Northern Light

by Deb Davies

  Damn it! Damn it! And now the phone was ringing, but that was good, because he could ask for help, if he could find his damn cell phone.

  Five rings. It started up again. Five rings. Elaine.

  Wait. No.

  Elaine wouldn’t be calling.

  He struggled to sit up in bed but was weighed down by a pile of covers. His pajamas had twisted and had a choke hold around his neck.

  Light from the moon reflected off snow that had piled up near the window.

  He rubbed his hands over his face. Goddamn it, what good was he to anyone?

  THE WILLOW CATKINS were yellow with pollen. In the park, ducks paired off and slid into the water, which was higher now than it had been last fall. The last time Laurel had left school a little late and crossed the two-lane road to jog over to the small stand of red pines, she’d seem a heron standing in the shallows. She stood still, watching it, inhaling the scent of new grass and old, decaying vegetation.

  Only now she wasn’t in the park. She was in, of all things, a study hall, looking through big glass windows that faced the road and the park. This room once had been a cafeteria, but now that an addition had created a quite nice lunchroom, this long, window-lined room had been converted into an all-purpose area. Parent-teacher conferences were held here. Science fair projects were set up on the tables. Speakers came in for small group meetings. And today, with three teachers out with the flu and only one substitute available, two last-hour classes had been sent there en masse to wait out the hour.

  In spite of the rule against sleeping, a number of students had propped books up on their desk and slouched down behind them, napping. The substitute, at a table near the doors that faced the hall, was grading papers and doing her best to ignore rule infringements. Periodically, one of the coaches who was running track in the gym across the hall would peer in to make sure no one got too rowdy.

  Near the back, a small group of girls that hung out with Claire were writing notes. Some of the notes got passed to boys at the next table, who mostly ignored them or flicked them into the trash. They were playing cards and elaborately ignoring the girls. People who opened these notes might find anything from “Daryl, I love you. Can you take me for a ride?” to “Daryl, you have a boner, and your face is turning red.”

  One of the girls who had befriended Laurel on Claire’s behalf, and had turned out to be a reasonably good friend, raised her eyes at Laurel and tipped her head toward an empty seat at their table.

  Laurel shook her head, mouthing, “Thank you,” and ducked behind her book. Going over there would leave her feeling more alone than she was now. Claire was home sick and holding a conversation seemed impossible without her.

  She wouldn’t be ignored, but Claire protected her from the endless questions. Why didn’t Laurel have a boyfriend? Who did she think was cute? Did she have a crush on someone? Maybe Laurel likes girls? Soft, just-a-joke shoves against her shoulder. Sticks of gum broken into pieces and passed around. If the gum ran out, a note was sent to the boys’ table, which sometimes elicited gum, tossed overhand, and sometimes a note saying, “69, foxes.” Shrieks and giggles. Gossip about a girl who was—don’t tell—pregnant.

  Laurel had known about sex since her mother, while buying Laurel her first training bra, had told her stuff she shouldn’t do, starting with French kissing and expanding from there, ending with, “Lord, Laurel, comb your hair and pull up your bra straps.” But some of the things her mother had talked about just seemed private. She’d had a couple of crushes and could talk about them to Claire, but mostly, she told everyone she’d met an older boy, a friend of her parents, whose family had moved to Scotland. They wrote each other long letters. She brought stationery and envelopes to school, and now pulled out the heather blue paper and retired behind a stack of books.

  But the sun had come around the south side of the school and was beaming through the windows. Some bees had come into the school and were now buzzing against the glass. When everyone left, she and the science teacher might open the far doors to the ball field and shoo them out, but for now, they weren’t hurting anything, and their escape attempts and buzzing didn’t bother her. In fact, they were kind of soothing, because they seemed to have some kind of purpose in life. She let her head rest on her folded arms for a minute, trying to think of some things to write to her friend, and suddenly, she found herself—what’s the word? Transported?

  She was outside the school and over in the park, by the water. She began to run along the pond, delighted with her cool freedom, and it seemed as if she were wearing tennis shoes instead of her school loafers, which flapped at her heels. She’d never run with such ease. Maybe she would be a runner! Her feet squished in a bit where snow had left wet patches, but she pulled her skirt above her knees and pushed up her sweater sleeves. The wind was cool, but the sun was warm, and she was perfectly relaxed. Her pace was so smooth, the grass and tree roots seemed to flow beneath her.

