by Ash Davidson
“She’s a good mother,” Colleen said.
“Yeah.” Daniel’s eyes swept the clearing as though committing it to memory. She smelled smoke, mud, and, faintly, the musty spice of the shirt—Rich’s smell.
“I should go,” she said.
Daniel nodded. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. She hoped there was a woman waiting for him up north, that he wouldn’t drive all night only to push through the door of an empty house.
“Take care,” he said.
She crossed the yard to her truck, this huge white, unwanted truck that somehow, over the months, without her realizing it, had become hers. He gave a quick salute. She climbed up behind the wheel, closed her door, and pulled down the visor. The keys to her old life fell into her lap.
May 28 COLLEEN
Colleen pushed all the clothes hanging in the coat closet to one side. Where was Chub’s slicker? She’d looked everywhere and finally let him go outside without it, since the morning drizzle had lifted, but it had to be here someplace.
The table saw whined out front, Rich running boards up against the blade with the practiced movement of a man feeding carrots to an old horse. The harvest work was done on the lower grove. Tomorrow, trucks would come to haul the logs to the mill, they’d return the rented equipment, and Rich would be finally, officially, unemployed.
She watched him set another board on the stack of finished ones. He’d stripped the bathroom walls down to the studs already, working to push the worry from his mind.
“Have you seen Chub’s slicker?” she asked, going out.
“In the truck,” Rich said, reaching for another board.
The balled-up slicker stuck out from under the seat. When she pulled it free, a wooden box slid out from behind it.
“Where’d this come from?” she asked after Rich finished the next board.
“Marsha.”
She fingered the carved lid: curve of river, salmon midleap, a scene so lifelike she felt a pang of nostalgia for a time she didn’t even remember.
“You want it in the truck?” she asked.
“Nah, take it in.”
He reached for another board and she hugged the box to her chest, watching him guide the salvaged redwood into the blade, the spray of sawdust. He was still trying to sort out what to do about his 24-7, timber he owned but could not harvest, the worthless, wild backwoods he’d mortgaged everything they had for.
She went in, hung Chub’s slicker from the hook, set the box on the table. Out back, Chub was trying to teach the old dog to fetch. She watched him wave a stick, hurl it across the yard, wait, then grab the dog by the collar and drag him over to it. She made sandwiches.
“Lunch,” she called out the back door. “Chub, go tell your dad lunch is ready.”
He dropped the stick and disappeared around the side of the house. The saw went quiet and they came in together, Chub chattering about the dog.
Rich leafed through the mail while he ate, half-listening.
“Is this today’s?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Today’s Sunday.”
He tapped the end of an envelope against the tabletop, dropped it back onto the stack of bills.
“You keep at him,” Rich told Chub. “He’ll learn. Even an old dog can learn, if you’re patient with him.” He cast Colleen a playful glance, got up, and set his plate in the sink.
“You want a cup of coffee?” she asked.
“Nah. Need to finish up out there before it rains.” He went out.
“I’m thirsty,” Chub said.
Colleen handed him a glass and lifted her chin at the dispenser.
“Can I have juice?” he asked.
“Have water.”
He sighed and shuffled over, struggling to hold the glass in place and press the spigot, the novelty worn off.
She watched Rich out the window.
When Chub went back to school, she would get a job. She would ask Gail Porter if she needed help in the office, or maybe Dot could use her at the register. If all else failed, she could find something up in Crescent City a few days a week. It might not be much, but it would be something. Of course she couldn’t tell Rich, not yet. The hurt look he would give her. You think I can’t take care of us?
May 29 CHUB
His dad held the kitchen door and Chub slipped out, racing up the hill through the fog. It was a school day, but his dad had let him stay home. His dad swung him across Little Lost Creek and they hiked up and over, resting at the 24-7 tree, until finally they stood at the bottom of a muddy hill studded with stumps and broken logs. Water ran down the slope, washing dirt into a brown river.
“Where are we?” Chub asked.
“You know where we are.”
Chub shook his head. Without the trees, it didn’t look like any place he knew.
His dad carried him across and they climbed around steep cliffs where mud had fallen away. His dad let him ride on his back, so Chub could see over the maze of broken trees and rocks, once-underground springs now welling in the mud.
They hiked up to where giant logs were stacked. At the gravel road, the fog ended, like they’d walked through a white wall into a different day.
“When’s your birthday again?” his dad asked.
“Tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow? Why do I keep forgetting that?” His dad grinned, full of mischief.
“What are we waiting for?” Chub asked.
“The trucks,” Rich said. “They’re coming to take these logs to the mill.”
“Are these the last ones?” Chub asked.
“Yep,” his dad said, squinting off into the distance. Chub tugged at his dad’s pant leg until he lifted him up to see: the top of the 24-7 tree sticking up from a blanket of fog, bright orange in a beam of sun. “Last of the last,” his dad said.
COLLEEN
She turned up the driveway, pharmacy bag sliding across the seat. A man stood at the front door, like he had an appointment. She collected her groceries, the new spatula, and stepped out.
