Deb said, “The buffer is seventy-two feet here and only sixty-one feet downstream. Aren’t they supposed to survey and flag this area before they cut?”
Martin measured the buffer himself. Sighing, he said, “Why don’t we move farther upstream and make sure they were consistent in their inconsistencies?” Jess watched him look down at his feet and move slowly up along the small stream, Miranda following close behind. Jess called for Miko and walked up to Deb, not sure what she wanted to say but feeling as if she needed to say something, connect with her in some way. But Deb turned away and walked down to the streambed.
Jess had thought she was finished with schoolyard battles and crushes. She walked over to the cedar stumps and traced the edges of the new cut with her fingers, wishing there were some way to end the struggles she constantly felt and to relax for just a moment in a clear place, where the splash of spawning salmon and the roll and rise of a free-flowing river could wash through her, cleansing her and assuring her that she was home.
She walked back to her pack. Deb had gone off to another group, and Martin was way upstream now, working on the buffer measurements with Miranda. It was almost one thirty. Calling to Miko, Jess walked to her car, the sun washing over the small valley, illuminating the torn hillsides with the special, fresh light that fills the air in late fall. Miko charged by her to the truck, ready for whatever was next.
PIAH
The dark current pooled behind the boulder where Piah was waiting for Lamoro to bring the herbs for their sick people. Libah, nestled against Piah’s back in her elk-skin wrap, moved in her sleep. A pair of spawning salmon splashed in the shallows just downstream from where Piah was waiting, and she started. The fall rains had come again in time to call the salmon from their ocean homes up into the arms of the Nesika and the lives of the animals and humans who depended on their return. Piah stood up slowly and looked out into the dimming light for Lamoro.
Lamoro was one of the medicine women who tended Piah’s people. She was the one to whom the spirits had come with the remedy for the fire illness that was sweeping through the small family tribe in the high mountains near the headwaters of the Nesika. The other tribes that lived in the valleys below were also getting the strange disease. The spirits had told Lamoro to gather willows from the low-lying areas and bring them to Piah’s people. These were what Piah was waiting for now.
She heard rustling on the forest floor and turned to see Lamoro struggling up the hill with a large bundle of willow branches lashed to her back. Piah went silently to her side and lifted the bundle off Lamoro.
“These will help,” Lamoro said, more to the willow than to Piah. Piah could see she was shaking from her effort and put her hand on Lamoro’s shoulder to steady her.
“Thank you.” Piah shouldered the bundle next to her baby on her back and helped Lamoro over the large stones up the mountain to where their people were waiting.
Their camp had grown sullen with so many ill. Smoke rose from the fire that the elders made each night for the sweat lodge. Piah could hear their songs vibrating through the stones around her as they chanted to the spirits, pleading with them for healing.
Lamoro sat with the women near the cooking shelter and began to show the others how the spirits had instructed her to strip the bark from the willows and pound it into a paste. Piah tasted the paste. It was bitter and seemed to suck all the moisture from her mouth. It was a familiar taste from her childhood, when her mother tried to sweeten the willow tea with dried elderberry.
The women worked into the dark, peeling and pounding the paste with the stones they used to grind berries and dried salmon into their food. Piah took some of the paste to the shelter where the sick ones were drying off after the sweat lodges. She carefully covered her mouth with a cedar cloth as she entered the low-lying earthen home and gave each of them a small amount of the willow paste in water. Some spat it to the ground, others swallowed, and some, too weak to open their mouths, slept and would get their medication in the morning.
Piah looked around her at the disfigured faces in the low flames of the evening fire. Some were swollen, with weeping sores; the ones whose sores had scabbed over were the most sick. She looked over at one of the old women. It was Piah’s aunt. She was slumped over, not moving, and Piah knew she had died. She slowly backed out of the shelter and stood looking into the dark arms of the cedar trees that surrounded their home.
