Northern Lights

by Tim O'Brien

  He leaned against the chimney and rested. The stones were warm now. The hunger was gone. The passion was gone. Another bad sign. Old Harvey had the passion.

  He tried to think. It was a good fire. The moon was white. He knew no fine tricks for escape. Except for the cold and blizzard and fire and elements, he knew little. He could not think.

  Behind him the snow sobbed.

  He was empty. He was weak and dizzy, his brain was slow, and the stones were warm and he heard the pouring sounds, the snow sobbing, the fire. He tried to speak. It was that clucking sound, a mixture of strange sounds.

  He returned to the fire and methodically warmed himself. He removed his parka and hung it to dry.

  Behind him, the sobbing sound, the snow buckled. The sobbing sound. Harvey. That was it, old Harvey. That dry sobbing sound. He listened, partly remembering, then remembering. It was Harvey, that sound.

  “Harvey,” he said.

  He found the drift, and while the moon shifted angles, he began digging. “Harvey,” he said. That was it, Harvey the Bull. He spoke his brother’s name and dug into the night snow. He was thinking and finally remembering. He attacked the tumular drift, digging fast.

  “Well, look at this, look at this, look at yourself now.”

  He dug into the drift, and the sound flowed out. “Look at yourself now, Harv. Harvey the pirate, Harvey the great bloody pirate.”

  He found the bag. The cloth was frozen stiff.

  He tugged at the zipper. “Some great pirate. Some great woodsman.” Perry worked the zipper down. The sobbing sound came out, mixed with a thick smell. “Look at this, you bull. Look at this stink bag. Some stink bag.”

  “A bloody disaster, you bull.” He felt his brother’s flesh. The bag was very warm. Goose down and snow insulation, body heat, decay and excrement. “This is where it ends, Harv. The old stink bag. Harvey in his stink bag.”

  He forced the zipper further down, gutting his bag like animal hide. “A disaster. Right from the start. Some hero.”

  Perry pulled at him. “Come on out, Harvey. Come on now, out of your stink bag.”

  Harvey wheezed, the sobbing sound. The great wild. The great elements. Perry gripped the bag and pulled it from the drift. The rasping sobbing sound swelled. He dragged the bag to the hearth. “The hero in his stinking stink bag. Think about that.” He rolled his brother out of the bag and on to the hearth. He was dizzy. He put his head down and rested.

  Later he sat up. The moon had become yellow. He stoked the fire and added new wood. He felt better.

  Working slowly, he propped Harvey’s head on the rucksack, covered him, heaped snow into a pot and hung it over the fire.

  He inspected his brother’s face. The breathing was bad. The neck was arched and stiff, and the raspy breathing would not stop.

  When the water was hot, he washed Harvey’s face and neck, then held his head and forced hot water into him. He dipped a cloth in the hot water, wrung it out and laid it over his brother’s nose.

  Then he rested. He sat with his back against the warm stones. He tried to plan. If the blizzard did not return, then they would leave in the morning, there was nothing else to do. If Harvey could move. If the breathing could be eased. If I die before I wake. His brain was starved. If he could manage. If he could keep the fire going. Then the morning. It was hard to think. In the morning they would leave on skis. They would try the skis. Or maybe rest. He was glad the awful hunger was gone. The hunger had stopped him from thinking. No bloody thinking. That was the problem from the beginning, no thinking. No bloody thinking. That was Harvey’s word, bloody. No bloody thinking and he’d gone along with it, no thinking from start to sorry finish, and now they were lost and in the morning they would have to try the skis. Or they could rest. They could stay at the old homesteader’s fireplace. They could stay at the chimney. The old homesteader had built a solid chimney, and the fire was good. Perry was proud of the fire. He was no woodsman but he’d built the fire and Harvey … Harvey in his stink bag. They would leave on skis. The complications baffled him. Harvey’s magnificent adventures: “It’s a bloody cinch, brother.” Harvey could bubble with it.

  Perry sipped hot water. If he could eat.

