What We Take For Truth

by Deborah Nedelman

She tilted her head to look up at him. “Is this the best time to go into that?”

  “It’s true then? You betrayed the whole town feeding those damn hippies? I never would have believed it.”

  “Oh god, Pat. I was desperate.” She gave in and laid her head back down in the muddy duff. “If it helps any, I felt like a traitor the whole time.”

  “You’re damn right! You were working for Jane, weren’t you? Doing just what she would have done!”

  “Goddammit!!” The fury at herself, at Pat, and at the predicament she’d gotten herself into boiled over, and Grace screamed, long and loud. “I can’t believe you’re doing this now!” In her rage, she tried to stand. “AHHHHHH!”

  “Oh, shit, Parrot! OK, OK. Forget it. Those guys’ll be here with the rope soon.”

  There was no denying the pain. She was stuck—dependent on Pat, but furious at him; angry at the whole town, but guilty and embarrassed by her own betrayal of them; wanting desperately to find Annie, but terrified of learning who her mother had become. And on top of all that, it now looked like she’d hurt herself badly enough that she wouldn’t be going anywhere very soon. Grace sank back into the muddy duff and let the tears come. She kept her head down, not wanting Pat to see her cry.

  The sound of his frustrated steps, as he paced along the cliff edge, added another layer to Grace’s distress. If she could get him to calm down, it might calm her a bit too.

  “Yeah, you’re right, it was Jane’s idea.” But as soon as she started to talk, her fury surfaced again. “Back then I didn’t know what a horrible liar she was. And speaking of not knowing the truth about people I trusted, I heard about you cutting trees in the preserve.” Her initial shock over Mary’s revelation had been simmering all day. Yes, not more than a couple of hours ago she’d wished for a chain saw to clear out these same woods, but that had been in a panic over Kev. This man she’d once loved, who maybe she still did love, had actually done it.

  Pat stopped pacing and stood, arms akimbo, shouting down at her. “I was doing just what your father, or any decent logger, would have done. Rose knew how much we needed to fill that contract. She was OK with it. Who are you to get on your high horse? At least we’re keeping this town alive. You’ve been aiding the enemy.”

  “Dammit. It’s always about taking sides with you, isn’t it? You’re never going to get over it.” She tried to get her good leg under her. Maybe she could stand. But as soon as she sat up and bent her knee, she groaned. A cascade of fir cones, rocks, and mud slid over the edge, bouncing off the boulders below.

  “Jesus! Be still. Don’t act like an idiot.”

  She wanted to grab him by the shoulders, to slap his face, to shove him off this cliff, but she could do none of that. She couldn’t even look him in the eye. She put her hands over her ears she refused to listen to anything more from him.

  By the time the men arrived, the silence between the two lovers was thicker than any rope.

  ***

  The men lowered Pat down to where he could stand next to Grace. Silently, he removed the rope from his waist and looped it around hers. Afraid of what might come out of her mouth, she clenched her teeth to keep from saying anything.

  She grabbed onto the rope and started to lean back till her leg screamed at her.

  When he saw her flinch, Pat stepped over and took hold of the rope. “You’re going to have to let that leg hang, Parrot. Push yourself away from the trees with your other leg.”

  The pain was wearing her down. She nodded, pulled the rope away from him, and clenched her hands around it. “Ok, I’m ready,” she yelled to the men standing above. As soon as the rope tightened and her feet lifted off the ground, she instinctively clenched her lips tight and tried to hold her body as straight and still as possible. There was no way to avoid being bumped against the branches and boulders that covered the slope; all she could do was try to protect her damaged leg as Pat had said. Not easy. Pushing off from a large cedar bough a bit too forcefully caused her body to spin around on the rope, slamming her injured leg hard against the higher branch. She couldn’t keep the groan to herself.

  “Sorry, Parrot! We’ve almost got you. Hang on.” She didn’t need to look above her to know that Clett was holding the other end of the rope with his thumbless hands, and that Burt was there, and Paul. Men she’d trusted all her life; men she still trusted.

