by Brian Hart
“Here we go,” Sissy said. “Get in there, Papa.”
Roy looked at Sissy, unsure if he was taking his clothes off or just climbing in.
“You’re going to catch the baby.” Sissy demonstrated what she wanted Roy to do. “I’ll help you if you need it.”
Karen moaned loudly and reached between her legs with one hand and Roy put his hands under and felt her pubic hair then something else and it was smooth and round. It was in his hand and he had the shoulders and the head and he might drop it, palming the head like a grapefruit, beyond slippery, he couldn’t see what he was holding at all, then Sissy was there and lifted the child out of the water. Roy had never seen anyone perform a task so expertly. Roy was astounded. The child made its first sounds. Sissy gave Roy a look, saw right into his panicked soul. He just barely had the sense to help Karen as she rolled onto her back and sat up in the tub. Sissy wrapped the little girl in a blanket and passed her to Karen and she held her to her chest. The blanket drifted in the water. Sissy went to work with her little fishing net, tapped whatever she was pulling out into a small trash can she’d brought from the bathroom. Roy brushed Karen’s hair back and touched the baby’s head. Her mouth was working and the cry was so small and tender Roy’s strength went from his legs and he felt like he might pass out.
“I gotta wash my hands” was all he could manage. He went to the kitchen sink and did a thorough scrub, dried his hands with one of the clean towels on the table. He watched as Wiley left the couch and went to her mother, stood behind her. Karen reached back and pulled her close.
They waited until the blood stopped pulsing in the cord and then Roy cut it. There was more waiting and crying. Karen was saving the afterbirth. Roy brought her robe and helped her from the tub and moved her to the couch. They sat as a family and looked at the child, rubbed the vernix and tested it between their thumbs and fingers.
Sissy eventually asked Karen permission and took the baby to what she’d established as her clinical area on the kitchen counter. She had a digital scale that assembled in two parts and she weighed the baby and used a tailor’s tape to measure her length. She listened to her heart with a stethoscope and examined her ears and eyes. Wiley and Roy helped Karen to the bathroom and helped her rinse off in the shower.
Sissy had given the baby a beanie with the birthing-center name and logo embroidered on it. She took pictures with her phone and Wiley brought Karen’s camera and took some pictures with that too. Roy used kindling and some red fir he’d been saving to stoke the fire.
After she put away her scale and packed her bag, Sissy connected a length of white garden hose to the tub and ran it out the front door and off the porch.
Wiley stepped carefully over the hose and knelt down in front of her mom. “It’s a girl, Mama.”
“She is a girl,” Karen said. “How are you, sweetie?”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
Roy leaned over Wiley and looked into his daughter’s face. He saw her and she was all there. He couldn’t speak. He wasn’t breathing. What was this? What new planet was this? What world did you come from? How did this happen? How is this coming as a shock? Karen reached out for his arm. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of a sauna.
Just then Sissy came from the bathroom, toweling off her hands, looking more Volkswagen mechanic than midwife. “That’s that,” she said. “I knew this was going to be an easy one. I told you,” she said to Karen. “You did great.” She smiled at Roy. “Ah, don’t hide it, it’s always the toughies that cry. Best day of your life. Congratulations, Papa.”
He nodded thanks but if he spoke he didn’t know what he would say. He wasn’t crying. The baby, his daughter, was stretching her face like she’d just pulled it on and her eyes were rolling around shockingly loose in their sockets. How many babies were just born around the world? How many people had died? Will this child live through a war? What happens if there’s a war? There is always a war. His wires were crossed. What about the sick chicken? Forget about that. He was responsible, directly, for a human life. That would never change. He’d fuck it up, of that he was sure.
“How about when it’s empty you and me haul this tub onto the porch?” Sissy said to Roy. He nodded OK. To Karen, “I saved the afterbirth for you, Mama. We’ll dehydrate it and put it into gelcaps like we talked about.”
