6. Embers

A chilling wind traveled up and over the ridge. It settled in around us as we toasted marshmallows on the crackling campfire that Dad had built using tree bark and pinecones. Collin had suggested we spend the evening on Calling Rock, a small outcrop surrounded on all sides by mountains. If we called out from its jutting surface, our voices reverberated back from all sides, echoing six or seven times before fading out. The granite face of Calling Rock soaked up heat during the summer days and radiated it back as nights set in. We often stargazed up there, the lichen-covered stone warming our backs amidst the cool night air. Dad had been surprised when Collin invited Royella and Aunt Taylor to join us on Calling Rock that evening; I had been nervous.

I had never liked marshmallows, but making s’mores was a welcome distraction, especially when Collin took an audible breath and announced to the group, “We need to talk.”

“No,” I said, elbowing him hard. “We need to stargaze.”

“Listen, Dad,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know you’ve been trying to kill owls.”

“What?” Royella said, her voice sharp.

“Smooth,” I mumbled to Collin, though only Dad heard me.

“Oh, don’t you look so shocked.” Collin’s tone filled with hostility as he turned to Royella. “I know about you and Table Mountain.”

“Know what?” she rasped.

“Collin, slow down,” I said, Royella’s visible panic worrying me.

“Listen,” Collin’s voice regained its calm. “The dead owls. The way you’ve been marking trees. You trying to cover up the time spent at Table Mountain. Something weird is going on and we want to know what.” He tried to catch my eye, but I concentrated on peeling the charred outer layer off the gooey center of my marshmallow.

Collin laid out the details that he and I had puzzled over the night before; Dad had been scouting trees in which spotted owls nested and marking them for his fellow forest rangers to cut down. Dad and Taylor had been arguing over their deceased parents’ will. Aunt Taylor’s dog, Button, had been poisoned when he chewed on a spotted owl. Taylor had run into Royella gambling at the casino on the Table Mountain reservation. Ranger Cooper had stopped by to take Royella on a tour of Foxglove’s timber. And I had found a letter addressed jointly to Royella and Aunt Taylor in which an agent from Macksfield Insurance had offered a quote on the value of the property’s trees.

I tried to read the adults’ faces, but I could only understand Collin’s expression. He looked more relieved than he had in a while, and I tried to imitate his relaxed mouth, his calmly focused eyes. A treetop breeze picked up in the distance.

“What’s going on between you two?” Dad finally said, turning to Royella and Taylor. “What’s with the insurance quote?”

“What’s with the owls?” Royella shot back.

I listened to the crackling of pinecones in the fire, to the squeaking of the bats that must have been flying somewhere overhead, to the irritating sound of Royella’s flustered breathing.

I put down my marshmallow stick and nervously began to speak. “Please try to calm down,” I told Royella before turning to Dad. “Listen, Collin and I came up here because we wanted to enjoy the summer with you. But I really hate this whole situation. So can you please just tell us what you’ve been doing?”

“I guess it’s… well it’s complicated,” Dad said, pausing reluctantly.

“But no one’s going to get mad,” I said, encouraging him. When I heard Collin snort, I quickly added, “And if we do, who cares. Isn’t it time for some honesty around here?”

“I think we all want to know what’s going on,” Taylor said, “and I love this place as much as you do. I can start.” She turned to me, unwilling to make eye contact with Dad who sat on her other side. She told us about the time she ran into Royella gambling at Table Mountain, the same story she had once let slip to Collin. She said she didn’t know why Royella had been gambling, but she did know that she had ceased to trust the seemingly devout pastor’s widow after the gambling incident.

The fire danced, flames flickering in the settled dusk and throwing light on Dad’s countenance, his eyes resting on Royella. She looked at her hands.

Taylor continued her story. She had befriended Royella who had suggested that the Foxglove timber could be lucrative. Taylor had gone along with getting a timber quote in order to maintain Royella’s trust and to see what she was planning. She said that she never told Dad because, in the absence of any definitive information to the contrary, he never would have believed that Royella was up to no good.

“Royella,” Dad finally said, “Why get a timber quote?”

“Thanks a lot for that one, Taylor,” Royella said.

“And what about the gambling?” Dad’s voice was soft.

Royella raised her eyes and looked at Dad defiantly. “First things first. I’m not talking about my business at Table Mountain until we discuss the owls.”

