Ash Falls

by Warren Read

  “I never cut down a tree before.”

  “You’re gonna do a lot of things you’ve never done before. Fish every weekend if you want. There’s rivers and lakes everywhere, all of ‘em full of trout or bass, or steelhead. You know, your grandpa took me up there when I was your age. This one summer, we spent a whole week camped out on the edge of the river, just pulling in fish one after the other, and hanging them up over the fire like they were laundry. Just reach over, pick em off the chain, pop ‘em in your mouth.”

  Above his head, just out of reach, a teardrop ornament turned on its own. It was a small turn, so small that Patrick imagined his father didn’t even see it. Some of the glitter and silver paint had been scratched clean, and he could make out a single white bulb hiding out on the other side.

  “Over in An Khe,” he said, “we’d all be deep in the bushes, with the bugs and God-knows-what all buzzing in my eyes and in my ears. You know what I’d do? Just put my head a thousand miles away. My M16, well that was a fishing rod. In my mind, I was sitting on the banks of the river, just waiting to drop my line in the fishing hole.” He laughed softly. “I know it probably sounds stupid as hell, but it made a difference to me.”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid,” Patrick said.

  “Everyone needs at least one good memory to go back to,” he said. “Something to pull you through later on, when things get bad.”

  Patrick said, “I saw a cartoon once where a guy sleepwalked into a place where they were building a tower. Every time he almost walked off the building, this big beam would go in front of him, and catch him.” Patrick reached up and brushed his hand against a fall of tinsel. “I don’t remember how it ended.”

  “That’s only a cartoon.”

  “Still. You could wake up way out in the middle of the woods. You might get ate by a bear. We’ll have to build a fence around the house.”

  His father laughed. “No way. Do that, and all I’ll be thinking when I go to sleep is how much I want to get out. Just get me the hell out of this city. Open up that sky and bring out the stars, man. Even your mom agrees with that. And you know she’s always the smartest one in the room.”

  A wave of white light came through the window and washed over the wall, followed by the slam of a car door. Patrick lay still under the tree, his father beside him, both of them staring up through the branches toward the front door. There was the sound of feet pounding the steps and the jingling of keys.

  His father said, “Speak of the devil.”

  The door rattled and creaked open, and his mother slipped inside.

  “Well, look at this.” Her voice was dry and smoky. “This is almost the weirdest thing I’ve seen tonight.”

  “We were just enjoying the lights,” Ernie said.

  “You should come down here, Mom.” Patrick rolled to his side and stared at the cuffs of his mother’s white pants. They were frayed and spotted with mud, and they brushed the laces of her blue-striped sneakers.

  “Scoot on out from under there and get yourself back to bed.”

  She walked over to the coffee table and took his father’s coffee mug in her hand and brought it to her nose.

  Patrick slid from under the tree and stood up. His mother put a hand to his forehead, and smoothed his hair from his eyes.

  “Everything okay, honey?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I woke up and Dad was here. We were just talking.”

  “Well you go on to bed. It’s my turn to talk to Dad.”

  Patrick walked the long hallway to his room and closed the door behind him. He quickly slid under the blankets, which now were ice cold through his pajamas. His parents’ voices hummed on the other side of the door, words coming in and out. Tired. Gone all night. Like an idiot. That boy.

  Outside his window, over the peak of their neighbor’s gabled roof and the bead of red lights, the sky had begun to bruise.

  At the end of the day, Patrick stood at the mouth of the Quonset with his bicycle leaning against his body, the frame bleeding cold into his legs. He watched Tin climb the paint-splashed stepladder to the low shed roof, a can of tar patch swinging in his hand. It was all of about eight steps to the edge. It was an easy pitch and even a person as old as Tin Dorsay could heave himself up and over the top rung, and crawl onto the roof without much trouble.

  Patrick pushed his bike across the patchy ground to a spot under the eaves, where Tin knelt above, slapping black glue over a buckled seam. The light was going, but there was enough white sun still hovering over the west mountain to send long pencil tree shadows running up the barn sides. Now and then, Tin scraped at the composite with his putty knife, lobbing clods of moss over the edge onto the ground.

