Dale should be able to cut straight across his fields to the high ground where the horses are grazing, but with the lower pastures still flooded he has to drive around, out the dirt snake to the Dismal Road, then right, keeping his back to the mountain. A half mile south he veers off, crashing through a wall of brush, dashboard rattling over roots and fallen limbs, following yesterday\u2019s two-track. Saplings buckle under the blade of the snowplow mounted to the truck\u2019s front receiver hitch; one snaps, a loud pop. He juices the engine, extra fuel injecting into the line. There isn\u2019t a beat-to-shit truck within thirty miles whose distributor Dale hasn\u2019t checked for looseness, whose cylinder heads he hasn\u2019t lifted off to measure bore diameter. He\u2019s made a living, built a life, all based on a simple faith in the perfectibility of machines. But after what they\u2019ve been through, a whiff of diesel through the vent is enough to make him wonder. Maybe we would all be better off just riding horses.<\/p>\n
Broad leaves of devil\u2019s club and cow parsnip scrub the windows, undergrowth so dense he doesn\u2019t even see the moose, a lumbering, loose-skinned bull, until it steps in front of him. He slams the brakes, steering wheel catching him hard in the sternum. He coughs, thumps himself in the chest. The moose stares, annoyed, dopey mug winged by antlers. <\/p>\n
Move it, buck-O.<\/p>\n
Dale judders up the rise to the clearing above the horses. From up here, it\u2019s a straight shot down-valley to the homestead, the half-dug horse grave, hayfields a twenty-acre lake. The cabin peeks out at the edge of the woods, swallowed to the top step in brown floodwater. He\u2019d never admit it to Elaine, but part of him wonders if they shouldn\u2019t tear the damn thing down. <\/p>\n
He drags the back of his hand across his mouth, as though he has only to speak his sons\u2019 names and they\u2019ll appear at the cabin door\u2014Gabe a loose-limbed fifteen, fifteen years gone, Ben husky and bearded, what Dale\u2019s own father would\u2019ve called a big bear of a guy. Ben\u2019s bounced around the Lower 48\u2014timber, hotshotting, construction\u2014but he\u2019s got a 9-to-5 in Phoenix now, heat so dry your knuckles crack and bleed, last place on earth to wear a beard. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s past dinnertime, but with the midnight sun it might as well be eight in the morning. Light plays across the muddy shallows over the pasture, breeze riffling the greasy, iridescent skin. Flocks of redwing blackbirds dip and swoop, feasting on mosquitoes. In June, before the real trouble started, Dale dug a trench around the low-lying outbuildings, cabin included, and lipped it with a berm. Lucky they\u2019ve always dug outhouse pits on high ground. Twice the river came over its banks, covering the lower pasture like a rice paddy\u2014this is what makes riverland valuable\u2014and twice his barricades held. If those greedy SOBs had taken half the precautions he had, closed the valves, shut off the tap, the whole situation might have stayed plain bad instead of tipping the scale to worse. <\/p>\n
He looks out at the thickets of second-growth spruce and poplar sprouted from the old slash piles, islands in the standing water. Black beads ring the trunks at the highwater mark.<\/p>\n
When the water finally recedes, Dale will have to heave his full weight against the cabin door to show the insurance men the damage. For now, he\u2019s tacked up a mental curtain, cordoned off this eventuality in his mind. He hasn\u2019t set foot in the cabin since Ben left, can\u2019t stomach the idea of ramming until he overcomes the door\u2019s resistance, portly, red-faced men pressing in behind him, giving the place a perfunctory once-over, ignoring the logs the boys spent months scouting, felling, trimming, the equally-distanced struts, the loft with its mountain view. Men who never built so much as a damn breadbox dismissing the place: rustic, amateur, shack. Dale elbows out of the truck. Even at this distance, the sick lingering sweetness of crude drifts up from the floodwaters. They say the particles have dissipated, but Dale still tastes the stuff in the air. <\/p>\n
He yanks a bale from the truck-bed, twine cutting into his fingers. For the first time in twenty-five years, Dale had to shell out for hay at the same outfit where he normally sells his surplus. Ninety percent of his pasture is underwater, the dry spot half dying, half growing. Still, it bothered him to pull his truck under the loft and wait, a sitting duck, as bales were tossed down, a dull thunk, air churning with hay dust.<\/p>\n
