Grey Rabbit kneels under a wide bare maple, the shadows of its branches like dark veins over the snow, and talks to the tree as she touches its bark. She is known to have a gift with the maples, and she wishes to continue to do well with them. She feels the need to prove herself, to stop the concerned glances of Bullhead and Night Cloud. She places an offering at the base of the tree, fingers the spot, and makes her first cut.
She aches for Coming-In Woman, who lost her eldest girl. No one knows what became of her. Some say spirited away, others say she was taken by an animal, most believe she fell through the ice.
Little Cedar is nearby with a group of children. Having finished with their work of setting out containers, they are running and chasing through the trees. It’s clear that he’s unhappy with her for making him stay in view, but that’s the way it must be for now.
If her dreams ended after Little Cedar regained his strength, they would have been a good omen, a warning of the danger he had been in. Grey Rabbit takes a spile from her bag and pounds it into the cut she’d made. But the children of her dreams still come, and always, as before, they’re desperate and beyond help. She knows no one who would cast bad medicine on her, nor of any large offense connected with her family. And yet there were no stories told of hunger as bad as what her family suffered. She must approach Bullhead and make an offering, ask her advice about the dreams, but the time never seems to be right. Why that is, she doesn’t understand. She needs to be alone, and to listen if she hopes to gain any understanding. Yet once alone she begins to feel severed. And that rift is more frightening then the worst of her dreams. Her mind turns in circles like a wounded fish.
Grey Rabbit stands and breathes the damp air. She can’t see Little Cedar, though she hears the playful voices of the children in the woods. She calls his name as she peers through the trees, walks through the snow with its long-veined shadows, calling again, louder and more insistent. She told him not to run off. She won’t begin on another tree until she has him in her sight. “Little Cedar,” she calls in a harsh tone, and then turns to find him standing close.
He’s short of breath and his face is red from running. “What?” he says, his hands on his hips.
I find places devoid of motion or sound. No ping. No fin. No shaft of light. The silt lying undisturbed.
And then suddenly objects like leaves in a wind. A flower vase. A cask of rum.
Laughing boy. Calendar. Broken oar.
And something just ahead. Passing out of view. A dark shadow. The water closing behind it.
I understand that I should follow.
Though it is lost again. Like a fleeting dream.
I traverse clinker trails without understanding. Search the open mouths of caves.
There.
He hovers near the steep rock shoal.
Somehow I always knew.
The man in the dark coat.
I approach.
He scatters like a murder of crows.
2000
“At first everyone was so nice.” Nora sits at the table near the picture window where the sky over the lake is streaked with long morning clouds. She swirls the coffee at the bottom of her mug.
“What was that?” Janelle asks from the tiny galley kitchen.
“Everywhere I went people would come up to me and say how sorry they were, and how much they’d miss the place.”
“Nikki, get your stuff together.” Janelle bags a sandwich and picks an orange from the bowl. “I love this painting, Mom. It almost glows. Rose had the same one?”
“No, it wasn’t the same, but it reminds me of hers.”
“It’s cool, Nanny. She’s gonna like it.”
“It sure captures the beauty.” Janelle squats next to Nikki, where the painting leans against the wall. “We’ve seen the water like that, out our window.”
“Yeah, like a dreamsicle.”
“You’re a dreamsicle,” Nora says from the table.
Janelle tugs on Nikki’s shirt. “Go get a sweater, and don’t forget your lunch.”
“Anyway,” Nora says, “I couldn’t even walk down to the Milk House without somebody bringing up the fire. Everyone seems to have adjusted, though. Some have gone over to the Boxcar, and some are at the 22.”
“Well, Mom, come on, what did you think, they’d stop drinking?”
Nora lifts her eyebrows and looks into her cup.
“Drinking what?” Nikki asks, zipping shut her little red knapsack.
“Nothing, Miss Big Ears. Now go get a sweater. How about your purple one?”
