Stumps of Mystery: Stories from the End of an Era

  4. Quatro de Julio

  Dante Gutierrez was nearly done mopping the dining room floor when the catering van pulled into the parking lot. He looked out the diner’s plate glass window at the lightening Eastern sky for a moment—steely gray giving way to a clumpy band of red stratocumulus clouds stretching across the horizon. The oil soap’s astringent scent gave him a slight headache as he swabbed the last corner of the worn fir floor. He’d cleaned it nearly every morning, before Mack’s Diner opened at 6 am, for the past four-and-a-half years, since he’d turned sixteen.

  “Good morning,” Herman called from the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” Dante replied, pausing to rinse and wring the mop before going over the entry area one more time. He was tired because had been up late the night before, working on an English paper that was due the next day—he hoped he could find enough time to finish it.

  “You hungry?” Herman asked when Dante rolled the mop bucket through the kitchen.

  “What’re you making?” As always, Dante was impressed by how put together Herman looked at the crack of dawn. His trimmed jet-black hair, still damp from the shower, was perfectly combed. And his black-rimmed glasses gleamed in the dim kitchen light. On that day, Herman wore a crisp red-white-and-blue snap-button cowboy shirt and black jeans—along with his red Chuck Taylors. Dante could barely struggle into shorts and a t-shirt at that hour.

  “A Mack’s Special Scramble.” Herman whisked eggs in a stainless steel bowl.

  “I forget, what’s in that?” Dante asked.

  “Whatever’s leftover in the fridge.”

  “Actually, I gotta bounce.” He walked to the back of the kitchen, emptied the mop bucket in the slop sink and rinsed it out.

  “But you’re helping at the booth later, right?” Herman called.

  Dante dried his hands on a paper towel and walked back to the line where Herman was cooking. “Yeah, I’ll be there. Right after the parade.”

  “Are you marching?”

  “Yeah. My MEChA group.”

  “Oh, you’ll be the one draped in the Mexican flag?” Herman flipped the eggs with a jerk of his wrist.

  “No, we don’t want to get shot.”

  “Ah, the land of free,” Herman replied. “You know, unless you’re Native-American, you came from somewhere else. Apparently, my Hoffmeister ancestors were hated through both world wars because they were krauts.”

  “Yet people still ate their food.” Dante headed toward the dining room to finish up. He always did another chore while the floor dried, like washing the glass on the front door or scraping the used gum from under the counter or replacing the urinal cakes in the men’s room.

  “I’ll get the chairs and mats,” Herman said, sliding his breakfast onto a plate.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, go on.”

  “That’s okay, I can do it.” Dante looked toward the dining room.

  “Take off. I’ll see you later.” Herman ground pepper over his food.

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  “Go on, Dante.”

  “It’ll just take me a minute.” Dante edged to the doorway.

  Herman laughed. “You freak. Get the hell out of here.”

  Dante laughed with him. “Okay, thanks. I’ll see you at the parade.”

  Outside, the day was already heating up. Dante hopped on his longboard for the short ride home through Woodhill’s nearly empty streets. It felt like a holiday, still and sleepy, except for a few firecrackers already popping far away somewhere. The soft morning air was fresh with cut grass and dew. He breathed deeply to get the cleaning taste out of his lungs as he cruised past the Twin Fir motel and the Post Office, then turned onto Mill Street.

  His family had lived in the same apartment for almost his entire life: a three-bedroom close to downtown, about a block from Woodhill Elementary. It was a small complex, just 12 units arranged in a big U, surrounded by tall maple trees. Most of the families had lived there a long time, and the landlord was something like third-cousins with Dante’s father, Luis. But the noise got to Dante, especially on hot nights like last night when everyone had their TVs cranked up to different stations and then the babies started crying. It was hard to study and impossible to sleep.

  Dante’s mother Sarita had had a baby, Joaquin, the year before. He was a cute kid, but soon he would have to move into Dante’s room—Papi said he was getting too big to sleep with the parents. Joaquin was a surprise. His mother had always said Dante and his sister Conchetta were all the children she needed, and Dante was thankful. Having a gardener dad and a mother who cleaned houses was cliché enough—they didn’t need a mess of kids too.

  Dante skated into the parking lot just as his dad was loading the lawn mower into his pickup. Dante hopped off his board to help. He and his dad looked alike, sort of short and stocky with serious faces, but his dad was about five times stronger with a barrel chest and massive shoulders. They hefted the mower into the truck bed (though his father really didn’t need any help) and Dante slammed the tailgate closed.

  “Why are you working today, Pop? It’s a holiday.”

  “Es Martes,” his father replied. It’s Tuesday. They stared at each other in the predictable game of chicken they’d been playing for years. Dante waited for his dad to ask him to help; his dad waited for Dante to offer. But Dante was wiped out and he’d be up late again that night finishing that stupid paper---he really wanted to catch a nap before the parade. They stared at each other. Yet Dante knew his dad was marching in the parade with his mariachi band and it would help him to be done with work as early as possible. They stared at each other. Dante needed the money; he shouldn’t refuse any opportunity to work. And his dad paid him minimum wage, even though he didn’t have to. They stared at each other. But he was so dang tired. They stared at each other.

