By Way of Water
Page 9
Dale greeted the girls, then walked to her bedroom with an armload of clean clothes. They set the books on the kitchen table and went to help her. The house was spotless, and Justy could smell coffee and something sweet, fresh from the oven. The clothes were stiff having dried out on the line in the crisp spring air. Most of the things were seconds from Mamie or Joella, brought into the house when Jake wasn’t home. They folded the clothes in silence, Lacee standing next to Dale, their hair almost opposites.
When the clothes were folded, Dale brushed her hair, making sure Lucas would be able to tell she tried to make this a godly family. Lacee and Justy went to the kitchen table and began their homework. After fifteen minutes, Lucas followed Micah into the house. Lucas carried a black plastic bag in one hand and his book bag in the other. Micah smiled broadly and whispered, “Brother Mills says I can get baptized when I’m ten.”
Dale and Lucas said hello and she offered him coffee. He declined, saying he’d wait until Jake arrived. Then he held up the plastic bag. “Sister Harris asked me to pass these along to you.”
Dale’s face turned scarlet, and she took the bag of more hand-me-down clothes, probably collected by Mamie when she’d gone on a visit to the Santa Rosa congregation where a Harris cousin lived.
“It’ll be one of the youngest baptisms,” Micah whispered to Justy. He stuck his hands in his faded jeans and rocked on his toes, just like Kyle. Justy blinked at his confidence. She knew the Witnesses were different from most religions because a person had to make a conscious choice to be baptized. The responsibilities that came with it were too large to give to an unknowing child, and most Witness children were baptized at fifteen or sixteen. Justy looked from Micah’s sure smile to Lacee, stuck in another book. If any one of them was supposed to get baptized, it should be her.
Lucas walked to the table and laid his Bible down. He cleared his throat and straightened his tie. “See the difference?” he asked. Lacee shrugged. Dale stepped closer, laying her arms across the back of Micah’s chair. A long minute passed.
“What I’m talking about is the difference between that homework of yours, the ideas of man, and this Bible, the knowledge of Jehovah God.”
Dale nodded, but she frowned slightly.
“I’m not saying your homework isn’t important. Schooling is valuable.”
Dale’s face relaxed and she leaned forward.
“The word of God deserves equal or more time in your lives.”
Lucas tilted his head and ran a finger over Lacee’s math book, clicking his tongue, and then walked to the couch, where he sat and studied his notes. Justy tumbled the pebble from Ochre in her hand, under the table where no one could see.
***
The last of the day’s sunlight slipped over the mountains as Jake walked into the house and stopped just inside the door, his eyes trying to make sense of Lucas. Then he pivoted and placed his muddy hand on the doorknob—all he wanted was a shower, and he’d forgotten that Dale had arranged another monthly study for him. Lucas stood, his feet hitting the rug with a soft thud. His piston-like legs carried him across the room to Jake in a whirl of motion and blue cloth.
“Jacob,” Lucas said, drawing out the name.
“Luke.” Jake nodded once, and adjusted his glasses. Lucas wrapped an arm around Jake and guided him toward the table. Jake moved as far away as he could within that grasp, his mud-spattered flannel shirt contrasting against Lucas’s suit. Lucas waved his free hand and the children stood, leaving the two men to face the table and the Bible.
“How’s things been, Jacob?”
“Fine.” Jake stole a look at Dale and then studied the mud creased into his jeans. Lucas cleared his throat and said, “Let us pray to begin this study.”
He bowed his head. While he spoke, asking for Jehovah’s loving spirit to fill the house, Jake looked around, his gaze caged by the angle of his downcast head. He wanted to feel blessed—be connected to the higher order of things—but he was almost sure that what he felt when he was in the woods or playing the fiddle was enough. Justy thought about the song Jake and Kyle had sung a few weeks before, the one about going to the river to pray. It made the most sense to her, the river being the place to talk to God.
