River's Hope

19-year-old Hope Siddons Clark of Willow Creek, Humboldt County, California, knew the bends of the Trinity River near her home like the back of her own hand. She lived in the countryside outside Willow Creek, at a cabin in the “middle of nowhere” in an area dotted with clusters of pines and firs, mountain meadows and canyons, and most of all, the Trinity River, teeming with edible fish and other God-given life.

She had lived in Willow Creek all her life, as did her mother’s family, who were Yurok Native Americans. Even as a young child, Hope was beautiful, with long, black hair, warm, perceptive dark eyes, and as her father, Kevin Clark, said, “a smile that could light up a night sky out in the country.”

Well-meaning friends and family told Hope she should move to San Francisco or Los Angeles and try to get a job as a clothing model, but Hope loved her rural home and Willow Creek, tucked deep in timber country.

Hope also loved to read, buying books at the thrift store or at Walmart in Eureka, on the coast. For residents of Willow Creek and the surrounding rural areas, Eureka, nearly an hour away, was “the big city.” Tall, stately conifers and mountains surrounded the cabin, deep down a country road where no one could find it accidentally, which was what Hope’s parents, Kevin and Melinda Clark, wanted when they moved the family there after the death of Melinda’s mother, Lynn, in a car accident when Hope was a baby. Melinda and her Yurok ancestors had lived in Humboldt County for hundreds and hundreds of years, but Kevin Clark was born in Ohio, moving to Eureka after high school to live with his aunt Janette.

One hot day at the cabin (July 8, 2015), Melinda Clark fed the flock of chickens that she raised for their eggs and sold in town. She also ran the Spotted Owl Store in town, catering mostly to tourists. Melinda ran the store along with two business partners, but hardly did her grocery shopping there, thinking it was overpriced. Kevin Clark was an anthropology professor at College of the Redwoods, a community college in Eureka, also selling the fish he caught on the part of the Trinity that was part of the nine acres and the cabin.

It was Melinda’s day off from the store. She asked Hope, who had a job as a receptionist at the Family Health Center in Willow Creek, if she could take a day off work so they could drive to Eureka together and “surprise your father.”

Hope said to her excited mother, “Mom, I’m off anyway. What do we need to do in Eureka? I need soda and peanut butter, so can we stop at Walmart?”

With a twinkle in her eye, Melinda replied, “To surprise your father, we need to go there anyway. We need cat food- again. I also need cherry pie filling, car wax and peanuts.”

“Are you going to make a pie for Dad? Is that the surprise?”

“That’s not all. When we get to Eureka, I’ll tell you more.”

Hope was intrigued. She put her wallet in her pants pocket and offered to drive to Eureka.

The pines and firs, mountains and river stretched in all directions around the cabin as they started their drive to Eureka.

The mother-daughter pair drove closer and closer to the coast until they could see the city of Eureka, and when Hope parked the car Melinda told her the reason why they were there.

“Hope, you know how your father is always griping about that old shed behind the cabin?”

“Yeah.”

“He thinks it can be used to store fishing equipment, but it’s a mess back there. He’s not fishing today, so he left the fishing stuff at home and I loaded it into the car.”

“Mom, what are we doing?”

“I was thinking we can surprise your father by repainting the shed and organizing the fishing lures.”

“What was back there anyway?”

“It was nothing but your grandma Lynn’s old romance novels with the covers ripped off, some scrap lumber and a few dusty pots and pans.”

As they walked through the aisles of Walmart, Hope and Melinda noticed two middle-aged men in the fishing supply aisle talking about a missing boat.

One of them was thin and tall like Kevin Clark, while the other was balding and portly with a Roman nose.

The man who looked like Kevin Clark groused, “Yeah, who took one of my fishing skiffs? No one knows? The guests have to sign in and out when they take one of the fishing skiffs down the Trinity.”

The other man reasoned, “Maybe it was a guest who just forgot to sign the boat out.”

“Maybe it’s gone forever. And those fishing skiffs aren’t cheap.”

“Yeah, I know they’re not, but I bet you it will show up soon.”

The Kevin Clark-looking man had a raspy voice and said to Hope, who was deciding what type of fishing lure to get her father, “Excuse me, miss?”

“Yes?”

“Do you have a job?”

Who was this man and why was he asking this? Hope decided to answer his question calmly. “Yes, I have a job.”

“Here in Eureka?”

“No, I live in Willow Creek.”

“That makes us townmates” the man chuckled. “I’m Cy Rivers and this is my buddy Sam Marsh, but please just call him Sammy.”

“I’m Hope Siddons Clark, nice to meet you two.”

In his raspy voice, Cy Rivers said, “Such a beautiful name for a beautiful girl” and chuckled. Now, Hope began to feel a bit uneasy. Melinda was in the automotive department, picking out car wax.

Sam Marsh butted in. “Cy, quit your dawdling and ask her the question.”

“Do you like working with kids?”

The men were making Hope nervous. “I’m an only child, but I don’t mind kids.”

“Miss, this is a job offer. There is a position for an assistant open at the preschool, Redwood Kids State Preschool on Route 96 in Willow Creek. Do you know where that is?”

