Northern Lights (28 page)

Perry skied straight ahead. Harvey was far behind him. The trees were growing everywhere, full pine and spruce, and the land sloped down.

He led the way.

The trees went on and on. He tried counting them.

At midday he stopped and motioned for Harvey to sit down. They rested on their rucksacks. Harvey had thin blue veins marking his forehead. His face was wet.

“I’m taking off this coat,” Harvey said.

“You’re not.” Perry did not look up.

“I’m sick.”

“I know that. You’re keeping the coat on.”

Perry sat and looked up the trail and tried to think it out. He was hungry but he felt all right. He admired the trees. They were green as summer, long and short needled spruce. Further ahead, up the trail, they turned to birch but beyond they turned to pine again. All over, the snow sparkled. It was a fine bright day and he saw everything clearly. The brightness made him close his eyes.

“I’m taking this coat off,” said Harvey.

Perry got up and slung the rucksack behind him.

“Did you hear me? I’m taking this coat off.”

Perry buckled on his skis, leaned on his poles and watched Harvey until he got up.

He waited, then without a nod he pushed off down the trail. He couldn’t get over how bright and clean a day it was, as though the blizzard had scrubbed everything like steel wool. On each side of the trail, the trees grew in neat rows. He was hungry again. It struck in strange places. The hunger had moved from his belly to the back of his brain, in some primitive transferal of sensation. The hunger would strike for a moment, throbbing as if it had been plucked like a guitar string, then it would shimmy and make him dizzy, then slowly give out and he would be clearheaded again and in control. He was leading. Lean at last, and clearheaded and cleareyed.

They skied up the center of the trail. Perry leading. He skied with his eyes closed. He wondered if a man could sleep and still go on, eyes closed, maybe even snoring, while the skis simply carried. Each time he opened his eyes, the snow was brighter.

The road was hypnotic in its stretches of long forest and snow and bright blue sky. All quite beautiful. The trail sometimes was very wide in places where the loggers had stopped to
cut, and other times it was impassable, grown over with saplings and coppice. Except for the sound of their skiing and the undertone of cracking in the snow, the forest was still, and the old trail swept through the woods like a river.

For a time they were followed by a hawk that dipped down on them, wings fluttering in a slow graceful breaking motion, then jerking suddenly upwards and disappearing high over the forest, then later returning to screech low over the trail, winding over their heads and jerking up and away again. But except for the lonely hawk and the sound of their skis and the sound of the cracking snow, the day was dumb and empty, a long track of light and snow along the trail. Perry played his counting game: trees, strides, breaths, memories, saplings, spurts of hard hunger, minutes, hours, backward, forward. He ran out of things to count, or they stretched on so far that he grew restless with the prospect of never reaching the end.

The forest kept coming and it was always there. The birch trees gave out to acres of evergreens. He could close his eyes and ski and imagine himself finally stopping and freezing and fossilizing and sprouting needled branches and joining the pines in a perfect communion. One of millions. Each the same. No cold, no hunger, no memories and no fear. An element among elements in the elements. He thought about it and followed the trail, sometimes not thinking at all, other times thinking: the road had no ditches. No rest stops. No fuel stations or scenic overlooks or picnic tables. No refracting road signs, no speed limits, no limits at all. Limitless. The trail was its own perfect logic, for it went from one place to another place, starting and ending, and they were following it so that sooner or later it would empty them either at the starting place or ending place. It was perfect, hypnotic logic. Then he began to think he was an adventurer. He would have some fine story to tell. He could tell
it to the son Grace wanted. He could tell it in the drugstore, and people would listen, the whole place would go quiet and Herb Wolff would ring his cash register while people listened and drank coffee, and he would have a great thing to remember and ponder. He could tell about this very moment. The very moment: the trail there before him, the big scary-looking pines walking in from both sides, the sound of Harvey’s cough behind him, the hawk now and again swooping down with its screech and talons, now, the hunger at the back of his brain, he could tell them all that. He could tell them he was, at that moment, just at that particular moment in that adventure, he could tell them he was absolutely and undeniably unafraid, fearless, simply acting, thinking of the things he would tell them. He was thinking. He was not sure about Harvey. Old Harvey, such a bull. He was not sure. The cough was bad. It was genuine sickness, all right. He would tell about Harvey’s sickness, how the cough always started with the fluid sound deep in the lungs and then came out in a flood of mucus and then ended in a whooping wheeze, and how they would stop for Harvey to catch his breath, and how Perry would then turn and begin to ski and how Harvey would finally follow, now following. The trees went on and on, and the trail wound on and on.

