Free Mink River: A Novel by Brian Doyle

twentieth birthday Rachel has decided to give him herself. A friend from high school has a tiny family fishing cabin up in the hills near the source of the Mink and Rachel is going to borrow the cabin. She and the friend went up there this afternoon to arrange the cabin as a love nest as the friend says teasing but envious. They make up the bed with freshly ironed cotton sheets and set candles around the bathtub and Rachel sets a bowl of salmonberries by the bed.
    What are you planning to do with those berries? says the friend.
    Use your imagination, says Rachel and they laugh.
    When they are done preparing the cabin they sit on the front step watching two tiny mud-brown wrens skittering and stuttering in the tangled brush around the door. The wrens have a burbling whirring wheedle like a sung question: rrrrrrrrr?
    What kind of bird is that? says the friend.
    Winter wren, says Rachel. Hear the rising note at the end of the call? And they flit around low to the ground like mice, that’s a sign of winter wrens. My mom loves them though she says the males mate with several females in a season.
    Men! snorts the friend and they laugh.
    The wrens find something in the brush and get all excited rrrrrrr!
    House wrens are different, says Rachel raising her voice a little over the excited wrens, once they get together they stay together.
    Rrrrrr! say the wrens.
    You want to marry him? says the friend.
    No, says Rachel. I haven’t thought that far. I don’t want to think ahead. I don’t want to think at all. I just want to be with him now.
    He seems a little … raw, says the friend.
    Rrrrrr! say the wrens, hopping about.
    He’s cute, says Rachel, and he’s gentle with me.
    What does he want? says the friend.
    He wants to rrrrrrrrr me all day long, says Rachel, and both young women laugh, and they stand up to go, and the frightened wrens leap away into the brush chattering kipkip kipkip .
    Rachel’s friend locks the cabin door and gives Rachel the key and they drive home imitating the wrens rrrrrrrrrr and laughing but each thinks the other is laughing a little too hard.
    39.
    Owen Cooney taping at home here. I am telling stories for my son Daniel. They are sad stories some of them but we are made of joy and woe both. So. My greatgrandfather was Timmy Cooney who worked on a road that goes nowhere and there is a story in that. This was during Bliain na Sciedan, the years of small potatoes. The road is built of stones. The stones were carried by hungry men. The men were paid with one piece of bread a day. The bread wasn’t enough and most of the men died. Some men fell right on the road and other men fell to the side into the grass and nettles and bushes. Timmy Cooney fell to the side of the road into the bushes and he crawled on his belly through the ditch looking for caisearbhan , which is dandelions, and samhadh , which is sorrel, and other herbs and weeds. His mouth was green from the weeds he ate. He was there in that ditch for two days and one night. On the second day he saw a man fall on the road above him where they were working and the man was too weak to stand up anymore and the other men working were too weak to carry him off the road, so they put their stones over him where he lay and they went on down the road.
    My greatgrandfather remembered that place because there was a holly tree there.
    After two days my greatgrandfather could stand up and he walked across a field to a little house. There was an oak tree there by that house. There was a man and woman and a dead girl there. The girl was about twelve years old. She was naked and my greatgrandfather covered her with half of his shirt because she was just beginning to grow breasts and no man’s eyes should see that. Her father and mother were too weak to bury her so my greatgrandfather carried her out behind the little house to the edge of a little creek and folded her arms across her chest and covered her as best he could with mud and grass. He cried he said like he