Mink River: A Novel (5 page)

By God, she thinks. I’ll
make
a man. I’ll make one from scratch. My new man. Be fun to tell Owen.

She checks grinning to see if there is a knob in the right place to make a man. Keeps circling the table. She never touches a raw piece of clay or wood or stone until she gets a feeling about it, and once the feeling comes she chooses her tools carefully, balancing various chisels and gouges in her hands to see who wants to work today, choosing music carefully for pace.

She puts on Miles Davis and then reconsiders and puts on Chet Baker.

No genius today, she thinks. Just dreaming. Just the right music by which to make a man, she grins: and o how very
many
men have been made to the music of Chet Baker, hmmm?

Thinks about making love to Owen. His lips and hips arrowing into her.

Such bony relentless hips, she thinks.

In the rest of her studio are blocks and slabs and chunks of wood: maple, cedar, fir, more oak, walnut, alder, spruce, hemlock, cherry, ash, laurel, elm, myrtle, redwood. Sawdust and shavings and chips on the floor like tiny frozen leaves. There are tools everywhere: racks of chisels and gouges, mallets and mallet heads, planers, jointers, table saws, circular saws, chain saws, and bandsaws. There are routers, drills, sanders, clamps, glues, oils, finishes, a huge hydraulic hoist, and carving benches with attached wood vises. And sharpeners everywhere. There are more sharpeners than anything else in the room. Daniel counted them recently: thirty-nine, his mother’s age.

13.

Cedar on the Mink River sitting and thinking. Watching the ripples. His recording equipment whirring in the fern of the riverbank. Ospreys rowing through the air above. Two adults two young. Mergansers, kingfishers, ouzel on the river. Water water river river talking talking. He hears the low bass booming of rocks being turned over by the river. Like a low mutter. Basso? Baritone?

He watches the ouzel and thinks of No Horses. Smiles; she is his goddaughter and the affection he felt for her during her childhood and adolescence has grown into a real respect for the woman she has become.

No Horses, she is one tough woman, he thinks. Lovely, strong, patient, talented, kind. My sweet little Nora.

But he thinks uneasily of the talk they had this morning in her studio, after he and Owen wrestled the spruce slab onto her carving table and Owen longlegged it back to his shop. A hard talk. A talk about holes. It began as a talk about carving holes in wood and then spun into holes in people, things missing; or as she said the feeling that something was missing that you’d never had and hadn’t known you didn’t have until suddenly you knew it.

He chews on that remark for a while, as the ospreys row in their floating lines up and down the river.

14.

Dad, says Daniel.

Yeh.

Tell me how you met Mom.

I should save it for a Project tape.

Tell me now?

It’s a long story, son. Suitable for telling by the fire.

But Mom will be there.

Is that bad?

You’ll look at her.

And?

You know what I mean—when she’s in the room your eyes go there.

When she’s in the room the temperature rises, boyo.

Dad. That’s gross.

Good thing for you I love your mama and versa vice.

I love her too, dad, but sometimes.

Sometimes what?

Sometimes you pay more attention to her than you do to me.

I don’t.

You do.

You don’t mean that.

It’s okay. I don’t mind. Sometimes I mind.

Well, when you’re married …

You pay too much attention to Mom.

What?

Does she pay that much attention to you?

Sure she does. Sure now.

15.

Moses the crow barks once and Daniel looks up at the seven clocks mounted above the workbench and says
gotta go dad
and hustles out of the shop and sails back to school on his bike his braids flying red black brown; he wants to be back in class just before school ends. Owen keeps rebuilding the beaver but now his mind is all awash and awander with No Horses. We met on this beach. Salt and sea. We were walking each alone me north she south. In the afternoon. The way she walks leaning forward her hair pouring out behind her like a river a comet’s tail. O that hair as black as the back of midnight.
An chuilfhionn
, the maiden of the flowing locks. When we passed on the strand we paused and her eyes flashed and her hair whipped around her face
mbeal-ath-na-gar ata an staid-bhean bhreagh mhodhamhail
red ripening in her cheeks like a berry on a tree. Her graceful neck her lips like bruised fruit. I never saw anyone or anything like her ever. There was a zest in her eye. I wanted to say something courteous and memorable but out of my mouth to my utter surprise fell
chailin dheas mo chroidhe
, dear girl of my heart, because she had me all flustered there in the salty wind, and I was so surprised at myself I laughed, and she laughed, a sound like the peal of a silver bell, and she said what language is that? and I said O that’s the old Irish, walk with me and I’ll teach you a bit, I was surprised at my own boldness but
do mharaigh tu m’intinn
, she made my mind all feeble with her eyes.

I will walk with you, she said, and we walked along trading words in our old languages, me in the Irish and her in the Salish, and soon we were trading stories in American, and soon after that we were trading salty kisses in our own language her long hair whirling around us like the salty arms of the salty sea.

16.

Worried Man notes the hour—golden russet slanting light, the hour when the angle of the sun heading toward the ocean illuminates everything seemingly from inside, so that plants glow greenly with their bright green souls naked to the naked joyous eye.

Bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars. Blake.

And he sets off on his rounds.

Around the Department of Public Works building, one circumference, for luck and to check the mildewing southwest corner of the building where Cedar has his rain gauge.

