Mink River: A Novel (34 page)

It gets dark enough for Owen and Nicholas and the wrestling team to ring the field with hanging lanterns, which cast gentle scalloped pools of light on the dark field. Talk and song and hubbub and laughter and shouts rise and fall. Smoke still towers from the grill and the
O Donnell brothers Peadar and Niall are black-faced and grimy and grinning. Cedar finds a corner and has a long talk with Nicholas. The doctor and Declan O Donnell go to get the man with one day to live from the doctor’s house and Declan carries the man in his arms from the house to the truck and from the truck to a chair by the bonfire and Daniel wheels over to chat and Kristi toasts marshmallows for the three of them. The night sifts down like charcoal mist. Bats take over from swifts. Worried Man quietly folds himself onto the bench on the other side of No Horses and takes her in his arms and she puts her head on his chest like a boat docking. Owen, passing by with Nicholas to fix the handful of burned-out lanterns, leans in and kisses his wife’s turbulent hair.

Michael the cop walks the fringe of the field, no particular reason, just keeping his eyes peeled, not looking for anything in particular, not breaking up the teenage couples leaning against trees, not breaking up arguments, not even breaking up a wrestling match starting to boil over and ringed by shouting boys, just walking, just keeping an eye peeled, just keeping the legs loose, no problem, listening to the music, grinning at the teasing he gets from those who notice him, accepting a beer that Stella hands him as he passes the kegs but not drinking it, clapping the priest on the shoulder as he walks by, waving to a table of teachers, glaring at a table of boys drinking too much beer, just walking, just keeping moving is all, no problem, noticing as the old folks put their sweaters on and then their jackets and coats, noticing coats hung on chairs, noticing a coat made of gleaming silver, which turns out, when he casually walks over and looks at it closely without looking at it directly, to be the nylon lining of a coat that’s been turned inside out, a brown coat, he keeps walking, no problem, keep moving, stay calm, no problem, but when he comes to the corner of the field where an old hemlock offers its ancient shaggy darkness he quietly leaves his beer on an empty table and steps under the hemlock and vanishes.

12.

That guy weighed about fifty pounds, says Declan to the doctor. I’ve carried fish weighed more than that guy. His wheelchair weighed twice as much as him. He can’t have much more to go. The guy’s all edges. His skin is like paper. Nice guy. Quiet. Was he a little guy before?

Not especially, says the doctor.

That’s amazing, says Declan. You wouldn’t think a guy could get that papery and all. You wouldn’t think he could stay alive and all. He’s hardly there. It’s like all his insides got sucked out and all’s left is the shell. Like gulls do with crabs that get caught up the beach.

He has what we call a voracious tumor, says the doctor.

So it’s eating him from the inside?

Essentially.

Man. That’s evil. Poor guy. You couldn’t take it out?

No.

Man.

They both watch the man with one day to live as he sits by the bonfire. Daniel leans in grinning and says something and the man grins and Kristi kneeling by the fire grins and offers the man a marshmallow smoking on her stick which the man declines gently with a wave of his hand nearly as slender as the stick.

He loves the sea, you know, says the doctor.

I thought he was a sales guy.

That was his job, yes.

Did he fish?

No. He just loves the sea. He was born here, you know.

Yeah, well, I was born here and I hate the sea.

Really?

Well—I hate depending on it. I hate working it like it was a farm. It’s alive, you know. It moves around. You can’t trust it. It does what it wants. It’s not like land. Nothing’s ever the same twice out there. Never the same color or weather or smell or anything. Everything moves around. You find the best fishing spot ever and the next time you go there’s nothing there. And there’s a lotta ways to get killed. I might like the ocean if it wasn’t my job. I’d like to like it from a safe distance, you know?

Are you going out tomorrow?

Yeh. Way out. Out to the shelf. I need big fish. Going alone. Grace and Nicholas bagged out on me. Chickenshit.

Why don’t you take him with you?

Who—him?

He’d like that.

He’s dead weight. So to speak.

Yes.

What if we get hit with weather?

What if you do?

He could drown.

Yes.

Oh.

Yes.

Well, hell, says Declan.

He told me he’s never actually been on the ocean, says the doctor.

Well, hell, says Declan. I got room, I guess. Might as well. Poor bastard.

He’d like that.

What the hell, says Declan. I could use the company.

Yes.

What the hey.

Yes.

Poor bastard.

Yes.

13.

Me and a guy in a fecking wheelchair, says Declan to the doctor, staring at the guy sitting in the freckled light of the bonfire. What a crew. Never a dull moment at sea. See what I mean? Nothing ever happens the same way twice. Up is down and down is up. Whatever you think will happen will
never
happen and what you
never
dreamed of will happen for
sure
. It’s the craziest thing. I stopped trying to understand it a long time ago. Now I just go out and come in. Gracie watches the birds and all but I just try to get some fish and not get killed. I’m a simple guy. I remember one time a reporter guy was at the dock when we came in, he wanted to do an article on the heroes of the salt sea and all, the decline of the fishery, the end of a way of life and all, all this literary poetical crap, and I had to laugh. I mean, really. The poor dope. None of us would do it if we could do something else, that’s the funny thing about meat fishing. Guys who fish do it because that’s what they do. Guys who hit the big day generally quit the life. They start fishing for tuna and swordfish and such, specialty fish for the Jap market. Or run charters for tourists. That’s easier. You get paid even if there are no fish. Or like the guy in Depoe Bay who takes people out to see whales. Now there’s a fecking gig—
watching
whales! You don’t have to catch a thing except a sight of a whale. There’s a gig for sure. He says it’s the fecking future but I don’t know. People need to eat. The thing is I like being my own boss and all but there’s no romantic crap in it. Man, we laughed that morning at that newspaper guy. We laughed fit to choke. Fishing is heroic and romantical for about an hour. By the end of your first day you were never so sore and tired before in your whole life, and your hands are all bloody, too. Then you add up your profit and you realize you lost fecking money on the day. Right then you either quit or laugh. What else can you do? There was an old guy in Newport I remember that was the name of his boat, the
Quit ’r Laugh
. He drowned, of course. Went down laughing I bet. A huge storm got him out by Rogue Canyon. He must have laughed when he knew it was the end. What other end is there for a fisherman? What else can you do? It’s quit or laugh. No truer words ever spoken. Or painted on a boat at the bottom of the sea.

