Heartbeat of the Bitterroot

by Janice Mineer

  Ann smiled and quietly wrung her hands. She looked torn between feeling like leaping in and not wanting to interfere with Rebecca’s plans. For most of the time, Zee managed to look very important while doing nothing to help.

  Zee finally stepped up to her duties and brought Angela bags to open and boxes to unwrap. The gifts ranged from hand-embroidered towels and quilted sofa pillows to the latest kitchen gadgets. Angela ended up in a snowbank of wrapping paper with bows stuck in her hair.

  The guests sat balancing plates of tiny sandwiches and cupcakes on their laps, trying not to spill pink punch on the white carpet when they laughed. I downed my cupcake, said “thank you” to Rebecca, and edged my way over to Elizabeth.

  “Should I stay and help clean?” I offered.

  “Rebecca and Janet said they will clean up, but Ann is making Zee help. We’ll see you back at the ranch in a while.”

  “Sounds good. I have some errands to run, so I’ll see you guys later this afternoon. I still need some shoes for the wedding. Also, I’ll stop at the store for some groceries Ann wanted.”

  I looked over my shoulder at Angela as I headed out the door and waved. Gracious as always, she was diplomatically handling a question from one of the girls about the “very handsome brother of James.” Was he available?

  Chapter 8

  dc

  When I stepped out of the car, my ears were greeted with the rasping wail of a chain saw and voices shouting behind the house. I lugged the bags of groceries inside and deposited them on the kitchen table. I opened the side door to see my uncle bent over the saw, his battered straw cowboy hat pushed far back on his head. Jack stood with his sleeves rolled up, mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief, and someone I did not know was flinging heavy chunks of wood into a jumbled pile. The sweet, pungent scent of freshly cut pine greeted my nostrils.

  “Working hard, I see,” I commented when the saw choked to a stop.

  “Hey, Jenna!” Jack grinned. He walked over, pulling off his deerskin gloves, and gave me a hug, leaving bits of sawdust clinging to my hair. He laughed and tried to brush them away, but ended up leaving more in their place.

  “You’re getting a lot done,” I said, eyeing the chest-high pile of split wood.

  “Coming along,” he said. “Dad’s a workhorse. My friend Michael is a good hand too,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the dark-haired man.

  When he saw me, Michael removed his gloves and stood, squinting in the sun. His weight shifted to one side and his chest heaved slightly. He brushed sawdust from his dark-blue flannel shirt.

  “Jenna, this is my friend Michael Callahan.” Jack pointed a thumb in his direction.

  “Hi,” Michael said quietly with a nod in my direction, a bright smile flashing beneath his thick, dark stubble of beard. He rubbed a broad hand across the slight cleft in his chin, then looked down, nudging a great slab of wood with his foot.

  “Yeah, we’re doing Michael a big favor getting him away from his desk job for a while. We’ll put a little color in those cheeks,” said Jack, reaching to punch Michael on the shoulder.

  Michael fended the blow deftly with one hand and countered by seizing Jack’s hat.

  “Jack is a tough task master,” I said, my voice apologetic.

  “Come on you guys, quit lollygaggin’ around,” my uncle said. “We want something to burn in that fireplace this winter.”

  “But not as tough as my uncle,” I added laughing.

  Michael looked at me intently with robin-egg-blue eyes, a slight smile lingering on his lips. I felt my face flush under his gaze. My mouth became dry and I had to clear my throat.

  Jack snatched his hat out of Michael’s hand and slapped him on the back with it. “Let’s go, buddy.”

  Michael turned away and picked up a heavy splitting mall. He set up a log, swung, and the wood divided into two pieces with a loud crack.

  “Hey, Jack,” I said, recovering myself. “Is Elizabeth here?”

  “Yeah, she’s inside with the kids.” He picked up sticks of split wood and stacked them into a neat pile against the weathered gray wall of the shed.

  Just then, my aunt appeared on the porch, wiping her hands on a red-checkered towel. “Michael, will you stay for dinner? Steak and pie,” she said, tempting him to accept the offer.

