Dale stood up and walked out onto the porch, where she waited, considering. It didn’t work to try and tell Jake how she felt when he didn’t come home, or how she felt so small when Walters came with his fancy gifts. Dale wanted to tell Jake she was tired of it—all of it. She picked up the logging boots and moved through the night to the pond, where the moon continued to tremble on the water. The night pushed up against her there, and she wondered if this was normal, standing at the dark edge of a body of water.
Words couldn’t take her where she wanted to go with Jake, and so she flung one boot, then the other, out and away from her, loving each instant of release. The rich moment after the weight left her hands filled her, making her think of her body in the river.
The boots floated on the surface of the water, dark blobs breaking the moon’s reflection. Dale brushed her hands together and returned to the house, to the couch, to the Bible and maybe sleep.
When he woke, Jake’s head hurt and he groaned. His stomach lurched at the smell of potatoes cooking. He pulled on his jeans and moved through the house to the porch, where he closed his eyes and let the morning sun pierce the pain. Drawing in a deep breath, he pictured the valley as it would be when he opened his eyes. Mist would be rising from the pond, the wooded mountains would stand tall around him and apple blossoms would dot the ground underneath the tree just outside the yard. It soothed him, the steady image of the land.
He blinked and realized something was wrong with his picture. He didn’t understand at first, but as the fuzz cleared, he realized Dale was out by the pond, a tree branch in her hands as she tried to hook an object in the water. She leaned out and tried again and again to snare the floating thing. Jake blinked one more time and the night came back to him—how he and Kyle had stopped off at Hilltop for a Friday drink and how it had turned into a playing session, he and Kyle filling the bar with their music. Dale and the kids had been gone and he remembered the flat space in the bed next to him.
Dale held a dripping boot. Jake didn’t recall anything in the evening that might’ve included boot throwing, but what he didn’t need was to find his logging boots floating in the pond this morning. He went back into the house and sat at the kitchen table, commanding his twitchy hands to remain still. Jake cradled his head and didn’t hear Justy slip past him. She went out the door, through the gate and climbed into the apple tree, lodging herself in tight so she could soothe the stirring ache rising between Jake and Dale. Her hands felt the woodpecker-scarred surface of the tree as Dale walked beneath her, set the boots on the porch where the sun could find them and moved inside.
The fight began with small sentences, words that veered near the aged hurt between them. Justy wanted to know what Jake and Dale were really saying to each other when Dale offered him coffee and breakfast, when he waited a full minute before answering. Justy hugged herself against the chill in their prefight conversation and wished she could be asleep like Lacee and Micah, wished she hadn’t woken when Dale had slipped from under the blanket on the couch. Justy looked at the waterlogged boots with their spiky claws on the bottom and guessed they’d be forever tight on Jake’s working feet.
Kyle walked from his cabin whistling a tune, glanced at the fresh crop of weeds in the garden, then turned to the mounting fight inside. Justy wanted him to step in and make them stop, but he continued on, walking past the porch and the apple tree and out through the front gate. He walked to the Doug fir tree, and Justy tried to push away her anger at him for not guiding Jake home sooner each night, for being the one to teach Jake to use his hands in anger. But she didn’t have the time or space to pay attention to him right now, not with Jake and Dale slinging words.
Justy focused her gaze back on the house, thinking about the birds that got dazed in the winter storms, sometimes striking the hard wall of windows of the living room with a thump. She willed herself to be a net, one she could throw over the house so she could catch the words before they left their world and gained power or fell dead at Jake’s and Dale’s feet.
Kyle tried to toss a rope over a branch and Justy tried not to be distracted by him. On his fourth try, the rope fell as he wanted. He walked to the bed of his truck and pulled out a small board with a drilled hole that he worked the rope through. Justy could see he was making a swing, and it made her smile before she remembered she shouldn’t be watching him. She moved so she couldn’t see him and listened to the silence coming from the house.
