Water Rites (26 page)

“I’m’ so sorry.” The woman covered her mouth with her hand.

“What about the man who sold this to you?” Jeremy turned to her. “What’s he like?”

“Julio Moreno?” The woman sounded surprised. “He’s honest, if that’s what you mean. His family has lived in Mosier forever. They grow sugar beets. Julio could tell you where he got it. I don’t think the man ever forgets anything.”

Nita stacked the empty pails together, gathered up Rachel, and scrambled to her feet. ‘I’ve got to go talk to him.” She tucked the squirming Rachel into her sling.

“Do you want to keep the pack?” The woman cleared her throat, her pity warm in the air. “If you’ll swap me for yours?”

“Thank you.” Nita emptied her pack onto the ground and handed it to the woman. “Thank you very much.” She rubbed the worn fabric gently.

David had bought the cloth at the Salem market. He had taught her how to sew with that pack. It had been a hard job and she had made a lot of mistakes. There was the seam that she had resewn four times. She had thrown it out the door of their tent after the third time and David had laughed at her temper. He had picked it up, and told her to work on it another day, and they had made love in the afternoon heat. Nita’s throat closed on tears as she tucked Rachel’s quilt, the water bottle, and a spare diaper into the familiar folds.

Rachel started to cry irritably as Nita walked back to the truck. Dan wasn’t back yet, but she couldn’t wait for him. Jeremy had followed her, not saying anything as she tossed the empty pails into the truck’s bed. She opened the door and felt for the keys beneath the seat. It was only ten miles to Mosier — they could be back in an hour. Dan would know it was important. He’d understand. She stared at the keys in her hand.
You should know how to drive
, David had said when she had turned sixteen. He had traded precious honey for the use of a clunky old electric hybrid and he had taught her how to drive. Nita climbed onto the seat.

“I think I’ll come with you.” Without waiting for her reply, Jeremy pulled open the passenger door and climbed in.

“No, thanks.” Nita glared at him.

He made no move to get out.

“Fine. Whatever.” Nita started the engine.

Rachel started crying hard, her face red and angry as Nita backed the truck out of the lot. Not because she feels me, Nita thought fiercely. That’s not why. She drove west, past the empty car lots and abandoned shopping centers that clustered at the edges of town. Rachel finally stopped crying. Nita looked sideways to discover that Jeremy had her daughter on his lap and was making a bright-green insect hover above her face. Rachel reached for it, smiling tentatively, her face still blotchy with weeping. Nita felt a stir of gratitude, but a cold stone of fear sat in her chest, squashing the words down inside her.

West of The Dalles, one of the stark cliffs had crumbled into the riverbed. It had taken a section of the interstate with it and traffic had to turn off onto the old highway. Nita took the two-lane winding road fast. The land rose on their left, barren slopes patched with tough weeds and clumps of sun scorched grass, pierced by rocks like broken teeth. You could see the stumps left from the orchards that had died and been cut for firewood. Cherries, Dan had told her. She had never eaten a real cherry. Cherries came out of the vats, fed by the bushes that had killed the Valley and hadn’t needed David’s bees. A few tall poplars remained from the old windbreaks, like posts of a vanished fence. Nita forced herself to slow down, afraid of what might happen if the land went suddenly green.

It didn’t go green. Jeremy made glittering butterflies and tiny green frogs for Rachel and the hills remained dead and brown.

It took less than half an hour to reach Mosier. Nita parked in front of an empty auto-body shop. Across the street, a tall white house stood up on a bank above the level of the road. Clothes hung on the wide porch, swinging in the wind, and Nita caught sight of cluttered chairs, saw the glint of glass on tables. Julio’s secondhand store.

Jeremy handed Rachel to Nita without a word. Clutching her daughter, Nita climbed the steep steps that had been cut into the bank. The wide porch was crammed with clothes, old tools, china plates and cups painted in vivid colors, plastic dishes, and furniture. Some of the clothes looked as if they had been hanging on the porch for years, faded into drab pastels by the sun. Others looked new and fresh, as if they had come from a store.