“Your Aunt Joannie thinks I should come out to California.”
“That might be a nice break. You always seem to like it.”
“No, to live. She wants me to move there.”
“You’re not serious?”
Nora shrugs and wipes toast crumbs onto her plate. “She thinks it would be good for Mother.”
“Grandma Bernie’s mind is gone. How could it be good for her?”
“I can’t find the purple one.” Nikki skips in. “How about this one?” she says with a twirl.
“Oooh. That’s a pretty red dragonfly on your pants,” says Nora. Nikki twists to see her rear pocket. “Oh yeah, Mom embroidered it.” She flips her ponytail as if it were nothing.
“Remember, Nanny’s picking you up from school, so don’t go getting on the bus.”
“Nanny, will you come out and wait with me?”
“Your Nanny doesn’t have her shoes on, and you need to get going.”
“Of course I will, Bun,” Nora says, rising. “Just let me get my purse.”
The morning air smells like pine and cold water. Nora walks Nikki down the gravel drive, taking care to avoid the ruts, branches, and soggy leaves that were lying under the snow all winter. Nikki plops down on a little wooden bench enclosed on three sides and topped with a slanting roof.
“This is sort of like my playhouse,” she says. “But I don’t play in it much ’cause it’s too close to the road. Sometimes I count the semi trucks.”
“It has a nice view.”
Nikki nods, swinging her feet. “I’ve seen deer over there in the trees.”
“Really?”
“Bears, too.”
“No.”
“Sure. Lots of times. I wasn’t even scared.”
Nora lights a cigarette.
“Nanny, you shouldn’t smoke. It can kill you, you know.”
“A lot of things can kill you, Nikki.”
“Mom says it’s unrespectful to your body. She says it’s the worst thing you can do.”
Nikki hops off the bench and picks up a pinecone. “Want to see how far I can throw?” Her pinecone hits the far lane and rolls. “Want to bet if a car will run over it?”
Nora waves until the bus rounds the curve out of sight, then goes back to the bench to have a cigarette. It’s quiet except for the occasional car, and a squirrel rustling in the brush. It feels like her first real smoke of the day. She inhales, then blows out a long slow stream. A jay is in the pines across the road, and it looks just like a calendar shot, a dab of bright blue against all the green.
“What are you going to do?” Everyone has been asking, even people she hardly knows. As if it isn’t a personal question.
“When one door closes, another one opens.” Those were Willard’s words. She’s not sure it’s true, though it’s a nice thought. She hasn’t seen any open doors.
She stubs out her cigarette and flicks the butt into the trees.
Nora steps to the edge of the driveway as Janelle pulls near and rolls down her window. “Is there anything you want me to bring back?” She’s dressed for work in her gold-and-white checkout uniform.
“I’m fine,” Nora says, suddenly seeing Duane in Janelle’s face. It’s her eyes and the way she’s looking up. Nikki, too, looks more like her father, with fragile skin and a thin face. Funny how these men found a way to stick around, even though they’d both left. At least her Duane had sent money now and
then. And later she had Ralph’s help, though Janelle never accepted him. Those were tough years. It was lose-lose trying to build bridges between the two of them.
“Nikki’s done at three, I’ll be back around five. You going to be all right by yourself?”
A map of Minnesota that Nikki’s been coloring lies open on the coffee table, the shirt Janelle’s mending drapes over a chair. Nora wanders through the little rooms. The house looks so lived in that the quiet feels heavy. There are three glass butterflies suctioned to Nikki’s windowpane—an orange one, a yellow, and a red. The wings glow. The colors look slick and edible, like the stained-glass windows of a church. Her mother cleaned at one for a time. “Joannie. Nora. Let’s head over for services,” she’d sing-song, as if attending were an employee benefit. Always, Nora would find herself staring up at the windows. There was something in the way the light came through the glass that stole her attention away from the service, and made all the words sink into the background.
