Northern Lights (23 page)

“Sure thing. It’s a good spot.”

It was comfortable. He had the feeling of civilized content: a chimney, the timbers of the old house comfortably under the snow, the beams and broken panels, the clearing spreading out into the forest. Harvey was busy scrambling for wood, clearing the hearth for a fire, tunneling into the drifts, but Perry was comfortable. It was an old homestead. A meadow hacked from the trees. Maybe farmed for a year and lived on. The dock meant fresh fish in flour. Bleak and comfortable. The warm hearth. He sat on a cleared-off timber. The snow was jagged around the
chimney, rolling up and down where the cabin had collapsed. Buried were pots and the stone foundation and a hundred different things of shelter.

Another song. Sung with the snow. Sung by the old man with the snow.

“We’ve got some sardines left,” said Harvey. “What do you think?”

“You know these things.”

“No sense saving them,” he said. “May as well eat them now. We’ll eat them now and have a good rest and see what there is tomorrow.”

“I don’t know much about it, Harv.”

“That’s what we should do.”

“All right.”

“We can fish if we have to.”

“Good idea. What about the ice?”

“There’ll be a way,” he said, beginning to cough. “We’ll see what there is tomorrow.”

A warm hearth, fire merry in the old homesteader’s fireplace with smoke creeping as in olden times up the broken chimney.

The moon was high and curved and bright above the storm, and Perry knew it and saw it, the dock mended and well on an August night, loons swimming underneath and Grace calling for supper from the door.

They woke to the blizzard. Before it had been a snowfall, and then a snowstorm. But it was different. Perry saw it immediately. He even spoke the word as he was waking. A latticework. “Blizzard,” he said.

They huddled against the stone foundation.

After a time Harvey stood against the blizzard and tried kindling the fire in the homesteader’s fireplace. He worked at it a long while then gave up without saying a word. He waded to what would have been a cosy corner of the broken cabin, dug into the snow, stuffed his sleeping bag inside and covered it partly with more snow, then climbed inside and zipped himself shut.

Perry stayed at the chimney. He was warm enough and unafraid. He took a nap, slept hard, and when he woke the blizzard was about the same, a bit tamer, but it was still bad and he slept again.

He woke, his glasses were hopelessly fogged. The torpid soggy memories. The blizzard was very loud and deep. He took off the glasses and slipped them to the bottom of his bag and stared ahead, seeing only a cold hole.

He slept again and then Harvey was shaking him, insisting they get up and walk. Perry closed his eyes but Harvey kept it up, unzipped his bag and pulled him out, and they walked and stamped their feet and waved their arms like hawks. They marched in a circle around the homesteader’s cabin, and Harvey sang marching songs and Perry sang whatever came into mind, his father’s songs.
Them Gopher girls are gamey, them Buckeye girls are gay, but them Hawkeye girls with them Hawkeye curls, them’s the juicy kind of lay
, and they tramped a path around the broken cabin. Perry’s head was hanging and Harvey was singing marching songs, singing
If I die before I wake, pray to God my soul to take; and if I die on the Russian front, bury me with a Russian cunt; and if I die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home; and if I die before I’m rich, bury me with a British bitch; and if I die locked up in jail, free me quick before I stale; and if I die and turn to mold, smother me in broads and gold; g’left, g’left, g’left-right-left
, round and round the broken tombstone chimney, right, left, wading with fullback high strides. Harvey was singing, then coughing, then singing, and Perry’s legs were heavy and the snow was thick. His
legs were heavy. His thighs hurt. He was cold, wide open and vulnerable. His tooth hurt, him. He opened his mouth to speak and the wind was drawn in, blowing his cheecks out, forcing back his own stinking breath.

“I’m hungry,” Perry said.

“Just relax.”

“Where are my glasses? Put them down in the bag and they’re gone.”

“You’re better off without them.”

“I need them. Get out and help me look. Harvey.”

“Better off staying inside the bag.”

“I
can’t
. I have to have them.”