  Michael shook his head. “No thanks, really. I have to pick up Emma in an hour or so.”

  “Your loss,” Jack said. “Best pie in the valley, man.”

  I followed my aunt into the house, glancing over my shoulder at Michael. Elizabeth was inside drying dishes and stacking them on the counter. I shuffled the grocery bags on the kitchen table and paused, staring out the window. Michael deftly stacked the split wood against the shed and then bent to set the next heavy piece on an upturned, massive log.

  “This is the guy you were telling me about? The blind date you wanted to set up?” I turned and looked into her eyes, a look I hoped said, “I’m sorry, I thought you were an idiot.”

  Elizabeth raised an eyebrow and gave me a knowing look. “Yeah, I know, right?”

  “I kind of thought he’d have a third eye or something.”

  Elizabeth feigned offense. “Come on. Give me credit for having better taste than that.”

  I watched him through the window as he thrust the heavy mall again and again into thick chunks of wood, splinters flying in all directions.

  “Who’s Emma?” I asked Elizabeth.

  She picked up one of the bags of groceries. Her voice softened as she looked out the window. “His wife died a couple of years ago. Emma is his daughter. She’s nearly four. Cute little thing.”

  “Oh, that’s so sad.” He seemed so young to have been struck by a tragedy of that magnitude. How does someone survive that kind of loss? “What happened to his wife?”

  “Cancer. He and Jack have been friends since college, though Michael moved away for a while. He lived in Seattle until his wife got sick. They came back here. We did our best to help him through the loss. It was pretty tough.”

  “Who takes care of his little girl?”

  “He does, mostly. His mother watches her when he is at work.” Elizabeth handed a bag of tomatoes and a head of lettuce to Ann to wash at the sink.

  “He’s a very nice man,” Ann said, “very polite.”

  Behind me, I heard a little voice. “Grandma, can I have a drink of juice?” It was Jordan, Jack and Elizabeth’s six-year-old daughter.

  “Hi Jordan!” I reached out to her. “Can I have a hug?” She ran to me, her honey-colored curls bouncing in a ponytail. She wrapped her legs around me as I swung her up into a hug. “You’re getting so big and heavy!”

  She leaned back, “Lookit.” She put a chubby finger on a lower tooth and wiggled it for me.

  “Wow,” I exclaimed, “looks like someone’s going to get a visit from the tooth fairy.”

  “I hope the tooth fairy has lots of money!” Elizabeth smiled. “I’m going downstairs to work on the quilt. Jenna, we need your help if we are going to get it done before the wedding. Nothing like waiting till the last minute, huh?”

  “I’ll be down in a minute to help,” Ann told her.

  Jordan played with my hair and hummed a song. I tickled her until she giggled in my arms.

  “That quilt is turning out beautiful, a real work of art.” Ann said. “I don’t know how she finds the time with two little ones to chase around. I’ve been helping her when I can.”

  The door opened and Jack came in, stomping his boots on the mat to knock off the sawdust. “Is there a doctor in the house?” he said with mock drama.

  Michael followed behind him, holding a handkerchief to his hand.

  “Splinter,” Jack explained.

  “Went right through my glove,” Michael said, looking abashed. “Next time I’ll know better and wear leather gloves.”

  Ann brought a small medical kit just as Elizabeth called to her from downstairs.

  “Here, let Jenna do it,” said Jack. “Sh
e loves to inflict pain.”

  I gave him a sour look.

  “Well, I see he hasn’t asked you to do it, Jack,” my aunt remarked.

  Ann handed the tweezers to me. “Here, will you help him? I hear the baby crying. Come on, Jordan, let’s go downstairs.”

  I set Jordan down as Jack headed back out the door, calling behind him. “Let me know if you need a transfusion, Michael.”

  Michael sat at the kitchen table as I opened the first aid kit and rummaged through its contents. I sat down beside him as he unwrapped his hand. I could smell his cologne mixed with the sweet scent of pitch from the firewood.

  “Let’s see,” I said, examining the wound. The top of a ragged piece of wood the width of a matchstick protruded from the thick pad at the base of his thumb. Blood pooled slowly, making it hard to see how deep the sliver had plunged.

