Mink River: A Novel (32 page)

1.

Dawn. A pregnant green moist silence everywhere; and then the robins start, and the starlings, and the jays, and the juncos, and the barred owl closing up shop for the night, and a hound howling in the hills, which starts a couple other dogs going, which sets a guy to shouting at the dogs to shut
up
for chrissake, and someone tries to get a recalcitrant truck going, and the truck just can’t
get
going, it gasps and gasps and gasps, which sets the owl going again, which sets the mice and shrews and squirrels nearby to chittering, which worries the jays and robins, everyone has the owl shivers, and then the truck
finally
starts but then immediately dies, which sets the driver to cursing steadily feck feck feck which sets his passenger to giggling and the passenger’s giggle is so infectious that the driver can’t help but laugh either, so they sit there laughing, which sets two crows laughing, which sets the hound to howling in the hills again; and then another car across town starts and a church bell booms brazenly and a house alarm shrills and three garage doors groan up at once and a gray whale moans offshore and there are a thousand thousand other sounds too small or high to hear, the eyelids of a thrush chick opening, the petals of redwood sorrel opening, morning glory flowers opening, refrigerators opening, smiles beginning, groans beginning, prayers launching, boats launching, a long green whisper of sunlight sinking down down down into the sea and touching the motionless perch who hear in their dreams the slide of tide like breathing, like a caress, like a waltz.

2.

Owen Cooney is up early and eager because today is the day he is going to carry Daniel home from the doctor’s house, and today is the day No Horses says she is going back to work in the studio after some long talking walks with the doctor and her mom and her dad and her husband about what No Horses calls the black dog at her heels, and today is the day of the picnic with all the meat you can eat courtesy of Declan O Donnell, and Owen is in charge of assembly and disassembly of the tables, and also today is the last day of equipment preparation before Owen drives Worried Man and Cedar to the foot of the mountain where they are to set forth on their voyages, and Owen feels very responsible indeed for the engineering and mechanical quality of the mountaineering material in question, he swore and vowed and promised No Horses that he would fourple-check the ice axes, crampons, carabiners, skis, ice screws, ice saws, pickets, belay loops, snowshoes, shovels, knives, batteries, compasses, flashlights, headlamps, first-aid kits, watches, radios, and whistles Worried Man and Cedar would carry, and finally he wants to bring Daniel’s repaired renovated and restored bike from the shop to the house so it will be waiting gleaming glittering cheerfully in Daniel’s room when Owen carries him up for bed that night after the picnic, so Owen is up with the first tentative tendrils of dawn (No Horses stirs but doesn’t wake) and dresses in a flash (no shirt no socks) and is out of the house (scattering a chitter of sparrows on the fence) and strolling along the river (leap of salmon, float of heron) and into the shop (soon redolent of coffee) when the sun finally peers over the eastern ridge and fills the shop with light just as Moses floats through the window and takes up his spot on the old football helmet.

Morning, bird.

Morning, man.

Busy day before us, Mo.

A most interesting day.

I’ll say.

I worry about the mountain, Owen.

Well, my friend, they are set on it, so …

Still.

I know. Me too. That’s why I am going through these piles of stuff.

Is Nora worried?

Yep.

Is Nora okay?

Owen stops tinkering with the carabiners and looks up at the crow.

I don’t know, Moses, he says slowly. She’s drained. Empty, she says. But she said last night she wanted to work today. First time she’s said that in days. That’s a good sign. And she wants to come to the picnic. And Daniel coming home will give her a lift. I don’t know what to do. I want to help but I don’t know what to do. Somehow she lost her compass. Her engine failed. Her gyroscope broke. She’s … lost. She says the road she was on isn’t there any more and she doesn’t know where to walk now.

I’m very sorry.

Moses, do crows ever … lose their way?

O yes. I think it’s a function of intelligence, Owen. The more complex the brain the more ways it can twist and turn. We are electrochemical beings. Anything can go wrong. I have seen crows go blank. I have seen crows deliberately cause their own deaths. I had a friend who dove into the sea. She was a most amazing creature. She had the most amazing capacity for languages. She could speak with any other creature. She had a most astounding mind. Something happened to her and she dove into the sea in a thunderstorm and she never came back up. I think of her every day. I think perhaps she is a fish now. She was a most remarkable creature. I think of her at dusk. When the light is blue and black and brown and everything smells like salt and sand and spruce I think of her. I think of her every day. She was a most remarkable creature.

