She opened her door, and Miko bounded ahead of her to her truck. He jumped into the cab, and Jess backed carefully out of the driveway. She turned on the local rock station and turned up the highway toward the river.
She decided to stop on her way to see Rich. It was a strange impulse, she thought, but he had been somewhat forthcoming with the documents from the earlier watershed analysis, and now he was going to be retiring in a few months. She wanted to make sure she had copies of everything she needed before he left.
The Forest Service parking lot was practically empty, and Jess wished she had called first. Oh well. She parked and slowly got out of her truck. Her leg was still weak, and she had to concentrate more on keeping her balance. She opened the large glass door and stepped into the entry area. A new receptionist greeted her in a formal tone. “May I help you?”
“Sure, I’m Jess Jensen, and I was wondering if Rich was in. I don’t have an appointment. I was just stopping by.”
“I think so. Let me check.” The young man turned to his phone and quickly dialed Rich’s extension. Jess wanted him to recognize her, know who she was—past worker who had been fired for caring too much, or the young woman who had been in the news for days—attacked by a mountain lion, no sign of the killer cat. But no, he didn’t know who she was.
“Yeah, Rich is in. He said to come on back.”
Pushing through the swinging doors separating the public from the offices, Jess walked the long, dark-wood-paneled hall to Rich’s office in the back.
“Hey, Rich, sorry to drop in like this, but I thought it might be okay.”
“It’s fine, Jess. Come in and sit down. It’s always good to see you. Are you doing okay?”
Jess resented the faux delicacy with which people treated her. “I’m fine. My leg is getting stronger, and I’ve stopped seeing blue Moonies sailing around my room at night.” She always guessed everyone must think she was a little crazy and had decided early on that maybe she was, and, well, she could share some of the fun.
“That’s good to hear. I’m actually really glad you came by. I’ve decided to write an article for the paper about what’s happened with the relicensing project, with the dam, and with you and the others who were involved. Now that I’m retiring, I have little to lose, and it seems with the press these days there may be more sympathy to the cause than there was two years ago. I just want to make sure I don’t say something about you and your story that you aren’t comfortable with.”
She looked up at him. She sensed, almost smelled, betrayal—the same feeling she had had that morning. Maybe it was something they were all carrying, a shared participation, a shared knowing, that what they were doing was harmful, and because of that they were motivated to keep working, to care, to try.
“It would be a good idea to let me read whatever you have to say. There are some parts of what happened to me that I would like to keep private. But write what you want, and let me know when you’re ready for me to read it. I was also wondering if there are any files or meeting notes that you may have regarding the transaction between PowerCorp and ODFW. I feel like there’s still something missing. Maybe it’s just a conversation no one knows about, but I wanted to check with you.” She felt like an echo in his office, as if she had been in this chair, asking this question, before. She had, and she would keep coming back to this chair until she believed there was nothing left to find.
Rich looked at her with a false smile. Jess felt again as if she wanted to run out of his office, and got up to leave.
“Well, Jess, here are copies of the relevant chapters in the final environmental impact statement, if you think they might be helpful. Let’s see . . . here’s a folder that has to do with the fish passage recommendations for the Green Springs.” He handed the manila folder to Jess. “You know, sometimes these things just happen and you’re better off to let them go.”
Backing through the door, Jess let his diminishment of her fall flat in front of him. “Let me know when you have that article done.” She knew he was waiting for an “atta boy” from her, but it wasn’t coming.
Miko was waiting, panting happily, in the cab of her truck. She rolled down the window and turned up her music. They were going upriver. As she drove, she felt the web she was woven into: one that she both was trapped in and had had a hand in weaving. She felt the familiar pull of the Nesika coaxing her upstream, weaving her visions of a child, salmon sliding through a dark slit in the fabric, lamprey eel flowing in dark rivers below this one, rivers of extinction. Jess wanted to stop them from leaving, help them find their way back home. She saw her young, blond daughter standing on the bank of the river, pointing to the splash of spawning salmon. That’s right—you will know what to do, sweetheart.
PIAH
Piah stood up from the river and brushed off her naked body. Her hair was caked with mud, and her body was tired from crying. A fierceness rose in her, and she stretched her back in the sun. Looking down at herself, she could see the scratches from the rocks. She untangled the mud from her hair, shaking it loose and breathing in the warmth of the living, quietly steadying her breath with her heartbeat and the rhythm of the rushing river. Then, closing her eyes, she began to sing her power song and opened to the spirits and forces around her. The cadence of her singing carried her into the place of visions, beckoning her into a widening vortex. But she no longer felt afraid here; she felt only determination emanating from the scar in her heart. She sat down on the soft riverbank and saw the river spirit walking away from her, summoning her to the edges of her vision. She wanted to show Piah something. Piah followed.
Below them was an opening into a clearing. Through the clearing ran a smooth river that seemed to be made of blue light. Piah extended her hand, and a beautiful tendril of the river of light reached toward her. Recognition and a calling-out passed through her, connecting her to the river and to something else.