  Then Luis pulled his keys out of his pocket, the signal he was leaving.

  “Need some help today?” Dante asked.

  “That would be great,” Luis replied. “Just for a while.”

  Dante sighed, tossed his skateboard into the back of the truck and climbed into the passenger seat. His dad was the master of the stare-off. Throughout his childhood, if Dante got caught in a lie, Luis could stare at him until he’d dissolve into a puddle on the floor. Dante had seen him stare an irate customer into silence. The only person not affected by Luis’ stare was Conchetta, the little princess, who made faces at her dad until he finally smiled.

  They pulled out into the street and Dante rested his elbow out the open window. The day was turning bright and hot though there was still hardly a soul about. Dante looked at the fat gloppy white cumulonimbus piled up against the Cascades. They looked clean against the pale sky, like they would taste sweet if only he could take huge bites of them. Like they would envelope him in safety if only he could dive into them. His limbs felt heavy and his paper on Moby Dick weighed on his mind. He tried to take the liberal arts core classes that he didn’t like during the shorter summer term so he could get them over with. But the work was always more intense, especially when the rest of the world seemed to be on summer vacation. He promised himself, for the gazillionth time, that someday there would come a day in his life when he would be able to sleep whenever he wanted.

  Luis pulled over behind the roach coach across from Home Depot and got out. Dante watched him joke with the guy in the window and burst into hearty laughter. Everyone loved his dad. Everyone. Sometimes Dante couldn’t even stand to watch it. He turned away.

  Home Depot was just opening. Dante looked at the cluster of Mexican guys on the corner, smoking, drinking coffee out of paper cups, waiting for someone to come by and hire them. He had stood with them plenty of times. Most of them had families they were trying to support and some of them would make comments about Dante taking food out of their babies’ mouths. But Dante felt he had every right to be there too—he had tuition to pay. In
a while, if those guys were lucky, some dude would come by in a pick-up truck or minivan and take some of them somewhere to work for cash.

  Dante had cut wood, painted houses, spread asphalt, spread gravel, spread manure, baled hay, pulled insulation out of a crawl space, cleared brush, mucked barns, built fences, dug holes in places that heavy equipment couldn’t get to, cleaned construction sites, cleaned moss off a roof, cleaned roof gutters, washed windows and helped many many people move stuff. The “employers” ranged from decent people like Mr. Ricci, the winery owner, (who paid good money, usually brought food in and made his own kid work alongside Dante) to the rat-faced lavender farm guy who called them all “Manuel,” as in “manuel labor” and paid a measly $5 an hour. Dante was proud that Mr. Ricci now called him directly whenever he needed help in the vineyard. It was much better than standing in front of the Depot, where a black van parked across the street could mean a raid.

  His dad got back into the truck and handed Dante a breakfast burrito and coffee. Dante unwrapped the waxed paper and took a bite of scrambled egg and chorizo. A dribble of grease rolled down his chin and he cursed himself for not eating when Herman had offered.

  Four hours later, Dante returned home on his skateboard. He and his father had worked at a huge newer house in a fancy neighborhood on the west side of town. The Costellos were having a big barbecue and wanted the yard perfect. Dante had been there the day before, cleaning with his mother. She was doing her Tuesday houses along with her Monday ones so she could take the holiday off. Dante had helped her get it all done, though he didn’t like working with her. She was too intense and always double-checked every thing he did. At the Costellos, Dante had been vacuuming the beige carpeting on the long upstairs hallway when the youngest Costello daughter, Fiona, had walked out of her bedroom in a bathrobe, her head wrapped in a white towel. If it had been anyone else from his high school, Dante would have been mortified. But he and Fiona had been on the debate team together, traveling all over the state. They had always been simpatico. They stood there, catching up, Dante with his hand on the vacuum cleaner and Fiona leaning against her doorway, close to him, clutching her robe closed under her chin. After Woodhill High, Fiona had gone to Princeton and Dante hadn’t seen her since the summer before.

  “You haven’t started yet?” Fiona exclaimed, talking about studying for the LSATs. “You’d better get busy.”

  “I’ve got a ways to go,” Dante said. “It’ll probably be years before I even get my degree.”

  “Dante!” Sarita’s sharp voice startled them both.

  “Hi Sarita,” Fiona said, smiling.

  “Hi Fiona.” Sarita nodded, all business. “Keep moving, Dante, we have a lot to do today.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged at Fiona, who wrinkled her nose back. He had always liked the freckles sprinkled over the bridge of her nose; she had told him once that you had to have Celtic blood to have freckles.

  She smiled. “We should have coffee.”

  “Yeah.” Dante nodded, knowing it would never happen. Fiona closed her bedroom door and Dante switched the vacuum cleaner back on.

