Vi Mitchell Opines
It's hard to tell when something breaks. Not hard to tell when it's broken, of course, but when it breaks. The whole damn universe tends to entropy and so following the fault line back is quite a trick. Take my grandmother, for example, and her young friend Angus Miller. She talked about him in a certain way. In her mind he was a tall, blustery boy. Just her own tender age of twelve when he stopped aging. Angus had gone with bucket and shovel one day out near the Hook to harvest clams. A fine day for a fine boy looking to take in the air and gentle sun, he had skipped school. As summer came on, children skipping and wandering the world was not an uncommon nor unwelcome occurrence on Makah Island.
His absence that day had, however, been noticed by my grandmother. Twenty children and one room could not conceal much when it came time to call attendance. So, as they had on occasion held hands, and even kissed once, and knowing Angus's predilection for early morning outings wherein he would fill his belly and then nap away the mild afternoons, she resolved herself to skip after lunch and rendezvous on their favored beach.
There, high up on the sandy shore, under the bright sun glittering off the sparkling cobalt Sound, just shy of tender blackberry shoots and fragrant blossoms, she had certainly found blond Angus in quiet repose. She found him silent, covered in tacky vomit, eyes frozen, glassy, and bloodshot, hands clawed in rictus and clutching at nothing. Angus had not known better. Or, had disregarded the warnings of old people, the way younger ones do. Disregarded that the crimson tide brings toxin and death, long after the stain of it disappears.
Right here in this tale you can come to the right conclusion that this was the moment Angus broke. His family too. His father started drinking and didn't stop and the wet-brained bastard went and shot himself and his grieving wife within the year.
The boy ate the bad clams and the little toxic microbes ate his gray matter and that's that. But where did the bad clams come from? Do you see the trouble in that question? Because the red tide that year came from somewhere. As it turns out, the rendering plant down south, overtown in in Commencement Bay, hadn't been minding what it should've been minding.
The waters of our Western passage run swift and every time the tide went out the mighty Pacific sucked the shit and rot of the runoff from the slaughterhouse through our little Hook. When the sun shyly appeared in May, a deep scarlet bloom of deadly algae found a home tucked into the loving shores Makah Island, and the red death was duly taken in by our innocent bivalves.
Now you think you've got the answer, don't you? It was the bosses at the rendering plant, the boys responsible for braining the cattle and pigs and sometimes horses and gutting and bleeding them into what used to be sacred waters that killed our favorite son. It was at that. It was one boss in particular. A man named Len Olsen who had broad shoulders. His boy had also died, the year before. Blood cancer was all the words they had for it then. Broad as they were, Len's shoulders had stooped and kept his eyes on the ground, not minding what he ought to be.
Have we finally come to it, then? The moment when Angus broke, the reason? But see, don't you want to know now why Len's boy had broken? Was it God that gave him the leukemia? Maybe. Perhaps, though, it was the fact that Len and his wife and his pride and joy lived downwind of the arsenic smelter. Seems the likelier truth to me. But the problem is, it was all of us that wanted, need, what the smelter produced as it poured acid into the air. And it can't be that we're all to blame for Angus's death.
So, it takes some work to get to how a thing, a person – or even a place, ends up broken. Most people aren't all that interested in work. But I am. That's all I'm interested in right now because I'm running out of time to understand how Makah broke, and to figure my way out of what I've done.
I’ve been editor of the Makah Quartermaster for almost two decades, so it won't be hard to tell a story, even this one. I'll get the worst of it out of the way first. For Makah Island, the worst would be when I hired Joanna Ford because it was the right thing to do, and she and Brian Stewart got into a twister over what he did to Brittany Roebuck; when I lost our Randy and we all lost what made this place home. ...
Revelation is now available for purchase on Amazon, IngramSpark, and IndieBound.
His absence that day had, however, been noticed by my grandmother. Twenty children and one room could not conceal much when it came time to call attendance. So, as they had on occasion held hands, and even kissed once, and knowing Angus's predilection for early morning outings wherein he would fill his belly and then nap away the mild afternoons, she resolved herself to skip after lunch and rendezvous on their favored beach.
There, high up on the sandy shore, under the bright sun glittering off the sparkling cobalt Sound, just shy of tender blackberry shoots and fragrant blossoms, she had certainly found blond Angus in quiet repose. She found him silent, covered in tacky vomit, eyes frozen, glassy, and bloodshot, hands clawed in rictus and clutching at nothing. Angus had not known better. Or, had disregarded the warnings of old people, the way younger ones do. Disregarded that the crimson tide brings toxin and death, long after the stain of it disappears.
Right here in this tale you can come to the right conclusion that this was the moment Angus broke. His family too. His father started drinking and didn't stop and the wet-brained bastard went and shot himself and his grieving wife within the year.
The boy ate the bad clams and the little toxic microbes ate his gray matter and that's that. But where did the bad clams come from? Do you see the trouble in that question? Because the red tide that year came from somewhere. As it turns out, the rendering plant down south, overtown in in Commencement Bay, hadn't been minding what it should've been minding.
The waters of our Western passage run swift and every time the tide went out the mighty Pacific sucked the shit and rot of the runoff from the slaughterhouse through our little Hook. When the sun shyly appeared in May, a deep scarlet bloom of deadly algae found a home tucked into the loving shores Makah Island, and the red death was duly taken in by our innocent bivalves.
Now you think you've got the answer, don't you? It was the bosses at the rendering plant, the boys responsible for braining the cattle and pigs and sometimes horses and gutting and bleeding them into what used to be sacred waters that killed our favorite son. It was at that. It was one boss in particular. A man named Len Olsen who had broad shoulders. His boy had also died, the year before. Blood cancer was all the words they had for it then. Broad as they were, Len's shoulders had stooped and kept his eyes on the ground, not minding what he ought to be.
Have we finally come to it, then? The moment when Angus broke, the reason? But see, don't you want to know now why Len's boy had broken? Was it God that gave him the leukemia? Maybe. Perhaps, though, it was the fact that Len and his wife and his pride and joy lived downwind of the arsenic smelter. Seems the likelier truth to me. But the problem is, it was all of us that wanted, need, what the smelter produced as it poured acid into the air. And it can't be that we're all to blame for Angus's death.
So, it takes some work to get to how a thing, a person – or even a place, ends up broken. Most people aren't all that interested in work. But I am. That's all I'm interested in right now because I'm running out of time to understand how Makah broke, and to figure my way out of what I've done.
I’ve been editor of the Makah Quartermaster for almost two decades, so it won't be hard to tell a story, even this one. I'll get the worst of it out of the way first. For Makah Island, the worst would be when I hired Joanna Ford because it was the right thing to do, and she and Brian Stewart got into a twister over what he did to Brittany Roebuck; when I lost our Randy and we all lost what made this place home. ...
Revelation is now available for purchase on Amazon, IngramSpark, and IndieBound.