He was moving a box into the cave’s dark but stood when he saw her, tension strung between his arms like a cat’s cradle. She couldn’t do anything more than suck in her breath, the loudly ringing alarm bell only in her head. She took a quick step backward, but the trail was too steep for hasty retreat, and she didn’t dare turn away with only a few strides between them.
He cocked his head sideways. “You must be the Larkins caretaker,” he said, his expression shifting subtly as he ran his eyes over her. “Shouldn’t wander so far from home. It’s not safe out here,” he said mockingly, but a sudden bark shifted his attention—Juniper on the hill below, looking up at them, his body on alert.
The man swung into instant action, raising his rifle and sighting down the scope.
Silva yelled just as the shot rang out—a deafening percussion followed by a rebounding report. The dirt behind Juniper’s head leapt and fell back into place as if the sound itself had stirred it. Juniper yelped and tucked his tail, sprinting out of sight as Silva yelled his name, her heart thundering in her chest, her stomach twisting.
“That your dog?” the man asked, his voice casual and cool. “Looked like a coyote to me. Like I said, can’t take any chances. It’s not safe out here.”
“They know what you’re doing—the shot-up mountain sheep, the illegal weapons, the girls. They know about all of it—” Silva said, trying to keep her voice from climbing, match threat with threat as her heart hammered in her chest and tears stung her eyes. Juniper.
“That right?” the man said, his expression amused. “Well, thanks for letting us know. We’ll be sure to keep a lookout. You, too,” he said, smiling tightly at her, his eyes full of threat.
Silva edged back down the slope, making sure each step was solid before taking it, not turning her back until the hill dropped her out of sight. She looked everywhere, but Juniper was gone. She tried to run and her stomach hit again, the harsh movement turning into wrenching cramps that crumpled her to the ground, hands and knees in the dirt. She pushed herself up, forcing herself to breathe, light-headed and dizzy with pain and adrenaline. By the time she made it to the gentler inclines, she couldn’t stop her legs from wobbling, her joints and guts both strung loose. She was glad for the anchoring clumps of bunch grass that kept her from losing her footing altogether and sliding into the river.
When she finally stumbled into the yard, Nick came out of the barn, his face turning instantly serious as he ran to her side and helped her up to the porch.
“What happened?” he demanded, his voice stern in alarm.
But she couldn’t answer, the cramps coming hard and fast, a cold panic seizing up what was left of her pulverized insides as she pushed herself up and ran for the outhouse, her body turning itself inside out.
When she came back out, Nick was waiting. He gestured to the water ditch leading to the cabin from the creek as he helped her back to the house. “Could be giardia. You can never be sure what’s going on in the water, what kind of pathogens might have been introduced from up above. It’s not something you want to mess around with, especially a severe case,” he said.
She’d never considered the water, but she should have. The rotten sheep, bloated and bobbing in the water. A wave of nausea rushed over her. “Did Juniper come back?” she choked out, clenching her guts, the man’s face flashing in her mind, his rifle held to his shoulder.
Nick shook his head slowly, his brows furrowed. “Is he lost?”
“We ran into a Lenite. He shot at Juniper—I tried to find him, but he ran away,” she blurted, everything crashing in around her head, burying her in the violence of its wake.
Nick’s jaw muscles clenched, his body suddenly going still. “Where?”
“At the old mine shaft—I don’t know if he hit him or not,” she said, crying.
Nick went inside and came back out with a pistol strapped to his waist.
“What are you doing?” she asked, panicking, her body folding in on itself.
His face was white, his arms as tense as coiled snakes. “Going to find him,” he said, but Silva wasn’t sure if he meant Juniper or the man. “Stay in the house. Don’t open the door for anyone.” Anger was evident in his every move as he left, retracing her steps.
Her intestinal distress matched her emotions, trading punch for punch, everything coming together in one mass that felled her under its weight. Isabelle and the baby, and now Juniper, too. She feared the worst—Nick taking the fight where it’d been threatening to go all along. She wanted to run out, stop him, but her body wasn’t her own to command anymore.
