Northern Lights

by Raymond Strom

  When she was done, I appeared to be a respectable young man. My hair shorn close on the sides but still long on top, a cowlick in front kept my bangs out of my eyes. I bent down, took some of the cuttings in my hand, and thought of my father. Now I looked very much like him. He had been the one who allowed me to keep my long hair in spite of my uncle and everyone else in Grand Marais, telling me all along that I was my own person, that it didn’t matter what anyone thought. It was a defining aspect of my personality and I had expected having short hair to cause some deep change to my very being, but I felt no different. With or without my hair, I would still be as much of a man as I always was, the man my father encouraged me to be.

  I paid for my haircut with the last of my cash, left five bucks as a tip and pocketed three quarters, then waited in a seat near the window, watching the rain. Two hours after he dropped me off, the Fisherman pulled up and laid on the horn, didn’t let up until I was in the car. I didn’t ask where he’d been, but I imagined it had something to do with the woman who had called for Jim.

  My mother made a little squeal when she saw me, ruffling my new haircut.

  “So handsome, just like someone else we know,” she said and looked around, but the Fisherman was already standing at the bar, lake water on his mind. Then, pressing a folded banknote into my hand, she got to the point: “I want you to help out tonight. If anyone asks you for anything, do it. I have a lobster in the back for your dinner.”

  Another hundred-dollar bill. I stuffed the money in my pocket and left her at the host stand where she and my cousin planned out the seating chart for that night’s reservations. In the dining room, the busboys draped white linen over the bare tables, then laid out the flatware and the waitresses followed with cloth napkins and metal carafes of hot water to polish the wineglasses and silver. Fresh roses had been cut and a small vase had been prepared for each table with a single stem and baby’s breath. For the finishing touch, I lit candles in tiny gold-flecked cups and placed them just far enough from the flowers that the petals didn’t wilt.

  It was the nicest restaurant I had ever seen but I had a sneaking feeling that even if it did live up to its looks, my mother would grow bored with it and move on to the next thing that caught her wandering eye. My father, me, Donald, Holm, Frank, her other child, the restaurant, the Fisherman. My mother wasn’t hospitable; she knew nothing of hospitality. I knew she didn’t care about any of the people who would visit her place that night—she was looking out for herself and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. I decided I’d do best to follow her lead, and with that thought I was free. An incredible lightness came over me. It was done. I had found my mother and taken it as far as it could go, and soon I would be back in Holm with Jenny again for the last few weeks of summer, then off to the rest of my life.

  The people were few at first but by seven o’clock the restaurant was full and the rain had stopped, a warm evening sun angling in on the dinner guests through the lakeside windows. I followed the Fisherman around the dining room and watched him stare at my cousin. He had no purpose or function at the restaurant and, as if to prove this, he ordered dinner at seven thirty when the dining room was still full. He had a tall glass of lake water and the sixty-dollar entrée that my mother had been so proud of the previous day: lobster tail, crab legs, and filet mignon. Halfway through his meal he got up to find Susan, asked her if she would melt some more butter and bring him another drink. She brought the butter and when she set it down the Fisherman grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. He licked her face from chin to ear, then pushed her away and told her she forgot his fucking brandy before he picked up his silverware and went back to his meal.

  At sunset, while clearing plates from a table near the window I was distracted by a heron stalking through the shallow water near the shore, hunting. As I watched, the bird stopped in the glittery trail of sunlight on the water, poised on one leg, and struck before it stalked off down the beach, a crayfish hanging from its beak by the claw. The crayfish struggled, swinging from its trapped arm, clapping at the bird’s neck with the other claw until its wrist was severed, when it fell to the sand incomplete. The bird waddled after it to take another stab but came up with an empty beak before it flapped its wings and lifted itself into the air.

  After the dinner business was finished, I asked my mother to bring me to her house so I could rest before my bus ride home. I told her I wasn’t hungry but she sat me down at a table by the window with a glass of beer and stomped off toward the kitchen, then came back with the biggest lobster I had seen all night.