She sat on the living room floor and listened to Lucas read from a brown book he held. He told the story of Job, how God allowed Satan to test one of Jehovah’s most faithful servants. Lucas’s voice was smooth, and the Bible pages rustled as he turned to the Scriptures cited in the brown book. Dale floured meat in the kitchen, and Justy heard the sizzle when Dale placed it in the skillet. The house seemed to grow smaller, the four rooms leading into one another and this moment, anger blooming inside Jake. He sat straighter and listened from a greater and greater distance to this story—God allowing Satan to strip Job of his land and livestock, then his wives, then his children. The knuckles of Jake’s hands moved a little closer to one another.
“Wait a minute.” Jake pushed back from the table, the chair scraping harshly on the floor.
Lucas looked up from his books and cocked his head. “Yes, Jacob?”
Dale paused in the kitchen, a piece of illegal meat in her hands.
“You mean to tell me God made a bet with the Devil?” Jake asked.
Lucas placed his thin hands over the two books and sighed.
“Well, in a way, he did.”
“And Job, he lost it all?”
“If we keep reading, we’ll see that Job got everything back, more than he had before.” Lucas leaned over the table, his tie dangling on the Bible.
“He got his wives back? His kids?” Jakes legs were flexed, ready to leave.
Lucas cleared his throat. “Jehovah gave him other wives, prettier than the first ones, and his children, he had twice as many.”
Jake ran his hands through his hair, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“And he came to know Jehovah on a deeper, more humble level.”
Jake put his glasses back on and looked at Dale, then to the children in the living room. He caught Justy’s eyes. His expression—a mixture of love and rage—was too much, and she looked away, reaching for the stone in her pocket. Micah and Lacee watched her slip it in her mouth. She flipped it with her tongue as the moment grew and the house shrank.
“That ain’t right.”
Jake stood. Lucas followed and reached across the table, his palm soothing the air between them. “If we can talk some more, Jacob, I think you’ll see it makes sense, in the big picture. This really is a story we can learn from if we step back from it.”
Lucas’s hand kept caressing the air. The stone tasted flat, like Justy imagined the bottom of the Eel at Carver’s Hole would taste.
She knew the Witnesses didn’t believe these were just stories, things to learn from.
“I’ve been studying with you going on two years, Luke.”
Jake looked at Dale, who met his gaze and swallowed. “I been trying to understand what it is Dale sees in this stuff.” He turned back to Lucas. “But no more. I won’t have any more of your shit. I ain’t having no part with a god that’d kill a man’s children, his family, just to prove a point.”
His voice rose in pitch and volume, and all eyes and ears tensed further. Jake walked into the living room and took one steady look at the children, his brown eyes wild behind his glasses. Justy felt Dale panic, knowing Jake’s chances in the New System dwindled as he walked out the door.
***
Dinner was quiet—chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. The silence stretched until Justy felt it would flood the house, leaving nothing. Kyle was the only one to find any words. When he walked in the door an hour after Jake had left, he took one look around and then drew a big breath. When they sat at the table, he told them the sawmill had at least three days’ work for him and he was pleased, seeing as how the foreman used to be a rodeo buddy of his. Just
y ate slowly and imagined what it would be like to chew with Ochre’s stone in her mouth, the mashed potatoes easing around the pebble like the stream that had formed it.
Dale tried to pay attention to Kyle and succeeded for a bit, a sad smile pasted to her mouth. But after ten minutes she gave up, her insides turning icy at the thought of what would happen to Jake now, when the End came.
Lacee saved them by asking Kyle for a story. She tossed her black hair out of her eyes, took a breath and moved forward from the afternoon. “What do you remember about me as a baby?”
Kyle laid down his fork and paused. His silence drove back the other one, and when he spoke, the room seemed to grow warmer. Dale took bites of her food rather than just playing with it.
“Well, you was born in the Ukiah hospital in the summer heat. Your mama and dad were living out at the Reese Ranch then, in the very same house your dad and me used to live in. Funny, huh? This was before they got lined up here, caretaking this place.”
