When Venus Fell (12 page)

Maybe Gib was right, too. There are no accidents. Only consequences. I had no idea where we were headed or what might happen next. Gib drove through the woods for several
minutes, turned off on another dirt road, and drove through more woods, to a clearing by the river.

I climbed out and looked at the building that stretched along the river’s bank; it was long, wide, and low, with a rust-streaked tin roof. Sections of its sturdy plank walls could be unlatched to prop up—like awnings—in hot weather. They were all closed and fastened with iron clasps. At first inspection I assumed the building was a chicken house, but it was too tall for that, and massively constructed, and besides, no one would put a single chicken house in the woods by itself.

Around it were lopsided piles of old sawdust sinking into the field grass like soft gray islands in a sea of green, already decomposing to form weak mulch that hosted briars and other hardy weeds. Several open-sided sheds were full of stacked lumber, and in others I saw small mountains of uncut logs peeking from thick plastic tarps. The rusted hulks of two dozen old vehicles had been lined up outside one wall of the building.

This spot was also the Camerons’ personal junkyard, or someone’s joke of an automotive museum. In addition to vintage pickup trucks and the rusted frame of a Mercedes touring car that would break any car collector’s heart, I recognized a couple of 1950-ish Fords and an old English roadster. But there were also skeletal frames from buggies, and the iron rims of wagon wheels, and in one shed, several pieces of antique farm equipment—large, spidery, horse-drawn devices for baling or cutting or whatever, I couldn’t fathom.

The clearing was beautiful in its own morbid way, with the small river gurgling on the other side of the building and wide old beech trees on either side, nodding in the warm breeze. I could imagine blacksmiths shoeing horses under the trees, and farmhands guiding mule-drawn combines up the same road we’d taken.

Gib finally staggered from the truck, left the door open, and stood with his feet braced apart, his hands hanging by his sides, as he faced the building. I climbed down from the
truck’s bed, watching the harsh movement of his shoulders as he took deep, uneven breaths; his fists clenched, then unfurled, then tightened again. He stood like a half-beaten but stubborn fighter.

Before I could think of anything to say he strode to the building’s wide industrial door, jerked a heavy iron bolt from its latch, then slid the door on its squealing metal tracks. Gib went to the center of the open door and stood, braced as he had been before, silhouetted by the inky shadows. Then he disappeared into the darkness.

The dogs milled uneasily outside. Even the stately blue-eyed dogs were reluctant to follow him. But someone had to go in there with him.

I moved slowly, aware of every degree of bright sunshine falling off my shoulders as I stepped inside, squinting. I smelled fragrant wood, dust, and clay earth. I smelled stale gasoline, like a service station on a broiling summer day.

As my eyes adjusted I looked around, then spotted Gib—a tall, dark shape—moving by the wall to my right. I heard a click. Lights came on, bright pinpoints of bare bulbs hanging under dusty metal hoods in a line down the center of the rafters.

In the middle of the floor stood a waist-high contraption, about fifty feet long, of steel rollers and sidearm levers designed to feed logs from a storage platform at one end of the building.

I looked from Gib to where the feeder met its goal: a steel table beside a maze of gears and wide beltdrives. Berthed in the center of the table, a savagely effective sawblade gleamed in the light. The blade was at least four feet in diameter, with teeth that looked as if they could rip a house in two.

Or a man.

A sawmill. Oh, my God.

Gib took slow, leaden steps, scuffing dust motes into the air. He stopped by the feeder trolley. His jaw clenched, he slowly held his damaged hand over the rollers as if the device
might burn him when he touched it. When he finally rested his hand on the metal track, his shoulders slumped and he bent his head.

Next he shuffled to the end of the feeder path, then laid his good hand on the long slabs of wood, already milled into rough sections two feet wide and a foot thick, and arranged neatly on the storage platform. He stroked one of the massive pieces. It was as if he had to touch each element of this place, to bless it or curse it.

I felt dazed, even more as I noticed details like the pristine layer of sawdust on the floor, still bearing grid lines in places, where it had been neatly raked. There was a lingering chemical smell from walls coated in perfectly unsmudged white paint. I looked at the steel gleam of the giant sawblade and the cloudy smudges that looked like gray spray paint on the sawdust around the base of the gray-hued metal posts beneath the feeder track. The building had been cleaned, scrubbed, repainted, and then closed up.

