Steve said, “Everybody in this valley is telling me what to do.”
“Everybody?”
“Yes!… you know what I mean. Jesus, you’re getting to be just like everybody else.”
“Everybody?”
Just that one word and I knew Kathryn was mad.
“Everybody,” Steve repeated, more sad than angry. “Steve, get down there and catch fish. Steve, don’t go into Orange County. Don’t go north, don’t go south, don’t go east, don’t row too far out to sea. Don’t leave Onofre, and don’t do anything.”
“I was just saying you shouldn’t deal with those San Diegans behind the backs of the people here. Who knows what those folks really want.” After a pause she added, “Henry’s trying to tell you the same thing.”
“Henry, shit. He gets to go south, and when he comes back he’s Henry Big Man, telling me what to do like everyone else.”
“He is not telling you what to do. He’s telling you what he thinks. Since when can’t he do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know… It ain’t Henry.”
I scrunched down behind my tree uncomfortably. It was a bad sign, them talking of me; they’d sense me by the way my name sounded to them, and search around and see me, and I’d look like I was spying when I had only been trying to get some peace. I didn’t want to hear all this, I didn’t want to know about it. Well… that wasn’t strictly true. Anyway I didn’t move away.
“What is it, then?” Kathryn asked, resigned and a little fearful.
“It’s… it’s living this little life in this little valley. Under Pa’s thumb, stuck forever. I can’t abide it.”
“I didn’t know life here was that bad for you.”
“Ah come on, Kath. It isn’t you.”
“No?”
“No! You’re the best part of my life here, I keep telling you that. But don’t you see, I can’t be trapped here all my life, working for my dad. That wouldn’t be a life at all. The whole world is out there! And who’s keeping me from it? The Japanese are. And here we have folks who want to fight the Japanese, and we’re not helping them. It makes me sick. So I’ve got to do it, I’ve got to help them, can’t you see that? Maybe it’ll take all my life to make us free again, maybe it’ll take longer, but at least I’ll be doing something more with my life than gathering the food for my face.”
A scrub jay flashed blue as it landed in the branch above me, and informed Steve and Kathryn of my presence. They weren’t listening.
“Is that all the life here is to you?” Kathryn asked.
“No, shit, aren’t you listening?” Annoyance laced his voice.
“Yes. I’m listening. And I hear that life in this valley doesn’t satisfy you. That includes me.”
“I told you that isn’t true.”
“You can’t tell something away, Steve Nicolin. You can’t act one way for months and months and then say, no it isn’t that way, and make the months and what you did in them go away. It doesn’t work like that.”
I’d never heard her voice sound like it did. Mad—I’d heard it mad more times than I’d care to count. Now that angry tone was all beaten down flat. I hated to hear her voice sound that way. I didn’t want to hear it—any of it—and suddenly that overcame my curiosity, and my feeling that it was my place. I started crawling away through the trees, feeling like a fool. What if they saw me now, lifting over a fallen branch to avoid making a sound? I swore in my thoughts over and over. When I got out of the sound of their voices (still arguing) I stood and walked away, discouragement dogging every step. Steve and Kathryn fighting—what else could go wrong?
Beyond the neck at the end of the valley, the river widens and meanders a bit, knocking through meadows in big loops. It’s easier to travel in this back canyon by canoe, and after walking a ways I sat down again and watched the river pour into a pool and then out again. Fish tucked under the overhanging bank. The wind still soughed in the trees, but I couldn’t get back my peace no matter how hard I listened. The knot in my stomach was back. Sometimes the harder you try the less it will go away. After a while I decided to check the snares that the Simpsons had set up on the edge of the one oxbow meadow, to give me something to do.
One of the snares had a weasel caught in it. It had been going after a rabbit, dead in the same snare, and now its long wiry body was all tangled in the laces. It tugged at them one last time as I approached; squeaked, and baring its teeth in a fierce grin, glared at me murderously, hatefully—even after I broke its neck with a quick step. Or so it seemed. I freed the two little beasts and set the snare again, and set off home with them both in one hand, held by the tails. I couldn’t shake that weasel’s last look.
Back in the neck I walked along the river, remembering a time when the old man had tried to detach a wild beehive from a short eucalyptus tree up against the south hillside. He had gotten stung and dropped the shirt wrapping the hive, and the furious bees had chased us right into the river. “It’s all your fault,” he had sputtered as we swam to the other side.
Sun going down. Another day passed, nothing changed. I followed a bend to the narrows where the river breaks over a couple knee-high falls, and came upon Kathryn sitting alone on the bank, tossing twigs on the water and watching them swirl downstream.
“Kath!” I called.
She looked up. “Hank,” she said. “What are you doing here?” She glanced downstream, perhaps looking for Steve.
“I was just hiking up canyon,” I said. I held up the two dead animals. “Checking a couple of the Simpsons’ snares for them. What about you?”
“Nothing. Just sitting.”
I approached her. “You look kind of down.”
She looked surprised. “Do I?”
I felt disgusted with myself for pretending I could read her that well. “A little.”
“Well. I guess that’s right.” She tossed another stick in.
I sat down beside her. “You’re sitting in a wet spot,” I said indignantly.
“Yeah.”
“No big deal, I guess.”
She was looking down, or out at the river, but I saw that her eyes were red. “So what’s wrong?” I asked. Once again I felt sick at my duplicity. Where had I learned this sort of thing, what book of Tom’s had taught me?
A few sticks rode over the falls and out of sight before she answered. “Same old thing,” she said. “Me and Steve, Steve and me.” Suddenly she faced me. “Oh,” she said, her voice wild, “you’ve got to get Steve to stop with that plan to help the San Diegans. He’s doing it to cross John, and the way they’re getting along, when John finds out about it there’ll be hell to pay. He’ll never forgive him… I don’t know what will happen.”
“All right,” I said, my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll try. I’ll do my best. Don’t cry.” It scared me to see her cry. Like an idiot I had thought it impossible. Desperately I said, “Look, Kathryn. You know there isn’t much I can do, the way he is these days. He almost hit me for grabbing him when he went after his dad the other day.”
“I know.” She shifted onto her hands and knees, leaned out over the water and ducked her head in it. The wet spot on the wide seat of her pants stuck into the air. After a good long time she came up blowing and huffing, and shook her head like a dog, spraying water over me and the river.