Marrow Island (24 page)

I called for Katie again. She was gone.

The rain started down in fat droplets, then harder. I ran for the barn at the far side of the field. I cranked open the old door and took a breath of the air. It was heady with the remnants of animal droppings and hay, the way that musk never leaves a barn. I felt all the energy drain out of me. I lay down near the doors, where there was some light, on a soft pile of dirt and bark, thinking,
This is where the bark lives,
and listening to rain shattering over the roof, dripping to the earthen floor.

I felt the storm pass above for hours, or minutes. A steady rain began to fall. Time moved in and out like a telescope. Sometimes I felt the presence of animals, breathing in the dark, their white globes of eyes fixed on me. Then I realized there were white globes at the back of the barn, in the shadows, but not eyes.
Not eyes,
I told myself. Or maybe I spoke. I crawled over the floor slowly, trying to get a better look at the glowing orbs, floating all over the ground. Closer and closer, but it was so dark. Cracks in the walls of the barn let in just enough steely light, just enough to set the orbs alight. They weren’t floating, I could see, but coming out of the bark and dirt, bubbling out over a pile of earth and bark like the one I had been lying on. But this one had more contour. Parts of it had fallen, causing little avalanches of mycelia and soil, uncovering long pale bundles of sticks, like fingers. I caught sight of a swatch of plaid flannel.
I’m hallucinating,
I told myself. So I crawled closer, reached out my hand to the swatch of plaid, and tugged until the dirt gave way to reveal buttons, and a cluster of white mushrooms tumbled down and maggots and beetles went scattering over the hand and fleeing across the barn floor.

I clambered to my feet and ran. I left the barn, the rain coming down in a light sheet, soaking me through until I reached the woods. It was getting dark. I cowered under the skirt of a cedar and shivered. I didn’t know where I was, but the island was only six square miles. As long as I kept the sea to my left, I would come to the Colony eventually. But I didn’t want to find them. What had they done to me? What would they do if they found me? How could Katie do this to me? If I stayed under that tree all night, I would be safe. I could wait till morning. The trees all around had light trails like comets when I moved my head from side to side.

I lay down on the needles and felt something hard against my collarbone. I felt for my shirt pocket. It was my phone. I turned it on. It was seven-thirty. If I could find a signal, I could call Carey, but I would have to walk. I would have to leave the safety of the cedar. Eleven hours till daylight.

I sat in a timeless fog, trying to figure out what to do. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw tumors growing out of them. I saw my eyelashes covered in them. I could feel them over my face, through my airways, creeping up my sinuses to the inner rim of my skull, down into my bronchi and the fat red slabs of my lungs.

Despite it all, there was still one separate channel of my brain that seemed outside the sensory chaos, where logical thoughts occasionally surfaced. I realized that I was going to get cold, and that I had thrown up my last meal, and that I had had maybe an ounce of water in the last several hours.

I also knew they were looking for me. I could hear voices in the trees, far off, maybe across the field. They would look for me in the barn. I didn’t know if this was real, but it felt real. I could hear Katie calling me, and Sister. I could hear them both, first one, then the other. Singing. But maybe it wasn’t them at all. Maybe it was the shrike, calling me out of my hiding place.

I heard a clear call—my name. It was closer. I crept out of my den and made my way from tree to tree. One at a time, away from the voices. Sometimes arms reached out for me, but they were only branches. Sometimes I picked a tree that was across a great expanse that I was sure was full of fox dens. It stopped raining, but I was wet and shivering, teeth chattering. At every tree I wanted to stop, to climb up into its branches and hide above, wait for them to pass. But I kept moving to keep warm.

The sound of the water echoed in my ears, was getting closer, and the voices had ceased. I waded through high grass at the edge of the trees and ran into a chain-link fence. Beyond, the sky, though dark, seemed to open up. I saw great expanses of cloud reflecting light from some source I couldn’t see. I walked along the fence until I found a place where a tree had fallen into it, bending it down to the ground. It was an old tree, long stubs of thick, bark-stripped dead wood jutting out of it. I held on to one, then another, slowly negotiating my way over the tree and the fence. My feet touched the gravel field on the other side of the fence, and I ran toward a red glow in the distance. Rocks jabbed my soles, wedged themselves between my toes. The air whirred with insects I couldn’t see.

The red glow became a fire, set back against a wall. A bonfire. Or bigger. A pyre. Something to burn witches on. But it was so far away. There were hulking shadows to my right and left, the ruins of tanks; water tanks, fuel tanks. Piles of concrete and rebar overgrown with weeds. The sound of the sea echoed off the wall and all around. It could be a trap, I thought. They knew I’d be attracted by the warmth of the fire. And it was warm. I could feel it. I became aware of asphalt under my feet, somehow hot, though wet. I walked toward it, wary of the shadows. The fire moved when I moved. It was always just a bit farther away. Though it flickered and charred the walls wherever it went. I saw shapes in it. Arms reaching out, legs beneath, dangling out like logs. My father’s voice came floating out among the echoes of waves, singing “O My Stars,” just like he did walking up from the shore, climbing the ladder to my room, the crackle under his voice like the needle on the vinyl record, but the crackle of a fire, of limbs, charring, the water left in them steaming out, blistering and popping, the flesh bursting. Farther and farther into the ruins, through the naked steel skeleton of the cooling pipes, the empty metal vats the size of small houses, right up to the base of the tallest of the smokestacks I followed it, till it shimmied away into the wet dark cavern of night and was snuffed out.

