Sourland (44 page)

Kolk was confiding in Sophie, he'd never been arrested. He'd left the state of Wisconsin within hours of the explosion and he'd never returned. He'd broken off contact with his friends—not “friends” but “comrades”—yet not “comrades” either—really. For years he'd moved about the country working with his hands. Learning skills with his hands: carpentry, plastering, roofing. He drove trucks, he learned to operate bulldozers. He used chain saws. He'd lived in Alaska, and in Alberta; he'd worked in New Orleans, and Galveston; he'd never returned to his family's farm but he'd returned to the Midwest, to northern Minnesota, which was very like his home, yet isolated. And no one knew where he was. Only Sophie knew where he was, and who he was. In the Sourland Preserve he helped maintain the trails, kept roads open in winter. He was a forest ranger on the lookout for fires, in times of drought. He helped search for lost hikers. He brought back the injured, he knew CPR. He could go days—weeks—at a stretch in this place of utter solitude without encountering anyone or speaking with anyone. More than once he'd found bodies on the trails, in high ground where hikers weren't likely to go in the winter. After the start of the spring thaw, he found them. Men—all had been young men, in their twenties or thirties—who'd gone out deliberately into the wilderness, into the snow, to lose themselves, to lie down and sleep in the numbing cold. He'd found them, lying motionless on the ground, so utterly still, peaceful as statuary, their faces strangely beautiful—for no decomposition had yet set in.

Sophie shuddered. “But—that's terrible. Finding someone like that—must be very upsetting.”

Kolk shrugged. “Why? Whatever was rotten in them is gone—‘cauterized.' That's the point of killing yourself.”

Sophie was thinking: Matt had liked—loved—hiking in the wilderness, before she'd known him. Then abruptly he'd ceased. That part of his life had ended. Rarely would he talk about it, he hadn't been one to reminisce. The walks they'd taken together—the “hikes”—hadn't been very arduous, challenging. After law school, Matt had gone into
corporate law. He'd been a brilliant and ambitious student at Yale and he'd gone into a corporate law firm immediately after law school, in Summit, New Jersey. Initially he'd been successful—always he'd been moderately successful—always competent, reliable. Always he'd been well paid. But he'd been disappointed with the nature of his work and with his associates—never would he have called them “friends,” still less “comrades”—and by degrees he'd lost all passion for his work. Servicing the rich, aiding the rich in their obsession to increase their wealth while giving away as little as possible to others. Sophie had no wish to confide in Kolk that her husband had never been happy in his work—possibly, in his life. By his late thirties he was becoming a middle-aged man, his body had gone slack, fleshy. He'd lost his youth though he had always loved Sophie—it was his wish, that they not have children. They'd lived a life of bourgeois comfort of the sort Kolk would find contemptible, Sophie thought.

Strangely Kolk was looking at her now. Almost, a kind of merriment shone in his soot-colored eyes. In a voice that might have been teasing, or accusing, he said: “You're a widow, are you! So, you must have money.”

Or maybe he'd said—“You're a widow. So, you must be lonely.”

Money, lonely
. It was logic, these fitted together.

Sophie said yes, Matt had left her money—and their house of course—but she worked, also—she'd worked for years at a university press that specialized in academic/scientific books—though she was now on a leave of absence.

Warmed by whiskey, Sophie told Kolk that she'd just finished copy-editing a manuscript for the press by an anthropologist/linguist on the subject of twins. Most fascinating was a decades-long study of twins through their lives, twins who'd cultivated “private languages,” twin-survivors after the death of a twin, iconic and symbolic meanings of twins, that varied greatly from culture to culture. Kolk listened in silence, drinking. Sophie heard herself say that grief too was a “private language”—when your twin has left you.

Has anyone written about the “private language” of grief, Sophie wondered.

It was then that Kolk said in a halting voice that he'd lost his father—that is, his father had lost
him
. His father had disowned him, after Madison. More recently, his father had died—not that it mattered to Kolk, belatedly.

He'd lost his brother, that had been more painful. He'd been nineteen at the time. But a consolation to think that if his Vietnam War-hero-brother had lived, his brother, too, would have disowned him.

“Why?” Sophie asked..

“Because he was a
war hero
. I was the enemy.”

“I mean—why is it a ‘consolation'? I don't understand.”

“Because he'd have ‘lost' me—eventually. When, doesn't matter.”

Kolk fell silent then, for some minutes. Beneath the table the bulldog snored wetly. The candles were burning down, luminous wax dripped onto the table like lava. Sophie saw that Kolk's mouth moved as if he were arguing with someone. At last he said: “Friends I had here in Sourland, or thought I had—by degrees I lost them, too.”

