Mink River: A Novel (19 page)

35.

Cedar in his office is in despair over money. He has his budget books sprawled all over his desk and his head in his hands. The Department of Public Works has no money. He has no money. Worried Man has no money. No one has any money. Who has any money? He takes his pencil and makes notes on people and money.

Maple Head is a teacher and so makes a small salary and she and Worried Man get a little money from the government, but Maple Head must by law retire at the end of the school year, which looms in two weeks and after that she might or might not be rehired on a part-time one-year contract renewable only by the whim of the county school board, such decisions traditionally made about three days before the start of the new school year in September, which means a long worried summer for that astounding woman with the brown and silver hair and brown and green eyes flashing.

Cedar and Worried Man officially are employees of the county and so draw small salaries but the salaries are tied to the county budget, which is tied to the state budget, which is slashed annually by the contentious legislature, and the salaries, which are tiny to begin with, are also reduced by an arrangement with the county by which both men chose full medical benefits over full salaries, which decision is mandatory for all county employees over the age of fifty-five.

No Horses, for all the glowing reviews of her work in the city newspapers and gallery shows and glossy photographs of her sculptures in art magazines and interviews with her on alternative and progressive radio stations and the public television documentaries of her work and college students who come to worship at her feet and talk about the poetry of the grain and the soul of the tree emerging as if from a chrysalis, has sold three works in two years for cold cash and has exchanged statues recently for an eye examination, four cords of seasoned firewood, and a case of pinot noir from a vineyard on the dry side of the Coast Range.

Owen gets by with the shop but he too does far more work in exchange for services and goods than he does for cash so between he and Nora they have barely enough money to cover the bills and as he says seemingly lightly but actually not very lightly at all, which worries his wife,
we’ll never be sick a day in our lives my love simply because we can’t afford to be
. The first bill from the hospital in the city where Daniel had his knees bolted and sewn and stapled and screwed and stitched back together arrived yesterday and Owen was so horrified that he hid it from Nora not that she’s been home to find it anyway.

The doctor who you would think would be the wealthiest man in town gets by mostly on payments, always late, from large and recalcitrant insurance carriers, and by spending one day a week in the city as a consulting general practice man. He has many times thought and dreamed and yearned for an administrative assistant in his office to deal with claim forms and phone messages and equipment purchases and warranties and prescription forms and referrals and appointments and malpractice insurance and deductions and professional memberships and patient records and a wall for photographs of all the children he has ever worked with, on, or over, but he can’t afford to hire anyone at the moment.

Michael the cop makes a decent salary from the county, which would never dare to muck with the budget for public safety but he cannot bear the thought of working four more years as a beat cop to get to his twenty years for a pension, the brokenness has become too much for him altogether, and he lies awake at night pondering what he might do for money to support Sara and the girls and the baby coming.

Sara who has been a fish counter at a dam and a waitress is thinking about finding work as a waitress again, maybe at the pub with Stella the bartender, but who will hire a pregnant woman to be a waitress, bars and restaurants want lithe young girls as waitresses to add to the décor and elevate the dining experience, not women of a certain age with spectacles and a swelling belly.

The man now with sixteen days to live sold boxes and containers of all sorts, or air with boundaries, as he used to joke, but he is no longer working.

The priest is paid a small salary by his order of priests and brothers although the superior of the order, a small intense grinning man whose father was a police captain in New York City and used to let his son ride police horses through Central Park, is worried that health care costs and lack of new blood will sooner than later doom the order and maroon the men working in areas with small populations of the faithful.

George Christie who used to be a logger and then ran the Department of Public Works for thirty years has a small pension from the state as an employee of the county but the state pension fund has been plundered of late by the contentious legislature to plug the current budget crisis so the whole idea of pensions for former employees of the state or county is up in the air and the subject of much dark speculation from one end of the state to the other. His wife Anna does not work but spends her time crooning and rocking by the river. Their twin daughters Cyra and Serena are headed for public college, which will be paid for by scholarships and grants and work-study programs and some small loans which George isn’t quite sure where he is going to get so he has lately quietly felled a tree here and there and cut it up as firewood for sale.

