She shook dust off an old rucksack hanging on the porch, packed a water bottle and a sandwich along with the map, left the bonsai in the porch shade, and started. Up the draw behind the house, she found the trail, pushing cautiously through brush and climbing steep switchbacks, expecting to find some marker to indicate where she was headed, but there was nothing but rocks and brush and more switchbacks. Nothing to say what really loomed ahead. Nothing to say what kind of disease the land had contracted—spaces vast enough to swallow something so vile.
She hiked the several miles up to the fork, but the map didn’t show which path would lead her the right way, so she went up both spurs, timing herself for a few miles in either direction, hoping for something, anything, to let her know she was getting closer, but she found nothing but more switchbacks leading her farther up.
Finally, sweaty and tired, she stopped at an overlook, the canyon opened up below her, the river looking like what it’d been named for: a snake undulating through the steep-walled gorge—a dark, liquid swath in the canyon’s austere emptiness. She knew she had to turn around in order to make it back before evening, but the thought of having to give up without making it anywhere left her more deflated than she’d expected—miles that had told her next to nothing, except to prove how infinite the land actually was and how little she could accomplish on her own, on foot. Each plan she made resulting in the same empty-handed outcome. What did she think she was going to accomplish, trying to find a place that kept captive all who entered?
* * *
In the next days, the outfitting group nearly on its way, Silva had no choice but to dig into the ranch work—pruning, pulling, and digging. Trying to rechart each possibility, trying to read into the future, just as Eamon had said he could. See what she might make out of things wholly outside her control, outside of what she could touch with her hand and trace with her fingers, intuiting each movement of growth.
She labored from dawn until dusk, until she was too tired to think, too tired to do anything but eat and sleep and work again the next day. Her stubborn white skin finally succumbed to the canyon sun, growing if not tan, apricot, each day warmer than the last. Nick’s drought in action, marching toward the flames he warned of—fire, air, earth, water. Each element calling you to its treacherous banks.
To stay cool in the canyon’s unrelenting heat as she worked, she took to wetting a handkerchief in the icy creek and tying it around her head, rivulets of water flowing down the sides of her face, edging into the corners of her mouth—water sated with mineral wash and decomposition that left a tackish coating on the back of her tongue, a taste like rotting leaves.
At the end of the week, she went down to the creek, pant legs scrunched up to her thighs, shirt unbuttoned, ready to wash the sweat from her skin and hair. It’d been an especially hot day, and at first that was what she thought she was smelling—heat that brought with it the smell of summer decay—but then the stink became full-bodied and moist, the air imbued with rot.
She followed the creek to the river, where a dead mountain sheep floated, so inflated with gasses it seemed to bob in the grasses in which it was moored. Bits of ragged flesh exposed, it looked ready to explode, and she was afraid it would, sending bits of putrid flesh like shrapnel, the smell of its rot on her skin, in her hair, in the back of her throat. She crushed some sage and rolled it in the handkerchief, pulling it up over her nose as though she were warding off evil, then searched out a piece of wood, long and smooth and as light as balsa. She poled the sheep out as far as she could reach, turning her head as its feet rolled up, stiff and pointed as it drifted on the river’s surface—a slow, bloodstained churl.
The canyon was quiet, the last jet boats gone from their fishing holes, the owls starting to call their hunts. The creek’s current created whirlpools of flotsam at her submerged feet—leaves, rafts of small sticks, a dead beetle—everything in this place in some flux, transitioning from life to death and back again.
She went back to her washing pool and scrubbed her hands with the grit from the creek bottom, but no matter how much she scoured, dirt pleated her palms and rimmed her nails. She’d never been able to wear gloves. Without the intimacy of a seed’s smooth hull, a leaf stalk’s rough bur, the soft crumbling of casting-rich dirt, it was as though she had lost the ability to see.