  “I’m all done.” Patrick kicked at the green puffs.

  “You put the buckets away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The right way this time?”

  “Yeah.” Now would begin the twenty thousand questions before Patrick would be allowed to go.

  “Cause last time you stuck ‘em inside the door, and I tripped and near about broke my neck.” Another chunk of moss tumbled from above. “You check the cages good?”

  “Three times.” There was the sound of the brush licking the roof again. He wanted his pay for the week. But Tin would not be fishing cash from his pocket now, not when he was stuck on the roof, wrist deep in tar.

  “So anyway,” he said. “I can come back out tomorrow, if you want. For pay and all.”

  “Hang on and I’ll get it for you.” There was the sound of dragging, and Tin brought himself to the edge of the roof where Patrick could see him clearly. He had black streaks to his forearm. He wiped his hands down the front of his overalls.

  “There’s a bunch of change in the console of the truck. Count yourself out some quarters and let me know what you got.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No. You did good work. You’re due your pay.”

  Good work. Those were two words Patrick hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Through all the sickening feed and the shit, and the scatter of tiny scabs over his arms from frayed mesh, all he ever heard from Tin was bellyaching. But all that was gone, if only for the moment. Patrick turned his handlebars and started toward the pickup.

  “Hold up a minute,” Tin said. “I wanna talk to you about something.”

  Patrick pressed down on the seat of his bicycle. The tires sprung under his weight, squeezing mud from underneath. The old man reached up and scratched at his nose, leaving a black smudge.

  “The thing is,” he said, “pelting time is in a couple weeks. If you’re up to it, I could use your help. I’d pay you good. If you’re up to it.”

  “To kill the minks?”

  “Kill ‘em. Jesus Christ, kid, you make it sound like I’m Jack the goddamned Ripper.” His eyes swung under a folded brow. “I ain’t asking you to kill em. I got a guy with a truck for that. All you gotta do is bring the cages to the guy. When it’s done, if you help out with the processing and whatnot, well, that’d be good.”

  “All of them?”

  “No, not all of em. Just the ones that are good enough for fur. The rest I hold onto, wait till spring. Let ‘em shack up for awhile and how-dee-do, pretty soon we got us some babies.” He winked at Patrick. “Naw, I just need you to help bring ‘em to the guy, and that’s it. It don’t take long. There’s a system. I got plenty of other things for you to do.” He looked over Patrick’s face, then turned back to his work. “If you don’t wanna do it,” he said, “I can get someone else.”

  Patrick bit down on his lip. A light tickle rattled his throat, the realization that the time had finally come, that moment when—for some of them, anyway—the feedings and the pacing and the box scraping would be done. He hadn’t thought Tin would ask him to take part in the killing, even though there was no reason that he shouldn’t ask. The old man needed his help. He needed him.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course you can think about it. Just don’t t
hink about it too long.”

  He swung a leg over his bike and settled himself on the pear seat. The old man’s face shrunk together as he grinned, his lower jaw reaching all the way up to his ears. A balloon grew in Patrick’s chest with a lightness that wanted to lift him from the ground.

  He made it to the base of the hill then stopped himself with his feet in the gravel. He cranked the handlebars, turned around, and pointed himself back toward the shed.

  “Hey Tin!” he called out.

  “Hey what?” He craned his neck in a labored attempt to see over his shoulder.

  “How come you never got married?”

  “Who the hell says I didn’t?”

  Patrick gave a single pump on the pedal, coasting to the shed. “So you did.”

  Tin turned back and continued slapping tar. “Jesus no.”

  “Ever get close?”

  “Depends on what you mean by close.” He held both hands over his head, palms facing one another. Slowly, he brought them together, bringing them to a stop about three inches apart. “I had a pretty little gal,” he said, dropping his hands, “used to cook up at my brother-in-law’s logging camp. She stayed on with me for a couple years.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, it got so she hated the rain. I told her she was in the wrong place for that. Last I heard she went off to Texas.”

