Ausable Chasm

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The location of the end of my third marriage: my back right rib, third from the bottom. September evening, 2014. A chick escaped the chicken pen when my third then-husband's bird dogs were outside and one somehow pawed back the gate, trying to get at the chickens again.

We were in the kitchen, puppies milling at our feet when I heard squawking and ran outside, saw the dogs surrounding the chick, ran up the hill yelling to scatter them and save it. The chick was frantically trying to get back through the mesh, floundering between the rush of dogs, alarmed hens scurrying to reach it from the other side.

He was about ten yards behind me, calling out. I assumed he was coming to help and calling the dogs to stop. Then I felt something hit my back. A quick impact, a thud on my rib. Astonishing.

I remember pushing the dogs out of the way and catching the chick against the mesh, the dogs so close I felt the brush of their teeth. I yelled away! and cupped it in my hands. It was vibrating, its feathers wet from dog mouths, tiny feet scratching for traction. I got it back into the chicken pen and it ran straight to its mother, Lucille, and dove under her wing. My hens, the flock of golden sisters, Lucille, Maybelle, Carlotta, Chinita, clustered around, chattering with worry. I called to them—it's ok honeys—in a shaky version of hen mother voice, hooked the gate shut and turned back to the house, and to him.

The right side of my back felt switched on. I saw a white bottle on the ground, the one we used for spraying dog messes to neutralize the smell, jumbo sized. Realized that's what hit my back, and it hit my back because he had thrown it at me, and he was yelling at me to stop, not the dogs.

We met near the house, wild with adrenaline for completely different reasons.

Did you really just throw that at me?

Don't you ever, ever harm my dogs.

The storm of an argument had no shared logic, no common ground. It registered with me that I just got hit in the back with a bottle thrown by my husband, and nstantly an uncrossable line had just been crossed. He was insisting if he wanted to hurt me he could have lobbed it overhand, as if that would be some comfort. The outrage, he insisted, was that I chased his dogs. I asked him if I should have let them kill the chick instead and he said of course, and I knew he meant it. And I knew he believed I had just crossed a line, not him, and that was not to ever stop his dogs from killing a chicken because that would untrain them, and ruining months of training was far worse than a chick getting torn apart.

Minutes ago the evening was going all right, an uneasy peace we were both trying to hold onto before he went to Michigan for a hunting trip with his dogs. He'd be gone a month, leaving me to care for the dogs he left behind, his pigeons, the house. I was already feeling quietly desperate and he sensed it, but we were still trying, somehow. There was a clear sunset after a day of blue. In the afternoon I'd fed the hens leftover apples and the chicks had hopped on my knees as I sat on the coop steps. I loved my hens. I loved the room with the cathedral ceiling and big windows that I'd had built on the back of the little house when I moved in, trying to make enough room for both of us. I relished the moments of quiet with my own two dogs, drives down the road, getting away from the house to cafes and fields. That's what I'd been focusing on.

Now the sunset was a sick yellow, a new breeze carried the scent of pigeon shit, sharp rocks were coming up through the dirt path behind the house because we'd made it too shallow.

I need to go to my room, I think I said. When I'm rattled my words get clumsy, like bags stuffed with so much that they can't stay upright. I meant much more but couldn't say it. The thing I feared most about him had just proven itself to be true: his underlying rage, bizarre priorities that put a wife last. It was a mistake to marry him, this strange, self-made handsome country boy high school football star turned dog trainer who saw himself as every woman's hero and had nearly convinced me. Whatever we'd had flew ten yards through the air and landed square on my ribs.

I had the neck of the spray bottle in my hand and it felt, oddly, the same width as a chicken neck might feel. It also felt like evidence, and I held onto it. What are you going to do, he said, and it didn't sound like concern.

I just want to go in the house, I said, heading inside.

It's not your room and it's not your house, he said, then went into the kitchen with the dogs.

It was a simple statement. Okay, I lied.

In my room, I sat in a chair and pressed my back against the rungs, testing it. It didn't feel broken, but it felt bruised, something amiss. My younger dog, the black one, laid its long nose in my hand, the bones of its lower jaw settling in my palm. My older dog circled on the big orthopedic bed, keeping her eyes on me. The skin across the back of my ribcage tingled, electrified. Over my desk was the bulletin board I'd started: some old postcards, an envelope from Dad with my address typed on his Royal manual, the o's and a's filled in where the keys were gummed up. What would he think if I told him what just happened, I thought, but couldn't imagine telling him.

Next to the envelope was my 1920s scenic postcard of Ausable Chasm, the whitewater furling through the rocky gorge, a singular force storming between the rocks. Wondrous Ausable Chasm, the caption said. I loved the postcard for the word ausable, the stippled, grand color, the idea of sending someone a scene like that and stirring their heart. I'd always wanted to use ausable as an adjective. I feel ausable. It had something to do with a French term for sand or a solid ground forced to disintegrate.

Later my husband came in. He wanted to know how I was. He had a peanut butter sandwich. Made my breakfast for tomorrow, he said, since you probably won't. He'd encased it so tightly in plastic wrap it looked like skin. He asked if I were going to make something of this, as if that was the real problem. If you think it needs to be looked at I can't stop you, he said, but we both know that's ridiculous. But if you want to, let's think of a story, he said.

I pretended to be confused.

I have a reputation, he said. I could lose my handgun license. They could take my guns if they think for some crazy reason I am guilty of —

Of course not, I lied.

So you were hiking with your dogs and you slipped backwards and fell on a rock, he said. It was clear he'd already thought it all through. That would be entirely believable, he said, way more than I hit you with a bottle. That should work.

He thought we were in this together. I remember a sensation like reverse gravity, being pulled upwards and forwards by a strong current. My dogs watched me carefully. I thought of my father at his typewriter, happily typing his daughter's latest address on the envelope he'd send, containing his letter that said, I hope this finds you well.

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