  And then she was aware of a young man running along beside her—well, almost beside her. His legs were longer than hers, but he was slowing his pace—she was sure of it—so that he didn’t catch up with her, or frighten her, or pass her.

  “May I join you?” he asked.

  “You may,” she said, “since you asked so nicely.” She glanced briefly over her shoulder. He was wearing a white dress shirt and blue trousers and had dark hair.

  Then they ran on for a while, and little by little, he caught up with her, matching her pace. And then, when she was finally out of breath, he put his hands on her shoulders, and they sank down on a sunny patch of grass, hidden by a huge red pine tree from the school and road. She was in his arms, perfectly safe, and knew it didn’t matter to him that that she had pine needles in her hair.

  Laurel woke and saw Arnie, sitting on the end of the bed, facing away from her with his shoulders slumped.

  “Hey,” she said. “Can you lie down a minute and hold me? I had a dream, and then I just woke up.”

  “Good dream, or bad dream?” he asked.

  “A good dream,” she answered decisively. If the boy in the dream was younger and thinner than Arnie, she had been younger then too.

  “You were in my dream,” she said. “And you held me in your arms.”

  CHARLES SAT IN a yoga position in the middle of a small island, surrounded by last year’s grass, branches that had broken off aspen bushes under snow and ice, and the thundering spring-level stream. He’d brought a rubber raincoat out and had folded it in a square. Sitting on it had initially protected his rump and legs, but as his weight and warmth encouraged ground thawing, his jeans had soaked through.

  He was cold but happy. He could see a mallard and his mate making a nest on the next small island. Looking upstream, he saw the path the sun made, turning the water diamond bright. A muskrat passed him, moving downstream with the current.

  He didn’t see the otter until it pulled itself out of the water and sat down like a cat, less than a foot from him, splaying its legs to fastidiously groom.

  “Hello,” he said.

  The otter ignored him.

  “Didn’t I see you before?” Charles ventured. “Two years ago, you and your pups made a snow slide just upstream from my cabin. They slid down it on their tummies and splashed into the water, then got out, ran around, and did the whole thing again for twenty minutes before your mate, and then you, joined in. Looked like fun. I wish I could have joined you.”

  “Well, you couldn’t have,” the otter said. “It’s rude to even think of it.”

  “Sorry,” Charles said. “Since you’ve joined me today, I wonder if I’m in your way. It’s really your stream, not mine.”

  “Did you get rid of that bird?” the otter asked. “Visiting is one thing, but I don’t want ravens here as a regular thing. They eat a lot of the same things we weasels eat—ground-nesting birds and chipmunks. You know that perfectly well.”

  “Oscar stops by,” Charles said. “He isn’t staying. He’s a young bird, no
t mated, restless. We’re friends, but he has places to go.”

  After a minute or so of deliberation, the otter looked out at the stream and said in a low voice, “There’s something else you could do for me.”

  “Anything,” Charles said.

  “I know you,” the otter said. “You watched otters on the big river this past winter. We otters do attend council. We heard you and your mate were seen lying on your backs in the snow, waving your arms and legs and making those snow things that look like birds with flared tail feathers. You’re both too big. Don’t do that. Or don’t do it near rivers. It packs the snow down so it’s harder for the food to make tunnels. Do you never think?”

  “Sorry,” Charles said again. “You seem ill-tempered.”

  “You would be too, if humans who eat corn, and humans who put water in plastic bottles, and humans who make seeds all alike, which makes it harder to find grasshoppers—wait, I’m getting off track.” The otter swiped a paw across its face, and Charles suddenly had the terrible feeling that the animal was crying.

  “Here’s the thing,” the otter said. “We know there are humans who do want to be outdoors and want their children to be, too. There’s a sandpiper group and a fish group, there are squirrel groups and maybe a raccoon group. I don’t know if there’s an otter group. I don’t even know if we’d want one. But I can tell you, all humans need to take care of the water. The stream was low last year. And hot, too. Trout don’t like it. We don’t like it. God doesn’t like it.”

  “How do you know that last bit?” Charles asked.

  “God is a river otter. Pteronura brasiliensis. I thought you knew that. There were people here a long time ago who used to know.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Charles admitted.

