Northern Lights (33 page)

Later he drank his own coffee and went outdoors and looked at the sky.

The wind was gentle. Not such a bad night.

He would have to leave soon.

He would have to make Harvey comfortable and then set off on his own, and he thought about it, feeling neither guilt nor pride.

He looked at the sky and knew it as a fact. They would die
separately or together, or one would die and the other would live, or they would both survive. The possibilities seemed infinite. In the morning he would leave.

He went inside and put a fresh cloth on Harvey’s brow. Then he spread his sleeping bag on the floor and spent the night in nervous brilliant sleep, hearing his own blood rush with dreams and half-awakenings, and in the morning he remembered only the sound of drowning.

He bathed Harvey’s face and chest. Then, avoiding talk, he went outside and gathered a large store of wood. He had no idea how long he would be gone, though it seemed likely he would be gone forever, and he spent the entire white morning bringing in the wood, stacking it behind the stove. He felt Harvey’s gaze but he kept working. He heaped snow into the two kettles, boiled it down to water, then poured the water into jars and pots. Harvey lay quietly in the bunk with a cloth on his brow. There was nothing they could say. Harvey’s face was blood red and raw, and the dead eye was glazed as though it had already given up, and behind Harvey’s beard there was no expression, just the glazed and lazy eye that followed him as he stoked up the fire, grabbed the bunk and moved it wholesale nearer the fire.

“You’re going,” Harvey finally said.

“Have to.”

Harvey nodded, either settling it or accepting it, then closing his eyes.

“Otherwise …”

“I know,” Harvey said. “Bum deal. Sorry.”

Perry ignored the acid building behind his eyes. He turned and sat on the floor and waxed his skis. When he was ready, he took the skis outside and stacked them against the shanty. His eyes were stinging.

He went inside and shook Harvey gently. “All right,” he said in his cheerful stinging voice. “Harvey, are you awake? Listen. While I’m gone you’re going to have to do some things. Are you listening?” He waited for Harvey to nod. “All right then. Listen up. First, I want you to keep that fire going. You know? No matter what, you’ve got to keep that fire going. Okay? There’s plenty of wood there and all you’ve got to do is put some on now and then. All right? Okay. Listen. I’ve got to go. After last night, you know what’s going to happen if I don’t go. Sooner or later, right? Okay. Now I want you to promise to keep that fire going and to always keep the water heating. You hear me? Okay then. When you think you’re having trouble, when you can’t breathe or start coughing bad, you just get to that hot water, and start breathing the steam. It’ll cut through all that crap. Just keep the fire going, keep the water hot. There’s plenty of water here. All right?” He gently shook Harvey. “You got me? The fire and the water, those two things.”

“I guess you’re going.”

Perry nodded. “You got it. Don’t worry. I’m going to go until I find some people or the highway or something, so don’t worry. Now listen. The other thing is this. You’ve got to stay awake more. You know? All the time, you’ve got to think about staying awake. The cough comes worst while you’re sleeping. You know? Okay. And you can’t keep the fire going if you’re asleep. All right then. Try to read, walk around if you can manage. If you keep awake and keep the fire going and keep the water hot, then you’re all right, we’re both all right. You’re not going to give it up. You hear? Just do those things.”

Harvey smiled and Perry smiled.

“I guess. I guess maybe you think I’m pretty stupid,” Harvey said.

“You’re improving.”

“Sure. I hear you.”

“You’re going to do what I tell you.”

“Cross my heart. I’m not all that stupid.”

“I know it.”

“This is the best way,” Harvey said. He smiled again.

“Just keep that fire going. Keep the water hot. Don’t let it all boil away, just keep it hot.”

“You’re a good fellow. You are. You don’t remember that rifle, do you? That’s strange but it’s good. I always thought you remembered it but you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

Perry put his mittens on the stove to warm. He pottered about, wondering what to do. He rigged a string to the door so Harvey could open or close from his bunk.

“Okay. Okay now?”

“It wasn’t supposed to snow,” Harvey said loudly.

“I know. I know it.”

“It wasn’t supposed to. Those things just happen sometimes in winter.”

“Okay. Take it easy. I believe you.”

