Mink River: A Novel (42 page)

Down and down and down and once they find a whole thicket of thimbleberries crammed with waxwings so eager and ravenous and foolish and gluttonous that they can hardly lumber off when Maple Head and Nora approach.

They look like little stuffed couches, don’t they? says Nora, and they burst out laughing again.

18.

Declan dozing on the bow in the broad calm light thinks sleepily of sails and the lovely windy words of the craft of enslaving air. Yardarms and lugsails, gaffs and rigs, jibs and booms, luff and clew and tack. Boats buffeted by breezes. Westering winds. He’d always been interested in boats and ships from before he could remember—he vividly remembers his father hammering him for not paying attention to the work at hand because he was staring out at the vast barges and timber rafts and tankers that loomed on the horizon, not to mention the occasional skidding scudding sloops and yachts and daily slogging chugging fishing boats bristling with lines.
Nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats,
that was the line from one of the books Grace used to read aloud at night when they were little, tucked up in their rooms in the attic, the fragile plaster wall between them, her bed against one side of the wall and his on the other and her voice coming through the little hole he punched through, the size of a dime, the hole he surreptitiously enlarged week by week, and eventually added a little screen in it, like a confessional! said Grace with delight after she’d endured her first confession, mortified because she had nothing to confess, Declan magnanimously lending her some of his sins, a small theft, a mink trap that killed a pregnant grouse, a silence as a boy was bullied at school. Jesus, the books she read through that screen! There must have been
hundreds
. And he’d never read one back to her, not one. What
did
I do for my sister, exactly, other than rag her relentless every day for six thousand days? The one girl. We thought she was spoiled but maybe it was the other way around. The Boys, we hated that, the three of us labeled genderically, mom and dad never said the Girl, did they, but maybe it was harder for Grace, eh? Then mom bags us and there’s no one there but Red Hugh hard of head and hand. Ach, the poor old bastard, an apt and suitable death, pierced by a wooden spear. Like the Tuatha. Jesus, what a clan. Good that I leave. Maybe it’s best I leave. She can find her own way. Maybe without me everyone has more room to grow. Like trees in the woods. Speaking of trees, O Donnell me lad, isn’t there a stepping-hole for an emergency mast on this ship, and didn’t you and wharf rat Nicholas lay in not one but two whippet spars for just this sort of eventuality? Aye, captain, we did. Look lively then, boy! And scrounge around for a mainsail while you are down in the hold. Aye, captain! Right away, sir!

19.

Of course Owen made Worried Man a most amazing and unusual robochair, using the wheelchair the doctor had loaned Danny. He and Dan and Moses disappeared into Other Repair for days on end and there was a continual clanking and whirring of crowbars and sanders and fan belts and compressors and the wailing of many machines shaping a new thing that had never been in the world before.

Any
one can make a wheelchair, said Owen, but
we
will make something else.

And when they came out, Owen and Daniel and Moses, after six days of very nearly round the clock labor, and buckled Billy into his new electric body, there was wonderment and merriment everywhere, on every face tears, in every mouth laughter. Cedar laughed so hard he nearly choked and Owen had to bang him on the back a while until he got clear, and No Horses laughed so hard she had the hiccups until dinner. Silvery it was, the robosuit, a sort of mobile metal parka, something like a race-car and suit of armor all at once, with a panel of buttons for the left hand by which everything was controlled, speed and cornering and even shiftable gears for hills and bad road conditions. It had heating and air-conditioning functions, a storage area for interesting things found along the journey, a sort of extendable mechanical arm on the right side for exploration, and subtle mirrors set all around so the occupant could easily see with a glance in all directions. It even had evacuation piping, in case the occupant was caught short, and an ejection apparatus, in case of emergencies. It had spare wheels cunningly set into the main body of the body, it had spare batteries, it had night lights fore and aft, and it would have had a radio antenna, said Daniel, if we thought you wanted to hear music all day, but we figured you didn’t. Do you like it, gramp? Is it okay? I love it, Daniel, said Billy quietly, and his face shone also. Will you and Owen help me into it? If you hold it steady there Owen can perhaps hoist these old bones. I am more grateful than I can easily say, Owen. You are a prince among men. I am blessed and graced to have you as a son. The day Nora fell in love with you, that was a good day. This button operates the arm? And this button opens and closes the fingers? Can I make a fist? If I touch someone do they get an electric shock? Imagine the possibilities.