She sat down carefully next to the water. The spirit of the Nesika hovered close behind her, seeming to urge her toward the river of light. Piah waited by the river and felt a question rise in her: What is killing my people, my family, Libah? We always knew how to care for one another until now.
She suddenly felt very cold and reached back toward the spirit of the Nesika. She was afraid, sensing that something or someone was watching her and knowing something was going to be asked of her—something dangerous and threatening.
From the depths of the river of light, a vision rose up, a brightly colored, woven circle filled with images of salmon, plants, people, and the river itself. Some of the people looked like the bearded man from her other vision, some were women, and some were light-haired children. Piah stared for a long time, as the woven circle grew larger and larger. The light from the river threaded through the images, holding them together, the salmon with the people, the trees with the children and the animals. Piah lay back and watched the circle rise above her, growing larger, almost filling the sky.
As the circle began spinning faster and faster, the light from the river began to dim. Slowly, the salmon and the trees fell away, as if a thread that had held them to the circle had been pulled or broken. The faces of the people began to change, and the children started crying. She saw her own people, the rash covering their faces, turning and walking away. Salmon thrashed along the bank of the river as it receded and left them stranded. A sharp, high howl began to ring all around Piah. The river of light was dying. Piah saw large gray walls holding it back, choking the flow of the river. The howl grew louder. All the changes were happening so quickly. Piah wanted to reach out and catch the falling bodies, but she was held fast to the ground near the river.
When there seemed to be no end to the disintegration of the beautiful image, a woman’s face appeared before Piah’s. The woman seemed to be Piah’s age, light skinned and small; she was terribly wounded on her neck and head. Piah could see the blood running down her neck from what looked like a bite from some large animal. The woman was crying, and her tears wer
e blue light, like the river. Piah wanted to reach out to her, help her in some way, but knew that she couldn’t, wasn’t supposed to. She saw that the woman was bending over a bundle, a small child or infant, and Piah felt her heart break open. Her breasts started aching, and she felt a kinship with the child. Then another young woman was standing behind her. It was Tenas, her sister, but she didn’t look like Tenas. She looked like the woman, in some ways; she was the woman’s sister.
The older woman turned and looked right into Piah with her vast blue eyes. The blood from her wound meandered over her right shoulder, and she was shaking. The woven circle kept falling to pieces, and behind the wailing, Piah could hear the strange, rough sound of men laughing. Piah let the woman gaze into her and felt as if they were trying to say something to each other. Piah wanted to tend her wound, stop the bleeding, hold her infant, but she couldn’t move; the weight of the descending light held her in place. She felt the momentum of the vision and recognized the presence that had taken her own daughter away.
Piah saw the woman reaching out to the strange gray walls, trying to free the river. She saw her trying to grab on to the salmon with her one good arm as they slid into the darkness. She could tell that this woman was holding on to her life and her child, and trying to hold on to the river. In the blood running over the woman’s shoulder, Piah could see a strand of the blue light weaving in and out. The river had hurt this woman, too; her kinship with the river, what tied her to it, was the same wound.
Piah could see that what was happening to her people, to the song of the river, had to do with this woman and her wound. She sensed that the relationship with the child and with this wounded woman was important to what was going to happen to her people, to this land, and to the Nesika.
Piah came back to the present and slowly opened her eyes. It had grown almost dark, and the air was colder. Piah turned to climb up the cliff to where her clothes were. She stopped and listened to a strange sound coming from a clearing near the river. It sounded like the muffled bark of a wolf and the low growl of a hunting mountain lion. Piah looked back as she was climbing the cliff and saw what looked like a mountain lion dragging a small woman’s body off into the brush. Piah stopped and leaped off the cliff, shouting at the cat. Then the image vanished and the barking stopped. Piah watched the quieting pulse of the river in the dying light and finished her climb to the top.
She dressed and sat near one of the many stone piles. Remnants of her vision haunted her, and she tried to make sense of what it had meant. She had cut one of her hands as she was climbing the cliff; the blood running from the wound blended with the blue-light meandering of the river. She remembered the time she had seen Mian on his quest. The initiation into the relationship with spirit was a powerful and important time for Piah and everyone in her tribe. Where were the helping spirits now? How could she find her own power again?
An osprey dipped below her into the river and rose with something large and silver in her talons. Piah watched as the bird found her nest. Giving her babies life, diving into the river, and coming back with more life . . . Piah leaned against a rock pile and heard in the distance the cry of a mountain lion hunting for food for her young.
JESS
As Jess continued up the road along the Nesika, she turned down her radio and checked her cell phone for messages. There was one from her mom, about Suzie. “Shit,” Jess said out loud. What’s she doing back in town? Her leg ached, and she shifted in her seat.
She thought about calling her mom back, but images of Suzie, of the empty room, the bed ruffled and her stuff just gone, tugged at her. Even though Jess knew why Suzie had split, she still had a feeling of being torn in her lower abdomen, the sudden drop of another trapdoor opening under her.
A year ago today. And now she was driving back, in the daylight, with Miko, to the place where she had been attacked. She had been through there when she’d needed photos of the Green Springs dam, but she hadn’t taken the time to visit in a way that she intended to remember. And now Suzie was back, too.
