Touch (17 page)

MID-NOVEMBER, MY MOTHER
and I walked back to the house after Sunday service, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder. We stopped for a moment and looked out at the children and parents already spilling onto the ice.

“Go on, then,” she said to me.

“What?”

“If you want to skate, to go down to the river, you may. I know you’d like to go be with your friends.”

One of the children—from where I stood, I could not tell who it was—a girl, perhaps seven or eight, wobbled away from the snowbanks and out onto the ice. She caught up with another girl, and the pair linked arms. The two girls skated forward until one of them fell to the ice, pulling the other atop of her. Their shrieking laughter carried to me.

My mother’s hand left my shoulder. “I’ll put your skates out for you.”

Her footsteps on the snow sounded like sugar crunching, and the two girls on the ice climbed gingerly to their feet.
I turned and looked at my mother. She moved lightly across the packed snow in the direction of our house. For the first time I realized that though I thought of my mother as old—and now looking back, already ten years older than my mother was at the time, I shudder to think of how ancient I must appear to my own children—she was still young enough to be a mother again. I knew that my stepfather had been married once, but until that moment I had not thought of the idea of my mother and Father Earl having children of their own. As I watched my mother’s back moving away from me, it took me a moment to realize that I was on the verge of crying

I suddenly, desperately, did not want to be alone, but neither could I face the thought of returning to the house, of looking at the skates that my mother was sure to put out on my bed.

I headed back toward my stepfather’s church, passing a family headed down to the river with their skates and sticks. When I neared the church I saw my stepfather talking with a few last parishioners, and I ducked behind the old cabin that he lived in when he first came to Sawgamet. The small building’s roof had fallen in years ago, and a sapling was twisting its way through where a window had once stood. I could not imagine my mother and me living with Father Earl in such a small house, even if it had stood whole. The house we were in by the village was not luxurious—nothing like the one that Uncle Franklin had built for himself—but it was large enough for me to have my own room, for a study, and even spare bedrooms should my mother and Father Earl start a new family.

After a few minutes I heard footsteps and the familiar voice of my stepfather pass by and then disappear. I hurried across the tramped-down path, past the large rock, the church, and
then a little further into the woods until I came to Virginia’s house.

To those who came across Julia and Lawrence’s house unexpecting, it must have seemed like a mirage. There was a small cabin that had been Uncle Lawrence’s before he married Julia, and then, on the other side of the clearing, the stone-built, three-story house that Uncle Franklin had lavished his attention on as a wedding gift for his daughter. The house was elegant and strong, and would not have been out of place on the grand streets of Vancouver. It was much larger than Julia and Lawrence could use with only one child, and there were several rooms that nobody ever seemed to go into. Virginia and I had often played hide-and-go-seek with Marie in the house, though my sister had refused to hide by herself after the time when we forgot to look for her and she accidently locked herself inside a chest in a forgotten room.

I stood on the front porch and hesitated. I had left the river thinking that I could not go home but could not stand to be alone, but the idea of spending time with my cousin was more than I wanted. She was always so cheerful, so full of energy, but what I needed at that moment was someone who would allow me to be alone within their companionship.

I was thinking this—or the simulacrum of this that an eleven-year-old boy thinks—when Uncle Lawrence opened the door.

He did not seem surprised to see me standing there, though I cannot say that I ever saw him look particularly surprised.

“Virginia’s out with Aunt Julia.” He took a bite of his apple. “Skating.” He looked directly at me when he said it, without shame or avoidance. “Want to help me feed the dogs?” He
motioned to his old cabin and the kennels that lay behind them.

“No, thank you.” I glanced at the kennels and then realized that the dogs were silent. “How come they didn’t bark when I came up?”

“I told them not to.” He stepped fully out onto the porch and shut the door.

“You knew I was coming?”

“A little bird told me,” he said. “I was thinking of taking the dogs out for a run after I feed them. If you want to join me, you’re welcome.” He stared at me until I looked down. “Unless you just need to get off into the woods by yourself for a while.”

Uncle Lawrence had invited me to ride the trapline with him before, but I had always turned him down. There was something about the fierce sharpness of Lawrence’s toothed traps that unsettled me, the careful way that my uncle worked through the bloody piles of pelts. I liked the dogs, though, and on another day I would have agreed to help him feed them. Some men’s teams were furious and unruly, but Lawrence had a true hand with his “boys,” as he called them, even though the lead dog was a bitch.

“Would you like to borrow a fishing pole? You can still find some open water if you pick a stream that gets good sun. Maybe you’ll be able to bring something home to your mother. It’s inside the old cabin,” he said, pointing across the clearing. He swung his hand against the side of my arm and then walked off the porch.

He pushed open the door of the cabin for me and then walked around the side of the building to the kennels, leaving
me alone to enter the house that he had lived in before he married my aunt Julia and my great-uncle Franklin had insisted on building him, as Lawrence called it, a castle in the woods.

As I stepped inside I was struck by how neatly he kept it. Lawrence had built the cabin himself, and though it was quite small, the joints were so tight that I could not imagine the wind leaking through. Even the floor was neat; Lawrence had washed gravel and hauled it up from the banks, covering the floor with the fine rocks. He had told me before that he had always planned on putting down planks, but then he had married Aunt Julia and Franklin had insisted that there was nothing to it but to build a house that was fit for his daughter.

