The Eve Tree: A Novel

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  Beyond the little pots, through the window, she saw her mother attempting to climb off the road and up a steep slope. What was she doing? It was surreal, the smoke making everything soft and bent, and her mother, wraith-like, gripping a short pine tree to get her balance. Molly slowly moved toward the door.

  As she approached the hill, she could see Catherine walking around a tree in slow circles. It was so unlike anything her mother would ordinarily do that for a moment Molly's breath caught in her throat. They shouldn't have let her come. It had been too much of a strain. But then Catherine looked up and waved and Molly knew that there was no problem with her mother's mind, whatever other problems there were. Her heart ached with the sight of her mother on the steep hill, small and old beside the oak that sprawled into the sky. What a difference there was between the two, the tree growing stronger as it aged, rather than weaker.

  "We come and go, but they stay the same," she said as she reached her mother. The grass around them had scorched to the color of sand. The hard stalks scratched at Molly's ankles. They stood on the side of a hill that curved upward from the plateau beneath them. Above them the hill moved toward the ridge, and below the house, the valley plunged toward the river.

  "What?" Catherine asked. She leaned on a low branch of the oak tree and breathed heavily. The sun through the tree lit her face in patches that moved with the tiny breeze, and her braid swung down by her waist. The lines on her face were so deep that they cast their own shadows. She put one hand on a limb of the tree. Hand and branch were sisters, both so gnarled. Her wedding rings were loose, Molly could see. She'd lost weight, then.

  "The trees," Molly said. "We change so quickly, but they're here. Standing through the ages." And their lives could be cut off so quickly. Molly put her hand over her face.

  "What color would you say that bark is?" asked Catherine. Any thoughts Molly had been shaping about having a deep connection over this tree, flew off.

  She looked at the tree.

  "Brown?"

  Catherine looked at her.

  "I can see that it's brown, Molly. I'm looking for something more."

  "Wood brown?" Molly didn't understand what her mother was getting at. They were silent for a moment, looking at the rough outer skin of the tree.

  Catherine tilted her head toward Molly. "Do you remember when we celebrated your father's birthday at the Eve tree?"

  Molly shook her head no.

  "You would only have been about four," she said. "Bill took you to look for strawberries."

  "Wait a minute," Molly said, leaning herself against the same branch that her mother was resting against. "I do remember that."

  The strawberries had been hidden in another small valley, not too far from the house. They all pretended that the wild berries were a secret, but really all the family knew where they were waiting, gleaming red in the plants, sweeter than anything Molly had ever tasted.

  "Save some for the birthday dinner," her father had said. "Let's try to fill the pail."

  When they were finished picking, her father held her hand, pink-tipped with strawberry juice, swinging the pail in his other hand. Molly kept peering around his legs to see the berries piled in a slightly mushy heap in the tin pail, until he became impatient and told her to walk in a sharp voice. Then she cried, so he picked her up and carried her. His face was rough with whiskers, and she buried her face on his shoulder.

  "What was he like?" she asked her mother, as if for the first time.

  Catherine touched the bark with the pads of her fingers.

  "He was more giving than I was," she said. "Although for many years I would have said that I was much more giving than him. But I held back more than I gave, while he gave everything he had. Kind of like you."

  Molly looked at the sky. It was empty and wide as a desert, but her mind still searched for rainclouds. You never gave up hoping, however unlikely your hope was.

  Catherine continued. "We don't all have the same vessel to work with. If you're pouring dribbles from your leaky tin cup, but you keep on filling and pouring, it counts the same as when you're a sea that breaks waves over all the folks around you."

  Molly stared at her mother. Catherine tapped the tree a few times with a bony finger.

  "Charcoal brown, I'd say it is," she said, looking up. "If there is such a thing." She looked at Molly for a few heartbeats. "He was happy sometimes and he was sad sometimes. And he loved us." She sighed. "I think I'll head back now."

  She reached out and broke a small piece of bark off the tree, turning to start down the hill. Molly grabbed her arm, just in time, as Catherine slipped in the rocky dust that held the grass together. They picked their way down the hill together, and Catherine turned to Molly suddenly.

