Mink River: A Novel (37 page)

You’ve really thought about this, says the doctor.

I have a lot of time to myself behind the bar, says Stella.

How did you come to buy the bar? says the doctor.

Windblow, says Stella, with a tight smile.

I see, says the doctor, who does see. One thing he has learned in his practice is to hear what his patients don’t say; which is, he has often thought, more telling than their tales. He cuts another pear.

29.

After they stop to kiss their boy Owen and Nora walk home along the river and for no reason whatsoever Nora takes off running and she flies along the tide flat all the way to where the Mink River empties with a sigh into the ocean and when she gets there she doesn’t stop but just dives right in like a slim knife. The river is black and braided and impatient. In two strokes she is across the river and standing in the brush on the other side. The world is silent except for the mutter of the river. Then to her astonishment she sees another runner arrive suddenly on the other bank of the river, popping out of the brush like a ghost. She can’t make out who it is. The other runner steps waist-deep into the river and she tenses. The river hums and grumbles.

Sweet mother of Jesus, says the man in the river, I think my
balls
are frozen, that’s the last time I ever pull a John the Baptist, and Nora bursts out laughing, the whole scene is so funny, him standing there wet to the waist, his hands out like a preacher, his long face grinning, and she’s soaked, her legs quivering from her sprinting, the new sun poking like an insistent hungry calf at the cottonwoods crowding the riverbank, and she laughs aloud and holds out her hand and he takes a step toward her with his hand outstretched too like in the movies and the river pounces just as he steps into a deep hole he did not of course see and he disappears with a great splash and the river pours over him greedily and she grabs his hair and he scrambles up the other bank and they collapse into the bushes laughing and spluttering and then suddenly kissing as the sun vaults over the fringe of the trees.

30.

Maple Head is up before dawn. Worried Man should be up too but she lets him sleep. She looks down at him for a minute after she showers. He sleeps with his mouth open and his long white hair all tangled among the pillows. She slips into the kitchen and makes coffee. She packed for her trip the night before and a little green rucksack and ash walking stick wait by the door. She watches the sun rise from the porch. It hints at itself first and then announces itself melodramatically and finally arrives brilliant and searing between two young pine trees like two green fingers pinching fire. From the porch she can see a sliver of the river. She has seen this river from this porch for more than forty years. It may be that she spent more time on the porch than in the house. She nursed No Horses here in a wooden rocking chair and she read a thousand books here and spent thousands of hours listening. Whenever she needed to talk with a student from school she would do so on the porch; parents of students she met at the kitchen table or in her classroom. Sometimes the porch was fogged over completely in the morning and she would bundle up and watch the wind melt the fog away. At such times the birds declined to sing. The fog always retreated southeast. Sometimes she came out on the porch to get away from something sour in the house. Sometimes she felt the house was her husband’s and the porch was hers. He had many ideas for the repair and renovation of the porch but she generally declined them. In summers sometimes she slept on the porch on a little foldaway bed. Above her the limitless seas of the stars. Sometimes she felt that the porch was a sort of boat. She never tired of the view: north to the river, east to the sandy hills that rose into small ragged mountains, west to the basalt cliffs brooding over the ocean. On very quiet nights she could hear the yelping of sea lions in the coves below the cliffs, and quizzical owls in the deep ravines the loggers never reached, where grew ancient hemlock jungles as thick as dreams. When the wind came from the west it bore the salt of the sea and the mossy shaggy dignity of the hemlocks. They smelled like grandfathers, she said once to her husband, who never forgot anything she said to him, and often turned her remarks this way and that in his mind long afterward, looking at them from different angles, wondering.

31.

The guy with the gun in the back seat of Michael the cop’s car is no dope and he has no intention of shooting a cop unless he has to. But he also has no intention of going to jail. He’s been in jail, twice, neither time very long but neither time very pleasant either. Once was the county jail and once was the state correctional facility. The county jail was essentially a workhouse and the state correctional facility was essentially a hell hole. The first time was for theft and the second time was for grand theft. Most definitely he is not going back to jail, no matter what. Most definitely he is getting into the next county and then he will figure it out from there. He knows that each county sees jurisdiction of suspects differently. He’s read some law. He is no dope. Plus he knows a guy who knows a guy. High time to start over, he thinks. Past time. It’s not like I have anything here to hold me. The kid isn’t even my kid. No way she’s my kid. She’ll figure things out. She’s smart, that kid. Her mother’s a useless drunk but the kid’s got brains. Five years on the county dollar and then she’s eighteen. And she’ll be a looker. She’ll get by. Nothing to worry about.

But he finds himself sour thinking about Kristi alone.

Take that dirt road there on the right, he says to Michael.

They drive along the rutted road deeper into the woods.

Life in prison for killing a cop, says Michael quietly.

Shut your mouth, says the guy.

It’s not like she’s really my kid, he thinks.

Now that left turn.

What happened happened, he thinks. Things happen.

They pass a clearing where a wooden shack is falling down and Michael realizes where they are, in the old logging tract near the headwaters of the Mink. The shack was the cook house and after the timber company went belly up the shack burned when some drunk kids tried to light the old stove.

Now another left.

The county line, Michael realizes.

Now along the ridge.

