Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  As it turned out, the land-surveying company John worked for in Vermont had connections with the Atkins Construction Company in Portland. His boss quickly arranged for an interview, and he got the job. So with a job and a place to live — on an island in Casco Bay with an ocean view, no less — things should have been ... well, maybe not rosy, considering his father’s situation, but certainly not as depressing as the cold, rainy drive.

  He noticed he was holding the steering wheel too tightly — even for such bad driving conditions. His bottom line — ignoring Julia’s — had been that he didn’t want to move back home … not to Maine, not to Glooscap Island, and certainly not to his father’s house. It was like being sucked down a funnel, right back to the one place he didn’t want to be. He knew damned right well that “you can never go home again,” and his response had always been — Who the Christ would want to?

  “I think it looks kinda spooky,” Bri said as she stepped out of the car and looked down the stretch of the suspension bridge leading over to Glooscap Island. Even with the hood of her raincoat pulled tightly around her face, strands of her light brown hair stuck out and fluttered in the wind until the pelting rain matted them down. Usually, Bri’s eyes sparkled with the youthful excitement of a thirteen-year-old, but now they were dark with apprehension.

  “I hope it’s not a bad omen,” Julia said. She was standing with John beside the U-Haul truck no more than fifty feet from the bridge. They had stopped to check a flapping sound coming from the trailer, but John was relieved to find it wasn’t a flat tire, as he had feared. Bri had gotten out to stretch her legs after such a long drive. October rain came down like hard pellets, rattling the truck top and their raincoats. The road over the bridge seemed to dance, vibrating with energy. Pencil-thin streams dripped from the brims of their slickers, and Julia’s sneakers made squishy sounds when she shifted from one foot to the other.

  Across the narrow bay, Glooscap Island was shrouded in fog. The land looked an amorphous gray, darker than the sky that seemed to breathe and swell. The island actually seemed to change shape in the shifting mists. Close to the end of the bridge, Julia could barely make out a few houses — or maybe fishing shacks. She wasn’t sure. The water in the bay was black and gray, capped by white wind-blown scud. The air was tangy with salty.

  The bridge, so John had told her, had been built back when he was a boy growing up on the island. He had told her how the island people had divided into two quite hostile camps — those for and those against connecting Glooscap to the mainland. Before the bridge, people had gotten to and from the mainland in one of two ways — either on the Casco Bay Lines ferry or in their own boat. Those folks opposed to the bridge saw easy access to the island as a threat to their independence and their quiet way of life. Those in favor of the bridge viewed it as a way to increase the population — and real estate value — of the land. Easy access meant more people, more houses, more summer folk, more jobs if you ignored the impact on the fishermen and lobstermen. In sum, it meant more money. Regardless, the bridge’s existence was evidence of which side had the greater pull in the state house. It all depended on your point of view whether you thought it gave the Glooscap residents the best of both worlds ... or the worst.

  II

  When they arrived at the house, Julia waited in the street with the car running while John slowly backed the U-Haul up the driveway to the garage door. Actually, it was an old barn converted into a garage that connected to the house by a breezeway. All but one of the windows along the top of the garage door were cracked or broken.

  Surrounded by maple trees, the house sat on the corner lot between Shore Drive and Oak Street. It was a typical New England cape, a bit larger than Julia remembered from previous visits to the island ... larger and much more rundown. The formerly white paint on the clapboards had weathered to a dull yellow. The sheltered sides were chipped and peeling; the front had practically been stripped down to bare wood. Rain slanting in off the ocean gave the house a mottled, sickly look.

  Time for a coat or two of Sears’ Best, Julia thought as she surveyed the house.

  The dull gray shingles on the roof were curling with age —”fish-lips,” as the locals called them. It looked as though the next strong gust of wind — certainly the first northeaster this winter — would tear them away along with the antique storm windows with their green felt-lined frames. No newfangled doors and aluminum combination windows, much less triple-pane thermoseals, for this house. The door in the breezeway sagged to one side, obviously loose on its hinges.

