Caribou Island (18 page)

Everything was working against Gary now. Irene, the weather, time. Old troll brought her bow, said she wanted to hunt. Arrow tips wide fins of razor blade, a compound bow with pulleys, a frightening amount of power, and she seemed in dark enough a mind to consider using it on him.

The wind colder again, building. Another low-pressure system, hardly a break since the last. Gary had expected some warmer weather after the early storm. A kind of Indian summer. But this was starting to look like fall would be short. Another day below freezing.

Not another soul anywhere on this huge lake. The boat heavy with canned goods, loaded to the gunwales. A barge making its way slowly into white, the sky coming down.

All that held them was a hollow in the water, the theoretical weight of that, a depression in the surface. If they dipped an edge, the water would rush to fill the vacuum and they’d sink right to the bottom. Gary could feel the weight of the boat loaded down, could feel its desire to sink. The inanimate world full of intent, and Gary acutely aware how frail his life was. Waiting, hoping to pass safely, and he could do nothing more.

I could have loaded us down a bit less, he called out to Irene. We’re heavy.

Irene turned to look at him a moment, as hostile a presence as ever, then looked forward again.

A slow passage, so slow it felt almost like Gary’s will was all that was powering them, but finally he was able to turn toward shore. He came in slow, aimed carefully, but they were too heavy. They hit rocks fifteen feet out, stopped dead.

It’s not deep, Irene said. I’ll just get out here.

She was over the side and sank to her thighs. Not wearing waders. She grabbed a flat of chili, heavy he knew, and took a step toward shore then slipped and went down. Dropped the canned goods, went in to her shoulders, thrashing with her arms. Stood back up, dripping, and didn’t say a thing. Just grabbed another flat of cans out of the boat, stepped forward again and made it this time to shore. Entirely soaked and must have been freezing.

Gary didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t think of anything safe. He put the engine in gear and tried to ram a bit closer but was caught. So he turned off the engine and climbed over the bags and flats to the bow, handed another flat to Irene, who had returned.

We’ll go back after unloading, he said. So you can take a hot bath and get some warm clothes.

She looked old, very old, the lower part of her hair wet, her face wet. She took the plastic-wrapped flat of soups and turned away again.

Gary swung his legs over and lowered into the water, a shock of cold. Grabbed a flat and stepped carefully on the slick rocks below, made it to shore, cracking through thin panes of ice.

If you want, you can relay everything up to the tents and I’ll do the trips to the boat, he said.

Irene paused a moment. All right, she said.

He was going to have probably fifty trips over the slick stones. Not having a dock or a better beach was something he hadn’t considered enough when he bought this place. One more example of his poor planning. But they wouldn’t have to do this often. Another boatload would last them to the hard freeze, then he’d buy a used snowmobile and bring supplies on that. Some kind of cargo sled. This entire place would be transformed. An open flat plain of white, no boats, and it was coming soon.

Gary could imagine walking out across the ice, the island no longer an island. The air still, no sound. Peaceful.

Irene gone a long time from shore. Changing her clothes, he was sure, and that was a good idea. Might save them a trip back home, too. Gary carried more flats of canned goods. His legs numb, his feet not feeling the rocks well.

Irene reappeared in dry clothing.

Feel better? Gary asked, but there was no answer. Irene picked up a flat of baked beans and walked carefully into grass and alders. The snow coming down heavier now, the world vanishing. No mountain, and the lake shortened. Closing in, leaving only the two of them and their work.

Back and forth, slogging through the water, Gary’s legs no more than stumps. He removed all the canned goods, the tubs of putty, everything heavy. Then pulled himself aboard and was able to motor in to shore.

Eagle has landed, he said to Irene, trying to cheer things up, but she was impervious. Grabbed another flat and walked away.

Gary finished unloading, then helped carry up to the cabin. Irene just setting things randomly in any spot.

How about a little planning? he said. We need to organize this stuff. But she didn’t respond.

