“What are you doing here?”
His usual red face was white with cold, his eyes wet. He wore the jacket he wore when hunting. It was thick and smelled bad. It was unusual because he should have been at work right now—he should be wearing his uniform.
“I was... just...” She didn’t know what to say. She had never seen her dad look so mad. Not since her mom had left.
He looked down at the doll clutched in her hand.
“Ain’t you got school?” he asked.
It was like him to not keep track.
“It’s teacher planning day.”
Every year, there was no school the day after the Harvest Fest. He should know that, she thought, and then: He wouldn’t.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I was just walking....”
“I told you to stay out of the woods!”
Emma wanted to argue. She wasn’t allowed to play with Mitchell. She couldn’t go by the river, because of the rapids. She wasn’t allowed in the woods. Her dad didn’t like most people in the town—he had bad things to say about them. There was so little for her to do. She was tired of coloring books and the sound of the TV in an empty house.
The Momma doll had gone very quiet in her hand. She had no more to say. Emma was silent all the way home, obediently following behind her dad. Emma didn’t like the way her dad’s jacket smelled, and now she was more afraid of the pigs than ever, which made no sense.
30.
That little girl was all grown up. Her name was now Emma Griffin, and she had married a man up in Alaska. She was gay but had never come out, which plays a role in this story. Her secret lover was another teacher in their small, overheated school. Her lover’s name was Patricia Rosner.
Patricia was curled up in a hotel bed. Both of them were attending a teachers’ conference. It was taking place this year in hot, humid Savannah, because it was so cheap in summer, and the two of them had just finished making sweaty, slippery love.
Now Patricia was reading the local paper while drinking coffee. Her hair lay wetly at the back of her skull.
“Hey. Isn’t this guy from your hometown?” she asked. She handed over the folded paper.
The article was at the bottom of the first page.
“Oregon Man Set for Execution.”
Emma began to read it, and at the mention of Chinook, all the memories came back. The poorhouse, the green river.
She had kept that doll all these years. Now she was tucked away in the top drawer of her dresser. Even her husband knew not to touch the Momma doll.
Mitchell Brown had been convicted for murdering a woman and making her disappear. She had not known.
“Are you all right?” asked her lover.
Emma remembered how her mother had run off. Then she thoughtof how Mitchell’s mom had run off, too, a few years before hers. It had been the town gossip, briefly.
“No,” she answered.
“Did you know him?”
“Mitchell?” She looked evasive. “My dad—you know.”
Patricia knew. She was the one Emma told everything, including how, when she was eighteen, under her pressing, her dad had finally said her mother had left him after threatening divorce. In college, Emma had made some efforts to find her mom, but all leads were dead ends.
Patricia scooched over to put her head in her lover’s lap. She stroked her thigh. They entwined fingers.