  "Oh, did you need something?" she asked.

  Molly felt angry blood rushing into her face. She wanted her mother to finally recognize her as responsible, to say thanks for coming to my rescue, I might have twisted my ankle, falling down this hill. She knew it wouldn't happen.

  "No," she said, her cracked cup giving that tiny dribble.

  When she got back into the house she found Rain and Amber at the table, heads bent over an old photo album. Molly ducked her head between theirs and saw the three kids buried in the sand at the beach. A lifetime ago. She felt a brief, stabbing longing for those days, and when it faded, it left her feeling weak. She poured herself a cup of coffee and stared out the window again. Catherine had gone back to the guest cabin and the hillside was empty of everything except grass and trees. Molly was so tired of the smoke.

  Jack entered the kitchen and stood beside her, putting one hand on her shoulder. She felt longing for him, too, the first she'd felt in months, and turned to put her face into the crook between his arm and his chest. He smelled like Jack, like warm skin and the slightest indescribable smell that was only him. It was like warm wood, or the house after you've been away.

  In less stressful times they would skinny dip in the river, letting it pull them along, the silky water piling up on rocks or their bodies, the cold of it making them clamber onto the hot rocks and stretch out there, baking like bread rolls in the sun. Rolling around together in the grass. She yearned for nakedness together on the grass, it rushed through her. All this longing! It must be hormones. She wiped tears off her cheeks, keeping her eyes closed.

  "How are you doing?" Jack asked.

  She didn't say anything.

  "I need to get on the road soon if I'm going to make it to this fire meeting."

  She lifted her head from his arm and chest.

  "I want to come with you."

  He made a face, considering. "You sure you're up to that?"

  "Up to what?" Todd asked, coming into the kitchen and pulling the fridge door open.

  "To going to the fire meeting, and of course I am," Molly said. "The goats are moved, all except Peony and her kid, and Gerard's bringing a friend to help with the milk this morning. I'll milk in the evening, just to give him a break. What else would I do? Stay home and wonder what the rest of you are talking about?"

  "That's what I'm going to do," Rain said.

  "I'll come, too," Todd said, pulling a tomato out of the fridge and taking a bite of it, like it was an apple.

  "Watch it, Todd. Don't get that everywhere." She looked at Jack. "So?"

  "Fine." He held out his arms and she stepped back into them.

  Molly and Jack and Todd took Jack's truck to a nearby field, about eight miles away, where a white canopy tent had been set up for the meetings and off-site fire headquarters. This meeting today was supposed to be a chance for the battalion to get everyone up to speed on the current state of the fire. It was open for the neighbors, so Molly thought many people she knew would be there.

  "Maybe with a bunch of people around they'll listen," Molly said, as they parked.

  "Maybe," Jack said. "I'm hoping so too, but trying not to expect too much."

  The three of them crossed the hot, dusty field to get to the
tent. To the right of it were several CDF trucks, one inmate crew truck, a helicopter, a bulldozer, and a large white board that had a cluster of people around it. A man in a fire uniform was writing on the board with a fat red marker. Molly immediately veered in that direction, wanting to see what was on the board, but just then someone inside the tent cleared his throat on the microphone.

  "If everyone will find a seat," he said, "we can begin." Molly recognized Vincent Conner's voice.

  They entered the tent and traipsed down the aisle. The chairs that were set up were white! It looked like some sort of fire-themed wedding. Molly felt giddy, trying not to laugh. They found three chairs nearly in the center, close to the aisle. Molly leaned over to Todd just before she plopped herself down.

  "Bride or Groom?" she whispered. He looked at her with alarm.

  Vincent leaned on the podium at the front, waiting for everyone to take their seats. There were three other chairs lined up beside him, and two of them were occupied. Chuck Telus was in one of them, and someone Molly didn't know was in the other. Standing electric fans oscillated futilely in the hot air. It was getting close to noon and the feeling in the air wasn't decent. People shouldn't live like this, Molly thought. She flicked her fingernails against the chair in front of her and looked around. A lot of the neighbors were there, more than she'd been expecting, including some she'd never seen before. She elbowed Jack.

