Tide King

by Jen Michalski

  “You help me with the roof,” she answered. “You save your strength until then.”

  “Tell me something about yourself, Maggie.”

  “I’m not that interesting of a person.” She did not turn to face him. The skin at the base of her neck was flushed, whether from sun or embarrassment he didn’t know.

  “Tell me about your father. I feel mighty strange wearing another man’s underwear. You can at least do me that favor.”

  “He was the most honorable man I’ve known.” She came and sat on the rocker, her hands clasped between her legs. “He taught me everything I know about hunting, fishing, the woods, God. My momma, I didn’t really know her that well—she died when I was so young. But my father wasn’t scared of raising a little girl. I had dolls at Christmas and my birthday.”

  “You ever had a boyfriend, Maggie?”

  “I’ve got more of daddy’s stuff.” She stood and moved to the foot of the bed, where a large cedar chest stood. An elaborate scene was carved on top, a clearing of river in the woods from which an elk drank. “I never could bring myself to get rid of it—figured I’d take it in a little and wear it myself. But I’ll take it in for you. Not all the pieces, but some of them.”

  “That’s very nice of you.” He studied his feet. His hair and toenails had grown back, although his skin was still baby smooth. “Thank you.”

  “Well, anyone’d be so nice.” She held up a green flannel shirt with blue checks. “This one would look good on you.”

  “Yeah, that one I’ll wear when I go to town.”

  “You want me to take you to town, is that what you want?” She stood up, looming over him, and he flinched. He’d seen her chop wood through the window, drag a 20-lb sack of flour from her motorboat and up the hill to the cabin, carry him back and forth to the outhouse like a doll. “You tired of being cooped up with a crazy old girl in the woods?”

  “No,” he answered. He reached up and took her hands. “I just don’t want you to get in any trouble, that’s all.”

  “That’s a crazy idea.” She pulled her hands away, brushing a strand of blonde hair from her face, where it pressed against her lips. It looked fuller and softer, and he wondered whether she had washed and combed it recently. “Why someone helping somebody would get in trouble. That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard.”

  She left the cabin, and Johnson watched her through the window walk aimlessly around the clearing in front of the cabin, clenching and unclenching her fists, kicking up the dirt. When she came back in, ten minutes or so later, he pretended he was asleep so she would not have to explain herself to him.

  “See how these fit you.” The next day, Maggie placed her father’s old logger boots on the floor by his feet. They were broken like an old back, the unlaced mid-calf sides falling open on each side, a long tongue unfurling from the opening. The soles still held their caulks. He pulled them over his pink baby-seal feet, and he stood in them unlaced, feeling his toes graze the roof of them.

  “They feel good,” he answered, and Maggie made an irritated sigh, bending over him.

  “You gotta put the socks on, lace them up tight.” She pulled the boots off and he felt her hands, full of life and circulation, graze his feet. She stretched the socks snug and reshoed him, pulling on the laces until the leather fit around Johnson’s foot like a second skin. She sat back on her haunches, her legs and hips spread firmly through her dungarees, her hands on the tops of her thighs, and her body began to shake. Tears ran fast down her big moon cheeks, her eyes bluebells after rain. He put his hands on her cheeks and felt the warm salt flow move over them. She grabbed his wrists but did not pull his hands away.

  “I miss him so much,” she said finally. Johnson pulled her up on the bed so they were sitting side by side, and he held her, the storm of her swelling against his chest, his arms, and after awhile he could not tell whether he was holding her or she was holding him because he was crying, too, for Kate and Stanley and his parents and for Maggie and her father.

  “I know, Maggie.” He stroked her back. “I know.”

  “With you here, it’s almost like…he’s not gone. Except he used to sleep in the rocker when I was younger. When he got older, I made him sleep in the bed, and I slept in the rocker, except in the summer sometimes I’d sleep on the hammock on the porch. After he died, I just talked to myself for hours, and nobody answered, of course. My daddy used to call me his little magpie, said I talked till my face was as blue as my eyes. He used to get so mad at me for staying here with him, saying I had to find a husband. But I never wanted to leave him. And he was right, wasn’t he?”

