He got back to the house after dropping Catherine off at the guest cabin and looked at the walls as though they could cool his brain off. Molly's favorite picture hung over the table in the kitchen. A whimsical sketch, something an artist friend had drawn for her while she was in the hospital; a small bird on the tallest branch of a winter-bared tree. At the bottom was scrawled, "The smallest bird can fly, can sing, can feed its young." Jack had always disliked it. Molly wasn't the smallest bird, for God's sake! She was brilliant like jewels, like the dawn on a perfect day.
And here she was letting this anger shake her over the earth again. He felt an urge to smash the glass of the picture, to rip the paper out of it. He shook his head in disgust. He sank into a chair and held his face in his hands.
His parents in San Diego still wondered why he wasted his life on this god-forsaken ranch. In his hometown he'd clocked in, taught his students, his only cares involving whether the surf was any good that day. He left that life, the promise of work with a regular paycheck, to come here where he felt that Molly would thrive. To take care of what Catherine passed along.
But was she thriving? Had it helped them? It was too much to take on for nothing. Too much to give up. No surf in the mornings, no sunset over the great forgiving ocean, only this smoky sky and burning in his throat like rage.
FIFTEEN
The day had gone on too long, in Catherine's opinion. Too many emotions running too high, too many ways that a person could be kept from peace. Molly would be fine, it was Jack who worried Catherine with his simmering and fretting. The fire would burn them whether it came or not. There were so many mistakes, that scene at the barn? Catherine sighed and sunk into the old sofa they kept in this guest cabin, tried to peel her support stockings off her legs. It took her a good five minutes, this old body of betrayal. Sweet Jesus, she was ready for a new one. She wasn't given to letting herself get so discouraged, but all this was enough to plague a saint. The thin white cotton curtains at the windows fluttered slightly in a breeze. She sat in the small room with the white walls and looked at her painting, thought about time running out, but she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open.
That scene in the barn, what did it remind her of? Oh yes, that was it. Would have been thirty years ago. Molly must have been what? Fifteen? As feisty as a cornered hog. It was a different horse Catherine was standing beside. She was working her way down his shoulder with the curry comb. Leif, that's what the horse was called, a gelding they were boarding. Catherine was still a straight, strong six feet tall, her hair almost free of gray. The little there was put there by grief and endless days with the children, by goat kids who disappeared from the hillsides despite sturdy fences. And of course by the husband who had gone and died on her. No, that's not the way it was, he hadn't meant it, but she felt it like a personal offense. Why did you leave me with this? she was always asking in her mind. She couldn't see then, standing there with that horse, that those few strands of gray would multiply; all the long years pulling the color right out of her hair.
The early spring had leapt in quicker than usual, that year. White hairs were flying from the horse's coat like a snowstorm. Catherine calmly worked across the shoulder to the mane, and all the while her daughter writhed beside her like a tempest. Molly shrieked. She moaned.
"But why?" she yelled, stomping her foot.
"'Because I said so' seems like a perfectly good reason to me," Catherine said, her hand only slightly white-knuckled on the brush. "And you need to watch the way you speak to me. You're not too old to have your mouth washed out."
"I'm fifteen, Mama, and I don't understand!" Molly's voice broke off on the last word, her skinny arms flailing. Catherine was irritated and a little sorry for so much emotion, but facts were facts.
"I simply can't spare you every evening for six weeks. There's milking in the evening, who'll help me do it?"
"I have the next-to-lead role! There's even talk that we'll get to perform in the Capital!"
"Oh the Capital." Catherine moved around the horse to his other shoulder. The white hairs that flew from under the comb caught the waning afternoon light like fireflies, before falling to the barn floor. "Well I suppose the goats can go unmilked, then."
Molly's face was seized in a sudden fit of inspiration. The hay was heaped around her bare feet in little old piles and she looked wizened in the huge barn, her black eyes staring and hair in black clumps.
"What about that time when you had the hired men come in for a few weeks?"
Catherine's hands paused on their way down the horse's leg as she combed and felt for any burrs. She tugged on the leg until the horse lifted his hoof and she inspected it. When she spoke, she kept her voice quiet.
"Are you talking about that time when I had my gall bladder out?"
"Yeah," Molly said, her face defiant. "What's the difference?"
"The difference," Catherine said slowly, "is that an infected gall bladder is important. This school play is not." As soon as she said it she regretted the sneer in her voice, but she never took anything that she said back, and she wasn't about to start now. She kept brushing the horse. There were six more horses that needed grooming. They wouldn't comb themselves.
"To me it is! This is my big chance, Mama. I could be seen."
"So that's what this is, is it?" Catherine stood and crossed her arms. A trickle of sweat ran down her back, it was that warm. Only April and there should have been more rain, they'd have trouble this year if they didn't get more. The dry days of September stared her in the face and every single thing on this ranch was something she needed to do, all on her own.
For the first time since Molly floated in with news she assumed was good, Catherine started to get angry. "It's about being seen. Because for kids your age a wide piece of land and parents and grandparents fighting to make it prosperous for you isn't enough. No, on top of it all, you have to be seen. It isn't enough that the whole wide sky sees you, that the Lord sees you, that all this land paid for by our hard work sees you. You need to be in the Capital. On a stage. Under lights. That's wonderful, Molly. You do that—after you figure out a way for me to get the goats milked, one that doesn't involve me spending any money."