When they stopped for rest, Perry consulted the map, looking again for some correspondence between the lay of the land and what was printed under the plastic. A few county roads cut into the Arrowhead, none of them seeming to go anywhere in particular, winding into the forest from the cutting edge of Lake Superior, roaming about, then either ending entirely or twisting in a circle back towards the lake.

Harvey started coughing and Perry had to stand him up. When the coughing got bad, Perry leaned him over and clapped his back, clucking to him gently like a mother at bedside. The
coughing eased off and Harvey sat down on his rucksack, his head in his hands, and Perry went back to the map. Surprising himself, he realized he was developing a new and not entirely desirable capacity for treating suffering with clinical dispatch, solving a crisis, moving himself to do what had to be done and nothing more or less, then moving on to the next thing. The next thing was the map, finding a way out. He’d stared at it so often that it somehow seemed an inscrutable but still friendly companion, as if offering something in a language Perry did not understand. The map seemed to stare back at him. Saying: look closer. Look at the elevations. This chain of lakes here, this river connecting them. He peered at the map and the green and brown map peered back at him, and at last he slowly folded it and returned it to his parka pocket.

“Are you ready now?” he asked Harvey. He stated the question.

Harvey coughed again. Perry stood him up and clapped him and helped him into his skis.

“Awhile more,” he said, “just awhile more and we’ll stop and I’ll boil you water.”

He had nothing more to say. Speaking seemed out of place, almost unnatural. Stammered, implied meanings. He realized it and did not like it, but still he could think of nothing to say.

“We’ll go,” he said.

Harvey did not look up. He stood with his skis wide apart.

He could have been standing at a urinal, looking down, his face composed and unstrained and content.

“Harv. We’ll go now.”

With a slow gesture of languor, Harvey nodded and moved forward, and Perry pushed off. Almost as they started, Perry was tired. He could feel it in his thighs and calves and in the bones themselves. He wanted to stop, build a hot fire, bring out the
sleeping bags and then sleep and sleep. He came close to stopping. He hesitated with his poles, relaxing his grip and feeling his arms float away from him, his knees start to cave as if cut like giant spruce to begin the long slow creaking fall to repose. He could have stopped and slept. Nothing to stop him. Easy. His body would have crumpled and his brain would have never known, and Harvey would have come beside him and they would have slept. The tiredness came just like the hunger. It simply came. As uncomplicated and elemental as water or lightning. And the trail wound into the forest in the same indifferent way. Perry pushed with his poles and kept skiing.

The day lasted summer bright, lasted and lasted, and the north was filled with white light.

Soon the trail began ascending. They moved slowly. Harvey had a hard time of it, sometimes seeming not to move at all.

At the trail’s summit they rested. Then they skied down. They moved fast, riding the downward-sloping trail, riding their skis and the downward-going forest. Perry did not need to push with his poles. He let the shining poles hang behind him. The speed blended with his tiredness. Sleep-speeding, the evergreens spilled by, then the straggly branches of birch trees, and the colors sped by in greens and silver and white light, and through an ice cocoon, a fast moving downward-going ice capsule, he slept-sped down, branches and snow glittering, and when he closed his eyes he could still see the brightness.

Harvey’s face was wet and red at the fire. Sweat dribbled from his forehead to his cheeks and into his beard, but he did not seem bothered by it. Rather, he lay against his rucksack with the air of wise content, and even when he coughed he did not move a hand to his mouth nor bend forward to ease the coughing. He sat still,
letting the coughing shake him like some electrical current, not moving or changing expression. He did not wipe away the sweat, or close his eyes, or try to sleep, or talk. At times he suffered blankly, at times not at all, at times appearing to be deep into thought and at times as hardened as a glacier, neither breathing nor moving. His bad eye seemed to be the active eye. While the rest of his face was tranquil, the dead eye rolled askew, untethered by nerve or muscle to its socket, aggressive and dominant. The eye was attracted to the fire as though by magnetism. And when he coughed, the bad eye remained open while the other closed and while his body tightened in a spasm, the bad eye peering out at the fire perfectly indifferent to the sickness.

