Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  The girls appeared, hair wet, cheeks flushed, Colleen’s T-shirts hanging to their knees.

  She ladled soup. Joanna blew on a spoonful for Camber. The girls pulled their sandwich bread apart, cheese stretching. Chub and Rich watched silently, as though awake in the same dream.

  * * *

  In the bathroom, Colleen squeezed lines of toothpaste onto the girls’ fingers. Their faces lit up at its sweetness. Joanna must have made them brush with baking soda. Colleen came back from tucking them into Chub’s bed to find Joanna alone in the kitchen, standing with one hand on the phone.

  “Did you get him?” she asked.

  “He’ll bring the trailer for Bossy. He’s not my blood uncle.” She rubbed her palms over her belly. “Jed kept saying we should move up there. Start fresh.”

  “You should get some rest,” Colleen said.

  “He said this place would kill you if you let it.”

  * * *

  The uncle arrived after midnight. Rich carried the girls out. Colleen sent Joanna with a blanket for them, a jar of hot coffee for the uncle.

  * * *

  Chub sprawled out, asleep on their bed. Rich closed the damper. Flames flickered, starved of air. Colleen sank onto the couch beside him.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I keep thinking what my mom would say.”

  “ ‘Here today, gone tomorrow’?” Rich suggested.

  She shook her head.

  “ ‘Easy come, easy go’?”

  She smacked him lightly in the gut.

  He slung his arm around her shoulder, kissed the top of her head. “ ‘You only get one miracle.’ ”

  She pushed air out her nose. “Yeah.”

  * * *

  The blur of Rich’s undershirt ghosted in the bedroom dark. Outside, Scout barked, low throaty growls punctuated by loud volleys. Not a raccoon. Something bigger.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Shh.” Rich hopped on one leg, getting his pants on. Underneath Scout’s growling, a motor idled.

  “Who is it?” she asked, thinking of Joanna’s uncle—had they forgotten something?—Rich moving with a single-mindedness that frightened her. “Rich?”

  She heard him bang his head on the threshold and curse under his breath.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered. Scout barked again, then gunshots, breaking glass, truck doors slamming.

  “Rich?!”

  Light beamed through the windows, tires spraying gravel. The house went dark. Not even Scout made a sound. She smacked into the rocker. Rich stood in the hall.

  “Don’t go out there,” she hissed.

  “They’re gone.”

  “How do you know?”

  She opened the door to Chub’s room, watched his chest rise and fall in the rocket-tail glow, still, miraculously, asleep. Her hands shook, pulling his door quietly shut again.

  The front door stood ajar, cold air seeping in, porch light turning fog molten. Outside, Rich crouched on his hams, his hand on Scout’s splayed body.

  “Rich?”

  He dropped his head. A sob rose from deep in his chest. She’d seen him cry only one other time: in the hospital at Easter. The gravel sounded strangely loud underfoot. She touched the small of Rich’s hunched back and he let loose, his hand resting on Scout’s neck, as though to comfort him. The dog’s tongue hung out, blood soaking fur. She wrapped both arms around Rich’s torso, pressed herself to his back. He brought an elbow up to wipe his eyes and raked his fingernails down his face, like it was a mask he could rip off. Then he gathered Scout’s limp body in his arms and stood.

  After she’d pressed her fingers to the bullet hole in the carving (HOME IS WHERE—the heart blasted away), swept glass into the dustpan, taped plastic over the broken panes, when finally Rich came in, his knees were brown. She smelled the soil on him. He went down the hall to their bed. She climbed in beside him, wiped the tender skin under his eyes. She needed to vacuum the glass out of the rug before Chub got up.

  “Did you see who it was?” she asked.

  “No. Colleen, you have to stop,” he said. “What if—?” Chub’s name pulsed between them.

  We’ll bury you. She’d thought they were talking to Daniel, but she realized now they’d meant her too, Joanna, Helen, anyone who stepped out of line. They’d meant her all along.

  March 6 RICH

  The wind swelled and sucked the plastic stretched across the busted panes, as though the house were breathing. He palmed the truck keys from the burl bowl, eyes sore. Stood under the shower too long.

