Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  “What did you wish for?” Rich asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” Chub said. “Or it won’t come true.”

  COLLEEN

  Colleen stood on a chair in front of Lark’s doorless cabinets, staring at a row of punch glasses. The windowpanes vibrated with the noise of the log splitter, Rich tossing cordwood into the wheelbarrow.

  “What do you think?” Marsha asked, scraping greasy dust off a plate with her fingernail. “I’ll try soaking them.”

  Colleen handed down the etched crystal goblets, green tinted, relics of another century.

  “Where did he get these, I wonder?” Marsha asked, keeping the talk going. “Must have been a wedding gift.”

  Chub emptied Sasquatches from the hutch, lining them up along the baseboards. He’d asked where Lark was and seemed to accept the answer, though he’d been more persistent about the squirrel, whose tail Rich had found in a mud wallow.

  Colleen scrubbed out the cupboards. Marsha’s cheery voice and Chub’s shy replies faded into the background, until she realized she no longer heard Rich. The log splitter sat silent, wood piled neatly against the shed. The dogs had crawled underneath his truck, sheltering from the drizzle.

  “You want more coffee?” Marsha asked. “I’ll make some.”

  Rich streaked by the window, loping down to the river and hurling a rock out. He bent, bracing his arms on his knees, then turned and strode back up, past the house. After a few minutes, Rich streaked past again, like he could hurl the thoughts in his head out with the next rock, sink them to the bottom of the river.

  “Took Lark years to carry those rocks up,” Marsha said, handing her a steaming mug. “Carried one up out of the river every day, until he got hurt.”

  Colleen had seen the rock pile at the base of the giant stump on Knockdown Ridge. The tree that had killed Rich’s father. They watched Rich stoop, hands braced against his knees, dark folds of forest disappearing into the mist on the other side of the river.

  “What is it about men?” Marsha asked. “They’d be better off if they’d just cry and be done.” Marsha picked invisible lint off her shoulder. “You ready for the living room? I’m afraid of what might be living under that couch.”

  * * *

  Rich came up onto the porch, hesitated, not wanting to sully the mopped floors.

  “Almost clean enough to eat in here,” Marsha announced.

  A lard can sat near the door, filled with cigarettes cut from the undersides of furniture.

  “Liked hiding them more than he liked smoking them,” Marsha said.

  “You about ready?” Rich asked. Colleen nodded.

  Chub had fallen asleep on the couch. Colleen touched his shoulder, waited for him to sit up. Rich stood in the kitchen alone for a moment. The last one out, he pulled the door shut behind them.

  “You know,” Marsha said, “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that door closed.”

  Rich clapped Killer and Banjo out from under the truck, hog nosing around Marsha’s tires.

  “Move it, you big lard-ass, before I fry you in your own grease.” Marsha shooed him. “I’ll come by and feed ’em tomorrow. Think we should take down his signs?”

  Rich shrugged. “Tree’s still here. Put a can out.”

  “You think? Maybe I will.”

  “Watch out for potholes,” Colleen called.

  “Honey, it’s the assholes I never see coming.”

  April 13 RICH

  “Lark loaned me some money,” Rich said, setting the pile of cash on the table. “Before he died. Should help tide us over, until the grove starts paying out.”

  Colleen looked at it, then at him. “I’ll deposit it today,” she said.

  He nodded, grabbed his lunch pail and thermos.

  She followed him out. “Be careful.” She rose onto her tiptoes to peck him on the cheek. He turned his head, caught her lips instead.

  * * *

  A few miles south of the house: a single brake cherry in the distance. Rich slowed: a station wagon, front end accordioned, perpendicular across both lanes, ocean a flash of silver through the trees. Rich pulled off onto the narrow shoulder, eyed the blind curve ahead, walked around to the driver’s side. Volvo. Washington plates. Sleeping bags, a cooler.

  “Everybody okay?” he asked. A woman cupped a hand to her bleeding nose in the passenger seat. The husband turned, bewildered, still gripping the wheel.

  “I told you to slow down,” the wife said.

