Northern Lights (36 page)

When his hamburger came, Perry ate it down without stop. Then the woman brought him a beer without asking, staring at him with a kind of familiar astonishment. Perry drank the beer and asked for another. He drank it slowly. When it was half gone, one of the flannel-shirted men sat beside him, letting his beer bottle clank with authority. Soon the second man sat on Perry’s right, bracketing him.

“What you doing out in them woods?” said the first man, allowing the question to fall more as a derisive comment.

The woman, again without asking, brought him another hamburger.

“You was the guy that got lost,” said the first man. “Thought there was two of you.”

“There were. My brother.”

“Where’d they found you?”

“Well, they haven’t yet. I found you, I guess. It’s pretty complicated.”

The man picked up a salt shaker and sprinkled grains on to the counter and balanced the shaker on its edge. He let it rest at the precarious angle, watching it balance with a practised eye. Perry watched it, too. The shaker rested on invisible square grains. “I was lookin’ for you myself,” the man said slowly. “Whole town was lookin’ for you. Whole state was.”

Perry nodded and kept after his hamburger.

“So,” the man said, “where was you all the while?” He grinned a bit.

“I don’t know. Off in the woods somewhere.”

“Lost?”

“I’d say so. That about describes it.”

“Shoot!” the flannel-shirted man said, making the word sound both malicious and obscene.

“Yeah.”

“You out in that blizzard?”

“The whole time,” Perry said.

The man grinned at his buddy. “You was lucky then. Shoot. You was lucky.”

Perry nodded and smiled and kept at his hamburger.

The man grunted, pausing as though carefully considering what to say next. His buddy sat grinning. “How the hell’d you get lost?”

“We just did. I don’t know. It’s a big wood and everything.”

“Shoot. I guess I’d say you was just awful lucky, that’s what I’d say if somebody asked me. You was awful lucky, that’s all. Shoot, after the blizzard, couple days after, everybody stopped lookin’. Figured you was kinda dead.”

Perry tried to smile pleasantly.

The man poked a finger at the salt shaker, stabbed it like a fly and laughed as it toppled and fell and scattered white salt. He was familiar. One of the northern men. Their vices were secret. “So,” the first man said carefully, “where’s the other guy? There was two of you.”

“My brother?”

“Yepper. Where’s
he
?”

“He’s all right …”

“He dead or something?”

“No,” Perry said stiffly. “No, he’s fine. He’s okay. We found a shed out there, maybe twenty miles from here. He’s okay, I know it.”

“How come he ain’t here?”

“Well, he got sick. But he’ll be all right.”

“Shoot.”

The second man started grinning again. There was something secret between them, something that they knew about or had talked about before.

“So,” said the first man, again balancing his shaker on the counter. “You left him out there then? I got it now, I reckon.”

Perry shrugged. He decided not to let them rile him. “I guess Harvey’ll be all right.”

The second man started giggling. He got up and put a dime in the bowling game.

The first man smiled. “How come you didn’t just build a big fire? That’s what I woulda done, I expect.”

Perry shrugged. “We did. We built a hundred fires.”

The second man giggled and flung a silver disc at the maze of pins.

The first man shook his head. Perry guessed he was a farmer out of business. “Don’t know how you coulda got lost in the first place,” the man was saying. “But I sure would’ve built me a big fire, first thing.”

“We did that.”

“A
big
fire.”

“Well, next time you can get lost,” Perry said.

The man kept shaking his head. “Not me. I never once been lost.” Suddenly he slammed his hand on the counter. The shaker fell. Salt spilled into the man’s lap. The pinball-playing man laughed a high-pitched, shrieking laugh that was almost womanly. “I’da never got myself lost all that time. I’ll tell you that. But if I did, just if I did and I didn’t, I’da built me a big fire, lots of smoke. Then I would have found me a bunch of boulders and spelled out SOS in the snow with ’em, and then, then I would’ve set fire on a big tree or something, got a big tree burnin’ at night so the planes could see it real easy. I woulda been out of there in
no time flat, all right. Bill! Didn’t I tell you that’s exactly what I’da done? So. Anyhow. Shoot. So where’s the other guy?”

“My brother.” Perry sighed. “He’s out there in a shed. I told you that once already. He’s okay. They’ll get him out fast.”

“Sick, huh?”

Perry nodded.