  "Do you know who that guy is?" she whispered, pointing.

  "Nope," he said.

  Athena was two rows ahead on the bride's side of the aisle. She wore bright red lipstick and a thundercloud on her face. Some firefighter was going to make a mistake and throw a bucket of water at her mouth, Molly thought. Lindsay was there, another of Molly's pot-growing neighbors. They had to be nervous, with firefighters poking around. There were always drug busts when there were fires, when officials looking around in places they normally left alone. She wouldn't know. Neither Molly or her mother had ever grown pot, because Catherine believed in keeping the laws of the land. Up to a point, thought Molly, thinking of her idea to put the bulldozers to work behind the back of the State. "The state of the back," she murmured.

  "What?" said Todd, slouching beside her.

  "Nothing," she said.

  Once, years ago, she'd been riding Moses on a secluded trail and she'd come upon a small crop of baby marijuana plants. After a minute of staring, she'd uprooted and scattered them. Probably some hippie had snuck onto their land and put the plants in. Jack told her later that what she'd done was stupid and dangerous, but nothing more had come of it. Jack kept the gun in the bedroom with them for a few weeks though, just to be sure. So much of the life and trade was mysterious to Jack and Molly, who weren't in the inside sphere. And growers were secretive even with each other.

  Molly swiveled to see who else had come. The Hawke's were in the row behind her. She wondered how they had made it from the parking lot to the tent. Peter Hawke wasn't walking a lot these days. The Hawkes were in their late eighties, old friends of her mother's.

  "Hi, Peter. Hi, Mary," she said. Peter reached over and gripped her wrist with a warm, bony hand. His grip was strong.

  "We're thinking of you every day," he said. "How's your mother taking it?"

  "She's doing all right, really," Molly said. "Did you know that she's up at the ranch now?"

  "No, no I didn't!" Peter released Molly's arm and sat back with a small huff. "Well, isn't that something, Mary?" Mary nodded vigorously.

  "Give her our regards," she said.

  "You know," Peter said. "We were always good friends with Catherine. We've never really seen her as Indian. She's not Indian to us, she's just Catherine!"

  They meant it as a compliment. It froze the smile on Molly's face. This was the kind of thing her mother had always had to ignore. Catherine shrugged it off. It was life. But Molly felt it. It was benign insult, an insidious racism that had clustered in the air around her mother's people, her people, all through California's history. She nodded with that tiny frozen smile still on her face.

  "That's all right," she said. "She's never really seen you as white." She nodded again and turned around. She checked to see if Todd or Jack had heard her, but Todd was texting someone, and Jack was talking to the person in front of him. Molly rolled her shoulders and scanned the room again.

  There was Greta, standing at the back. They'd been friends for eight years now, since Greta moved here after she married David. David's land was down the river aways, off on String Road. Molly and Greta had kids who were the same age, Greta's from a different marriage, and they found each other in the grocery store one rainy winter afternoon. Molly wasn't great at being friends. She got prickly and insulted at the smallest thing and it happened a lot because Greta seemed to say whatever came into her head to say. But they kept exchanging recipes and knitting together, sitting cross-legged on the couch in the winter with their baskets of yarn and pointy needles, the rain coming down in sheets, pounding against the house out of spite. Molly waved at Greta now, but Greta was laughing at something somebody said and didn't see Molly's small wave.

  There was a tap on the microphone and Molly turned around to face the front. The tent was open beyond the podium and she could see women preparing food in another tent, with a couple of bulldozers in the distance. One woman untied her apron and retied it. Molly wiped sweat off her upper lip with her hand. The air was as still as glass. Molly breathed a prayer of thanks for no fire-spreading wind.

  Vincent Conners cleared his throat again, and slowly the buzz in the room faded to quiet. Vincent made a "come here" gesture toward them with his hand, and Molly frowned as Jack stood up beside her and began to clamber toward the aisle. She and Todd turned their knees sideways to let him through.

