By Way of Water

by Charlotte Gullick

  “One guy I worked with in Washington, Indian fellow from the Puyallup tribe, he liked to tell how the salmon used to be so thick, a person could walk across the river on their backs. He said maybe Jesus wasn’t so original.”

  Jake smiled and rolled his neck against the tension building in his shoulders.

  Kyle gestured toward the graves and said, “We’ve done our part.”

  Jake considered this. All the trees he’d helped fall rose up in his thoughts and fell again—an earthquake’s rumble in his memory. It made him proud and angry and confused all at once.

  “I wonder if the bastard’ll show,” Jake said. He hated that he needed to rely on someone like Gaines to make it through the winter. Depending on the man in the summer was insult enough.

  Kyle said, “If I remember old Shelby properly, he’ll show all right, but not until he makes us sweat a little, like he’s made us sweat for the job in the first place.”

  Jake studied his hands and wished they were wrapped around the handle of a chain saw. His fingers wanted the vibration of chain cutting solidly into a tree. Kyle looked back to the swirling river. A fat drop of rain landed on the windshield, and they both watched its watery path to the hood. Gaines’s shiny white Ford pulled up next to them.

  “Here we go,” Jake said. They climbed out of the Willys and walked over to Gaines. The hum of a power window revealed his craggy face, and cigarette smoke poured out of the cab. A small white dog sat on Gaines’s lap, barking at them until Gaines shoved him back. Gaines squinted against the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth. The dog worked his way back onto Gaines’s lap and stuck his head out the window at Jake and Kyle.

  “Sorry I’m late, boys, but I had to spend some time with Nigger this morning. She was acting funny, like maybe her stomach was paining her,” Gaines said. When he talked, ash fell from his mouth onto the dog’s back.

  “Isn’t that mare getting up in years?” Kyle asked, and Gaines stared at him. Jake shifted his weight and his thumbs danced outside his pockets.

  “Been a while since I seen the famous high climber in these parts,” Gaines finally said.

  “Shelby.” Kyle dipped his head toward Gaines.

  “If you could’ve seen the look on her face, you’d of known something was wrong. You used to be horse people.” Gaines looked through the windshield. Then he shook his head and said, “You going to sign that petition, Chief?”

  Jake shrugged. Gaines talked like it had been weeks instead of hours since he’d seen Jake.

  “They going to hire you or anybody else from around here?”

  “Don’t seem like it.” Jake looked at the ground and stepped on a small rock, rolling it underneath his boot.

  “They bringing people in?” Gaines sat up straighter, the wrinkles in his forehead doubling as he sucked on the cigarette.

  “Probably so. Specialty crews.”

  “Shit fire if that ain’t going to screw this town.” Smoke drifted from the cab.

  Jake pushed his boot harder against the rock.

  “Can’t be a caretaker all your life, eh?” Gaines smiled. He petted the dog without paying attention to where his hand landed. “Ready to dig, boys?” He grinned and said, “The vet is coming, so I can’t stay long.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jake said, thinking about the falling jobs later in the spring and the way his chain saw would feel. Kyle studied the sky.

  “Good.” Gaines threw his cigarette butt out the window. He placed a CAT cap on his thick brown hair and opened the door. The dog jumped out and sniffed Jake and Kyle’s boots. Gaines started walking the instant his feet hit the ground. His short legs took quick and precise steps, the denim of his jeans making whipping sounds. The little dog trotted beside him. Jake and Kyle followed Gaines to the biggest family plot. The thick humus softened their steps, and the water rushed past noisily.

  “This here’s my family.” Gaines gestured toward the group of headstones separated from the other graves by a decrepit wooden fence, some of the markers dated back to the eighteen hundreds, some were unreadable, two simply said, “Child.” Gaines stopped in front of the most recent headstone, military insignia decorating the corners. It read: “Shelby Gaines, Jr. 1950–1970. Died an honorable death serving his country.”

  “He goes first,” Gaines said, and coughed. “Then the rest of my folks.”

