it was the only eye he had.
6
Celia drove her old Honda wagon past thousands of stumps. The road down to the
valley could be treacherous, and she negotiated it carefully on her way to work.
Last fall a deer hunter had skidded off the gravel into a steep revine, and it
took the rescue squad more than four hours to free him from his mangled pickup.
She'd heard that the hunter wasn't seriously hurt, just a few minor cuts and
bruises; but what had really piqued her curiosity was whether he was the same
man she'd once caught poaching on their land.
When they bought their fifteen acres six years ago, they didn't know that some
of the locals favored the ridge during deer season, which officially ran for
most of October.
Fine, Celia and Jack agreed when they saw the hunters arriving and heard
gunshots booming in the forest near their home. We'll live with it. It's just
one month out of the year. How bad can it be?
Back then they thought their land, at least, would remain a safe haven; and they
put out a big salt lick to attract the deer. But the salt lick also attracted
the hunters with the promise of easy prey, and on her frequent hikes Celia
started seeing coyote tracks around the gutted remains of deer that had been
poached, dressed, and dragged off to the road.
Jack tried to console Celia by reminding her that deer season would soon be
over. "It's only a month," he kept repeating, "only a month."
But a month turned into two, and two turned into three, and the killing went on
well into their first winter.
Finally, on a sunny Saturday morning in early January, an hour or so after Jack
had left for work, Celia heard a gunshot that sounded as if it came from right
outside their kitchen window. It was so loud and so close that she stiffened and
couldn't move for a couple of seconds. When she did step out onto the deck she
saw a man driving down the long sloping meadow in front of their house in a
shiny new Jeep. He rolled right over the reedy stalks of wildflowers and didn't
stop until he pulled up by his kill in one of the few remaining patches of snow.
"You son of a bitch!" She reached in the door and grabbed a jacket and started
down the meadow. Sure enough, the deer had been shot right beside the salt lick.
As she approached the hunter he turned the animal on its back, pulled out a huge
knife and, to her considerable horror, plunged it into the deer's anus and sawed
it open. It took her breath away to see the blood drooling onto the snow, and
she had to force herself forward.
He was busy trying to crack open the pelvic bone with the tip of his knife when
Celia stormed up to him with her arms folded across her chest.
"You're trespassing," she said, "and you're poaching." Her voice was too high,
and she sternly ordered herself to calm down.
She wished Jack had been home. The hunter— middle-aged, balding— was looking her
up and down. Her made her feel as if she were a piece of meat.
"Is that so?" He sounded like some kind of backwoods cracker, except he had that
new Jeep and must make money somehow. A logger, she thought, or a pot farmer. It
was hard to tell one from the other anymore.
He used a rock to pound the butt of his knife, and the pelvis split apart with a
nauseating sound— sharp and dull at the same time, truly sickening. Then he
split the deer's underbelly, and what looked like a bucket of blood spilled out.
Celia thought she might vomit. She had to turn away but she could still hear him
working hard. His breath came in loud puffs, and she also heard the gristly
sounds when he cut open the hide.
"Yes, that's so," she said fiercely. She tried not to show any fear, and she
made herself look at the hunter and his prey. He'd shot a yearling. Its antlers
were little more than mossy stumps, barely legal during hunting season, and
hunting season ended months ago.
"You wouldn't deny a man the privilege of getting himself a deer, now would
you?" he said as he yanked open the flaps of gray fur. Then he pulled up the
sleeve of his camouflage jacket and stuck his arm up inside the animal to pull
out its guts. But he did this for only a second or two— long enough to bloody
himself up to his elbow— before he rolled the yearling onto its side facing
downhill. He reached back in and with the aid of gravity started pulling out the
lumpy mass. Celia saw it stream onto the snow like the earth's own lava, red and
angry-looking, steaming in the cool air.
He put his knife back to work, slicing this and that. Snip-snip-snip. She heard
this too.
"Yes, I would."
"You would, huh?" he snorted. "This your land?"
"Yes," Celia almost shouted.
"Well, don't be getting so uppity about it. Some of us been hunting around here
a helluva long time. You just don't come in here and have things your way. Who
the hell you think you are?" He made eye contact with her for the first time.
"Big mistake, lady."
"My name is not lady, it's Mrs. Griswold to you, and mister, let me tell you
you're the one making the big mistake."
"Think so, huh?" He chuckled and looked back down. "Guess we'll see about that.
Me? I'm taking this deer home, so you can squawk all you want. Don't make any
difference to me."
He finished field-dressing the deer and dragged it over to his jeep, the open
kind with a roll bar. He left behind a bloody smear in the snow, a disturbing
depression that led back to the entrails still steaming in the bright sun,
resting on a wide oval of red slush now soaking into the spongy earth.
He dumped the deer in the back of the Jeep. Celia heard a metallic sound as the
animal's body fell on some tools, its head hanging over the side. Sunlight
flared on one of its smooth dark eyes. She made a note of the license plate.
"I'm reporting you."
"Hey, you do what you want, girlie." He smiled when he said that. Then he
slammed the Jeep door— the only evidence of his anger— and drove up past their
house, leaving dark tire tracks in the untouched meadow.
She marched back inside and called Charlie Vates, the game warden. He came over
and took her statement that very morning. When she mentioned the new Jeep, he
paused.
"You know who that is, Mrs. Griswold?" he asked as if he didn't expect an
answer, and he certainly didn't wait for one. "That's Bill Keiter's brother,
Hal. You know Keiter, the fire chief?"
"I know of him."
Vates put his pen down on the table, and she realized he was trying to tell her
something without saying anything at all. She looked him right in the eye.
"I don't care if he's the President's brother. I'm pressing charges."
Vates nodded thoughtfully and picked his pen back up. He made a few more notes
before asking her a final question.
