Mink River: A Novel (28 page)

Past Boring and Kelso and Sandy and now both men feel the mountain rising beneath the road, feel the air crisper, feel a stony intelligence somewhere ahead behind the rows of screening trees.

Past Shorty’s Corner, Cherryville, Marmot. Both men are silent, savoring the cold air, the sugaring of snow amid the trees, the unbroken ocean of fir sweeping away east as they round a turn.

Past Alder Creek.

I think your daughter has finally settled into that alder log we hauled in there, says Owen.

Alder was always her wood as a child, says Worried Man. Her crib was alder, her bed, her first little canoe. Even her hair was red when she was small.

Past Salmon and Welches and Wildwood and Brightwood and Rhododendron and just there as they passed over the Salmon River bridge Worried Man saw the bright white mountain and a shiver went through him from the top of his imperious white head to the tip of his toes.

Past Zigzag, past Government Camp. Also named for soldiers, says Owen. Funny how many places remember warriors.

They turn off the main road after Government Camp and take the spur road to Timberline Lodge and walk up past the old stone and fir building, past gaggles and straggles of teenagers and tourists, and sit for a moment in the juniper scrub behind the lodge so Worried Man can catch his breath, and then they walk up the mountain as high as they can, their boots caking with dust. Owen quietly falls behind his father-in-law just in case.

Worried Man stops to point out places. That’s Palmer Glacier, which opened in 1924 and swallowed a horse. Those teeth there are the Hawkins Cliffs, and there’s Crater Rock, right in the center of the ancient mouth of the mountain. Zigzag Glacier starts right there. Joel Palmer walked on that glacier barefoot because his moccasins gave out.

Where’s the summit?

Just there to the right, above that sheer cliff face.

That’d be quite a climb.

It’s more than eleven thousand feet above sea level, Owen. People get dizzy on the peak. Hard to breathe. Sometimes people bleed from the eyes and ears. But we are not going to the summit.

Where are you going?

To the northwest side, above the Sandy Glacier. There’s a huge area there that is remote and isolated, so much so that there are no records of any climbers or exploration or survey parties in that area. That’s where we have to go.

That’ll be dangerous.

I suppose so.

Even for experienced climbers.

Yes.

Certainly for amateurs.

Owen, says Worried Man, we might as well be straight with each other. I have always liked you very much. You love my daughter with grace and patience and I love her more than I could ever explain to you or anyone or even myself. You work hard, your humor is a pleasure, your heart is large, you gave me my grandson. You are a good man, a real man, not a boy in a man’s body. And I too am a man and not a boy. My body is old. I am not stupid. I see the danger. I know what might happen. But this is crucial to me. This is the end of a dream. I have worked for years to be here, and I know deep in my heart I am right. To not go would be to surrender to age, to frailty, to time, and if there is one thing I will not do on this green earth it is surrender to time. So we will go, Cedar and me. Do you see? It would help me if you understood. It would matter very much to me. I love you like a son and I want matters to be clear between us. Sometimes you have to make journeys that are hard. There are all kinds of hard journeys. This one isn’t as hard as most. Your greatgrandfather walked through a vast hunger. My grandfather watched his people vanish before his eyes. Your son will have a hard journey. My daughter is on a hard journey. But we make our journeys. We have no choice. We can’t hide from who we are. That’s no life at all. You know that.

I do, says Owen.

They stand silently for a minute looking at the mountain and then Worried Man says, we’d better get home and they turn and start back down and Owen speeds up a little without seeming to so he can walk in front and after a couple of minutes when they hit a particularly steep patch Owen feels Worried Man’s hand on his shoulder for support but he doesn’t say anything and neither does Worried Man and all the way home in the car they talk about journeys and voyages and voyages and journeys.

30.

