Mink River: A Novel (44 page)

Do you stay in touch with him? asks Stella.

O yes, says the doctor. I see him twice a year professionally and more often in the social ramble. You know him. Small man, tough, firm-minded. Wants to make sure everyone in town is safe and secure. Considers the health and happiness of every resident his life’s work, and quietly assumes responsibility under the aegis of a Department of Public Works, the definition of which he has successfully stretched like a new skin.

Cedar!

The doctor takes a long pull on Matthias.

That is what he has called himself ever since the war, yes. He took a new name when he got a new skin and I must say that the name has come to fit him beautifully. To be honest I cannot even remember the name he had when we were in the mountains during the war. That name died with the man he used to be.

29.

The day before the rains came Michael the policeman received the State of Oregon Above and Beyond Medal from the Governor of Oregon in a special ceremony in the school auditorium at noon to which the entire community was invited and after which an informal reception starring the Governor and the Superintendent of the Oregon State Police would be held in the pub. The Superintendent, a slight man with a limp and a dry wit that has much enlivened his long career in law enforcement in the state, begins the proceedings by noting that he himself was also like Michael once the entire de facto police department in a rural district but that his most famous arrest was that of wolverine that (a) had become a past master at robbing fur traps in the district and (b) was not supposed to exist, wolverine officially being extinct in the State of Oregon, but there it was, inarguable, furious, and not smelling exactly like a rose neither, said the Superintendent, to general laughter. The Governor addresses the assemblage after handing Michael the medal. There are some moments when we are tested to the very bottom of our souls, says the Governor, and those moments always arrive unexpectedly, and very often no one is there to witness them, and the decision to act comes from the deepest part of who we are, our truest selves; for this very deepest aspect of the soul we have only words that do not fit very well, but those are the words we have, and I use them here with humility and gratitude: character, courage, honor. I have been governor for eight years, says the Governor, and before that I spent many years in civil service, and I have seen much, and now that my own service is about to end, I can be frank about what is important, as opposed to what we say is important. Children are important, and serving each other is important, says the Governor, and everything else is not as important. We argue and debate and excoriate and demonize and send things to committee, says the Governor, and meanwhile children starve and are raped and endure illnesses a doctor could arrest in an instant. But for every night when I sat in my office with my head in my hands filled with despair at the way children were being mistreated in the state I had sworn to serve, says the Governor, there were always mornings when I heard about men like Michael. There are such astounding seeds of grace and courage in us, says the Governor, that you cannot, in the end, surrender to despair. That is what I have learned, above all other lessons, in my time, says the Governor, and that is why I present this medal to this man before all his friends and neighbors, and say publicly that we admire him and thank him, for his courage is, if we are honest with each other and using real words this afternoon, an act of love.

30.

Well, son, says Cedar to Nicholas, I’ve drawn up the papers for you to quietly take over the Department,
de facto
rather than
de jure, de jure
Worried Man and I will remain co-directors but we are getting old no question about it and it’s time for someone young and strong and smart and ambitious to take over and bring new energy to the ancient enterprise, although you bet your butt I will be issuing advice hand over tea kettle.

Sir?

Nicholas, don’t call me sir, it gives me peristalsis in the esophagus.

Cedar.

Nicholas.

I’ve decided to go to college.

Nicholas?

Oregon State University, sir. In Corvallis.

I know where it is, son.

To study marine biology.

Have you been admitted?

No, sir.

Nicholas, stop calling me sir, it’s killing my bladder.

Cedar.

Did you apply?

Yes, sir.

And you have expectations of being accepted?

Yes, sir. I am the salutatorian of my senior class.

My salutatorianations.

Thank you, sir.

Nicholas, please stop calling me sir.

Sorry. Sir. Sorry.

Do you have any money for college?

I’ve applied for two scholarships and three grants. The prospects are good. I met with Mr. McCann at the bank and he helped me find funding sources.

Your father knows about this?

I told him last night.

Does he approve?

He was … startled. But he says I should shoot for the moon. He’s … changed.