Kyle indicated Dale with a gentle point of his thumb, and she smiled.
“Your dad and me, we were working a falling job, and one afternoon your dad just lays down his chain saw while he’s in the middle of a face cut into a lovely, ancient hemlock. He says to me, ‘It’s time.’“
Kyle was rolling now, pulling them into that other afternoon with his direct gaze, the way he leaned into his words.
“So, I’m not a man to doubt another most times, especially when it comes to birthing babies. I put down my chain saw, too, and we walk out of the woods and to the truck, and Jake, he’s like a man made of rubber, not able to get the door open, losing his glasses in the dust of the landing. I work the handle for him and there’s no way he’s driving, so I climb in behind the wheel and he says, ‘Haul ass,’ and I do. We get to the ranch, and there’s your mama, seventeen and full with you, and your dad was right. You’re about to enter the world and we got to get to the hospital. Now.”
Dale laid down her fork and leaned into her hand, carried back. Lacee listened to Kyle, her head slightly cocked, enjoying her story. Justy took in Kyle’s words like they were food, letting her body find new places for the story to rest.
“Can we go to the River Fork hospital?” Kyle shook his head.
“Nope, not good enough. How about the Willits hospital? No, we got to go to Ukiah because it’s got the best reputation and your mama will not have you enter this world unless it’s in the best way. And off we go, Dale in the middle and your dad over by the door, wound tighter than a bantam rooster. The two of them are clinging to each other during the contractions, sweat on all three of our brows, and it ain’t ‘cause of the June heat, let me tell you. The truck is doing the best it can and I’m just hoping we don’t start to hear pistons knocking. A little past Willits, I see the lights from a highway patrol car. I pull over, hoping this ain’t going to take too long. Your dad is out of the truck and charging the officer. The guy is so afraid to move we’re all stuck, me thinking I shouldn’t take off without Jake. But Dale, she starts to singing and her singing gets louder and louder. Her voice is so dazzling, I’m thinking she should be making records while she’s in labor if this is what pain does to her voice.”
Kyle stopped to take a drink of water, setting it down with a chuckle. Justy noticed again how his eyes looked like the Eel when she wore her fall colors.
“What happened next?” Micah asked. Kyle rubbed his hands together, looked at each child in turn, then he and Dale grinned.
“We left him,” Kyle said.
“You left Jake?” Micah and Lacee asked together.
“Yep, I put the Willys in gear and we took off. I figured the two of them would work it out and then we’d have a police escort.”
“I turned around, and the look on Jake’s face…” Dale held up her hands as if to ward off the look, even now.
Kyle paused for a moment before continuing. “The next time I see Jake, he and the cop are standing outside the nursery pointing and talking about which is the cutest baby.” Kyle grinned even wider. “Of course, the darling of the bunch, they both decided, was the black-haired little girl in the left corner.” Kyle reached out and tousled Lacee’s hair. She crossed her arms and smiled.
“Tell the rest, Kyle,” Dale said.
He puzzled a look at her.
“You know, about that lady and her comment.”
“Oh. Yeah. While we’re standing there admiring you, and your mama is sleeping off the work she’s done to bring you here, this couple walks up, not much older than Jake and Dale.”
Lacee leaned forward, greedy for her details, Justy understood this hunger.
“And the woman,” Kyle said, “she said in this whispering sort of voice, but it ain’t any whisper because we can all hear her, plain as day. She says, ‘Why, look at that little Indian baby,’ pointing right at you.”
“At me?” Lacee furrowed her brow.
Kyle and Dale nodded.
“You were a little Indian baby,” Micah said.
Lacee laughed a little and threw a glance at Dale.
“Can you believe that?” Dale asked and then looked at her pale hands, feeling lost again because her children looked so much like Jake.
“What about me?” Micah asked. “What happened when I was born? Did I look Indian?”
“I remember that night,” Lacee said. A scowl crossed her face.