The man shook his head. “Stupid,” he finally said.

Perry nodded again. “Pretty dumb.”

“Stupid, that’s what.”

“Well, you won’t have to worry about me doing it again.”

The man swiveled off his stool. “Won’t be lookin’ for you again, neither.” He licked his hand clean of salt, then put it out for Perry to shake. “You don’t play bowlin’ pinball, do you?”

“No,” Perry said.

“Well. Okay then. Keep your pecker up.”

“I will.”

The man marched out of the store and his friend Bill followed him with a giggle and grin. Perry heard them drive away in the pickup.

He sat at the counter and waited. At last the woman brought him another beer and a fresh glass. Perry found two five-dollar bills in his pocket. They were stuck together, and he peeled them apart and put one on the counter. He was depressed and still hungry. He bought a candy bar, brought it outside and sat on the steps to eat it. Snow melted off the roof. Now and then a car passed by, speeding north or south, spraying water off into the ditches. A wave of the old melancholia passed through him and he got up and went inside and called Grace again. There was no answer. Outside, he retrieved his skis and wiped them off and stacked them in a dry spot by the garage. He was depressed. There ought to have been crowds. The highway should have been jammed with well-wishers. He took up the branch that he
had used as a pole, gripped it hard and flung it across the highway and into the woods. A clod of wet snow slid off the roof. Inside again, he had another beer. He watched the clock on the wall: a Hamms beer clock with a canoe floating in twilight blue waters, the moon just up and shining, the lake water twinkling, the forest green behind it, the hands of the clock saying it was almost noon. He went to the phone and tried Grace again. He let it ring twice then hung up. He was restless. He went to the electric bowling game and slid a dime into the slot. The lights flashed and the pins came down. A clown’s face lit up. Lucky, he thought. He sent a metal disc whizzing up the polished alley. Four pins shot out of sight. The clown’s face lit in a frown. The disc bounced back, and again he sent it flashing towards the gleaming pins, and they all shot out of sight, all but one, and the clown frowned at him.
Lucky, plain stupid lucky this time
. He fired the disc again, and it bounced back, and he fired it again, again, and the lights flashed and buzzers shrieked, and the clown’s face lit in alternating smiles and frowns and tears and grins, randomly, and he kept shooting the disc up the alley until the game went silent.

Both hands on the wheel, the patrolman drove carefully. He chewed gum and wore sunglasses and he searched the road with the mechanical rhythm of radar.

They drove through Schroeder and Taconite Harbor. It was a fine, slow drive.

Perry was mildly and pleasurably drunk.

Heat poured out of ducts below the dash. The police radio now and then buzzed.

Perry felt fine. He was smiling and watching the scenery and feeling the heat and creeping alcohol.

He watched the road bend towards him. The forest grew right to the shoulders.

Inside the car, air-light dust drifted in waves, warm gentle currents. The sun was just to the west. The car hummed along at a steady even pace, and the patrolman was blind behind his sunglasses, and Perry felt fine.

A blue Chevy swept by, heading in the opposite direction. The patrolman let up slightly on the accelerator, watched the car in his rear view mirror: “Sixty-five miles an hour,” he said.

“What?” Perry half turned.

“Sixty-five, sixty-seven miles an hour.”

“Jesus Christ.”

They continued south.

The woods finally opened and Perry saw the silver water tower of Sawmill Landing.

They turned on to Route 18. They passed the drive-in theater, the Dairy Queen, Franz’s tavern, a meadow high with snow. They crossed Apple Street and turned into Mainstreet, the library, the first houses, the stone foundation of the town’s first bank. It was a bright busy Saturday. They passed the farm extension office and Perry looked at it with the dull disinterest of a tourist. The venetian blinds were partly closed, but he saw the outline of his desk and the filing cabinets. The town was a jumble of artifacts. The patrolman slowed to twenty-five miles an hour, and the car glided unseen to the far side of town. Snow lay in great melting heaps along the streets. Listlessly, the road twisted along the lake shore. The patrolman smiled under his sunglasses and said it was a nice little town. Perry nodded and watched the trees go by.

Grace was waiting on the porch. She took his arm and he bent and let her kiss him, then he kissed her cheek. He saw her hair and a fast image of her eyes.

The patrolman stood holding his skis. His eyes were far away behind his sunglasses. Perry took the skis and the officer touched his cap and said so long and walked with long strides to his car and drove away. At the end of the lane he honked twice.