“And why?” Sophie asked. Her veins coursed with something warm, reckless. “Why did you ‘lose' them?”

Kolk shrugged. Who knew!

Sophie thought
You need a woman in your life. To give your life direction, meaning
.

You need a woman in your life to give you—your life.

In his slow halting voice Kolk was saying that he'd been waiting for—wanting—someone here in Sourland with him. He'd had some involvements with women, that had not worked out. This past winter especially—he'd been the most alone he had ever been, in his life. And when he'd thought of someone he wanted—when he lay awake plagued by such thoughts—it was she—Sophie—who came to him.

Sophie, whose face he saw.

But which face?
Sophie wondered. Kolk had not seen her face in twenty-five years.

“You look the same. You haven't changed. You…”

Sophie stared at Kolk's fingers, gripping the jam-glass. She could not bring herself to look up at him, at his eyes. Was he drunk? Did it require drunkenness, for Kolk to speak in such a way? Was what he said true?—how could it be true? Sophie could think of no reply that would not be facile, coy, clumsy—her heart had begun to beat absurdly, rapidly.

Wanted.
Was it good to be
wanted
by a man, or not so good?

Kolk confessed, he hadn't been sure if he remembered her name. But he'd remembered Matt Quinn's name.

Kolk was easing closer to Sophie. Hairs on the nape of her neck—hairs on her arms, beneath her linen shirt and sweater—began to stir, in apprehension. Unless it was sexual anticipation, excitement. For it had to be a good thing, to be
wanted
. Kolk said that when he'd “lost his way”—his “faith”—he'd “wanted to die”—he'd “come close to dying.” He'd hiked out into the wilderness—in Alaska, in Alberta, here in Minnesota—thinking how sweet, how beautiful just to lie down in the snow and sleep, shut his eyes. It would not be a painful death once you got over the initial shock and pain of the cold.

Sophie shuddered. Another time she wanted to touch Kolk, to comfort him.

“And what about you, Sophie? D'you ever think about such things, too?”

“No.”

“Yes. I think you do. I have a feeling, you do.”

The sudden interrogation made Sophie uneasy. Her swollen lip was throbbing, she saw how the man stared at it, as if fascinated. Elsewhere on her body the lurid little bites itched, throbbed with heat.

To be
wanted
was the reward, as it would be the punishment. To be
wanted
was not to stumble out into the snow and die, just yet.

Sophie conceded, yes she might have had such thoughts. But she hadn't meant them.

Kolk said yes. All thoughts we have, we mean. No escaping this fact.

Fact? Fact? Sophie's head spun, she had no idea what they were talking about.

In a lowered voice like one suggesting an obscene or unthinkable act, that dared not be articulated openly, Kolk said they could do it now—together. This night, in Sourland…

Kolk splashed more whiskey into their glasses. Crude jam-glasses these were, clumsy in the hand. Their commingled breaths smelled of whiskey. A
twin-language
, Sophie thought. No language more intimate than
twin-language
.

That was why she was here: her twin had summoned her.

This night. Together. Love me!

Then, Kolk surprised her. Saying—this was in a murmur, a mumble: “See, I saved his life. That was why.”

His
life? Whose?

Sophie smiled quizzically. Was she expected to know this? What exactly was she expected to know?

In an aggrieved voice Kolk was saying that that was why he'd hated him—why Matt Quinn had hated him. Why he'd turned against him. His brother.

His
brother
?

He, Kolk, had known Matt Quinn long before Sophie had. Their connection was deeper, more permanent. On the canoe trip to Elliot Lake when Matt had almost drowned. Afterward, they'd never talked about it.

In a wistful voice Sophie said, “You loved him!—did you.”

Kolk spoke haltingly, not entirely coherently. He said that the canoe had overturned in white-water rapids, on a river south of Elliot Lake. It was their second day of canoeing. There were two canoes, his and Matt's was in the lead. In the rock-strewn stream the canoe had plunged downward much faster than they'd expected, and had overturned—both men were thrown into the water—Matt struck his head on a rock—his clothes were soaked at once—except that Kolk had been able to grab hold of Matt, he'd have been swept downstream and drowned.

So fast it happened, like all accidents. A matter of seconds and the rest of your life might be required to figure it out.

Matt had thanked Kolk for saving his life. He'd been deeply moved, he'd been badly frightened, some sense of himself had passed from him in the white-water rapids in the Ontario wilderness, and was gone. Never would Matt Quinn regain whatever it was he'd lost.