Hope laughed. “Yes, I know where Route 96 is. Everyone in Willow Creek can at least find their way to 96.”

“It pays eleven bucks an hour. How much does the job you are at now pay?”

“I don’t want to disclose that, but it pays less than eleven.”

“So, are you taking the offer or not?”

“What is your phone number? I have to consider a few things first.”

Sam Marsh wrote down the number and handed the slip of paper to Hope, who was unsure if she should take the job offer. She lived with her parents and paid rent each month, and still had money left over after buying essentials- or was the job offer a ruse and the men were trying to ask her out?

They were rough outdoorsmen who seemed to not know or care about early childhood education, but Hope reminded herself that looks were deceiving. After getting out of the Army, her best friend Jocelyn Davidson’s brother Anthony, who was also “rough-and-tumble” moved to San Francisco and became a nurse. Male nurses were nearly unheard of in Humboldt County, but not in the more progressive Bay Area.

Melinda and Hope went through the store, and before checking out they went to the baby section of the store to look for a gift for Jocelyn, a year older than Hope. Jocelyn had had a baby a few weeks prior, named Trinity Marlene France after the Trinity River and the baby’s father’s mother (Marlene France). The father was Jocelyn’s boyfriend Marc France.

On the phone, Jocelyn had gushed to Hope about how Marc had said “our baby is as beautiful as this town.”

It was true. Willow Creek and the surrounding area was blanketed in firs and pines and divided by the Trinity River, a deep, wide river carving an aquatic pathway through northern California. Salmon, steelhead, brown trout and other fish lived in the river, and many helped fill the dinner plates of residents. When Hope was in elementary school, she had a classmate named Vivian Sprightly who was from San Diego, but her family moved to Willow Creek and after a year, they moved back to San Diego. Hope could not understand why people moved out of Willow Creek unless they had to, but it was because of Vivian Sprightly’s dying grandmother in San Diego.

At the checkout, Melinda groaned and Hope asked her what was wrong.

“It’s that early intervention therapist with the gravelly voice, Hope. She always has a full cart of crap.”

Hope laughed. “I don’t know how she got a job working with any kids, let alone special needs kids. Speaking of kids…”

Melinda was not sure what Hope was trying to tell her, so she responded, “Am I going to be a grandmother? Who’s the father?”

“Mom, relax. It’s nothing like that at all. Two guys in the fishing aisle were griping about a missing boat and acted like they were trying to ask me out, but they offered me a job at a preschool.”

“Here in Eureka?”

“No, at the preschool on Route 96. It pays $11 an hour. Mom, should I take it? I told those guys I would let them know, but they didn’t seem like preschool teachers.”

“Neither does the Marlboro Woman over there. All kidding aside, Hope, you would make a good preschool teacher, but If you get red flags, don’t take it.”

Melinda, Kevin and Hope all laughed at “the Marlboro Woman” an early-intervention therapist in Eureka, but she lived in Willow Creek. Her voice was marred by years of heavy cigarette smoking, sounding as rough as the gravel lining the Clarks’ driveway.

After Walmart, Melinda and Hope went to the thrift store (Rescue Village), McDonald’s for lunch and then Melinda took the wheel for the drive back home to surprise Kevin when he returned from his job in Eureka. It was ninety degrees that day, but the Clark’s were a family of outdoorsmen. Hope began painting the shed a deep, earthy green- the color of the vast blanket of trees stretching as far as the eye could see. With both Hope and her mother painting the shed, the job did not take long. They then took Kevin’s fishing equipment, arranging it neatly on shelves. His three fishing poles were propped up neatly in one of the shed’s corners. It took slightly more an hour to finish the job.

“Mom, won’t Dad be happy? He’s talked about fixing this old shed for years.”

“He sure will be, Hope. He’s going fishing with a couple of his guy friends tomorrow. Hope, would you hang this on that old rusty nail in the shed? I bought it at Savers.”

“Savers?” Hope was not sure what “Savers” was. She was familiar with most of the stores in Eureka, but had never heard of Savers.

“A thrift store they have down in the Bay Area. When I went there last month, I stopped at Savers and bought this. That’s where I got you those Robyn Carr books.”

Robyn Carr wrote romance novels and women’s fiction, and was one of Hope’s favorite authors. Hope mostly read romance novels, women’s fiction and Christian fiction. The Savers item was a wooden plaque with the word “HOPE” painted on it in green letters, and since it was her name, Hope chuckled as she hung it on the rusty nail, which like Melinda’s family, had been there for generations.

After Hope hung it in the shed, Melinda fed the chickens and went out to a small clearing in the dense forest, part of the Clarks’ property.

Hope read a few pages of the book she was reading, and felt “immersed” in the cornfields of Pennsylvania’s Amish country, which had been described as “peaceful” several times in the book, but Hope was surrounded by natural peace and beauty in her Willow Creek cabin. She was jolted out of her book by the ringing of her cell phone.

“Hi, Hope. This is Meredith. My mom is having a baby. We live on the Hoopa Valley Indian reservation, 900 Big Hill Road. Please come!”

