Caribou Island (16 page)

Gary noticed a change in the sound of the rain hitting the tent. Softer now. The first snow, a kind of prayer answered. No roof yet on their cabin, but the snows had arrived. He wouldn’t have thought of it this way before. He would have railed and raged at the early season, felt cheated by time. But now he understood he wanted this. He wanted the snow.

He sat up in his sleeping bag, unzipped quietly.

I’m awake, Irene said. You don’t have to be quiet. I’m always awake.

It’s snowing, he said.

I know. It’s been snowing for hours now.

I’m just going to take a look. He pulled on his pants and shirt, stood in the entranceway of the tent to pull on boots and raingear. The tent still blown by wind, whipping and lurching, but no longer the heavy sound of the rain.

He stepped outside into a deeper cold than he had expected. Not quite October yet, but it felt like October. Not wearing enough beneath his raingear, but he’d only be out here a short time anyway. He bent into the wind and snow and walked toward the water’s edge, wanted to see the waves. Dark out, black, but the waves would be breaking, showing white.

The undergrowth thick, deadwood everywhere. Alder branches lashing at him. The snow cold on his cheeks, melting when it hit. Big flakes, delicate. He wished he could see them.

Through alder to the tufted growth near the shore, thick grasses, and he could see the white of the waves now, fainter than he had imagined, and feel the windblown spray on his cheeks.

Nap nihtscua
, darkened night-shadow,
northan sniwde
, snow from north. This is what Gary loved.
Hrim hrusan bond
, frost-bound world,
haegl feol on eorthan
, hail fell on the earth,
corna caldast
, coldest of grains. His favorite part of the poem, because it was the unexpected shift, a surprise. After all his suffering at sea in storms, the seafarer wants only to go back out again.
Nor is his thought for the harp nor for ring-receiving nor the pleasure in woman nor in hope of the world
,
nor for anything else
,
except for the surging of the waves.

A desire from a thousand years ago, a longing for
atol ytha gewealc
, the terrible surging of the waves, and Gary understood this, finally. He hadn’t understood it in grad school, because he’d been too young, too conventional, believed the poem was only about religion. He hadn’t yet seen his life wasted, hadn’t yet understood the pure longing for what was really a kind of annihilation. A desire to see what the world can do, to see what you can endure, to see, finally, what you’re made of as you’re torn apart. A kind of bliss to annihilation, to being wiped away.
But ever he has longing
,
he who sets out on the sea
, and this longing is to face the very worst, a delicate hope for a larger wave.

Gary shivered with cold but wanted to face the elements more purely. He pushed back his hood, unzipped his rain jacket, laid it in the grass at his feet. Full shock of wind, all his warmth taken. Pulled off his sweater and then his shirt. Bare-chested now, and he raised his arms into the storm, yelled at the wind and snow, a madman. A man alive, he thought, and wondered whether he was expecting some kind of rebirth, redemption. But he hated that he had any thoughts at all. He wanted to be swept clean of thoughts, wanted his mind to stop. So he stepped forward into the spray, onto the beach, slippery stones covered in slime, kept his arms raised and walked slowly, ceremonially, his body shaking out of control, wracked. He slipped and had to put a hand down, recovered. Legs pounded now by waves, blasting into him, the first shock of a wave hitting his stomach, and he leaned sideways into the oncoming water, arms lowered now, bracing, hit again by a wave, knocking him back and he fell, went under, one arm jarred all the way to the shoulder from impact with rock, and then he was clear again, then drenched by another wave. He yelled, whooped and hollered, felt better than he’d felt in years, stopped trying to stand, just sprawled in the rocks, held his breath each time he was covered, shook free in the trough, yelled again. He didn’t even feel that cold anymore.

The world came in different sizes, though. That expansive feeling, that sense of extension, of connection, could moments later feel smaller, hard and cold, and Gary didn’t know how this worked. The moment was over, before he had ridden it as far as he would have liked, and if he stayed here now, it would not come back. He knew that. But he stayed anyway, because he didn’t like that rule. Was it a rule of the world, or just a limitation of self, and how could you ever know the difference?

Why can’t I stop thinking about this as a moment? he asked out loud. Why can’t I just live it? Why does it have to end after five minutes?

Consciousness not really a gift. He’d had these thoughts thirty years ago, when he first arrived, and there’d been no progress. All that had changed was his commitment. Back then it’d been full of belief, and now it was more determined, coupled to annihilation, not expecting anything in return. Nothing better to do, he told the waves.

