had a terrible feeling. What had he said? Did they know he wasqueer? The end of the evening was a shadow of a shadow, just those moments â heâd been talking to one of the men. His face against the cool glass. His thankful, horizontal bed. The solid earth. His heart seemed to be beating funny. He thought of his father, who was half-drunk most of the time. Was every waking day like this? The dark lapped at him, and he thought he might throw up, and he wondered how his father had ever been able to stand himself. Jackson felt a nauseous self-loathing that began in his stomach and moved out his arms and legs. Suddenly, he needed air. He got up and walked out into the cold, feeling his way through the wood chips and snowmelt and dirt toward the lake.
He felt better almost immediately, in the dark, walking. In Portland heâd walked everywhere. Hungover or high or straight sober, he would walk those streets at night and feel like he could go anywhere because this was his body, these were his own two legs. The road was always stretching out in front of him, the bridges knitting across the river, one way, back the other. He could hear the soft lap of the lake water now, and he sat down near the slope to the water. The cold earth soaked his pants and he felt better.
In another month, the lake would be full. The old river had been washing the town out slowly, one ruinous winter at a time. Silver was full of sand and gravel deposits, holes where the river had eaten away the topsoil, streets where the concrete was crumbling. According to Leary and the rest of the crew, the river was a loss. Channelizing it would save what was left of that watery dump, and then the lake, instead of being a marshy sprawl with no clear borders, would instead be a carved-out bowl, perfect and shimmering, and the water would spill out of a narrow channel at one end and head down the mountains, neatly continuing on its way. An aerial view of Silver would show a neat dark stamp pressed into the ground, spilling out to the east to become a river again, snaking through the blue-black timber to eventually join the Lochsa.
The particulars of the project were uncertain to Jackson. Mike Leary was someone big on a project that was, in the scheme of things, small. Just a handful of speculators interested in apretty jewel of a lake, a necklace of houses. And it was pretty. The A-frames were half-moon clusters at four points around the lake, banks of tall windows reflecting the water. It was summer camp for the six-digit circuit. It gave Jackson a thrill, even in the dark, to see the peaks of each A-frame like a cathedral, the faintest glow of the pale wood. Even as Spartan as it was, he could imagine the kind of high-end lives that would settle into the bare rooms. Stainless steel pans hanging in the kitchen; New Yorker copies on the coffee table; expensive shampoo in the bathroom. If the old heart of Silver was a craggy piece of rock, the new heart was a smooth pebble, a skipping stone. Cedar and glass, large porches that stretched, plank by plank, toward the edge of the lake.
He kept having little boy thoughts, his half-drunk mind â how do they make a town? Where do the families come from? But still how goddamn weird that you could take a patch of silt and stilt it up and hem it in, sew it like a glove â the lakeâs fingers, the palm of calm water, the wrist of the lake spilling down dark mountains.
Jackson imagined that in twenty years the cleared land where the new lake sat would be lush again, full of young timber. The old riverbank, now exposed to the tin cup of the sky, would no longer look ravaged. It would become land again, and everything that had surfaced when the water ebbed away would be carried off. The shell of the old pickup, the bottles, the nameless bags of sodden, decomposed trash. At some point, it would all be dragged away or the grass would grow over it.
But still, he thought now, sick all the way to his toes, sitting
He felt better almost immediately, in the dark, walking. In Portland heâd walked everywhere. Hungover or high or straight sober, he would walk those streets at night and feel like he could go anywhere because this was his body, these were his own two legs. The road was always stretching out in front of him, the bridges knitting across the river, one way, back the other. He could hear the soft lap of the lake water now, and he sat down near the slope to the water. The cold earth soaked his pants and he felt better.
In another month, the lake would be full. The old river had been washing the town out slowly, one ruinous winter at a time. Silver was full of sand and gravel deposits, holes where the river had eaten away the topsoil, streets where the concrete was crumbling. According to Leary and the rest of the crew, the river was a loss. Channelizing it would save what was left of that watery dump, and then the lake, instead of being a marshy sprawl with no clear borders, would instead be a carved-out bowl, perfect and shimmering, and the water would spill out of a narrow channel at one end and head down the mountains, neatly continuing on its way. An aerial view of Silver would show a neat dark stamp pressed into the ground, spilling out to the east to become a river again, snaking through the blue-black timber to eventually join the Lochsa.
The particulars of the project were uncertain to Jackson. Mike Leary was someone big on a project that was, in the scheme of things, small. Just a handful of speculators interested in apretty jewel of a lake, a necklace of houses. And it was pretty. The A-frames were half-moon clusters at four points around the lake, banks of tall windows reflecting the water. It was summer camp for the six-digit circuit. It gave Jackson a thrill, even in the dark, to see the peaks of each A-frame like a cathedral, the faintest glow of the pale wood. Even as Spartan as it was, he could imagine the kind of high-end lives that would settle into the bare rooms. Stainless steel pans hanging in the kitchen; New Yorker copies on the coffee table; expensive shampoo in the bathroom. If the old heart of Silver was a craggy piece of rock, the new heart was a smooth pebble, a skipping stone. Cedar and glass, large porches that stretched, plank by plank, toward the edge of the lake.
He kept having little boy thoughts, his half-drunk mind â how do they make a town? Where do the families come from? But still how goddamn weird that you could take a patch of silt and stilt it up and hem it in, sew it like a glove â the lakeâs fingers, the palm of calm water, the wrist of the lake spilling down dark mountains.
Jackson imagined that in twenty years the cleared land where the new lake sat would be lush again, full of young timber. The old riverbank, now exposed to the tin cup of the sky, would no longer look ravaged. It would become land again, and everything that had surfaced when the water ebbed away would be carried off. The shell of the old pickup, the bottles, the nameless bags of sodden, decomposed trash. At some point, it would all be dragged away or the grass would grow over it.
But still, he thought now, sick all the way to his toes, sitting
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