Meredith was one of Hope’s high school classmates, and like Melinda but unlike Hope, she was mostly Yurok Native American. Kevin Clark was mostly of Italian, English and Irish ancestry, but found out he had a distant Native American relative dating back to the early 1800s, but she was Seneca, completely different from the Yurok.

After telling Melinda where she was going, Hope drove her mother’s station wagon on Route 96 North, with a country music CD blaring and the windows down, driving slowly because of the area’s hairpin turns and curves. Just north of the town of Hoopa, she drove onto Big Hill Road into the rural backcountry. Forty-five minutes later, Hope arrived at Meredith’s house, a ramshackle place on the reservation, which was plagued by poverty, alcoholism and methamphetamine usage. Meredith’s mother had been on drugs, but had gotten off them, remarried and now was having a baby.

When Hope entered the house, she heard Meredith’s mother, Annie, moaning and groaning with the pains of labor while everyone around her tried to reassure her that the baby would be out soon.

“UGH. UGH. UGGGHHH.” The contractions grew more frequent and stronger as the midwife attending the birth shouted “PUSH! PUSH!”

Sweat broke out on the woman’s face as she continued to push during contractions and then gave one large push about twenty minutes after Hope arrived.

A squirming, wet, squalling baby girl slid into the midwife’s gloved hands as the baby’s mother beamed with joy and maternal love. The baby’s father was Meredith’s stepfather, Jimmy. Using a pair of scissors he used to cut fishing line, Jimmy cut the umbilical cord and held the newborn baby in his arms, admiring the product of his own seed- to him, she was absolutely perfect.

They were soon off to the hospital, with the baby wrapped in a blanket. Hope watched as the nurse at the hospital in Willow Creek examined the baby, and Jimmy asked Annie and Meredith if she had any ideas on what to name the girl.

Annie still in a state of euphoria that only a birth of a baby could cause, responded through a wave of happy tears, “Willow for my mother and this town… and Eunice for your mother?”

Jimmy smiled at Hope, who felt useless in the situation. She had done nothing but talk to Meredith and read her book- she knew next to nothing about babies, but Meredith wanted her to come.

Hope felt unwanted, but Jimmy and Meredith made sure she was important.

Jimmy asked his wife if the baby’s middle name could be “named after my daughter’s best friend, what’s her name?”

Hope was not sure what to say. She had not done anything to help with the birth, but Meredith, Jimmy and Annie were acting like she had.

She cautiously told Jimmy her name, and asked if they were sure to choose “Hope” as the baby’s middle name.

They wanted it to be “Hope” so the tiny baby’s namesake agreed. Hope remained at the hospital until about 6:00 p.m. and before she left, Annie asked if she would want to hold the baby.

She whispered gently, “There is always hope.”

It was a phrase her father said when Hope was born, back when they were living in Sacramento. Kevin’s mother’s family, the Dow family, was of chiefly English ancestry, and there was a girl named Hope in every generation dating back to when the Dow family arrived in Massachusetts from England in 1633. A Hope was born when her father went off to fight in the Revolutionary War, and that Hope and her husband, Daniel, gave birth to another Hope in the year 1815, right before they moved from Connecticut to Ohio.

It had been a long, but a happy, day for the young woman. Still, she did not feel like she deserved to be the namesake of Annie’s baby girl, even if it was the baby’s middle name.

Kevin soon came home from work, and was beyond delighted to see the shed and how nice his fishing equipment was arranged.

“Thanks for doing it, Mel” he gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek. “And you too, Hope. When we go fishing tomorrow, everything’ll be in order and ready to go. What’s for supper tonight?”

“Rotisserie chicken, French fries and cherry pie. I wish I could do better, but….”

“Better, Mel? You know I love that. That’s the first meal you ever made for me after we got married.”

“Thanks, Kev honey. I got the rotisserie for just three bucks at Walmart.”

Hope felt her heart soar with happiness and pride. Melinda was big on “the little things make people happy” and it was clear that “little things” had made not only Kevin happy, but also Meredith’s mother and stepfather.

Over dinner, Hope recalled the details of the birthing as a soft, warm rain pelted the windows of the cabin.

“We thought they would have to fish the baby out, but then she pushed and the baby was born.”

Kevin Clark spoke up. “Speaking of fish, do you want to go with me tomorrow to catch some on the Trinity?”

Hope loved fishing, but was not sure if she had to work. “Let’s play it by ear, Dad. I might have to work. If not, I’ll go with you.”

“Sounds good, honey. I’ll cook supper for a change if we catch some good fish.”

“I forgot to tell you I took the job Mom told you about- the preschool job that those guys offered me at Walmart.”

“That’s my girl- you have a way with young ones. With such a good attitude like that, Hope, you’re living up to your name.”

Pride overwhelmed the young woman as she looked out the cabin’s window to see the sun beginning to go down as the family ate together. She also saw the smiling faces of her parents, their four cats eating their own “dinner” of cat food, and most of all, a sense of God-created peace.

I cannot wait to see what the new day will bring, Hope thought to herself.