The man who beats his son works at the fish co-op, which is shockingly making a decent profit these days because the catch is so good, which worries everyone in the industry fishermen and processors and distributors and wholesalers and regulatory personnel alike because each and every one of them male and female conservative and liberal responsible and rapacious secretly in his or her heart of hearts fears this is the boom before the bust.

Nicholas, the son of the man who beats his son, just signed up to spend the summer fishing with Grace and Declan on Declan’s boat, their agreement being a small salary plus ten percent of profit. Declan and Grace will split the rest of the profit. Red Hugh O Donnell’s estate at his death turned out to be nothing but the old farmhouse and the land on which it muddily squats, neither worth much in the way of cash money. He also owed more than ten thousand dollars on fecking dairy equipment, which was fecking outmoded the day it was fecking hatched as Declan says darkly.

Rachel and Timmy work at the shingle factory near the old sawmill, which is the very last of the timber and logging concerns that once dominated the local economy and now are reduced and shriveled to Shingles For You, which employs seven people on a full-time basis but in the last two years has slightly expanded sales mostly to housing developments in the southwestern United States where many of the people building new houses yearn almost unconsciously for the smell of fresh-cut cedar, which reminds them of grandparents and holidays and childhood and snow; but even so Rachel who lives with her parents and saves every possible penny calculates that she can get her own place in about seven years, which thought always makes her small house seem as small and dark and cold as a prison cell in which she is sentenced to fritter away her youth.

Cedar drops his pencil and again drops his head in his hands. He has no money. No one has any money. How can he do public works without any money? How can he do what he must do? How do people get by? He can’t figure it out. We’re all a step from the abyss, he thinks. One slip and it’s all over. We’re all a car wreck or a disease or a wrenched back or a black funk or a badly hurt child or a bitter divorce away from disaster. How do we get by? He can’t figure it out. Maybe cash money is the problem, he thinks. Maybe we should go to a complete barter economy. Maybe we should be hunters and gatherers like the old days. Maybe I should get my raggedy ass out of this chair and quit moaning. Maybe I should go see my boy Daniel of the three-colored hair red brown black. Maybe doing and not thinking is what I should be doing.

36.

Owen gets up at the funeral of Red Hugh O Donnell, held on the beach, and says, I will deliver a brief prayer in Irish at the request of the O Donnell family.

He is about to say, And knowing that the congregation gathered here this morning does not speak the ancient tongue of the clans I will also translate my remarks into English afterwards, but he has a sudden impulse not to translate into English at all, but just to let fly in Gaelic and be done with it, to just say what is on his mind, free from the possibility of insulting anyone, most especially the four O Donnell children in the front row, who certainly hated the old man with bitter burning hate but this isn’t the time to say so publicly.

All this runs through his head in a second and he decides in the blink of an eye to just say his piece in the old tongue and let the words float mysteriously out to sea. From long bilingual habit he translates silently in his mind sentence by sentence as he goes.

So, he says aloud. A Dhia, glac chugat anois anam brúite Aoidh Rua Ó Dómhnaill, fear ceannláidir crua, taoiseach a chlainne.

God, take to you now the bruised soul of Red Hugh O Donnell, hard of head and hand, chief of his clan.

Má tá go leor trócaire Agatsa turcántachtaí an tseanbhastair a mhaitheamh, ar aghaidh leat.

If You have enough mercy to forgive the old bastard his cruelties, go to it.

Shíl mise gurb fhirín súarach a dhíolfadh a dheirfiúr féin ar phraghas gamhain mhartraithe ab ea é, agus gurb é an bhail a chuir sé ar a chuid pháistí chomh náireach sin go bhfuil cruthú ann nach dtuilleann a leithéah clan ar bith.

Personally I thought he was a mean little man who would sell his own sister for the price of a crippled calf, and the way he treated his children was a shame sufficient to prove that some men ought not be granted children at all.

