Evergreen (6 page)

“
He
wouldn’t,” Eveline said.

“Well, you’re not
him
.”

“It’s complicated,” Eveline said, thinking of her parents, who’d sent word through Reddy they were disappointed she wasn’t coming home while Emil was in Germany—her mother had used the words
positively stupid
.

“No, it’s not,” Lulu said.

This morning, after Lulu and Eveline finished the thermos of coffee Lulu had brought and smoked a cigarette on the porch, and Gunther complained of Hux’s helplessness and Hux spit up milk as if to annoy him further, they all went up to the meadow to work on the garden. Lulu lent Eveline her spade and hoe, but she turned the soil with her bare hands, which explained her black fingernails and her lack of flinch when she encountered a snake or an earthworm. When Eveline encountered either, she howled.

“They’re not the biting kind,” Lulu said.

“No, but they’re the wriggling kind!”

In the afternoon, after Gunther and Hux napped in the cabin, the four of them—
And Buckley!
Gunther said—went down to the river so Eveline could practice fishing. She used the lures from Emil’s tackle box because she wasn’t nervy enough to use a worm.

“You have no problem piercing the flesh of chickens and turkeys and fish—other
alive
things,” Lulu said. “You married a man who does that for a living, for God’s sake.”

“
Once
alive,” Eveline said. “But you’re right. I have to work up to it.”

So far, with the lures she’d only caught river detritus.

“You might just be a wait-for-your-husband kind of girl,” Lulu said.

Emil had never lorded his survival skills over her, but Eveline’s lack of them irritated her now. Emil was the one who cut wood and dragged it through the snow. He was the one who carried Meg and William’s belongings to the roof when the water came through, and he was the one who put them back when he found a way to get the water out.

I will bait this hook!
Eveline thought.

And she did, though she squirmed the whole time while Lulu laughed and laughed.

“I’ll shoot the worm if you want me to,” Gunther said to Eveline, just before the hook pierced the worm’s flesh, and Eveline felt both triumphant and a little sorry.

“Thank you,” she said to Gunther. She was about to kiss the top of his head when she remembered what he did to his hair after Lulu had touched it. Instead, Eveline cast her line the way Lulu taught her and felt a tug on the end of it.

“I have something!” she said.

Eveline reeled in the line—
You have to think like a fish
, Lulu said—and just as she was about to declare triumph, she saw what she’d caught: an old leather shoe covered in algae.

Lulu unhooked the shoe from the line and cradled it like an infant. “So that’s where you went. I’ve been looking all over for you. You poor baby.”

Eveline thought of Emil and the day she’d arrived in Evergreen after falling asleep on the river and foolishly losing her paddles. And though neither Emil nor Lulu had meant anything by
poor baby
, Eveline was mad they’d both said it. Lulu could catch a fish with her bare hands. Probably Emil could, too.

“You have to think like a fish,” Lulu said again.

“Fish don’t think,” Eveline said.

“Sure they do.” Lulu thrust herself away from the rocky shore and jumped into the water wild eyed and fully clothed. While she spun around in the river like a crazed, cold fish, Gunther poked at Hux with his index finger, and Hux clamped down on it.

“Your coat!” Eveline said.

“He’s got me and Buckley!” Gunther said.

Eveline freed his finger. “We don’t bite, darling,” she said to Hux.

“You might try meaning that,” Lulu said, wringing out the ends of her coat, which smelled even more unpleasant and looked more alive than it had when it was dry. She came out of the water, red cheeked and dripping, and plunked down on a large gray rock that was warm from the sun. To Gunther and Buckley she said, “You’re lucky he’s all gums.”

Eveline sat down next to Lulu. “He’s
very
sorry.”

Lulu poured the water from her boots onto Eveline’s leg. “No, he isn’t.”

While Gunther and Buckley sat beside Hux with a healthy dose of fear in their eyes, and Lulu and Eveline sat beside each other on the rock sunning themselves, Eveline thought of Meg and wondered if she and Lulu had done the same thing together.

