If You Find Me
by Emily Murdoch
For Ruth, Anita, Sarah, and Taylor,
who keep me brave...
And for Jack, always.
SPRING AND FALL (1880)
to a young child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
—GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Part I
THE END
Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
—WINNIE-THE-POOH, FROM POOH’S LITTLE INSTRUCTION BOOK
1
Mama says no matter how poor folks are, whether you’re a have, a have-not, or break your mama’s back on the cracks in between, the world gives away the best stuff on the cheap. Like the way the white-hot mornin’ light dances in diamonds across the surface of our creek. Or the creek itself, babblin’ music all day long like Nessa when she was a baby. Happiness is free, Mama says, as sure as the blinkin’ stars, the withered arms the trees throw down for our fires, the waterproofin’ on our skin, and the tongues of wind curlin’ the walnut leaves before slidin’ down our ears.
It might just be the meth pipe talkin’. But I like how free sounds all poetic like.
Beans ain’t free, but they’re on the cheap, and here in the Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park, dubbed “the Hundred Acre Wood,” I must know close to one hundred ways to fix beans. From the dried, soaked-in-water variety to beans in the can—baked beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans . . .
It don’t sound important. It’s just beans, after all, the cause of square farts, as my sister used to say with a giggle on the end. But when you’re livin’ in the woods like Jenessa and me, with no runnin’ water or electricity, with Mama gone to town for long stretches of time, leavin’ you in charge of feedin’ a younger sister—nine years younger—with a stomach rumblin’ like a California earthquake, inventin’ new and interestin’ ways to fix beans becomes very important indeed.
That’s what I’m thinkin’ as I fill the scratchy cookin’ pot full of water from the chipped porcelain jug and turn on the dancin’ blue flame of the Bunsen burner: how I can make the beans taste new tonight, along with wishin’ we had butter for the last of the bread, which we don’t, because butter don’t keep well without refrigeration.
Sometimes, after a stint away, Mama will appear out of nowhere, clutchin’ a greasy brown sack from the diner in town. Then, everythin’ we eat is buttered thick as flies on a deer carcass, because it would break mine and Jenessa’s hearts to waste those little squares of gold.
Mama says stealin’ butter is free, as long as you don’t get caught.
(She also says g’s are free, and I should remember to tack them onto the ends of my ing words, and stop using ain’t, and talk proper like a lady and all. Just because she forgets don’t mean I should. Just because she’s backwoods don’t mean me and Jenessa have to be.)
At least we have the bread. I’m glad Ness isn’t here to see me scrape the fuzzy light green circles off the bottom. If you scrape it carefully, you can’t even taste the must, which, when I sniff it, smells like our forest floor after a wetter month.
Snap-swish!
I freeze, the rusty can opener one bite into the tin. Nessa? The crunch of leaves and twigs beneath careless feet and the unmistakable sound of branches singin’ off the shiny material of a winter coat is too much noise for Jenessa to make, with her cloth coat and footsteps quiet as an Injun’s. Mama? I scan the tree line for the lemon yellow zing of her spiffy store-bought ski jacket. But the only yellow in sight drips from the sun, fuzzyin’ up the spaces between hundreds of shimmerin’ leaves.