Echolocation

by Karen Hofmann

  Let me, Sack says.

  He connects with the ball on Matt’s first toss, sends it up bouncing off the roof of the shed. The bat makes an electronic distress squeak. Sack laughs.

  It’s probably the first natural laugh Matt has heard from him in the whole six months he’s been living here.

  Those first two years when he had been working at getting Tess to fall in love with him, he and Tess and Lewis and Alison had been coagulating into two couples, into adults. The sharing of meals, of belongings, of camping trips. Sack had been born and Tess had held him, fresh from Alison’s body, and looked at him in a way that told him it was time to press his luck, and he had, and they’d got married, in a ceremony calculated to complement but not rival or undermine Alison’s and Lewis’s. He had absolutely understood this, but it had been beautiful in spite of, or maybe because of, those constraints, the way he’s always heard things can be.

  In the tub are splintered building blocks and wheel-less toy cars; electronic learning games in cracked plastic housings with shredded paper decals; gnawed detailed plastic figurines of wild creatures; finely-sewed, glass-eyed puppets with limbs and hair ripped off. All the delicate and expensive toys Sack has been given, thoughtlessly, or maybe just too soon. Tess has talked about cleaning out his room, which overflows with junk, just so he can find the toys that still actually work, but Sack had set to howling, had thrown such a tantrum, when she’d suggested it.

  They’ll have a demolition party, a two-man derby, he and Sack. The smashing, the grinding, the crushing. It will make a good afternoon. He gets a fist-sized river rock from the driveway’s edge, hunkers down beside Sack on the sidewalk, and mimes smashing the rock down on the replica car. He looks Sack in the eye, hands him the rock. Go on, Buddy, he says. Be my guest.

  He’s right. Sack enjoys this new game wholly. His cheeks flush pink, his greenish blond hair darkens with sweat, his lower lip, which tends to hang open, closes up over his piranha-like lower jaw. He sorts things thoughtfully, almost tenderly selecting what he wishes to destroy. He squats beside the driveway to select a better rock, one that fits his fist more comfortably and has a flattened snubbed business end. He pulverizes a small mountain of his damaged possessions, blocks and cars, miniature electronics, small porcelain heads and limbs, leaning into it, finding the toy’s sweet spots, making of the crushing and grinding and splintering an art.

  The afternoon passes. The others will be home soon. Lewis or Alison and Tess will be back to take over, Matt realizes. There might still be time for a run. Anyway, he’ll be free: free to talk to Tess, to open his laptop, to do any number of things. That’s not to be underestimated.

  The sidewalk is littered with fragments of toys, with a flotsam of crushed plastic and metallic paint dust. He’ll have to sweep it up. In his mind’s eye, Matt sees the dark stain behind the shed where he dumped the rain barrel. Shit. That too.

  But no: A few days in the air will take care of that anaerobic bacterial odour. Wholesome decomposition will ensue. The gloves, he’ll bury.

  He stands up, stretches, straightens his back. Don’t let the bastards grind you down, he says to Sack.

  Bastards, Sack says, thoughtfully.

  That’s right, Sack, he says.

  He’ll take the boy out here, next weekend, take Sack’s clean shining unused real stainless steel miniature gardening tool set, and let the child loose. Out of a half-acre spread of lawn, Lewis can spare a little digging space. Sack can pit his unholy energy against the topsoil.

  Matt will watch a video. He’ll learn how to break up turf with a spade. He’ll set Sack loose against the earth itself. Something interesting might happen. Something will be experienced first-hand. Something will respond the way it’s supposed to. Something will be appeased.

  THE CANOE

  THEY ARE CANOEING THIS YEAR near Blue River, in mountains that are not quite far enough east to be the Rockies, but are, Kirsten says, rocky enough. She is brittle today, full of what Evan calls smart remarks, but what she sees as sticky patches, adhesive bandages, placed all over herself where there are cracks. There has been an argument in the car. She feels battered, as if they’ve been in a minor accident, and is already composing in her head the amusing and only slightly bitter account of the dispute that she’ll tell to Linda later, perhaps when they’ve gone off into the underbrush to pee. The putting-together of this account calms her, like the rolling of string into balls. Only her surface, her top layer, remains delicate, and she must patch and fill fast enough that it doesn’t disintegrate entirely.

