The Way Back from Broken

by Amber J. Keyser

  “I think it’s about fishing,” he said. “See the weights?”

  “Uncle Leroy really liked to fish.”

  That was an understatement. In the fifties, he and RJP must have fished all summer, every summer. In the sixties, the frequency dropped, weekends only. Then in the seventies it was erratic, a week here, a day there. The last page had three lines.

  12 Sept 1977, 6 lbs 0 oz, 3 colors, Mepps gold spinner, w/ RJP

  13 Sept 1977, 2 lbs, 5 oz, 2.5 colors, gold Williams, w/ RJP

  26 Sept 1977

  “That’s weird,” said Jacey. “What happened on September 26th?”

  “Looks like he gave up fishing, I guess. We should eat lunch.”

  Jacey tucked the notebook back where she found it and helped him make sandwiches. When the sun came out in the middle of the afternoon, Jacey threw down a vintage National Geographic circa May 1984 and tugged Rakmen’s arm. “Come on! Let’s go exploring.”

  “Gimme a minute,” he said, shrugging her off and finishing his text to Molly. I’m sorry they won’t let you go. She’d been invited to the beach with a friend from school, but of course, her parents had said no.

  I’m used to it. Bummed tho, she wrote back.

  “Rakmen—” Jacey whined. “I want to go see Edna.”

  “Get us a water bottle and some bars and we’ll go.”

  It’s outdoor activity hour at Camp Fall Apart. Tiny dictator insists on a canoe ride, he texted.

  Sounds like fun. Can I go to camp?

  Even over text, he knew she was faking cheerful. He couldn’t decide which of them had it worse. Molly’s parents kept her home. His had sent him away.

  Next summer for sure.

  It’s a date.

  That sounded good to him.

  Rakmen pulled their rain jackets off the coat hooks behind the door and waited while Jacey filled a water bottle. He itched to see the sun and get out of the cabin even if meant going to see grouchy old Edna. Anything was better than staying here.

  Rakmen was half out the door with Jacey right behind him when a loud metallic bang exploded inside the wall behind the sink. Turning back toward the kitchen, he heard another ominous clunk and the deep gurgle of rushing water.

  The bedroom door slammed open, and Leah stormed out. “What’s going on? I’m trying to read.”

  Jacey glued herself to Rakmen.

  The torrential sound of water increased.

  Leah wrenched open the cabinet under the sink and shoved aside bottles of dish soap and bleach and stacks of old sponges. The moldy drywall behind the sink pipe ballooned outward, thrumming with the force behind it. Damp began seeping through, spreading out. They stared, transfixed. Then with a sloshy tearing sound, the wall gave way and gallons of rusty water poured onto the floor, soaking Leah’s jeans.

  “We’re sinking!” Jacey shrieked.

  “Not sinking, leaking,” said Rakmen. “Where’s the shutoff?”

  Leah turned off the sink valve, but the water didn’t stop.

  “Get me a wrench,” she hollered. “The water main is probably in the crawl space.” She grabbed a flashlight and slopped through the growing puddle on the floor. Rakmen raced for the wall of tools in the shed out back. By the time he returned with the wrench, Leah had wriggled into the crawl space under the cabin.

  Rakmen handed Leah the wrench and crawled in after her to hold the flashlight.

  Jacey screamed through the floor. “It’s getting worse. A chunk of the wall fell out!”

  Leah strained against the valve. She smacked the pipe with the wrench and tried again. Groaning with effort, she pulled against the rusty plumbing.

  Jacey hollered down another status report. “The rug is floating.”

  Rakmen touched Leah on the back. “Let me try.”

  She nodded and squeezed past him, trading the wrench for the flashlight, and he crawled forward into the muck. Rakmen pulled on the valve, putting his weight into it. With a screech, the valve fell into place. The sound of rushing water ceased, and in the dark confines of the crawl space, he could hear Leah cursing rhythmically.

  “Come on,” he said, half-pulling her out of the crawl space.

  They waded through the main room and began cleaning up in silence. Leah mopped. Jacey filled a garbage bag with sodden masses of paper clippings. Rakmen hauled stacks of soaked magazines to the outdoor fire pit. Flecks of their yellow covers dotted his skin.

