one knew I was a wolf pup sometimes or how quick my reflexes were and no one knew I was Friend of Snake.
And just the same, no one at home knew what happened at school. Mama K didn’t know and Mama L didn’t know and the Mean Aunt didn’t know. They thought they knew but they didn’t. And nothing happened at school. Nothing except that I began to see what the problem was. The problem was that I had practiced and prepared for the wrong things. I was totally problematic. The problem was my mamas and the problem was the Mean Aunt and the problem was the way we all lived together outside without permission, with sardines and yarrow and faggots and stone tablets, and so the problem was me.
6
HELEN
When Rudy began collecting buckets, I figured it was something to do with self-improvement. Fall was the season that Rudy traditionally vowed to get his shit together. He had tried hibernating the whole winter. He had tried fasting. He had quit drinking briefly. He had tried eating a pound of raw ground beef with cayenne and honey in it twice a week. He had tried swishing coconut oil around in his mouth for thirty minutes a day. He had tried Christianity. He had even tried simply announcing, when I showed up for work in the mornings, “Look at me. I am new and improved. I’m a better man.”
Now buckets rolled around in the back of his truck, more of them every day. Five-gallon mayonnaise buckets, two-gallon buckets that were stained with deep green frosting, food-grade buckets that had once held potato salad, lemon meringue pie filling, nondairy whipping cream. I worked for Rudy nearly full-time that fall, repairing trees from summer storms, preparing them for winter ones.
“Why so many buckets, Rudy?” I asked him, when I could no longer see the chain saws underneath them. We were facing a spruce that day, its split trunk showing a keyhole to the sky.
“New business idea,” he said. “Whenever we go out on a tree job, pruning, removal, I don’t care what it is, we offer the client some fruit trees, too.” He tightened his harness, unwound his throw line. “If everyone had fruit trees growing in their yards, no one could be pushed around. We’d be like, Fuck you, we have our own fruit, so stop trying to sell us your fucking Washington State apples and shit. We’ll do for ourselves.”
“Sounds like permaculture,” I said.
“I don’t care what it sounds like,” he said. “If the hippies want a tree, fine. If they want to talk to me about culture, watch me kick some hippie ass.”
“So you’re planting an orchard?” I said.
“A nursery,” he said. “That’s why the buckets, or are you an idiot?”
“Where are the trees?” I asked.
“I’ve been cultivating rootstock out on the coal company land,” he said. “But it’s too much shade. The trees need eight hours of full sun. I’ve got to find somewhere better. I’m thinking maybe the pipeline easement runs down the side of your place. Plenty of sun. Lots of space.”
“You ever worry about it?” I asked.
“Worry about what?” he asked.
“The pipeline,” I said.
“Oh sure,” he said. “Sure I do. You hear about accidents sometimes. But it’s like getting hit by lightning. Could happen but no use fretting about it while you wait. Anyway, the mailman told me the company’s selling out,” Rudy said. “Abandoning their holdings.”
“Is that good news?” I asked.
“I’m just passing on what the mailman told me,” Rudy said. “All I know for sure is that the pipeline’s a good place for fruit trees until I get something else figured out.” He swung back and pitched his line, with its yellow weighted pouch, toward the uppermost branches of the spruce. The pouch missed its mark and plummeted back down to us. Rudy backed up and tried again.
* * *
In those first years, I had turned to Karen and Lily as a respite from Rudy, but the longer I lived with them, the more my time with Rudy had become its own sort of relief. At least with Rudy I could put my ear protection on and shut up. I could let him do the talking. At home, there was no rest. When I had something to say, I said it. I said it until I was hoarse.
I knew a snake slept in the bed with Karen, Lily, and Perley. I knew black snakes didn’t bite, but still, it didn’t seem quite safe. We couldn’t