Mink River: A Novel (10 page)

In my greatgrandfather’s family there was a mother, a father, three girls, and himself. They suffered but lived because they would gather grains from stooks of rye and wheat and boil them, and they kept a few turnips in their garden, and my greatgrandfather caught what fish he could in the sea, and also he stole four sheep from a neighbor.

He regretted those four thefts all the rest of his days he said even though they maybe kept his sisters alive.

Finally his sister Cait died of the fever that howled after the Hunger came. She was ten when the Hunger began and fifteen when she died. She loved to dance and had hair as black as the inside of a dog. She could leap and spin like a bird. She was the fastest runner of anyone. She could remember any story that was told to her and many was the cold wet night when around the fire she would tell stories, saying the voices of the characters in the stories so eerily perfectly that you’d swear the characters were in the room and the stories utterly alive, and people came from miles around to hear her tell her stories, children especially. When she finished telling her stories there would be a roar of laughter you could hear far away. Sometimes then when the mood was upon her she would dance by the fire, her hair whipping and flying, and such a sight you never saw, a girl so slight and light whirling faster than the eye could see, whirling so fast that you thought it entirely possible that if you blinked your eye she would vanish utterly and never be seen again on this grand grim green earth.

Mharbh an gorta achan rud
, the Hunger killed everything, my greatgrandfather said.

42.

Cedar leans his head back to pop a salmonberry into his mouth as he walks down the dark road wondering

where is old Billy he should have come home by now the old goat out there smelling pain in town a good thing he does that because the fact is that he smells out half the work of the department without his nose we’d be out of a job ho ho so really his nose is the most important piece of equipment we have I’ll have to get it insured can you imagine Billy noseless I mean what kind of public works department would go noseless not us that’s for sure we are up to the minute with the latest nasal and otolaryngological technology I wonder how much we can insure it for we’ll have to get a doctor’s statement I can’t wait to pitch this to the doctor this’ll be hilarious and o the look on May’s face o this will be delicious

when suddenly Moses’ shadow flickers across his face

and from the crow’s sheer speed and arrowing flight Cedar immediately smells bad trouble

and he spins on his heel to keep Moses in view against the dense dark sky and just as he does

a woman runs by him so fast that he feels her tailwind rather than actually sees her

but he immediately recognizes her hair flowing behind her a river of black against the dense dark sky as she sprints away

and he begins to run after her but after one leaping step

he slams on the brakes and stands there quivering like a wire thinking

shit. shit. okay. all right. shit. don’t run. think. moses must be leading her. nora’s fast. she’ll get there fast. someone hurt. billy? broke his hip. shit. in the woods. okay. shit. gotta get him out. need a truck. need a doctor. nose. noseless. get a truck. get the doctor. first the doctor. okay. doctor. go.

and he goes as fast as he can go toward the sea

where in his house by the sea in his room in his bed in the murky dark the doctor is awake his eyes glinting.

43.

One living being saw Daniel fly over the edge of the cliff and sail end over end into the thicket of spruce trees below the path: a young female bear on her early evening rounds, the same young bear who read the
New York Times
at the Department of Public Works. She is three years old this spring. Her name in the dark tongue of bears means
eats salt,
for her habit of scouring the beach for food. Today she has eaten six young ground squirrels, their mother, several dozen beetles, several hundred salmonberries, and a dead jay. The young squirrels were delicious. Later this evening she will eat two fledgling murres on the beach. She likes to sharpen her claws on cedar trees and will walk miles to find the right tree for sharpening her claws. She has eaten shark, skate, ray, halibut, perch, cod, cormorant, pelican, gull, duck, heron, salmon, steelhead, tern, sea lion, seal, and gray whale. She has eaten bat, beaver, bullfrog, deer, dove, rabbit, raccoon, and robin. She will mate for the first time in about a month, with a bear whose name means
only one
. They will be together for three nights and four days. She will give birth to female twins. He will never see the twins. She and the cubs will leave him in the pearly dawn while he is sleeping. He has never walked on the beach because he believes the roaring ocean is a bear of incomprehensible size. He got his name because his mother had never had a cub before him and never had one afterwards. His mother died a week after he learned to forage for himself. He grew so thin the year after his mother died that two loggers who saw him on a ridge one day thought he was a dog.