“It wasn’t planned to snow.”

“Just rest.”

Perry got the fire high and put fresh water on. He put on his parka, and shook Harvey’s hand, and they hugged and separated, and they laughed. Harvey’s beard was full and soft as baby fuzz. “Remember everything. Stay awake.” He closed the door. He carried his skis to the road and snapped them on. He pushed off and skied fast up the road, turning out of the sun, slowing down when the shed was far behind him.

The road was flat. There were birds in the sky and in the trees along the road, sparrows and blackbirds mostly.

He skied stiffly, adjusting again to the feel of the skis and poles and motions.

The day was as flat as the road. It was a day so like all the other days that for a time Perry believed it was one of the others—Harvey behind him, the certain feeling of there being more than one person in the forest, the feeling he could stop and turn and talk if the urge came.

His arms gave out fast. It worried him. He let gravity carry him. Somehow, his knees would not flex properly. Each bump in the road jarred to the base of the brain, but he held on and let the road and gravity and skis carry him down.

He let the road carry him down and tried counting the days. More than a week for sure. Ten, eleven. More than that. Fifteen, at least. More than that. Twenty seemed closer. Three weeks. He couldn’t be sure.

The road pulled him down and gradually he fell into the proper balance and motions, bending for the turns, using the ski edges to slow the steep descent, leaning forward and crouching to absorb the bumps.

Sometimes the road leveled off but it never climbed. He moved fast. Around midday the sun came out and the snow got mushy. The trees were full of blackbirds and sparrows.

He skied and did not worry about the map or sun. He had a road and that was enough to think about, and the road kept descending. Towards the middle of the afternoon the road dipped and rounded a bluff and he was able to look off far over the forest. The road twisted along the face of the bluff, turning fast down, and he leaned hard left and felt the skis bite, and for a moment he was parallel to the road, hanging free, then he straightened and the skis touched again and he was descending. The road was down and down. He thought about Harvey, imagining him in the shanty alone. It was not a good thing to think about. He concentrated on the skiing. The road dropped before him into a funnel of trees. White pines grew to the edge of the road,
arching over it in a great canopy, and he skied down, raising his arms as though flying. He leaned far forward. The road swept him down, into the pine funnel, a dizzy circus chute. The speed snapped at his ears. Then the road dropped from under him. He could see the speed. Something seemed to fling him downward, and for a moment he was terrified, then his skis touched down and the road snatched the left pole from him, tugging it up, and it was gone, glittering for an instant over his shoulder, then it was gone far behind him and the road swept downward. He heard the lost pole splatter in the snow behind him, a tinkling sound, and the road swerved, still falling, and he leaned hard to his right, and let the right pole drag for support.

The road dipped and straightened and still descended. Below was a vast gorge of pine. He held on, dragging the right pole for balance, and in an instant he was in the gorge and still flying downward and downward. The road at last dipped and ascended, and he took the small hill without effort, carried up by simple momentum. He stopped there. He removed the skis and fell back in the snow. He spread his arms and closed his eyes. The sun was tropical.

He was on his back. Basking. Some warm salted ocean.

He slept for a time. It might have been a long time. It was long enough so that when he awoke the sunlight had turned hard gray.

He was tired. He sat up and looked back the way he’d come, down the small hill, into the pine depression, then up the steep hill towards the place he had lost the pole. He was tired. Pushing up and brushing away the caked snow, he buckled on his skis, stood still a moment, then removed them. He was angry at himself. Angry for losing the pole, angry for almost killing himself, breaking a leg, ending it for himself and for Harvey. He considered going back for the lost pole, but the fatigue was too much, and at last he
walked into the woods and after a long search found a branch the right size. Breaking off its twigs, he tested it and decided it would work as a substitute. The branch was much heavier than his pole, but it was the right length and it seemed strong enough.

For at least an hour he skied steadily and carefully, forcing himself to ski and not think. Then he had to stop. Bending over the branch, he began to vomit, his stomach contracting in empty shivers, and he was sick. He was hearing bells. Music of a distant sort. He swayed with the dusk wind, caught himself with the branch, then he heard it again, thinking it was a chime inside him, in his head or belly or memories, and again he shuddered and retched, and again he heard the faraway music of bells. “Sleep,” he said, “now I lay me, now I lay me.”

