Brian's Return (4 page)

“It sounds great,” he said. “A long visit will do you good. You’ll have a wonderful time.”

The canoe was the problem. He had to pay extra for shipping it and from Minneapolis north he had to send it by truck. The airlines took care of all the arrangements. He had to send it early for the canoe to be there when he arrived and he worried that something would happen to it—hated to let it out of his sight. But the airline called to say when it arrived safely in International Falls—a full four days before he flew up himself.

The rest of his gear he put in two backpacks, except for the bow and arrows. He checked the bow on the plane in a thick paper tube and the arrows went in boxes with his packs.

He did not take winter or cold-weather gear except for a windbreaker-anorak and two Polar Fleece pullovers. He wasn’t sure why. When he walked around the house or through town or was at school there was not a thought in his mind of coming back. Perhaps he would, but . . . As television had soured for him he had started to read more, studied history more and knew that in the past many young men his age, nearly sixteen—were away and into their lives. In the Civil War sixteen-year-olds had been fighting, dying. With his parents’ permission, Brian could enlist in the army at seventeen. For better or worse, he was set on his own path and he didn’t think of coming back and yet he didn’t take winter gear.

It was the lack of room, he told himself—he could get it later. He just didn’t have enough room.

The last two weeks were filled with calling the travel agent, assuring everybody he would be all right, making certain everything on the List was packed, and visiting Caleb.

Then finally the last day came and he visited Caleb to say goodbye.

“You’ll write,” Caleb said, and it was not a question but a statement. “I’ll want to know how you’re doing.”

Brian nodded. “Except that I won’t be able to get any mail out.”

“In the fall. There will be the supply run you told me about. You could send letters then.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Well, then . . .”

Brian stood and they started to shake hands. Then Caleb moved around the desk and grabbed him up in a bear hug. Brian’s feet actually left the ground.

“I’ll write,” he promised when he was loose.

“Tell me everything,” Caleb said. “Tell me about light and colors. All of it . . .”

“I will.” He paused. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Caleb smiled. “You already have. Just write.”

His mother drove him to the airport and helped him with all his gear. At the check-in she put her hand on one of the packs and he looked at her and she was crying.

“I’ll be fine, Mom.”

“I know. I just remembered how it all started. The small plane, and the hatchet I gave you. It all seems so long ago and it was just two years.”

No, Brian thought, hugging her. It was more than that. It was a lifetime ago.

“You’re grown now. Your father and I were talking about it last week. But when I see you like this, getting ready to leave, I think of you back then when you really
were
a little boy.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to go.”

He didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say. She was his mother and he loved her. He loved his father too but he had to do this thing or he would . . . he didn’t know what he would do. Go crazy. Never be right. Somehow inside he would die.

“I’ll write and send it out by bushplane.”

“You’d better.”

She stayed with him at the gate, talking of small things and touching him now and again until it was time to board, and then she waved as he walked down the tunnel to the plane.

Brian flew to Minneapolis and changed to a shuttle flight to International Falls. He got in at three in the afternoon and found his canoe and paddles waiting at the airport. He called the bush pilot, who answered on the first ring and told him to get his gear down to the dock by a store in Ranier, a little town on Rainy Lake near International Falls.

Brian took a cab to the dock with all his gear. The driver had rope to tie the canoe to the rack on top of the car, said he did it all the time what with all the people coming to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. He waited on the end of the dock and in an hour a bushplane with twin floats circled once, landed and idled up to the dock.

“Hi, Brian!” The pilot jumped out and tied the plane to the dock. “Good to see you again. Just put your gear in the backseat and we’ll tie your canoe on the float. Won’t take a minute.”

In five minutes they were taxiing away from the dock. The pilot throttled back and moved down the lake a quarter mile to a small building beside another dock.

“My shack.” The pilot pointed with his chin. “I could have had you take the cab there but the cabbies don’t like the road. It’s two miles through the woods and mostly mud. You got food?”

