By Way of Water

by Charlotte Gullick

  Justy looked away from Lacee’s tear-stained face to the sky, seeing a slice of the moon. It looked like a horn to her.

  “Jake got so drunk, he shot his pistol into the fireplace. After that, he got all the people out of the house, in the dark, and down to the barn. He saddled up his horse Sandy, barely doing it right with the whiskey. About this time. there were about twenty people standing at the edges of the corral, watching Jake trying to fit a boot into the stirrup. It didn’t look so good for a while, but then he surprised them all and got on that horse in the middle of the night. He even enjoyed maybe a whole minute on that mare before she’d had enough of him and his drunk ways and bucked him off. Jake went sailing through the air and landed on his ass, and he’s grinning the entire time.”

  “That’s how happy he was, Micah. He finally had a boy.” Her voice made Justy think of a coiled-up rattlesnake, ready to strike.

  Dale took a step back from Lacee, her lips pressed tightly together.

  Micah moved over to Kyle’s body and hugged it. He started to cry again.

  Under her breath, Lacee said, “The blessed boy had arrived.”

  They watched Micah until Lacee gently drew him from Kyle’s body and Dale stepped down and tried to join them. Lacee allowed Dale’s arm on her shoulder for an instant and then pulled away so that Dale was left to hug only Micah as wave after wave of regret washed through her.

  Then Lacee said, “We have to call somebody.”

  Dale just nodded. Lacee blew out her breath and held her head in her hands.

  “Time for bed,” Dale said at last and leaned down to pick up Kyle’s guitar.

  Lacee took a step closer. “We can’t just let him lay there like that,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Dale gathered the body of the guitar to her and held it like a shield. Lacee pulled hard on the neck until Dale finally let go, causing Lacee to lose her balance and take a step backward. Then Dale took a deep breath and looked Lacee in the eye.

  “It’s time for bed,” she said again. She picked up the fiddle and bow from the porch, then walked to the gun rack in the hallway. After hanging up the instrument, she came back outside and searched for Jake’s glasses in the grass. When she found them, she told the children a third time to go to bed. Lacee stared at her and then nodded at Micah and Justy to move to the bedroom. They lay on top of the covers. Lacee turned away, so Dale kissed only Micah and Justy on the forehead, the salt smell of her dried tears filling Justy’s senses and making her think of the Pacific. None of them could sleep. Justy lay, feeling Jake shove his hands into the earth, aching for them to be something other than they were. She listened to Dale standing in the dark bathroom. After taking a deep breath, Dale flipped on the light and studied her face in the mirror. Fat red marks still stung her left cheek, and her neck was bruising in a ring. But she could breathe, so she drew in all the air she could while she wondered who her people were.

  ***

  On the floor in Kyle’s cabin, Dale pressed her body to the wood beneath her. She stared at the ceiling, trying to read the darker whirled knots in the paler pine surface. Her prayer fell away from her mouth and she began to speak louder and louder, trying to block out the sounds of the night before. She wanted nothing so much as a quiet place to think over all she’d done wrong last night. The three masks on the wall watched her, and she shut her eyes against their noise. Quiet evaded her, so she kept praying and praying, hoping the sound of her voice would keep out the sound of Jake dancing in the grass in front of her, her own hands pushing the locks down on the truck doors.

  ***

  In the morning, Justy walked past the garden to the middle of the grassy field. She stood facing west, the mountain range blocking her view of the ocean she wished to see, her tongue pressing Ochre’s stone against the roof of her mouth, her feet glued to the earth beneath. Anything to keep her in place and help her hold the breaking pieces together.

  The afternoon they buried Kyle arrived hot and windless. His fresh gravesite gaped in the far north corner of the new cemetery. Redwoods circled the headstones behind the Grange hall where a group of people gathered. Dale stood strong, her eyes taking in the coffin. Behind her, Joella and Lucas stood with their heads bowed. Joella’s right hand gripped Micah’s shoulder slightly and he looked older to Justy—Lacee’s story about his birth creating a crease in his forehead. Lacee stood next to Dale, arms crossed and anger holding her head upright.