These things
matter to me, Daniel, says the man with six days to live. They are sitting on the porch in the last light. These things
matter to me, son. The way hawks huddle their shoulders angrily against hissing snow. Wrens whirring in the bare bones of bushes in winter. The way swallows and swifts veer and whirl and swim and slice and carve and curve and swerve. The way that frozen dew outlines
every
blade of grass. Salmonberries thimbleberries cloudberries snowberries elderberries salalberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. My wife’s voice velvet in my ear at night in the dark under the covers. Her hair in my nose as we slept curled like spoons. The sinuous pace of rivers and minks and cats. Rubber bands. Fresh bread with too much butter. My children’s hands when they cup my face in their hands. Toys. Exuberance. Mowing the lawn. Tiny wrenches and screwdrivers. Tears of sorrow, which are the salt sea of the heart. Sleep in every form from doze to bone-weary. Pay stubs. Trains. The shivering ache of a saxophone and the yearning of a soprano. Folding laundry hot from the dryer. A spotless kitchen floor. The sound of bagpipes. The way horses smell in spring. Red wines. Furnaces. Stone walls. Sweat. Postcards on which the sender has written so much that he or she can barely squeeze in a signature. Opera on the radio. Bathrobes, backrubs. Potatoes. Mink oil on boots. The bands at wedding receptions. Box-elder bugs. The postman’s grin. Linen table napkins. Tent flaps. The green sifting powdery snow of cedar pollen on my porch every year. Raccoons. The way a heron labors through the sky with such vast elderly dignity. The cheerful ears of dogs. Smoked fish and the smokehouses where fish are smoked. The way barbers sweep up circles of hair after a haircut. Handkerchiefs. Poems read aloud by poets. Cigar-scissors. Book marginalia written with the lightest possible pencil as if the reader is whispering to the writer. People who keep dead languages alive. Fresh-mown lawns. First-basemen’s mitts. Dish-racks. My wife’s breasts. Lumber. Newspapers folded under arms. Hats. The way my children smelled after their baths when they were little. Sneakers. The way my father’s face shone right after he shaved. Pants that fit. Soap half gone. Weeds forcing their way through sidewalks. Worms. The sound of ice shaken in drinks. Nutcrackers. Boxing matches. Diapers. Rain in every form from mist to sluice. The sound of my daughters typing their papers for school. My wife’s eyes, as blue and green and gray as the sea. The sea, as blue and green and gray as her eyes. Her eyes. Her.

31.

After Michael the policeman brought Kristi’s father to the police station, Kristi’s father was photographed and fingerprinted, interviewed at length by two detectives in an attempt to elicit inculpatory statements, and finally released, still wearing his big brown coat. He denied all wrongdoing adamantly and threatened legal action against both detectives as well as the arresting officer. The detectives issued a no-contact order, informed him clearly that he would be arrested again if he made contact or sought to make contact with his daughter, and sent the case on to the district attorney’s office. Both detectives reported to their chief that although they had both developed a dislike and distrust of the suspect almost immediately, they could not in their professional opinions find enough evidence to keep him in jail pending review of the case by the office of the district attorney.

Two days later the district attorney’s office reviewed the case and, finding sufficient cause for further review, sent it on to a grand jury. One day later the grand jury, composed of nine citizens of the county impaneled for thirty days, did find probable cause of crime, and instructed the district attorney’s office to issue a felony indictment. Warrant for the arrest of Kristi’s father was issued the next evening by teletype and by direct phone call to all police stations in the county. Michael’s shift supervisor presented him with a warrant sheet in the morning at roll call, which is why Michael is now cruising Trailer Town looking for a man in a big brown coat.

Three days, thinks Michael. Three days have passed and he could be in Mexico or Canada by now. He could be anywhere. I had him in the car. I had him in cuffs. I had him. Now he could be anywhere. He didn’t seem like a runner to me though. He seemed like a badger, not a deer. He’d hole up. He wouldn’t run. He’d hole up. He’d want revenge. He’d hole up.

But where?

So he cruises the town: Trailer Town, the beach road, the old quarry road, the back of the railyard, the fringes of the woods, the empty summer rentals, the alley behind the old hotel, the sheds and shacks at the sawmill, the alley behind the shingle factory. The veins and arteries of his town, through which his black and white car moves unhurriedly, sharp-eyed, worried.

32.

