Juggling Fire (11 page)
Chunks of dry spruce are still stacked to the roof poles.
It was Becky’s and my job to stack the firewood and bring it in with Dad. Because I was so little, I was rather proud of my muscles. I remember following Dad into the cabin after he’d loaded a couple of small bits on my waiting outstretched arms. Mom was carving an owl at the table.
Bread steamed upside down on the counter beside a bowl of melted garlic butter.
“Strong like a moose,” laughed Dad when I clattered the firewood into its box.
And I cartwheeled back out the door for more.
This time when we got outside, Dad asked me to teach him. Over and over he took a running jump with his arms outstretched and then collapsed at the moment of impact. Finally I caught his knees at the proper angle and held them up for a split second. The dogs were howling and Dad was able to shout in triumph before he once again toppled over.
He wore a red lumberjack shirt.
It’s still hanging on a nail in the shed.
Behind the entrance to the dragon’s cave, where the sleeping
prince had lain enchanted, was the sound of a trickling stream.
The prince and princess followed that trickle, leading their steeds
along the water’s edge between sheer black cliffs, until the stream
itself was arched with a stone entrance.
Through the entrance shone a small pond. White birds dove
and planed back and forth from water to cliffs again and again
during the hours of daylight. At dusk they flew in procession—
long lines of birds above the many streams flowing like the spokes
of a wheel—and slept under moonlight on the rocking waves of
a dark deep sea.
But of this pond I cannot speak, for The Place Where the
Stories Come From is silent and still and serenaded only by
the great white birds winging in at dawn from the faraway sea.
Still, there is a look of recognition in the eyes of those who have
been there, who have breathed that air and drunk from that pond
and dangled their fingers in that cool water.
When the prince and the princess rode back to the royal
palace, it lay beneath a blanket of ivy. Not a bird stirred. The
sun shone and bees alone droned amongst the acres of wild flowers.
The prince and the princess did not speak on their return, though
sometimes their gazes crossed and then moved away.
“The king is sleeping in his royal bedroom,” ventured the
prince as they clattered across the moat on the ancient wooden
bridge. “He has been asleep since we left.”
And side by side they drew up in front of the decaying palace
to face what lay inside.
I kneel beside the fire-pit outside the cabin door and light a match on a rock from the circle. I hold it to the kindling and watch the flames spread first to my teepee of twigs and then to sticks and chunks of split spruce. Flames lap at the outside of the wood first, curving with the contours of the wood until each piece disintegrates, collapsing into spruce stumps, while Mom was carving.
The forest is silent, like a beach when the tide has been suddenly sucked out to sea. Without warning, a wave of loneliness crashes over me. Something’s choking in my throat. I stand away from the smoke and realize I’m moaning. How can I make camp? Or look for my father or clean the mess he left behind? Squatting on a chunk of upended firewood, I hunch over the flames until I can door.
I’ve forgotten Brooks. I unzip the tent and he squeezes onto my feet. I haven’t even washed his wound tonight. Nor can I force myself to move. I don’t want to see the cabin.
From across the river I hear wolves calling to each other over the empty expanse of tundra beyond the trees. They must have followed us down. Becky says wolves call partly to mark their territory.
In the morning, loosely woven mats of slush ice are floating with the current past the cabin, flowing together and sealing shut like scabs along the banks. After tea I stand in the cabin doorway. I’ve been home for part of a day now and a night. I remember things from yesterday: new memories are being stuck over the old.
“Dad!” I shouted. “There’s an otter in the river.” Dad had shaving
cream on his face, and Chili, the new puppy, was sucking noisily
at Ginger. “Gross!” I muttered, although I secretly believed it
was beautiful.
Dad dabbed shaving cream on my nose and I stuck it back
on him. I somersaulted down the bank to where Becky was
calling. It was spring, and though I was too little to understand
why, there was a fresh start in the air.
Brooks leans against my leg. I unhook an old parka from a nail behind the door and spread it out for him to lie on. Slowly he sinks onto it and slurps at his wound.
