Afloat (25 page)

‘Why?' I ask.

She draws her bright yellow legs up to her chest, leaning back against the pine tree.

‘He was my friend too,' she says. ‘He told me about the African resort.'

A burst of thunder interrupts her, then lightning, and the air feels full. Brenna looks at me. I look at Rummy, but he's staring down into the ground as he drinks.

‘What resort?' I ask.

‘Thanda Private Game Reserve,' she says. ‘In South Africa. His aunt lives out there and said they were looking for experienced foreign waiters.'

She pauses, her hood covering her face.

‘He was going there in October. So he didn't have to go home.'

The light of the flashlight dims suddenly, then returns to full strength.

‘A
game
reserve?' I say, unbelieving. ‘He didn't like being outside.'

‘It's a five-star resort,' she says. ‘The staff get free fucking body massages, rose petal baths, everything. He showed me the website.'

I look at Brenna, feeling as if I've underestimated something this summer.

‘I didn't know that.'

‘Neither did I,' Rummy says.

She motions to the tiny wooden animal upturned in his hat.

‘He really wanted to see a zebra,' she says.

He never told me about South Africa. A whole other country, his plan for luxury and escape never mentioned. Sucking water from the end of my cold fingers, I try to remember if he knew about St. Kat's. If he knew how I craved the decadence of eating steak with expensive wine, to be the sort of woman at the table the waitress usually mocks in the kitchen, only she wouldn't – I wouldn't be pretentious. I would understand, because I had been there. I wouldn't demand that
my mashed white truffle potatoes be substituted for green beans, or ask for an extra plate or more garlic sabayon when she was busy. I'd never even taste the wine, just motion for her to pour. I would have an understanding face. I would leave an extravagant tip. I've seen too much here to settle for anything less.

I pick up Brenna's offering and stroke its tiny wire mane with my finger.

‘He's cute,' I say.

Brenna reaches for the bottle. ‘I did my nails to match.'

She holds out a hand, each of her long fingernails striped with black, then white.

Rummy places his own contribution into the Indians hat. Trainer's Spice Girl playing cards. Covered in clear packing tape to protect them from rain, there are only a few cards left. Some were lost on the road as he slipped under the carriage that night. Some he lost earlier, or traded. On the back of each is a figure of a woman, leaning forward, posing and dressed in leopard print and leather.

‘What ever happened to his bike?' I ask.

‘They never shipped it,' Rummy says. ‘Tom sold it to a guy over at the bike shop for ten bucks. He's gonna get a new wheel for it, straighten the fenders. I took the cards off before he sold it.'

‘Did they have the Spice Girls up in Canada?' Brenna asks him. ‘Their music I mean?'

Rummy glares at her. ‘Do they not have an education system in Toledo?'

‘I went to a Catholic school,' she says defensively.

‘So did I,' I tell her.

The vodka makes everything seem important.

‘You should know we've had running water
and
electricity in Canada for years now,' Rummy says to Brenna.

‘So you
have
heard of the Spice Girls then. That's all I was asking, fuck.'

More rain falls, and Rummy wants to know if she's heard from Blue, and she tells him she hasn't. In a voice uncharacteristically kind, she asks him to forget Blue, and to move on.

There will later be some debate as to what exactly we were talking about when we first noticed. It's true that sometimes a presence is felt before it is seen.

We all look up together.

Holy shit.

Standing just yards from our gathering, through the rain and just across the narrow crevice in the ground, is the dark, real form of an animal, larger than anything I've ever seen. Its legs are long, three times taller than a horse, its body beginning somewhere up in the darkness. We stare – just four impossibly long and muscular legs, longer in the front than the back. Rummy shines the flashlight silently along its body. The sleek coat is perfect except for a bare patch of pale skin near its neck, as if the hair had been rubbed away or fallen out from disease. Its back rises up into a hump before descending again to meet its elongated head. His face is long, endless, and serene, undisturbed by our light and presence. Rising above him are antlers – huge, bone-colored protrusions like delicate driftwood stretching out and up towards the sky, and it doesn't seem they can be so big, that his head can hold them up. Enormous, silent, his one wet eye reflects the light, and blinks. The rain falls around us, the tops of the trees bend and there is thunder. He exists here in just one small beam of light. It is monumental, the moment so intense, so drawn out as the three of us sit with legs crossed in front of a hat, a zebra and
some playing cards, but somehow something else has come, and I don't know if I'm breathing.