A half-eaten plate of potatoes sat in front of Jake, and the eggs he’d just swallowed left an odd taste in his mouth. Dale washed the dishes, and the air in the house changed as something dangerous rose up between them. Justy held tight to the tree as Kyle walked over to her, leaving the swing swaying from the Doug fir. He tapped his finger on the wood, imitating the noisy woodpeckers in their quests for tree grubs. But his tapping was too soft to sound like the birds, and Justy felt annoyance creep into her stomach. He was part of the problem. She looked at his cowboy boots, their tired blackness framed by the white apple blossoms, and she realized their sweet smell.
Kyle stood quiet, his hands now stilled on the tree. A rush of questions filled Justy and she reached for the stone in her pocket. She wanted to know exactly what had happened during Dale’s pregnancy and why Dale had decided to stop singing with Jake. Justy pushed the stone against her teeth and sighed. The creases in Kyle’s face told stories she could never know, ones she could only imagine.
Dale didn’t mean to, but she screamed, her formless words carrying out over Justy’s head where she couldn’t catch them. Justy willed herself to live in this instant, in how the apple blossoms sang their scent, how Kyle felt the rough surface of the tree, how the tip of the western mountains were still held in the final traces of coastal fog. She felt so completely split by the feelings of Jake and Dale that she had no room for herself or even a shadow of Jehovah. The house was full of murmurings she couldn’t understand, but she stretched toward the sound of their voices. She heard a thump and Kyle paused; she knew Jake had thrown Dale’s Bible books across the room, cursing the day the Witnesses arrived and stole his wife.
“A tree is a good thing,” Kyle said. He looked at the pond’s rippling surface, and Justy wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her. Blue sky and occasional clouds mottled the water.
“Before we came west, those few times your great-granddad and mom got into it, I’d go out to this old cottonwood and lean back. I’d watch the sky and the dirt road and wonder where it’d take me if I just took off left, them and my sisters. But I couldn’t. Not after the twins died.”
Kyle half closed his eyes. Justy loved the sound of his voice, the way its deep tones made the world seem logical and easy. She hadn’t decided what she liked better, his singing voice or his speaking voice. Another thump came from the house and Kyle turned so he could keep an eye on the front door. His fingers looped over the bark and Justy thought maybe he talked to keep himself from going to the house and stepping into Jake and Dale’s business again.
“You see,” Kyle said, “Mama and Daddy were fighting. ‘Discussing,’ Mama called it, the move to California.” He kept his eyes on the house, and Justy decided to dedicate one ear to him and one ear to the fight, hoping Kyle might say something that would help her. “So many families were going, had gone. Daddy wanted to go, but Mama, she thought it was better to stay and keep working what was left of the land. Ever since the twins died, she hadn’t left the county, afraid for some reason that their graves wouldn’t be safe. She told Daddy that things just had to get better, and me and Essie and Jewell? Well, we didn’t even have one pair of shoes between the three of us to walk to school, so we sort of sided with Daddy. We heard talk, you know, that California had more jobs than people, and we wanted to go, all of us teenaged and able-bodied. In Clifty, we couldn’t do a thing but stare at the walls and play music. Mama thought it’d be worse, heading out to a place where we didn’t have any family, any know-how of lif
e.”
Kyle shook his head and said, “But there wasn’t a thing left in the soil, not a damn thing. Thirty-four. That was a year.”
A bird squawked and Kyle searched the surrounding trees. “That’s a scrub jay. You can tell by the call.” The world slowed with the silence coming from the house. Kyle returned to his story, “And Daddy won out, piling us into a Model T and driving us, with all of our fool stuff, and when we arrived in southern California, all those families, it made a person sick. And it was hard on both of them, but Daddy grew quiet. Seeing all that hunger. After a while, he even stopped playing the fiddle, and one day he just handed it to me without a word.”
Justy felt something big stirring within Kyle, and she sensed she didn’t want to know what he would say next. Kyle closed his eyes and Justy wished she were swimming—somewhere different than where she was.
Kyle stood up straight, said the words fast: “The next night and with the help of too much whiskey and the family shotgun, he left.”
