“Unless I have to deal with you,” he said during what turned out to be their last argument.
She didn’t know when she began speaking to him the way she spoke to herself, with all the judgment and cruelty of someone not expecting to be overheard. She always meant to walk out when a fight got nasty, but she never learned how. What came next felt inescapable, unalterable.
“You don’t know how to live in your own head,” she spat, stung. “I have nothing to do with it.”
He left the pills in an otherwise empty bathroom cabinet, ransacked like the rest of the house. In his stead, the orange plastic vial signaled, “Why bother? Who needs this life, the only one we learned to build in our years together?”
No answer to those questions, only a long hot bath and a bottle of wine and one more bad decision.
She thought an overdose would flash memories and the smell of sulfur, a fireworks finale. Instead, it was like nodding off on a redeye, getting colder and colder in the darkness between distant glimmers until they, too, disappeared.
The broadcaster’s voice was smug. “Please return to your vehicles. We are about to arrive at our destination.” Claudia pressed through the double doors into the feverish heat of the cabin, where people filed in to begin flowing down the stairwells.
Barnacled pillars towered on either side. The ferry coasted into the approaching dock in neutral, poised for the final reverse thrust. Inside the cars, everyone waited to turn on their engines, listening for the first eager sputter, that lone cough becoming two hundred streams of idling vapors before the ropes were tossed.
A fitful rain splattered the asphalt. Cold and wet and wind silenced the workers, who grimaced and pointed and made circling motions with their hands.
Eagles and vultures wheeled through the gloaming over razed forests and colossal silvered stumps that sprouted frail versions of themselves. Semis bearing logs no wider than a forearm rattled past, pulling her SUV from its center of gravity with whooshes that left her stiff and staring.
A truck came upon her, fast. It was dusk. The highway’s shoulder disappeared along hairpin curves that wound from cliff top to strait. She braked on the steep grades and turned up the music to drown his horn, tipping her rear-view to avoid his brights until she could yank herself into a pullout. With a final honk and the finger, he was on his way.
Con calma. Trembling, she cruised the final curves into Neah Bay through nightfall—the forest dark around her, headlands black and jagged against the strait—and soothed herself with her mother’s admonishment against hurrying, given as she arranged from her hospital bed for Claudia to be sent north into the custody of the father she’d never met. Todo se hace con calma.
She used to bring Claudia beachcombing after every storm, hitting up the hotel frontage at dawn, before resort guests left their breakfast buffets to scavenge Baja’s coastline. Among the nets and kelp and trash they’d find shark’s teeth and sand dollars and, once, a big green glass globe that came all the way from Japan. At the end of a long day, holding Claudia’s cold hands when she was tired and little and crying, her mother told her to close her eyes and imagine being a big green float. You’re in the sea. You go up and down, but you’re always near the surface. That’s your job, to stay close to the light.
Rolling down her windows to wake herself with a cold rush of briny air, Claudia slowed as she drove into town, peering into the night, wondering if she would see someone she knew. It had been months since she was out here. Light poles cut jaundiced circles into gray pavement. Nobody. Neah Bay was quiet but for the barks of sea lions and the slap of boats rocking at berth.
Her headlights cast twin moons onto fog that crept from the strait and surrounded her. Phosphorescence flickered from a few windows of the trailers lining Front Street. A car passed her in the mist, its lights blurring into soft suns. She could not see the driver.
She threaded the curves between the church and the clinic. Leaving the low clouds behind, she entered a corridor of lichen-mottled alders, their naked branches joining hands overhead. She watched the shadows along the shoulders of the road.
A white flurry filled her windshield. “Holy shit!” She slammed the brakes.
An owl, whisper close, smelling of rot.
She shifted into park and sat back, tires squealing in her ears. Her heart pummeled her chest. She hyperventilated, lightheaded. The crown of her skull seemed to shift and move. She cringed and covered her head with one hand. Cowering in her seat, she glanced out the window and checked her mirrors. Nothing.
