by Summer Wood
Wrecker, usually quiet, chattered endlessly on the ride to Fortuna. About football, which he followed only sporadically, and television shows—reception at the farm still subject to the vagaries of the weather, in spite of the antenna he had rigged on the roof of the farmhouse—and about the weather itself, which had held steady all month but about which the farmer’s almanac (but could you really trust that? they were wrong as often as they were right) predicted a severe season of storms, so Len had best clear out the bar ditch that was supposed to carry the water off his road but which had clogged the year before. He was thinking of learning to play electric guitar. There was this guy who had tried to jump his motorcycle all the way across the Snake River Gorge and dang but he wished he had seen that. When they got to the high school and Wrecker slouched off, Len nearly fell out of the truck, frazzled by the unexpected onslaught of language. He turned to Willow. “Is he on drugs?”
“Better than that,” she laughed. “Endorphins. They’re free.”
Len shook his head. Most of the time the boy was calm, levelheaded, and immensely competent. “He sounded like a—”
“A teenager?” Willow offered.
Len had been thinking more along the lines of used car salesman.
It was remarkable, really, she said. Teenagers, observed in the wild, had been known to sustain that level of acoustic barrage for hours at a time. They’d been observed sleeping past noon and had the documented ability to consume in a single sitting the accumulated caloric stores of an entire social group for a week.
“Oh, really.” Len chuckled. She was mocking him, now. He liked the way it made him feel. “Wasn’t there that special on them? Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. They talk, they sleep, they eat.”
“My boys did.”
Len glanced sharply at her. A streetlamp spilled its light into the dark cab and limned her profile. She was gazing dreamily down. Then she lifted her eyes and looked frankly at him. “I could stand something to drink right now.”
Len nodded and shifted into gear. He stared straight ahead. Something had just changed between them. There was a little bar he knew—it was a workingman’s bar but women went there, too; not her kind of woman maybe, but it was all he could think of, on the spot like this—and he piloted the truck to its lot. His mouth was dry. “Think this’ll do?”
“It’s perfect.” As Willow slid across the bench seat to reach the far door her dress gave static sparks that made Len look away, dizzy. Lovestruck. There. He might as well admit it. He stole a glance at her as he held the heavy door to the bar. Something had changed in her, and the crazy buoyant feeling he had fought for so long—the one that started lower than the pit of his stomach and left him breathless and ready to rise—was set loose. His shoulders lifted. He didn’t know where he was going and he made himself believe he didn’t care.
The theme of the dance was Fall Harvest and the Fortuna High School gym was decorated with pumpkins—real pumpkins as well as some leaf-stuffed orange trash bags made to look like giant, malicious jack-o-lanterns—and a motley assortment of party streamers and hangings and a mirror ball that cast its little pebbles of light in a dizzying stream across the faces of the teenagers. Wrecker stood among them, paralyzed. He’d spent hours anticipating this evening and had finally decided that if he could just get himself here there was a reasonable chance he could fake the rest. But something had gone wrong. He’d been shuffled by the small crowd into a corner of the gym with other gawky, singular boys. Their defects were relatively apparent. Were his?
Len had taught him: identify, then remedy. Name the problem and then solve it. The problem was that he was trapped in hell and there was no way out. He’d been thrust into freakdom before he even had a chance to— Whoa there, now. Wrecker struggled to keep the terror from creeping into his expression. Steady, boy. That was the kiss of death, that look that told the world you’d piss your pants if you got close to a girl. And a few yards away a girl stood, for a brief moment, alone. Wrecker recognized the look that flitted across her face. He wasn’t the only one suffering. His shoulders cranked down a quarter of a notch and he forced himself to move closer to her.
“Hey,” he said.
She could have glanced at him and turned her back. For a second he thought she would. Then she tipped her head a little to the side and considered him. She was halfway pretty. He had his hands jammed in his pockets but if he were to extract one and extend it she was actually close enough to touch. The music was loud and Wrecker felt a sudden surge of possibility.
“What,” she said.
It was a start.
