Ash Falls

by Warren Read

  They used to talk so much about what “eventually” meant, she and Jonas, of the kind of world that waited for them after Eugene finally grew up and left home. There were a hundred little things they would do just as soon as it was the two of them again, with no child to chase or clean up after. On the morning after their wedding, Jonas asked her to name all the places she wanted to see in her life, and she told him the Redwoods in northern California were first on her list, and then Monument National Park. Death Valley, too. Lyla dreamed of being in the desert, of scanning the endless stretch of sand and tumbleweeds, and stands of spiny cacti spotting the horizon.

  “You got it, Pumpkin,” he promised her. They lay in his double bed, looking out the window at the tar-splotched rooftops of the Main Street shops.

  They made it to Eureka once, about six months after the wedding. But that was it. Lately, it was getting harder and harder to imagine that any of those places even existed anymore, much less that she would ever get to see them.

  “You know why she sneaks, don’t you?” she said.

  “I suppose it’s because he’s always bugging her about her eating,” Jonas said. “Well, he won’t change unless she toughens up.”

  Lyla set down her coffee and gazed over at him, at the stony bridge of his nose, at the gentle, white hairs that lay like spider webs on his fingers as he ran them over the newspaper. Jonas was a man who had always been generous with her, with the money he earned, and the time he had. Even if her life didn’t turn out the way she’d imagined and if there were moments when she dreaded the thought of thirty more years of awkward conversation over the morning newspaper and fried eggs, he was always there for her. If nothing else, she could count on him to listen to her when she talked and come home from work every night when he was supposed to do. That kind of thoughtfulness was more than a lot of women got.

  He tried to show that same generosity to his son, but it was clear he could never figure out Eugene. “I don’t understand you,” he’d say from behind the steering wheel, eyes locked on the rear-view mirror, fiery. Even though the school was less than a half-mile away, those drives home were eternal. “Why can’t you be a good kid and just do what you’re told?” The Army would never put up with it, he’d say. “Why do you always have to be Johnny Smart Ass?” The whole time Eugene would sit in near silence, sobbing quietly into his coat or—as he got older—brooding, glaring stoically out the window at the passing houses.

  Lyla pushed her chair back and stood up from the table. When she touched the edge of his cup and tipped it to one side Jonas shook his head, so she removed it from the table and added it to the breakfast plates that were already soaking in the sink. As she ran the water, she looked out the window, down the block at the streetlights that still shone down onto Main Street. Now and then a car would drift past. People were already beginning their days.

  “I saw her at the Red Apple the other day,” she said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “That Bobbie woman. The nurse.” She reached into the water with the washcloth and found a plate to scrub.

  “Hank’s gal?” Jonas said. “Well hon, she doesn’t live but six blocks from here. You’re bound to run into her sometimes.”

  “I know that.”

  “It doesn’t make it news.”

  “I never said it did.” She dropped the plate into the rack. “I’m just making conversation, Jonas.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. He looked at her with a curious expression, as if he had no idea why she should be irritated. The newspaper draped over his hand like a wilted flower. “I wish you wouldn’t let her get under your skin like you do,” he said, going back to his paper. “It was the husband who did it, not her.”

  “I know that,” Lyla countered, running both cups under the faucet at once. “But she had a hand in it.”

  “There were quite a few hands involved in that whole mess, Lyla.”

  She pulled the stopper from the sink and watched the soapy water melt down the drain. She knew he was right. In her heart, she knew what he said made sense, but it was like he was standing on the other side of a locked door, telling her to just walk through already. She couldn’t do it. That woman didn’t deserve to be let go so easily.

  There was the sound of voices downstairs and the ache of water through old pipes. Lyla turned around from the sink in time to see Jonas fold his paper and get up from the table.

  “I guess I’m off,” he said.

  She said, “You wouldn’t want to be late.”

