Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle (7 page)

Forge had sprung into its existence from a single blacksmith shop staked out in 1863 at the headwaters of the Clearwater River. The convergence of several small tributaries had been the ideal spot for trappers and prospectors to resupply, trade wampum with the Nez Perce Indians, and have their mules reshod. Alternately converging and forking rivers with their shoals and shifting sandbars had marked the furthest incursion of steamboats that had come up the Columbia River past Lewiston, the original state capital. Lewis and Clark themselves had been the first recorded white savages to winter on the banks of the Clearwater and carve out huge canoes from the great bull pines they found, nearly three quarters of a century before the first steamboat shattered its paddle on the rocky river bed and been turned into Forge’s first semi-floating hotel, just down the new street from the smithy and across Oro Fino Creek from the Chinese laundry.

Forge had eventually been reincarnated from a gold-mining boomtown to a logging capital. Mercedes had often heard her grandfather tell about his first summer job as a poleman on a log drive. He and his friends had come up from California one spring and been dumbfounded to see the great Clearwater River nearly choked by a great, shivering jam of lumber. They’d lent a hand, prying the freshly hewn and strangely naked-looking logs off the banks of the Clearwater, and ended up riding the jam itself all the forty miles to the cedar mill. Max Adams and his companions were hired on and spent the rest of that summer and two succeeding on the river, herding tons of bobbing, new lumber toward its destiny in the various mills which dotted the wide banks. His last year before heading off to college in San Francisco, Max and his brother Harry had been assistant cooks on a floating chuckwagon, a prefabricated mess hall with a pair of outboards that traveled with the log drive from the logging camp all the way to the mill.

A chunk of this rough, raw wilderness had settled solidly into Max’s soul. He’d fallen in love with the wide, green valleys from his very first summer, and Max twice made good on his promise to return. Once to marry Britta Bergstrom, the daughter of an immigrant Swedish farmer he’d stayed with when he wasn’t cooking flapjacks for the smelly, bristling loggers. Again when his last child, Mercedes’ father, had left the nest for college. Max and Britta had retired from California as fast as they could pack their station wagon, and come back to the quiet.

As much as Mercedes was a product of one of the most boisterous, blaring, overflowingly Italian families of San Francisco, she had equally deep and reverberating roots here, in Forge, Idaho. A fact that she’d only begun to discover the summer she was seventeen, when the general course of her life and of everything else around her had nearly convinced her that life was over.

Mercedes allowed her arms to drop back into the water and began sculling with her hands, moving her elbows and wrists in a snap-glide-snap that reminded her of the fake salutations of parading prom queens. Her calves ached. Slowly she began to turn, the jet of water velvet smooth against her flushed skin.

The little boys playing at the end of the pool seemed to have reached the limits of pleasure that mere splashing could provide. She watched as the smaller one reached out and grabbed his brother’s goggles by the thin band of plastic that connected the two lenses, and soundly snapped them across the bridge of the larger boy’s nose. The older brother squawked and reeled back. “Ow, Donald!” Mercedes winced. The only kids she’d seen play like this had been Alice and Diane’s little brothers. The lifeguard on the tower across from them just laughed and twirled his whistle by its nylon tether.

Mercedes switched her kick style, whirling her legs beneath her, twisting slightly from side to side. Maybe I should step in before one of the little tykes ends up in the hospital, she thought. As she began to move towards them, the older boy ripped the goggles completely off his brother’s head, then, jumping purely for height, threw the rubber-bound goggles over the smaller boy into the gutter. “There, that’s what you get!”

Yelping, Donald pounced to the side of the pool, his arm shooting into the covered trough that gurgled greedily. The bright blue lenses sailed on, borne away on a wave from their owner’s splashy approach. He almost snagged the slithering end of the rubber strap before it slipped away down the drain. Red-faced, he aimed himself at his crocodile-grinning brother. Before the lifeguard could blow his whistle, Donald had surged over his snickering brother in a rush of miniature breakers and chlorinated froth.

Mercedes looked up at Garret before turning back to the empty deep end. Better leave this to the proper authorities, she thought as she listened to the lifeguard’s dictates over the now-silent boys.

During the brief show she had never stopped treading water, and as she lifted her elbows once again out of the water, Mercedes found herself looking towards the widest spread of the concrete pool deck, where she’d spread her towel earlier, between the fence and the Coke machine, next to the square blue trapdoor, locked now, that accessed the pool’s surge tank. Before passing through the entire filtration system, the goggles would no doubt go there, along with all the other detritus that was washed down the drains.

The young lifeguard, Garret, had climbed down off his tower and was now quietly berating the boys, who stood shivering before him, bouncing on the deck, their arms firmly clapped around their tanned middles.

