Caribou Island (15 page)

The Coleman stove had a back to it, a windbreak, but when Irene tried to put it up, the stove blew over, spilling fuel, the wind too strong. Plenty of propane stoves available now, and they were still using one with wet fuel. She’d be bringing fumes into the tent. The wind was something you could learn to hate. Pressurized and vindictive.

Irene’s hood blew off, her head exposed now to the rain, but she jammed the lighter right against the burner, flicked again, and it caught. A quick flash of warmth on her hand. She adjusted the knob and the flame held, though it was blown so much it was never a full ring, one side or another snuffed.

Irene pulled the hood of her raingear back on, turned away from the wind, and shivered. It should be visible. You should be able to see the wind. It had weight and heft, an intent born purely into the world, unforgiving. It would blow until all the world was smooth and nothing left in its path.

The six-gallon water jug was heavy, so Irene only tipped it, filled a pot, placed the pot on the stove and put a lid on. The water should come to a boil in about two hours. That was her guess. Another impossible part of their stupid plan. Why don’t you make some pasta, Irene? Sure thing, big daddy, coming right up. Wouldn’t want to slow down your pile of sticks.

Irene hunched over as low as she could, her face close to a patch of horsetail, thin spindles, segmented. Only a foot high now, she said to the plants, but you used to be higher, didn’t you. They looked frail now, on their way out, but once they had grown as tall as redwoods, in a time when other plants hadn’t yet figured out how to grow above two inches. First with a vascular system. The lives of plants like humans, full of struggle and domination, loss and dreams that never happened or happened only briefly. And that was the worst, to have something and then not have it, that was certainly the worst by far.

Irene ripped out all the horsetail, tossed it aside. Time to move on, she told the plants. You’ve stayed past your time. Then she stood up, braced against the blast, and tromped over to Gary, to the hovel.

Gary was sawing down through the front wall, a jerky motion, stops and starts.

Can you push out against the wall? Gary yelled. The saw’s jamming up.

So the wall was folding back already, pinching the saw. What would it be like when he removed a section? Irene knew he hadn’t thought that far ahead, though. She leaned into the wall beside him. Smell of sawdust even in all this wind, huff and puff of Gary beside her, sound of saw teeth ripping. He liked this, she knew. And maybe she shouldn’t grudge him. She held on to the top log, rough bark, laid her cheek against it, and could feel the whole wall moving.

A concentration again behind her right eye, a fault line, the bones of her skull like tectonic plates moving, grinding at the edges. Her only goal each day now was to get through the day, her only goal each sleepless night to get through the night. Reduced to existence, to bare survival, and there was something good about that maybe, something honest. But she still felt other things, too, light drifting notes somewhere out there: loneliness, for instance. She missed Rhoda. She hadn’t stopped feeling entirely.

Irene wondered if this was what had made her mother’s end possible, the fading away of feeling. She had always imagined the opposite: her mother in a fit of passion, distraught at losing her husband to another woman, unable to imagine her life without him. But what if she simply hadn’t felt anything anymore, after losing everything? That was a new possibility, something Irene couldn’t have guessed. And it felt dangerous. You could end up there without having noticed the transition at all.

Lean harder, Gary yelled. It’s still jamming up.

Sorry, Irene yelled back, and she pushed harder into the wall, her feet slipping on the ply. She doubted any cabin had ever been built like this, having to push at the walls, walls so frail they bent in the wind. Even the first pioneers, with their rough tools, would have done better.

Pushing harder pressurized her head, brought the pain to a new intensity, the cold and wind and exertion a perfect combination. That was the other possibility: suicide to end the pain. A very simple equation. Not worth living if you only felt pain, so if the pain seemed unending, the logical thing was to end your life. But she would never forgive her mother for that. Her mother should have loved her, and that should have been enough. Irene would never do that to Rhoda.

Irene had to stop pushing for a moment, the pressure in her head too intense, the entire thing a balloon.

Keep pushing, Gary yelled.

I can’t, she told him. My head.

Gary stopped sawing, the saw left jammed in the wood, hanging there. He straightened up and had to grab the wall with one hand to keep from blowing over. Irene hunched against the wind.

