Ruthie Fear Read online

  Darkness reached down into the valley from the Sapphires. Ruthie left the blind and walked through the yard. She passed furniture that had once lived inside the trailer and now lived outside, including a rickety card table beside the bullet-riddled washing machine, a brown recliner, and a sodden yellow mattress. On summer nights when it was too hot to sleep inside, she and her father used the mattress to watch the stars. Rutherford’s rare moments of creativity were spurred by the cosmos and the nearness of wild, killable game. As they were lying on their backs, he told Ruthie stories of planets with forty-point elk the size of school buses. “You hunt them with rocket launchers,” he said. “If you miss, they’ll skewer you on their antlers and toss you out into space.”

  How did I end up here? Ruthie wondered. She imagined the giant elk watching the winged skeleton pass overhead. The tines of their antlers so numerous they were like the branches of a willow tree.

  As the long hot August days passed in the blind, Ruthie was disturbed to find contradictions within herself. Places of illogic that animals lacked. Just as she had imagined shooting her father in the icy pond, she saw herself dying for him, too. Leaping into the water and heaving him onto the shore with her last breath. Pulling his body from his burning truck only to be engulfed in flames herself. Stepping into the path of a charging bear and beckoning for him to run. Some days she was determined to never hunt an animal as her father did. On others she fashioned guns from sticks and aimed them through the eye slit, massacring every squirrel in the Breeds’ big ponderosa.

  NIGHTS GREW COLD in October. Ruthie had trouble sleeping in the confines of her closet room. Cloud shadows loomed between the stars through her window. They transfigured into starships, then became malevolent, light-swallowing monsters. In frightening moments, the rumble of trucks on the distant highway went silent. She clenched a flint arrowhead in her palm. She listened to her father’s fitful snoring through the thin door. She saw the creature looming over the trailer on its stilt-like legs. Felt it bending down toward her. Faceless, eyeless. Silently calling her into the maw.

  Leave me alone, she mouthed.

  She wrestled with the scope of existence. The way the dark sky and the dark mountains could make her feel both huge and infinitesimally small. How she could see her shadow stretching across her yard like the black finger of God, or cower in her blind at the sound of a branch snapping a hundred yards away. How she felt like a part of the entire breathing world, yet totally alone.

  Rutherford kept a separate freezer full of discarded heads in the bunker beneath the shed. He fed them to his beetles in the winter when business slowed to nothing. Occasionally, overtaken by morbid fascination, Ruthie would descend the ladder and open the lid to find the frost-lashed eyes of deer, antelope, and bear looking back at her. Their implacable wondering reminded her of the wolf’s, as if in all animals the body’s final question was where its spirit has gone.

  She spent most of her time alone. Emotions stormed through her. Cars passing on the road could make her so angry that she wanted to sow the asphalt with land mines, while the flight of a bee, one of the season’s last, over the withered plants in the Breeds’ flower garden could lift her almost to tears.

  At recess, she’d stand on the edge of the playground—a small, solitary figure—and stare up at the tops of the lodgepole pines waving in the breeze. Always in motion, these stationary things. She tried to decipher the messages they transcribed on the sky. Each needled tip writing its story, roots reaching through the ground beneath her delivering messages. She sent herself zooming up the trunks to look back down into her own eyes, and found the yellow rings glowing around the pupils.

  Only her friend Pip Pascal seemed to understand. An orphan, also motherless, Pip watched the world with the same intensity. She was the only other person Ruthie told about the creature. They sat together on the pavement in the shadow of the gymnasium and Pip drew it in her notebook, ending with a feathered kidney atop two tall menacing spider legs. The idea of a disembodied organ pulsing with life disturbed Ruthie and delighted Pip, who drew other variations: lungs and hearts and bladders, lurching together across the paper void.

  “You think it came from outer space?” Pip asked.

  Ruthie shook her head. “I think it came from here.” She described how she’d imagined it wriggling out of the mouth of a dying elk.

  “They could be coming out of all kinds of animals,” Pip said, in sudden awe.

