Wrecker

by Summer Wood

  She held on. He let go.

  Thanks a million, Pops, she said. She wanted him to know what a bargain he had struck.

  It’s nothing, he said perversely. Don’t spend it all in one place.

  But she did.

  Hadn’t she been vindicated, though? Bow Farm was paradise. Melody paused at a level patch halfway down the hill. Ahead of her squatted the farmhouse, and beyond that the barn, gone to gray and tilting off its foundations like a drunken matron, her dear old home sweet home. And now she was going to have to lug that post all that distance to it. Shit. She had embarked on a restoration project that rivaled any other and couldn’t seem to curb her impulse to collect materials to sustain it. Nothing was paid for but nothing was stolen, either—although a few broken slabs of marble had been liberated from the back side of an old bank without explicit permission. Real work hadn’t actually commenced on the project; apart from some basic tasks like replacing broken panes of glass so the rain would stay out and making a monumental effort (okay, Ruth’s monumental effort) to clean the hayloft so she could set up a bedroom, she was still in the collecting phase. So? They owned the place. She, Willow, and that finance company Willow had finagled a loan from. She could work on it for the next half century if she lasted that long. Sure, there was the balloon payment to deal with—but that was fifteen long years in the future.

  The trees that flanked the path to the farmhouse were scruffy little scrub oaks that gave way to stately buckeyes in the dooryard. Melody shuffled on, glancing east when a break in the brush let the view yawn before her. Loggers had hauled out the best timber decades before, but there were still patches of old firs tucked among the scrub and hardwoods. There was something comforting about them. Generations of disasters befell them, and look, Ma—still standing! She glimpsed a movement below and heard the screen door of the farmhouse slam. Ruth. No mistaking that distinctive waddle. The boy buzzed around her, an errant electron tethered by affinity to the massive nucleus Ruthie presented. Melody skirted the log farmhouse and followed them around to the backyard.

  Ruthie’s mouth was puckered with clothespins and she reached to clip a sacklike flowered nightdress alongside some voluminous undergarments. She toed the wicker basket of wet clothes Melody’s way. “Make yourself useful,” she mumbled.

  “Kid can’t reach?” Melody dipped into the basket and shook out a miniature pair of corduroy pants before pinning them to the line. At least he was out of diapers.

  Ruth used the last of her clothespins to pair socks. “Reach, nothing. He’s got a vertical leap Tarzan would envy. I had to retie the line after he was swinging on it.” She nodded toward the kitchen. “I sent him in to play. I’ve washed this load twice already and I wouldn’t mind seeing it dry without dragging in the mud first.”

  Melody glanced at the sky. “You must think spring is coming.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” In Mattole they measured rainfall by the foot. Winter came and the creeks flooded, the land slid, and what looked like paradise in the golden rays of autumn turned into a muddy mess. How else would they have managed to buy the land so cheap? That, and distance. If San Francisco was the center of the universe, the Mattole Valley hovered in its nether reaches, a day’s drive north and so rugged and remote that even the coast highway surrendered its ocean view and headed inland for more stable footing. But Melody’s hopes had soared when they stumbled across Bow Farm. Remote, dilapidated, the neglected farmstead covered eighty acres of cleared meadow and mixed conifers and a year-round spring, the water sweet tasting and cold enough to set their teeth. The huge barn was weathered to a slant but still standing, the farmhouse itself frayed but sound. It was perfect. And thirty thousand dollars more than they were prepared to spend. Melody stood behind the real estate agent and scribbled furiously on the back of an envelope. OLD TREES! she wrote. ROSE BUSHES! She tapped her pen against her front teeth and tried not to scuttle the deal with her breathlessness. Willow cast an amused glance her way. In thirty seconds she had the agent charmed; in ten minutes he was looking for creative ways to finance; in three weeks Bow Farm was theirs, with a mortgage they could handle and a lump sum due at the end of it.

  Ruth took back the basket. “I’ll finish this. Go in. He was asking for you.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Bad night, Johnny said.”

  Melody ducked under the line and jumped the steps. The back door to the kitchen had a half-window in it and she peered in to see the boy hunched, splay-legged, on the linoleum. He held something in his hand. Melody pushed open the door.