  “Where are you going?” Colleen asked.

  He raked his fingers down his cheeks, itching from the shave. “Be back in a couple hours.”

  She followed him out. “Rich,” she called after him. “Be careful.”

  He should have gone back, let her peck him on the cheek, but he knew the moment she touched him, he’d bawl—bawling over a dog—so instead he climbed into the pickup, pulled out north, and drove, putting miles behind him. He crossed the Oregon line. In Brookings there was a hardware store that carried prefab doors. Rich caught his reflection in the glass, as rough-looking and red-eyed as he felt.

  “Can I help you?” The pimple-faced kid eyed Rich cautiously, like he might hoist a door under one arm and take a run at him.

  “You got any without this cutout?”

  The kid looked confused. “That’s a dog door.”

  He bought a solid six-panel, no windows, twice what the lumber was worth, a peephole that made him think of a cheap motel. It would change the whole feel of the house. He loaded it into the bed alongside a new window, tubs of woodfill and plaster, felt the slam of the truck door in his bones, tooth eating its hole. Come this far.

  He watched the miles tick up: a hundred twenty, a hundred forty, coast highway curving north, filling in the blank map in his mind the way a wave washed across sand. When he got to Coos Bay, he trolled the ritzy coast houses until he spotted the boat, a white sign trimmed with blue: STEPHEN LANGLEY, DDS.

  He loped up the walk, rang the bell before he had time to change his mind, shoved his hands into his pockets, fingers stubbing bullet casings. Astrid opened the door: chin-length silver hair, reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, powder-blue collar sticking out from a white cardigan. As though she’d dressed to match the sign.

  “Yes?” she asked. If she was surprised to see him, if it stirred any feeling in her at all after all these years, she didn’t show it, just gave a quick nod of acknowledgment: Yes, I remember you. Yes, we made a baby together once. What do you want?

  The side of his face throbbed in time with his heart. A hundred fifty miles, the farthest he’d ever been from home, and here she stood, impatient, as though he’d taken her away from a television program.

  “I got a tooth needs to come out.”

  “Just a moment.” She left the door cracked. He heard a burbling that, when she opened the door, turned out to be the pump on a fish tank. She led him around a staircase, toward the back of the house. She’d shrunk some, shoulders narrower than he remembered. She pushed open an inner door and stood aside. He found himself alone in a room with a chair like a barber’s, a sink, a glass jar of tongue depressors.

  A man about Rich’s age came in. So this was Langley.

  “Have a seat.” The man went to the sink and washed his hands. Slight and severe, when he pushed the hydraulic lever and Rich’s chair lunged backward, his pointed chin and sharp nose made him look like a rodent, overhead fixture lighting his thinning hair. “Let’s take a look.”

  The man prodded along Rich’s gums with a metal hook. Rich flinched, pain zinging. He opened and closed his fists, tasting the latex of the man’s gloves.

  The dentist sat back and removed his paper mask. “You need a crown.”

  “Can you pull it?”

  “It’s a molar. I don’t like to pull a tooth you need.”

  Rich sat up. “I’d just as soon be rid of it. It’s g
iving me hell.”

  The dentist’s gaze tracked across the room. Rich scanned for needle-nosed pliers, a drill, some tool he recognized.

  “Astrid?” the dentist called.

  With both of them leaning over him, Rich’s heart thunked. She avoided his eyes, stared at a spot on his top lip, as though he’d smeared some grease there. His palms sweated, extra saliva pooling.

  “Take my sweet tooth out while you’re at it.”

  The dentist sighed, as though the joke tired him.

  “That’s a nice boat you got,” Rich said.

  “Thank you.”

  “You take it out much?”

  “We bought it for our son.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “He’s an attorney.” The dentist took the syringe from Astrid. “You’ll feel a pinch.”

  Rich winced.

  “Give that a minute to numb up.”

  They left him. Clammy with nerves—thought it was her, sitting so close, but it was worse alone. Pins and needles started in the gum, spread. Television in the next room. Fern in a china pot near the door.

