Marrow Island (27 page)

“If I leave now, I can get back to the cabin before dark.” Or I could stay, I think, in case she comes back tonight. But instead, before signing off I say, “Carey: make sure everyone knows about the hiker. Just in case.”

I throw my books and clothes into my pack, leaving the food, the toilet paper and the hand sanitizer and all the other things I’ve brought.

As I close and lock the door, overhead one raven, then another, then another. They’re loud, calling out to each other. There are other birds on the move, too, a strange migration: Steller’s jays, in pairs, songbirds so fast I can’t tell them apart, a solitary magpie. They scatter, alight on high branches, call from tree to tree. Particles of ash drift by on the breeze.

I remember reading about the unusual movements of wild animals before earthquakes—this was long after our quake, in a geology class in college. Days, even weeks, before there are shifts in the earth’s plates, animals flee. Getting as far away from the center of the disaster as possible. The evidence is anecdotal, of course, but often cited to demonstrate the abject ignorance of the earth and its movements that humans live with, the utter divorce from the relationship with the environment that nurtured us through millions of years of evolution. The animals know what’s coming before we do; they heed the instinct to flee. But we humans, even when we know what’s coming, we do nothing. We watch the animals disappear.

I stop at the bottom of the path before I head off into the trees. I turn back to the lookout, for a last glance.

At the cabin I see the evidence of the early fire season, of nights Carey has spent at the field office in Prairie City: cold coffee in the pot, moldy oatmeal on the stove, dirty dishes, a stale smell—windows have been closed—a pile of unopened mail on the table. There’s a blanket and pillow on the couch. He sleeps there when he’s on call; it’s a horrible place to sleep, so it’s easier to wake up.

The light on the answering machine is blinking. There are three messages, and I can guess that at least one of them will be from my mother. Her voice comes out, as if from a can attached to a string, stretched along the five hundred miles between us.

“Lucie, it’s Mom. Please call me when you get this. I love you.” She sounds anxious. The cord of tension travels through my ear and into the back of my head, down my neck and spine. The message is from yesterday; they’re all from her. Each one is shorter, taut with anger, with worry.

I open a window and lie down on the unmade bed, press my face into the sheets to smell him. They’re cold. The scent of him makes him real to me, and I sink into the bed. But I smell someone else there, too. It takes a moment of shock for me to realize it’s not some other woman I’m smelling, but my own scent, from before the days at the lookout, bathing in the river. There’s a fermented odor to me now, an activity in the cells that wasn’t there before. I inhale the remnants of us on the sheets, and there’s a clarity to it, a certainty, if just for a moment. It’s the sanest I’ve felt in weeks. I need to bathe.

Cellar spiders have woven webs in the bathtub; he’s been showering at work. And I realize how alone I was all those nights at the lookout—how much farther he was from me than I realized. I wonder how Katie found me at all—how she would have known that I was up there, and not here, at the cabin. I grab the broom and collect the spiders, shake them off outside, let the water run in the tub until it’s only lukewarm and get in anyway. It feels like a hot tub compared to bathing in the river.

Night falls before Carey comes home. I heat some soup and cut the mold off a log of Tillamook cheddar, salvage what I can to eat with crackers. The radio is on, tuned to the only station that comes in out here, which favors old country and country-gospel. I fall asleep on the couch, waiting for the sound of his truck.

It’s almost ten when he comes in, dropping his overnight bag and gear by the door. I sit up sleepy-eyed, but I am anxious to see him.

“Don’t get up,” he says. He comes over and picks me up, carries me to the bedroom, lays me on the bed, and sits next to me.

“You smell like a campfire,” I say.

“Biggest campfire you’ll ever see,” he says, kissing my knees open. I’m wearing underwear and one of his T-shirts and nothing else. He puts his face in my crotch and inhales.

“The hell?” I say, laughing.

“I’ve been spent the last twelve hours running interference between a raging fire and the BLM, state and federal forestry, and the fire chiefs of three counties.”

“That’s quite the weenie roast.”

“You smell amazing.”

“I took a bath.”

He crawls up next to me and kisses me, closes his eyes and falls back on the pillows. I unbutton his shirt, loosen his belt. He grunts as I undress him down to his undershirt and briefs.