  “Texas?”

  “Can you believe it? You gotta hate something pretty bad to end up in Texas.”

  Patrick rode the hill to the River Road standing up all the way, legs pumping like pistons. And the balloon swelled so that it might bust open. He would do it. He’d show up and be a man, get right in there with all the other guys and do whatever he had to do. Skin them, haul the bodies away, he didn’t know. However hard it might be, he would stand up and do it. His mind stormed like this all the way up the drive. He reached the roadway, slipped through the gate and around the posts, brushing against the stripped salmonberry bushes. He had once seen a deer, skinned, hanging from the garage rafters of a friend’s house. It had been upside down, its body pink and shiny in the naked glare of the nearby trouble light. A swarm of flies had moshed all over its eyes and mouth. It would probably be the same with the minks, only smaller. Everything would be smaller. It wasn’t a big deal, to kill an animal. As long as it was quick and it was for something important. Tin needed the money. He’d raised them up. Fed them and watered them. They were his, and he could do whatever he wanted with them.

  The lights from town rose into the darkening sky, a white haze reaching above the jagged ridgeline of the forest. Patrick pedaled hard, his knees bucking all the way to his chest, the quarters weighing down his pocket, five dollars and fifty cents’ worth, tugging at the beltline of his jeans as he rode. He zipped along the middle of the empty road, zigzagging among the yellow dashes, working the looped handlebars back and forth like a pro. A rooster tail of water lashed a stripe up his back as he raced into town. It was Friday night, and he owned the street.

  The payphone outside Rexall Drugs was at the far edge of the building, as far from the front door as you could get without being in the parking lot. He leaned his bike against the shingled wall and searched with numb fingers for the coin slot. The fluorescent rod hummed and flickered above the phone, erratic and hardly useful as he carefully punched out the eleven digit number.

  It rang in his ear. Once, twice…five times before it was picked up.

  “Who this?”

  “Mama T? It’s me, Spooky.”

  “Spooky? Well hey there little man. It sure is good to hear your voice.” Mama T’s voice was soft and warm as velvet, rolling out from way down in her throat, just like always. “How’re things up there in Ash Falls? Got snow yet?”

  “No. I wanted to surprise you by calling with my own money for once.”

  “Well, it sure is a surprise.”

  Patrick held onto his words, the cold earpiece pressing against his skin. The parking lot was a patchwork of tiny lakes, each reflecting the blooming night sky back at itself. His breath came like puffs of smoke, fogging over the metal telephone receiver. A hundred miles away, Mama T’s own breathing was a warm wind through trees.

  “I’m doing good,” Patrick said. “I have to help kill the minks in a few weeks.”

  “Well. That’s a ugly thought.”

  “It’s okay, it’s part of the job.” He ran his fingers up and down the ribbed metal cord. “Is Shadow there?”

  There was a pause, then Mama T said, “No honey. Shadow ain’t been here for a couple weeks, now.”

  The words pulled at his insides. He wanted to slide down into his haunches, but the phone wouldn’t reach that far down.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No, honey.” She clicked her tongue. “You know don’t nobody stick around Mama T’s for too long. But I reckon he’ll be on my stoop any day now. Shadow’s just like his name. Here one minute, gone the next.”

  A bank of lights panned over the wall, and the sound of rusty springs and thumping bass stirred up Mama T’s words. Behind him, the rumble of an engine cut short and a door groaned open.

  “Don’t tell me what to buy with my own money, bitch.”

  The door slammed. Patrick turned around. Eugene Henry leaned against the primer-splotched fender of his sedan, baseball cap tilted over his eyes, one thick leg crossed over the other. He held his wallet at his belt buckle and worked the open flap with his meaty fingers, tight 501s worn pale in certain places, cuffs bunched over the laces of mud-caked boots. Behind him, in a near silhouette, sat Marcelle, in the passenger seat. She stared straight ahead.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  Patrick brought his eyes back to the car. Eugene slipped his wallet into his back pocket, cupped a hand over the full pouch of his crotch and squeezed.