Molly stared at her with her mouth hanging open. Catherine wanted to knock it shut. She shook her head in disgust. A small hurt part of her whispered that she would never have dreamed of leaving her mother alone with so much work for the sake of a school play. How come her children had grown up with such ideas?
She heard the soft uneven sound of Molly's feet hitting the hay as she ran out the door, but she didn't turn to watch her go. "She'll be okay," she told the horse, and he stared back at her with one calm eye.
Catherine stood up and walked slowly down the hallway. She laid herself carefully on the bed, curling up on one side with her knees tucked like a child. If she could go back, if she could change things, she would give Molly a dozen plays. She would be the first to clap when the time came, sitting in the audience with the lights on her daughter.
SIXTEEN
Molly stumbled away from the barn, cursing herself and the hard, hot coal inside that burned her. She aimed up toward the road, where was she headed? Maybe she would go to the tree, maybe she would find Jefé. Part of her wanted to get into her truck and drive away from this place. The dust in the yard swirled around her feet. She was past the house, headed up the hill.
She stopped short. One of CalFire's CATs was parked in the gravel clearing next to the goat barn. Her mother's words fluttered around in her head like moths, bumping her skull. Go save your land. She hated doing anything her mother suggested, but it seemed they were united this once, in the scratchy grass under her feet and the limitless love for the land that swirled in them and pulled them to do unspeakable things. Like stealing bulldozers.
She ran over to the CAT and climbed onto the step, then onto the track next to the door to peer into the window. The keys weren't in the ignition. Shit. But no, there they were! Dangl
ing off of the monitor. She jumped down and swung the door open, heaved herself in and closed it. Her hands were sweating so much that she couldn't grasp the controls properly. She wiped them on her pants and laid them carefully on the two joysticks. So what was the plan? She gazed at the landscape through the window. The trees were swallowed already by smoke, by a fire that hadn't even reached them yet. She bravely turned the key. Nothing happened. Shit. She looked around the cab. She and Jack had driven dozers before, leveling ground for the new cattle barn, but that was many years ago, and this bulldozer was so different. Think, Molly! There had to be some kind of safety switch, there always was on these new machines. On the floor? She felt around. Yes! It was behind her left foot, inside a little steel door. She flicked it and nearly jumped out of her skin as harsh beeping filled the cab, accompanied by a dozen flashing lights.
"Jeez, CalFire," she muttered. She turned the first key to the start position, and heard the engine crank, but... nothing. Think, think ,think, Molly! She combed through her memories... ah, the throttle! Stupid girl. She yanked the throttle lever to open and the CAT roared to life. Right! She stared at the gears. Oh, wow, this fancy CAT was automatic. Should be a cinch. Except she still couldn't move the thing until she figured out she needed to unlock the park function.
Once it was unlocked, she moved the blade instead of the dozer three times trying to get the thing to go forward, cussing and praying desperately under her breath. On the fourth try, the CAT lurched forward, and she nosed it down the hill, gripping the joysticks with white knuckles. They were on their way! Her prayers became vocal, crashing off the windshield. "Dear God..." The bulldozer was terrifying, a mechanical horse that didn't respond to her voice. She crushed a small tree that she couldn't seem to avoid. Where was she heading? She bumped and jolted toward the road, set to drive up to the ridge and beyond, make the fire line herself. She would clear the earth of debris, and in doing so, it would be ask though she drove a wedge between the fire and her ranch, a ravine, a canyon that the fire would never be able to cross.
She shifted gears and steered to avoid a pile of old tires. Ramped herself onto the right road and drove on. This was amazing. Sweat trickled down her temples and dripped into her shirt, tickling her. She took one hand off the joystick and swatted at her shirt, then smacked her fist back on the stick as the CAT hit a bump and slid to the side. Her heart was beating like a bird's wings in her ribcage. A hundred more meters and she'd be at the switchback that led to the ridge.
But what was this? A group of convict workers in a loosely clumped circle, their orange uniforms garish in the haze. They lifted their heads and looked in her direction. There was one firefighter standing with them, the leader of their team. Molly's hair was wet with perspiration now, drops falling from the ends of it. The men were in her way. She kept on, not turning, finally blasting her horn at them. Finally their expressions turned to alarm and they scrambled out of the way like cockroaches. Molly laughed.
They saw who she was as she passed them. Mouths opened and closed, but Molly couldn't hear because the CAT was too loud. They ran after her, waving. She turned sharply, throwing the CAT around the curve to make the switchback on the edge of the steep hill and begin the climb, but she misjudged and one of the bulldozer's tracks left the road at the wrong moment. Enough of the dozer pulled to the left to bring the whole thing off the road, and then Molly was falling, no, not falling, sliding down the hillside on a bronco that rattled her bones and shook her almost to death. Before she could gain too much speed and roll the thing, its side crashed into an unseen object and stopped.
She frantically tried to get it moving again. "God, please. Help. Come ON!"