“Mrs. Gundersen?” The man eyed the spatula uneasily, as though it were a weapon. He was young and clean-cut. He looked familiar.
“Did something happen?” she asked. “Is Rich okay?”
The man wore a suit, as an undertaker might.
“Ma’am, is your husband home?” the man asked. “I’d like to talk to him if he has a few minutes.”
“He’s working.”
She recognized him as the congressman’s assistant only after he introduced himself. She remembered him standing off to the side when the congressman had stopped by the fish fry with his wife a few months back, moving from table to table, shaking hands. Must be an election year, Gail Porter had scoffed, crossing her arms, burying her hands in her armpits, safely beyond reach.
“I don’t vote,” Colleen told the young man, who was standing aside now to make room for her to open the door and invite him in.
He gave a tight smile. She shifted the bags in her arms. She wasn’t letting him inside without Rich home.
“We’re reaching out,” the man began, “to all the landowners affected by the…” He paused, as though the next word were delicate. “Expansion.”
“Our land wasn’t taken,” Colleen said, aware of how short she sounded. “It’s the land next to ours.”
“That must have been disappointing for your husband.” He searched Colleen’s face for a reaction.
“He needs a right-of-way.”
“That’s a question he’ll have to broach with the park service,” the assistant brushed her off. “If he has any questions, he can call the office.” The man produced a business card.
“Questions about what?” she asked.
The man offered the same clenched smile. “We’d be happy to discuss with your husband what his… options might be.”
“You want to make sure we won’t make a stink, is that it?” Colleen asked.
The man stared at her, unblinking, as though she were a simpleton, no
t worth arguing with. “I understand you’re upset, ma’am. Again, we’d be happy to discuss it with your husband.”
The assistant looked to Colleen’s full hands. She adjusted her load, fiddling with her keys. He dropped the business card into her grocery sack and stepped off the cement slab onto the driveway gravel.
Inside, she unpacked flour, sugar, Chub’s birthday candles. She rubbed the corner of the man’s card between her fingers, paper thick and expensive. She set it on top of the bill pile, then took the pharmacy bag and its contents down the hall to the bathroom and shut the door.
RICH
Rich felt lighter, now that the timber had been loaded and hauled away. Chub ran ahead, galloping down their hill to greet the dog, throwing a stick, then grabbing the old husky by the collar and dragging him over to it, while Rich went inside to clean up.
“We’re back,” he called.
He pushed the bathroom door open and there on the toilet with her underwear around her ankles sat Colleen. He stank of sweat and diesel, but she didn’t seem to notice him. He hesitated on the threshold.
“Honey?” he asked. “What is it?”
She looked up, tears streaming down her face, and held a clear tube out for him to see: a small brown disc, like an eye, at the bottom. She began to sob.
“Hey, it’s okay.” He squatted next to her, took her face in his hands, the smell of piss in the toilet.
She unrolled a wad of toilet paper and blew her nose.
“I went to get the candles,” she said finally. “I was right there, by the pharmacy, so I thought, maybe—” She lifted her chin at the test.
“How far along?” Rich asked.
“Six. Maybe seven. What do we do?” she asked.
Rich swallowed. His back had cramped up from crouching, so he stood up.
“What do you want to do?”
Colleen shook her head, wiped herself, stood and rebuttoned her pants, flushed.
“I know it’s stupid to think—” She washed her hands, leaned into the mirror and examined her eyes, blew air up from her bottom lip. “Why would this time be any different?” She breathed deep. “But I can’t help it, you know? I just—I’m so happy.”
The kitchen door whooshed, Chub tumbling in.
“Mo-om?!” he yelled.
“I’m coming.” She palmed her cheeks and smiled at Rich. “I promised him he could help me make his cake.”
June 2 RICH
Rich sat parked, looking out the fogged windshield at the Widowmaker’s heavy door. He drummed the wheel. He was early, still time to throw the truck in reverse. He’d been turning it over in his mind all week, but it wasn’t until the last of the Lower Damnation logs were hauled off that the prospect of hanging up his hard hat for good really hit him. He couldn’t afford just to sit on the 24-7 the rest of his life. Hell, once his share of the salvage contract check came through, he couldn’t afford to sit more than a few months, after he back-paid the missed mortgage payments. He’d waited until Colleen herded Chub out the door to school this morning, then snatched the business card off the stack of mail, fumbling the numbers as he dialed. And now, here he was, hunched in his truck outside a bar on a Friday night, like a man about to cheat on his wife.
He stepped out. Rain speckled the arms of his coat. He heard music seeping out from inside, the after-work crowd. He pulled the door open and the full force of the band hit him. Randy tossed a coaster onto the bar and set a beer on top of it. Foam soaked Rich’s mustache and he wiped it with the back of his hand. His back was to the door. Every time it opened, he felt a gust of cool air, a clench in his gut. Randy drew him another, the band loud, and then came the tap on his elbow. He followed the aide, young and clean-shaven like a missionary, into the back room, and there, sitting behind a rough-hewn dining table, a relic of the last century, was the man himself.
“This is Richard Gundersen,” the aide said, eyeing the beer Rich had brought with him, the last inch slopping at the bottom of the glass.
