Mink River: A Novel Page 9

  Grace steps forward and knocks on Owen’s window.

  7.

  Owen’s hammer pauses in mid-blow when he hears the rap of knuckles on his shop window and he turns to see who is knocking and sees Grace and she sees the startle in his face and her belly leaps and tumbles.

  Grace. Come in.

  Sorry to bother you so early.

  Is it early then?

  I think so.

  I’ve been … busy.

  What’s that?

  Daniel’s bicycle.

  What happened to it?

  He crashed, Grace. He went off a cliff. His legs are all smashed.

  O God.

  They operated for hours. His legs are all smashed. His knees are all smashed. My little boy. His bike is all smashed. My little boy. I have to fix his bike. He’ll want his bike. My little boy. He’s all smashed.

  O God.

  Everything’s all smashed, Grace.

  The shop is broiling hot and Owen is sweating profusely and he sits down heavily on his work-stool and bows his head so Grace can’t see his face but only the roil of his hair black as the inside of a dog and the hammer huge and steel-blue in his hand.

  She doesn’t know what to say. She reaches out and puts her hand in his wet hair and he begins to weep and she reaches out her other hand and touches his rough jawline. His face is all wet with tears and sweat and her hand gets all wet. She steps forward and brings his wet face into her loose sweater below her breasts and he weeps and weeps his shoulders shaking and shuddering. Her belly roils and tumbles. She doesn’t know what to say. The shop is broiling hot. She wants to say something but doesn’t know what to say so she says nothing and he weeps and her hand sifts through his hair.

  8.

  Worried Man here telling stories to my poor grandson as he sleeps with his broken legs. I think my voice crawls into him and heals him some so I will tell him some stories of the People. We have been here from before even our stories remember, my sweet boy. We lived by the mouths of rivers. We had magic numbers. Five was the magic number for men and four was magic for women. We had brothers and sisters far to the north, into the ice. Sometimes their boats appeared here out of the mist and we would talk to them. We built big houses of cedar and often several families would live together in the same house. Some of our houses were a thousand feet long. We ate flounder, herring, smelt, seals, sea lions, whales, salmon, elk, deer, bear, and yetska roots from the marshes. In winter we wore waterproof hats and robes of woven cedar. We used cedar for diapers, canoes, masks, drums, arrows, paddles, cradles, harpoons, rakes, weirs, looms, nets, rattles, rope, bowls, horns, whistles, blankets, and baskets. When we fought we wore armor made of dried elk leather and we painted our faces red and black. We made hats woven of spruce roots. We liked to drink sea lion oil. We ate salmonberries, thimbleberries, gooseberries, bearberries, shotberries. When one of our children died we left her toys and dishes out in the rain to bleach and fade. The greatest people among us were those who gave everything away. Our names were earned by deeds or dreams. Sometimes our old people would hand over their tired names to their children and take fresh names with which to die. We told stories sometimes for ten hours at a time. We could sing for ten hours at a time for days and days. We went to the mountains to see clearly when that was necessary but we were a people of rivers and the sea. Our houses faced the river or the sea. Sometimes our best storytellers would be the mayors of the town. There were two mayors for each river. In winter we would dance and sing and pray the world back into balance. We made blankets and baskets. We made the best canoes there ever were and our infants slept in cradles shaped like canoes and our dead slept in canoes that we would hoist into asayahal, the south wind. South Wind had many adventures. He lives in a cave now. No one knows where the cave is but Cedar and I have an idea. Ice was gecla in the old language, and the winter surf was xilgo, wild woman, and thunder was nixixunu, powerful but kind. Everything had a story, Daniel. Beaver liked to be alone. Blue Jay was a gossip. Crane carried people over rivers with his long legs. Eagle you could trust. Muskrat was a brave little man. So many stories. And those stories had a certain flavor in the old language, a shape in your mouth, a taste. Sometimes when I am half asleep I hear the old words in my ears. I hear my grandfather saying quoatseha tetlewap leluk, goodbye you sweet boy. He would say that as he hugged me into his chest, as strong and hairy as a bear, so I never heard those words without his arms around me and his smell like salt and smoke. Sometimes I whisper those words to myself and they make me sad and warm at once. I whisper quoatseha to you now, my boy. Don’t you be afraid. Crane will carry you over this dark river, his wings strong and fierce.

