Even though she’d already said goodbye to him, Racina walked back to her dad, who was standing with Dr. Beller, Phee, and Aunt Leah. The day was warm for this early in June. Dust from the surrounding fields was blowing across the runway. The women were fanning themselves with their hands and holding their dresses down at the same time.
“I’m melting,” Aunt Leah said. “How much water are we made of, Dr. Beller?”
“More than sixty percent,” Dr. Beller said. “Call me Sarah.”
“What is it, honey?” Racina’s dad said, bending over her.
Racina looked down at her purple cowboy boots, which her dad surprised her with that morning. She didn’t exactly earn them, but they were special anyway just like he promised they would be. “What if it won’t stay up in the air?” she said to him now.
But it wasn’t the plane she was afraid of or even meeting her mother for the first time, which she was going to do with Uncle Hux in a few short hours.
She was afraid to leave him.
Her dad picked her up and hugged her close.
The first time they said goodbye he put his hands behind his head like he couldn’t breathe. The first time, he told her all the things she was supposed to be careful about. The first time, he said she was the greatest goddamn girl who ever lived.
This time, her dad finished hugging her and set her on her feet again.
“Will you do something for me?” he said.
Racina looked up at her dad. She decided she wouldn’t put up a fight if he’d changed his mind about her going. She’d stay here forever if that was what he wanted.
“Do you know what would make me happy?” he said. His eyes looked big and soft and open. “If you promise me you’ll have lots of fun on your trip.”
Racina knew how hard it must have been for her dad to agree to send her up in a plane without him, to give her what she really wanted. “Dad,” she said, but this time she wasn’t scolding him for threatening to burn down barns. She was telling him she loved him.
“Go get on that plane already,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”
After Uncle Hux and the pilot finished strapping the badger’s crate down to the floor of the plane with bungee cords, they helped Racina into one of the seats in the back and adjusted the straps so they were snug but not too snug. The pilot gave her and Uncle Hux headsets to wear so they could talk to each other while they were in the air. He said he was going to take them over Evergreen before they went south. He was a big believer in seeing the place you called home the way the clouds did. The birds. The sun.
“You ever been up in a plane, Hux?” the pilot said.
“No, sir,” Uncle Hux said.
“That probably means you’ve never been anywhere but the Northwoods. Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle with the two of you.”
“We’d appreciate that,” Uncle Hux said.
When the pilot started the plane, the engine coughed and the propeller began to spin and Racina lurched forward. Even though she was strapped in securely, Uncle Hux put his hand across her shoulders like he did when they were driving sometimes and a deer darted across the road in front of them. The pilot told them not to worry.
“I’m just going to turn us around and we’re off,” he said. “We’ll be in the air about two hours, give or take some. We can decide how scenic we want to be.”
“You have any last advice for us,” Uncle Hux said. He looked a little nervous. A little paler than normal. He was gripping the side of his seat.
“Every time you think you need to hold on, let go,” the pilot said.
He turned the plane around so that it was facing the sun. When they started down the runway, everything began to rattle inside the plane. The windows sounded like chattering teeth. The engine was roaring. The propellers spun faster and faster until Racina couldn’t see them individually anymore. They were getting so close to the end of the runway, Racina thought they were going to go straight into the potato field beyond it and the forest beyond that. She said a prayer a nurse had taught her during one of her hospital stays. Racina didn’t know if angels really lived in the clouds and looked over those who needed it, but she liked the idea of it. All that goodness floating over her and the people she loved every day.
Right before the end of the runway, the wheels finally lifted off the ground, and they headed straight up into the blue. At that moment, Uncle Hux let go of the seat.
When they were up high enough, the pilot leveled the plane out, and it stopped working so hard and making so much noise. Racina pressed her face against the window, which was cold now even though when they were on the ground it was warm. Uncle Hux pressed his face against the window next to him, too.
“I’m going to follow the river up to Evergreen,” the pilot said.
From the sky, the river looked like a sheet of sparkling blue ice that someone had twisted up in places and straightened out in others. Racina couldn’t see the gray stones along the banks she’d sat on for as long as she could remember. She couldn’t see the river grass either or the little red butterflies and lacy moths that clung to it in the spring. But there was something wonderful about the view, too. Everything Racina had ever loved was beneath her at that moment. Phee’s cabin, Uncle Hux’s, her own. The river, the meadow, the forest. The pictures of her mother in the corn. What Racina had always thought was so small was really so big. Beyond the river, the forest stretched out as far as she could see in every direction.
“Everyone who wants to turn this land into parking lots and driveways should have to see it like this first,” Uncle Hux said, which made Racina wonder if he was thinking the same thing about Evergreen. “If this place isn’t worth protecting I don’t know what is.”
“At least hard winters are in its favor,” the pilot said. “Not a lot of plumbing either. Not a lot of anything most people like.”
