Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  * * *

  It was almost dark. His dad crouched in the doorway of the doghouse.

  “You awake?” his dad asked.

  Chub sat up.

  “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  Chub followed his dad up the hill. It was strange to walk the path without Scout. No Scout running ahead, panting. No Scout doubling back to lick Chub’s ear. They got to the trees and his dad veered off the trail to a spot where the dirt had been dug up and then stamped down. His dad squatted beside it and pulled Chub close.

  “What’s wrong?” Chub asked.

  His dad sucked air in his nose. “Did I ever tell you about how I first found Scout?” he asked.

  Chub shook his head.

  “I went down to the beach to get your uncle Lark some driftwood. I pulled a log free from this pile, and there was this scruffy little puppy. Scared me. I fell back on my butt and before I knew it he was standing on my chest.” His dad smiled. “When you were first learning to walk you used to chase him around the yard. When you sat down, he’d come over next to you so you could grab on and pull yourself back up and chase him some more.”

  Chub leaned against his dad’s shoulder. His dad drew in a shaky breath.

  “He was a good dog.” His dad reached into his front pocket, and there in his palm was a yellow agate the size of a jellybean. Chub took it. His dad nodded at the turned soil. “It’s okay,” his dad said. “He had a good, long life. Now he can rest.” His dad rubbed warm circles into Chub’s back. “Now he can rest.”

  March 12 RICH

  “Maybe we shouldn’t.” Colleen stalled, staring across the community center lot at Eugene’s truck.

  “We’re here,” Rich said.

  He held the door. The smell of battered fish wafted over them. Across the room, the Sanderson kid pinged a dart into the pocked board—bull’s-eye. Eugene handed him another, caught sight of Rich, pretended not to. There were two kinds of men: guys who swung, and guys like Eugene, who looked around for something to hit you with first. The second dart pinged beside the first, so close it split the tail feathers. The kid could have shot Scout from a distance, but Eugene must have gotten out, pressed the barrel right to his head. Rich clenched his fists. Eugene, you worthless piece of shit.

  “Enid isn’t here,” Colleen pleaded, as though this gave them permission to leave.

  Pete, Don, and Lew all acknowledged him with curt nods, but Colleen kept her head down. Rich followed her and Chub through the line, watched Chub pick at his French fries. Eugene dug around in the cooler by the dartboard for another beer.

  “I’m going to go talk to him,” Rich said. “Before he gets too loaded.”

  “Rich,” Colleen protested, but he was already up, tipping his head toward the door.

  Rich went out and leaned against his pickup. Before long, Eugene appeared, loose in the knees.

  “How much you up?” Rich asked.

  “One sixty.” Eugene raked his boot through the gravel.

  Rich clapped the bullets and their casings onto the hood. “You have something to say, say it.”

  Eugene glanced back at the door, rammed his fists into his pockets, cold air sobering him up. “You’re the one who has shit to say.”

  Rich picked a bullet off the hood.

  “I dug this out of my front door. We got a problem?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You killed my dog.”

  “I didn’t.” Eugene shook his head.

  “Who did then?”

  Eugene shrugged.

  “Cut the shit, Eugene. You’re my fucking brother-in-law. You’re the only damn family we have.”

  “I tried. I defended you. But then you let Colleen go off and do whatever she feels like, helping that guy sling shit at Sanderson. Shit, Rich, you might as well have hung a target on your back.”

  Eugene turned to go, but Rich grabbed him by the shirt neck and shoved him against the grill. Casings rolled off the hood, tinking at their feet.

  “You listen to me, you sonofabitch.”

  “Get off me.” Eugene struggled, went limp, outmatched, weighted down by liquor.

  “I don’t care what Merle tells you to do. I’ll deal with my own wife my own way.”

  “He didn’t tell me shit until after. You think I wouldn’t have tried to stop them, if I’d known?”

