“Yah, it sure came down quick.” He flexes his fingers and then cracks them loudly, which doesn’t get the usual rise out of her. “Something smells good in here.”
Berit hands him the warm bundle, which he makes a ceremony out of opening. “Now, this is surely a piece of heaven.” He holds the bread under his nose, then smiles as if she’d given him spring’s first strawberries. He takes a bite and sets the bread on his workbench. “Heaven. But I smell earthly paradise nearby.” He grabs hold of her coat and still chewing, slowly draws her near.
Berit jerks her coat away. “I’m sure you’ll make do with your bit of heaven.”
She scoffs as she opens the door, but Gunnar can see that her eyes are shining. The warm rye nearly dissolves in his mouth. What a figure she cuts as she heads down the path, dangling buckets in the fading light. He raps on the windowpane with a lead, just to get her to turn around.
Berit’s cheeks are flushed, but not from the wind. She hears the tap tapping beneath the blowing, but she’s not going to look back. Thoughts of their morning give her stabs of pleasure. The things between them these days, she just doesn’t know. She’d never imagined this new hunger that has taken hold, that rises like heat and falls like good rain. To experience this now after all they’d been through, all the sorrow, disappointment, and anger, just all of it. Betrayed by her body, that’s how the loss felt. And then that sad year of distance.
Now those times seem long ago, though it was only last autumn when everything changed. She still puzzles about the suddenness, and how it seems to point to the day when Gunnar was so late from picking his nets. She recalls the strange pauses in his work rhythm, and the way he kept glancing back out to the water. She can still see clearly the look in his eyes as he took the fish shovel from her hands, so full, and brimming with such a grave gentleness. “It’s time,” he’d said. “We have each other. That’s blessing in plenty.” Those were his words, and then he’d kissed her.
Since then he’d been a man determined, wooing her back slowly and sweetly. Now there are whole other worlds they share, places they go that are almost like dreaming. She just isn’t certain what’s proper sometimes. Good Lord, when she thinks of Nellie and Hans down the shore, or in the other direction the Torgeson brood. Well, she just can’t picture it.
The little light that’s left is fading fast, but the wind has yet to die down, making the snowfall nearly invisible, though she feels it like tiny needles against her skin. Berit steps onto the ice. Covered with wavering lines of old snow, it looks like a floor of grey marble. She’s smiling at how Gunnar had tugged on her coat when a gust of wind catches her buckets and she slips, banging her knee on the ice.
With a foot in one bucket to keep it from rolling, she lowers the other into the water hole, paying attention to her task now. In the dim light, the water hole is black and foreboding. It sets her insides against themselves, causing her to feel strangely cautious, as if she might pull the bucket from the lake and find it filled not with water, but with some horror instead. She hauls the rope up, and there it is, a pail of water with a small piece of ice, but its harmlessness doesn’t ease her feeling, so she works with haste and turns back toward land and the light from Gunnar’s window, lying yellow across the snow.
From below, the surf churns grey and white. It billows like the bottoms of clouds, creates a sound like rolling barrels, or the distant muffled stampede of hooves.
What prickling sensation at the precipitous drops—one hundred feet, two hundred feet, and more—where the slow-growing fish feed. The herring and the whitefish I once sought. The rising siscowet and the trout. Suspended overhead like long dark shoes. Like deeds left undone. The shape of regret.
On the lake bed the sediment rests in layers. Grey matter from the north. Red from the south. One era’s story deposited over the next.
And my own story, to which I cling.
Yet all this, too, is somehow mine.
I see the relic surfaces bearing the scour marks of ice. The fine, flowing patterns etched in the rock are as my own fingerprints.
Dimpled silt. The solitary burbot swims.
Ringed vibrations surge and rebound.
And rivers of mud waves lie in long troughs. Each red clay canyon has its own dark sounding. Each cave, a pulsating entrance.
The roaming currents carry the whisper of words. Bimitigweyaa. Bon voyage. I try to understand.