“Thanks,” Karen said.
“Sure,” Sissy said.
“You want a drink?” Roy asked Sissy.
“I wouldn’t say no.”
Roy poured two tall bourbons, cheers.
“I have a sister,” Wiley said proudly. She jumped to her feet and did a little dance, booty shake.
“You have to watch over her, though. OK?” Karen said.
“OK, Mama.”
The baby had already latched onto her breast. She was moving right along. Wiley was fiddling with the baby’s fingers. Roy had his drink, was odd man out.
“Seems like there should be some type of trial period,” Roy said. Karen gave him an uncomprehending look. “I mean, she’s ours now. Like forever.”
Sissy glanced at Karen and knocked back her drink. “I guess you can take the skateboarder out of So Cal but you can’t take So Cal out of the skateboarder.”
“It’s a lot of responsibility is all,” Roy said. “You at least have to go through a background check to get a gun. People, anyone, can have a baby. It’s crazy.”
“Why are you talking about guns right now?” Karen said.
“Are you getting another gun?” Wiley said.
“No, I’m not,” Roy said. “Not anytime soon. It’s just weird that any person can just have a baby. That’s all I’m saying.” He was trying to make light but his concerns were serious. Wiley nodded because she agreed. He downed his drink and tipped his glass at Sissy. “C’mon, Spacek. Let’s get a move on.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“For the So Cal business. Fair’s fair.”
“You’re lucky your check cleared,” she said to Roy, as they hoisted the tub. To Karen. “You really did do great, Mama. You too, Wiley. Come see me in a couple days and we’ll see how everybody’s doing. We have some paperwork too, but it can wait.”
They named her Sarah after Karen’s grandma. She slept in their bed that first night and they couldn’t get her out of it for years to come. For Roy it was like checking a 9-volt with his tongue. A weak battery, or even a dead one, would give you a little kick but get a fresh one and there’s no question. He could taste that electrical kick, see it in Karen’s face, and it gave him the feeling that his life before Sarah was a game played with other people’s money.
After two weeks of sleep deprivation by way of late-hour diaper changes and general farmstead collapse by way of neglect and winter weather, not to mention the innumerable and overwhelming father-daughter mind-melds that warped and rewarped his soul, the feeling that this was somehow scripted or preordained and that their lives mattered overtook his doubts, smothering his logical mind, which repeated to him endlessly that no one counts, that mankind is a germ. Looking at his family, his old frameworks went soft and rotten, teetered and swayed. If these people didn’t matter, then nothing did, and if nothing mattered, they still would.
[30]
M<55
OR 9XXXX
He’s working shirtless on the rocks, scraping the bear hide with a flattened steel can. Bloody dots cover his back like a pox. He found the first tick embedded in his leg when he’d undressed to soak in the hot springs. The more he looked, the more he found. Sol had tweezers. They took turns. The deer and the bear were covered in them too. Their discussion about Lyme disease hits a wall with the U.S.-government-created conspiracy theory. Call it cooties. Call it a bum deal. Bug bite. Call it: If you don’t die, nobody cares. And then nobody cares. The mud scooped from the hot springs helps with the itch.
Meat is draped blackly on crisscrossed paracord and on a length of barbed wire the man found up the hill and stretched tree to tree like a clothesl
ine. The drifting smoke of four separate fires mostly keeps the blowflies from landing. The bear cub is still in Sol’s stone cage, quiet now, its muzzle bloody from the venison Sol has been feeding it.
Something wakes the dog, a sound or a smell, and now he’s up and moving out of the smoke, watchful, sniffing the wind. When he barks the man stands up from the bear hide and sees them coming up the hill. He grabs the militiaman’s rifle and puts it to his shoulder.
The one in front has a modded AR, the other two have hunting rifles, wooden stocks and scopes. They stop as a group when they see the gun pointed at them. They’re dressed in civilian clothes, T-shirts, Carhartts, baseball hats.
