Hush (4 page)

it was the only eye he had.
6
Celia drove her old Honda wagon past thousands of stumps. The road down to the

valley could be treacherous, and she negotiated it carefully on her way to work.

Last fall a deer hunter had skidded off the gravel into a steep revine, and it

took the rescue squad more than four hours to free him from his mangled pickup.

She'd heard that the hunter wasn't seriously hurt, just a few minor cuts and

bruises; but what had really piqued her curiosity was whether he was the same

man she'd once caught poaching on their land.
When they bought their fifteen acres six years ago, they didn't know that some

of the locals favored the ridge during deer season, which officially ran for

most of October.
Fine, Celia and Jack agreed when they saw the hunters arriving and heard

gunshots booming in the forest near their home. We'll live with it. It's just

one month out of the year. How bad can it be?
Back then they thought their land, at least, would remain a safe haven; and they

put out a big salt lick to attract the deer. But the salt lick also attracted

the hunters with the promise of easy prey, and on her frequent hikes Celia

started seeing coyote tracks around the gutted remains of deer that had been

poached, dressed, and dragged off to the road.
Jack tried to console Celia by reminding her that deer season would soon be

over. "It's only a month," he kept repeating, "only a month."
But a month turned into two, and two turned into three, and the killing went on

well into their first winter.
Finally, on a sunny Saturday morning in early January, an hour or so after Jack

had left for work, Celia heard a gunshot that sounded as if it came from right

outside their kitchen window. It was so loud and so close that she stiffened and

couldn't move for a couple of seconds. When she did step out onto the deck she

saw a man driving down the long sloping meadow in front of their house in a

shiny new Jeep. He rolled right over the reedy stalks of wildflowers and didn't

stop until he pulled up by his kill in one of the few remaining patches of snow.
"You son of a bitch!" She reached in the door and grabbed a jacket and started

down the meadow. Sure enough, the deer had been shot right beside the salt lick.

As she approached the hunter he turned the animal on its back, pulled out a huge

knife and, to her considerable horror, plunged it into the deer's anus and sawed

it open. It took her breath away to see the blood drooling onto the snow, and

she had to force herself forward.
He was busy trying to crack open the pelvic bone with the tip of his knife when

Celia stormed up to him with her arms folded across her chest.
"You're trespassing," she said, "and you're poaching." Her voice was too high,

and she sternly ordered herself to calm down.
She wished Jack had been home. The hunter— middle-aged, balding— was looking her

up and down. Her made her feel as if she were a piece of meat.
"Is that so?" He sounded like some kind of backwoods cracker, except he had that

new Jeep and must make money somehow. A logger, she thought, or a pot farmer. It

was hard to tell one from the other anymore.
He used a rock to pound the butt of his knife, and the pelvis split apart with a

nauseating sound— sharp and dull at the same time, truly sickening. Then he

split the deer's underbelly, and what looked like a bucket of blood spilled out.

Celia thought she might vomit. She had to turn away but she could still hear him

working hard. His breath came in loud puffs, and she also heard the gristly

sounds when he cut open the hide.
"Yes, that's so," she said fiercely. She tried not to show any fear, and she

made herself look at the hunter and his prey. He'd shot a yearling. Its antlers

were little more than mossy stumps, barely legal during hunting season, and

hunting season ended months ago.
"You wouldn't deny a man the privilege of getting himself a deer, now would

you?" he said as he yanked open the flaps of gray fur. Then he pulled up the

sleeve of his camouflage jacket and stuck his arm up inside the animal to pull

out its guts. But he did this for only a second or two— long enough to bloody

himself up to his elbow— before he rolled the yearling onto its side facing

downhill. He reached back in and with the aid of gravity started pulling out the

lumpy mass. Celia saw it stream onto the snow like the earth's own lava, red and

angry-looking, steaming in the cool air.
He put his knife back to work, slicing this and that. Snip-snip-snip. She heard

this too.
"Yes, I would."
"You would, huh?" he snorted. "This your land?"
"Yes," Celia almost shouted.
"Well, don't be getting so uppity about it. Some of us been hunting around here

a helluva long time. You just don't come in here and have things your way. Who

the hell you think you are?" He made eye contact with her for the first time.

"Big mistake, lady."
"My name is not lady, it's Mrs. Griswold to you, and mister, let me tell you

you're the one making the big mistake."
"Think so, huh?" He chuckled and looked back down. "Guess we'll see about that.

Me? I'm taking this deer home, so you can squawk all you want. Don't make any

difference to me."
He finished field-dressing the deer and dragged it over to his jeep, the open

kind with a roll bar. He left behind a bloody smear in the snow, a disturbing

depression that led back to the entrails still steaming in the bright sun,

resting on a wide oval of red slush now soaking into the spongy earth.
He dumped the deer in the back of the Jeep. Celia heard a metallic sound as the

animal's body fell on some tools, its head hanging over the side. Sunlight

flared on one of its smooth dark eyes. She made a note of the license plate.
"I'm reporting you."
"Hey, you do what you want, girlie." He smiled when he said that. Then he

slammed the Jeep door— the only evidence of his anger— and drove up past their

house, leaving dark tire tracks in the untouched meadow.
She marched back inside and called Charlie Vates, the game warden. He came over

and took her statement that very morning. When she mentioned the new Jeep, he

paused.
"You know who that is, Mrs. Griswold?" he asked as if he didn't expect an

answer, and he certainly didn't wait for one. "That's Bill Keiter's brother,

Hal. You know Keiter, the fire chief?"
"I know of him."
Vates put his pen down on the table, and she realized he was trying to tell her

something without saying anything at all. She looked him right in the eye.
"I don't care if he's the President's brother. I'm pressing charges."
Vates nodded thoughtfully and picked his pen back up. He made a few more notes

before asking her a final question.
"You in the fire district up here?"
She shook her head no, and Vates smiled.
"Good thing."
A month later Vates called to say that Keiter had been fined a hundred dollars.
She nodded as she hung up the phone. The son of a bitch had trespassed, poached,

and hunted out of season to bag maybe fifty pounds of meat. A hundred bucks? Two

bucks a pound. It wasn't much but she thought it was a lot better than nothing.
As it turned out, the hunter who plunged into the ravine last fall wasn't Hal