  “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

  She went to the refrigerator and took out his lunch, a Tupperware bin of leftover meatloaf and roasted potatoes, something she had put together for him the night before. She had no way of knowing if he actually ate the lunches she packed for him. He said he did, and the bins he brought home with him were always empty. But there had to be plenty of decent restaurants in the shopping center where the bank was. She supposed it didn’t really matter.

  He was at the kitchen door now, his arms fighting the sleeves of his sport coat. His tie was knotted too loosely and she could see his top button, even from the other side of the room. The egg yolk was still there as well. For a moment she felt a sense of satisfaction, that he might see the mess himself in the rearview mirror of his Buick, or in the restroom at the bank sometime later that day. He would think of her then and wonder how she could have missed something so obvious.

  She brought his food to him, and he took it and gave her arm a squeeze, and kissed her on her cheek before turning to leave. Outside, daylight was just beginning to break, and the cold rushed in as he swung open the door. The air was crisp, carrying in the smell of early morning, before the logging trucks started thundering through on their way to the mountain.

  “Just a minute,” she said, turning him to face her. She slid the Windsor knot to his throat and tucked down his collar, then she licked her finger and used it to wipe the food from his face. He smiled at her, kissed her again, and told her he’d see her that evening. He’d pick up a bucket of chicken on his drive home if she wanted. She just had to call and let him know.

  She went to the window and watched as he backed out of the driveway and drove off down the street, a cotton-white cloud billowing from the back of his car as he rounded the corner to the highway. There was more noise below her. Eugene and Marcelle were up now, opening and closing drawers and speaking to each in hard tones. What could they possibly have to talk about, she wondered, the two of them, with what little they knew about the world outside of that basement. Maybe they didn’t say a single word that had anything to do with life beyond the next two hours of their lives. Where had Marcelle put his socks? Could he pick up his own towel? Would Eugene drop her off at work on his way out so she didn’t have to walk?

  She went to the sink and pulled the frying pan from the dish rack. There would come a day eventually when the two of them would no longer be living in that basement with their queen-sized bed and thrift-store vanity, and their shelves made of cinderblocks and boards, playing at marriage. There would someday be a time when Lyla didn’t have to watch them pretend they were something more than two kids trapped by circumstances and a stupid piece of paper that called them “husband and wife.” And as Lyla imagined a basement devoid of Eugene’s decrepit furniture, replaced by her mother’s sewing machine and boxes of linens or anything else she chose to put down there, it suddenly hit her: What then? What waited for her and Jonas when there was no longer Eugene and that girl to clutter up her conversations and thoughts and efforts?

  She went to the corner desk and took a sheet of paper and a pen from the drawer. In block letters she wrote GAMBLE APARTMENTS, then walked to the refrigerator and clipped it to the freezer door.

  Bobbie and Tin

  Friday afternoon came sooner than expected. Bobbie did her final inventory, locked up the office and went to the hallway to wait for the bell that would bring in the weekend. She twirled her keys in her hand, watching two women teachers t
alk on the lower landing of the stairwell. They leaned in so close their hair touched, and they occasionally glanced up at Bobbie. They were young, new to the school just last year, and Bobbie wasn’t even sure what they taught.

  She looked at the floor outside her office door, a habit now, always checking for hazards before stepping out. Patrick took his sixth period—American Lit—at the opposite end, from Peggy Chapman. Bobbie had heard that Peg was merciless in her grading, and spoke to the kids as if they were graduate students. But Patrick seemed to be holding his own, even though he seldom had a book in his hand.

  The bell rang and bodies poured from doors. Patrick appeared amid a swirl of classmates and they cut in and around him, shoulders knocking shoulders. He came toward her as if he was crossing a river on stones, his chin dipped, yellow bangs tumbling over his eyes. She wanted to go right to him, smooth that hair back from his face and kiss him at the temples, like she did when he was a boy.

  He came to her and she touched his elbow.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “How was the day?”

  He thumbed his hair from his eyes. “We had a test.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. People flooded all around them and Patrick shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I gotta stop by my locker,” he said. “And I gotta go to work.”