You can’t work? Gary’s lips pulled back a bit, angry, impatient. But then maybe he realized how that sounded. Closed his mouth, looked away. Sorry, he said.

Yeah, me too.

Sorry, what? he asked. Couldn’t hear you over the wind. The wind buffeting, pumping in blasts, a rising howl each time it accelerated.

I said, Yeah, me too.

Oh.

She could tell he was afraid to ask what that meant.

Gary looked down at the wall, at where he was sawing, the wall curving back, pinching the gap. I think I have to brace this better first, he yelled. If I get the braces ready, can you push while I nail?

Yeah, she yelled. Why not.

Gary climbed over the back wall, going for the pile of two-by-fours. Irene slumped down inside the cabin, out of the wind for the most part, ducked her head down, her chin inside her jacket, folded her arms, closed her eyes.

A fair representation of her three decades in Alaska, slumping down in raingear, hiding, making herself as small as possible, fending off mosquitoes that somehow managed to fly despite the wind. Feeling chilled and alone. Not the expansive vision you’d be tempted to have, spreading your arms on some sunny day on an open slope of purple lupine, looking at mountains all around. This was her life, and she wanted it to pass. At least right now. Thick rain came down again, and she remembered the pasta water but didn’t want to get up.

Gary sawed away at the lumber pile. The braces would be knees jutting inside the cabin from every wall, impossible to walk around inside without running into them. First house in the world designed like that. Irene the lucky wife.

But she shouldn’t be so small-minded, ungenerous. That wasn’t who she wanted to be. So she stood up, sailed across the platform, climbed over the back wall, and went to tend the water. Lifted the lid, saw no bubbles. Hadn’t expected to see any.

She hiked over to Gary. A patch covered in sawdust now, bright and reddish in the rain. Water’s not boiling, she yelled. Too much wind. How about I make PB&J?

Yeah, Gary said, not looking up, concentrated on sawing.

So Irene turned off the stove burner, left the pot of water sitting there for next time. The storm forecast to last a week, maybe two, so it might be a while. At the tent, she kneeled just inside the opening, careful not to drip on a sleeping bag, and made sandwiches. Made four, to get them through the afternoon. Almond butter and lingonberry jam, not bad.

Soup’s on, she yelled from the tent. Kneeling like she was at some altar, but worshipping what god? An outpost for the faithful who hadn’t yet decided on a name. Still fashioning their god, finding their fears and their corollaries. Most importantly, what would the god do? Irene didn’t want an afterlife. This life was more than enough. And she didn’t need to be forgiven. She just wanted to be given back what had been taken. A lost-and-found god. That would be good enough. No other fancy qualities, nothing mystical. Just give back what had been taken. Can you do that? she asked.

No answer, of course. The tent as wild as any flames for reading signs, but you’d have to want to see. You’d have to be half-dumb or from an earlier time. That was the problem with now. You couldn’t believe, and it was awful not to believe.

Gary fell down beside her, another would-be penitent on his knees. Well, he said. I got a couple frames knocked together.

The House of the Lord shall be built, Irene said. Hallelujah.

What?

Sorry, Irene said. Just a joke. Here on my knees, I feel like I’m in some kind of church.

Huh, Gary said. You’re right. Unbelievers going through the motions, like Anglo-Saxon Christians. We even have the storm blowing outside. They’d give a Christian burial but lop off the head just in case. Then they’d go lop off some living heads.

Sounds good, Irene said. If I stayed out here long enough, I could probably be driven to murder.

It’s not that bad.

I’d rather be unconscious, but other than that, yeah, it’s pretty good.

Irene.

She chewed her sandwich and didn’t say more. She didn’t feel like talking. For a moment, things had seemed bright. And that moment had lasted about half a minute. The tent a void before them, beckoning. She wanted to lie down again.

We need a roof, Gary said. We get to that stage and everything will seem a lot better.

The almond butter was too salty, the sandwich gumming in her mouth. I miss Rhoda, she said. She used to visit every day or two, and now she can’t.