  9.

  Owen gets a grip on himself after a few minutes and stands up embarrassed and Grace steps back and dries her hands on her jeans. Her sweater sticks to her belly where his tears and sweat have soaked it through.

  Sorry about your sweater, he says.

  Not a problem. Really.

  Can I lend you a shirt then?

  No no. It’ll dry off.

  Got a clean shirt right here.

  No no. Thanks though.

  A cup of coffee then?

  I don’t want to keep you, Owen.

  No no. It’s good to talk. Good to be distracted.

  I’m awful sorry about Daniel.

  Yeh.

  He’ll be fine, I’m sure of it.

  Yeh. Thanks.

  He’s a sweet boy.

  Yeh.

  I see him zooming around town every day.

  Yeh.

  He’ll be fine, Owen. I know it.

  Yeh. Thanks.

  He makes coffee and gives Grace the clean mug and he takes Moses’ mug in which the crow likes to store snail shells. Owen empties out the snail shells. She looks at his hands so as not to look at his body. He begins to sit on his stool again and then realizes that she’s standing and he’s shirtless and he pops up and offers her the stool but she declines. He hurriedly puts his shirt on but he doesn’t want to sit down again so they stand there, coffee steaming. He looks at her closely. Hasn’t actually noticed her for years, really. She was a kid. A strong girl good with tools and boats and such. Not a girl anymore. A young woman. A woman.

  How’s your brother Declan king of the sea? he says.

  Good. Good catches lately.

  Halibut?

  Yeh. Price is down a little but the catch is good.

  That’s good.

  Yeh.

  And your family?

  Good.

  I can never remember your brothers’ names.

  They all look alike. Like puppies.

  They both grin.

  Do you ever hear from your mom?

  No.

  Sorry.

  No no. It’s okay.

  More coffee then?

  No no. I should be going. Got to get some sleep today. We’re out again tonight after halibut.

  Supposed to be a wild wind tonight.

  We only go out a couple miles.

  Is aicher in gaith innocht, fu-fuasna fairrge findfholt, says Owen. Bitter is the wind tonight, it tosses the sea’s white tresses.

  That’s lovely.

  Yeh. The old Irish sang in every sentence.

  I don’t know hardly any of it. All I know is curses from Red Hugh.

  I’ll teach you sometime.

  I’d like that.

  All right then.

  I’d best be off.

  Luck on the sea’s white tresses.

  Thanks. And thanks for the coffee.

  Any old time.

  I’ll be here every day at dawn then.

  They smile.

  Daniel will be okay, Owen. I feel it.

  Yeh.

  Courage.

  Yeh.

  Say hi to No Horses for me.

  I will.

  But he doesn’t. He is exhausted and riven with worry and after hammering Daniel’s bike back into a rough semblance of what it was he goes home and s
leeps for two hours and then he spends the rest of the day sitting at Daniel’s bedside praying and staring so that night when he and No Horses crawl into bed blind with exhaustion and the hollow residue of fear they do not trade tales as they usually do but they fall asleep instantly curled back to front like spoons like hands like petals of a flower long and lean his arm a blanket on her arm gently.

  10.

