by Tim Poland
He breathed in the moist, cooling air and jabbed at the fire with a charred stick until new flames leapt to life. At last, predator and prey worthy of one another.
14
AFTER SANDY CLOSED THE FIRE-ROAD GATE BEHIND HER truck and latched the old padlock, she leaned on her forearms on the pipe-rail gate and rested for a moment, her breathing deep and slow. Her hands and wrists ached; she closed her hands into fists and then opened them, repeatedly, flexing her fingers. She hunched her shoulders, stretching her sore back muscles. Her jeans and boots were caked with mud. She was tired, profoundly so.
Tommy had been well along in his flood reclamation by the time Sandy got down Willard Road to his place, but Sandy joined the process nonetheless. Perched on the seat of his tractor, Tommy protested, but Sandy brushed off his protests. They threw their backs into the work, and after three hours—Tommy with his tractor, a loader on the front and a harrow on the back, Sandy with her pickup—they’d cleared and gathered the flood trash into three huge piles. Tommy insisted he’d take care of the rest of it later. Probably just burn it.
“Whenever I damn well please,” he said. “Like to see the government tell me I can’t. My land. Hell, they’d be lucky if I don’t sue them. It’s their mess in the first place.”
The bull tossed his head and stomped around his pen again. The cows and steers had been let out into their pasture. Stink sat in the cab of Sandy’s truck, snarling at Tommy and eyeing his cattle.
Despite her own protests to the contrary, Sandy drove her truck slowly back up Willard Road behind Tommy’s tractor, where he ran the tractor’s harrow over the flood debris on the slope in front of Sandy’s house. In no time at all, her driveway and the slope were fully cleared, the brush deposited in a compact pile at the edge of the pine grove.
“It’s what neighbors do,” Tommy had said. “Remember?”
County and state road crews were already out and at work, doing the best they could, but still Sandy had to stop three times to drag flood debris out of the road on her way into Damascus. She slowed on the river road and made a quick assessment of conditions as she passed Edith’s spot. The lower Ripshin still flowed furiously, deep and muddy, but it was now well back within its banks.
It was obvious once Sandy took the curve into Damascus—the flood had delivered a hard hit to the hamlet at the bend in the river. A few houses, those set farther back and farther uphill from the river, appeared to have escaped damage. A few others had clearly taken on water. People trudged here and there, in and out of dwellings, dragging water-damaged belongings outside. A man in rubber irrigation boots with disheveled hair sat on a plastic igloo cooler beside a tangled heap of carpeting, a stunned and stupefied look on his face. One mobile home had been lifted from its supports and sat tilted at a precarious angle.
Sandy hit the brakes and skidded to a stop as another pickup truck fishtailed out of the Citgo onto the road directly in front of her. The Citgo parking lot was still partially littered with flood debris and covered with a thick, slimy coating of silt, crisscrossed by tire tracks. A stack of sodden sandbags was piled in front of the store, off to the side from the entrance. Two store employees were going at the parking lot with push brooms, long-handled squeegees, and a hose. Sandy guessed they’d be at it for the remainder of the day.
The parking lot of the Damascus Diner looked much the same, except only one set of tire tracks cut through the layer of silt and debris. The tracks cut through the slimy coating, showed where the vehicle had slid when pulling in, and ended at the parked white van Sandy had seen the women leave in two days ago. A few lines of footprints led back and forth through the silt to the diner entrance and back to the van. A single track of footprints appeared to lead out of the parking lot in the direction of the Citgo. The front door of the diner was open, hanging on one hinge. Even from her spot across the lot, Sandy could see that the abandoned diner had taken on a lot of water. The flood line around the exterior looked to be at least three or four feet high. It would be a ruin inside.
Sandy had looked over her shoulder to check for oncoming traffic before pulling back out onto the river road. When she did, she saw the red-haired woman from the diner. She came out of the Citgo, smacking the top of a new pack of cigarettes against her palm as she walked back toward the diner. She wore rubber boots that came nearly to her knees. The boots flapped as she walked, clearly two or three sizes too big for her. Her long denim skirt was thickly rolled at her waist, bringing the hem of the skirt up to her knees.