“We never talked about it afterward,” Kolk said.

Sophie said, “Why did you cut yourself off from us! You could have seen us, all those years.” Quickly Sophie spoke, a little drunkenly. Saying that Matt would have wanted to see him—he'd have forgiven him, for their political quarrel. For whatever it was, he'd called Matt. An ugly word—
fink
. Sophie had never heard that word uttered, before or since. Whatever those old quarrels had been—“escalated resistance”—the Viet Cong, Cambodia, Kissinger, war criminals….

She was wounded, hurt. She was very angry. Fumbling for the jam-glass. She was very drunk now. If she were to stand up—the room would tilt, lurch, spin, collapse. This was funny to anticipate—she had to be cautious, not to succumb. For she was angry, and not wanting to laugh. And when the man moved closer, she bit at her lip—her freaky swollen lip—and did not move away. Seeing her hand reach out to Kolk—to Kolk's stiff-raised shoulder—to Kolk's face—daring to touch the melted-away flesh at Kolk's jawline, that was like hardened wax, serrated scar tissue.

She felt a sick-swooning sensation, vertigo. Badly she wanted to kiss the man's mouth, that was mutilated. Kolk grabbed her hand, twisting the fingers to make Sophie wince.

Was he angry? Repelled by her? He touched her swollen lip, that seemed to fascinate him. Another time he murmured
Sorry!
Leaning close to Sophie and suddenly he was looming over her, upon her, seizing her face in his hands, kissing her. Sophie's instinct was to shrink away but Kolk held her tight, unmoving. There came then a strange sort of kissing, mauling—the way a large cat would kiss—a panther, mountain lion—the man's mouth was wet, hungry, groping—the man smelled of
whiskey, and of his body—a sweaty-yeasty smell—a smell of unwashed clothes, bed linens, flesh—Kolk might have tried to bathe or in some way cleanse himself but dirt was embedded in his skin, beneath his fingernails. The most thorough soaking could not cleanse this man. Kolk had become a mountain-man, in a few years Kolk would be a crazed old mountain-man, beyond reclamation. No woman could live with such a man, it was folly for Sophie to have thought she might live with such a man. Wildly she began to laugh, she could not breathe for his tongue in her mouth, his hot panther-mouth pressed against hers and sucking all the oxygen from her. With the years Kolk's whiskers would sprout more wildly from his jaws, like jimsonweed. His soot-colored eyes would grow crooked and glaring in his bald hard head like rock. His stubby-yellow teeth would grow into tusks. Winters Kolk would hibernate, in bedclothes stiffened with dirt. He and Cerberus the guard-dog of Hades, pig-pitbull with a milky eye, a freak like his master in a stuporous winter sleep, in their own filth wallowing, no woman would consent to such a life—had Sophie come here to Sourland, to this life, of her own volition?

Yet Sophie was kissing the man—out of schoolgirl politeness, good manners—out of schoolgirl terror—Sophie dared not resist, as the man hungrily kissed her—he was a predator, ravenous for prey—he kissed and bit at her lips—he sucked into his mouth the swollen lip—this lip that beat and throbbed with venomous heat was delicious to him—and there was the taste of the man, in Sophie's mouth—a whiskey-taste, an acrid-taste, a taste as of ashes—the man's gigantic tongue protruding into her mouth—snaky, damp, not warm but oddly cool.
He will strangle me. Choke me like this.
For she could not breathe, she could not move her head away from the man's mouth, the man's tongue. She could not free her head from the grip of the man's fingers. She did not want to offend the man. She knew, a woman dares not offend a man, at such a time. In the throes of desire. In the throes of a ravenous appetite. A woman who has touched a man as Sophie had touched this man, dares not then retract the touch. She did not dare to enflame him. She did
not dare to provoke him. She did not dare to insult him. She did not wish him to cease liking her. She did not wish him to cease
wanting
her. It was essential for her survival in Sourland, as in all of the world, that the man not cease
wanting
her. Sophie knew this—she had been a wife, and she was now a widow—and so she knew this—with a part of her mind, calmly—yet she was losing control, her limbs seemed to be going numb—along the pathways of her nerves, eerie rippling flames. The spider bite throbbed in her lip. In other parts of her body spider bites throbbed. Like any besotted lover Kolk was saying her name—a name—
Soph-ie—Soph-ie
—she felt a thrill of triumph, at last the man knew her name. She had made him know her name, finally. She felt a thrill of triumph, the man was
wanting
her. Now
wanting
began, it could not be made to stop.