  Driving to the next job, Sarita had torn him a new one for being so familiar with the customers.

  “She’s my friend, Mom,” Dante had protested. “We grew up together.”

  “I don’t care,” Sarita had replied. “She’s a customer. Keep your distance.”

  Dante had kept silent, but he was annoyed with his mother. She was so old fashioned. Cripes, almost everything Conchetta wore had once belonged to Fiona.

 

  That next day, Dante and Luis trimmed and mowed and raked and edged and swept and bagged the yard debris on the Costellos’ lawn. Dante kept a lookout for Fiona, but didn’t see her before he left. Luis stayed to help set up some rented tables and chairs and a shade tent, but told Dante to take off.

  The streets were much more lively by the time Dante cut back through downtown. He saw marching bands gathering and people setting up floats, kids decorating bikes, beauty queens, drill teams, horses and clowns. Every year, Herman always joked that there were more Woodhillians marching in the Fourth of July parade than watching it. But already there were people lining the parade route, taping out their turf on the sidewalk, lounging on lawnchairs and cooking hotdogs on little Smokey Joe grills. As he rolled through the Town Square, Dante saw Herman setting up a food booth with the other vendors. When he passed a group of three cops talking in a tight cluster, he hopped smoothly to the sidewalk, placed his board under his arm and walked until the cops were far behind him.

  He entered his family’s apartment and his sister Conchetta instantly started shouting. “Mom! Mom! He’s home. Let’s go.” Dante carried his skateboard through the living room to his bedroom. Sarita was in the kitchen feeding the baby who waved his fists at Dante. The apartment was tidy, freakishly tidy, almost like no one lived there. Sarita was very strict about clutter; Dante’s dad said it was because she grew up in squalor back in Mexico—she needed her house super clean. He passed his parents’ bedroom; Luis’ red charro suit, gleaming silver roosters running up the seams, hung on the door under a clear plastic bag.

  “I need to take Connie to Wal-Mart,” Sarita called. “Will you feed Joaquin?”

  Dante’s shoulders slumped and he looked helplessly at the ceiling. “Aw, man,” he moaned. He set his skateboard under his bed and returned to the kitchen. His mom was spooning some bright green muck into the baby’s mouth. “I need to take a shower and get ready,” he pleaded.

  “We’ll be right back.”

  “I need a red t-shirt for the parade.” Conchetta bobbed around the table on the balls of her feet, her black ponytail swinging. Her long skinny legs made her seem like a colt

  Dante looked at Joaquin, green stuff dribbling out of his mouth and stuck in his curly black hair. “Why can’t you take him with you?”

  Sarita set the bowl of food down hard on the table and sighed angrily; she had a very short fuse. “He needs to eat, okay?” She stood up, small and neat, her own dark hair cut very short. In her tanktop and cutoffs, she almost looked like Dante and Conchetta’s little brother.

  Dante plopped down in the wooden chair she had just vacated. “Okay. Just hurry up.”

  Sarita grabbed her car keys from a hook hanging by the back door.

  “At least go to Target, not Wal-Mart,” Dante said.

  Conchetta whirled around. “Why should we listen to you? You can’t even drive, you stupid wetback.”

  Sarita reached back and pinched Conchetta’s upper arm hard.

  “Oww.” Conchetta pulled away and rubbed the sore spot.

  “I told you not to call him that,” his mother said as they rushed out the kitchen door.

  Dante sat in the silence of their wake. Sometimes he hated Conchetta. She had it so easy and got everything she wanted. Her quinceanera had cost their parents a fortune; he couldn’t even afford to go to his high school prom. She was taking driver’s ed that summer. And she was already planning on going off to some fancy college since she could get financial aid. But she had a point: Why should anyone listen to him?

  He was so tired, so weary, all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep for about two months. He looked out the window above the sink into the courtyard. Later, all the families would be out there barbecuing. The adults would drink beer and the kids would run around screaming, waving sparklers and throwing firecrackers. His dad would play his guitar, but not Mexican music, more likely Grateful Dead songs. How was he going to get his Moby Dick paper done?

  He looked up at the sky. A set of altocumulus clouds was lined up in long rows like ribs. Like whale ribs. He particularly liked the contrast of white against blue sky. When he was little, he thought the clouds were a secret world where everything was clean and fresh and everyone was happy. If he lived there, his mind would be clear and his soul would be filled with light. And eve
n now, he loved to look at the clouds, especially when he was working outside. They never failed to calm him and give him hope.

  Joaquin babbled at him.

  “Goo goo gaa gaa,” Dante replied, picking up the bowl of baby food. But his ringing cell phone interrupted him; it was his friend Claudia from MEChA. He was supposed to help paint signs up at the student union.

  “No problem,” she said, “I’ll paint yours. What do you want?”

  Dante considered. Amnesty now? Fat chance. Tuition equity? Their club had been working to get undocumented students who graduated from Oregon high schools to pay in-state tuition ($1500 a term) instead of out-of-state ($5000)—like the law in California.