Uncle Hux put his hand on the window the way he did sometimes at home on the window where he put Racina’s sketches up. Racina wondered if the glass was his crystal ball the way the cross she’d found was hers.
Uncle Hux had told her the story of her grandparents building a life out here at a time when there wasn’t any. He’d talked about a flood that almost swept Evergreen down the river. He’d talked about a man that came and stole something that didn’t belong to him. He’d even talked about the bear trap that got Grandma Lulu and the drink that got Grandpa Reddy, the Irish poison that got both Grandpa Emil and Grandma Eveline.
But he’d also talked about the deep and pure love they all had for one another. He’d talked about a bird named Tuna. Egg pies. First fish.
The power of an old coonskin coat.
“It’s everything I like,” Uncle Hux said, letting go of the glass.
After that, the pilot steered the plane away from the river. He said they were southbound now. In a little while, the towering tamaracks and black spruces and white pines would give way to rolling green farmland with sheep and cows and horses and would stay like that all the way to Wisconsin. He said the cornfields were something to see in July and August. June was still early yet, but it would give them the right idea anyway. He said maybe that was where those cans of miniature corn came from.
Racina liked the idea of a field full of baby vegetables. Even though she knew they cried a lot, she liked the idea of a field full of babies, too. Most of the people she’d seen in Yellow Falls and Green River did what they could to quiet their babies down. They rocked them. They bounced them. They gave them their fingers to suck on. They gave them bottles. One mother, though, cried right along with her baby in the middle of Main Street last year.
The mother was sitting on a bench in front of the general store that day with her baby in her arms, and even though Racina and her dad were in a hurry to get back to Evergreen, her dad offered to hold the baby while the mother did her shopping. He sat down right next to her and put his hand on her wrist. Before the mother could say anything he asked her what her favorite place in the world was, a
nd though she looked surprised by the question at first she eventually said something about a lake down south she used to swim in as a girl. She said the water was so cold it took her breath away every time she jumped into it, but she kept jumping in anyway. She said she missed that.
“I used to picture being deep in the woods,” Racina’s dad said.
That day, he and Racina didn’t end up watching the baby while his mother shopped, but the mother did let him hold the baby, a little blue-eyed boy named William. She let Racina hold him, too. Racina remembered being surprised by how heavy he was. She remembered being afraid her arms were going to suddenly stop working and he’d fall to the ground. She remembered thinking he was the prettiest baby she’d seen but wanting to give him back. She remembered wondering if her mother had felt that way with her.
Phee said her mother had tried to be less afraid by memorizing that little book about pregnancy. She said Uncle Hux used to sit on his porch with her mother while she read about what was happening inside of her. She said she’d rub her stomach. She’d tell Uncle Hux about Racina’s fingernails. Her toes.
Racina had memorized that book, too. She knew about the fine hair most babies were born with. The gooey coating. She wondered if her mother had covered her eyes when she got to those parts like Racina did. What Racina loved most about that book was that her mother had held it in her hands. Some of the pages were more worn than others. Some had little question marks drawn on them, like she was going to ask someone to explain something to her. The page about a baby’s first kick had a little pencil heart drawn on it.
Racina looked out the window of the plane again. Below her were rolling hills, fields with enormous silver sprinklers stretched across them, and trees that grew outward instead of straight up the way they did in Evergreen.
“We’re not far now,” the pilot said.
The plane started to fly lower and lower until the fields didn’t look like squares stitched together into a quilt a hundred shades of green anymore. The windows and the air inside the plane got warm again. Humid. Everything started to rattle again, too.
“Are you okay?” Uncle Hux said to her. He was gripping his seat.
Racina put her hand on his. “Are you?”
“I keep forgetting to let go,” he said.
The plane got so low Racina started to see the individual branches of trees. She could count the rows of plants in the fields. The pilot told her to look out her window and when she did she saw the big rectangular sign with her name on it: WELCOME TO RACINE.
Before she left Evergreen, her dad told her she was named after a small farming town in Wisconsin and that her mother was the one who chose it. He said a kind woman lived on a dairy farm there. Sister Lydie. Just Lydie now. He said she was the first person who ever brought her mother a glass of milk or sang her a song. If it weren’t for Phee’s spoiled old cat, he said Racina probably would have been named after her directly.
The pilot flew the plane so close to the sign Racina could almost touch the rainbow that arched over her name. The red, the blue, the purple.
Uncle Hux unbuckled himself, got out his camera, and started taking pictures.
“Smile,” he said, even though Racina was already smiling. She wanted to speak French and do the math that made her dad crazy. She wanted to multiply things! Racina thought she would be scared to fly in a plane and meet her mother for the first time, but she wasn’t. Years ago, on their way back from a doctor’s appointment, Uncle Hux took her to the fountain in Green River, and now her penny wish was finally coming true.
“I think I got one of you and your sign,” Uncle Hux said.