  Meanwhile there’s the business of getting the canoes off the cars and onto the convenient trolleys the park provides and piling the tents and sleeping bags and air mattresses and coolers into them. It’s a routine, like surgery: They have their moves down pat. Evan and Jeff sling the Bean’s red canoe from the top of their SUV, while Kirsten and Linda steady the first trolley. Then they brace the other trolley while the green canoe is lifted from Evan and Kirsten’s wagon, and settled with a gentle thump. Jeff has already opened the hatch of his vehicle and is tossing out the bright cylindrical packages. Evan does the same with theirs. Kirsten and Linda catch. Kirsten drops. They are slippery, these nylon capsules. A clatter as she fumbles, tent poles inside jostling, fibreglass on fibreglass. Watch it! Evan snaps, pausing in his throw. Whoops, she’s broken the pattern. But Jeff flashes her a grin, a wink, out of Evan’s line of sight. A consolation prize. She smiles weakly, grateful and embarrassed at the same time, as if, naked, she’s been thrown a towel.

  Then the coolers are lifted, placed in the bottoms of the canoes. Their cooler is heavy, packed with meals that she has cooked and frozen and wrapped individually, in foil and then slide-seal bags. They’ll eat their way to the centre, as things thaw. (Well, not really. They’ll eat their way downwards, through bricks of chili and butter chicken, beef ragout, pesto sauce and pasta, fat pork sausages.) Everything frozen solid, packed in ice. Linda and Jeff’s cooler, she knows, contains something similar. They have been doing these trips for many years. They have it down to an art.

  Paddles in, last, and then the cars locked, re-checked: beeps and flashes. Evan pulls wire mesh from a disjointed heap at the end of the parking lot, kicks a chunky roll towards Jeff, and they wrap the vehicles’ wheels, unspooling the mesh around the base of the vehicles as if winding ribbon around hats, or cakes. Something bridal. It’s for the porcupines, who like to gnaw tire rubber, god knows why, for they could hardly have evolved to eat rubber. Linda says she thinks they are attracted to the salt, the winter road salt that has permeated the rubber, that is imbedded in the treads. Kirsten says she suspects the porcupines are a myth, anyway. Evan and Jeff just like to tie things up. Linda laughs.

  Or maybe, Kirsten says, they chew rubber for boredom. Out of. She means out of boredom. When she’s had one of her pills she mixes her prepositions up: a very specific kind of brain zap that she suspects is psychosomatic. (Prepositions: the words that tell us the relationships of things in time and space. It’s the definition she gives her students.) Perhaps the pills get between the synapses that understand time and space and short-circuit them. Or is it a language problem? Either way, a minor side effect. The pills work.

  Maybe, Kirsten says, the porcupines chew the rubber tires out of boredom.

  Drop it, Evan says, menacing.

  On the trail, Jeff and Evan push the trolleys with the laden canoes, while Linda and Kirsten guide the bows. Even in June, at this altitude, the ground is just thawed, and boggy in patches, and the clay portage path treacherous underfoot. Kirsten and Linda are supposed to watch for exposed roots, rocks that might catch the trolleys’ wheels and tip them. They are supposed to call out warnings. Linda is better at this. Kirsten forgets to pay attention to the ground in front of her. Evan sighs when the wheels of his trolley catch.

  The trail is beautiful, winding through darkness and light: dense dark spruce and more open fir. Gymnosperm, Kirsten thinks. Naked seed. Linda taught her this term.
She thinks of Greco-Roman wrestling, though: lithe, impossibly sinewy bodies tumbling in graceful arcs.

  Linda has told her that the hard, resinous needles of conifers conserve moisture, an advantage in cold dry climates. The trees seem alive, Kirsten had said, then.

  They are alive, Linda had corrected her, puzzled. But what she had meant was, they seem human.

  Along the edge of the path grow mosses, the paired pink bells of the twinberry, the white solitary dogtooth violet in its serene quartet of leaves. The low yank-yank of a nuthatch, the gin scent of the creeping juniper. Kirsten feels herself open to the pleasure of the scent, the wood, its many small voices. Even the pores of her skin are ears. How lucky to have this. To have the canoe, and Jeff and Evan, who insist on this ritual trip, and Linda, who after all these years, still doesn’t get her, but has taught her the magical names of the birds and the wildflowers. Tears blur her eyes.