44.

Owen Cooney here telling stories for my boy Daniel.

I will continue the story of Timmy Cooney.

He saw and heard many things during the years of the Hunger, and he never forgot any of them, and he told those stories until the day he died.
Is mo lau nad muir n-oited imma-rau,
it is many a day since I sailed on the sea of youth, he would say, and
ad-ciu form bratt brothrach n-ais,
I see on myself the shaggy cloak of age, but I remember those who vanished and I will sing them.

So he would tell us about the two strong young brothers in his town whose shoulders were bent all the rest of their lives from carrying the coffins, and about the old man who ate a painting of food he was so mad from the Hunger, and about the way little children would ram their hands into a cauldron of boiling broth desperate for scraps of meat in the soup, and about the mother who killed her daughter to save her from the Hunger, and about the father who died and when the doctor opened him afterwards they found he’d eaten nothing but bits of skins of potatoes for months, giving all the potatoes to his wife and children.

There were a thousand thousand thousand stories like those stories, he said.

One time my greatgrandfather was cutting wheat when a man came walking down the road. He was carrying a load on his back. He stopped to rest by the field where Timmy Cooney was. It was late in the afternoon. The larks were whistling. Scanlan was the man’s name. It was his dead wife he was carrying. He was taking her to the graveyard of the town where she had been a girl. She had died of the Hunger. He could have buried her where they lived but he knew that she wanted to be in the soil of the town where she had been a girl. She was sitting in a
sugan
on his shoulders, a carrying-chair made of rope and knotted tightly to his back. Their little son was walking with him. The wife was wearing a blue cloak and hood just as she did when she was alive. My greatgrandfather got some milk to give to Scanlan, but Scanlan wouldn’t take the milk. He said it would overcome him because he had not eaten anything in days and he needed to keep what strength he had so he could bury his wife before dark.

The little boy drank the milk and off went the boy and his father down the road.

Char chlaon a pairt,
my greatgrandfather said of that man: his love did not waver.

45.

Everyone is kneeling.

For an instant, for a split second, every knee everywhere touches down, into mud, wood, stone, linoleum, water, leaf litter, sand.

Grace is on her knees in a bed. No Horses is on her knees in the woods in the dark by her unconscious son who is face-down his shattered knees wet with blood and mud. Maple Head is on her knees in her kitchen looking for a broiling pan. The doctor is on his knees in his closet looking for his mudding boots. The man who lied in court is kneeling on the beach praying. Cedar is on his knees in the doctor’s tool shed looking for rope. Worried Man is on his knees on the porch of the Department of Public Works praying. Rachel is on her knees in the tub of the cabin up in the hills. Her boyfriend Timmy is on his knees facing her. Michael the cop is on his knees in his living room with a daughter laughing on each shoulder as he snorts and whirls. He is a bear with two baby eagles on his shoulders and then he is a whale with two baby seals on his shoulders. His wife Sara is kneeling in the bathtub washing her hair under the faucet. The child inside her is kneeling on her bladder. The man who pulled out a chair for Grace in the bar is on his knees in the bed behind Grace. Stella the bartender is on her knees mopping vomit in the bathroom of the bar. Red Hugh O Donnell is on his knees where he has fallen after swinging his white stick at his sons and missing them altogether and the two sons Niall and Peadar are on their knees mocking him. The priest is on his knees by the bed of the old nun who just died. A moment ago he touched her knees with oil and whispered
bless you for all those hours in prayer for us
. Owen Cooney having finished making tapes is on his knees in his kitchen scrubbing the floor with oil soap; his wife and son are absent and it would be a poor steaming burro of a man who wouldn’t take advantage of a little slippage in time to get the damned floor smiling shiny and ah the song on Nora’s face when she sees this floor. The man who beats his son is on his knees by his bed praying. His head is bent to touch his blanket. His son is on his knees by the dryer in the basement pulling out clothes to fold there is a pile of his folded clothes by his left knee and a pile of his father’s folded clothes by his right knee. Grace’s brother Declan is on his knees in his bed sound asleep with three blankets pulled over him like three tents red black brown. Anna Christie is on her knees in the shallow water at the edge of the river. Her head is bent to touch the river. Her daughter Cyra has just knelt to wrap her mother in a blanket. As the blanket settles onto her mother’s shoulders so do Cyra’s long thin hands like birds landing gently and Cyra’s long thin fingers probe gently tenderly into the tight taut muscles of her mother’s big shoulders to draw out all the screaming there.