  Pat made his own way up, tugging on branches and leaning into protruding rocks. Once they were both at the top, the group took stock. Grace’s leg was starting to swell, and she couldn’t bear her own weight. They wanted to carry her, but she insisted on throwing one arm around Clett and leaning the other on Pat in spite of the angry sparks that flew between them.

  After the second switchback, she asked for a break. “Just give me a second.” And she slumped down on a fallen log, sticking her injured leg out in front of her.

  “When you were a little girl,” Clett said, “I carried you on my back, you and Shauna. Want to try that again?” He grinned and stooped down for her to grab hold of his shoulders.

  She laughed and shook her head. “I’ll be OK in a minute.”

  “We trusted each other back then. We stuck together,” Clett went on. “Then your dad died, your aunt started all her environmental bullshit, and now I don’t know what we are. It just seems like a lot of apologizing is in order, all the way around. I’m sorry, Parrot.”

  Grace looked hard at this man, whose scars bore witness to the brutality of life dependent on the forest.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry too, Clett.”

  Once they were up and moving again, Pat whispered in her ear. “We can still make it work between us. Don’t follow Jane, Parrot. Don’t turn your back on all of us now. Don’t run away.”

  His breath was tender on her neck and she heard the plea for forgiveness in his words, but Grace’s anger was holding her together and she knew if she let it go she’d break down.

  “If searching out my own mother is running away, then that’s what I’m doing. But I’m not following anybody. And I’m certainly not sticking around here with a thief who’s stealing trees from the preserve.”

  ***

  Doc Janson wasn’t able to do much for Kev. He cleaned the wound and helped get him down to town, but it was clear the boy needed to be taken to the hospital. Sherrie Thomas piled the Bigleys into the back of her van and drove them down the mountain to Everett.

  By the time Grace got to her cabin, her leg was swollen and she was exhausted. Clett got her settled on her sofa and Pat went for Doc Janson. She started to protest; now that she was home, lying down, maybe it wasn’t so bad. But the shivering had started again. Clett wrapped a blanket around her.

  “Looks to me, you’ve got a broken leg, Parrot, and you’re in shock. It’s one thing the doc can do something about. You need to let him do it.”

  In the end she was grateful for the doc’s attention. She just wished Pat hadn’t been the one to fetch him. One more thing she owed him for.

  ***

  It was well past dark when Sherrie’s van appeared on Main Street. Folks poured out of the Hoot Owl and surrounded the car. Sherrie turned off the engine and got out.

  “They’re keeping him for a few days at least. Kevin and Mary are sleeping on chairs in his room. The docs think he may have damaged his eye and they’re worried he isn’t talking.” Someone offered her a beer, but she shook her head.

  “We’ve got to get them some clothes and their truck tomorrow. Can one of you drive it down and I’ll pick you up at Everett General?”

  “I’ll do it,” Pat volunteered. “And Charlie can follow me down. You don’t need to, Sherrie. Right, Charlie?”

  “Sure. I’ll take Walt’s truck.”

  ***

  Over the next few days, the absence of the Hoot Owl’s most loyal customer created a vacuum that sucked in most of the town. By the time Lyle got the coffee going in the morning, at least half the tables were occupied by anxious people awaiting news of Kev. Even Grac
e, who the doc had taken into Cooper to get her leg x-rayed and set, managed to hobble on her crutches over to the café on the third morning. Her concern for Kev outweighed her conflicted feelings toward everyone else in town. She perched on the kitchen stool where she could serve the folks at the counter and handle the register. This was hardly like old times, though. Grace’s smile was strained and there was no teasing banter. After that first morning filled with awkward apologies, Grace put a sign on the back of the register:

  “If you know where Annie Tillman is, tell me. Otherwise shut up about it. You all know how to do that.” This elicited a lot of raised eyebrows and mumbling, but folks kept their explanations and regrets to themselves.

  Pat had been coming in most days and sitting at a table toward the back of the café nursing a cup of coffee he fetched for himself. He avoided making eye contact with Grace.

  On Thursday morning when Kevin Sr. called the number at the Hoot Owl, Pat waited tensely with everyone else to hear Grace relay the conversation. The doctors were releasing Kev. His eye was healing, and he could see again, but he still wasn’t talking. They thought it was shock and that he’d be better off at home. The docs warned them to keep things quiet, avoid a lot of fuss.

