Northern Lights (12 page)

Harvey would glare at her. “I don’t see what my eye has to do with anything. It’s not the point. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Just tell us how it happened,” Addie would laugh. “Tell us about a great adventure where the hero loses his eye. I want to hear every last gruesome detail. How did it feel, what did you think, did you cry? Do heroes ever cry? How did it feel, what did you think? Did you think you were going to die, was it worth it? Tell us this great adventure story. Tell us everything!”

It would stop him. Addie knew how to pin his ears back. She could find his soft spot and sear it and stop the nonsense.

Perry envied her. She wasn’t taken in. She was free and clear of his influence, able to ride him with ease, effortlessly swaying with him, guiding him like a matador, stopping him short, turning his plunges into wasted energy.

“Well,” Harvey would say, “I still think we all ought to take a great ski trip. Anything crazy about that idea?”

“The cold,” Perry would say.

“No spine. You don’t really have spine, do you?” Harvey would sneer.

But Addie could smooth even those moments. She was good to have around. She was young and always teasing, and her skin stayed dark even without sun. The snows frosted on the ground. The days were crusted and cold. He continued his exercises, dieting, walking into the woods around the house. He felt stronger, but it was energy without much purpose. Preparing, searching for some use for his new leanness, he counted off the push-ups and sit-ups, listened to Harvey’s talk, watched the town get ready for winter, watched Addie, dribbled from day to day in a sleepwalking, restless disgruntlement. Grace was quiet. One evening she suggested a vacation. He ignored her. She could be sweet and understanding and soft, almost infuriating, and he just ignored her. Harvey was harder to ignore. Sardonic and sententious, Harvey would lay his grand plans, playing on Perry’s feckless preparations and invoking the teachings of the forest, their common history, their father, the town, the Arrowhead, adventure. At night, lying still with Grace, Perry heard his brother roaming the upstairs hallways, sometimes with the wind in the timbers, sometimes with Addie’s voice, joint laughter. He felt alone. He felt sometimes, lying there, as if he were being hurtled headlong into a scrambled thicket, caught in Harvey’s wind.

“Don’t you like being warm?” Grace would say.

“Yes.”

“Me, too,” she whispered.

He turned, lay on his side, faced the wall. Her breath was on his neck. The wall looked like a sky. Sallying, dazzling white points of light.

“Are you sleeping?”

“No.”

She was quiet. He turned again, involuntarily, wrapped around her. Now he smelled her hair. Her body seemed to sink away from him.

Harvey moved about in the upstairs bedroom. The ceiling squeaked. Perry listened and heard them talking. He heard Addie’s laughter. He wanted to listen in, creep up the stairs like a cat and put his ear against the door and listen in, find a window to peer through beclouded. He was intrigued.

“Cuddle me,” whispered Grace.

“I am.”

“Brrr.”

“I know, I know.”

“Are you happy?” she whispered. She was happy, he could feel it. Bed was her place, the warm sheltered soft center of the bed, and she wanted a child.

He heard the toilet flush. He listened, fascinated, thinking of Harvey’s blinded eye. The floor seemed to shiver. Then the house settled into quiet.

“I hate winter,” Grace said.

“It’s not winter.”

“It is. It’s here. I hate it. I think we should take a vacation. Don’t you think so?”

He rolled again, restless, turned to the wall. He smelled her flannel nightgown. The house was finally silent.

“Wouldn’t a vacation be nice?” she said. “Someplace warm. Wouldn’t you like that?”

He murmured yes, it would be nice, and in a while he heard her soft breathing. He listened to her sleep. He listened to the house, brittle timbers, a man’s house. He listened to the outside wind. It had been that way forever. He tried to reconstruct his mother’s face. Imagination played its tricks. He did not know her but he still imagined a face, like Grace, a certain feel and sensation that was entirely separate from the old man’s house. No notion of family, no blending of softness with the leaden tread of his father or the squatting bomb shelter in the backyard. Grace turned, curled to the bed center. The night thoughts crept on him. Disorganized. A new job maybe. He felt vulnerable. Grace was warm beside him. It was that water-like soft center that first attracted him. A ripe smell tantalizing his imagination, something known instinctively but never encountered, like a nerve numbed and blunted. His father hadn’t liked her much. “Looks like somebody’s mother,” he’d once muttered, his only comment. Home from college, college boy with Iowa girl. He liked her bigness. It was nothing erotic, no Addie, but the big bones had flesh that seemed to sink to the touch, down and down. He wondered what the hell she thought about.

