by S. M. Hulse
* * *
My newest painting is coming along. It’s my fourth attempt at painting the house. This time I’m building the color slowly, layer upon layer. I’ve thinned the paints, and it’s made for a more laborious process than I’m used to, more frustrating. It’s not going badly, exactly. The painting looks like the scene in front of me. House, land, mountains, sky. Objectively speaking, it might even be one of my better efforts. But I could have said the same for the three canvases I’ve already painted over or trashed. I feel myself getting close to that point with this one, too, though I can’t isolate exactly why the painting is so disappointing.
The sky is already finished. A thin, jagged strip along the top of the canvas, gray and overcast, enough light showing through the banks of clouds to keep the sky this side of foreboding. Now I’m at work on the mountains. I start not with what I can see, but with what I cannot, with what I know lies beneath the surface of the slopes. The darkest colors first, near-black grays for the deepest deposits of mudstone, then lighter grays for the limestone, finished with blood brown for the rock containing iron pyrite that roughly weathers to iron oxide. It matters to me that I paint the mountains with depth. That I not forget there is so much more to them than the flora on their slopes or the shapes of their peaks against the sky. But the layers of paint, carefully mixed and applied though they are, seem to barely hint at all these mountains hold, at how they’ve shaped the lives of those who enter their depths and live in their shadows.
I’m uneasy thinking so much about the mountains. The wilderness over the ridge is still vast, still empty. I know parts of it well, but that familiarity is starting to feel like a burden. We did not go to South Dakota.
On the mountains’ lower slopes, I work up a pale green-tinged gold to match the new grasses, add some deeper green in the shaded patches, flick my brush to reflect the way the tallest stalks bend beneath their own weight. Mix in the slightest bit of red to suggest the fallen pine needles left over from autumn, faded and crushed to a dusty mulch by a long season beneath the winter snows. It looks almost the way I want. Almost.
I push my chair back, squint at the painting, up at the mountains, back to my painting. Almost without thinking I lean to the side until my hand grazes the ground. I gather a small handful of soil, brush my fingers against each other above my palette, like a chef adding a pinch of seasoning to a dish. I blend the soil into my paint with a palette knife, dip my brush into it, feel the grit beneath the bristles. Touch brush to canvas.
* * *
Friday morning I drive to the tiny library in town, park beside Fanny Gordon’s station wagon in the otherwise empty lot. The library is just a single room, with two shelves of books for adults and two for children, a handful of magazines, bound copies of the Miner and the Elk Fork Chronicle, a pair of computers. The collection skews toward true crime and romance, reflecting the tastes of Prospect’s most voracious readers.
I’ve borrowed the few art books dozens of times. My favorite is on Caravaggio, though it smells of mildew and many of the pages are creased or torn. The first time I checked it out, I didn’t think I would like the paintings; they seemed dark, the shadows too pronounced. But then the light caught my eye. The way each painting celebrated it, even if there seemed to be only the scarcest amount, only the yield of the smallest window or a single flame. Chiaroscuro, the book said. Shadow and light.
Fanny glances up from behind the checkout desk when I enter. “Jo, dear. How are you?”
I gauge her interest at half genuine concern, half quest for gossip. For a moment I imagine the reckless release of answering honestly—I feel like I can’t breathe. I check the radio a dozen times a day to make sure no one has died because of my brother’s bomb. I lied to the sheriff and I think he knows it—but anything I tell Fanny will be common knowledge this time tomorrow. “Oh,” I tell her instead, keeping my voice neutral, “I’m as well as can be expected.” I turn away before it occurs to her to ask exactly how people in my situation can be expected to be.
The table holding the public computers is too high—my hands nearly at the level of my chin when I rest them on the keyboard—but I can see the screen clearly enough. I call up the website for the plein air festival in Elk Fork, plug in the flash drive I brought. The selection committee requires two sample images, and I choose one landscape and one equine painting.