  The maple trees in the side yard were spindly and gray, permanently bent landward from the prevailing sea winds. Their branches reached skyward like tired skeleton’s hands, grasping but never grabbing hold of the tattered clouds. Braced between two old maples was a stack of unused firewood which, by the rotted looks of it, would remain unused. All in all, the scene pretty much reflected how Julia was feeling inside — dull and dreary. She needed something to cheer her up, soon.

  Julia drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she watched John get out of the truck, go into the house by the breezeway door, and then, from the inside, run up the door. She wondered if he could fit the U-Haul inside, the garage was such a cluttered mess, but John dashed out to the truck, started it up, and, leaning out into the rain, backed it on in. The front end of the truck barely made it inside so he could close the door — not that the rain couldn’t pour in through the broken windows.

  But only a portion of Julia’s attention was on what John was doing. Most of her mind was occupied with thoughts about the house — their new home. She hoped it wasn’t as bad as her first impression. Of course, she couldn’t have expected Frank to keep the place up — not after his stroke. The rain didn’t help her mood. It beat down on a summer’s worth of tangled weeds and uncut grass, and muddy runoff streaked the driveway.

  She had wanted to take Bri into the house as soon as they got there, but she also wanted John to be the first to greet his father. In spite of their agreed-upon arrangements, they had set up the whole business of moving in with him over the phone, and she was nervous about their first face-to-face meeting.

  Looking up at the large house — God, in this weather, it looks like Noah’s ark, she thought — she began to wonder if they were doing the right thing after all. She wasn’t blind to the heavy responsibilities they were taking on, even with the help of a visiting nurse, who was supposed to stop by daily. But the reality of it hit her hard.

  John, meanwhile, had run the garage door down and was standing in the shelter of the breezeway, waving for her to bring the car up the driveway. Julia put the car into gear and drove right up to the barn door and cut the engine. John began to unload the car as Julia and Bri got out and approached the kitchen door of their new home.

  Sitting in his wheelchair, Frank Carlson — Bri’s new grandfather — was waiting for them in the kitchen. If the house had appeared more run-down than Julia remembered, then Frank appeared much worse. Her strongest memory of him was of a hearty, robust man who, in spite of being six feet tall and weighing over two hundred pounds, had carried himself with grace and an easy strength. The frail man sitting in a chrome-plated wheelchair, his thin legs covered by a frayed patchwork afghan, looked like an entirely different person. Only his face, which was much thinner and more wrinkled, remained the same.

  “Frank,” Julia said, approaching him cautiously, as though he were an animal she didn’t want to spook. “Nice to see you again. How have you been?”

  Frank made a smacking sound with his lips as he ran his fingers through his baby-thin gray hair. His eyes suddenly clouded over as he looked from Julia to Bri and back again to Julia. He shifted in the wheelchair, the motion almost knocking off the tattered slipper from his left foot.

  “You ain’t Abby, are yah?” he said, his brow furrowing.

  “No, no,” Julia replied. “I’m Julia ... John’s wife. Remember?”

  “‘Course you are,” Frank said, his ey
es suddenly brightening. Then his voice dropped to a low rumble. “Well, hell — I’ve been better.”

  “You’ve never met Brianna before,” Julia said. “Bri, this is your Grandfather Carlson.”

  “It’s-umm, very nice to meet you,” Bri said, sounding to Julia like a schoolgirl reciting a memorized line.

  She held out her hand to Frank, and after regarding her a moment, he held up his own hand and they shook. Bri was surprised by the warm strength of the man’s grip. His hand was callused and hard from a lifetime of work, but there was also gentleness when he touched her. When they broke off, she found herself staring at the blue veins and tendons that stood out beneath the thin, nearly translucent skin on the back of his wrinkled hand.

  “Why don’t I heat up some water for tea,” Julia said, cutting into the awkward silence. She rubbed her shoulders and shivered. “By the time John gets inside, he’ll be chilled to the bone.”

