Wrecker Read online

  A man alone can operate a sawmill if he’s smart. Len lay on the narrow strip of bed Meg didn’t take up the next morning, and let his mind wander slowly toward waking. Len had done it himself; but he’d had to be smart, Len thought, and he’d had to be careful. With winches and pulleys and roller tables a man could maneuver the logs into place, he could lift the chainsaw carriage and position it onto the timber, adjust the settings to skim the bark slabs first, then quartersaw the log so the wood smell—sharp, sweet, intoxicating—leapt into the air and gave him strength. There was Engelmann spruce in these woods, here and there cedar, lodgepole pine, the strong and stringy Douglas fir. There was redwood, too, but Len left that alone. It took more than one man to handle a redwood, and something about the tree spooked him, the big crowns casting the forest floor in a kind of twilight gloom and the wind in the dead branches above sounding like a dry hinge on a barn door.

  A good part of the year it was too wet to get in to the forest. Len worked on the vehicles, then. Patched the roof of his house. Sharpened the sawteeth. The forest here was wet and deep, and ferns grew tall as a man in places. In winter the creek jumped its banks and flooded the road and only the tallest vehicles could downshift and get across. Then everybody dreamed of the desert. Dreamed of being someplace they could dry out. They plodded along and listened for the suck and rumble of mudslides. They stoked their fires with Len’s cordwood and watched the flames for prophetic gestures. Mud caked on their boots six inches thick. They met at the Grange Hall for pancake breakfasts and played top this. These past years, though, too many families had a son in that other wet place, the one they watched on the evening news. Or a son had gone to Canada to sidestep the war. Len had signed up himself in ’44; they sent him to basic training and then called the war off and he was dispatched with his buddies to MP in the Philippines. He didn’t know what he would tell a son of his to do. A son of his? Len remembered the kid on the couch and swung his legs over the side of the bed, dressed, and went in to restart the fire.

  The scatter of blankets had shifted. They were bundled up now in a tangle on the armchair, and through their soft bulk Len could pick out an elbow, the dome of the boy’s head, and sticking out of the bottom a bare foot. He stared at that. It was as long as the palm of Len’s hand. It would need socks. It would need shoes. It would need flippers for swimming lessons at the Y and basketball sneakers and lace-up oxfords for catechism and how on earth did you size a thing like that, anyway? The kid came with a trash bag half full of who knows what. Len would have to go through that. But not now. He stepped out of the door and the sun poured magnificently over the stoop and he heard a warbler singing hard enough to burst and he was happy.

  By ten o’clock Len was gasping for air. Pistol-whipped by noon. Knocked-down defeated by three in the afternoon.

  Not that the kid was bad. Not exactly. But there was no way a person over three feet tall could keep up with a thing like that. He had speed on his side and a complete unconcern for his own safety and a kind of smoldering disrespect for the command of his elder—Len—which erupted into outright disobedience and ensued in a ridiculous chase that left Len winded and feeling foolish. The boy looked down at the ground and spoke with such a low voice when he did speak that Len was forced to crank the dial on his hearing aid (the gift of too many years around loud machinery) to top volume and even then found it hard to gather the meaning of the boy’s garbled utterances. Len could not understand why he did the things he did. Who in his right mind would climb to the top of a stack of logs three times his own height—the logs themselves well stacked but always subject to tipping under pressure, a log that size a steamroller once it gets started—and let loose with a holler and jump? And then, earnestly chastised for his action, the danger explained in no uncertain terms, and with the elder in command watching—climb to the top and jump again? He was taken with the log truck, with the winch, with the machines. And every time Len turned his back the boy disappeared. Into the woods, into the lumber shed, drawing with a stick in the dirt between the vehicles. And once, it seemed, into thin air.

  Len was searching the bushes by the outhouse for the second time, calling for the boy, when he heard a sound from the direction of the house. He stood up to listen. Yes, from the house, and it had to be the kid: not a high whimper like a puppy would make, but closer to a moan. It raised the hair on the back of his neck. He had penned Meg’s goose to keep her from harming the boy, but God help him—he’d never thought of his wife that way. He took off at a run, leapt the front steps, and threw open the door.