Michael tries to slow down infinitesimally but the guy is watching him like a hawk and he pokes the gun in Michael’s neck again and Michael speeds back up to thirty-five. He hears the guy roll his window down and feels the sudden air. The ridge was clear-cut eight years ago and the new spruce there is only head high and Michael has the odd sensation of driving through a crowd of green nodding people peering at the car. The county line is about a mile down this road. Michael thinks of everything he could possibly do. He could slam on the brakes and grab for the gun. He could swerve suddenly and grab for the gun. He looks in his rearview mirror and sees the guy looking out the window and he tenses his shoulders to swerve the car but just then there is a terrific crash as Moses the crow sails headfirst through the open left rear passenger window and smashes into the guy’s face and the gun explodes and blows out the right front window and the car skids wildly and smashes into the wall of young spruces and there is a blizzard of feathers and glass and spruce needles and then a dense silence broken only by the chirruping of wrens.

32.

Worried Man was pouring coffee when he smelled fear so foul and immediate that he dropped the pot and scalded his hand. He grabbed the kitchen counter with both hands and felt for the fear. His hand seared with pain and his stomach lurched from the stench of fear. A man in a car. Two men. A nodding line of young trees. He felt the two men like two braided screams in his head.

May …

But she was already there, leading him to the sink and running cold water over his hand.

Two men in a car, whispered Worried Man.

Where are they?

Not far …

Bad?

Bad.

I’ll call Cedar.

But Cedar’s phone rang and rang and the Department of Public Works phone rang and rang and when Maple Head called the police department it was Ellen who answered, still on duty, unable to go home for fear of what was happening to Michael, and when Ellen heard that Worried Man had felt the two men in his head she began to sob.

Just then Owen drove up with Cedar to collect Worried Man for the mountain.

Okay, said Cedar calmly when Maple Head explained. Okay. We need eyes aloft. We’ll send Moses.

Which is how Moses was aloft in the shimmering dawn; and how he swam up and up and up like a hawk until he could see the town below him like a buckle on a belt; and saw cars of every hue and shape humming and coughing through field and forest and lane; and saw finally on the eastern ridge a police car heading steadily south through the young green saplings sprouting like the tallest possible grass; and decided, no one ever knew why, not to speed back to Owen but to bank down toward the car; and how as he sped down along the ridge he saw Michael’s grim face, and the hunch of the brooding shadowed passenger, and the blue glint of a gun; and how he folded his wings tight to his body, and curled his long leathery legs, and stooped wild and joyous and violent as a falcon, falling like a fist out of the new sun, falling toward the back window of the car like a bullet, all caution flown, filled with reckless joy, his last thoughts of the old nun who had one day found him fallen in the leaves, a moaning in the mud, a helpless gaggle of mewling bones.

33.

Just as Moses smashed into the man with the brown coat Daniel woke with a start. He lay there in the fragile light and stared lidded at the sparkling ocean stretching away from the long windows. His thoughts were blue and murky. He had been dreaming of his mother rocking him and he could hear the creak creak creak of her chair in his head. He rolled over to go back to the dream but his casts clanked and his knees woke up snarling and the dream slid away all raggedy like tattered cloth.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes and worked himself into his chair and wheeled out onto the deck. Gulls and terns were wheeling over the shimmering water and he could see cormorants diving in the surf and emerging suddenly with wriggling fish in their beaks.

Kristi came out in her pajamas and wrapped in a blanket and sat crosslegged on the deck. They both looked to the corner where the man who sold boxes and containers would usually be but the corner was gapingly empty.

He was the nicest guy, said Daniel quietly.

Yes.

What was his name?

I never asked, said Kristi.

The doctor knows.

Let’s not know, said Kristi.

They stared out to sea but there were no boats visible, only the wheeling white birds and the diving black birds and the glimmering sea like a million shards of glass.

I’m going home today, said Daniel.

Today?

Yes.

Are your folks home?

No. My mom went camping with my grandmother and my dad is taking my grandfather to the mountain.

Why is your grandpa going to the mountain?

Sort of a science project. My gramma says it’s a spiritual quest.

Is he religious?

Not like anyone else.

Isn’t he kind of old to be climbing mountains?

I guess. He’s tough for an old man though.

How are you going to get home? says Kristi.

I’m going to wheel home in this thing.

All the way up the hill?

Yup.

Alone?

Yup, says Daniel.

Can … you do that?

Yup, says Daniel.

I mean, is it okay with the doctor? Can you leave without his permission?

I don’t know, says Daniel. I have to, though. It’s time.

They sit silently some more and then Daniel says with his voice shaking just a little bit although he has taken deep breaths so it won’t shake, Will you come with me?

Well, says Kristi, but she’s facing the ocean and he can’t see her face so he can’t tell if she’s saying
Well
as in
maybe
or
Well
as in
no
.

I could sure use some help, he says.

I doubt that, she says.

They watch the white birds wheeling and diving into the ocean and Daniel notices how they wheel smoothly until they see something promising and then they just plummet headlong.

Yes, I’ll go, says Kristi. I’ll go. We’ll go. But first we have to do something about your hair. It’s all tangled together. Did you wash it last night? Because it’s all wild. It’s all jungly. Usually it’s in three braids, right? By color? My hair’s not as thick as yours. Yours is to die for. Mine is all straw and spider strands. We better get some breakfast. We better talk to the doctor. Do you think he should come with us? It’d be fun if we went alone. I could push you. If you want. But I don’t know. I guess I’m a little nervous. About going out there. But you’ll be with me. We’ll be together. And it’s not far, right? Just up and over the hill? It’ll be an adventure. Like a voyage. Like going to sea.

Like going to sea, says Daniel, and they look at the sea again, the birds whirling and diving into the glittering blue glass.