As she finished washing up, she noticed something lodged against the opposite bank. She waded in and fished it out—a jagged piece of plywood, most of a NO TRESPASSING sign still attached. She threw it into her growing burn pile heaped with brush, pruning clippings, and wood scraps. A few nights before, a storm had surged the creeks full of mountain runoff, and the next day, a wooden door had washed up on shore along with driftwood and wads of tangled fishing line. The door lay flat, moored on the beach as if it were a secret passageway, as though all she had to do was pull it open and walk into a whole new world. She had dragged it to the burn pile and leaned it upright against a tree where it still stood—an entryway to another land. She wished she might cross space and time that easily, transport herself entirely.
She walked down to the beach where she could see the moon rising, heavy and low, nestled like an egg on the still-blue evening sky between the peaks. She’d started to wonder if there was something fatalistic, something cursed and restless to her birth story. All that unreachable, latent power—power to command the tides, direct the earth’s axis, and modulate the frenetic energy of the sun threatening to pull her under.
Underwater boulders shifted in the current, sending up otherworldly echoes, as if the river were slowly purling loose, pulling up the stakes that held it earthbound to join with the air. She breathed in the smell of fecund dirt, wet sand, and algae, and when a particularly warm gust lifted the hem of her shirt, she let it, her skin contracting at its touch. She felt the night’s movement against the sharp spine of the canyon.
In the moonlit dark, she peeled off her shirt, then her pants, stripping until her skin was fully exposed. She looked down and studied the nearly imperceptible swelling beneath her flesh. Who would choose a life defined by never-ending heartbreak? A life of aloneness. She walked along the water’s edge and kept going, first toward the mailbox, then past the trailhead. Finally, she took off running, following the river, legs lifting, arms pumping, the wind kicking her hair up behind her, lifting and falling in rhythm to her stride. She let the pounding enter her and carry her, running over this hill and the next, finding that the farther she went, the less there was left behind, the less there was to feel—the familiar pain, the ache deep inside that never left.
She didn’t stop until her muscles combusted, until she had to bend over and grab her knees to breathe, her pulse roaring, her bare skin flushed and mottled, her nerves tingling as if she’d been electrocuted, every muscle twitching, every cell of her body lit on fire.
The moon had climbed high over the hills, everything silvering under its touch, the striated sky bright with raked clouds. She felt the lunar weight pulling at her. She let her hands rest against her bare stomach, imagining what the first quickening would feel like—a bump, a nudge outward, a movement like bird wings under the surface of flesh fluttering again her palms? The thought left her shaken. She already knew that the best you could often hope for was to be overlooked by fate’s dark attentions. That maybe if you kept your head down, if you worked hard enough to make yourself invisible, it might pass you over when it came around, rattling at the doors, knocking at the windows, looking for entry.
Clumps of brush surrounded her, a game trail leading down to the water’s edge. As she made her way down it, she almost stepped on a snake, its dark shape stretched across the trail. She was close enough to see its opaque, segmented tail-tip, its wedged head and black-bead eyes. It tightened the muscle of its body, flicked its tongue out to test the air, and a rush of adrenaline jellied her knees. She knew she should back away, but its beauty and danger transfixed her. She wanted to reach down, run a finger over its diamond-stitched scales, but it
was gone as suddenly as it had appeared—a dry scrape of belly, a whisper in the dirt, rattles shaking loosely in warning.
The heat of her run had worn off and left her chilled, her feet raw. She lowered herself into the water, wincing at its bite. As the water reached her waist, she imagined letting go, the small weight of her stomach pulling her under like an anchor until she, too, disappeared into the dark—a full circle traced wide. Why fight the inevitable? Why not let go like everyone else had? But when she looked up, she saw a brown lump bobbing on the water’s dark expanse, bumping against shore rocks. Something fleshy, a wet shifting of hair and bloated gut. Another mountain sheep.