  “You see something you want, boy?”

  Patrick turned his back to the car. “I better go Mama T,” he said. “Love you.”

  “Yeah,” Eugene called out. “You better turn away. You wouldn’t know what to do with this monster anyway.” He laughed, deep and gravelly.

  “Love you too, baby.” Mama T. kissed him through the phone. “You know my door’s open anytime. All you got to do is be clearheaded when you here, okay? Them’s the rules.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He said goodbye, and placed the phone back on the receiver. From the corner of his eye, he watched Eugene pass through the front door. He turned around and saw that Marcelle had turned on the dome light. She was leaning forward, close to the rearview, smoothing her fingers over the skin beneath her eye. Her hair was longer since the last time he’d seen her. It was swept back from her head in big curls and fell down her neck onto her shoulders. And she was chubby in the face, her cheeks like soft, fleshy apples under those busy fingers.

  He pulled his bicycle from the wall and mounted it, taking his time as he fussed with his bag and the handlebars, turning the pedals so they were just right under his sneakers. He moved the bike from the payphone out into the glare of the big Rexall sign, keeping his eyes on the front seat of Eugene’s car. He worked the gears as he rocked back and forth on the seat, rolling forward a few feet to watch the chain shift over. Finally, Marcelle looked from the mirror and out the window at Patrick. She froze in position for a moment, then reached up snapped off the light.

  Patrick gave the pedal a single pump and coasted around the trunk to the passenger window where he waited. The glass reflected a ghostly image of himself, a goofy kid whose hair was dirty and too long, strung back in ropes from his zit-pocked forehead, staring stupidly into the cab.

  The window slid down a few inches. Marcelle was leaned back in the seat, her face turned only slightly, looking at him through the sliver of space.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just using the phone.”

  “Why don’t you use the one at your house?”

  Patrick
said with a stumbled laugh, “You know why.”

  “Oh,” she said. “So you’re still sneaking off to see that Shade guy.”

  “Shadow.” He rubbed his thumb over the reflective tape on the handlebars. It was already layered with moisture from the dropping clouds. “But no. He took off.”

  “Took off?”

  “Yeah.”

  He wouldn’t say it, not in a million years. But more than anything he wished they could be somewhere alone, just the two of them, him and Marcelle. Marcelle Foster, not Marcelle Henry. He wished she would put her arm around his shoulder, hold onto him and tell him it would all be okay, like she used to do. He wanted to say to her that it was like someone was pinching his throat with their fingers, squeezing so tight that it felt like he might never talk again. He wanted to lay his head down on her warm lap and feel her polished nails comb through his hair, and hear her say that she would always be his friend, forever, that it would always be the two of them no matter what. And maybe then the claws grabbing at his neck would finally go away.

  “It’s probably good, you know.” She was looking at him straight on through the window now. He could see, even in the dim light of the cab, the dark smudge under her eye.

  “There’s people getting sick all the time, Patrick,” she said. “I see on the news, they look like skeletons. It’s awful. That church is closing down, too. But you probably already know that.”

  “It’s not a church.”

  “A club. Whatever. Used to be a church. You know what I mean. You have to be careful, Patrick. You don’t know if Shadow has it or not.” She looked to the front of the drugstore. “Just don’t be stupid, okay?”

  “So how’s married life treating you?” he said.

  She shifted in her seat and looked at the rearview again. “He’s gonna come out any minute,” she said. “You oughta go. He’s been in a nasty temper since he heard about your dad getting out. Waking up in the middle of the night, yelling out Ricky This, Ricky That. Cussing and snapping at everyone for no reason.”

  It was an explosion in the pit of his stomach. It raced like fire up through his chest and down his arms, burning hot in the tips of his fingers. He looked up at the Rexall sign, then over his shoulder, down the street. There were two cars idling at the traffic light, farting clouds of white smoke into the intersection. A station wagon with wood sides and a little convertible with a black ragtop. Convertibles didn’t belong in Ash Falls, not in November.