Perry melted snow and boiled water and gave it to Harvey to drink. Perry held the tin cup, watching the water wet his brother’s beard, watching his brother’s eyes, holding the cup until he saw Harvey’s throat bob.

And it was snowing. There was still some fire, and the snow was sweeping before the fire. He awoke and saw it was snowing. The sky was black and clear, the northern stars, the dippers, everything shining, and still it was snowing. He held out his hand. It was fine dry snow. Then he saw it was snowing from a pine tree. A pine tree was snowing on him, snowing on the fire. A pine tree pregnant and sagged with snow, buckled almost sideways with the weight, snowing on him.

He was looking for airplanes. Sometime while he was trying to sleep and not sleeping, he had thought that they would have airplanes looking for them. Important to keep the fire going. At night an airplane would see the fire. He got it going high, then lay back and carefully scanned the sky for airplanes. He searched
the sky section to section. He searched each of the constellations, and the moon, and the huge sprawling spaces of open black. He scanned each horizon. Then he divided the sky into quadrants and did it again, systematically searching for an airplane.

He heard Harvey move.

“Sleeping?” he said softly.

Harvey moved again. His breathing was wet and deep down.

“Sleeping?”

“I’m sick.”

“Here, let me heat up some water for you.”

“I don’t think …”

“Hot water’ll cut through the crap. Hold still and rest.”

Perry heaped snow into the pot and put it on the fire.

He lay back and continued his search for airplanes. Harvey was mumbling, but Perry gazed upwards, looking for lights.

Harvey’s fluid talking was background music: “I’m sick, I guess … I guess I was right about that, wasn’t I?”

“You’ll be all right.”

“People have always told me that. Harvey, they always say, Harvey, you’ll be all right.”

“Lie still.”

The sky had no airplanes. Perry continued his search, thinking about the form and shadowed wings and red and green lights, looking from horizon to horizon.

“Anyhow,” Harvey said. “Anyhow, here we are. I didn’t force you to come. You can never say I forced you.”

“I didn’t say that. Relax. I’ll give you some water when it’s hot.”

“Anyhow. Here we are. You and me. I don’t mind it. Really, I don’t mind it at all. I’m sick but I feel all right anyway. I don’t mind it … I wish Addie was here. That’s what I wish. That Addie, she’d be teasing me and telling me I’m not sick. Really. She’d
be teasing me and saying pirates don’t get sick. She calls me her pirate, did you know that? She does. Her pirate. I’m not really a pirate. She’d say pirates can’t get sick. Who ever saw a sick pirate? she’d say. Do you know … do you know this, that when I asked her to get married, I asked her polite and straightforward, but when I asked her to get married, Addie said, just like that, she said pirates don’t get married. Who ever heard of a married pirate? she said. Can you believe she’d say that? Who ever heard of a married pirate? I can’t believe that … I don’t know. I don’t like those sorts of names. The old man, he liked to call me a bull. I never said anything about it to him, though. Never told him I didn’t like being called a bull. Or anything else. You probably think I always liked being called that. People always think they know what people think and everything, but they don’t. There’s a lot you think you know you don’t know … I’m not criticizing. You know a lot, you know more than me, I guess, and you’re always sensible and there’s nothing wrong with that, so I’m not criticizing … And I’m sorry I was hollering at you back there. I get that way. I don’t know why but I sometimes get that way. You probably think I’m always thinking about going to Africa and remembering the war and doing all those strange things, but that’s not true. People always think they know what people are thinking about. Anyhow. Anyhow, I’m sorry I hollered at you, I just get that way. I been thinking about getting a job, maybe you didn’t know that. I was telling Grace about it, and I told her not to tell. Grace is nice. She is. I’m sorry about that, too. You must think … I don’t know. I remember things, too. Sometimes I got scared going out with the old man. Not later on, I wasn’t scared then, but the first times going out for a long time, when we went way deep and I was just a little kid, I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. Do you remember that? Do you remember?”