Fine, he said, and he looked around. No room in the tents, and they needed the cabin clear for construction. So Gary stacked against the back wall. Soups and baked beans on one end, chili and canned veggies on the other. Bags piled between. If a bear came along, they’d be in trouble, but a bear seemed unlikely out here. Plenty on the far shore, but he’d never heard of one on this island.

By the time he was finished, Irene was sitting on a log.

That’s it? he asked.

Yeah.

We should try to place a couple joists, Gary said, looking around, but he could see the light was fading, the world going dark blue. Looking like winter. He could see his breath in the air. Or maybe it’s a little late for that.

I’ll heat up some soup, Irene said.

Thanks, he said. He walked down to the beach to fish out that flat of chili she dropped. Stepped into the water, newly cold, the waves about a foot high now, the water blue-gray and opaque. Couldn’t see even his own feet, but he’d brought the shovel, so he poked around with that, could feel the tip on rock. A new kind of fisherman, a prospector, almost, prodding at the deep to find what could be unburied. What if he could go deeper? He’d follow this rocky slope all the way to a hundred fathoms, the low valley, where he’d dig deep into silt, make great piles like sand. Who knows what could be uncovered then. The Lake Man, they’d call him, and he’d find everything that had ever been forgotten. A childhood alongside an old shoe, a rusted-out engine full of someone’s thoughts from a summer afternoon. He’d find everything that ever was here. There’s something about water, he said aloud. What is it about water?

Gary pulled the shovel along the bottom like a rake, a farmer tending soil, feeling for that flat, for a rectangular shape softer than rock. He stepped deeper and went for another row of rock, shuffling sideways, combing the area, and finally found it. Eureka, he said. The Lake Man recovers all.

He tugged with the shovel, pulled into shallows until he was able to reach down and grab. Carried it up to Irene to show her.

I got that case of chili, he said.

Irene didn’t even look up. Kneeling before the stove, gazing into a pot of soup. Getting darker now, her face lit by the stove.

What the fuck, he said. Are you ever going to talk to me again?

You wouldn’t want to hear what I have to say.

Fine, he said. You’re probably right. I’ve heard about enough of your crap.

Gary went into the tool and supply tent to clear a space. Kneeled at the opening and stacked everything high on one side. Then went to the sleeping tent to grab his bag and pillow. I’m sleeping in the other tent, he said.

Irene like a monk over the soup. As if this meal were made of signs.

Gary stripped off his wet boots and pants and socks, put on dry clothing. Could feel his feet tingling back to life. I’ll take my soup now, he said. I’m sure it’s hot enough.

So Irene poured half the pot into a large plastic bowl and Gary grabbed a spoon and hiked down to the water’s edge. Found a good rock and sat looking into the darkness falling over the water. No longer snowing. In the far distance, on the opposite shores, no longer a clear divide between water and sky. The boat bumping in the waves, scraping occasionally on rock.

He wanted to live out here. He wanted to spend a winter, wanted to experience that. But he could see now it would be only one winter. In the spring, he would leave this place, leave Irene. He didn’t know where he would go or what he would do, but he knew it was time to leave. This life had finished.

Irene lay alone in her tent. A quieter night than usual, no wind. And she tried to imagine what it would be like in winter. Not so hard to do, really, after living at the edge of this lake so many years. As she walked out onto it, she’d find fault lines in the snow. A thin dusting, faint ridges raised up where the ice had cracked. No other footsteps, no tracks of any kind. Irene the only figure on a broad pan of white.

Early winter, the temperature minus fifteen. The mountains would be white, the lake and glacier. Only the sky a new color, rare winter sun, rare midwinter blue. The sun above the peaks moving sideways, unable to rise any higher.

Irene would carry her bow, her footsteps the only sound. The world prehistoric. Wind shifting the snow like sand, small dunes and hollows. The water close beneath.

