Ruthie picked Moses up and watched her father clamber onto the windowsill to survey the damaged roof. In motion, his big hands and feet made it look like he still had room to grow. As if he might yet turn into someone else. His face, though, was aging rapidly. The seething, backed-against-the-wall expression he held when observing the new mansions being built on the Mitchell Slough by Wiley King’s friends had etched permanent lines in his forehead. His eyes remained so pale as to seem almost unreal.
He balanced his level on the edge of the roof. Ruthie prayed the trailer hadn’t been knocked askew. Everyone in the valley knew the story of old man Pascal, Pip’s father, who’d gone crazy when he couldn’t get his trailer back to level after the mudslide that killed his wife. It was a common problem in a valley marked by hills and defiles. The slant turned him insomniac and he grew paranoid with grief, refusing to leave his property, forgetting to feed his daughter. In the end, he shot himself, and his body slid from his bedroom to the kitchen, ending up against the bathroom door, where Pip found it.
“At least we’re flush,” Rutherford said, hopping down and going to check on his beetles.
Aftershocks. Ruthie wondered if there’d be any warning, or if they’d come from nowhere like the first quake had. She listened to her father curse inside the shed. She knew she should go in to help, but the idea of the beetles swarming over her bare arms, scurrying up toward her nose and mouth, wanting to feed, was too much for her to bear. Rutherford came out looking pale. “Bins fell,” he said. “Most of them are gone.”
“Maybe they’ll come back,” Ruthie said softly.
“They ain’t dogs.”
All the Fears’ belongings were off the shelves inside. The TV lay facedown on the floor. It looked tragic there, like it couldn’t get up. Ruthie set Moses in his bed, told him to stay, and ducked around the tree branch coming in through the ceiling. She heaved the TV upright. A large crack split the screen with little spiderwebs coming out on both sides.
“Goddammit to hell,” her father said, coming in behind her.
The screen didn’t even flicker when she tried to turn it on. How would they eat without its voices in the background? They’d been standing on a bowl of Jell-O the whole time. Why had no one told her? Curses, calderas, government experiments. Already she’d seen a headless creature and felt a mountain rise beneath the road. What else were they hiding?
“Is Charlo’s curse real?” she asked.
Her father snorted and sank down onto the couch amid plaster from the roof. He ran his hand over the stubble of his hair. “Hell no. He was just the last Indian around for people to blame. First they blamed him for spotted fever, then crop failures, droughts, and now earthquakes, I guess.”
“Bitty Law, at school, said you’re an Indian lover.”
Rutherford grimaced. “You just stay away from the Laws. They got poison in their blood.”
Ruthie paused. “Why do we live here?”
“What?”
“It’s . . . it’s not safe. The people are mean, there’s no work, and we don’t even have a house.”
“Where should we go? San Francisco? New York? Think I could be a banker there? Suck people dry and live in a glass box while you play with dolls all day?” Rutherford gripped his knees. “I didn’t ask for this.”
Silently, Ruthie crossed the wolfskin rug to her small room. She straightened her shelves and placed her stuffed eagle back on the bed. She lay on her back and did what she was most ashamed of: she wished for a mother.
AT CHURCH ON SUNDAY, the choir stood up to sing, the organist struck a low note, and the entire congregation jumped from the way the floor vibrated. Ruthie figured instead of a sermon Father Mike should just point at each person and say, “Repent,” to save himself a lot of trouble.
Instead, he went with Corinthians. A young priest, he was new to the valley from Boise, and enthusiastic. His voice rose to fervid heights: he knew the sanctifying value of a good old-fashioned natural disaster—the kind you never saw coming—in bringing people back to God. The pews were packed. Rich and poor. White and Salish. The rich families were up front: boys wearing suits to match their fathers’, girls in frilly, flowerlike dresses. Rutherford had slicked his hair back and had the stunned, blasted look of three days sober. Ruthie could smell his aftershave from two seats away. Kent Willis—likewise shellacked—sat with his neighbor Danette and her roommate Judy Conklin behind them. All the Happels and Laws and Pompeys were scattered throughout the pews. Ruthie’s teacher was there, too, with her children. Pip sat alone in the back by the door. Her notebook was clutched against her chest.
Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass Christ crucified above the altar. It cast a radiant spectrum of red, orange, and gold that shone on Terry French’s long black braid. He sat beside Ruthie with his niece Delilah. Both girls fidgeted on the hard wood. Ruthie couldn’t remember ever coming to church except on Easter, when they gave away cooked chickens. She’d never seen Terry there before. His brown fingers rested on his knees, notched and busted and perfectly still. He seemed to be in the pew and not in it at the same time. She wished she had this power: to be in one place while her mind occupied another. Delilah had a small bead thunderbird purse in her lap. She was visiting from the Flathead Reservation, where her mother’s house had fared worse than Terry’s hogan.
“Look for an egg along the river,” she said, when Ruthie leaned over to whisperingly ask if thunderbirds were real. “Then you’ll know.” Delilah gazed up at the heavy beams in the rafters. Ruthie followed her eyes. She was sure she’d seen an egg beside the river before. If these beams came down it wouldn’t matter who was rich, none of them would survive. It would be the end of the valley. The thorns on Christ’s head had blood on their tips. They looked gruesome. His eyes expressed more misery than salvation. Ruthie decided it was better to die most anyplace besides a church.
After the service, there was a fair in the parking lot, where people had brought clothes, food, and other things to give away. Delilah and Ruthie kicked a rock back and forth while Rutherford shamefacedly took an armful of blankets from Father Mike’s pretty young wife. The hole in their roof hadn’t fixed itself, and nights were cold, even though summer was coming. Others took mittens and gloves and Ruthie saw a pink bike she wanted but knew her father wouldn’t let her have. She asked Delilah how her house was in Arlee.
Delilah shrugged. “It wasn’t that good to begin with.”
Ruthie had never been to the reservation. Only eighty miles away, it was another world to her. As full of mystery as the sky.
Father Mike parted the men around his wife. “Let this bring us together,” he said.
A singing group from Lolo started playing children’s songs. Delilah disappeared into the crowd. Ruthie stood on the edge looking after her. Pip had left before the service was over. Ruthie remembered the way Pip’s uncle had held his hand over his chest. She hoped he was okay. The band had a hen in a cage. For the grand finale, they let it out and stood it on a bucket. The hen seemed quite pleased and stomped its foot, adding a tuneful cluck to the music. Ruthie wasn’t impressed. One night through her window she’d seen an owl pass overhead and heard music too beautiful to describe.