  The man pried his hands off the wheel, pulled the door release, bashed Rich in the kneecaps, sat back. There was a divot in the windshield where his head had hit, egg rising on his forehead.

  “Those needles get pretty slick when they’re wet,” Rich commiserated. “Will she start?”

  Two kids in the backseat. The woman’s nosebleed dripped down her chin. Rich offered his handkerchief. The man wouldn’t move, so Rich stuck his arm through to her.

  “Log truck comes around that bend, he’ll cream you,” Rich said. He reached in and tried the key. The starter clicked.

  “Put her in neutral,” Rich said. “Kids better hop out.”

  He got the wife behind the wheel. He and the husband pushed the car to the shoulder. The man faced north, probably the direction they’d been headed.

  “I can give you a lift to town,” Rich said.

  They squeezed in, Volvo fading into the fog behind them. With the car out of sight, the man began to snap out of it.

  “I couldn’t see.”

  “Where you from?” Rich asked.

  “Bellingham.”

  “You get fog up there?”

  “Yes,” the wife said, scrunching her nose, blotting experimentally.

  The kids were spooked but unhurt. Be fine once they got a hot cocoa. Rich pulled in at the Beehive. Missed the crummy by now anyway.

  “Dot bakes a mean bear claw,” Rich said, holding the door for them. He ducked to avoid conking his head on the bell. Dot looked up, whisking the contents of a mixing bowl braced under her arm as though the motion were also powering the lights overhead. “These folks had a little car trouble,” he said.

  The wife pulled the kerchief away from her nose.

  “Oof,” Dot said. “Let’s get some ice on that.” Dot showed the wife to the toilet, set two cinnamon rolls on plates for the kids. The man stood like he was waiting to be told what to do next.

  “Dot brews coffee to raise the dead,” Rich told him. “Dot, I got to get to work. Can you call Harvey? We got it to the side, but somebody comes around that curve too fast, that’ll be it.”

  “Where at?”

  “North of Wilson Creek.”

  “Go on.” She reached for the phone.

  * * *

  When Rich got to the mill lot, Marsha was hauling a box to her car. He rolled down the window.

  “You moving?”

  “You think I want to be here when they find out?”

  “Find out what?”

  “Grove’s sold.”

  “Sold?” Rich asked. “What do you mean, sold? To who?”

  “The park. Bought and paid for. Merle just called and told me himself.”

  “But—the harvest plans. They just finally—” Rich stammered.

  “That’s what he said.” Marsha shrugged, wedging the box into her backseat, Merle’s Cadillac nowhere in sight.

  “Where is he?” Rich asked.

  “Home, I think.”

  That sonofabitch. Rich tore out of the lot, went flying back through town, up Requa Hill. The Cadillac’s doors were thrown open, trunk crammed with suitcases. The debarked dog unleashed a hoarse volley when Rich set foot on the bottom step. The front door stood ajar. Gone were the hutches with their china eggs, the burl clock, four indents in the carpet where the coffee table once sat. Even the phony smells had dissipated, leaving only a damp, musty tang.

  “Somebody rob this place?” Rich asked.

  Merle looked over his shoulder, taping a carton shut. “She’s
on the market. You interested? I’ll let you have her for a song.”

  Rich snorted. “So that’s it?” Rich asked.

  Merle hefted the carton. “Not much of a sendoff, is it?”

  Rich followed him out onto the porch, watched him wedge the carton into the trunk and slam it, lean his weight to force it shut.

  “Why’d you sell?” Rich asked.

  “I didn’t sell anything.” Merle scratched his neck. “You got a problem, talk to Congress. Took the whole Damnation Creek drainage. Why do you think corporate wanted that timber down so bad? Have their cake and eat it too, just like in ’68. Anything ‘downed by the hand of man’ as of January thirty-first they can haul out. And they got their proof right there in the newspaper.” Merle leaned back against the car, catching his breath. “Laws are funny, aren’t they?”

  “What are you talking about?” Rich asked.