Mercedes kicked the water with greater ferocity, groaning softly as she forced herself to work. Lines of white fire now drew themselves across her legs, winding from her buttocks down around to her inner calves. Thirty seconds more. She managed to lift herself out of the water nearly midway up the slopes of her breasts before she gave out, her arms collapsing into the water and immediately working to support her. A rivulet of perspiration ran into her eye, and she leaned back, dipping her face backwards into the cool, cool water before lifting her legs up as well. Gradually, Mercedes arched into a back float.

She began to breathe deeply, letting her body know to begin its cooldown. Years of this type of exercise had thoroughly programmed her metabolism, had managed to educate the mysterious workings of a body that had so often and so thoroughly turned traitor to her. When it came to exercise, at least, her body now seemed to know precisely when to flex itself into something taut and hard and when to relax.

Mercedes felt like she was weightless, floating almost without effort, and she could imagine the pool bottom more than twenty feet behind her and below, herself buoyed above.

This was the best part, she thought. She wondered if her doctor had known he would turn her into an endorphin junkie by prescribing such a rigorous exercise schedule. A gentle warmth was spreading through her entire body. It filled up the hollow, aching chambers in her legs and lower abdomen. Overflowed the bounds of her body. Wrapped her in a tender heat.

And there, floating, almost levitating blissfully on a wave of buoyant emotion, Mercedes found her thoughts once more spiraling in reverse, down through the history of Forge; not that dry commentary friendly to any museum chronicle, but the story of her own first coming to Forge. That miserable, torturous, deliriously happy summer when she was seventeen.

Forge

When she was seventeen

Mercedes leaned back into the leather upholstery and closed her eyes, trying to listen to her grandfather whistle through his teeth in syncopation with the jazz piano gliding from his CD player. She could feel him glance her way occasionally as he drove the white LeBaron through blades of sunlight and shadow cast by the pine trees lining the sides of the road. The top was down, and the tires themselves were singing on the blacktop, a monotone background note to the music from her grandfather’s CD player. 

She could smell Grampa Max’s cologne. Her whole life, the scent of Brut aftershave had been one of the fine constants she marked time by. To her it was the essence of her grampa, of summer afternoons hiking with him in the hills, of her first memory of being pushed gently on a toddler swing and then turning to recognize the raw, handsome Swedish masculinity of her grandfather. To her, he’d never changed. She recalled the sheer delight she’d felt as a young, young girl when she realized for the first time that her eyes were exactly the same shade of green as those of Grampa Max.

Eyes closed now, she imagined her surroundings: the wide, green Clearwater River slipping by on the left, headed in the opposite direction. Beyond it, the steepening, boulder-studded cliffs that reached up to the sky. On her right, greener hills with miniature valleys of their own; wooded and rolling hills that eventually led (she’d seen from the airplane) to a bright yellow prairie, and then more mountains. It would be nice to capture the view somehow.

So far, Idaho wasn’t that different from the hills and parks north of Oakland, where her grandfather had taught her how to fish when she had been a little girl and before he and Grandma Brit retired.

He was looking at her again, stealing glances away from the unwinding black ribbon of highway. “Merce, you’re being awfully quiet on me. Hardly said a word since you got off the plane.” He tried to sound jovial, but Mercedes knew him well enough to hear behind the forced gallantry of his concern. She might be losing a father, but the old man next to her was losing a child. Maybe. Not for sure. Even the doctors didn’t know for sure.

“Sorry, Grampa.” She managed to smile. “I was just thinking ‘bout Dad.”

“Me, too, plum.” His thick finger stabbed at the CD control, and the sharp-edged, opening chords of a rolling blues piece filled the brief pocket of air in the convertible. “But I’m sure glad you could come up and see us. I ever tell you you’re my favorite granddaughter?”

Mercedes laughed. “I’m your only granddaughter.”

“That’s right! Uncontested champion of that department.” He leaned slightly as they rounded a tighter, sloping corner. “Say, you don’t think your aunt Sylvia will have any kids and upset the apple cart, do you?”

Sylvia was her father’s older sister, a professor of English at Berkeley and a pronounced feminist. Mercedes didn’t know how to respond to that one. She’d never been sure exactly what her grandparents thought of their outspoken daughter. It had upset them terribly when Sylvia had decided to become a Mormon a few years ago, which was odd, since their daughter had already swung along the complete pendulum of radical, left-thinking politics. Once Mercedes overheard the neighborhood gossip chattering on and on about how Max and Britta were leaving the state so they wouldn’t have to spend their retirement money bailing their daughter out of jail. “Such an irresponsible dreamer, that girl. An embarrassment to her family.”

