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Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

It was the middle of the afternoon, January 1969, and a halfhearted rain dampened San Francisco and cast a gloomy pall over the hallways of the Social Welfare building.

Len stood waiting for his life to change. He was a skinny man with a long face that showed its creases despite the stubble on his chin and cheeks, and he kept moving his hands from the brim of his cap to the pockets of his jeans as though he couldn’t be held responsible for what they might do if left unsupervised. Finally a door creaked open and a young woman edged into the hall.

“Sir?”

Len lurched forward. He stopped abruptly when he saw the boy. This one? He was barely a child. They’d said he was three, but Len hadn’t . . . were three- year- olds that tiny? Len had expected something along the lines of a good-sized calf, seventy pounds or so, take a little muscle to roll—but this kid would have a tough time toe-to-toe with the goose that patrolled the ragged edges of Len’s yard. Did geese hurt children?

Len said, “Hey.” He meant to sound friendly, but his voice caught in his throat and sputtered like a gas engine with a lazy spark.

The boy turned his face to him, and Len peered closely. He hadn’t seen Lisa Fay since he’d married her sister fifteen years back, but there was something of the family resemblance in the snub nose, in the delicate oval curve of the chin. There was little else that seemed delicate on this boy. In spite of his small size he was robust and muscled. His pale hair was cropped short and badly, and his corduroy pants were bunched by a belt at his waist, the elastic gone slack. Kid had the right to look bedraggled, Len thought, yanked from his mother that young. He had the right to look forlorn. This boy didn’t look forlorn, he looked ferocious. Len cleared his throat and glanced away.

The plain truth? He hadn’t wanted a kid. Had no idea, with Meg the way she was, what to do with one. This boy was too small to bring to work with him and too young to leave on his own and would probably not take kindly to being penned up all day. Len looked sideways at the young woman who had maneuvered the boy into the hall. There was no other kin to take him, she’d said. Of course, if Len preferred he be raised by strangers—

“Do I sign something?”

Miss Hanson flashed him a weary smile. “Why don’t you and

Wrecker take some time to get acquainted?” She gestured toward the boy. “I’ll meet you in ten minutes in the office and we can take care of the paperwork.”

It was settled, then. Len took a hesitant step forward. His body was a compact knot from thirty years of working the woods, cramped worse from six hours in the truck on the drive south. “Okay.” He grimaced upon squatting down. “All right.” Should he call him sport? Son? Fifteen years to go, and already ten minutes seemed like an eternity. He reached out his hand. It looked giant and threatening, even to him, and he slid it back into his pocket. The kid stood his ground. Battle-worn, renegade— Len wasn’t a praying man, but a few minutes alone in the company of this boy and it was starting to feel like something a good bit bigger than he’d bargained for. “I’m your uncle Len.”

The boy made a low sound, mixed outrage and dismay. That about summed it up, Len thought.

Len drove north out of San Francisco and watched the city fall away behind them. He followed the line of traffic across the Presidio and over the water, gray and choppy, that flowed beneath the Golden Gate. On the far side the truck rumbled past the entrance to San Quentin Prison. Len snuck a glance sideways. The boy’s absent mother was shelved someplace like that. Lisa Fay had been sentenced for so long to the state slammer that they might as well have thrown away the key. Len frowned, and his fingers

itched for a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked in years, but it had been a very long day.

A muffled snore escaped from the boy, and Len risked a look in his direction. Wrecker. What kind of a name was that? Slumped against the door with his neck bent at an unnatural angle and his short legs jammed straight out on the seat. Len shifted his grip on the wheel and blinked his gaze forward. The highway buckled into green hills between each sleepy little town. Two hours down, now, and they still had four to go, a hundred miles north on narrow roads before they turned and threaded night-blind through the giant trees, up and down the winding mountain nearly to the sea. When the few buildings of Cloverdale loomed ahead, Len pulled in and parked in the lot of a diner. He was too weary to make a straight shot of it. “Boy?” Len said, and reached a big hand to jiggle the kid’s shoulder. Wrecker. It would take some getting used to. “You want something to eat?”