‘It's a goddamn moose,' Rummy says, disbelieving.

A powerful rush of spirit enters into my stomach, and I am positive this feeling of something beginning must be the same perfect appreciation and awe that any one of us, anywhere, must feel when confronted with such an impossible vision. I think of all three of us and the entire world stranded together with a feeling of wanting more, and wanting meaning, and I think of the little boy in the lifeboat with three religions, but here, the island belongs to those who found it first, whose myths brought us here, to the place where the earth never ends.

He is slow, impossibly slow, as he bends quietly, bringing his elegant face to where the ground is split at his feet. His antlers bow before us, nodding at the ground, and he seems to smell the earth, or taste it, I cannot tell. He rises again. When he turns back into the darkness, I realize what I am about to lose. When the light can't find him anymore, we are alone again, and it is painful.

He is gone, and we cannot hear his footfall. We look at one another, then into the forest, waiting and listening for his return.

‘That was a moose,' I say.

‘How did the moose get here?' Brenna wants to know. ‘I've never heard of moose on Mackinac.'

Rummy takes another drink of Belvedere. ‘The ice,' he says.

‘He came across the ice in the winter.'

‘Don't they swim?' I ask.

‘Maybe he swam,' Rummy says thoughtfully. ‘We'll never know.'

It is almost one o'clock, and we fold the hat around the playing cards and the zebra. The rain is unrelenting, all three
of us are wet through, our hands frigid, water dripping from our noses, drunk, elated. The three of us hold our offering together, fists touching, and Rummy yells, ‘I'm fucking soaked, asshole. Don't say this Canuck never did anything for you,' but his voice breaks and he makes a choking sound.

Kneeling, our knees muddy, our brains suspended with vodka and the lingering presence of our visitor, we drop the hat into the crack in the island. Rummy pours some vodka in after it.

The offerings make no sound, they never reach the earth, they simply fall. We never hear them land. Bryce told me the Native Americans believe this a spiritual place, nothing dropped into the crevice ever reaches the bottom.

‘I can't believe we saw a moose,' I say, as we begin the long ride back home.

His bike weaving dangerously back and forth across the path, Rummy agrees with me.

‘But the moose was as real as I am,' he says.

Rummy stands on the doorstep. In the bright burning of the streetlight, his entire frame is lit up like an offering. He is wearing dark jeans and a brown leather belt, his gray hairline holding steady, his face with the same distinguished, wry expression I've become used to from studying his headshot on the university website. His hair and jacket are wet, though the weather around us is quiet, everything echoing like a too large church hall. I can feel the rain but cannot see it, yet. It is the eye of the storm – or perhaps it has passed altogether.

He is here just as I've imagined him these last three weeks – constructing this impossible meeting, considering the possibilities, what I will say and how he will respond.

‘You're late,' I say, relieved.

‘Drove through the storm,' he says apologetically. ‘It's a big one.'

He holds up a bottle in a brown bag and waves it at me.

‘You knew I'd make it.'

I hear in his voice that he is the same, that underneath the old skin I am not used to yet, he is there.

‘Well, come
in
.'

As he passes through the doorway he is close enough to smell. The scent of somewhere I've never been. There is a brief moment, imperceptible as it passes, where our time is not all gone and the evening is still ahead.

In my relief at Rummy's arrival I feel dizzy, and look to my wooden crucifix above the light switch – but it's gone, and I don't remember what I've done with it. Aunt Lydia gave one
to my mother as well, and I couldn't have thrown it away. Has Anna taken it? When did I last visit Resurrection Cemetery? As I age the graves accumulate along with the guilt at my inability to visit them all, but the drive is too far, the traffic so fast, and perhaps Anna will take me to my parents tomorrow.