It rolled in the water, and she saw a distinct pattern of exploded flesh. With the extent of the first sheep’s bloating decay and her lack of expertise, she’d thought perhaps it was just the normal process of decomposition. But this time it was clear, evident in the symmetry of the wounds. She’d thought she’d heard shots in the hills, had imagined with cold dread what they might mean. Her fears translated into reality, this place deadly to anything that ventured too close. Full of enough threat and violence she’d wondered at her own foolishness in coming, in thinking she could do anything to save anybody, including herself, submerged in cold, dark water flowing swift enough to take you under and keep you there forever. She imagined her body floating to the river’s surface, rolling bloated like the sheep’s—exposed, vulnerable. A physical betrayal of a private act meant for nobody but herself.
She pulled herself out of the river, climbing through the rocks until she found the trail again, her wet feet coating in its soft dust as she walked back. She glanced uneasily at the empty hills, her arms wrapped over her chest, her teeth chattering, her skin wet and exposed.
She’d come farther than she realized, and it took a long time to reach the ranch, tree trunks standing out ghostly in the dark, her clothes a heap on the beach. She tried to dress quickly, grit grinding against her damp skin as she struggled with her pants and shirt. Then she froze in place, clothes half on, as she heard a weak but distinct splashing over the lap of water on the shore.
Shivering in the night air, she tried to tell herself the noise was just another river murmur, the night making each noise new and strange, but the splashing moved closer, became rhythmic. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move to hide herself. What if someone had been watching her all along? Someone who gunned down mountain sheep off river bluffs. A man in the dark.
The splashing was closer, just up the shore but even with the full moon, the night was dark enough that, at first, she couldn’t make out anything other than a wheezing pant. Then, finally, she saw it. A waterlogged dog clawing shore boulders, trying to find purchase. It slipped and disappeared underwater, and Silva ran, stumbling past the boulders, wading into the water, her wet clothes and the current pulling her in deeper, as if the river were trying to get back its chance to keep her. She grabbed the dog by the neck and hauled it out of the water, wincing as it yelped.
When Silva got it to shore, the dog tried to stand, but its legs went wobbly and it collapsed at her feet. She carefully ran her hands along its legs, shoulders, and hips, feeling for any broken bones, any evidence of it, too, being shot, but everything seemed intact.
Scanning the dark for things she couldn’t see, she asked in a shaky voice, “Are you okay?” and at her words, the dog’s tail thumped weakly. It was a male husky mix, cream and gray, a black stripe up his nose and a mask over the top of his brown eyes that made him seem thoughtful, as if he, too, were assessing the situation. The tops of his ears were blunted and torn, as if they had been shot off, edges of skin tattered where bits of fur had grown back. She wondered if he’d escaped whoever was massacring mountain sheep.
He didn’t protest when she scooped him up and carried him like a baby, even though he was big enough that he dwarfed her, filling her arms.
Inside the house, she built a fire even though the night was still warm, situating the dog next to the stove. She fed him out of her hands, and he licked her palms clean over and over again. His brown eyes followed her whenever she got up. Finally, she lay down next to him, snuggling close and stroking his side as much for her comfort as his own. She’d determined she would stay up all night, keeping guard, but the fire’s heat was flush on her skin, a slow radiating prickle, and she fell asleep breathing in the dog’s wet leather smell, her hand buried in his fur, finding reassurance and comfort in each of his breaths.
* * *
When she woke, the dog was standing quietly at the screen door, looking out.
“Ready to leave already?” she asked, heart in her throat. She pushed open the door, expecting the dog to dart out and run away, but he just stood there looking at her expectantly. She went out and sat on the porch steps in the sun, and as if in reply, the dog sat next to her and leaned up against her side. She put her arm around him and stroked the soft fur on his chest. They sat this way a long time, gazing out at the river reflecting the morning light, pondering everything the waters had carried.
Later that morning, she called in an order for dog food and to report the shot-up mountain sheep. The dispatcher told her to keep an eye out, keep watch. As if she could prevent anything bad from happening—to herself or anyone else. The river and creek had already delivered their own messages of warning. Shot-up mountain sheep, a no-trespassing sign, a nearly drowned dog.