  “It’s not too late, Maggie. You’re still young.” Johnson pulled away to face her. She was not Kate, but she would make someone—like Stanley—a fine wife.

  “Huh—you see me getting all dolled up for a church dance or something?” she snorted. “I’m thirty-eight years old. I don’t even own a dress. I don’t need nobody.”

  “Maggie, you’re a good-looking woman,” he said, and she stood up after he had stared too long at her.

  “Why don’t you try out the boots?” She stared at the floor, her hair out of its ponytail and spilling into her face. She fetched a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of her dungarees and wiped her tears. “I’ve been so busy a’blubberin.”

  “You mean outside?” He looked at the door.

  “Go on.” She waved him away, still sitting in the rocker, clutching her handkerchief. “Get yourself walking. Hunting season isn’t going to wait for you.”

  “Of course.” He nodded.

  “Go on.” She did not look up at him. He turned and walked out onto the porch. It was the first time he’d stood on his own outside. A hammock was tied at one end of the porch, and some fishing equipment, a kerosene lamp, and a wooden oar, broken, against the wall on the other side. He opened the screen door. The slope was fairly level here. Through the trees, he could see the glint of the water. He could hear an engine motor a few miles off and wondered how close they were to the road. He took small steps until he reached the source of the water. The mountains flanked each side of the lake for several hundred feet, overhanging the water in some parts, and ponderosa pines and evergreens grew along the elevation. Savage and beautiful and largely uninhabitable except by people like Maggie and her father.

  He could leave now. He could make it down to the road, hitch a ride to the ranger’s cabin, the forestry service, whichever came first. They would take him to the hospital, he figured, make sure his treatment had been proper, and he could find Stanley Polensky. He needed answers, now more than ever.

  But he turned back. On the trail back, he picked some forget-menots, other wildflowers that grew close to the water. He walked, one foot very deliberately in front of the other, and leaned against trees when he tired. He thought of the wiry girl underneath the calloused hands and thickened middle, the small but respectable swell of her breasts, her water eyes, the way her face broke up into pieces when she laughed, loud and easy and that way she dressed his back. He entered the cabin, letting the screen door fall shut behind him so she would not be startled, and when he entered the main cabin, she stood at the stove, boiling potatoes and carrots and salted venison. He replaced the wilting flowers in the vase with his own and sat at the table as she brought over two plates.

  “I feel good,” he said as she fumbled with the silverware and napkins. She looked at the vase but did not reply. “I bet I could walk all the way to town this week.”

  “Well, that’s good to know you’re thinking of leaving. I’m needing you out of here soon, anyways.” She retrieved two mugs and filled them with coffee. He picked up his fork and knife as she sat across from him.

  “I think I could probably sleep in the rocker tonight.” He looked at her. “You probably need to be getting your rest.”

  “It don’t make no difference to me.” She stabbed at the venison with her fork and began to saw it with her knife.

  They cut and ate the veniso
n and potatoes and drank the coffee and listened to the crickets, the nightbirds, the trout jumping out of the lake, the tick of the Bakelite alarm clock that rested next to the Bible on the bedside table. The evening came like a cloak over the cabin, and Maggie lit the kerosene lamp by the bed. He stripped down to his boxers, folding the clothes and putting them on top of the cedar chest, as Maggie sat on the rocker in her dungarees.

  “Take the bed, Maggie.” He stepped toward the rocker. “I’m strong enough to sleep sitting up. Lord knows I got through the war sleeping all kind of ways.”

  “I’m all right.” She crossed her leg and her arms. He leaned over her and grabbed her under the armpits, bracing with his legs to pull her upward. But before he could lift, she kicked him in the shin with her boot. He crumpled to the floor, afraid for a moment that she’d broken his leg.

  “Aw shit, Maggie.” He hugged his leg, rocking back and forth. “Just take the goddamn bed.”