  He thought about numbers. He counted moments and sounds. He counted his store of logs, eight of them. Two logs for each hour, four hours of fire. He would have to go to the pines for more wood. He would go when the moon moved. When the moon moved a foot in the sky, then he would go after the wood, but first he had to rest.

  He watched Harvey sleep. The bronchial rasp seemed almost natural, with a rhythm that rose and fell like winter.

  The bag did stink. He could not get over it. Even with the burning wood and open air, he could not get the smell out of his head. He watched the moon and counted and waited. For a time he drifted along the borderland of sleep. He could not think and he could not dream. There was no great insight. He wished he had his glasses. They were buried somewhere in the drifts. He should have had better sense.

  He tinkered with his fire. He was proud of it. Built it from scratch and without any help or smug advice from Harvey.

  He crouched and hugged himself and huddled by the fire.

  He watched a million stars. He recognized the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and the North Star, but the others he didn’t know. Harvey would know them. The Latin names or Greek names or whatever, the constellations, the orbits, the Sioux names and the Chippewa names and all the gods and myths and stories.

  It was dark. They would be searching. Perhaps the search was over. He imagined a thousand Boy Scouts, a thousand searching flashlights closing in, a ring of Boy Scouts drawing closer.

  He wanted sleep. The fire was sleepy. Harvey was sleeping.

  The moon slipped across the clearing and disappeared behind the birch trees. He wished he had his glasses. It did not matter, because there was nothing much to see.

  Dawn came up in slivers.

  Bits of light streamed through the trees, slowly expanding and broadening, and the day got bright and the sky grew blue like summer.

  Perry lay with his head and shoulders inside the fireplace, where a tiny flame still burned. He waited for the fire to die. He listened to his own breathing, then to Harvey’s breathing, the mistaken sounds of atrophy.

  He blinked. He watched the embers, then the ash. He was comfortable.

  The snow was clean. The snow rolled out and out. He kept his sights low, there was no sense looking further.

  “Harvey?”

  Perry pulled himself up. He balanced in the snow, holding a hand against the chimney.

  He wondered if he had slept. He couldn’t be sure. The elusive thoughts or dreams had not stopped. He was tired.

  “Harvey?”

  The snow was deep. It was a fine high sky.

  Harvey’s neck bulged, contracted, and the sobbing sound came out and his Adam’s apple lurched. Perry shook him. “Harvey, have to get up now.” He helped him sit against the chimney. Harvey’s face was drawn.

  “Have to move, Harv.”

  Harvey lay against the stones. His eyes opened, surprising Perry. The bad eye was like marble.

  “We’ll have to leave now, Harv.”

  Harvey peered ahead, resting against the stones.

  “Just rest then I’ll find the skis and we’ll leave.”

  Perry shaded his eyes. The day got bright. Perry rested, then waded through the snow. He wished he had his glasses, but they would be buried deep and there was no sense looking for them. He found the skis and poles and carried them to the chimney. The equipment was brittle and shiny. The skis needed a wax job. He clapped the snow from the toe bindings, leaned them against the chimney and went out after Harvey’s rucksack. He poked through the snow with one of the poles. It was a long search. He stumbled on rubble of the homesteader’s collapsed house, timbers and beams and granite stone, poking with his pole. He found the rucksack, slung it over his shoulder and waded back to the chimney. Harvey was sleeping. Per
ry shook him again. Harvey nodded, closed his eyes and lay back.

  “Leaving soon,” Perry said. It was hard to talk.

  Harvey nodded, eyes closed.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “I’m sick, brother.”

  “I know it. Doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”

  Harvey rasped, then chuckled. His eyes were still closed.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “I hear,” Harvey said.

  “We’re leaving.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “I understand that we’re leaving.”

  Perry rolled up the sleeping bags and stuffed them into his rucksack. He folded the map, studied it blindly, then put it in his pocket. The forest was all the same. He packed the water pot and matches. He got to his knees and reached through the snow, searching for his glasses. When his hands began to numb he gave it up. He warmed himself, exercised, then dumped snow into the fireplace. Smoke jumped from the broken chimney, hovered and finally dissipated.

  The forest was bright and white and still. He looked once more about the homesteader’s clearing.