  Rich tightened his grip on Eugene’s shirt. “Maybe there’s something to all this spray talk if Merle’s paying guys like you to sneak around shooting people’s dogs. You’ve been drinking that stuff for years. We all have. If it can fuck up a deer, sure as shit it can fuck up a baby, you kiss-ass. Ever wonder why Alsea isn’t crawling?”

  Eugene jerked free. “Watch your damn mouth.”

  “And what do you think Merle would say about your little burl game?” Rich asked. “Colleen saw them out at your place—you think a tarp’s going to hide that? You think Merle’ll give two shits about you, once he finds out?”

  “You don’t know shit, Gundersen.” Eugene snorted, beer on his breath. “You think I’m dumb enough to steal burls out from under Merle’s nose? Whose idea do you think it was? He had to keep some money coming in, how the hell do you think he could afford to keep us all on the payroll, waiting on those harvest plans to clear?”

  “You’re a fucking liar,” Rich said.

  “Who you calling a liar?” Eugene lunged. Rich caught him by the throat, felt the urge to hurt him—to really hurt him. It took Eugene a moment to start struggling against the chokehold, eyes sharpening, a glint of panic, hands clutching at the vise of Rich’s knuckles.

  “Richard,” Colleen said.

  Rich released him. Eugene coughed, sucked air, rubbed his throat.

  “Go ahead,” Eugene said, hoarse. “Tell Merle. Tell him I’ve made myself another two grand on the side, cutting cordwood off Sanderson land. At least I’m cutting something. Your timber is going to fall over and rot. You’ll be so broke you’ll be begging me to let you in on it.” Eugene spat. “Sorry about your damn dog, but don’t go blaming the shit you’re in on me.”

  Colleen stepped aside to let him by, flinched at the door whapping shut behind him.

  “My coat’s inside,” she said.

  Alone in the parking lot, Rich spun a slow circle, eyeing the pickups. It could have been anybody, some guy from that night on the road when Scout had bared his teeth, growling, as though he already smelled him.

  Colleen came out, dragging Chub by the hand and hustling him into the truck. Fog swirled in the headlights, rolling out over the rocky edge as they rounded the curves, Colleen inhaling sharply, unsure where the road was, if there still was one. At the willow, Rich turned in, flicked the headlights off. They stared at the dark house, silence where Scout’s bark should have been.

  SPRING 1978

  March 16 COLLEEN

  In the weeks since the hearing, Colleen had gotten used to the stares in town, conversations petering out when she drew near. Give it some time, Rich said. It’ll be a slow thaw. Chub in school, she filled a glass at the filter spout, watched it spill over, sniffed it. She walked the mile up the gulch along Garlic Creek on her own. She sat on the front steps of the abandoned cabin and stared at the Deer Rib slide. Already plants were sprouting, life returning after disaster.

  Walking back down the hill to the house, she heard the telephone, still ringing after she shed her boots and pushed through the back door into the kitchen.

  “You heard?” Marsha was breathless.

  “Heard what?” Colleen asked.

  * * *

  She smelled it before she saw it, smoke settled over the glen like fog. She got out of the truck: Helen and Carl’s blackened fireplace a lone pillar, mounds of wet wood and ash.

  “You a friend of theirs.” A statement, not a question. The old man stood on his front lawn across the street, watching her. “Carl’s hands are burned up pretty bad,” the old man said. “Lucky nobody died. Hell of a fire. House went up like a bale of straw.
” The man scratched his scalp.

  “Do you know where they are?” Colleen asked.

  “Up at Hupa, with the rest of them, probably,” the man said. “She’s got family up there, on the reservation. They were always coming around.”

  “Are they coming back?” Colleen asked, hearing how foolish the question sounded. She wanted to sit down in the middle of the road.

  * * *

  Chub bounced up and down on the curb, waiting for her to come to a complete stop. He launched himself up onto the seat, chattering, and disappeared to his room when they got home. Rich sat in the kitchen, bank statements spread across the table, filling out their tax forms.

  “They burned it.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, not looking up.

  “Helen and Carl’s house. To the ground.”

  “What?” He stopped. “When?”