  Owen Cooney here in my son Daniel’s hospital room. He is here with two broken legs. I’ll tell stories as he sleeps. Maybe the stories will help him. He has slept for two days. The last time he was awake he was falling through the air. He must have fallen fifty feet through the air. I keep thinking of him falling through the air. My sweet little boy. God help me. God heal my boy. God help my sweet Nora asleep on the floor. I will tell a story. I must tell a story. My greatgrandfather Timmy Cooney told stories. He walked and told stories. That’s what he did all his life. He couldn’t stop walking after the Hunger. He walked and walked. There are stories in the air as thick as birds around me, he would say. I will save those stories from starving, he would say. I have a great hunger for stories, he would say. He always walked west. That was his way. To the west was Tir na nOg, the Country of the Young, the Country of the Blessed, where no one ever grew old and no one ever was hungry. It was near to you when you heard bells, he would say. Some people said it was under a lake and some said a river but Timmy Cooney said it was under the great ocean to the west. Sometimes he saw it shimmering there. He would stand ar chostai, on the shore, and sing and tell stories. He said you could reach that country on the back of a white horse. You could live there for a hundred years and it would be the blink of an eye here. You could come back but woe to you if your foot touched the ground. You had to stay on the white horse. That horse would take you from one country to the other. It was a very good horse. There are more holy horses and holy countries than we will ever know, he would say. The way to find those countries is by telling stories. You can eat stories if you have to, he would say. A good story is a very good thing to eat. If you have a true story and some good water you will be all right, he would say. He would sit and listen to people for a long time without moving. He wanted to hear their true stories, he would say. He would never close his eyes. He was afraid of sleeping. Sometimes he wouldn’t eat anything for days and days. He would just sing and tell stories. There are stories as thick in the air as birds around me, he would say. If people die young their stories haven’t been told enough and there is no rest for them, he would say. Their stories are too hungry. I will save those stories from starving, he would say. Sometimes he would tell stories about stories. The stories of children are green, he would say, and the stories of women are blue, and the stories of men are red. You can walk right through a story on the road or in the woods and only hear one word from it, he would say. Or you can sit down inside a story and hear the whole story. Then the story is inside you. You can eat an infinite number of stories. No one can ever eat too many stories. When you have saved enough stories from starving then you will see Tir na nOg, the Country of the Blessed, where no one ever grows old and no one ever is hungry. Geabhaedh tu an sonas aer pighin, he would say, in that country you will find joys as common as pennies, as thick in the air as birds around you.

  11.

  Worried Man here at Daniel’s bedside again telling stories as he sleeps.

  I will tell more stories of our People.

  We built all sorts of canoes, from tiny ones for duck hunting to enormous ones for the ocean. We could fit fifty or sixty people in a big canoe. Sometimes we would sail the big canoes north or south after whales or seals. Sometimes those big canoes would be at sea for days. Sometimes the canoe would come back without the people in it. My grandfather’s sister disappeared this way. She went to live in the sea. Her name was Neshukulaylu. She was very strong in her body. She didn’t marry anybody. She loved to fish for halibut. She loved salmonberries. She could really sing. She loved to hear stories over and over again. You couldn’t tell a story too many times for Neshukulaylu! Her favorite story was the story where a man goes up the Mink River to spear steelhead but every time he finds a good pool for fishing, Thunder roars and pours down hailstones on the man’s head, and the man can’t catch any fish, and finally he loses his temper and curses at Thunder, and Thunder appears, a huge giant, and makes the man come with him to his huge house in the mountains. Neshukulaylu loved that story! She would laugh and laugh when she heard that story. She had red hair. When she was a baby her mother bound a bag of swan feathers to her head for a whole year and she had a swan forehead the rest of her life. When her canoe came back from the sea without her in it my grandfather and his three brothers burned it and rubbed the ashes all over their bodies. Then they made a red funeral canoe for her. It was cedar soaked in berry juice. They loaded it with fish and berries and told stories into it and put it netaat, near the water, in a spruce tree. It was still there when I was a boy but then the ocean came one wild winter and Neshukulaylu took her red canoe back to her new home in the sea. Her youngest brother would never tell stories about Thunder ever again. He wouldn’t tell any stories about his sister either. He would get up and leave the house when people started to tell stories about her. But my grandfather liked to tell stories about her. He said that once you had a sister you always had a sister. He said where she lived there were halibut as big as houses and salmon bigger than the biggest canoe. He said that where she lived there were always berries, as many as you could eat, no matter how many you picked. He said that where she lived you could never be sick. He said that we little children would meet her someday. He said we would know her right away from all the other people because she was very strong and she had red hair and she would be laughing.

  12.

  When the old nun died on the top floor of the old hotel she felt her self leave her body and drift up toward the ceiling, as she had half expected might happen, but quite unexpectedly whatever she was now snagged on the ceiling fan, which had been broken for years, and there she stayed, stuck fast. Her body lay beneath her, composed and still. After a while the night maid came in and found her body. The maid called the priest, who anointed the body: forehead, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, knees, feet. Then the priest called the hotel manager, who had much admired the old nun, and the manager came up from his office on the first floor and stood there at her bedside with the priest.