In the distance, Piah could see a hovering light. In the center of the light was the face of the man she had seen in her vision when she was at the stone circle, praying for Mian and his journey. He was laughing. Piah clenched her hands and wanted to shout at the strange man to leave, leave and take the disease with him. Then he was gone and Piah turned to find her father.
Piah sat in the doorway of her family’s home and watched as the men carried the body from the healing shelter. Lamoro stood next to her and placed a welcoming hand on Piah’s head. Piah drew closer to her.
“The willow bark is helping those with the fever. Others seem more restful. Can you go with me tomorrow to get some more? It grows only in the lower valley and is very far. If we can gather enough, we won’t have to go back down there for many days.”
“Yes, Lamoro.” Piah shifted her nursing baby to the other breast and carefully petted her soft black hair. She felt the healing power of Lamoro pulse through her and into Libah. They would be safe from the disease, from the spirit that laughed at her from the arms of the dark trees.
The next morning, Piah fed Libah and left with Lamoro to go down into the lower valleys. Usually they went down there only in the winter, when the other tribes were gone. Now, it was dangerous for them to go. The lower tribes had been known to kidnap and enslave the men and women from Piah’s tribe. Especially now, when so many were dying, kidnapping was becoming a way to replace the lost relatives. Piah heard others call this the Mourning Wars.
Watching Lamoro flow gracefully over the large river boulders, Piah could see her strength and her power carry her to the medicine she needed for her people, her role as healer seeming to be a kind of weight and strength she was giving herself and her life over to. The basalt canyon narrowed sharply before opening into the wide river valley below. Piah knew they would have to go almost as far as the colliding rivers before they found the willow. She worried that going so far would keep her away from Libah for too long, and that her own breasts would begin spilling unused milk before she would be with her baby again, but she knew other mothers would feed her daughter. She looked into the billowing white water pouring down the canyon. The Nesika, which nourished Piah’s family much as the milk of Piah’s body nourished Libah. The bodies of the spent salmon and eels that the river pulled from the faraway sea layered its banks, feeding the plants, the willows they were seeking now to help Piah’s people.
JESS
The Nesika Lodge was an old, familiar, wood-stained structure. Jess had been here for her high school senior prom dinner with her date, a tall, awkward boy named Dale. The sun was slanting through the trees, just catching the edge of the river as it turned behind the hundred-year-old log building. She sat in her truck for a minute, absentmindedly brushing Miko’s ears. He put his head down on his large paws and looked up into her eyes.
“Well, Miko, here it goes. I just need to remember why I’m doing this.”
Miko answered with his watery, hopeful gaze and thumped his tail.
As she opened the heavy, carved-wood door, her arm felt weak and her hand shook. Jeff was sitting at the corner table, playing with the bill of his dark green hat. He looked up, pushing his dark brown, curly hair away from his face. He stood a little too quickly and walked toward her. It was so good to see him. Jess wanted to run into his arms, like in the old love story, but she could smell the damp concrete between them and backed away.
“Jeff, hi. Thanks for meeting me.”
“It’s okay. Yeah, I know. It’s good to see you, Jess. Really good.” He sat back down in his chair and almost misse
d his seat.
Behind him on the lodge wall was a beautiful, large photo of Tom McCall, a well-liked former Oregon governor who loved to fly-fish on the river. There were fly rods hanging overhead and a large glass display case showing the many hundreds of hand-tied feather flies that could be used to seduce the fish of the Nesika. Jess was familiar with most of them; she had collected many of the more exotic “species” and learned how to tie some of the flies on her own.
“How was Alaska?” Jess asked.
Their waitress interrupted them. Jess asked for coffee with cream and a glass of water with no ice. Jeff asked for decaf coffee and a slice of apple-blueberry pie. Smiling absently, the waitress took their menus and they refocused on the table in front of them.
Jeff shifted continuously in his seat. She noticed his hands, streaked with mud, nails broken from working with equipment like the underwater cameras they had used the first day they’d met. Jess could almost smell the forest from that day, the damp, insistent rain, the ease of their quiet moments, and the warmth of their intimacy and passion.