  When he came back inside after the last load, Rakmen found Leah staring at a map on the wall. It was very old, navy blue with white lines delineating lakes and rivers. Dotted lines connected them, paths of some sort.

  “I’m not staying in this mouse-infested junk heap,” she said.

  A prickling, electric sensation filled him. Rakmen tried to read the bend of her back, the tension across her shoulders. He wanted her to turn so he could read her face. Words couldn’t be trusted.

  “Good,” said Jacey, a nervous smile twitching around her lips. “The cabin’s yucky.”

  “Goddamn Leroy. He let everything go to hell,” Leah said without turning.

  They were teetering on the edge of something, but whether it was attack or retreat or surrender, he couldn’t tell. In his pocket, his phone vibrated. Molly. Even if everything else at home was shit, Molly was there. The only bright spot. Rakmen decided to back retreat.

  “We’re ready to go,” he said, keeping his voice as reasonable as possible. “Let’s chalk this up to a bad idea. We can probably change our plane tickets.” He didn’t know what his parents would say about him coming back early. They didn’t even have to know. Juan’s mom would probably let him stay at their house.

  Leah turned, her eyes narrowing. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Rakmen had miscalculated. Again. Jacey trembled next to him, and he remembered the night Leah had broken the plates.

  “We are not going home,” Leah whispered. “We are going—” Rakmen strained to catch her words. “We’re going au large.”

  Those were the words etched on the canoe.

  Rakmen felt the ridged letters scraping his fingertips. Au large had sounded dangerous then and felt worse now. A sick, churning boil rose in his stomach. The lid that he’d kept so firmly clamped down was lifting, threatening his last shred of calm. Rakmen’s hands balled into fists, but he forced himself to turn, to put one foot in front of the other, and to walk out the door.

  CHAPTER 16

  Jacey followed Rakmen.

  “Stay with your mom,” he warned.

  She shook her head. “I’m staying with you.”

  And blam—they were back at Promise House, and she was asking him how to walk without a leg, and it was the middle of the night, and she was standing in the window of her broken-down house, begging him to bring her mother back.

  He couldn’t even save himself.

  “Come on then,” he growled.

  They hauled the canoe to the water, and Rakmen paddled until the muscles in his arms burned and even then he didn’t stop. He couldn’t get far enough away from that woman’s crazy. Not even the sun beating down on his shoulders could dislodge the dread he’d felt when Leah said au large.

  The loud slam of a door echoed across the lake. Edna stood on her porch, hands on hips, evaluating the universe.

  “Will you take me to see Edna?” Jacey asked in a small voice.

  Small price to pay for the fact she hadn’t spoken since they’d been on the water. Rakmen pointed the bow towards Edna, who was heading down to the dock with a fishing rod under one arm. As they approached, she settled herself into a folding chair.

  “Hello, Power. Mr. Rock Man,” she said, eyeing them closely. “Whatchya doing here? Why you got yellow crap all over you?”

  “A pipe burst in the cabin,” he said, scratching flakes of dried National Geographic off his arms.

  “Everything got soaked,” said Jacey, helping Rakmen tie the canoe to the dock.

  “Leah need help?” Edna asked, without looking up fro
m the worm she was skewering. Rakmen shook his head and sat down next to Edna, who added a red and white bobber to the line.

  “What does au large mean?” Jacey asked, poking one finger in the margarine tub full of dirt and worms.

  “That’s what the old French trappers used to say before they headed out into the bush.” Edna gave a mock salute and called out, “Au large!” The salutation rolled loudly over the surface of the lake.

  In her gravelly voice, the words sounded almost cheerful. When Leah had said them, it felt like a grave.

  “But,” said Rakmen, “what’s it mean?”

  “Ah,” said Edna. “That’s the thing.” Rakmen and Jacey leaned in. “It means to the wilderness. To the unknown. To adventure!”

  “Adventure?” Rakmen repeated. Those words had nothing to do with that train wreck of a woman back at the cabin.

  Edna cuffed him upside the head. “Look, mister. Au large is big. It’s a way of life.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, rubbing his temple. “But Jacey’s mom says she’s leaving the cabin. Says she’s going au large. Are you telling me she’s planning to head to the woods like that crazy guy we saw?”