  “Hah! Hah,” the animal said, baring his teeth slightly. “Take your mate on a trip, if you want. She looks mangy. Take her to the Big Lakes, the ones that connect to the Waters of the World. But when you’re back, find some way to hawk up cash for the cause. Write another book. Prattle about that raven. Tell about the owl—nasty creatures, owls—that was hit by a car and would have frozen if you hadn’t let it warm up in your cabin.”

  “I don’t want to write another book.” Charles had put his hands down now. He looked crestfallen but stubborn. “I hate writing books. And no one pays attention to books unless you go around touting them. I have had ideas for books, but I hate touting.”

  The otter whuffled its mustache. “There you go! Another book! Get your mate to tout.”

  “I can’t do it!” Charles said.

  “No?” The otter whistled. And then something happened that Charles would remember all his life, though he never told anyone, not even Claire, about it. The otter turned its back on him, and when it turned around, it had somehow transformed itself into a six-foot-long giant river otter. He braced himself on his tail and crunched through a fish he held in one paw, the way Charles held an ice cream cone. The otter grunted with annoyance. It pointed the now headless fish at him.

  “Here’s the thing we need help with: Humans don’t understand there is no such thing as private water. All the water flows together, and it’s mine. It’s my blood. Humans take my blood that I give for communion, just as I share with the rest of my creatures. But that’s not enough for you.” He hissed, breathing harder.

  “Oh, no. My blood in plastic bottles with artificial flavors. My heart’s blood pumped through shale. You spray pig shit, which is fine in small quantities, to poison my litters. You pour filth from tourist ships into salt heavens where bat-winged angels fly. Even your kind can’t swim off the great coasts without getting sick. South African children wait in line for my bounty while Indian nouveau riche bathe daily in vast pools of my blood that cannot return to my veins. Lands freeze, fall in mudslides, or burn.

  “You don’t respect the holy or the consecrated. Do you know what happens when a god is ignored, you amateur anthropologist?”

  Charles whispered, “The god, uh, disappears.”

  “The god disappears. You’re right about that, babycakes. And sometimes, when the god disappears, the people disappear with it. Look it up.”

  The giant river otter turned its back on Charles and slid into the creek, where the ripples were so bright he could no longer see.

  WHEN CHARLES SLID out of his moment of meditation, which he had been practicing on his back, he stretched his legs, waiting for his muscles to twang in rebellion against the classic yoga stance he hadn’t tried in years. Given the fact that he was still in bed—and the seat of his pants dry—he had to assume the visitation had been a dream. But it had seemed so real! The “fish group”? Trout Unlimited, he thought. Audubon. Sierra Club. Raccoons Unlimited?

  Damn, he thought. Claire had joked about fundraisers for Trout Unlimited, and he’d chimed in suggesting a rock-climbing wall. How did you make a dent in this administration? If, like a protesting Buddhist or the gay activist who had received no attention in the press, he poured gasoline over himself and set himself on fire, would Trump pee on him?

  Claire came into the bedroom wrapped in a white towel, with another white towel turban wrapped around her hair. “I had the worst dream last night,” she said. “I dreamt nothing was true. But then the dream wasn’t true, so I decided I would just get up and take a shower.”

  “My dream may have been true, but it wasn’t good, either.”

  “Sketchy results from you telling us to ‘go to sleep and dream.’” She sat next to him.

  “Interesting choice of words,” Charles said, “from a woman who sketches.”

  “Tries to, yes. Wildflowers.”

  “We have to start somewhere,” he said. “I’ll make pancakes with maple syrup when Arnie and Laurel get up. We can talk about our dreams.”

  “I don’t think Arnie will like that,” Claire said.

  “And yet,” Charles said, “we’re all going to have to keep sharing our lives when we take this trip.”

  Deb and her husband, Rick, who helps her with research, own a cabin on a trout stream near Luzerne, Michigan. They live in an old farmhouse. Deb taught basic writing and creative writing at Jackson College, and Rick was regional president of Comerica bank. They are enthusiastic supporters of the Jackson Symphony, the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, the Dahlem Nature Center, the Jackson Carnegie Library, and rescued animals. They have two children, Stephen, a lawyer who produced the movie Tattoo: A Love Story, and Bets, an author who is also published by BHC Press. They own a gold pitbull named Nellie and a black cat, Olive. Their most unusual family pet was Argy, a voracious, sometimes vicious, Argentinian horned frog.