Once we’re done, she can come out and visit us.

You’ve separated me from everyone. And I don’t mean just now. I mean for thirty years. Separated me from my family, from your family, from friends we could have made here, from the people I worked with, who you didn’t want coming over to the house. You’ve made me alone, and now it’s too late.

Whoa, Irene. Slow down there. You’re hitching up a hissy eighteen-wheeler.

You’ve destroyed my life, you fuck.

Fine, he said. I’ve destroyed your life. Gary left his uneaten sandwich, stalked off to hammer at his own ill-shapen temple.

And what was the point? Irene asked. Why did everything have to be taken? Retired from work, her children grown, friends and family fallen away, everything that her marriage had once been, who she had been. All gone. What was left?

She finished her sandwich then stood in the rain and wind that had no power to purify, empty water, and walked to the cabin, climbed over the back wall, stood beside her husband to push so he could fit a clumsy brace, a couple pieces of two-by-four tacked together. She didn’t speak and he didn’t speak. They only worked, first one side of the window and then the next, Gary down on his knees, driving his shoulder into the lower wall, pushing the logs back to the edge of the ply, driving nails.

Irene knew she should feel sorry, but she felt nothing. She left Gary to carve out the window, a void in the wall that would become their only view, something that seemed an obvious symbol of the narrowing of their lives, and returned to the tent to lie down.

The tent so loud above her over every other sound, she finally slept, faded away into the only real shelter.

When she awoke, it was night and Gary was in his sleeping bag beside her. Are you awake? she asked.

Yes.

What are you thinking about?

The Seafarer.
Calde gethrungen
, he recited to her,
waeron mine fet
,
forste gebunden
,
caldum clommum
,
thaer tha ceare seofedun hat ymb heortan.

And what’s that mean? she asked. You want me to ask.

Pinched by cold were my feet, fettered by frost, by cold chains,
caldum clommum
, there the anxieties sighed hot around my heart.

Yeah, you have it tough, she said.

Who are you to know?

The storm came from a colder place, an early fall promising an early winter. The Bering Sea weighing down on them, the Arctic close enough to be felt. Already the leaves had turned, and it was still September. Aspen become yellow and gold. Rhoda hadn’t noticed the transition. It seemed that overnight the leaves had changed, the motor homes disappeared. The streets felt empty, thick bands of rain sweeping across, no one on the river walk as she crossed the bridge. River swollen and fast, salmon already rotted away, their desperate run finished. Darker in the mornings now, the light disappearing quickly.

For more than a week Rhoda hadn’t been able to reach her mother, and this was all she could think about now, her mother and father out there on that island in the storm. Cold now, near freezing, and they were living in a tent, building a cabin. They couldn’t be building in this weather, though. All day and night lying in a tent, waiting. They’d go crazy. Or one of them could be hurt, and it was too rough to take the boat for help. Rhoda didn’t know whether anyone else was still out there. Only summer cabins now. In the past, half a dozen families had lived year-round on Caribou, but now her parents would be the only ones.

Rhoda found it difficult to go to work. She couldn’t focus. She arrived almost fifteen minutes late, said hello to Dr. Turin and Sandy, the front office manager, and took off her raincoat. Walked into the back room and said hello to Chippy, an arctic ground squirrel some nut had raised as a pet. His tail too small, like a chipmunk’s. Bear burrito. Tundra rat. But he had gotten lucky somehow, transcended his fate. He’d have heating all winter, skip hibernation, feast on cat food and watch TV. How would his little brain make any sense of that?

Rhoda looked through the day’s schedule. Mostly flea baths. Light now that drop-ins had gone south. She had a lunch date with Jim. He was taking her somewhere nice—a surprise, he’d said—though there were only a couple nice restaurants in town, so the surprise would be somewhat limited.

A buzz from Sandy, and Rhoda went out front to collect a pug named Corker, brought him back and set him in the tub. He was looking for a limb to grab, she could tell, but she stayed behind him, kept him dominated.