  “You still there?” Claudia asked.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking.” What did he really want? He was tired of paying the highest tuition rate with no hope of financial aid. He often wondered if it was even worth it.

  What did he really want?

  “Da-nte?” Claudia’s voice sang into his ear.

  “Okay,” he said, spooning spinach into his little brother’s mouth. “I know what I want.” Joaquin smiled at him and pounded his highchair tray.

  After Joaquin finished eating, Dante put him into his play-yard and took a shower. As the hot water pounded onto his shoulders, Dante thought about just last term when he had nearly dropped out of school for good. He was flunking biology and had a nasty cold that had turned into a sinus infection lasting about a month. And he was working every spare hour to save up for the next term’s tuition. He just couldn’t get his act together; one thing went wrong after another. He was the biggest loser ever. When he decided to quit, his favorite poli sci professor asked Dante to talk to someone at the health center before she’d sign his drop form. The counselor had him write a list of options:

  1.Finish my degree, work my way through law school, help change the system.

  2.Return to Mexico and wait to re-enter the US legally (which would take about a dozen years, if I ever got back in).

  3.Wait for immigration reform or visa amnesty (which could be forever).

  4.Marry an American (like I could even get a girlfriend).

  5.Drop out of school and join papi’s gardening business.

  The next morning at work, Dante had been sitting in a booth at the diner, perusing his list, thinking about adding suicide to it, when Herman came upon him. Herman had encouraged him to keep going. He even promised him: “When you graduate and get into law school, come to the B of H. The Bank of Herman is an equal opportunity lender.”

  Dante had stayed in school. He was grateful to Herman for his encouragement, but he was still depressed. Even if he did finally get his B.A., even if he if did get into law school and finish, even after passing the bar, he still wouldn’t be able to get a real job without a social security card.

  The parade staging area was in the elementary school parking lot, just down the block. He got there as his MEChA club was arriving from the opposite direction. Claudia was already at the registration table, standing strong and imposing, a hand on her hip. Dante stood next to her.

  “What is your group?” the matronly woman behind the table asked. She wore a red-white-and-blue cardboard top hat over her curly gray hair. Dante thought she looked like an owl, the way she blinked behind her thick eyeglass lenses.

  “MEChA,” Claudia answered.

  “What?” Blink, blink.

  “MEChA,” Claudia said slowly, overstressing a Latina accent. “M-E-C-H-A. “Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan.” She turned her head and murmered “moron” toward Dante.

  The woman looked up and blinked at Claudia’s “Immigration Reform” t-shirt. “This parade is for Americans, dearie. It’s Fourth of July.”

  Dante heard a Claudia make a small growling noise in her throat. She raised the US flag she had rolled up in left hand and waved it in the woman’s face. “Ma’am, we are Americans. Do you have a supervisor or something?”

  The woman wrote hard on a pad of forms, her ballpoint pen digging into the paper. “Well, you’re late.” She ripped the page off savagely and thrust it at Claudia. “Give this to the coordinator over there.” She pointed off to the left.

  “Gracias,” Claudia said, smiling sweetly, then muttered, “bitch.” They walked away from the table and joined the other students in their group. They weren’t all Latino; there were white, Asian and black kids too, members of the Multicultural Student Union and the rabble rousing Sociology Club. Tyler Stewart, a pitcher on the NOU baseball team, came up to him with a stack of signs. “Which one is your’s, dude?”

  “Pass the Dream Act.” Dante answered.

  “What’s that mean?” Tyler asked as he looked through the signs.

  “It stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors. It’s a federal bill that’ll let undocumented students become citizens if they go to college.” Dante frowned and shook his head. “It’ll never get passed.”

  “But there aren’t any illegals at NOU are there?” Tyler asked, handing Dante his sign. “They couldn’t afford the out-of state tuition.”

  Dante merely shrugged and took his place in line. It was almost time to go. He watched as the Woodhill High band, sweltering in their forest green uniforms, marched forward playing “God Bless America.” Dante sighed, exasperated. When was someone going to sue that dumb-ass school for all their God shit? He remembered when he was finishing high school and how some of the kids would pray under the flag pole to get into the college they wanted. He’d been thrilled to be accepted by the U of O, no praying required. But then he’d been shocked when he figured out he wouldn’t get any financial aid to pay for it. And enraged when he found out that U of O wouldn’t let him in after all without papers. It still made him mad.

  Following the band, the sports teams filed past in ranks of red, white and blue. He saw Conchetta with other members of the girls basketball team forming a line of red—that’s why she needed that red t-shirt so desperately—drop everything, Mom, so the little princess fits in.