“Come back!” I sobbed. My voice circled round the cooling towers and smokestacks.
Come back. Come back. Come. Back
. I sunk down in the weeds and hugged my knees. I felt the cell phone in my pocket and pulled it out. I was on the southeast corner of the island, where I might pick up a cell signal from Waldron or Orwell. The phone lit up and my eyes blinked shut. I thought I was dreaming; there was one bar. I dialed Carey’s number. The ringing was jarring. It continued to ring, sometimes cracking up. On the last ring there was a break, then voicemail.

The words I wanted to say and the words that came out of my mouth may not have been the same, I couldn’t tell. There was a body in the barn; not the graveyard, where the babies are, the barn. They fed me poisonous mushrooms. They fed me dead baby mushrooms. They feed the dead to mushrooms. I was incoherent, not sobbing. I stared around me in the weeds. They were flecked with down and feathers, fish bones. I picked at them. Bald eagles slept a hundred feet over my head in their smokestack nest. I looked up, as if I might see them. When I looked down, I realized I had dropped my phone. The light on its screen went out, but I found it in the weeds. I put it back in my wet shirt pocket.

I wandered into the woods. I listened for the sound of the ocean and kept it to my right this time. My right. I found a sheltered place and clung to a tree that looked out over a bluff onto the water. I could just make out waves, I thought. Reflecting something. A deranged glowing orb in the sky. The moon, idiot. Just sleep. I wrapped my whole body around the tree. Hugging it with my legs, pressing my face to the bark. I held on to it and prayed that it would hold me till morning, though some part of me didn’t care.

I felt myself falling and woke. My face was in the moss and salal. There was light in the sky, still gray. A light rain fell, but I was sheltered by low branches. I was three feet from a sheer drop to the rocky shore.

I scooted myself away from the bluff, used branches to pull myself up. My legs were weak and my head swam, but I felt warm. I was aware enough to know that I might be hypothermic. I went slowly, weaving and holding on to any bush or tree sturdy enough to support me, and in this way I found the road. I wasn’t sure which way to walk, so I went right. When I found an old trail marker, I knew I had reached the outer edge of Fort Union. I followed the road to the end, the entrance to the park on one side, the path through the trees to the Colony on the other. What time was it? Would they be awake? The way was clear, through the trees, and in the light of day, the effects of the mushrooms wearing off. I wasn’t afraid anymore of what they would do to me when I made it back. At the hill above the kitchen on the bluff, I scooted down on my butt, afraid I would fall headfirst down it. A few bodies were moving about in the drizzle, heads down, deep in their work prayers. I crept to the doors of the chapel and lay down, tried to turn on my dead phone, dropped it. After a while: the approach of a boat on the water below, the bellow of someone’s voice breaking their vow of silence. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t say a word.

Thirteen

THE WOODS

MALHEUR NATIONAL FOREST, OREGON

JULY 12, 2016

CAREY’S WORKING LONG
hours, helping organize the fire crews, coordinating with the Bureau of Land Management and the National Interagency Fire Center. Sometimes he’s on call at the cabin; sometimes he just doesn’t come home. They have cots in the back of the station and take turns catching a couple hours’ sleep each when fires are burning. They’re already working on two fires, one near homes to the northeast in the Umatilla, outside Baker City, threatening farms and houses. A smaller one in the Ochoco. These are all far enough away that his station is merely on alert; ready to pitch in if needed.

It’s been the warmest, driest season on record, with the lowest snowpacks in the mountain ranges, with more of these drought years expected to follow. I listen to the talk back and forth at the station. A few smoke-detecting cameras have been set up in some forests, but not all—not out here. The early summer heat is already toasting the undergrowth, and the warm waters out over the Pacific have been creating unseasonable storms, coming inland—breaking out over the Cascades, dumping their moisture in the valley, but not their velocity, not their electricity. Lightning strikes cause fires some of the time—most of the time it’s people, campfires and cigarettes and sparks from railways, fireworks. Then the storms bring winds that spread the fires, whip them up higher and toss them across containment lines, create their own weather systems, massive heat and smoke storms that can be seen from space.

They’re manning the fire lookouts this year—the ones they normally rented out to backpackers. I convince Carey to let me man the lookout I’ve been going to all spring. His boss says, “Sure, that’s great.” But Carey says he’ll keep looking for another volunteer.

He goes over how to use the CB radio again. It’s a silver and wood laminate box, covered in knobs and little red and green lights, a frequency meter. I suspect the machine is older than both of us.

The first rule is “Just don’t touch any of these knobs.” He gestures to an area of the box with buttons and abbreviations like RB and ANL. “Just don’t bother. There’s a manual somewhere if you get desperate, but just remember: Channel nine for emergency calls, that’s the station dispatcher. If no one answers, try nineteen—you might get a trucker on Highway 7 who can get a call through to some other station’s dispatch. After that, just try all the stations. But be patient. Always come back to nine.”

He sends a test call to dispatch at the station. It’s Darlene, the office manager for the Forest Service. She sounds like she’s been eating something, but maybe it’s just the interference. “Weather disturbs transmissions all the time. Certain conditions can bounce a call off the ionosphere and send it hundreds of miles away,” he says.

I give an impressed whistle. “Win for Mother Earth,” I say.

Carey shakes his head.

“I’ll come up on my days off—”

“If you get any days off,” I say.

We heat some beans and kielbasa and eat on the deck and watch the sunset. I light citronella coils, and we sit at the edge, legs dangling. We don’t talk; we take in the view and the air. When we’re done, I take our plates inside and bring a camp blanket out, wrap us both in it while we drink cans of Oly.

“Do you miss the firefighting,” I ask him, “when you’re at the station pushing paper and dispatching?”