Northern Lights (35 page)

“What day is this?”

“I reckon it’s Friday. Arild, you know Arild, he works down in Silver Bay like I was telling you, and he comes home Friday nights or Saturday mornings, most time Saturday morning, so.…”

“No,” Perry said slowly, “I mean what day of the month is it?”

The young woman stared at him. She could have been in high school. He knew the cool assured look. “It’s the twenty-ninth of January, I guess.”

He nodded. He drank the cocoa then followed her to the curtained-off bed. He lay back without covering himself. He closed his eyes and heard her closing the curtains, heard her move off towards the kitchen. He did not immediately fall asleep. Later he heard a child crying, and a woman’s calm young voice.

N
ext it was dark.

The curtain was thick green. Lights were playing somewhere behind and beyond it.

He was cold. Dimly, without sound or cause, the curtain moved like foliage brushed by wind. A fire was going in the next room, the same room really, and it glowed against the veil of a curtain. Something clattered. A pot or kettle. Nearby, the little girl was whimpering. He felt uncomfortable, too warm and too cold, a stranger in the house. He was no longer tired. For a few long moments he watched the bright firespot on the curtain, then he got up, looked for his clothes. Everything was very dark except for the veiled fire. Finally he tied on the robe.

The child was still on the floor. She seemed asleep.

Wide awake and fresh, Perry went to the kitchen.

He heard the young woman singing in the bathroom. He found the refrigerator, took out a can of beer and drank it down. He was greedy and hungry. He found a package of sliced
bologna. He opened it and ate two slices and slipped the package deep towards the back of the refrigerator. Then he opened another can of beer.

Outside, his skis were propped neatly against the front steps. His rucksack lay where he’d dropped it, now covered with a coat of frost. He stood on the porch in his bare feet, sipping the beer and looking out on to the lawn and towards the road. He figured it was not far from dawn.

When he went inside, the young woman was at the table, her hair wrapped in a towel.

“What the dickens you doin’ out there?”

“Hi,” he said, smiling at her. He held up the can of beer. “I woke up. I’ll pay you for this, I was just thirsty. I had some of that bologna, too.”

She laughed. “Well, what the dickens? What you doin’ out of bed?”

“I woke up.”

“Woke up! I should say. You only been sleepin’ a half hour or so. Twenty minutes. I was thinkin’ you’d sleep till forever or something.”

“Really? Felt like it
was
forever. What time is it?”

“Close on to midnight maybe. You went to bed round eleven. An hour’s all you was in there at most. I thought you’d be sleepin’ till Sunday at least.” She lit a cigarette and offered the pack to him. “Guess you oughta be hungry. Here, when I get my hair dried I’ll fix you a sandwich. The way you was throwin’ up I thought sure you’d be sleeping till … Anyhow, I guess you’re feelin’ some better now.”

“A lot.” He finished the beer and watched her dry her hair. The house had no luxuries. It was washed clean and the furniture was old and polished and sturdy. On one wall was the fire-place. A photograph of the child hung over the mantel.

The young woman made him a bologna sandwich. Freshly washed and dried, her hair was very long and straight, cut neatly across her forehead. She had the pale skin of her child. She wore a clean white robe pulled tight across her shoulders and waist, and as she washed and rinsed and stacked the dishes the robe folded around her legs. She wore fluffy white slippers. The light was bad. A single kerosene lamp stood on the table as a centerpiece. The water splashed gently. She dried her hands, knowing he was watching, and slowly she turned, her eyes down. “ ’Nother sandwich, Mr. Perry? Reckon you could stand some food. How the dickens you get yourself lost anyhow?”

“There was a blizzard.”

“You seen yourself in a mirror?”

“No.”

“Y’oughta look. You was a mess when you come in here, I’ll tell you that much right now. Still look awful sick and skinny and all.”

“That’s fine with me. Look, you don’t have to make another sandwich, I’ve had plenty.”

“No problem.”

“Really.”

“Okay then, you’re the boss. I reckon when Arild gets here—he’ll be here tomorrow for sure—when he gets here he’ll drive y’on in to Tofte or Lutsen, whichever you want. He’ll be glad to know you found, I mean, glad that you heard the dog barkin’. He likes that dog, too. Both of ’em like that dog, though I can’t think of one good thing to say about him, except he’s big, that’s the only thing. Arild’s big, too, though.” She finally looked at him, forming a circle with her hands. “Got muscles like this.”

“Sounds strong.”

“You bet he is. I don’t know what he’s gonna say when … 
Anyhow, he’s somebody to be careful of if you know what I mean, Mr. Perry.”

“I know.”

“Okay then. Just wanted … Okay. He’s older’n me, too. Graduated year before me. We both graduated. He’s over twenty-five now.”

“He sounds good.”

“He’s gonna laugh when I tell him you got lost out in the woods. He thinks, well, he
says
he thinks only fools and dogs ever get lost, but that’s ’cause he thinks he knows everything ’bout everything.”

“Well, he’s right. We were stupid.”

“Arild’ll tell you you shoulda brought a map along.”

“Well, we had a map. We got lost anyway.”

“Well,” she said.

Abruptly she got up, clutching her robe around her. “My name’s Carla,” she said, “just like the little girl. We’re both Carla. I thought it was kinda cute, don’t you think? You know how old I am? I’m twenty-one. I thought I’d just better tell you, just in case.”

She moved out of the kitchen and lay down with the sleeping child.

Perry went outside. He was not sleepy. He thought about Harvey and felt some guilt, but he went inside and blew out the kerosene lamp and passed through the curtains to the soft bed. Lush, illiterate sounds came from behind the curtains. The young woman’s child was awake. The child was talking about the lost dog, then the young woman hushed her.