Brian had been looking at the building. “Pardon?”

“Do you have food with you? Thing is, the two fishermen are coming in early in the morning. I thought you’d stay here in the shack for the night while I go home but there’s no food here. I’ve got my Jeep there and we can run and get you something if you need it.”

“I ate on the plane,” Brian said. “And I have some stuff in the packs. I’ll be fine.”

“Good enough.” He pulled the plane delicately to the dock, climbed out on the float and tied up the plane. “We’ll be back early in the morning—I plan on leaving here at daylight-thirty. About four-thirty. See you.” And he was gone.

Brian stood alone on the dock and looked at the shore. It was not woods. Not yet. Here and there were cabins, and docks with boats next to them. But there were thick trees and bird sounds and green— lord, he’d forgotten how thickly green the northern forest is in the summer—and he let the sounds, and the lack of noise, settle over him like a blanket. He stood there for perhaps five minutes, relaxing.

It was coming into evening. He purposely had not brought a watch or clock. They did not fit where he would be. And he had been only partially honest with the pilot. He
had
eaten on the plane—a tiny sandwich and some peanuts and a Coke—but he didn’t have food with him. Instead he had the ability to get food.

He took his pack with the sleeping bag out of the plane and moved up to the small building. It was unlocked and inside it was full of old engine parts and fishing gear. There was a couch in one corner and he thought of sleeping on it. But the sky didn’t look like rain and the stink from paint cans in the corner convinced him. He would sleep away from the shack.

In one pocket of the pack he had rolls of fishing line, small sinkers and a plastic container of hooks. He had seen many small panfish—bluegills and sunfish—by the dock when he stepped off the plane float and he rigged a line with a hook and sinker. Then he went into the trees, turned over a rotting log and grabbed half a dozen earthworms.

The fish seemed starved and in ten minutes he’d caught five of them. He pulled the line, rolled it on a stick and put it back in his pack. Then he cleaned the fish, leaving the heads on, scaled them with the back of his knife and threw them in his smaller pot. The shore was covered with driftwood and in moments he had a small cooking fire going near the water’s edge on the small strip of sand beach. He added lake water to the pot, slapped the lid on and put it directly into the flames.

The evening crop of mosquitos found him but he threw some green grass and leaves on the fire. The smoke drove them away. He sat and watched the evening sun disappear over the lake to his left, and thought how truly and honestly right it felt.

Once, when he didn’t think he could stand being at home any longer, in the middle of the night he had taken the blanket off his bed and gone into the backyard and lain on the ground. It was almost more than he could bear to be in a room without an open window. He had to feel the air on his skin, to feel a part of the outside. That night he had lain trying to see up to the sky, to the stars. There was too much city light to see much but he tried, just as he tried to pretend the air in the yard was the same as the air in the woods.

Now he spread his bag in the grass on the bank and lay on it. It was not dark yet but close, and he could make out an evening star and he thought of how people wished on them. He had never done it but now he wished he could see it again the next night and the next and the next and always be able to see it.

He smelled his fish soup. It was nearly done and he added a couple of pinches of salt from a plastic bag he had brought and set the pot off the fire to cool a little.

After ten minutes he took the lid off and used the tip of his knife and a spoon to peel the skin away, then ate the tender pink meat along the backbones.

He ate quickly, carefully avoiding the bones, and then drank the broth. He cleaned his pan in the lake and decided to put up his tent to avoid the night bugs. He’d brought a small two-man tent. He’d thought of going without one at first but the tent was very light and had screened openings and the insects—whether he loved the woods or not—were awful. It took him five minutes to set it up and put his bag inside but instead of going to bed at once he put more driftwood on the fire and sat for a while in the dark.

He was close now. Not quite there but very close. Tomorrow the plane would take him northeast. He smiled.

He unzipped the tent and crawled inside and lay on top of the bag. For the first time in months he was sound asleep within five minutes.