Kyle shook his head again and remained silent for a few minutes. Justy thought of the graves, how Jake and Kyle moved the bodies of people who probably never imagined they’d be rootless, especially in death. A small spider distracted her and she watched its quick little legs take it on a journey.
“I missed that cottonwood,” Kyle finally said. Justy shut her eyes and tried to imagine it. A lone house with a simple wooden porch came to her, a single tree standing trusty guard. A clear stream ran near the Cottonwood, cattails and reeds growing along the water. The picture seemed empty, and she realized she’d given the house no family. She had them already moved to California.
A wry smile gathered in the left side of Kyle’s mouth. “I met your grandmother in Arkansas, right before Daddy piled us into the truck. Kind of funny if you think about it, the two of us meeting up again.”
Kyle pushed away from the tree, winked at her and then moved. He went back toward the road, then on down to the barn, going either to visit the pictures or oil his saddle. Justy thought about him meeting Jake’s mother when he was so young, about the chances of Lila and Kyle meeting again in California. It seemed to Justy that they should’ve stayed together, life pushing them at each other after traveling all those miles.
She turned back to the house and knew that the fight was over. Dale stood on the porch, her eyes red-rimmed. Her hair was half falling out of its braid, and she held a towel in her hands that she wrung tight. Justy could tell Dale saw the distant future in God’s kingdom, when she would be perfect. Dale looked down and saw the drying boots. She slowly brought her right foot forward and pushed them off the porch.
***
Even though the next day was Sunday, Joella didn’t come to take them to the Kingdom Hall. Dale woke the children an hour later than usual and told them to get dressed in outside clothes. Lacee and Justy looked at each other and smiled. No dresses on Sunday meant something special. The house smelled of syrup and French toast, and Justy walked sleepy-eyed to the kitchen table where Jake and Kyle already sat. Kyle patted the seat next to him, said, “Here, string bean.”
She sat down, smelling his crisp aftershave. He wrapped a warm arm around her and pulled her to his side. She closed her eyes, feeling the strength of his body, and wondered if he felt closer to her because he’d told her stories yesterday or because he’d waited out Jake and Dale’s fight with her. When everyone sat at the table, Jake cleared his throat and said, “Today, we go see a tree cut.” He took a bite.
“Your mother here”—he pointed with his fork—”she says we don’t spend enough time together as a family. So, we’re having a family day.”
“Finally,” Dale said under her breath, “What is it, Dad?” Micah asked. His brown hair stood up in sleep-worn tufts. Jake pretended not to hear Micah, who wiggled in his seat and looked at Kyle and then Dale to see if they would tell him. Finally, Jake swallowed and grinned at Micah.
“We’re going to see one of the last giants fall.” Jake took another bite of French toast and smiled. “I think it’s a good thing you kids get a look at this tree, seeing as how there aren’t going to be too many more.” Jake looked at Kyle, who cupped his own chin with his hand and said, “So.”
Dale went to the kitchen counter to make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. The rest of the family waited and then Kyle nodded. He rubbed his long fingers together. “There’s the time I decide to teach your dad here to be a high climber.”
Jake stabbed at another piece of French toast with his fork.
“We was working a job near Myers Flat, some private property tucked in among all them state parks. And Jake, he’s been pestering me for weeks to let him top a tree and I haven’t wanted to let him, it being more dangerous than falling or choker setting, and it being a job on the outs. But the boy is persistent.” Kyle looked across the table and smiled.
“Jake, he’s all of seventeen, working with me in the woods during the summers, and he thinks he’s some hot stuff.”
“You know them fallers said I was better than most old-timers,” Jake said, the slightest urgency in his voice.
Kyle nodded. “I didn’t say you weren’t good, boy. But high climbing, it’s a whole other ball game.”
Jake accepted this and went back to his French toast.
