Winds of Change: Short Stories about Our Climate

by Robert Sassor

  We take Egan Drive toward town as the sun sets and ignites the mountains across the channel. On this desolate road, it's almost as though we are the only people left on earth. I often had that feeling here with you.

  The road curves as we approach town, and Lucy slows around a bend. Ahead, I see an illuminated arc: candles—maybe hundreds of them—flickering inside the glass-enclosed skyway that connects the high school with its parking lot.

  "Who organized this?" I ask.

  "I don't think anyone did. I think it was spontaneous." She parks and turns to look at me, giving me permission to explore on my own terms.

  I start to ascend the staircase. Paper bags with candles lead the way to the sky bridge, which is lined with candles and cards, stuffed teddy bears, a few roses. I pick up some of the cards.

  "People have been posting a lot of things online, too," Lucy says. "Not sure if you've seen that. I was thinking, if you'd like, I could email some of them to you. Maybe keep a file?"

  I smile by way of a response. As I reach the top of the stairs, the candlelight overtakes the dusk. There are students at the end of the passageway reading some of the notes. Did you know them? Were they nice to you?

  There is a poster that appears to have been put together by an art class. A large picture of you is in the middle with notes written all around it. It's a picture I've never seen of you before. I realize the treasure trove before me: images of you that I might otherwise have never seen.

  "I've been thinking," Lucy says quietly, "about all of the artwork that Jacob left behind. What if we held some sort of retrospective? I'm sure the JAC would let us use their center, or we could do it here at the high school. It's just a thought. I mean, I always thought his work should have been showcased more. I thought it'd be nice for people to see what they've been missing out on all this time."

  My gaze wanders outside, past the candlelight, into the growing darkness. It never occurred to me that there would be this kind of outpouring for you from the students here. In my peripheral vision, I see Mr. Jefferies, the school counselor you despised. He sees me, and doesn't approach.

  "I'd have to give that some thought," I say. Your work: it is so personal. And some of it, well, I'm not sure the community deserves to see that side of you, to know you in that way.

  Lucy puts an arm around my waist. She is so young yet so free, so able to express what she feels. She reminds me of myself when I was young. It's strange, being jealous of someone so much younger.

  "He was loved," she says, meaning it.

  "Can I … keep these things, when it's done?"

  She glances over to Mr. Jeffries. "Yeah. I'm sure they're planning on that, but I'll ask, just to be safe."

  "Thank you for bringing me here."

  She looks at me with so much earnestness. "We were lucky to know him. Those of us who really knew him, we were so lucky."

  The emotion swells in my throat. I nod my head slowly and wonder: how many of these people really knew you? And moreover, did I?

  * * *

  I find myself waiting at the kitchen window, watching the snow fall. Last night, it snowed hard, coating the leeward face of the trees and accentuating their imperfect, non-perpendicular lines.

  I never really knew how much Val meant to me until your father died. She was always my rock, in addition to you. I make busy work at the sink, knowing she should arrive soon. I imagine that I see her car in my peripheral vision, and am disappointed to look up and see only empty road. When her silver car approaches, I grab my jacket. We meet in the drive and embrace for I don't know how long.

  She sits with me as I recount everything that's happened. She listens with one hand on my knee and the other occasionally wiping the tears from my face. She grabs me tissues when I need them. I don't know how much time passes, but I find myself exhausted, unable to go on.

  She changes the sheets on my bed and lets fresh air in—I feel adolescent, convalescent.

  "Can I get you out of the house tomorrow?" she asks. "I thought I'd take you to the lake, we can go for a walk."

  "Actually, if you don't mind, there's someplace I've been wanting to share with you."

  She looks at me, perplexed. "You're on. Now get some sleep. I'll stop by tomorrow."

  * * *

  The car passes noiselessly over gravel frozen in place and time. I point Val to an imperceptible track leading to the old soap factory, and she turns off Wire Gate Road to follow it. We pull up in front of a tall, concrete building set against the mountains outside of Juneau. Its roof is long gone. What few windows it had had are now empty cavities from which life, sprouting from within, reaches out for the sunlight.