Len and Willow sat in a booth in the dark bar with a broad table between them and what looked like instruments of torture—Willow identified them as nautical objects—decorating the wall adjacent. They were talking. Mainly Willow was talking. Whatever had infected Wrecker on the drive over seemed to have been contagious. Willow noticed Len’s stifled surprise and apologized. It was just, she said, that if she stopped—if she didn’t get it all out—she was afraid that what was left unsaid would knot itself around her windpipe and squeeze it shut.
Len had the opposite problem. He was sure that if he said what he was resisting saying he would be finished in thirty seconds and his world would implode. If he told her, if she knew, there’d be no turning back. Either she felt the same way or she didn’t, and either option charted a future he couldn’t live with.
It was her work, partly, Willow explained. The carpet restoration had tapered down to a trickle. Of her best clients, three had died of old age and another two had largely curtailed their collecting. She’d tried to drum up new business, but her heart wasn’t in it and her close eyesight had grown blurred, making the work harder. Besides, now all she could focus on was stories.
“Stories?”
Len wrinkled his forehead and Willow took another stiff swallow of scotch. She drank it neat and Len noticed she was drinking it fast. Stories, she repeated. Epics, adventures, folktales. Why did people do the things they do? The—she sputtered a little as the scotch burned her throat—stupid things they do? She was obsessed with stories. She’d always loved them. Had told her children stories every night, half of them drawn from the borders of the rugs she handled.
There, again.
“Willow,” Len said gently. He set his beer down and tenderly reached across the table to cup his hand around hers. “That’s twice.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, a flush rising in her face. Len couldn’t tell if it was the alcohol or the warm air in the bar or something else. The something else he was bringing up or the something else he was trying not to. “Am I repeating myself?”
“That’s twice you mentioned your children. Do you …” He cleared his throat. “Did you …” He didn’t know how to phrase the question. “I’m listening,” he settled on.
He watched her face. He wished he could commit it to memory, each fold and crease and stretch of luminous skin, each freckle, the way her lips parted slightly and quivered, the few stray hairs she tamed against her temples, the way her gaze dropped and darkened and resisted, calling a kind of interior light, and then darkened further; the way her neck bent like a swan’s to bring her lovely head forward, first, and then down close to the table.
“Ah,” she said, her voice softly upbeat and only slightly ironic. “Look at that. I guess I’ve had too much to drink.” She raised her head again and looked directly at Len. “You and Meg. You didn’t want children?”
Len opened his hand in a small, helpless gesture. “They never came.” He smiled weakly. “Meg got the goose.”
“And you got Wrecker.”
It surprised Len, the quick flush of emotion that flooded him. He had to look away quickly. He opened his mouth but said nothing.
“You’ve done fine, Len.” Willow kept her gaze on his face. “Come on.” She slid out of the booth and reached for his hand. “It’s time. Let’s get the boy.”
It was still early when they arrived again at the park
ing lot outside the high school gym. A few other vehicles sat scattered across the asphalt. Some were occupied. Len tried not to look. There was a fair amount of activity evident in two or three of them and it was hard to ignore. Willow had scooted to the middle of the bench seat to make room for Wrecker and she was close enough to Len that when he turned his head to face her he could breathe in the scent of her shampoo. Delicate, complex. Some kind of flower he had no name for. He leaned past her to switch on the radio for distraction but his upper arm inadvertently brushed the side of her breast. He froze. Then he retreated stiffly to the far edge of the seat.
“Len.”
Some kind of flower—he reached again to turn the music up and this time she shifted with him. Opening, somehow. Widening in a way that made him gasp.
Willow took Len’s hand from the radio knob and placed it so the callused tips of his fingers straddled the arching dome of her knee. The heel of his hand slumped into the warm hollow between that knee and the other.
Len made an involuntary sound—a deep sound, almost a moan—that appalled him. He held his breath to try to wrestle back control. He couldn’t retrieve his hand from its home between Willow’s thighs but he kept an iron grip on the door handle with the other. If he held tight he couldn’t reach over and lay it on Willow’s breast. He couldn’t shift closer to her on the seat or—
“Oh, Len, no,” Willow exhaled.