“Honestly,” he said, “that was for you.” He held Royella’s gaze.

“Guys,” Collin said as he picked at the crusty lichen growing on the rock beneath us. “Will you just fill us in?”

I sandwiched my marshmallow between two graham crackers and handed it to Taylor, who ate it absentmindedly. Dad and Royella began bickering, each eventually confessing.

Dad had decided he owed it to Royella to earn enough money so that two of them could go somewhere exciting and start fresh. He thought that his unpleasant divorce and the pastor’s legacy made their relationship too difficult in the Sierras. When he became aware that spotted owls inhabited the Foxglove area, he knew that the only source of funds for their new life—the trees that could be logged and turned into cash to finance their adventure—would be valueless if the Forest Service discovered the endangered habitat.

He began searching for spotted owl nests in the national forest surrounding the property, marking the owl-inhabited trees he discovered for the rangers to cut. The pretense of fire safety had successfully covered his underlying motives. Yet, he had no such convenient excuse for cutting down trees with nests on the Foxglove property, as the property was not subject to thinning by forestry workers. Instead, Dad had placed poison in the areas where he found owls. It had been Dad’s poison that killed the owl whose carcass poor little Button had found and chewed.

Royella too, unbeknownst to Dad, had been interested in logging the property. However, she had no intentions of beginning again with him elsewhere. Before her husband had died, the couple had been working on a charity project to build a school at Table Mountain, the Indian reservation and casino where Taylor had run into Royella. They had set up a very successful online contribution page on their church’s website. Unfortunately, with the pastor’s death, the gambling problem Royella had suppressed since the day they had married had flared up again. When her own money had run short, she found herself borrowing from the congregants’ donations for the school. Now the Table Mountain community and the pastor’s congregation were both pressuring her to move forward with building the school, but she had squandered the money she needed to finance it. Desperate, she had contacted an insurance company to learn the value of Foxglove’s trees. Given that Aunt Taylor and Dad had recently been fighting over their parents’ will, she had assumed that Aunt Taylor needed money and would be on board with her plan to log the property and split the cash. The will’s ambiguous wording left open the possibility that Taylor had a legal claim to the property, meaning that even if Dad rejected the logging plans, Taylor might be able to provide authorization. In either case, Dad would receive at least half of the logging money, which Royella knew would then effectively become hers, as the two had become accustomed to sharing expenses and earnings. And if for some reason Dad selfishly hoarded the money, Royella could always marry him.

As the stars came into focus on Calling Rock, the silhouettes of towering pine trees solidified in shape against the night sky. I watched the campfire slowly transform into a pile of glowing embers. For the second time that year, Dad’s plans were smoldering and disintegrating while Collin and I watched.

*

I looked out the window as we took off, the nose of the plane tilting upwards. We gained altitude. The Los Angeles runway disappeared below me, and I closed my eyes, visualizing our return to New York. Rachel and Marissa had made plans for a picnic dinner in Central Park that night, though I wished they had chosen a restaurant. After returning from Foxglove summers, any “natural setting” paled in comparison and made me homesick for the mountains.

Beside me, Dad sat with his eyes closed. He had shaved his beard and dressed in freshly washed jeans with an ironed button-down. Even if Mom wouldn’t agree to take him back, I knew he planned stay in the city. I think I was glad for that.

I wasn’t sure how to find a way to forgive him for his selfish attempt to log Foxglove, and I knew he would never forgive Royella for using him. Royella had assumed that, since they were both at fault, they could just continue the way things were and move forward together with their logging plans. But Royella’s scheme was just the reality check Dad had needed. He had broken up with her, right there under the twinkling stars of Calling Rock. When Royella stood up outraged and asked Collin and me how we could possibly hope that our parents would reconcile after Dad had betrayed us—choosing her, and attempting to destroy the two-hundred-year-old family mountain place for her sake—I had found myself wordless. But Collin, who was absentmindedly stirring the fire’s glowing embers, had quietly told her to leave. We didn’t really know her, he had explained, and Dad was family.

I leaned against the airplane window, shifting my body and trying to find a comfortable position. The patterned blue fabric of my seat looked new, as if the plane had recently been reupholstered. I thought of the duct tape-patched seats of Dad’s Chevy and wondered whether the government would hire a new ranger to take his truck, fill his place. Maybe not. Perhaps the drought would end soon and there would be less work, less concern that so much as a stray ember could cause a fire.