  I see now, in a new way, what you saw in this place. You thought I didn't know what you were up to over here, but of course I did.

  "What was Jacob doing all the way out here?" Val asks, stepping toward the doorway.

  "Fine-tuning his craft, being defiant..."

  I watch as she steps through the door, hands in her pockets, and surveys the room—taking it all in as though she had walked into a museum. I follow her inside, becoming enwrapped in your graffiti-style art that adorns every surface. An ecosystem of thoughts and images that interconnect to tell the story of a life I'm still trying so hard to understand.

  "These were Jacob's?" she asks, half-whispering. I nod. She looks at me in awe. "I had no idea," she says. "I feel terrible saying this, but all this time, I underestimated him."

  I see a work I'd never seen before: a series of icebergs in black and white with hints of light blue. Their style is almost like a watercolor, with the bergs' outlines reflected on whitecaps of a charcoal sea. Below, you wrote: "God will sip them like little drops of dew when it is time. —William Stafford." Where did you read this? Was this from one of your father's books?

  I hear Val breathe deeply. "Is this…?" she starts, seeing the portrait of me on a nearby wall. I join her.

  "Yes," I say.

  If she understands the meaning of the piece, she gives no indication. "The technical detail..." she says, but doesn't finish her thought.

  The meaning is clear to me. You painted my visage as a mountain face with crosshatched lines—the types of crevices where water seeps and freezes, shattering the rock and sending it cascading below. There is one such rock scree tumbling from the side of my cheek. And at its base, you painted a tiny version of yourself along with our dog at the time, Mercury, looking up as falling pieces of me were about to devour you both.

  My face flushes. I shouldn't have brought Val here. Then she looks at me, her face full of compassion. She holds my arm and turns around to decipher a new wall. "I didn't know he was so interested in the environment," she says. "I knew he cared about social issues, developing nations and such. I guess I didn't know about this other side of him, did you?"

  I don't know how to respond. The truth is, some of your themes take me by surprise as well.

  We stare at a painting of an Inuit man under the ice, surrounded by jellies and constellations of tiny lights. The whole painting is blues and grays and beautiful. The hunter seems to be about to throw a spear underwater, legs and arms outstretched like a dancer. "I remember talking with Jacob about climate change," I say, "about how Inuit hunters on Baffin Island are falling through the ice on their way to traditional hunting grounds. It's getting warmer there, and the ice is too thin—people are dying while trying to provide for their families."

  Val looks at me, surprised. "Is that what inspired this?"

  I shrug. "I'm just trying to tie the pieces together."

  One piece that stands out is of a bird. I figure it's a cormorant. You painted a silhouette of it airing its wings—looking remarkably like a crucifix, with oil dripping from its body against a bright, orange sky. It is a simple piece compared to some of the others, but it makes me think about the sacrifices made at the hands of our folly.

  I see Val look over at the large self-portrait you'd painted nearby. I don't think it registers with her, but
I recognize the image as being of you, or rather, how you might look if you were blond, if you were female.

  "She's pretty. Who is she?"

  I shrug. But I recognize the eyes. "Val, I don't know how to say this … and I don't know why I'm telling you, other than that I have to talk to someone. I never thought I was a perfect mother, but it's so easy for me to see now just how much I failed Jacob. There were things he needed me to understand, without having to ask me to, that I never really got. That I'm still processing, still making sense of…"

  "Honey, what is it?"

  I compose myself. I am still not comfortable telling her, letting her in on your secret. Not yet. "The truth is, I knew Jacob was unhappy. And I'm sure I tried to help, in my way. But, and this is the part I can't stop thinking about." I take a deep breath. "The gun safe, in the garage. I knew it was unlocked." I look into her eyes, wanting her to grasp the meaning.

  "What?"

