Wintering

by Peter Geye

  Gus knew the look his father was talking about. He’d seen the same glint in Cindy’s eyes up on Long Finger Lake. The moonshine lighting it up. Those nights in his car, kissing fierce, he’d confused that look with desire. But, listening to his father, he thought it over and realized what it was—the Aas wires getting crossed. He shivered to think he’d missed it.

  “In the oxbow there, a heap of driftwood’s piled up, and I start carrying it across the river. Water’s not more than knee-deep, but swift there at the chutes. Charlie and I, we have to work together. Wedge a couple logs into the rocks above the maw. Float a bunch more across the water. Choose our steps carefully. We’re busy as goddamn beavers.

  “Meanwhile, the boys onshore are drooling on their shirtsleeves. Sun’s burning their necks. I kick Freddy in the ass. Charlie fills his hat with water and pours it over his brother’s head, and he bolts upright but then falls over just as quick, because the arm he thought would hold him up wasn’t there. This sets Charlie howling. He slaps his knee with his hat and says, ‘I guess some Jap mixed your left hand into his chow mein, eh, Georgie?’

  “Georgie scrambles up and gets in his brother’s face. ‘You’re a lousy son of a bitch, Charlie. A no-account shithead.’ Charlie steps back and laughs again and calls him a sourpuss. Georgie takes a half-step back but then spins around and kicks Charlie square in the ass. Sends him stumbling into the water alongshore. Charlie fills his hat again in the same motion and keeps splashing his brother. Freddy, he gets between them, and when Charlie makes another run he pushes him aside and Charlie ends up back on his ass in the shallows. I guess this cooled him down a little, because, the next thing I know, we’re all standing on the lip of the maw.”

  The expression on Harry’s face, it was as though he was looking straight down into it now, sitting in the trapper’s shack. “You and me, we were right there. Day one of this great adventure.” He looked at Gus. “Not two hours from home. Remember?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I should’ve told you this story right then and there. I should have had you look into that hole.”

  “I’ve looked into the Devil’s Maw a hundred times, Dad.”

  “But you never looked into it knowing what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Charlie ties a lantern onto a rope and lights it and starts lowering it. He plays out maybe thirty feet of rope and—poof!—the light’s just gone. I start thinking maybe this isn’t the best idea I ever had, but since I’m not about to renege and lose the bet, I harness myself up. Fix the free end of the rope to that cedar tree that grows out of the bedrock there. I’m all ready and Charlie says, ‘I’ll hold the rope.’ I tell him he can hold his dick.” He smiled at this. But frowned a second later.

  “Then I’m rappelling into the maw. One minute I hear all the hootin’ above, the next it’s gone. Water’s dripping from above and spraying from the walls and it’s cold. Ninety degrees out on the river, and twenty feet down you could’ve stored your milk and eggs.”

  Harry paused for a long time, staring again down into his empty coffee cup. “Christ almighty—”

  “What was it like?”

  Without looking up, Harry said, “First and foremost, it was dark. You can’t imagine. And cold, like I said.

  “I lit a lantern. The walls were smooth and wet. There was a rock shelf on the other side of the shaft that I tried to swing over to, but I couldn’t reach it. So I just hung there for a few minutes, looking down.” He stopped talking, brought the cup closer to his eyes, and stared into it. “I’ve thought about hanging there in the Devil’s Maw an awful lot over the years. I sure wish I’d gone deeper. Found the bottom. I’d have been the only person on earth to know what was down there.” He finally lifted his gaze.

  “But I didn’t have enough rope. I clumsily dropped the lantern and watched its light plummet for what seemed a damn long time. Never heard it shatter or splash. It was just gone, gone, gone. But where? What happened to it? All these years later, is it still shining down there? I wondered the same thing about the flames that Georgie threw into those tunnels on Iwo Jima. Where’d that go? Into the fires of hell? Or did it catch some Japanese machine-gunner and burn him up?”

  He finally set the coffee cup on the table, pushed it to the center like he was tempted to pick it back up but didn’t want to. He did keep his eye on it, though.

