Vera Violet

by Melissa Anne Peterson

  Vera Violet

  Copyright © 2020 by Melissa Anne Peterson

  First paperback edition: 2020

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Peterson, Melissa Anne, 1981– author.

  Title: Vera Violet : a novel / Melissa Anne Peterson.

  Description: First paperback edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019014913 | ISBN 9781640092327

  Classification: LCC PS3616.E84348 V47 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014913

  Cover design by Nicole Caputo

  Book design by Jordan Koluch

  COUNTERPOINT

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10987654321

  To my parents,

  Melody and Scott,

  who always helped me

  CONTENTS

  Hell Out of Dodge

  Part 1

  1. Fighters

  2. Hillbilly Music

  3. As I Got Older

  4. Fourteen-Eye Oxbloods

  5. All Tears Flow Home

  6. When Mother Left

  Part 2

  7. The Northside

  8. Street Walking

  9. Soul Food

  10. Christmas

  11. On Reservation Road

  12. 6:30 A.M.

  13. La Llorona

  14. Duane

  15. The Big Cat

  16. What It Used to Be

  17. A Bad State

  18. Bremerton

  19. The Dance of the Ghetto

  20. Black Rocks

  Part 3

  21. Hair

  22. Junk

  23. The 1967 Mercury

  24. Honey Burst

  25. Gas Station Body

  26. Meat for Nadine

  27. Preacher’s Slough Road

  28. Nazi

  29. June in St. Louis

  30. Swamp Water

  31. Oily Snakes, Scared Hamsters, and Nightmare Spiders

  Back to the Hills

  Acknowledgments

  HELL OUT OF DODGE

  The Montana sky opened up and gave me snow. Snow to numb my wounds. Snow to cover my footprints. Snow to cushion the echo of the rifle as I fired it repeatedly.

  Eventually, my target became shredded and my pocket empty of bullets. I gathered my debris and sat on my tailgate. I watched the patient conifers gather white snowflakes. I was alone except for lodgepole pine and grand fir. I knew that if I lay down underneath the branches, the green needles would hide my body. If I curled up there, I would soon freeze. Scavengers would eat my flesh. But the trees would remain, untouched. Because my survival meant nothing. I would always be a wild thing crouching. Jubilant only for brief moments during times of plenty. Comfort was ephemeral. Passion short-lived.

  On the bench seat of my rusty white Ford was a .40-caliber handgun and a letter with ancient creases. I propped the rifle against the dashboard and climbed in next to the handgun and piece of paper. I tapped the snow from my boots and slammed the door. I had to crank the engine twice before it rumbled to life. At first the heater blew out cold air but soon the snow from my wool gloves melted onto the paper. I reread the words I had already memorized. The frantic pencil lines were faded and smudged. But they stood out plainly in the reflected light from winter snow:

  Vera Violet (my fighter),

  I’m staying here for a while, and I’m giving you this handgun (with 16 in the magazine). I have my sharpened, stainless steel blades, a compound hunting bow, graphite arrows, and a leather quiver. I have a cellar filled with these things (in a cabin on Granny’s property). I’ll save my pencils and notebooks. I’ll repeat my words and weigh them. I’ll lace my boots and visit the gravel pit to sight the rifles in and oil the barrels.

  I’m staying here to hunt. I’ll fish and gather berries and roots. There will be no disconnection between my body and the bodies of others. Between my food and the deer running. Between my pen and my ancestors or my boots and the dirt.

  I’ll fix my old truck and hope for the best. But I’ll prepare for the worst (when the credit runs out and someone has to start making payments). I know the time will come (it always does). I know it when the ocean tides ebb, and Oakland Bay looks weary. That’s when I see how the rats and coyotes and raccoons prepare themselves. They gather to feast. They get ready for the great selling-out (the going back on agreements . . . when everybody’s soft belly shows).

  I think the worst will come when the silver jets take off for the last time. That’s when the false fronts crumble and the past will reappear. I imagine those dead men and women rising, Hypochaeris and Scotch broom blossoming, the sun burning and maddening. That’s when the plastic melts and bubbles, cities burn to the ground, and the soft-handed men look back to see what is left.

  Only then, when their suits are torn to rags (when dirty fingernails dig in barren soil blindly). Only then, will they see us. Entire families. Like cockroaches. Like we always were. Each man, woman, and child with two feet planted in the too-real soil. Guarding our little piece. Fingers on our triggers. Smiling.

  I know it’s hard. I know you’re sad. But I also know these things will happen. Go find Mother. I’ll be there soon. Just keep your weapon near you (with 16 in the magazine).

  —Dad

  I finished reading and refolded the paper. I put it back into the glove box with the unloaded handgun and full magazine.

  One thousand miles away, the O’Neel family swampland gathered water. Fifth-wheel trailers slid down hillsides. Cabins sunk deeper into the soft, wet soil. My father struggled up a brambly hillside in the rain. He was hurried and anxious—desperately following the sloppy trail of a buck in a death-run who stumbled while bleeding. It was growing dark in Western Washington. Mosquitoes whined in the wet shadows that spread. A mountain lion smelled the fresh blood and screamed.

