Mink River: A Novel (24 page)

You lock me in?

No, no. You can lock it yourself. For safety. For peace of mind.

Peace of mind.

There are two other patients on this floor also.

Okay.

One is a boy your age and the other is a man who is very ill. Both are gentlemen. You’ll like them. I’ll introduce you now if you like.

Okay.

The man with twelve days to live is asleep in the reclining chair in the corner by the maps of the sea but Daniel is awake and curious in his bed.

Dan, this is Kristi. She’ll be living here for a while in my care.

Hi, Kristi.

Hi.

I’ll go now, says the doctor. I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. I’ll be downstairs in my study when you are ready to get to bed, Kristi.

They watch him go silently.

Want to sit down? says Daniel.

No thanks. What happened to your legs?

Crashed my bike. Went off the path in the woods by the sea lion cove.

Hurt a lot?

I don’t remember much, to be honest.

Who’s the man in the corner?

He’s real sick.

How sick?

He says he has twelve days left before he dies. He’s real clear about it. He’s a nice guy. Quiet. He’s a real good listener. You find yourself thinking aloud when you talk to him. Nice guy. Are you sick?

No.

Why are you here?

Some things happened.

Oh.

Family things.

Okay.

I should find my room.

Okay.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Kristi goes to find the doctor who is downstairs in his study reading the Book of Job. Wearisome nights are appointed to me, he reads. Kristi walks down the stairs. When shall I arise and the night be gone? She walks through the kitchen. I am full of tossings to and fro until the dawning of the day. She sees a dark hallway and thinks, his study must be down there but I am not going down there. My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and are spent without hope. Doctor? she says. Doctor? O remember that my life is wind, he reads, and hears her voice, and he closes his book, and stands up, and closing his eyes, he folds his hands together in the ancient gesture of supplication and helplessness, and says aloud, in a clear voice that carries down the hallway to the kitchen, here I am, Kristi. Here I am.

14.

Maple Head walks over to the doctor’s house, cutting along the beach in the moonlight, the tide is low, thinking about her husband, about all the hours and days and weeks and months and years they have spent together, about all the arguments they have had, all the laughter, all the exhausted moments with the baby, and then raising a girl and then a young woman, and trying to have more children but not having any more children, that was hard for the longest time, that was a deep wound between us, he wanted more children and so did I but I stopped wanting more children before he did, and maybe we spoiled Nora a little because of that, but what can you do, you do the best you know how at the time, and we never really had any money, and I made more money than he did for the longest time, and that was hard for him, that was a small wound between us, and he had all these wild projects, and I love that, because he is his dreams, and without his dreams he’d be empty and tired, but those dreams were crazy sometimes, all the projects, all the stuff in the house, all the machines, and all the thousands of hours he could have been doing something for money, but he is who he is, a dreamer, impractical and practical, I know that, and I love him for who he is, I know that, and I am not perfect either, a dreamer too, I always wanted to open my own school and never did, never never never had the money, but it wasn’t the money I sometimes think, it was the leap, I never took the leap, but how could I?

At the doctor’s house she knocks and he opens the door and a smile spreads across his face as he sees her and he adjusts his spectacles cheerfully and says May, it is always the highlight of my day when I see you standing before me. Come right in. He’s still awake. I was just getting a new patient squared away.

Billy and Cedar told me about her. Can I help?

You might just look in on her, May. She’d be happy to see a friendly woman’s face, I think. She’s in the back bedroom upstairs.

Maple Head sits on the edge of Daniel’s bed and tucks the blanket around his shoulders as tight as a tick as he says and she kisses him on the forehead and he tells her about his sea lion dreams.

You know what your grandfather would say about these dreams, Dan.

What?

That they are visions of your guiding spirit.

Really?

Really.

What will I be, then?

Well, I don’t know, Dan. Clearly something to do with the ocean. We can ask Worried Man tomorrow.

He’ll know.

He knows a lot, love.

He knows everything.

Well, she says smiling, he
thinks
he knows everything. Go to sleep. I’ll come by tomorrow with your grandfather.

Okay.

Night.

Love you, Gram.

I love you too, Daniel. Deep dreams to you.

Maple Head knocks on Kristi’s door and Kristi opens it a crack and says, yes?

My name is May, says Maple Head. I’m visiting my grandson Dan and thought I’d say hello.

Hello, says Kristi, not opening the door any wider.

Settling in? asks Maple Head.

Yes.

Can I help at all?

No.

Well, I’ll be here every day to see Dan. Tell me if I can help at all. Maybe tutoring or something. I’m a teacher. Sixth grade. Most of my students are about your age. You’ll need to keep up with your schoolwork, I guess.

Thanks.

Okay. Well. I’ll be going.

Is Dan asleep?

I think so.

Did … did you tuck him in?

Yes, I did.

My name’s Kristi.

Well, Kristi, I did tuck Daniel in. Tight as a tick.

Could you … tuck me in too?

Yes, Kristi, I could, she says, her heart twisting, and she does, her hands wrapping the sheet and blanket around the girl’s shoulders narrow as bird bones, her face pale against the pale sheets. All the way home Maple Head sees the girl’s white face in the white moon trailing its white cloak over the restless sea.

15.