  When any classmate besides Pip tried to talk to her, Ruthie would hurl their ball over the fence into the woods. She forestalled their questions—about her yellow eyes or her short hair or her father—with anger, and was known to bite, scratch, and kick. She didn’t own a single dress. Rutherford bought her jeans and black T-shirts at the same thrift store where he bought his own. They looked like full-sized and miniature versions of each other when they were seen together. The red in Ruthie’s hair glowed like the red of her father’s beard. She accompanied him on every errand in Darby and Hamilton, and on odd jobs after school, to escape the property on Red Sun Road. She studied each detail in the outside world: the way old ranchers sucked their teeth in the Montana Café, speaking only of the weather, how George Whipple watched the stock boys from high behind the counter of his feed store, Kent Willis doing push-ups on his lawn while the radio blared conspiracy theories and his neighbor Danette kept count from her lawn chair.

  The teachers placed Ruthie carefully in the back row of desks and only called her name during roll.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” they asked.

  “A wolf,” Ruthie answered.

  She inspected the carcasses of dead birds and wondered what they would look like if she fed them to her father’s beetles. The delicate, almost impossible architecture of flight. When she learned the fate of sea turtles and the blue whale—choking to death on ten thousand plastic grocery bags—she felt such rage that she wanted to incinerate every ship on the ocean.

  Rutherford was little use in matters of morality, as he was adrift in the modern world himself. His conversations with other men in the valley revolved around jobs, guns, engine parts, dogs, what dogs are thinking, and everything being ruined by outsiders. He never punished Ruthie except if she disturbed his things or entered his room without permission. When she came home with a scraped knee from a schoolyard fight, he didn’t ask her who or why, he simply lifted her dirty foot to the middle of his chest, held her calf firmly in his callused hands, and inspected the cut. She could feel his own heart then, as strong as the thud of the ground through her soles. She struggled to keep from flinching as he poured on rubbing alcohol.

  The sawdust-and-rot smell from his shirt announced his approach, though generally he left her alone, allowing her to roam free, even as the weather turned cold. His advice was primarily related to hunting and the petty wars he constantly found himself in: with neighbors and the game warden and rich ranchers like the singer Wiley King, whose mansion he’d helped to build. With employers and checkers in the grocery store and tourists who drove too slowly while gawking at the glacier-sheared cliffs of Blodgett Canyon. He defined himself in opposition to the wealthy scientists at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, and the billionaires building eighth homes on Charles Schwab’s Stock Farm Club. He stockpiled supplies, tested his survival skills deep in the woods, and told Ruthie stories of society crumbling, when all the rich and soft—unable to hunt or fend for themselves—would come to him and beg for help.

  The only people he trusted were the poor. At the top of a small rise to the south, on land even drier than the Fears’, lived the Happels. A family of fellow former mill workers destitute to the point of subsistence living. M. Happel and his nephew poached firewood beyond the national forest boundary along with the Fears, and often the two men, Rutherford and Happel, met by their sagging fence in the evening to look out at the mountains without speaking, as if they owned all that they could see.

  HEAVY RAINS FELL in November, delaying Rutherford’s an
nual overnight bowhunt with the French brothers in the West Fork Wilderness. Ruthie spent long afternoons in the blind, watching the water pour down on the mouth of No-Medicine Canyon and make a swamp of the Breeds’ yard. The Breeds themselves were gone south to Arizona for the winter. She’d watched them pack up. June humming to herself, barefoot, as she watered the plants in her window boxes one last time. Reed cursing as he struggled to hitch the trailer to the back of their new Silverado. The blind stayed dry but the damp chill seeped beneath Ruthie’s clothes and made her want to burrow into the earth. She wondered if the creature had shelter. A den of some kind.

  Sometimes Pip joined her, armed with the large hunting knife she carried underneath her shirt. They carved their names into the wood floor as rain splattered the roof. Ruthie carved ROSE, a name she wished for, more beautiful and deadly than her own, and not a mirror of her father’s. Pip rolled up her short pants and showed the many-armed figures she’d drawn on her thigh, like the ones they saw chiseled in the rocks. They talked about what they’d do if they caught the creature. How they’d lead it through town for everyone to see, then bring it to a veterinarian to give it eyes and ears and a mouth. The houses they’d buy with the reward, the talk shows they’d go on, all the different foods they’d eat.