The water more than just a medium, more than wave and temp. It felt abrasive against his skin. It had body and impact. It hurt to stay here, despite the numbness. So that’s what got him to crawl away, finally. He couldn’t stand. The rocks hurt his knees, even through his jeans. He crawled out of the waves and onto the beach, into tufts of grass, spiky and rough, felt around with his hands until he found his shirt and sweater and raincoat. He didn’t put them on. Just held them in his hands as he crawled over deadfall and blueberry, patches of moss, whatever else covered this ground. He made it to the tent, unzipped, his hand numb like a club, and crawled in.

You’re shivering, Irene said. Your teeth are chattering like they’re going to splinter. What did you do out there?

Went for a swim, he said, and fumbled at the buttons on his jeans, trying to get his wet clothing off.

Went for a swim.

Yep. I need help with my pants. Can’t get the buttons. Hurry, please.

That’s great. But she crawled over and helped. Her hands hot on his skin. You’re freezing, she said. Don’t think of trying to get in my bag with me.

Thanks, he said.

Thank yourself. You’ve been doing stupid shit like this for too long.

Out of his jeans and boots and socks, Gary found a towel to dry off, found his thermal underwear, top first, then bottoms, got into his bag. Found his stocking cap. The mummy part of his bag over his head, he pulled the drawstring. He’d be okay now.

Here’s what I have to tell you, Irene said.

Let’s skip it.

No. Your idea that you’ve deserved more than you’ve gotten, that’s the problem.

I don’t need a lecture. I’m aware of my failings.

No you’re not. None of your life has measured up. You think you were destined for more. You think you were worth more.

I know who I am.

No you don’t.

Fuck you.

Not that easy. You think you deserved someone better than me.

Maybe I did.

Irene hit him then, a hard punch that glanced off his forearm. He went into a tuck in his sleeping bag and she kept hitting him, not saying anything, just hard punches over and over to his body. Didn’t punch his face. Still holding back. Why hold back? he asked. Why not punch me in the face?

Because I love you, you fucker. And then she was weeping.

Gary turned over to face the other way. Let her weep. Maybe she would leave. And he knew that was wrong, but he just didn’t feel whatever he’d need to feel to counter it. Maybe he was missing some basic human faculty, whatever it is that connects people to each other. But what he wanted was to be left alone. And was that really a crime?

When Gary woke in the morning, Irene was gone. He was stuffed up, having to breathe through his mouth, throat sore. His head hurt. So he turned over and tried to go back to sleep.

He could hear hammering, the wind died down, the tent no longer berserk. Irene working on the cabin, but he wondered what she was doing. She could be breaking it apart, not building at all.

This got him up, the idea that she might be destroying the cabin. He pulled on a dry set of clothes, his bib overalls and an old dry pair of boots, his wet raincoat. Unzipped the tent and stepped into a land gone white. The snow not deep, maybe an inch or two, but breathtaking the way it transformed. Distance and depth defined, the upward-facing leaves white, the stems beneath in shadow. Even the spruce, the collective effect of the topside of each needle and topside only made white. The world outlined and remade entirely, the light itself changed. Yesterday might as well have been six months ago.

Wow, Gary said. This is beautiful.

Irene paused in her hammering, looked around, hooded in green raingear. Yes it is, she said. But she didn’t look at Gary. Went back to hammering.

Gary stepped over to the cabin, walked in the back door, fully cut out and braced. On the forward wall, the space for the window, not quite square. Layers of log above it, the last layer at eight feet. Irene standing on an aluminum stepstool, driving in the last nails.

Thanks, Gary said. Looks like we’re ready for a roof.

Yeah, she said. What’s the plan?

I was going to do it with logs, Gary said. But I don’t see how that’s going to work. It’ll just leak.

No response from Irene. Being careful, he could tell. Had a lot to say but was holding back, which was fine by him. She finished a nail, five blows. The wind sifting through the trees, much lighter than before.

So I think I’ll buy some sheeting in town. Not the look I wanted, but we’re late, and we need a roof. Wind’s dying down, so we should be able to get to shore, maybe tomorrow or the next day.

I like that plan, she said.

We need to put it at an angle, Gary said, for the snow to slide off. We’ll make the back wall higher and get some two-by-eights for roof joists to run from the back wall to the front. That should hold it, I think.

Irene stepped down from the stool, looked out the hole for the front window, standing there with her shoulders slumped, holding the hammer. Sounds good, she finally said. That’ll work.