  I grimaced. “Oh, that’s kind of ugly.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  I placed my hand on his, steadying it. It was warm and strong. He did not flinch when I probed around the wound with my fingers, feeling for the invisible end of the sliver.

  “I’m sorry, does this hurt?” I asked. I fixed my eyes on my work, not daring to face those piercing blue eyes again.

  “It’s all right. You’re doing fine.”

  I could feel him studying me, taking in the color of my hair, the light spray of freckles across my nose.

  I loosened the sliver with the needle, then pulled it out with the tweezers. The blood flowed more freely and I dabbed it away with a wad of gauze. I ran the side of the needle along the skin, checking for any pieces left behind.

  “There. I think we got it,” I said, displaying the offending fragment. “Band-Aid?”

  “No, it’s OK,” he said, pressing the wound with his handkerchief. He paused and looked at me for a moment before adding, “Thanks.”

  I cleared my throat. “You’re welcome.”

  When he left the room, I found myself staring after him, thinking of his clear blue eyes, dark brows, and full mouth. I collected myself and went downstairs to find the others.

  Chapter 9

  dc

  Elizabeth and my aunt were bent over the quilt rolled out onto a long wooden quilt frame. Jordan sat on a small stool at their feet, studying a coloring book, while the baby, Austin, slept in his carrier. I knelt down to look at his rosy cheeks and touch his downy soft hair.

  I scanned the quilt. It was beautiful, pieced together with strips of rich burgundy, taupe, and blue against a background of soft beige.

  Elizabeth pointed to a table nearby. “The needles and thimbles are over there.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I lifted my hands in protest. “I don’t think I ever really figured this out.”

  I marveled at the long rows of tiny, even stitches. Colorful flowered prints, solids, and plaids were expertly orchestrated in the quilt top.

  “Come on. We’ll help you,” Elizabeth offered.

  “I’m just going to finish this section, then I’d better get up there and put dinner on the table,” my aunt said as she adjusted her glasses and threaded a needle.

  A luster of white caught my eye on a nearby table.

  “What’s this?” I leaned over the tray of shimmering white beads and crystal stones.

  “Oh, it’s a necklace I am making for Angela to wear for the wedding,” Elizabeth explained. “It’s part of ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.’ You know, for good luck.” She came to my side. “I learned how to make the necklace in a class in town. These crystal beads here belonged to Grandma Gilmour, but the necklace was broken so I bought some new beads and worked them in together to make a new design for Angela. And see here, this blue glass bead will be the centerpiece.” She held the pieces together so that I could get the idea.

  “It’s beautiful. It’s really stunning.”

  “She’s amazing, isn’t she?” my aunt said.

  Elizabeth laughed depreciatively. “Well, I seem to get myself wrapped up in a lot of these projects. I just hope she likes it. I really want to make this special for her.”

  We sat down across the quilt from each other, Ann working beside me. I threaded a needle and surrendered myself to their instruction, guiding the thread along “the ditch” between the pieces, chewing my lip in concentration, trying to spare my fingertips from the sharp point of the needle.

  I listened to Ann and Elizabeth, their heads bent together over the quilt frame, chatting peacefully, their fingers flying over swatches clipped from our past: pale blue fabric left over from Angela’s prom dress, a print from Uncle Martin’s shirt, even a piece of cotton from a skirt Ann had made me. Remnants of our lives stitched together. It was a good thing, this closeness, this time shared together. It was something I had almost missed. I remembered how close I came.

  Later, I slipped out onto the porch and settled into the swing. The rhythmic creak of the chain was comforting. I pulled the collar of my polar fleece up around my neck as the air began to cool. I listened to the sound of the voices rising, then falling from inside the house like the babble of a river, lives that flowed with mine. Freckles and Hershey played tag in the yard, taking turns leaping, then dodging each other across the fragrant grass. The sun setting behind the barn colored the sky with amber rays. But as darkness fell, the peaceful scene before me faded into another bleaker, blacker time, a time I’d rather have forgotten but could not.