My throat burns from trying not to cry. Then, very clearly, the thought comes to me: there’s no one here to listen.
I pick up the old broom from the corner and sweep, though a shovel would be more useful. If I live to be a great-grandma, I will only ever have one father. Only one man will ever say with pride, “My daughter did that.”
And, dead or alive, he left.
“What part of that, Dad,” I ask the man dabbing the shaving cream on my nose and laughing, “didn’t you understand?”
I look at my hands, wrapped around the handle and tip of the broom. They’re fineboned and strong and can juggle fire. They’re grown-up hands now, like my father’s, not a child’s, and they need to clean this room.
PART 2
The Wind Passes Over It
As for man, his days are as grass;
As a flower of the field so he flourisheth.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone;
And the place thereof shall know it no more.
(Psalm 103)
The words are printed in black marker on cardboard tacked behind the stove. The edges are stained and sooty. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it last night. Pretty weird—it doesn’t sound like the Dad I remember at all. Much too serious. I tuck it inside the pages of a book and stick it on a shelf.
While the cabin light is still dim, I dissolve the salt lump in a basin of hot water and wash the pus from Brooks’s side. I don’t wait until the sun floods the floorboards with light. I don’t want to see the wound too clearly.
While Brooks naps, I fill a tin bucket with debris from the floor and chuck it where the slop pile once spilled down the bank. Around noon I wrestle the two stoves back in place under their safeties and connect the scattered lengths of pipe. I find a couple in the shed next door to replace the most badly battered, and somehow, by the time the sun is sinking between peaks, pipe is sticking from stove holes out the roof.
I light fires in both stoves and keep shoveling out glass while the smoke clears in the cabin. I dump the broken glass in the river so animals won’t slash their feet walking by the clearing. The glass should be pulverized to sand with next spring’s breakup.
At dark I hammer plastic bags from my pack over window holes and light kerosene lamps. A barrel behind the cabin still contains fuel. Tomorrow I can look for real see-through window plastic. We always left some to replace any windows broken in our absence and for doubling over glass during cold snaps. I boil rice with dried onions and donate most of my portion to Brooks, who’s shifted to lying beside the cookstove. I move the parka underneath him, but he barely rouses.
A wind sweeps through the clearing and moans its way downriver.
It’s too dark to check out the cache. Tomorrow, I think, I’ll nail green poles beside the rotting ladder rungs.
I yank tent pegs from the ground outside and spread the tent out flat over the floorboards in the kitchen, along with my travel sleeping bag and pad. I boil tea water in my camp billycan and watch the shadows in the corners of the cabin. There are no voices whispering from long ago.
The debris may be gone, but the floorboards, counters, shelves and even the ceiling need scrubbing. Strings of ancient dust mixed with spider webs hang from corners and windowsills, ready to blow in my face when I clean. In places the moss chinking between the wall logs has shriveled and fallen out.
In the night a wind grazes past the corners of the cabin and rattles the stovepipe jutting to the sky. I can’t sleep. I think about reading, but it’s too cold to keep my hands out of the sleeping bag to hold the book. The log walls need to warm up before they’ll retain any heat. No new fairy tales come waltzing into my mind either.
What do true fairy tales need? A quest, of course, and willingly assumed danger. The landscape has to be right as well: forests and cottages in clearings and river glades, and enchanted castles covered with brambles and guarded by beasts. The main character should be brave. Beauty is optional, though it is often revered when found. There must be emotion: a quest without longing is boring. And “to quest” means “to look for.”
I lie on my back and listen to the wind. Finally I sit up with my back propped against the cupboard so I can peer out the window into the night. I let my mind roam, but still no characters ride in to take charge.
I hear the river carrying tinkling cakes of slush ice and the lull of wind traveling from the peaks…
Images of my childhood reel through my mind in color and sound like they’re happening before my eyes. When I was little I got excited about almost anything. Quests were all around me; it was just a matter of picking which to follow. Passion poured from every moment of my life.