Wrecker blinked a few times and reached a hand to wipe away the spit that dampened his cheek. Len hadn’t noticed the boy’s blue eyes before. Stormy. The color of sea squall, not clear sky. “I have to pee.”

“Pee? Oh.” Len wrinkled his forehead. “That.” He got out of

the truck and crossed to the other door and unbuckled Wrecker and lifted him down, and they stood there awkwardly for a moment, while Len wondered if he should carry the boy, or take his hand, or simply walk ahead and hope he would follow. He had settled on the last when the door to the diner flapped open and two men and a woman walked out.

Len sagged. Four hours from home, and his Mattole neighbors were marching straight at him. Charlie Burrell bleated a greeting, and his wife moved in to lay a sympathetic hand on Len’s elbow. “Hullo, dear,” she said. Greta was a decent woman with a face as broad and bland as a saucer. “How’s Meg?”

Len’s gaze swerved aground. Six months had passed since his wife had gone in for a root canal and come home with an infection that spread into her brain and rampaged like a wild beast. Penicillin saved her life, but it couldn’t save her mind. “Meg?” Len answered gruffly, glancing back up. “Meg’s fine.” The same, he clarified. The doctors didn’t think she’d change much from how she was now.

Charlie shuffled and grunted. “Hell of a thing,” he mumbled. He glanced at his wife, and his voice veered toward belligerence. They’d had some news. “Junior got his draft notice,” he announced. The son, thick and sullen, stood behind and pretended deafness. “I believe he’ll go, but Greta here . . .”

Len watched the woman’s lips tighten and her body inch away from her husband’s. She kept her gaze trained on a spot just past Len’s shoulder, and answered in clipped tones. Their neighbor had troubles of his own without them burdening him with theirs, Greta said. She flashed Len a quick glance, and her voice softened slightly. He should take care of himself, now. She would stop over to see Meg soon. Len nodded. He breathed out as they left. He settled his cap back on his head, paused a moment to reset his balance, and remembered the boy.

“Wrecker?”

Len circled the truck and scanned the parking lot.

“Kid?” He called twice, his voice tight and low. He swung his head toward the road to make sure the boy wasn’t trapped in traffic, and then he hurried across the lot at awkward angles, checking between the cars. Len rushed inside and anxiously searched the faces. A boy, he stammered, taking hold of the waitress. Had she seen him? A little one. His eyes lit on a stool at the counter. “Maybe this tall.”

“Whoa, there,” she said, steadying him. “You lost your kid?”

She studied Len’s panicked face and then turned to the diners. “Any y’all seen this man’s boy? ’Bout yay high.” She gestured to her hip and then turned back to Len. “How old?” Her eyes widened. “Good God. Get looking,” she shouted. “Three years old and on the loose. Spread out,” and the people left their napkins by their plates and did as she ordered. “Norton,” she yelled to the cook. He came out wiping his hands on the dingy apron that girdled his body. “Check down by the river. And fast.”

Len felt his heart seize. If anything had happened to the boy—

“You set there,” the waitress said. She placed a hand on his shoulder and forced him into the cracked padding of a booth. “You look like death. Can’t have him see you like that,” and Len felt himself collapse under her soft push. The room emptied. Len counted slowly to five, forcing each breath into his lungs. And then he stood and followed the cook’s broad back down a path to the river. He paused when Norton did, watched the cook straighten from his bearlike slump, tap a cigarette loose from a crumpled pack, hold it to his mouth. Norton leisurely cupped his hands to light the cigarette and drew a noisy, satisfied lungful of smoke. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. Compare the three settings of Wrecker: hippie San Francisco, the women’s prison at Chino, and the secluded Mattole Valley. How does each of these settings look and feel in the novel? What does Lisa Fay miss most about San Francisco? Why does the Mattole Valley feel like home to Melody?