  Wrecker tilted his dirt-smudged face toward her. “Oh. Deedee.” His voice was munchkinlike, piping but throaty—a flute that aspired to run away from the orchestra. This nickname business, it was a new thing. The last time she’d been called anything but her own name had been in college, and the tag had to do with her prowess at knocking back shots.

  “Hey, little man. Show me what you’ve got.” Melody ran a hand over the velvet of his head. Ruth had just taken the clippers to his mop, and his ears lunged from the sides of his head like vulnerable creatures suddenly stripped of shelter. She examined the wad of paper he handed her. It was folded into a dense, bulky triangle. “What is it?”

  “Watch.” He reached up to retrieve his toy and with his left hand he carefully stood it on one point. The sinews on the back of his neck guarded a tender hollow no bigger than the nail of Melody’s thumb. She’d never been around kids, much. Not up close. She couldn’t get over it, how small he was, and how much noise and energy and willfulness and—and person there was. She squatted down to observe his preparations. He made a circle with the index finger of his right hand and then he let loose and flicked the wadded football hard. It bounced off the lower cabinets and ricocheted back to collide with Ruth’s shin as she entered the kitchen.

  “Finesse, buddy.” Ruth set down the basket. “And keep it out of my stew.”

  “Stew? That’s what smells so good.” Melody followed Ruth to the woodstove and peered over her shoulder as she clattered about, lifting lids and rattling utensils. Ruthie was queen of the kitchen. When she arrived there was still a layer of grease on the windowpanes left over from the previous owners, and the refrigerator coils were lost in a thick matting of dog hair and dust. No dirt, they soon learned, stood a chance against Ruth’s eagle eye and elbow grease. She cleaned with a fury and she cooked that way, too, staking a claim to the four-burner woodstove and turning out real meals with whatever she could find. Eggs from Johnny Appleseed’s wild chickens fried in butter; scalloped potatoes with a thick coating of salt and cheese—she had a penchant for grease and sweets, and was killing them with it. Ruth dipped a spoonful of stew for Melody to taste. “Got barley in it.” With a defensive edge to her voice, she added, “It’s good for you.”

  “Stew?”

  “Hold on, little sweetheart. It’s still cooking.” Ruth dragged a chair out from the table, its legs screeching against the linoleum, and pushed it up against the sink. “See what you can do to lose some of that dirt.”

  Melody watched Wrecker climb onto the chair and twist the faucet, wet his hands, and wipe them dry on the front of his shirt. They were a pair, those two. The boy had been at Bow Farm for two months, now, but it hadn’t taken any time at all for him to peg Ruth for a kindred soul. Wrecker gravitated to commotion, and even when Ruth dozed her breathing made a distinct wheezing whistle. She was sliding down the backside of middle age, losing the war against gravity, and wore her considerable weight in a soft wide landing pad around her middle. The better to hug him with, Melody figured; the better to do the Bump as they boogied around the kitchen. Ruth had fallen for the boy hard and thought nothing of spending the whole day in foolery to coax an unexpected smile from the foursquare of his face. Melody had watched Ruth sneak glances at Wrecker throughout each day; together they’d seen his sober face go quickly livid with anger or frustration, watched it brighten with deli
ght until he noticed and swallowed it, embarrassed. The change was quicker and more intimate than the weather. He was scarred and volatile and more luminous than any celestial body. There had to be a way to defuse some of his explosive anger, Ruth worried, before the boy blew himself up by accident.

  “I made you something,” Ruth said, her eyebrows lifting and wiggling like nascent caterpillars. Wrecker chortled, a cascade of raspy giggles that Melody matched without meaning to. He had wrinkled his face, trying to duplicate the burlesque routine Ruth performed with her bushy brows. Ruth turned away and reached under the sink, rustled about with some clinking sounds. She creaked herself back up. In her hands shimmered a sheet of crushed soda cans wired together. “Get over here,” she commanded. When Wrecker advanced toward her, she fed his arms through holes in the sides and let the tunic-shaped contraption dangle about him. She stood back and beamed. “You’re invincible, buddy. Nobody can mess with you now.”

  “Dinty Spaceman?” Melody ventured.

  “In the flesh. Newly outfitted with his ray-deflecting armor.” Ruth gave him a gentle shove and the tin cans jingled. “Now get out to your spaceship and make the galaxy safe for mankind.”