Sandy’s window was open, and she nodded as she caught the woman’s eye when she walked past her truck. The red-haired woman paused and walked over to Sandy. She pried a cigarette from the pack, stuck it between her lips, and held the pack out to Sandy. Sandy held up her hand to decline. The red-haired woman lit the cigarette with a disposable lighter and held the smoke in her lungs for several seconds before exhaling. She took another long drag before speaking.
“Hell of a goddamn mess, ain’t it?” she said.
“Looks pretty bad,” Sandy said.
The red-haired woman took another long, deep pull on the cigarette. “Well, no getting around it now. Better get on in there and see if there’s anything salvageable in this disaster.”
“Are others coming in to help you?” Sandy asked.
“Shit, they’re too busy crying and trying to figure out what didn’t happen.” She exhaled another long plume of smoke. “Just sitting around like a bunch of dumb clucks. Would’ve done better to do a lot more preparing and a lot less praying.” She flicked the cigarette into the slime at her feet, where the flame hissed out. “Enough of that nonsense. Best get at it here.”
“Good luck,” Sandy said.
The red-haired woman nodded in gratitude, sighed, and walked through the blanket of silt to the wrecked diner. Sandy put the truck in gear, checked over her shoulder again, and pulled out onto the road, the back of her pickup fishtailing slightly.
STINK had spent more time today in the cab of the truck than he would have liked. Recognizing that they were now on the road up to the bungalow, he sat upright, his tongue out, his tail thumping lightly.
“I know. It’s been a long day for you,” Sandy said. “We’ll be there soon.”
Sandy guided the truck along the fire road more slowly, more cautiously than usual. She was distracted, one eye on the narrow, steep road and one on the stream below. The upper Ripshin was still thick and churning, but it was nearly within its regular channel. A couple more days without rain and it would recede to its usual course and flow, the silt and debris would settle and wash out, and the headwaters would be perfect for fishing again, just in time for the heart of autumn.
The other structure along the fire road, the little cinder-block dwelling that belonged to “some fellow” from North Carolina, had sat unattended, uninhabited for so long that Sandy rarely even noticed it anymore when she traveled up the fire road. Its brown paint was badly peeling, half the windows were boarded up with plywood, and weeds threatened to fully consume it. For Sandy, the ramshackle cottage had long since become an inert, neutral part of the landscape. Unremarked. Only because she was driving cautiously, her attention split between road and river, did she notice the place at all today. Only barely, from the corner of her eye, did she catch the unexpected movement in front of the place.
Something was there.
A man.
Keefe.
He stood at the door, his shoulders hunched, struggling with the doorknob.
Sandy cut the ignition, got out of her truck, and started down the overgrown path to the little house. Something in the incongruity of the situation, with Keefe, whom she saw as inextricably coupled with the cedar-roofed bungalow further up the fire road, standing there, wholly out of place, battling with this abandoned shack—she walked slowly, tentatively toward him, as if approaching a skittish wild animal or a rare and fragile plant.
“James?”
Keefe issued no response, as if he hadn’t heard
her. One hand shook and twisted the doorknob while the other jabbed at the deadbolt lock with a key. His brown fedora sat askew on his head. His shirt and trousers were rumpled, and, from the knees down, his pant legs and shoes were wet and muddied. His face contorted in a grimace, his mouth hung half open, and Sandy could hear his rapid, rasping breath. She spoke his name again, calmly, again a sort of question. Again no response. She moved a step closer and laid her hand softly on Keefe’s forearm.
“James?”
He jerked suddenly upright and recoiled from Sandy’s touch, as if he’d received an electrical shock. The face he turned to her was clearly startled and confused.
“James, what are you doing here?”
For a moment he said nothing, only stood there, his eyes darting frantically over Sandy’s face, before he turned back to his battle with the locked door. “Key won’t work. Can’t get in.” He jabbed again at the deadbolt. “Something’s wrong. Don’t understand.”
