Lava Falls Page 17

  “So now you’re naked?” our son asked, smirking, no longer male bonding.

  “Yes,” Jim answered. “You don’t know until you’ve heard them howl.”

  The End of Jesus

  Mac had been gone for more than thirty years. So when I found her little book in Powell’s I collapsed in shock, dropped right there onto the bookstore’s wood plank floor in a dusty splotch of sunlight coming from a high window. In my trembling hands I held the book that had failed to save Mac’s life, though it had saved mine.

  I’d come back to Oregon for my mother’s memorial service, which would be taking place in under an hour, and I’d walked to the bookstore in a kind of trance that was a combination of grief and dread. The city of books was a comfort, all those words, all that knowledge, the vast diversity of human experience. I strolled through the store’s many rooms as an antidote to the service I was about to attend, where everyone would believe in one, and only one, truth. I considered staying in the bookstore, skipping my mother’s memorial service. That blasphemous thought made me touch the books for grounding, for random guidance, and I dragged my hand along a row of bumpy spines.

  And there it was. I would have known it anywhere. The unassuming slim girth. The short red spine with the white lettering. Mac’s book.

  It wasn’t just the same title, it was the very book, her copy. I knew this because when I opened it up and flipped through, I found a section of blank pages in the back. On the first of these pages was the printed word “Notes.” Here the book owner was supposed to write down her own observations, and Mac had, with brief discretion. She’d written:

  June 10: Sylvia.

  June 14: Sylvia. Sylvia.

  June 30: Sylvia. Sylvia. Sylvia.

  August 9: Robin’s rocks.

  August 18: Hell.

  September 9: How to survive.

  October 12: The end of Jesus.

  The August 9 entry? That’s me, Robin. I’d lived under an entire rock pile of guilt ever since, but apparently it hadn’t been misplaced. I was one of three people she named in the season of her demise: Sylvia, me, Jesus.

  I bought the book and took it back to my hotel, where I packed and checked out. Yes, my mother had died. And yes, I felt an enormous and tangled sadness. But that didn’t mean I had to subject myself to her most recent pastor and congregation who, I’d been informed many times, prayed for me regularly.

  Instead, I drove to the scene of my thirty-year-old crime, Armpit, Oregon, a small town three hours from Portland. I wish I could say all those years provided me with a kind of armor, but they didn’t. What happens to you at that dawn-of-adolescence age is like a dream, the way it penetrates your entire psyche, floods you with feelings as bright as sky, as wet as water, as blunt as rocks. You can’t lift an arm without lifting the weight of that dream, too. As I drove into town through the Douglas firs that line the highway, I once again became that tender twelve-year-old girl whose geography had a radius of about ten miles. Who knew how to read but hadn’t ventured beyond the Bible. Who believed Jesus was everyone’s savior. And why not? His picture alone looked like a way out. The thin, defenseless chest and skinny arms. Scraggly but clean, even pretty, hair. Sorrowful eyes. He didn’t hunt or belch as a joke. He shared his food and washed bad women’s feet. A model for love.

  The church was exactly as I remembered it, two big prefab structures, attached like an L. An early autumn drizzle made the place even more dreary, but I got out of my truck to brave the dampness. The confusing thing about returning to a place that so warped your existence is that you simultaneously can’t believe you’ve let it have so much power over you even as it exerts its force all over again.

  New Day Church of Jesus Christ had youth events on most Saturday evenings, which were pretty much mandatory. Movies, karaoke, even some early version of Christian speed-dating for the teens. The community room is large and the little kids were kept on one side, drawing pictures or listening to stories. Age was the only beyond I could imagine, and so I always watched the big kids.

  One warm July evening, I saw Mac leave the community room, and not by the door that led to the bathrooms. It was pizza night. The big boys threw wadded napkins, shouted insults, chugged sodas. Trevor, who already shaved a dark beard daily, decked a skinny boy and was “wrestling” him, but the other kid didn’t look like he was having fun. As the mayhem escalated, Mac slipped out. I stepped out right behind her.

