A giant of its kind Item Type Thesis Authors Hinrichs, Christie A. Download date 26/09/2021 18:22:05 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/8248 A GIANT OF ITS KIND By Christie A. Hinrichs RECOMMENDED: Gerri BrishtwHf C i ^ Daryl Farmer. Advisory Committee Chair Rich Carr, Chair, Department of English APPROVED: Sherman, D.ean.jeaij. Collegp£ ofcLiberal Arts . Eichelberger, f theyGVaduate School ? A GIANT OF ITS KIND A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS By Christie A. Hinrichs Fairbanks, Alaska May 2013 iii Table of Contents Page Signature Page................................................................................................................................i Title Page....................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... iii Epigraph.......................................................................................................................................... 1 1........................................................................................................................................................2 We May All Be Netted Together................................................................................................ 3 Snag ................................................................................................................................................. 5 Yellow Bottom .............................................................................................................................33 Fetch and Swell ............................................................................................................................50 I I.....................................................................................................................................................68 I Would Be the High Point of Water........................................................................................69 A Giant of its Kind ...................................................................................................................... 70 The Green Men ............................................................................................................................91 Under a Clipped Hedge.............................................................................................................105 II I..................................................................................................................................................124 Everything That Concerns You Concerns M e ........................................................................125 Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do........................................................................................128 What Harold Saw ...................................................................................................................... 141 We Are Who We Were Then ................................................................................................... 155 iv I V .................................................................................................................................................171 The Children Are Watching .....................................................................................................172 The Back of Another Man’s Head .......................................................................................... 174 Pinprick.......................................................................................................................................185 The Far Stars..............................................................................................................................205 V.................................................................................................................................................. 237 Sleepsick.................................................................................................................................... 238 The Empty..................................................................................................................................240 1 Here too, in the middle region of deepest canyons, are the grandest forest trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species and the size and beauty of its trees. The winds blow in melody to their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere with the songs of birds and running water. JOHN MUIR, 1894 2 I. 3 We May All Be Netted Together First, forget everything you know about home. Don’t think about the slipshod duplex where you swam in a half-deflated kiddy pool full of floating grass. Or the house your grandmother owned before she got too old to be trusted with the wood stove. Forget the parking lot of the reservoir, your sister’s waterbed, the basement davenport, or wherever it was that you lost your virginity. Banish all thoughts of small town parades and bus journeys. Next, examine your body. Stand in front of the mirror on the back of your closet door and strip away everything that makes you distinct. The ironic T-shirts, push up bras, the tube socks your mom sent in a Christmas box, novelty ties. Rub out the eyeliner with the back of your hand and shave your beard. You’ll find that your hair, falling in clumps to the floor, will cause you actual physical pain, but do it anyway. Cut away the tattoos, the fifty extra pounds, that birthmark in the shape of a strawberry on the nape of your neck. Scrub your skin until it takes on its own light, forming a troposphere that traps your uniform heat. Ninty-eight point six within a millimeter of every brow. Now you are ready to move. Focus on the muscles working beneath your layers of fat and sinew as you throw a punch, roll down hills, operate heavy machinery. Gather together in small groups of two and three, and ask yourselves, if we drained the blood from our veins, would it be equal in weight and measure? Are we all fitted with the exact same number of eyelashes? Is one’s distaste for poetry and particleboard balanced by a love for steel tipped darts and hardwood in another? These questions don’t matter, but 4 understand that the answer does. Understand that the cure for unhappiness is not happiness, but rather, the crack in someone’s back tooth that only you can fill. 5 Snag That the trees would be standing long after she was gone had once comforted Beth. Even after the wind-lashed deadfall had slipped off the green chain and severed her father’s spinal cord, after he retreated within the confines of a nursing home suite and into his broken body, after she finally understood herself to be alone in the world, Beth saw the trees, the same trees that towered over her girlhood, as limitless, without beginning, immortal. She thought this idea strange, since she had been clothed and fed all her life by men whose livelihood depended on razing those trees to the ground. But when the sun warmed the branches, sending the circle of darkness back into the mundane and familiar boundaries of dirt roads and beat up pickup trucks, Beth couldn’t help but feel relieved that they stood as they always had, and had not rearranged themselves, by some diabolical magic, in the night. Beth took the baby monitor and a sweater out the back door toward the lean-to behind the cabin. She pulled a pack from a gap in the low-slung rafters and knocked out a cigarette before picking up a tin can and heading toward the tree line. He’d been gone for over a year, but seeing those cans always brought her father’s scent, wet ferns and the earthy shit smell of pulp, right back. As a precaution, the logging crew her husband Perry had hired would arrive well before dawn and work only until the sun broke over the eastern treeline, when the heat index made fire a threat. But cigarettes were much more likely to cause a fire than overheated diesel engines. Back when he was bucking Doug Fir and Pondos in the 6 Cascades, hooking giant spruce out of the brittle late summer forests, her father had insisted his brush monkeys smoke into a tin can. Can’t charge nobody for a cinder,he’d said. He’d pour a slug of water or JB—whatever was handy—into the bottom of the can and carry it around with him everywhere. She wove herself through the tagged trees, bringing the monitor up to her ear every few yards to make sure she could still hear the baby’s heavy breathing in the still cabin behind her. She had bought the best model on the market—a range of almost 300 yards. Not that it mattered; the baby slept constantly, waking only to eat ferociously and stare at her for a few moments in bewilderment before sliding back into unconsciousness. But she knew Perry would panic if he found her out of bed. She walked to the end of the monitor’s tether and found a spongy stump for a seat while she smoked. As she sat, she tried to transmit the customary message to her father, concentrating very hard to guide her thoughts down the hill, along Highway 20, through town and into his room, cramped by the various equipment that kept