  Mary thought Kev would like to see Parrot.

  There was a collective sigh of relief. Mrs. G offered to take some flowers over to the Bigleys’. Sherrie said she’d put up a welcome home sign. Pat offered to make a run down to Cooper to pick up some groceries for them. Did anyone know Kev’s favorite foods? Grace grabbed a pen and paper and wrote a list. “I’ll be sure we’ve got chocolate cream pie, but he can’t live on that. Here’s a few things I know he’ll eat.” She handed Pat the list and he gave her a quick nod. “Thanks,” they both murmured simultaneously.

  With a general scraping of chairs and dropping of change on tabletops, the others, concerned but grateful, exited the café.

  Charlie hung back until the place had emptied out, then sat on the stool next to Grace. “My dad got back to me. On top of everything else that’s been going on with your leg and Kev, I just didn’t know when to talk to you. But my imagination’s been running wild thinking about how you’re going to react. Then you put that sign up, so I thought...”

  She nodded and put her hand on his shoulder. “That sign wasn’t meant for you. Knowing you were going to find out where Annie is has kept me going. Think that’s what it’s like to have a sibling?”

  “Yeah, maybe so.” Charles grinned. “It’s been nice for me, too, sis.”

  She smiled. Taking a deep breath, she balled her hands into fists. “OK, bro, I’m sitting down. Tell me what else I need to know.”

  “Well, Annie’s alive, so I guess that’s not bad, is it?” Charlie inspected Grace’s face.

  She nodded, calm now, then raised her eyebrows. “And where is she, Charlie?”

  “She’s in some kind of asylum. She’s been there a long time. She’s had a hard life, Grace. She lost the baby and went into a deep depression. That’s the way she was when I last saw her, years ago. Nathan claims he tried everything to pull her out of it. But knowing my father, I can’t imagine he was very effective.”

  “Asylum?”

  “Yeah.” He was clearly relieved that Grace was taking this well. “And get this—she’s in California. A place called Camarillo State Hospital. It’s near Los Angeles.”

  Grace nodded slowly and her lips stretched in a thin grin. “She made it to LA. Good for her.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. There are parrots in LA.”

  It had taken Charlie pushing pretty hard, but Nathan finally admitted that when Charlie had visited that summer when he was sixteen, things were falling apart. Annie had been talking crazy for years; she believed she wasn’t supposed to be a mother, wasn’t that kind of woman. One day she’d say she knew Grace was better off without her, then the next she’d demand to see her baby girl. But after Charlie left Annie stopped talking about seeing Grace again. Instead, she became obsessed with going to LA.

  Nathan wouldn’t take her seriously. He’d always hated big cities. But when Annie stopped speaking entirely, he got desperate.

  As soon as they arrived in LA, she wouldn’t talk about anything but the parrots. She’d get up at the crack of dawn and roam the streets, looking for birds. She got lost and the police picked her up in someone’s backyard. They said she needed to go to a hospital. It looked like she would be staying in the mental ward. Nathan couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t wait to get out of the city.

  “That was almost eight years ago, Grace. He just left her there.”

  Abandoned. This was a pain Grace understood—a vein of heartache that ran through both their lives.

  “So that’s what I know. Right now, I just want to knock Nathan’s teeth out, but I’m more concerned about you. You gonna be OK, sis?” Charlie stood up and put his arm around her shoulder.

  She shook her head. “Whew. I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird. A lot to take in.”

  Grace was quiet for a long while, staring at the stack of empty coffee cups behind the counter, stained and chipped—the same cups her mother had filled for customers years ago. Finally, she turned to Charlie.

  “Thank you for all that. I don’t know how I’d have ever found out if it wasn’t for you.”

  “I won’t say it was my pleasure, but I’m glad I could do it. I still can’t believe all the cowards in this town, letting you believe she was dead all these years.”

  “It’s getting harder for me to think of them as cowards.” She frowned. “But I don’t know what else to call them.”