  “Probably,” said Edna, handing the fishing rod to Jacey and shooing her to the end of the dock. “Cast out by that submerged log.”

  Rakmen and Edna watched Jacey figure out the push-button reel. Her first cast was too jerky. The bobber splashed into the water ten feet from the end of the dock. “Go easy,” Edna advised.

  Once Jacey had successfully launched her worm out near the log, Edna turned back to Rakmen. “Leah went ‘on trip’ a lot when she was a kid up here. Hell, I did too when I was younger. It’s good for the soul.”

  “Whatever. She’s a parent. She doesn’t get to have an adventure because the pipes broke. Coming here was a bad idea. I think she needs to accept that.”

  “I think,” Edna interrupted, “that you should give her some credit. I’ve talked to Leroy. I know about the baby.” The sucker punch doubled him over. “She’s struggling, and she’s trying to figure it out.”

  “Jacey’s scared of her,” Rakmen said, lowering his voice and watching as the girl cast her worm out to its watery grave.

  Edna nodded. “Grief is terrifying.”

  The bobber at the end of Jacey’s line dipped under the surface, and she hooted, pulling back the rod. It curved, bouncing as the hooked fish struggled and broke free.

  “The question is,” said Edna, “what about you? Will you be going au large?”

  Another adult who was so damn sure he could pick up the pieces.

  “Like I have any say in the matter.”

  “You always got choices,” Edna rasped.

  “No, I don’t,” he said, feeling a sick bitterness run down the back of his throat. His sister was dead. He was stuck in the woods with a crazy woman, making sure she didn’t get her other kid killed. He hadn’t asked for any of this.

  “You could blow your brains out.”

  Rakmen twisted to face her. Edna was staring across the lake at Leroy’s cabin. Stone eyes. Clenched jaw. Wrinkled skin spread over a granite skull. She was all hardness. He fought the urge to recoil from the danger that had suddenly appeared. They shouldn’t be here. He knew that now. But it was too late to get away.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that kind of thing,” Rakmen stammered.

  “Supposed to?” Edna asked. She shook her head, words bitter. “When the worst happens, stupid people say stupid things. I only say true things.”

  The blackness in her was loss.

  It was emptiness.

  In this moment, they were the same.

  “Who did you lose?” Rakmen didn’t mean to ask her, but the question escaped his lips. He saw the memory book from Promise House, the faces of children frozen in time. He needed to know.

  “The three of us were best friends, Leroy, Richard, and me. We spent every summer on this lake together.”

  “You went fishing,” he said, remembering the notebook and the initials.

  She met his eyes, and her voice was softer than he had ever heard it. “We did a lot of fishing. Richard and I were going to get married. But he struggled something terrible with depression. I was young then and stupid and told him he didn’t have an option. He had to get through it, shake it off...” Her voice trailed off and she rubbed the palms of her hands back and forth along the arms of the chair, breath slipping out of her.

  “What happened?”

  She stilled her hands and cleared her throat. “Let’s just say he made a different choice.” Her words were hard again. “And here we are, you and I,” she continued. “Choices all around, Rock Man. Make one.”

  At the end of the dock, Jacey’s rod bent double. She squealed and thrashed the rod in the air. “Fish! I got a fish!”

  “Reel!” Edna commanded.

  Jacey obeyed at top speed. She was flushed and panting by the time she had tugged an olive green fish as long as Rakmen’s hand out of the water.

  “Way to go, Power. You got a bass.” Edna heaved herself out of the chair and pointed Rakmen toward a rusty metal bucket. “Fill that with lake water.” She unhooked Jacey’s fish and held it up by the lip for Jacey to admire.

  “Oh, it’s pretty.”

  Rakmen set the sloshing bucket beside her, and Edna dropped the fish in. She was back to normal, crusty and scarred over. A survivor.

  The three of them were still watching the bass swim laps in the bucket when a mournful call reverberated across the lake. The loon had risen from deep water, shaking its head like a dog and sending water droplets in the air. Iridescent green shone on its head like an oil slick.