  Melody stepped narrowly out of his path as Wrecker bulldozed his way for the back door. The woman was obsessed when it came to the boy’s happiness. Ruth lived in a makeshift room under the rafters of the farmhouse and came down most mornings to find him waiting impatiently for her in the kitchen, and each day Ruth outdid herself, inventing games no one had played before and tableaux Wrecker could reenact for hours. She folded paper airplanes that fell from the sky, grew expert at farting noises made under her armpit. The two of them invented knock-knock jokes with incoherent punch lines. Twice a week she would fill the metal tub and scrub Wrecker raw, banish dirt from behind his ears and between his toes, and discuss twenty-car pileups. But none of that held a candle to Dinty Spaceman-a-Go-Go, with his metal colander for a helmet and rocket ship docked in the yard. In the absence of rocket fuel, Dinty Spaceman had to dance on the hood to activate the thrust engines and prepare for takeoff. Indeed, any time he noticed a decrease in power he had only to climb through the window and stomp a few steps—the wilder the better, as Go-Go was never mild—on the wide hood to revitalize the engine. He could fly to the moon, then. He could zoom through the Milky Way.

  Sure, and he could slip off the rain-slicked car hood and crack his head so his brains poured out, Melody thought, but so far there had been no serious injuries.

  Melody watched the boy through the kitchen window and glanced toward the front door when the hinges squeaked. Sitka the dog entered first, with Johnny Appleseed the human close behind. Johnny Appleseed the mostly human, Melody corrected herself. Her friend was as far on the spectrum as a person could get and still belong to the same species. Tiny, leathern, silent as the night, he pictured himself some hybrid form of plant and animal in a base of dirt and water. The women moved over to make room for him at the window. Melody lifted her chin and gestured toward the boy. “He gave you some trouble last night?”

  Johnny shrugged. “He’s no trouble to me. Just to himself.” He tipped his head toward the boy in a gesture of respect. The day before, as they were driving the Mattole Road toward South Fork, the motor of Johnny’s beloved Ford Falcon had burst into flames. “That was the end of it,” he told them, his dark eyes drooping sorrowfully. With Wrecker’s help he had shoved the rusty vehicle from the bridge into the river below. Aghast and euphoric, they’d watched it dip and bob in the current, and then they’d trudged the nine miles back to the farm. The boy rode the last four, exhausted, clinging to Johnny’s back, and hadn’t complained once. “It was a long day. More than he could handle, maybe.” Johnny held Melody’s gaze for a long beat before turning to Ruth. “Most nights he’s fine.”

  Melody, shoulder to shoulder with Ruth, felt the older woman falter. If a train were barreling down on the boy, Ruth would heave herself in front of it to save him. But this train was stealthier, colliding with him in his sleep and leaving him squalling or, worse, nearly silent, his eyes wide and his pajamas soaked in sweat—and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it. Melody glanced at Johnny. They all knew it was more than just exhaustion that had clobbered the boy. Whatever he’d been through before had left its mark on him. “What do you think happened to him?” She kept her voice low. “Before he got here, I mean.”

  They watched as Wrecker quit bouncing on the roof and slid back into the car through the open window. His face was half shaded, half in sun. He had just powered up the rockets and was intent on navigating.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?” Johnny Appleseed dispensed his words like drops of water from a bedouin’s goatskin canteen. “He can’t go back. So help him go forward.”

  “What’s done is done,” Ruth said crisply, as if she believed it.

  Melody wasn’t so sure. Everyone at Bow Farm seemed to have some private, unresolved reason for being there. The land had a way of calling to its own. That first August they’d dragged Ruth half dead out of the sea, bullied her back to life only to discover that she’d been making an honest effort to leave it. Whoever she’d been before—her old name, her old home—had drowned in the attempt. The March after that Johnny Appleseed had wandered mysteriously from the woods that fringed the bowl of cleared meadow. Now the boy had arrived, with his blue eyes and his short fuse and that trash bag for a suitcase, and made himself at home.

  “Maybe,” Melody said. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something important had changed.

  Ruth and Johnny helped Melody haul the post down from the roof of the bus. They’d lugged it as far as the farmhouse when the drizzle began, and they dropped the post and ran for the laundry.