She gripped her middle, listening for gunshots from inside the locked-up house, unable to prevent anything from happening. It’d all been set in motion long before her.
When she heard footfalls on the porch an hour later, her first thought was that the man had come to finish what he’d started, but it was Nick, his face grim, Juniper clutched in his arms. She rushed out, looking for bullet-torn flesh as Nick laid Juniper on the porch, but both dog and man seemed intact. It was only when she took Juniper’s head in her hands that she saw the clean-edged hole shot through his ear, noticed the frantic rhythm to his panting, the drool running from his muzzle, his ears pinned back, his eyes glazed in distress.
Silva’s agony was like a chokehold. This was her punishment for not listening to her own strangling gut, for thinking she could fix anything.
“I have a med kit. We’ll get some water down him, do what we can,” Nick said.
Juniper whimpered as Nick settled him on a blanket on the living room floor, just as Silva had the night he’d washed up. He yelped when Silva touched his side, his heart beating so fast under her hands, it seemed it would burst. Silva couldn’t stop herself from sobbing.
“It’s going to be okay. We’ll get you both taken care of. Juniper’s tough, he’s already proven that,” Nick said, but she knew there were no assurances she could count on, however desperate she might try. Life took what it wanted. Left you to pick up the remains.
“I’ll get a call into Mack, then ride upstream, try to locate the source of the giardia, if there is one,” Nick said, turning his face away, but he wasn’t fast enough. Silva saw the dark trace of his thoughts. “I need to boil some more water—don’t want to take any more chances.”
He got up, but it seemed she’d already used up the chances she’d been given. She wondered if Nick’s mother’s belief had been right all along: that parasites and nightmares went together.
Before leaving, Nick brought Silva cool washcloths and tea, thoroughly cleaned and dressed Juniper’s wounded ear, and administered several syringes of water to Juniper, making sure they were both well-hydrated, the two of them on the same trajectory.
Silva kept vigil at Juniper’s side the rest of the morning, running her hands through his soft fur and murmuring words of comfort, soothing herself as much as him as she tried to convince herself that everything would be okay, even though it felt as if everything were ending. Her world tipping on its axis, throwing her overboard to sink into the abyss.
* * *
By the time Nick got back hours later, Silva could hear a jet boat engine coming upriver fast. Nick went out to meet Mack and when they came in the house, Mack’s face was lined deep with worry. “I was prepared for the worst,” he said, looking grimly back and forth from Silva to Juniper as though he’d expected both of them to be gone. But how could you prepare yourself for that—the worst—when it seemed to shift into darker and darker territory with each breath?
Mack had brought antibiotics for both her and the dog—his “Canada supplies,” he called them, no prescription needed. He quizzed Silva on her symptoms and the timeframe of her illness, and then nodded seriously, agreeing with Nick’s giardia conclusion. All the people in the canyon had had a round or two of it, he said, and they’d all become pretty familiar with the treatment, the recovery methods. Since testing for giardia was so faulty and often took weeks to complete, they had all just learned to diag
nose and treat it themselves. He said he’d be happy to boat Silva back so she could go to the clinic in Two Rivers, but that they’d most likely send her back with the same meds he’d brought.
Mack and Nick knew only part of what ailed her body, but the last thing Silva wanted to do was leave the canyon—leave Juniper and Isabelle, too—in order to seek medical care, even if she needed it. She realized for the first time that the giardia itself might have been the cause of her miscarriage. Willing to do anything that might help calm her body—both guts and uterus—she swallowed the antibiotics with a tepid glass of boiled water that tasted like blood, dry-heaving when the taste hit the back of her throat, her guts and womb both pulsing with referred pain, her mind blurred with the familiar sinking weight of lament.
“Did you figure out where the giardia might have come from?” Mack asked Nick.
