The Eve Tree: A Novel
Prologue

Humboldt County, Northern California

1943

The hills were plucked like chickens, and Catherine was breathless with fear. She stood on the ground beside her horse, tightened her hand around his reins. A dark gray haze covered her eyes. She saw racing white pinpricks. Her unsteady knees trembled. When the haze passed, the landscape was still changed beyond recognition. Enough trees had been felled to throw heaven off kilter, and she could still hear the ringing of the logger’s saws. 

Catherine and her horse were perched on the ridge of the hill that was thrust from the river valley below. On one side of the ridge, her house was cupped in one of the smooth plateaus of hill. On the other, the forest had stretched out for miles, rippling in small hills, eventually plunging into another valley. Now it looked like a terrible storm had passed through. They had cut so many trees down already, it couldn't be believed. Contracts, promises, and money changed hands. Small plumes of smoke wound into the air where the loggers had burned to make room for falling trees.

It was late spring. Beside her, two of the last of the wild irises waved in a tiny grassy bowl. They were flecked with sawdust. Catherine turned her head and saw that behind her all was like it had always been. Clumps of trees on hills, forest in the valley. The green of spring bathing everything. As she turned back to the desecrated slopes on this side of the ridge, she heard someone call the all clear, and she cringed, bracing herself for the crash. 

Catherine knew that any falling tree made a sound, but in the last months she had learned that a hundred-fifty foot Redwood shook the very earth. It made a sound like dying, like what might happen if the stars crashed out of the sky. This one gouged a hole in the forest, and the crash scraped at Catherine's insides. A tremendous cloud of dust rose as the tree settled its groaning corpse into the ground, and as the dust cleared, Catherine saw a dozen men scramble over its long body, already working to cut it apart, carry it out in pieces. She felt sick. She turned away.

God in Heaven. She was the one who had called the loggers here. She mounted her horse and they climbed back to the top of the ridge, then descended, slowly, the horse stepping carefully on the new grass. In the distance Catherine could see the house, stock still beneath the protective oaks. She didn't look back as they came past the point where the logging was hidden from view. She didn't want to see it again.

She held her body still as she slid the saddle off her horse and heaved it over the saddle post. Eased the bridle off his face. Leaned her face against his. 

Catherine had been up to the logging zone many times, but today was the worst. For a month now, she had wanted to change her mind, to say, "Forget about it, selling the trees was a bad idea," but she couldn't. She wouldn't back down.

She left the barn and walked up the hill to the house. The air smelled like advancing rain. One tree on the hill waved its limbs at her. It looked like a threat. 

The house was cold, as though no one had taken care of the fire. She walked to the stove and saw that it had gone out. She rubbed her red hands together and piled kindling into a small tipi, lit it with a match. She set a few sticks on top, finally, one log. She sat back on her heels and watched it catch. Tiny flames snaked into grooves in the dried grains of the wood, snatching at them and hissing. Her throat thickened and ached.

She shut the stove, stood slowly. Went to find her mother. 

Bertha was sitting in the gray living room in her rocker, holding her face in one hand, looking down to the river below. Mostly it was hidden from their view by the trees and knobs of hill that got in the way, but a glint showed here and there, flashing like the sides of many fish in the sun. 

"Ma," Catherine said. She crossed the room and sunk down in front of the rocking chair. "You feeling all right?"

It took Bertha a long time to look at Catherine. When she did, her eyes were dark and sad. 

"What did you see up there?" she asked.

Catherine stood and brushed at her blue jeans. 

"It's chilly out," she said, "Temperature took a dive again. Like it's barely spring." She walked a few steps away, turned again, twisted her hands behind her. "Hope the tomatoes don't freeze."

"Catherine." Bertha rocked the chair violently.

"What do you want to know?" Catherine couldn't meet her mother's eyes.

"How much have they taken?"

Catherine stared at her mother’s skirt where it ended and flapped against her thin legs, a few inches above her moccasins. They were crisp and new, Catherine had bought them the last time she and her mother went to the Pomo tribal land. With timber money.

"A lot," she whispered.

"How much?"

"I... I can't tell. They've taken a big swathe. Almost as far as I can see."

Through their feet and in their ears, they felt and heard another tree fall. Catherine's mother recoiled as though someone had hit her. She shrunk in her chair and gasped. Then she started to weep. Catherine was at her side in an instant, her hands on her mother's hair, strung through with all the gray that had appeared in this last year. 

"Ma, Ma..." she said, but she didn't know what else to say. She held her mother as she cried and she felt nauseous with guilt. A long line of choices spread behind her, choices her mother had opposed. 

Bertha took a deep breath, then sighed from her belly, a deep sigh, a dying sigh. She pushed Catherine's hand away. 

"Tell them to stop," she said. "It's enough. It's enough."

Catherine stood and left the room, sprinted to the barn to saddle her horse and go to the loggers, tell them to stop. Stop the falling, stop the noise, bring them back. Finally she could make herself bend and undo this doing.