  A girl in a blond ponytail and plaid skirt brushed past them. Patrick reached out and tugged at her sleeve. She spun around and smiled, toothy, the fleshy gums showing pink. “Hey hey,” she said. “Hi, Mrs. Luntz.”

  Bobbie smiled, though she had no idea who the girl was. It was typical. Kids she knew ignored her, and those she felt like she’d never seen before bellowed her name from the parking lot of the grocery store. Bobbie turned back to Patrick.

  “I thought I’d drive you.”

  “I got my bike.”

  “We can put it in the back.” She leaned to one side to catch his eye. “Hey,” she said. “I’d like to meet the old guy.”

  His face screwed up at her.

  She said, “Don’t give me that.” This was an argument she didn’t want to have, not now, not here in the hallway at school. Why couldn’t he just say Okay and be done with it? “Buck up,” she said. “It’ll be a good thing.”

  Patrick laughed. “It’ll be a frigging mess.” He reached up and put his notebook on his head. His eyes closed, the jaw pulsating as he ground his teeth together. This was a thing of his, when he found himself backed in a corner. When he didn’t want to lose it and wind up in trouble on top of everything else that might be happening to him. It was one of a few things he’d picked up from watching Ernie, early on. After a good thirty seconds, he gave a heavy sigh, and brought his notebook back to his side.

  “Whatever. Okay.”

  Out in the parking lot, Tina Reiter and Sam Gish, the history teacher, were already climbing into her Datsun. It was too early for TGIF. There was an unwritten rule that teachers wait for the lot to clear of students before locking up and heading out for the weekend. It could be that Tina and Sam were abandoning the mountain for the night, getting an early start. Whatever the case, this coupling was news to her. She glanced over at Patrick, but he paid no attention to them.

  While he fiddled with the radio, Bobbie asked about his plans for the weekend, if he was getting with friends, if he had any homework. What did he like about Tin’s, if anything. Small talk. He gave a word here and there. Being civil. Bobbie was fishing, feeling for any indication that the beans had been spilled about Ernie. Patrick seemed like Patrick. Concise. Evasive. If anyone had said something to him, he wasn’t giving it up.

  By the time she came upon the turnoff to the mink farm, he had a tight hold on the passenger door handle. “Just drop me at the gate,” he said. “Up here.” He nodded his chin at the windshield and snatched his gym bag from the floor to his lap. “You’ll just get stuck at the bottom.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Bobbie said.

  I’ve been in tight spots before, she thought to herself. You try navigating your way out of the Blue Moon Lounge parking lot, six-drink-drunk at two a.m. in a Buick Skylark. Giving the wheel a spin, she coasted through the open gate and took the decline to Tin’s slowly, rocking over ruts and divots the whole way down.

  Patrick sank against his seat and let his head bounce against the window while he stared out through the glass. All around them, the forest stood dense and black with shadow, still holding onto the day’s rain. He was not so different than the little apple-cheeked boy who had once called out street signs from the backseat as Bobbie cruised the taverns looking for Ernie’s Firebird.

  She wasn’t bending. She was determined to take Patrick all the way to the river’s edge, whether he liked it or not. The fact was, he had money to spend. She was his mother. She had the right to know exactly where, and how, he was earning it.

  The car came to a stop in a clearing of patchy sod, the rolling Stillaguamish a starry, green-blue ribbon filling her view. At the far side, thick cedar boughs hung like curtains over the water, rippling loosely in the breeze. Through the closed window she could hear the whisper of the water’s flow, and the tinny chatter of chickadees. “Sweet Jesus,” she said aloud. “I might even be willing to deal with all those mink if it meant I could wake up to this every morning. Just me and you, way out here with nobody else.”

  The old man was already coming up from the riverbank, whip fishing rod in one hand, a clutch of slimy trout dangled from the other, mouths sucking air, bodies slapping at his leg. He was a giant tortoise, hunched forward, craggy head bobbing from the loose opening of a mossy wool sweater. His legs angled over the uneven ground. He was old, even older than Bobbie had imagined.

