The lake, rolling away from the slight rise on which the cabin sat, was as familiar to her as her dreams. Cold prickles began to dance up her arms, along her neck, into her scalp. It was, in fact, the lake where she had dreamed about Grandpa and Old Raven Man fishing, where they had flipped a huge radiant creature from the deep dark waters. Where she had floated down and down through darkness into the light inside
her soul. Where she had shared with them the honey-tasting flesh of the spirit fish.
She swung around and looked at the hill behind her. A low buzz began to grow in her ears. She tasted the cold memory of snow on her tongue. Black wings flapped powerfully against her chest. And then, as the enchantment grew, a brilliant winter sky, a cabin with windows looking east to the lake, west to the hill.
Without warning, her whole body reacted, became unbalanced. Dizzily she sank down, stretched her legs in front of her, hung her head, inhaled the green early-summer heat.
“You just sit there for a while,” Mr. LaFrenière said kindly. “It will take some getting used to.”
Think about something else. No, not the boy, standing there with his arms folded. His gorgeous black shiny hair. The smell of sage rising around him.
Mr. LaFrenière went on, “This is undeveloped land that's been in my family for a hundred years. When your dad bought it, he promised me that he wouldn't change it except to build his cabin over there. He kept his promise.”
She breathed deeply. “Mr. LaFrenière,” she said. “I've never even seen a photograph of my father. What did he look like?” And then she added, “When you knew him.”
“He was a tall man. A little taller than you.” He took off his cap, running a massive hand like a bear paw through his hair, then offered, “And, I think, he was a tired man.”
He was a tired man. A tired man.
“How long are you staying?” the boy, Lonny, suddenly asked.
“My mom lent me her car for the week,” she said, her guts churning. Please don't let me throw up on this grass, right in front of him.
“You won't be using it much.” He scanned some faraway green place across the lake. His eyes were unreadable.
She struggled back to her feet.
They unloaded her things from the back of the truck and set them on the wooden front steps of her father's cabin: boxes of food supplies that her mother had carefully packed, two coolers, a big army kit bag, and three plastic bags full of every conceivable necessityâ pillows, sheets, her cotton tree quilt, a first-aid kit, extra shoes, three thick wool sweaters, a flashlight, and so on.
“If you need anything, there's a phone,” said Mr. LaFrenière. “That dad of yours wasn't altogether against modern equipment. I guess you knew that your mother called a couple of weeks back to say you'd be around sometime this summer.” He smiled and added, “So everything works. Everything's in order. And by the way, the water's okay, but it doesn't taste so good. We haul our drinking water from town.” He looked at Lonny. “So we'll leave now and let her get settled in. You can bring a jug of water down to her later. You'll do that, won't you, son.”
It isn't too late. Say something. They're leaving. God, don't leave me here.
Lonny turned away. She watched him stride quickly
over to the truck. Like he could hardly wait to get in and leave. He jumped inside and slammed the door shut and leaned against the steering wheel.
Mr. LaFrenière pulled some keys out of his pocket. Two bright brass keys on a dull beaded brass chain. “He's got something eating at him today,” he said apologetically. “These are the keysâone for the cabin, the other for the shed out back. And the power box is inside the kitchen. Main switch is right by the door. Just flip it on.” He paused, as if he was forgetting something, then said, “Would you like some help inside with your things?”
He had warm brown eyes and a courtly manner. She half expected him to tip his cap.
“I can manage,” she said.
“Well, then, welcome to your little home, miss.”
“Mr. LaFrenière?” she blurted out.
“Yes?”
“I'll be fine.”
With a little nod, he said, “Call us anytime. Our number is posted on the wall beside the phone.”
He walked slowly back to the truck. He heaved himself into the passenger's side. Heavily closed the door.
Lonny lifted an arm over the seat and, looking over his shoulder, backed up the truck with a careless grace that took her breath away. Then he stopped and slowly moved ahead, bumping up the long trail back to the prairie road. For a while, she could hear him shifting gears. The engine's slightly asthmatic whine. And then she was alone.