“Mr. Gundersen.” The congressman gestured for Rich to sit, as though they were in his house.
Rich pulled out a chair, its legs scraping the floor, a little slow from the beer, a belch stuck halfway up his windpipe.
The young man went out. Once they were alone, the congressman leaned back in his chair, a move that reminded Rich of Merle.
“So. I hear you’ve got some park-quality timber to sell.”
“I did. Before that new park deal blocked us in,” Rich said.
The congressman nodded. “You need a right-of-way, through the Damnation parcels, to get your harvest out.”
“I need the road,” Rich confirmed.
“A federal right-of-way can be… costly. Environmental assessments, public comment periods, enough red tape to run you from here to Sacramento and back,” the congressman explained. “Bureaucracy. Takes a lot of grease to get the wheels turning sometimes.”
“I wish somebody would have told me that a year ago,” Rich said.
“A raw deal,” the congressman agreed.
Rich tipped his glass to the side, watched the liquid slosh, waiting for the man to lay out whatever offer he’d brought him here to make.
“Would you do the work yourself?” he asked at last.
Rich nodded. “I’ve got a couple guys I used to work with. We had the contract on that ‘downed tree property’ on the lower grove.”
“Let’s see now, you got what?” The congressman mulled it over. “A hundred million board feet stranded up on that ridge? At a penny a board foot, that’s—” He calculated, then shook his head. “I just don’t see it, Mr. Gundersen, not with what jumping through all the hoops will cost you.”
Rich downed the last sip of his beer, set his glass back on the table.
“What if I didn’t want to cut it?” he asked.
The congressman gave a slow smile. “That’s a funny question for a logger to ask.”
“There’s a lot of old-growth up on the top of that ridge,” Rich reminded him.
“The League might be interested,” the congressman conceded. “If you were willing to settle for less.”
“How much less?” Rich asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe they’d pay twenty percent of market. Maybe a little more if you found the right party to… negotiate.” He eyed Rich, waiting for him to take his meaning.
Rich swallowed. Twenty percent on a million dollars—$200,000, less than he owed, minus whatever this joker had in mind for arranging it.
“That’s pretty steep.” Rich stalled, wondering how much of a cut the man would take.
“It is.” His soft hands drummed the tabletop: the hands of a man who’d never done an honest day’s work in his life. “A rock and a hard place, am I right?” The congressman pushed to his feet. “Take a few days, Mr. Gundersen. Think about it.”
He hung his coat over his shoulder and left Rich there, alone at the table, the noise of the band picking up on the other side of the door.
June 3 CHUB
Chub wore his new birthday boots, the ones his mom had bought him before school started. He didn’t remember them until he opened the box. They were just like his dad’s, except the laces kept coming undone. In the sandy lot above the beach, his dad crouched low with a groan, cinching Chub’s rabbit ears tight.
The ocean was loud. His dad kicked through the driftwood, tossed a piece to the side, then another, making a pile. Chub scooped up a small log, bulky but light.
“That’s a good one,” his dad said.
For a while, there was just the lap of the tide, the clunk of wood. Chub watched waves through his binoculars. His dad sat down on a log to rest.
“Let me see that one there. By your feet,” his dad said.
Chub picked up the driftwood, orange-red. His dad turned it over, shook it, held it to Chub’s ear. “What do you think is in there?”
“A Sasquatch.”
His dad shook it again, listened. “You know, I think you’re right. Hand me a
nother one.”
Chub listened again. “Sasquatch.”
His dad put it aside, dug through their pile.
“Here. Listen good now.”
“An elephant.”
His dad laughed. “Pretty small elephant.”
His dad laid the wood on his knee, pulled a knife from his pocket, then took the knife off his belt and laid it beside the first; they matched. He tucked the first knife onto his belt instead and showed Chub how to dig the blade out of the one that was left, how to lock it straight. “You try.” It was hard. “There you go.”
Chub closed the knife and held it in both hands.
“My dad gave me this knife when I was about your age,” his dad said. “And now I’m giving it to you.”
Chub looked up, to see if he meant it.
“I have Lark’s now.” His dad patted the knife on his hip. “That one’s yours. Open her back up.”
It took Chub a few tries.
“Go ahead. Dig out your elephant.”
His dad squinted down the beach. Chub gouged at the wood.
“I’m cold,” he said after a while. His dad didn’t stir, lost in his thoughts. “Daddy, I’m cold.”
“Close that up then, we’ll get going.” His dad waited for him to drop the knife into his bib pocket and loaded Chub’s arms with the driftwood they’d collected.
At home, his dad turned serious. He led Chub down the hall to the back bedroom. His dad’s cheaters lay sprawled beside the alarm clock on the nightstand. His dad opened the nightstand drawer and waited for Chub to set the knife inside. “A knife is a tool, not a toy. You ask your mom when you want to get it out. You don’t get it out on your own, you understand?”
Chub nodded. His mom watched from the doorway with her arms crossed. “This cookie-boy smells like seaweed,” she said. Her tummy had been hurting before, but now she felt better.