You’re sure about this decision?

Yes.

Well. Well. I’m happy for you, Nicholas. College will be good for you. Launching pad for what you can become. And I understand that’s an excellent university. Despite the football team.

Yes sir.

Damn my ancient and bleary eyes, Nicholas.

Sorry.

Can you work summers for the department?

I’d be thrilled if you would let me.

And you are enrolling in January, if they see fit to admit you?

September of next year.

Would you like to work here until then?

Very much so, s … Cedar.

31.

George Christie writes and calls every single person he ever knew in the logging, timber, milling, wood processing, wood finishing, housing, marketing, and shipping businesses, not to mention every union rep and barkeep he ever knew of which there were a few, as he says, and he makes a contact list as long as yer other arm, as he says, of the people who express interest in buying or selling the extraordinary objects to be carved and shipped by what he and Nora have both begun to call Old Bastard Wood Products, and they make up a preliminary catalogue of selections, and interview woodshops large and small within a hundred miles to ascertain who might be able to handle subcontracted smaller pieces if such need ever comes to pass, and after brief consideration of nonprofit status they incorporate as a for-profit corporation, and then he says, as he and Nora are sitting on the deck of her studio, now here, kid, is when someone who is a human bean has to go meet the customers and shake their fins and nail down the orders, that’s how it works, so we are going to have to hire a rep, you got any ideas?

And she says, yes, me.

No no, kid, says George, you’re the talent.

I’ll go.

Kid, you are not paying the closest attention to old George Christie, which you should. I ain’t young but I ain’t always stupid either.

I’m going to make the journey, George. I’ve been thinking about a journey I need to take alone, and here it is. I’ll be gone about a month. I’ll be sure there are plenty of carvings done before I go. You map out the itinerary for me and I’ll go. I’ve never been over the mountains, George, and it’s time. I’ve never gone anywhere just
because
. I’m going to wander with purpose. Trust me.

Well, I don’t know, kid.

Really.

Really?

Your family …

My business, George. No offense.

32.

The doctor takes Worried Man out for their evening wander around town. Stella is taking a long long long hot shower after a long day digging post holes. The doctor is sitting on her porch smoking Labbaeus, the eleventh apostle, who was surnamed Thaddaeus. He watches a heron flap slowly and intently east to west, emerging from a dell in the hills and working slowly toward the sea. The sun is glorious but its heat is spent this late in the season. Down at the edge of the vineyard where the fence will go a coyote osmoses along the line of vegetation, waiting for something to bolt. The doctor counts three fishing boats on the horizon, all of them rigged for salmon. The sky fills gently with swifts, taking over from the swallows, who head home in a ragged gaggle, chaffing each other and doing somersaults. A vulture takes a last cruise on general principle and then folds up his tent and surfs down to the dairy farm where lately the vultures like to sit on the far fence at dusk giving the willies to the high school kids who come to make out as night falls. Sara and the girls are making supersoup, which is so dense with potatoes and turnips and rutabagas and onions and leeks that Michael says he could use it to plaster the tub haw haw. The priest is working on his sermon for All Souls Day, which started out as twenty pages of closely reasoned prose, which he cut to ten, and then to five, and then to two, and now he is smoking a cigar and contemplating the very real possibility that he will rise on that day of ancient prayer for the soul of the deceased, and approach the lectern, and adjust the microphone, and clear his throat, and say
wake up!

33.