Claudia pressed both palms into her eye sockets, cradling her forehead. “You’re just tired,” she repeated. Her senses attuned to Wa atch River’s splashes and murmurs. She dropped her hands, ready.
A large brown mink stood facing her. Eye level. Its neck was long, ears pointed, tail curled over its back. Claudia raised her hand as though to honk. It rose higher on hind legs, front paws dangling, and sniffed the air in all four directions, lifting its sharp muzzle, nostrils flaring. Her arm faltered and lowered onto her lap. She glared, willing the mink to move. It didn’t move. It didn’t blink. Pressure mounted between her temples. Her left eye twitched, uncontrollable.
With a slow finger, she pressed the buttons to roll up her windows, sealing herself in. The mink pricked its ears at the mechanical whine and got on all fours.
She punched the horn. “Get out of my way!”
The mink reared up and laughed. Horribly, impossibly, and yet there it was, human laughter ringing in her ears.
She startled at the sound of tapping. A man in jeans and an old work jacket stood outside her door, limned in light.
Wiping her mouth, she smiled at him, uncertain. Her engine was still running. She straightened and turned to see the silhouettes of children wrestling in the back seat of his car. His beams kindled the drizzle into a shower of small comets. She cracked the window, massaging her neck.
“You okay?”
“I’m sorry.”
The man studied her face. “You should be careful on these roads. You could hurt somebody.”
“I haven’t been feeling well.”
He nodded. “Where you headin’?”
“Hobuck Cabins.”
“Know how to get there?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll follow you, just in case. It’s on our way.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Get some sleep.”
“I will.”
“You do that.” He got in his car and slammed the door.
Blushing, she shifted into drive. He thinks I’m drunk, she thought. Or on drugs. I wish I were. It would explain a few things. Did I dream that mink? What about the owl? Was I hallucinating? Jesus. She hoped not. She didn’t know what was worse—freaking out about random animals or being found stupefied in the middle of the reservation’s main road.
Still, she knew the animals were not random. Not here, on this land, among these people. Unease spread across her like oil. You’re less than a mile from the cabins, she thought. Drive.
Small wisps of mist curled into shapes at the periphery of her vision. She refused to look at them, dismissing what she saw, what she had just seen. Her hands slipped on the wheel. She tightened her grip and turned left at the bridge, debating whether to introduce herself. Their lights were stark on the grassy riverbanks. Patches of fog scurried across the black river, too swift. She would hear about this episode as soon as she started her interviews in the community, maybe even before then. Everyone was sure to hear about it.
Few dunes had escaped four wheeling, the grasses yielding to scabrous patches of sand. Beyond them, the sea was shrouded. She used her blinker early to let him know he could move on. He stayed behind her, resolute.
Claudia pulled off at the sign for the office and parked at an unmanned booth with a dim vestibule. She left her lights on and the engine running, just in case. He pulled up next to her.
Ay Dios, she thought. I hope this doesn’t get weirder. She called “
Goodbye!” and approached the booth. An envelope was pinned to the wall under the awning, her name in neat letters. Her body relaxed. She was expected somewhere. No, “expected” isn’t quite it, she thought, swatting off iterations of the word like “expectation,” “expecting” and “expectancy.” No, not at all. It was better than that, nicer. Someone thought of her. Though she paid for that attention, it warmed her. She waggled the envelope in his direction. Maybe he would go home and forget about it.
He raised a hand from the wheel, fingerpads forming a fleshy shark’s fin, and drove off, his girls swiveling in their seats to stare, their faces reflecting her headlights with the pale disregard of distant planets.
Chapter Two
PETER COASTED DOWNHILL. The “Welcome to the Makah Nation” sign receded to a speck in his rearview. He stepped on the gas, ready to get this over with. And just like that, a cop swung into position behind him. Neah Bay PD.
Dread coiled in his gut. His eyes flitted to the speedometer. 35 in a 25. The officer spoke into his radio and settled back in his seat. Peter slowed and waited for the flashing lights. None came.