20.

Final project, says Maple Head to her class. In the last fifteen minutes of class today, write down some things you believe in that don’t make sense. Write an essay, but don’t worry about coherence and shape and narrative style. Just make notes. Play with words and ideas. Are there things that you believe with all your heart that don’t make the slightest sense, if you examine them in the cold light of day? Try to use corners of your brains you don’t usually visit, and take this seriously, don’t be giving me flip essays about chipmunks and Oregon State football. Stop and think for a moment, about your family, your people, organizations, civic and religious and cultural entities, about core beliefs, about things you really and truly care about, and then write from your heart. Again I ask you to take this seriously, and try to just pour down substantive thought. Don’t worry about coherence and shape and clarity, for once, just write freely. But be honest. We will not be reading these aloud in class, only I will read them, in private, so you don’t have to pose and wear your usual masks. I’ll give you one example, which you cannot use, and then off we go. For example: friendship. Does friendship really make sense? If, in the end, those who know you best are exactly those who can deliver you the most pain, who know your weak points and flaws and can with exquisite accuracy find and irritate those sore places, then why bother to get close to people? Similarly marriage, does marriage make any real sense in a world of serial infatuation, a world in which evolutionarily the distribution and dissemination of genes is better aided and abetted by a deliberate refusal to commit to monogamous relationships?

That’s two examples, Mrs. M, says a boy named Blink. So we can’t write about marriage either?

You married, Blinky?

Not anymore, Mrs. M, which gets a general giggle.

Well, then.

But Blink is stuck on thinking about marriage, and he figures he’ll take a flyer on it in his fifteen minutes, because it turns out he is a majorly serious student of the marriage he sees up close and personal, which is his mom and dad, who have a tumultuous but interesting marriage, as far as he can tell, although the range of his experience with marriages is thin, whereas as far as he can tell his mom and dad are the only people in the history of the extended Blink clan to actually get married or stay married; here and there an aunt dove into marriage but quicksprinted right out, like one time, this was his Auntie Antonia, her marriage lasted three days, and ever after she talked of it as a crucifixion followed by three days in the tomb followed by a miraculous resurrection.

As my mother says Marriage doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and is clearly an agreement between two fools for the Perpetuation of a foolish race, writes Blink. However, I believe that Marriage has its uses and utilities. However, it is a good example of a thing that makes some Sense but not much. Most of the time Marriage appears to be a Difficulty because the parties involved come from different planets and have to find common or overlapping Orbits. This seems mostly unworkable in the Personal Sphere just as it is in the Astronautical Sphere as we have seen recently in class. Observationally I speculate that arguing about Money and making humorous remarks is the key to Marriage. In conclusion Marriage does not make sense but I believe in it because I have seen it applied to real-world Problems and its curious Effects are something to be studied very carefully in the future by careful scholars. Further study is called for perhaps by the Government or a Married Committee or the Department of Public Works.

Time! says Maple Head. Pencils down. Pass your papers up your row to the front please. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. Away you go! Off! Away!

21.

Sara is on her knees in the garden and Michael is in a wheelchair at the edge of the garden and the girls are running around the house the younger trying to hit the older with a water balloon and the older sister is staying tauntingly just exactly out of her sister’s flinging range which she, the older girl, knows to within the whisper of a whisker of a wren. Sara plants garlic, beans, carrots, tomato starts, broccoli starts, and, experimentally, eggplant. Second crop, she thinks. Second chance. She finishes the last row and mills through the whole patch again for weed seed and finally calls it a day and leans back against Michael’s chair. He runs his hands through her hair. Fingers her ears. Lord, woman, he says, even your ears are attractive. She snorts. Were I not at the moment somewhat incapacitated, he says, bending down to murmur this in her ear, I’d carry you inside the house and lock the doors and remove every thread of your clothing and make those ears burn, yes I would. She giggles. I’d rub everything I got against one ear and then an hour later start on the other, he whispers, and now she’s laughing, and he keeps murmuring cheerfully about how he will eventually end up rubbing against the exquisite sensual foothills of her extraordinary ankles, and this is such a peculiar phrase that she laughs so hard her cheeks and stomach hurt, and she stands up, laughing, to stretch her stomach, and as she turns around and reaches out a hand to touch his face her water breaks.

