“Come here.”
Alex pulled her close and kissed her, but Hannah stepped back. “I can’t do this right now,” she said. She pushed her fingers through her nest of hair. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not.” Alex held both her shoulders and stooped a little so she’d look at him. “You’re starting to see, that’s all.”
“Bran said he was awake now. He had been asleep before—everyone was asleep—but now he was awake.”
“Yes, exactly. He sees the world like it really is.”
“I’m not Bran,” she said.
Alex studied her face. “Hannah, you’re not going to end up like your mom.”
Hannah hugged herself and Alex let go. “I need you to leave,” she said. When he looked hurt, she added, “I just need some time alone, Alex. It’s been a bizarre day.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He slid on his wet jacket, holding his T-shirt balled up in one hand. As he left the house, Hannah called after him. “Alex, I’m sorry.”
He paused before he shut the door, but didn’t look at her.
— 18 —
Blessing of Snow
BRANDON PACED BETWEEN the window and his hospital bed, back and forth, back and forth.
“Like a caged animal,” Jesse said. He and Hannah stood with their backs against the wall near the door, away from Brandon, as he clearly didn’t want them near. There were no beds available in the small psychiatric ward, so Brandon had been placed in this single room on another floor. The door was locked so he would not escape, and he was under a suicide watch.
Brandon wore only the hospital gown the nurses had inflicted on him, which revealed his bare ass when he turned. He wouldn’t put on underwear and had kicked off his slippers. When the nurse had brought him lunch, he had eaten with his hands, smearing the food across his face.
“That’s not Bran,” Hannah told her father.
“When your mother took sick, I thought some other personality had taken her over too.”
Hannah bit her thumbnail and then shook her head. “That’s not him. He told us there was something inside him. He warned us. Alex warned us.”
Jesse didn’t rise to the bait of Alex’s name. “There were times your mother dragged me down into her world, when I started to believe the things she told me, to worry about my own sanity.”
“You didn’t see what I saw on that bridge.”
“I saw a naked kid in the thick of a lightning storm, about to jump. Bran could have died, Hannah.” Like your mother, Jesse thought but didn’t say. Hannah would be thinking the same thing.
“He wasn’t trying to kill himself.” She hesitated. “He really did bring down that storm.”
Jesse turned to face her, resting his shoulder on the wall. “Hannah, schizophrenics often think they can control the weather.”
“I know, but I also know what I saw. All this is playing out just like Alex said it would.”
“You need to stay away from Alex and his bullshit.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
They both watched Brandon pace for a time, then Hannah said, “I’m going downstairs to see Grandpa.” She knocked for the nurse to open the door.
“I’ll meet you there as soon as I’ve talked to Bran’s doctor.”
As the nurse opened the door, he said, “Hannah, wait.” She stopped, holding the door between them.
“How much do you remember about what your mother went through? You should try. It may help you understand Bran.”
“I remember that Mom died and you left us there, with her body.”
“Dad was with you.”
She shook her head as if he had completely missed the point before closing the door behind her.
She had a right to be angry, of course. He knew it. The day Elaine died, it was snowing just as it was this day. He had stepped outside through those hospital doors into falling snow and raised his hands and face to it as Elaine so often had in the early years of their marriage, before he had begun to leave her. Her small hands catching snowflakes, her shining face, her eyelashes gathering snow; snow melting on her tongue. Before her illness, she was a woman who made a celebration of such simple pleasures. If Elaine had survived that terrible day, he would have bundled her up and carried her into the snow, and everything would have been all right. She would have forgiven him for his many betrayals and forgotten his absences during her illness, the evenings he couldn’t bring himself to sit by her side, to hold her. He would have waltzed with her in the snow the way they had in the backyard of the farm in the first winter of their marriage.