The look of the lake out the window has totally changed, gone from dull grey to rippled and steely. Nora steps over Nikki’s sleeping bag on the floor, unbuckles her suitcase, and takes out her notebook. All night long she could hear the waves hitting shore. Janelle calls it soothing, but Nora finds it unsettling, with the house so close to the edge, and the water drumming in her ears.
Nora sits at the table, the notebook open to an empty page. “What Next?” she writes across the top. She sips her coffee, taps the pen on the page. Write anything, she tells herself. She looks at the lake, then back to the page. Her eyes wander over the room.
As Nora rounds the house she hears the sound of wind chimes, the wooden kind that sound hollow when they collide, though she doesn’t see where Janelle has hung them. She sets her things at the picnic table and cups her hand around her lighter, her back to the cold wind coming off the lake. “What Next?” it says at the top of the page.
The hollow knocking is coming from the water. Nora sets the pen down and rubs her eyes. She puts her mug on the notebook to keep it from blowing and walks to the edge of the little yard. Out beyond the slanting rock ledge there are chunks of floating ice as big as bathroom mirrors clacking around in a sea of ice chips. They weren’t there the day before.
She smokes and watches. The sound is soothing and it’s pretty the way the ice is glinting. It looks like a giant grey daiquiri. Further out, a gull floats in the swells, and she wonders that it doesn’t freeze to death. Beyond it there’s only open water and a long-lined horizon.
“What Next?” The page looks impossibly blank. “Rebuild,” she writes, though she already knows that her settlement will come in well below the cost of new construction.
1902
Gunnar can hear it in her breathing, short and shallow. He loves knowing her pleasure, knowing that she is now only sensation. No awareness of the coming day, no chores, no worry on her mind. There’s nothing at all between Berit and his tongue.
He starts again, slowly tracing upward, each time reaching a little higher, while his fingers hold the familiar weight of her hips. She’s close so he stops, and then starts in again, snaking his tongue in slow circles until she gasps, her back arching off the bed.
The birds are winding down their predawn ruckus, and sure, he should get out of bed. But he’s feeling lazy and lulled by Berit’s warm skin as his arm rises and falls with her breath. There are two places in the world that he considers home, where he has never questioned belonging. There, with his head close to Berit’s, gathering her body into his arms; and then out on the lake, riding the swells, feeling her in the same way. The sky out the window is still black, and he’d like to stay a bit longer, but reluctantly, quietly, he gets out of bed.
There’s light enough to see, but it’s still before the sun when Gunnar settles into his skiff. He has an anchor setup of smaller twin boulders, split-roped out the first one hundred feet. He figures he can get them over the gunnel in quick succession by himself. It’s important that he add another net to his gang. With prices down from three cents a pound to two, he has to increase his catch to stay even.
The lake is high but not steep or cresting, so he undulates easily over the swells. The first rose light is on the horizon, and Gunnar keeps an eye on the brightest spot as he rows. He loves the particulars of first light, and the slow way that it comes around. The morning has clouds like a mountain range to the east, as if a new continent had risen over night. The sun, though still not showing itself, is turning their bases a deep scarlet.
He has a half a dozen gulls in tow, keeping him company as he rows, and on shore the hills are coming clear, with the tallest pines separating from the sky. The sun comes up, an enormous pink ball, lifting slowly out of the lake, turning the backs of the swells pink, and it’s going to be another fine morning.
Gunnar rows out a net’s length while keeping an eye on his seaward uphauler. It’s anchored at about 240 feet. His new rope is plenty long. He stands now while rowing, aligns himself with his buoys. Everything around him has turned to rose: the sky, the water, even the bobbing seagulls.
Squatting low, he gets his strength below an anchor rock and puts it over the gunnel, the rope whipping. Quickly he lifts the second one, and the lake swells underneath the boat, as if coming up to take it from his hands. Gunnar lets the boulder splash into the lake, and he’s overboard feet first, ice cold engulfing the crown of his head.