  “I got some Salada,” Frank said as he started to roll his wheelchair over toward the kitchen counter. “None of that fancy-pants herbal stuff.” He pronounced the “h” in herbal. Only Bri caught the little twinkle dancing in his eyes as he said this. She smiled back at him.

  “I’ll get it,” Julia said, halting him. She went over to the stove and picked up the teakettle and inspected it before giving it a quick rinse and filling it with cold water from the tap. Its bottom was blackened.

  Frank grunted. “Works well enough … I just can’t always get to it fast enough.” He slapped his hand down on the armrest of the wheelchair. Pulling back hard on the wheels, he swung over to the table. The tendons in the backs of his hands stood out as thick as pencils as he moved, and both Julia and Bri saw his neck tighten with the effort.

  As the water was heating up, Julia rummaged around in the cupboards, looking for cups and sugar. Frank seemed unwilling to tell her where to look, so she took the opportunity to go through the cupboards. She noticed that all of the food and only a few dishes, bowls, cups, and glasses were on lower shelves within easy reach of someone who no longer could stand up. What surprised her, though, was the cleanliness of the kitchen. Everything was in order, stacked neatly away. From the condition of the outside of the house, she had expected to walk into a pigsty. This was a pleasant surprise.

  Julia found the sugar bowl on one of the higher shelves. She figured Frank didn’t use it. When she took the lid off, she was even more convinced — the sugar had dried to a single, solid lump. She put four cups on the table, and then leaned back against the counter while she waited for the teakettle to start whistling.

  Bri was standing by the kitchen window, looking out into the back yard. She jumped with surprise when her grandfather spoke close behind her.

  “There’s a much betta’ view out the living room window,” he said. “Storm like this can really send the waves up over the rocks.”

  “Oh. I’ll have to go see,” she said.

  Once Bri had left to check out the view, the silence in the kitchen got thicker. It wrapped around Julia like a heavy coat. She was trying desperately to imagine John growing up in this house, but she couldn’t picture him living here. Of course, back then things would have been much different. Frank would have been young and strong, like John was now. Dianna, Frank’s mother, would have had her drinking, which would eventually kill her, under control; and John and his brother, David — who, unlike John, hadn’t been lucky enough to return from Vietnam — would have been racing through the house, whirlwinds of noise and activity.

  But no matter how hard she pushed her imagination, she simply couldn’t conjure up those ghosts from the past. This had been the home of a solitary, crotchety old man for too long.

  “I have to say, you do seem to have gotten along quite well before now,” Julia said. She winced as soon as the words were out of her mouth, realizing how they might easily be taken the wrong way.

  Frank, who apparently was used to taking things the wrong way, snorted. His left hand, lying stiffly in his lap, twitched slightly.

  “I mean,” Julia continued, “the house is — it isn’t a ...” She rubbed her hands together and was grateful when the teakettle started whistling shrilly and she could turn her attention to it and let her sentence die.

  “I been having Hilda Marshall do a bit of housework a coupl’a times a week,” Frank said.

  “Well, I guess from now on you won’t have to,” Julia said. She finished filling the four cups, then went over to the window to see if she could catch any sign of John. She rinsed the kettle again, shook it empty, and put it back onto the stove.

  Frank made a soft chuckling sound and shook his head. “I been sayin’ all along it weren’t necessary for you and John to do this, yah know.”

  Julia turned and looked at him. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She was thinking, If John didn’t want us to come here, and he doesn’t want us here ... did I really force the issue this far?

  And in spite of all her altruistic motives based on family ties and needs, for the first time Julia wondered what she had gotten herself and her family into.

  “Bri ... Honey,” she called out, forcing a steadiness into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Why don’t you go out and get your father. Tell him I have some hot tea for him.”

  Bri came running from the living room, but she only got halfway to the kitchen door before John swung the door open and, in a gust of wind-blown rain, stepped inside. He shivered as he sloughed off his raincoat. His face looked pale and tense, almost frightened as he glanced at his father and nodded a silent greeting.

  “So,” his father said, his voice rumbling in his chest like distant thunder. “After all these years you finally come home to stay.”

