The River (2 page)

2

Lost lost lost…

The next morning was Saturday. When I woke up the river had a new mood. I thought I’d heard every noise it could make. When the water was high and swift and muddy, it seemed to be shouting; when it was low and treacherous and soothing, it was almost like a lullaby, one of the lovely but really brutal ones.
Come, dip your toes in my glacial goodness. I will rock you to sleep, and then dash your head against a submerged boulder.

I’d heard the river angry, I’d heard the river playful, but until that morning I’d never heard the river grieve.

My bedroom was in the attic under a sloping ceiling—a scrawny room that must once have belonged to the hired help or a very cold nun when my great-grandmother first ran Patchworks during the Depression. Back then it was a kind of homey barracks for lumberjacks—a place where a woman with a genteel southern lilt served stacks of biscuits and sweet corn on the cob to men who wanted to remember they weren’t one hundred percent wild.

The crow’s nest (as Mom called my room) was in the corner on the river side and had a turret with a territorial view. And man, did it cover a lot of territory—rushing water, tall trees, rolling foothills—if I opened the window in winter and leaned out I could almost see the Hoodoo Ski Bowl. But since I didn’t ski it was no big deal. I felt no need to conquer mountains or speed down them. Since I was a runner, my attitude was: downhill is cheating.

My room was also the noisiest in the place, especially in a storm. Between the rain slapping the roof and the white water rushing out back, most of the time I woke up feeling pelted. But not that morning. That morning I felt more adrift than usual, as though someone had cut an anchor.

I got out of bed and smoothed the three layers of antique quilts behind me. As I did, I closed my eyes and listened. It definitely seemed as though the river were crying.

I looked out the window. The water was brown and high, but we seemed in no danger of flooding, so I shook off the creepy feeling as I pulled on my sweats and dashed downstairs.

Dad was sitting at his favorite table in front of the picture windows in the café, eating his three-berry bran waffles and looking up every so often to make sure Fred the Eagle was still in his aerie in the treetops along the opposite bank.

I was hoping to sneak past him but he looked up and saw me.

“Hold on, missy. Where do you think you’re going?”

Just once I would have liked to have gotten away without him harassing me. My Saturday morning run was my one hour of freedom a week. And to think: months ago I imagined that when he went on serotonin inhibitors I’d be able to get away with more stuff. All the drugs had done was make him more vigilant.

“To Tiny’s and back.” That was my loop. About a 10K. It took me along the Santiam River Road, past the Kid for Sale sign, past the Santiam National Forest Ranger Station, to Tiny’s Garage, which was next to Highway 22, then reverse.

“Got your cell?”

I pulled it out of my sweatshirt pocket and showed it to him.

“Is it juiced?”

I nodded.

He looked at his watch and clicked a button. “I’ll call Tiny,” he said.

Dad said he got the chills just thinking of me galli-vanting along that isolated road (his word—
gallivant
), so he alerted our neighbors to keep an eye out for me: the Armstrongs at the Kid for Sale sign; Ranger Dave (hope-fully less brokenhearted this morning); and finally, Tiny of Tiny’s Garage and Minit-Mart. I suppose the neighborhood watch was sweet, but they weighed me down. Without neighbors I could’ve shaved thirty seconds off my best time, easy.

Mom poked her head out of the kitchen. Ropes of raw dough were peeling off her arms like extra layers of skin. “There’s a breakfast burrito for you on the warmer,” she said, and went back to slapping a loaf into shape.

I had no desire to eat. Dad had already set his watch; it was time to go.

I burst through the wooden door and into the chilly damp air. It was raining biblically hard, but that made it perfect running weather. I took my first step across the porch and nearly tripped over a two-by-four plank with three mud pies arranged neatly on top, each with a sprig of a fat purple blossom (lupine?) sticking up like a birthday candle.
Whoa, great presentation
, I thought.
Mom would be impressed
.

I knew who left us the present. Karen, third of four Armstrong children, she of the blue whale rain slicker and cross-shaped scar on her forehead, Kid for Sale. I babysat for her and her brothers and sister yesterday while their parents grabbed a bite at the inn. These mud pies must be Karen’s way of saying thank you.

I nudged them to the side of the door and began what would be a very long race.

Of all the buildings in Hoodoo, ours was the only one with “curb appeal.” Everyone else focused their gardening skills on their backyards since that was where the river was. Their front yards were either a quarter mile of grit, or a quarter mile of grit peppered with rusted pickups and unfenced, unleashed mongrels. At first I was afraid of these canines, some of whom were large and imposing, running free, but I soon learned that most dogs think of runners as a pack. Sometimes by the time I reached Tiny’s I was running with a posse of six dogs. Today, before I ran up to the Armstrongs’ house, I’d only picked up Trixie, an energetic terrier, and Thor, a giant, lean German shepherd with a huge bark and a half-masted ear, which made him look always perplexed. Thor was harmless except for the parasites crawling on his belly and ears.