  “Okay,” the dentist said. Astrid took a seat on the other side of his head. “You’ll feel some pressure.”

  Flat on his back, Rich searched for something to take his mind off Langley, who was prying the tooth out as though levering a tree root free with an iron bar. He tasted blood. Every few minutes the dentist stopped for Astrid to suction it out. Rich stared at the ceiling, only half registered the slick lump passing through his lips.

  “It’ll be sore when that wears off.” Langley peeled off his blood-smeared gloves and dropped them in the trash.

  He washed his hands, gone before Rich could thank him, room spinning from sitting up too quick.

  “That’ll be forty-five dollars,” Astrid said, putting on her glasses to write a receipt. She held it out to him, her hand reaching through time, the same hand that had once offered the peacock caddis, its tickling weightlessness landing on the water like a live insect, ripples circling out from the raised snouts of trout. The hand she’d once taken his in, to press it to her belly. At nineteen, he’d laughed to chase the fear. I could teach him to fish, he’d said.

  How do you know it’s a him? Astrid had challenged him.

  There’d been no girl child in Gundersen history, but suddenly, because Astrid had willed it, it was so.

  Her then.

  Astrid had smiled, as though the idea pleased her, or maybe, looking back, it was only the satisfaction of winning. A day later, she’d changed her mind. After all of it—rain pelting the windshield as he fumbled for something to say on their way back from June Millhauser’s in Samoa, settling finally on We could still get married. After her rage. What makes you think I’d marry you? After she’d forced him from the car, blood spotting through her wool skirt, and slid behind the wheel herself. After she’d left him there, at the side of the road. Even after he’d met Colleen, the guilt still lingered at the back of his mind—if only he’d said something, done something. But he saw now that Astrid didn’t regret it, didn’t think of him at all.

  “Is that your grandson?” she asked, nodding at his open wallet, Chub all dimples in his school picture.

  “Son.” His tongue was numb and clumsy, gauze roll wedged in to staunch the bleeding.

  “Oh.” She stared at the wallet a moment longer, as though he might flip to the next photo.

  “We’ve only got the one. Colleen—my wife—we’ve lost a few—eight.” He corrected himself. “We’ve lost eight.”

  He waited, as though Astrid might say she was sorry. He still felt the weight of the small parcel June Millhauser had handed him to shove into the woodstove, a baby the size of an apple core. He’d wanted so badly to unfold the cloth. It felt wrong to burn what should be buried.

  “I used to think about him,” he admitted. “Her. For a long time, even after I stopped thinking about—” He cleared his throat. You, us. “I wanted a family.” He’d been carrying it so long, it was a relief to set it down, finally, at her feet.

  Astrid closed the account book. “I’m glad you found someone.”

  He pinched the fly out of his pocket and dropped it onto her desk. She lowered her hand over it, hovering, as though saying a prayer.

  “Goodbye, Rich,” she said.

  * * *

  He stood outside the closed door, holding the waxed paper envelope she’d put his tooth in. No one had asked if he’d wanted it. He patted his cheek, checking his face was still there. Fog rolled in. He drove slow, felt the curve of Last Chance in the pit of his gut. He passed the house and kept going, turned in toward Requa, up the roll-back hill. Pickups lined the road. Rich parked, got out, and walked up, passing Eugene’s Chevy in Merle’s driveway, sap gunked in the bed, a busted chain. Too lazy to even cover his tracks. Just as well. Needed to set things straight with both of them.

  The debarked dog hacked. Rich pulled the blood-soaked plug of gauze free. He followed voices around the side of the house to the back deck, barbecue smoke itching his nostrils. They stood around the grill, Merle flipping steaks—Eugene, the Sanderson kid, a couple young guys from the other crew, a few more who looked familiar from that night on the road after they’d massacred the lower grove, though it had been dark.

  “Rich, come on up here,” Merle called, like he’d been expecting him.

  Rich mounted the steps. Eugene’s eyes slid away. Scout must have trotted right up to him looking for an ear rub.

  “Grab a beer,” Merle said. “We’re celebrating.”

