Read Online Mink River: A Novel by Brian Doyle - Free Book Online Page B

balance, and the uncontrolled front wheel of the bike skews to the left and Daniel skews to the right, and the bike slams shuddering to a stop and Daniel flies over the edge of the cliff with his backpack flapping and his braids going in three directions and his mouth open but no sound emerging whatsoever.
    36.
    Worried Man stares up at the porch, which looks vaguely familiar, but it’s awfully dark.
    Must be the utter and complete lack of moon that makes this hillside so strange, he thinks. The darkness dread & drear. Blake.
    He gets a bead on the pain again, which is right above his head through the decking, and he thinks about calling up to her gently through the patio, but then considers that the young woman will have eleven heart attacks if suddenly a voice from beneath her feet asks about her stabbing pain.
    I’ll go around the house and knock, that’s what I’ll do.
    He steps out quietly from under the deck, trusting that the blanketing night will hide him, and when he reaches the corner of the house he leans in to use his hands against the wall, so as to be sure of his steps. He feels a smooth tube attached to the wall, and then he feels the rough wood of the wall itself, but not until he edges along to the next corner does he realize that the tube is Cedar’s rain gauge, that the wall is faced all around with cedar shakes, that his hands are upon the Department of Public Works, and that the young woman in throbbing pain on the deck is his daughter.
    37.
    Grace and Declan are back in port just after dawn. A good night’s work. They’ve cleaned and iced the catch on the boat and they box it now in wooden crates and heave the boxes into Declan’s truck.
    Coming?
    I need a drink.
    Fecking seven in the morning, Grace.
    I’m not tired.
    She hops back on the boat to get her gear. Declan’s itchy eyed and he stinks and his back hurts and all he wants is shower and sleep and he’s worried about Grace and embarrassed by her and his temper rises.
    You’ll get drunk and screw some loser, he says.
    So?
    What for?
    Feels good.
    Come home and sleep.
    I’m not tired.
    Screwing drunks in their rathole rooms. Lovely.
    She says nothing.
    You’ll get pregnant with some loser spawn and then what?
    Then I’ll be pregnant for a few hours and then I won’t be.
    Meanwhile half the town gets a crack at you.
    So?
    You’re a cheap bus everybody gets to ride, Grace.
    So?
    You’re my fecking sister .
    So?
    He guns the truck and rattles off. A spurt of yellow ice-melt slides off the truck. She walks down the street to the bar. The bar opens before dawn for the boats coming in. It’s half-full of men. The only other woman is the bar maid, Stella. Grace gets a whiskey and gulps it, gets a second whiskey, sips it fast, and then gets coffee and a third whiskey. Takes her sweater off, tucks in her shirt, turns to survey the room. All but two of the men are looking at her. The faces of the men looking at her are greedy and masked. Several are smiling. She knows them all except the two not looking at her. Her throat is burning from the whiskey.
    They must be from away, those two, she says to Stella.
    I guess, says Stella.
    Someone calls Grace from the other side of the room. She ignores the man calling her. She carries her coffee and whiskey to the table where the two men from away are eating eggs.
    May I? she says, and the two men look up. She sits down next to the one who pulls out a chair for her.
    38.
    Of course there are many other people in Neawanaka. So very many. Old and young and tall and short and hale and broken and weary and exuberant. So very many it would take a million years to tell a millionth of their lives and we don’t have the time, worse luck, for their stories are riveting and glorious and searing. But, ah, let us choose two, we’ll go sidelong for a moment and peer in on, say, the young couple who were coupling on top of the bedclothes earlier in the day.
    Their names are Timmy and Rachel. For Timmy’s