  How’s the migraine? Linda asks, and Kirsten says, Oh, gone, mostly.

  Those new pills really work, huh, Linda says. She knows Kirsten’s migraines, which have dogged every trip for years.

  They’d better, Kirsten says, at fifteen bucks a shot.

  Good thing you have extended medical, Linda says.

  Kirsten thinks about not being able to afford the pills, and shuts her eyes for a second.

  And no side effects, huh, Linda says.

  No side effects, Kirsten says firmly. She doesn’t see explaining the space/time thing.

  Behind them Jeff and Evan push the trolleys, as if wheeling gurneys. They appear similar, Kirsten thinks, like models chosen to set each other off, but not by too much, in a magazine ad. Evan is a little greyer; Jeff’s hair is curly. But they wear similar bland middle-aged professional faces, similar khaki-coloured windbreakers, striped golf shirts, dark chino shorts. Both the same medium-tall height, both with the build that comes from twice weekly runs, occasional squash games: a build that is neither lean nor going to fat, but somewhere in-between. It’s as if they had decided at some point in their lives to become twins, and have been quite successful at that undertaking.

  Kirsten says to Linda, under cover of the noise of the trolleys, Evan is such a prick, we had such a stupid argument loading the car this morning. Can you believe it; he said we shouldn’t have brought the cooler. He said we should travel lighter.

  What did he think you’d eat? Linda says.

  I don’t know. Fish, maybe. A lot of fish.

  Jeff’s the same, Linda says, equably. He didn’t want to bring the tent.

  Oh god. Imagine the bugs, Kirsten says. (But imagines the stars, the kissing sounds of carp rising in the night lake.)

  They are suddenly shouting to be heard, and Kirsten realizes that it is the chop of a helicopter, drowning their voices. She hadn’t recognized it at first, oddly. But there it is, right over them, and deafening, now.

  They all four stop on the path, heads tilted back, staring up. (Like statues of awed yokels, Kirsten thinks.) The helicopter is green, official, with the maple leaf on the side and numerals, letters, on the underside. They can see two figures inside, both wearing headphones. It’s not clear which is the pilot. Then the helicopter swings back out over the lake and is gone.

  My god, what was that about? Kirsten asks.

  And Jeff says that it’s likely search and rescue, that when he went into the parks building to buy their passes and pick up the trolleys, one of the rangers had told him that a couple of canoeists had been lost, last seen just above the falls.

  Evan whistles, a low, long intake of breath, and Linda exclaims that it’s terrible, but Kirsten falls silent, because she suddenly sees what she has known all along: The crack has been widening all day, and somebody has fallen in, more than one person, and it is reaching now to her very feet. And she is unable to move, they’ve gone on without her. But then Evan is at her ear, near, beside, inside her ear, muttering at her to just behave, and she covers her ears with her hands and strides off down the trail.

  And then the lake, held like a sleeping mirror by the blue peaks.

  AT ITS MOUTH THE LAKE IS MARSHY, and the water, between the clumps of cattails and floating islands of lilies, is sombre jade. Kirsten lies back in the bow, trailing her hand in the warmer upper inches of the water, parting the duckweed. The water pushing against the canoe is thick with suspended particles, green corpuscles. Underneath, carp are gliding along arched passageways, mouthing the liquid world. The water plants twining, voluptuous tunnels.

  Evan fishes from the canoe, casting out his line, reeling it in, casting out and reeling in. The whir and click of the reel, the quick flight and gradual closing in of the tackle, are hypnotic. And in Evan’s even casts, a profound satisfaction, an entrenched contentment, that is actually relaxing.

  Evan had spent all winter refurbishing the canoe, stretching its new fibreglass skin over the wooden ribs, scraping and moulding, heating glue, coaxing and cobbling the vessel back into working order. He is good with his hands, a surgeon. He liked her to be his helper, hand him things. Sometimes she did, if she weren’t too busy, if she’d had a glass of wine or two, in the evening, and was feeling peaceable, detached.