Perry’s throat hurt. Shouting, it had become a natural means of fighting the blizzard. Calmly as possible, thinking it out, he began the search for his glasses. First the bag. He groped methodically through the folds, down deep. Then, removing his mittens and carefully storing them in the bag, he got to his knees and searched the snow immediately surrounding the sleeping bag, working slowly in a circle, moving further out with each sweep. The blizzard had gone mute. It whipped and swirled but had pitched somewhere too high or low or fierce for him to hear. Instead he heard Harvey’s coughing and a later growl as he pulled phlegm from his lungs and spat it out, then a long whining breathing. Perry’s wrists iced. He plunged after his glasses, closing his eyes so that without sight and sound the blizzard was gone and only his wrists and hands were cold.

It seemed to be a nap, or verging on it, but he found his eyes were open. He was propped in his bag against the white chimney. And he was hungry. He sat still, wishing he’d found his
glasses. More rotten luck. It was dark enough to be night. It was night.

He got himself up and leaned against the chimney.

The frothing sensation bubbled him all over, a boiling without heat or any sound or light. Harvey’s coughing again. More rotten luck.

Perry leaned forward. Nearsighted, he moved away from the chimney and uncovered Harvey’s bag. He got him up and held him and walked him around the fallen cabin. It was night, Perry was sure of it. They walked without singing. They stopped for Harvey to lean over and cough and spit. Then Perry helped his brother into the bag and covered it with snow, then he climbed into his own bag and forced the zipper to the top and propped himself against the broken stone chimney.

He was certain he was awake, and he blinked to be sure. Inside the bag he smelled himself. Dark and even warm. A cold winter’s morning with oatmeal in the kitchen and his father at the stove in slippers and flannel, Sunday before church. What month was it? Winter. Winter month. It was not 1962, it was winter. It was not October. What time was it? Wintertime. Sunday before church in wintertime was the old man’s quiet time, cooking his own breakfast and letting Paul sleep late, then waking him, the only gentle time, and a very fine time. He was sure the blizzard had passed, for there was not a sound. The old man in flannel and slippers, cracking the door quietly, looking in. It was
his
time. The old man came in and his eyes were never cold-white on Sunday wintertime mornings, sitting sometimes reading, thinking maybe Paul was asleep. A quiet morning time. He was certain it had passed. That Sunday morning wintertime feeling, wrapped and warm with the Hudson Bay blanket all around him, deep in the bed, the old man reading or getting a
yellow-paged sermon ready, checking things, a calm rested look when Paul peeked, peeking in on the old man’s quiet time. The old man’s face ageless and kind at those times. A slipper dangling from a rocking foot, hooked boyish on the toe. Those had been
his
times.

He tried Harvey’s counting trick. He kept his head deep in the bag. He counted slowly until he was bored and still not asleep. He got to eighty-one and decided it was a bad trick that never worked because it was not supposed to work, making the staying awake boring and fruitless and not helping anyway.

He considered putting his head out to test the blizzard. He could not hear it but he knew it was there. Once in the night he had looked and it had frightened him and he’d decided not to look again until daylight.

Then he wondered if it were day.

He considered taking a look, then decided to give it more time. He tried remembering some fresh songs to sing. If they’d only talked. He could think of a million things to say now. He would say things about Grace. That would be one subject. He could talk about Grace for a year or even two, describing parts of her waking dreams and talk and talk. And ask about his mother. That would be something magnificent to talk about. He would just listen and drink coffee politely and hear his father talk on and on about his mother. Then they would reminisce about the scrapes together. Maybe taking an hour apiece, each could say what he was thinking when they’d argued about this and that; the old man could say: I got angry because you did this, and I was thinking that, and I wish this, and I wished that, and we agree on this, the time was mid-afternoon, it was July, no … October, the bomb shelter was being built, I thought we should have it, you thought it was crazy, Harvey was out there working, you were watching television, I finally died, the shelter was finished,
though. He would pay close attention. He would change that. He’d never really paid attention, always hoping the old man would change when instead he ought to have paid better attention to why he hadn’t changed and wouldn’t and didn’t.

He twisted, lay on his belly and cradled his head. He was hungry. He tried counting again and gave it up at sixty.

He considered again taking a look at the blizzard. For all he knew, down deep in his goose-down bag, for all he knew the blizzard was over and it was daylight and all was in a thaw. It was a nice possibility. Nice idea, he thought. Everything was such a damned nice idea when it was an idea.