“It was a crazy one,” Kyle said.
“Tell me,” Micah almost pleaded.
“Guns and horses, that’s what I remember,” Lacee said.
“And don’t forget the whiskey,” Dale said, her voice firm. A moment passed and the good feeling that had been blossoming in Justy wilted.
“Lots of firewater,” Kyle finally said. “I’ll tell you another time, Mike.” He stood and Micah frowned at his empty dinner plate. Kyle placed a hand on his head.
“Your daddy was proud, don’t you think different,” Kyle said. He took his plate to the sink and then left through the back door after thanking Dale for dinner. They heard his guitar from the cabin while they cleared the table and washed the dishes. Justy tumbled Ochre’s stone in her mouth, her stomach eased. Hovering on the edge of this calm was all she felt but couldn’t express—Dale’s lonesome worry about Jake and Jehovah, Jake’s idea of the Witnesses, the distant place she was trying to put Kyle in.
Spring rolled forward and the rain continued to fall, feeding the Eel and the restless places inside Justy. Her favorite part of school came at ten o’clock, when she and Ochre were sent to the sixth-grade classroom for reading. Even though they were second-graders, their book reports and poetry declared them advanced, and daily they walked the short distance to Lacee’s room. Justy sat next to her sister for the whole hour. The group took turns reading aloud and whenever it was Justy’s turn, Lacee or Ochre would read her part. No teacher supervised the group, and Justy loved how the story spun itself around them and they were taken to other places and other times.
Eleven-o’clock recess came and Justy sat on the bench, the other children whirling in the spring rain. She held the stone tight in her right hand and checked the landscape of her family. Ochre sat next to her, waiting. She was thinking about the four riders again and when the world would end. She knew there was supposed to be a raising of the dead and a chance for the resurrected to learn the Word of Jehovah. Jake and Kyle sat in the Willys at the town cemetery, waiting to begin the unearthing of bodies. She kept listening for the sound of hooves.
***
Jake toyed with the steering wheel while Kyle stared out the windshield. Between them sat a black metal lunch box that Dale had packed with sandwiches, jerky and two apples. Three days before, Jake had finished the waterline trough and Gaines had finally agreed to begin the grave job. Beyond the tree trunks that ringed the cemetery, the roiling Eel moved powerfully, eating at the bank. Headstones scattered the area, mos
t of them gray and canted, a few moss-covered and deep green. Salal and redwood ferns grew in sporadic clumps throughout the gravesite. Redwoods reached tall and dark toward the gray sky. Part of one tree’s looping roots jutted out over the water, the soil washed away.
“It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Kyle asked.
“What.”
“How them great big trees got those shallow roots. You’d think Mother Nature would’ve given them a taproot that went all the way to China.”
Jake blinked behind his glasses, amazed anew at the giants. Kyle leaned forward and whistled. Jake shivered inside his denim jacket and glanced into the truck’s side mirror. Kyle looked from the ancient trees to the white sky. “Looks like more rain,” he said.
Jake used to be able to feel close to this man. “Figures,” he said, and turned back to the graying clouds and looked from sky to river—almost a mean-spirited thing in the winter in these high-water years. It seemed like forever ago. In summer, the river was an inviting green, nothing like the brown mass of movement in front of him now.
The rain had fallen for a week, the river rising and finally pushing Gaines to get the job done. The Eel seemed close to its breaking point, like it had in ‘64, and Jake knew if it kept raining, their work would only be miserable and hard-pressed.
“Damn that Gaines,” Jake said. The silence swelled and he shifted in his seat. He rolled down the window. Cool air crept in and he sighed.
“You think the graves are going because they took out all the trees in the middle of this grove?” Kyle asked.
“Probably so,” Jake answered. “Just wait until that mine goes through. They’ll strip it all down.” They both shook their heads.
“How the salmon runs been down here?” Kyle asked.
“Kind of shitty. Not like they used to be.”