She’d been dominating Jim, too, for the past week. An accident. She’d given up hope, realized it wasn’t going to work, and somehow that put her in the stronger position. She felt like the walking dead, sleepless and worried about her mom and dad, feeling unattractive and doomed to spinsterhood, and somehow that was setting Jim on fire. It was too stupid to even try to understand, because in the end, he would still take her for granted, same as he’d been doing all along. The only reason she wasn’t leaving was that she had nowhere else to live.

Corker hunched down, trembling, and Rhoda hoped this was fear as well as cold. He’d had his share of getting his way. Time for him to feel something new.

The flea shampoo always irritated Rhoda’s eyes, made her red and puffy, so at the restaurant, she’d look like she’d been crying. She gave Corker his final rinse, he shook and didn’t do a very good job of it, she toweled him off, and she could see her father having a heart attack out there, gone to build in the rain, pushing himself, picking up some big log and then just keeling over. Her mother trying to help him, calling out for anyone, but her voice lost in the storm, no help nearby, no phone. Her mother would have to drag him down to the shore, try to get him into that boat with waves pounding at it, waves over her head maybe, and she’d be knocked down, her leg broken, maybe unconscious, and Rhoda wouldn’t even know. The storm would blow for another week, her parents lying facedown in water, dead, or thrown on the beach, waves breaking over, their bodies white and bloated, blue lips.

Damn it, she said. How could you do this to me? Then she realized she could buy a satellite phone for her parents. That would work. She’d be able to reach them. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of this before.

She left Corker in the heat lamp area to dry and thumbed through the yellow pages. Half a dozen calls later, she was told no one would have a sat phone in stock but she could order one online. So she checked and found it was almost $1,500, plus air time at $1.49 per minute if you bought 500 minutes, so another $750.

Yikes, she said. She would have to ask Jim. That was the only way. She needed the phone, and she deserved to be paid for all the domestic service she had provided. Though maybe she was being a little hard on him.

At noon, Jim called and asked her to meet at Kenai Landing. He was running late. So she drove out, almost fifteen minutes away. An old converted cannery. Mark had worked on boats here when it was in full operation. Now only one of the two large warehouses still processed fish. The other had been converted to boutique shops, the machinist’s shop and hen house converted to hotel rooms, a smaller warehouse become a restaurant.

The wind sharper here off the Cook Inlet. Colder. Heavier rain. She parked as close as she could but had to run a hundred yards. In this rain, it all looked like a cannery still, an industrial camp, cold gray warehouses and grim work. A hell of a place to meet for lunch.

But when she swung open the door, Jim was waiting there and had a big grin, obviously happy to see her, so that was nice. Sorry about the rain, he said.

They shed their raingear and sat at a booth. Jim ordered king crab legs for both of them, a treat. How’s work? he asked.

Jim never asked about her work, but she decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Someone brought in an arctic ground squirrel, she said.

As a pet?

Yeah. He claims Chippy is real smart. Has plans for teaching him various card games this winter, I think.

Jim laughed. Takes all kinds.

And that’s something we do have here.

Ha, Jim said.

Then it was oddly silent. She couldn’t think of anything to say, and he seemed preoccupied. Looking down at his napkin and silverware. He was a weirdo, plain and simple. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen that before.

Jim slid out of the booth, slow and awkward, stood a moment, looking at the ground, then got down on one knee. He was holding a small box in one hand.

Rhoda, he said, looking up at her now, and she couldn’t believe this was happening. He hadn’t given her any chance to prepare. He opened the box and showed her the ring, a large princess-cut diamond with smaller diamonds on either side, not a setting she ever would have picked, but there it was, a big diamond. Will you marry me?

He looked afraid. And she felt afraid suddenly. All she had wanted, and none of it was happening the way she had imagined, but it was happening at least. This miserable restaurant, mostly empty, a rainy day, and she smelled like flea bath, her eyes all irritated, but what the hell. Yes, she said. Yes, of course. She stood and he held her and they kissed, the way it should be. The ring on her finger now, looking at it on his shoulder as she held him, her husband, or fiancé. Soon to be. She wanted to tell her mother.

I have to tell my mom, she said.

Yeah, Jim said. We can tell your parents.

