CHAPTER 17: Journey

Grace and Jackson stood under the awning over the entry to the church and stared into a heavy rain. The parking lot was emptying fast and its gravel was slimy with mud carried in on the big tires of dozens of vehicles.  

Jackson turned up his coat collar, pressed his hat down on his head and ran to the truck in the corner of the lot. He opened the door for Grace who ran behind him. He was helping her into the truck when he suddenly let go, jerked away. “Hey,” she said, then screamed with pain as Jackson’s weight slammed against the door, pinning it against the back of her legs. She heard swearing and cursing, then Jackson’s weight on the door was released. Grace climbed into the cab, pulled the door shut behind her.

She looked out the window. Three men were pummeling Jackson. One fell in the mud and struggled to get back up. Two burly men rushed in, pulled the attacker who fell in the mud away. Jackson dealt with the other two, got a punch in, but the other one slammed him in the ribs.

Grace opened the glove compartment, pulled out Jackson’s handgun, popped in a full magazine and jumped out of the cab into the torrent of rain. She pointed the gun in the air and yelled, “I’ve got a gun! I’ll shoot!” The men ignored her. Grace flipped off the safety and shot twice at the sky. The fight stopped as quickly as it started. The men scattered.

A man stepped forward and handed Jackson his hat. “Thanks, Joe,” said Jackson.

Grace put the safety back on the gun and studied glass shards littering the ground under a broken light on the pole next to Jackson’s truck. Planning, intent, she thought.

“Call the Sheriff? File a report?” asked a woman.

“Nah,” said Jackson. “I’m fine. We’re fine,” he said, putting on his hat and wiping the mud off his clothes. “Everybody’s fine,” he said loudly. “Let’s all go home.”  

People drifted away and the last few trucks drove off.

Grace’s heart was still racing as she settled into the cab of Jackson’s truck. “OK, who were they?” she asked as Jackson got behind the wheel. His hand shook as he turned on the heat; his right knuckles raw.

“Just jerks,” he said, cleaning the mud off his face with the back of his sleeve. “They worked for a mill that shut down last month. I wouldn’t hire ’em, so they’re lookin’ for a reason to beat me up. Instead of fightin’ the enemy together, we are, literally, at each other’s throats.”

He watched as Grace unloaded the gun. “You sure scared the shit out of those guys,” he said. “Where did you learn how to handle a gun?”

“Originally? My grandfather was a hunter,” she said as she stored the gun and ammo back in the glovebox. “Introduced me to bows and rifles when I was little.”

“You hunt?”

“No, but I’ve had my share of death threats as do many writers.”

She paused. He waited.

“One night about ten years ago, a guy cornered me in a restaurant parking lot; said he was going to kill me.” Her voice wavered. “I could see people inside, behind a big plate glass window—drinking, eating, laughing. So close, but they could have been miles away. No one looked up, no one helped. I remember thinking, ‘I am going to die watching that woman eating pie, that man drinking beer.’”

Jackson grabbed the red and black plaid wool blankets from the back seat of the cab and wrapped one around her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she said.

“What happened?” he asked, wrapping himself in the second blanket.

“I kneed the guy—really hard; ran inside. People were shocked to see me, running in like that. They simply couldn’t see what was going on right outside the window in the dark. Insurance forced the owner to put up these super big lights. Me? I learned the hard way not to rely on people.” She paused, continued. “I found an instructor, bought a handgun, practiced; started hiking, jogging, swimming. Took it further, did a little skydiving, some base jumping; learned ropes, climbing.”

“Impressive,” said Jackson.

“Life comes at you when you’re not looking, right? Two years later, another guy hassled me late one night. I didn’t ask if he wanted to rape me, rob me, or give me a piece of his mind.” She laughed. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when he saw the gun! He left in a flash. I feel safer with it. I would have brought it with me but, well, I didn’t want to check it with my baggage.”

“And end up on another government list, right?” he asked, shaking his head. “You are not what I expected,” Jackson said, driving out of the lot into town, past the Silver Dollar Tavern. Grace noticed Tom, Jason and a few other men huddled under the eaves, deep in discussion.

“I didn’t see Tom and Sara at the meeting,” said Grace.

“They haven’t gone for awhile,” said Jackson, picking up speed on the main road. “Look, I don’t want to upset Sara or get Tom worked up so, if you don’t mind, let’s stop at my house. I’ll get cleaned up, do a little first aid.” 

“OK,” she said with a faint feeling of worry as she recalled Mike Tate of the Washington Natural Resources Defense Council’s warning:

These Silvercreek people are angry. The Armstrongs can be difficult, dangerous even.