  Meg was no small woman. Broad-hipped and broad-shouldered, she had cornered the little boy and was advancing on him, her arms outstretched to bar his exit. Wrecker huddled in the corner of the room, moaning, his head tucked like a turtle as close as he could get it to his chest and his eyes wide with terror.

  “Meg!” Len shouted, and wrapped his arms around his wife.

  Wrecker saw his opportunity and shot like a bullet past the two of them, out the door and gone.

  Meg slumped her whole weight against Len. He stepped back to support her and shifted his grip and saw where his hands had raised red welts on her forearms. He had never hurt her before, and a wave of guilt and horror crashed over him. He would never do that again. Never. Never.

  “Oh, girl—,” he started, but Meg opened her mouth wider than he thought possible and drained all the air in the room into her lungs and then let it out in a tremendous bellow so loud Len had to release her and frantically clap his hands over his ears and struggle to adjust the volume on his aid and roll his eyes up into his head to escape the pain of the sound.

  And when that breath ended she drew another and bellowed again. And again. For breath after breath, despite Len’s every effort to calm her, she kept up her wail. She clung to him as she bellowed, she held him tightly, and when she finally calmed—or tired—enough to stop, she took his face in both hands and said the first two intelligible words she’d uttered since the dental surgery had gone so wrong.

  Her eyes wide, bovine, her mouth struggling to meet the unreasonable demands of language, Meg said, “My boy.”

  Len led Meg into the bedroom and settled her onto the bed. The early evening sun streamed through the window and left a bright patch on the spread. He lay next to her and stroked her hair and spoke softly. It didn’t seem to matter what he said. He told her how he was going to have to borrow the grader to improve the track to the back lot, and how the welding generator would need an overhaul, and that he hadn’t quite gotten used to seeing the new red roof on the lumber shed. He said she made the best buttermilk biscuits around and that the latch on the garden gate was working fine now and that he had more business to take care of in the city but that he’d be back as soon as he could. The sound of his voice calmed her, and she closed her eyes.

  Len eased himself up from the bed. He’d kept his voice soft, but every nerve in his body jangled, knowing the kid was on the loose. He stepped down into the yard and quickly surveyed the perimeter. The sun was just a few degrees off the horizon and dropping fast. Len checked the log pile and the machinery and then circled the house in systematically widening bands. The shadows lengthened, a hundred pools of darkness that could swallow a boy that small. “Wrecker?” Len called, the name rolling like marbles from his dry mouth. His voice cracked and he called again, and then again as the sweat dried clammy on his neck. He stopped at last with the boy’s name ringing in the air. His jaw trembled. What if he’d lost him for good?

  And then it was dark, and Len realized he didn’t know what to do. It was cold, this time of year, and too dangerous for a boy that small—he was a baby, for chrissakes—to spend the night in the woods. What a mistake he had made, taking this child. A son? A person didn’t just collect a son from a government office. Len pushed the thought from his mind. When he found him he would load him in the truck and take him back to the city. Surely Miss Hanson would understand. There must be some nice home for a boy like that. A boy like
—

  Wrecker was asleep on the seat of the truck. Somehow he had gotten himself in. How? When he couldn’t even reach the door handle? And shut the door and buckled himself into the seat belt. His wispy blond hair was plastered to his forehead. Asleep he looked like an angel, not the wild animal, the unbroken young mustang, Len had fought all day. He had Meg’s family’s chin. He had long eyelashes, and the shoelaces Len had tied for him throughout the day had come undone. He needed a bath and a bedtime story and an end to this nonsense. For god’s sake, what was he thinking?

  The boy needed a mother.

  “Wrecker,” Len said, his voice gruff but not harsh. The boy mumbled and turned in his sleep. “Wrecker.” Len reached in and gently shook the boy. “Come on, son. Wake up.”

  Wrecker’s eyes fluttered open and he pulled away from Len’s touch. He looked around the truck and then back at the man.

  “I have to take you back,” Len said.

  “Home?”