Nick nodded. “I rode up the creek. There was a heap of decaying elk several miles up, hidden behind a brush pile. They didn’t get there by chance.”
“Dietz’s?” Silva asked, fearing the answer. What it would mean, Len poisoning the creek that led to the Larkins place, the same water she’d been drinking for weeks now.
He nodded, his face inscrutable. “Skinned and left to rot.”
Her stomach flip-flopped. Len, the cause of her body’s distress—the water as poisoned and ominous as her nightmare.
“So, what happens now?” Mack asked.
“I notified Ted, the game warden. Len wouldn’t let Ted on his property to examine the elk for disease when he brought them in. Captive elk are often full of stress-related diseases. Not something to take lightly, especially when all that separates them from the wild herds is a bit of wire. The creek runs close by Almost Paradise’s pastures. These were dumped. Ted’s going to have to get a court order to do it, but with this now, there’s plenty to warrant it, especially with the occupation going on, too. They’re getting ready for something. War, it would seem.” Nick’s jaw was set, the scar stretched tight across it. “If he wants a battle, he can have it.”
“A group came by when you were gone,” Silva finally said, all of it seeming like a betrayal now, speaking with Len and Faith, going to Almost Paradise, even though she hadn’t meant it that way.
Nick sat still, considering her carefully, waiting for her to explain. She could see his struggle with it—a new thread, unraveling something she wasn’t sure should be unraveled.
“Several men, along with Len Dietz, met a boat in the middle of the night, picked up a load of weapons and ammo, and rode upriver. I called it in the next morning,” she said quickly.
“They’re gearing up for something, that’s for sure,” Mack said. “And it ain’t good.…”
Nick walked to the window, his back to them like a wall. She’d seen him like this before.
Silva regretted speaking the Lenites into existence. She pictured Len standing above her, his hand on her shoulder, marking his territory. She wished she’d been able to say what she’d known immediately upon meeting him: that he was a man who took everything captive.
In the window’s reflection, her face was pale and gaunt. Again, she fought the urge to tell Nick everything she hadn’t yet been able to say, but all the conclusions had already been finalized. What more did she need to go through before she accepted what the universe seemed intent on telling her? What more would it take for her to understand all that was not meant to be hers? What more would it take for her to stop wishing for things she couldn’t have? Going back to the boarded-up cabin, nothing remaining but herself, everything stopped before it had even had a chance to begin.
She looked down, fighting the sting of tears behind her eyes. After being able to suppress outward emotion for so long, why did it come to this now? She blinked hard. She wouldn’t cry, not here, not now, with Mack and Nick watching. She looked at her hands mutely, worrying her torn cuticles, tucking her misery and grief back where she hoped they couldn’t see it.
After Mack left, Nick said she should go to bed, get some rest, but she refused to leave Juniper’s side. Just as Nick couldn’t forgive himself for leaving his baby brother behind, she couldn’t forgive herself for going to the mainland and leaving Eamon, alone and dying. She wouldn’t do the same ever again.
Nick dozed off late in the evening, sitting slumped in the chair. Silva watched him sleep, the long scar highlighted along the contours of his face, until she, too, dozed off.
When she awoke, Nick was standing and looking out the window, the sound of the river amplified in the still air as light advanced along the canyon’s rim, the sky shifting and rolling—the same as her insides, despite Mack’s pills. A blanket Nick had laid over her fell from her shoulders when she got up. On the floor, Juniper didn’t move and she panicked, dropping to her knees beside him, but when she touched his side, his eyes shifted under his lids.
“Made it through the night,” Nick said. “Sleep has a way of healing everything.”
She studied his face. “My grandfather used to say that. You remind me of him,” she said.
Nick glanced at her questioningly. “He was a good guy, right?”
She looked out the window. “The best there was.”
“How are you feeling?” Nick asked, his voice soft with concern.
She smoothed her wrinkled shirt to give herself time to lie, say she was fine, but it seemed in one fell swoop she’d lost the ability to pretend she was okay when she wasn’t.