Ach bronntar páistí ar chréatúir fuara cosúil le hAodh Rua, agus is cruthú dearfa é sin domsa go bhfuil Tusa i d’sheanfhear crúalach nimhneach chomh dall ‘s chomh crua le cloch.

The fact that some cold creatures like Red Hugh are blessed with children is to me incontrovertible proof that You are a cruel and spiteful old man as blind and bitter as a stone.

Mar sin féin, duine ab ea Aodh Rua, agus dá bhrí sin d’fhulaing sé pian cosúil le cách agus é ag troid go fíochmhar chun an grá a fháil ‘s a choimeád d’ainneoin na bearta gan cruth atá agatsa; agus mar sin déanaimid comhbhrón leis, mar nach é a fuair a chéasadh le himeacht a mhná chéile, agus an naimhdeas a thug a pháistí dó de bharr cruais a chroí; ach rinne Tusa é, mhúnlaigh Tusa é, ‘s mar sin, is féidir Leatsa é a thógáil ar ais chugat.

However Red Hugh was a human being, and so he suffered, as we all do, battling ferociously to find and harbor love against Your misshapen plans, and so we join in empathy for his suffering, which there is no question was considerable, what with his wife leaving him and all, and the enmity of his children, which he earned by the hardness of his heart, but You made him, and You formed him, and so You can have him back.

Cuimhneoimid ar a dheagníomhartha, agus céiliúrfaimid iad– mar ní hiad ach a cheathrar clainne atá ina suí sa chéad rang ansin; dá bhrí sin i ndáríre tá an ghuí seo ar a sonsa, ar son a síochána, ‘s ar son na lúcháire nua a bhfaighidh said b’fhéidir i saol a bhfuil fearg fhuar spairneach a n-athar imithe as.

We will remember what he did well, and celebrate that, which is pretty much the four children sitting in the front row, so really this prayer is for them, for their peace, and for the new joy they might find in a world without the cold blizzard of their father’s temper.

Amen.

37.

In the pub after the funeral Grace comes up to Owen and says, Thank you for the prayer. We really appreciate it. Could you tell me roughly what you said?

Owen clears his throat and says quietly, God, take to you now the blessed soul of Red Hugh O Donnell, hard-working chief of his clan. Let your mercy pour upon the man like a sea, and bless the children You granted him, and let the waters of Your relentless love pour upon the bitter stones of their grief and wear it away utterly. In your capacious heart harbor this one poor man, and bless his suffering, and turn it all to prayers for his unquenchable soul. You made him, and You formed him, and unto You he is now returned as if a babe to the sea of his mother. We will remember what he did well, and celebrate that, which is foremost his four children sitting in the front row, so really this prayer is for them, for their peace, and for the new joy they might find in a world without the mysterious blessing who was, on this wild green earth, their one and only father. Amen.

Thank you, says Grace.

A pleasure, says Owen.

Declan is sitting in the corner with Cedar talking about fish. The halibut is almost always right-eyed, did you know that? says Declan. Not right-eyed like right-handed but actually both eyes are on one side of the creature. The top side. The eyes start out one on each side of the head and then one eye moves to join the other. Wild, huh? An eye moving from one place to another. Imagine if we could send our eyes roaming around. I’d send ’em down to my toes to feel for dabs in the tide. Flounder. We used to do that with the old man when we were little. Grace was the best. She wasn’t afraid of crabs. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Or I’d send my eyes behind my head so I can see trouble coming. Or send ’em down to my pecker. That’d be hilarious. I’d be a legend among the ladies. Instead of being a nothing with the ladies. It’s because I stink. I smell like fish no matter how hard I wash. I wash like crazy every night. I work like crazy every day. All for nothing. All work no money, that’s me. You know what the O is for in O Donnell, don’t you? We O everybody. That’s what the old man left us: O. Work your ass off and die in a second like the old man. Chief of the clan. Hard of head and hand. That’s the O Donnell way. On O Donnell Day.