2000
The long blue door of Nora’s Buick creaks. Creaks when she opens it and creaks when she shuts it. She tightens the scarf around her neck. Even though she’d started the car earlier, the darned heater is still blowing cold air. The streets are icy and driving is slow with the grey sky pressing down on the buildings, making everything look so squat and dingy that in comparison, the traffic light is dazzling. Bright red, it hangs over the intersection, shining like a perfect maraschino cherry.
The Schooner’s pretty quiet, just a few second-shifters, though it won’t be long until business picks up. The locks are open again, and the ice cutters are out. Once the ships can pass, the railroad, everything, will start swinging into gear. Still, winter is hardly over.
Nora shoves the door to the bar open, causing the green shamrocks she’d hung from the netting to twirl and glint in the low light. Willard waves from the kitchen at the end of the bar, where he’s dropping a basket into the fryer.
“It’s freezing.” Nora hangs her coat.
“No lie. Listen, do you mind if I split? Cheryl is sick, so with the kids getting home. . . . I haven’t restocked the longboy yet.”
Nora lights her first cigarette of the shift. “How was the day?”
Willard shrugs.
“I hope she doesn’t have that stomach flu. Len had it, he said it was killer.”
“Yeah, but short. She’s just wiped out.”
“Did Finn come by about the stove? He was supposed to show up around ten.”
“Nope.” Willard slides his arm into his jacket.
“Did he call?”
“Nope. I’ll see you tomorrow. You’re the best. Hey,” he says, turning from the door, “the fries are for the guy shooting pool.”
Nora raises the metal basket and shakes off the hot grease, then dumps the fries into a hotel pan lined with paper towels. She puts out ketchup and a napkin dispenser. “Fries,” she calls toward the back of the bar.
She’ll have to try and reach Finn again. Jesus. That’s twice he hasn’t showed. It’s bad enough not to come when you say you will, but it’s plain disrespectful to not even call.
A tall boy straddles a stool and leans his pool cue against the bar. “Did you know the table is crooked back there?” He shakes salt and then pepper over the basket.
“There’s nothing wrong with my table, it’s the floor that’s crooked.” How’s she supposed to handle a rush on burgers when half the grill won’t heat?
“They’re adjustable, you know. All you have to do is screw them up or down from the legs.”
Seriously, she’s not in the mood. He looks like a college kid, with pale hair that falls in an I could care less sort of way. “You can? My God, you’re a regular genius.” She leans in with a tone of voice honed glass-sharp over the years. “I can’t imagine how I ever got by before you set yourself on that stool.”
“Schooner.” Nora clamps the phone between her ear and shoulder. “He’s not here, Bev. I know, hon, try the 22.”
“Excuse me.”
It’s the kid again, flush cheeked and looking sheepish. “Excuse me, but could I please have some mustard?”
Nora sets a fresh squeeze bottle on the bar.
“Thanks,” he says, and then, “I’m sorry.” His words come out in a near-whisper.
She wasn’t expecting an apology. With the kids, it’s mostly know-it-all attitude.
“Forget it.” She puts a little sweetness in her voice, but now the boy won’t meet her eye. Nora watches him in the mirror, his chin propped in one hand while his long arm moves like a
crane, lifting and dropping to the basket for fries. “That table’s been trouble for years,” she offers. Still, he won’t look up at her.
Nora opens the longboy to check her stock, jotting a quick list on an order pad. In the back room, she makes up a mixed case. Finn’s the one she’d like to have words with. She really is trying to watch herself. She knows how people can react so differently. Some are like frying pans where everything slides off, some are like mirrors—back at you in a flash, but some are like water—touch them anywhere and you’re in.
The boy is halfway through the basket already. Nora sets the case of beer on the floor behind the bar. “If you want to try and fix the table, I’ll take care of your tab. I don’t have a level, but you can eyeball it with a water pitcher. The footing slips back, though. It won’t last long.”
“Really?” the boy lifts his head.
“I’m Nora Truneau.” She extends her hand.
The boy wipes his fingers across a napkin, takes her hand and gives a bow with his head. “Deets.”