  “I’m fine here.” She bent forward slightly, peering at him in dimness. “Are you all right?”

  He lunged toward her from a sitting position and grabbed her arms, pulling as hard as he could until she was on the floor with him. From his knees, he grabbed the runners of the rocker and dragged it across the floor toward the door.

  “What the hell are you doing!” She wrapped her arms around him and tried to dislodge his grip with her fingers. “Let go of my goddamn rocker!”

  “You sleep in the bed or I’ll turn it into kindling.” He pulled at the runner and legs, trying to separate them. He stopped and looked at her. “I don’t really want to do this. I just want you to relax. I want…to take care of you for once. Is that all right?”

  “I don’t need nobody doing anything for me.” She stood up and retrieved the rocker, returning it to its spot by the bed.

  “Are you afraid I’m going to leave, Maggie?” He sat on the bed. “Or are you afraid I’m going to stay?”

  “I don’t…I don’t know what you’re asking.” She straightened the snaps of her dungarees, refolded her sleeves. “I already told you the season’s starting soon.”

  He leaned back against the wall, feeling the stubble on the back of his calves and thighs. It had started growing a few days ago, the last thing that would return him to being Johnson. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the shallow breeze that limped over these late summer nights, kissing his bare shoulders, underneath his chin. The events of the day drained him, and he found himself inch toward the forgiving mattress. He felt additional weight strain the bed, and when he opened his eyes Maggie lay with her back to him, hugging the other edge. He lay on his side facing her and pressed against the wall so that they were not touching, and he watched her back rise and fall until he fell asleep.

  Johnson thought about Helena. The longer he stayed in the cabin, and Maggie ventured to town for supplies or parts for the boat or even just to catch up on town gossip, the more he starved for sustenance beyond the scraps that she tossed to him as she deemed fit—while they sat on the porch at night sharpening her knives or early morning out in the secret fishing spot away from the other boaters, in the bed they sometimes shared, on the chilly nights, although not as lovers.

  Helena was his business. And so was Stanley Polensky. He hinted to Maggie that she might need help carrying the groceries or the ammo from the store, but she laughed.

  “I done it all these years, Calvin.” She’d stand in the rocking boat as he unlooped the rope, watching the distance between the dock and the boat grow. “I’ll be fine. Those rugs and quilts need a beatin’. I’ll see you before dinner.”

  One night he begged for the hammock, which Maggie usually took at night, claiming his back was bothering him. Then, at dawn, he stole away to the dock, untied the boat, and drifted 50 yards off the shore before turning on the engine. Still, the motor whirred through the trees and echoed off the rock like a sledgehammer. But there was nothing he could do now. He headed down the shoreline, following the curve of the river until he reached the dock where he’d climbed on the boat that took him to the gulch fire. He tied Maggie’s boat to a spot on the dock and nodded a good morning to a man putting his tackle box in his speedboat. The man, older, swallowed by overalls and a sleeveless undershirt, bent his brow into a stare. Another man, who leaned against the door of the boathouse fondling his pipe, looked at Johnson, then Maggie’s boat. Before they could strike up conversation, Johnson walked casually down the road.

  After about a mile or so, he reached downtown Helena, found the one-room library, and waited on the front steps until it opened. The librarian showed him how the old newspapers were stored, on microfiche now, little print on film rolls like movies, and he looked at the articles, reading about the Mann Gulch fire, the smokejumpers and ranger who perished, pictures of deer burned to death where they stood as the fire raced over them. He read quotes from the ranger about the fire becoming a blowup, a dangerous ignition of conditions which sends the fire up in the air and through the air at incredible speeds.

  He read for hours, slowly, moving his finger over the lines, looking for clues about other missing, dead. But even though he had not expected to find his name, he did not find any mentions of any other missing firefighters. No quotes from Lane Gustafson or Mantee or a Stanley Polensky, and he did not know why this had surprised him. The only person who knew he was alive in Montana, perhaps in the world, was Maggie.