Irene imagined herself not properly dressed for the cold for some reason. Wearing what she had worn inside the cabin, finished now: a blue sweater, thin down vest, wool pants and boots, a knit cap, white and gray. No gloves. Her hand holding the bow was cold. She walked toward the glacier, toward the mountains, away from the island. Walked slowly. Then stopped and looked around.

Without her footsteps, no sound. No wind, no moving water, no bird, no other human. This bright world. The sound of her heart, the sound of her own breath, the sound of her own blood in her temples, those were all she would hear. If she could make those stop, she could hear the world.

The water beneath her was moving, and that must make a sound. A dark current beneath ice, no surface to break, no ripples, but even that must make a sound. Deep water, layers and currents, and when one layer moved over another, something must hear that, some tearing of water against water. And over time, the changes in those currents, the shifts, the lake never the same from moment to moment. All of that must be recorded somehow.

Irene could imagine herself continuing on over the thin crust, holding the bow in her left hand, letting the other hand warm in her pocket. Continuing over light dunes of snow, pausing in an area of large flakes. The size of fingernails, individual snowflakes, their branches visible, lying at angles, razor-thin. They looked ornamental, contrived, too large and individual to be real. She squatted down for a closer look, touched a flake, then wiped her hand across the surface revealing the black of the lake, the color of ice over the depths. A vacuum of light. And no way to peer into it, the surface clear but so dark as to be essentially opaque.

The cold would press in. Not dressed for this, not prepared. Her legs and back cold. She’d be shivering soon. The sun so bright and without any warmth.

Gary, she said. And she stopped. This big lake, so flat, only the small drifts of snow. She looked at the far shorelines, turned a slow circle, tried to see it all at once, the immensity of it.

And then she would walk toward the nearest shoreline, wanting the cover of trees. The distances deceiving, elongating. At the edge of the lake, ruptures and monuments of ice, their peaks covered in snow, mountains of another scale. She stepped over a ridge, a giantess, slick ice beneath her boots and then rock, large pebbles, the beach. Into the trees quickly, home of winter birds: spruce grouse and willow ptarmigan, white-tailed ptarmigan. She’d seen small flocks of redpoll feed in temperatures colder than this.

No trail here. She stepped over deadfall, pushed through bare patches of alder, grown thick, food for ptarmigan, into the taller white trunks of birch, the evergreen Sitka spruce, tall and thin with branches bent at odd angles.

Irene looked for signs of life, saw and heard nothing. Her footsteps cracking. The forest nonconcealing, open to the sky, too bare, too stunted to cover. Wallow and swale, the flats and hollows, pushing again through denser growth right into a devil’s club, spiny knob rising out of the forest as high as her shoulder. She cried out, her left hand impaled with spines. Twisted cane with its knobby head, thick with spines. And now she saw there were many more here. A thicket, so she had to backtrack, go around the wallow, find higher ground again.

She would find a stand of white birch, easier going, more space between trunks, make good progress, the snow not too deep. A rise, finally, the flank of the mountain, dragging the bow behind her. The cold air heavy in her lungs. As she came over a small hill, she could see the mountain above, white above the treeline, rumpled and old. She’d climb until she reached the top. Many miles, and she’d never done this in winter, but it didn’t seem difficult now. It seemed almost as if she could be carried upward, as if she could float above the ground. Only the bow was holding her back, weighing her down, so she let it drop from her hand, didn’t watch it fall, didn’t look back, climbed faster, a new urgency, pulling at small branches with her hands.

Irene felt dizzy, lightheaded, the climbing a kind of trance, watching the snow in front of her, always perfect, small hollows around every trunk, everything contoured, the world traced and made softer.

Nothing more after that. Irene lost the vision. Could no longer see herself, could no longer see the winter. She was back in the tent, alone, thinking the world wasn’t possible as it was. Too flat, too empty.