He grabs the second bale. Evenly weighted, he pushes down through the brush toward the four white-faced horses staring over the temporary fence, a shabby council. He sidesteps, palm still sore from yesterday\u2019s devil\u2019s club. Elaine had come along to help, but once they got to the clearing she crossed her arms, one hand worrying a loose sweater thread, resisting the pull of the cabin across the dark lake\u2014invisible from the house. A week ago that lake was twenty acres of top-notch hay, enough to get them through the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou coming?\u201d Dale had asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cSquiters\u2019ll eat me alive,\u201d Elaine said, voice dulled by the window glass, as though traveling through a tin can along a string twenty years long, from an era of squiters<\/em> and jimmyjams, meeses<\/em> and geeses<\/em>.<\/p>\n Dale had hauled the hose down the hill alone, stuffed one end inside the trough, then hiked back up to plunge the remaining end into the tank in the truck-bed, siphoning until the trough was filled. The hose snagged on a branch when he was reeling it in and he slid, thorns stitching across his palm. At home, Elaine tweezed them out, doused flaps of skin with peroxide\u2014just remembering makes him draw a hiss of air through his teeth. A little fear is healthy; that\u2019s something we\u2019re supposed to teach our kids.<\/p>\n He drops the bales, pops the twine with his pocketknife and tosses sheaves over the fence, grass cropped to coarse brown stubble. Earp sidles up to the fence, more dog than horse\u2014Ben spoiled him, snuck him carrots from the winter bins.<\/p>\n Cool it, Dogfood. <\/p>\n Dale runs a palm along the horse\u2019s belly, living machinery of muscle and gut, smacks his rump. Earp nudges, wanting more. <\/p>\n Knock it off, you big whore. <\/p>\n \tThe horses\u2019 tails swish, flicking mosquitoes. The insurance man sent out to do the initial assessment had sworn himself hoarse, face smeared with a pale layer of Deet.<\/p>\n \t\u201cThey\u2019re the state bird,\u201d Dale had joked, taking pride in the swarming cloud when the man bent to retrieve his clipboard.<\/p>\n \tDale had bailed the water out of the horse grave with a bucket that morning and set two slow fires at the bottom to thaw the permafrost. The smoke was keeping the bugs down, but it seemed a bad time to mention this to the man, who slapped the back of his shirt, then retreated to his rented sedan for his jacket. <\/p>\n \tMosquitoes play favorites, something to do with pH. Dale and Gabe could always trudge across the buggiest swamps, while Ben and Elaine spun and swatted and later swabbed pink welts with Calamine.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could barbecue a damn elephant in that pit,\u201d the insurance man had said. He\u2019d been up to Montana after elk and was interested in caribou. Dale humored him, though he\u2019d never shot anything but hogs, and even that filled him with remorse. If the horses ever got sick, he\u2019d have to call Eddie. <\/p>\n \t\u201cNothing like pit,\u201d the man had said. \u201cMeat melts right off the bone.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cHe\u2019s digging a swimming pool,\u201d he\u2019d heard Elaine tell Ben on the phone. She\u2019s never been good with bad news\u2014always twists away with a joke. Dale got pretty winded bailing the water out and when he hauled himself up, he\u2019d found her standing there. <\/p>\n \t\u201cHow\u2019d your husband die? Heart attack, digging a grave for a horse.\u201d She handed him a towel to wipe his face. \u201cWhat happened to the horse? Nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n \tThe horses chew the store-bought hay, twisting to nip at their flanks. Sonny and Cher are both swell-gutted and swaybacked, chestnut faces bearded white. Dale bartered an engine rebuild for the two geldings, Wyatt and Earp\u2014the boys just little then, barely tall enough to ride. All four are about ready for the glue factory.<\/p>\n \tEarp snorts. Don\u2019t look so hot yourself, Old Man. <\/p>\n \tIt was Earp who had the colic last winter, gut ballooned. Dale set a fire to thaw the ground and started digging\u2014it gave him something to do. He wanted Elaine to call Ben\u2014Earp was his, he had a right to know. Wait and see, she said. In the end he pulled through, but Dale could tell it shook Elaine, the thought of having to call with news like that when the thread they held was already stretched so thin, when, any day, Ben might slip away for good. <\/p>\n Dale rubs the warm velvet between Earp\u2019s steamy nostrils, feels a tug of affection\u2014a way to do something for Ben. It\u2019s not a lot, but he\u2019ll take it. Earp noses his palm, snuffling. <\/p>\n \u201cWe work to feed them, but the horses are retired,\u201d Elaine likes to tell people. <\/p>\n Dale started drawing social security in April\u2014held out to sixty-eight for the higher payments. There\u2019s a dugout around back of his shop with two wooden tracks extended over it, shored up with posts, enough space to walk around underneath a chassis. Thirty years ago it was a temporary innovation\u2014he\u2019d put in a lift, eventually. Won\u2019t be inching another truck out onto these tracks anytime soon. Who knows how steady the pilings will be once the mud dries.<\/p>\n Water can really fuck you over, the cashier had said, while Dale waited for his hay.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In those three weeks of rain, Dale had surveyed his fields, dug extra drainage, rain sluicing off his yellow slicker. Thirty-three years, nearly half a life in the Interior; he\u2019d never seen this. Fill a glass faster than you could pour one. And then, like someone turned off a spigot, it stopped. Suddenly, it was quiet: the tack-tack<\/em> of a woodpecker, blackbirds perched along the barbed wire like musical notes, lifting off and settling farther down with the shuffle of turning pages. He slogged through standing water, shoveled a channel through sucking mud toward the frothy churn of river, water pouring off the pasture like water from a pitcher. A pleasant ache spread through his arms. He would finish the ditch, make himself a tuna sandwich. <\/p>\n He felt it first, a quivering in the air. A train, that was his first thought, not a track for fifty miles. It roared through the woods, surge carrying whole tree trunks, tore around the bend, so loud he felt the vibration in his chest. He sprinted for high ground, reaching the porch just in time to watch the eroded north bank collapse, wrenching the half-buried pipeline free. Waves washed over the fields, a brown tide.