Something has slipped, but I catch hold, and after a moment I am fine again.

Rummy. Saving me from time, delivering me from grief if only for an evening. Animated. Real. Covered in skin. He scratches his nose, briefly fingering a nostril, and we pause for a moment before he stretches out his arms – an angel, or something not so obvious – and says, ‘Give us a hug then, Bell.'

We embrace and he is warm and solid, his body reliable and working properly, keeping his insides safe all these years. He feels now a better friend than ever before.

‘When is Erik coming back?' I ask as we draw away, his watch clasp catching in my hair.

‘At eight,' he says, disentangling himself from me. ‘Nearly two hours.'

When his son returns they will continue on to Milwaukee. Down from Calgary through the Midwest and over to Wisconsin for the annual meeting of the Oral History Association. Rummy is the keynote speaker. I am part of his latest project, his bid to keep our small part in history alive. His wife Aileen is not strong enough to travel.

‘Come and sit,' I tell him. ‘I'll get the drinks.'

He follows me into the kitchen and sits obediently in my chair, making an
ahhhhhhh
noise as he leans back. His jacket is open, a navy-blue corduroy lined with fleece, and underneath his V-neck sweater is Hunter Green; I recall he had an almost identical sweater on the island. He puts both hands on his thighs as he takes in the kitchen.

‘You've done well for yourself, Bell,' he says. ‘Right part of town, right people. The house is white. Easier to sell if they're white, I hear.'

‘It's true,' I say. ‘That's true. And thank you.'

He raps the wall beside him with a knuckle while looking around.

‘So are there different
shades
involved here?'

Pulling open the fridge door to retrieve my half of the promise, there is a single photograph held by a magnet in the shape of a sailboat – Russ meeting the President in Cheyenne, me in the background, plastic ID badge around my neck. I was close enough to sneeze on her.

With ice in each glass, I pour Rummy's liquor for us both, then add the ginger ale. The bottle slips, and when the floor dries it will be sticky. He takes the glass from me and holds it up.

‘Rye and ginger, together at last.'

‘Your favorite.'

‘It's all I ever drink,' he says. ‘Here's to old friends.'

We raise our glasses across the table from one another, our eyes full of the past. We sip carefully, and it seems unbearable to wait any longer. Rummy wipes the table with his sleeve, erasing the wet ring left by his glass. I had Anna's coasters out this morning, but they've disappeared.

‘I'm glad to be here, Bell. I needed to come.'

‘It's hard to believe you're really here.'

Something crashes against the window, but doesn't come in.

‘Now,' he says.

From the inside of his jacket pocket he withdraws the tiny earpiece he'd described over email, and I fumble with its minute dimensions while he fits a similar piece over his own ear. A wireless, voice-activated recording device available in
different colors, I've seen them only on television. Turning to Rummy with the device buried in my ear canal, he nods in approval.

‘It won't record until I say
begin
,' he explains.

‘You're the expert,' I tell him smiling.

He smiles back, shrugging his shoulders.

‘We Canucks have always been better listeners than the rest of you.'

‘What's it stand for?' Alan asked as I perused Rummy's latest title a few years ago:
The Demise of the Canadian Reservation: Personal Narratives by First Nations Peoples
.

‘What does what stand for?'

‘Rummy.'

‘I don't know.'

It felt odd not knowing, and I refused to join him as he pondered the possibilities.

‘Rumsfeld, Rump
Roast
, Romania…'

‘Romania would be shortened to Rommy,' I pointed out.

‘Rumpelstiltskin,' he continued, ignoring me.

‘You should read it when I'm done,' I told him.

‘Or I could stare at the author's photo and call it reading.'

Alan had fallen on an icy city sidewalk that morning, and I received blame by association; I worked at city hall, where the decisions were made about which neighborhoods to salt first after a storm. I put the book away.