By Rosamund Healey
Featured Art by Reagan Settle
Ruth Ann doesn’t drive that way anymore. She doesn’t have a car but if she did, she wouldn’t. She has no reason to go to that side of the hill anyway. All that’s left of the Alstead farm is a small sliver of land on the dark side of the hill, just big enough for Ruth Ann’s double-wide trailer. Her daddy’s old place—the parts bought by the flatlanders—sits on the sun side of the hill, empty aside from ski season or leaf-peeping. Ruth Ann heard they razed the old farmhouse and put up a new lodge, all logs, meant to look old, yet nothing like what folks used to build. She heard someone else taps their sap lines and runs their sugar house too, but they still put their name on the syrup. She would not drive to that side of the hill for a thousand dollars. Well. Hundred.
“Time, lovey.” Haley doesn’t want to go to school. She pouts, sticky fingers on the cheap screen, knowing she can test Ruth Ann. Ruth Ann reaches out and tries to paw it off the girl, her arms jiggling as she stretches, yellowed nails like sloth claws. Haley jumps up quick and they play their game, the two of them moving in the trailer like slow-motion ninjas, knowing every corner by heart, how to avoid every precarious pile of stuff or mound of dirty laundry. Ruth Ann soon stops to catch her breath. She steadies herself, hand on her knee, palm on her heart, neither body part built for such a heavy body or small space. Haley relents quick, eyebrows knitting as she tosses the screen and roots around for a bottle of stale water. Ruth Ann smiles when she takes a sip even though it hurts. “Come now. Bus will be here.”
The bus arrives, a miracle in itself. Dale must be on his last legs, Ruth Ann thinks, waving to the ashen man at the wheel. Everyone knows Dale goes across the state line for chemo now. They’re still letting him drive though. Dale needs the insurance and no one else wants to meander the gulches and mud tracks or get up at 4:30am to report to the bus depot. Ruth Ann thought about it once, but quickly decided against it. She had no license. And she didn’t want to drive around and see how things had changed, pass the houses all prettied up and empty. Ruth Ann had her triangle anyway—home, Dollar Plus, Haley’s school. Days when her triangle turned square or pentagon or beyond were usually bad days. Doctor, church for funerals, food pantry; worse, into town proper—could you really call it a town? Lawyers, insurance folk. She still remembers taking the only taxi in the county, the cost of the news: $8.25. There’s been an accident.
It happened during stick season, in mid-November when the trees are bare but the snow hasn’t come in. That’s when you can really see the shape of the hills, their rocky outcrops or gentle curves, their true contours. Ruth Ann used to like stick season. She liked to see Pletchville right down to its bones. That changed when she married Billy. Stick season became the last rattle, the final push. Push, push, they always pushed logging crews that time of year, racing against the snow that would keep the skidders out of the highest woodlots. Ruth Ann can always tell an old logger when they come into the store. They are crooked men, without exception. All loggers catch the bad side of a tree at some point. Eastern pines, balsam firs or even red oak; you could haul a thousand, but it only took one to tumble down or shunt off the racks to crack a limb or back. It only took one to unsettle a whole pile and bury a man alive in the raw forests. There’s been an accident. $8.25 later she learned Billy was gone. She got a settlement, just enough to buy a trailer and lot on the dark side of the hill her family used to own. They called it generous at the time; the money.
John picked her up twenty minutes after the bus left. Late, always late. Picking her up late, paying bills late, coming in late, waking Haley, how big did he think the trailer was? Her son didn’t come home last night though and he smelled like pot and cigarette smoke and something else a little sour. For a moment Ruth Ann felt a lick of heat; saw him without the grace of motherhood. Get your own place, get your ass in gear, take care of your own kid. Didn’t he know she was one late shift away from getting fired? But she only twisted her mouth and settled into the rattling car. She’d never say that. Never put anything before that little girl. Always head right over if the school called and said Haley needed picking up. She’d never say no to Dot in the office. Never let them dial the next phone number on Haley’s list.
Haley doesn’t stay overnight at her mother’s anymore. Or during the day, either. Never, if Ruth Ann can help it. It’s nothing the cops or the judges said, it’s just how it is. Ruth Ann has no stubbornness in her, no grit, no fight. Except on this. On this she is a load of eastern pines, crashing down, pining John into compliance, burying Rachel into submission. Sometimes Rachel will kick off and make her way to the trailer and pound on the flimsy door all strung out and glass eyed. Lemme see her. But Haley doesn’t want to come out. She has her headphones on and stares at that screen as if it will gobble her up. Ruth Ann sits next to her, flips channels on the thin couch, breaks out a candy bar and shares it with her granddaughter until the ruckus goes away.
