by Summer Wood
“Oh, Jesus, Jack. I didn’t tell you about the time we got raided by the DEA.” Melody leaned back and laughed, rueful. “That was so fucked up.”
“You were growing pot?”
“No way.” She nodded toward the wind-swelled tablecloth. “Willow wouldn’t let us.” It was just as well, though, maybe. Having Wrecker changed the way she looked at things.
Jack shifted to watch the others. His eyebrows rose and he gave a short, sharp bark of a laugh. He leaned closer to Melody. “Hey. When’d Willow and Len get together?”
“What?”
“Oh,” he said, backing away. “Was it a secret?”
“No,” Melody said. “What? No. Wait. What?”
“Oh,” Jack said. “Sorry.” He wrinkled his lip in amusement.
Melody snorted. Jack was full of shit. He was sure that any friendship between a man and a woman had to be sexual. Why not? he’d said. If you like somebody … and Melody had countered with the decency argument (Melody, of all people)—sanctity of marriage, blah blah—to which he nodded gravely and said, Oh. Thanks so much for setting me straight on that.
Jack, who’d made a play for Ruth when he first arrived. Out of respect, he insisted.
“You got raided?” Jack said politely. “Care to tell me about it?”
Melody looked closer. Willow and Len? Not possible.
“Uncle Jack!” That was Ryan, Wrecker’s friend who, to his father’s deep regret, stood only four-eleven at sixteen. He had the bottom-heavy look of a marsupial and a mind quick enough to outwit any adult he’d ever met.
“Yo!” Jack creaked his way up from the picnic bench and shielded his eyes from the sun.
“Tell Wrecker to go get his Frisbee.”
“Get it yourself,” Wrecker answered. He laid a shoulder into Ryan’s midsection and lifted him off the ground. They were playing a kind of rugby, Wrecker and Ryan and the kid who drove the Corvette—what was his name?—and the girl Sarah. They lacked a ball and made up for it with Ryan.
“Where’s it at?”
It was in Wrecker’s cabin, Ryan sputtered, his voice muffled by the bodies that lay on him.
“Come with me,” Jack said. “I want to hear about this raid. As your attorney, and all.”
“Yeah, right,” Melody retorted. “You’d let me rot in jail.”
“No! I’d visit you to find out where you kept your stash. Then I’d let you rot in jail.”
Melody untangled herself from the picnic bench and shouted to Wrecker. He should check with Ruth, she said. She might want him to put the oysters on soon.
Wrecker extracted himself from the scrum and faced her. He knew, he said. He was going to. His tone of voice said: You don’t have to tell me.
Melody took an extra moment to look at him, standing there. “See?” she said to Jack. “See what a pain in the ass he is?”
Beautiful, he agreed. And her heart swelled to see her boy grown tall like that, strapping, independent, still here, mouthing off, catapulting toward his future but for the moment standing shining in her sight.
Wrecker’s cabin smelled like peat with a hint of wet dog and motor oil.
“Jesus,” Jack said, stepping inside. “Something die in here?”
Melody hovered outside. Better to let Jack negotiate the mess. She had too many battles running already with her son to want to take on the condition of his cabin. Her mother had forced her to keep her room clean, make her bed every morning and run the vacuum on the weekends, and look where that had gotten her: the crowned queen of mess. It was half that—the futility of it—and half that it took too damn much effort to hassle the kid into cleaning it up. Twice a year she went at the barn with a vengeance, cleaning it down to its bones, but the rest of the time she was content to sweep sporadically and straighten here and there, knock down the dust if it had laid up thick enough to write in with a finger. Her restoration efforts had petered out once she had a place dry enough and warm enough to satisfy her comfort levels. It was good enough for government work, she told Jack. Good enough for the girls I go with, he answered gleefully. “Smells like boy.” Jack’s voice sounded hollow. He was trying to avoid breathing. “Man. Mom would’ve killed us.”
“Should I make him clean it up?”
“Hell, no.” He flashed her a sardonic grin. “Wait’ll he leaves home, then torch it.”