But she’s on that island. Rhoda let go of Jim and sat back down. The waiters and waitresses were clapping now, from across that huge empty space. Thank you, Rhoda called out to them, and tried to smile.

Rhoda, Jim said, sitting back down on his side. It’s all right. You’ll be able to tell her soon.

I want to tell her now. I want my mom to know.

Jim looked over his shoulder at the restaurant staff, gave a little wave. Rhoda, they’re going to think something is wrong. You look so unhappy.

I think I’m going to cry, she said, and then she did. She put her hands up to cover her face.

That ended the clapping, and no one came over. Rhoda tried to make it stop, but she wanted her mother to be here, and she was afraid something might have happened. I’m afraid they might be hurt, she told Jim. There’s no way to reach them.

Rhoda, can you stop crying? I don’t want these people to think the wrong thing.

Fine, Rhoda said, pulling her hands away from her face, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. I won’t embarrass you, since that’s what’s important now.

Rhoda. It’s not like that. They just won’t understand.

I’m going back to work, she said. And she stood up, grabbed her purse and raingear.

Please, Jim said.

I’ll see you this evening. I’m driving out to their house after work.

In all this rain? It’s forty minutes out there, and then the gravel road.

I’ll see you this evening. She marched out the front door without looking at the waitstaff, who were all staring at her, she knew, and ran through the rain to her car, a place where she could cry all she wanted, all the way back to work.

And when she arrived, she wiped her face with Kleenex and no one thought anything was wrong, since her eyes were always puffy here. She could hide. She gave a gray terrier a bath and wondered why she felt so miserable. She loved Jim. She was happy to marry Jim. It was all she wanted, really. But somehow not being able to tell her mother was ruining everything, and she didn’t understand that. She felt empty and lonely and scared when she should be feeling happy.

The afternoon dragged on forever, flea bath after flea bath. She had small bites all up her arms and could feel several in her hair. The smaller dogs, especially, were just flea sponges.

She had to work late, until after seven, time creeping along and no call from Jim, no visit to see how she was doing. She bundled up, hurried through cold and rain to her car, and took the highway toward the lake. The sun low, setting so much earlier now than even a few weeks ago. She ran the heater, had the defroster going on the windshield.

Rhoda was angry Jim hadn’t called or visited, but she tried to stay positive. They’d get married this winter on Kauai, maybe Hanalei Bay. But Rhoda felt tired thinking about any of that. All the years of dreaming, and now that it was happening, she couldn’t even focus on it. Thanks, Mom and Dad, she said. And thanks, Jim.

So much water on the road. A truck came blasting past and threw up enough spray she couldn’t see anything for a moment. Driving blind at sixty. She slowed down.

The bullet-riddled signs for the lake appeared, finally, and she turned onto gravel. She didn’t know why she was coming out here. They weren’t going to be home. She should be with Jim. But she just had to check.

No one else on this road. A long, lonely curve of gravel in the middle of nowhere. The summer traffic ended. Trees blown and bent. Pieces of gravel hitting the underside of the car, the windshield swamped and then clear and then covered again, fogged all along the edges.

She pulled up to her parents’ house and ran to the front door, but no one had been around for a while now. Small branches on the walkway. She banged on the door, but of course no response. Looked down to see weeds in the planter boxes. Colder here than in Soldotna. Dark and windy, close to the mountains and glacier. Rhoda didn’t know what to do. She needed to know her mother was safe.

She leaned against the front door, put her cheek against it, and closed her eyes. She needed to think, but the inside of her was only fear. She could go to the boat ramp. Maybe she’d see something there.

So she drove to the campground. Her dad’s truck in the lot, and nothing else. The sun had set, blocked by rain and cloud, almost no light left. She walked in near darkness down the ramp to the water’s edge. Breaking waves, just as she had imagined, white flashes nearly as high as her head. Steep and packed close together, louder even than the wind as they crashed ashore. The rain stinging her face, cold and slushy, turning into snow.

Damn you, she yelled across the lake. No way to reach them even if she found a boat. Only a few miles away, and sealed off from the rest of the world.