lumberjack.” Chub shook. Lark pulled his hand free, wringing out his wrist. “Bust some knuckles with that grip.”
Rich pulled out a chair.
“Hummingbird!” Chub pointed to the feeder hanging outside the kitchen window.
“Marsha put that thing too close to the glass. That hog plants his hairy ass right under it, opens his pie hole, and waits for them to drop in. You want s
omething to eat?” Lark searched the counter with his eyes. “How about some hummingbird tongues on toast? I got fresh.” Lark danced his eyebrows at Chub. “Let’s see, I got some bread around here somewheres.” Lark picked up his mug, like the loaf might be underneath. “You ever catch a hummingbird?” Lark leaned over, clapped his hands behind Chub’s ear, brought a wooden nickel back around, and dropped it into Chub’s bib pocket. “ ’Course not. Too damn fast. Now, they bop into that window and bam! I hurry on out and cut out their tongues. I got to be quick though. That hog’s greedy. Hard to talk without a damn tongue. You ever try?” He grabbed his own, a white crack down the middle that looked painful. “Ith almoth impothible tho thalk withouth yar thongue.”
Chub smiled. “What happened to your neck?” he asked.
Lark looked down his nose at the gauze squares taped there like he hadn’t noticed them.
“You don’t want any hummingbird tongues, huh? Let’s see what else we got.” Lark hobbled over to the icebox. He tugged the cheesecloth off a cake, cut three crooked slabs, and slid the blade under to transfer them to the table.
“Damn good,” Lark said, brushing crumbs from the patchy bristle around his mouth.
“Where’s Flyer?” Chub asked, frosting on his lips.
“Around here someplace, ’less the dogs ate her. Go look in there.” He jerked his head toward the sitting room. Chub slid off his seat.
“Take some of this.” Lark handed him a hunk of cake. “Make her come to you. You got to learn that about women.”
With Chub gone, Lark scratched at his bandages.
“How you feeling?” Rich asked.
Lark grunted, eyed the bags under Rich’s eyes. “How about yourself?”
“Same.” After he’d left Lark’s last night, he’d trawled the streets of the Glen, driven up and down the gulches where houses were clustered, looking for that man’s van, until he’d run the tank down.
“It’ll blow over,” Lark said. “Tree huggers stick around long enough to get their picture in the paper, then they’re off to save the whales. Don’t know about that one you’re married to, though. You two smooth things over?”