  Jake looked to where the river ate at the bank. Other graves would slip into the water soon. Gaines coughed again, deep and lung bruising. He wiped his eyes and tried to grin, but all three men knew he was in pain. Gaines stared at his son’s grave, then pointed to the plot of his wife, Rose. The dog pushed through the fence, lifted his leg and sent a stream of urine on her headstone. Gaines moved like he was going to kick the dog but stopped short. The dog slinked behind a redwood tree.

  “Damn mutt,” Gaines said. Jake didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry.

  “Where do they go?” Kyle asked, hands deep in the pockets of his jacket. He could see Gaines reflected in Jake’s glasses. Jake closed his eyes and listened to the river, thinking about how far away it could take him. He heard movement and opened his eyes to see Gaines leave the plot and walk to the bank, where he stood at the edge, hands on his blocky hips, as if daring the water to move any closer. He turned to them after a minute and raised his voice a notch.

  “They go up by the Grange. The town has agreed to use the land behind the hall,” Gaines said, and gestured with his left hand. “All these dead folks won’t be my worry anymore, and they’ll have a nice view of the river from up there.” He laughed and started into another raspy fit, turning back to the water, his body heaving.

  Jake and Kyle exchanged a look, and Kyle mimed smoking a cigarette. Gaines walked back to them, quiet tremors rippling his chest.

  “The way this is going to work,” he said, “is that you two dig up the graves, sift through the dirt, find the bones and put them in labeled boxes.” Gaines paused and looked at his family’s headstones. “Not that I give a good goddamn whether you throw all the bones in one box. Excepting my kin, of course.” He grinned and started back to the truck, seeming almost to run. The dog darted after him. Jake and Kyle followed, and when they reached the truck, Gaines climbed in and lit up a cigarette. The dog jumped in. “Move your ass, Shirley,” Gaines said as he closed the door.

  “You can unload the stuff,” he said to them, and picked up a Zane Grey novel from the dashboard. The dog watched Jake and Kyle, sometimes pausing at Gaines’s cough, tail stopped in midwag. When the bed of the truck was emptied, Jake and Kyle waited. Gaines used a book of matches to mark his place.

  “I expect you to be here at eight every morning.” Gaines coughed shallow and grinned. “Handle my family careful, especially Junior.”

  Jake and Kyle nodded as Gaines started the truck and shifted into reverse.

  “I’ll bring some more boxes come Wednesday.” He pushed the dog off his lap and said, “Gotta go tend my girl.” A small motor eased the window upward as he pulled away. The dog watched Jake and Kyle, tiny body quivering, mouth sending out soundless barks.

  “He’s a warm one, ain’t he?” Kyle asked.

  “Belongs in the ground with the rest of his bunch.”

  “Won’t be too long.”

  “No wonder he got motivated to move this thing.” Jake indicated the cemetery with an up tilt of his head. He watched the river and Kyle looked the direction Gaines had driven. Not a single vehicle passed on Highway 1 this time of day.

  “Let’s get after it,” Jake said. He moved to the Gaines plot and felt the restless, cagey feeling in his hands. To stop it, he started building the sifter with a careful frenzy.

  As Jake finished hammering one side of the chicken wire to the box frame he’d built, Kyle walked past him with a shovel. Drops of rain hit the backs of their necks and they both looked to the sky. They flipped up the collars o
f their jackets. Kyle sank a shovel slowly into the son’s grave, as though he might feel something creep up through the soil, into the metal, into his leg.

  The river rushed past and the sky lowered itself, the canopy pushing more water at the earth. Kyle continued to dig and Jake finished making the sifter. The redwoods around them leaned up to the sky, and when he wasn’t looking, Jake knew for sure that the treetops had disappeared into the fog. The waterlogged earth gave easily under Kyle’s shovel.

  Jake stretched his back. He walked to the pile of supplies just outside the plot and grabbed a shovel. He roamed, shovel perched on his shoulder—a gesture he felt was too casual. But he didn’t know how to carry himself. He didn’t look at Kyle, digging up a boy Jake had gone to school with, killed in another forest. He stopped at Rose’s grave and stood where he thought her feet had been.

  “Begging your pardon,” he said, and pushed the shovel into the ground. Kyle paid Jake’s words no mind, only worked deeper into the son’s grave. The sky released more rain and the dirt soon became mud. The shovels pulled away with sucking sounds. Jake tried to think of something funny to say, but his mind yielded nothing of the like, and so they worked in silence, the river full and hungry, the trees bridging the distance from earth to sky.