“You wish some help?” A lanky man wearing a too-large denim overall stepped from the house. His left arm was scarred and twisted, but his eyes looked young, in spite of his gray hair. “You are looking for clothes,
senora
?” He smiled at Rachel. “For
la nina?
”

“No. Thank you.” The words stuck in Nita’s throat. Slowly she held out the pack. “This belongs to my . . . husband.” Her voice trembled in spite of herself. “A woman said she bought it from you.”

The man’s face took on a wary expression.

“I don’t mean . . . I’m not accusing you of stealing it.” Nita flushed.

“I did not think you were.” Julio Moreno shook his head slowly and Nita cringed at the texture of his reluctance.

“Tell me,” she said.

He spread his hands. “I . . . found the pack.” He looked beyond her, at the barren, brown hills. “It was away from the road, in some rocks, you know. It was empty.” Moreno coughed a little. “There were bones.” He coughed again. “It is easy to die in this dry land.”

Bones. Nita stared at the pack in her hands, blue cloth, bought with the honey she and David had gathered, sewn in the evenings together. “Was there anything to . . . show who he was?” He? Why he? She thought in terror. The bones could have belonged to a woman.

“He wore jeans,
senora
. A shirt, blue or green. His hair was dark, I think.” He shrugged, his brown eyes full of sympathy. “I put the bones in the churchyard.” He pointed up the street. “That is where bones belong. Even now, when it is so easy to die.”

“Will you show me?” Nita whispered. She didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare look at Rachel who would have David’s blue eyes and his face. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on the pack in her hands, a wad of blue cloth that had smelled like honey and David’s sweat once, smelled like a stranger now.”

“
Lo siento mucho, senora
,” Moreno said softly. “I will show you.”

The stone he had used to mark the grave was a stone from the hillside, gray lava rock, dusty and squarish. Nita touched it with her fingertips, feeling its coolness and its weight. It was heavy, like death.
It is easy to die in this dry land.
Nita wondered how the man whose bones lay beneath the stone had died. He had died so close to a town, so close to a road and people.

“It wasn’t David,” she said out loud.

Julio Moreno, head bowed, twisted arm hanging at his side, said nothing.

Nita turned away, angry at his silence.

Jeremy waited at the overgrown fence around the tiny graveyard. “I’ll drive back,” he said and lifted Rachel from Nita’s arms.

At the truck, she climbed into the passenger side without speaking. Rachel was asleep and blessedly, didn’t wake up as Jeremy tucked her onto the seat beside Nita. In spite of his hands, Jeremy handled the wheel easily. Nita stared out at the brown land as they followed the road’s twists and turns through the dust. “I don’t want him to be dead,” she whispered, but a tiny part of her — a small place deep inside — was relieved. She leaned her head against the door, wanting to cry, wanting to weep for him. Her eyes remained as dry as the soil in the dead orchards.

The road circled around the head of a deep, cocky canyon. An old house sat down in the bottom, huge and dilapidated. A hint of majesty still clung to it in spite of its sagging roof and gaping, glassless windows. Green showed down there, the stingy, irrigated green of the present. Carefully watered rows of beans filled the floor of the canyon. As the pickup labored around a bend, Nita lost sight of the house. She wondered dully who had built it, out here in this lonely canyon.

Up on the rim again, Jeremy pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and shut off the engine. “Come for a walk,” he said, and it was a command, in spite of his gentle tone.

She had no strength to refuse. When Jeremy scooped up Rachel and held out his hand to her, she climbed out of the truck. They were up above the narrow little canyon. The wind whipped at her hair, trying to tug it loose from her braid. A promontory jutted out from the wall of the Gorge like a round island of rock, connected t the land by a narrow neck. Nita followed him out onto it. The center of the promontory looked hollow, like a bowl, and the broken skeletons of old trees jutted up from the rocky ground.

Jeremy sat down with Rachel on his lap and pulled Nita gently down beside him. “I found this place years ago,” he said softly. “I come back when I’m in the neighborhood.”

The dry cliff top wavered to life around them. The hollow became a pond, ringed by trees whose branches were tipped with young leaves. Stiff green blades poked up through the still water and tiny flowers carpeted the green grass, white, pink, and purple. Silently Jeremy pointed. Nita turned her head and caught her breath. Beyond the rocky edge lay the river. It stretched between the carved walls of the Gorge, vanishing eastward and westward into an opalescent haze. The wrinkled sheet of gray blue water shimmered, shading into browns along the shore. She could see the highway down below here. Dozens of trees dotted the ground and the hills glowed with soft greens.