In my mind, I’m tucked into the bottom bunk.
How strange that the real physical bunk is not only in my memory, where it’s lain all these years, but in this actual room with me, grubby with neglect against the far wall. A squirrel has scattered moss and dried mushrooms on the mattress. I can see the bunk shadowed in the moonlight that streams through the tarp I’ve tucked into the empty window frame beside it.
Becky was above me, head dangling down from the top
bunk. She poked me with a wooden sword she’d carved with
Mom from a length of kindling. “Get up,” she hissed. “We’re
going out.”
I buried my face in the blankets and snored dramatically.
The sword tickled my cheek. I swatted at it, and it clattered
to the floor. Instantly, Becky’s head disappeared onto her own
pillow and I heard snores coming from her too.
“Go to sleep,” Dad shouted from their bedroom.
When I’d just slipped cozily back into my dreams, Becky
landed with a thud on my mattress, having catapulted herself
over the top bunk. I knew this without opening my eyes because
it happened at least twice a night, no matter what I did. I’d tried
ignoring her and kicking her. Once, when evicted from a happy
dream, I even cried.
“Wolves,” she mouthed. “Follow me.” She handed me my
own sword, waved hers in a circle over her head and thrust it
bravely before her.
I was awake then. I wavered a moment between the
warmth of my blankets and the waiting trial. Adventure won.
Luckily my pajamas were the toddler type with built-in
feet. I followed her on tiptoe to the door, and we inched it shut
behind us. Indeed, wolves were surrounding the clearing, eyes
shining in the forest of moonlight. Becky clutched my hand
firmly to ensure I didn’t get taken away.
“Good evening, wolves,” she pronounced. “You leave my
little sister alone.”
We struck brave poses.
“Avast, ye wolves,” I told them. Pirates said it; that’s all
I knew.
Becky held her sword to the sky with her free hand. I wriggled
out of her grasp, dropped to one knee and held my sword
as far in front of that knee as possible without keeling over.
Above our heads a star plunged. For a moment it looked like
it would splash into the river, but of course its light blazed out
long before. I was struck speechless with happiness: the wolves,
the silver moonlit sky, our smooth-handled swords and the stars
embedded in the dome above.
Mom and Dad were mumbling in the cabin. I heard footsteps,
the rifle being lifted from its pegs and the door opening
behind us. Mom chucked blankets around our shoulders and
Dad knelt on one leg with the rifle lifted at his right shoulder.
“Over their heads,” said Mom.
Dad jerked the barrel up and shot into the air. Then he
reached out his hand and touched Mom’s hand. His fingers
curled around hers. She took her spare hand and held it against
his cheek. “Thanks,” said Mom. “I like wolves. They’re not so
different from us.”
Wolves wheeled back into the shadows. They milled about for
a minute or two, then loped off, hunting for a less guarded meal.
Sled dogs tucked their heads deeper under their tails, curled
in straw beds in their snow-buried houses.
When my family went inside, I stayed out awhile, wrapped
in blankets and peace. I’d never been alone in the night before.
I pretended the stars and the wolves were my friends. I pretended
I’d lost my family and I was going to live with the pack. I wavered
back and forth between a dead family and one that was simply
lost. Never did I consider being lost myself. Maybe they were
sick. Yes, that was it. My family was sick, and I was just joining
the pack for a while so I could bring them back some meat.
Fresh meat should heal them, I thought.
The sky was big, I realized, and our cabin and clearing were
very small. Why could I only see a little way into the forest, but
when I looked up I could see for light-years through the sky?
I got sleepy trying to figure out what a light-year was. I thought
it was the amount of light needed to light up a year of my
life, but if that was true, I didn’t understand how light-years
could measure distance. And if I asked anyone, they’d tell me,
but they’d smile like I was cute. I hated being cute. I stood at
attention, sword rigid at my side and saluted the stars.