“We heard you shooting yesterday,” the one in front says. He is middle-aged, bone thin and haunted-looking with angry red scars on his hands and creeping up his arms. “We figured we’d come and talk to you, tell you what’s what.” He takes off his baseball hat and wipes his brow. His hair is gray and rusted-looking and overgrown. His head has the look of a ruptured cottonwood seed.
“Are you militia?” the man says.
“No,” the leader says, putting his hat back on. “I’m a Californian. I’m an American. I grew up in these woods. My father and grandfather logged these hills. I raised a family here.” He glances at the two young men behind him. “My sons.”
“I’m lowering my weapon,” the man says. The bear cub is crying again. The sound from the stone cage is one of desperate pain or of farmwork, an unhappy hackle raiser.
“What do you have in there?” the older man says, taking a step forward.
“Bear cub,” the man says.
His sons shake their heads in disbelief, scowl at the idiocy.
Then they turn as a group and watch as Sol comes walking down the hill, daintily, foot to foot in his European underwear, his laundry folded over his arm. He stops when he sees the men in camp.
“They’re not militia,” the man says.
Sol takes a few steps and sets his clothes down on a rock, holds his hands up. “If you want to eat, we have plenty,” he says, offers a smile. “I’m going to put some clothes on now so don’t shoot me.”
“We’d have killed you already if we wanted to,” the taller of the two sons says.
“That may be true,” the gray-haired man says to his son, “but we’re here because if we heard your shots, then STT did too. You should get going. Take what meat you can carry but don’t stay here.”
“And don’t come back,” the tall son says. The smaller brother nods in agreement.
“OK,” Sol says. He looks at the man, nods OK.
“We’ll pack up,” the man says.
“They’ll be coming from the ranger station or near it. You don’t have much time.”
“Thanks,” the man says.
“That rifle you have tells me two things,” the leader says. “Either you were with them or you killed one and took his weapon.”
“I was never with them,” the man says.
“Bullshit,” says the tall son. He points his rifle at the dog. “That’s a cop dog or a military dog. I make you for Jefferson or STT, fuckin’ Western States sure as anything.”
“Don’t point that at him. I said we’re leaving.” The father waves his hand at his son and he lowers his weapon. The man sets the rifle down at his feet and shows them his hands. Sol pulls his shirt over his head.
“I’m letting that damn bear go,” the tall son says, and he’s about to say something else when a shot rings out and a spot like a large drip of paint or a cherry pit appears on his forehead, pink mist like a halo. Five maybe six more shots snap by and the old man and his sons jerk and twist and quickly crumple as if a spell has been cast. The shooting stops and Sol raises his hands and drops to his knees. The man catches the dog and holds on to it and waits for what’s coming, doesn’t bother picking up the rifle.
The militiamen come through the smoke, moving fast, barrels up, and kick the weapons away from the dead men, wordlessly set a perimeter. They’re dressed in their standard mismatched—Real Tree, desert, digital, jungle, Mossy Oak—camouflage uniforms. The dog lover, Sampson was his name, smiles at the man and slings his weapon. The man waits for him to say something but he isn’t talking. The leader arrives, weapon slung, offers his hand. The man refuses to take the bait, stands on his own, brushes off his pants.
“I thought we lost you,” the leader says. He turns and motions for Sol to lower his hands and get up. “Signal went out for days then it came back.”
“What signal?”
“Your dog. We put a trace on him. First time we saw you.” He points at the dog, its neck, makes crawly fingers.
The man glances at the dog. He remembers the militiaman petting him, slapping his hands together when he was finished. Sei brav. Flies are lighting in the blood now and on the bear meat.