  A great woman, said the manager.

  She was that, said the priest.

  None like her.

  None before none again.

  Forty years a teacher.

  A thousand children.

  Never lost her temper.

  Twice she did, remember?

  They smile, remembering.

  Her face is peaceful.

  She didn’t suffer.

  She just fell asleep.

  Who will tell the crow?

  I’ll call the doctor.

  The priest left and the manager, who had much admired the old nun, knelt for a moment at her bedside, and then he left too, locking the door behind him, and the room was still again. The old nun, or whatever she was now, had seen and heard all this, indeed she could see and hear far better than she could when she was alive, everything in the room now unbearably clear, everything its absolute self, everything rimmed with light like frozen dew rims twigs and leaves, the toaster shining, the refrigerator magnets shining, her coffee cup shining, the painting of Moses shining, her to-do list with fix fan! on it shining, and she could hear for miles and miles, every sound crackling and distinct, every sound announcing its origin in a way she had never heard before. She heard owls, girls, trees, radios, fish, a fist landing hollowly on the chest of a boy, the suck of a baby at a breast. She heard a thousand thousand thousand sounds she had never heard before and would never have been able to identify before but now she knew them and loved them and had always known them and they were delicious and holy and necessary.

  Beneath her the door to her room opened again and
two burly men entered and examined her body minutely. Neither was the doctor. She wondered where the doctor was. She and the doctor had been good friends. One of the men below her signed a death certificate and the other man signed it too. Then they gently zipped her into a green plastic bag and the second man lifted her body gently and carried her out of the room in his arms. The first man made her bed carefully and turned out the lights and closed the door and locked it behind him and the old nun or whatever she was now hung in the fan in the dark listening and listening.

  13.

  Many times the priest had anointed the sick and the dying and the dead. He had anointed men and women and children and infants. He had anointed a boy one day old. He had anointed a boy one hour old. He had anointed three infants he was sure were dead but he couldn’t bear to refuse to anoint them before the broken parents. He had anointed a newborn girl with no arms or legs. He had anointed a newborn girl whose heart stopped the minute his voice did. He had anointed a miscarried fetus in the arms of its young mother in a muddy berry field. He had anointed a man who was more than a hundred years old. He had anointed that man’s wife a week later. He had anointed two fellow priests. He had anointed an actress in her dressing room. He had anointed a boy who hung himself in his basement. He had anointed a huge bishop who had a heart attack in an airport and died by the luggage carousel. He had anointed a basketball player who died at midcourt and who gripped the priest with his long strong hands so powerfully that the team trainer had to quietly break the boy’s death grip as the doctor screened them from the boy’s mother whose anguished howls echoed throughout the packed silent gym. He had anointed a logger decapitated by a falling fir limb. He had anointed people in wrecks on the highway. He had anointed the body of the man who washed up on the beach. You weren’t supposed to anoint someone who was clearly and inarguably dead but he anointed them anyway and ecclesia supplet, let the church figure out the details, as the huge bishop used to say with a grin. The huge bishop had been his best friend. They had grown up together in farm country thick with oak and hickory trees. The bishop had a hickory walking stick that he carried everywhere. The stick was from the farm where he grew up. There was a stand of hickory so thick and dense there that deer and wild turkey and a red fox lived in it. When the bishop died by the luggage carousel his hickory stick clattered and rolled under the line of rental carts and a janitor found it late that night and brought it to the lost-and-found where the priest claimed it the next morning. Per istam sanctum unctionem, through this holy anointing, the priest had whispered to his dearest friend as he died in his arms, et suam piissimam misericordiam adiuvet te Dominus, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you, gratia Spiritus Sancti, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the bishop staring up at him tried to say amen but couldn’t, and the priest whispered ut a peccatis liberatum te salvet atque propitius allevet, may He who frees you from sin save you and raise you up, and the bishop’s eyes flashed and faded, and the priest rocked his friend in his arms for a long time as the luggage carousel went around and around and around.