South of Superior (43 page)

“A better chance.”

“You can't tell me you were doing any good way Up there with that pizza place. And the prison, come on. You hated that. Listen. You'll get another job. I'll give you a good recommendation. Don't be like this.”

Paul stood Up and opened the door. “Get out of here, Jim. And don't ever do me any favors again, you got that?”

After Jim left, Paul got in his truck and drove. He roamed all over the back roads surrounding Edwardsville, Up and down the streets of the town itself, around the old two-story brick high school, through the parking lot of the A&W. He ended Up finally at the curve on East Phillips Road. He coasted to a stop on the shoulder, then got out of the truck and stood on the crunchy, sun-sparkled snow.

It had been hot and muggy the day of the accident. The cicadas were rasping in the trees, and the world had seemed slow, so slow. It was summer vacation, Paul was twelve, and he was bored. He was sitting on the porch drinking Tang with ice cubes in it, reading a
Popular Mechanics
. He was supposed to be mowing the lawn, but he figured he'd do that later, when it was cooler. Suddenly there was a roar in the driveway. Manny, on his new bike. Paul dropped the magazine and ran down the steps, thinking,
Thank God, something to do, I'm saved
. The slow, dull world had burst into life.

Manny took him for a ride around the block, and then another one, and another. At first this was great, but pretty soon it was boring. “Come on, let's go somewhere,” Paul had said. “Show me what this thing can do.”

“Can't do it. You don't have a helmet, and this thing's not built for two.”

It didn't take Paul all that long to wear him down.

They headed out into the country, going slow at first but then faster and faster, and then they came Up on this curve and everything after that was a blur. Paul knew he hadn't leaned the way he should have. He knew Manny was going way too fast. God, it had been fun before it was all disaster.

He walked slowly along the curve, more aware of his limp than ever. He knew from having been told—here was where he'd been thrown, clear of the bike and clear of the trees that lined the road. Here was where Manny had landed. Hit his head, died instantly. The bike had scattered into a hundred pieces from the force of the crash. If he looked, he could probably still find a chunk of something, hidden in the gravel and weeds, twenty-four years later.

Twenty-four years he'd been limping along on his bad leg, telling himself he was a philosopher, a thinker, a student of life. What bullshit. Really he was just a man who always expected the worst.

Paul stared into the winter sun for a moment, giving himself an excuse for his watering eyes.
You're an idiot
, he said to himself, but not Unkindly. He tried, but he couldn't keep tears from brimming in his eyes.

“Manny, I am sorry,” he said out loud. The words vanished into the clear winter air. But it was true. Manny shouldn't have died that day. Paul shouldn't have ended Up in the hospital and come out six weeks later with three pins in his leg and a burden of guilt so big he could barely drag it, and could never set it down. He was sorry, but he couldn't change the past.
We were dumb, both of us
, he thought to his cousin now.
It was an accident. A stupid, useless, unnecessary, preventable accident. It was both our faults, it was nobody's fault, it doesn't matter whose fault it was. I'm alive and you're not, and I have to accept that. It's done.

Back at the house
that night Paul sat on the couch beside his dad, turning Greyson's kaleidoscope in his hands, putting it Up to his eye now and then. He pretended to watch the news. There was a letter written on a heavy piece of drawing paper in his pocket that had come in the mail that day. The address was in Greyson's handwriting, but Madeline wrote the letter. He knew she didn't know it had been sent. He knew her. No way would she have put this in the mail.

Dear Paul
, the letter said.
We miss you. That's all I'm writing to say. We're okay, but—

The letter broke off there. There was a sketch of Paul playing the piano, Greyson beside him with a harmonica, a line of pumpkins carved with different funny faces. It made him smile.

Paul heard a vehicle pull in the drive, heard the kitchen door open and close, heard his mom talking to someone. He got Up to see who it was. His nephew Tom, improbably grown into a man, a man who'd been to and returned from a war. He was thin but strong-looking, and quieter than ever. He'd been home a week now.

“Hey, Uncle Paul,” Tom said.

It was always a strange feeling when his sisters' kids called him “Uncle,” especially this weary soldier. “Hey. What're you up to?”

“Just came to say hi to Grandma.” Tom's eyes met Paul's briefly and traveled on. He looked pale, drawn. “Guess I'll get going now.”

“Don't take off,” Paul said. “The last time I saw you, you were perfecting some God-awful thing you thought Up, popcorn shrimp and peanut butter on a Ritz cracker, I think.”

Tom's grin seemed inadvertent. “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

“I've had crazier ideas.” Paul put Greyson's kaleidoscope on the counter and grabbed two beers from the fridge. “Would you believe bleu cheese is great on a pizza?”

Tom picked the kaleidoscope Up and looked through it, turning the base slowly. “I ate some pretty strange stuff in Baghdad. A lot of the guys wouldn't try anything, but I figured, Hell, I was there. Might as well make some kind of sense out of it. I liked the kabobs. Good spices.”

Paul's mother squeezed Tom's shoulder on her way toward the living room. “You two catch Up. We'll be in watching
Jeopardy!
if you get bored.”

 

 

“What do you think
of winter now?” Mary Feather asked one morning. Madeline was in Mary's woods trying out the snowshoes she'd found in the hotel.