The cabin had a slightly musty smell, but still looked ready to live in, as if Lawrence expected guests at any time. The inside was an odd mixture of practicality and unexpected warmth. Brutal, jawed traps hung from pegs, organized by size and looking well oiled, while there was a fussily crafted wardrobe tucked into the corner. The arched doors matched perfectly in the middle, and Lawrence had fashioned a latch out of a stone from the river’s edge and carved a wolf in the wood. Two bunks were set against the wall, one above the other, and the small tabletop was a sawed-off round, sanded and polished so that even in the light wafting through the windows, the unlit lantern on its top seemed to have a twin. The two chairs tucked into the table were indistinguishable from each other. I wondered how Lawrence had bent the wood backs so well. Our house was filled with furniture my stepfather had purchased, but this furniture was something different, something that seemed to draw all of the light. That might have been why the last thing I noticed was the pelt hanging from the wall by the
door, almost against my elbow. I had never noticed it before, and I touched it warily, like it might still be alive. The fur was incredibly soft, colored gray with two fierce streaks of sunset parading down the length. It was as long as my arm and half again as wide.

I heard footsteps outside and then Uncle Lawrence came in through the door. He looked at me touching the fur, and I said, “What’s this from?”

Lawrence pulled the fishing rod from a slot on the wall. “Don’t know. Came up in one of the traps last year. Spit and fought and tried to bite me. Couldn’t get near the thing. Had to shoot it four times to get the thing to die. Never seen anything like it.”

“The woods,” I said.

“The woods,” Lawrence agreed. He handed the pole to me. “Here. Made the pole myself. Spent a few hours shaping and whittling it. You’ve got to get it when it’s green and know which ones have enough give. It’s a fine pole. You won’t find grubs in this weather, but I’ve got some stale bread I can give you, something for the hook. Not sure you’ll catch much anyway, least not unless I take you to my secret spot. But if you do catch something, be sure to let your mother know who lent you the rod.”

I waited outside of the big house for a moment while Lawrence went in for the bread. When he came back out he handed me a tied handkerchief filled tight.

“Seems like a lot of bread,” I said.

“Well, I might have slipped some cookies in there,” he said, and gave me a wink that was so large and obvious and slow that I couldn’t help laughing. “But there ought to be enough
bread in there to see you through anyway. And you’ll tell if you catch a fish with a chunk of gold in its belly.”

I went away grinning.

THE WOODS THEMSELVES
were quiet except for the crunching of my boots in the snow. The birds and squirrels had taken flight at the sound of me, unusual enough that I wondered if there was something else that had passed through the trees recently, a wolf or some other predator. I stayed on the well-worn trail that passed by the abandoned mines and led to the small cluster of cabins where the Chinese lived. Past that I cut my own path through the snow along the banks of the river for fifteen or twenty minutes. I stopped for a minute to catch my breath, and when I did, I heard the voice.

It was a woman’s voice, high and floating, and though I could not make out the words, it seemed to be calling to me. I listened for a moment, and then, though I could not have said why, I was suddenly sure that it was my sister, that Marie was calling for me. I started to run, pushing branches out of my way and stumbling across the uneven ground, heading toward the sound of the river and my sister’s voice. The voice came louder, growing as I approached the water, but when I burst from the trees into clear view of the Sawgamet, the voice was gone. The sun shone down heavily, the river called, and the whistle of birds returned around me, but I no longer heard Marie’s voice.

I stood on the bank, holding the rod and catching my breath, looking out across the partly frozen river, waiting to hear her voice again. For a second, I thought I heard it, but
then I realized that it was the sound of the water splashing and running against the ice and the rocks and its own flow, and I began to laugh at myself, at my grandfather, and at the idea that my sister, that anyone dead, would be out in the woods, calling me down to the river.

I had intended to walk a little further, but where I stood would serve for fishing. The river strangled in and ran quickly here, and the fast-flowing water was still only partly frozen despite it already being mid-November, the water burbling and bouncing white. Though I knew better, I put my foot down tentatively on the edge, banging my heel against the hollow-sounding ice, and then eased my weight onto it. I shuffled out a few feet toward a small hollow where the water ran slower in the midst of its fury; the ice cut away into what looked to be a deep, gathering pool of water. The sun angled enough to keep my shadow from hitting the water, and I thought I saw the glistening movement of fish beneath the surface. With the winter coming and the drop of temperature, it would only be another week or so before it was all ice, even the rushing violence of the water in the middle. Past that, far enough into the winter, and I would be fishing again out on the river, huddling on stools over cut holes in the ice with Pearl and my grandfather, hoping to liven up the winter menu of canned and salted meats with something fresh-caught.

The ice creaked a little underfoot, sending the breath out of my body, but it held. I thought of turning to shore—I knew I was being foolish—but I was already firmly situated. I might as well have a few fish to show for my stupidity, I thought.

It did not take long for me to feel a tug on the rod, and the fish that I pulled from the water gleamed in the winter
light. It took a few flops on the ice before I smashed in its head with the butt of my knife. Lawrence’s joke made me think of gutting it to check for a gold nugget, but I cast the line back in instead. Two more fish came out in quick succession, easy targets for the stale bread and lined hook my uncle had given me. The fish were of size enough that I thought one more would see me well returned home this afternoon. My stepfather would take the fish with no word, but with the little smile he gave me every time he was happy with something I did. He never seemed to know what to say to me, how to tell me he was proud of something, but I could feel it.

A burst of steam came from the surface of the water where I had been fishing, and I watched it carry over the water a ways, and then I dropped the hook back in the river, trying to lay it near the rock where the water slowed a little. Almost immediately the line tugged again and I lifted the fish from the water, watching its scales flash in the sun and letting it hang above the river for a few seconds, enjoying the weight of my catch. When I tipped the rod down and lowered the fish to the ice beside me, it pushed its tail heavily, bouncing and trying to flip itself to the water. The tail sent a loud knocking sound that made the ice creak and reverberated through my boots, making me once again question my decision to stray out onto the ice.