She still wouldn’t look at him, and Gary felt almost like he should make an effort here, say something to close the distance, to make peace. Maybe apologize for last night, for saying he deserved someone better than her. But she was the one who had attacked him, and he didn’t feel like making the effort right now. He felt chilled. He thought for some reason of Ariadne and the passage in Catullus where
in her bride’s heart revolves a maze of sorrow
, maybe because of the way Irene’s shoulders were slumped. He couldn’t see her face, but she looked like all was lost, staring out into the snow. He couldn’t remember the Latin. Ariadne was watching Theseus take off in his ship, abandoning her, just as Aeneas would do to Dido and Gary himself had been thinking for years, perhaps decades now, of doing to Irene. And maybe now was finally the time to let their marriage die. It might be better for both of them. A thing ill-conceived from the start, something that had made both their lives smaller. Hard to know what was true. Part of him wanted to apologize, wrap his arms around her, tell her she was all he had in this world, but that was only habit, not a thing you could trust.

I’ll go cut the logs, he said.

Rhoda found Mark at the go-cart track. He and his friends always went on the first day of snow so they could spin circles and crash into each other. Fishing was over, and they had nothing to do now except drugs and stupid shit like this. Rhoda clung to the chain-link fence and yelled to get his attention, but of course there was no way he could hear her. The putting of a dozen engines. Mark wearing a camo jacket and a Russian hat with earflaps. His friend Jason wearing a pink Hello Kitty jacket just to be an ass.

The course was rimmed by stacks of old tires, then fence, then the broken-down motor homes of half a dozen fishermen who lived here year-round, Mark’s buddies. The kind of depressing hell Rhoda wanted no part of anymore. The kind of place where she had spent all of junior high and high school, smoking pot and having sex at the edge of gravel lots. She wanted to forget any of that had ever happened.

She grabbed a piece of gravel and threw it at Mark as he flew around the corner. It bounced off the front of his cart. He skidded to a stop, then saw it was her, grinned, flipped her off, and hit the accelerator. Tok, wearing a Red Baron scarf, slammed from behind, threw Mark’s cart sideways into the barrier. Tollef, Tok’s brother, came around fast and rammed Mark again, Mark whiplashing against his seatbelt. He was yelling and stomping the accelerator, trying to get out of there, made it maybe twenty feet before Hello Kitty whipped by and leaned over to cuff him on the back of the neck. But then Mark made it clear and was chasing them down.

Rhoda walked through a gap in the fence to the small set of bleachers, the only spectator. She’d had sex with Jason once on these bleachers, disgusting to think of now. That had been in the snow, too, though much colder, middle of winter. It hadn’t become her life; that was the important thing.

She waited through another fifteen minutes of crude gestures and obscenities, doughnuts and collisions, the life of the penis. Waited until they’d had their fill and sauntered back to the entrance, shouldering each other and going for wedgies. Then they walked past, without stopping, Jason with a little smile. We’re going to Coolie’s if you want a beer, Mark said over his shoulder.

Hey. I came here to talk to you.

Sorry, he said. I’m otherwise engaged. He said it in his Brit voice and of course got a laugh.

I need to get out to Caribou Island. You can arrange a boat.

Mark stopped, at least, and turned around. His friends kept going. Why do you have to go out there?

Our parents, she said. Remember? The people who made you and raised you? They’ve been out there this entire storm, in a tent, and there’s no way to contact them. I need to know they’re all right.

They’re fine, Mark said and turned away.

Listen, Rhoda said, but her voice had gone weak. She was starting to cry. I know you don’t like me, but I’m really worried about them, and I need your help.

Mark surprised her then. Turned around, walked over and gave her a hug, patted her on the back. Okay, he said. I’m sorry. I’ll get a boat. When do you want to go?

Today?

It’s too late for today. How about tomorrow, ten a.m., I’ll meet you at the lower campground?

Thank you, Mark. You can be good, see?

Can’t make a habit of it, he smiled. See you tomorrow. He jogged ahead to catch up with his friends.

Then she remembered. Hey, she yelled. I’m getting married.

Mark waved his arm in the air to acknowledge, but that was all. Didn’t turn around.

So Rhoda returned to work and asked for the time off. She got through the rest the day and went home to Jim. An enormous complex of exercise equipment in the middle of the living room, painted metallic light blue. Jim wearing spandex shorts and a wife-beater, pulling a bar down behind his neck.

Wow, she said. What the hell is that?