She slumped in the seat, weeping now, ignoring the firemen, who had run down the hill after her and were pounding on the door. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets and saw stars. That was it. Her rescue was over.
She locked the park lever and opened the door and slithered out. It was a giant stump that had stopped her from sliding down to the river, she saw.
"Are you okay?" The firefighter in charge. "What do you think you're doing?" "That's government property!"
What will anyone remember you for? Molly thought, silent, looking at his face. Mustache, red cheeks and nose, thinning hair, small mouth. She barely saw him. She knew all she needed to know about him. She was shaken and probably bruised, so she started to walk away.
There was a squawk from the walkie-talkie on his hip.
"The fire has breached the perimeter, Team A to the western perimeter."
She looked at the walkie-talkie, then at the firefighter's face. Around them, the inmate team stood, waiting. Some were looking at the bulldozer, examining it for damage. They talked quietly. All eyes on her.
"What did that guy say?" Her shrill voice rebounded off the hillside beside them. Piercing enough to reach the house. She flinched. "Our perimeter?"
He lifted the radio and spoke into it for a moment. Molly couldn't hear what he was saying, there was a buzzing around her, like a swarm of bees. She waved her hand in front of her face to shoo them, but of course there was nothing there. She didn't wait for the man's reply.
She passed Jefé without stopping as she ran down to the barn. The barn was empty except for a few of the horses, and she panted in the dim light for a moment before running back to the house.
"Jack!" she called, as she whipped the door open. He was sitting with his head in his hands at the kitchen table. He looked up as she came in. She saw him, his beautiful eyes and hands, his curly black hair, but she couldn't pay attention to those parts of him. "Spot fires on the perimeter!" she said. "It's on our side."
"What?"
"We need to go, let's go. We need horses. Shit, I should have saddled them and brought them up here."
Jack stood up and poured two glasses of water from the tap. He handed her one.
"Already?" he said.
"Come on!"
"Drink that. We can get the horses. Barn's on the way."
She drank the water and went to find her boots. They were in the shoe pile, outside and she plucked a pair of socks from the shelf in the carport. She started lacing the boots and had to restart twice because she was winding the laces around the wrong hooks. Her hands were shaking.
"Do you think we need to bring a flashlight?" she asked.
"It's barely five o'clock!" Jack was pulling boots on as well.
"I know, but there's no saying how long we'll be out there."
"What are you thinking? We're not the fire brigade." He turned to look at her. "You're back so fast," he said, frowning. "After taking off. You never come back so fast."
"Did you hear what I said? The fire has crossed our perimeter! Of course I'm back." Of course, of course. Poor guy, he looked unglued. She looked at him apologetically. He looked away as though he didn't want any of her.
They walked quickly toward the barn. "Let's take Moses and Benny," she said, and he shook his head no.
"Moses is too skittish for a fire."
"Jack! I want to take my horse."
"Think it through, Moll. That horse is testy and you shouldn't take him anywhere near a fire."
They took Jive. Molly gave in, there wasn't time to argue and Jack was likely to refuse to come if she didn't do what he wanted. Then they argued about which way to go. Molly was all for charging straight up the hill, but Jack said Jive wouldn't. She rolled her eyes.
"He's not used to that kind of riding," Jack said.
She wanted to shake off the heavy drudgery that seemed to have settled over them, shake the leaden sky off her shoulders and ride swiftly, like water. The horses plodded up the hill the long way, toward the gentle road that would slope them slowly down to where fires were likely even now to be snatching at their trees.
At the intersection to the main road there were about a dozen vehicles, some parked, others idling their engines while they waited for directions. Todd and Amber were leaning into two different truck windows,
no doubt giving directions. Molly felt itchy with all the people spidering over her land.
"Should we go over there?" she asked.
"I'll go quickly," Jack said. "I'll tell Todd and Amber to meet us down there on the ATV once they've finished. We may need help."
He crossed the pasture to where the vehicles sat in a web, wedged in corners and bends in the road. His figure was straight on his horse. Molly held her hand onto her forehead against the glare, wishing she had a hat. The top of her head was burning. She'd start a fire herself, torching the forest with her flaming hair or her tongue, rude as it was. What good posture Jack had, she thought as he rode back to her. She straightened on her horse, wincing. She was going to pay for that crash later.
"They seem to be handling it," he said. She urged her horse into step behind him. Benny was the lead horse with Jive. Jive obediently clumped along behind. The sound of the hooves on dry gravel made an achy space above Molly's stomach. They walked the horses up the slopes, breathing smoke all the way. She had the urge, over and over, to claw something off her face, jerking her right hand up and wiping it over her forehead and mouth, then putting it back on the reins as she realized what she was doing. They passed the CAT, visible over the side of the hill, and Jack frowned, looking at it, but didn't say anything.
"What are we doing?" she asked suddenly, when they were almost there. "We don't even have water."
"We can stomp, if the fires are small. We're... looking things over."
Molly liked the sound of looking things over. A butterfly zigzagged out of a thicket ahead of them and she blinked at it. It was as lovely as a butterfly ever was, on any other normal summer day.
The Eve Tree: A Novel Page 18