The air inside the bag was bad.

Time stretched, then dissipated and took on excruciating importance and then disappeared entirely, less than important, non-existence and false.

Except for his toes he was warm enough.

His tooth was all right.

His legs ached but it was from immobility and not the cold.

The important things were all right. He was dry, the most important thing. He’d kept the snow out. His chest and back and legs were all warm.

He had to pee. It had been a long while. Stretching, contracting, tricky time.

He knew he had to leave the bag. Knowing it, he waited, letting his bladder percolate with the anticipation and concentrating on the coming pleasure.

He played a guessing game, guessing if the blizzard had ended, guessing if it were day or night or one of the transition times, guessing how many hours or days had passed since various points in the past, all warped now.

He waited and let the fluid push like gravity. Almost as a ritual, he thought for a moment each about Addie, then Grace, then Harvey, and jumbled together his father and old Jud, stopping suddenly in the quick realization that, taken together, they were the only names he knew, just a clutter of other junk faces.

The bag air was rotten. He smelled himself. When the blizzard ended, he decided firmly, he would have Harvey build a fire and they would boil water and wash themselves. Rinse away all the frozen sweat. Then, if any instant coffee were left, then they would drink hot coffee and things would be much better. It made a nice thought. Clean and hot coffee and a nice fire and some sunshine. It was another nice idea.

He heard a gurgle somewhere, and he listened, thinking maybe it was a sound of melting and thaw, or a change in the blizzard, or daylight. He listened closer and heard it again. It was fluid. A sobbing sound. He listened and it grew louder and changed into the sound of Harvey’s cough.

Perry crawled out of the bag. He was surprised at the daylight, a bright white blizzard, beautiful with white boiling snow that was perfectly lighted.

He zipped his bag shut, waded a decent distance away from the crumpled cabin, stood with his legs apart and anchored, and urinated with long pleasure. As if tidying up after him, the blizzard whipped clean snow into the steaming hole. He removed his mittens in order to force up his zipper. He felt better. He steadied himself and muttered consoling helpful sounds and waded back to the chimney and thought about what to do next. He did some exercises, talking to himself about staying dry and taking care, easy does it. Jumped like a jumping jack, flapping his arms high and clapping his mittens together, side-straddle-hop. He hopped to Harvey’s sleeping mound: “Up and at ’em!” he shouted. “Up and at ’em!” He had to bellow. He stopped and listened: the wind, the wind … “Harvey! Gotta get up! Buddy!
Old buddy buddy! Up and at ’em as they say! Get that old blood circulating, up, up, up! Come on, Harv! Toro! Toro! Up and at ’em, Toro! Hi ya, hi ya!” It was spectacular boiling white daylight. “Up, up, Toro!” he called, getting Harvey out of his bag and walking him round and round the homesteader’s tombstone chimney. “Easy, easy,” he consoled. He walked Harvey around the broken chimney. Later, he thought, he would build a fine fire and they’d warm up and rest on the hearth. Get to someplace warm, get to where he could think. A dazzling, dazing lightness, illumination as if the snow itself were a source of inexhaustible light. Harvey clung to his arm and Perry led him around the stone chimney. Harvey held tight and Perry led him. Perry led him. Round and round. Harvey’s grasp was tight, and his head was low, and round they went.

“What time is it?” Harvey asked from his hollow.

“Don’t know. You all right?”

“Sick.” Harvey’s voice came muffled by his bag and the covering snow and phlegm. “Bronchitis, I don’t know. Pneumonia.”

“Just lie still, Harv.”

“I know what it is.”

“It’s not what you think. If you lie still and sleep you’ll be fine.”

“I know exactly what it is.”

“Be still.”

“It’s bloody pneumonia, that’s exactly what it is.”

“Go to sleep then.”

Indecently low, through sheets of snow and beyond the wind, he saw the moon. Propped against the chimney, his eyes and ears and nose out of the bag, he was looking at the storm,
but he saw the moon. Inside the bag it stunk but outside there was the clean smell of the moon.

“Hey, Harv!” He shook Harvey’s bag. “The moon! You can see the moon.”

He giggled.

“Harv, just take a look at this.”