  He thought about what Tyler had said. Who knew that Dante was undocumented? His family, of course. Herman. The registrar’s office because he couldn’t produce a social security number. The people who hired him off the corner? Working for them didn’t necessarily mean he was illegal. What would Tyler think if he knew? Dante was so tired of hiding his status. It exhausted him. He was ashamed of his dirty secret, yet he was proud of all he’d accomplished in spite of it. Sometimes he thought he should just “come out” as an illegal and become an activist—like Herman and the gay guys. But he was scared of being sent back to a country he hadn’t been to since he’d left as an infant. And he could put his parents at risk too—even though they paid taxes with a Taxpayer ID number, they still didn’t have green cards. They’d had fake green cards back in the ‘80s—that was how they got driver’s licenses—but his father told him it was different back then. Nobody seemed to care if you were documented or not.

  He saw his dad run up to his group of six other musicians, guitar in one hand, sombrero in the other. The mariachi laughed and clapped him on the back. They were all from Jalisco, like his dad, and after playing together for 15 years, those guys were like uncles to Dante. They got into their formation and joined the parade as the trumpet bleated out the familiar opening notes of their trademark tune, “El Son de la Negra.” His dad was so happy to play, even after a really long day of work.

  Finally, it was Dante’s club’s turn to join the parade. He walked next to Claudia; somehow, he felt safe next to her, and not just because she was bigger than he. She was a solid girl from Portland who loved to argue. She also planned to be a lawyer, like her mother, a goal she could actually achieve. He often wondered what she would think if she knew he was illegal—how stupid that he couldn’t even tell his best friend. People along the street cheered. The sun beat down on them as they continued on, wa
ving and throwing Jolly Ranchers. Dante felt sweat trickling down his back as the sun beat down. He was proud to be in the parade; he hadn’t marched since Cub Scouts.

  Little kids ran into the street to pick up candy. Senior citizens peered from under big umbrellas that shielded them from the sun. Dante could smell meat cooking and acrid firecracker smoke.

  “There’s your mom,” Claudia said. Sarita, Joaquin in her arms, was standing in the shade of a tree. He waved his US flag at them and his mother smiled and waved back. She pointed for Joaquin and he waved his arms at Dante. They continued down Main Street past the library and the Woodhill Hotel, then headed toward the Town Square where the festivities would continue in picnic form. The warm breeze blew back his hair and he laughed for no reason. He didn’t feel tired for once.

  But suddenly he heard angry shouting: “No way, Jose!” and “Dream on!” They walked past a small group of angry white people who were screaming and shaking their fists. They stepped off the sidewalk, leaning toward the marchers, a tight knot of rage aimed right at them. One man kept screaming “Go home! Go home!” Dante was shocked to see it was the guy from the lavendar farm who paid $5 an hour. His rat face was bright red and he was pointing right at Dante. “Just keep going,” Claudia said in his ear as she slipped her arm through his. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it coming for him, a huge hocker of spit flying from the lavendar farm guy’s mouth. Dante searched the hot sky for a cloud to look at, even a wispy cirrus or a patch of white anywhere, but all he saw was endless blue.

  5. The Meadow

  The mornings were finally getting a bit cooler, the promise of fall in the tired forest air. Olivia Bradford allowed herself a tight little smile as she pulled out of the ranger station. She much preferred working in the winter, when she could sit in her truck—alone—drinking coffee, nibbling cookies and answering radio calls. To her, August was pure hell, especially at the Lost Mountain Campground. It was the month all the idiots came out to play.

  She was working with Duane that morning, just starting a twelve-hour shift. He slumped in the passenger seat, clearly stoned as usual. Mr. Wake and Bake. A tribute to federal employees everywhere. Actually, he was just a summer temp, but the public didn’t know that. During the rest of the year, he was a shop teacher over at Woodhill High. She hoped he was more dedicated to that job—though judging by the half finger missing from his left hand, she doubted it.

  Olivia thanked God every day for her position. The benefits alone were more than most people dreamed of, especially the folks back in the neighborhood. Some of her old Roosevelt High classmates in North Portland had done well for themselves in the ten years since they graduated, but most of them, people of color like herself, were unemployed or working poor. No health insurance. No job security. Toiling away at some crappy job with no future. She looked over at Duane. His thinning gray hair stuck out from under his cap and his khaki uniform shirt had some sort of brown stain running down the front.

  “The wife still visiting out of town, Duane?”

  He grunted and looked out the window.

  Olivia always made sure her uniform was clean and pressed; it annoyed her that Duane apparently couldn’t even work a washing machine. Her height and broad shoulders intimidated people and because of this, she felt it was her responsibility to be especially well-groomed.

  The Lost Mountain Campground was nestled into the side of one of the Coast Range’s tallest peaks. Its main road, coming off Highway 13, looped through the trees, past the 26 campsites, three outhouses and a parking lot for daytrippers and backpackers. At the farthest point from the highway lay the famous meadow where, supposedly, a UFO had crashed in 1957. A deer hunter had taken some blurry pictures, and the area was launched into one of those wacky mid-century rural legends-in-the-making. Olivia wasn’t sure if she believed a UFO had actually landed there, but it wouldn’t surprise her. The place had an eerie vibe, attracting freaks and criminals.