The sun was shining after endless days of wind and snow. The winds had blown without pause, gusting sixty miles an hour, howling around the attic and sucking the warmth out of everything. Madeline had never been so cold. For the duration of the storm she never took off her hat, indoors or out. It was a watch cap of black wool, a gift from Mabel. (“Knitted you a chook,” she said at Christmas, handing the hat to Madeline without ceremony.) She stayed bundled Up in long johns and the insulated Carhartt pants she'd found at the thrift shop in Crosscut, and two wool sweaters over layers of shirts. A pair of fleece-lined slippers that Arbutus and Pete gave her for Christmas had become her most prized possession, as well as her goose-down comforter. She thanked Emmy nightly for having gotten them each one, years ago.

Madeline put Emmy's blanket on Greyson's bed and he pronounced it snuggly but really he seemed unfazed by the fact that as long as the winds blew she could not get the temperature in their attic rooms much above fifty. He had grown Up in this wind-battered town, and took it for granted. The fuel she burned keeping the hotel just bearable made her cringe even as she turned her hands over and over above the potbelly stoves and radiators. But even cold and worried, she could not resist the storms. She always hovered at the windows to gaze out at them, or bundled Up to go out into them.

But now the most recent storm was over. She'd jumped that morning when the county truck roared by: enormous and orange, with a plow big enough to scoop Up a small house. Sparks flew from the blade as it rumbled down the street. A few minutes later a deer wandered past, its delicate black hooves click-clacking on the newly scraped pavement like high heels. Now the sky was a bright, clear blue, and the wind for once was still. The temperature was only ten degrees below freezing.

“I love winter,” Madeline told Mary, bending to buckle a snowshoe.

“You still think so this far in, then you'll make it,” Mary said.

“Emil wants to take Greyson out rabbit hunting. I don't know if I want him to.”

Mary raised her brows. “Why not? You can trust Emil with a gun, he likes to drink but he's no fool. He's hunted his whole life, made his living off it you might say, he'd never mix business with pleasure.”

“It's not that so much. It's just—the idea of it. Rabbits make me think of the Easter bunny.”

Mary made a dismissive noise. “Rabbits make a good stew, is what rabbits do. Here, I'll send one home for you, got it froze out here in the woodshed. You'll see.”

“Oh, I don't think—”

“Try it,” Mary growled. “I'll give you some venison, too. You're going to live in this country, you should eat of this country. That's what's wrong with the world today. People want to eat lettuce and tomatoes in January, I never heard of anything so foolish, the stuff's got as much taste as an old shoe.”

This was true. “All right. I'll try it.”

“You ever hear from that young man of yours?” Mary asked just as Madeline was about to trek away across the clearing.

“What?”

Mary made a look of impatience. “Paul Garceau.”

“Ah—he's hardly mine.”

“He Used to come now and again, to visit. I got the idea he thought a lot of you.”

Madeline felt herself flush. “I liked him too. He was good to Greyson.”

“That ain't what I meant,” Mary said, sounding put out.

Madeline ignored this. “He writes to Greyson, short things—cards, a note—and Grey writes back. He's so independent about it. Has to have his own envelopes and paper and stamps. I can't believe how much he's grown Up just since I moved here. Paul calls every week, Greyson loves that. And Paul did send me a postcard too, I got it the other day. He's somewhere down south right now, working for the Red Cross. He and his nephew are there for a month. A hurricane ripped through someplace and they decided to go help rebuild.” She shrugged at how Unpredictable people's lives were.

“Bah. Don't you know life is short?”

“What?”

“Life can get lonesome on your own,” Mary said in a warning way.

Madeline decided to ask a really honest question, which in her experience people usually did not do. “Has it been, for you?”

Mary looked off across the horizon. With the trees bare of leaves you could see the lake clearly. She squinted, her eyes watering a little in the cold. “Naw. I wasn't never lonely.”

Madeline nodded, not believing this at all. She shifted on her snowshoes, suddenly anxious to get moving.

 

 

Gladys was behind
the registration desk when Madeline got back. Greyson was on the lobby couch playing with his handheld computer, Marley tucked into his hip.

“How's it going?” Madeline plucked off her hat and ran her fingers across her scalp. She was drenched in sweat and thought of a shower pounding down on her back. But such things did not exist in the Hotel Leppinen and she'd have to be content with a soak in the tub. Maybe Pete would have time to help her install the fixtures she'd ordered to convert the taps to include a showerhead tomorrow. Maybe not, too. He and Arbutus were heading to Chicago again in a few days and were busy getting ready to go. Madeline had gotten so dependent on his help, it made her nervous to think of his being gone for that long, two weeks. She wondered how Gladys was handling it. It had to be at least twenty years since she and Arbutus had been apart as much as they had been in the last few months.

“Things are fine,” Gladys answered. “Greyson got home from school about twenty minutes ago.”

“Earth to Greyson,” Madeline called and he nodded without looking Up from his game. Madeline sighed. “I hate that thing. He disappears into it.”

“He's all right, he doesn't do it every minute. It's probably relaxing.”

“Relaxing! Jabbing away at those buttons, trying to blow Up something?”

Gladys shrugged. “He's good at it.”

Madeline studied him. Probably Gladys was right. The toy let off a series of beeps and whirs and squeals and Greyson said, “
Yes!
”

“Any phone calls?” Madeline asked idly, not expecting any. Gladys glanced Up, then looked down again to make a notation in the guest register, which was lying open before her. The journal Madeline gave her was open on the desk too, and Madeline tried to decipher a few words of upside-down writing. Gladys flicked the cover closed. “Pretty quiet,” she said. “I did rent a room for tonight and tomorrow. A couple coming Up to cross-country ski from downstate, I put them in Two, it's warmest, backing Up to the chimneys like it does. The woman said she read your ad in the Crosscut paper, some friends had brought a copy back with them, so that wasn't a total waste of money.”