He was in a glen. The forest rose steeply on each side, and the road burrowed ahead into the edge of dusk. The sky was dull and crowded with clouds. He leaned on the branch until the sickness passed. He decided he would not stop again. He would not think about another night in the forest. He pushed down the road, head down, passing through the glen and into an open meadow and then back into the trees.

The sound of the winter bells. At times the chime seemed to sound just up the road, at times behind him, at times deep in his skull. He was sick. His nose dripped with thin syrupy snot without substance, dribbling into his lips so that he could taste it, then into his beard. He was alone and he felt the full loneliness of the wintertime. Steadily, the road climbed. Perry sensed it was climbing for a reason, and he followed it up, shuffling the skis and pushing with his branch and pole. The sound of winter bells surrounded him. The branch tore a gash in his mitten. He was sweating. His nose dripped with the sweet tasting winter snot, and he reached the road’s summit where the bells were again ringing and he came down, followed the road as it twisted left and flattened and began climbing again.

It was night. The sweat froze under his parka. He skied with his eyes down, watching the few yards stretching immediately ahead.

He heard the bells.

Then he heard a dog. It was a big dog, he could tell from the bark. It was excited, too. He pushed harder. The barking was somewhere ahead of him, not far away, perhaps at the top of the hill or just below, not far. A little to the right.

It was a big dog, all right. A town dog.

He made the hill. He stopped and listened, wiping his nose. The barking was gone but the sound of bells seemed even louder. He glided down the hill and followed the road in a long slow arc, and on the far end of the curve, just as the road straightened, he came upon a yellow litter bin and picnic table. The table was brown pine, turned upside down. It was civilization. He could smell it now. Smell its complexities. It sobered him. He stopped, rested against the litter bin, and tried to clear his head to think it all out. It had been a dog, all right. He was sure of it. And the bells were still chiming, not so loud now but still there, somewhere to the right and in the woods. When he was rested, he started off again, trying to ski smoothly so as not to wear himself out. The road climbed and hit another apex and began falling. It was a long, gentle slope. When he came to the end of it, the night was complete, nothing but woods and dark and the strip of white road, and he listened, but the bells were gone and the dog, if it was ever there at all, was silent. There were no stars and no moonlight. “Wish I may, wish I might,” he murmured.

It was very cold. He hadn’t felt it before.

He let his mind clear. He wiped his nose and a blind dizziness settled in his stomach. “Star light, star bright,” he said, “have the sight I might tonight.” He held his mittens under an armpit. He blew into his hands and waited and listened for the bells.

An hour of darkness passed. The road was smooth and flat. Skiing steadily, not stretching himself and not stopping, he grew
warm and the sickness eased off and left a taste in his mouth that no longer frightened him. It was a quiet cold winter night. He thought of Christmas, then of particular Christmases. Then he thought of summer, summer in general, summer with sun and mosquitoes and short cool nights. Then he thought of Christmas again.

The smell of civilization was gone. Without his glasses, he might have passed a town without noticing, a town or a house, something, the bells and the big dog. He considered turning back, calculating the time he would spend retracing the road towards the sound of the barking dog. Without deciding on one course or the other, he skied straight on, thinking about the dog, picturing it in warm greeting, thinking next about the bells, then thinking about a flurry of things.

In the night he heard an airplane.

He sat up. He hadn’t been asleep. He’d found another picnic area and sat down for rest, and sometime during the night he’d drifted back and looked at the sky. He’d been thinking. His mind was out in the woods, roaming by itself in and out of the trees, rambling about, trying corners here and shadows there, lazily exploring.

Then he heard the plane.

It made perfect sense. Without having to look for it, he saw it. It was high and far away. He saw the red and green wing lights. He did not have to move. He watched it come, aimed right at him. He saw the dark hole of the cockpit. The cabin lights. He thought he saw faces and hats. He imagined cocktails being served. And toasted almonds and smiles. As the plane passed overhead, he stood and waved, and the trees seemed to waver with the jet’s wind.