  She had argued for replacing the canoe with two light new kayaks, ones they could have carried separately. Had imagined herself taking the kayak down to the river, in the winter, when the swans patrolled its banks, slipping silently among them. She’d even suggested to the girls that they could contribute to the kayaks, make them a joint Christmas present. What can I get you and Dad? they always moan, in November. You’re so hard to buy for. But the girls had both argued against the idea, vehemently. They loved the old canoe’s shape, its idiosyncrasies. You couldn’t buy a canoe like that, now. It had character. Though they are both living on their own now, one in university, one working, they are still heavily invested in the securities of their childhood, she understands. They need the canoe: For them, it is still cradle, or womb. She understands this, understands their need to have still, beneath them, stable ground. A childhood of happy canoe trips and placid, nurturing parents paddling in unison.

  The helicopter can be heard, then seen, miles down the lake, tracking up the shoreline.

  Still haven’t found them, Evan says. Kirsten remembers the lost canoeists, the conversation the day before.

  Strange to think they’re probably in the lake, she says.

  Yes, Evan says. At the bottom, by now.

  The lake is immensely deep, with steep sides for most of its perimeter. It doesn’t turn over. The bottom is a place of mystery, dark and unreachable, like space.

  They won’t be found, then, Kirsten says.

  I don’t know, Evan says. They will float up, I think. He is dispassionate; he is familiar with bodies.

  When? Kirsten asks.

  Evan shakes his head.

  Maybe, Kirsten says, they won’t sink. They’ll be carried along, just under the surface. Where would they end up, then?

  Here, Evan says, after a pause. Here, near the marsh. Where the lake exits. The currents all head here.

  Kirsten looks around. Away from the marsh, where there is open water, the surface is blue, opaque, hard and glittery as mica. The lake appears slippery rather than liquid, dazzling, impermeable, a metallic tissue. Ahead, a pair of grebes, startled, runs across the surface and flaps off toward the trees.

  She had not thought, last fall, that she would agree to the canoeing trip this year. Had thought: the girls are gone. There is nothing to confine us.

  The world is watery, deceptive, impenetrable.

  LATE JUNE IS THE WRONG TIME TO CAMP, this far north. It’s far too bright, the nights are too short, this close to the solstice. At 11 it’s still light enough in the tent for Kirsten to see Evan’s slightly averted profile, his high brow and nose and full lips. Evan has fallen asleep, as always, instantaneously, as if he’s been clubbed over the head. There are no layers, for him, between consciousness and unconsciousness: just a simple switch. On/off. For her, though, sleep
is a location to which she must drift down slowly. As she falls, fronds of the day’s thoughts, sensations, brush her again. She is aware of this vegetation becoming gradually more elaborate, more unlikely, more irresistible. And the slightest noise or movement will jerk her back to the surface. She must always fall asleep after Evan does, and her slow drifting often takes hours.

  The morning journey, though, happens in reverse. She passes from sleep, even from deep dreaming sleep, effortlessly and instantly, as if stepping through a doorway. Evan wakes laboriously, groans, thrashes, yawns profoundly, as though he is being dragged back against his will, extradited into consciousness. His loud yawns, his leg jerks usually wake Kirsten long before she’s had her fill of rest. Wake her to a sense of disappointment, grievance.

  It’s no use. Sleep is unattainable, tonight. There is no preliminary softening of edges, only the inadequate depth of the air mattress. Kirsten rises, unzips the tent’s door and slips out into the oily light.

  Jeff is on the shore, gazing out toward the lake. On the sand beside him, a lantern, not lit, and a paperback copy of poems by Jack Gilbert. Without looking up, he moves the lantern, the book, and she sits. Jeff’s hand moves discreetly and brings up a small object, finger-shaped, that glimmers a faint white. He proffers it to Kirsten in his upturned palm. It takes her a moment to recognize it.

  Oh – yes, please.

  He puts it in his own mouth, lights it with a long barbecue lighter, and draws on it quickly, a series of staccato puffs, until the end glows, and then passes it to Kirsten.

  Too light for camping, this time of year, he says.

  Yes. Solstice.

  But quiet, at least.

  Yes. She says. Evan can sleep anytime, though.

  Linda wears a blindfold.

  Evan will be up at four.

  Hopefully not chopping wood?

  Such complicity, and all done with inflection, so subtly, that to try to put a finger on it, to say there, there, would be to extinguish it.