Evergreen (37 page)

“I chopped him into the ground,” he said, but it didn’t seem like what he’d really wanted to say either.

When they arrived at Dr. Beller’s office, the nurse took Racina back for a blood test. Usually her dad went with her, but today Dr. Beller wanted to talk to him privately. The nurse who usually drew her blood was sick, and her replacement couldn’t find Racina’s vein until the sixth try. She kept apologizing, and Racina kept telling her it was all right. She didn’t look tough, but she was. She was from Evergreen.

When her dad saw her arm, he wasn’t as nice.

“I could do better than that,” he said when they were both back in the waiting room. “I
have
done better than that.”

“She was really nice, Dad. My veins are tiny.”

“Goddamn it,” he said, raising his voice. “Why do people keep wanting to hurt you?”

“It only looks like it hurts,” Racina said.

“What’s going on out here? Do I have to call the police to get a little order in my waiting room?” Dr. Beller said from the doorway next to the reception window. She was wearing bright yellow shoes today that crisscrossed at her toes, a dress that looked like geometry, and a little purple flower twirled up in blond hair.

Dr. Beller winked at them, but before Racina could wink back her dad did.

“Should we all go back to the exam room?” Dr. Beller said.

“I like your shoes,” Racina said when they got there. Racina took hers off and hopped up onto the exam table. “Your flower, too.”

Dr. Beller took it out of her hair and with a bobby pin secured it to Racina’s. “I have a whole backyard full of them right now. It’s like a purple carpet.”

Dr. Beller talked about how well Racina was doing and how great it was that she’d gone two whole months without so much as a sniffle. She checked Racina’s heart and listened to
her lungs. At the end of the exam, Racina’s dad left the room so Dr. Beller could examine her chest and stomach.

“Does this hurt?” Dr. Beller said, pushing lightly around her belly button.

“No,” Racina said.

“How about this?”

“Still no,” Racina said.

“This is all very good,” Dr. Beller said. “I’m so happy you’re feeling well. I’m hoping the blood test you took today will tell us a little more about what’s happening in your body when you’re not sick and maybe that will help us keep you that way.”

Dr. Beller leaned over Racina to take one last listen to her heart. She wore perfume that smelled like lemons. When she was finished examining Racina, she opened a cabinet and pulled out a small basket of toys. “Are you too old for one of these?”

“Should I be?” Racina said.

“You should see my collection,” Dr. Beller said. “I’ve got the house and the barn and the tractor even. I’m only missing the old goat now.”

Racina picked out a little plastic cow to add to her barnyard set at home. The cow was the color of cream with brown spots all over it. It looked proud of itself somehow.

Racina followed Dr. Beller out to the waiting room. She was lagging behind a little, looking at the cow. She didn’t put everything together until she and her dad were back in the truck and on their way out of Green River. Her dad had started going a new way.

“Do you like Dr. Beller?” she said.

“Sarah?” her dad said. “Yes. She’s a great doctor.”

“I mean do you like her how Aunt Leah and Uncle Hux like each other?”

“I’m not going to buy her a tiny teacup if that’s what you mean.”

Racina looked down at her cow. “I wouldn’t mind if you liked her like that.”

Her dad didn’t say anything for a long time. They drove past the last business and up a winding road with forest on either side of it. There were only a few houses, a few telephone poles, a few places to pull off from the road if you got turned around. Racina didn’t know if he did it on purpose, but ever since he’d started going this way her dad would slow down right before they passed the orphanage her mother grew up in. Today when he did that, Racina saw a bunch of kids chasing one another around the grass, laughing and panting in a way that made Racina jealous. Uncle Hux said it used to be a very uninviting place when it was called Hopewell.

“I do like Dr. Beller,” her dad finally said. “I like her a lot.”

Racina liked Dr. Beller a lot, too. She was funny and smart and nice. Unlike all of the other doctors Racina had known, Dr. Beller was the only one who didn’t have cold hands. She was the only one who said there was nothing more wonderful than the sound of a heart.

“The woods and lemons smell good together,” Racina said.

“You think so?” her dad said. “What if she doesn’t like me back?”

“She said all she’s missing now is an old goat,” Racina said, leaning against her dad’s arm while he drove. She could already picture Dr. Beller at the cabin with them. She could see the three of them—the two of them, since she’d be stuck with the dirt tea—making coffee in the mornings and taking it out onto the porch like Racina and her dad did when it was nice outside. She could see them walking along the river. Through the forest. Eating blueberries as they went along. She could see
her and her dad showing Dr. Beller all the reasons they loved Evergreen so much. She could see the three of them listening to the radio before bed. She wondered if Dr. Beller would want to tuck her in, and if she did what story she would tell. What song she would sing. What song she and her dad might sing together.

“Dad?” Racina said, picturing them at her door and feeling funny about it for minute. “Why do you drive this way now?”

They were past the orphanage, on their way out to the alfalfa and potato fields. The windows were closed, but Racina could smell the wet earth, the plants peeking up through it.

“I guess it’s my way of finally saying goodbye to your mother,” her dad said.

“Do you still love her?” Racina said.

Her dad put his hand on her knee. It was rough in places and smooth in others. “She gave me you, didn’t she?”

Racina looked at the plastic cow in her lap and the hand on her knee. She didn’t know what a dairy farm looked like or Wisconsin or even an old friend. She only knew that she wanted to know those things the way she knew the woods and the bog and the river.

“I want to see her, Dad. Phee told me she lives in Wisconsin.”

Her dad took his hand away from her knee as if her knee had stung him. “She shouldn’t have told you that. It isn’t her business.”

