Heart Spring Mountain

by Robin MacArthur

  “Pass the joint, Mama,” Danny says with a smile, and Deb’s heart alights, grows warm again. Danny. Her son. His live face and green eyes like Stephen’s. Like Lex’s, the fiddle-playing grandpa none of them knew.

  He takes another hit, gets up and grabs Vale’s phone off the counter. “We need music, my friends,” he says. He puts on Ruth Brown’s “5-10-15 Hours.” “Ruth!” he says, beginning a slow shuffle. Vale smiles, puts her glass down, and joins him.

  “Dance with us, Mama,” Danny says, reaching out to her, pulling her up off the chair. And so Deb dances, too. She feels like a fool, here in this kitchen, her old white body in wool socks, dancing next to the wood stove on these creaking pine floors, surrounded by these many-paned windows, while Ruth sings. My God, music—isn’t there something to it? Deb thinks. A house that knows music—a house that fills with it, swells with it, is broken and made whole with it? She feels her grief for Bonnie and for Hazel flooding through her body, finding outlet in every crevice and every pore.

  When the song ends, Vale goes to the phone and puts on Missy Elliott’s “Partytime.”

  “Just what you might have heard in this very kitchen fifty years ago,” Danny says, grinning, moving his sun-kissed bare feet across the pine. Vale raises her arms above her head, closes her eyes, shimmies her hips back and forth to Missy’s syncopated thwack. Missy’s unapologetic presence in the world. Missy’s fury, sex, self-love.

  Deb laughs, but there’s a deep pang in her chest. What glorious creatures, she thinks, pouring more wine, watching Vale and Danny bust their young and beautiful asses. Fierce and resilient, she thinks, as a large crack comes from outside, rattling the house, making the candlelight flicker.

  The joint is passed to her one more time, and she sits down and takes another hit, at once sure that they are not alone in this kitchen. She is sure that Hazel is here, too, only a younger Hazel, in a flowered apron and loose cotton dress, pulling bread from the hot oven. And Lena is here, too—Vale’s grandma—with her long hair and one-eyed owl on her shoulder. Yes, she’s sitting in the corner, tapping her foot and singing along. The owl blinks, closes his one good eye.

  And Lex is here, too, with his fiddle, playing along, his left foot making its own percussive rhythm. What a crowd!

  But there’s another here, too, Deb is suddenly sure. Stephen, walking toward her. The Stephen Deb first loved—twenty-three years old. Blue jeans. Worn flannel. His too-soft heart. Not ever sure of itself. And then he is behind Deb. She smells him before anything. Warm heat. Wool. He bends and puts his hands around her waist. Puts his lips to her left ear, that particular tingle of wet lip, prickle of beard, whispers, “Hello.”

  Deb closes her eyes. A deep breath she hasn’t allowed there for years.

  But now Danny is calling her name and motioning for her to get up and start dancing again, and so she does. All of them do, across the pine floors: Danny, Deb, Vale, Stephen, Lena, Lex, Hazel. Their bright, best, young faces. Their fearlessness and inhibition. They are lighting up the night, moving their elbows, bending their knees, while the ice falls and the trees crash. While the world begins its great unraveling they are all there, dancing, their love and their joy on their shoulders. Their best-intentioned, misspent love. Oh, the impossibility of it. The sheer impossibility of doing it right!

  “Don’t stop now, Mama,” Danny says, reaching his arms out to her, and so Deb two-steps across the floor with her son. They stumble into one of Hazel’s one-hundred-year-old wooden chairs and right themselves at the last minute; they trot back across the floor the other way and crash into the refrigerator. Deb is laughing so hard, she thinks she might piss her pants, might cry. They open their arms into a ring and slip them over Vale’s head—they circle around her, the outer petals of a flower—and Vale raises her arms toward the ceiling and closes her eyes and smiles, a beautiful spinning stamen, an unbearably gorgeous queen, and Deb thinks—this is it. This is how to face the end of the world. Like this: heads tipped back. Dancing. Laughing. Drunk and stoned in homage to the great beasts on their shoulders, on every shoulder, always—death and love. Death and love.