Len’s head jerked up and he yanked his hand clear, his knuckles rapping hard against the dash. The sudden pain pierced him. He looked around wildly. “There,” Willow said, tipping her head toward the gymnasium door while she smoothed her skirt. “The children,” Willow clarified. They were both breathing rapidly and some moisture had condensed on the windshield. Through the foggy glass Len could make out the shapes of hulking boys exiting the gym and heading for trucks. The girls could be identified by their smaller size and the snug fit to their jeans. Both Len and Willow scanned anxiously for Wrecker. They didn’t dare look at each other.
His eyes trained on the windshield and his voice no higher than a whisper, Len said, “It’s no, then?”
Willow cast a furtive glance his way. Her eyebrows lifted. A small hiccup of laughter slid out from under her control, and then one more.
Len felt surprise and relief spread like a mantle of warmth throughout his chest and arms. He let his head fall back against the seat back. His own laughter escaped to join hers. They laughed tentatively at first but their joined laughter grew bolder, more full-throated, edged toward giddy. Len didn’t know why he was laughing. He wondered briefly if they would be able to stop. He reached over and gave her a quick hug, a hug of comfort and collusion, and Willow returned it. And as they sat apart recovering, making little gasps and sighs and exclamations, Len realized that he had been deeply mistaken. Everything was suddenly so clear.
Willow tapped his wrist. “There he is,” she said, and pointed.
Wrecker was dressed like all the other boys. The shoulder-length hair that fell in his eyes, the torn T-shirt, the ragged jeans—it could have been a uniform. But something distinguished their boy from the others. Something—
He was happy.
“Oh,” Willow said.
It was palpable. His happiness was a shine that transformed the darkness about him. He was alone but the glow he gave off suggested he hadn’t been alone recently. They saw him catch sight of the truck and tip his chin toward them, head their way.
“He’s beautiful,” Willow murmured.
Len glanced at her. It was funny to hear her say it, but it was true.
The boy reached the truck and opened the door and swung himself in, and in a moment the air in the cab changed from the charged intimacy Len and Willow had created to a wild, swirling, circus brew of hot breath and pheromones.
“Wow,” Willow remarked.
“Huh?” Wrecker settled himself on the bench. He was all thigh and shoulder spread and strong deodorant and Len could detect, mixed in with the boy’s own personal aroma, a distinctly girl smell. “Okay,” Wrecker said. “Let’s go.”
Len fired the engine and shifted the truck into gear. The driving gave him something to do, an action to steady his legs and focus his mind. Willow’s body was pressed close to his and she was trembling slightly. Every breath she took vibrated against him. Len reached for a blanket he kept stored behind the seat. His hand trailed against the nape of Willow’s neck as he drew it forward. “Are you cold?”
Willow opened the spread across her legs and his. “Just a little.” She straightened the blanket from beneath and let her hand linger in his lap.
Len swerved into the opposite lane.
“Easy!” Wrecker’s eyes widened. “Len! I can drive if you’re tired.”
“Sorry,” Len muttered.
“Good dance?” Willow ventured. With her head turned toward the boy, Len glimpsed the long line of her neck. He wanted to follow it deep into her blouse.
“It was okay.”
“Anybody you knew?”
“Not many.” He gazed dreamily out the window. “A few.”
Len drove with an acute concentration. He kept the truck steadily in its lane as the road wove up the narrow mountain pass. The headlights splashed over the broad leaves of shrubs and shone in brief flashes on fir trunks. Streaks of moonlight stuttered briefly through the canopy, but when Len climbed out of the trees and crested the ridge the moon suddenly appeared, swollen and luminous, before them, spilling its milky shine into the cab.
“Pull off, Len.” Wrecker looked entranced. “You ever seen it like this, before?”
Len parked the truck by the roadside and the three of them piled out. The fog had moved off the ocean and the moonlight spread across the waves. Out in the distance, the rest of the world waited.
“Pretty decent day,” Wrecker declared softly.