  "I never knew the combination. It's been unlocked since Dean died. I had a son who was suffering from depression, who was bullied at school. I had a gun safe at home that was unlocked. I never put the pieces together." Val hugs into me from the side. "It should be him standing here, not me…"

  Val closes her hold on me, completing the embrace. "Honey. Honey. Hold on. Jacob was unhappy, and that wasn't your fault. Jerry and I, we knew that Jacob was unhappy, too. But none of us ever fathomed that these thoughts could have been crossing his mind." She pauses. "Jerry and I keep asking ourselves: how could we have seen this coming? What could we have done differently? It's natural to ask these questions. But Bee, you were doing the best that you could do. We all were." She is so strong. I never see her cry, not even now. "You gave him so much love. But sometimes … sometimes the need is too great. The need is more than anybody can fill." She gently rocks me, as if I were young. My nose runs onto her jacket. The mountain of my sorrow unfurls, cascading all around us. "It's not your fault, honey. It's none of our faults."

  After a while, she steps back, holding my arms. "Jerry and I have been thinking. Why don't you come stay with us for a while? Get you out of that house. What do you think?"

  It's such a kind offer, but it's not what I want. I don't want to be separated from the remembrances of you: the dirty mug in your room, the laundry of yours, still undone. Before I can answer, I am lost again in my thoughts, staring up at the sky, watching as wisps of clouds pass overhead at a clip.

  "Thank you for bringing me here," she says. "I'd like to show Jerry someday. I'd like to come back and take it all in." Her eyes are clear and stare right through me. "Shall we head back? Are you hungry? Can I buy you dinner?"

  I shake my head no. I haven't been hungry in days. "Would you take me past the observatory on the way home?" I ask.

  She smiles. I wipe my nose on my sleeve, and she takes my arm as we walk back to the car.

  * * *

  The lock is frozen and I have a hard time getting the key to turn.

  "I don't know why Jerry doesn't replace that thing. You need WD-40? I might have some in the car," Val offers.

  With force, I pry the door open.

  "No woman's as strong as a Juneau woman," she says.

  "Except maybe a Sitka one…"

  The observatory is a train car retrofitted with a couple of rooms inside, and a long door through which the 17- and 12-inch telescopes are wheeled out whenever there's a soul who wants to see the stars. I came here to pick up the rock that you once gave me. Remember? You cracked open the ice and reached into the running water to pluck this stone for me: deep green with copper flecks. Whenever things would get difficult, particularly when your father was ill, I'd worry this stone between my fingers. It would always remind me of a more simple time. A time so full of joy and mystery and love.

  I lock the office door behind me and see Val eyeing the 17-inch reflecting telescope that Jerry had built. He made it one mirror at a time as the funds came together. He even handcrafted its wooden swivel mount. "I remember the night we christened this," she says. "What was Jacob's favorite star again?"

  "Pleiades."

  "Pleiades, that's right. Which is why Jerry picked it as the first thing to point the telescope at, to see if the whole contraption—all that time, all that effort—worked."

  "First light, he called it."

  "Right. I remember Jerry turning to me, in his understated, English way, and saying, 'There it is.' God, I was so relieved," she says.

  I realize that's what you were to me: my first light—the ray that tested me, gave me the chance to fulfill my role in the cosmos.

  "Any other errands? Grocery store? I'm here to be helpful."

  "That's kind of you." I rub the rock between my fingers. The idea of running errands seems so banal. There is nothing left in the world that I need. "I think I'll head home. I have arrangements to make."

  Val scrunches her lips, revealing lines that are among the few indicators of her real age. As we head out, the heavy metal door slams behind us. I reach out to hand the keys to Val.

  "Give these to Jerry, will you? I don't think I'll be coming here for a while."

  "That's nonsense. He won't accept the keys, and he wouldn't forgive me if I did. Hang onto these. He needs you here; he's too old for this stuff."

