He reached for her, then jerked his hand back as the truck slammed down again. Ruthie’s backpack flew up from her lap and hit her in the face. Warm blood trickled from her nose. “Dad, it’s a tornado!” she screamed. She’d seen a movie on TV where a truck was sucked up from the highway and deposited fender-first in a cornfield. She was sure they were going to die. The only hope was to come down wheels-first on a gentle incline, like the planes she and Pip watched land on the private airstrip at the Stock Farm Club. White-knuckled, her father looked for a place to turn off, but didn’t stop.
Across the road, a brick chimney crashed through the roof of a farmhouse and Rutherford said, “Earthquake?” in disbelief.
All Ruthie knew of earthquakes was that they were supposed to happen in California, not Montana.
Mexican workers were huddled in the doorway of Pompey Nursery. Raymond Pompey stood with his arms over his head as flowerpots shattered on the ground around him. Another worker was trying to run from his truck to the door. The truck was dancing around. Ruthie watched until—as suddenly as it had begun—the shaking stopped and the truck went still. The worker fell to his knees. He dug his hands into the dirt and closed his eyes. His lips moved silently.
Rutherford kept driving as if he couldn’t think of what else to do. His right eye twitched. For Ruthie, seeing him afraid was like seeing her own hand on fire. “Dad,” she said. “Is it over?”
She wanted him to stop the truck. She squeezed her backpack and tasted blood. The pain began: a dull ache spreading behind her eyes. Rutherford nodded. “But aftershocks. There might be aftershocks.” He said the words unsurely, as if from a half-remembered source. Later, Ruthie would learn that the Bitterroot Valley hadn’t had an earthquake in twenty-seven years, before either of them was born.
They passed Adrian Pascal, Pip’s uncle, standing outside the house where Pip often stayed, holding his chest like he was trying to keep his heart in. His neighbor’s roof had collapsed. Ruthie wondered if people were inside. Trapped. Dying. She hoped Pip was safe. Distant sirens began to yowl. Sheriff Kima stood outside the sheriff’s station holding a cage full of birds.
“Moses,” Ruthie said.
Rutherford didn’t answer. His eye twitched again. Moses slept in Rutherford’s bed most nights, on a pillow by his head.
Two trucks had collided in the Overturf intersection. One of them was on its side. A woman cried inside, belted to her sideways seat, clutching her shoulder. Her bloody hair hung to the road, and her tears and the blood flowed across her forehead instead of down her cheeks. A cluster of people stood in front of Whipple’s store with wild eyes, and some others, who’d abandoned their cars and run up the hill, were now coming back down on foot. Rutherford slowed to a crawl and called out the window to Whipple, “What the fuck was that?”
Usually talkative, Whipple only nodded, his face as pale as the ends of Ruthie’s fingernails. She dug them into her thighs. She tried to stop shaking. The ground had stopped shaking, so could she. Inside the store, hammers and nails and screwdrivers were strewn across the aisles. The stock boys leaned against the wall in their aprons, looking dazed. Loose grain covered the linoleum. A sheepdog ran across the parking lot, glanced back at her briefly, and disappeared around the store.
“Moses is alone at home,” Ruthie said.
“Or wherever he is by now,” Rutherford replied. Which made her heart rise up her throat.
THE TRAILERS in Whispering Pines Trailer Park were still standing. The little bridge over the irrigation ditch was still there. Some dirt had splashed across the asphalt, but no trees had fallen over the road. They stopped at Kent Willis’s. Kent, Len Law, Len’s crippled sister Eleanor, and Eleanor’s nurse were in the yard. Kent was squatting like a linebacker, looking crazed, as if he’d wrestle the next natural disaster into submission himself. Eleanor was bright-cheeked in her wheelchair, while her young nurse trembled beside her. Len held a crowbar. His narrow eyes gleamed. “Have you seen Moses?” Ruthie asked, momentarily forgetting her hatred.
Kent blinked at her and slowly straightened from his crouch. “He might’ve run by.”
“You were outside?” Rutherford asked.
“Mowing.” Kent nodded to the lawn mower on its side in the grass by his foot. “Near lost my toe.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“We were walking,” the nurse said. “Thank God.”
“God’s got nothing to do with this,” Len tapped the crowbar against his sister’s chair for emphasis. His bowlegged stance gave him the aspect of a lost vigilante. “It’s Charlo’s curse, same as ever.”
“There’s people dead,” Eleanor said. “I just know it. Can you imagine Missoula? All those big buildings downtown. . . .” Excitement tinged her voice. Ruthie supposed she wanted bad things to happen to other people. She longed for a nation of the legless, in which she, with her years of practice, would be queen.
“What curse?” Ruthie asked.
“They don’t teach you nothing in school, do they?” Len said. “Chief Charlo cursed this valley from up on Lolo Pass when the army finally ran him out. Bad things been happening ever since. Disease. Accidents.” He nodded to his sister’s legs.
“No, this comes from Yellowstone,” Kent cut in. “I heard it on the radio. The government’s been doing experiments—all those scientists in the labs. They knew this was coming. The whole thing’s liable to blow. A super-volcano, wipe out the entire Northwest.”
“Never should have let Charlo go free. That was the army’s mistake.”
“Oh, Christ.” Rutherford shook his head in exasperation. “Just let us know if you see the dog.”
They left Len and Kent arguing on the lawn. Ruthie tasted the metallic salt of blood on her tongue. She looked up at Trapper Peak to see if the finger had broken off, but it remained there, beckoning.
RUTHERFORD DROVE OVER the hill past Happel’s shack, which was flattened as if a giant foot had stomped it down. The nephew sat dejected on the front stoop. He looked up at Ruthie but didn’t wave. The Fears’ teal trailer still stood across their driveway but a thin lodgepole pine had fallen on it, and its one sturdy branch was skewered through the roof. It looked funny there, like it had just dropped in for coffee. Ruthie laughed.
“You going to fix it?” Rutherford asked.
They parked and Ruthie stood in the yard calling Moses while her dad went and turned off the gas. She called until her throat hurt. She searched the hillsides for his small boxy shape. She even looked into the dark mouth of No-Medicine Canyon, though she knew he’d only go in there if he was facing certain death. He’d seen the creature as surely as she had. She wondered if the earthquake had thrown him clean off the earth. He was only twelve pounds. She pictured his small body twisting away through the black of space.
Finally, he appeared on the ridge by the Happels’ collapsed fence. He approached shamefaced, his head low, stump tail quivering, as if the whole quake had been his punishment for pissing on the bathroom rug, or chewing up one of Ruthie’s shoes. She got ahold of his collar and didn’t let go. She pressed her face into the wiry fur on his back. He licked her hand. She took him back to the trailer and Rutherford crouched to pat his head. “Good boy,” he said.