He dozed the rest of the way, his big head leaning first against the window glass and then shifting to fall to Willow’s shoulder. Len and Willow stayed silent and solemn for the steep descent to the water. One sharp turn after another swayed them back and forth against each other. They rode without speaking as the road hugged the beach and turned inland at the river’s mouth, and when they turned at last onto the dirt road they woke Wrecker to open the gates. Len stopped above the farmhouse and Wrecker spilled out of the cab. He shook himself like a newborn colt. “No work tomorrow?”
“No work, buddy.”
“See you later, then.” He trotted off into the darkness toward his cabin.
They watched his dark back disappear. The moonlight flooded in and lit Willow’s face. She kept it slanted slightly from him. Len’s throat was tight. “Willow?”
“Drive up a little farther, Len.”
He released the brake and backed the truck onto the road again.
“Just ahead. On the edge of the meadow.”
Len eased the truck to a stop and shut the engine. Willow slid away from him and opened the door and got down.
Len pushed his way out and walked around to stand in front of her. He draped the blanket over her shoulders and rested his hands on her waist. Her chin tilted toward him now and he paused because he wanted to remember all of this: the shine of her eyes, the thrum of his body, the softness of her skin, and that first day, too, how fragile she’d seemed, cracked in half from whatever she’d come from but gorgeous, terribly and irresistibly and unreachably beautiful. It clobbered him. It drove him out to the privacy of his woodlot for solace. He was in love with his wife and still every cell in his body had turned toward Willow with a kind of magnetic conviction that had never let up. Len dipped toward her now and let his lips brush lightly from her forehead down the line of her profile to her lips. If she wanted him to, he would stop there. He would let that be enough. That single, tentative kiss.
Willow reached a hand behind Len’s head and brought him close and kissed him hard. He felt her lips open to him and her body tremble against his own. “Come with me,” she said hoarsely, breaking for air.
“I can’t wait anymore.”
She led him across the moonlit meadow to her yurt. He was barely in the door when she was rushing through the buttons of his shirt, fighting his belt buckle, running her hands wherever they would reach. He kicked off his boots and struggled out of his jeans. “Hey!” He laughed a little. “Whoa!” He’d wanted this for so long and he was afraid for it to be over before he registered what was happening.
“I know, Len.” He couldn’t tell if Willow was laughing or crying as she dragged him toward the bed. Somehow she had slid out of her clothes and her naked body stunned him. “I know.” She reached for him and he didn’t resist and he heard her gasp, saw her eyes widen and shift focus as they moved together. Len let his head sink to her neck, felt her lips move lightly along his ear. “We’ll slow down later.” Small, delicate cries finding their way into words. “Next time, Len.” He felt himself fall into his body as he listened. “Next time,” she whispered. Softly, in his ear. “I promise.”
CHAPTER NINE
It was a giant tree, the trunk misshapen by fire and encrusted with lichens, and it dominated the slope with its girth and the broad circle of shade cast by its canopy. It was a mammoth, a monster, a dinosaur even, a relict fir left standing when its regiment fell to loggers a hundred years before. Noises flattened beneath it. Its hollow had housed bear and cat and bird and the occasional juvenile delinquent escaped from the boys’ reformatory in Lassen. In a storm it waved its limbs and threatened to uproot and roll itself and half the hillside down to dam the creek and block the county road below. It was a public hazard, the owners declared. It was an insurance spike. And it was square in the intended footprint of their new house, a modern extravagance planned to poise on the hillside and command a view of the sea.
It would have to go.
The contractor was a youngish guy with a bulbous nose and pants that sagged under a lazy gut. He was paying on his equipment like he couldn’t believe and his naturally generous impulses were constrained by the red that showed up in his checkbook too often for comfort. It had crossed his mind more than once, recently, that success in the construction business might require more than a strong back and an unfettered delight in the orderly repetition of milled lumber. This house was a chance to make a name for himself and put some change in the bank—or at least keep his machines on the job and out of hock. He was itching to start. And the first item of business was the tree.