  She pulled into the parking space next to the first bathroom. The year before, a couple of prisoners from the county work crew had escaped while cleaning the campground and were still at large. Since then, because of the so-called “security issue,” the rangers had to do the maintenance themselves. “I’ll go first,” she told Duane, “You can check the fee box.” As she climbed out of the truck, she looked pointedly at the Tupperware container that sat between them on the seat. “I counted those,” she warned. She knew it was dangerous leaving her baked goods alone with Duane when he was stoned. But after the last time—well, Olivia was pretty sure he wouldn’t try anything again.

  “Don’t worry, Oscar,” Duane said, “I’m not going to steal your cookies.”

  “Who’s Oscar?”

  “That fuzzy dude on Sesame Street who steals all the cookies.”

  Olivia shook her head. “That’s Cookie Monster, you fool. Oscar’s the grouch.”

  Duane spread his hands. “Well, there you go.”

  She nodded her approval to Duane, signifying that she thought his wisecrack was pretty funny. Even when something tickled her to no end, she rarely allowed herself to laugh at work. At the back of the truck, she took out the cleaning caddy, donned some latex gloves and a paper surgical mask, and entered the bathroom, holding her breath against the oppressive stench. It was a pit toilet with a cement floor and screened window high above the hole—the largest outhouse in the campground. They called it the Ritz. Olivia kicked a few wads of toilet paper toward the throne, then pitched them down the hole. Even though her hand-printed sign clearly said “Keep lid closed when not in use,” no one had bothered to close the lid. She sprayed the toilet with disinfectant, then replaced the empty roll of paper. She glanced around; the floor was okay, no one had barfed. She barged back outside, wrestled off her mask and stuck it and her gloves in her pocket.

  At the truck, Duane had already emptied the fee box and figured out who still hadn’t paid for the previous night. “Let’s collect now,” she said. Usually they cleaned all the bathrooms first, then collected fees. But on her last evaluation, her supervisor Vance gave her a less than perfect score on “flexibility,” so one of her goals for the year was to be more flexible. She was working toward a grade increase to GS-10 level; the pay bump would help her save for a remote mountain cabin in which she planned to spend her retirement 40 years in the future.

  At the first site, she stood back while Darryl approached a dented blue pickup with a rusted canopy over its bed. It was the kind of vehicle that could carry anyone inside: a retired farmer, a tweaker, a serial killer, a couple of nuns on a nature retreat. Duane looked through the windshield, then made a notation on his clipboard. He pounded on the side of the canopy a few times, but it was pretty obvious no one was there.

  Olivia bent down, picked up a cigarette butt and threw it in the campfire ring. That is what she hated about summers. All the mundane chores. She was a glorified custodian. Her sister, a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines, always complained she was a glorified waitress. As if being a ranger or flight attendant was better than being a custodian or waitress. It all came back down to benefits. She had gone through four years at Northwestern Oregon University, with a double major in forestry and recreation, and here she was picking up other people’s trash. Yeah, winter would be sweet.

  She was distracted by a metallic clinking. Duane appeared at her side and they walked toward the sound. In the next site, they found a boy who looked to be about five or so. He wore a grimy white hoodie and no pants; he was attacking a huckleberry bush with an axe. A vintage green canvas tent, probably purchased from Sears back in the sixties, leaned at the edge of the clearing. Olivia put her hands on her hips. Good lord, she thought.

  “Hey buddy,” Duane called softly.

  The kid turned around. He was barefoot, his toes nearly black with dirt. “I’m chopping wood,” the boy yelled.

  “I see,” Duane said. “Th
at’s a very cool axe. Can I take a look at it?”

  The boy looked up at him, skeptical. “You a police?”

  Duane squatted down. “No way.” He smiled “I’m a ranger. I’m here to check out your equipment.”

  The boy frowned. “Why?”

  “Well, we need to know it’s in perfect working order. Let me see it a minute.” He beckoned to the boy.

  Olivia strode over to the pair. “Oh for Christ’s sake.” She yanked the axe out of the kid’s hands. He instantly started wailing. Duane rolled his eyes. “Where are your parents?” Olivia demanded.

  She heard the unmistakable sound of a tent zipper and watched a rumpled skinny man crawl out into the day. He stood slowly, like every muscle was sore, and squinted at Duane and Olivia. “What the fuck?” he mumbled. The boy ran to him, sobbing, and threw his arms around his legs.

  Olivia held up the axe like the thunder god Thor. “This yours?” she asked.

  “What about it?” He ran a hand through his tangled brown hair, then rubbed his stubbled chin.

  “Your kid was playing with it. He could have cut his foot off.” She leaned the axe up against a tree. “You should keep a better eye on him.” She walked off, leaving Duane to check on the fee. “Freakin’ Sasquatch,” she heard the man say. She pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t laugh out loud. Good one.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw Duane laughing with the guy. Vance paired them up that summer because, according to her last evaluation, she was sometimes “brusque” with park guests. That was one goal that she wasn’t focusing on too much; some guests deserved to be treated brusquely. Hell, they came out in the woods and thought they could do anything. Like they didn’t have to follow the rules or obey the laws, and it was up to her to look after their kids. Where was the glory in that?

