“No, that’s uh, look, I’m going down to Clarkston tomorrow and I wanted to know if you’d do me a favor.”
She was silent.
“Marissa?”
Now she was crying. Sounded so easy, so natural. Damn.
“I’m so sorry,” she sniffed.
Oh. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“I didn’t know Sean all that well, not really, he was a few years older, but he was a good guy. Great guy. Charming. Decent. Shit. I’m babbling like an idiot.”
“No, no, you’re fine.” More than fine. She was warm and tender and vulnerable.
“You want me to go to the funeral with you?”
That was a thought. He wondered what that might be like.
“John?”
“I hadn’t—no, I, uh, just wanted to know if you could feed the cats, you know, check in on them now and again? Be gone a week or so.”
“Oh. Sure, no prob. But…I’ll go with you if you like.”
“No, uh, that’s—thank you, though. I’ll leave the key under the salt and pepper rock next to the steps.”
“Okay.” She paused. “John?”
“Yeah?”
“I really am very sorry about your brother.”
“Me too. Thanks for the cat-sitting thing.”
“My pleasure. Call me if you need anything. ’Kay?”
“Yeah, appreciate that. Thanks.”
“Drive safe.”
It was an hour down the empty highway before it hit him. He slowed down.
She had been riding down that dark sorrowful river of lost sibling grief in a raft all alone for some time. She had wanted to come with him. They were in the same boat now.
He sped back up and rumbled through the darkness.
Clarkston, Washington
The stars were bright chips of ice still awaiting the moon as the two-hour drive south through the dips and swells of Palouse Prairie wheat brought him as ever to the precipice that overlooked the Lewiston-Clarkston valley. Eponymously named for that manifestly destined duo, the two cities rubbed narrow shoulders on the Idaho-Washington border far below, conjoined at the confluence of the Clearwater River running east and the Snake coiling its way to the south.
Both cities sprawled up the opposite side of the valley, light trickling back and swallowed by the black horizon, but he knew the topography well. On the left, beyond the Lewiston Orchards were the low hills of the Nez Perce Rez; further lay the brief Idaho panhandle and then the vast stretch that was Montana. On the right he could just make out his mom’s rural neighborhood in the Heights above the town proper, and further southwest rose the foothills of the Blues. Nestled in that rugged wilderness was his grandpa’s ranch.
He stretched his legs along the rest stop. It was a long drive, or so he told himself. The wind swelled up and with it the unconquerable stench of the Potlatch Mill that bloomed pollution into the water below; it filled his nose with dank, warm air. It was always warmer down here. His eyes followed the Grade down a series of cutbacks that weaved and ducked with offshoot runaway truck ramps spaced judiciously along its seven miles of dodgy decline. Many truckers owed their lives to those still lakes of gravel. A few owed their deaths, too. A dozen headlights at the bottom crossed the river and lost themselves in a harbor of twinkling lights.
He got back in the truck and followed after them.
His mother greeted him at the door. “You’re a day late, Johnny.”
Dark circles lay claim beneath her watery, fatigued eyes as she glanced disapprovingly at his beard, and more gray streaked her hair. He offered up a neglectful son’s apologetic smile and shrug and hugged her. Always a willowy woman, she felt fragile, like an old doll that threatened to fall apart in his arms. She held him tight as she whispered her ever-faithful blind optimism in his ear, that as sure as the sun would rise everything was going to be alright. Her buoyant words only illuminated more boldly his shame.
He followed her into the kitchen and felt his father’s eyes. The man had never lived in that house. Even so, he was cognizant of his father’s disappointment in his son: failure in marriage, fatherhood, in family. In life in general. It left him unsettled. He had the urgent compulsion to do something, anything, but held no clue as to what. Not an unfamiliar feeling, but here around his mother mourning his dead brother its current was much more amplified.
He sat at the familiar, worn oak table as she put on tea while her second husband was cordial as always. Decent enough man, Phil, but there was always something about him that rubbed McConnell the wrong way. Probably his soft, safe and affable nature, so opposite the direct, rugged outdoorsman his father had been.