Gib fumbled with an old engine that had been mounted off the ground on a concrete pedestal. He opened a wide wooden window on the opposite side of the building, squinted in the added sunlight, took something small from his trouser pocket, and bent over the engine unsteadily. It roared to life. Its thumping noise filled the building, and pungent exhaust smoke wafted out the window through a pipe.

But the sawblade sat motionless, as if waiting for him to pull a switch or press a button somewhere. He contemplated the blade with eerie fascination, walking around it slowly, riveted to a single line of sight that linked him to the gleaming, dangerous blade. He never seemed to notice me, standing a few feet away. I debated both of our next moves as if action were an improvised duet I didn’t want to play.

I sidled past him then hurried to the engine, studying it. The key. The key in an ignition switch was easy to reach. A small, smooth chunk of wood dangled from it by a thin chain.
The words “Sawmill Engine” were painted in fading black on the wood.

Gib curled his ruined hand into a fist and slammed it against a control panel on a post beside the sawblade gears. The blade shivered, then accelerated, soon spinning at full speed with a sinister
whirring
sound I could hear even above the earsplitting beat of the tractor engine.

Gib sank his hands into his dark hair and staggered toward the log platform. He jerked a large, pronged hook off a wall and jabbed its sharp tip into the end of a log atop the platform. He wrestled the log onto the feeder track. It shimmied precariously on the track’s edge, nearly rolling off before he lifted a booted foot and shoved it. The log settled into place. He sprawled on his back.

I yelled, but he couldn’t hear me over the engine and the blade. He struggled to his elbows, sat up, then rolled onto his hands and knees and wavered to his feet. He had a shell-shocked look of determination. Shuffling, wiping sweat from his forehead, he went back to the log, which was inching down the track toward the blade.

I grabbed the engine’s ignition key by its homemade wooden key chain and jerked it from the switch.

Silence. Everything stopped—the engine, the sawblade, the log creeping along the rollers. Gib frowned at the sawblade and the halted log. Slowly, blinking, he raised his bewildered scowl in the general direction of the engine. When he saw me he scrubbed his good hand over his sweating face, and looked again.

He started my way, swaying, holding on to posts, walls, beltdrives—whatever helped him move quickly without falling down. “Give me the key,” he ordered in a tone that could have sliced logs as sharply as any blade.

He bore down on me with his good hand thrust out and his momentum warning that this was no time for rational arguments. I bolted to the window, which was just a crude
opening with no screen. The bottom ledge was waist-high. The key still clutched in my grip, I latched on to the ledge with both hands and threw one leg over it.

But he caught me from behind, wrapping both sweaty, dirty arms around my waist, pinning one arm but not the other one. I yelled but held on to the window ledge with my right hand and right leg still hooked over it.

He pried me off with a hard tug that sent him to the floor with me splayed on my back on top of him. I rolled off and crouched on my knees, furious. “Get your hands off me! Are you too drunk to realize I’m trying to save your life?”

He sat up wearily, then thrust out his good hand. “I’m milling those logs today. It took all my willpower to walk in here. I’m not walking out without doing the job.
Give me that engine key.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove to yourself, but I know this isn’t the way to do it. Does this have something to do with your brother?”

The mention of Simon made him bow his head. I crept closer to him. “Talk. Talk to me. I talked to
you
—to that photograph—for years. Now you talk to
me
.”

Gib bent his head nearer mine. His breath hot and quick on my face, he gasped for air. Then, “We came here to cut boards for the chapel floor. We were arguing about something that wasn’t even important. We were in a hurry. I was always in a hurry. Simon caught his arm in the beltdrive by the blade. I tried to hold on to him, but the belt pulled him into the blade. The blade snagged my hand. Then it caught my brother and cut him to pieces.”

I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat. Suddenly I could imagine the smell of blood, the carnage. Gib exhaled harshly. He must have been picturing the same thing but in horrible detail. “Okay,” I whispered quickly. “Okay. It’s over.” He raised his head, looked at me, pressed his cheek against the top of my head, then put his arms around me and held me snugly.