  As she drives me home, I feel the glacier looming at my side again. The sun has set, and the sky is uncharacteristically clear. I see a flash of green in the upper atmosphere, cosmic rays dancing with the oxygen high above. I want so badly for Val to turn onto Mendenhall Loop so that we can watch the aurora at the glacier. But she doesn't notice and steers us forward.

  I close my eyes, feeling the contours of the stone from you in my hand. I imagine you there, at the glacier, bundled up and watching the lights with childlike wonder—marveling that we live in a world with so much beauty.

  Stay there, my sweet, hold that moment. In the life of a light beam, I am there with you.

  How Close to Savage the Soul, John Atcheson

  Honorable mention

  The aromas hit him like a fist, poised there over five decades, waiting until now, triggered by this foolish trip.

  Fresh and fertile, seaweedy and salty, they ignited electric jolts from somewhere deep inside his soul, firing off images, conjuring up a thousand snapshots covering his long life. Like coming home again, he thought. But now he noticed another odor, an overlay—fetid and coppery—the smell of death?

  "Is this how you remember it, Grandpa?"

  What was he supposed to say? As the memories flooded back, he flipped through them like catalogue cards, searching for the right words. No, not catalogue cards you old geezer—Google listings.

  "Not exactly." He felt the little hand in his, soft in that way little kid flesh is, against his own, gnarled, age-worn, and arthritic. It reminded him of another little hand from a long time ago. No, don't start …

  In truth, it was far from how he remembered it, and so he let the memories march past while he searched for the right answer. The whole month of August, every year from as early as he could remember. From the time he was younger than little Will here. Corking waves in his father's safe arms, riding up one side of the swells out past where they broke, then down the other, buoyant in the salt water. Now, no one even knew what corking was.

  Later, he and his brothers would ride the waves, first body surfing, then with rubber rafts, and finally with surf boards.

  Much later, he'd come here with his own child. At least for a while.

  So much time, then. Time for life. Time for mistakes. Time for corrections. Time to right wrongs.

  But it goes. It goes. Is that what he should say? Tell him how it goes, disappearing more quickly with each year? How it tricks you so at the end; it seems to vanish all at once, like the last suck of water down a drain? How he could feel that last inexorable tug on him even now?

  No. We've already given him enough of a bummer. Maybe happy stuff. Like first love.

  There had been several dunes over to the left w
here the boardwalk ended. In a cleft between them, sheltered from the crowds, he'd made love for the first time with a local girl he'd known since they were both kids, kissing and caressing until they both thought they'd explode and then finally, stripping off their clothes, heedless of the gritty sand in that way that only adolescents could be. What year was that? 1996?

  He smiled to himself. No. Not exactly fodder for a six year old.

  "We used to ride those waves, Will." He let go of the hand, kneeled down beside the boy, and pointed out at the breakers rolling in. "Me and your great-uncle Hank."

  The boy's eyebrows shot up. "Really?"

  "Yup. We were good, too."

  "Can we do that?"

  Again, what to say? "Maybe later, buddy."

  The little boy cast his eyes downward but said nothing. A generation used to disappointment, the old man thought.

  He took the little boy's hand. "C'mon. We have to get going."

  "Can't we stay a little longer, Grandpa?"

  The old man eyed the waves and listened. He loved the sounds. Rushing in, building, like the wind shushing through trees before a storm, ebbing out and poising in silence, before building once again. He hated to disappoint the boy. Maybe a little while longer.

  "OK. Let's sit down." He guided the boy over to a bench near the end of the boardwalk, and they sat together, silently, watching the surf build, listening to the sounds intensify. It was a clear day, hot, as usual, and the perspiration beaded up around his eyes, stinging them before dripping down and rolling across his cheeks. He checked the boy. His face was flushed, and he'd stopped sweating. Bad sign. Dammit, gotta watch that. He took a bottle of water out of the small pack he carried and handed it to the boy, who took it greedily and started gulping it down. "Easy. Save some for later."

  He checked the surf, then, satisfied, he turned back to the boy. "You OK?"