  “It’s a three pounder,” she said and pulled out the chair opposite me to sit down. Uncomfortable, she shifted in her seat, folded her hands, smiled up at me. “Is there anything else you need here?”

  I thought for a moment that maybe I had been wrong about my mother, but when I told her I had everything I wanted she stood and walked off. Thinking she was planning to return, I set down my fork and watched her weave through the men milling near the bar and around the bartender, take a glass, and fill it like the Fisherman had—ice, brandy, cherry—then, bringing the straw to her lips, she turned and leaned against the bar, eyes on the television mounted in a corner I couldn’t see. I waited for a while, watching her watch television, but when she went for a second drink I turned back to my meal.

  I had never eaten lobster before and, though I had seen people eating it all night, I wasn’t sure how to use the cracker, didn’t know how to get the meat out of the claws. I struggled with a claw for a while but then moved on to my potatoes and corn on the cob, forked out the tail and got that down. I sipped my beer and looked out at the lake, now dark, but I could see the lights of a passing tanker and a sailboat anchored out in the distance. In the reflection I saw the Fisherman approaching and tried to ignore him, hoping he would leave me alone, but he walked right up to my table and ripped the claw I had been working on right off my lobster.

  “What, do you not know how to do this?” he asked, then snapped the claw in half with his hands and slurped the meat out of the shell before he picked up my cup of butter and took a sip. He looked down at me and shook his head before he tossed the empty claw back on my plate and turned toward the bar.

  In bed that night, my thoughts about the Fisherman became images that haunted my dreams. Having his way with my mother, my cousin Susan and her twin, and Jenny. Then all four at once, making eyes at me to be the fifth, reaching out, taking me by the shoulder, shaking me.

  “Be a fucking man,” he said, rattling me with each word, but that scene fell away and I opened my eyes to see that it wasn’t the Fisherman’s hands on my shoulders but my mother’s.

  “Wake up, Shane,” she said, eyes closed, still asleep herself. “It’s time to leave.”

  * * *

  My mother dropped me off at the Gas-N-Go without getting out of the jeep, rolling down the window to thank me for helping out at the restaurant before spinning the wheel and heading back to the Fisherman. No mention of another meeting and then she was as gone as she had always been, the only thing remaining was the hundred-dollar bill in my pocket. I made my way into the Gas-N-Go, bought two shitty donuts, and told the cashier she could keep the change. Ninety-eight dollars plus coins. I didn’t want anything to do with it. Stood outside and ground the nasty pastries in my mouth, swallowed them down while I waited for the bus, alone, in the dark. Soon all of this, my mother, the Fisherman, and South Haven itself, would be behind me forever.

  When the bus pulled into the station in Chicago, I had an hour before my connection and just enough change to call Jenny’s house from the pay phone. No answer. This worried me. She hadn’t called my mother’s house like she said she would, hadn’t answered when I called, and now she still wasn’t around. My paranoia from my last day in Holm returned and I was certain that Svenson had figured us out and gotten his hands on her. I did what I could to squash those thoughts, but soon I was back on the phone, growing more and more worried until it was picked up on
the nineteenth ring.

  “Jenny?” I asked. Silence. “Jenny?” Only breathing on the line. Something was wrong—Kristina had answered the phone. She had made her way from where she was to the kitchen, in her drugged-out state, hoping it was Jenny. This was not a good sign.

  “Kristina?” I asked. “Answer! Are you okay? Do you know where Jenny is?”

  More deep breathing and then a dead line. My three quarters fell into the phone, leaving me with nothing, and I wished then that I hadn’t been so hasty with my mother’s money.

