Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

“Shht.” She’d crouched, clamped her hands over the old mutt’s snout, holding it shut. “Quiet. You be quiet.”

  The dog had begun to whimper, a vibration she’d felt in her hands.

  “It’s okay.” She’d released him. “He’s okay. He never goes far.” To prove her point, she’d gone in. She’d stood at the window looking out, willing him to appear, forcing herself to stay calm, resting one hand on her belly.

  And now the eight, peeling up on the stove clock.

  She went out into the yard. In the distance, the echo of Rich’s voice. Chu-ub. Chu-u-ub. Then suddenly, it stopped. Had he found him? In the fading light she saw Rich wading down through the undergrowth, a bundle bunched in one hand. She rushed to meet him. His face was drawn, deep lines in his forehead.

  “Where was it?” she asked, grabbing Chub’s slicker, hugging it to her chest.

  “Across the creek.” Rich swallowed, opening his fist. Chub’s binoculars. “We’d better call Harvey. It’s getting dark. There are tracks everywhere. We need more than one person.”

  Her fingers trembled as she dialed.

  “Harvey?” she asked.

  “Tell him to hurry,” Rich said.

  RICH

  Colleen stood in the rain in the backyard, yelling Chub’s name. He heard tires on the gravel out front and went to meet Harvey. If they started at the creek and split up, they’d have a better chance of finding them before the rain melted their tracks. But it was Eugene’s truck in the driveway, Enid heaving herself out.

  “I have to get home and milk those goats,” she said. “Another hour and they’ll explode.”

  “We can’t find Chub.” Rich swallowed. It sounded worse aloud. “He and Wyatt are gone.”

  “Well. They’ve got about two minutes,” Enid warned, and disappeared into the house.

  Out back, Colleen had gone quiet.

  “Enid’s back—” he said, rounding the corner, and then he saw Wyatt, standing at the edge of the yard, soaked and shivering, his shirt smeared with blood.

  “Where’s Chub?” Colleen asked him.

  Wyatt began to sob, and before Rich could move, she flew at him.

  “What did you do?! What did you do!” She grabbed his shirt, pulling it up, checking he was intact, then shaking him.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” Enid came out the back door.

  Colleen was screaming now, smacking Wyatt, who cowered, shielding his head. Rich pulled her off him. “Chub?!” she yelled, fighting Rich’s embrace. “Chu-ub?!”

  Enid squatted before Wyatt, holding him by the shoulders, his cheeks tearstained. “Wyatt, what happened?” The gentlest voice Rich had ever heard her use. Wyatt bawled. “Wyatt, where’s Chub?”

  “Where is he?!” Colleen yelled.

  Enid thrust an arm out to quiet her. There was the sound of rain pouring off the roof.

  “Chub fell,” Wyatt said. “We were playing and he fell. He hit his head—”

  “Where?” Enid coaxed.

  Colleen strained in Rich’s arms.

  Wyatt turned and pointed. “By the road,” he said.

  Colleen sprinted up Bald Hill, stumbling.

  “Colleen! It’s too far!” Rich yelled. “Get in the truck!”

  “Go,” Enid said, seeing Rich hesitate, and started up the hill after her.

  Rich dashed through the house for his keys, sprinted to the truck, gravel skittering across the highway as he swung out. Rain pelted the windshield. His heart beat so loud in his ears it sounded like nothing more than Chub’s name.

  No Name Road was a muddy washboard. Rich gunned it, parked the truck at the culvert, and pushed out.

  “Chub!” He stood at the road edge. Damnation Creek thundered below him.

  His voice echoed down into the cut zone and he slid after it, detouring around busted logs and torn-up boulders until he reached the spot where the slide dropped off in a cliff edge. He surveyed the frothing creek, swollen with runoff.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Chu-ub?”

  How easy it would be, standing here, for the side to calve off, churn him down into that mud. He backed up, turned, and tracked uphill at a diagonal, calling Chub’s name all the way back up to the road. The rain had let up some. Out of breath, he started another sweep down the hill.

  “Chu-ub?”