“Alaska was good. The project was pretty clear-cut—to use an apt metaphor for that area. The Tongass is a really big place, so much bigger than the patchwork forests we have here. We saw a lot of bears and eagles, and the streams were choked with salmon. You ever been up there?”
“Yeah, remember, I told you about the summer I crewed on an old fishing boat for a seminar on whales?” Jess said. “We went up into Frederick Sound and listened to the humpbacks sing to each other and scoop the krill from the water. I loved it—it’s amazing yet unexplainable.”
“It really is.” Jeff looked up into her eyes, and for a moment Jess let his gaze rest in hers. “I didn’t get a chance to go out into the sound. We mostly took flow measurements up on the Brooks River. You would have loved it, Jess. The rivers up there have to get down to sea level in a hurry, so they really move. The rapids are crazy, almost like a steady waterfall.”
Looking up at him across the table, Jess liked the mental image of Jeff sitting next to the Brooks, thinking of her, feeling their connection pulling him, the flow of a fast, high Alaskan river reminding him of his love and care for her. She looked up into his brown eyes and saw the hurt and the shimmer of recognition that she had expected.
Jess took in the familiar light in his eyes. He was so smart; she loved the lucidity of his mind. She half listened to what he was saying but mostly focused on her feelings rising up in response to his opening up to her. At the same time, she felt her ideals, like a pillar that stood inside her, beginning to deflect her sensitivity to her memories.
For a moment, Jess imagined that even though they had been apart, separated by oceans, they might have been communicating in an old way. She remembered a time when they had sat in the sun along the Nesika, a time when their bodies had seemed continuous and she was certain in love. “Remember that Marge Piercy poem I read when we were camping in the hills above the Nesika last spring—‘Perpetual Migration’?” Jess closed her eyes and recited, “The salmon hurtling upstream seeks the taste of the waters of its birth but the seabird on its four-thousand-mile trek follows charts mapped on its genes.”
Jess caught herself and looked down at her hands in her lap. Her throat tightened, and she felt like apologizing, for wandering into this memory, this tender, private place of connection that she so missed, so longed for in her life. She knew that this sense of connection, of something from an older time, was holding her to her work, to her vision, and to her desire to save the river.
“Hey, Jeff, sorry. I miss you. You know that right?”
How could I have just said that? She wanted to run from the café. She gripped the edge of her chair. Suddenly, the clatter of the café sounds around her grew louder. She knew she had to hold herself—the flight instinct gripping her felt as strong as the steady migration toward her desire that she had experienced moments before.
Jeff reached his hand quickly toward hers across the table. “Jess, it’s all right. I miss you, too—of course I do. When we broke up, you have no idea how much I wanted to follow you, try to save you somehow, but I knew I couldn’t. I was so sorry about your job and what they did to you. You must know that. I kind of just put my head down, kept doing my job . . .” Jess noticed he stopped himself before he headed over that cliff. “You know I can’t help you right now. I have my job, and I know that if the dam had come down, it would have been amazing, for us, for the salmon. But it didn’t and it isn’t. Maybe Rich is just trying to show you why.”
They sat together in silence. Jess felt her breath high in her chest and her heart beating a strange, strong pattern. Playing with the curved handle of her coffee cup, Jess relaxed into the vortex of feelings swirling around her.
“More coffee?” the waitress asked, almost on cue.
“Sure, that would be great,” Jess said.
Just outside the window from their table was the old apple tree that had been there as long as the lodge had. The branches were bare, and a few small apples clung to the higher limbs. Jess watched a small chickadee bounce from branch to branch, and she longed for a moment of similar innocence.
“He seems to be pretending that he just discovered the whole thing, like he had nothing to do with the wording that was changed in the watershed analysis. Damn, he makes me so mad. He’s like you. It’s like trying to work with a Gumby doll that gets bent into whatever shape the people in authority want him to be in. You know how I felt about all that.” Jess felt the heat rise in her as she leaned against her wooden chair back. “So what he did was somehow ‘find’ these notes in his office and give them to me. Why would he have done that?”