The truck jouncing back up the trail. A thin bead of sunlight breaking through the poplars, shining in his eyes. Pop giving him the third degree. Why was he “so rude to her”? And “Why every time you have to go into that property do you act that way?”
“What way?”
“You know.” Pop looked hurt. He rubbed his hand over his chin. Let that big hand fall helplessly onto his lap and then drummed his knee with his fingers.
“No. I don't know.”
But of course he knew. And then they didn't speak to each other the rest of the way. And when they got there, he offered to go to town and pick up the mail and whatever else they needed. Maybe go and see Deena at the deli, pick up some hamburgers and her thick crispy french fries. He'd buy a can of creamed corn, Pop's favorite.
Pop just took off his cap, slapped it against his trouser leg, and put it on again. He squinted forlornly at a gray cloud.
“Dammit, Pop, say something.”
Didn't say anything. Shook his head and wandered off in the direction of the workshop. So now he'd be in there until all hours, tinkering with stuff. Fixing things that didn't need to be fixed.
The way she sank down in the grass at Earl's place, he thought maybe he was wrong. Maybe she did see it. It, whatever it was. The way she hung her head, sickly, over her knees. That little bone at the back of her neck sticking up. Something was happening, that was for sure. And it was scaring the shit out of him, attracted to this girl who conjured up his childhood terrors as easily as breathing.
Athin trail of her father's life was scattered throughout the cabin. But it was nothing out of the ordinary. In the bathroom, the shower head leaked and drizzled rust-colored water. So she unscrewed it and fixed it. Of course that then led to the floors, which she scrubbed with the rusty water and the only soap she could find, a half-used bottle of dandruff shampoo. But the rest of the place still smelled of old grease. Did he fry everything? And there were little dried-up pools, everywhere, of candle wax.
Before she changed it, the calendar on the wall by the phone still said
January
. On a hook behind the bedroom door, she found a bent-up cowboy hat hanging over a well-worn brown leather jacket with a fur collar, and under that a pair of misshapen brown corduroy pants and a green wool cardigan sweater with two pockets. She picked everything up and carefully went through every pocket. Made a small inventory of what she found: a paper clip, five
dusty acorns, a smooth white stone with maroon markings, four toothpicks, a small red-handled jackknife.
She piled the clothing beside the living-room door. A door that opened onto nothing. No landing. No steps. Straight down, three feet, onto wild prairie grass.
Her father and, she supposed, the LaFrenières before him had simply allowed all that green and mauve and amber grass, strewn with little white wild-flowers, to roll away, down the sloping embankment onto the rocky shores of the lake. She sat there, gazing out over the ruffled water until the breeze died and the mosquitoes started to urge themselves into the cabin.
Then she tried calling home. Remembered that Mom, whom she should have called earlier, was going shopping with Auntie Francine and then to dinner and a late movie, so that they wouldn't worry about her, which they probably were doing anyway. So she left a message on the machine: “Hi, Mom. Hi, Auntie Francine. It's me. It's Alex. I'm here. I didn't get lost. I'm fine. Mom, I'll call you later. Or I'll call tomorrow. Or something.”
She got off the phone and called Peter. His little brother, Dougy, answered with a bored voice and didn't want to talk to her, and in the background she could hear the TV turned way up and some girl who was with him singing in a weird voice like she was part duck.
“So will you give him the message?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Dougy, did you even write down the number? Read it back to me.”
“I've
got
it! Bye.”
She knew that Peter wouldn't get her message. She put down the phone. The LaFrenières' phone number was right there in her father's familiar scrawly hand. She stroked her fingers over it, feeling the ridges and hollows the pressure of his pen had made.
555-3651, Tom and Lonny LaF.
The sun was just slanting, late-day gold grazing the top of the big hill behind the cabin. She hadn't eaten since late morning, two doughnuts before she drove onto their property, just before they brought her here. The clock over the fridge had stopped working who knows how long ago, at seven minutes to three. Besides the clock, the kitchen contained a woodstove, a table, one chair, and the refrigerator. A sofa, a little table, and a circular braided rug were in the living room. A bed and an empty bureau in the bedroom. That was it. No pictures. No ornaments. No really personal traces other than the clothing.