But it had been Sylvia who’d paid for Mercedes’ plane ticket to Idaho, and Sylvia who’d moved in with her brother to help him take care of his wife during her final months. Just over a year had passed since illness killed Mercedes’ mother in tiny, quick degrees, grinding her down, shredding the delicate protective sheathes around her nerves. The doctors couldn’t even agree on a diagnosis of the symptoms, aside from terminal myelin degeneration.

Neither her fierce Italian blood nor the resounding adjuration of a thousand Hail Marys had stemmed the tide inexorably turning against Mercedes’ mother.

Sylvia arrived on their doorstep–broken into the house through a window, actually–and took charge. By that time, Mercedes was accustomed to staying home from school three days out of five to care for her mother. Even with Sylvia’s timely advent, Mercedes barely made it through the semester.

Now it was Sylvia who stayed by her father’s side while he was recovering (he
was
recovering) from the removal of some kind of cyst or growth that had attached itself to his intestines. Sylvia would take care of him long enough to give Mercedes a kind of vacation. Sylvia had a good heart.

“I hope she has kids, Grampa,” Mercedes said, squeezing his knee. “But we both know who’ll always be your favorite, right?”

He smiled and patted her hand. “That’s right.” Max tapped the volume on the CD player, and driving, focused piano filled the car. The music was upbeat, seamless, and Mercedes simply couldn’t imagine anyone’s fingers moving that fast across a keyboard. During a measure’s worth of drum solo, Max said, “Can you name the piano here, Merce? Remember anything I taught you?”

“Let’s see. Sounds a little like Duke Ellington, but more . . . careful about his notes.” She thought. “Smooth, like Michel Petrucciani, but--”

“Listen to the tone.”

She snapped her fingers. “Benny Green!”

“Good girl.” Max slapped the steering wheel. She could tell he was pleased. “Okay, honey, we’re coming up on the town. Tell me honestly if you’ve ever seen a prettier sight.”

The trees had begun to thin out somewhat, and Mercedes had noticed the occasional house nestled in among the lush, leafy green boughs. The valley itself had widened out, as if someone had scooped a miniature plain out of the smooth, lime-colored hills. The mountains themselves began to look more sculpted, more graceful, though occasionally the ridges were broken by craggy outcroppings of rock that looked like an exposed backbone of some great prehistoric beast.

They crossed a bridge, then another, then a third, and then, as Max pointed, Mercedes saw the great white dam, far up one of the canyons, extending almost from peak to peak. “Water in the reservoir is almost high enough,” Max said. “Spring runoff was good this year. Another week or so and she should be warm enough to ski in. You ever waterski?”

Mercedes shook her head.

“That reminds me,” Max said. “Your grandmother and I take turns taking her sister’s grandkids to the city pool, but today we’re both strapped. They’ve got lessons at eleven, and then we usually let them swim the whole afternoon. Would you mind?”

“Taking them to the pool? Easy.” Mercedes looked out at the widening valley. Whole neighborhoods now stretched from the highway to the foot of the mountains, and not a mini-mall in sight.

“Are you sure? Not too tired from your flight?”

“No problem, Grampa. How old are they?”

“Alice is seven, and the twins are, oh, I don’t know—nine or ten. Oh, and you’ll want to meet Irene and Diane; they’re your age. Diane gets her license in the fall, and Irene–who usually drives–just had her’s suspended for the summer. Broke her heart.”

“Why’s that?”

“Mercedes, in a town like this, a teenager without a license is like a blindfolded parachutist–frustrated, irritable, but with a vague idea that something exciting is just about to happen. You’ve got to have freedom in a place as little as Forge, but a little discipline, too. The kids here can go crazy from boredom if there’s nothing to do. Poor Irene. That girl’s got a mischievous streak—reminds me of you. Are you sure you want to be a chauffeur? You’re supposed to be relaxing up here. If your dad knew we’d put you to work right away, he’d give me hell.”

“S’ alright, Grampa. I can’t just sit around. Wouldn’t want me turning into a blindfolded parachutist, now, right? Hey, what’s that?” She pointed at a rambling two-story building across the river, about halfway up the rolling hills. It had been painted a stark, jarring blue, unnerving against the dun hillside.

Max laughed. “That there’s the high school. Another reason for the kids in Forge to go a little crazy sometimes.”

They left the highway and crossed another bridge. As they wound through town, Mercedes was struck by the fact that she couldn’t see a single stoplight. One movie theater, a single screen. A modern-looking library, across from the ancient brick junior high school her father had attended for part of a year. It was so quiet.