  “Maybe it’s the wrong word. I trust you’ll figure it out.” Charlie smiled, then he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “This is the doctor’s name and number at the hospital where Annie is. I thought you’d want that. I’ll need to be moving on soon.”

  “What’s next for you, Charlie?” Grace turned her head away as she said this, not wanting him see how sad the idea of his leaving made her.

  “Henry says he can get me on with an outfit up in B.C., something that doesn’t have the stink of Nathan all over it.” He pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket and held it between his fingers. “Think I’ll give it one more go as a hauler, but I know it’ll never be the job I’d always imagined. Gotta start thinkin’ about retooling.”

  “Right. Well, I hear school can change your life.” She grinned at him. “Thinkin’ about that for myself.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I’m grown up enough to stick that out, as long as I don’t end up behind a desk.” He looked down at the cigarette, broke it in half and dropped it in trashcan by the cash register.

  “I suspect Fish and Wildlife will be hiring. They always need guys with experience digging traps in the woods.” She elbowed him lightly in the ribs.

  “Thanks. I’ll be sure to add that to my resume.” He stood up. “Time to go.”

  She reached her arms out to hug him. “Don’t forget about me.”

  Charlie hugged her awkwardly. “Hadn’t pictured this,” he laughed. He stood back and looked her in the eye.

  “Look, there’s no way I’m going to forget about you. I gotta know how it all turns out or I’ll drive myself crazy imagining it. I got your number. I’ll be calling.” And he turned and walked out of the café.

  Grace put the paper Charlie had given her into her pocket and pulled her crutches under her arms. She walked into the kitchen where Lyle was standing over the sink. “So now you know what’s been going on with me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d heard a few things from folks. That Charlie seems like a good guy.”

  “Oh, I’d say he’s one of the better lumber thieves around.” She chuckled.

  “We’ve all got our shit, as they say.” Lyle shrugged. “One more thing, Grace, you got a letter here from Jane.”

  He picked up an envelope from under the phone and han
ded it to her.

  “Keep it, Lyle. Stick in with the others.”

  Too much was coming at her at once. It was exhausting. The last thing she wanted was to read anything Jane had to say.

  ***

  Mary and Kevin looked like they’d been the ones lost in the woods. The pain and worry of the last days were written in the dark circles under their eyes and the deep furrows in their brows. Kev, sitting between his parents in the truck, waited as they got out, his gaze straight ahead, as if he were scanning the forest for threats before taking any chances. His ever-present, silly grin was missing.

  Grace leaned on her crutches next to the truck. She gave Mary a hug and tapped on the window. Kev turned toward the sound. When he saw her, the muscles of his face began to thaw and slowly a flicker of light returned to his eyes. She opened the door and leaned in. “Hi, Kev. I’ve missed you.”

  Once the family was settled back in their house, Kevin took Grace aside. “This whole adventure has changed him, Parrot. I don’t know if we’re going to get him back, but I really think you can help him. I told him Pat and Charlie had found you and that seemed to make him relax a bit. He got upset again when I said you broke your leg, but he had to know.” He looked over his shoulder to where Kev was sitting; then he turned back to Grace.

  “Look, I know you’ve got your own stuff going on and you might not be able to stay in town, but could you hang around for a little while and visit with him?” He put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “I feel terrible asking you to do this after what this town did to you.”

  “One thing I’m sure about, Kevin, is that I love that kid. He got himself in this situation because he was looking for me. He and I both have some healing to do.” She looked down at her crutches. “I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

  Her leg limited how much walking she could do, so she asked Mary to bring Kev to the cabin in the morning. When they arrived, Grace got her crutches, and she and Kev made their slow and awkward way down to the Hoot Owl for pie. This quickly became a ritual, and others took note. The folks who’d been gathering at the café while Kev was in the hospital were still showing up. That first morning Pat came in with his dad, and they both made eye contact with Grace and smiled. The next day Clett put a hand on her shoulder and nodded. These gestures were like drops of rain that sank into the brittle soil of Grace’s heart. Kev softened too, a muted version of his grin returning as he stuffed big forkfuls of chocolate cream into his mouth.