Oh, and in the kitchen, a few pots, dishes, utensils. And in one kitchen drawer, wrapped carefully in dark pink tissue paper, she found seven fat white candles and a perfect round, low candleholder. Green, green stone. Dark and smooth. Beautiful. She cradled the candleholder in the palm of her hand and went and lay down on the bed. She sprawled
on her back. She placed the green stone on her abdomen, breathing deeply, feeling its weight. Letting it gently rise and fall, rise and fall. She tried to relax. She tried to sleep. Then she stared at the ceiling and tried to feel at home.
After the sun, a great fiery ball, started to edge the rim of the prairies, he went out and watched a hawk fly with ponderous dignity off a fence post, walked over the sagging wires and silvery wolf willow onto what was now Jacob Wiebe's pastureland.
He came to a circle of white rocks and looked down at a dried cow pie. Prairie grass grew right up through it, and it crumbled under a light kick. He thought about how many buffalo had once grazed here. How many of their bones were scattered or crumbled or buried. How many generations of pasture sage had grown up from this very earth they had walked on, from their bones and dust and blood and hearts.
All these thoughts became jumbled with images of the dark-eyed girl over at Earl's place. The white sleeve of her T-shirt resting against her smooth arm. Her lofty nose. The smell of her, sitting between him and Pop, as they drove over there in the truck. Damn, she smelled good. Like clover or something. How did she get that smell? It didn't come from a perfume bottle.
It came from her. It drove him nuts, the memory of that sweet smell.
The sky was turning a pale smoky blue when he got back. He hadn't bothered with eating, hadn't been hungry. Hollow as old bones, and light-headed, he stood by the refrigerator door, slowly drinking cold town water out of a plastic juice jug.
Earlier, he'd watched Pop eat two of Deena's burgers, two bags of fries, a side order of onion rings, and a bowl of creamed corn speckled with Cajun pepper, his eyes lowered the whole time over his food. And now he was back in the workshop. Lonny could see his light from the kitchen window.
The telephone rang, and it was Robert. Dunderhead had run off again. “Damn him,” said Robert. “You can never count on that stupid dog staying in one spot for ten minutes. Have you seen him?” Lonny said that he hadn't, and then Robert stayed on the line for several minutes more talking about Tammy, who always had her nose in the air now that she was going out with Richard Dobson, whom everybody knew would end up a lawyer just like his father.
Lonny interrupted his friend in midsentence, midstream. “Robert, go out and find yourself somebody else.”
Silence. And, “You think?” And then, just like that, he's talking about going up to northern Ontario on a fishing trip with his dad and Uncle Daryl. “Crops are in, and it's a good time to go.
Huge
friggin' muskies, Daryl says. Real fighters, too. You should come with us, Lon. It'd be great.”
That day, coming back from the mound after Robert has pedaled furiously home, he comes into the kitchen. His mother is there with her back to him. At the sink, snapping green beans. Snap, in half. Accusingly, into the waiting bowl.
She says, not turning around, “You see dragonflies up there all the time. They move around like little angels. How many did you see today, my babe?”
âI
didn't see any.” A sick wave of heat rises up his body.
A west wind whispers against the moth-white kitchen curtains, blows them in, sighs through her hair.
I've really got to go now, he told Robert, who had moved on to talking about the ball game he was pitching over at Poplar Bluff tomorrow night. I'll be there, Lonny said, even though he had no intention of going. And after that, Robert finally got off the phone.
Earl's daughter was waiting for the jug of drinking water that had been promised to her, and he couldn't leave it any longer. He filled up a big blue container, threw it into the truck, and then quickly left, wheels grinding over gravel, spinning out their bad-luck song.
But three minutes down the road, in the ten-o'clock twilight, here came Robert's big black Lab, Dunderhead, loping toward him, a red moon rising at his back. He had a sideways gait and a look of purposeful attention.