I froze. It had been years since I’d hugged anyone except Ella for comfort—either to give or receive it. Gib represented every kind of easy protection Pop had raised me to reject. Suddenly, just being there, choosing to be in the valley and to follow Gib—made me despise myself. Who was the enemy? Who did I blame for what had happened to Pop, and then to Ella and me? Gib and his whole pioneer-American, patriotic family personified the Us in an Us-versus-Them world.

And I would always be one of Them.

But then I heard the whisper of Sister Mary Catherine’s lectures, God bless her stern, unyielding soul.
You’re a musical wonder with a pagan name and a heathen father, but you’re a passionate child. Look into your heart and never forget to give that passion to the people who need you. That’s all that will save you
.

Slowly I put my arms around Gib. We held on to each other and gave comfort.

For the first time in ten years, something in my life was pure, innocent, and simple.

Later Gib sobered enough to drive me back to New Inverness. He escorted me to the deep, stone-columned veranda of Hoss and Sophia’s house, his stride showing only the slightest waver. He stepped ahead of me with easy grace, opened their beautiful stained-glass front door, then stepped back, gesturing for me to enter. I could see the dignified but not quite deferential attitude of a man trained to serve and protect.

“I’ll see what I can do about having your car repaired,” he said with quiet formality.

“I appreciate that,” I answered the same way.

“We’ll expect you and Ella at the Hall in the morning. I’ll send someone to pick you up after breakfast.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s nothing I can do about today except apologize and swear nothing like that will happen again. I had no right to lay my hands on you in anger, not for any reason. I had no right to upset you. I had no right to expect your help and concern. The fact that you kept me from hurting myself speaks well for your integrity and badly for mine.”

“Oh, please, I’m not used to being worshiped.”

“I’ve been turning into a drunk. An invalid and a drunk,”
he went on wearily. “This isn’t the only day I’ve gone to that sawmill stoned out of my mind. It’s just the first time I had the guts to unlock the door.”

I glanced at him sideways, for safety. I could still feel his arms around me, and when I looked at him the sensation wrapped me up again. “Good for you, then. You unlocked the door.”

“And I would have done more if you hadn’t stolen my damned engine key.”

I bristled, preparing for an argument. But there was the slightest glimmer in his eyes, like the sunny rim of a cloud. I snorted.
“Ass.”

“I’m going back this afternoon and find that key,
Nellie.”

With a grim smile of victory, he left me standing there. I don’t know which made me madder—his stubborn refusal to forget the sawmill project until he was strong enough and had enough help to do the work safely, or the fact that he’d just turned my ear-pleasing Italian family name into a down-home Tennessee nickname.

Sophia found me wandering in a daze up a front hall, and came with her hands out. “What has happened to you? My husband went looking in the valley.”

“Vee!” Ella called, as she hurried down a handsomely carved staircase. “I was so worried! You’ve been gone two hours! What happened?”

“I met Gib at the chapel. He went to the sawmill. I followed him. He was drunk.”

“You went
there
with him?” Sophia said in a soft, horrified contralto. I nodded. She moaned. “But no one goes there. They can’t bear it. Did he—oh, he was never supposed to go there and try to use that terrible blade again—”

“He didn’t,” I promised. Miserable and bone tired, I pulled the sawmill engine key from my skirt pocket. “What’s that?” Ella asked, but Sophia gasped. I dragged myself up the stairs. As I passed Ella I noticed her exasperated and puzzled expression. I patted her shoulder. “I’m fine,” I lied. I heard
Sophia sigh, behind me, “Oh! It is true, it is
true
! The angels have sent you to work miracles!”

I was no angel. I desperately wanted to pack our things and leave.

But I did like the idea of Gib going back to the sawmill and searching uselessly for the key.

Ella and I sat in Hoss and Sophia’s tiny restaurant at a table by a window. A high, white thumbnail moon perched in the early-evening sky above the mountains, which made astonishing dark silhouettes against the horizon. I couldn’t see the evening star, and strange fears skittered across my nerve endings like a spider. I had no guiding light and I was lost in a wilderness of more than one kind.