His mom made him a sandwich. It kept her hands and eyes busy, and soon after verifying her remaining son was alive and intact she retired to bed, offering him a sincere and exhausted, “I’m glad you’re here, Johnny.” Phil made his own kind words and followed after her.
It was 2:00 a.m. but a foregone conclusion that sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon. He sat awhile picking at the crust of his sandwich, listening to the silence until it became as flagrantly hollowed out as he felt. He had to get out of there. Brewing a thermos of coffee, he hopped into his truck and went for a drive.
Lewiston-Clarkston had been much smaller when he and Sean had spent a considerable number of their formative summers down here. Now there was a community college, a Walmart, a Costco, a slew of hotels and Restaurant Row, the nom de guerre of the road dominated by fast food franchises fighting for taco and burger supremacy. Behold! It had expanded its repertoire, now boasting an Applebee’s and Red Lobster.
Before all this modern progress his father had met his mother here and had then been promptly drafted into Vietnam. Each perfumed letter he received from her had forged a link in the chain that kept him connected, kept him from falling into the abyss, however black and however far away he felt, and it was that chain that had enabled him to find his way home, out from the darkness, and eventually get on with a normal life unlike so many of his brothers in arms. It was a good story, and it was one of the few his father ever told about that war.
He drove south along the river and his memories were much louder. He remembered every river bend and jut of land though, unlike Sean, he had retreated from this Eden of bucolic youth, visiting rarely after their father died. It had been one of their many points of contention.
“You’ve forgot how to live, man. You want your daughter depending upon a man all her life? Men are assholes. I’m looking at the king of assholes right now.” Sean had side-armed a beer at him and not kindly. He’d spent a year playing peacekeeper in Kosovo, eager as the rest of the country to go spill some blood in Kabul. “You know what dad would do? She should know how to take care of herself. Christ, when’s the last time you breathed in fresh air, you lazy bastard?”
At least he hadn’t called him fat. He wasn’t then, not really, just a bit pudgy around the edges. And Sean had been right. Katie did deserve to know the childhood that they had known. He did introduce her to the woods among the bears, bugs and bees, and she was such a ball of boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm that he had enjoyed himself, too, on the water fishing, teaching her how to cast, how to shoot, how to survive, the nostalgia surprisingly more sweet than bitter. It had been good times.
What had happened to those times? They had disappeared. The divorce maybe. It had been rough on them both.
He headed out Riverside, navigating its twists and turns as it left the city. Pulling off the road, he walked down to the listless, black water and skipped stones by moonlight, watching the black flitter of bats as they screeched for insects. It was cooler here, fishy and earthy. He breathed deep as he took up a rock for a seat and sipped coffee, the coyotes howling their blues.
More memories sifted. Sean catching his first sturgeon, carving his initials next to the others on the tail and setting it free. Attempts one, two and three to row across the rapids because they were there, never mind the bikini-clad Ferrell sisters egging them on
, McConnell nearly drowning twice. Tearing up the fire roads on their dirt bikes, Sean rolling the three-wheeler over the bluff and walking away with nothing more than a scrape and a smile. Sneaking beers and watching shooting stars until dawn while fooling around with the Deaverton sisters down by the creek, his cousin Blaine stealing Joy while he wasn’t looking. His broken foot the next summer earned by jumping off the pier (trying to impress Rose, Joy’s cousin) and landing on the damn rowboat instead of the water. His foot still ached when the weather was damp with cold.
The coming day began to leach the blackness from the sky and he returned to the truck. He reckoned his grandpa would be up. He kept on 129, through sleepy Asotin, hanging a right onto the winding gravel of Couse Creek Road, leaving the river behind.
Mostly cattle country now, family owned and operated, as long established as the sodbusters of the wheat fields to the north. His grandpa could boast he knew every family out here and they him if he had been the boasting kind. You had to drive with caution as there was nothing to keep the dumb beef off the dusty road for twenty miles of twists and blind turns around rustic ranches, small farms, big barns and clumpy pastureland that spread across splotchy-grassed plains when it didn’t butt up against dry, steep hills.