  I got out of the truck and crouched on the frozen ground in Montana. I took out my buck knife and slashed lines into the cold earth at my feet. The lines turned into letters, and when I finally turned my back to leave, a message was temporarily carved into the icy soil: It has been very hard to love you.

  Within minutes the sound of my engine died away. The words carved into the bitter ground were seen only by a hesitant bobcat who sniffed warily. Snow soon covered my tire tracks, and the sentence was lost forever.

  PART 1

  1

  FIGHTERS

  A long time ago, a scowling face with shaggy dark hair stared up at me during recess. The new boy wanted me to come down from the big wooden tower. He yelled with scrubbed hands cupped around a red mouth. The wind took away his words.

  Tanya, Tammy, and Sherrie stood around the thick pine logs with crossed arms. They would not let the new boy through. Because I was the leader. And I said who could climb the ladder to the top.

  I beat the boy after school. I did not say a word before or after. I beat him because he stood against the brick wall alone like he was a fighter. So I came up to him fast with a sucker punch. He doubled
over, and I pushed him down. I gave him a swift kick for good measure.

  As he lay in the mud gasping, I retreated and threw handfuls of pea gravel from the wooden tower where Tanya, Tammy, and Sherrie waited. It rained down on his curled form as he struggled for air. The fistfuls of small rocks were meant to tell him: I am a fighter. I was born for this.

  My body was tall and gangly. I was boyish and ugly with holey jeans and dirty clothing. I had devil-colored yellow hair that hung down in long greasy strands. Insatiable blue eyes. A face that glared.

  My teacher sent a note home to Mother. It told her I was “negatively influencing the other female students.” And I “incited them to violent acts.”

  Mother told me I had to stop and slapped me hard. She gave me extra chores. My brother, Colin, laughed. My sister, Mima, scoffed. My cheek burned and felt puffy where Mother’s hand slapped my face. But my wooden tower was the best place. I knew I would go back there. Day after day.

  Before I got on the school bus the next morning, Mother sighed and told me I did not fit my name: Vera Violet. “I named you after my mother and she was a gentle lady.” She told me Vera was my grandmother’s first name. And violet was the flower she loved best. A flower that grew in the prairies south of town. On mysterious humps of earth named mima mounds. Mother told me I didn’t act like her mother or those little purple blooms. She knew deep inside that I could not stop fighting. That I was born for it.

  When I got to school, the Fighter Boy got his revenge. He caught me at first recess. Real quick. He grabbed my arm and held it. It was picture day. They handed out little black combs for us to straighten our hair with. He had his in his front pocket. He took it out and swiped at my arm. He did it hard because I was squirming to get away. He used it like a knife. He got me right below the elbow where my skin was pulled taut.

  He didn’t think the black plastic would cut me. His eyes popped open wide in surprise when it did. He watched the blood drip to my wrist. He dropped my arm like it was hot metal, stared ferociously into my eyes, and grinned. The next instant, he turned tail and ran. I held my fingers over the wound and stared after him. A calculating calm settled in my young mind.

  That night, I dreamed of mima mounds covered in early blue violets. Undulating hills stretched on for miles. There was a zigzag fence. My black-and-white retriever ran beside me.

  The Fighter Boy waited on a mound with his arms crossed—frowning. Fescue brushed his pant legs. Violets blinked their purple faces among the green bunchgrass. Flowers covered the hills as far as we could see.

  Together, we walked through wet areas between mounds. We traveled deep. The standing water was warm and dark—it covered our knees. We slipped down farther, into a low spot between two bulges of earth. A space filled with calm and awe and secrets. A place of otherworldly hope and violence. Into the soil. The water heaved silently. It was over our heads. We were inside my female body. A womb. And it was filled with dark water.

  I woke from the dream in a strange mood that lingered. The night had offered a sensation that changed me. In the morning, I went to my wooden tower first thing like always. I looked out at the playground from my cold, windy, queenly position. I knew I felt different. I knew, as the rain came down, I loved the Fighter Boy.

  Small children are capable of great love. Love that overwhelms. Love that changes small worlds completely. Dangerous feelings that blot out everything.

  That day, a rumor rippled up and down the hallways of the grade school: The Fighter Boy was kicked out of school forever. The principal insisted on it. He saw how the Fighter Boy smashed the face of the older fifth grader (the would-be bully—the thief who robbed the Fighter Boy of his baseball cap).

  The rain still poured after school let out. Kids shivered inside their raincoats in the bus lines. I saw Tanya, Tammy, and Sherrie standing with their hands on their hips in front of the wooden tower. They waited.

  But I snuck out a hole in the back fence. I slid down the mud bank to the bottom where raging wastewater bubbled. I waited for my bus alone in the wet weeds. I threw rocks the size of pigeons into the muddy torrent of water. I counted the minutes out loud as I sat. My bus would take a long time yet.

  Tanya, Tammy, and Sherrie finally came to find me. They had to sneak down one by one. We were all dirty and wet and pressed close together. They sat next to the water with me. We threw rocks the size of starlings. And sticks as thick as pencils. I told them about mima mounds and purple flowers. Tammy smoked a cigarette. They left one at a time to catch their buses. Mine was the last—rural routes always took the longest.