  Eugene slapped a bottle against his chest and Rich looked down at it, like this might be the fight starting. He saw it drop, explode at his feet. Saw himself clap the bullet casings onto the porch railing, shove Merle against it. But here was the beer bottle in his hand, slick and cool, still whole. Merle handed the steaks off. Guys headed in. Rich hung back.

  “You don’t look happy, Rich,” Merle said, scraping burned fat off the grill.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “You want to know what I think?” Merle closed the lid over the grill. “I think you’re one lucky sonofabitch. I think you got a brother-in-law that looks out for you.”

  Eugene caught Rich’s eyes through the glass, looked away too quickly. Rich set the full beer on the porch railing.

  “I think you go home and tell your wife to keep her mouth shut,” Merle said. “It’d be a shame if word ever got out that Larson baby came out stillborn because of her.”

  “It wasn’t stillborn. It was born with the top of its head gone. How was she supposed to save it?” Rich demanded with a surge of anger.

  Merle raised his eyebrows, not used to being interrupted. “I bet the state would be real interested to learn some backwoods housewife is playing doctor, pulling babies out before they’re cooked.”

  “That’s not true,” Rich said, accidentally knocking the bottle off the railing. It shattered, foaming on the ground below.

  “True, not true.” Merle shrugged. “You know how rumors spread.”

  “She doesn’t take any money,” Rich said. “She never has. You leave her out of this.”

  Merle pressed his tongue into his cheek, suppressing a smile. “You coming in?”

  Rich looked in the window at the men hunched over their steaks. If he looked at Merle, he would grab him by the throat, slam him up against the faded yellow siding.

  Merle followed Rich’s gaze. “They’ll settle down. We were young once too, remember?” Merle gestured toward the door, but Rich didn’t budge. “Suit yourself,” Merle said. “Soon as this rain quits, we’re going to work you so hard it’ll knock your dick down into the dirt. Rest up. Get things straight at home.”

  “Or what?” Rich asked. “You’ll have Eugene cut my brake lines too?”

  “Go home, Gundersen. Go home to your wife.” The screen door thwapped closed behind him.

  Rich swallowed the taste of blood. Eugene shifted his weight, though his back was to t
he window. An animal knows when it’s being watched. Quick shot of eye contact from Merle, letting him know Rich was still out there.

  The husky growled, backing under the steps as Rich collected the pieces of the broken bottle so the mutt wouldn’t cut a pad. A dog wasn’t a man. It didn’t choose which sonofabitch owned him.

  CHUB

  His mom stopped chopping, listening without turning her head. Dad was home. Chub ran to the front door. His dad limped around the back of the truck and let the tailgate down. Chub waited for Scout to jump out. It was Chub who’d found Scout’s chain abandoned in the backyard this morning and run inside to tell. Scout ran away!

  I know, Grahamcracker, his mom had said, I know.

  All day he’d waited: Scout had gone to find his dad. His dad would bring him home. Instead, his dad slid a door from the truck bed.

  “Where’s Scout?” Chub asked.

  “Watch out there, Chub,” his dad said. Chub moved out of the way.

  “What happened?” his mom asked.

  “Got it pulled.” His dad patted his swollen cheek.

  Chub walked out to the truck. Wet gravel poked the bottoms of his feet. He climbed up on the back tire and looked into the bed: no Scout. He jumped down and yanked open the truck’s door, even though dogs didn’t ride up front.

  “Where is he?” Chub asked, coming in.

  “Go wash your hands,” his mom said.

  They sat at the table. Chub dragged his fork through his mashed potatoes.

  “What if he’s lost?” Chub asked.

  His mom looked at his dad.

  “All he has to do is follow his creeks,” his dad said. He took a bite, sucked air, and pushed his plate away.

  Chub asked to be excused and slipped out into the backyard. Here was Scout’s chain. Here were his bowls. Here was a marrowbone carved with his teeth marks. Chub carried the bone to the doghouse and peeked in the doorway.

  “Scout?”

  He crawled in. Here was the old rag rug from the kitchen, Scout’s dog smell. Chub touched his cheek to the rug, hugged Scout’s bone to his chest, and curled up to wait.