The weathered farmhouse with its wraparound porch was visible about a mile away as the road straightened and paralleled one of the streams that wound across the parcel. Much of the land remained untamed with copses of virile woods and rough scrubland that hugged the toes of the Blues. It was still plentiful with deer, elk and turkey and when the thermometer rose hot enough you could spy the lone black bear poking about the berry bushes. Behind the house were several outbuildings: a barn, a workshop, the old stables and then pasture. Beyond rose a background of folds of brown foothills.
Passing under the simple sign carved out of larch he read: STEELHEAD RANCH and in postscript below: SHIRKERS NEED NOT APPLY!
He stopped in the middle of the wooden flat-bridge to peer down into the burbling creek. They were still there, fat rainbows with their tails wagging, awaiting their hapless breakfast.
More memories bubbled to the surface. His dad teaching them how to fly-cast, 10 and 12, 10 and 12; cleaning their catch before hungrily devouring a lunch of peanut butter and honey on whole wheat, apples plucked fresh, a slice of grandma’s blue-rhubarb pie. Washing it all down with lemonade, fresh-squeezed and real sugar, none of that saccharin/sucralose bullshit, sour enough to pucker your lips as you sprawled out on the bank to let your clothes dry, the hot sunshine of high noon above, a full day’s fishing behind. The day a rattler had slithered up behind Sean, he couldn’t have been more than six. Their dad kicked it to death against the rocks in his steel-toed boots then cut the rattle off and gave it to his brother, who had kept it in his pocket, taking it to school every day, bragging about the encounter. The serpent must have been ten feet long by third grade, fangs as big as Bowie knives by fourth. Probably still in Sean’s pocket now for all he knew.
Or it had been.
He clucked his tongue. “Not today fellas,” he said, letting the trout off the hook.
He parked in the wide gravel driveway. His grandpa was already up and about feeding the chickens in the yard. Not feeding them as much as leading them clucking and pecking towards the henhouse.
“Morning, Grandpa.”
The old man squinted into the sun at him. He was in his customary overalls. He looked perhaps a bit more stooped, maybe a little less of the cropped white hair on his head but his eyes were sharp as ever, and though not spry he moved with conviction.
“You talkin’ to fish now?” The old man snorted and went back to his hens. “Thought maybe I was being bushwhacked by an Amish. You forget how a razor works? Guess they don’t pay you enough to afford one up in the big city.”
He shrugged.
“All talked out are ya? Maybe you should go back and conversate with the crick some more, bond with the frogs and crawdads. Prob’ly jealous of those trout now. Just look what you stirred up.”
He smiled. It felt strangely out of place. “Chickens got out, huh?”
“Goddamn coyote,” the old man said nearing the wire coop, chickens in tow. “Got a couple a hens. One of ’em a snack for later, I suspect.”
“Where’s your dog?”
“Good question. Prob’ly up the road humpin’ that goddamn pug.”
“Who has a pug?”
“Deavertons. Ugliest bitch I ever saw.”
He recalled dry-humping a Deaverton himself a time or two.
“Beer?”
“Beer sounds good, Grandpa.”
Never too early for a beer from the porch fridge at Grandpa’s.
The unbreakable rule was three a day, didn’t matter when, his grandpa attributing his good health to his strict drinking habit. His mom had told him another story. When the old man was young and drinking hard his grandma had given him an ultimatum, her and the kids or the whiskey and beer. After months of contested Irish will, threats to leave, packing and unpacking the old Buick, they had managed a compromise. He had stuck to three beers a day since, even after she had passed away fifteen years ago.
They took up chairs on the porch facing the dawn, listening to the roll of the creek as the sun lingered over the low trees of the horizon. Sparrows chirped among a contingent of rabbits nibbling on the bank while a few deer popped down for their morning drink. The air was rich, sweet with alfalfa and mint, and he inhaled deep gulps of the stuff.
“That coyote’s up there plannin’ his next foray.” His grandpa eyed the dirt and scrub rising to their left, handing him another cold one. Binoculars rested on the porch rail but the old man still had eyes like a hawk. His worn Winchester 30/06, Model 70 with the original stock, rested across his knees.