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tDismal was more settlement than town, sixty families, two-fisted country when Dale and Elaine first arrived from Minneapolis: midwesterners, not scared of a little winter. They\u2019d lived high on the hog, burning through savings, cashing in retirement accounts\u2014it seemed impossible they\u2019d ever reach the age they are now. They wired the house, added the sunroom, installed a phone line (now the one tenuous link tethering them to Ben\u2014it sags, goes slack for weeks, a single ring enough to snap it taut). Heritage families kept hogs, chickens, goats\u2014meat and milk\u2014animals that served a purpose, but Elaine wanted a horse. They had to drive down to Juneau to find one for sale. Once they got there, the woman insisted on selling the pair.<\/p>\n \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t buy just one shoe, would you?\u201d she asked Dale, as though instructing a child, protecting him from his own foolishness.<\/p>\n \t Sometimes, when the horses came up alongside each other, Dale would try to lift Elaine\u2019s mosquito veil, nearly toppling them both. <\/p>\n \t\u201cYou\u2019ll get me all bit,\u201d she\u2019d say moodily, rearranging the netting, corner of her mouth twitching, holding off a smile.<\/p>\n \tGabe would have been thirty this year, about the age they were when they packed everything into Elaine\u2019s \u201868 Volvo, sleeping by the side of the road or, when it rained or they\u2019d seen a bear or were too tired to set up the tent, sitting straight up in their seats. Their first date\u2014pizza\u2014she tapped her foot the whole time, impatient for it to be over. He worried she would stand up and leave, but she laughed open-mouthed, and her laughter buoyed him, filled his chest with air. She came home from teaching one afternoon, laden with papers to grade: let\u2019s move to Alaska. If he\u2019d refused, she would have gone without him.<\/p>\n \tHe takes a last look at the horses, out in the open\u2014enough berries ripe on the south-facing slopes to keep the bears occupied. The trough is low again. Have to haul the tank out in the morning. <\/p>\n \tBack on the road, Dale looks over the fringe of treetops toward McKinley, fogged in, though earlier the mountain was out, a craggy white iceberg. Melt gets worse every year. Even before the rain, the river had been swollen. Dale had dug trenches until one and two in the morning, midnight sun turning the grass hay silver, casting a pale, dusky light over the shop and barn, the outhouse with the crescent moon in the door. Ben had been scared of the dark, but Gabe, Gabe hadn\u2019t been scared of anything. <\/p>\n \tDale sits on the front step and shucks off his waders. With twenty-plus hours of daylight, Elaine\u2019s sweet peas grow an inch a day. He can almost watch new tendrils unfurl through the latticework. He heaves open the insulated door, six inches thick. <\/p>\n \t\u201cHorses are fed.\u201d <\/p>\n \tElaine has a quilt spread piecemeal over two card tables in the sunroom\u2014she spends the summer out here. Roxy used to snooze at her feet. How they\u2019d grieved that dog, who\u2019d sniffed and licked and chased their boys, who remembered their smell, the sound of their voices slinging a ball back and forth. Dale tried explaining this to a neighbor as they dug a new outhouse pit, but the man just leaned on his shovel until Dale trailed off, let the shuff of dirt fill the silence. Ben went quiet on the phone when Dale told him Elaine had made the call–the phone was her domain–but bad news was his job. He\u2019d gone back and forth about it, considered allowing the old lab to age\u2014fifteen, twenty, twenty-five\u2014to live forever in his son\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n \t\u201cYou still there?\u201d Dale had asked. He felt clumsy, wanting to console.<\/p>\n \t\u201cStill here,\u201d Ben said. <\/p>\n \tJanuary, eight or nine years ago now. He\u2019d stored Roxy\u2019s body in the shed. He\u2019d thought about digging a grave for her that summer, knowing she wouldn\u2019t last the winter, but when he mentioned it to Elaine she tsked, rose from her chair. All winter, whenever he\u2019d gone to the shed, the parcel had been there, wrapped in plastic. Once the thaw came, he got down almost two feet before he hit permafrost, deeper every year. So when Earp had his colic, Dale didn\u2019t hesitate. He went out in the morning, set the fire, started digging; he was too big to store in the shed.