Brian awakened and for a second did not remember where he was. There was a scuffling outside and he thought of bear and how stupid he’d been to leave his pack on the ground next to the tent. When he looked out he saw not a bear but a skunk and it wasn’t near his pack but smelling around the dead embers of the fire.

The fish leftovers. When he’d finished the soup he’d put the skins and heads and bones on the fire and burned them. The smell must have traveled up and down the lakeshore. There was half a moon and enough light to make out what was happening. He sat up to watch and the movement startled the skunk, which immediately raised its tail and aimed at him—from six feet away—but held fire.

Brian sat very still and the skunk seemed to shrug and then lowered its tail and went back to snooping around the fire. When it didn’t find anything it looked once more at the screened tent, snorted and waddled off into the night.

Brian smiled as he watched it leave. He didn’t know if it was a female but thought of it that way because the only other skunk he’d known closely had been a female that had “adopted” him and moved in with him when he’d spent the winter in the North. She had saved him from a bear and he would always have a soft spot for skunks.

In the east the sky was faintly light and Brian decided to get up and get ready. The pilot had said daylight-thirty and that would be in not much over an hour.

He made a small fire and put some water on to boil and dropped a pinch of tea in the water. While it was heating and boiling he rolled his bag and took the tent down and repacked it.

For a time he had nothing to do and he sat watching the fire, feeling hunger come back. The fish and broth had filled him but hadn’t lasted long and he didn’t have time now to fish and cook before it was time to leave. Hunger was an old friend. Once it had been an enemy and he had panicked whenever he felt the edges of it, but now he knew he wouldn’t die if he didn’t eat right away, or even this day, and he mentally tightened his belt.

Besides, he had some sugar cubes. He put three of them in the tea and drank it out of the pot as soon as it had cooled enough, and the hunger was knocked down.

He used the empty pot to pour water on the fire, killed it completely and stirred the ashes into slush. Then he loaded his pack and sleeping bag back on the plane and sat on the dock waiting.

Somewhere nearby a loon called for the morning, the sound flowing gently across the lake, and it seemed then, for a moment, as if he’d never been gone. As if the past two years and more had not existed and he’d stayed in the bush.

This lasted until he heard a motor and looked up to see an old Jeep Cherokee rattling down the ruts to the shack. There was a canoe on top and the pilot and two men inside.

Brian stood and waited as the Jeep parked. The three of them got out and took the canoe down and moved onto the dock.

He’d been dreading meeting the fishermen. All the magazines he’d read and some of the shows he’d watched on television had left a bad taste in his mouth about so-called professional fishermen. He didn’t feel like explaining himself to anybody. The pilot knew who he was, knew the Small horns and that he was going to visit them—or assumed it. Now there were two others who would ask questions.

But Brian was wrong.

The men were old—past sixty—but still moving well. They took the canoe down and tied it on the off float of the plane, the one away from the dock, with practiced ease. They looked so much alike that Brian thought they must be brothers. Square-jawed and balding; what hair they had was gray and bristly. They smiled easily, said hello to Brian, but didn’t ask more from him.

The plane was almost full by the time the men got their gear behind the rear seat. Brian moved his packs back as well and slid into the rear seat. The plane only took four adults so one of the old men sat next to him and oddly enough it was Brian who wanted to question them. Their fishing equipment wasn’t new or high-tech. The reels were old casting reels, obviously well kept, and the men handled them with an almost loving care.

Brian was silent until they were in the air and then he turned to the man next to him. “Do you fish a lot?”

The man had been looking out the window, down at the lakes, and he turned and smiled. “Once a year. We go up into the bush lakes and fish for muskies. We catch and release them—actually, we hardly ever catch them because we cast and use plugs we made ourselves. I haven’t caught one now in . . . Ben, when did I last catch a muskie? Was it two years ago?”

The man in the front turned. “Yes. No. I think it was three. We’ve had a lot of strikes since then but no boaters. Why?”