Irene curled on her side in her sleeping bag, waited for sleep, which never came. The night an expanse. Hours of focusing on her breath, counting her exhales, trying to slip away. Then turning onto her stomach, her knees sore from the sideways positions.

Early morning, the wind coming up. Still dark out. She lay on her back, no longer trying for sleep. Just let the pain pulse through her head, drifted around in it, felt tears leaking from her eyes but couldn’t find any emotion attached. A general sense of grief, or despair, something empty, but not what you’d call a feeling. Too tired for that. Waiting for light, for the day to start so at least she could get up and there would be activity. Something to pass the time.

She closed her eyes again, and when she opened her eyes sleepless hours later, the blue nylon of the tent was just visible, and so this was the beginning of the day. Another half hour of waiting and it was light enough to rise and dress.

Cold and overcast as Irene emerged from the tent. She walked over to the cabin, looked out the open space for the front window, shivering in the wind. She needed to get working to warm up.

So she stepped over to Gary’s tent. Get up, she called out. Gary. It’s time to work. I’m cold. I need to start working.

Okay, he answered finally. She envied him his sleep. Waking into a new day separated from the last. For Irene, her entire life was becoming one long day. She wondered how long she could survive. At some point, if you never sleep, do you die? Or does just lying there for hours, resting with your eyes closed, count somehow as partial sleep, something you can do for years on end?

Gary came out of the tent with his boots unlaced, jacket unzipped, head bare. Mostly gray now. Stumbled off a few feet and took a piss, faced away from her. Which reminded her of the outhouse. They still had an outhouse to build. No more squatting behind bushes in the snow.

Gary shook and zipped, stepped away, laced his boots, grabbed his hat from the tent. Cold, he said. Wind coming up.

Yeah, she said. I get to saw the ends of the joists. I need to get moving to warm up.

Okay, he said. What about breakfast?

We can have that later.

Okay.

They walked to the pile of two-by-eights and brought one into the cabin through the back door, stood on stepstools. Gary along the high back wall, holding the joist over his head, marked a pencil line for the cut.

Then Irene worked at the saw, feeling her upper body warm. Under different circumstances, she might enjoy building a cabin. A good distraction, a sense of accomplishment. The angled piece came off and they walked back to test the fit.

Pretty good, Gary said finally. Good enough. We can cut the others at the same angle.

Irene tried to just work and not think about anything else. The ripping of the saw through wood, the way the wood grabbed at it, clenched it, stops and starts, and she was thinking of winter again, wondering at what she had seen. Did it mean anything? Saying his name, standing there on the ice looking all around. Or brushing away the snow, seeing the black of the ice, or running into devil’s club, all the spines. It hadn’t been a dream. It was a waking vision, and yet she’d felt the sting of the spines, seen the twisted club heads all around her. Carrying her bow. And had she been out hunting? How can we not know our own visions, our own daydreams?

Gary saying something. Irene tried to come back, focus. What? she asked.

I said we won’t be able to fit both ends. Or maybe we can. Let me think.

Irene stopped sawing. Waited. Looked down at sawdust in the snow. Her toes cold, her knees cold against the ground. She got up in a squat, but that felt unstable for sawing, so she kneeled again.

I’m not thinking well, he said. I need some breakfast. We should have breakfast before we start.

Irene at fault for his inability to think. Nothing new there. She went to the Coleman stove and put the teakettle on a burner. Hot water for oatmeal and chocolate or tea. Neither of them drank coffee. In many ways, their strange lifestyle had been good. No TV. No Internet. No phone. Just the lake, the woods, their home, their kids, going into town to work and buy supplies. It hadn’t been a bad life, on the surface. Something elemental about it. Something that could have been true if it hadn’t all been just a distraction for Gary, a kind of lie. If he had been true, their lives could have been true.

Gary in his tent, resting or warming up while Irene waited for the water to boil. She wondered whether she could be softer, forgive him for everything, let it pass. Accept what her life had been. Something reassuring about that. But in the end, you feel what you feel. You don’t get a choice. You don’t get to remake yourself from the beginning. You can’t put a life back together a different way.

