The Spawning Grounds by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

livingroom. He checked to make sure he was right and, sure enough, Elaine was seated at the window as she had been for days, staring out. When he turned back to the river, the ghost of his wife was gone.
    “That ghost, that Indian boy, has been watching, waiting for another fool to jump in that river,” said Stew. He pointed his finger at his grandson’s chest. His yellowed nails were clean for the first time Jesse could remember. “Now that thing’s inside you.”
    Jesse glanced at Brandon, expecting him to tell his granddad that the old man had really lost it now. Instead Brandon avoided eye contact as he bit his thumbnail. “What’s inside me?” he asked Stew. “What is it, exactly?”
    “The Wunks,” Stew said, then grinned. He knew how foolish he sounded, how old, how far gone.
    “But what
are
the Wunks?” Brandon asked his grandfather.
    “You ask Dennis about that,” Stew said. “He knows. He’ll tell you stories.”
    “Dennis Moses, you mean?” asked Hannah. “Alex’s grandfather? Grandpa, he died several years ago.”
    Confusion spread across Stew’s face, quickly followed by a flush of new grief. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said. Then he rattled the plastic tray on his wheelchair. “Let me out! I’ve got to get back home!”
    Jesse put a hand on Stew’s arm. “You can’t go home, Dad.”
    Stew made an animal cry of frustration and swept the plate of food from the tray. Brandon jumped back asmashed potatoes flew across the floor and the plastic plate clattered and spun away.
    A nurse rushed in, her scrubs printed with penguins. “He’s certainly keeping us busy,” she said with the patience and cheerfulness of a well-trained daycare worker. She patted Stew’s tray. “This has to stay on,” she told him. “Do you understand?
On
. So you don’t fall out.” Then she knelt to clean up the food from the floor.
    She looked up briefly at Hannah, at Brandon, at Jesse. “Jesse, isn’t it?” she asked him. “Your daughter said you’d likely be here today. I’m Annette.” She scraped Stew’s lunch back onto the plate with the butter knife. “Stew gets restless, throws things around. I know it’s hard to believe, but that’s a good sign. He’s got fight.”
    Jesse picked up Stew’s cowboy hat from the night table. The scent of his father was bonded to the inner band of the hat: wood shavings and the needles of lodgepole pine, as if, born to this place, Stew had taken the forests into himself.
    “I meant to tell Hannah you should take his wallet and keys home too,” Annette said. “Things go missing here. They’re in that locker.” She stood, plate in hand. “Do you have to use the washroom?” she asked Stew. When the old man ignored her, she said, “He’s due for potty time. We’ll give it a try and see if that calms him down.”
    “He’s not a child,” Hannah said.
    “No, of course not.” Annette patted Hannah’s arm as if she was, then left the room, carrying Stew’s plate.
    Jesse opened the locker door and picked up Stew’s thin, cracked wallet. He had bought that wallet for his father oneChristmas, what, twenty-five years earlier? Under the wallet Stew’s clothes were neatly folded: muddied work pants and a wrinkled white T-shirt with a spawning sockeye salmon on the front.
    “This isn’t his T-shirt, is it?” Jesse asked his daughter. Stew rarely wore a T-shirt with an image on it. His standard outfit was jeans or green work pants and a plaid shirt, summer or winter.
    “I bought that for him,” Hannah said. She looked away as she added, “For Father’s Day.” Hannah and Brandon had given Jesse nothing for Father’s Day, not even a card. They hadn’t phoned Jesse and Jesse hadn’t called them.
    Annette came back with a male nurse and the hoist to lift Stew. Brandon faced the door, his face reddening, as the two nurses fitted the sling under his grandfather. Annette switched on the contraption and Stew rose into the air. His ridiculous blue gown