The Things Owen Wrote

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  “Yes it is,” Owen says. “Mine’s over here.”

  He points to his own suitcase, which is lying open beside his bed, the contents spilling out onto the floor.

  His granddad looks dubious.

  “Well okay, then. Let’s open that suitcase. We’ll make sure it’s your stuff inside,” Owen suggests.

  This is the notebook mix-up all over again, Owen thinks. He has to open the cover to prove his point.

  His granddad reluctantly nods.

  Owen retrieves the other suitcase and heaves it onto his granddad’s bed. He unzips it and throws back the cover.

  Owen blinks, owl-like.

  Aris takes a step closer to peer inside. She puts her hand to her mouth.

  Owen stares with alarm into his granddad’s face.

  His granddad looks away.

  “Oops,” Neville says quietly. “It appears as if I didn’t do a very good job packing.”

  “No,” Owen says in a little voice. “You didn’t.”

  Inside the suitcase are his granddad’s socks.

  Just socks.

  All socks.

  A suitcase full of socks.

  “Well, I must be off to bed,” Aris says quietly.

  But before she leaves, she gives Owen a gentle squeeze on his arm.

  “We’ll chat in the morning,” she says kindly.

  She softly closes the door behind her. The silence she leaves in her wake is deafening. They can hear the tick of the alarm clock on the night table, the distant thrumming of the glacial river rushing by and birds still singing because the sun refuses to go down.

  “Pops?” Owen says.

  “My feet get cold,” Neville replies.

  “What about pajamas?” Owen asks.

  “I guess I forgot them. I had a lot on my mind. All those last-minute travel details,” Neville says.

  “Right,” Owen says. “You had a lot to remember.”

  He wants so badly to believe his granddad. He tries to convince himself that having to quickly plan for a short trip to another country might explain a suitcase full of socks.

  But it’s no use.

  “We’d better get some sleep,” Neville says. “We have another full day tomorrow before we head home.”

  “Right,” Owen says again, turning away.

  Owen knows he is still doing his blinking thing. He can’t help it. He is also having trouble with his words. He crawls into his bed and pulls the duvet over himself. He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of his granddad who is also getting ready for bed. After a few minutes of silence, he opens one eye to spy on his granddad.

  His granddad is lying on his own bed, glasses and shoes removed but otherwise fully clothed with his duvet half-thrown over his body. He is staring up at the ceiling, one arm tucked under his head. He looks uncomfortable.

  Owen gulps down his sadness. He rolls over to face the other way, snuggling into his pajamas, the ones he so carefully chose to bring. For the first time since the beginning of their adventure, Owen misses home.

  When Owen wakes up, he is not sure what time it is because the light has not changed all that much inside their room. But it is morning. His granddad is in the bathroom. Owen can hear the shower going and his granddad whistling some happy tune, as if last night with the suitcase full of socks never happened.

  Owen stretches and climbs out of bed. He throws back the curtains of the balcony doors and squints up at the bright gray sky. Then he changes into clean clothes, trying hard not to think about his granddad’s suitcase.

  Owen’s granddad emerges from the bathroom wielding a toothbrush. Although he has showered, he has had to change back into his clothing from the day before.

  “Bathroom’s all yours,” Neville announces as if everything is right with the world.

  “Where did you get the toothbrush?” Owen asks.

  “The innkeeper gave me some spare supplies,” he says proudly. “Problem solved.”

  “That’s great,” Owen says.

  But Owen is wary. Owen is on guard.

  He uses the bathroom. When he is done, his granddad is waiting to take him downstairs where they will have breakfast with Aris. She joins them shortly after they sit down in the dining room. Its walls are covered with photographs of sparkling pale blue glaciers breaking off into the dull gray Arctic Ocean.

  “Did you sleep well?” Aris asks them brightly.

  “Yes,” they both say together, Owen a beat behind his granddad.

  The server arrives with coffee and then their meals.

  Owen worries when he sees spoons on the table, but his granddad picks one up to stir sugar into his coffee as if he has been using spoons all his life.

  Which he has, Owen thinks.

  His granddad takes a healthy slurp of his coffee and then smiles at both of them.

  Aris does not mention the suitcase full of socks, but Owen catches her staring at Owen from time to time. He focuses on getting his food down, hoping it will take away the cramps in his stomach.

  It doesn’t.

  After breakfast, they check out of the inn and climb into Aris’s car. All luggage is accounted for. Owen secretly makes sure of that. It is a short drive to Reykir where they will go for an outdoor swim. To their right is the ocean, today steel blue, and in the distance a solitary island looms with steep cliffs all around.

  “That’s Drangey,” Aris announces.

  Owen, who has been stewing in the backseat, now looks out his window. He has seen this striking island before. Then he remembers where.

  “Stephansson has a painting of that island at his homestead in Alberta,” Owen reports.

  His granddad turns to give him a pleased nod.

  “Take a photo,” Neville suggests.

  Owen tries to take a shot that makes the island look strong and defiant like the painting that Stephansson owned, but his hands shake and the photograph comes out blurry. He deletes it.