The river whirls and sings and Anna rises and sings and as she begins to sing all knees rise all at once from the mud the floors the beds the tubs all over,

except Daniel’s.

46.

Moses wheels sharply and drops like a stone when he is directly over Daniel’s body, to show No Horses the exact spot. He plummets, he falls. He is blacker than the black night. When he lands
plop
on Daniel’s backpack No Horses throws herself over the edge of the path feetfirst and scrabbles wildly down the slope through salal and blackberry bushes. Moses shouts and she aims for his ragged voice. The bushes grab her angrily as she slams through them. Moses spins in a tight circle shouting. She stumbles over Daniel’s mangled bike. Moses shouts
here here here
. She falls to her knees by her son’s body his braids askew red black brown. Moses leaps back into the air. No Horses feels for Daniel’s pulse. Moses whirls up up up. She feels Daniel’s heart hammering hammering hammering and she sobs and runs her hands over him tip to toe. Moses in the air sees Cedar and the doctor at the edge of the path. The doctor has a lantern. Daniel’s legs are blood and splintered bones. Moses shouts to Cedar
go go go
. Cedar flings himself over the edge of the path feetfirst. No Horses is curled over her boy her black hair a black tent in the black night. Moses whirls and lands
plop
next to the doctor. Cedar lands on his knees next to No Horses and Daniel. The doctor says to Moses
is he alive?
And Moses says
yes but his legs are smashed
. No Horses holds Cedar’s flashlight on Daniel’s body. The doctor calculates miles and minutes to the hospital. Cedar skims his hands over Daniel tip to toe. Moses leaps back into the air and whirls toward town. The doctor feels in his jacket for his cigarettes. Cedar looks up from Daniel and peers into the thicket of spruce trees. No Horses starts to shiver. The doctor finds his cigarettes but doesn’t light one. The flashlight wobbles. Cedar and the doctor brace Daniel’s legs with thin shimmies of wood and tape the splints together so nothing moves, and they gently work a thin narrow sheet of wood under Daniel, and the doctor checks the boy’s pulse and eyes and neck and spine again and again and again, and then Cedar stands up, but when No Horses crouches to pick up the top half of the litter Cedar says
Nora no
and he turns to the trees and says three words in a language she does not know and the young female bear steps out of the thicket of spruce trees and picks up the litter in her huge dark arms and walks with it upright uphill to where the doctor is waiting.

47.

The bear is confused and excited and angry. She cradles the boy in her huge dark arms and rumbles uphill right through the bushes. This animal is broken, she thinks. It smells bloody. The blood makes her hungry. She remembers the ground squirrels. The word for ground squirrel in the language of bears is
meat in holes
. The night is as black as she can ever remember. Daniel’s braids flop and swing. She has never touched a human being before although she has seen and smelled many of them, all different flavors and sizes. In the dark language of bears the word for human being is
killer brother
. Not one killer brother smells like another one. Her thighs ache from walking upright. Once she smelled a dead killer brother on the beach. The word for dead is
no longer eats
. From fifty yards away she smells the doctor’s cigarettes in his jacket pocket. She smells the sweat and salt of his boots. She smells the smears of jelly in Daniel’s backpack. She smells the oil No Horses used to clean her chisels and gouges. She smells the oil Daniel used on his bicycle chain. She smells the bread Maple Head was baking when Cedar left the house. She smells rage and fish and ice on Cedar. She smells drowned beaver on Daniel. The word for beaver is
meat in water holes
. She smells pear and iodine on the doctor’s hands. The word for pear in bear is the same as the word for apple. Daniel slides awake but his face is pressed so firmly into thick sour dirty dense black sweaty bear hair that he can neither see nor hear nor speak. The word for dirt is
mother below us
. The doctor hears the bear crashing toward him through the salmonberry bushes. The word for salmonberry is
eye of spring
.