  “ ‘Well?’ Charlie says when I climb back out.

  “My arms were about to fall off and I was breathing hard and steaming like a racehorse. ‘Well, what?’

  “Freddy and George are standing there. They want to know, too. But I say, ‘Pay me, you louts.’ And faster than they can pull their money out they’re piling it into my hand. Ten bucks apiece, everything I’d lost at the stud game and half again as much. Then George starts looking very serious. ‘Out with it,’ he says.”

  “And?” Gus asked.

  Harry looked at him like there was a punch line in the offing. “ ‘George, you’re not going to believe this!’ I tell him. ‘Those walls are streaked with gold! Gold and diamonds and rubies bigger than your brother’s goddamn head.’ Then I turned to Charlie. ‘And a spring’s running fast with hundred-proof home-burnt! And beautiful ladies, ready and waiting for a dandy like you.’

  “I untied myself from the rope and made a gesture of handing it to Charlie. ‘Of course, we’ll need a stronger rope to lower your fat ass down.’

  “ ‘Just tell us what you saw down there. What the hell is it?’ Charlie says.

  “I told him his potbelly was blocking out the sun and I couldn’t see a damn thing through it.”

  Harry, straight-faced and fierce-eyed, said, “And there’s one-armed George, standing with his back against that cedar tree, chuckling at his little brother. He was still learning to live without his arm, always seeming like he was about to tip over. ‘It’s just a hole in the rock, you rube.’

  “Of course, Charlie’s madder than a fox in a trap. He tells George to shut the hell up, that he’ll rip his other arm off and beat the snot out of him with it. Then he turns to me and says, ‘I ought to give you a beating, too.’

  “To which I say, ‘Feel like giving it a try?’ ”

  Harry reached for the cup, then stopped and leaned back in his chair. “George wants to know if there’s a bottom. ‘To the hole?’ I say. ‘I didn’t get there, but it stands to reason there’s got to be one.’

  “Charlie, he can’t stand it and says, ‘You wouldn’t know reason if it kissed you on the lips.’

  “ ‘Maybe not, but I know more than you do.’ He took a step toward me and raised his fist. He might have swung it, too, but Freddy Riverfish steps in, and nobody—I mean nobody—tussled with him. Not back then. Not ever. He was always right beside me. So Charlie pockets his fist and says to me, ‘You think you got the market on ancient wisdom, Harry Eide.’

  “ ‘What the hell’s ancient wisdom?’ I asked him, then I looked from man to man. ‘I just went down the Devil’s Maw, with you assholes holding the rope. Ain’t that the opposite of wisdom?’ ”

  He got up and walked to the window, bent down to look up at the sky, and turned back to Gus for a long minute before he said, “Freddy and I, we hike it back down the falls and camp our asses down there in the cool mist off the river. He tells me about how his granddad and great-granddad used to come up here and make offerings. They’d throw tobacco into the maw, trying to get things right with the spirits. Freddy, he’s as fallen away from his religion as I’d ever been from any faith at all, and from our spot on the beach there it seemed like a waste of snoose, is all. Better to save it and just accept there were places in this world you could never reach. Spirits, too. Beliefs. Things that just couldn’t be known. Things not meant to be known. Freddy was always going on about the things we couldn’t know. It wasn’t a philosophy. He would never have called it that. Myself, I thought all those talks were more like blacksmithing—hammering out the impossibly h
ard and nearly unbendable parts of life.

  “Of course, given all that day had had to offer, our fires were stoked and we jabbered on for half an hour while waiting for the Aas boys to finish their squabbling. No doubt we got it all figured out, too, what with the home-burnt and the hot sun.”

  He went back to the table and sat down across from Gus. “Only one of the Aas boys ever came down those falls.”

  Gus stuttered something about the story he’d always heard, that George Aas drowned up there, but he could hardly get a word out, let alone string any questions together.