  He hiked back up and cut down again, pushing through the ferns into the harvest zone. He followed the rutted Cat tracks and suddenly there in the mud were footprints. He crouched to inspect them, stood.

  “Chub?”

  He listened, scanning the hill. Dusk was falling. Ruined logs lay on their sides, berms as high as a house blocking his view. Rich made for a stump upslope, circled it, searching out handholds, until, straining and grunting, he heaved himself up onto the flat expanse of the cut and pushed to his feet.

  “Chu-ub?” His voice warped. Chu-u-u-ub.

  His eyes combed the steep slope, skid trails grooved deep into the mud, broken limbs, piles of dry-rotted timber busted to chips the size of matchbooks. He walked to the edge of the stump, a thirty-foot drop on the downhill side.

  “Chub?” he called, hoarse. The crash of the creek grew louder in the silence that followed, his gaze raking through narrow passages between logs, blood pumping in his ears until suddenly—there, there in the low, gray light: boots.

  “Chub!” Rich forgot himself, nearly vaulted over the edge. He turned, slid down the stump’s lowest spot, bark scrubbing his side, and ran, dodging spears of splintered timber, weaving between wrecked logs until—there: Chub’s little body. On his back in the mud.

  “Chub?” Rich asked, approaching.

  Chub lay pale and rain soaked, a gash in his forehead. Rich crouched beside him, took his hand, cold and still.

  “Chub?” Rich’s voice broke.

  He touched Chub’s throat, feeling for a pulse. His lips were blue, his hair matted with blood. Rain beaded on his cheeks, his nose. Despite the cut, he looked almost peaceful. Please. God. Please. No.

  A sob loosed itself from deep inside Rich’s rib cage.

  Take me. Please.

  He pressed harder, two fingers against the soft underside of Chub’s jaw.

  Take me.

  Chub blinked.

  “Chub?!” Rich’s heart leapt. Chub’s eyes tracked across the sky until they found Rich’s. Chub stirred. “Stay still.” Rich moved a hand to Chub’s chest.

  “Daddy?” he asked, confused. His lip wobbled.

  “I’m here. You’re okay. I’m here now.”

  Rich examined the cut on Chub’s forehead. Chub winced. “Sorry, Grahamcracker,” Rich said. “Let me just get a look.” Rich followed the gash around, parting Chub’s hair to inspect where the gap opened to the width of a knife blade on his scalp, jellied black with blood. “You’re okay,” he said, as much to himself as to Chub. He whipped off his coat and wrapped him in it.

  “I’m cold,” Chub said.

  Rich rubbed the backs of Chub’s arms through the fabric. His knees cracked as he pushed to his feet with Chub in his arms.

  “Where’s Mama?” Chub asked.

  Rich heard a voice in the distance, Enid calling after Colleen.

  “She’s coming, Grahamcracker.” Rich carried Chub up the hill. “She’ll be here in a minute.”

  Rain speckled his neck and shoulders, Chub warm against his chest, water snaking down the hillside as they made their way through stumps and slash, up through the dark pillars of the big pumpkins that remained.

  June 18 COLLEEN

  Chub sat in a kitchen chair, legs dangling. Colleen leaned over him, holding her breath as she eased the sticky edges of the bandage free.

  Chub flinched. “Ow.”

  “Sorry, Grahamcracker.” She was trying to be gentle when it would be better to be quick. She pulled. Chub yipped. “There, got it.” She examined the yellow ooze on the pad, less than yesterday, swept his bangs up out of his eyes.

  The stitches in his forehead were pink, cr
usted with dried blood.

  “It itches,” Chub complained.

  “That’s good, Grahamcracker. If it’s itching, it’s healing.”

  Another week and she would take him to get them out, then to the drugstore to pick out a new Matchbox car, a reward for holding still. They’d pinched the gash in his head—four inches long and a half-inch wide—closed with staples, shaved off his hair around the wound, prickle of new growth now as she dabbed the edges with the soapy cloth.

  “That stings,” Chub whined, tipping his head away from her.

  “I know, Grahamcracker. I’ll be quick.” He whimpered a little. She squeezed out the rinse cloth and blotted the soap off. “One more time,” she said, careful not to press too hard. When she finished, she tore a new bandage from its wrapper, pressed it carefully over his sewn-up forehead, and let his hair fall back, covering it. “All clean, my little miracle.”