14.

Maple Head, relishing the last of the salmonberries on their table as the bats flicker past like afterthoughts, quietly tells No Horses that she has decided to make a journey on foot to the source of the Mink River starting tomorrow at dawn, for two reasons.

One: to find the prime seep or spring from which the river begins its trip to the sea, such a primary spring being, in every culture on every continent, a place of healing and restoration, and it would be a very good thing for me to find such a place, for all sorts of reasons. Imagine how we could quietly bring people to the spring to be restored, Nora. The good we could do! Billy and Cedar talk about public works all the time, but what a public work
that
would be!

Two: to discover if the ocean surf can indeed be seen from the hill where the source is found, which would corroborate Sisaxai’s first story of the town’s birth, the one in which Asayahal, the south wind, falls in love with Xilgo, the wild woman of the winter surf, whom he could see from his hill, tossing her long white hair in a most alluring fashion. One of my theories is that you and I are related to Xilgo—all the women in our family, you know, for as far back as anyone remembers, had long rich curling hair like the surf. I mean, look at Daniel. That boy has hair most women can only dream about. Red black brown.

Plus kid, I need to stretch my legs, and get all those sweet wild voices out of my hair, and get away from the school for a while, and get out of town, and anyway your father and Cedar are off to the mountain on their own journey tomorrow, and the doctor says he’d like Daniel to stay with him for a few days more, so there’s a clear stretch of days here for both of us, and the weather’s fine, and it’s high time for a trip. Will you come with me, Nora? I’d be very honored if you would. Just you and me and the river. We’ll bring a little food. We’ll pick berries. We’ll tell stories. We’ll rest. We’ll walk and walk. Please say yes. It would be wonderful to just walk quietly in the woods by the river, you and me. We haven’t done that in ages. Remember all the walking we did when you were young? In the woods and by the sea. You would hold my finger when you were little. I loved those times, Nora. Especially the woods in late spring, when everything is opening and everything has hope in it for a while. We would walk and walk, do you remember? Will you come with me?

Yes, mama, says No Horses, lifting her head from her mother’s shoulder. Yes, I will. Yes.

15.

Cedar and Worried Man start clearing off tables. People are starting to drift home. The wind rattles the lanterns. Cedar organizes what remains of the wrestling team for cleanup duty. Teenagers in cars peel out of the school parking lot in squeals and screeches of rubber on asphalt. Raccoons slip onto the field and quietly snare meat and berries from sopping unattended paper plates and slip back overjoyed into the ragged fringe of the woods. All the hornets leave and the wasps think about leaving. Nicholas sits quietly at a table with his father and the priest and the two young women who teach second grade. A young screech owl wakes in an old spruce and shakes and shivers and stretches and steps out of its hole and gapes in amazement at the wild lights where usually she can cruise silently along the crewcut grass scaring mice and voles into motion and so to their sudden and piercing deaths. Owen reminds Worried Man and Cedar that he will be at the Department of Public Works building in his truck at dawn to take them to the mountain. The young owl thinks her jumbled and furious thoughts. Rachel tells Timmy that she has decided to quit the factory and go to college in the fall. A coyote approaching the field upwind suddenly smells Michael the cop standing in the shadow of the shaggy hemlock. Two yellowjacket wasps linger by the grill where shreds of meat adhere until Cedar says something quietly to them in their language and they rise quietly into the air and go home. The wind dies down to a whisper. The first stars appear and Maple Head whispers them to her daughter as she has done a thousand times over the years: Dubhe and Merak, the brother stars who point to Polaris, the north star, and red Antares to the southeast, and yellow Arcturus overhead, and blue Spica to the south; and across the table Anna Christie the singer listens in silence and then suddenly stands up on the bench and opens her mouth and fills the field with her enormous voice, singing a river song.

16.

Michael the cop is now only a shadow in the shadow of the shaggy tree. He wants a cigarette something fierce and he has to pee like a horse and his knees hurt but he doesn’t move a muscle. He breathes slowly and carefully. He watches the coat. Once a boy comes by and picks it up and Michael tenses but it’s not the kid’s coat and he puts it back and runs on and Michael breathes again. Wait. Another time a man puts his hand on it but it turns out he’s old and he’s only leaning on the chair for support and he walks on and Michael breathes again. Slow. Easy. Wait.

Then the guy picks it up.

That’s the guy

He doesn’t put the coat on.

That’s him

He looks around carefully.

Don’t breathe

He walks toward Michael.

Don’t breathe

Ducks beneath the shaggy arm of the hemlock.

Don’t even think

Brushes past Michael by maybe two inches.

O

And walks off briskly through the woods on a trail kids use to get to the beach.

He knows the trail!

Michael counts to ten slowly and considers whether to nail him right here right now but it’s too dangerous with people around he could be armed so he detaches himself from the shadow of the hemlock and eases down the trail after the guy one shadow in the vortex of another shadow their shadows moving through the shadows of the trees the ferns the bushes the whispering trees the watchful trees the murmuring trees. Below their twinned yoked moving shadows the hungry patient ocean.