  I made my way onto the bus when it was time and, in spite of my worries or maybe because of them, I passed out and moved right into a dream. Jenny’s house stood before me, so close yet impossibly far as I stood immobile in the street, watching Jenny approach on foot. I called her name but she didn’t hear me, couldn’t see me. Oblivious, she stepped up onto the curb, focused on her front door until the sound of a pump action drew her attention up the street. We both turned to see the barrel of a rifle sticking out the open window of a pickup truck, like in a cartoon or an old movie, holding her as its target. The door swung open with a screech and a young man stepped out, not taking his sights off Jenny. Although his silhouette could have been any boy in town—cowboy hat, T-shirt, jeans, and boots—neither of us needed light to know who was after her.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said, though she hadn’t. “You get your ass in the truck.”

  She stood her ground for a moment and a swell of wind came over them, shuffling the leaves of the nearby trees.

  “But my mother,” she said, not pleading but rather calm, “you know she needs my help.”

  “You should have thought about that before you tried to cross me.”

  “I didn’t cross you,” she said. “You’ve been running on that shit for days. We both have. Let’s go inside and get some sleep. I’ll hold you ’til you’re tired. You aren’t thinking straight.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said and motioned with his gun that she get moving.

  As she stepped across her lawn, she looked to her neighbors’ windows, all dark. Defeated, her shoulders slumped and she made the last slow steps to the open passenger door. After she climbed in, Svenson circled the front of the truck, sights still trained on her, opened his door, and stuck the barrel of the rifle deep into her stomach before he got behind the wheel. After his door screeched shut he threw the truck in gear and peeled out into the street where I stood, lead-footed, unable to jump out of the way as he ran me down. I raised my hands before my face to block the light, then bolted upright in my bus seat, the lights of the tall buildings of downtown Minneapolis flickering on in the growing twilight. An hour to go and we couldn’t get back fast enough.

  Thirteen

  Only three days had passed but Holm was different, even the smell. Walking down Center, the burning plastic, the hot steel of the metal works shop, and whatever those other factories produced all made their way to my nose for the first time. Sour and spoiled, the humid air hung around me and hurried my steps. By the time I reached the train crossing I was running.

  “Jenny!” I called as I turned north on the tracks toward where I knew she painted trains but I received no response so I called again. “Jenny!”

  Flicking my lighter near each boxcar, I looked for any new HOPEs but found none. Dejected, I made my way toward the Arlington but saw from half a block away that my light wasn’t on. I had hoped that she was hiding out at my place, maybe she had even called my mother’s house to find me gone. The lights being out wasn’t proof that she wasn’t in there, however, so I climbed the rickety stairs to the third floor and knocked while I fumbled with my keys. No one answered, so I opened the door to find a mess that I wasn’t expecting, the bed unmade and garbage strewn across the floor, but no sign of Jenny. I flipped off the lights and shut the door again.

  “Where is she?” I asked the empty hallway.

  After I dug into my backpack to find I had no change, I picked up the pay phone and dialed 0. When the operator answered I told her I’d like to make a collect call and gave her Jenny’s number.

  “Your party is not answering,” the operator said, having cut off the call after the tenth ring. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  I gave her my mother’s number and she picked up on the second ring.

  “Jim?” my mother asked before the operator could even go into the spiel about the collect call. She sounded panicked. Once the operator got her to accept the charges she asked me a question I didn’t expect: “Have you heard from Jim?”

  “No,” I said, “why would I know where he is?”

  “I don’t know, Shane,” she said, defeated. “I don’t know what to do anymore.” I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, knowing that he was off with some woman in town—my mother facing now what she had put my father through all those years earlier—but I wasn’t going to let that distract me now.

  “Has anyone called for me?”

  “For you? Why would anyone call my house for you?”

  The little goodwill I felt for my mother left me then.

  “Is that a no?”

  “Of course it is,” she said. “How can you call me at a time like this and ask that?”

  “He’s cheating on you, Mother,” I said, “and you deserve it.”

  I slammed the receiver into the cradle, then stood there for a moment, staring at the phone, amazed at what I had done, but was startled out of it when the phone rang. Assuming it was my mother calling back, I turned and ran down the stairs and out into the street, my backpack bouncing hard behind me as I descended. Only when I was halfway to her house did I realize that the callback could have been Jenny.