Instead Jesse had stood alone in the swirling snow outside the hospital, as his young son and daughter cried in their grandfather’s arms by their mother’s dead body in that intensive care room. He couldn’t hold Hannah; he knew she wouldn’t let him, not after his betrayal with a girl named Fern, with Gina, with others she also clearly knew about. So he had walked out into that first flurry of the winter alone, hoping for his wife’s forgiveness, her blessing of snow.
Hannah found her grandfather seated at his wheelchair by the window, studying his old, wrinkled hands as if confused by them. Outside, the delicate snowflakes of the first snowfall floated down. “What should I do?” he asked her as she sat on the bed. “I don’t know what to do.”
When Hannah didn’t respond, Stew looked again at his hands. On an arm above Stew’s bed, the television Jesse had just rented for him flickered with the volume muted. Hannah stared at it, not taking anything in, as she decided whether to tell Stew about Brandon or not. She knew Jesse wouldn’t. Jesse would tell Stew that Brandon was at home, that he was fine.
“Grandpa? Grandpa, look at me.”
Stew turned his rheumy blue eyes on her. He seemed so much more vulnerable without his glasses.
“We should talk about Bran.”
“Brandon!” Stew cried, suddenly agitated. He started pulling at the tray on his wheelchair.
A woman went by the open door with the book trolley. She stopped to glance in the room and, taking in Stew’s confused mental state and Hannah’s panic, moved on.
Hannah hugged her grandfather to calm him, to prevent further outbursts. “Bran is all right. He’s fine.”
Stew shook his head. Even in his drug-induced confusion, he knew she was lying. “He’s lost,” he said. “We’ve got to find him.”
Hannah rocked her grandfather and shushed him, afraid the nurse would sedate him again if he didn’t calm. “Everything’s fine,” she said, hating that she now sounded like a babysitter comforting a child. She turned up the television volume to distract her grandfather and watched the news with him for a time as she held him, her mind on Brandon in the ward above.
After a time, Stew seemed to relax, and Hannah sat back on the bed beside him.
“You look different,” he said.
Hannah smoothed the curls in place around her shoulders. “Just my hair,” she said. She had worn it down, rather than in her usual ponytail.
“No, something else.” He peered at her. “You in love?”
Hannah shook her head, even as she felt the flush rise to her face.
“Huh,” Stew said. “Good. You need something of your own right now. It’s that Indian, isn’t it? Dennis’s grandson. Coyote.”
Hannah smiled despite herself.
Stew grinned as if that was the funniest thing. Then his expression became serious as he took Hannah’s hand. “Maybe he can help us then. He can help Bran.”
“Maybe.” Hannah said. “He told me a story, a story Dennis told you, about the salmon boy. He thought the mystery had taken possession of Mom, was trying to work through her.”
“Yes, yes! That same mystery has Brandon.”
“Did Dennis say how to get rid of it?”
“Oh, Dennis tried. He sat with Elaine for hours—while Jesse was on night shift—travelling the ‘spirit trail,’ as he called it, to find her soul, to bring it back. I thought it was all bullshit, of course.
But what the hell? What if Elaine was possessed? What if Dennis could bring Elaine home to us? I figured it was worth a shot. And anyway, Dennis brought me over a bottle of Lamb’s. The least I could do was indulge him. Jesus, I’d give anything for a glass of rum.” He leaned forward as he lowered his voice. “Can you slip in a bottle?”
“I take it Dennis couldn’t find Mom.”
Stew sat back in his wheelchair. “He found her all right. He said that part was easy. Her ghost was hanging around, stuck here. But he couldn’t lead her back inside her body because that thing was already there and it wasn’t about to leave. Dennis said he had an idea about how to get it out of Elaine, but by that time I’d had enough of his witch doctor stuff and told him to get the hell out.”
“But the mystery did leave. It took Mom back to the river.”
“Yes, eventually.”
Stew put a hand on her arm. “You’ve got to find a way to get that thing out of Bran before the same thing happens to him. Bran’s soul is hanging around too. I’ve seen him. Maybe if that thing is gone, he can find his way back in. You’ve got to get it to leave.”