“Oh, hey,” he says as I’m pulling his shirt off.

“Yes?”

“Before I forget: that hiker you saw.”

I drop his shirt to the floor.

“Yeah?” My heart pounds in my chest.

“I think I found her when I was evacuating the campground.”

“You did?”

“Brown hair, red bandanna. Mid-twenties. I didn’t talk to her, but somebody else in the group said they had all been out hiking near Cougar Lake.”

“You saw her up close?”

“So that mystery’s solved,” he says.

“Maybe . . .”

He turns around and kisses me.

“Are you still worried?”

I look into his eyes and wonder if it’s too late. Even if I tell him, what could he do? She’s gone two days now.

I nod.

“Did she look like Katie?”

“What?” He pulls back.

“She looked like Katie.”

He looks confused, then there’s pity in his eyes, his voice.

“No, not really. Not up close, Luce.” He wraps his arms around me. “Is that why you’ve been acting so weird? You thought you saw Katie?”

“I really did see her.”

“I’m sure you did—in your mind. You wanted to see her, so you did. From a distance, with the dark hair, her height . . . this woman could’ve looked like Katie.”

We lay down and he holds me for a while.

I say, “Do you want a beer?”

And he says, “Sure.” Eyes closed.

When I get to the kitchen, I take deep breaths, open a bottle, and take a swig. Back in the bedroom, he’s asleep on his side, facing the room. He falls asleep like that—instantly—like a giant knocked out by a clever village boy. I stand there drinking the beer in the rim of lamplight, an owl marking the hour out in the trees somewhere.

In the night the fire slows down, the containment lines on the west side are holding. We decide I should go to Prairie City, though. Carey wants me to take his truck, but I refuse.

“Your car is falling apart, Lu.”

“It’s falling apart, but it runs. I drove it to Spokane, didn’t I?”

“And you haven’t driven it five miles since. It’s fifty miles to Prairie City. These roads are dangerous, especially during a fire. I just want to know that you’re safe.”

“You need your truck more than I do. I’ll stay on the paved roads. I’ll be careful.”

He pulls on his jacket and kisses me, heads out the door. I don’t hear his truck starting up, so I open the front door again. He’s fussing around with something in my car. He sees me in the doorway and sticks his head out.

“CB radio,” he shouts.

I walk out to the car. He’s duct-taping the radio to the top of the dashboard.

“I worry about you, too, you know,” I say, staring him down.

“I’m a pencil-pusher now, not a fire jumper.” He steps out of the car and looks back at me, hard.

“I am not going to die.”

I bring his hand to my face, resting my cheek in his palm. I am sure my father believed the same thing every time he left for work. I should tell him I’ve missed two periods, but it seems so dramatic.

“Call me when you can, so I can hear your voice.”

Carey warned me that the roadside motel in Prairie City was booked with Missoula hotshots, so I end up reserving the same room we stayed in for my birthday, at the inn. I think about calling my mom back but decide I’ll do it from the hotel.

I find my suitcase in the closet and throw it open on the bed. Stand over it, bewildered, not remembering what I filled it with when I came out here. I look around the room. My dirty laundry is in the canvas bag and ready to go. I have two drawers of the dresser, so I pull them out and dump them over the suitcase. A hairbrush in the bathroom. A small, cluttered bag of makeup and toiletries. A few books. I take everything, right? I pack it all, just in case? In case I never come back. In case there’s not a cabin to come back to.

I turn on the radio to settle my nerves. The country-gospel station doesn’t seem to have a DJ or advertising of any kind, no interruptions in the broadcast for weather or news, no emergency broadcast alerts. As far as I know, it’s broadcast from outer space. I wash the breakfast dishes and the coffeepot, watching out the window, thinking of Katie. I look down at the soapy water, my hands doing circles around the inside of a coffee cup. When I glance back up to the window, for a second I let myself believe she will be there, limping up to the cabin. I dry my hands and force myself to walk away from the window.

I should have told Carey everything. I will tell him all of it. When the fires are out.