“You’re nothing but skin and bones—look like you’d blow away if the wind came up,” he said, walking over and circling her wrist between his thumb and index finger to illustrate his point, his hand warm on her skin. “The giardia hit you hard. You’ve got a lot of ground to make up,” he said, but he didn’t know how hard she’d been hit, what kind of ending she’d reached.
“Don’t we all?” She pushed herself up, willing her legs to obey.
“I hope you’ll give the canyon a second chance,” he said, and she could hear it buried in his voice—the sincerity and hope, along with notes of hidden anger and desperation. He, too, had staked everything on this one final thing, this one last way to make it.
They were standing close enough she could sense his body heat, and it was all she could do not to lean into the shelf of it, find stillness there, as if taking shelter from a battering wind.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said, even if it weren’t exactly true—Eamon’s cabin boarded up and waiting. His ashes drifting on its shore. She was pretty certain if Nick knew everything she’d done, he wouldn’t be so eager to have her stay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
* * *
Babies like dust, like powder, their skin like paper, like ash, babies like cordwood, stacked. Babies like you, babies like her, babies like them, babies like him—a new likeness, a vision projected, a cluster of wavering hearts. Her lips pulling at your breasts, her milk streaming from your chest, her whorled nest of hair that you breathe in like light, this holiness made manifest, this heavenly angelic earth. You hold her tight, keep her close, touch her smooth, plump skin, lowering her into the water that breaks like glass beneath her, covering her as it covered you once, too, this reminder of air, of lungs and blood, of crystalline sunlight shot through. She cries and your breasts release, a soaking for both of you, washing away the sins of the fathers, the sins of the flesh, the sins of your inner being made manifest. She will live afresh, she will breathe, she will rise up in holiness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JUNE 2001
Mack brought something up for you. I almost forgot,” Nick said, knocking on the bedroom door before handing Silva a large, stiffly padded brown envelope, addressed to her at the Larkins Ranch in unfamiliar handwriting, no return address. “A secret admirer?” he said, lifting his eyebrows at her before closing the door behind him, leaving her alone to open it.
She was glad he had. When she tore the envelope open, she found a raw-edged twelve-by-twelve watercolor inside—another of Isab
elle’s paintings, this one both larger and more detailed than the pregnant girls. “Baptism of the Virgin Maidens” was written on the back in Isabelle’s looping cursive, and Silva recognized the scene with a start. It was at the Larkins Ranch’s small beach, Sheep Creek surging into confluence with the Snake, a line of girls standing thigh-deep in the river, flanked by Faith at one end and Len Dietz on the other. Faith’s gaze was as grave as Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” looking out into the unknown as if she were waiting for some foretold disaster to unfold. As if she were carrying the world’s burdens on her shoulders.
It was the same look Isabelle had captured before. The same brushstrokes, the same color palette, the same mood and tone. Dressed from head to toe in white, the girls had their heads covered with lace veils. Water streaming from their outstretched arms, long white dresses wet against their child bodies, they looked like repeating replicas of Christ the Redeemer at the summit of Mount Corcovado. Off to the right, Len Dietz was bent over, submerging the last maiden, her deific child’s face visible just under the water’s silvery surface, her veil floating like a shroud behind her, her eyes closed, her hands clasped to her chest in worship.
Len on Nick’s family land, baptizing his child brides in the Snake River of Hells Canyon, its waters bringing one kind of death or another over and over again. Isabelle serving as witness to the virgin maidens’ baptism—before Len took the girls as his concubines. Before his seed grew in their wombs. Before they were shrouded in birthing blood instead of lace.
Silva went over every detail, the dusty smell of watercolor like some kind of direct communication from Isabelle, as though she’d meant for Silva to come find her. A trail of crumbs, one painting at a time. It wasn’t until Silva looked in the envelope again that she saw the small slip of torn paper, five words written above Faith’s signature: Seek and ye shall find.
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