“How do I do that?”
“Dennis would know,” he said. He squeezed Hannah’s arm with surprising strength as he pressed his request on her. “Ask Dennis.”
“Dennis Moses is gone, Grandpa. He died a long time ago.”
“Oh!” Stew cried. “Then what should we do? I don’t know what to do.”
Hannah realized that her grandfather had been asking the same question she had come to ask of him: he was looking for a way to save Brandon. He was looking for a way out of all this.
— 19 —
Ripples in the Air
GINA WATCHED THE hummingbird feeder hanging in front of her kitchen window, a warm mug in hand, waiting for the bird to return. The Anna’s hummingbird had stayed on into late fall, hovering around her window daily, as if trying to get in. She kept the feeder full for its sake.
Her garden beyond was dusted in snow, and flakes still drifted down. Early that morning, the curly tips of the kale had been sugared with crystals of frost. Gina wished she had gotten around to planting parsnips, as they grew sweeter after a frost. She would have pulled them from this winter garden, boiled them and fried them in butter, a little salt and pepper, and eaten them for supper with eggs and bacon. The earthy smell of parsnips frying.
This year she had planted a child’s garden, really, with fast-growing, showy plants. Cosmos, tomatoes, sunflowers. Now eight-foot sunflowers drooped wet and sad under the weight of slushy November snow. Ragged things. Grant had said he would get around to chopping them down, but both he and Gina knew he wouldn’t. They would stand until next spring when Grant tilled the ground for her, offering their seeds throughout the winter to the chickadees and towhees that hung upside down on the flower heads to eat from their faces.
The hummingbird finally zipped up to the feeder, and Gina stepped forward to watch the tiny, shining, vibrating thing.
But almost immediately the hummingbird zagged away, and Gina looked past the feeder to see Jesse entering her driveway. The hummingbird hovered over him as he approached the house, but he didn’t notice it and it left him to resume its haunt of the Robertson house, beating outside Bran’s window. She often saw the bird flickering between the house and the river, or perching on the same spot on the electrical wire above the road, on the Robertson side. So tiny she would miss it if she didn’t know where to look.
Jesse reached her garden, and Gina opened the door and stepped onto the stoop to greet him.
Jesse didn’t climb the stairs to the porch. He didn’t want to presume. He stood below Gina, looking up. “Grant home?” he asked.
“He’s working night shift this week.”
Jesse nodded as he looked back at the farmhouse. “I saw his truck was gone. I was hoping we could talk. I’ve got a problem, with Hannah. Alex has managed to convince not only Bran but Hannah that the ghost in Dennis’s stories is real. She seems to think Bran is possessed by it.”
Gina nodded. “Ah.”
“It almost sounds funny when I say it, doesn’t it? Bran possessed, by a ghost.”
“Given the circumstances, and our history together, no, there’s nothing funny about it.”
“You’re not going to tell me you believe this shit too, are you?”
Gina shook her head. “No. I just mean Elaine—the things she believed, that she saw.”
Jesse took a step up. “I was wondering if you could have a talk with Alex. Tell him to back off.”
“I already have.”
“Can you try again?”
“It wouldn’t do any good. He believes the stories. You could try talking to him yourself, but I doubt you’d get anywhere.”
Jesse looked at the reserve across the river. He had already made an ass of himself at the bridge. He doubted Alex would listen to him or even welcome him into his home.
He turned back to Gina. “Maybe you could talk to Hannah then? Make her understand what Bran is going through?”
“I could try. But you already know what she thinks of me.” She paused. “Then there’s Grant to consider.”
“He’s asked you to stay away.”
She nodded.
Jesse looked past her into the kitchen. The heat from the open door spilled out into the cold; he could see the ripples in the air beside her. “I’ve caused problems for you, at home.”
“The problems were already here.” She sounded tired.