  “Charlie’s sliding on his ass, hollering about something we can’t hear. He’s waving his arms and hurrying toward us. We stand up, Freddy and I, and step into the shallows. What’s going on, we want to know.

  “Charlie bends over to catch his breath, then says, ‘George! He jumped into the Devil’s Maw! He goddamn killed himself!’

  “ ‘Killed himself?’ Freddy says. Untruer words could not have been spoken. George, who’d lived through Iwo Jima, who’d just spent all night with us yucking it up, laughing more than he had in his whole life, he’d jumped into the Devil’s Maw? No chance of that. No way, nohow.”

  Gus’s wide eyes asked the question his voice couldn’t form.

  “Charlie killed him dead.”

  “Why?”

  “How could I know the answer to that?”

  “But—”

  “There was nothing to be done. No one knew that better than I did. If George was in the Devil’s Maw he was gone forever. But we hiked it back up there, Freddy and I. We got on our bellies and shouted into the maw. Charlie’s standing there without an ounce of concern on his fat, sunburned face. He lit a cigarette and says, ‘What a sad day. What a sad, sad day.’ But he wasn’t sad. There was even a hint of goddamn joy in his voice. ‘Suppose we better get back to town and let folks know George is gone.’

  “Freddy and I were floored, of course. Speechless, and frankly a little bit scared. I was, leastways. But what else was there to do? Gone is gone. George was never going to be found.”

  “Did anyone ever try?”

  “Try how?”

  “Get ladders? More rope? More lanterns?”

  “Didn’t you hear the story I just told? About how deep that hole was?” He kept right on. “A few weeks later, the Aas family put up a cenotaph for him.”

  “What’s a cenotaph?”

  Harry looked lost and sad. “Gravestones for the unfound. That’s what cenotaphs are for. He might as well have been left on that battlefield on Iwo Jima, the poor bastard.”

  Gus was still rightly bewildered. “So…George didn’t jump?”

  “Of course not. He was pushed. By his brother. Charlie.”

  “But nothing ever happened to Charlie. He never got in trouble for this?”

  “No one knew. Or, anyway, no one could ever prove it.”

  Gus sat there staring at his father through the candlelight. For a long time Harry didn’t say anything. Somehow Gus knew enough not to prod him. He knew to wait.

  When Harry spoke again his voice had hardened. “Remember last winter, when we hit the deer on the highway down around Misquah? The look in her eyes?”

  Gus nodded.

  “Those whitetails are about the quickest thing in the woods, but that girl couldn’t move. We plowed right into her. Goddamn flattened her, right? Well, that was me and Freddy. We didn’t know what to do. And we didn’t all these years since, either. I don’t think we ever even talked about it, Freddy and I. Not until this year.”

  “Why now?”

  Harry looked at him across the table. “Why now? You don’t really have to ask, do you?”

  “What does all this mean?”

  “Last month, that night in the fish house, when we decided to come up here, you remember that night?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, before I came to the fish house, Freddy and I were in Two Harbors.”

  “Why?”

  “We were talking to a newspaper reporter from the Tribune.”

  “Why? I don’t understand any of this.”

  “There’s a lot to understand.”

  “So explain it to me.” He was scared and confused and he didn’t like the look on his father’s face. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “Remember when the coffers at Immanuel Lutheran came up empty a few years ago?”

  Gus nodded.

  “That was Charlie Aas, council president. Now, what did he do with the money? I don’t know. Maybe some debts require the good Lord’s money.”

  “What does that have to do with George?”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with George. It has to do with Charlie. That’s what I’m telling you.” Harry could see the confusion on Gus’s face. “Listen to me. Just listen. You remember when Bud Nardahl was voted out of the mayor’s office?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was Charlie’s work, too. Now he’s fighting to dam up the Burnt Wood. He’s in the pocket of the lumber and mining companies. You name it, he’s up to his double chin in it. That’s what I’m telling you.” Harry was getting heated. “Do I need to remind you about his girl? You and her and that summer fling?”

  Gus shook his head.

  Harry took a long, deep breath. “And of course there’s the matter of your mother.”