<\/p>\n \tDale watches Elaine stitch. He doesn\u2019t like to think of her holed up here when she retires. They\u2019d talked about moving down to Anchorage years ago, when the boys were in high school. More opportunity. But Anchorage was expensive. They\u2019d have to sell the house, the horses. Worst of all, they\u2019d lose this hermetic closeness, wouldn\u2019t be a family in the same way. When the boys were young, he\u2019d taken them to the lagoon to watch flocks of seagulls fend off eagles whenever they got down to Anchorage on a supply run. The eagles preyed on seagull chicks, the smaller birds hurling themselves against the predator, folding over each other in the air like schools of fish. The boys squeezed Dale\u2019s hands, watching.<\/p>\n \tHe worked so hard to hold the river back, to hold onto their life here beside it; maybe it\u2019s time. Another year or two, when Elaine retires: Idaho, Wyoming. They could have land. Ben\u2019s more or less settled with Amie. Elaine still tightens her nostrils at the mention of her\u2014all those tattoos\u2014but she\u2019s a nice girl, pretty in a weathered, ropy way, on her own with those two little girls.<\/p>\n \tBut who\u2019ll buy the place now, a stone\u2019s throw from a busted pipeline?<\/p>\n \t\u201cHave your own little corner of paradise here,\u201d the insurance man had said, coins of sunlight dappling through the trees. <\/p>\n \t\u201cHad,\u201d Dale corrected. <\/p>\n \tOnce, when the boys were young, a surge of runoff swept away a section of riverbank, leaving the pipe exposed. Gabe got the idea to follow it to California. He was thirteen months younger, but had the certainty of the firstborn. Ben trotted behind, trying not to get his feet wet. A quarter-mile downstream, the pipeline burrowed back under the bank. Gabe had a hangdog look, returning, but Ben beamed: peanut butter-honey sandwiches, warm milk, and nobody could accuse him of wimping out.<\/p>\n Elaine resigned from the Dismal School when Ben got to kindergarten\u2014didn\u2019t want to teach her own kids. She took a state job flying to remote villages, leading public health workshops\u2014prenatal vitamins, preventive care. Dale stayed with the boys, patched up trucks neighbors towed over. A man down the road traded transmission work for the loan of his tractor; Dale figured they could save on feed by putting up their own hay. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tThe level had come up like water filling a pot. A vertical foot from the door of his shop, then six inches, four. Dale stayed calm, carrying up what he could, laying it crosswise over the rafters. He was filling last-ditch sandbags in the dusky half-sun, Elaine inside, glued to the weather radio, when the USGS guys came up the driveway in a government pickup, headlights throwing ferns into relief. Both men had mustaches, which made the evac order seem like a prank. They talked to him through the truck window, drove off to warn others. By the time Elaine filled grocery bags with photos\u2014whatever she could grab off the walls\u2014the stink of leaking oil burned their eyes. Dale snuffed his nose on the back of his hand, expecting blood. Looking back, he has to hand it to those guys, bumping down twisting two-tracks to homesteads four and five miles apart, along a flooding river in the middle of the night, ordering people off their own land, a job that, in another place, would have fallen to a sheriff. Every decade a census taker gets his head blown off by taking I shoot first<\/em> figuratively, but these men didn\u2019t stop to consider; the river was rising and there were people who needed to get out of its way.<\/p>\n \tWhen they got home two days later, Dale walked up the valley to look for the horses. Water had come three-fourths of the way across the pasture. The tall uncut hay had acted like a big brush; tar clung to the stalks, standing water filmed with oily scum. Dale cut through the woods, following hoofprints until he found Sonny, the other three hunkering nearby, soaked to the skin. He led them to higher ground and tied them, not worried about contamination yet, just wanting to be able to find them again. Elaine was sitting at the table with the phone to her ear, so still his heart skipped\u2014Ben?<\/p>\n \t\u201cFind them?\u201d she\u2019d asked. He nodded. She switched the phone to her other ear. \u201cPeople must die on hold to these claims people.\u201d He opened one fist, pumping blood to his fingertips. <\/p>\n If the phone rang while Elaine was out, he waited until the machine picked up\u2014a dead starter, a potluck invite\u2014ready to pluck Ben from the cradle.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The kid who was driving the night Gabe died lives down in Wasilla now: married, with a son of his own. Besides a split in one eyebrow, he bears no physical traces: no limp, not even the bulge of a broken nose. The eyebrow might as well be a healed-over piercing. Dale saw him in town not long ago. Drove in for a couple of spark plugs, just as the rains were starting. Dale always makes a point to shake his hand, though he still sees the fifteen-year-old kid. The watery light of the fire must have flickered across his and Gabe\u2019s faces as they waited for the engine to warm up, both flushed with the evaporating heat of the bonfire, breath fogging the windshield, a dozen beers between them. The school year was over\u2014black ice still glassed the dips in the road. Just two drunk kids borrowing a Jeep. When Dale drove out to the wreck later, the scent of burnt metal was still sharp with gasoline. <\/p>\n \t\tBen left the year after the accident; he\u2019s never come home, never visited. At least, down there, he\u2019ll never run into this man\u2014the last person to hear Gabe\u2019s voice, to breathe the same close air. <\/p>\n \u201cRaining pretty good out by you?