She named him Juniper after the twin-trunk bonsai Eamon had given her—child and parent always together. As a child, the closest thing to a pet that Silva had were the island seagulls that followed her, mawing and mewling as they begged for scraps. But all Juniper cared about was her. He slept next to her bed at night, and stayed at her side all day as she worked. On her daily hikes—surveying the canyon as far as she could on foot—Juniper stayed on alert next to her as he, too, listened and watched for things up in the hills, even though no other warnings had floated down. Silva didn’t know if Juniper’s original owner might eventually show up, or who that owner might prove to be, but she knew that no matter what she wouldn’t be able to give Juniper back if someone did come for him. It was as if, in Juniper, she’d discovered a lost soulmate—a part of her that had always been missing. She fell asleep each night with her hand in his fur and woke each morning to him licking her face, his own face an expression of devoted love. They had found each other, and that was enough.
Silva brought back pieces of the canyon from their hikes until the house was a naturalist’s arrangement of feathers, bones, and pieces of rock that were once wood—metamorphosis into an indestructible mass she wished she, too, might achieve. She found a dusty, desiccated frog resting in a corner of the kitchen, its long-toed feet arranged in repose, small snout of a nose, bony-ridged back, eyes dried shiny black. Succumbed to this land of contradiction: a place baked harsh enough to suck your bodily fluids dry, leave you husked and drifting, as insubstantial as air. A place that tore everything down until all that remained was its essence—life in sharp relief.
She misted the bonsai each evening, checking for stress, but despite the unwavering heat, they, too, were sprouting new growth, the deadwood larch covered in lacy needles, and even the bristlecone pine cautiously budding, recovered from the shock of transport. She’d come to understand that the canyon was thrumming with life despite its barrenness at first glance.
* * *
On an early-morning hike, several miles upriver, she found what she hadn’t known she’d been looking for: two small hackberry trees growing in a boulder pile, their small, twisted forms stunted and warped. Thick, bent trunks, strong branches, healthy arrowhead-shaped leaves. The only trees she’d ever seen that mimicked Eamon’s honeysuckle. She carefully dug them up, severing their roots and wrapping them in wet burlap before taking them back to the house.
At her desk, she flipped Eamon’s honeysuckle notebook open to diagrams of trimming, the process of charted and deliberate growth. She sat the trees next to the notebook and examined the corresponding lines of th
e bodies she would re-create, reading Eamon’s words: Initial wiring is the foundational stage of creating a bonsai from a raw piece of plant material, re-creating nature’s elegant balance. This is the most important step as it lays the foundation of all future growth.
Silva loosened the hackberry’s roots and made the trims Eamon had sketched decades earlier. She ran her fingers over the trunks and branches, tracing future lines of bark and bud—the only thing that reassured her, the only thing that made any real sense, formed any kind of unity. The similarity between the new sketch and the beginnings of her trees provided the kind of certainty she needed. The only kind she could count on. Meticulous planning, things in order—these were things Eamon had taught her. The things on which she’d depended. First one tiny move, then another. A trim, a twist of wire, a new shape. Each centimeter of growth charted.
She flipped the pages as she wired branches until her hands were numb and rank with copper, trying to see the shapes she needed to create, repruning what she’d already gone over until she’d reached the vision that’d led her there. She felt the connection in her fingers—knowledge of the form the trees would become. She, too, could see into the trees’ future.
Forty years before, Eamon had written, The larger trunk has been trained into the informal, upright style and the smaller trunk trained into the semi-cascade style, giving the composition a feeling of motion and drama, suggesting a tree blown by the wind, clinging tenaciously to a steep cliff, stretching horizontally to find the sun. This is the result of not only the directional flow of the two trunks but the alternating spirals of live and dead tissue in the larger trunk, the crown of “jin,” or dead wood, and the strongly defined and layered branching.
Sins of the Bees Page 11