On the outskirts of town, they passed a man driving a large black SUV. A Mickey Mouse air freshener dangled from the rearview mirror.

Déjà vu, thought Grace.

She shivered, pulled the blanket tighter around her.

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Seamus Boyle listened to sports radio on the four-hour drive from the garage he rented near Boeing Field south of Seattle to Silvercreek on the Olympic Peninsula, but it gave him little comfort—he hated the Northwest timber country. Too wet and too dark, he thought. Too many damn trees. He preferred endless vistas, 360-degree views to the horizon, deep blue skies. Montana, he thought. Love those wide, open spaces. Or the beach. Costa Rica. Belize.

Boyle arrived on the outskirts of Silvercreek just as the Yellow Ribbon Alliance meeting let out. He pulled off the road before he got into town and parked on a dark side street. Not that he had to be invisible, but there was no sense in showing his face to half the town. After ten minutes, the road was quiet.

That’s better, he thought as he turned his black Suburban—a Mickey Mouse air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror—back onto the road and passed a few stragglers. He passed a couple in a white F-350. They look familiar, he thought. Déjà vu.

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Motion detectors activated the lights around the house at Dragonfly Glen and three startled bats flew out from under the eaves. On the back porch, Jackson turned the water lever to the on position, flipped on the gas and the electrical panel. He unlocked the back door and switched on the kitchen light.

Grace followed him inside. A rack next to the sink was full of clean dishes covered with a layer of dust, as if Jackson had simply walked out one day, and never looked back.

“Do you need some dry clothes?” he asked from the living room where he turned on a light and opened the flue, started a fire.

“No, thanks, just a towel for my hair,” she said.

Jackson disappeared down a hall and returned with a towel. He tended to the fire then flipped on the CD. Trey Pendley’s “When Tomorrow Starts Without Me” played.

And the sun will still come up in the morning / Still go back down at night / And the days, they may seem a little darker / But I promise it’s just as bright

Close your eyes, breathe in, you'll see / It's okay / When tomorrow starts without me / When tomorrow starts without me

The bruises on Jackson’s face and hands were coloring. “I’ll get cleaned up,” he said. She nodded. He popped out the CD, chose Larry Fleet’s “A Life Worth Living”, headed upstairs.

Well, those that know me well / Know I'm known for raisin' hell / I got scars and I got stories / Can't believe I lived to tell

No, it ain't hard to see / That ain't the man I wanna be / But I try to love everyone / God puts in front of me

At the top of the stairs, he stopped and looked down. Grace had laid her coat over a chair by the small bar and was sitting near the hearth, leaning in to get the full effect of the fire’s warmth, her eyes closed, her golden skin illuminated by the flames. The red in her hair glimmered in the firelight. Jackson turned away and continued down the hall, Fleet’s voice following him.

And that's a life worth living / The way I wanna spend my days / 'Cause the time we're given / So quickly slips away / When I fly up to the sky / And I hear my maker say / "Son, you're forgiven" / That's a life worth living

Grace surveyed the room. The house was much smaller than Jackson’s parents’ home. There was a comfortable mustard sofa with deep blue cushions and a navy wool blanket; two overstuffed leather chairs by the fireplace shared an ottoman upholstered with a mustard and purple striped horse blanket, studded with brass tacks.

Grace stood and walked to the far wall where a carved case displayed trophies for superior horsemanship in the names of Molly Peterson and Molly Armstrong. Scattered among the trophies were pictures of a dark-haired woman riding or posing with horses. The mantel held photos of Jackson and the woman laughing and hugging, or smiling on horseback.

There was a photo of the entire family at Christmas—the parents, the four young boys. Grace almost didn’t recognize Tom. He had both his arms, and was grinning with anticipation and excitement like a child at a party. Larry Fleet sang on:

If there's a tear that I can dry / Don't you know I'm gonna try / When I see the wild in me / In my young boy's eyes / I forgivе like I'm forgiven / And pick him up when hе falls down / Make sure he knows that his old man / Will always be around

In a cabinet, there were framed collections of butterflies and beetles, birds’ nests, a variety of stones, decomposing leaves.

The north wall was floor to ceiling bookcases. She ran her fingers along the spines—Dante, Dickinson, Li Po, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman and more. A leather-bound volume lay on a side table next to a worn leather chair by the fireplace. She gently blew the dust away. Walden. She opened it. A first edition. She carefully put it back.

There were dozens of books on the lumber business, trees, birds, fish, nature. She found Allan Savory’s workbooks on holistic management, all of Joel Salatin’s writings on “neighbor to neighbor commerce” including a dog-eared copy of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, and Chris Smaje’s Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future: The Case For an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods.