“You going to shoot him?”
“Well I ain’t gonna ask ’im to dance. You do that enough with the fish.” He scanned the hills. “Might be I just scare him off a little. If the sonofabitch shows himself, which he won’t. Prob’ly underground by now, sleeping off that full belly.” He took a pull from his Bud. McConnell did likewise. “How’s your mom doing?”
“I dunno. I guess she’s alright. We didn’t talk much.”
“She’s had a rough go, that’s for sure. Hard enough losing a husband. Losing a child…It just ain’t the natural order of things.”
“Yeah.”
“Sean was a good boy, grew into a good man. Like your dad.” The old man leaned his gun against the wall.
“Yeah.”
“Stop yeah-ing me, boy. I’m not too old to kick your can around the driveway.”
“Yes sir.” He had really missed the ranch.
They sat in silence. Drinking beers. The morning sky lit into a tangerine glow.
“Too much early death in this family,” his grandpa abruptly said. “Your uncle was killed in sixty-eight. Your dad had just gotten over there, didn’t even know for a month.”
He knew that story. His father stepped off the plane the day after his uncle John, his namesake, had been killed in action. He had been twenty-years old. “My dad never talked much about it.”
“He wouldn’t. He was smart that way. And tough, your dad. Tougher than most. But they were close. Like you and Sean.”
He patted his knee like he was a little boy in need of comfort. Maybe he did need comfort but it wasn’t because he and Sean were close.
Their dad’s death had strained and stretched them apart, one bearing the responsibility for the family, the other all the anger he could muster, and both refusing to tolerate the other. He had been sixteen, Sean had been ten. When his little brother joined the Corps his correspondence went to their mother and on occasion Katie, John getting news secondhand with either mom’s glowing approbation or stern disapproval for coloring. Sean’s brief trips home for leave were just long enough for them to remember being brothers and dredge up ancient disputes and resentment that now seemed so damn pointless.
They drank beer. Sentiment
ality this early, if ever, uncomfortably uncharacteristic for McConnell men.
His grandpa said, “You’re gettin’ fat up there with that city living. Doesn’t pay to be soft, boy. You doin’ any huntin’?”
John shook his head. He hadn’t hunted in hears.
His grandpa grunted. “Seen any of the family yet?”
His grandpa had begat five daughters besides his two dead sons and like good Irish Catholic lasses they had begat an army of their own. John had too many cousins and second cousins to count these days.
“Nope. Just mom and you.”
“Well. You’ll see ’em soon enough.” He didn’t sound enthused.
“Can’t say I much care for funerals.”
“Me neither,” his grandpa agreed.
They mended the chicken wire and filled in the hole the coyote had dug in his hasty escape.
“Maybe we should go get Briar off that pug and hunt that chicken-thieving bastard down.”
“What the hell for?” his grandpa grunted.
Around noon Blaine arrived and coaxed him into helping out with chores. The physical labor felt good though his back protested loudly. His cousin was a year older but harder, leaner and tanner, making him self-conscious of his soft, flabby paleness, and Blaine didn’t shy away from making observations of his unhealthy state neither.
By late afternoon the beer and toil had caught up with him. Bidding goodbye, he left the way he had come, back to his mother’s, to wait with her for the arrival of her dead son and his only brother.
CHAPTER 9
MAY
Clarkston, Washington
His mom allowed the honor guard and the gun salute. Sean had lived and died a marine after all, she couldn’t refuse him that, nor his dress blues, but she had declined Section 60 at Arlington. She wanted her son home. Next to his father. Despite his decade of service, he thought Sean would have wanted that, too.
A local priest, Father Keane, who had never known the fallen, gave a lofty sermon on the ultimate price of war but it was Spokane’s Father DeCaro’s softly spoken eulogy, humorous and poignant, of an angry youth bent on self-destruction and his subsequent heroic turn into the capable, well-loved and respected man the world was now achingly bereft of that made the pews fondly smile and gently weep.
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