  The wind picked up. My feet were numb inside my muck-caked rubber boots. My body grew stiff beside the stream of grimy runoff. I stayed there as the gusts blew my hair, the wind whipped the bare skin peeking through the holes in my jeans, and my ears grew red and ached. I listened to the breeze rustling the red alder leaves. I waited for the wind to carry the sound of the yellow school bus and the smell of diesel exhaust.

  I waited for the wind to return to me the words it had stolen. When the Fighter Boy yelled up at me—with scrubbed hands cupped around a red mouth.

  2

  HILLBILLY MUSIC

  My father was so good-looking he induced certain sounds in a viewer. His sideburns boasted reverb. His crooked smile was outlaw country music. The calluses on his palms made them rough-hewn lumber that boomed and thudded. His arms were heavy and powerful like Les Paul guitars.

  I called him Dad, and he worked swing shift, so I didn’t see him during the week. But on the weekends he told me stories in the driveway. I handed him tools while he hunched shirtless over his pickup that broke down a lot. He propped the hood open with a wooden stick, and I helped. It always took a long time.

  After the note came home from my teacher, he told me different things than usual. He told me about the prisoners with shaved heads who weren’t allowed to speak. In the hills among the big trees. The sawmills and logging camps. Douglas fir one thousand years old. I listened carefully to every word. I pictured shoulders hunched over loud machines. Blood boiling inside silent bodies. Anger. Frustration. Thick, dark forests. Before all the trees were cut down. Way back. That first white baby born in Washington Territory—a crying infant with no home. Dad talked about steep hillsides. Old growth. Men in shackles and chains. The blades screeching and moaning. Mountain devils waiting. Lumber barons with evil hearts, heavy pockets, and mouths salivating as they watched the prisoners die on cold windy floors. Their chains caught in the machinery. Their shaved heads a bloody symbol. Their scalps shorn with dull straight razors to stop the spread of lice, demoralize their hearts, and help them forget they were human.

  He told me the men worked in leg-irons, and if their fingers caught in the blades, they were sometimes cut off with common carpenter saws. Dad shook his head and let me know “they didn’t have doctors. Didn’t have real prisons. They had those work camps at first. Couple rich fuckers wanted to get richer.” He stared at me. A shotgun warning surged from his black Irish blue eyes before he said, “That’s what greed does.”

  In my mind, the unspoken words huddled underneath the prisoners’ thirsty tongues. Frustration erupted in their tired bodies. It coiled and raced and circled in fierce, red blood. Their words did not come out through crooked, set teeth. Clenched jaws halted. The men were voiceless. And their tongues stumbled clumsily even when free.

  “And what about later?” I asked him.

  He was quiet before he spoke. “Later, they buried the men where they died. In shallow, unmarked graves. Broken chains, falling logs, and violence killed them.”

  I imagined their blood mixing with the sawdust. I imagined them falling asleep to the phantom nighttime hooting and chattering of northern spotted owl. The trees looming far above. The rain pouring down.

  When Mother came home and found me in the driveway with big, wild thoughts in my head, she scolded him. Dad told me these things because he saw something in my eyes. A hunger that would remain. A hardness t
hat must have meaning. He saw how I strutted when I walked.

  My life would be difficult. I was a fighter. And I was born for it.

  He oiled his boots at the foot of my bed as he talked before bedtime. He caught my eye before speaking. Sometimes, when I stared straight into his eyes in the dark I heard a fiddler playing notes in the devil’s key. Sometimes, when I looked at how his black hair swept across his forehead, I heard wicked harmonicas telling secrets.

  He told me that Wesley Everest was thrown off the bridge on Mellon Avenue three times before his neck finally snapped. And that young boys were taken out of town regularly and beaten one by one by men in city shoes. He told me that even as the workers’ faces were filled with purple bruises, the desperate boys asked what right the lumber barons had to the land in the first place. They asked how they could steal and exploit so decadently. Wesley Everest hung from the bridge all night. His teeth broken and bloody—caved in with the butt of a rifle. The men castrated him and shot his body repeatedly. Dad told me that neither coroner in town would take the dead man in the morning. And no one was prosecuted for the murder. His jailed friends were forced at gunpoint to dig the hole where he was buried.

  He told me that in New England hundreds of years ago Irish, Scottish, and poor English servants conspired together with African-born slaves to escape to freedom. He described the rebellions. And how afterward the masters forbid them to interact. And they were not allowed to marry one another. He said runaway slaves with light skin used to shave their heads to blend in. He explained to me that white trash was a name created for those who lived in mixed neighborhoods. It was a name for the poverty that remained in spite of skin color. He told me how rednecks were workers of all skin colors who protested unfair treatment. “Those words shouldn’t hurt you.” He patted my feet and turned my light down low. He set his boots against the doorframe.

  Mom lingered in the hallway and listened. He walked toward her, and I could hear her reprimanding and him sighing. Her words, “Giving her confused nightmares,” floated across my sleepy eyelids. I saw them spelled out. Colin snored lightly. My parents kissed in the dark.