That was the problem, Melody thought. Half the time she thought she was too strict, laying on chores, making him pull his weight around the farm, and the other half she was convinced she was letting him get away with murder in the name of freedom. It was exhausting, really. There was no reliable scale that let her know whether she was doing a decent job or screwing him up royally. It seemed like pure luck—better luck than she deserved, for sure—that he was (she crossed her fingers, here; she knocked on wood) turning out okay. More than okay. Turning out to be a person whose company she enjoyed. At the end of most days, it was Wrecker she wanted to hang out with.
Jack emerged into the waning light with a Frisbee in his hand. “Another minute and you’d have to go in after me with oxygen.”
“That bad?”
“Pretty bad.” Jack tossed the disk into the air and caught it. “He’s a good kid, sis. How’d you manage that?”
“I had help,” she said soberly. It was the truth of the matter. Without Ruth and Len and Willow, without Johnny Appleseed when he’d been around, Sitka and the pups—without even Jack—she’d have failed miserably. Well, and maybe with a different kid. Wrecker had some rough edges but they were nothing compared to what she’d been like, growing up.
Jack draped his arm over her shoulders and they walked the path back toward the farmhouse. “He said school’s been a bitch for him.”
“He talk much about that?”
“He doesn’t talk much about anything. But I gather he’s not exactly a scholar.”
Melody shrugged. “He’s smart. Anybody can see it. He’d just rather figure things out on his own, with his hands, than learn it in a book.” She paused and ferreted a thorn from her sock. “Some of his friends board in Fortuna, go to the high school there.”
“You think you could make him go?”
“Not really. Plus, there’s no way in hell I could afford it.”
Jack grinned noncommittally and looked off to the distance. That’s how it was between them. Melody had to sweat and scrape each month to make ends meet and Jack went through life with his hand in the cookie jar. The car, the job, the house with the beach view—he had it all. Not that Melody would trade places. She’d decided early on it wasn’t worth the price. She’d had help to buy Bow Farm; that was enough. Still, the difference between them was enough to throw a dose of awkwardness into any conversation where the topic came up.
“You could ask Dad.”
Melody glanced at him sharply. “Right.”
Jack stepped to the side and paused to scrutinize her. “You’ve got a great life here, Melody,” he said. She snorted, and he shook his head. “You do. I respect it. But how are you going to send Wrecker to college? He’s sixteen, Melody. How’re you going to help him get started?”
Melody kept walking. There was a low roar in her head it was hard to think through. “He doesn’t want to go to college.”
“He might.”
Melody stopped on the path and spun to face him. “You know what, Jack? Fuck you. Dad disowned me. So don’t make it like I’m a bad mother for turning down some imaginary help for my son.” She turned again and stalked ahead. The Frisbee sailed over her head and collided with a branch. She stooped to pick it up. Then she turned and spun it at him, hard.
Jack caught the disk and shook it at her. “That shit’s in your head, sis. You think Dad gives a crap about twenty grand? The man’s a fucking millionaire.” He spun the toy on his finger. “They’d like to see you.”
Melody laughed a short, surprised gasp. “For what?”
“Beats me. You’re such a bitch.” Jack caught up with her and nudged her
in the ribs with the Frisbee. “But maybe they’d just like to help. I mean, why not? Let them be grandparents.”
“You know the kind of help I could use? Spend a little more time with him yourself. Don’t just show up and be the hero when it’s convenient.”
“Moi? I’m a hero? Oh, I like that.” Jack flashed his roguish grin. No wonder women fell for him, Melody thought. It was hard to stay mad. “But listen, sis.” His voice turned suddenly serious. “Don’t count on me. You’re the solid one.” Jack walked a few fast paces ahead and then turned and walked backward. He crowed, “The solid one who got raided by the Drug Enforcement Agency.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed, and shook her head. “I’m just glad Wrecker wasn’t there when they came.”
Jack walked beside her, then, and she told him how she and Wrecker had spent the day in Eureka shopping for new basketball shoes. Size ten and a half—he was thirteen and growing out of everything, and she had the day off from the Mercantile. “We got back to the farmhouse and Ruth was a mess. Two guys with dark windbreakers and mirrored sunglasses came in and told her they had to search the place. They ransacked it. When I got back to the barn it was pretty clear they’d been there, first.”