  The song ends and Vale picks another. Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” Sweet Jesus. Deb’s all-time favorite. She stands still, heart pounding in her chest, breath slowing. She falls back into her chair. If there were a singular voice of God, Deb thinks, it would be Nina Simone’s. Danny pulls Vale to him and they slow dance, Vale’s face against his chest, a smile across her lips, momentarily happy, and Deb is surprised by the tears that fill her eyes.

  How Vale deserves to be happy.

  They pull apart, and Danny sits down in a chair next to Deb, and Vale dances alone in the middle of the room. Her eyes closed. A streak of pain across her brow, limbs in slow motion, intoxicating. She’s got something there, Deb thinks. Something being said with this body. Moving to Nina’s piano. Nina’s snaps. Nina’s drums. Moving to Nina’s voice right in her ear—singing, a near moan—a timbre that seems to set them all momentarily free.

  Hazel

  DECEMBER 21, 2011

  She can hear their laughter. Boots across the floor. That awful music.

  None of them notice the woman climbing in through the window: dark hair, a thin face, watery eyes.

  Hazel can smell her from here—mud? Cigarette smoke? Piss? Who is this woman, and why is she here? She smells like an animal in pain, a dying cow at the back of the barn. Her clothes wet, mud-stained.

  Hazel stares at this woman’s face, the one that is easing toward her. This woman’s cheekbones look so familiar. Her eyes a deer’s eyes—dark and tender.

  She comes to Hazel’s bedside and sits down on the stool beside her. Hazel stares. What has happened to this woman’s face? Rings under her eyes. Scabs across her cheeks, like she’s been picking. Dark hair swirling around her brow and cheeks and ears.

  Hazel glances toward the kitchen, at Deb and Danny and Vale, dancing like fools to that unbearable music. Why don’t they see this woman who has broken into the house? Hazel wants to call to them, but her tongue won’t move. Parched—her mouth is. Her throat unable to swallow. The woman seems more ghost than human. The woman reaches for Hazel’s hand, and Hazel lets her touch it. Warm hand. Remarkably so. Beautiful small fingers—near-child size, all bone. Why are the pockets under her eyes so dark? What are those scars, up and down her thin arms, below her sweatshirt sleeves? The woman’s sweatshirt: white with a wolf emblazoned on its front. Streaks of brown across it. Swamp water.

  Oh. For a long moment Hazel cannot breathe, but then it comes, volcanic, her chest filling once more with air. Bonnie—this is Bonnie.

  Bonnie come home. Hazel folds her fingers over Bonnie’s fingers. Squeezes them as tight as she can, every muscle in her body straining to do so. Bonnie, who has been missing. She remembers that now: a storm. Hazel mouths, with her dry lips and dry tongue that won’t move, “Bonnie.”

  The woman squeezes Hazel’s fingers. Smiles at her. Her smile is bright—a beam of sunshine. “Hello,” she whispers. “How are you?”

  Hazel tries to say, “I am terrified,” but the words don’t come.

  Why don’t the others see? What a racket from the kitchen: their ridiculous bodies, angry sounds.

  Bonnie, Hazel thinks, squeezing her hand. Wild child Bonnie running barefoot across the yard, squatting to pee on Hazel’s periwinkle, seeing a cow, yelling out “thow!” and smearing her face with jam. Motherless child whom Hazel taught to pick ripe blackberries and gather eggs and shell peas.

  “It’s cold out there,” Bonnie says. Laughing. “Dreadful.”

  Hazel nods. Squeezes the hand tighter. It’s not about the land, she thinks. It’s going to that baby, that baby girl, fat thighs and dirt in the rings of her neck, pee dribbling down the inside of her thighs.

  Bonnie bends down and kisses Hazel’s brow. “Sleep tight,” she whispers. Her sour smell overwhelming. She lets go of Hazel’s hand, goes to the window.

  Ha
zel tries to reach for her. To call her back. But the words don’t come. Bonnie slips outside. Closes the glass behind her.