  But it didn’t reappear.

  Pip grew bored when the rain ceased, and followed the yellow explosions of larch up into the hills.

  Ruthie remained through the first snow and her seventh birthday, held in place by a feeling that she would miss something if she left. Staring out through the slit, waiting, she felt like she could both visit the past—the time of petroglyphs, before highways and power lines and houses like the Breeds’—and prospect the future. When the creature would make its slow, lurching way among grass-covered ruins.

  6.

  As they were driving home from Darby Elementary on Old Darby Road, Rutherford’s truck suddenly dropped hard to the right. It rolled to the left and slammed onto its axle. He wrestled the wheel around. The beer he’d been drinking leapt from the cupholder and spit foam over the upholstery. Power lines whipped overhead, making a high singing noise. Ruthie clutched her backpack and stared up at them. She was only seven and the world was ending. The road jumped and swung. Her lunch came hot and sour up her throat. She tried to focus on the trees. They were jumping and swinging, too.

  “Sonofabitch.” Rutherford’s voice cracked. It was the first time Ruthie had heard him afraid. Even when he’d nearly blown himself up with a scavenged propane grill, he’d simply stared at her from below his charred eyebrows, and told her to go get him some ice. The underpinnings of her existence shifted. Her father couldn’t be afraid. He was supposed to know what to do, always, in all situations. What could she depend on if not him or the stability of the earth? They slowed down horizontally but not vertically. Ruthie tried to pray. The only word that came was help. Help, Dad, help.

  He reached for her, then jerked his hand back as the truck slammed down again. Ruthie’s backpack flew up from her lap and hit her in the face. Warm blood trickled from her nose. “Dad, it’s a tornado!” she screamed. She’d seen a movie on TV where a truck was sucked up from the highway and deposited fender-first in a cornfield. She was sure they were going to die. The only hope was to come down wheels-first on a gentle incline, like the planes she and Pip watched land on the private airstrip at the Stock Farm Club. White-knuckled, her father looked for a place to turn off, but didn’t stop.

  Across the road, a brick chimney crashed through the roof of a farmhouse and Rutherford said, “Earthquake?” in disbelief.

  All Ruthie knew of earthquakes was that they were supposed to happen in California, not Montana.

  Mexican workers were huddled in the doorway of Pompey Nursery. Raymond Pompey stood with his arms over his head as flowerpots shattered on the ground around him. Another worker was trying to run from his truck to the door. The truck was dancing around. Ruthie watched until—as suddenly as it had begun—the shaking stopped and the truck went still. The worker fell to his knees. He dug his hands into the dirt and closed his eyes. His lips moved silently.

  Rutherford kept driving as if he couldn’t think of what else to do. His right eye twitched. For Ruthie, seeing him afraid was like seeing her own hand on fire. “Dad,” she said. “Is it over?”

  She wanted him to stop the truck. She squeezed her backpack and tasted blood. The pain began: a dull ache spreading behind her eyes. Rutherford nodded. “But aftershocks. There might be aftershocks.” He said the words unsurely, as if from a half-remembered source. Later, Ruthie would learn that the Bitterroot Valley hadn’t had an earthquake in twenty-seven years, before either of them was born.

  They passed Adrian Pascal, Pip’s uncle, standing outside the house where Pip often stayed, holding his chest like he was trying to keep his heart in. His neighbor’s roof had collapsed. Ruthie wondered if people were inside. Trapped. Dying. She hoped Pip was safe. Distant sirens began to yowl. Sheriff Kima stood outside the sheriff’s station holding a cage full of birds.

  “Moses,” Ruthie said.

  Rutherford didn’t answer. His eye twitched again. Moses slept in Rutherford’s bed most nights, on a pillow by his head.