\u201d the man asked, his little son regarding Dale, big brown eyes.<\/p>\n As much as he wanted to crush the man\u2019s hand\u2014a desire that\u2019s only grown stronger over the years\u2014those eyes made him loosen his grip.<\/p>\n \t Every fall, before the snows, Dale sweeps twigs off the cabin\u2019s porch, replaces worn-down shingles, patches chinks. He performs the repairs from the outside, hauls the ladder back to the barn. As if, any day, Gabe might jerk open the insulated door and step out into the world again. <\/p>\n Dale and Elaine have gone to visit Ben, the last time two years ago, after he moved in with Amie. <\/p>\n \u201cCabin\u2019s waiting,\u201d Dale told him, and his son grimaced, a pang Dale had grown so used to he\u2019d forgotten it until he saw it reflected on Ben\u2019s face.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tHome with the boys, he dropped hard blue pebbles of frozen blueberries into pancakes, knocked the snow off their skis. Some of their neighbors used dog teams, but Dale and the boys got into town fine on skis, heaping supplies on a plastic sled. Elaine was off charting infant weights, hammocking babies in a cloth sack hooked to a scale you held up off the ground to get a reading. When Gabe died, she waited two years, until after Gabe would have graduated high school, then quit\u2014too old for the rattletrap bush planes, she said\u2014and went back to teaching, as if this had been her plan all along, as if Gabe had simply followed Ben to Fairbanks. Except, of course, Ben, an only child for the first time in seventeen years, hadn\u2019t gone to Fairbanks, hadn\u2019t left for college at all. When they were little, the boys would stare each other awake, catapult out of bed, but Gabe had taken all that shared momentum with him, hurtling through the Jeep\u2019s windshield alone. Ben loafed. Elaine hounded him: was he going to let his life stop here? They\u2019d never raised a hand against their boys. Now she seemed always on the verge of striking him.<\/p>\n \tSometimes still, walking out to his shop, the loss hits Dale in the chest. He doubles over, grips his knees, getting his breath. There are other things: twisting to grab the shoulder belt, his mind on a shim or a coil, the click of the buckle slicing him open.<\/p>\n \tThe summer before he died, Gabe drafted Ben into cabin-building. Together, they combed gravel bars along the river for cottonwoods tumored with burls to fell and varnish for porch pillars. When it was finished, they moved out to it. They still came up to the house for meals, but they lived all that winter there, planning to build a second one\u2014Ben\u2019s\u2014once the ground thawed enough to dig the footings. <\/p>\n \tDale used to sit by the window at night, cold air coming off the glass, and long for his boys, less than half a mile from the house. They were teenagers\u2014they wanted their own lives. He\u2019d linger near the outhouse, hoping to run into them, Gabe lanky and fresh-faced, exhilarated by the stinging air, but Ben always looked cold, ashamed that he longed for the warmth and comfort of the house. He has Elaine\u2019s wide, open face, which shows emotions plainly.<\/p>\n \tOne winter, when the boys were young, Elaine out in the Aleutians on a fly-in, a rabbit fell down the outhouse pit. There\u2019d been a lynx in the yard that year; it might have chased it in. In the early afternoon darkness, outhouse seat searing, frigid air wafting up from the hole, completely odorless, Ben heard it scurrying, frantic, clawing the winter stalagturd solidified atop the block of frozen waste. He came shouting, tripping down the cellar stairs to dig the garden carrots he hoarded from the bin. Dale fashioned a harness to a margarine container that could be filled with water, lowered, then hauled back up by a string tied to the toilet tissue dispenser.<\/p>\n \tBetween keeping the horses fed and the stove stoked, it took Dale two days to get around to rigging a net to a mop handle. For two days, Ben was in constant motion, squeezing out frozen cylinders of margarine container ice, reanimating bendable carrots, snow crunching under his boots, only his head visible over the tunneled path. Quiet, plodding, good-hearted Ben finally with a project of his own. Adding wood to the stove, hearing Ben knock his boots against the front of the house, shove open the door, news of the rabbit bursting in on a blast of cold air, Dale\u2019s chest inflated with love for his sons, for this house and their life in it.<\/p>\n \tDale raised the rabbit in the net. The boys scrambled after him, up the snowbank until they stood looking out on glittering snowfields, crusted with ice, drifts washed up against the black comb of forest, the pale glow of moonlight. Dale lowered the net, the rabbit\u2019s fur a perfect camouflage of white. For a moment it stood still, nose twitching. Then it bounded. Gabe shot after it. Dale heard the swish of Ben\u2019s jacket sleeve rubbing his own\u2014rooting for Gabe, for the rabbit, until it catapulted into the trees. Ben released the held breath Dale had felt tightening his own chest.