3.

Enter into the rock, into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, that’s from Isaiah, says the doctor, stooping to pick up a rock from the sand and skipping it out over the quiet morning ocean. Into the clefts of the ragged rocks, Billy, that’s where you are going. Are you really going?

We are really going, says Worried Man.

After the picnic?

Tomorrow at dawn. Owen is driving us.

Don’t forget the medicine. It will stimulate your heart in case of arrhythmia.

I won’t forget.

I’ll give you a second bottle.

Okay.

I’ll look in on May.

I’d be grateful.

Maybe I’ll ask her to marry me.

I’d be hateful.

They walk along the beach silently for a moment.

I’ll miss our walks, says the doctor quietly. The evening ones especially.

Me too.

I have come to depend on them for clarity and perspective.

Me too.

And for the startling talents of my friend who can sniff out pain and trouble.

You know, says Worried Man so quietly that the doctor has to strain to hear him over the lap lap lap of the patient ocean, I am tired of pain.

I know the feeling.

I have smelled it all my life and I am tired of it.

Yet we are professionals, Billy.

Mm.

Who volunteer for other people’s pain.

Mm.

To carry their pain.

Mm.

To heal their pain.

Mm.

But we don’t, do we?

We … what?

We hardly matter most of the time.

What?

We don’t, Billy. We make our holy gestures, we conduct our intricate and complicated rituals, we apply salves and poultices, elixirs and potions, and people remain broken and torn. The best I can do is just witness the pain. Just stand there and watch it eat my patients. I can’t help the man who sold boxes and containers. He will die before Tuesday night. Mark my words. I wave my arms and apply magic liquors but nothing really matters. I can’t help Kristi. She’s broken in places you can’t see. I wave my arms and say magic words and they don’t matter. I am like your father who used smoke and spit and magic words on his patients. Sisaxai, the healer with two hands. With the healing sign carved on his bed, carved by the woman he loved. I have no sign on my bed. I have no woman. I have no magic. I just stand there and watch. That’s what I do. Pain comes to me and I wave my arms and conduct my intricate rituals, as ephemeral as the wind, as insubstantial as shadows, as elusive as smoke.

4.

Cedar at his work table at the Department of Public Works is thinking about money again. Because there is no money in town people do all sorts of things to get money. Stella the bartender for example collects ferns and thyme and cedar needles and dries them and packages them in sachet bundles. Maple Head applies relentlessly and tirelessly for grants from historical societies and cultural associations and preservation agencies and any and all other grant-issuing entities whose mission statements emphasize the preservation and promulgation of regional character and heritage. Declan O Donnell has done the odd bit of quiet fishing and hunting out of season, on the theory that seasons are really ephemeral administrative ideas and bonehead legislative dodges anyway, and he has also quietly logged here and there without what you might call a permit or permission, and he has also engaged in what he calls entrepreneurial agricultural production but Michael the cop has called illegal marijuana production. No Horses briefly executed commissions for what turned out to be a short-lived company selling authentic genuine handmade carvings of totem animals by living American Indian artists and craftspeople none of whom actually received a check for her or his work and some of whom continued to receive notices of bankruptcy proceedings long after she or he had forgotten that peculiar chapter in her or his artistic career such as it was.

George Christie the former logger tried his damnedest for the longest time to get his beloved logging museum up and running, said museum being as he said an extraordinary opportunity for the people of today to visit a place and a time fading away as fast as smoke and fog, a place and a time and a craft and a breed of men and women with their own lingo and tools and humor and horrors and style and skills and stories and pride in their work, which was of a kind never done before and never to be done again in Neawanaka and environs whereas only the once would men and women of such strength and courage come to the woods to drop the big trees with respect and awe in their hearts and a crosscut saw the size of a boat in their meaty hands, but that time has well passed and even the memory of it is fading faster than the kids of today can spit on its coffin as it trundles by pulled by draft horses of the kind that were once endemic and necessary in these very woods.

Cedar grins and winces as he remembers what George Christie did to the beautiful cedar and spruce cabin he had built with his own hands to house his beloved logging museum. He chopped it down, alone, working every day from dawn to suppertime, and then he sawed and split the logs into firewood, and so burned his dream, as he said, so at least his dreams would provide some heat for his children, at least they would be good for that. Damn it all.

5.