  “Last night.”

  “Are they okay?”

  “They’re alive. Homeless, but alive.”

  “Did you tell Chub?” he asked.

  She knew she needed to; he was looking forward to that party. But it surprised her that Rich had thought of it. She shook her head. Rich sighed and took off his cheaters, folded them.

  “You’re thinking that could have been us?” she asked. She’d felt a blinking light of panic, staring at the wreckage of Helen and Carl’s house.

  Rich was quiet. “They didn’t have a dog,” he said finally.

  How can we stay here? she wanted to ask. But Rich’s great-grandfather had chopped a clearing out of these woods, felled tree after tree until the call—tim-ber—had tolled like a bell in his heart, echoing down through the generations. Rich would chop off his own foot before he walked away from this place. And how long would she and Chub last without him? A week? A month? She sat down across the table from him.

  “Things will calm down,” Rich promised. “They’ll calm down.” As though repeating it might make it true.

  March 18 RICH

  Rich idled. A fresh-painted sign, propped against a sawhorse, blocked the dirt two-track:

  SORRY, WE’RE DEAD.

  Have to be dead to pass up screwing a tourist out of a city dollar. Rich swerved around it, plunging into tall grass. The cabin came into view, Lark slumped in a chair on the porch. Rich punched the horn. Lark didn’t budge, tuft of gray hair licked sideways by the breeze. He pulled up out front. The dogs came around the side of the cabin, followed by the hog.

  Shit. Lark. Don’t do this to me now.

  He tossed Lark’s mail onto the seat, pushed out of the truck, took the steps two at a time. Wood curls were strewn around Lark’s feet, half-carved Sasquatch still in his lap. Two buttons held his shirt together at the bottom, as though he’d torn it open to breathe, growth the size of a plum swelling below his collarbone. Spittle cobwebbed the corners of his mouth. His freckled bald spot had a yellowy tint.

  “Lark?” Rich asked. He touched his shoulder. Lark’s head snapped up. Rich started. “You sonofabitch.”

  “ ‘Closed’ wouldn’t fit,” Lark said with a crooked grin, doing up his buttons. “You going to stand there like a damn tax collector? Pop a squat.”

  Rich wiped his boots on the mat, COME BACK WITH A WAR streaked with dried mud, and dragged a chair out from the kitchen.

  “I knew a guy killed another guy over a dog once.”

  “Wish it was as simple as that,” Rich said, splinter of grief still lodged in his chest.

  “Pretty low blow.”

  “Least Merle didn’t burn my house down.”

  “No kidding,” Lark said. “Who do you think he had do that one?”

  “Who knows.”

  They watched the river.

  “Everything ironed out between you and Colleen?” Lark asked after a time.

  “More or less,” Rich said.

  “You track down Dr. Fish Doctor?”

  Rich shook his head.

  “Afraid you’d kill him?”

  Rich let out a long breath. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.” He picked a squirrel statue off the crowded crate and ran a thumb along its tail, feeling every wiry hair, turned it over and examined the bottom, as though a message might be carved there.

  “I wanted to hit her, when she told me,” Rich admitted, the shame of it a lump in his throat. “I never would. You know I never would.” He shook his head. “It’s my own damn fault. I got so wrapped up in that whole 24-7 deal.”

  Lark tossed Rich a hunk of driftwood. “There’s a Sasquatch in there wants free.”

  “That’s your job,” Rich said.

  “Help a dying man out.”

  Rich popped open his knife.

  “Any word on those harvest plans?” Lark asked once they were both finished.

  “Not yet, officially.” Rich rose to leave.

  “How you doing on toothpicks?”

  Rich tapped his front pocket. “All set,” he said, and went down the steps to his truck.

  “Watch out for potholes and assholes,” Lark called after him.

  Rich collected the mail off the seat.

  “Almost forgot,” he said, coming back up onto the porch and tossing the envelopes onto the upside-down crate. “Lot of mail for a dead man.”