  Loggers and other townspeople formed the rest of the circle around the coffin. Gil Walker sat in his wheelchair, next to Mark Sloan and Lefty Fry. Gaines smoked cigarette after cigarette while Juan led the service. He spoke in soft tones about the way Kyle scaled a tree faster than anyone in the county and how he could play the west out of his guitar. Helen watched him from beside Gaines, and Justy realized she’d never seen Helen outside of the bar.

  Dale felt a decision rise within her. She shrugged her arms, trying to keep the thing at bay. Her hair fell down her back, two different lengths, testimony to the craziness of the other night.

  Justy saw it all from afar, sitting on a redwood stump, trying not to think about all the bones Kyle had helped to bury. She pressed the stone into the stump, her right hand denting in the shape of the rock. While Juan talked, Justy tried to push out the thought that kept looping back at her, as if she were the water stuck inside the beer sign at Hilltop.

  Juan asked Mark to step forward and sing something, since Kyle had liked music so much. Justy felt Dale stir and then move forward. She held out a hand toward Juan. A puzzled look flitted across his face for the quickest of seconds, and then he quietly told Mark to hold on. Dale moved farther forward and closed her eyes. Justy saw Joella shake her head and mouth Dale’s name.

  Dale swallowed, sent a prayer to Jehovah, asking him for understanding, and then she opened her mouth. Justy stood as Dale sang about going down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way. Dale’s voice pierced the heat and the pain and sent chills over Justy’s skin. The group bowed their heads as Dale’s magnificent voice moved into the void of Kyle’s death, reaching inside of Justy.

  She had never heard Dale sing alone before, and the sweetness of it, the depth of it, the whole of Dale’s voice, all of it boiled inside Justy. She wanted Dale to sing and sing, never stopping until the New System came.

  And then there was Kyle, the man who was already gone from the entirety of who he had been. Already he’d become the man who had tried to stop the fighting between Jake and Dale and not the man who drank his evenings away with Jake, not the man who’d first laid hands upon Jake in a fight. Justy didn’t understand how she could feel such a tender ache for Kyle’s life and at the same time know he was part of the story that caused Jake and Dale to flow away from each other.

  Dale finished the song, tears streaming down her pale face, her hands knotted into each other. Justy turned her gaze away from them to the cloudless sky, feeling Jake from a farther distance. Juan remained quiet for a few minutes. He finally cleared his throat and said a few words about the music that brought the Colby family together.

  Lacee snorted, and Justy wished Kyle could appear one more time and tell them how to move forward in their lives. She didn’t know which weaving of words would make her feel better about Kyle’s death and the night leading up to it. She wanted Kyle to come and talk himself out of the story instead of being snatched away.

  Then the group moved into the hall, where plates of food filled two tables. People spoke in hushed tones and no one seemed to want to leave. Justy sat outside on one of the wooden benches, clenching her teeth. She watched through the window as Helen approached Dale and the two women hugged. Helen’s brown hands gripped Dale tight, and Justy thought about those hands and their fingers, how they’d reached out across the drunken nights to warn Dale about Jake’s violent moods. When Helen finally released Dale, Justy suddenly hoped that Juan had held Helen when s
he cried over their missing son. Dale fidgeted with a tissue in her hands, not hearing the people who came to offer their condolences. Justy didn’t want to feel Dale wish to be nearer to Jake, wish to know where he’d gone, so she walked down the steps, through the embracing shade of the redwoods and out into the sun and to the fresh mound of the grave. Justy felt the sun beat down on her. Squatting, she studied the soil that now covered Kyle’s coffin. The earth was moist and brown and she lay down and covered her eyes with her hand.

  She pressed her body into the ground and cried to merge into its dark coolness, as if it were the river. She tumbled the stone in her mouth and pretended she was it and her tongue was the Eel.

  The sound of footsteps coming near did not stop her wish.

  “Justy.” A young boy’s voice. A long minute passed. “Justy.” She knew it was Ochre from the gentle pitch of his voice. She peeked at him. Sunshine and Nolan were with him. He knelt and placed a cool palm on her arm. His touch overwhelmed her, and tears filled her eyes, but she told herself she wasn’t supposed to cry. She turned away and lay on her side, both hands curled into fists, knuckles pressed to her face.