In the morning Owen wheels Daniel out to the little deck over the sea and they watch the gulls and cormorants and pelicans wheeling. Sea lions power through the surf heading south in little pods of three or four. Daniel sees a seal. Owen sees a whale’s spout. Three terns flash past and skim fish from the sea. The ocean hums. Owen makes breakfast and brings it out to the deck. The man with eleven days to live goes for a walk along the beach. The doctor takes Kristi off to some appointments of a legal nature. Owen and Daniel bask in the late spring sun.

Tell me about your mom and dad, Dad, says Daniel.

Is maith an scealai an aimsir
, says Owen dreamily.

What’s that?

Time is a great storyteller.

Does that mean you won’t tell me the stories?

No, no, says Owen, shaking himself awake. You’ve a right to know. What is it you want to know?

Your mom lives on a hill?

Yeh.

Where?

Kilfinnane, in Limerick county. Near Clare and Kerry.

She won’t come down anymore?

No.

Why?

She’s afraid.

Of what?

I don’t really know, Dan. I haven’t spoken to her for years and years.

Why?

Just haven’t.

And your dad?

He’s buried along a road nearby.

I knew he was dead but not how he died.

No.

I always wanted to know.

I’m sorry, Dan. It’s been hard for me to talk about it.

I’m sorry.

Yeh.

How did he die?

He worked himself to death on the road. He kept working until his heart gave out. Some people think he did it on purpose.

Was he young?

Sixty.

I’m sorry, Dad.

Thank you.

What was he like?

Quiet. He never said much. I don’t think he was ever very happy. He never found the work he really wanted to do. He had a hard life. I understand him more now that he’s gone than I did when he was alive. He confused me when I was your age.

Did you fight with him?

No. He was very quiet.

And your mom?

She’s very quiet too. They married late. He was much older than she was. He lived up on the hill and she passed him in the road every day at dawn and dusk. They’d stop to talk. She found him more interesting than the boys in the town and he thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He was very lonely. She thought he was fascinating and handsome. She began to bring food to his house sometimes, berries and milk and such, and one thing led to another, and that led to me. There were only seven people in the church when they got married, my mother says. Her father refused to come. She never forgot that. Her sisters keened at the wedding.

Keened?

Keening is wailing for the dead. They were saying she was dead to them. My mother and father never forgot that either. They went to live in my dad’s house on the hill and that’s where I was raised, on the hill, until my dad died, and I left for America.

Why?

I had to leave.

Why?

Lots of reasons, I guess, says Owen, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. I didn’t like myself then, I didn’t like my home, I wanted to be new, I wanted a fresh start. I felt stuck there. Trapped. I had to get out. I wanted a new country. A new self. A new start. I wanted to be born again, in a sense. I wanted my own life without everyone else’s stories in it. I wanted to write my own story.

Do you miss your mom?

Yes.

Did you ever go back?

No.

Do you write?

No.

Does she write to you?

Yes.

Do … do you read her letters?

Yes. You can read them. They’re in the shop.

Do you want to see her again?

O yes, Daniel, sure I do. But I can’t. We haven’t a penny, it’s all long ago and far away now, and I feel I’ve hurt her so with my silence that I can never make it up. You can’t heal everything, Dan. You just can’t. It’s better left alone now. Time is the great healer, eh?

I’d like to meet her.

Maybe someday.

Maybe soon.

Maybe.

We’ll figure out the money, Dad.

Yeh.

Really.

Sure we will, son.

Tus maith, leath na hoibre
, says Daniel, and Owen’s mouth falls open just like in the movies or in the cartoons, it opens like the hinges to his jaw suddenly surrendered, he is open-mouthed and gaping, and then grinning in the broad morning light.

And what does that mean, o young scholar of Gaelic?

A good start is half the work.

That’s well said, son.

Yeh.

All right, then.

All right.

16.

At noon Cedar and Worried Man are drinking beer and eating salmonberries. Between them is one empty beer bottle.

It has had many names, says Worried Man. Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark called it Falls Mountain and Timm Mountain,
timm
being a word of the local people meaning the falls in the river nearby. The French voyageurs who may have climbed it in their pursuit of furs called it Montagne de Neige, the mountain of snow. Some say it was called Waucoma, also the name of the little river flowing north from it to Nchiawana, the grandfather of rivers. Captain John Fremont, the Pathfinder, who was a dog and a coward, saw it “glowing in the sunlight,” as he wrote, from his camp in the Blue Mountains, hundreds of miles away. The Scottish botanist David Douglas may have climbed it in the summer of 1826, after he lost all his papers and tools and seeds in the Fraser River that spring. He was a fine and good man and my greatgrandfather walked with him and told stories of him. A very gentle man, said my grandfather, the sort of man who sat down so as not to be taller than the child telling him the story. Remind me to tell you a story about my greatgrandfather and David Douglas.

You were telling me about the mountain, says Cedar patiently.

I walked to it once when I was young, says Worried Man. That was one long walk! I walked as far as I could go, past all the trees, past juniper and ravens, into the dust and snow, where all things are silent, even
asayahal
, the south wind, and there I found my colors, blue and white, and my work, which is seeing clearly, and my spirit, which is the heron. And now I have to go back. We have to go back. That’s where the time is, Cedar. I know it. I am absolutely sure.