His mouth clamps shut. His arms flail. He’s incredulous and reeling with panic as he struggles the knife out of his pocket. The rope is coiled around his leg.
“Stay calm,” a voice says from some corner in his head, but he can’t control his panicked movements as the anchor rock pulls him relentlessly downward.
His rib cage is caught in a giant clamp.
He’s a comet of bubbles dropping into darkness.
He cuts frantically.
The pressure is going to kill him.
Whether he’s sawing at the rope or his leg, he doesn’t know. He can’t even feel his grip on the knife.
The darkness closes in around him, tunneling his vision, encircling. He can’t believe he could be so stupid. His ribs are going to cave in.
His muscles spasm.
His mouth opens.
The lake flows down his windpipe.
When his blade finally makes it through the rope he feels the pressure slowly leave his chest. Feebly, he moves his arms and begins to swim upward. He’s not even cold anymore. Berit will be furious with him for his carelessness.
There’s a strong current swirling around him, and a sound like whispered conversation. It’s beautiful, hushed, Indian maybe, and the wings of the dragonflies pulse in rhythm. He propels himself upward with his arms and one leg. He must have broken the other or pulled it from its socket. He’s looking up through a keyhole at the hull of his boat. It appears like a leaf floating overhead. There’s cold light streaming down, and one oar dangling. Leaves have always pleased him most in the autumn, when they sail and twirl down from the trees. He sees a copper flash, and then a scaly muscled wall of black glides directly in front of his face.
2000
“What smells funny in here?” Nikki asks as the car door groans shut.
“I don’t know. What do you smell?”
“Eeww, it’s this,” she touches the netting of the glass float. “It smells weird.”
Nora backs out of the parking space. “It was in the fire,” she says. “Should we go somewhere?”
“I thought everything got burnt up.”
“Yeah, mostly.”
Nikki holds the float in front of her eyes. “Oooh, It makes everything green. Underwater world,” she sings. “Hey, do you want to go to the agate beach? It’s so fun.”
Nora drives past the gas station, the last thing in what is considered town. “Are you sure you know how to get there, Bun?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there a million times. There’s a sign for it. It’s the beach with the cross. Last year I found the biggest ag
ate ever. Like this,” she says, making a C with her hand the size of a half-dollar. “I’ll show it to you when we get home. It’s an orange one with white and brown rings that make a picture like a cave. Jack tumbled it for me.”
Mr. Numerology. Nora rolls her eyes. “Thank God your mother sent him packing.”
“Nanny!” Nikki’s mouth drops open, but then she giggles. “He was kinda weird.”
Nora nods with a cigarette between her lips. “Kinda.” She puts the lighter to its end.
“Ick. Peeuw.” Nikki makes a face.
“Open your window. There’s plenty of air.”
Nikki rolls down the window and leans her head over.
“You look like a dog sticking your head out like that.”
“I am,” she laughs, and starts barking at everything.
The sun, falling toward the ridge, shines on the surface of the lake, but the long arc of beach where they stand is already sunk in shadow. Nora looks out over the grey water. There’s no chime-ice anywhere.
“What was that cross about?” she asks. They’d taken a short path to the mouth of a river, where a big cement cross had been erected. But Nikki was anxious to get down to the beach, so they’d just stayed a second and turned around.
“We had to learn about it in school,” Nikki says, bent over searching the rocks.
“So, what happened? Is someone buried there?”
“No. It’s about this missionary guy.” She picks up a rock and examines it, then tosses it disappointedly back to the ground. “You want to know the story?”
“Sure. Tell me.”
“Well, you see, there was this missionary.” Nikki straightens up and looks at her. “They wore these long black coats,” she slices her hand at her ankle. “Anyway, he came here to save the Indians because they didn’t believe in God. So once he had to go in a boat to help this one, and he got caught in a big storm. But then, what happened, just when his boat was going to crash into the rocks, it went into that river instead.”
The Long-Shining Waters Page 7