Jeff looked down at his half-eaten pie and didn’t answer.
“You know what I think? I think you believe that because they’re paying you to believe that. Our science was sound and conclusive. The report was created, and I, a state employee, and you, a scientist for a private corporation, based the conclusions in the report on our findings. I’m going to meet with Planet Justice lawyers, and we are most likely going to bring a lawsuit.”
Now he spoke: “Oh, Jess, that’s going to be a waste of your time. I really doubt PowerCorp is very concerned about a lawsuit . . .” Jeff stopped himself and looked out the window.
Jess kept her eyes locked on her coffee cup, her hands clenched under the table. She didn’t enjoy feeling like some peon being lectured to. She was the one with the PhD. “Jeff, I know that we’re now living in very different worlds, but I also know we both want what’s best for the salmon, for the river.” Her anger balled up inside her chest, and her face flushed with heat. She didn’t want to cry, to lose herself in front of him. Pinching the skin on the back of her hand, she avoided his eyes so he wouldn’t see the fury of the storm raging in her heart. “And I know you know what is wrong, too.”
“We do want the same thing. I envy your tenacity. I see the sacrifices you’ve made, and they’re impressive. And I’m sorry. I absolutely understand what you’re doing, and mostly I think I understand why. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you.”
Loved about me. Jess let silence surround them and the voices of the other diners take over. Her body raced with confusion and something like desire, and she choked back the impulse to say, Come home. It was as if she were looking at Jeff across a great chasm, the river flowing steadily in the canyon below them. Shaking herself, she refocused on why she was here, what she was trying to get from him.
“They never formally charged me with anything, you know.”
“I heard they couldn’t find enough evidence to, but that your computer was the source of the file and that Suzie went missing not long after you were fired from the agency.”
“Yeah, she did—I heard she’s somewhere in Florida. I feel bad for those boys. Mink is doing better, thank God. It could have been so much worse than it was. They’ll do their time, and that’s a drag, I just wish their time meant something. That’s one of the reasons I’m going
ahead with the lawsuit—and that’s why I’m asking for your help. You were at those meetings, and you know the details of how those decisions were made. You became the main scientist for the new watershed analysis—”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, the changes that Power-Corp is proposing should give the salmon access to the spawning grounds that the dam has blocked. The best lawsuit will never change their minds.”
“Okay, I get it.” Jess pushed back her chair. “Want to see Miko? He’s out in the truck. We’ve been hanging out with Martin at the ground-truthing they’re doing up at Blanch Creek. Miko loves ground-truthing . . .” Jess darted a knowing look at Jeff and watched his body stiffen. She wanted to ask him about the truth—if that mattered to him.
“Did you meet Deb?” he asked.
The feeling between them plunged.
“Yeah, she was there. We didn’t talk much, and she wasn’t too interested in getting to know me, but that’s okay.”
Jess scanned the books near the door while Jeff paid the check at the cash register. Mark Twain and other river books, fishing manuals, and a small collection of nature essays lined the crooked shelves. They walked out to the truck in silence. The river was lined with golden alders and cottonwood, and the late-afternoon air was cooling quickly. Miko jumped up in the front seat, wagging with pure dog exuberance at seeing Jeff.
“Hey, boy, how are ya?”
Miko jumped from the truck and twirled in excitement.
“C’mon, Miko,” Jess called out, walking toward the trail behind the lodge, down to the long slope of the Nesika’s west bank.
Miko bounded ahead, and Jess instinctively moved close to Jeff’s side. She could feel the tingle of his presence, and body memories of their lovemaking surged through her. Remembering the lace of the vine maples on the fall day they had made love in the hot springs made Jess feel weak and vulnerable. She pushed her hands hard into her pockets to stop from reaching out to him. The brush of his slick black PowerCorp jacket against her arm sent a charge through her torn heart.
The Same River Page 12