  He looked for a sign or a direction. He let his eyes turn across the plot, across the snowed-under foundation of the old house, to the fireplace, and chimney, to the stand of birch and beyond to the old dock and the frozen lake. There were no roads. He turned and faced the brunt of the forest. It was opaque. It was spruce and birch and white pine.

  He reached down for Harvey. “Leaving now.”

  He pulled him up. Harvey wobbled. He blinked.

  Perry helped him into his skis and clamped the toe bindings and tested them.

  Awkward, heady with departure, he rolled the nylon tarpaulin into a ball, tied it to his rucksack and slipped the straps over his shoulders. For a moment he was pleased with himself. Harvey stood like a fresh-born colt, head drooping. The forest was straight ahead.

  Perry stepped into his skis and flexed his shoulders to shift the rucksack higher, then he pushed off and he felt strong at last.

  They skied slowly. The land sloped down from the chimney, into the woods. There were no paths and Perry wound his way ahead, letting the skis take a natural course downwards. He steered southeast. Sooner or later the ski course would bisect North Shore Drive, the highway and the great lake.

  It was a gleaming cold day, and the skis bit the snow crust and the forest was still and brittle, and Perry pushed without thinking, and he did not worry. The pines were tall and thick. The forest descended.

  At intervals he rested and waited for Harvey.

  They did not speak. The skis crunched and bit the snow, and Harvey’s dry breathing followed him both driving and pursuing.

  Perry felt lean.

  Though blind and groping from tree to tree, he still had a sense of great new clearheadedness. He skied erect, thinking he might be watched, photographed for some epic motion picture spinning on sparse themes of survival and manhood, and he counted moments and pines. A dozen simple tasks, step and glide, push and glide.

  Harvey moved slowly, head down, dragging his poles like outriggers. Perry waited and watched. The gallant pirate. He felt some shame, even a pinch of embarrassment. He knew so much about his brother, the memory of his climbing out the school window, perching on the ledge, then plunging to the school yard, hollering Geronimooooo. And other such memories. Nothing false about the bravado, and certainly nothing make-believe.

  “One glide one, two glide two, three glide three,” Perry murmured. He felt lean. The old fat was gone. To be a great bull.

  “Twelve glide twelve,” he murmured, and the land swept down. He skied erect. He’d lasted it out. He was leading now. He felt good and he felt strong. “Twenty glide twenty,” and the snow squeaked like chalk on a blackboard. Harvey’s breathing followed him, the harsh bronchial sound.

  “Fifty-nine glide fifty-nine, sixty glide sixty,” he chanted.

  He came to a stand of dense pine. Sidestepping, he jabbed at the trees with his pole, testing it. He felt the branches buckle and pushed through. He stood alone. The woods were very high and thick. Behind him, he heard Harvey’s breathing. He unbuckled his skis and walked back for Harvey.

  “Well … the trees are too close. We’ll have to walk awhile. We’re going to walk awhile. You hear?” He knelt in the snow and helped Harvey out of his skis. “Take my shoulder now. We’re going to push through.” Harvey was tall. There was a slight shadow. He cradled the skis and led Harvey into the dense trees. “Stop here.” His voice was stiff. It was all right. There was some authority.

  They walked a long mile. The country began to rise and they rested often, then the forest thinned out and fell sharply, and again they skied.

  The forest finally fell to a frozen river. Like a hook, it curved away from them. Perry studied it. What he could see of it, the river bent almost directly south. If it continued south, they would get deeper lost. If it straightened out somewhere ahead, a generous twist, it might lead to the southeast and the highway and the yellow end. He took out the map. There were a thousand small rivers. Ten thousand, twenty thousand lakes. It looked simple. Lake Oslo. Whitefish Lake. Caribou Lake. Beaver Lake. There in the corner, a small black dot, was the town, Sawmill Landing, stenciled in black. The Arrowhead engulfed it. And all the rivers; blue lines running into blue patches, surrounded by green, raw forest.