  Great light. Great panic. Oh my God. Great light. An astonishing pain. Hazel reaches for the bed sheets. Opening.

  Bonnie

  4 P.M., AUGUST 28, 2011

  She looks down into the swelling and churning water and watches all the things passing below, picked up from the shore along the way: branches, barrels, a green rubber boot, trees, a refrigerator. She blinks, disbelieving. Laughs.

  “Fucking beautiful!” she calls out, the sound of her voice swallowed.

  She thinks back to the farm where she grew up, ten miles upstream, headwaters to this creek and all it harbors. “Wash us all clean,” she whispers, her arms outspread toward the roiling water. The roar of the water is all she can hear. The rain covers her face, her hair, soaks through her sweatshirt, her pants, her white sneakers. She tips her face back and faces that rain. So cool. Effervescent! She wishes Vale were here to see it. Why aren’t you here with me, Vale? That perfect mole at the back of her neck, dark curls. Bonnie hears the crack of something breaking. She looks down—the concrete ripples below her feet. A black thing floats by. Wings. A large bird! Raven? Hawk? Owl? Her mother had one. An owl. Otie. Bonnie laughs, just thinking of it. Her mother and her owl. But what is happening? Electricity through her body. Water all in her white sneakers. The ground under her shifting. Another crack like thunder. Jesus, what is happening? Jesus: Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Ain’t that the truth, Bonnie thinks, looking down at the water below her feet. The love of Jesus! As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. The bridge is cracking, breaking, but Bonnie’s body does not fall. It doesn’t crash with the concrete into the roiling water below. Instead she walks across to the other side. To solid ground. To cool, black earth beneath her. Arms spread. A smile across her lips. Cackle of high laughter. The love of Jesus pounding in her chest and everywhere. She turns and watches the bridge crash and crumble and break, bones of green iron and steel and concrete disappearing into white water. Sweet water! Oh, Vale, baby. Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Vale, baby, Bonnie thinks, laughing, walking, I’ve always loved the motherfucking rain.

  Vale

  11 P.M., DECEMBER 21, 2011

  A thundering cracking sound comes from outside, and Vale goes to the window to look out. A large branch has fallen two feet from the house, missing it, miraculously. Vale turns and walks into the living room to check on Hazel.

  There’s a new stillness to the room. Sheets tangled around Hazel’s legs, eyes closed, dry lips parted, lantern light flickering across her brow.

  “Hazel,” Vale whispers, going to her. She reaches for Hazel’s hand and wrist.

  No pulse.

  She puts her hand to Hazel’s chest: no breath.

  “She’s gone,” Vale calls into the kitchen, an ache shooting through her chest and legs.

  Vale’s never held a dead hand before. She’s never held Hazel’s hand before. Sunspots. Long bones. Thick veins, the warm blood stilled. “Hazel,” Vale whispers, her breath lodged.

  Maggots. Bees. Carrion crows.

  Night swimming.

  DEB AND DANNY COME RUNNING FROM THE KITCHEN. “Oh,” Deb whispers, putting her hand on Hazel’s chest. Danny stands close behind her, places his hand on Hazel’s leg.

  “We should sing, no?” Deb says after a few minutes, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, and Vale and Danny nod, and so she starts singing the words to the Nina Simone song still ringing in their heads. “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” It seems absurdly fitting. Vale and Danny join in. When they don’t know the words, they hum.

  Vale’s voice keeps breaking up—she finds it hard to breathe—their voices accompanied by the incessant peppering of ice on the glass windowpanes, the occasional crash of a branch falling.

  With every one: mothers in El Salvador, mothers in Iraq, mothers in Syria and Somalia. The finality of every single death unbearable, Vale thinks, stroking Hazel’s still hand.

  “I’m here with you, Hazel,” she whispers.

  And she is: here. She’s been without roots for so long. But she’s here. Now.

  While so much in the world goes wrong, and so many good things rise, too: Occupy, poetry, hospice. Good deeds, large and small. Counterpoints of magnanimity and altruism.

  Vale puts her head against Hazel’s bony chest.