  Len made himself meet the boy’s eyes for as long as he could before he turned away. “I can’t promise you that.” His face looked stern, but he was only tired. “Look.” He turned back to the boy. “If I go inside and get food and blankets for the trip, will you be here when I get back?”

  Wrecker nodded.

  Len squinted. “You sure?” he said. “I want you to be sure. Because if you go running off again I don’t think I’d have the energy to find you.”

  Wrecker just looked at him. Len met his gaze and let it hold him up, like a fighter slumped in the arms of his opponent, too weary to punch.

  Len returned to the truck with two peanut butter sandwiches and a block of cheese, and Wrecker tore into the food like he hadn’t had a meal in days. He was wearing an old sweatshirt of Len’s—there didn’t seem to be anything suitable for winter in the bag of clothes—and Len had had to roll the sleeves well past halfway to let Wrecker’s hands free. Still, he needed help peeling the orange. He wanted cookies. He was thirsty.

  “Let’s go see Willow,” Len said, and turned over the truck engine. “She’ll give you something to drink.” Len backed out of the drive and rumbled slowly toward Bow Farm. He pulled in to the small cleared area and parked the truck beside a battered VW bus. He turned to the boy and considered. It would save a lot of time if Len could go alone. “Listen,” he said. “I’ll come back for you.” He furrowed his brow. “But you’ve got to stay put.”

  Len paced down the short trail to the log building that served as common space for the inhabitants of Bow Farm. “Hello?” he shouted. “Anybody home?” He stood under the yard light to let them get a good view of him, and waited.

  “Who’s there?”

  Len turned toward the deep bark. “Just me, Ruthie. Len. From next door.”

  And then from the darkness, Willow’s elegant drawl. “Come to borrow a cup of sugar, Len?”

  “Something like it, Willow.”

  The porch lamp switched on overhead, and they stood together in the fringe of light. Len felt like a galoot in his faded work coveralls. Slight, sophisticated, Willow leaned against a porch post as though it were a city lamppost and gazed at him in a way that made him swallow hard. Ruth was neither slight nor sophisticated. Older than either one and broader than both combined, she stood bundled above dungarees in what looked to Len like layers of plaid flannel topped with a lumberjack’s vest. Len only had business with Willow, but he knew there wasn’t much chance of dodging Ruth. Hearty, helpful, the woman resembled a country monk but was nosy as a fishwife in a gossip den.

  “I hate to ask again, Willow,” Len said, his hat in his hands and the side of his boot scraping the ground.

  Willow’s eyebrows arched. “Leaving so soon?”

  Len flicked his eyes at her and then at Ruthie, whose arms remained crossed on her chest. He hesitated. “I didn’t expect to,” he said. The women waited and Len could tell they wouldn’t make this easy for him. “It’s the kid,” he said, blushing. He pointed with his cap to the truck. “I can’t keep him.”

  “What kid?” Ruthie looked confused.

  Willow cut her a glance. “Not that it’s any of our business, Len,” she said, and Len groaned inwardly, knowing he’d have to tell the whole sordid story if he wanted help with Meg, “but whose kid is he, anyway?”

  “A kid?” Ruthie repeated.

  In the distance the truck door squeaked open and the soft pad of footsteps ruffled the quiet night. They listened intently until the boy resolved out of the darkness and stopped on the trail, a few paces from the porch. Len cleared his throat. “This is Wrecker,” he said quietly.

  He glanced at the women. Something skittered briefly across Willow’s face, something private and complex and beyond his understanding, and Len looked guiltily away. But Ruth’s square face lit like the front beam of a locomotive and she followed its trajectory straight for the boy. “Johnny Appleseed! Melody!” she shouted over her shoulder, and a short, lithe man and a gangly woman emerged from the farmhouse at her call. “We’ve got a visitor.” She squatted at his side and bobbed to balance. “Awfully glad to see you,” she said. “I’m Ruth.” Then she opened her arms, and Len watched, agape, as the boy walked into them. She hugged him close and carried him past Len and Willow and up the rickety porch steps. The screen door slammed behind her.