  And she was going to be pissed at him. He hurried along the main street but stopped in front of a sporting goods store. The size of the cooler, a deep green Coleman, so shiny and new, caught his eye. Color everywhere, in the clothes of the women, the cars, orange and red and cobalt, big engines that sounded like airplanes. Strange, whiny guitar music from the windows as he passed. Men wore their hair long, curling over their ears, their sideburns touching their chins. They passed him on the street, looking at him from behind mirrored sunglasses and smiling. Were these boys, in their denim jackets with the fringe, their heeled boots, even born when he was buried in the ground? Were they even born when he was sunken in the water? They walked away languidly, as if poured down the sidewalk. It was as if he had stepped into the future. He supposed he had.

  Back at the dock, the man with the pipe waited with the deputy sheriff. Johnson didn’t have any identification, so he didn’t feel compelled to tell them his name. Accordingly, they didn’t feel compelled to give him lunch, coffee, or cigarettes in the holding cell while the owner of the marina went out to Maggie’s cabin to bring her into town.

  “Yeah, I know this man.” She wore her best shirt, a simple white blouse and a pair of denim jeans. She did not look at him. “He’s been helping me out at the cabin. I sent him down for a can of coffee. I got to get ready for the season.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Maggie.” The sheriff cupped her shoulder. “I know you’re busy up there this time of year. He just wasn’t very accommodating in helping us get to the bottom of things.”

  “He don’t talk much.” She shot Johnson a glance. “I think he’s a little soft in the head.”

  Neither of them spoke on the way home. Johnson concentrated on the bobbing and crashing of the boat against the water, the crystalline blue sky, the blinding noonday sun on the water.

  “You mind telling me what the hell that was all about?” At the cabin, she banged a pot on the stove and heated water for coffee. “I thought you’d done run off for good. Maybe that’s what you was planning?”

  “I wanted to go to town. It’s not like I haven’t hinted about it a hundred times.” He stood in the doorway of the porch.

  “And what the hell do you need there, exactly?” She lit a cigarette and spooned the instant into two mugs. “Don’t I bring you everything you want?”

  “I never said you didn’t. I just wanted to make sure there was a town. For all I know, I could be in heaven or something.”

  “You’re a real kidder.” She exhaled and poured the steaming water. “I ain’t laughin’.”

  “I just wanted
to read the newspaper. About the fire. I wanted to know if I’d been listed as missing. I got twenty years to catch up on. You should see the cars they’re driving now, Maggie. The engines are so powerful. And the way people dress. The things you can buy.”

  “I could have told you that. Nobody ever said nothing about anybody missing in the fire.” She thrust a cup toward his hand. “And I already asked around town about your Stanley Polenksy. No one’s ever heard of him. And things might change, but people don’t. That’s all you need to know.”

  “But—”

  “You know, why don’t you just leave if you’ve got ants in your pants? The season is starting, and I’m going to be too busy to worry about you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re the only person who knows that I’m alive, who knows anything’s wrong with me.” He turned to her in the doorway. “Who believes me. I owe you for that much, and plenty more.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Calvin Johnson.” She walked past him and sat on the porch steps, cigarette between her fingers, coffee mug snug between her palms.

  “But you keep me here like some animal at the zoo.” He touched her on the back. “I don’t mind working off any debt, but I need to be able to come and go as I please. We’re not married or anything, you know. And, to be honest with you, there’s someone else.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” He could hear the break in her voice, feel the slight heave of her shoulders. “Don’t you know you say her goddamn name every night? How do you think that makes me feel, after you ask me to share the goddamn bed?”

  “I’m sorry, Maggie.” He sat down next to her. “I didn’t mean it that way. I like you so much, and I think you’re a great woman, but I love someone else.”

  “It don’t matter, anyway. I can’t love no one no more, Johnson.” She stood up and walked into the cabin. “My daddy dying, it tore the seam in me. I ain’t enough rope left to lend.”