  Now Gus felt embarrassed. Like a dolt or a little kid. Innocent and naïve. “You have proof? That’s why you were talking to the reporter?”

  “Charlie’s gotten a little big for his britches. He’s been heard, down at the Traveler’s Saloon, after a few too many. Bragging’s the word, I guess. Hinting, maybe. About how he put himself right in line way back when. Made sure the family was his. Word’s been getting around, and Freddy and I, we took it to the reporter. About George, and everything else, too.” Harry rapped his knuckles on the table. “None of this is simple, bud. Of course it isn’t. But the bottom line is, Charlie’s been having his say on every damn thing for too long. Now it’s time for some comeuppance.

  “This summer, Freddy and I were fishing the Hex hatch on Long Finger and we got to talking. Freddy’s made it his special project to keep the rivers free. He’s as sick about your mother and Charlie as I am. He’d like to put a bullet in Charlie’s brain, same as me. But we can’t, of course. So out there in our canoe we got to talking about what we can do. Which led us to that Tribune reporter in Two Harbors. After we talked to that old pencilneck, we’ve had some chats with the county attorney and the sheriff, too.” Harry sat back in his chair, took another deep breath, and looked, for a moment, like he was relieved. “Who knows what Freddy’s been dealing with since we left?”

  Gus replayed the sequence of their conversation back to the start. “What does any of this have to do with having company?”

  “It’ll take some time for everything to catch up with Charlie. Lots of folks will need to have lots of conversations about lots of different things. In the meantime, Charlie sure ain’t gonna sit on his hands down in Gunflint.”

  “Charlie’s coming after you?” Gus ventured. “After us?”

  Harry took hold of Gus with his stare. “Likely he’ll pay us a visit, yes. If he can find us, which he’ll try pretty hard to do.”

  Now it was Gus’s turn to walk over to the window. “Why would he come here?”

  “Whether it’s brothers on the Burnt Wood River or generals on a Pacific island, boys will always be looking for a place to tangle.”

  Gus turned back to his father. “How could he find us?”

  “There’s nowhere to hide from what needs to come, bud. We’re here because whatever finds us needs to end after it does. This business between me and Charlie would never have a chance of ending in Gunflint. It needs this place. Needs winter, which is soon to get here.”

  Gus was then acutely aware of his own anger, both at himself for being so green and at his father for withholding so much. “I can’t believe this. Are you out of your mind?”


  “Charlie knows only one way. His way. He thinks the world is simple, but it isn’t. He thinks people are simple, but they’re not. Just he is.”

  “This is bullshit,” Gus said, and he could feel his voice quaver.

  “No, it’s not, Gus. This is life. Come back over here. Sit down.”

  “No.”

  “Bud, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The thing isn’t what is a man capable of, it’s what he’s able to do. In town, with all his cronies, Charlie is able to do a whole lot. He’s obviously capable of anything. Anywhere. But out here, he’s got no advantage. He could bring his ten best hunting buddies and we’d still outnumber them.”

  They stared at each other for a long time across the candlelit shack, Gus growing furious. He took one step forward and two steps back. He cleared his throat. “How could you drag me into this?”

  And Harry smiled. Not a mocking smile, but one that conveyed a kind of pity. Or at least that’s how Gus understood it. “You were in this even if you didn’t know it. There’s no two ways about it. To Charlie, we’re the same person. He hates you as much as he hates me. He hates that you’re my son.” His smile was gone now. “But do you know whose sons aren’t in this? Charlie’s. Of all the differences between me and him, that’s the biggest. That’s my advantage.”

  GUS WOKE in the morning to the sound of his father’s razor on the strop. Harry stood at the window in his underwear and socks, his face lathered up, looking at his reflection in the glass. He must have heard Gus stir, because his gaze shifted from his own face to Gus’s. He brought the razor up his chin, rinsed it in a bowl of water, shaved another swath, and paused to look at Gus over his shoulder. He pointed to the stove with his razor. “There’s coffee,” he said.