Rachel is not serious anyway. The woman still remembers the night she lost Haley. The house party, the drugs, the adults; a full night and morning passed until the girl reappeared. Was there a grown-up? Did a grown-up take you? Ruth Ann didn’t want to ask but she couldn’t unsee the loose elastic on the leg hole of the unicorn undies. Her throat still closes at the thought. But she knew nothing for sure. The child didn’t talk about it. Never said a peep. Bringing her to the cops wouldn’t help, either. They might take her away. But Ruth Ann still threatened Rachel with it. I will take her to the station, tell ‘em everything, holding firm as Rachel wailed, raccoon-eyed, buried by Ruth Ann’s stack of pines. A year on, Rachel sometimes rises and stumbles over, beats their door for show. And underneath it all, Ruth Ann sometimes welcomes the commotion. Haley should know her mother at least tried.
Ruth Ann tires as she works through the Monday restock. Cereals were back in, prices higher than ever. Everything was going up, even at Dollar Plus. Rachel used to work there, too. She’d whip through re-stocking like it was a contest. Winner! A new record for shelving Beefy More and color-fast bleach! Rachel used to like to win. She grew up on the sunny side of the hill, the kind of girl who made science fair posters and sang the national anthem when Pletchville Little League went to States. John buzzed around her, adored her for a time. That’s why he worked at the woodlot all hours to buy a car, even after the logs rolled his father. John never took it personally, never held any grudges against the forests of Pletchville, didn’t want anything beyond logging trails anyway. But not Rachel. She could do the math as fast as the register. They even talked about having her run Dollar Plus. Management material. But it didn’t work out. It was too much, or maybe not enough. Rachel didn’t want a triangle. She wanted a circle, ended up with a needle.
Ruth Ann pauses as she pushes the stock cart up the toy aisle. Haley would be eight in three weeks. She’d been saving up, setting aside a few dollars a week for something good. She stops in front of the boys’ toys, the science kits and mini tool belts. Haley would like any of those. The child was whip smart, 7+5 in a second, could already spell Massachusetts. Not Ruth Ann. She could hardly spell herself, not big words anyway. Across the way were the toys for girls—knock-off dollys, pink and blond with that lovely hard plastic smell, little kitchen sets with perfect machine molded cupcakes. Those were the toys she played with as a girl. Played her dolly to death in the freezing bedrooms of the old farmhouse, wind skittering under the peeling sashes, four of them in one room, three more in another. How is it that none of them figured out how to hold on to that place, how to sell the milk to the fancy ice cream folks or city supermarkets? But they were the last rattle anyway, a generation born into debt, stick season of Alsteads on that hill.
A drawn-out buzz goes off in Ruth Ann’s pocket. She fumbles and fishes out the silver lump, flips it open. It’s the school. Haley isn’t feeling well. Are you sure? I’m at work. Ruth Ann hears Dot pause. I can always try the next on her list. Dot isn’t being cruel. But the school won’t keep her if she says she’s going to puke. No, no, I’m good, I’ll be by in a few. Ruth Ann can walk to the school from Dollar Plus, it only takes 15 minutes. But first she needs to walk to the back room and tell Megan she has to go. Megan doesn’t take the news well. They’d talked about it—Ruth Ann leaving her shifts on a dime whenever the school called. Megan glitters with Rachel’s hard energy. She wants out of Pletchville too. She is management material. If you go, she says, I’m taking you off the schedule for good.
But what can you do? Ruth Ann takes off her pinny and hangs it up under Donna’s watchful eyes. They’ve worked together for years. Donna has witnessed it all from her owl-eye glasses; the log loads on Ruth Ann’s life, the flower—Haley—sprouting through the debris. Go pick something out for her birthday, Donna offers. Don’t worry about it. I’ll pay and use my discount. Donna has grace. She doesn’t even look pained when she makes the offer, even though she lives on the dark side of a gulch and counts her pennies for the propane guy. Ruth Ann nods, her throat wooly but unable to refuse. She can’t have nothing for Haley’s birthday. She returns to the toy aisle and goes to the science kits, the ones where you grow your own crystals. Even the picture on the box glints. Haley would love it.
She picks it up but pauses, thinking about Rachel. She pictures Haley with a needle, hollow-eyed and twig-limbed by twenty. Could you live in a triangle once you knew about circles? She puts back the crystals and reaches for a dolly. Its wide eyes don’t blink. Mansion or trailer, sun side or hillshade; those dolly eyes will never blink.
She leaves and walks north towards the school. An eighteen-wheeler goes by, smacking autumn leaves into her legs and twirling the bag with the dolly. Ruth Ann stops and catches her breath, eyes on the horizon. Behind the town and its steeples, the hard outcrops and steady ridges of Pletchville show themselves, their true substance revealed under the fuzz of bare timber. She smooths the bag and nestles the dolly in her coat. Haley will love it, won’t even blink. Ruth Ann knows this. It’s stick season. She can see everything, right down to the bones.
Rosamund Healey primarily writes novel-length historical fiction, and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. She lives in New England with her young family and works in the design industry.
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