Snow Creek(5)

Maybe Sheriff Gray reminded me of someone. Maybe it was the way he talked to me that made me feel his interest wasn’t rote, wasn’t sexual, but of the kind that indicates a true connection. I told him some things about my past, how I’d erased as much of my background as I could.

“You won’t tell on me?” I’d asked.

He’d shaken his head. “Hell no. We’re all running from something or someone.”

It was like that. He found a few things about me on the police database and deleted them. He told me that when I graduated, he’d have a job for me.

“You are right for this job,” he said on my first day. “Uniquely right.”

He reminds me daily—even when he says nothing—that good can come from evil.





Two





My ancient tan Taurus, windows rolled up, suddenly smells of wintergreen. I lean slightly toward Ruth and sniff. Yes, it’s her. It’s not unpleasant, but a little curious. She’s not chewing gum. Eating candy. As we drive from town, up toward the hills behind Snow Creek, she seems to notice that I’m breathing her in.

Not in a weird way, just a curious one.

“Deodorant,” she announces. “I make my own for traveling. Otherwise I don’t wear it. Hope it isn’t too strong.”

“No,” I say. “It’s nice.”

I don’t tell her that it smells a bit like a truck stop urinal cake. Naturally, I think, she makes her own deodorant. Soap too, I bet. Butchers hogs. Has a loom. Ruth is a pioneer woman living in the modern world and she’s making everything herself. She was Etsy before there was such a thing.

“Look for the white-painted post of a mailbox,” she says. “No box. Just the post,” she tells me as I round a curve up a hill. “It’s the first marker to get there.”

The pavement recedes from cracked and tarred asphalt to compacted gravel. I follow the road up an incline and pass a dilapidated cabin draped in a patchwork quilt of brown and blue tarps. Then another with the same leaky roof issue. It rains a lot here in the Pacific Northwest. Some newcomers can’t take the constant dousing from a soft sprinkle to a hard driving deluge.

We call them Californians.

A quarter mile or so further, we pass two mobile homes stacked on top of each other. I do a double take. Ruth does too.

“That’s one way of getting a two-story,” I say.

Ruth, in all her wintergreen glory, smiles. “Some people,” she says.

A young doe appears at the edge of the road. I tap the brake.

“Ida made me a pair of deerskin moccasins when we were kids. Too small for me now, but I still have them. Our father said she was the best hunter of the ten of us.”

“Ten,” I repeat. “That’s a houseful.”

She nods. “Eight boys and two girls. Momma was a glutton for punishment, that’s for sure. She had us girls last and always said she wished we’d been first out of the gate. Would have made things a lot easier for her.”

My mom told me a hundred times that having me before my brother Hayden was a godsend: Now, I have a built-in babysitter.

The clouds start to thicken, and a light rain pelts the windshield. Ruth directs me up another incline and we pass another house; this time, smoke curls from a chimney.

“How much further?” I ask.

“I’m not sure in miles,” she replies. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

I look at my phone. No service. No GPS.

“You’re right,” I say. “I doubt I would have found your sister’s place on my own.”

Ruth stares out the passenger window as the green of fir, spruce and feathery hemlock envelops us.

“That’s the way she and Merritt wanted it. They didn’t want the world to find them because they didn’t want anything to do with its ugly and irredeemable influence.”

“How is it that you could call them?” I ask her. “I don’t have any reception. I expect where we are going it isn’t going to be any better. There isn’t a cell tower for fifty miles.”

“Satellite,” she says. “They’re off the grid though they have internet and phone through satellite hookup. We have the same set-up back home.”

“You called me from the parking lot.”

“I borrowed a friend’s phone.”

“Oh,” I say, thinking that Ruth comes from a lot of rules, yet doesn’t always follow them.

“Get ready to turn up this driveway,” she says, abruptly.

I follow the trajectory of her stare.

I see nothing but a wall of green.

“What driveway?” I ask.

“Slow down. It’s right… here.”

I stop the car. I still don’t see any driveway.

“Right there,” she says, pointing. “See those two firs?”

I do. They have low-hanging branches that sweep against the gravel of the roadway.

“Drive between them.”

Between what? I think.

“There isn’t a road,” I say.

“Yes, Detective. There is. Once you push through, you’ll be on it.”

I’m glad my car is old. I’d get out and check out the wisdom of plowing through, but the rain keeps me inside where it is warm, dry, and very wintergreen.