  March 20 COLLEEN

  Daniel leaned against the brick wall of the Beehive, waiting, like they’d agreed to meet here. She walked past him.

  “Colleen—” As though after humiliating her in front of everyone, in front of Rich, she was the one being unreasonable. “Colleen, come on.” He stirred but didn’t follow.

  Inside, Dot’s eyes kept sliding toward the window.

  “How long’s he been out there?” Colleen asked.

  “A while. Waiting on a ride. Lost his brakes again, I guess.”

  In the refrigerated case: four white store-bought eggs, each stamped with a date.

  “They’ll be working right in your backyard,” Dot said, as though trying to cheer Colleen up, to compensate for weeks of cold-shouldering. “Rich can come home for lunch.” Dot dropped bear claws into a sack, set it on the counter, but kept her hand on it. “I lost one too,” Dot confided. “Long time ago, now. When Lew and me were first married. You trust God, but still. You want a reason.”

  Colleen took the bag. The bear claws weighed almost nothing.

  “My dad took me, once,” Colleen remembered. “To see the salmon in Blue Creek, after they spawned. They were rotting up and down the banks. He said they died doing what they were born to do.”

  “You okay, hon?”

  “I keep thinking about what this place was like when I was a kid. It’s not the same.”

  Dot wiped an invisible smear off the counter. “Oh, I don’t know. Still rains.”

  Colleen went out.

  “Colleen,” Daniel called after her. He held her truck door to keep her from slamming it. “Will you listen to me for one minute?”

  “Oh, now you want to talk to me?” Colleen fumed. “You don’t want to wait until there’s a microphone?”

  “Colleen, look, I only got those results the day of.” Daniel dropped his eyes. “I should have told you first, before I—”

  “Before you announced it to the whole town?” Colleen crossed her arms. “Well?”

  He cleared his throat. “The lab found 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, and TCDD—dioxin contaminant—five parts per billion.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  Daniel looked off sideways. “There is no ‘safe’ level.”

  “You tested both?” Colleen asked.

  “Both what?”

  “The faucet water and the filtered?”

  Daniel nodded.

  Colleen snorted, shook her head.

  “I never meant to drag you into all this,” Daniel said by way of apology.

  “Sure you did. From the very first day you did.” How could she have been so stupid? “Where did you get them?” she asked.

  “Get what?”

  She rapped her knuckles against her
temple. “You just woke up and decided, ‘Today I think I’ll dig up a child’s skull and hide it like an Easter egg’?” Even as she lashed out, she knew the accusation was absurd.

  “You think I’d have anything to do with—?” Daniel tightened his jaw. “All those preservation people think about is how they can use us to push their own agenda.”

  Colleen scoffed. “That’s something you’d know something about.” She jerked the door, but he held fast.

  “Yes, okay, you’re right,” Daniel said. “You’re not some here-today, gone-tomorrow choker setter’s wife, okay? You bring babies into the world. It had to be someone the community respects. We have to show them we aren’t just going to get in line.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Colleen shot back.

  “Colleen, I see you. You want another kid so bad it might as well be written on your forehead.”

  “You don’t even know me.” She yanked the door.

  “Colleen, come on, don’t be like that. We can’t give up now.”

  “I’m married.” The look on Rich’s face when she’d told him; the glass jars hitting the wall; the sick drop in her gut, still, whenever she passed the radar station turnoff; the worry at the back of her mind, even now, that someone would drive by and see her talking to Daniel—all of it contained in these two words.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  A brown Datsun pulled into the lot and honked. The pretty journalist with the camera.

  “Of course not.” Colleen slammed her door.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said through the glass. “Colleen, I care about you.”

  “No, you don’t. You didn’t then, and you don’t now.”

  She put the truck in gear. She’d made him angry. Her own hands were shaking with it.

  March 22 RICH

  Rich rolled another round onto the chopping block, arms warm and loose. Ax work was honest work. He’d been out here since three, too antsy to sleep—first day of the season. In two hours, he’d be back on the crummy. Colleen cracked the front door.