Sandy recognized the key immediately—his key to the bungalow, exactly like her own. “James.” She paused, felt her lungs fill with air, and then said it. Aloud. “We don’t live here. We live up there.” Her head tilted in the direction of the bungalow in the clearing a half mile farther upstream.
“Nonsense. I ought to know where I live.” Keefe tried again to force his key into the lock and slapped his hand against the door.
Sandy folded her hand around his and pulled the key away from the lock, trying to draw Keefe back from the door. “James. This isn’t your house. You live further up that way.”
Keefe stood away from the door and stared at Sandy, as if he’d just now noticed her presence. His lips were open, moving, his tongue working against his teeth, but no sound came out.
“James?” Sandy reached and found Keefe’s other hand and held both his hands firmly in her own.
“Alice?” His lips and tongue had finally found the word they sought.
Two syllables. Only two, but the wrong two. Alice—Keefe’s long-dead wife. He didn’t recognize Sandy. He had no idea who she was. Her knees buckled, as if the ground had cracked beneath her, opening a fault line that would split and swallow the headwaters.
In an instant, all the preceding clues realigned themselves. The old man alone in the clearing at the old Rasnake homestead, seemingly unsure of which direction to turn. The improperly tied yellow stoneflies on the tying bench. The persistent detachment and withdrawal. She knew these signs, knew what they could indicate. Those earlier markers she’d tried to ignore now knotted themselves irrevocably to what now stood undeniably before her.
“James, it’s me. Sandy.”
“Sandy?”
“Yes, James. Me. Sandy.” She released his hands and gently slid one hand around his arm. “Come. Let me take you home.”
Recognition remained absent from Keefe’s face, but resistance drained from him. Sandy led him away from the cinder-block shack, up the path, to her truck.
Keefe sat quietly in the truck cab, his face retaining the look of resigned confusion, as Sandy drove the rest of the way up the fire road. When she pulled down the gravel drive from the fire road and parked at the bungalow, Keefe turned to Stink, who sat between them on the seat, and laid his hand on the dog’s head.
“Stink, old fella. I suppose you’re ready for another long nap on the sofa.”
“James?” Sandy turned to him, trying to betray no emotion in her face.
“Yes?” His voice was steady, clear in its usual timbre. He knew her. He knew where he was, but a fearful light remained in his eyes. He knew, perhaps, where he was, but not how he came to be there just then.
Sandy raised her hand to where Keefe’s rested on Stink’s head. She wrapped his hand in her own and pressed it tightly in her grip. “Let’s go inside,” she said.
“Of course, my dear.”
Stink’s tail thumped on the seat between them.
HOW would she speak to him about this? How to communicate about something that by its very nature hampered communication? How to question him about crucial information that he might or might not be aware of, about recollections that he might or might not recall? How to propose one set of facts when she knew he would adamantly and sincerely deny those facts, the proof of which lay within his own mind? How to broach the subject of indisputable infirmity when he felt perfectly well? And he did seem well now, while she was not. Sandy was tired. Dead tired. Everything leading up to the flood and its aftermath had left her exhausted, utterly drained. She simply couldn’t manage this now. She’d wait until later, tomorrow maybe, to confront him about it. She just couldn’t face it yet. Not right now.
Sandy peeled off her muddy clothes and stepped into the snug shower stall in the bungalow’s bathroom. She closed her eyes, leaned her head into the hot, steaming spray, and surrendered to the water washing over her. Had she worked and struggled to come to this new understanding of love that she’d recognized in Tommy and his history, this sense of love as a thing intricately interwoven with location? Or had she merely moved dumbly through the world until she stumbled upon it? She didn’t know. And if the answer mattered, she didn’t care. Keefe had long since stitched himself into the fabric of the headwaters. Now she had done the same, and Keefe was, for her, the loop through which her own strand secured itself within the whole cloth. Keefe and the headwaters, they were one and the same, and she could live without neither. She lifted her head and let the hot water pelt her face until it stung. If the seams of Keefe’s mind were beginning to loosen, could she still hold herself, hold them both, in place within the fabric into which they’d woven themselves?