The one doing the talking drops his pack and lays his rifle on top. “My name’s Printz and that’s Sampson—he hasn’t shut up about your dog by the way—and that’s Danish and Lott, Hick, and Latham.” He smiles at the dog as he takes off his coat. He’s wearing a second pistol in a shoulder holster, a utility belt with a knife and ammunition. He leaves his pack and his coat on the ground and slings his rifle back on his shoulder. “Bad dudes.” He passes a hand over the bodies. “They don’t look like much, but as a family they’ve been raising hell around here for the better part of a decade. This is a big day and we only have you to thank for it.” He nods vigorously at the man, like you better believe it. “You’re our Judas goat. Do you know what that means? You did all the work. They came to you.” Then he notices the rifle at the man’s feet. He picks it up, turns it over and traces his fingers over the stock, the carving. The other militiamen are closing in now, trying to get a better look. Printz passes the rifle to Sampson, who ejects the magazine and clears the chamber.
“It was Dave Matthews’s,” the man says.
One of the militiamen, Lott, laughs. “That answers that,” he says.
“Shut the fuck up,” Sampson says to him.
“He was a fan,” Lott says. “I’m not talking shit.”
“Both of you be quiet,” Printz says, nodding to the man. “We’ve met already, but who’re you now?” he says to Sol.
Sol is standing with his hands open at his waist. He glances at the man and smiles before he speaks. “Solomon Morris Sheridan the Third,” he says.
“Uppity little bitch,” Sampson says.
“No, that’s my sister’s name,” Sol says.
“Fuck you,” Sampson says.
“What’s with the rash?” the one called Latham asks. “Are you contagious?”
“Ticks,” the man says.
Latham squirms and scratches his shoulder. “Fuck that,” he says.
The bear cub cries and gets everyone’s attention. Printz peers in to see, then waves his comrades over. Danish, beefy arms and a blond flat top, spits chew spit at the bear and walks away. “Fucking stupid,” he says.
Printz watches him go. “Don’t just wander off,” Printz says after him. “We still have work to do here. I want this cleaned up before nightfall.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Danish says. “Let it be written.”
There’s a slot in the rock down the hill, a big broken smile, and the militiamen roll the bodies one after the other into it and then kick in duff and smaller stones to cover them up.
As the sun slips behind the mountain, the temperature drops and the steam thickens. The militiamen take turns in the pools, with one standing guard at all times. They have ticks too but not as bad. They have their own tweezers and headlamps. They make a contest out of it. Sampson wins with thirteen. Printz is the last to use the pools, tick-free and he gloats. Once he gets dressed and pulls on his boots, he picks up his pack and his weapons and walks over to the man, squats in front of him.
“Water sure is nice, isn’t it?” Printz says. The man glances at the pool but doesn’t answer. Printz has wide-set, calculating eyes and thin blond eyebrows. “This i
s a delicate matter, so I want to talk to you one on one.” When he speaks intimately, there is the click of false teeth. The man gets a sense of what’s coming.
“Was he dead when you found him?”
“No.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“No.” The man doesn’t know what message Dave Matthews sent to his comrades, if he and the dog were mentioned.
“Are you going to make me ask?”
“He shot first.”
Printz nods, tugs the hair on the stretched bear hide and the barbed wire screams a little. He brushes the bear fur with his hand. “I’m willing to forgive you for what you’ve done, but I’m going to need something in return.”
“You can have the rifle.”
“I’m not talking about that anymore.” Printz leans in, talks too closely. “Our sweep, our mission, is to reestablish Preservation control. That means neutralizing or expelling the remaining Jeffs as well as independent and federal forces that we come across.”
“I already told you, I’m not interested and you can’t have my dog.”
“Hear me out. When we hit the Columbia River, we’re taking a boat from there, back down south. We’ll be working a different angle on the coast, delivering aid instead of doing security patrols, hearts and minds. We got families too. This is the good fight. We’re helping people. Helping the country.” The man shakes his head no. “Damn, brother, you aren’t hearing me. I’m talking about you coming with us. You and your dog. Sampson tells me the dog is only as good as the handler so you’re in.” He touches the man’s arm. “I think you owe us that much.”