\t<\/p>\n \tThe boys trudged up the tunneled snow-path toward the house, exhaling purposefully, breathing white shapes into the dark, naming them: rabbit, fox, eagle, lynx. Heads thrown back, they watched their creations rise, puffs of living smoke.<\/p>\n \tIt\u2019s terrible to admit, but Dale is grateful if they had to lose one, it was Gabe. Ben had to be prodded: go sled with your brother, jump, it\u2019s not cold once you\u2019re in<\/em>. Gabe threw himself headlong\u2014football, guitar, climbing\u2014would have whooped when the Jeep fishtailed, fearless. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tThe pasture drains, an oily muck sucking at Dale\u2019s waders as he collects rotting fish in a bucket, adjusting the kerchief over his nose and mouth, stopping only once, at the sound of the phone ringing. Not Ben, it turns out. Only the neighborhood phone tree, a reminder for the community meeting.<\/p>\n \tDale hasn\u2019t set foot inside the schoolhouse in a decade. Elaine greets neighbors, people whose kids and grandkids she\u2019s taught right here in this room, with its green chalkboard and cast iron stove. She lays hands on forearms, asks after sons who\u2019ve followed girls down to Sitka. It always surprises him, her public persona unchanged, how she wades smiling and energetic into large gatherings, Elaine as he\u2019d first known her. <\/p>\n She works her way through the rows of chairs\u2014this is, after all, her classroom\u2014chooses seats near the front. The EPA guy sits with the oilmen at her desk, on the raised platform. There\u2019s an Ag boy too\u2014the only one Dale recognizes\u2014plus a camera crew from Anchorage Channel 8.<\/p>\n \tThe room smells dank and musty from being shut up all summer, platform coated in a fine layer of chalk dust, mites swirling in the beams streaming through the windowpanes. Homesteaders from twenty miles in all directions pack the room. Dale feels them shifting, straining to understand what\u2019s being said.<\/p>\n \t The air is fine. They tested it. It smelled bad for a couple days, now it\u2019s clean. The EPA will come around to collect samples\u2014soil and water. A month or two before they get the results.<\/p>\n \tThe main company man is dressed in a smug white turtleneck, a jacket with leather elbow patches, the kind of smooth-talking huckster who would name a town Eden, Sweetwater, Paradise Glen.<\/p>\n \t\u201cI\u2019m not here to feed you a load of bullcrap,\u201d he says, overdoing the twang. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a problem. We\u2019ll fix it. Ask the Yellowstone River folks down in Montana. Their land\u2019s back to normal. Hell, some of them made good money off that deal.\u201d<\/p>\n \tA few chuckles, muttering. <\/p>\n \tThe man pushes up his jacket sleeves, pleased, figuring he\u2019s won the room over. To this man standing on the platform, and the others, seated at the old desk Dale sanded and refinished, she must look harmless: a silver-haired matron, face pink with the heat of all these bodies. They don\u2019t understand why the room stills when she raises her hand, how, behind her, everyone sits up straighter. \t<\/p>\n \tThe man smiles, ready to explain, to indulge.<\/p>\n \t\u201cWhat about depth of cover?\u201d she asks. \u201cThat pipeline wasn\u2019t buried out by us. Isn\u2019t that the law?\u201d <\/p>\n \tHe nods sympathetically, her accusation registering in the tightening of his jaw.<\/p>\n \t\u201cYeah,\u201d someone says.<\/p>\n \t\u201cHow come some of my grass is dying and some\u2019s growing?\u201d a voice calls from the back.<\/p>\n \t\u201cCan we use it next year, if it comes back?\u201d\t<\/p>\n \t\u201cHow much oil is too much oil on my property? Huh?\u201d <\/p>\n \tDale turns to see who\u2019s asking, but Elaine stares straight ahead, as if she sees them reflected in the man\u2019s eyes, though of course she simply knows everyone in the room by their voices. <\/p>\n \t\u201cWhere the hell were you guys before<\/em> this happened?\u201d<\/p>\n \tA half dozen at a time, a volley. Dale sees the man\u2019s Adam\u2019s apple bobbing above the line of his turtleneck.<\/p>\n \tWhen they get home, the light on the answering machine is blinking. Ben wants to know about the spill, if it\u2019s near them. It was on the news. Just hearing his voice gives Dale\u2019s heart a jolt, makes him want to lunge for the receiver. He waits through dinner, dishes, waits for Elaine to call back\u2014her territory\u2014he\u2019s not allowed to rush her. Finally, he gives in: \u201cAren\u2019t you going to call him?\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cPretty late,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n \t\u201cNot that late.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cMight wake the girls.\u201d <\/p>\n \tThey know the girls have different fathers, but Ben\u2019s role in their lives remains unclear\u2014they\u2019re not sure whether to begin clearing a shelf in their emotional pantries, or just wait and see how it goes.<\/p>\n \t\u201cI\u2019ll call tomorrow,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tWhen Gabe wasn\u2019t home in the morning, Elaine flipped ahead through the calendar, like she\u2019d marked the date of his return. She was scheduled for a fly-in. <\/p>\n \t\u201cCall you tonight if I can,\u201d she said, leaving the pebble of worry to roll around in Dale\u2019s shoe. It took her two days to get back. <\/p>\n \tThey put the campershell on, took Gabe\u2019s body to Anchorage to be cremated. Ben drove, Elaine in the passenger seat, Dale in back, music. It almost felt like a trip. <\/p>\n \t\u201cRemember when he cut off that girl\u2019s pony tail?