I wander the cabin, opening cupboard doors and drawers, marveling that I have nothing else. Nothing. I left everything behind. Everything I ever loved is in Seattle, collecting dust in my apartment. I sink into the couch. What if it all burned down? My soft gray sofa covered in pillows, my shelves of vinyl records, books, the closet full of decent clothes (the ones I knew I wouldn’t need out here), my French press and my favorite coffee cup, pictures of friends, of my parents when we were all still together, on the islands, the jar of agates collected from the windowsills, the latch-hook rug by my bed that Grandma Lucia made, Grandpa Whit’s old coat, the photograph of the two of them, standing next to the cottage, the other things I asked my mother to collect from the cottage before I sold it back to the Swensons.

Margaux and Charles, they were Jacob’s sister and brother. I met them in Seattle during the trial. They weren’t the monsters Katie had suggested, but they were pragmatic businesspeople. Rookwood and the cottage would go on the National Historic Register, in honor of their aunt and grandmother; Marrow Colony they dismantled and sold, along with the ruins of the refinery. They allowed those colonists who seemed not to have been involved in Jacob’s death to collect what they could before they were evicted from the property.

What did they take away with them?

The suitcase yawns from the bed, so I pack a few of Carey’s nicer shirts—ones he never wears—and a pair of jeans I’d only seen him wear twice, his only books,
Moby-Dick
and
Lonesome Dove,
a duo I’ve taken to calling
Lonesome Dick
. Then I pick up random objects from each room and pack it till it’s full. I pull on sneakers and a sweatshirt and load the case and the laundry bag into the trunk of my car. There are a few things left inside when I hear the CB radio in the car. I sit in the front seat and listen. It’s Carey, talking to someone else, another ranger. He left it on the dispatch channel for me, so I hear it all. They’re moving the fire line, winds shifting, driving the fire downhill. Carey isn’t in the field; he’s at the station, handling dispatch. Relieved he’s safe, I listen to the chatter, then they both sign off, and all there is to hear is the river and the breeze in the pines, shaking down dry needles. Flakes of ash blow by. Inside the cabin, the lights flicker and blink out.

First, I think I’m seeing things again. But my visions don’t flicker—they ignite. The kitchen window remains dark. I step from the car and approach the cabin. The front door is wide open. I stand at the threshold. There’s no more radio twang, just fitful cabin sounds, old wood shifting and settling, the drip of the faucet. I stare into the dim rooms, wondering if I am alone. Did she walk up from the river, sneak in the back door? Is she hiding in the shadows? I uselessly flip the switches near me on the wall. The circuit breaker is behind a landscape on the far living-room wall. The fire has caused a power outage, I tell myself. But I go room to room, saying quietly, under my breath, “Where are you? Where are you?”

I call Carey from the hotel room. I tell him I’ve brought his favorite belt, clean underwear. The innkeeper is letting me use their washer and dryer. Carey’s heading to the Sunshine Guard Station to hose it down. There are several old lookouts and cabins in the path of the fire. They’ll try to save as many as they can. He reminds me to call my mom and tells me not to wait up for him.

I start a load of laundry and take the service stairs back to our room on the third floor, the way the innkeeper showed me. When I explained the situation over the phone, she put us in the honeymoon suite at the discounted “fire season rate.” I remember the last time we were here, jumping on the bed, doing a striptease, deflecting Carey’s concern. I can’t muster the shame I think I should feel, for not saying what I should have in that moment. But I dig through my backpack for the GPS watch. It blips a greeting. I put it in my back pocket and walk to the post office.

Prairie City looks like a ghost town most days, even in the summer, but today it’s bustling. There are cars everywhere with official logos on the doors and license plates. In the three-minute walk to the post office, I see all of the uniforms of the major agencies affected by the fires: U.S. Forest Service, Oregon State Forestry, Parks and Recreation, Fish and Wildlife, and the Bureau of Land Management. They’re mostly men; the few women among them seem tense and miserable. They’re probably being treated like secretaries. I gather our mail, stuffed into the small PO box; we haven’t picked it up in a while. I go through it next to the trashcan, tossing out junk mail—how it follows you wherever you go, even all the way out here, I’ll never understand. In the end there’s an Audubon magazine, a few bills, a card for Carey from someone with his last name, one of his four younger sisters probably, and a small manila envelope for me, with a Spokane postmark and the shaky handwriting of one of the sisters Rose. I won’t open it here. I put the envelopes inside the magazine and tuck it under my arm.