“The river is so big,” Jeremy said softly. “How could anyone who lived with this ever imagine that it could be empty?” He shook his head. “It’s our own fault. The Dry. I think we let it happen because we couldn’t believe in it, because we had so many rivers, so much water.”

He loved this lost world, in spite of how much it hurt him. His sadness blended with the sweeping curve of the river, wove itself into the green hills that would really be dry and dusty if you walked on them. Nita looked down at the ground in front of her. Flowers glowed among the lush grass stems, smaller than her little fingernail. Pink and white stars clustered with fringed blue cups. A bird fluttered soundlessly in the bushes and the branches swayed, their new leaves bright green or bronzy red. So much
life
. She was drowning in it. It filled her up in an aching rush, overflowed to spill down her cheeks as tears, dissolving the stony numbness that filled her.

“He’s not dead.” Nita clenched her fists, squeezing invisible dust between her fingers. “Those aren’t his bones, do you hear me? I love him. I love him so much.”

“It’s all right, Nita.” Jeremy’s thickened fingers were gentle as he stroked her back. “If he died, he didn’t desert you. Don’t punish yourself for how you feel.”

“Bastard! I didn’t ask you!”

Rachel woke and began to scream. Jeremy caught Nita’s wrist as she started to scramble to her feet. Teeth clenched, she tried to jerk free, but he was strong, for all his crippled hands. She slipped, gasped as she fell hard onto her knees. The pain cracked her anger and the first sob shook her. Jeremy put his arms around her and gathered her against him, murmuring meaningless sounds of comfort as she wept against his shoulder. The sobs hurt her, tearing their way out of her flesh, making her shake with their force. After a long time they finally slowed, fading into hiccoughs.

Jeremy was holding her tightly, his cheek against her hair, the warmth of his comfort gentle in her mind. Slowly she straightened. “You’re all wet.” She touched his tear-soaked shirt and drew a shuddering breath. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Part of me wants to believe that he’s there, under than rock — that he didn’t run away. He was so afraid — of everything that was happening.” Nita choked on fresh tears. “He was afraid and because I knew it . . . I made it worse. He couldn’t hide from it if I was there.”

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy murmured. He pulled a bandana from his pocket and wiped her face.

Rachel had stopped crying. Jeremy had tucked her onto his lap and she was sucking on her fist, staring intently at his face.

“She likes you.” Nita giggled, heard the shrillness in her voice, and stopped. She touched Rachel’s cheek with her fingertip. So much David’s face. “What if she
is
like me?”

“What if she is?” His eyes were on hers, pale and intent. “Is that really why you think he left you?”

“Maybe,” Nita whispered. “I don’t know.”

“You’ll teach Rachel that who she is and what she is, matters. You’ll teach her to be proud of herself and her gift,” he said fiercely.

Need
. She met his eyes, feeling it, not sure what it was that he wanted from her. “Gift?” Anger came back to her suddenly. “It’s not a gift to eavesdrop on pain and lust and anger. I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know.” Rachel wailed as Nita snatched her from Jeremy’s lap. She ran back to the truck through the green world, stumbling on the dust and rocks she couldn’t see. Jeremy limped slowly after her.

“Don’t be angry,” he said when he caught up with her. “I know it’s hard for you. It’s hard for me — what I am — and my makings don’t have any real value. Your ability means something. People are so far apart, even when we try so damned hard to be close. You can narrow that gap, Nita.”

“No.” She looked around at the flowers and the distant pond, losing herself in the sweep of the river and Gorge. She could feel peace in this place, like moisture in the air.

“It’s spring,” Jeremy said. “That’s why it’s so green. I’ve seen it in summer, too, but it’s dry then. It looks more like . . . now. I thought you needed spring.”

“Thank you.” Nita touched his face, hearing loneliness in his voice, thick as layered dust. “Thank you for doing this for me. Don’t ever think it doesn’t have value. Please.”

He took her hand between his, kissed it gently, and climbed into the truck. The land didn’t turn dry and brown again until they were well below the crest.