“Well, Deets, welcome to the Schooner.”
There’s the sound of footsteps down the back stair, then a crack of blue dusk and a shot of icy air. Nora pours a Manhattan, double cherries, and places it in front of Rose’s stool, where she lands like a bird on a limb, her hair dark and wiry with streaks of white, her bony shoulders settling in.
“How are things?” Nora asks.
Rose just nods and looks at her with those large, brown, everstartling eyes. They dominate her face, but it’s not just their size. It’s the way they contrast with the rest of her body—small, rickety, almost brittle—but then those big eyes, always liquid and swimming, like two dark dams barely holding.
“Rose, this is Deets.”
“Pleased.” Rose nods, lifting her hand in front of her mouth.
“Did you lose your bridge again?” Nora asks, shoving the warm bottles to the back of the cooler, feeling the sliver of protectiveness that has worked its way under her skin in the years since Rose became her tenant.
“It’s not lost,” Rose says, skimming her lowball in its wet spot on the bar as if it were circling in its own private skating rink. “It’s somewhere up there.” She lifts her chin toward the ceiling.
How she can keep track of anything, Nora doesn’t know. Not that her place is messy, it’s just full. She has all of Buck’s stuff still around—his accordion on the chair, his guitars and drum, even his shaving brush on the shelf in the bathroom.
The beer-after-work folks are starting to drift in, and Nora’s glad to be picking up the pace. She turns the news on over the bar, catching bits of it as she works. A train derailed near Ashland, groundwater toxic waste, Native American treaty rights, then clips of the lake in a year-ago storm, the waves crashing over the shipping channel walls. “You ready for another?” she calls to Deets, who is on his knees in back, examining the pool table.
Rose reaches up and bats at a shamrock, setting it spinning in the TV light. “He’ll never get that leg to stick.”
Nora shrugs. “Yeah, I know.”
“Do you remember that Irish commercial with all the green fields? That’s what these make me think of. What was it for?”
“Soap. Irish Spring.” Nora knocks a cigarette from her pack, and a lighter appears in front of her. “Thanks,” she says to Deets, who seems fully recovered.
“Wouldn’t spring in Ireland smell like sheep shit?” he says.
Nora lets out a smoke-choked laugh.
“Aye, lassie.” He feigns a thick brogue and leans toward Rose. “Ya smell as ripe as my field boots, ya do.”
It’s Nora’s big laugh this time, coming right from the gut. “What do they have now, comedy majors at the college?”
That one gets a cackle out of Rose.
“I don’t know. I’ve been out for ages.”
Nora is a bit surprised. She’s usually on the money with people’s age. “What are you doing still in town?”
“I’m not. I just moved here. I came for the lake.” He flashes her a knowing smile.
“The lake?” Nora wets a rag in the sink. “You moved here for the lake?”
“I’ve always wanted to live here. My uncle has a cabin on the Canadian border. I used to spend half the summer up there. You know, hunting for agates, scouting for boats. Oh man, the night sky on that beach. The black sea of stars. That’s what my uncle calls it. It felt more like home than my real home.”
“That lake’s an ass-cracker,” Rose says into her lowball.
“I can’t explain it, but I’ve always known I’d live here. I might learn to dive and try timber retrieval. There’s wood on the bottom from the logging days.”
“Old-growth trees.” Rose sips her drink. “I saw it on TV. Rich people want the wood for building, and people who make instruments, too. I wonder how an old-growth piano would sound.”
“My real dream is to work on a freighter. But I have to find out what it takes to do it.”
“I can tell you what it takes to work the ships.” Nora points to the pool table. “Either balls bigger than those, or else a very small brain. Don’t you know people die out there? You’ve got half an hour in that water if you’re lucky.”
“I’m a good swimmer.”
“It’s not about swimming. It’s about hypothermia. Why not live somewhere warm, like California? I’ve got a sister out there, and it’s all palm trees and sunshine. When I talked to her this morning she was drinking coffee on her patio. Really.” Nora wipes the bar. “If I were your age I’d turn tail and head west.”