Harvey wore his dress greens. He looked trim. A silver bar twinkled on each shoulder. Five medals were linked in two neat rows on his chest.

“I’m so excited!” Addie cried. “Doesn’t he look just like a war hero? This is a grand night. And I’m so glad I know a hero! Don’t you think Harvey looks just like a genuine war hero? I think so. Smile, Harvey. There, you see? A hero. I’m trying to persuade him to walk with a limp. Don’t you think a limp would add to the overall effect?”

“You look great, Harv,” Perry said.

The kitchen was warm.

Grace put napkins on the table. She pulled goulash from the oven, then hot biscuits. They ate quickly and Addie chattered on, and Harvey was quiet and sober and trim. He’d had his hair cut.

Perry drove the eight miles into town. Over the forest, the white fuzz of the football field lights glowed. Perry drove up deserted Mainstreet, turned on to Acorn Street towards the field. Harvey sat in the back seat with Addie, straight and quiet and confident. The snow was steady.

The teams were already on the field warming up.

The bleachers were crowded. They had come from all over, Two Harbors and Silver Bay and Grand Marais.

The snow blew in drifts across the field. The high-school band marched on to the field and formed two rows, and the teams ran through the marching aisle to their dressing rooms and the crowd rose to cheer them.

Harvey was dignified and erect. A few teenagers whistled at his uniform. Harvey ignored them, and they took seats near the fifty-yard line. Bishop Markham waved. He was sitting with Herb Wolff and two members of the town council. They were the core of the Sawmill Landing Boosters. They all carried red and black pennants. Bishop wound down the bleachers to shake hands.

“This is your night,” he said to Harvey. “You look great in that uniform.”

Harvey nodded. He was solemn and dignified.

“A genuine hero,” said Addie.

“I should say!” Bishop held both of Harvey’s shoulders for a moment. “The town is proud. This is a fine moment.”

Bishop went back to his friends and the band played the national anthem. The VFW honor guard carried the flag to the
north end zone, hoisted it up into the snow. Then the crowd cheered again and the cheerleaders led more cheering, and on the opposite side of the field the Silver Bay rooters did the same, and the noise picked up.

Harvey stared resolutely at the snowed-in football field. The two teams returned to the field. They were jumping and exercising and the loudspeakers called out the starting lineups. Grace unfolded a blanket and draped it across everyone’s knees. The bleachers were full of people. The whole town was there. The band played the Sawmill Landing fight song and everyone stood. Perry’s glasses steamed over.

Spreading a white haze over the forest clearing, floodlights sparkled with the snow, and the teams lined up.

The Sawmill Landing boys were in red and black.

Silver Bay wore silver.

Grace passed along a Thermos of coffee, but Harvey kept his eye on the field, a grand marshal inspecting the troops, and the Sawmill Landing team booted the ball high and Silver Bay erupted, the snow drifted across the field with the sounds of sharp contact, silver and red and black and battle cries.

It was a bad first quarter, fumbles and intercepted passes, and neither team came close to a score. Harvey watched intently. Addie kept chattering but he paid no attention. In the second quarter, the snow began whipping the field, piled into drifts, and both teams abandoned their passing games and stuck to the ground. It was a battle of endurance. A big Silver Bay fullback plowed relentlessly into the left side of the Sawmill Landing line, battering and hitting for five yards a crack. The snow got fierce. Grace was shivering. The Silver Bay fullback continued slashing into the line. Leaning forward with each play, Harvey pressed back, never taking his eye from the game, and Perry watched the crowd and snow and cheerleaders and Addie.

With a minute left in the half, the Silver Bay fullback broke through and ran head down into the Sawmill Landing end zone. Harvey shook his head.

“Ha!” cried Addie. “Now there’s a disaster. You would have stopped that brute,” she said.

Harvey shrugged. “I like his style.”

“But wouldn’t you have stopped him?”

“Maybe,” he nodded. “I guess I would have tried.”