  “Here we are,” Aris says as she pulls into a parking lot, which is practically empty because of the early hour and the remoteness of the place.

  She retrieves a small tote bag from her trunk.

  “All Icelanders travel with their swimsuits, but if you didn’t pack yours, you can rent one.”

  The mention of packing reminds Owen of the suitcase full of socks. Now he can’t stop thinking about it.

  They enter a small wooden building that sells hot coffee and knot-shaped pastries along with tickets to the outdoor pools. Owen and his granddad are directed to the men’s changing area, which is back outside in a fenced enclosure. Gusty cold wind blows right off the Arctic waters, making it a challenge to get undressed. Once changed, they make a dash for the two pools. Each is shaped like a large well and surrounded by flat stones. Owen spots a set of stairs that leads into the closest pool where Aris is already immersed.

  “Hot! Hot! Hot!” he yelps as he descends the steps in his haste to get out of the cold wind.

  Aris laughs.

  “You’re right. It’s forty degrees Celsius. You’ll soon get used to it.”

  Owen and his granddad slowly ease into the water and eventually settle down on the rocky ledge that serves as a bench all around the pool. Arctic gusts blast their bright pink faces, but they are warm beneath the surface.

  “I’ve never felt better,” Neville declares.

  Owen says nothing.

  They stay in the pool for half an hour, staring out at the lone island of Drangey or behind them at the black mountain face called Tindastóll, letting the heat soak deep into their bones.

  Owen tries to relax. He can’t.

  After Reykir, they take a short drive to the historic farm at Glaumbær where they scramble out of the car. The farm is made up of a row of little turf houses with white wood fronts and sod roofs that go from
the peak all the way to the ground. The windows are tiny and few.

  They go inside. The lighting is almost cave-like. The buildings are connected by narrow tunnels. The ceilings are low. The floor is packed dirt. The air smells like earth, like they are buried.

  “People used to live here?” Neville asks in wonder.

  “Right up until 1947,” Aris says. “Stephansson’s parents were married at this very site,” she adds.

  They stand in what looks to Owen like the bedroom. There are two rows of small wood-framed beds with woven wool covers along the walls. A clothes trunk and a spinning wheel stand at the far end of the room.

  Owen barely takes in the homespun details, but his granddad points to Owen’s camera, so he shoots some photographs in his numbed state. The photographs look exactly the way he feels.

  Flat.

  He deletes them, too.

  Next, they visit the nearby turf church, a national historic site near Stephansson’s family farm at Varmahlíð.

  It is also tiny. The walkway is stone. The front is clad with dark wood and two red-trimmed windows on either side of a turquoise-painted door. At the peak is a plain wood cross. The walls are made of sod like the farmhouses, with tufts of grass sticking out everywhere. Inside are rows of straight wooden benches with a central aisle and a pulpit at the front.

  “This church owned the land that Stephansson’s family farmed in this region,” Aris explains. “Every spring, his family would have to make a payment of eight sheep to the church to cover rent, and every summer they had to pay five kilos of butter. It was a small fortune back then.”

  Owen is having trouble concentrating. Maybe fresh air would help. He bolts outside. He finds himself standing in a little graveyard behind the church. The tombstones remind him of old people sitting in crooked lawn chairs at a country barbecue, all facing the same way to watch a game of horseshoes but gossiping among themselves.

  It is getting close to eleven in the morning, so they head to their last stop before Stephansson’s monument: the Skagafjörður Archive.

  Owen perks up.

  His notebook!

  With all his worries about his granddad, Owen almost forgot why he wanted to go to Iceland in the first place.

  The archivist is waiting for them at the front doors and gives Aris a giant hug when they arrive.

  “So great to see you,” the archivist says jovially. “How’s little Britta?”

  “Just fine,” Aris says. “My mom’s staying with her.”

  Aris introduces Owen and his granddad to the archivist.

  “And you were friends with one of Stephansson’s very best literary translators, Gunnar Ingvarsson,” she said, turning to Owen’s granddad. “Thank you so much for sending Stephansson’s travel journal. We’ve received it safe and sound.”

  “I’m certain Gunnar would be pleased that you have it. I’ve also brought his notes about the journal,” Neville says, patting his briefcase. “I thought you might like that, too.”

  “Wonderful! Well, come with me. I know you don’t have much time, so I’ve already pulled out the documents that we have by Stephansson. You’ll be able to see why his travel journal is such an important addition to our collection.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Aris reminds Owen and his granddad.

  She returns to her car to head to her meeting.

  Owen and his granddad follow the archivist into a special reading room on the second floor, and she leads them to a large white table. On it are three bundles of documents wrapped with cardboard covers and brown paper, tied shut with cotton straps. The archivist unties the first bundle and opens the folder inside.

  “We don’t have a lot of documents by Stephansson because most of them are housed at the national archive in Reykjavík,” she says.

  The archivist produces the marbled blue travel journal that Owen’s granddad couriered.

  “It’s a beautiful artifact,” she says, almost transfixed by what she is holding.