  “Justy.” Sunshine’s voice, careful and warm. Ochre placed his hand on her arm again and squeezed the slightest bit. Justy felt the soil digging into her other arm and the sun hitting her legs where they poked out from the under the dress. Ochre removed his hand and the silence stretched. A crow cawed from somewhere in the trees.

  “Should we go?” Ochre whispered.

  “No,” Sunshine and Nolan said together. A hand reached out and touched Justy below the knees. By the size and warmth of it, Justy could tell it was Sunshine. Another hand landed on her ankle—Nolan’s palm, warm and loose.

  “This is when people need you the most,” Sunshine said, and Justy wasn’t sure whom she was talking to. Then Justy sat up and looked at them. Ochre’s hair was out of its braid and flowing down his back. They watched Justy with that distinctive Raven look, not smiling, not frowning, just open. Ochre held out a small pouch. Justy felt the soft leather.

  “It’s deerskin,” Sunshine said. “Ochre and I made it this morning. We put some good herbs in it.” She mimed careful pouring into the small mouth of the bag. Justy opened the drawstring, reached inside and pulled out a pale dried disk.

  “That’s licorice root,” Ochre said. Sunshine sat down cross-legged. Nolan and Ochre remained squatting.

  Sunshine tilted her head, looked at the trees surrounding the cemetery. “Ochre asked me a couple of days ago what we could do to help you.”

  Ochre nodded at Justy, his blue eyes wide open.

  “And I thought we could put together a little bag for you to carry wherever you go.”

  “A place to keep your worries, if you want,” Ochre said.

  “Or your wishes,” Nolan said, his hand lost in his beard.

  “And you can add whatever you want,” Sunshine said.

  “But the deal is”—Ochre leaned forward—”whatever you put inside, it’s your secret.”

  Justy rubbed her fingers against the soft skin. She reached behind her and pulled some of the fresh earth from Kyle’s grave and added it to the herbs.

  ***

  Justy walked away from the house, away from Dale reading her Watchtower. Away from Micah sitting listlessly in the rope swing and Lacee trying to read a book on the far side of the pond. She followed the creek into the shade of the bay trees, letting their sharp smell be her world. Moss-covered boulders blocked her path and she climbed over them, feeling with her fingers for small holds in the rocks. The water level was nearing its summer low and the creek moved with lazy determination toward the larger Rattlesnake. All of the water finding its way to the Pacific. She wished she could keep going inland until she found the source of the river.

  Even as she moved, she felt each of them once more. Jake pulled drinks into his body, somewhere not too far away. He studied his fingers, wanting to be able to coil them peacefully together. Dale stood up from the table and walked to Kyle’s truck, heading to the river.

  The places they lived inside Justy stormed and stretched with a sound like horses. She felt Dale step free from her clothes and enter the Eel, felt her swim against the current, pale arms stretching to pull her through the water. The river filled her and she felt calmed by the weightlessness.

  Justy lay on the boulder and watched a spider work its way over the moss. She knew that soon she, too, would have to rinse herself clean. And like in her dreams, she’d find the season to let the river take her away. But on that day, the firm earth supported the full weight of her body. The stone in her mouth tasted like sadness. So she added it to the pouch.

  This novel is in no way meant to be representative or indicative of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion. For accurate and complete information, please contact your local Kingdom Hall.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Of course, I am extremely thankful to the many people who supported me. Without them, there would be no book.

  My father, who is not Jake.

  My mother, who is not Dale.

  The immediate circle: Jerrie, Blaine, Cindy, Lance, Sydney, Samantha, Dan, Kathy, Keegan, Sarah Margaret, Tony.

  The Upward Bound Program, the Colorado Council on the Arts, the Santa Fe Writers Project, especially Andrew Gifford, and the MacDowell Colony. The many talented folks I met there: Chris Engstrom, Lawrence Chua, Carol Potter, Naoe Suzuki, Scott Frankel, Marina Berio, Jon Rappleye, Greg Woolard, Timothy Burton XX.