“It’s about the beginning of August, and all summer long Jake’s been hounding me to teach him to climb the big trees. I give in on one of those mornings you can barely feel that somewhere down the road, winter is packing its bags, headed your way. It ain’t much. Just the tiniest shiver running up your spine that don’t last longer than a second, but all the same it makes you think about the rain, and the long, dark days, and you wonder how you’ll survive one more rainy season. I get one of them shivers and I think to myself, Self, it’s as good as any other day to show your boy the thing he wants so much he acts like a rabid dog.
“I go to wake Jake and he’s already outside the cabin, brewing coffee over the camp stove. Eager about another day of work. I stand and watch him for a minute, him not knowing I’m there, and I see him eye the camp cat sleeping on the hood of the crummy. The thing about the cat is that she and Jake hate each other, more than is reasonable, and all for some unknown reason. The other guys in the camp make a point to bring Jake and the cat together in all kinds of situations, like stuffing the poor animal in Jake’s sleeping bag in the middle of the night when he’s stepped out to take a leak. Places where Jake and the cat are bound to continue their relationship.” Kyle chuckled, and took a sip of coffee.
“While Jake is eyeballing the cat and I’m eyeballing Jake, I step forward and tell him that today’s the day. Jake jumps up, spilling coffee all over the front of his hickory shirt, and a shit-eating grin covers his face. The cat? She sees Jake jump up and hightails it out of there, thinking he’s coming after her. We go on about the day and then around eleven, I call Jake over and show him how to hook himself into the lanyard, how to dig the spikes of his caulk boots into the tree as he starts to loop himself upward. Of course, Jake waves my instructions away, having studied my moves for years. I give him a few more pointers and then Johnny Jones steps forward…Remember him, Jake?”
Jake nodded and Kyle continued, “Well, Johnny, he hands Jake a pack, and then Jake is off running up the tree like he’s a born natural. He looks good, and I get this feeling of pride start to fill my chest as I watch him scramble up the tree, chain saw hanging down his back. You can just tell he can’t wait to get to that first branch a hundred feet up the redwood and go at it with the saw. And then he reaches the branch…”
Kyle started laughing and had to clear his throat. “I don’t know how Johnny did it, but somehow he got that cat into the pack he’d handed Jake. And that cat, she must’ve been too scared to move until Jake reached back for the chain saw and started it up. I’m craning my neck backwards to watch him, holding my breath. Then I see Jake coming down, down, down that tree, seven
times faster than he went up, and when he gets near the bottom, I can hear the cat screaming, and the back of Jake’s neck is covered with scratches. Johnny Jones is on the ground laughing his fool head off and I’m trying not to laugh, not when it could’ve caused Jake to fall. But there’s Jake, trying to wriggle out of that pack and trying at the same time to keep as far as he can from the cat, who has absolutely lost her mind. I think it took Jake about as long to get out of that pack as it did to convince me to let him try climbing.”
Lacee and Micah laughed and Jake stood and moved away from the table.
“Let’s leave in twenty minutes,” he said at the front door. Dale cleared his plate without looking anyone in the eye.
***
The children climbed into the bed of the Willys, and Dale handed them two sleeping bags. Lacee placed one up against the cab and then the children sat, using the second sleeping bag as a cover. Warm air—full of the promise of summer—surrounded them, but that promise would last only until the truck started moving. Jake climbed in and started the engine. Dale placed a Styrofoam ice chest in the bed of the truck and looked at the children as if to secure each one in place for the ride.
They hit the highway and the world seemed wide open to Justy, with the wind blowing and the fresh air filling her senses. The pale blue sky rolled overhead. Tree-lined mountains edged the view, and she imagined climbing those hills, back into country that hardly ever had a human visitor, walking through the trees and shivering in the shade as she headed west. Over the lip of the mountains, she’d gain a view of the grand Pacific. She’d see waves crashing against the rocky north coast. Lacee’s teacher, one of the ones who had helped start the petition and didn’t shave her legs, had told the reading group that she’d been to Ireland. Ms. Parsons said the cliffs over by the towns of Westport and Fort Bragg reminded her of the Irish coastal country. Jake said the Colbys were part Irish, part Indian, part something else—all people who’d been given the runaround.
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