He peered out the passenger window. The wrinkled gray water of Neah Bay rippled north from the Coast Guard dock and around Waadah Island, unfurling toward a container ship suspended in a line of fog that pierced the strait. Damp driftwood beaches divided the bay from town. The reservation’s main drag was lined by low buildings and trailers, some proud and tidy, others boarded up, defiant. There were still no stoplights. Dogs made dirt nests wherever they saw fit to bed down.
He was almost home.
Peter pulled over by a semicircle of young men on Front Beach, heads bent toward a common purpose. He lit a cigarette and watched the cop pass him to cut left into a big parking lot. The cruiser spun a circle to face Front Street.
Dozens of bald eagles spotted the mudflats, dipping their heads and slumping their shoulders, spreading water on their wings and shaking themselves clean, fluffing their leg plumage to step from one pool to another. Peter thought of his father, who in a rare fit of whimsy once said eagles pulled up their petticoats to bathe.
That he tried not to think of his dad, but did, proved his constant lack of self-control, an admission that he was less than a man. The only good hours were those he lost underwater, mind on the glare, sucking stale air and pissing his suit. Welding made sense. He could measure a day’s progress without searching his soul. Nothing but light and metal. That’s what he saw when he sat poolside with other trainees doing flutter kicks with fins on, abs burning—a tiny bright arc turning into piers and harbors, a long line of pilings carrying everything above.
He checked the cop, casual as he could. Still there. Sweat beaded the lines of his forehead.
If he spun around and stepped on it, he could probably stay ahead long enough to make it back off the rez, where a tribal cop was unlikely to bother. They could always call in the feds, or Clallam County. A state trooper, even. He doubted they cared about long-dead Indians.
Eagles shrieked from the highest branches of a cedar towering above the beach. Their whistling unsettled him. Two girls with green braids walked by, heads bowed over phones.
Raucous laughter drew his head to the right. Between the men’s shifting, shuffling legs, Peter saw a crow hopping with a can in its clutches, thrusting its beak inside and tumbling before going aloft with a quick flap of wings.
Low hills slid toward the strait. Skinny trees grew in silent crowds over the clearcuts of his youth. The town clustered on the flatland along the water. Recognition clutched at him. This is your place. He batted it away. I don’t belong here.
Peter listened to the sway and clank of the marina—that was new—and tried not to look for their old troller. It was easy enough. The fleet had tripled in size. Who made good? Probably the same names that dominated back in the day.
For as long as there was memory, Neah Bay had been a collection of families soaked in drama and the preservation of status, each head of family claiming chiefs for ancestors—never mind the slave blood that coursed in the night—mapping triumphs in public, charting in private the fall of a cousin, a sister. It was only a question of when tragedy would hit, he thought. Not how. There are only so many ways to wreck a life.
Maybe he underestimated his own. The big boats at berth told him that, and so did the new gym’s digital sign. The Red Devils had a tourney coming up. He hadn’t played basketball since high school. Had his mom kept his jersey?
One of the women who tried to claim him, Tammy—even her name was suburban, and that’s where her folks lived, on the outskirts of Bellevue, though she tried to hide it—was always going on about racist mascots. He hated when she got involved with shit like that; it let him know he was part of her street cred with the guilty liberals she called compatriots. She had a master’s degree and waited tables, for Christ’s sake. Being on the ass end of capitalism didn’t make her revolutionary, even if she liked to paint.
He tossed the filter and pulled onto Front Street. The cop eased out behind him, stayed close as they passed a VFW trailer. Didn’t flip his lights until they approached a big building with long ramps.
Here we go. Peter was furious he’d stashed his gun in the toolbox. This place never forgets. The officer strode up with a notebook, fingering his holster, speculative. Peter tried the breathing exercises he found online to fight anxiety. He hid his unease as best he could. No one likes a nervous man.
“Peter.”
He kept his silence with both hands on the wheel, so there could be no excuses later.
“I seen you comin’ down the hill. You back?”