Miko rode alongside her, swaying along with her turns on the highway. He looked up at her, and she felt an ever-present sadness from him, something that had been there since the attack. It felt like his big heart was sorry. Jess wondered what he remembered from that day, locked in the front seat of the pickup, imprisoned and helpless. But what if he hadn’t been there, if he had been out? Jess shuddered at the thought. He could have been killed, or wounded as deeply as she had been. She noticed a slight shade of gray showing around his black muzzle and knew that someday he would go and she would be here without him. Miko let out a sigh and appeared to get more nervous as they neared the dam. Jess reached over to him and felt tears rise in her eyes. They were going back, and they were going back together.
As she drove down the rough gravel, the long afternoon shadows from the Douglas firs danced on the road in front of her. She suddenly felt heavy, as if she were taking on a weight not her own. The rocky parking area opened up from the shadows, and the gold of autumn hung on the banks of the river like curtains. She felt the electrical charge of fear memory pulse through her.
The long light lit up the face of the dam, and Jess sat in her truck for a long time next to Miko, wondering if she should let him out or leave him in the cab. But maybe this was a chance for him to go with her, be next to her, try to find the pieces that had been left behind that day. He sniffed around and appeared more attentive than usual. The high whine of the turbines seemed to harmonize with her nerves, and the decaying smell of the late-afternoon fall river seemed stronger, more present.
She could be where the mountain lion had been that afternoon, pacing hungrily in the shadows, then following the scent of deer down to the water’s edge and finding her instead. The turbines’ sound blended with the rush of the Nesika, and Jess wanted to call out. Miko started barking at the splash of a spawning pair of winter chinooks in the shallows across the water.
Jess suddenly felt dizzy. The notes that Rich had given her were back in her truck, sitting on the front seat. It was possible there would be something in there that she could use for the lawsuit, something that would help persuade the judge.
She backed away from the river and turned toward her pickup. When she got to her truck, she pulled out the manila folder. She walked down to the edge of the darkening water and reached her hand into the sharp, cold current of the Nesika. She waited for a moment, then eased the folder of papers into the water. The current took the folder, and the paper swirled like white leaves floating downstream, the river like a woman’s hand separating the fibers carefully before beginning to weave. With that, Jess laid down her weapons. Her battle was ending, in some way; she was giving back to the body of the river the words preserving the dam that continued to hold the Nesika’s current prisoner. She stood to watch the last pages slip around a small rock, and she hoped that the river would know what to do.
When the papers were gone, Jess called to Miko and walked back up to her truck. How she had decided to put the notes in the river, she didn’t know, but she carried a new, lighter, clearer feeling and wanted to make sure she got back home safely.
Once she began to drive, on impulse she reached for her cell phone, called Jeff’s number, and left him a voice mail: “Hey, Jeff. I was wondering if you’d like to come to dinner tonight. Call me.” She hung up and smiled at Miko. She felt the bridge under her holding her as she reached out to him. Imagining Jeff getting the message, she knew he would say yes. And later, when she checked her messages, he had.
When Jess got home, it was dark. She wished she had left some lights on in the house. She grabbed the groceries out of the back of her truck and unlocked the front door. Just as the key turned in the lock, she heard someone walking up behind her.
“Jess?” said a rough female voice.
Jess whipped around. “Holy fuck, Suzie! Jesus, you scared me. Wow, where have you been? Mom said you were in town.”
“Yeah, Jess, sorry. God, are you
okay? I’ve been away—went to Florida, actually. It was all so fucking complicated with those guys getting busted and hurt.”
Jess threw on the porch light, which glinted off the many piercings along Suzie’s right ear. Her now white-blond short hair and heavily made-up dark eyes seemed like an exotic mask to Jess.
Memories of the attack rose around her, and the right side of her face began to twitch. Since the attack, most of the physical symptoms of her brain damage had disappeared. She noticed it only when she was startled or scared; her face began to twitch, and her thinking became disconnected.
Jess stepped into the shadows, hoping Suzie wouldn’t notice. “I know why you went; I just don’t get the disappearing act, Suzie. Fuck . . .”
Suzie looked away, and Jess spotted the tip of a tattoo on her neck, a snake or a dragon or something. “I know, but I’m back now. Can I come in?”
“Now is not a good time—Jeff is on his way over, and I have stuff to do. I don’t know, Suzie—maybe in a few days, but I’m pretty busy and my uncle is coming to town.”
“Jeff?” Suzie prompted, but when Jess just looked at her, she said, “Okay, well, let me give you my new number, and you can call me when you’re ready.”
Jess handed her a piece of paper and a pen. Suzie handed Jess her number, and Jess looked down at it and then backed away, saying, “Okay. I’ll call you in a few days.”
Once Suzie was gone, Jess sat down on the couch, thinking about her old friend, once so close to her, now crazy and fearsome. A sudden, striking smell filled the room, the salty-bloody scent of predator and prey. She held her hand to her face as if she were trying to quiet a restless child. She didn’t want Jeff to come in and see her like this.
The Same River Page 18