  Two trucks had collided in the Overturf intersection. One of them was on its side. A woman cried inside, belted to her sideways seat, clutching her shoulder. Her bloody hair hung to the road, and her tears and the blood flowed across her forehead instead of down her cheeks. A cluster of people stood in front of Whipple’s store with wild eyes, and some others, who’d abandoned their cars and run up the hill, were now coming back down on foot. Rutherford slowed to a crawl and called out the window to Whipple, “What the fuck was that?”

  Usually talkative, Whipple only nodded, his face as pale as the ends of Ruthie’s fingernails. She dug them into her thighs. She tried to stop shaking. The ground had stopped shaking, so could she. Inside the store, hammers and nails and screwdrivers were strewn across the aisles. The stock boys leaned against the wall in their aprons, looking dazed. Loose grain covered the linoleum. A sheepdog ran across the parking lot, glanced back at her briefly, and disappeared around the store.

  “Moses is alone at home,” Ruthie said.

  “Or wherever he is by now,” Rutherford replied. Which made her heart rise up her throat.

  THE TRAILERS in Whispering Pines Trailer Park were still standing. The little bridge over the irrigation ditch was still there. Some dirt had splashed across the asphalt, but no trees had fallen over the road. They stopped at Kent Willis’s. Kent, Len Law, Len’s crippled sister Eleanor, and Eleanor’s nurse were in the yard. Kent was squatting like a linebacker, looking crazed, as if he’d wrestle the next natural disaster into submission himself. Eleanor was bright-cheeked in her wheelchair, while her young nurse trembled beside her. Len held a crowbar. His narrow eyes gleamed. “Have you seen Moses?” Ruthie asked, momentarily forgetting her hatred.

  Kent blinked at her and slowly straightened from his crouch. “He might’ve run by.”

  “You were outside?” Rutherford asked.

  “Mowing.” Kent nodded to the lawn mower on its side in the grass by his foot. “Near lost my toe.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “We were walking,” the nurse said. “Thank God.”

  “God’s got nothing to do with this,” Len tapped the crowbar against his sister’s chair for emphasis. His bowlegged stance gave him the aspect of a lost vigilante. “It’s Charlo’s curse, same as ever.”

  “There’s people dead,” Eleanor said. “I just know it. Can you imagine Missoula? All those big buildings downtown. . . .” Excitement tinged her voice. Ruthie supposed she wanted bad things to happen to other people. She longed for a nation of the legless, in which she, with her years of practice, would be queen.

  “What curse?” Ruthie asked.

  “They don’t teach you nothing in school, do they?” Len said. “Chief Charlo cursed this valley from up on Lolo Pass when the army finally ran him ou
t. Bad things been happening ever since. Disease. Accidents.” He nodded to his sister’s legs.

  “No, this comes from Yellowstone,” Kent cut in. “I heard it on the radio. The government’s been doing experiments—all those scientists in the labs. They knew this was coming. The whole thing’s liable to blow. A super-volcano, wipe out the entire Northwest.”

  “Never should have let Charlo go free. That was the army’s mistake.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Rutherford shook his head in exasperation. “Just let us know if you see the dog.”

  They left Len and Kent arguing on the lawn. Ruthie tasted the metallic salt of blood on her tongue. She looked up at Trapper Peak to see if the finger had broken off, but it remained there, beckoning.

  RUTHERFORD DROVE OVER the hill past Happel’s shack, which was flattened as if a giant foot had stomped it down. The nephew sat dejected on the front stoop. He looked up at Ruthie but didn’t wave. The Fears’ teal trailer still stood across their driveway but a thin lodgepole pine had fallen on it, and its one sturdy branch was skewered through the roof. It looked funny there, like it had just dropped in for coffee. Ruthie laughed.

  “You going to fix it?” Rutherford asked.

  They parked and Ruthie stood in the yard calling Moses while her dad went and turned off the gas. She called until her throat hurt. She searched the hillsides for his small boxy shape. She even looked into the dark mouth of No-Medicine Canyon, though she knew he’d only go in there if he was facing certain death. He’d seen the creature as surely as she had. She wondered if the earthquake had thrown him clean off the earth. He was only twelve pounds. She pictured his small body twisting away through the black of space.