The half ended with another Sawmill Landing fumble. Familial blood was high and the crowd hooted.

A gun was shot off.

“Parade time!” Addie said.

Harvey climbed out of the bleachers and walked to the south end of the field.

After a time, the band marched on to the field with drums rolling and bugles and trombones. Addie leaned on the iron railing. She was grinning. Grace shivered in her blanket. The band fanned into a formation resembling an arrowhead. Seven baton twirlers then walked bare-legged into the snowstorm, flashing their silver instruments, all seven of them blonde and smiling, and the snow kept falling.

The band played marching songs and a microphone was carried to the center of the field.

Grace shivered and snuggled close to Perry. Addie leaned over the railing for a better view. “I hope he remembers to walk with a limp. I told him he had to pretend a limp, it would make him look so gallant.”

Partly masked by the snow, Harvey’s float emerged from under the goalposts. He sat on a crepe paper throne. The band broke into “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Decorated to look like an American flag, the float flowed soundlessly through the snow, through the end zone and on to the field, into the white lights.
The crowd applauded. It was very cold and the snow was blowing and it was hard for Perry to see.

“I can’t see his face,” Addie moaned. “He has his own parade and, will you believe it, I can’t even see his face.”

The float rolled to midfield. There it stopped, the wind lashing at the crepe paper and colored streamers. For a time Harvey simply sat there as though abandoned, but then four men walked through the snow to the microphone, all in parkas with hoods drawn up. Harvey sat still, looking vaguely towards the bleachers.

One of the hooded men stepped to the microphone, Jud Harmor’s old singsong voice. His formal political voice. The loudspeakers crackled and the storm picked up. Harvey sat very still on his float. “… honor and service … a hero in a war without … Sawmill Landing, where he … whose father for fifty-seven years served the town and the church, a man … a hero, badly wounded, yet coming …” The images were whipped like fluid in the snow, the words jumbled past with present, and old Jud mixed Perry with Harvey with their father, but Harvey sat still as Jud talked against the storm. The microphone gleamed in the floodlights. When Jud finished, Harvey climbed down from the float, back straight, and walked like a king to the microphone. The four hooded men shook his hand. Jud held up Harvey’s arm. The wind lashed again, for a moment obscuring both of them in a blur of snow, and Perry strained to see.

“It’s marvelous!” Addie said. “Don’t you think so? Just look at him.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t he some hero?”

“He is,” Perry said.

“I think it’s silly,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I guess it is.”

“Aren’t you jealous?”

“Maybe so. He did all right.”

The loudspeakers crackled and Harvey was talking.

“What’s he saying?”

“The wind, I can’t hear.”

“The pirate!”

Three cheerleaders ran to the field. One of them gave him a large glittering key and each of them kissed him.

“The cad! A typical pirate, rape and plunder.”

Then the band played again. The air was frosted and the horns and drums played a martial tune.

“Just look at him,” said Addie. “He’s loving it, every silly second.”

In slow motion, a grim forest mirage, Harvey marched to his float, mounted it, stood at the crepe throne with an arm hoisted high, spine straight, the band playing, the snow drifting across the field, the crowd’s frosted breath, the coming winter. “Just look at him,” said Addie.

The float maneuvered through a slow turn and circled the field. It departed through the north goalposts. Harvey waved.

“Touchdown!” Addie said.

Perry’s glasses were steamed. A cold embarrassed blur. Instantly, the two teams dashed on to the playing field and the cheerleaders leapt towards the field lights and Harvey’s float was fogged in the driving snow.

Grace was shivering. “I think we should go home,” she murmured.

“What’s the matter?”

“Can’t we just go home?”

Perry looked at her. Her eyes were white.

“Are you sick?”

“No. It was awful. Let’s just go home.”

Perry wrapped her in the blanket. The wind picked up and the game resumed. Silver Bay took the kickoff and the big fullback charged into the belly of the Sawmill Landing line. There was no stopping him. He wrapped his arms around the ball, tucked his head in, and bulled ahead.

The odds twinkled by the billions in the winter sky.

Short days, and it was time for a change.

Harvey was sick. Grace called the doctor in, a young fellow with freckles and blue eyes, and he went to Harvey’s room and spent a long time and came down smiling. “Mild,” he said dreamily.