\u201d Ben asked.<\/p>\n \t\u201cPig tail,\u201d Elaine corrected. \u201cMelanie Hood\u2019s little sister.\u201d She laughed. <\/p>\n \tDale tried to listen, but his mind wandered. He ran his thumb across Gabe\u2019s cold forehead, skin pale yellow-green. Besides that, he didn\u2019t look bad. There was a dust of salt under his eyes. It was those minutes Dale couldn\u2019t allow himself to imagine\u2014where had he been while those tears ran down his son\u2019s face? Had he felt any inkling? Had he looked up from brushing his teeth, heard a noise, felt the tug of an invisible string?<\/p>\n \tDale had answered the phone that morning, back when he still answered the phone\u2014Elaine gone, Ben out feeding the horses. He pulled his boots on and ran, panicked, as though something might happen to his older son too, before he reached him.<\/p>\n \t\u201cWhat?\u201d Ben asked, annoyed, voice still gravelly with sleep. Dale began to weep. \u201cWhere\u2019s mom?\u201d Ben asked, uncertain, thinking of the tin-can bush planes. He and Elaine had bickered before she left and Ben hadn\u2019t said goodbye. <\/p>\n \t\u201cWhat?\u201d Ben asked when he told him. \u201cWhat?\u201d <\/p>\n \tBen lived in Gabe\u2019s cabin that summer. Looking back, Dale wonders why they didn\u2019t insist he stay in the house. When the boys were young, Elaine blamed Dale for letting Ben get tubby, said he would be teased\u2014she\u2019d been heavy as a girl. Sure, he was big-boned, felt things a little too deeply, but he could take care of himself. It gave Dale pleasure to see Ben eat. Flipping pancakes at the stove, boys talking at the table behind him; he wished he\u2019d recorded those mornings, wished he could play back the cassette.<\/p>\n \tIn Phoenix, Dale had been surprised at his son\u2019s bulk, shooting hoops in the driveway with those little girls. Dale had tried playing, just to be close. Ben mopped sweat from his forehead, bent to catch his breath, trying in his own way to bond with these girls, abandoned by their fathers, skeptical of men, and of their mother\u2019s boyfriends especially. Dale saw he was interfering, pretended to be winded, drifted away, the echo of the ball on concrete reverberating off the front of the house. <\/p>\n \tHe had hoped Elaine and Ben would reconcile, but both seemed to feel they had traveled a sufficient distance already\u2014Elaine by visiting and Ben by allowing it. A few weeks before Ben left for the Lower 48, Dale had come in to find Elaine screaming, kitchen drawers rolled out, cabinet doors flung open. It took a minute to understand what the fight was about: Gabe\u2019s old Red Sox cap, which had lain on top of the fridge all these months, an item Ben had coveted as a boy and which Elaine now accused him of taking.<\/p>\n \t\u201cIt\u2019s not my fault!\u201d Ben yelled.<\/p>\n \t\u201cI know that!\u201d she yelled back. \u201cDon\u2019t you think I know that?\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tThe EPA guys take samples. The oil company sends a woman insurance adjuster to do the final estimate. Dale wonders if they think he\u2019ll be less demanding of a woman, or if he has already shown some weakness, some readiness to compromise. The mosquitoes dive-bomb her until Dale takes pity, lets her in.<\/p>\n \tElaine must have been watching him show her around the property. \u201cIt\u2019s your perfume,\u201d she calls from the sunroom. The adjuster looks up, startled, as though the house itself had spoken.<\/p>\n \t\u201cI\u2019m not saying the water\u2019s bad. We\u2019d just like it tested, for three years or something. Same with the soil,\u201d Dale tells her. \u201cWe want to be able to show a clean bill of health for our property, to tell people it\u2019s okay and have some science behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n \tThe woman writes a check to cover the temporary fencing, the uncut hay\u2014she has special emergency authorization. Later, he examines it, the memo: recovery effort, Dismal, claim 461.<\/p>\n \tHe imagines the office jokes. Dismal, they got that right<\/em>. <\/p>\n \t\u201cWe won\u2019t get two cents for this place,\u201d Elaine says. Not bitter, merely a statement of fact. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tThe barn smells of wet wood, of rot. He\u2019ll have to dig out the floor, haul in fresh dirt. He takes the bucket off the nail, grabs a harness, a lead, and crosses the pasture, walking uphill. Earp greets him. He ties him to a fence post to keep him from nudging. <\/p>\n \tLadies first. <\/p>\n \tHe doesn\u2019t need a harness to groom Cher\u2014she leans into his touch like a lazy housecat. He runs his hands down her legs and she gives up her hoofs. He scrapes out muck and pebbles, a few mashed sticks, pulls the gunk around the frogs of her feet loose with his fingers. He rubs the currycomb in tight hard circles, following the direction of her coat, bringing out the dander and crud, sweat cooling his brow when he stops for breath. He whisks dirt out with the hard brush, soft-brushes bellies, wipes faces with a wet rag. Sonny, then Wyatt, who edges away a step at a time so that when he finally wipes away the last trace of undercoat they\u2019re three yards from where they started. Earp has turned as much as the harness allows, keeping Dale in view. <\/p>\n \tSimmer down, Dogchow. <\/p>\n \tHe leaves him tied, starts with the currycomb, feeling the muscles flex. Earp gives in, a blanket of satisfaction settling over him. Dale\u2019s arms ache\u2014tomorrow he\u2019ll be sore. <\/p>\n \tGetting old, huh Glue? <\/p>\n \tEarp nudges him in the shoulder. He\u2019s halfway down the horse\u2019s midsection with the soft brush when he spots Elaine trekking up through the muddy pasture.