“I wasn’t crossing the river then,” Lulu said when Eveline asked her about it.

“Why not?” Eveline said.

Lulu tossed a pebble into the water. “I’m pretty sure we didn’t come to Evergreen for the same reasons. Actually I know in my heart we didn’t. Why did you come here?”

Eveline thought of Emil and his butterflies. “For love, I guess.”

When Gunther and Buckley got up to chase after a low-flying bird downriver, Lulu said, “I came because Gunther needed a father and Reddy needed a wife. I used to work at the saloon, and Reddy was one of my regulars. He liked me because I knew just when to take away the whiskey and put down a cup of water and a plate of fried potatoes in its place. He said I was his angel. He’s pretty uncreative when it comes to romance.”

“Gunther isn’t his?” Eveline said.

“Of course he is. Even if he isn’t,” Lulu said. She looked at
the other side of the river. “Not everyone was sweet like Reddy. Some of them didn’t ask for what they wanted.”

As if she sensed Eveline was about to put an arm around her, Lulu sprang to her feet. She started downriver toward Gunther, who was standing in the water trying to catch minnows in the reeds. She threw a heavy stone into the water. Another.

“I wasn’t always a wilderness master like I am now,” she said, looking back. “I didn’t know how to swim when I came here. Reddy had to teach me.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon at the river’s edge. Lulu ran up- and downriver with Gunther and Buckley, the three of them kicking and hollering, while Eveline fed Hux and thought about what Lulu had told her. As a true friend Eveline knew she couldn’t say anything, but she wanted to for that reason.

Just before Lulu herded Gunther and Buckley into the rowboat and crossed the river for the night, Eveline said,
“Wait,”
to Lulu, who already had one foot in the rowboat.

Eveline picked up Emil’s fishing rod and unwound the line from the reel.

“You take one end, and I’ll take the other,” she said to Lulu. “When you get to the other side, tie it to a tree branch and hang a bell from it. I’ll do the same with mine.”

“What for?” Lulu said.

Eveline placed the fishing line in Lulu’s palm. “If you need me or I need you. It’s like a doorbell. A way of knocking all the way out here.”

“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Lulu said, but before she pushed the rowboat away from the shore, she wrapped one end of the fishing line around her thumb and wrapped the other around Eveline’s.

That night, Eveline wrote another letter to Emil.

Dear Emil
,

I don’t know if my first letter reached you or not, but if it did I’m sorry for its shortness. It’s true that Hux and I are staying in Evergreen, but I didn’t tell you how much we miss you and can’t wait for you to return to us. I also hope you send a letter soon or that you’ve already sent one. I don’t know how to picture you in the Black Forest. Is it really black?

Your son is beautiful and quiet these days. His demeanor has changed dramatically, which Lulu says happened with her boy Gunther at the same age
(
except he started off quiet and grew wild
).
Lulu seems so tough on the outside, but she’s actually very tender. Kind, like you. She’s been helping me with the garden. So far all we have is turned earth, but she tells me we’ll have green soon. I can’t wait for you to see it, to eat from it. I have been learning how to fish, too, although so far I’ve only caught an old boot!

Nighttime still makes me nervous, but I’m getting used to its noises more and more each time my ears encounter them. Sometimes, the noises surprise me. Sometimes, I surprise myself
.

Have you ever been afraid?

Love, Eveline

7

According to Lulu, Reddy drove to Yellow Falls every week when the weather and the alfalfa and potato fields allowed a trip, ostensibly to pick up the mail but really to get drunk. At first, Eveline didn’t understand why he had to drive the twenty miles each way to drink whiskey when Lulu kept a cupboard full of the brown bottles in their cabin.

“He saved my life,” Lulu said. “That makes me obligated to save his.”

