What Violet Might Have Seen

Violet rose just before the sun. There was dew on the ground, dappling the long parched tongues of the bear grass in the meadow, and there were matted trails running to the woods from where the deer had fed on the grass during the night. There was mist on the lake but no breeze and the night had left behind a chill, though Violet knew the day would be hot and the freshness that was on her skin just now would turn to sweat by mid morning. She moved quietly about the campsite, picking up things that had been dropped on the ground. She had set up the tent in the last dim light of the previous day, working quickly, not bothering with the mosquitoes. Her two children had sat on a log by the cold fire pit. They had their arms around one another. They stayed out of her way. They knew something was wrong for it was something they had known many times before. The girl, Lila, was 7. Warren, the boy, was only 5.

Violet could have made a fire for them, at least a little one, but she knew they would only kill it with their own efforts to keep it going and then they would probably cry, or the boy, anyway, would cry, and Violet was just not up to that this night. In fact, she had not been up to it for a long time now. Aside from that, she had come here to hide, after all, or at least she liked to imagine she had, and a fire might give them away. She liked to think that she was just like one of those old time Indians her father and her father’s father talked about, those ghost-dancer kind of Indians, the kind that would creep through the forest in the night, not lighting fires, not speaking, feet walking on air, each having a dead warrior at either elbow, just about ready to live again.

Of course he would come looking for her, if only because she had his truck. He would get some other bum, some other drunk to drive him and they would start out in the town first, hitting the taverns along their way, and then they’d hover around the places on the Reservation where her relatives lived, keeping their bleary eyes out, skulking about like hungry crows, and then lastly they would head for the hills, as Violet had done in the first place, raising snakes of dust on all the back roads, and likely Big Jim would be getting pretty angry by that time, which was what had caused the whole problem in the first place. Chances were he would find her, but Violet was still hoping for the best. She did not know what else to do. She could count her options on the fingers of one hand, not even counting her thumb, and then still have two or three fingers to spare.

Violet began to gather some small sticks. They were wet from the dew but she was hoping she could get a fire going. It was important to have a fire for the kids. She looked around, by the fire pit, in the bushes, by the lakeshore, for some kind of paper or flammable garbage someone might have left, for she herself had neglected to bring any paper, even any toilet paper. She had done things quickly, at a moments notice. Something in her head had told her what she needed to do and so she did it. There would only have been a certain amount of time before he showed up again, before he staggered up to her doorstep with one of those bouquets wrapped in clear plastic that you get on sale at the Safeway store, and so in the middle of Perry Mason she had stood up abruptly from the sofa, packed up the kids, grabbed a couple changes of clothing for them, thrown the tent and the raft in the bed of the truck, stopped at the corner store for candy and bread and bologna and headed for the lake.

There was no paper to be found. She thought about her purse and knew that there would be some Kleenex there, but the purse was in the tent and she did not want to go in and wake the children. She wasn’t ready to start with them. Things were peaceful for a change and she was enjoying it. She had not had a moment’s peace in 7 years. That, her father had always told her, was a magic number. Seven. It could get hold of people like a whirlpool, swirling them round and round. There were ways out of it, but Violet did not remember that part. Of course it didn’t make a bit of sense as far as Violet was concerned. It was just one of these superstitions the old people had.

Violet took her handful of sticks and bark chips and dumped it onto the soggy coals. Her canvas sneakers were wet from the grass and the bottoms of her pant-legs were wet. She didn’t like to have to go up the trail to where the truck was parked through the bushes and through the shouldering branches of the small pine trees, but it was the only thing to do. The huckleberries and blueberries had been early in coming this summer for it had been unusually hot ever since May and there had been just enough thunderstorms to keep them from going to seed. Violet gathered the berries along the trail to, dropping them in her hat. She decided she would make something for the kids, although she did not have much to work with. In fact she had almost nothing to work with. She had brought a box of cornflakes, but no sugar and no milk. She had brought bread but no butter. She had got Hostess Twinkies at the store and a can of chili and a can of spaghetti and a case of beer, but she had no opener nor pots nor pans nor utensils. She had no bowls, no plates. What was she thinking?

From the cab of the truck Violet gathered up scraps of paper – candy bar wrappers, empty cigarette packs, unopened junk mail, a crumpled up statement of Big Jim’s overdrawn bank account. She also found two dimes and a nickel under the driver’s seat and she slipped these into her pocket. She gathered the deflated and folded rubber raft from the back of the truck and bundled it under her arm along with the foot pump.

Before heading back down the trail she stood by the gravel road for a time, looked one way and the other, listened. She felt like she was standing on the moon. It was very lonely and empty. She felt like the only person in the world and it made her afraid.