  The house is silent except for the refrigerator rattling in the next room.

  “I’m here,” she says. Cheek on Hazel’s pale cotton nightdress.

  VALE STANDS, GOES TO THE DOOR, PUTS ON HER HAT AND boots and coat.

  She picks up the deer vertebra and slips it into her pocket. Grabs the white Reebok sneaker from the kitchen table and tucks it under her arm.

  Outside, the trees are coated in a near inch of quivering ice. There is no light—star or moon—just a faint wash from candle and lantern drifting out the windows.

  Vale scrambles down the driveway. She can hear branches cracking from the woods; the rain and sleet and ice drip under the collar of her coat. Her feet slip out from under her, and she lands on her ass, uprights herself, slides the rest of the way down on her feet.

  At the bottom of the driveway, at the bridge crossing Silver Creek, Vale stops. She walks into the center of it, pulls the bone out of her pocket and holds it above the stream of still-open water.

  She stands there for a long time, feeling the rain freeze to her cheeks, the rain freeze to her eyelashes, mingling with the tears that stream down her cheeks, a line from No Word for Time ringing in her head: “When you have learned about love, you have learned about God.”

  Vale raises the bone above her shoulder.

  “You’re free, Bonnie!” she yells into the wind and rain. The branches around her bend, shudder, arc, crack. Vale tosses the bone into the swirling water. It spins for a moment, caught in an eddy, then disappears downstream.

  “Baby girl,” Bonnie says, climbing out of the water, collapsing onto the sandy riverbank next to Vale on that day the photo was taken. “This is too good, honey-cakes! This river. This sunlight. You by my side? Too goddamn good.” Closing her eyes. A smile across her lips. Touching Vale’s toes with her own.

  Vale reaches into her coat and pulls out Bonnie’s shoe. She brings it to her face. Puts her cheek against the cracked leather. Lifts it above her head and launches it with her best pitcher’s arm into the dark water. “I’ve missed you,” Vale says, watching the shoe disappear slowly, white thing bobbing on white crescent waves.

  Vale pulls her arms to her chest, feels the water thunder past below her feet.

  She would like to go to Neko, let down her hair, undress him, find their song, streaking. She would like to walk upcreek and find Marie, learn everything that was forgotten. To face the future, Vale thinks, turning in a slow circle, closing her eyes, heavy sheets of ice falling on the water, on the trees, on Vale, one must look both forward and back. The past and the future existing at once in the cup of her wet and shaking hand.

  And then there’s a sound from the trees uphill near the swamp. An owl, barred—who cooks for you?—and Vale opens her eyes, laughs. “Fucking of course, Bonnie,” she says, standing still, looking into those upstream woods. “An owl: the death of something old, the start of something new.”

  Bonnie puts her wet cheek against Vale’s dry one, grins. Whispers in Vale’s ear, sand on her lips: “The mother is the love factory.”

  Vale tips Lena’s hat toward the woods and the birds that dwell there. “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” she calls out, joining in, a near howl, her body exhausted.

  Love songs, Vale thinks. Amid the squall they are seeking one another. Deb, Danny, Neko, Vale—seeking one another. Vale turns toward the house and the people in it—these night creatures she’s been given. She holds her arms out wide in both directions, her body freezing, a block of ice, her lips and jacket and cheeks c
oated in it. Seeking one another. Amid these great and wilding storms that are our own. And in the dawn? Vale moves her arms up and down slowly, near wings. Luz. The thing that comes with every morning.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Gratitude to the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts for their generous support of this work.

  Gratitude to the various cabins, living rooms, and cafés throughout southern Vermont (especially their beams and windows) where these words were written.

  Gratitude to the following books for expanding my understanding of time, place, hope, and the lives of birds: Evan T. Pritchard’s No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People; Frederick Matthew Wiseman’s The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation; Trudy Ann Parker’s Aunt Sarah: Woman of the Dawnland; Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants; Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities; and Tony Angell’s The House of Owls.

  Gratitude to my friend Judy Dow for teaching me about the Eugenics Survey of Vermont, forever shifting my sense of place.