  “That grove is park land now. Sanderson will get its salvage job, and then it’ll be reclamation, restoration, all that environmental bullshit. By the end, won’t know there was ever a road there. You want your logs off the 24-7, you’ll need a goddamn helicopter, no other way you’re getting them out.”

  “I thought they expanded the park down by Redwood Creek,” Rich said.

  “Rich.” Merle smiled. “Read the fine print.” He must have known this was coming for months.

  “What do you mean?” Rich asked, his chest tightening.

  “It’s all Humboldt County, except for two parcels. Little spot known as Damnation Grove. It took some negotiating, I can tell you. It’s not ‘contiguous.’ But I sold it hard, Rich. ‘You ain’t never seen redwoods like these, if they go, the Damnation Creek salmon run goes too.’ I sold it so hard, shit, even I teared up. Those trees are special.” Merle flicked an imaginary tear from his eye.

  “You two-faced sonofabitch.” Rich backed up, his vision blurring. “All this time you were stringing us along, getting us to fight for that grove, while you were selling it out from under us?”

  “That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” Merle said. “Works out better for the company’s bottom line. Is it my fault a bunch of rich city assholes want to spend their family vacations looking at trees? I didn’t invent the cow, Rich, I just see how to milk it. Sure, it’ll cost a few guys like you—well, it’ll bury you, you can forget about using those access roads, you’d need a federal right-of-way to haul private timber across park land. With how long that environmental bullcrap takes, you’ll be dead before you—”

  Rich decked him, catching the hard ridge of his cheekbone, the fleshy bend of nostril. Merle stumbled back.

  “That all you got, Gundersen? Come on.” Merle smacked his other cheek.

  Rich hit him again, then a third time. A thick rivulet of nose blood ran down over Merle’s lips.

  “Enough,” Merle panted.

  Rich’s breath came and went, came and went. He shook the sting out of his knuckles.

  Merle wiped his lip on his sleeve, leaned over, spat, blood smeared across his teeth. “Eugene cut a couple hundred grand worth of burls off that grove. Maybe he’ll teach you.”

  “Cheat, bribe, stab, or steal,” Rich said.

  A look of satisfaction crossed Merle’s face. “Always liked the sound of that.”

  Merle climbed heavily into his car and reversed out of the driveway. The husky came out from under the porch, whining.

  “You forgot your dog,” Rich called.

  “Shoot him,” Merle said. “We’ll call it even.”

  The rear end of the Cadillac sank, rounded the bend, and slipped out of sight. Rich blew air out his nose and started the truck. The husky stretched to the end of his chain, white around the eyes.

  Waste-of-a-bullet dog.

  * * *

  When he got back to the mill, Marsha’s car was still in the lot.

  “Figured you’d be back,” she said, standing behind her counter when he came in. She laid out his check. Rich signed and Marsha tore off the voucher, a ripping he felt in his chest.

  He fingered the corner, folded it in half, and tucked it into his breast pocket. “You know how much my first check was? Twelve dollars. Bought myself two pairs of denims and about a hundred chocolate bars.”

  Marsha smiled. “I’m mailing everybody else’s.” She nestled a stack of envelopes inside a carton of odds and ends. “Walk me out.”

  She stood for a moment in the doorway, surveying the front office, before turning the light out on twenty years of her life. In the parking lot, Marsha popped her trunk, reached in, and pulled out a framed picture—the crew, Lark and his dad. “You should take this.”

  “Nah.”

  “Go on.” She dug in the trunk, came up with a wood box about the size of a King James Bible. “Lark said not to give it to you right away,” Marsha said. “You know he liked to boss.”

  It was heavy: river carved into the lid, a heron lifting off at the water’s edge, chinook leaping from the current, each fish scale angled and oiled to create the illusion of glistening. Show-off.

  “I almost forgot.” Marsha went around to her glove box and came back. “Here.” She plonked Lark’s bone-handled knife into Rich’s hand.

  * * *

  It took most of the day, driving out to the grove, the crew a mob, Eugene kicking the rim of the crummy’s tire hard enough to break a toe, then storming off in the direction of town, park service guys shifting nervously in their tan-and-greens, Harvey in between. At the end, Don got into Rich’s truck and they rode back to the mill, following the crummy.