“They had a warrant?”
“They told Ruth they did, but when Willow showed up she demanded to see their badges, and they cleared out.”
“Shit, Mel. That’s scary.”
“Maybe. But we don’t grow, so they didn’t find anything. Assholes took some cash from the barn, though.”
“They weren’t DEA.”
“Then who were they?”
Jack shook his head. “Couple of thugs, sounds like. Why didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?”
Melody brushed the stray hair out of her eyes. “I had bigger fish to fry. They took the bag of cash I was holding until Monday to deposit in the bank. The drawer from the Merc.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t a ton of money. Two fifty, three hundred bucks, maybe. But I was freaked. That was way more than I could cover. So I tried to get a hold of Dreyfus to tell him.” She flashed a glance at Jack. “This is the fucked-up thing. Nobody saw Dreyfus again. I kept the Merc open for a couple of days until his business partners sent a truck and a carpenter up from Oakland to haul out the inventory and board up the place. Everything perishable, we just gave it away.”
“And you were out of a job.”
“After ten years.” They were nearly to the farmhouse.
“They never found Dreyfus?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I’m just glad Wrecker wasn’t there when they came. He has a thing about cops.”
“What kind of a thing?”
She glanced up at him briefly and then back down. “A pretty bad thing.”
Jack tilted his head toward her. “Yeah. You know, you never told me the whole story about him. Before and all.”
“What’s to tell?” Melody shrugged. “Shit happened. His mother couldn’t take care of him and Len knew her, so he adopted him. Meg was sick, so I got on board right after that.”
“You adopted him.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”
They could smell the smoke from the fire and see Ruth through the trees. “Well,” Melody said, “I never, like, did any paperwork.”
Jack stopped in his tracks. “So you have no legal rights.”
Melody’s eyes darkened and she looked away. “I’ve raised him all this time, Jack. He’s my son.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Says you. Says Wrecker. But what if something happened to Len?” They were back at the farmhouse. “Let’s talk about this later.” Jack stepped into the yard, lithe and powerful, and sailed the plastic disk into the dusk.
The kids were playing chicken; Ryan riding the shoulders of Corvette Boy, Sarah perched atop Wrecker. The light was waning. The fire in the pit crackled merrily. Meg and Ruth were standing beside a picnic table laden with potato salad and corn on the cob and baked beans and sliced tomatoes and the box of oysters ready to be grilled. Melody stood just outside the frame of it, taking the picture to preserve in her memory: her brother, her friends, her kid, his friends, on the day he turned sixteen in the place she loved more than any other in the world, perfect, perfect, perfect, if Jack would just leave that shit alone, as the disk soared high and hovered for a moment and then turned on its trajectory and arced its way back to land.
It was headed for Wrecker. In one fluid motion he raised his arms and lifted Sarah over his head and placed her safely on the ground, and then, without a break, he dove—graceful as a porpoise, streamlined and in perfect accord with his body—to catch the disk. His hand sealed, sure, around it, and Wrecker continued his slow airborne descent to earth.
There was a boulder that wouldn’t get out of the way.
There was the moment of impact, and the sudden damping of all sounds but the one crack, the sound of his bone breaking, and then—from this boy who never cried—the low-pitched unh of pain.
And then Melody was flying, was by his side.
The cast accomplished what poor grades had failed to do: it kept Wrecker unemployed that summer. He was in a foul mood. His body conspired to return to work and fired off signals that drove his brain berserk with their force and persistence. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t drive, but he could damn well crutch, and he wore out the rubber buttons on their bottoms racing the quarter mile to the road each day to collect the mail. He made Melody drive him to the sports store in Eureka so he could buy himself a training bench and a set of free weights. His shoulders bulked out while the muscles of his right leg languished. He grumbled bitterly. He had come upon his calling, and instead of being out in the woods felling timber, he was stuck at home watching reruns of Mister Ed.
He took up fishing.