  Mac walked across the church parking lot and straight into the woods. I hesitated because there wasn’t any path, just trees and who knew what animals. But it was still bright out, and Mac didn’t seem afraid. I followed quietly.

  Mac was fifteen years old and unlike all the other teen girls at New Day. Lanky and awkward, she wore boyish clothes and her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I thought she got away with dressing like that because she was so smart. Mac knew the Bible inside and out. She could quote verses by heart. Yet she refused to flaunt it. This frustrated Pastor Evans, how if he called out the chapter and verse, she’d deliver the words, but if he asked her to supply a passage that illustrated some point, she’d shake her head. She wasn’t willing to twist the meanings of Bible stories to flesh out anyone’s agenda. Sometimes, though, she’d spontaneously recite a verse, simply setting the words, verbatim, alongside life. She always carried a small Bible right in her back pocket. The word against the body.

  On that warm evening she moved through the woods with the ease of an elk. As she ducked under a downed tree, the mossy log leaning against the upright trunk of another, she ran her hand along the cushion of green. Soon she emerged from the woods and onto the cut-off road that led to the dump. She walked slowly, tossing stones at trees. Sometimes she stopped and looked up at the sky, and I’d look too, expecting a plane or a bird, but there was only the blue. At the top of the small hill overlooking the dump, she turned and said, “Why are you following me?”

  I shrugged.

  She looked at me for a long time and I looked right back. The jeans, bright white boy’s tee, and blue and green plaid flannel shirt looked good on her. She seemed so comfortable. I coveted her high-top sneakers.

  “Why did you leave the church?” I asked.

  Mac sat down on the hill’s small summit, and I climbed up to sit next to her, regretting the stupid question. The dump had baked in the sun all day, and the stench was ripe, a cross between burnt rubber and rotted banana peels.

  She said, “I have things I want to think about.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  She looked at me again, and I felt exposed, like in those dreams where you realize you accidentally went to school naked. And yet, it felt strangely good, like deep honesty. Even the stench felt necessary right then. She asked, “You ever been out here?”

  “Once to drop off our old refrigerator.”

  “Watch,” she said, and nodded toward the pile of car parts, cut grass, carpet scraps, television hulls. There were four crows, their wings shiny black, flapping around the trash, picking at anything edible.

  “The crows?”

  “Them. For starters.”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes and watched the crows. They had their own personalities. Some were funny. Some, mean. One kept chasing the others away, like it deserved an advantage.

  The sun set and I worried about walking back in the dark, but something kept me seated next to Mac, and I was sure glad I stayed, because at late dusk, a black bear came out of the woods and climbed up on the garbage. The crows screamed and leapt into the air, circled over the bear, as if they could drive it away, and then alighted on a different part of the garbage heap. The bear snoofed around until it found a relatively fresh dump of potatoes and cabbage and orange rinds. It scarfed all that down.

  After the bear finished eating, it lifted its head and looked right at us. I grabbed Mac’s arm.

  “Won’t hurt ya,” she said. “He only wants to eat.”

  There was a fortifying calm about Mac. Like she knew
a really good secret. I thought about all the other kids back in the church, shouting bad jokes and burping pepperoni breath, and how extraordinary it was that I got to be here, with the crows, bear, and Mac. Deep in my gut I felt a glow, and it spread all around us. I swear, I felt as if something lifted me right off the ground and floated me. I whispered, “Thank you, Jesus,” and Mac smiled at me. She got it.

  Mac let me walk back to the church with her and we went right through the murky woods. It was as if she had cat eyes, could see in the dark. I held onto the tail of her flannel shirt. The glowing and floating stayed with me the whole time I was with her.

  That week I walked out to the dump every chance I got, hoping to find her. Finally, late Thursday afternoon, I saw her sitting on top of the hill. I was afraid she wouldn’t be happy to see me, so I hid in the woods and watched. After about five minutes, she shouted, “I see you.” At first I wanted to run in shame. But as I stepped into the sunshine, the shame was replaced by that Jesus feeling, levitating me to Mac. She got up, shook out each leg, and met me halfway. “I’m walking back now,” she said and let me fall in step beside her.

