Divisadero Read Free

hitchhiked two
hours northwest onto the Colfax–Iowa Hill road and watched the men with
crevassing tools working in the north fork of the Russian River. He was
seventeen years old when he impetuously hired himself out for a pittance and
the chance of a bonus to man the Anaconda suction hoses. He came home at the
end of the week with a twisted back. He remained wordless in front of us, these
two girls, his curious listeners, as to where he had been. Wherever he had
gone, we could see, he had been somehow altered, been part of a dangerous
thing.
    He had jumped from the fl oating platform, the Anaconda hose in his
arms, and sunk to the bottom of the river. A second later the generator broke
awake and his body was fl ung from side to side as he tried to aim the live hose under
boulders for the possibility of trapped gold. Sometimes, when it got loose from
the suck of gravel, the jet hose leapt free of the water, into the air, Coop
still riding it until he fell back onto the river’s hard surface, submerging
once more with the glass and leather and iron of the diver’s helmet lolling
rough at his neck while within it the thin line of air led amateurish and
tentative and, he knew, unsafe into his mouth.
    Coop sat in the small,
dark farmhouse kitchen with us and attempted to talk of this, but he could
barely take even one step into telling us of the absurdity and danger of what
he had allowed himself to do. So we did not know what had occurred. I remember
we sat there and chanted, ‘Coop’s lost week, Coop’s lost week. Where did he go?
Who was he with? Who was the woman who must have so exhausted him?’
    The smooth rolling hills
of our farm were green in the constant rains of winter and parched brown during
summer and fall. Driving home, north out of Nicasio, we climbed to the peak of
the hills, then abruptly swerved right onto the farm’s narrow dirt road, which
went downhill a quarter-mile before it reached the barns, the car clobbering
over speed bumps made from the rubber of tractor tires that had been hammered
into the earth with spikes. When Claire and I were older, returning from
parties in Glen Ellen, half asleep and with full bladders, we cursed the
existence of the bumps. In the darkness, at the foot of the hill, we had to
halt the car. My turn, I said, getting out in my new cotton dress and
tight shoes to push the too-friendly and wide-awake mules off the path at the
foot of the hill, so we could drive on.
    As sisters we re fl ected each other, competed with each
other, and our shared idol was Coop. By the time he was in his late teens we
discovered he had other lives, disappearing into the city, haunting pool halls,
dances, returning just in time to drive Claire into Nicasio for her piano
lessons. She’d watch his lean brown hands, how he handled the clutch, how he
took corners as if guiding them through water, swerving back to the straight
road in a single gesture. She loved Coop’s easy, minimal effort towards
whatever was around him. A year later, picking her up in Nicasio, he shifted
over to the passenger seat and threw her the keys, pulled a paperback out of
the glove compartment and began reading while she, frantic and uncertain about
everything, steered the suddenly massive car—she felt she was screaming— up the
winding road to its crest and then slid down the hill to the farm. He never
once looked up, never once said a word, maybe glanced
at the face of an almost sideswiped mule as it caught his eye in the side
mirror. From then on, Claire drove to and from piano lessons alone, missing
Coop. Coop, who with his con fi dence would sweep a hay bale over his shoulder and walk to the barn
lighting a cigarette with his free hand.
    Sometimes Claire and I
would come down the hill with the car lights turned off in complete blackness.
Or we would climb from our bedroom window onto the skirt of the roof and lie
flat on our backs on the large table-rock, still warm from the day, and talk
and sing into the