Cedar hears No Horses scream in her studio and he comes running. For once the door between her studio and the cavernous central work area is unlocked. She is still shaking the alder chips from her hair onto the floor.

Nora!

Cedar.

Are you okay?

No.

What’s …

I can’t bear it anymore. The black snow.

Nora?

Everything’s sad. Everything’s empty.

He reaches to take her in his arms, as a grandfather would embrace a granddaughter, but her face is so gray and gaunt that he is startled and his arms stop on their way toward her shoulders.

Nora, are you ill?

Uncle, I feel nothing. I can’t feel anymore. I can’t think. I can’t work. I can’t see straight. I’m so afraid. I don’t feel anything. I poke myself with the chisel sometimes to make sure I am here. There’s a snow. I can’t sing. I am so afraid. I’m lost. I’m lost at sea. Will you help me? I’m so afraid. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any more hope. I ate the hope. I used it up. No more hope. Where is the hope? Will you help me? Will you hope me?

I have seen this face, thinks Cedar. I have seen that face. That boy in the war. That woman on the beach one day. The man on the train.

Nora, he says quietly, come walk with me. We’ll take a walk.

A walk, she says dully.

Take my elbow, he says. Here we go. Lovely day. We’ll take a break.

A break.

One time, he says—wanting to keep words in the air between them, words to lead her out of the chip-strewn room, down the hallway smelling of oil and paint, through the cavernous central work area smelling of dirt and wood and burst fuses and turpentine, and out into the newborn air—one time when I was in the war there was a guy who lost his way.

You were in the war?

I don’t like to talk about it.

I’m sorry.

It’s time to talk, I guess. This young man was named Harry or Barry or Larry. He had been on an island in the Pacific. I disremember the name of the island. This guy was young. He was just a kid really. He’d been under fire for weeks and weeks. We went to get him and his friends off that island. Most of his friends were dead. He lost something on that island. Something in his head. The thing that makes you
you
. He couldn’t speak. He didn’t say anything for days after we got him off. He just stared. The thing that got him talking finally was a cigarette. We were on the next island over from the one where we got him. I asked him if he wanted coffee and he said no. I asked him if he wanted food and he said no. I asked him if he wanted fresh fruit and he said no. But when I asked him did he want a smoke, well, you should have seen his face light up, Nora. I had to light it for him and put it in his lips. His arms didn’t work very well. I lifted up his helmet and tucked the butt between his lips and he took a drag like it was the most nutritious and necessary air. After that he started to come back a little. It took an awful long time but he came back, Nora.

He came back?

He came back. Funny the things that bring you back to yourself. Somehow that cigarette got him started back on the road. I knew another guy that a song brought him back from darkness.

I’m afraid. I’m so tired, Uncle.

That young guy on the island, Nora, he told me he ran out of bullets and hope on that island. He wanted to die. But he got himself back, Nora. He started again clean. He was born a second time. He used to say that his old self died on one island and his new self was born one island over. I disremember the name of the second island but he used to call it Resurrection Island. He used to wonder if there were lots of resurrection islands. I think maybe there are. I think maybe they are all over the place. I think maybe we don’t even see the half of them. They are invisible maybe. They are tiny maybe. They’re all over the place. That’s what I think.

You think so?

I do, sweetheart. I do.

33.

Today was packing day at the shingle factory and Rachel has glue in her hair, splinters in both hands, sawdust in her eyes, and the smell of cedar in and on and through her from tip to toe. Generally she loves the smell of cedar, such a sharp friendly smell, but on packing day at the factory she
hates
the smell of cedar and she wants it
off
her, and it’s such a crisp warm day, and the river looks so clean and inviting that she walks briskly up past the school to where a bend in the river makes the Cool Pool, a haven in the dog days of summer, and there she shucks her clothes in about an eighth of a second and slips in easily, she loves water and the river and swimming, the feeling of moving water against her skin. The water is a
lot
colder than she expected, but rivetingly clear, and she lazes and luxuriates and ruminates and meditates, her whole body submerged except for her nose and eyes. A thrush pipes.