  I thank: Joe, Lindsay and Phoebe Fox; Barbara Elliot; Daren, Tim and Charlotte Lewis; Heather, Eddie, Ben and Sam Kassman; Scott, Kirsten, Fred and Baby Maurer; Christine Funk; Martha Owens; Vicki Kerr; Cathy and Rich Ormsby; Mrs. Clara Phipps.

  Colin, Colleen and Maura Anderson; Tim, Juliet and Myles Anderson; Julie and Harry Augur, Avery Augur; Nanci Beazley; Briana Byrd; Bernard Dix; Will, Lynn, Ben and Miles Dixon; Corbin Donahue; John Grissum; Charlie and Linda Hamlin; Jeff Henderson; Aaron Hunter; Jennifer Inge; Sheila Kelly; Merle and Burdette Knous; the Krugs, Tom LaChapelle, the La Garita Club staff, Jason, Amy and Kalen Lustig-Yamashiro; Schiavone McGee; Mrs. Clara Moore; Frank and Kate O’Brien and Max; Lauren and Jordan Reed; Lee Rogers; Scott, Jenny and Wailea Siler-Hom; Jim and Molly Smith; David Toole; Marie Tucny; the Veras; Jill Walsh; Christy Wafer; James White; Kurt Wolter and Anne Sullivan; the music of Los Lobos.

  The Carpenter family: Stephen, Dorothy, Steve and Zoubeida Ounaies, Sean and Marty, Seth and Mi Hillefors. Dreux Carpenter: writer, comedian, companion and friend. Forever.

  The other talented writers I know and am lucky enough to call friends: Kolin Ohi, Richard Rodriguez, Robert Buckley, Aisha Krieger, Dayna Lane, Chris Markus, Steve McFeely, Mary Morrow, Melissa Nelson and Colin Parish, Leo Geter and Tim Mason, Beverly Ball, David Hicks.

  My thanks to Sarah Manuel for the steadfast friendship that guided her careful editing hand. I love you, too.

  I thank the following for help along the way: Inez Hernandez-Avila, Pam Houston, James D. Houston, Page Stegner, Tom Higgenbottom, Jane Vanderburgh, John Walsh. Jack Hicks and his direction of the Creative Writing Program at University of California, Davis. Louis Owens, who was there at the beginning and helped me find and believe in my voice. A better mentor doesn’t exist. I am grateful to the good people at BlueHen Books: Caitlin Hamilton, Kim Frederick-Law, Greg Michalson. And I am especially thankful to Fred Ramey for his patience, professionalism, and most importantly, his perennial faith.

  Charlotte Gullick is a novelist, poet, essayist, educator, editor, and public speaker. A native of the Leggett Valley in Mendocino County, California, she grew up during the area’s transition from logging to marijuana production, and the resulting tensions inform much of her writing. Her awards include a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship for Fiction, a Santa Fe Writer’s Project Grand Prize, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, and a MacDowell C
olony Residency. She is currently Department Chair of Creative Writing at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas.

  GUIDE QUESTIONS

  1. What is the significance of the novel’s title? What role has the Eel River played in the lives of Justy’s parents? What does it represent for Justy?

  2. Discuss the themes of faith and sacrifice. What sacrifices or promises do the characters make to their faith? Jake’s lack of faith seems to put him at odds with his family, but does he truly believe in nothing?

  3. The author chose to give Justy qualities of both wisdom and innocence. Did you feel that this characterization was effective?

  4. Were you surprised that Justy could “see” distant events? Why do you think the author chose to use that particular narrative device? What other mystical elements appear in the story?

  5. How does the author evoke a sense of change throughout the novel? Consider the coming mine, the falling of the great redwood, and the changing seasons. How do the changes to the land degrade Jake’s sense of self? What does this say about the larger community?

  6. Compare the novel’s opening and closing acts of violence. Was the final act inevitable? How would the story have been different if Kyle had lived?

  7. Did you feel that the ending was hopeful? What is the significance of the deerskin bag and the stone that Justy places inside of it?