Keiter. If it had been, Celia might have wished him a lot more than a few cuts

and bruises.
She continued on her way to work, leaving behind the stumps and enjoying the way

the narrow road snaked through the trees; but as she whipped around a familiar

bend she spotted a new logging road gouged out of the forest, a brown smear with

skinny roots sticking up at odd angles.
She had to slow down to pass a large yellow bulldozer parked by the side of the

road. About twenty feet away two men worked their chain saws, spilling a steady

steam of sawdust in the air. As Celia drew closer, the noise of their engines

turned into a shriek. A third man smoked a cigarette by a head-high stack of

neatly trimmed conifers.
Before moving to the Northwest, Celia held a rather storied view of loggers:

rugged individualists who used their wits and brawn to brave the forest and help

build the nation. After living here a few years, she decided loggers were no

more romantic than cattlemen once you'd seen a slaughterhouse.
The man smoking smiled and waved, and even though their presence made her

uneasy, she waved back.
Up ahead she could see the biggest, prettiest meadow on the ridge, and as she

drove toward it she spotted patches of bright-orange poppies, like the one she

tried to paint yesterday morning. They always appeared in abundance at this time

of year. Perfect, she thought, for the Halloween season just around the corner.
She smiled as she sped past the meadow. At least they can't spoil this.
*
She pulled into the driveway that ran alongside the Bentman Children's Center

and mumbled, O-G-I-M, short for "Oh God It's Monday." She figured if Friday had

an acronym all its own, Monday certainly deserved one, though she did enjoy her

work as an art therapist. She used her talents as an artist and her training in

psychology to decipher the secrets that most children hid in their artwork.
The Center sat on the outskirts of town, directly in front of a large hill that

had been logged during summer vacation. The barren face of that rise loomed over

the entire area, and even from a distance Celia could see the stumps and the

sickly tint of sawdust. The father of one of the boys at the Center had worked

this clear-cut, a point of considerable pride for the seven-year-old, who

boasted about it continually:
"My daddy done that. He cut down every one of them trees," to which Celia or one

of the other staffers would reply gently,
"Eddy, it's not correct to say, 'My daddy done that.' It's 'My daddy did that.'

And it's not 'Every one of them trees,' it's 'Every one of those trees.' "
"Did too, did too. He done that."
Patience, Celia would counsel herself, patience.
The Center consisted of two buildings: a single-level structure in the back that

housed the classroom; and the two-story main house, which was built in 1920 and

renovated before the Center opened fifteen years ago. Celia and the two child

therapists had their offices on the main floor, along with the clerical staff.

As she made her way from the parking area she heard someone laughing. It sounded

like Ethan, although dark humor was common among most of the men and women who

worked here, and in this respect they differed little from cops, reporters, ER

doctors and nurses, or anyone else who deals with the grimmer aspects of human

nature.
At the moment eleven children were enrolled at the Center, which served all of

the region's schools. Originally it had been part of a pilot project for

"special needs" students, but the state started providing ongoing funding and

opened other children's centers around Oregon— after it became apparent that

dysfunctional kids were turning into a growth industry. Some of the children

attending the Bentman Center lived in towns twenty miles away. All of them had

been classified as "severely emotionally disturbed," and a few, including an

eleven-year-old schizophrenic, were in much worse shape.
Passive-aggressive behavior was commonplace, and it was not unusual for children

to defecate or urinate on themselves. Not surprisingly, the rules required

parents to make sure their offspring always kept an extra set of fresh clothes

at the Center.
As difficult and as objectionable as the children could be, Celia found it

gratifying to work with them. Whenever she got depressed about a child's

behavior she made herself remember the children who had established control over

their impulses, caught up on their academic work, and returned to their

neighborhood schools.
She hiked up the steps of the main house. It was a large white rambling

structure with canary-yellow trim around the windows and doors, which she had

found a bit garish until she'd learned that the color had been selected by a

vote of the Center's first clients.
A large porch welcomed guests, and a vestibule the size of a studio apartment

received them. There were hooks for coats, a hip-high Japanese ceramic pot for

umbrellas, and a six-foot perforated rack that had been placed above the metal

grate of a hot-air duct. Most years it rained a lot, and they used this system

to dry their soggy boots.
Celia walked into the living room, which served as the reception area. The

imperious Barbara Kneese presided over it, she of the bifocals, rigid posture,

and severe manner of a Prussian. Only Barbara's wild hair humbled her dignified

older presence. Her frizzy curls sprang from her scalp and raced like white

water down over her shoulders. For years Celia had watched Barbara war against

it with straighteners, scissors, and sprays, never fully surrendering to its

shameless spontaneity.
"Morning, Barbara." Never Barb.
"Good morning, Cecilia." Never Celia, much less Cel. The receptionist paused to

swipe at a wiry hair hanging in her face. It bounced around teasingly before

settling right back where it had been. Barbara grimaced. "And how are you

today?" After more than two decades in the States, her German accent remained as

flatulent as ever.
"Okay. Is there coffee?"
"Indeed there is. Dr. Weston made it, but there was no milk today. It went sour

over the weekend, and plop-plop I had lumps in my coffee this morning. Lumps!"
"That's a drag," Celia sympathized as she swept into the Center's kitchen. The