“Is it true?” Racina said.

“It doesn’t matter,” her dad said in the same sharp voice he’d used when someone from the government came out to Evergreen last year and said they were thinking about finally building that dam again. “You’re not going.”

“Because when I was a baby she hurt me?” Racina said.

Her dad hit the steering wheel with his hand. A wood chip went flying.

“I’m going to kill Phee.”

“She wasn’t the one who told me,” Racina said.

“Then I’ll shoot Uncle Hux.”

“It’s in my medical file,” Racina said. “How my cheek was in the snow.”

Racina didn’t know why, but something about what she’d said made her dad pull the truck over to the side of the road. Something made him look like he did that night when he was sleeping and she’d covered him with a big wool blanket even though it wasn’t cold.

“You don’t forgive her, do you?” Racina said.

Her dad looked toward the last of the woods, which were green from all the rain. The fields up ahead were green, too. “No,” he said.

Racina touched her cheek. “But I do.”

Her dad looked at the woods a long time before he put his hand back on her knee, before he turned to the road in front of them, before he let out the breath he’d been holding for years, it seemed like, and said, “I guess that means I have to let you go.”

36

Three and a half weeks later, Racina was standing on the airstrip in Yellow Falls. She and Uncle Hux were getting ready to go up in a bright red plane with a bush pilot her dad knew. Uncle Hux told her not to worry when she saw that there were only three seats including the pilot’s; his badger, which he was bringing back to the museum personally this time, didn’t count as a passenger. They were going to be gone four nights, which seemed like a really long time now that the pilot was telling them he was ready to go whenever they were. Except for when she was in the hospital, Racina had always gone to sleep in Evergreen.

Even though she’d already said goodbye to him, Racina walked back to her dad, who was standing with Dr. Beller, Phee, and Aunt Leah. The day was warm for this early in June. Dust from the surrounding fields was blowing across the runway. The women were fanning themselves with their hands and holding their dresses down at the same time.

“I’m melting,” Aunt Leah said. “How much water are we made of, Dr. Beller?”

“More than sixty percent,” Dr. Beller said. “Call me Sarah.”

“What is it, honey?” Racina’s dad said, bending over her.

Racina looked down at her purple cowboy boots, which her dad surprised her with that morning. She didn’t exactly earn them, but they were special anyway just like he promised they would be. “What if it won’t stay up in the air?” she said to him now.

But it wasn’t the plane she was afraid of or even meeting her mother for the first time, which she was going to do with Uncle Hux in a few short hours.

She was afraid to leave him.

Her dad picked her up and hugged her close.

The first time they said goodbye he put his hands behind his head like he couldn’t breathe. The first time, he told her all the things she was supposed to be careful about. The first time, he said she was the greatest goddamn girl who ever lived.

This time, her dad finished hugging her and set her on her feet again.

“Will you do something for me?” he said.

Racina looked up at her dad. She decided she wouldn’t put up a fight if he’d changed his mind about her going. She’d stay here forever if that was what he wanted.

“Do you know what would make me happy?” he said. His eyes looked big and soft and open. “If you promise me you’ll have lots of fun on your trip.”

Racina knew how hard it must have been for her dad to agree to send her up in a plane without him, to give her what she really wanted.
“Dad,”
she said, but this time she wasn’t scolding him for threatening to burn down barns. She was telling him she loved him.

“Go get on that plane already,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”

After Uncle Hux and the pilot finished strapping the badger’s
crate down to the floor of the plane with bungee cords, they helped Racina into one of the seats in the back and adjusted the straps so they were snug but not too snug. The pilot gave her and Uncle Hux headsets to wear so they could talk to each other while they were in the air. He said he was going to take them over Evergreen before they went south. He was a big believer in seeing the place you called home the way the clouds did. The birds. The sun.

“You ever been up in a plane, Hux?” the pilot said.

“No, sir,” Uncle Hux said.

“That probably means you’ve never been anywhere but the Northwoods. Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle with the two of you.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Uncle Hux said.

When the pilot started the plane, the engine coughed and the propeller began to spin and Racina lurched forward. Even though she was strapped in securely, Uncle Hux put his hand across her shoulders like he did when they were driving sometimes and a deer darted across the road in front of them. The pilot told them not to worry.

“I’m just going to turn us around and we’re off,” he said. “We’ll be in the air about two hours, give or take some. We can decide how scenic we want to be.”

“You have any last advice for us,” Uncle Hux said. He looked a little nervous. A little paler than normal. He was gripping the side of his seat.

“Every time you think you need to hold on, let go,” the pilot said.

He turned the plane around so that it was facing the sun. When they started down the runway, everything began to rattle inside the plane. The windows sounded like chattering teeth. The engine was roaring. The propellers spun faster and faster until Racina couldn’t see them individually anymore.
They were getting so close to the end of the runway, Racina thought they were going to go straight into the potato field beyond it and the forest beyond that. She said a prayer a nurse had taught her during one of her hospital stays. Racina didn’t know if angels really lived in the clouds and looked over those who needed it, but she liked the idea of it. All that goodness floating over her and the people she loved every day.

Right before the end of the runway, the wheels finally lifted off the ground, and they headed straight up into the blue. At that moment, Uncle Hux let go of the seat.

When they were up high enough, the pilot leveled the plane out, and it stopped working so hard and making so much noise. Racina pressed her face against the window, which was cold now even though when they were on the ground it was warm. Uncle Hux pressed his face against the window next to him, too.

“I’m going to follow the river up to Evergreen,” the pilot said.