This morning Thor—with his crooked but functional sonar—heard the cries before I did.

“Karen! Karen!”

I rounded the bend and there was Mr. Armstrong standing by his mailbox where the Kid for Sale sign used to be. He was a compact guy with sandy brown hair and leathery skin of someone who worked outside a lot—which he did, being in construction. Behind him, his yard was being chewed to mud by three stubborn goats.

Mr. Armstrong was worried about something. He tried to hide it, but anxiety was dusting his face like pollen.

“Morning.” I nodded.

“Have you seen Karen?” he asked.

“No,” I said. And in my heart I felt something do a light somersault. I should’ve been used to it by now. Karen was an explorer—always charting new places and experiences. When she was off trailblazing she didn’t always remember to check in. But she always came back.

I remembered my foot connecting with the mud pies before I started out. “I think she was at the inn earlier. She left us a present. But I haven’t seen her.”

Mr. Armstrong smiled, but he was holding his breath. “I hope she isn’t down by the river. She knows she’s not supposed to go there alone.”

At that moment, even though I was saturated, I got a chill. On days like these with the snowcaps beginning to melt, the rapids were swift.
Lost lost lost
… even here I could hear the river wailing.
Nothing’s wrong
, I told myself.
She disappears all the time
.

“I’m sure she’s fine. I’ll bring her home if I see her.” I glanced at my watch. “I should be back in thirty-four minutes. If we haven’t found her by then, I’ll help you beat the brush.”

Mr. Armstrong sighed and looked at his own watch. “Thirty-three. You’ve got time to make up.”

“For Karen? I’ll make it in thirty-two.”

I smiled at him in what I hoped was a confident, reassuring way. Then I waved and left, happy to be gone. Mr. Armstrong’s worry was so palpable it felt like a wall. Some things, I was discovering, you can’t run past.

By the time my pack and I hit the Santiam National Forest Ranger Station, Thor and Trixie and I had picked up Bailey, a mutt that looked like a normal golden retriever from the chest up, but his legs were short and stubby, like a basset’s. It was hard to take Bailey seriously. Those stubby legs made him look like a real clown.

The sign in front of the ranger station announced that the danger of a forest fire was low today. I spat the rainwater that had funneled from my hair, down my nose, and into my mouth. I once made the mistake of suggesting to Ranger Dave that his pie chart should have a “Well, duh,” setting for days like this. And he’d rounded on me, furious, poking a lean finger at my chest. “Do you know how much acreage we lost last summer? Have you even
seen
the east side of the pass? That burn was so out of control we’re lucky no one got killed.”

At the time I apologized sincerely and offered him more Penn Cove Mussels with ancho chile salsa, but I think that was the moment I realized that Hoodoo was so different from my old life I could take nothing for granted. In Hoodoo, I couldn’t even make jokes about the weather.

This morning Ranger Dave was sitting on the covered porch, dry and smug, sipping a mug of coffee. His long brown hair was loose and shaggy. He wore a Dalmation robe and a raccoon was draped around his shoulders like a stole. He fed it bites of cruller, which the raccoon grasped and ate in tiny delicate bites. The critter froze when he saw us jogging past, and Thor’s sonar went up.
I sense the presence of something chaseable
. But when I kept running, so did he.

Seeing Ranger Dave and his critter, I tensed, ready to spring. I cocked my arms back, my strides became jumpy and anxious. Then I watched in what seemed like super slo-mo as Ranger Dave clicked a button on his stopwatch.

Even though I was too far away to hear the noise it made, I heard the click and it sounded like the word
go
. Something shifted channels inside me and my pack and the landscape fell away. I was pure movement, a swift current, strong enough to flow over anything in my path.

Run, Ronnie, run.

And I did. I ran off the bunny carcasses, shredded and stringy. I ran off our move and my dad’s burnout. I ran off Mr. Armstrong’s worry. I ran off my own lost hopes of having friends with a future and having a future of my own.

A mile later I stopped and tagged the gas pump at Tiny’s Garage, my chest heaving. I brought my sweatshirt up to wipe the rain from my face. I looked above my head. There, with its narrow, twisty shoulders and thundering traffic, was the highway. Trucks thundered past carrying giant logs, mobile homes with bikes mounted on the rear, Audi SUVs with ski racks shedding snow—all on their way back to Portland. But not me. For me, this highway was as far as I could go. Any way further by foot was blocked. And today, like I did every Saturday, as I stood there confronted with my limit, I understood that I ran mostly because I couldn’t run away.