*

She had forgotten cigarettes as well.
There was only half a pack, so she would have to conserve. First she got the fire going. It wasn’t easy. The first two attempts burned up most of the paper she had gathered and made little impression on the damp little sticks and chips of pine bark. She wasn’t one of those Indians who could snap their fingers and make a fire or put her ear to a track and hear a train coming or hunt down a man by way of broken twigs and bent blades of grass. If she were, she wouldn’t have ended up with Big Jim in the first place. Her father had tried to teach her all these things and more, but she was never very interested. She was actually more interested in not being an Indian than in being one because sometimes people would treat you badly just because you were, like the high school kids over in Madras, and Violet was not so far out of high school that it didn’t still hurt. She had gotten out of the whole mess by getting pregnant. Now her father spent much more time with 7-year-old Lila and he was old and gray and more lost in his dreams and fables than ever. Violet figured that if he wanted to he could be of some practical use to her, but he didn’t and he wasn’t. At least Jim cared. If he hadn’t cared they wouldn’t have fought and he wouldn’t have beat her up in the first place. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t come looking for her, and Violet knew that he would come looking. He was faithful in that way. He was a good man. He was the father of her son.

Another thing Violet had forgotten was alcohol. She wondered how she would survive without cigarettes and alcohol.

As soon as the fire had caught on well to the drier sticks it began to lap more vigorously at the damper ones and dry them out. Smoke swirled up through the little doors and windows and rooftops. Walls crumbled and fell. Violet added larger sticks and thin pieces of cedar bark. The fire crackled. Violet tapped one of her few remaining cigarettes from the pack and lit it off the winking new coals. She had forgot to bring matches. She had one book in her pocket and perhaps 5 matches in the book. She wondered if it was possible to freeze in August. She thought maybe she should go home and get more matches. More food. More of everything.

She remembered a fire they had made on her grandfather’s property and it was winter then and there were patches of snow around the bases of the trees, looking as if they had spilled out like sugar from the trunks, and the fire and the smell of the winter wood burning gave a sweetness to the air. She remembered how warm she had been, despite the chill of December, despite the teeth of the wind, for these came against the circle of firelight only to cower, to draw back on their haunches, and Violet was safe and warm and content. She made believe she was in a city inside the fire. There were people and cars and hotels and houses. Hanging from the stout limb of a wind-beaten tree nearby was the carcass of an elk the hunters had shot and her father and her grandfather were skinning the elk, its front legs stiff and open to each side, blood dripping on the sand-like snow beneath. She was about 7 then, the same age her daughter was now.

*

Violet laid out the rubber raft on the lakeshore and inflated it with the foot pump. She thought she would catch some fish for the children’s breakfast but then remembered that she had brought no rod. No doubt her father could tell her seven ways to catch a fish without a rod. Probably he already had. Sometimes she wished she had listened more. She just hadn’t thought she would ever need to know most of what he would have to tell her.

The raft was small, not much more than a child’s toy, really. Violet launched the raft and lied down in it, her neck on the bow, her feet on the stern. The lake water undulated beneath the rubber floor, caressing her back. Violet had forgotten to bring the oars from the truck so she paddled with her hands for awhile, until she got out into deep water, then let the just waking breeze take over. She closed her eyes and the breeze gently rocked her toward the other end of the lake. The sun was looking down over the top of the eastern butte now, she could feel it on the skin. The air responded to the light, drawing in a breath, blowing it out, turning the little raft in lazy circles.

Had she opened her eyes Violet would have seen many things. She would have seen how the lightening sparked fire from the previous summer had come down through the trees right to the rocks of the shore and then tried to jump the lake at its narrowest point, turning the tops of the nearest trees yellow like old mens fingers pointing to the sky. She would have seen how the fire turned and followed the shore line, ripping bushes from the rocks like a hungry black bear, plodding through the thickets, licking its way along the slopes and into the gullies, leaving naught but black hooded, stoop shouldered specters behind, which the osprey and bluejay would no longer frequent because of the waste that here had been made. At the far end where the water was smooth and still and clear she could have seen rainbow and brook trout, heavy-flanked from bottom feeding, slowly gliding in and out of the charcoal colored shadows. She could almost have reached down with her hands and scooped them up. From the far end the fire had turned back again, watching itself from the opposite shore, a spectacle for the eyes of the dispassionate fish and for the frogs that had abandoned the burning rocks on the shore. There at the far end the fire had split, stretching one arm in either direction. One arm returned along the lakeshore, the other in the opposite direction, burning through the long draw that led to the lower lakes and then all the way down through the Reservation to the desert, all the way down to the gravel road Big Jim would sure take when he came to find Violet.

It was midmorning by the time Violet paddled back toward the camp. She had fallen asleep for a time. It had been a long night. As she approached the meadow where the tent was pitched she could see Warren playing by the smoky fire, waving a red-tipped stick in the air, makes circles and crosses. Her daughter was on the shore, just standing. She was looking out over the water. Violet raised a hand to wave but Lila did not wave in return. She just stood there, like something growing from the ungenerous stones. Violet could feel her gaze. She could almost see the path it made in the air. She wasn’t sure what hour it was, but she knew she had been sleeping for quite some time. There was no one else in the camp, no one by the trail that entered the trees, no noise but Warren’s high voice on the breeze.

Violet wondered how long it would be before Big Jim found her. She wondered if she could wait that long.