Perry wanted another cigarette. He lay on his back, listening to the shushing sounds of the young woman, thinking about one of the filtered cigarettes, then thinking again about Harvey.

His legs and arms itched, soap film.

Harvey would be all right.

He’d done his best. In the morning he’d leave early.

He scratched himself hard.

Feeling guilty, knowing the young woman was awake and listening and wondering, he got up and passed through the curtain and padded outside and urinated off the porch. The night was very cold. His penis shriveled in the cold air. He urinated and smiled at his skis and rucksack, drew some long breaths of cold air, then went back to the bed.

A long time passed. He scratched himself up and down. He took off the robe and lay naked. He could not stop scratching himself.

The bed was too soft, sagging wherever he turned, too soft and too warm.

He felt dangerous. He put a hand over his heart and felt it beating. He had a great wealth of strength. He felt like a tree, very tall and strong and deeply rooted and fatless, tough hard fibers that an electric saw could cut. Safe, now. Safe and sound.

He heard the young woman get up and hover in the dark somewhere in the center of the main room.

He listened to her try for silence.

Then he saw her shadow on the curtain. She was standing very still, her shadow straight, her headshadow cocked as if listening.

When the curtain at last parted, he pretended to be asleep. He heard her straining for absolute silence.

After a time, he heard the curtain close, heard her lie down with the child, then he slept.

In the morning she brought him coffee in bed. “Don’t spill it now, you hear? No fun washin’ blankets, you know.” She smiled
at him and he smiled back. “I heard y’ havin’ a bad time tryin’ to sleep,” she said, watching him drink, standing over him with her arms folded. “Know just how it is. Strange place, strange bed and all that.”

“I slept fine once I got to sleep. What time is it?”

“Oh, I let you sleep some. Guess it’s almost noon or so. You just have some breakfast, though.”

Perry hurried, dressing in the bathroom. The young woman had pancakes ready. He wasn’t hungry but he ate anyway. The little girl ate silently beside him.

“No need to hurry so,” the woman said. “Anyhow, you should eat another pancake. It ain’t, it isn’t puttin’ me out any if you want one more.”

Perry shook his head and got up to look at the map. The young woman played with her wrists. “Well, then, you just better drink some hot coffee, that’s all.”

“No,” Perry said. He put on his parka.

“You just goin’ then?”

“I’ve got to. I want to say …”

“I ain’t gonna tell Arild nothin’. Don’t worry about nothin’.” She smiled straight at him.

The little girl was waiting outside in her snowsuit. She held the sled by its rope. She watched Perry get into his skis. The young woman stood on the porch without a coat, hugging herself.

Perry threw on his rucksack. “Hope you find that dog, Carla.”

“He’s good as caught right now.” And the little girl went down the road one way and Perry went the other, and the young woman stood hugging herself and watching.

Almost immediately, fences appeared along the road, then a summer fishing resort with a locked gate and No Trespassing signs. Perry skied in the righthand ditch. He was vaguely proud of himself, proud in a general sort of way, and soon he heard the long rush of automobiles on a paved road ahead. Then the forest changed. The trees shrank to half their forest size, turning brown and shabby looking. The change could have been drawn by a straight line. Behind him lay millions of green pines, and before him were nothing more than city trees, separate and tenuous and sparse. Things seemed somehow wilted and diseased. He passed a sprawling old junkyard circled by a peeling fence that advertised the Lake County Fair in huge red letters.

Then the road made a final violent twist, as if strangling itself out of revulsion, and then there was the highway.

Perry stopped before leaving the woods.

The snow was mushy.

He made a snowball, packing it hard in his bare hands, then he picked out a decent-sized evergreen and threw the snowball, missing the tree by a few inches, and the snowball sailed out of sight.

He turned on to the highway and skied along the shoulder. There was no ditch. He put his head down and went slowly, letting the dirty snow pass under his skis. A gray monotonous day, and except for a single station wagon that sped past without stopping, the road was desolate and empty. Ahead was Tofte, a half-mile down the road.

His neck ached. It was all dull and routine and perfectly ordinary.

He stopped at a gas station outside the town.

He clapped the skis together, knocking off wet snow, then he tied them together and rested them against the pump.

A pickup was parked in the open garage.

An old sedan stood on its head under an elm.

Inside, the light was bad. Two men in flannel shirts and jeans were drinking beer and playing an electric bowling game.

The place smelled good. It was wood and spilt beer and groceries and gasoline. A woman sat on a stool watching the men play the bowling game. She got up and brushed her hands on her apron. Perry asked for a pay phone.

“Sorry,” she said. “No phone unless for emergencies, and it’s a private phone, too.” Her accent was frontier Swedish, hitting her last syllables with the precision of a fine bell.

Perry told her it was indeed an emergency.

She looked at him suspiciously, then went over to one of the flannel-shirted men, then came back and pulled a phone from under the counter.

Perry called the state police first. The duty officer didn’t sound much surprised. He sounded old. “Hot damn! We been looking for you, fella. Where the hell you been?”

Perry told him. The old-sounding officer took down the details. It seemed to last to eternity. Finally he told Perry to hold the line and there was a short pause, then the line buzzed and another officer was on the phone, this one younger and less friendly and more efficient, and Perry repeated the story, giving Harvey’s approximate location, trying to visualize the old shanty as he talked. When he finished, the efficient-sounding officer told him to stay put and not worry, a car was being dispatched from Grand Marais. The conversation ended with a long clanging buzz.

Next he called Grace. He rang four times without luck, then he tried Addie’s boarding house, then the library, then Grace again. He thought he might have forgotten the numbers. He got the operator and she called and still no answer.

He hung up and stood with his arms folded.

The woman with the Swedish accent stood across the counter from him.

“Would you want a hamburger, Mr. Perry?” she said.

He nodded and sat down. Lights on the electric bowling game sparkled and bells rang.