  He looked for a river with a big hook. They all had hooks. He did not know much about maps. Ought to have gone out with his father, he might have learned something. But there was no sense asking Harvey now. All the blundering. Perry folded the map and returned it to his pocket. He helped Harvey on to the river.

  “No,” Harvey murmured.

  “What?”

  “Nope. No more.” Harvey shook his head, his eyes down. His bad eye was hard. “I’m sick. This is far enough. This is enough, brother.” He planted his poles and leaned on them. Slowly at first, then fast, his skis slid backward and he fell face forward and lay still.

  “Get up,” Perry said.

  “This is enough.”

  Perry hooked his arms around his brother, lifting him. “Up,” he said.

  “You don’t understand. This is …” Harvey coughed and Perry pulled him forward and they moved down the river, rounding the bend, and they skied south.

  The pines were high on both banks. Icicles dangled from the branches.

  The white river sparkled ahead. “Eighty glide eighty, eighty-one glide eighty-one, eighty-two glide eighty-two, eighty-three glide eighty-three.”

  Far ahead, over the forest, a mammoth cloud hovered. It was the backside of the blizzard.

  The river flowed south and Perry worried. They would have to leave it if it did not soon bend southeast.

  The skiing was flat and easy. He glided along the frozen river, letting inertia carry him. Numbers flopped in his head. He counted aloud, counting for each skating motion, each breath. The mammoth cloud looked natural over the forest. It shifted, regenerated like an ameba. It was familiar. He’d seen it coming. Harvey had laughed. He counted numbers, hard numbers. Ninety glide ninety. He counted faults in the river crust, keeping his head down, a way to keep limbs functioning, methodically step by step, ninety-one glide ninety-one. He counted Harvey’s respiration behind him, turning the disease into dry numbers, counting the days they’d been lost. He concentrated, searching for something unique in each of the lost days. He counted to nineteen, juggling numbers, but finally losing track as the blizzard blended the days into an indistinguishable force, extinguished day and night and time and even number. At last the river turned. It was a slow arcing bend, and they rounded it and came to a bridge. The bridge was old, plank flooring and silver-iron railings, high enough to ski under without stooping. Perry stopped. He leaned on his poles and waited for Harvey. “Bridge,” he said. Harvey sat on the river. “There’s a road up there, Harv.” Perry unbuckled his skis. It was a steep, long climb up the riverbank, a sheer bluff that was iced and deliberately imposing. �
��I’m going up.” He tackled it without thinking, digging with his fingers and pushing against the bank for adhesion. Roots of old trees bulged from the bank and he used them as a ladder. He did not stop climbing until he’d scaled it. He rolled on to his back and spread his arms and lay still.

  He was dizzy. He’d been dreaming. Not dreaming, thinking. And not thinking, a combination of dream and thought.

  He could not remember. He may have slept, he did not know.

  The sky was darker now. He was cold.

  He pushed up, leaning on an elbow. He was very cold. He saw the bridge. “Gawwd,” he moaned, remembered, then quickly scrambled along the bank and got to the bridge. It carried a narrow trail across the river and into the far pines. Probably a logging trail, he thought; Harvey would know. It was a plain dirt road that emerged, crossed the river and submerged again.

  He walked on to the bridge. The planks shivered. The frozen bolts creaked. He was very cold. He looked each way, hugging himself. He looked up to where the trail tunneled out of the forest and down to where it disappeared again in a mountain of pine. A crust of night grey was coming down the river. He was cold.

  He leaned against the iron railing. He was hypnotized and cold.

  Harvey lay on the river below.

  Perry stared down. Harvey’s arms were splayed, disjointed, his skis jutted at two obtuse angles. His yellow parka shined. Snow spread out and out to the banks of river, climbing the banks, spreading out and out into the forest.

  Perry gazed down.

  Harvey’s brown beard had frosted. The gray crust came sliding up the river. The yellow parka shined. Making angels in the snow: Harvey as a kid, making angels in the snow, arms and legs splashing. The forest was closing up, all right. Perry gazed down. Harvey was still, frozen in the river, cemented in the frost. His bad eye was open, wide open, bulging out. “Hey, Harv!” he called. “Hey, Harvey. What you doing down there?”