  TWO

  Church Wood

  I

  “We probably ought to take a look around, don’t you think?” Julia asked. She had gotten up from the table and was putting the empty teacups on the counter beside the sink. She would wash them later, after they had supper. The surprise would have been if Frank had an automatic dishwasher.

  Rain was still rattling against the windows, but with the furnace rumbling like a friendly beast in the basement and the ceiling light spreading a warm, yellow glow all around, the kitchen was cozy. The only chill had been the not-so disguised tension between John and his father.

  A blast furnace at full tilt, Julia thought, might thaw that out.

  “You’ll have to ‘scuse me from helpin’ yah,” Frank said. “I think Johnny remembers where everything goes.”

  He pushed his wheelchair away from the table and started moving toward the living room, where Bri, her tea getting cold on the coffee table, was sitting on the couch, looking out at the storm-tossed ocean.

  Once Frank was out of hearing, Julia sighed and shot John a withering look.

  John took a breath and shook his head, covering his face with his hands as he rubbed his eyes.

  “I’m beat from the drive,” he said by way of excuse, but when Julia didn’t respond, he nailed her with a look and said, “This isn’t going to work out, you know.” His voice was muffled by his hands. “I knew it all along, and I tried to tell you.”

  Julia was standing at the sink, her fists tightened.

  Granted, their first hour in the house had been tense, but she was convinced that it was only a matter of time before everyone adjusted.

  “He’s used to being alone,” she said, nodding toward the living room. She could hear the soft buzzing of voices as Frank and Bri talked. “After an active life like he’s had, don’t you think you’d be a bit resentful, being confined to a wheelchair?”

  John shook his head and, sighing, leaned back and looked up at the ceiling light. The cheap cut glass made the glow spin in watery circles in his vision.

  “I think he’s done pretty well, considering what he’s had to adjust to,” Julia continued. “I mean, feeling so confined and so dependent on other people ... no wonder he’s a little cranky.”

  John laughed at that and s
uddenly shifted forward, his voice lowering as if he were threatening her. “He hasn’t changed — not one damned bit. It’s a matter of degree, not kind.”

  Julia wet a dishrag, walked over to the table, and wiped up the crumbs, scooping them into her hand, then rinsing them down the drain. She was determined not to let her husband’s hostility and negativity get to her.

  “I wish you would give this a fair chance,” she said. “After I —”

  John laughed again and rubbed under his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Yeah … sure. Go ahead and regale me with your story of your grandmother and what happened to her when she was put into a nursing home.”

  “That’s not fair, John, and you know it.” Julia was wringing out the dishrag and now gave it an extra hard twist.

  “Come on. Tell me about how the staff treated her ... or failed to treat her. About the time you came to visit her, and she had crapped herself and had been lying in her own filth for how long? An hour? Two? Certainly long enough so it had —”

  “Stop it,” Julia shouted. She slapped the dishrag down on the edge of the sink. “That’s not fair!”

  “Sure yes, it is,” John said, pushing his chair back and getting up. “I think it’s more than fair because, as far as I’m concerned, this is your gig.”

  With a ragged intake of breath, Julia turned away and looked out the kitchen window. Her pulse made a soft, fluttery sound in her ears like a trapped bird; her throat felt as though she had swallowed something hard and dry. She started to speak, but all that came out was a sharp clicking sound.

  “Little Miss Goody-two-shoes,” John said.

  Julia could see his reflection in the window, and she didn’t like the smirk on his face ... not one little bit. Taking a deep breath, she turned and looked at him, forcing her emotions to loosen up.

  “John —” she said, raising her arms pleadingly, signaling him that it was time to stop this “got’cha” crap and hug her. He hesitated for only an instant, then got up from the table and came to her, pulling her close. She lost herself in his heavy scent, grateful that she could let him hold her like this, if only for a moment. She twined her arms around the small of his back and, looking up at him, waited for him to kiss her. When he did, she couldn’t help but notice his lips were cold and tight.