"You in the fire district up here?"
She shook her head no, and Vates smiled.
"Good thing."
A month later Vates called to say that Keiter had been fined a hundred dollars.
She nodded as she hung up the phone. The son of a bitch had trespassed, poached,
and hunted out of season to bag maybe fifty pounds of meat. A hundred bucks? Two
bucks a pound. It wasn't much but she thought it was a lot better than nothing.
As it turned out, the hunter who plunged into the ravine last fall wasn't Hal
Keiter. If it had been, Celia might have wished him a lot more than a few cuts
and bruises.
She continued on her way to work, leaving behind the stumps and enjoying the way
the narrow road snaked through the trees; but as she whipped around a familiar
bend she spotted a new logging road gouged out of the forest, a brown smear with
skinny roots sticking up at odd angles.
She had to slow down to pass a large yellow bulldozer parked by the side of the
road. About twenty feet away two men worked their chain saws, spilling a steady
steam of sawdust in the air. As Celia drew closer, the noise of their engines
turned into a shriek. A third man smoked a cigarette by a head-high stack of
neatly trimmed conifers.
Before moving to the Northwest, Celia held a rather storied view of loggers:
rugged individualists who used their wits and brawn to brave the forest and help
build the nation. After living here a few years, she decided loggers were no
more romantic than cattlemen once you'd seen a slaughterhouse.
The man smoking smiled and waved, and even though their presence made her
uneasy, she waved back.
Up ahead she could see the biggest, prettiest meadow on the ridge, and as she
drove toward it she spotted patches of bright-orange poppies, like the one she
tried to paint yesterday morning. They always appeared in abundance at this time
of year. Perfect, she thought, for the Halloween season just around the corner.
She smiled as she sped past the meadow. At least they can't spoil this.
*
She pulled into the driveway that ran alongside the Bentman Children's Center
and mumbled, O-G-I-M, short for "Oh God It's Monday." She figured if Friday had
an acronym all its own, Monday certainly deserved one, though she did enjoy her
work as an art therapist. She used her talents as an artist and her training in
psychology to decipher the secrets that most children hid in their artwork.
The Center sat on the outskirts of town, directly in front of a large hill that
had been logged during summer vacation. The barren face of that rise loomed over
the entire area, and even from a distance Celia could see the stumps and the
sickly tint of sawdust. The father of one of the boys at the Center had worked
this clear-cut, a point of considerable pride for the seven-year-old, who
boasted about it continually:
"My daddy done that. He cut down every one of them trees," to which Celia or one
of the other staffers would reply gently,
"Eddy, it's not correct to say, 'My daddy done that.' It's 'My daddy did that.'
And it's not 'Every one of them trees,' it's 'Every one of those trees.' "
"Did too, did too. He done that."
Patience, Celia would counsel herself, patience.
The Center consisted of two buildings: a single-level structure in the back that
housed the classroom; and the two-story main house, which was built in 1920 and
renovated before the Center opened fifteen years ago. Celia and the two child
therapists had their offices on the main floor, along with the clerical staff.
As she made her way from the parking area she heard someone laughing. It sounded
like Ethan, although dark humor was common among most of the men and women who
worked here, and in this respect they differed little from cops, reporters, ER
doctors and nurses, or anyone else who deals with the grimmer aspects of human
nature.
At the moment eleven children were enrolled at the Center, which served all of
the region's schools. Originally it had been part of a pilot project for
"special needs" students, but the state started providing ongoing funding and
opened other children's centers around Oregon— after it became apparent that
dysfunctional kids were turning into a growth industry. Some of the children
attending the Bentman Center lived in towns twenty miles away. All of them had
been classified as "severely emotionally disturbed," and a few, including an
eleven-year-old schizophrenic, were in much worse shape.
Passive-aggressive behavior was commonplace, and it was not unusual for children
to defecate or urinate on themselves. Not surprisingly, the rules required
parents to make sure their offspring always kept an extra set of fresh clothes
at the Center.
As difficult and as objectionable as the children could be, Celia found it
gratifying to work with them. Whenever she got depressed about a child's
behavior she made herself remember the children who had established control over
their impulses, caught up on their academic work, and returned to their
neighborhood schools.
She hiked up the steps of the main house. It was a large white rambling
structure with canary-yellow trim around the windows and doors, which she had
found a bit garish until she'd learned that the color had been selected by a
vote of the Center's first clients.
A large porch welcomed guests, and a vestibule the size of a studio apartment
received them. There were hooks for coats, a hip-high Japanese ceramic pot for
umbrellas, and a six-foot perforated rack that had been placed above the metal
grate of a hot-air duct. Most years it rained a lot, and they used this system
to dry their soggy boots.
Celia walked into the living room, which served as the reception area. The
imperious Barbara Kneese presided over it, she of the bifocals, rigid posture,
and severe manner of a Prussian. Only Barbara's wild hair humbled her dignified
older presence. Her frizzy curls sprang from her scalp and raced like white
water down over her shoulders. For years Celia had watched Barbara war against
it with straighteners, scissors, and sprays, never fully surrendering to its
shameless spontaneity.
"Morning, Barbara." Never Barb.
"Good morning, Cecilia." Never Celia, much less Cel. The receptionist paused to
swipe at a wiry hair hanging in her face. It bounced around teasingly before
settling right back where it had been. Barbara grimaced. "And how are you
today?" After more than two decades in the States, her German accent remained as
flatulent as ever.
"Okay. Is there coffee?"
"Indeed there is. Dr. Weston made it, but there was no milk today. It went sour
over the weekend, and plop-plop I had lumps in my coffee this morning. Lumps!"
"That's a drag," Celia sympathized as she swept into the Center's kitchen. The