Then up Hawk Street to the doctor’s to collect the doctor.

Then Lark to Heron to Murre to Cormorant to Warbler to Chickadee, which has only the one resident, Mrs. L, who hands him berries or pears depending, whose pain is in her wrists and knees. He can feel her grinding soreness as they turn into Chickadee. When they get to her gate she hands him a little soft paper box of salmonberries, which he hands to the doctor. As the doctor asks her about her pills and such, Worried Man rubs her wrists.

His huge hands are beaver tails, maple leaves, baby halibut.

He notices that the berry box is deftly made of yesterday’s newspapers.

From Mrs. L’s they take the old sand quarry road, now half overgrown with young alder, to the other end of town, where the few houses huddle in a rough circle around a seasonal marsh, waist-deep in winter and dry in summer. Around the dell they go, on these streets that have no names, streets known by who lives on them, and then down the beach stairs to the water. By now the sun’s nearly in the ocean and the tide’s mostly out and they brisk along stride for stride, silent, meditative. This is the real edge of the town, this strand of sand and seawrack, the shells of Dungeness crabs, a sneaker here and there from a wreck at sea, a fishing float occasionally, a shard of wood, bones, sticks, logs. Sometimes a dead seal or sea lion or shark. Once a doe that maybe fell from a cliff. Once a humpback whale. Sometimes very much alive sea lions, who are really big and bark like dogs and move much faster than you might imagine. Once a dead man.

As they near the river they pass the keel of the
Carmarthen Castle,
which wrecked there more than half a century ago.

Welsh, says the doctor, not slowing.

Mm?

Wheat and timber, sailing from California to Oregon.

Why did it wreck?

The captain who was roaring drunk on an unbelievably foggy night turned into the Mink thinking it was the mighty Columbia River and discovered he was wrong. The whole load of lumber slid into the Mink. Some was teak. Note that the O Donnell barn has a lovely teak door. The only fatality: a rooster that had three times been around Cape Horn.

Worried Man stops suddenly.

You feel it? says the doctor quietly.

Mm.

The doctor stands silently for a minute while Worried Man casts about for the pain in the air. He has tried to explain to the doctor, and to Cedar, and to his wife, that he doesn’t hear or smell or feel the aura of someone else’s pain—he, just, well, catches it, sort of. I just am
apprised
of its existence, sort of, he says.

What does it feel like?

Like electricity, in a way, says Worried Man. But there’s a sort of screaming or tearing in it. A chattering. It’s hard to explain.

Where is it?

Nearby. Up.

Can you tell … ?

A woman.

The doctor, discreet, bows gently and heads back to his house. Worried Man, equally discreet, waits until the doctor turns the corner and then he heads uphill away from the ocean.

The night falls thick, he thinks, I go upon my watch. Blake.

17.

Daniel arrives, panting for dramatic emphasis, with only five minutes to go before the last bell rings. His grandmother glares at him but he is smart enough not to smile and then the bell rings and the class flutters and rustles and sprints and bustles off and Maple Head crooks her finger at Daniel to come to the desk and as he shuffles to the front of class he looks closely at her eyes under her thunderstorm eyebrows but sees no green fish leaping so he smiles.

I’m sorry, Gram.

I’ll only be a half a minute, you said.

Sorry.

Hmf.

You know what Dad’s shop is like, Gram.

O alright. You missed geometry.

I know it all. Test me.

Just do the questions after Chapter Five tonight. How’s your dad?

Stuffing a beaver.

Sentence of the day. Where’d he get it?

Grace.

Walk home with me?

Okay, Gram.

He rides his bike slowly, standing up on the pedals, and she floats smoothly over the fresh-washed asphalt, her feet feathers and songs, the rising wind pours her hair into the air. Rained gently last night, just enough to wash the town clean, and then today a clean crisp fat spring day, the air redolent, the kind of green minty succulent air you’d bottle if you could and snort greedily on bleak wet January evenings when the streetlights
hzzzzt
on at four in the afternoon and all existence seems hopeless and sad.

Daniel watches his grandmother’s hair stream behind her and he sees the brown fish leaping in the swirling silver river.

How’d you meet Grampa?

We met by the river.

Did you love him right away?

No.

No?

I was fascinated, though.

Was he fascinated too?

Yep.

How could you tell?

I could tell.

How?

I could tell. You’ll see someday.

Was he in love?

He was … fascinated.

Is that the same as love?

Better.

Better than love?

There is no real love without fascination.

Is he still fascinated?

I sure hope so.

Are you?

Yes indeedy.

Was Grampa skinny then too?

Skinny as a stick.

And funny like now?

Funny and kind like now.

What year was it when you met him?

A long time ago, Danno.

How old are you, Gram?

Old enough not to tell my impertinent grandson.

Why don’t women say their ages?

Because people make assumptions.

How old is Grampa?

Older than dirt.

How old is Cedar?

No one knows. Not even Cedar.

Really?

He doesn’t know what year he was born, love. Or where. Sometimes I think he is one of what your dad calls the ancient ones.

Daoine sidhe
, the fairies.

He doesn’t say fairies, does he?

Daoine maithe
, the good people, he says. That’s respectful.

You’re getting good with the Gaelic.

Dad’s teaching me a little. It’s cool.