  ***

  Justy sat in class, waiting for Ochre and then the rest of the students to finish their spelling papers. Ms. Long watched the new aquarium she’d brought in the week before, the tropical fish flashing their brilliant colors as they swam. Justy liked to watch them, too—how their tiny bodies flowed through the water, like she did in her dreams. Ms. Long’s brown dress pooled at her ankles as she sat in front of the fish; the yellow flowers in her hair were beginning to wilt again. She turned from the tank to look at Justy. They held each other’s gaze and then Ms. Long crooked a finger.

  Justy stood and felt Jake growing angrier as the rain heckled his back. Dale sat at the kitchen table, studying the week’s Watchtower, marking answers to the magazine questions. The meeting clothes she’d ironed still hung on the edge of the ironing board, and the love she felt from Jehovah softened her day.

  Justy walked to Ms. Long, who placed an arm around her slight shoulders and smiled at her. She still smelled like vanilla. The teacher led Justy outside and squatted in front of her. The rain pounded on the breezeway roof and out of the corner of her eye, Justy saw the rain as if it were a curtain she could walk through.

  “Now, Justine. I’ve put up with your not talking for months now.” Ms. Long cleared her throat and rubbed at the rose tattoo on her hand. Justy thought she might even have tears in her hazel eyes.

  “I’m trying to be understanding, but I’m beginning to worry.” She cleared her throat again. “I don’t know how to say this next part, so I’ll just tell you. I’ve heard talk about your dad—that he, he has a temper. I just want to make sure everything is okay at home.”

  Justy closed her eyes and wanted to scream.

  Ms. Long shifted her weight on her bent knees. “You can tell me, Justine. You really can. I used to volunteer in a shelter.”

  Justy blinked, wondering what a shelter was. Ms. Long sighed and patted Justy’s arm, then stood. “I’m here if you ever want to talk.”

  Justy nodded and turned from the teacher, needing to pay attention to what was happening in Jake.

  ***

  Kyle slowed as he and Jake approached the coffins. His skin felt dry and wet at the same time, and it was something he didn’t feel comfortable wearing. Jake tried not to think about the coming mine and how it’d be a similar thing, a digging into the earth that somehow shouldn’t happen. But not thinking about the mine was like not breathing. He couldn’t do it—couldn’t keep back images of the mountain assaulted. When the company had turned the land Jake loved into a raw hill, where would he be? Things started to slide around in his head—Dale’s distance, Kyle’s coming back after so many years. Jake stopped and spat at the base of the nearest tree. It felt like his guts would burst with his burden.

  “Damn this,” he said, wiping rain off his glasses on his wet sleeve. The caged feeling grew and he wished he’d brought his fiddle. Kyle paused and took off his jacket. He tried to toss it at the headstone between the two graves he and Jake worked on, but it landed at Jake’s feet. Kyle grinned and Jake reached down, winter blood starting to fill his body. He picked up the jacket, glared at Kyle and said, “Watch it.”

  He tossed the jacket then and it landed on the rickety plot fence. Kyle went back to working the soggy soil until his shovel finally hit Shelby Jr.’s coffin with a thud. He shivered and began scraping the mud away. “Thanks for the shit job,” he said.

  Jake dropped his shovel, walked through the gate and to the edge of the cemetery, where the water churned past. He put his arm against a redwood and tested his weight on the roots. They were slippery, but he stepped out farther, watching the river lap at the bank.

  Kyle eyed Jake and held his breath. The coffin seemed to leer at him, and he attacked the remaining mud with his shovel.

  Jake closed his eyes and tried to let the sound of the water ease the knot building inside him. His boots were only inches above the torrent, and he looked to the gray sky, rain hitting him square in the face. He let go of the tree and his arms shot out for balance so that he felt like a ridiculous bird, equipped with useless wings that could take him nowhere, even if he knew where he wanted to go.

  He walked back and glanced at Kyle, more in than out of the hole. It made him furious to see his father soaking and muddy in a buddy’s grave.