  When he saw them he hollered, “Well if it isn’t Skunk in a car!”

  Patrick climbed out and went around to the back of the wagon, pulling his bicycle out and walking off without so much as a goodbye. When he got to Tin, he paused and said something. The old man responded with a few words and a wave of his arm, and Patrick pushed his bike toward a cluster of buildings in the distance. Tin broke into an eager march to Bobbie’s car.

  “So you must be the famous Mister Tin,” she said, getting out of the car and taking support from the closed door behind her.

  “Just Tin,” he said. He laid the fishing pole against the fender and took her hand in a cold grip. “Dorsay’s my last. Most people think it’s Irish, but it’s French.” When he spoke his tongue ran over the entire topography of his toothless mouth.

  “So that’s your boy?” he said.

  “That’s my boy.” Bobbie nodded her chin at him. “All seventeen years of him.”

  Patrick stood near the mink houses, hands deep in his pockets as he gaped back at them. The jeans weighed loose on him and his jersey hung too far over his beltline. He could stand to gain some weight, Bobbie thought, or have a mother who would take him shopping more than once a year.

  “Clock’s running, fella,” Tin hollered. “No pay for staring!” He looked at Bobbie and gave her a wink. Patrick walked away, disappearing into a small silver Quonset adjacent to the mink houses.

  The land was a clutter of hovels and dwellings and rusted out vehicles, windowless and resting on oil-splotched cinderblocks. Pitch-roofed barns huddled against the edge of the forest opposite the creek, ringed with sprays of thick, yellowed crabgrass and brushy sorrel. Plywood shutters, propped outward like sleepy eyelids, extended from each hut. These were low-rise barracks, regimented in close rows.

  An algae-stained travel trailer pressed snugly against a cloud of naked blackberry brambles, connected to a meaty maple by a lone, sagging clothesline. Further back, far from all the clutter, stood what Bobbie assumed to be the old man’s place, nestled at the deep edge of the cleared land. It was a two-story farmhouse with lattice-paned picture windows and a wide, swaybacked porch.

  “So can I get a look at them?” She nodded at the barns.

  “The minks? God. Them nasty goddamned things.�
��

  They walked to the barns, each lopsided in their gaits as they stepped over the lumpy sod. She had caught a whiff of the creatures as soon as she had come into the river bottom, but now that she was out, the closer she got to the buildings, the more pungent the air became. Not unlike skunk, she thought. Heady, musky, and miles thick.

  “I think if I lived here I would spend half my day hoping for a strong breeze,” she quipped.

  “Hell,” he said. “Thirty odd years. You get used to it.”

  Tin swung the door open and the full scene rolled over Bobbie like an unexpected, breaking wave. The stench was more than she had imagined. She remembered vividly how she had made Patrick strip in the mudroom on that first day back, and the memory gave her heart a pinch. Twin lines of crowded boxes lined the walls of the barn, wire mesh cubes with spots of blue-gray, scurrying, scratching, some gnawing at the wire. Others lay still, curled into furry balls in the farthest corners of their pens, oblivious to the racket. She had imagined a lot worse, given Patrick’s complaints. But Jesus, those things did stink.

  She kept her hands tucked into her jean pockets, walking squarely in the middle of the aisle. As she kicked at the sawdust flooring, she traced the rough-hewn beams that propped up the tin roofing, and she thought about just how much Ash Falls was made from the grain of its own forest. Hank had rambled on for over an hour about this once, as they sat on his cabin porch, passing a roach back and forth between them in the dark.

  “There isn’t one person in this town,” he’d said, “who appreciates the history that lives in the walls of their house.” He patted the shingles over her head. “This piece of wood,” he said, “was in the ground when the Declaration of Independence was signed. How can that not just blow your mind?”

  Bobbie squatted down in front of a cage. “I wasn’t expecting them to be so cute,” she said. “Hank told me they were mean sons of bitches.”