I set to work filling out the brief application form. One question asks why I want to participate in the festival, and I compose a bland answer about sharing art with the community. The selection committee will like that reply, certainly more than the first ones that came to mind: I want to know if I’m good enough. I need money and hope I can sell a painting at the festival auction for more than I can at a gas station. I’m tired of trying and failing to paint the house I’m losing. I want to not think about my brother and what he did for one day, just one day. I click in the final empty field on the form, the one that asks my name. Let the cursor blink. Josephine, I type, and then: Grady. My mother’s maiden name.
I click “submit” before I can change my mind.
* * *
The storm comes on suddenly. The morning was hotter than those preceding it, the sky a flawless blue from one mountain range to the other. My first hint that something has changed is the startling sound of the broken shutter upstairs slamming into the side of the house. It comes again, and I’m braced for it this time. Through the kitchen window, I see the tops of the ponderosa pines arch, straighten, arch more deeply with the next gust. A thin branch snaps off one of the trees and the wind flings it to the ground as sharply as a dart.
The clouds arrived without my noticing, but now they move so swiftly I can watch their eastward progress against the still ridge of the mountains. Lightning forks suddenly and I blink against its brightness; the thunder comes several seconds later, a rumble rather than a roar. The worst of the storm might miss us. Might go north.
Might not.
I pull on a sweatshirt and go outside. Lockjaw prances along the paddock fence line, nostrils flared. Another gust of wind—I duck my head and grab tight to the handrims of my chair to keep from being blown off the path—and a bigger limb breaks off another tree. It falls a few yards before being caught in the arms of its brother branches. Lockjaw brays, the sound pitched higher than usual, cutting through the din of the wind and the increasingly frequent thunder.
“Easy, Muley,” I call, but Lockjaw doesn’t so much as flick an ear in my direction. A storm like this sent her through the fence when she was younger.
I cross the bridge over the creek and the wind-buffeted water pushes its way above the wooden boards and licks at my tires. Another fifteen yards—easy, the wind at my back—and I’m in the barn. The rain starts suddenly, gray sheets coming in gusts, the sound like handfuls of gravel thrown hard at the aluminum roof. I go to Lockjaw’s stall, pull the door open. “Hey, Muley!” I call again. “Hey, Lockjaw!”
This time Lockjaw turns at the sound of my voice, begins trotting toward the barn. Another boom of thunder and she spooks sideways, tossing her head in the rain, eyes rolling to the whites. “Come on, Lockjaw. It’s all right, girl.” She lopes into the stall and stops with a snort a few inches shy of me. I reach up and stroke her shoulder, feel trembling beneath my palm. Mules are generally steady creatures, and Lockjaw steadier than most, but storms are her weakness. “There’s a good girl,” I soothe. “You’re okay now.” I pull shut the exterior door leading to the pasture.
Some horses and mules panic and hurt themselves if stalled during a storm, but Lockjaw always seems to feel safer inside. I don’t blame her. The barn is fragrant with orchard grass, the air is still, and the battering rain has steadied to a regular drum on the roof. Even after the power goes out, all the lights snapping off at once, the barn feels secure. The storm continues to send hard gusts against the building, the beams creaking beneath the weight of the wind, and the thunder comes every minute or so, but the wild look fades from Lockjaw’s eye.
I wonder if Samuel is close enough to see this storm, to feel the brunt of it. He hates thunder almost as much as Lockjaw. I asked him why once, and all he said was, Dad used to tell me it sounded like a rockburst.
Another crack, not thunder but something else, louder and more immediate, and then a thud I feel in my chest. I go to the doorway of the barn, squinting against the rain, and see one of the pines on its side across the creek. I appreciate the tree’s height only now that it’s fallen; eighty feet is easier to understand stretched across soil than reaching toward sky. It stood on the far bank; now its top lies just a few yards from the barn doors, clusters of pine needles swaying almost at my feet. I’d liked the tree—it shaded my bedroom window as a child, and a family of gray squirrels often nested in its branches—but they’d have cut it when they tore down the house, so I don’t spare much grief for it. Probably won’t even bother to have it removed.