“But my being home doesn’t help, does it?” He stepped back down. “You can tell Grant he doesn’t have to worry.”
“You aren’t going to leave, are you? I mean, you’re not going back to the coast?”
“Not today.”
Gina had once told him she hated his unwillingness to make promises, to tell the lies that were necessary to keep any relationship alive. Hannah had said something similar to him, during one of his rare visits home.
“You don’t even pretend to care,” she said. “I wish you would at least pretend.”
Jesse looked back at the old farmhouse. It slumped, elderly, in the snow. “You still love him?” he asked Gina.
Gina didn’t answer until he looked back up at her, then she shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I ever did. I loved the idea of him.” She shrugged. “Being a cop’s wife. The security.”
“Did you love me?” Jesse hated the childish whine in his voice. But her face opened to him, like in the old days.
“I loved you,” she said. “I might have left Grant, if you’d asked me to. If you hadn’t…”
If he hadn’t fucked around with that girl, Fern. “I was so stupid, about everything,” he said.
“We all were.”
The hummingbird returned to the feeder by the window, and Jesse glanced at it and then at Gina in wonderment. He climbed the steps to join her for a better view, and the hummingbird lifted from the feeder and circled them, hovering in front of Jesse’s face before slipping away.
“I think about you all the time too,” Gina said, picking up on the conversation they had had the week of his arrival, the day at the farmhouse when he had faced Hannah with the news of Bran’s illness.
“There are so many things I would have done differently,” he said.
“Maybe you can, now.”
“Maybe.”
They waited in silence for the hummingbird to return.
Finally Gina asked, “You want to come in?” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but at her garden beyond. Her tone was hopeful, pleading.
“Is that a good idea?”
“No,” she said, but she stepped back, inviting him into the kitchen. After a last glance at the farmhouse to make sure Hannah hadn’t seen them, he joined her.
— 20 —
The Crow
HANNAH, WRAPPED IN her Cowichan sweater, wiped the damp snow from Eugene’s Rock with her sleeve and sat to wait for Alex to arrive. He had volunteered to cross the river to
meet her here, so she wouldn’t have to walk through the freezing water of the shallows, which was the only expedient way to reach the other side of the river now. To get into town, people from the reserve had to use a logging road that wound through the hills and crossed a rough, temporary bridge upriver past the mill. Many had parked their cars on the Robertson side of the burned bridge and made the daily hike across the river at the shallows so they could get to and from work. Bridge reconstruction wouldn’t start until spring.
A wet November snow had fallen again that morning, covering the fields and river shore. Mists rose up from the pastures, obscuring the farmhouse and what was left of the burned bridge. A cloudbank hid the cliff face of Little Mountain from view and drifts of fog hung low over Samuel’s gravesite on the benchland. The countryside was cloaked in white, a dreamscape.
Abby barked from the yard where she was tied, and Hannah looked downriver to see Alex’s dark silhouette, shrouded by mist, as he crossed the river at the shallows. As he drew near, Hannah’s heartbeat quickened. She had waited a week for Alex to call, uncomfortable with the thought of going to the reserve after all that had transpired on that bridge—and after. When she didn’t hear from him, she tried calling a few times but he didn’t answer. Finally, two weeks after the bridge burned, he responded with a brief text, suggesting they meet here.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
Alex sat on Eugene’s Rock next to Hannah, close enough that she could feel his warmth, but not so close as he used to sit. As if accompanying him, a crow flew up and landed on the branch of the dead pine above them.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked him. “Where have you been?”
“I wasn’t sure…” Alex paused. “I thought of stopping by the house a couple of times, but I saw your dad’s truck in the yard. With Brandon in the hospital and you dealing with both him and Stew, I figured I shouldn’t—I didn’t think this was the right time.”
“You could have answered my calls,” she said.
“You were the one who pulled away, Hannah.”
The Spawning Grounds Page 14