George Christie the former logger stands in the DPW truck and pitches logs and splits down to No Horses who carries them two by two to the serpentine ranks of grills the O Donnell brothers Peadar and Niall have arranged for the picnic. After twenty minutes George and Nora switch places and after forty minutes they take a break in the cab of the truck where they drink beer and talk wood.

Lot of alder there, George, says Nora.

Lotta everything there, kid.

I swear I smelled juniper.

You gotta real nose there, kid. You work the wood?

Sometimes.

What does that mean?

I do some carving.

I seen your statues. They’re good statues.

Thanks.

Ever cut your own wood?

You mean logging? No.

You should. Learn the wood when it’s alive.

Well, I’ll think about that, George. I certainly will.

Me, I like the big trees.

Spruce?

Well, kid, your spruce tree is a good tree, a real good tree, but I’m a cedar man, myself. Most important tree in the woods, the cedar is. Hell, your dad’s people, now, they used the cedar for everything from houses to diapers. I always cut a cedar with respect. For one thing they get amazing old, more than a thousand years. Hell of a tree. Now, I would imagine working with a wood like that would be an amazing thing. That so?

I’ve only worked a few pieces, really. Mostly I use oak or alder.

Oh, hell, I’ll get you some big old cedar. There’s something special in an old cedar. It’s seen an awful lotta life. It’s a smart old thing and the smart stays in the tree. Sounds crazy but it ain’t. There’s something in a cedar just isn’t in another tree. Not even your big old redwoods, which they are a hell of a tree also. But your cedar now, that’s the tree of here. You gotta know the cedar if you want to really know these hills. I’ll get you some really old cedar and that’ll get you going something amazing. It’s a hell of a tree, kid. I’ll get you some.

Thanks.

Well, kid, glad we had this talk. Let’s get to work. Listen, you gotta learn to quiet down a little. I don’t mean to get on your case or anything but we gotta lotta work to finish here. You gotta learn to let the other guy say something sometimes. That’s only fair. You know what I mean? You take turns. That’s only fair. What the hell. Here we go.

6.

Michael the cop walks the perimeter of the football field with Cedar just to make sure that there are no obvious safety problems considering the size of the crowd expected. They argue cheerfully about whether or not this event should fall under the purview of the police department, which is charged with public safety and civic order, or the public works department, which is charged with civic safety and public order. The day has opened into that fat heat that presages real summer, the sort of broad heat that has young men shirtless, babies peeled down to shirts and diapers, and old folks carefully removing their blazers and jackets and draping them primly on the rickety folding chairs. The tables are all set up and the wrestling team is finishing the chairs. Frisbees float in the distance. Dragonflies and damselflies drone by like tiny glittering airplanes. Owen and Grace rattle off in Owen’s truck headed back to his shop to get ten more tables. Swallows swim and swifts slice the gleaming air. Maple Head leads a giggling gaggle of girls in unrolling and cutting butcher paper into tablecloths and taping the paper to the tables. Two ground-squirrel kits who graze the field every morning after the bell for school rings wander up over the bluff edge of the field unconcernedly and freeze with horror at the incredible welter of human activity before sprinting away in the desperate zigzag tail-high way of ground-squirrel kits who hear a hawk or feel a fox somehow somewhere staring. George Christie the former logger is cursing cheerfully at the
O Donnell brothers Peadar and Niall as they try to get all George’s wood burning properly to be coals properly at three o’clock when the damn picnic is scheduled to start if ever yer damn brother shows up with yer damn meat. Gulls wheel overhead clockwise and above them buzzards counter-clockwise. Declan rattles up in his truck with the meat. The priest joins No Horses and Anna Christie and Sara and Rachel and Timmy and Rachel’s mother and the manager of the shingle factory in laying out knives and forks on the tables on which the butcher paper riffles and rattles in the breeze. A gleaming biplane drones by high above the shoreline like a huge dragonfly. A gray seal pops his head out of the near surf and cranes his neck to see what They are doing up there this time. You never can tell with Them, he thinks. Dangerous and riveting creatures altogether. Best to avoid Them, because They can and do and will bring you violence, and being anywhere close to Them is certain to mean pain, but They are so utterly fascinating, so unpredictable, so alluring, that you find yourself drawn to Them almost against your will, against your better judgment, against all sense and sanity, day after day after day, like the tide is drawn reluctantly and joyously to the moon.