Except, I see now, it’s fallen squarely across the bridge. The wooden planks are entirely hidden beneath the thick trunk and the broad reaches of needle-clothed branches. I roll down the path as far as I can, but the tree blocks my way when I’m still well short of the bridge. The creek is at its highest this time of year, but the water is still no more than eighteen inches deep. It’d be nothing if I could walk. But the banks are steep near the barn, the creek bottom soft and silty.
I could saddle Lockjaw, ride across. But the storm will leave her on edge for the rest of the day; it would be a risk to ride her. And I slipped once trying to use my mounting bar after a rainstorm, the wet metal too slick to get a strong grip on. Even if I did ride back to the house, my chair would still be on this side of the creek. It feels like one of those logic puzzles I hated so much in school.
My cell phone is in the bag on the back of my chair. I return to the barn and open my contacts list. Samuel. Hawkins. Fuel Stop. That’s all.
I dial Hawkins. Three rings, then his terse voice mail prompt. I hang up. He’ll be busy after a storm like this. I try again, same result. Hawkins hasn’t spoken to me since he drove me home in silence from the Knock-Off Sunday, since I told him South Dakota yet again. He’ll answer if he sees my name on his phone, though. Surely after the storm. I wait half an hour, dial a third time. Nothing.
I try Fuel Stop—One Bear isn’t exactly a friend, but he’d probably help me—but I get a busy signal. The landlines must be out.
The thunder has stopped, the wind eased, the rain still falling but not so fiercely. I’m wet from going outside to look at the tree, though, and the storm has left the air cool. I rub my hands hard up and down my upper arms.
I could call 911. This isn’t what I’d call an emergency, but I might feel differently in a few hours. I wondered if the agent outside the gate would come investigate the fallen tree, but he hasn’t, and despite my predicament, I’m glad. Still, I could call and ask to be put through to the FBI; Devin would probably love an excuse to come rescue me.
There must be someone else. Something of a marvel that I can live in such a small town for such a long time and not really know anyone. Oh, I know names, faces. I know jobs and families and histories and every kind of gossip. I say hello in stores and nod across parking lots, but that’s it. That’s the way it’s been since Mom died. Samuel and I kept to ourselves. It seemed safer that way. I’ve never really needed anyone but him.
I hold my breath, call his cell. The number you have dialed …
Of course not.
I reach into my bag again. My fingers find the card just where I left it the night the pastor gave it to me. Haven’t even looked at it until now. Asa Truth, it says. Below that: Pastor, Light of the World Church. He’s crossed out the printed phone number, beside it written My cell, and a number. I hold the card between thumb and forefinger, tap its edge against my thigh. Take a deep breath. Dial.
One ring, two, three.
“Hello?” The voice cautious, a little steely. He’s probably received as many calls from reporters and strangers as I have, if not more. And he’s waiting for news just as I am. Hoping for it, fearing it.
“Hi,” I say. The word comes out raspy, and I clear my throat. “Um, this is Jo. Josephine,” I add, and finally, “Faber.”
A moment’s silence.
“You gave me your card?” The rain starts to let up, as though softening its strikes against the barn roof to match the fragile weight of my words. “I was…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. Don’t know what I was thinking. “Never mind. This was a mistake. I—”
“No,” the pastor says quickly. “No, I’m glad you called.”
“I shouldn’t have.” I wish the card had been in the house, safely on the far side of the creek. I’ve opened a door I should have kept closed. “I just … I didn’t know who else to call.”
“What’s wrong?” He’s gentled his voice, sanded down the startled, harsh edges of his earlier words.
I grip the phone tightly, think about hanging up. Already I can guess the pastor is the sort to call me back. “We had a storm just now,” I say. “A big one. I don’t know if you caught any of it down in Elk Fork.”
“There was some rain.”
“I came outside to bring our molly into the barn. Our mule. She hates thunder.” I squeeze my eyes shut, shake my head. “One of our pines came down in the storm. There’s a creek runs the length of the property between the house and the barn, and the tree’s over the bridge.”
“You’re on the barn side?”