  Then the archivist unwraps the next bundle and shows them pages of handwritten letters that are a hundred years old. It is hard for Owen to read cursive writing and it is especially hard because the words are in Icelandic. But every so often, Owen spots English place-names that nearly jump off the pages: Canada, Alberta, Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Markerville, Swan Lake and Medicine River.

  Seeing these familiar names makes Owen ache. On top of everything else, his homesickness is worsening.

  The archivist opens up the last bundle. This one contains letters by Stephansson, all in Icelandic, only the writing is very different, very child-like. The words are larger, jagged and crooked on the page. They are written in what looks like a thick purple pencil, not the elegant black fountain pen and razor-sharp lines of the earlier letters. A lot of the sentences are aggressively crossed out with Stephansson starting again and again in shaky penmanship, as if he is chasing his words. It looks like he wrote these letters with his left hand.

  “What’s going on?” Owen asks.

  “Stephansson had a stroke in the months just before he died,” the archivist explains. “Think of how frustrating it must have been for him to be at the height of his creativity and filled with so much poetry, but to have such a difficult time writing it down. In some ways, these letters touch me the most.”

  Owen’s granddad picks up one of the purple-penciled letters.

  “I can see why. He’s desperate to be heard,” Neville says quietly.

  “How can you tell?” Owen asks.

  Owen’s granddad points to the paragraph right before Stephansson’s signature.

  Each of the last three scrambled sentences ends in a bold exclamation mark.

  !

  !

  !

  Neville points to each exclamation mark and declares, “I am here. I am here. I am still here.”

  Owen takes a step back as if he has been slapped in the face with each punctuation mark. He can practically feel Stephansson pointing an accusing finger at him right there in the room.

  Owen’s knees almost buckle with the overwhelming guilt that he has been carrying. He stands numb as the archivist begins to put Stephansson’s work back into the protective folders with great care.

  Owen’s granddad pulls out Gunnar’s notebook from his briefcase.

  “Here is Gunnar’s research about Stephansson’s travel journal,” he says, handing the yellow notebook to the archivist with equal care. “And in exchange,” he adds, shooting Owen a smile, “do you happen to have my grandson’s notebook? It looks like this one, only it’s green.”

  Ten

  Owen comes out of his haze at the mention of his notebook.

  “Ah, yes. Your grandson’s notebook,” the archivist says to Neville, taking Gunnar’s notebook from his hands.

  She turns to Owen. “You did a beautiful job recording field notes about Stephansson House. I dream about going to Alberta one day and visiting that historic site myself, so I read what you wrote from cover to cover. I’ll go get it. It’s in my office.”

  When she leaves the room, Owen turns to face his granddad.

  “Pops,” he says.

  “Yes?”

  Now is the time to confess. Only Owen has no words.

  “Something wrong?” Neville asks, bending a little to look into Owen’s face.

  Owen opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He can only blink, his left eye slower than the right.

  “Owen?” Neville asks, his eyebrows raised in concern.

  “Here you are,” the archivist says brightly as soon as she re-enters the room.

  Even from where Owen stands, he can see that she has the right notebook. It is green.

  The archivist strides toward them, holding his notebook out.

  “I also enjoyed the poetry exercises that followed your field notes. Sim
iles. Metaphors. Hyperbole. Personification. Alliteration. Onomatopoeia. But I must ask you, Owen. Did you write the poem on the last page?”

  Owen tries to swallow. His ears are burning up. The backs of his knees are sweating.

  “A poem?” Neville says, turning to Owen. “Is it the one about your grandmother? The one you read at her funeral?”

  Owen gives a weak nod. He stares at his shoes.

  “It’s a wonderful poem,” Neville says to the archivist. “Everyone said so at the funeral. The things Owen wrote! You can imagine how proud we were.”

  Neville reaches to take the notebook from the archivist, but Owen is quicker. He snatches it from her and without a word, flees from the room, down the stairs and out the front doors. He only stops when he spots a bench off to the side near the empty parking lot. He collapses on it, drops his notebook to the ground and puts his head in his hands.

  Moments later, he feels his granddad sit down beside him.

  “I thanked the archivist for both of us,” Neville mentions quietly. “She wants to you have this.”

  Owen manages to look up to see his granddad holding out a pen. Owen takes it. It has Skagafjörður Archive printed on its side. A souvenir.

  Owen says nothing as he puts it into his pocket. He wipes his eyes and puts his head back in his hands, staring at the grass between his feet. The pages of his discarded notebook blow open and turn in the soft breeze.

  “I’m so sorry about your grandmother. I know how you feel. I miss her, too,” Neville says. “We all do.”

  “No,” Owen manages to say.

  “No?” Neville asks.

  “I miss her. I miss Grandma every day. But it’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Owen takes a deep breath. He sits up to face his granddad.

  “The poem I read at her funeral? That wasn’t my poem. Not completely.”

  “Oh?”

  “I tried. I really tried. I wanted it to be perfect for her. But I couldn’t finish it. I couldn’t finish the ending. And so I copied a few verses from another poem. Stephansson’s poem. The one about his son who died from the lightning bolt.”

  “Who? Gestur?”

  “Gestur.”