They were on the ground a few minutes later, and Uncle Hux and the pilot were helping Racina out of the plane the way they’d helped her into it. The air was even warmer than it was in Evergreen. The wind was stronger, too. Racina’s hair blew across her face, and when she finally found a yellow hair band to tie it back with, the wind shifted directions and lifted her hair and she saw the woman walking toward her.
Racina knew the woman was her mother not because her mother was famous for having thick black hair, which was pulled back into two glossy braids that swung in time with her hips now. She knew the woman was her mother not because she was wearing a pair of denim overalls and a white T-shirt the same as she did the day Uncle Hux took pictures of her in the corn. She knew the woman was her mother not because she had big gray eyes when everyone else in the world seemed to have eyes that were brown or green or blue. She knew the woman was her mother because she’d spent her whole life dreaming about her.
It turned out her mother had, too. Dear Racina, her mother had written back after she got Racina’s letter. My darling. My daughter. My dreams belong to you.
Uncle Hux and the pilot were struggling to get the badger out of the plane when Racina lifted her legs and started running. Even if her dad were here, Racina knew this time he wouldn’t tell her to slow down. This time he wouldn’t tell her to stop altogether.
This time, he’d tell her to go.
With each new step, Racina heard the click-clack of her purple cowboy boots on the ground, the story they were already starting to tell. She heard the sound of the wind. She smelled the rich black earth. Before they left Evergreen, the pilot told Racina and Uncle Hux to let go the moment the plane lifted off the ground, but when Racina’s feet lifted off the ground now, when she was in her mother’s arms for the first time, she held on with everything she had. Her mother held on to her that way, too.
Right then, with her ear pressed against her mother’s heart, Racina wanted to tell her textbook friends Watson and Crick that they were wrong. DNA wasn’t the secret of life.
Love was.
Acknowledgments
Without my husband’s unfailing belief that my stories are worth telling no matter how difficult they are or how long they take to tell (or how poor that may make us), Evergreen never would have been written. Each day that I came out of the room where I write, each time I was lost in the story, and each time I found my way out again, he managed to give me exactly what I needed: faith it would all work out. My six-year-old daughter did that, too. After watching me work for months, sometimes happily, sometimes unhappily, she came to me with a pile of paper her father had stapled together for her. She said, “I want to be a writer like you.” I’m thankful for my little family. I’m thankful for my big family, too: my mom, my dad, my step-mom, and my four brothers. My friends, new and old. The Fiction Writer’s Co-op. All the people I’ve met who love books and work so hard to support them.
Among those people is Michelle Brower, my fearless agent and friend, who doesn’t give up when she hears bad news. She digs in. I couldn’t ask for a better book partner. I admire her enthusiasm, grace, and remarkable instincts so much. Those instincts led her to my wonderful editor at Knopf. Without Jennifer Jackson, whole pieces of this book would have been missing. She understood the heart of Evergreen from the very beginning. Working with her was like coming home after a long and tiring trip. There was supper on the stove. Warmth in the fireplace. All I had to do was leave my shoes at the door.
About the Author
Rebecca Rasmussen is the author of the novel The Bird Sisters. Her stories have appeared in or won prizes from TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, Glimmer Train, the Mid-American Review, and other publications. She was born and raised in the green and rolling Midwest. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and teaches English part-time at UCLA.
An A.A. Knopf Reading Group Guide
Evergreen by Rebecca Rasmussen
About this Reading Group Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Evergreen, the luminous new novel by Rebecca Rasmussen, acclaimed author of The Bird Sisters.
About the Book
Evergreen is a gorgeously rendered and emotionally charged novel that spans generations, telling the story of two siblings,
raised apart, attempting to share a life.
It is 1938 when Eveline, a young bride, follows her husband, Emil, into the wilderness of Minnesota. Though their cabin is run-down, they have a river full of fish, a garden out back, and a new baby boy named Hux. But when Emil leaves to take care of his sick father, the unthinkable happens: a stranger arrives, and Eveline becomes pregnant. She gives the child away, and while Hux grows up hunting and fishing in the woods with his parents, his sister, Naamah, is raised an orphan. Years later, haunted by the knowledge of this forsaken girl, Hux decides to find his sister and bring her home to the cabin. But Naamah, even wilder than the wilderness that surrounds them, may make it impossible for Hux to ever tame her, to ever make up for all that she, and they, have lost. Set before a backdrop of vanishing forest, this is a luminous novel of love, regret, and hope.
Discussion Questions
1. The book’s epigraph is a quote from José Ortega y Gasset: “Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are.” How does this prove true for Eveline, Hux, and Naamah?
2. Eveline’s arrival in Evergreen reads almost like a fable: “Eveline LeMay came after the water. She arrived on a cool morning in early September, asleep in a rowboat without paddles as if she knew the river currents would carry her past the tamarack and black-spruce forest, around Bone Island, a fen, and a bog, all the way to Evergreen and her new husband, Emil, who was waiting for her on the rocky shore” (this page). How does Rasmussen use language to create a real world where less-than-realistic things happen?
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