  “Sold us out to the park. All the shit I’ve seen Merle pull over the years, and I still can’t believe it.” Don shook his head, like he was drunk and trying to sober himself up. “What are you going to do with your free time, Rich?”

  “Travel.”

  Don snorted. They came up on Eugene limping along, fists balled, torso thrust forward.

  “Should we let him walk it off?” Don asked.

  Rich passed him, slowed, watched Eugene grow larger in the rearview.

  Don slid out to let Eugene climb in the middle. Rich waited for him to let loose, but Eugene only clenched and unclenched his fists, the quietest Rich had ever seen him.

  Rich dropped Don at his truck in the mill lot. Eugene slouched down and tilted his head back, staring at the truck’s ceiling.

  “I burned Carl’s place down,” he said. “Merle told me they wouldn’t be home. Said not to worry about the truck in the driveway, they were up visiting her folks.” Eugene shook his head. “All the shit he had me do. For what? What the hell do I do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Rich admitted.

  Eugene sat forward, hunched over his knees.

  “He cleared out his place,” Rich confided. “Probably halfway to Vegas by now.”

  Eugene ran his palms along both sides of his hat. “Shit,” he said, and got out.

  Rich watched him limp to his truck and climb in, head off home. Once he was out of sight, Rich headed back up to Merle’s house.

  “You going to bite me, you sonofabitch?” Rich asked, letting the husky off its chain. The dog bolted, moving fast, despite its hobble, scrambling up into the cab.

  “Nah, you ride in back.” Rich let the tailgate down. “Come on, now.”

  The dog refused, feinted when Rich reached for him, until finally Rich gave up. The husky whined, panting as they backed down the drive, wet nose tracing patterns in the glass, fogged with its god-awful breath. Rich reached across and cracked the passenger-side window. Together they rode, wind on their faces.

  At the house, Rich hooked him to Scout’s old chain around back.

  “Whose dog is that?” Colleen asked, standing at the kitchen window when he came in.

  “Nobody’s.”

  She scrounged around for something to feed it. He sat down and laid the picture frame on the table: Lark on a giant stump, head tipped slightly back, Rich’s father beside him, leaning an elbow on Lark’s shoulder, stubborn, bashful, stupid w
ith hope.

  “What happened to your hand?” she asked.

  His knuckles had swelled, a smear of Merle’s blood dried across them. Elbows on the table, he bowed his head, pressed his fists into his forehead.

  “Rich, what is it?”

  “Nothing.” He straightened up. His right hand throbbed. “Just tired.”

  “Rich. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  April 14 COLLEEN

  Chub held the empty pickle jar in his lap. She parked in the dirt pullout above the path. Chub ran ahead through the brambles, a tunnel of green. He hadn’t even noticed the old dog this morning. Just as well. It couldn’t bark and might not live until dinner.

  The path turned to sand. Chub disappeared into the light at the end, surf crashing.

  “Chub, wait!”

  She ran after him, bursting out onto the beach. Chub stood surveying a pile of driftwood, redwood pounded smooth but still orange, not salt or water enough in the ocean to bleed its color. The tide was still going out, foaming where it cut around sea stacks. Chub hung back, wary, that feeling of the ocean calling your name, ready to knock you down and drag you out.

  They searched tide pools for something show-and-tell worthy. Wind whipped Colleen’s hair, snapped her slicker, a wind to shake the change from your pockets.

  “There’s one!” Chub yelled. An orange starfish clamped to a rock.

  Usually he dragged on the way back to the truck, but today he raced ahead, shaking the jar, watching the starfish slosh in the seawater.

  “You’ll make him seasick.”

  He buckled his seat belt and swung his legs, jumping down as soon as she pulled to the curb outside the school. She watched him go. Before he got to the main doors, kids were swarming him, jar emitting a light only they could see.

  * * *

  That afternoon, she sat under the painted saw, waiting for Rich, when he came in. He set his keys in the burl bowl, as if he’d spent the day at work.