Emma Marris’ celebration of novel ecosystems, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, rubbed shoulders with Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.

Marla Cone’s Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic nestled harmoniously on top of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring next to Vandana Shiva’s The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture and Russell Means’ Where White Man Dare to Tread.

In an unlikely pairing, Thomas Sowell’s Applied Economics sat on top of a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent. There was a full collection of Victor Davis Hanson’s work.

Mark Dowie’s Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples sat on a shelf next to Peter Kareiva’s Conservation in the Anthropocene, Grahame Webb’s Wildlife Conservation: In the Belly of the Beast, and Elizabeth Nickson’s Eco-Fascists: How Radical Conservationists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage. Jackson’s library also included Wayne Hage’s Storm Over Rangelands and Ron Arnold’s Trashing the Economy, bristling with Post-its.

A wide-ranging collection of vinyl and CDs, heavy on jazz and country, was organized on shelves next to a dusty record console and the CD player from which Larry Fleet’s voice flowed over her.

I may not live to be a hundred / Never see the Seven Wonders / Girl, as long as I got you here by my side / That's a life worth livin' / The way I wanna spend my days / And it feels like heaven / When you look at me that way / When I fly up to the sky / And I hear my maker say / "Son, you're forgiven" / That's a life worth livin' / So I'll keep on livin' / This life worth livin'

Grace chose a dusty bottle of whisky from the bar, searched the kitchen for honey, filled a kettle with water and set it to boil. She leaned against the counter and took in the room. It had blue and tan check curtains, a nook in the corner with blue Peruvian fabric on the window seat. Solid but discolored copper pots and pans hung from a rack above a refurbished Wedgewood stove.

I could cook here, she thought. She imagined Molly rolling out pastry on a piece of marble sitting on the wood table. They must have been immensely happy, thought Grace, feeling a pang of sadness over the love Jackson had lost.

The kettle hissed and Grace made up hot toddies in two large coffee mugs. She carried the drinks upstairs. When she reached the second floor, she stopped. Jackson was on his cellphone, whispering.

“No, don’t. I mean it, Jason. Just don’t.” Quiet. Then, “You listen to me now. You’re gonna get yourself in trouble if you do it that way.” A pause. “Don’t do anything ’til we talk,” he said, then, “At one tonight. That reporter’s staying with us so, no, not in the house. Outside. In the wood shop.”

Grace held her breath as she listened to him moving about. She heard water running in the bathroom, quietly went downstairs. She sat by the fire, the back of her legs aching from where the truck door had slammed against them when the men tackled Jackson. That’s gonna leave a bruise, she thought, sipping her drink. Her body relaxed, but her mind was a whirl of worries. She thought about the pull she felt toward Jackson and weighed it against the worry she felt now, alone with him at night in his lonely house.

She remembered his scent, like the outdoors, cold air and trees; the way he moved, the sheer size and muscle of him. His huge scarred hands and how gently they’d touched her.

Grace laid her head back against the couch, exhausted by everything she had learned in the last few days, and thought about a man who spent the winter hours reading books and poetry, listening to jazz and sad country songs, a man who had spent his life learning everything there is to know about trees.

She wondered, Could such a man set fire to the forest? she wondered. Is he willing to risk jail, even death, to save the only life he's ever known?

She listened as Larry Fleet and Zach Williams sang.

In the morning, in the evening, everyday and in between / When its raining, when its pouring, and your grass don't look so green / Your world might fall to pieces, but these troubles won't last / Just remember brothers and sisters, this too shall pass

Oh, this too shall pass / This too shall pass / Oh, this too shall pass

A few minutes later, Jackson came down in clean clothes, carrying his heavy coat and moving with sore ribs. He placed his coat on the back of the chair, next to hers.

A Band-Aid was pasted under one eye and gauze was wrapped around the knuckles on his right hand, the ends dangling. “Could you tie this off?” he asked.

In the low light of the flickering fire, she secured the dressing. More scars, she thought.

He watched her and reached up with left hand, felt the stubble of his beard as she finished securing the gauze on his hand.

He noticed the drinks and picked up one, smiled and leaned against the stone surround of the fireplace. “Thanks,” he said, taking a sip. “Good and strong, just what I needed.” He took a deep breath, looked around the room. “Sorry for all the dust, but here we are. I’d like to hear more about those opinions you said you’re carrying around inside.”

He moved toward her. Grace drew back involuntarily. Jackson raised an eyebrow.

He emptied his mug quickly. “Maybe it’s best we get back,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”