They went inside. The place was dark. The carpets were soft. They stood in the kitchen. Grace made coffee and together they listened to it percolate and bubble and drain down. Then he grinned with a genuine relief and embarrassment. “Harvey’s all right,” he finally said. “They’ve got him in a hospital down in Duluth. Took him out by helicopter. I guess we can drive down to visit him tomorrow.”

They drank coffee standing up. Perry leaned against the counter. The kitchen curtains were drawn. He grinned and looked up and Grace looked away. “Well. There’s nothing I can say. I … Harvey’s okay and I’m okay.”

“What about you, Paul?” She was whispering.

“I’m okay.” He saw her completely. “I’m fine, really. It’s dumb, isn’t it?”

She opened the curtains. “I better make something. You must be famished.”

“I’m really … Okay, eggs or something. I’m fine. I tried calling you. I called quite a few times.”

“I was out shopping.”

“Oh.”

Then they went to the living room. Perry sat with her on the sofa. After a while she took his hand. “I don’t want to explain it all now,” he said.

“That’s fine. That’s fine now.”

“I want to rest.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I know you do.”

T
hat spring, Harvey took a fancy to gin. In the evenings, sitting by the fire or on the porch, they drank gin fizzes or gin and tonic. All through April, they drank gin. Harvey bought a crate of limes and filled a cabinet with expensive gin, and Addie would mix the drinks in half-gallon jugs and they would all sit and drink and plan for summer.

Harvey wanted to leave Minnesota. And he wanted everyone to leave with him. For a while he talked about Boston, then he talked about Key West, then about Seattle but eventually he settled on Nassau and stuck with it, reasoning and cajoling and orating with his special flair and whimsy. The more gin he drank, the more persuasive and beguiling he became. He talked in broad colorful images. Illusive pictures: blue water, warm skies, fans spinning slowly on lofty hotel ceilings. Deep-sea fishing, golf and tennis, fine tans and good health and shining teeth and lovely women and adventure.

He did not talk about the long days of being lost. The same
way he never talked about the war, or how he lost his eye, or other bad things. He would not talk about it. “Yes, we’ll go to Nassau,” he would say instead. “Where it’s warm. By God, we’ll have us a lovely time, won’t we? Buy a sailboat and sail the islands, see the sights, sleep at night on the beaches. Doesn’t it sound great?”

“What about typhoons?”

“By Gawd!” he would grin. “I
hope
so! We’ll hold tight under the weather. Just think about it, will you? Buy us a house with an open courtyard and colored bricks and palm trees, and we’ll chip in for an air conditioner, and we’ll drink rum out of big kegs, through straws and we’ll swim, and we’ll go to native dances, and we’ll fish the sea dry. We’ll do it, we will.”

“At least,” said Addie, “you can’t very well get yourself lost on an island.”

Harvey would shrug. “No imagination.”

“How about a holiday out to California?” said Grace.

“Too easy.”

“Such a scout,” cooed Addie.

“I thought I was a pirate?”

“No,” she grinned. “Now you’re a great frontier scout.” She laughed. “Like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, you know. Never get lost, always on track, a real woodsman. A scout.”

“What about California?” Grace said. “Whatever you can do in Nassau you can do there, and it’s closer and not so expensive and we can come back.”

“Exactly!” Harvey crowed. “Come back, come back. The idea is to go and
not
come back. Just go.”

“To Nassau!” cried Addie, hoisting high her glass. “Friends forever.”

“You might stop teasing. I’m serious about it.”

“Actually,” Addie said, “I understand that Nassau is positively
crawling with creeps now. You know? Real creeps. Crooks and gamblers and politicians and students and people who never bathe.”

“We’ll drive them out.”

“Hooray,” Addie said. “Hooray!” she shouted. “Hooray for Nassau and Harvey and a bloodbath!”

Like history, he thought. He thought.

Or histories. Mawkishly the same, as repetitive as a church rhyme.

A job, though. A preacher, perhaps. Like the old man. Return to Damascus Lutheran, filled with new religion, sparkling ice insight seen on the road to Damascus Lutheran, delayed and detoured by years of mawkish melancholy. Wear the old man’s vestments. Put on the garb in the attic, and be a man. And preach neither salvation nor love, preach only endurance to be ended by the end.