  “Go ahead in with Wrecker,” Willow told Ruth, arriving in time to cross the yard and offer Melody some shelter with her umbrella.

  Melody was sick and tired of the rain by this time of year. She pushed inside with the laundry basket under one arm while Willow sat on the porch bench and removed her muddy boots. That was Willow: the picture of preparedness. She kept a spare pair of shoes next to the door so she wouldn’t track dirt into the farmhouse. Melody had trouble keeping track of her rain hat. Her keys. Half the time, her mind. But Willow was Willow, which meant Bow Farm had cloth napkins and matching cutlery nesting together in a drawer in the kitchen. They had olives, the occasional bottle of good wine, cured salami, Gorgonzola cheese, a decent assortment of fruits and vegetables. Ruth was averse to commerce and cooked with whatever the others brought home. Johnny Appleseed—who would have been content with moss and small grubs—raised hens for their eggs, traded for meat, and produced cases of canned goods he acquired through mysterious channels. Melody offered beans and grains from the Mercantile that had to be soaked overnight and cooked for hours to become palatable. She was committed to eating natural foods but hid a valuable stash of Snickers bars and Cracker Jack boxes in the barn for bad cramps and midnight cravings. It was her secret. Wrecker knew, but she’d paid for his silence with chocolate.

  Ruth lifted the lid from the soup pot and ladled it into bowls.

  “Told you it would rain.” Melody reached for her bowl and parked herself at the round kitchen table between Wrecker and Johnny Appleseed.

  The boy had finished half his stew by the time Ruth eased herself down. “Mind your manners,” Ruth told him. “Nobody eats until everybody sits.” Melody looked up guiltily and laid her spoon beside her bowl. Ruth glanced at her. “Rain?” she scoffed. “That was a sprinkle. Spring’s here.”

  “Not by a long shot.” Melody lifted her spoon again and went to work on the stew. “Pretty good stuff, Ruth.”

  Johnny Appleseed nodded reverently. “You’re the best, Ruthie.” He turned to Melody. “She’s right, you know. Winter’s over.” He glanced around the table. “Day after tomorrow, I start planting.”

  There was a moment of shocked silence.

  “What?” Melody shook her head and laughed at him.
“Are you crazy?” She gestured toward the boy. He sat at her elbow, shoveling the stew in as fast as he could. “You can’t go yet. Where would he sleep?”

  Johnny’s face clouded. “The ground’s ready,” he said softly.

  Melody put her spoon down and stared at him. She cupped her hands over Wrecker’s ears. “No fucking way, Johnny.” She enunciated slowly and forcefully so that there would be no confusion. Johnny had his dates wrong. Once he left for his planting contracts they wouldn’t see him for weeks. He lived in the forest with his crew of wild boys and worked dawn to dusk, planting seedlings over acres of lumber company clear-cuts. On the side he tended his own crop, hidden in obscure patches on federal land.

  “Will you excuse us?” Willow rose from the table, cleared her bowl, and gathered Wrecker from his seat stacked with pillows. She gave Melody a meaningful glance. “You three work it out. Whatever you need from me, I’ll try to do,” she said, and carried the boy into the living room.

  Melody felt the red creep into her cheeks as she watched Willow settle the boy down against the base of her armchair. She hadn’t signed on for this. Things were fine so long as Johnny took care of him, nights, but if Johnny left—she swung her head toward Ruth and spoke in a low mutter. “I thought we were in this together. Tell him, Ruthie. If he goes now, there’s no one to cover for him.”

  Johnny Appleseed sighed. “I’m right here,” he said. “I’m listening.” Melody glared at him as Willow’s voice floated in from the other room. Some nights she read to Wrecker from Sinbad or Aladdin, the language a great wafting cloud of image and incomprehension; other times she made up stories, launching her characters—almost always two big boys and their smaller sister—into the unknown on the back of a flying carpet. This night’s story began with a lion, his mane thick and luxuriant, the muscles on his back a cushion for the small boy who rode up there. “Hold on, Wrecker,” she called softly, swaying him back and forth between her calves and introducing sound effects—the soft swish of the wind, the bark of hyenas in the night—that filled the stony silence in the kitchen.