  * * *

  I came upon Jenny’s house to find the garage open, the car gone, and the door into the house ajar. Someone had left in a hurry. Pulling the garage door closed from the inside, I switched off the light and stepped into the house to hear a newscaster pass it to the weatherman on the television at top volume.

  Every light in the house was burning and mosquitos, having entered through the same door I had, swarmed around the fixtures. Finding a bottle shattered in the kitchen, brown liquid pooling in the low parts of the uneven floor, I smelled a touch of whiskey mingling in the air with cigarette smoke and, moving into the living room it all came together with the stink of days-old shit: Kristina, lying on the couch with her hand to her mouth, dead to the world, liquor and pill bottles on the table before her.

  “Kristina?”

  I shook her shoulder and her hand fell away limp, but when she moved it back to cover her nose, I knew she was still alive. Looking her over, I saw the stains causing the smell, a sludgy wetness moving from her jeans to the couch cushions, and had to choke back down what tried to come out of me.

  Unsure what to do, I went into the kitchen and paced for a moment. On the counter was an overflowing ashtray next to a pile of dirty dishes that extended into the sink. I rinsed out a glass, took it to the living room to pour myself a drink, and then stepped out onto the deck. The whiskey was warm and rough and once I got it down my mind slowed a bit. Jenny had been gone for a while and, though I knew she was often late and came home to her mother’s accidents, she wouldn’t leave Kristina alone for this long on purpose. These were bad signs. I needed to call the sheriff.

  I found the phone receiver hanging at the end of its spiral cord, no dial tone, but it chirped back to life after a few taps on the hook and I dialed the police station. While it rang, I saw that an answering machine lay in a jumble at my feet—Kristina having ripped it out of the wall at some point, I assumed—so I plugged it back in and turned it on, just in case Jenny was trying to call from wherever she was. When Claire answered at the station, she patched me through to the sheriff in his car and I tried to tell him what I knew but it all came out at once.

  “Stop, Shane,” he said. “Slow down.”

  “Jenny’s gone,” I said. “The car is missing.”

  H
e said he’d come within an hour and hung up. I had plenty to keep my mind busy while I waited. First I had to take care of Jenny’s mother.

  I took the top sheet from Kristina’s bed and spread it on the floor next to the couch, rolled her down. Although I could see the direct line between mother and daughter, the youthful glow in Jenny was fading in Kristina. Her face had begun to grow hollow, her cheeks sunken, her hair thin. Her lips were dry and cracked and the skin of her hands too. Drugs, whiskey, loneliness. She was Jenny’s future, if Jenny was lucky enough to have one.

  I started with a sponge and some towels to clean the vomit out of her hair before I moved to the mess in her pants. It took a moment to overcome my embarrassment when I saw what the job entailed, the creases that needed to be wiped clean, but I got her changed and carried her to bed, so light she felt like no more than a cat in my arms. She lay back in her clean pajamas and stretched against her pillows, yawned, and then sunk back deep to wherever she came from.

  After I poured another quick sip of whiskey, I slapped a few mosquitos, then started in the kitchen with the broken bottle on the floor, soaking up the liquor with a towel before I swept up the broken glass. It hit me while I was doing the dishes. Jenny was gone. I knew it was Svenson, he had to have done it. I had seen up close what he had done with the dogs. Poison, a knife through the neck. These thoughts disappeared into the work, the cleaning, the dishwashing, but would resurface. I was clear-headed when I made my way to the garage to find bug spray, which I sprayed at the clouds of mosquitos and then watched them fall out of the air, but later, as I pulled the corduroy covers off the couch cushions, I understood that maybe this life had grown to be too much for Jenny. I had only been here an hour and I could see that Kristina needed full-time supervision, someone to wipe her ass and keep her away from the whiskey.