For an instant she thinks she laughed so hard she actually really and truly peed her pants although she’s wearing her ancient cotton gardening dress that used to be blue but long ago became soil-colored as Michael says, but then her uterus contracts with a mighty and mindbending clench and she realizes
o my god o my god here she comes
, and she says
Michael the baby!
and his face flickers joy and fear and thrill and shame that he is helpless, all at the same time, she sees all this flash across his face, and he says calmly professionally husbandly, okay, okay, all right, if you can get to the house I’ll get to the window and you hand me the phone and you get to the bed, and she says
too late o god!
and she crouches down and grabs the handles of his wheelchair as another contraction roars in
o god o god
and the baby wrenches inside her and gets ready to see the sun. Michael shouts for the girls but they think he is just barking some dad imprecation and they keep running. The baby lurches. Michael cups Sara’s face in his hands.
O god o god
. The baby small and slippery spurts toward the light and Sara’s hands go white on the handles of the chair and Michael strokes her hair and murmurs, okay okay all right all right and minutes later the baby slides smoothly out of Sara onto the sweet soil at the edge of the garden. Sara kneels and picks her up and the tiny girl opens her eyes and they stare at each other for a long time. Michael is sobbing so hard his chair shivers. The two sisters, with that eerie sensory apparatus for shimmering moments that kids have, materialize silently and stare at their new sister. For a long moment the only sound anyone can hear is Michael crying quietly but then the baby says
mew?
and the sisters start giggling and all is well and all manner of things will be well.

Is that a girl? says the older sister.

Yes, love.

What’s her name? says the younger sister.

Daddy wants to name her Albina.

Do you?

No. Her name is Mia Serina. That means my heart.

Hi Mia! say the sisters together in their voices high and sweet as birds. Hi Mia!

22.

Now a pub, thinks Grace, is not a bar, so drinking, all due respect to drinking, should not be the paramount activity in the pub. Talking is, right? Or even better, listening. So I have to arrange matters so that people listen to each other. While drinking. Maybe we should have smaller glasses. Or push all the chairs and tables closer so people overhear what people are saying and then they cannot resist saying hey. And there should be kids. Kids are a good sign. You can’t get drunk when there’s kids. And dogs. And maybe birds. Parrots? A heron? Jesus, can you have a pet heron? What if it gets into a fight? I can see me calling Michael about the heron starting a fistfight about who’s the best football player ever. But sports teams, yes. Bowling. Baseball. Maybe we can have a fishing league. Dec could run that. And wine tastings with whatever Stella makes. People like stuff like that. Poker tournaments. Poetry readings. Plays. Hey, plays in the pub, yes. Write that down, Jesus, Grace, get organized. A board of trustees? Maybe we have Mass here sometimes? Language lessons? Get Owen to teach Irish? Woodcarving? Get Anna to sing opera songs at night. One night a month. With Michael maybe. Need piano player. Need piano. Music cools people out. Soothes the savage breast. Good food. Easy to make. Sandwiches, soups. Open at noon for lunch. Close at midnight. No one stays in a bar after midnight except to drink. I should know. Movies? Movie night. Football games. Maybe old football games. Great games from the past. Film fest: every single time the Beavers hammered the poor bedraggled sorry ass Ducks. Yes. Guest speakers. Be the village green. Be the center of town. Be the heartbeat. Be more than a bar. Be a pub. Pubs are fun. Stop by for an hour. One pint is plenty. Be normal. Kids welcome all day and night. Lemonade. Jar of chocolate bars on the counter. Darts. No pool table. Pool tables breed fights. Windows open. Tables outside? Back deck? Peadar can build a deck. Build it around that huge spruce. No parking lot. So what. People who want to come here will come here. Be a destination. No cars by the windows. Look out at real things. Trees. Beach. Kids. Rain roaring in off ocean. Wood stove. Newspapers and magazines. Books. Bookshelves. Reading glasses available. Reading nooks. Great books. What are the great books? Jesus, did I ever read anything great? All those books through the wall to Declan. Jesus. Friendly proprietor. Tough but charming. Sober. Patrons cheerfully offer to buy owner drink and owner shakes head grinning and says not today, I take Tuesdays off. Change day as necessary. Or not during Lent. Not during March. Not during football season. Made a vow. Made a promise. Swore to high heaven. Yes. Made a vow. Promised management to lay off and see what happens. New world. New country. New drapes.