This is the future me, Jim said. I figure I have at least ten more good years.

Okay, she said. She wasn’t sure what this was all about. You’d better have more than ten. I’m only thirty.

No problemo, he said. You’ll be living with a hardbody soon.

She watched him finish his set. He was out of breath and red-faced by the end, splotchy, his arms and shoulders looking old and slack.

You’re not thinking of other women, are you?

What?

This sudden getting in shape thing, right after you ask me to marry you. Kind of seems like a panic response, making yourself attractive again so you’re not limited to one mate.

Rhoda.

I’m serious. You said you have ten more good years. Good for what?

Jim stood up and flopped his workout towel over his shoulder. Rhoda, he said. You’re the only woman I want. Okay?

She tried to find anything in his eyes, any sign of a lie, looked at his mouth, also.

Rhoda, I love you.

Okay. She gave him a hug. I’m just stressed out about my mom still, I think. I’m going to Caribou Island tomorrow. Mark’s taking me.

In this weather? You go out on Skilak at the wrong time and you could die.

The storm’s passed. There’s not supposed to be any wind tomorrow morning. Maybe not even any snow.

You shouldn’t go out there. Just wait for them to come in. They have to come in soon for supplies. They’ve been out almost a week.

Ten days.

Well that’s my point then. They’ll come in.

Rhoda didn’t feel like talking about this. She went to the fridge and started pulling things out for dinner. Chicken she needed to use up, olives, feta, red onion. Maybe some couscous. She could hear Jim huffing away. Hard to believe the new muscles were for her.

Cooking always helped. Especially in a kitchen like this. A good stove, six burners. The couscous in water on the back row. Then she poured olive oil in a pan, added minced garlic, got the chicken breasts going. Chopped the red onion. She could calm down when she was cooking. Her breathing could slow. She’d been panicking without even knowing it. Panicking all day, probably.

Hey, she called out to Jim.

Yeah?

I need a satellite phone. They’re expensive. But I need to talk with my mom. It’s been freaking me out.

How expensive are they?

Fifteen hundred, or maybe a little less. Plus seven-fifty for minutes.

Ouch.

I need it.

Okay.

The chicken was browned, cooked most the way through, red onions translucent. She poured in the tomato sauce, olives and some of their juice, let it come to a boil then turned down to simmer. Added pepper, couldn’t think of what other spices went with Greek chicken. Poured in some balsamic, then added Madeira. Probably not right for this dish, but what the hell. Drunken chicken. She poured herself a glass of cabernet.

I’ll take some in a minute, Jim said. I’m hitting the showers.

Rhoda drank her wine and stared down at the chicken, the olives dark in the sauce. Something had changed. Somehow the air a little cooler, maybe, thinner, more isolating. Just the two of them here in this house. Maybe because there had been a goal before. The proposal. Rhoda could see how marriage might feel lonely. A new feeling she couldn’t quite describe or even reach. Something at the edges, something she didn’t like. She could imagine long periods of time in which they wouldn’t say much to each other, just moving individually around the house. And she wondered whether this was where kids fit in. Having a child would provide a new focus, a new center of attention, a place for the two of them to meet. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be. You focused on each other until you decided to marry, then you focused together on someone else. And then what happened when your kids grew up and left? Where were you supposed to focus then? There was something terrifying about not having a focus. Your life could never be just what it was. That was frightening. No one wanted that.

In the morning, Rhoda drove to Skilak. Heavy skies, cold, twenty-eight degrees, but very little wind, only occasional light snow, a few flakes and then it would be clear again. The trees white, with black shadows. No green. She knew they were still green, but she couldn’t see it. The winter color palette of white, black, brown, and gray, arrived earlier than usual.

She wanted to call Mark to confirm, but he would consider that nagging. She turned off the loop road toward the lower campground and coming over a rise could see water, gray and very small waves. Pulled into an empty lot, no one around, looked at her watch, a few minutes before ten.

Rhoda bundled in her snow jacket and hat, winter gloves. Wearing long underwear, also, and boots. It would be cold out on the lake in the boat. If the boat and Mark ever arrived, of course. She walked down to the ramp, to the water’s edge. A fine layer of snow, undisturbed. No one had used this ramp today. Her parents most likely the only people out there.

The lake already freezing at its edges. Clear thin panes of ice among the rocks. Delicate and translucent, most of it broken already into small triangular shards. Rhoda tapped at them with the toe of her boot.