2. Discuss the circumstances of Meg’s illness. What was Meg like before she got sick? What toll does Meg’s condition take upon her marriage, and how does Len express his devotion and his doubts?

3. What are Len’s first impressions of three-year-old Wrecker? What reservations does Len have about taking Wrecker in? Are his worst fears justified? Why or why not?

4. Each resident of Bow Farm—Melody, Willow, Ruth, Johnny Appleseed, and Wrecker—has survived a difficult past. How do we learn about their histories? What are they running away from, and how do they reconcile a painful past with a hopeful present?

5. Young Wrecker’s early days at Bow Farm are full of “love in overalls, love with a spade in its hand.” (28) Why is taking care of Wrecker such hard work? What does each of his caretakers contribute, and how do they make this unusual family work?

6. Compare Melody and Willow, the two founders of Bow Farm. How do their personalities, homes, and parenting styles differ? What are the sources of tension between these two friends, and how do they eventually resolve their differences?

7. Lisa Fay puts off naming her son until he says to her, “I a wrecker.” (63) What is the meaning of this unusual name? What are some of Wrecker’s destructive tendencies, and how does he fight the urge to “wreck” the things and people around him?

8. Love doesn’t come easily in this novel: Arlyn leaves Lisa Fay, Melody and DF Al don’t stay together, Len misses the old Meg, and Ruth mourns the death of Elizabeth. What does this theme of difficult romance add to the novel? How do these stories of lost love compare to Len and Willow’s romance?

9. Trace the journey of the photo that Belle snapped on Wrecker’s third birthday. How does the photo get passed along, and what does it mean to each person who has it? How does it eventually land in Wrecker’s hands?

10. Consider Lisa Fay’s fifteen years in prison. How does she cope with her circumstances, and what memories and emotions threaten her sanity during these long years?

11. When Melody tells Wrecker about his mother, she finally understands that “her omission could be as gravely harmful as an outright lie.” (239) Why does Melody keep Wrecker’s history from him for so long? What are the consequences of her silence? Was her “omission” a mistake? Why or why not?

12. While Wrecker is at his first school dance, Len and Willow finally admit their feelings for each other. Discuss how these two scenes fit together: Wrecker meeting girls and Len and Willow getting closer in a bar. What discoveries do these characters make during this trip to town?

13. Why does Willow share her own story as a mother in her good-bye letter to Wrecker? Discuss how Willow’s family history leads her to give Wrecker the following advice: “Listen to me. Don’t choose. Melody is your mother. Lisa Fay is your mother, too.” (259). How does Wrecker respond to Willow’s advice?

14. Wrecker spans twenty years, from the boy’s birth to his young adulthood. When does time seem to pass slowly in the novel? When does it pass quickly? Which important events mark these years of Wrecker’s life? How does Bow Farm and the Mattole Valley change over these two decades?

15. Discuss the last scene of the novel, when Wrecker, Ruth, Len, Willow, Melody, and Lisa Fay sit down to dinner together at Bow Farm. How does this dinner make them into a family? Why do you think it is told from Ruth’s perspective? How would this scene be different from the point of view of another character?


Suggested reading
Summer Wood, Arroyo; T. C. Boyle, Drop City; Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World; Meredith Hall, Without a Map; Susan Straight, Take One Candle Light a Room; Pam Houston, Cowboys Are My Weakness; Marisa Silver, No Direction Home; Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here; Antonya Nelson, Bound

Summer Wood is the author of Arroyo. In 2007 she received the Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation for her work on Wrecker. She teaches writing at the University of New Mexico’s Taos Summer Writers’ Conference, and in 2009 she directed the first NEA/Taos Big Read. She is currently the director of Voices from the American Land, and has lived with her family in Taos for the past twenty years.

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