“Not much to look at,” her grandfather said lowly, smiling and waving at a passing motorist. “Not exactly Chinatown or Market Street, is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s peaceful, kind of nice. Relaxing.”

Her grandfather looked across at her. “Good. Relax, Mercedes.”

They pulled into an elm-lined neighborhood. Max’s house was larger than Mercedes expected, and as the car purred to a stop in the short driveway, the side door opened with a bang and out came Britta, trailed by three girls. Mercedes’ grandmother was a blond giant in a flour-covered apron, and she trundled forth, kneading small bits of dough out from between her fingers.

“Hey,” was all Mercedes could say by way of greeting before she was swept up in a hug. She wondered if her smile would one day be as beautiful as her grandmother’s, framed by jowls as pink as a baby’s.

Max took care of the luggage while Mercedes was bustled inside, borne on a wave of her grandmother’s exuberant chatter. The house smelled of cinnamon rolls; absolutely redolent with the aroma of whatever spicy was simmering in a huge black pot on the stove. She was introduced to her cousins: Diane, Irene, and Alice, who each had mahogany-colored hair and deep-set eyes to match.

“We didn’t know you were so pretty,” blurted Alice.

“What, me?” Mercedes set her suitcase on the big bed that would be hers for two months. She noticed with pleasure that the second story offered a view. “You’re the ones who are pretty.” She cupped Alice’s chin in her hand. “Absolutely a little doll! Tell me,” she sat on the bed. “How many boyfriends do you have?”

The little girl blushed, and Irene said, “Tell her about Tommy!” Alice blushed an even deeper shade of red. “You’ll see him when we go swimming this afternoon. We are going swimming, aren’t we? Right?” All four laughed.

Diane, the tallest, sat down on a cedar chest that poked out of the closet. “Aunt Sylvia called about an hour ago, asking if you’d gotten here yet. I think she’s going to call the airline and complain. Oh, she also told us that you should look in your suitcase the minute you got here, and that we should watch.”

Puzzled, Mercedes stood and began dialing in the combination on her suitcase. She was pleased her cousins had turned out to be so nice. Of course, they would know Sylvia, too. Mercedes kept forgetting they were all members of the same family, the same clan. It felt good to be in a normal house, with normal people for once. So what if Forge was a minuscule town, a dot on the map. Maybe she needed a good, healthy dose of
normal
, boring life. “Did she tell you what it was?” she asked, unsnapping the lock.

“Aunt Sylvia said it was something that would help you take it easy while you were here. She said it would help you make friends or something.”

Mercedes opened her suitcase and choked on a very unladylike guffaw. It was a black Jantzen bikini.

She held it up by its underwire for the girls to see. Except for Alice, they were speechless. “That looks like underwear,” she said.

Mercedes smirked. “Anybody got a real suit that I can borrow?”

*

The pool was actually pretty nice, she decided one swimsuit later, as they waited in line outside. From the street she’d been impressed with the surrounding park and the ten-meter platform that rose above the pool like a monument to some techno-aquatic god. The other side of the fence was a maelstrom of color and noise, shouting and splashing supplicants at the temple of summer. Mercedes felt vaguely disjointed in the summer heat, but not uncomfortable. Part of her couldn’t believe she’d actually left home. She was sure she’d blink and find she was still in California.

Everything looked new, and she said as much to Irene. “Pretty nice for a one-horse burg like Forge.”

Irene’s voice was muffled by the pile of towels she carried. “New pool. It was a donation by one of Grandpa Max’s friends, Sean Lyons–I think he’s an architect.” She went on to explain how the pool had become
the
place to hang out, at least until the water in the reservoir warmed up.

Inside, the little kids made straight for the water, while Mercedes followed Irene and Diane as they hunted for a dry place to spread the towels. If there was anything lacking in the pool, it was deck space. They finally laid down next to some other high school students on a wide square of concrete awash in hard sunlight. Her cousins’ friends were a pretty clean-cut bunch. “Mercedes, this is Ryan, Chad, Ken, Lani, Neal, . . .” Irene’s list went on and on. Mercedes went through the motions of saying hi to one and all. Not much use. The heat was like a solid presence, a thick, humid quilt blanketing one and all. The monolithic diving platform stood unused.

Mercedes found a spot between a Coke machine and a blue iron trapdoor about two feet across. The trapdoor was open, and two little boys crouched over it, squinting down into the blackness. They were in her way.

“You guys mind?” Mercedes made as if to unfurl her towel over them, and they scuttled halfway out from under it, embarrassed. She was beginning to get annoyed. Little boys. They were just sitting there, like they were fishing or something. “Hey,
amigos
!
Habla ingles
? Move over.”