This is Daniel Cooney making a tape for the Oral History Project. I am twelve years old but will be thirteen tomorrow, on All Souls Day. This is my first tape. I am nervous. I hope to be a professional bicycle racer. This is my ambition. I think I can do it. My mother was a famous runner and my father says his side of the family was renowned in years past for relentless illogical activity, so I have the right genes. Also I want to be an ocean scientist. I am especially interested in sea lions, which are not lions. I used to want more than anything to leave this town but recently while recuperating from an accident I learned to appreciate the town in other ways. When I needed help a lot of people were immediately ready to help. This was a lesson for me. There are lessons everywhere, I guess. That is a lesson in itself. My father is Owen Cooney, a mechanic and repairman. My mother Nora Cooney is an artist who is starting a business with a family friend. Her real name is No Horses. My grandfather works for the town and my grandmother is a teacher. Because it is a small town I know almost everybody and they know me. Because the town is on the ocean it used to be a fishing town and a logging town also. But now those jobs are finished in their former form as our family friend George says. So as a town we are not sure what we will be. Some of us are afraid the town will die because everyone will have to leave to find work. Some other people think we will invent new ways to be a town. I am not sure about this and no one has asked me. I think we might become the bicycle-racing capital of the world, or maybe a place famous for studying sea lions. That could happen. My friend Kristi thinks that our town will become famous for storytelling. She says maybe we will build a storytelling factory and people will come to hear and buy and trade stories and there will be story festivals and contests and etc. That could happen. We do have a lot of stories here. As long as my grandfather is alive we have an endless supply of stories. His white name is William Mahon but his true name is Worried Man. This is ironic because he does not seem worried very much. There is a story there I am sure. My dad and I are building a boat for my grandfather. Not for the sea but for a tree. It is a tradition on my mother’s side of the family that when someone dies he or she is placed in a boat and the boat is hoisted into a tree, usually a cedar but sometimes a hemlock. My grandfather also had an accident recently on Mount Hood and lost the use of most of his body except his head and hand. He says it was not an accident at all but I don’t know what that means. My dad and I are working on the boat secretly. It is a gift for my grandfather. In a way it is his coffin. You want to be careful about how you present a coffin as a gift to the guy who will be using it eventually, says my father, but on the other hand you want to get it done before it’s needed, he says, so we are quietly building it on the weekends and after school. We are using every wood that grows in or around the river, and then using stones from the sea as filigree. Also the priest has blessed the boat. We want to have everyone in town say a story or a prayer into it until it’s crammed with stories and prayers for my grandfather. Our friend Moses has collected feathers and tufts of fur and small bones and things to put in the boat. My mother carved a heron into the prow. My grandmother put a book into a special cedar box near the stern that my father built especially for the book. I am not sure what the book is. My grandmother says she will tell me one of these days. My father says there’s a huge amount we don’t know about life and death, and, all things considered, having a really good boat to travel in seems like an excellent idea. This makes sense to me. Yesterday we cut words into the side of the boat. My dad did it in the language that his side of the family spoke for thousands of years: LIAM Ó MATHÚNA, A BHÁD, it says, which means WILLIAM MAHON, HIS BOAT. Thank you, the end.

34.

Moses, sitting on the football helmet at Other Repair, issues a speech as Owen planes planks. Human people, says Moses, think that stories have beginnings and middles and ends, but we crow people know that stories just wander on and on and change form and are reborn again and again. That is who they are. Stories are not only words, you know. Words are just the clothes that people drape on stories. When crows tell stories, stories tell us, do you know what I mean? That’s just how it is with crow people. We have been playing with stories for a very long time. There are a lot of stories that haven’t been told yet, did you know that? And some stories get lost and don’t get told again for thousands of years. You find them sometimes all lonely. That’s why we have wings, you know. To go find stories. There are some stories that only certain kinds of people can tell. For example the wolverine people, there are some stories only they know and if you try to tell one of those stories nothing comes out of your mouth. That’s how dancing and singing were invented, you know, to try to jiggle the stories out. O, yes, a very long time ago. And there are stories that can be told only under water, and stories that can only be told far up in the sky. There are some goose stories that can only be told when you go over the top of a mountain. There are human stories like that too, of course. Some human stories you can only tell at night and some can only be told to children, isn’t that so? There are caves south of here where there are human being stories scattered all over like pebbles on the beach. You wouldn’t believe how many human stories there are. I have seen that cave, but I cannot tell those stories, Owen. Yet there they are, waiting for someone to come along and pick them up and tell them again. Because stories keep going and going. They are a sort of food, I think. But what do I know, Owen? I am only an old crow person who used to have wings.