“It’s not a big creek, but with my wheelchair…”
“I’ll come right away.”
“You don’t—”
“Do you have a chain saw?”
“I … I don’t know if there’s gas in it.”
“I’ll stop and get some.”
I hear him moving on the other end of the line, metal clinking against something hard, the rough brush of cloth against cloth. This isn’t what I expected. Yes, I’d hoped he could help, but I feel as though part of me is still arguing against calling him at all, and now things are moving so fast; he’s moving so fast. “I tried to reach a friend,” I say, “but he didn’t answer. This isn’t—I shouldn’t have called.”
“I’m leaving now,” the pastor says. “Tell me where to go.”
* * *
He arrives in just over an hour and a half, which means he drove much too fast, especially accounting for a stop at a gas station. He pulls up alone in a dark green SUV; I watch warily as he steps out of the vehicle and unfolds his tall frame. Despite the pastor’s willingness to come, something like shame or fear circles and nags at the relief I feel.
I wheel from the darkness of the barn onto the path that’s now dappled with sunlight. “Hello,” I call, lifting one hand in a cautious wave.
He looks toward me for only a moment. “I see your problem,” he says, nodding to the fallen tree.
I stop a couple yards from the edge of the creek, behind what were once the tree’s highest reaches. The pastor matches my distance on the far side. He wears jeans, a chamois shirt, and lightly scuffed work boots, safety goggles in one hand and a red gas can in the other. The clothes don’t suit him; they’re outdoorsy, and he seems like a man who ought to be on a stage. “Thank you for coming.” There’s so much more to say, and no good way to say it—none that I can think of—so I point behind him. “The chain saw is in that shed. It’s not locked.”
He nods, and I return to the doorway of the barn to watch him work. He paces the edge of the creek, crouching once to peer at the bridge beneath the tree. It takes him three tries to start the chain saw, but he’s methodical once he has it going, chooses his cuts with care. He doesn’t appear as at ease with this kind of work as Samuel, who moves with an economy and efficiency few can match, but he’s careful and deliberate, and makes good headway in a relatively short time.
There’s nothing I can do to help, and I try not to mind. There’s a lot I can do—far more than I expected immediately after my injury, when even many simple
tasks seemed overwhelming—but there remain a few things I cannot, and this is one of them.
When the pastor has most of the branches off the tree, he looks at the creek and then, without any visible hesitation, steps into the water, boots and all, and continues cutting the branches he couldn’t reach from the far bank. He stumbles once, goes down on one knee in the water, and I gasp, but the chain-brake kicks in. He keeps the saw out of the water, restarts the chain, and continues with his work, never sparing so much as a glance in my direction.
More than an hour has passed by the time the pastor pushes the last round of trunk away from the bridge. The fallen tree still sprawls on either side of the creek, but now there’s a gap in the middle, and the path and bridge are thickly dusted with fresh sawdust but otherwise clear. The sun has sunk below the western ridgeline, the first evening star already brightly visible in the darkening sky. The power has come back on, and the barn lights glow behind me as I roll down the path and across the bridge. The sawdust’s scent pierces the rain-cleansed air, and I try not to think of Samuel. “Thank you,” I say.
The pastor pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, mops the sweat from his face. “Felt good to work.” He glances at the piles of branches and rounds of trunk on the bank, at the rest of the tree’s body. “You’ll have plenty of firewood for winter.”
Samuel always seasons pine at least a year, though he says six months will do in a pinch. Doesn’t matter now. “Gotta be out of here before then,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t. Nod. Smile. Agree. Shouldn’t have been hard.
“I forgot,” the pastor says. “I saw in the paper. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.” I glance at the pastor’s soaking boots, his muddy jeans, his sweat-stained shirt. I wish I could not notice them. I wish I had been able to reach Hawkins. I wish my mother hadn’t taught me to be polite. “Um … I understand if you just want to get going, but it’s a long way to drive in wet clothes.” I pause, to see if the pastor will preemptively decline the offer I haven’t yet voiced. “I could dry them if you want.” Another pause. “Maybe get you something to eat.”