<\/p>\n \t\u201cAbout done,\u201d he says, thinking she has come to help. He takes the rag from his back pocket and wipes Earp\u2019s face. The horse nuzzles, blows warm air into Dale\u2019s shirt.<\/p>\n \t\u201cI caught him on his way out,\u201d Elaine says, a lightness in her voice different from the one she puts on in public. \u201cHe\u2019s off today. He\u2019s taking the girls to the pool.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cOh yeah?\u201d Dale wipes his hands. \u201cThink they\u2019ll come up?\u201d They haven\u2019t discussed it, but suddenly Dale pulls the curtain at the back of his mind open, and here it is.<\/p>\n \t\u201cMaybe,\u201d Elaine asks. \u201cFour roundtrips. It\u2019s a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cWe could help them out.\u201d He\u2019s walked to edge now, risked tipping the whole plank. She might clam up, go gruff. Could be weeks before he gets another word out of her.<\/p>\n \t\u201cI offered,\u201d she says. Dale looks up. \u201cThey\u2019ll think about it.\u201d She avoids his eyes. He flops the rag into the bucket of brushes, slap\u2019s Earp\u2019s flank to let him know they\u2019re through. The horse sidles up to Elaine.<\/p>\n \t\u201cSenior citizens,\u201d she says, rubbing Earp\u2019s nose.<\/p>\n \t\u201cAll of us.\u201d <\/p>\n \t\u201cI don\u2019t want to move,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n \tEarp turns his head Dale\u2019s way, snorts.<\/p>\n \t\u201cSay something, you stupid sonofabitch,\u201d Dale translates.<\/p>\n \tElaine laughs. Full-throated, mouth open, a laugh echoing through a long tunnel, piped from a window booth at the Pizza Palace in Duluth, Minnesota.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \tThe company sent a thresher to level the uncut hay yesterday and today, as though to show approval, the mountain is out. The grass around the cabin has been cut back, but the air still smells faintly of crude, residue caked around the foundation. Dale spreads out plastic and scrapes away clumps. By late afternoon he\u2019s gone around the whole cabin, a process not unlike grooming a twelve by twelve-square horse. In the end, the insurance woman had not asked to look inside. He gathers himself, rams the door with his full weight. <\/p>\n \t Inside the air is musty. Dusty cobwebs sag from two-by-fours bracing the underside of the loft. The brown paper lining of the insulation\u2014they never got around to drywall\u2014gives the place a quilted feel. An old propane cookstove, exposed red wires. The girls will have to stay in the main house. But maybe Ben and Amie would like a little privacy, a view.<\/p>\n \tThe ladder up to the loft is just a few two-by-ones nailed flush to the wall frame. Dale\u2019s face warms, fingers cramping until finally, short of breath, nostrils itching with dust, he manages to haul himself up into the loft with the heaviness of a half-drowned man. There\u2019s an old sleeping bag laid out of the floor, sheets of plywood nailed to the undersides of the steep-pitched roof, rubber climbing holds screwed into the plywood for Gabe to practice crimping and dynoing, hanging upside down for hours.<\/p>\n \tDale coughs into his sleeve. It\u2019s warm, sun baking through triangular windows set under the point of the roof. He dodges, searching out the mountain, but there\u2019s no mountain. A red corner of barn, the braced wooden tracks around the back of his shop\u2014is this all the window has ever looked out on? <\/p>\n \tAmie\u2019s girls will run out to the horses when they visit.<\/p>\n \tWhich one\u2019s yours, Ben? <\/p>\n \tThis one. The one who thinks he\u2019s a dog. <\/p>\n \tThe old horse will accept a pat, then turn, faster than Ben can step back, and nip him as hard as possible without breaking the skin. Later he\u2019ll have a bruise whose meaning he can probe with his fingers.<\/p>\n \tIn the morning, the girls will stand at bottom of the cabin steps, nervous to set foot on the porch. They\u2019ll know the cabin belongs to the boy in the photos. They\u2019ll be curious about him, but not enough to risk it.<\/p>\n \tPancakes! Wake up! You guys! Mom! Pancakes! <\/p>\n \tThey\u2019ll lead the way through the tall grass behind the outhouse, Ben and Amie following. <\/p>\n \tThe stinkhouse! <\/p>\n \tThey\u2019ll clothespin their noses, sly, wanting to be chased. <\/p>\n \tThe pee pit! <\/p>\n \tDale presses a palm to the dust-spotted glass, feels the vibration of their shrieks, the giddy terror of being tickled, or held upside down by the ankles, dunked head-first into the rank air of the outhouse hole longer than a held breath\u2014that way children have of living only here, only now.<\/p>\n