  Kyle ran a hand over the top of the coffin. Jake began to dig haphazardly. Pictures flashed through his mind, tricky images that captured a place and time he could no longer access. He dug faster, wanting to forget everything that ballooned inside him. His muscles burned cold and the rain fell harder, and he remembered the last fight with Kyle, how Dale had looked so swollen in her pregnancy, how it was Kyle who’d stepped in and stopped Jake’s hands from losing themselves on her again. Kyle had moved in between them and slugged Jake for all he was worth, and Dale had stopped singing. Jake dug even faster, and his thoughts ran back to the first time Kyle had hit him. It made him want to leave his skin, how Kyle had judged him for hitting Dale. Jake hadn’t wanted to. He stopped digging and felt his jawbone, still able to remember the way the pain had knifed through his head. Then he dropped into his body fully, tired of memories, tired already of this job, tired in general. The mud seemed to rise up around his ankles, and he fought his way out of the grave.

  Kyle looked to the trees, then turned to see Jake’s fist come at his face. He slipped the blow, and Jake lost his balance and fell into the grave. He recovered and came at Kyle again. But Kyle threw a punch before Jake had time to land one himself. Jake paused at the pain in his jaw, and in that moment, Kyle took a step back and dropped his hands.

  “I’m tired, son.” He shrugged, though his chest heaved in the old way, reminding him that he knew how to do this. Kyle wiped at his eyes and at the gritty soil on his lips. Jake shook his head and then pulled himself out of the grave, heart knocking against his ribs. He muttered to his hands and willed them to pick up the shovel again.

  ***

  Justy looked at the fish tank, prepared to see the fish swimming backward or looping through the water as if crazed. She’d seen it before—how animals acted strangely before an earthquake. But the fish floated serenely, and she wondered if only she could feel the world shattering and the raising of the dead.

  On Sunday morning, Dale gently shook the children awake and told them to get dressed for meeting. Justy blinked and couldn’t believe that seconds before, she’d been in the Eel again, swimming away. She could hear the sound of rain and of the shower running. Ochre’s stone remained tight in her fist, where she’d willed it to stay before she fell off to sleep. Lacee crawled over her and headed toward the bathroom, but the door was locked and the shower muf
fled the sounds of Kyle singing. She came back to the bed and stood over Justy. Dale was cooking pancakes, and the smell of warm syrup filled the house. Jake still slept a dreamless sleep, last night’s whiskey carrying him away from the bruises he and Kyle still wore. Micah rolled over and mumbled.

  “Get up,” Lacee said, and poked Justy in the ribs through the blankets. Justy blinked once more, then emerged from the covers, feeling the cool air hit her skin. Lacee walked to the closet and rolled aside one of the two doors. She felt the different dresses and sneered. Justy understood this feeling—dresses didn’t allow a girl to be prepared for anything, except being reliant on someone else. Justy joined Lacee and picked out an orange and cream dress that reminded her of Creamsicles. She pulled off her T-shirt and stepped into the dress, feeling trapped and exposed at the same time by the loose fabric around her legs. Lacee sighed and grabbed a red-and-white gingham dress that other girls had worn on Sunday mornings.

  The shower stopped and Kyle emerged a few minutes later fully dressed, with his brown hair slicked back. He stuck his head in the children’s bedroom and grinned, taking stock of the dresses, then whistled. “Well, aren’t you two pretty little things?”

  Micah sat up and said, “Today is meeting.” His voice rang with enthusiasm and Lacee rolled her eyes.

  “We know already. Get up.” She flopped on the bed and pulled on the brown dress shoes that had come in a bag of things from Mamie. Kyle watched her and hummed. Then he bowed out of the room, and Justy wondered how he could be so merry with a swollen lip.

  They all gathered at the kitchen table, except for Jake. Dale had curled the ends of her blond hair, and it bounced around her face when she moved. She sat in her usual spot, just left of the head of the table, where Jake usually hunkered and where no one else ever sat.

  “Do you mind?” Dale asked Kyle, and he shook his head. The children followed Dale and bowed their heads. She led them in a prayer, feeling uncomfortable; since there was a male present, he should be saying the words. She made it quick, and they began eating the hot pancakes.