  It turned and fixed a red-eyed stare on Rakmen. Warning shot through him, then the bird hooted, a soft feathery call which drifted over the lake. It dove, leaving nothing but a smooth spot on the water.

  “Sometimes the Inuit buried their loved ones with a loon skull,” said Edna, pulling out a fresh earthworm. “Supposedly the birds can see the way to the spirit world and guide the dead on their passing.” The worm twisted around her gnarled fingers as she wove the hook through the middle of it.

  Jacey looked up from the fish bucket. “What if someone doesn’t have a loon skull?” she demanded.

  “Huh?” Edna grunted, holding out the re-baited fishing rod.

  Jacey ignored the rod and got in Edna’s face. “If a person doesn’t have a skull, will his spirit get lost?”

  “I dunno. I haven’t died yet.” Rakmen wondered if Edna realized what Jacey was really asking. “Seen a lot a lost people, though,” she continued, “and that’s before they got buried.” When Jacey didn’t take the fishing rod, Edna put it down on the dock and started to pack up the tackle box. “I think you’ve got to find your own path.”

  “Do you know the way?” Jacey asked, expectant.

  “I’m an old woman,” Edna said. “I’ve been my own stern paddler for a long time. I won’t be afraid when the loon comes for me. That’s the ultimate au large.” She pointed to the bass. “Whatchya gonna do with this thing? Clean it and eat it?”

  Jacey shuddered. “No way. Let it go.”

  “Suit yourself,” Edna shrugged.

  Rakmen tipped the bucket over the edge of the lake and watched the bass swim to deeper water. The loon was down there with its blood-red eyes, watching. A chill swept through him.

  Suddenly, he needed to get back. He needed to know which au large Leah had meant. Rakmen hustled Jacey into the canoe. Edna waved them off, and they paddled across the lake. The wind had shifted and a faint trace of rot rolled out of the bay where Leah waited in the moldy cabin. Its windows watched them approach, hollow-eyed and full of warning.

  CHAPTER 17

  The silence of the cabin as they approached sent fear racing through Rakmen. He pushed Jacey behind him on the trail that led up from the lake. If it was bad in there, as bad as he thought it could be, he didn’t want her to see it first. Stea
m rose from the pile of soggy magazines in the fire pit.

  The door was propped open.

  Relief washed over him when he saw Leah hunched behind a small mountain of bundles heaped on the kitchen table. She was counting Ritz crackers into even stacks. Deranged but breathing.

  “What’s going on?” Rakmen asked.

  “Packing.”

  “You’re counting crackers.”

  “Yes. Twenty-six per lunch meal. Ten for you. Eight each for Jacey and me.” Leah handed Jacey a tub of almonds, a measuring cup and a stack of plastic sandwich bags. “Put three-quarters of a cup in each bag. We need at least twelve plus another twelve of cashews.”

  Jacey’s silence as she started measuring nuts told him she was equally nervous about the strange intensity that had replaced the vacancy in Leah’s eyes. Rakmen wasn’t sure which scared him more.

  “Um, that’s very precise,” he prompted.

  “Got to keep the weight down. We’ll be out a long time, and we have to carry everything we’ll need until our resupply stop.”

  Rakmen looked around the cabin. Soggy slabs of drywall hung from the hole under the sink. Soaked balls of lint and clumps of wet newspaper had collected in the low spots of the still-wet floor. Dark wetness had wicked up the upholstery of the couch.

  A sudden image of himself with this crumbling cabin on his back flashed through Rakmen’s mind. The weight would crush him. The stink rising from the cabin would suffocate him. He wanted to kick the walls until they collapsed. Instead, he pressed his palms against the table and forced his voice steady. “What’s the plan here? Our agreement was eight weeks at this cabin.”

  “Well, it’s a piece of crap. We need to get out of here.”

  “And by out you mean what exactly?”

  “Twenty-four days on trip,” Leah said, scrawling another line on her growing to-pack list. “We can carry enough food for twelve days if we’re careful. I’ll send a box to Branvin with enough for the return trip.”

  Jacey abandoned the nuts and watched them, wide-eyed.

  “Trip? You mean camping?!” he said, unable to temper his rising voice.