  A

  It was late October in my sixth-grade year. It had been more than four months since I last saw my mother. She sat, smoking on the front porch swing. She was not as thin and pale as she had been when she left me at the ranch. She wore new clothes and had acquired a car. Her hair was black now and fell in a sleek line to her shoulders.

  We were alone. I leaned back against the porch railing, facing her. A starling, a lone straggler that had procrastinated his long flight south, chirped shrilly from the roof overhead.

  “I want to stay,” I mumbled.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I want to stay here,” I said louder.

  My mother took a long drag on her cigarette and considered me. “I’m going to Nevada. If you don’t come now, don’t expect me to come back for you.”

  “It’s nice here.” I twisted the strings on the front of my sweatshirt tight around my fingers until they ached. “I get breakfast every day. I like playing with Shep and he would miss me.” I licked my lips, then continued, my voice thin and strained. “I have friends and I like this school.”

  My mother pulled the cigarette from her lips. She raised her chin and a long tendril of smoke snaked into the air. She dropped her eyes and said, “I can get you into a school down in Nevada, as soon as we get a place.”

  I stared at my shoes. I’d heard this before. I’d been in three schools in different towns in the past year. One was a warm place with palm trees and camellias. Another was a small town by a cold lake where the wind blew relentlessly. The last was a random collection of houses at the end of a long road that stretched into a vacant dry plain. It just didn’t last.

  “I have friends here and my cousins,” I said.

  My mother flipped her hair away from her face with a trembling hand. “Well, maybe they can’t afford to feed you,” she spat.

  “I heard Uncle Martin say I could stay.” I caught my breath, waiting for her reaction. My heart thumped in my chest.

  “When?” my mother snapped.

  “Last night. I heard you talking.”

  I stood there, the evening falling gray around us. A bird shrieked sporadically into the cooling air. The swing creaked as my mother shifted her weight. She sat cross-legged, her foot twitching nervously like the tail of an anxious cat. My stomach tightened. I swallowed hard. “I want to stay,” I said.

  Tension appeared around her mouth. My mother rose, crushed her cigarette, and without looking at me, walked into the house.

  The next morning, we stood at the split-rail fence, dr
y leaves rattling back and forth around us in the breeze, scuttling along the ground. My mother’s car idled and coughed fitfully. She gazed into the distance across the tops of the trees that lined the end of my uncle’s lane. She smoothed her short black skirt. The wind fluttered the collar of her silky shirt causing the dragon print to shimmer and writhe.

  “Well, goodbye then,” my mother said, her eyes briefly resting on my face. “You had better be good or I’ll find out.”

  I waited. After a moment, she reached down and gave me a stiff hug, enveloping me in the aroma of whisky, stale smoke, and cheap perfume. “Bye,” I murmured into her hair.

  My mother turned, and without looking back, climbed into the battered Camry, grated the gears, and drove away.

  A strange mixture of feelings circled inside my gut as I watched her disappear into the distance, a black plume of smoke billowing after her car. There was pain and a feeling of loss and sadness, mostly for what should have been. There was also a great sense of relief that washed over me, marred by a pang of guilt. I stared down the road, long after the dust cleared. The starling had ceased its insistent chirping and in the silence, I could hear geese honking as they flew over the river not far away. I turned and found my aunt waiting on the porch. I climbed the steps, took my aunt’s hand, and walked into the house.

  Chapter 10

  dc

  On Monday, my friend Bobbie picked me up at the airport for lunch at Paradise Falls, a restaurant we had frequented since I was at the university and she was in beauty school.

  We ordered our meal, then Bobbie asked, “How was the weekend at the ranch? And the shower? I was so sorry I couldn’t come.”

  “It was fun. Everybody had a good time. Angela got some beautiful stuff for the new apartment they are renting.”

  “I think they are such a cute couple. Lucky kids,” Bobbie sighed.

  I thought about the work party and remembered Michael rhythmically stacking the sweet-smelling pine. “I also met this guy.” I dropped my eyes and spread my napkin on my lap.