  He slid off the chair and out the back door before she could stop him.

  In the front room, Rich shoved the ash drawer back into the woodstove and stood. He’d spent the morning cleaning the stack. She took the bowl of soapy water to the sink and drained it, wrung the washcloth out, watching Chub in the backyard, talking to the dog, looking over his shoulder, the shadow of his accident still trailing him. She heard Rich come into the kitchen behind her.

  “I shouldn’t have let him wear those boots,” she said. “They’re too big.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Rich reminded her for the hundredth time. “Wyatt pushed him.”

  She hugged her elbows. “Still.”

  Just a fluke, the doctor had said. He hit that rock just right.

  Rich washed his hands, dried them, rehung the towel.

  “Colleen, he’s fine,” he said. “You don’t have to watch him every minute of the day. He’s okay.” He slid his hands around her waist, cupped her belly, kissed the top of her head, and rested his chin there. “We’re all going to be okay.”

  She let out a ragged breath, relaxed into him. When she looked back out the window, Chub was gone.

  “It’s past his bedtime,” she said.

  Rich gave her arms a squeeze. “I’ll get him.”

  From the kitchen door, she watched Rich scan the yard, then walk up the hill to roust him from the ferns, clapping his hand to his chest when Chub leapt out, then herding him on ahead, up the path and out of sight.

  CHUB

  From his hiding place in the ferns, Chub had fiddled with the dials, then brought the binoculars to his eyes. He’d watched his dad come up behind his mom. He’d watched him rest his chin on top of her head and twist a little, like they were dancing. It made Chub forget he was mad at his mom for washing his cuts with soap. It gave him a squirmy, happy feeling. It made him want to bury his face.

  He’d squeezed the binoculars. He loved them because they came in a black leather case with red insides. He loved them because they were small and heavy, an adult thing. But what he loved most about the binoculars was this: how he could be so close he could see a crumb in his dad’s mustache, the freckle below his mom’s eye, so, so close, without them knowing.

  Suddenly his dad had come out the back door.

  “Chub?” he’d asked.

  Chub crouched lower.

  “Chu-ub?”

  Chub had felt the urge to stand up. Here I am. The squeeze of excitement that came from hiding.

  “Have you seen Chub?” his dad asked the old dog. “No? Me neither.” His dad had shrugged. “I guess Bigfoot got him.”

  “There’s no such thing as Bigfoot!” Chub had yelled.

  “Who said that?” His dad had wheeled around, shading his eyes with his hand.

  Chub had hunched lower. Through the binoculars, he’d watched the little smile play at the corner of his dad’s mouth, felt it tug the corner of his own. He was invisible for as long as he could hold his breath. One one thousand. Two one thousand.

  His dad had narrowed his eyes, then started stomping up through the grass, ferns swishing.

  “Ha!” Chub had shot up when his dad got close. His dad had reeled back.

  “You scared me,” his dad had said. “Come on.”

  * * *

  Now Chub ran ahead up the path to the top of their hill and together they stood looking back down at the house, the yellow square of kitchen window casting its glow out into the yard.

  His dad breathed deep, and Chub copied him, his breath burning in his chest, until finally his dad let it go, threw his head back, and stared up at the darkening sky.

  Chub’s neck got tired, so, after a while, he turned and looked out at the light going down through the forest instead, trees almost black in the dim. A figure appeared: hunched and shaggy, bigger than a man. Chub froze. Hairs rose on the back of his neck. It came closer, sniffing the air.

  “Dad,” Chub whispered.

  For one long, impossible moment, Chub didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

  “Dad.” Chub tugged his dad’s pant leg. His dad turned to look.

  Slowly, the Sasquatch dropped to all fours, becoming a bear again. It sauntered off into the brush. Chub stood still. Bear bear bear bear, said his heart. Until finally his dad took his hand and, together, they walked down the dark path home.

  June 19 RICH

  His hair wet-combed, Rich thumped himself in the breast to loosen the tight knot of dread.