  Back in the truck, she opened her container of cookies and took one out. It was a new recipe that she had created over the weekend: she called it a Hazelnut Butterdrop. She took a small nibble and closed her eyes, letting the cookie melt on her tongue. She tasted it carefully, gauging the texture, then swallowing and breathing shallowly to judge the aftertaste. Next time, she wouldn’t grind the nuts quite so finely, and she might increase the butter ever so slightly. But yes, it was one tasty cookie. She would bake another batch, then tweak the recipe and maybe elevate it to her “Favorite Local Ingredients” file.

  She took another bite and looked off into the forest. Sasquatch. Oh how she would love to see one. She thought about it every once in a while, usually when she was out alone on a logging road. She imagined touching one’s fur, looking into its eyes. What would it feel like? What would it smell like?

  “Hey,” Duane slid into the passenger’s seat. “Gimme one of those.”

  Olivia snapped the lid shut. “Why don’t you learn how to bake your own damn cookies?” In the two months they had worked together, Duane hadn’t shared a single thing with her, except some bad jokes. They drove the several yards down to the next bathroom.

  While Duane cleaned the crapper, Olivia walked back to the meadow. She was never sure what she would find there: a drum circle of patchouli-soaked hippies from the college, a bunch of kindergartners from the rich-kid academy dancing around a maypole with streamers in their hands, a teenage couple on Ecstasy screwing their brains out. Back in the seventies, someone had constructed a life-size replica of Stonehenge out of cinder blocks there. Legend was it appeared overnight. The thing had been slowly dismantled by folks who needed to prop up a fifth wheel or wanted to build temporary steps up to their truck canopy or needed a hard surface to crack nuts with a hammer. But there was still a circle of blocks remaining, and that was where she found about six women seated around a smoky campfire. They were all fiftyish, ranging from ropey, tanned, brittle ones with tasteful red rinses in their hair to soft pasty ones sporting menopausal backfat and frizzy manes of natural gray. Olivia paused and watched them.

  “I honor the spirit of the fire,” a tall woman with a boy’s haircut pronounced, “and your power to transmute. To you I willingly give this symbol of my daughter’s education and ask you to transform it into something—better.” She smiled at the sky. “Dare I say Yale?” Then she threw a piece of paper into the fire; it looked like a photograph, like a school picture. Great, Olivia thought, shaking her head and moving toward them. White bitchcraft. Some kind of twisted sunrise ritual.

  “Morning ladies,” she called.

  The women all turned to her and froze. Olivia imagined raising her arms, stomping her feet and roaring at them; she frowned to keep herself from chuckling. The tall photo-burner stepped forward; she was nearly the same height as Olivia. “Hello,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Nora.”

  Olivia kept her hands clasped behind her back and stepped past Nora to the edge of the fire. “This is a no-fire zone,” she said, turning back to the women. “You need to put this out. Now.”

  The women stood silent, looking at each other. One of the puffy women whispered to Nora, who then smiled at Olivia. “We are so sorry,“ she said. “We’re almost done with our ceremony, then we’ll make sure it’s thoroughly extinguished.” All the women smiled and nodded like a set of middle-aged bobblehead dolls.

  “That fire needs to go out now.” Olivia spun around and walked quickly back toward the road. “Bye!” the women called after her. “Thank you.”

  Some people, she thought, shaking her head. They could burn down the state with that measly fire. She thought of the ranger a few summers ago who started a huge wildfire when she burned some old love letters—hundreds of thousands of acres were destroyed. That ranger later killed herself.

  At the truck, she pulled a bucket out of the back and filled it with water from the faucet near the bathroom. Duane was collecting a fee about two sites down. She marched the bucket back to the meadow and doused the fire as the ladies gasped. One yelled “hey!” Olivia watched the sodden smoke rise. Then she picked up a nearby stick, squatted and stirred the mucky ashes. Satisfied, she stood and turned around to see the coven staring at her in various stages of hurt. Once again, Nora stepped up to Olivia. This time not so friendly.

  “Look,” Nora said, her voice low and trembling with anger. “I really respect you as a woman and I respect you as an African American—”

  “Ma’am,” Olivia interrupted. “I just want you to respect the rules of the U.S. Forest service.” She picked up the bucket and left them there.

  “You just don’t get it,” Nora spat after her.

  They are so stupid, Olivia thought as she walked back to the truck. She understood they were looking for something, but there was a different kind of magic there that they obviously couldn’t see.

  City people were always sniffing around the woods for something mystical; Olivia had been a clueless city dweller herself until the summer before her sophomore year in high school. She and a group from her church had attended a two-week Outward Bound program deep in the Siskiyous. It was weird. The other kids were nervous and sulky but Olivia, for the first time in her young life, felt completely at ease. It was as if the smell of the woods was nitrous oxide—it made her inexplicably happy. The next seven years of education were just an extended pathway that would eventually return her to that place that could still her anxiety and douse her worries.