  Willow flashed Len a wry smile. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The answer is yes.” She laid a cool hand on his forearm. “Come inside, Len. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  From the outside, the farmhouse looked old and dilapidated, with paint flakes peeling off the logs and some of the windowpanes cracked, the putty crumbling out. Len stepped over the threshold and lifted his head in surprise at how welcoming they had made it within. Woven throws and hand-hooked rugs brightened the dark wood. Willow repaired precious carpets for her living, Len knew, but she had a loom, and a love for crazy patterns and color. A giant, calcified whale vertebra propped up a stack of books, and overstuffed armchairs circled a large pillow in the center of the floor. The boy lay fast asleep in the middle, his head cushioned on one arm and small snores escaping his open mouth. Len finished his story. “At least,” he said quietly, “that’s all they told me. There might be more.”

  He glanced around at them. Willow’s face was serious and composed, and she nodded slowly, running an index finger absently along her lower lip. Ruthie’s gaze was focused on the boy. A tear slid over her wrinkled cheek, and she brushed it away with the sleeve of her shirt. She looked up at Len. “Did they say why she’s in jail? Or how long?”

  Len hesitated. Miss Hanson hadn’t told him the whole story, he said. Something about drugs, something about a gun, something about a cop—she’d be in a long time, he said. He didn’t tell them she’d done the shooting. He couldn’t square it with the picture he held of her, a little girl with an eager smile and anxious eyes. And the bullet had only grazed the policeman.

  By the time Wrecker’s mother had a chance at parole, Len told them, the boy would be grown.

  “Why you?” Melody was the youngest of the bunch, a blunt-mannered blonde girl from somewhere down south. Len pictured a beach town full of people like her, tall and handsome and trying hard to disguise themselves with odd clothes and messy hair and a way of sloping around like their bones were made of rubber. She had a braying laugh and perpetual bad luck when it came to keeping her car on the road. Three, four times already Len had winched her VW bus from the ditch. Careless, Len had ventured, but Willow would not have it. Haphazard and impulsive, she said. Slapdash. But generous, and as loyal as a person could be.

  “What?” Len said, and blinked rapidly.

  Willow looked from one to the other. “Meg’s sister is Wrecker’s mother,” she clarified. “So Len is the boy’s uncle.”

  “I know why they asked him,” Melody said, dismissively. She sat up and shook her hand as though she were tumbling dice to gamble with. She did this reflexively, the way other people pop their joints or drum their fingers. Len wanted to gra
b her hands and still them. He wanted to chase after her and pick up all the little piles she left in her wake. He itched to step in and stop her from making so many mistakes—Steer into the slide, he advised her, each time he came to pull her out of the mud—but she turned a deaf ear. This girl listened to nobody. She dropped from the chair to lounge cross-legged on the floor. “Come on, Len. Why would you say yes? I mean—” She stared at him frankly. “Let’s face it. You’re loaded up with Meg.”

  Len’s brow furrowed. Why? This was a kid, a child with no other relatives to look after him. Wouldn’t Meg have said yes? You couldn’t leave a child alone in the world. But now Len was saying no. Was this right? How could this be? He looked aside, morose. Accused, somehow. And plainly guilty.

  Willow came to his rescue. “You do what you have to do,” she said, “and you figure it out later.” She looked around at them, challenging anyone to argue. Then she laid a hand on the sleeve of his work shirt and gave a gentle squeeze. “We’ll help you however we can, Len. Why don’t you get a good night’s sleep, call the agency in the morning, and go in the daylight. We’ll take care of Wrecker until you’re ready to leave.”

  “Would you—”

  “Of course.” Willow nodded. “It’s no trouble at all. Meg will be fine until you come back.”

  Melody yawned. “I’m going to bed. See you all tomorrow.” She stood and looked down at the sleeping boy. “You too, buckaroo.” She glanced at Ruth. “I’ll come take over in the morning. You staying with him tonight?”

  The broad woman fluffed the pillow behind her. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She turned to Willow. “You go on, now, too. He’s just a wee thing. I can handle him fine.”

  “He’s giving you the wrong idea,” Len muttered. “Wait’ll he wakes up. I’m telling you.”

  Ruthie leaned forward and balanced her hands on her knees. “How bad could he be? Three years old.”