“Depends. Maybe.”
“You been gone a long time.”
“Am I getting a ticket?”
“Don’t recognize me?” The cop pulled off his aviators. His face was wide, like someone had stepped on it, pushing his cheeks into jowls that bulged. Still, there was something in his eyes, a brightness that moved beneath, bringing intimations of boyhood.
Peter squinted. “Randall.”
Randall’s hand crowded Peter’s face. They shook, compressing each other’s fingers until Randall grinned and called it off. “Three kids, a wife. You?”
“Flying solo. On my way to see my mother.”
“About time. You should come over, meet the kids.”
“Who’s the lucky lady?”
“You and Maggie don’t talk, eh?”
Peter was no longer panicked, but he was getting irritated. Why exactly had he been pulled over?
Randall smiled, sure of himself. “Roberta.”
Roberta read Peter’s lifeline when they were kids. “You’re gonna die before you get old.” She traced his palm with a chipped red nail. She smiled, hair spilling silken on the inside of his wrist, showing her dimples. “You’re gonna have lots of lovers, though. Lucky guy.”
“Lucky? To die young?”
“Yeah.” She pressed his hand between hers. “You know, go out when you’re still good looking, the ladies chasing you right into the grave.”
“You think I’m good looking?” He flipped his hand around to take her by the wrists, fingers meeting and overlapping, body screaming to bring her close. He never forgot what she said, or what they did. It never felt inevitable to love someone again.
The ache echoed through his chest. Roberta was the one who tracked him down with the diagnosis—dementia—his mother squirreled away with so many other secrets. Roberta hadn’t said anything about being married. To be fair, he didn’t ask, hustling off the phone to nurse the old hurt alone. She must not have told Randall about the call. That was encouraging.
Her husband was a big cock in a small town, but he had his gun at the ready. It was good to keep that in mind.
“Congratulations.”
“You can go along. I just wanted to say hi.”
“Put on a little show, you mean.”
A handful of elders gathered on the building’s ramps.
“I seen you coming do
wn the hill.”
“Yep, that’s what you said.”
A man in a Seahawks baseball cap, eagle feather dangling from its crown, shuffled down the ramp. Peter steered his truck past him, stomach curdling with spent fear. An old woman covered with blankets sat in a folding chair across the street. Slow as a heron stalking the shallows, she turned to watch the action.
“I’m not ready for this.” His dashboard rattled in response, like always.
Speeding past dead ends choked with blackberries and trucks on blocks, Peter wove around basketball hoops and sedans with flat tires. But Diaht Hill had come up in the world. Every third or fourth house had a new SUV pulled up front. There were neat woodpiles and clipped lawns. He slowed by the old carvings, here a thunderbird with mother of pearl eyes, there a mossy headed whale.
His family’s patch of land was a postcard of a place he’d never been, at first. Just a tired doublewide. But soon he saw himself flying on a bike with the training wheels snapped off, heard big boots scraping the pavement behind him, his front wheel wobbling and tipping him into the gutter, bloody but toughing it out as his dad scooped him up and carried him to the couch.
He bade his memories be quiet as he stepped onto the street. And then his mother was standing there, smaller, distilled.
Peter took her birdlike shoulders into his arms, guarding his smile. Cataracts ghosted the blacks of her eyes. He touched the gray cloud of her head and hugged her. Knowledge of his own mortality emanated from the bones shifting, frail as popsicle sticks, beneath the loose skin of her back.
Through the tickle of her hair, the trailer’s tufted brown carpet came into focus. He braced himself, blinking against the vision that came to him unbidden. Blood and oil spreading on plaid linoleum, pooling around his dad, spread eagle and unmoving.
“Thick as a tree.” His mother patted his chest. “I made coffee.”
She pulled him in, shooing a herd of cats from the porch and shutting the door against the smiles and stares of neighbors.
It was dark inside and smelled of wood smoke, coffee, cat piss and a dank funk he could not place. He fought the urge to breathe through his shirt.
Subduction Page 2