“I recall your tail turning plenty at his age.” Rose stubs out her cigarette.
“Don’t you believe a word she says.”
“How about that infamous night down at Tony’s?”
“All right. Fine. You two can reminisce. I’ve got work to do.”
Nora gathers empties from the floor, stopping to chat with Ed and his crew, who are occupying the long table in front, then cleaning the mess left by Jimmy D., who can’t drink a bottle of beer without peeling off the label bit by bit and rolling the paper into little balls. She sets the empties on the bar. She likes to get to them early on, before the beery film dries inside.
“Schooner.” Nora has the phone on her shoulder while she scrubs a pair of glasses on the brushes.
“Listen, don’t get mad, okay? I know we’re supposed to come down on Friday, but it looks like it’s not going to work out.”
Nora dunks the glasses into the rinse tub, then sets them on the drying rack.
“Mom?”
“Janelle, I already did the shopping. And I promised Nikki a trip to the bowling alley.”
“Yeah, she told me about it. Do they have special times that are kid-appropriate?”
“It’s bowling. There aren’t any special times, except during leagues.” The silence on the other end of the line is loud. “Is there a problem with bowling?”
“It’s just not going to work, Mom. We’ve got a lot going on. It’ll be better for everyone if we make it another time.”
“Well, that depends how you define everyone.” Nora puts two more glasses on the brushes. She had a feeling this was going to happen again. “Where’s my Bun? Does she like her purple rabbit?”
“Nikki loves everything that comes from you, Mom.”
“Put her on.”
“She’s away on a playdate. I already told her the weekend is cancelled. You could come here. I’m not the only one with a car.”
Nora stops scrubbing. “I work Saturday night,” she says in a measured tone. “I always work on Saturday night.” She places the glasses on the rack and takes on another pair of dirties. Again, there’s nothing but silence on the line. Nora keeps her eyes on the brushes as she works.
“Look, I’m busy,” she says finally. “I really can’t talk now.”
“I can hear you washing glasses. You can’t be that busy.”
Nora looks blankly around the bar, catches Rose giving her a sympathetic lo
ok. The water sloshes in the stainless steel sink. There’s the sound of quarters being pumped into the cigarette machine, then the rod being pulled and the metallic thwack back, followed by a soft thud.
1622
Grey Rabbit struggles to get to the surface, where patches of light undulate and swaths of color twirl in icy clouds. The pressure in her chest is a frozen boulder. She works her arms to push herself upward, kicking her legs with all her strength, but it’s slow, slow, the water’s thick as wind and she has to fight to move through it. Her chest feels like it will burst apart. She is nearly there. She kicks and flails, at last propelling herself up and free.
But no, there is no relief. And there, above her, the taunting surface, twirling and swaying clear and ice blue, and then a child splashes in. The girl’s face wavers, growing huge and then small. Her eyes closed, her mouth a blue pucker. Grey Rabbit beats at the water like a frantic bird, trying to rise up and reach the child with her arms, but there is pressure against them, something holding her down, no, pulling, now lifting her upward, nearer and nearer to the sloshing light. Her face breaks the surface, and she gasps for air, mouths the dry brown emptiness around her. The child. She sees the tawny brown roof of her wigwam, then Bullhead’s broad back, turning away.
She’s no longer underwater; her spirit is in her body. The sky through the smoke hole is purple. Her stomach tightens. Food. They need food. Bullhead is making a soft clicking noise with her mouth. “There’s fresh snow,” she says. “The tracking will be good. Night Cloud will take Standing Bird along.” She stirs the fire and disappears out the door flap.
The girl’s round face, her lips a blue pucker. The image propels Grey Rabbit upright. Across the fire, her sons lay curled and sleeping. From outside come the sounds of Bullhead laying wood. Her words were neither reproachful nor angry, though Grey Rabbit sensed something between them meant for her. She drops her head as shame moves through her, quick as fire in dry grass. She should have been up and tending to her work, but instead she has let all the weight fall on Bullhead.
The Long-Shining Waters Page 2