  This time, instead of going directly through the woods to the church parking lot, she headed off toward the creek. When we got near, she crouched down and said, “You know this plant?” She held her open hand under a whorl of fuzzy, serrated leaves as if presenting something sacred.

  I shook my head.

  “Nettles. They’ll sting you. But you can also eat them.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out what I had always thought was a Bible. She flipped through the pages until she found the one she wanted, used a splay of fingers to hold up the book and show me the drawing. She spoke from memorized knowledge. “The whole plant is edible but it tastes best when it’s young. If you cook it, the stingers mush out. You can also put the whole plant in a blender. It’s good for joint and muscle pain.” She handed me the little red book so I could read for myself, like maybe I wouldn’t believe her. I looked at the cover: How to Survive in the Wilderness.

  “Watch,” she said. Mac scraped away a layer of forest floor. She pinched some of the black soil between two fingers, placed it on her tongue and swallowed. I kept my eyes on her face, awed.

  “The difference between dirt and soil,” she said. “Dirt is just dirt. Stuff you don’t want to touch. But soil is completely clean. It’s old trees and plants all broken down. It’s perfectly fine to eat.”

  “Like the bear eating at the dump?”

  “No, not like that at all. That bear shouldn’t eat at the dump. He does it because it’s easy. He should find his own roots, berries, and gophers.”

  The next Saturday night she once again walked right out of the church, the little square book in her back pocket, its shape discernable under her flannel shirt, moving against her butt as she walked. I knew what I’d seen: How to Survive in the Wilderness. Yet somehow my mind did a trick and pretended it was the Bible, after all. When she’d been gone a few minutes, I pictured her ducking under the mossy log.

  I would have followed her again if I could have. No one had missed her the previous week. Pastor Evans liked working with kids who pushed the envelope: girls who showed too much skin or boys who smoked pot. He enjoyed wrestling with people’s souls. With Mac’s sensible clothes and quiet intelligence, she usually flew under his radar. But I was only twelve years old. Carly, the assistant pastor in charge of the little kids, had conniptions when I’d turned up missing. I lied and said I’d left the community room to take a nap in the lounge. Now she watched me like a hawk.

  But I continued my weekday pilgrimages to the dump, sometimes checking once in the morning and again in the afternoon. I’d noticed the way the other teen girls ignored Mac and the teen boys, if they paid her any attention at all, snickered at her clothes and voice and stride. I thought of myself as the only person on Earth who appreciated Mac, probably her only true friend. I imagined her to be lonely, lonely enough to not mind the companionship of a little kid.

  On a hot midsummer day, I was stunned to find Mac sitting on the hill above the dump with someone else. I stayed in the woods where I could watch, and this time she was too busy with that other person to notice me.

  This would be August 9. Mac described that day’s events with two words: Robin’s rocks.

  Mac’s companion was a pretty girl, her own age, with brown skin and wavy black hair. Her close-fitting cool lime tank top showed a lot of her breasts, and tight jeans sheathed her full hips. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted a dark color, maybe blue. The two girls laughed and pulled at tufts of grass. Mac laid her arms across her drawn up knees and hid her face in them. Then she peeked at the girl out the side of her self-made mask. The girl pulled one of Mac’s hands away from her face and held it in her own lap. She tickled Mac’s palm with her fingers, as if writing words there. Mac’s expression became very serious. The girl leaned in so that their faces were about two inches apart.

  Mac kissed her. Right on the mouth.

  That was okay. Jesus is love, right? This looked like love.

  But the kiss didn’t end. It just kept going. They looked like they were mashing each other’s faces. The girl leaned back and pulled Mac down with her. They scooched their entire bodies against each other.

  That white light I had felt with Mac? The glow I thought was Jesus? It popped and hissed like firecrackers now. It burnt and scorched, turned to hot, dry coals.