  "What's going on?" she asked.

  "Oh, they asked me to say some things, to represent the ranch. I didn't realize I was supposed to sit up there," he said. He gave a small shrug and loped up the aisle toward the chairs.

  "Dad's up with the big guys now," Todd said.

  "Yup," said Molly.

  Vincent started. "Thanks for coming out, everyone. I'll just do the introductions, for anyone who doesn't know us. Then I'll say a few words, and we'll turn the microphone over for opinions and questions, okay?"

  There was general nodding and affirmation in the tent. One rowdy spurt of clapping that was quickly hushed.

  "This is Steven Benzer, representative from the Bureau of Land Management." Vincent indicated the man that Molly didn't know. Steven grimaced and waved. A few people around Molly clapped tentatively. Molly put her hands together a couple of times, but dropped them because she wasn't sure what they were clapping about.

  "Next to Steven is Chuck Telus. Director of State Parks." More tentative clapping. "Jack Boscelli, representative for local land owners." Hearty applause. Jack smiled and gave a mock bow. Molly saw a flash or two go off. Craning her neck to look over her shoulder, she saw a couple of bored reporters and some photographers with their big cameras, sitting in the back row.

  "And I'm Vincent Conners, Battalion Chief for the Department of Fire." He paused for the clapping.

  "Thanks for the interest, everyone. We're pleased that there's such a community effort behind this. Great turnout." Molly's mouth popped open. It wasn't a bake sale, for God's sake. The forest was burning.

  "I want to reiterate that we're putting our best effort behind this, and have confidence that this fire will be subdued in good time." Molly saw Athena shift violently in her seat, but she settled back down. "I know that Chuck has some things he'd like to say, so I'll hand him the microphone now." Molly breathed in and all she could smell was smoke. The light pouring in through the windows of the tent was hazy with it. And here they were, calmly chatting.

  Vincent didn't sit down while Chuck stood at the podium, he merely shrunk to one side to give Chuck some space. There was Mr. Telus with those pants again. They were pulled well above his hips. It was very strange.

 
; Molly leaned closer to Todd. "I hate his pants."

  He looked puzzled. "You hate flame retardant pants? They need something to protect their legs from the flames, Mom. Would you deny them that?"

  "Not his pants. Mr. Hiked up to his belly-button's pants."

  "Oh, now you're just being mean."

  "I'm sorry. I can't help it."

  "I think you're jealous," Todd said. "You'd like some pants like that. And I don't blame you. I think you'd be stunning in them."

  Molly smiled at him. He was wearing skinny black jeans and a white t-shirt. He looked like a skinny tattooed version of his father.

  "Perhaps you should buy me some. For Mother's Day next year."

  "Consider it done." They shook hands, crinkling their eyes at each other. Molly realized she'd missed a lot of what Chuck Telus said.

  "Shoot. Be quiet," she said.

  Chuck was looking around the tent sternly. "Due to the Minimum Impact Suppression Tactics that we are constrained to employ in a State protected region, we will not be putting any dozer lines into the park." It was the same stuff again.

  There was restless commotion around the room. Something strange was happening inside Molly's stomach. Chuck put his thumbs in his belt loops.

  "I want to emphasize, again, that we don't believe there is any danger to the neighboring properties. This fire is doing an excellent job of clearing away underbrush in the Old Growth, and there is no way that we are allowing CATs into a protected area. The fire is contained. Some of you people have seen it." He gestured toward Jack and shook his finger at the rest of them once or twice.

  Vincent stepped toward the microphone. "Jack? Would you like to address this?"

  Jack nodded and stood up. Chuck made as if to move away from the podium, but Jack gestured for him to stay where he was.

  "I can talk from here," he said. He was beautiful, Molly realized. Standing there with the other men, the perfect lines of his face came out more clearly, the deep smile lines and brown of his skin, his black hair turning gray above his ears. She could see his thick eyelashes from thirty feet away.