After her shower, Sandy dug a T-shirt and a pair of flannel drawstring pants out of the duffel she’d brought along. As the day had waned, the temperature had dropped a little. She took one of Keefe’s old woolen sweaters from the dresser and slid it over her head. The sweater was well-worn, showing pulls and pills here and there, but still deliciously warm and comfortable. She rolled the long sleeves up and brushed her damp hair back.
“Hope you don’t mind,” she said, indicating the sweater as she walked out into the bungalow’s living area.
“By all means,” Keefe said.
While she’d been in the shower, Keefe had changed into clean, dry clothing and made coffee. He’d also brewed a cup of chamomile tea for Sandy. He sat on the sofa, sipping his coffee and reading, with Stink curled at his side. Sandy nudged her dog until he huffed and grudgingly moved to the end of the sofa. She sat down between the two of them, lifted her mug with both hands, and took a slow, luxurious drink of the hot herbal tea.
“Mmm. Thank you,” she said. The muscles and tendons in her back and legs, in her hands and wrists—they all ached but now seemed to loosen and relax with the infusion of the tea’s heat.
If she had intended to deliver any sort of statement when she stormed out of the bungalow two days before, it had registered only with her. Keefe marked her recent absence only by noting that he hadn’t been away from home for several days but that he guessed, what with all the rains, there must have been some flooding below the lake and dam by now.
Most often, Sandy would move through any story she told quickly, laconically, presenting her tale as no more than a series of events to be delivered in the sequence in which they occurred, free of narrative detail and nuance, seeking only to move from beginning to end, to present the necessary information and be done with it. Whether her pace was determined by the soothing influence of the hot tea, the thick warmth of Keefe’s sweater, or the knowledge of the other story that lay in wait for them somewhere on the other side of this one, Sandy lingered, embracing each tangent along the path of this telling.
Speaking as one devout angler to another, Sandy gave special attention and detail to the waters of the lower Ripshin, its depth, volume, color, degree of agitation, speed of current, amount of debris carried, bank erosion, and possible lasting effects on the fishing downstream. She led Keefe through the literal free-for-all at the Damascus D
iner and how the scene was occasioned by the assumption at the Wilson Hollow Road commune that the pending flood indicated Judgment Day coming around the bend. Her voice faltered, clotted with a rush of sadness and sympathy, when she told him of the wreck of the diner she’d witnessed and of the red-haired woman’s return earlier that day, alone, resigned to reclaim what she might from the remnants of the disaster, entirely on her own.
“That’s a shame,” Keefe said. “More needless destruction because of religion. Last thing anyone needs.”
It took Sandy a long time to talk her way through her day and night with Tommy—the rising water, the anxious bull parked behind her house, the tale of the grandfather’s death, the dazzling freshness of the tomatoes, their cleanup work that morning, the blinding shine of the released sun across the floodwaters.
“You must be hungry, my dear,” Keefe said.
She was. Sandy was ravenous.
She asked, with significant trepidation, how he had been the past two days, fearful of what might arise from the conjunction of what might have actually happened and what he might recall. Standing at the counter in the little kitchen, making sandwiches, Keefe slipped easily into a brief account of the time. The days of the flood had been far less eventful here in the headwaters. He’d spent his time as he usually did—observing the waters of the upper Ripshin, reading, tying flies at his workbench. Yesterday, as the rains were letting up, he’d hiked up the fire road to check on the bear-baiting pit he’d informed J.D. about. He was glad to report that, as far as he could tell, there hadn’t been any further action there since he first discovered it. And, he told Sandy, it appeared the builder of the baiting pit had not yet done irreparable damage to the bear population. On his way back to the bungalow he’d encountered a large black bear sitting in the middle of the fire road, having a long, leisurely scratch. Having to wait until the bear finally decided to move on, he hadn’t made it back to the bungalow till nearly dark.