The water boiled, finally, and Gary emerged for his oatmeal and hot chocolate, sat down in the doorway, a space for one. So Irene ate her oatmeal kneeling at the stove, thinking you really can’t put a life back together a different way. That was the problem. Knowledge came too late, and by then, there was no use for it. The choices had already been made.

I see now how to do it, Gary said. I just needed a little food in my stomach. We’ll angle one end of the extension pieces, then hold them in place and mark a line for where to join. That’ll work.

Sounds good, Irene said. She hadn’t been listening, and she didn’t care. She began sawing again, her shoulder getting sore.

Gary taking a break, making plans while she worked, or maybe only daydreaming. So she stopped. You can finish these, she said, and walked to the tent to lie down, her head spinning. The pain as sharp as it had ever been, like someone sawing through her skull, but she didn’t care much about that. It just was. The pain had become like breathing. Nothing convenient about breathing, but we keep doing it.

She could hear Gary moving faster but also jamming the blade more often. Impatient. Wanting to get the roof on. But Irene could see now that the tent was more comfortable than the cabin ever would be, so she was in no rush.

Okay Irene, Gary called out. I’m ready to measure the extensions.

Irene didn’t move at first. Just seemed too difficult to get up.

Let’s go, Gary said. We can put up all these joists today and maybe even get the roof on.

Okay, Irene said. She crawled out of her bag, put on her boots, and stepped outside. A perfect workday, really. Cold and overcast, but not coming down on them, not too windy. She walked over to the pile of joists and looked at her husband. A stranger’s face. No friendliness.

I’ll go in first, he said. You’ll be on the back wall.

Okay, she said, and followed with her end. Stepped onto a stool, held her end high.

Make sure you’re level with the top, he said.

It’s there, she said. Just mark it.

I’m doing that, he said.

They set the joist down and he nailed the two pieces together. Hard hammer blows, loud.

They raised it again, and Gary nailed his end into the log wall. Damn it, he said. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this.

Irene could see a nail at the base going in crooked, another angled from the side. Maybe you need brackets, she said.

Yeah. I realize that now. But I don’t have brackets, and there doesn’t happen to be a store out here. Damn it.

So she kept holding her end while he drove in four crooked nails.

A long morning and afternoon with the joists, Gary growing steadily more frustrated and angry. His hat off and jacket unzipped from the exertion, his hair in ruffs that stood at odd angles and bent in the breeze. Jammed his thumb, cracked one of the ends, threw his hammer at the ground, got through the day in small fits and rages. Told her to hold her damn end still.

But finally the joists were in place, slanting down from the back wall to the front. Gary stood on a stool in the middle of the platform and pulled himself up on one, testing the strength. That’ll hold, he said. Let’s get the roof on before dark.

Irene hadn’t said a word in hours. They grabbed a piece of aluminum sheeting and leaned it against the front of the cabin. Brought out stepstools and hoisted the sheet into place.

It’s not quite long enough, Gary said. That’s why I got the smaller pieces. So we can let this overhang a bit. That’ll help keep the rain off the walls.

Irene did as she was told, held the sheet while he went inside to nail. I’ll have to get some goop for the nail holes, he said. So Irene knew it would drip on them, probably all winter. No bed, just their sleeping bags with large wet spots from the drips. Or maybe they’d sleep under a plastic tarp, the edges of the plywood wet and muddy, her pillow on the floor. That’s what she had to look forward to, she knew.

Let’s grab the next sheet, he said. Evening, only an hour or so of light, racing against the dark now. No lunch. Only that oatmeal for breakfast. Irene felt dizzy and insubstantial, like she might be able to drift above the ground, float just below the level of the trees. Held another sheet in place while he nailed, and another, cold aluminum. She wore only thin canvas work gloves. The temperature dropping, something below freezing. Shivering now.