Okay, Mark, she said, and pulled out her cell phone. Let’s hear the story. But when she called, he said he was only a few minutes away, so she decided to be nice. Thank you, she said. See you soon.

Rhoda had grown up on this lake. This was supposed to be home, this shoreline. These trees. The mountains, the way the heavy clouds moved in and made the summits an act of memory. But it didn’t feel like home. It felt as cold and impersonal as a place she had never been. She didn’t understand why her parents had settled here, and she wondered why she hadn’t moved away, like her friends, to a better place.

Mark came down the gravel road in his old truck, pulling a trailer. He gave her the shaka sign and a grin, pulled a wide half-circle in front of her, then backed the boat to the water. An open aluminum boat, something less than twenty feet, with an outboard. Exposed to the cold, but big enough to be safe.

Mark hopped out and Rhoda gave him a hug. Thanks, Mark.

Whoa, Mark said. It’s just a boat.

I know, but I’m worried about them. And I’m thinking, also, that they’d use the upper campground if they came in today. We may miss them if we launch here.

Well we’re here now, Mark said. We’ll just zip over to the upper campground if we don’t find them.

Okay, Rhoda said. She didn’t want to argue, but she wished they could drive around to the other ramp. It wouldn’t be that hard to do.

Mark was already unbuckling straps. Then he grabbed a small cooler out of the back of his truck, and fishing poles.

What’s that for? Rhoda asked.

A few brewskis. And a fishing pole in case I’m waiting. Never know when Nessie might be hungry. Six hundred feet deep. We have to have some sort of Sasquatch motherfucker down there.

Rhoda wanted to laugh or smile or something, but she felt tense. This trip a kind of opportunity, perhaps, but she just didn’t have it in her. She needed to see her parents safe first, and then she could do the chitchat.

Right, then, Mark said, and he grabbed life jackets. Here’s yours. Not that it’ll do much. We’d freeze before anyone got to us.

Thanks, she said. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate this.

He backed the boat into the water, left her with the bow line while he parked. Then they climbed aboard and were off, Rhoda in the bow, the wind sharp. Waves very small, no more than a foot, but the boat felt loose and wobbly at speed. Occasional spray over the side.

Rhoda searched off the port bow for any sign of a boat crossing to the upper campground, but she didn’t see a thing. No one else out here. The lake always larger than she expected. Rimmed by low shoreline and trees all along this end, impossible to tell distance. If you stood on one shore, you could think the other shore wasn’t far. It was only when you came out to the middle that you could judge size, but even then the perspective kept changing. Caribou and the other islands hardly visible at first, and then slowly they grew. Frying Pan Island first, with its long handle, Caribou behind it. Past them, a shoreline rockier, she knew, with boulders and cliffs, much prettier. Each of the bays over there was large enough to feel like its own lake, and yet from here they looked like nothing. Then the headwaters up to the glacier and the river that linked to other lakes beyond. It had been years since she’d been up there.

When they were kids, their parents took them camping on the far shores. Steep pebble beaches backed by forest and mountain. She and Mark hiked a rocky headland, with views of bays on both sides, and looked for wolverines. A nearly mythical creature. She didn’t know a single person who had seen one, and so as children, they were constantly hunting the wolverine, and they scared each other with tales of what would happen when they’d find it. The wolverine would sometimes play dead, or offer up its neck, but if a bear went for that, the wolverine would attach to the bear’s underside, bite its neck and rip its razor claws all along the bear’s belly. This was what she imagined as a kid, reaching down for a dead wolverine and having it rise up and rip out her stomach. She wasn’t scared of bears, because she had seen those, and she loved animals, but she had never seen a wolverine.

Remember the wolverine stories? she yelled to Mark over the engine.

What?

She repeated.

Oh yeah, Mark smiled. You used to scare the crap out of me with those.

Rhoda smiled too, then looked ahead again at the islands approaching. White now with snow, and she couldn’t remember how many years it had been since she’d last visited.

Calmer on the back side of the islands as they curved around Frying Pan. Flat water, no spray. Small waves again around the other side, and several cabins tucked into the trees. She had expected to see her parents’ boat by now.

The chop a little rougher, and Mark slowed. The island steeper, rising to a hill. No boat along the shore. Rhoda couldn’t find her parents.

Slow down, she yelled to Mark. They have to be somewhere in here. She was searching the trees, starting to panic. There was no boat. So they could have left for the upper campground already. But they also could have gone down in the storm, drowned, or their boat washed away and they were stranded and maybe something had happened. It was nothing out here. No other people, no help.