It was Ruth’s idea. Wrecker could mobilize well enough over rough ground to make his way down to the Mattole and back. Why not make himself useful once he got there? She liked fish. All of them did except Melody, who could go on eating her red beans and pumpkin seeds and pass up the nice poached steelhead with lemon butter. Ruth fashioned a creel out of an inner tube and a pair of old jeans. She bullied Len into providing a rod and reel. Every morning she made Wrecker a lunch and watched him hobble down the path toward the river. Some days he returned with a fish squirming in the creel, some days he didn’t, but his mood improved noticeably. Ruth grew suspicious. Wrecker was an independent boy, but he was not solitary by nature. He was angling, she began to suspect, for something other than fish.
She cornered him one day when he slid a speckled trout into the kitchen sink. “Nice fish,” she said. She reached into the sink and grasped the slippery body, stabilized it on the drainboard, and whacked it over the head with the wooden mallet she used to tenderize game. The fish’s mouth gaped open and its eyes grew cloudy. One more whack and the body lay limp. She looked purposefully at Wrecker. “Something new down at the river?”
It was into the second half of August and Wrecker’s hair had grown out thick and shaggy, sun-bleached, a shelf of it spilling into his eyes. Behind the hair his eyes sparkled. “New? Nah,” he said, his voice gruff but his eyes laughing.
Ruth cocked an eyebrow and determined to sleuth it out. She gutted the fish, cleaned it, dredged it in flour. She lit the propane burner and heated oil in a pan and scalloped some potatoes and baked them while the fish sizzled on the stovetop. The next morning, a fine, fresh, August day, she packed his lunch, gave him a short head start along the path, and followed behind.
Ruth was huffing by the first bend in the trail. The crutches slowed him down, but not nearly enough for her to keep up. She stopped and used her apron to dab at the sweat that ran into her eyes. By the time she reached the base of the hill, her heart was pounding—chug-ah chug-ah—like a rickety steam engine, and the boy had vanished from sight.
Ruth rested with one pudgy forearm wedged into the crotch of a tan oak. Pain radiated up her right side and she
heard an unfamiliar, faintly ominous wheezing sound come out of her rib cage that scared her enough to turn around and retreat slowly to the farmhouse. She didn’t want to collapse there on the path where Wrecker could find her on his way back. The plan would need to be amended.
The next day she had her stealth on. Also a hat, a sturdy pair of walking shoes recycled from the free box at the Presbyterian church, a stripped stick that balanced her over rocky ground, and a pair of binoculars looped around her neck that she cursed every time they banged against her sternum. In her pocket she carried a Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. If anyone asked, she was birdwatching. She had borrowed the gear from Willow. There was nothing wrong with taking up a new hobby; she could use the exercise, and this time she paced herself, trudging along the path instead of trying to keep him in her sights. True, he might veer from the river route, head deep into the trees or cut toward the road, but she would take the risk on his destination. Didn’t he bring back fish? There was something—something or someone—down at the river that had him hooked.
Exercise was overrated, Ruth decided, puffing even at the slower pace. She paused to let her racing heart slow. Every single thankless joint in her body squawked when she took them out on parade. She was sixty-eight years old and had the balance of a drunken sailor, a finicky ticker pulsing in her chest, and unreliable eyesight. There was a perfectly good chair in the kitchen of the farmhouse that offered a more sensible and comfortable place to locate her wide backside. It had to be said that bushwhacking miles through poison oak and blackberry bushes was no easy stroll. Ruth wrinkled her nose and sneezed pollen into her embroidered handkerchief. Then she shouldered her small satchel and continued along the trail.
She was sixty-eight, but she was a hell of a long way from decrepit. She still cooked and cleaned and handled the laundry, churning it in the wringer-washer and clipping it onto the line to dry. Her blunted fingers fumbled when she tried to thread a needle or repair the tiny tired guts of the vacuum motor, but she climbed ladders, weeded the garden, swore with abandon when the occasion warranted it. She surprised them all by praying. They shouldn’t be alarmed, she said. It was a precautionary measure. She’d taken a few missteps in her life and just wanted to point out the mitigating factors.