  I bent down and found a rock. It was the size of a golf ball, with sharp edges. I fired it at the two girls. It landed near their feet, but they didn’t even notice. I felt angry and helpless. I didn’t think I could breathe. I picked up a bigger rock and fired it, too. This one landed a few feet away from their heads, and now they sat up, startled, looking around. I began pelting them with stones, throwing as hard and fast as I could. Mac leapt to her feet and picked up a rock herself. She threw it back at me and shouted, “Get out of here!”

  That’s when I saw the bear. It lumbered toward the dump, but stopped when it saw the human crossfire. Mac and her friend were up on the hill, but I was in the woods, in the bear’s territory, and this only increased my fear. I meant to shout the words, but they came out in a hoarse whisper. “I’m telling,” I said. “I’m gonna tell.”

  I ran all the way to the church, tripping on sticks, once falling so hard I scraped both forearms. I got right up, though, and ran so fiercely that by the time I got to the church parking lot I was wet with tears and sweat. Pastor Evans always said that he was there for us, that we could come and talk any time. I went directly to his office.

  The door was locked. A dry mark board hung from a nail on the door and a marker dangled from a string. Across the top of the board were the words: I want to see you! Leave a note. I gripped the marker and wrote, “Robin was here.”

  I never told.

  I never told.

  I never told.

  But Mac stopped sneaking out of church. She lost weight, as well as her purposeful gait. She stopped objecting when Pastor Evans or Carly called her Mackenzie. Her gaze, rather than searching out worthy subjects, seemed to land just anywhere. Mac’s suffering was like bait for the ministry. Pastor Evans called on her more often, asked her to pass out the cupcakes or say the closing prayer.

  I checked the dump daily, badly wanting to tell her I’d never told. Always the crows were there. Sometimes the bear showed up. I’d sit on the hill and think nonstop about that kiss between Mac and Sylvia, and then grow hot with chagrin at the memory of my rock throwing. Sometimes, when my despair became unbearable, I pretended Mac sat next to me. That way I could see the crows and bear and sky and woods through her eyes. Shimmering with light. I pretended to know that secret her whole body had seemed to hold. Before.

  Each time I left the dump, I stopped in the woods near the creek, scratched away a layer of the forest floor, and ate a taste of soil.

  I stalked her at church, too, but she looked right through me, as if I were invisible. She alwa
ys moved away before I could say a word. Once I slid into the pew behind her in the chapel and, talking in a desperate whisper, said, “I didn’t tell, Mac. I swear it.” But she was gone before the first words left my mouth.

  I saw the other girl everywhere. At the grocery. Waiting at the bus stop. In the library. She always wore gigantic gold hoop earrings that tangled and glinted in her dark hair. She was really pretty, even though her face was badly broken out with acne. I liked her mouth. It was asymmetrical and her smile was like cocking a gun, quick and then released. She worked in the Arco convenience store, and so I asked Gregory, whose dad owned the station, her name.

  “You mean Sylvia?” he said. “That Indian chick?”

  I shrugged and walked away, as if he’d misheard my question.

  On a Saturday night in early September, after the opening prayer, while the little kids were still corralled with the big ones, Pastor Evans rested his hand on her shoulder with a restraining chumminess. “Mackenzie, I know the other kids would love to hear about wilderness survival. Go on up front and share a bit of what you know.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said.

  “Why, you’re never without your book.” It sounded like a reprimand, like she was never without the wrong book. He caught himself and smiled hard.

  Carly moved to Mac’s side, took hold of her arm, and lifted her out of the folding chair. The older boys slid low in their seats, smirking.

  “Yeah, sure, okay,” Mac said, as if she were making a choice. She walked to the front of the group and quickly said the stuff about nettles. As she spoke she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, kept her hands stuffed in her pockets. She listed three other plants you can eat, too. Then she tried to take her seat, but Pastor Evans smiled hard again and said, “A bit more, please. This is fascinating.”

  Mac talked about building a shelter against rain and wind. She said that a hat was the best protection against hypothermia because you lose ninety percent of your body heat from your head. She didn’t tell them anything about crows, bears, or soil.