  “Where are you going?” Colleen asked.

  “Bank,” Rich said. When he’d finally stomached checking it, he’d found the post office box strangely empty, but surely if he showed up in person, he could work something out. The salvage job money would be here soon.

  “Need anything?” he asked.

  Colleen looked up from sewing the buttons onto Chub’s new blue dress shirt.

  “Saltines. And we’re almost out of pickles. Could you put the new bottle on the dispenser before you go?” she asked. “I can’t lift it.”

  He went into the kitchen and changed it, then scooped his keys from the burl bowl.

  “Rich?” she asked, his hand on the knob, as if she could sense he wasn’t telling her something.

  He swallowed, turning. “Yeah?”

  “Be careful.” She smiled, dropped her eyes, raised them.

  He came back and pecked her on the cheek. “Be back in a couple hours.”

  * * *

  It had rained hard last night. The winding highway was slick with fallen needles, a white tunnel through the fog.

  In the parking lot of the savings and loan, he popped the false bottom out of the glove box and removed his paperwork, checked his back pocket for his wallet. He stepped up onto the curb, filled his lungs, and pushed in the glass doors.

  Wedged into a too-small chair in the too-small waiting area, he bounced his leg, keys jingling in his pocket. The receptionist scowled. After half an hour, the loan officer emerged, annoyed at being summoned without an appointment.

  “Mr. Gundersen.”

  The hallway seemed shorter than last time and before Rich had a moment to wipe his sweating palms down his denims, he sat facing the man. He swallowed.

  “What can I do for you?” the man asked, sounding tired, as though they’d already been through the whole song and dance.

  Rich pulled at his collar. “I’ve uh—been a little short. I missed a payment. Two, actually.” Rich pushed the loan papers across the desk. “I’m probably going to miss a third one here, coming up, but I’ll have the money next month. I was hoping there might be some kind of—grace period—”

  The man flipped the papers around, leafed through, forehead creased, as if he had no memory of drawing them up. He tapped the end of the stack against the desk and stood.

  “Give me a minute,” he said.

  In the stillness, Rich listened to the ticking of the burl clock, the squeak of the chair, the jogging of his own leg. He rubbed his palms over his knees. Take a few days. Think about it.

  Nobody was hiring climbers. He could pick up tree-trimming work, maybe�
�some people wanted only to keep their big trees standing, make sure they didn’t fall on the house. He might make some kind of living, as long as his body held up, but then what? He rubbed a thumb along the edge of the man’s massive desk, cheap mahogany veneer.

  The loan officer returned, tossed the papers onto his desk along with a folder, and sat down with a sigh.

  “You’re all set, Mr. Gundersen,” he said, pushing the papers back across.

  Rich waited for him to lay out the terms, what kind of fee he was looking at, to deliver a warning of what the consequences might be next time.

  “You’re paid off,” the man explained, opening the folder. “Paid in full… March twenty-fifth. I was off that day, so looks like one of my colleagues took care of it for you.”

  Rich choked on his own saliva, buried his cough in his elbow. “What?”

  “It’s paid off,” the loan officer repeated.

  “What do you mean?” Rich asked. “How?”

  The man flipped the folder around. And there inside was a carbon copy of a cashier’s check, the shaky scrawl of Lark’s signature.

  Rich’s arms tingled.

  “They should have sent a payoff notice, PO Box 43, Klamath.” The loan officer took the folder back and stared at the check for a moment before closing it again.

  “I took him to the bank that day.” Rich sat back, stunned. “I didn’t know he had that kind of money.”

  He shook the loan officer’s hand when he offered it, somehow made his way back down the hall, until he stood outside again.

  Lark, you sonofabitch, how the hell did you ever pull that off?

  Shit pays.

  He wanted to shout it across the empty parking lot. He found a pay phone. His hands shook as he dialed. Colleen, pick up! He tried again.

  Across the way was the pet store, an aquarium in the window, phone still ringing in his ear. He hung up and crossed the street. A bell tinkled over his ducked head. A gray-haired woman looked up from behind the register and nodded. He walked to the wall of tanks: darting neons, a sucker fish with its whiskered mouth latched to the glass.