She and Eveline were taking a break from the meadow garden and Eveline’s side of the river, which long cold pine shadows took hold of in the afternoons. If you wanted direct sunlight, which Eveline and Lulu did on this day, you had to cross the river.

The two were sitting in a pair of tipsy diner chairs, which Eveline recognized from Harvey Small’s. A sandy fire pit was in front of them and a sleeping child between them. Behind them stood Lulu and Reddy’s cabin, which Lulu had painted red on one side and blue on the other because she couldn’t decide which color she liked better.

June had taken over the land, the trees, and the river. Only at night, when the air turned crisp and the logs were lit, when the mosquitoes and blackflies retreated, could drifts of heavy snow be conjured. During the day, June bugs clung to the outside of both their cabins. At night, the moths, prehistoric in their oddness and Jurassic in their size, took the June bugs’ place. Emil would have been able to tell Eveline their Latin names and might have preserved one for his personal collection. Eveline called them elephant moths and sketched a few of them in her journal for Emil to look at when he returned.
Eighty days, at the most
. She’d started brushing the moths off the cabin door and the porch railing, since cedar didn’t deter them and she couldn’t afford to lose any more clothing.
Seventy-nine
.

Gunther and Buckley were taking turns on the tire swing, which hung from a great old oak tree with branches nearly as thick as its trunk. Instead of them being annoyed with Hux, lately they were encouraged he could hold up his head for several minutes before it flopped to one side. Whenever they saw Eveline, they’d ask, “Can he walk yet?”

“A few more months,” Eveline would say to keep up their hope.

Today the two seemed content to let Hux grow on his own terms, which allowed time for Eveline and Lulu to talk freely instead of spelling what they didn’t want the boys to hear. “How is driving to Yellow Falls to drink saving Reddy’s life?”

“He won’t drink in front of Gunther. He thinks it would make him a bad father, since he doesn’t do it for enjoyment,” Lulu said.

“Why does he do it?” Eveline said.

“Reddy needs whiskey like the rest of us need water.”

“What does he do in the winter?” Eveline said.

“I have to slip teaspoons of whiskey into his coffee to calm
him down,” Lulu said. “Once, I put a shot’s worth in a bowl of beef stew.”

“He didn’t taste it?” Eveline said.

“He didn’t say anything,” Lulu said. “He went back for a second helping, though.”

“Is that when he shot his toe?” Eveline said.

“He was sober for that, bless him.”

“I’ve never had a drink,” Eveline said. “Unless you count in church.”

“I don’t,” Lulu said, getting up. “I won’t!”

She went inside the cabin, crashed around the cupboards, and came back outside with a bottle of whiskey and two chipped glasses.

“I have to feed Hux,” Eveline said, her breasts swelling at the thought.

“Give him some goat’s milk,” Lulu said to her. To Gunther and Buckley, she said, “Would you two go milk Willa Girl, please?”

“We’re swinging, Mama!”

“It’ll make Hux walk
a lot
sooner,” Lulu said.

“What if he doesn’t like goat’s milk?” Eveline said, brushing Hux’s silky dark hair with her fingers.

“Better hope he likes whiskey,” Lulu said, pouring some into the glasses.

Eveline sipped the astringent liquid with as much grace as she could, even though the peppery taste on her tongue made her eyes water and her nose run. She wanted to spit it out, but Lulu would only make her drink more.

“It’s not high tea,” Lulu said. “What are you doing with your pinkie finger?”

“I’m being a lady,” Eveline said.

“Stop. It’s making me want to throw up.”

When Gunther and Buckley finished milking Willa Girl in her chicken-wire pen beside the cabin, they took a shortcut through the garden and ended up trampling a row of young sweet corn and spilling most of the milk along the way.

“This will make him grow big muscles,” Gunther announced, handing the glass to Eveline, which gave her an excuse to set down the one with whiskey in it.

“How should I feed it to him?” Eveline said.

Lulu laughed a little. “A spoon?”