  Although Portland was just over an hour away, she went back only occasionally to see her relatives, get a decent haircut or attend a decent church service. She felt like a stranger in her hometown anymore. She often felt like a stranger in whitebread Woodhill too, but at least she had a job that got her out into the woods.

  Back at the truck, Duane was stowing the cleaning caddy. She threw the bucket in next to it. “Let’s take a break,” Olivia said, grabbing her thermos and cookies from the truck cab.

  “No argument here,” Duane replied, and settled with a sigh in the passenge
r’s seat. Olivia walked back through the meadow, nodding at the huddle of glaring women, then entered the woods at the Lost Mountain trailhead. It was a well-traveled path—especially in August—that looped 12 miles around the mountain crest, past a waterfall, old growth groves and several viewpoints offering astounding vistas of the valley to the east and the ocean to the west. Most people never hiked up that far. Olivia walked in a few hundred yards and sat on a flat log that she liked. She opened her thermos and poured a cup. She took great care in grinding the beans and brewing her coffee, unlike Duane who always brought the swill from Mack’s Diner. She opened the container of cookies and took one out.

  Sitting there, with the aroma of strong coffee and the feel of her butter cookie between her fingers, a stand of massive cedars looming above her, soft dry moss beneath her ass, Olivia felt an overwhelming sense of contentment. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and melted into the log. She exhaled and felt the tension drain from her upper back. Summer was almost over.

  A few yards away, a branch snapped. Olivia thought squirrel or deer or bird, but the image of a bigfoot flashed through her mind. She looked toward the sound, but saw nothing. Blowing on her coffee, she watched a flicker drill into a Doug fir. Soon, the fall fruit would be in season and she could bake some apple cookies. She half-turned again toward the noise behind her, then considered trying some pumpkin cookies with lots of ginger—that could be tasty.

  But soon the strange sound became so loud, she set her cup on the log and stood up to investigate. Dried needles crunched beneath her boots, and the pungent odor of skunk cabbage wafted up. She stepped through the ferns, past a huge salal bush. The noise was so loud, Olivia was pretty sure it was a person, maybe a brush picker or mushroom gatherer. She hoped it was someone benign; the only things in the woods that frightened her were people. Walking around a huge, hollow cedar snag, she saw a pair of bare feet sticking out of the rotted-out stump. She had seen snags as big as Volkswagens that had neat little rooms inside, like where a Keebler elf would live. They were always the first places they searched when a child went missing.

  The feet were filthy, hard and black on the soles. “Hello,“ Olivia said, “You want to come out of there?” When she didn’t get an answer, she nudged a foot with her boot toe.

  The person slowly backed out of the snag. Olivia was expecting either a kid or a deranged hermit, so she was startled to see a young woman, maybe 20, with long tangled brown hair—the bottom half bleached blonde. She wore a faded blue sweatshirt and cutoffs. Her pretty face was streaked with dirt and tears, and she sneered at Olivia who regarded her silently, then realized she was the girl who had been hanging out at the campground all summer. A tweaker. Olivia had wanted to call the state cops on her long ago, first when the girl gave her stringy boyfriend a blow job right in the middle of the meadow, and then a month later after a camper caught her ripping off his ice-chest. But Duane always cut the poor guttersnipe a break because she was the daughter of one of his high school buddies. Her name was Lacey something.

  They stared at each other for a moment. Then Olivia looked past the girl and into the snag. There was a backpack and a grimy blanket—a magazine picture of Johnny Depp as a pirate stuck up on the wood wall. Oh my lord, she thought, she’s living in there. She looked back at Lacey, who was chewing her bottom lip. “Where’s that guy you hang out with?” Olivia asked.

  Lacey shrugged.

  Olivia put her hands on her hips, considering what to do. Then she noticed, beneath the dirt on the girl’s cheek, a raging blue and green bruise. And there was an infected-looking bald spot next to her right temple. Olivia stared into her jumpy eyes. The strange thing was, there was something about her that reminded Olivia of herself: like if she were a teenaged tweaker, she’d be doing the exact same thing. Burrowing in a stump in the woods made sense to her because it is obviously the safest place to be. Living in an old tree snag might be pretty wonderful. Olivia shook her head slowly. She should turn the girl in, help her get into a program. But more likely the girl would end up in county lockup for a few days, put on a year-long waiting list for rehab, then bounced right back out on the street with a bad case of jailcrabs. There was nothing Olivia could do for her, yet there was something that touched her. Something that poked at her under-used heart. The girl was headed for prison or death. Why not let her commune with nature a while longer? She stared at her, thinking.

  “What?” the girl finally demanded. Her eyes were red-rimmed and runny, yet still defiant.

  “Nothing,” said Olivia, handing Lacey the precious Hazelnut Butterdrop that was still in her hand. “Nothing,” she repeated, walking away.