The Long-Shining Waters (15 page)
Read The Long-Shining Waters Online
Authors: Danielle Sosin
“Granddaughter? You must have started young.”
Frank seems different in the daylight, a little too practiced, smoother, more closed. How many women in how many ports, Nora wonders. Not that she’s judging, she’s just curious.
“Humor me. I don’t get to do this very often. We won’t stay long. Come on, help me look.” Frank guides her by the elbow. The sand, still packed and hardened from winter, barely moves beneath her feet. They amble slowly near a long swath of rocks that parallels the shoreline.
“What exactly am I looking for?” asks Nora.
“Agates.”
She jabs him with her elbow.
“Like this.” Frank bends over and picks up a rock.
“You found one already?”
“The small fry are everywhere. I told you it’s a good beach. He holds a red rock the size of a nickel to the sky. “They’re translucent. See how the light comes through? That’s one way to tell. Also, they have this banded striping inside.”
“Yeah, I know what agates look like. Like the rings of a tree, I always thought.”
“I suppose some do. But they’re crystallized, not organic. You can’t count the bands and know the rock’s age. That’s kind of an interesting thought, though.” He squeezes her arm. “The bands would have formed one at a time, from the outer edge toward the middle, but there wouldn’t be a band for each year of growth, like you find with tree rings.” Frank turns the rock over in his hand. “There could be hundreds, maybe thousands of years between each band. I don’t know if anyone has ever done the research. And time would be the opposite of tree rings. Time would move this way.” He runs his finger from the edge of the rock inward. “As opposed to a tree, where time is seen moving in the other direction.” He jiggles the agate in his palm. “Regardless, this little rock is ancient. It was formed in a gas hole in molten rock. We’re talking millions and millions, tens of millions of years ago.”
Nora’s mind blanks at the gargantuan time span. She turns her back to the wind and lights a cigarette. “My question is, how do you go about picking them out so easily? I mean, really.” She sweeps her arm down the path of stones.
“Look for the translucent glow,” he says, and drops the agate into her purse. “This is the best time, with the sun at an angle.”
A light but cold wind blows against Nora’s face. Frank keeps stooping for rocks, but throws most everything back. Too small. Not pretty enough.
“Is this one?” Nora asks. “How about this?”
“Quartz. Nope, quartz again.”
“Well, they glow,” she says, a little exasperated. She’d rather be warm and working a crossword.
“I thought you grew up around here.” Frank lifts an eyebrow.
“I’m not much of a water person,” Nora says, looking out to the lake. She stoops, pushing her cigarette butt into the sand, and comes up with a cream-colored rock that has a raised pattern in it, like half of a grapefruit.
“What’s this?”
“Hey, wow,” says Frank, taking the rock from her hand. “It’s a fossil. Good find. It could be some sort of sea sponge, or coral.” Nora looks at him like he’s nuts. “It is,” he says. “There was ocean here once. I mean loooong, long, long before the lake was formed.”
Nora examines the grapefruit design. “Whatever you say, Mr. Science.”
Frank shakes his head and digs his hands in his pockets. “You are a real piece of work.”
“Aren’t I? Now listen,” she counsels, “if you want to find fossils from the loooong-ago ocean, just look for the white ones with the raised designs.” She drops the fossil into her purse, feeling encouraged about the hunting now. She recalls how she and Joannie used to walk the railroad tracks, looking for stuff that had fallen off the trains. She doesn’t remember finding much of anything other than spikes, chunks of ore, and empty bottles. It was the feeling of anticipation that she liked.
“I’ve found a lot of great stuff out here,” says Frank, taking her arm again.
“Sunken treasure? Message in a bottle?”
“Tackle, floats, handmade fishing leads from the old days. I even find stuff when I’m in a city.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Rings. Beads. Marbles. Money. I notice anything that shines.” He winks at her.
“Yeah, right. And what’s the most valuable thing you ever found?”
Frank stops walking, and looks out at the water. “I’d have to say, a good divorce lawyer.”
Children play on the ice overhead. They run in clusters with vibrating footsteps. Chase a stone as it skims across the ice. A school of fish flees the one running fastest. Running beyond the bounds of the game.
Without warning, I hear a quick crack of ice. Feet first, the girl crosses through. Her moccasins are decorated in porcupine quills. Her arms spin in frantic circles.
The children on the ice see her disappear. Shrieking, they run out. But only so far. Close enough to see her mitted hand find the shelf of ice, then disappear again.
She can no longer hear her name being shouted. She is a breathless creature. A thrashing bird with numb wings.
When calm settles and spreads through her body, she searches for the hole. For the way back. She finds a place where the light penetrates. A slippery wet cloud of grey. But now she has no sense of why she would care. The girl searches for the lost stone. She feels the slithering black current approach.
She sits here, cross-legged, where the water is still. Holding the game stone in her lap. Fine silt lines her fingers. Her mouth is as dark as blueberry skins.
1902
The sky is visible through the top two windowpanes, the water through the two on the bottom. Clouds drift by. Gulls in flight. The rare boat slips past like a thought, like a year. Sky in the top two panes, water in the bottom, like four separate paintings in flux, now bright blue over dark, then white to grey-green, and later yet, the evening’s pink. Some days striped with color, wavy, silver, rippled, popping white caps, rollers, wash of orange. Berit absentmindedly pets the cat, her fingers in its soft fur. The cat purrs, yawns, and stretches.
She should crawl down the ladder and put another log in the stove. It’s warm out, she knows, only cold inside, but the bright sun and the sparrows and the grass and water seem best tempered by wall and window.
A gull streams past the upper panes, followed by the clear sound of the cabin door opening. Berit lies absolutely still, wondering if she’d forgot to latch it the last time she was up. She rolls slowly off her pallet of blankets and puts her face to the glass, but there’s no skiff in the cove. She stays near the window, crouched and listening. She can hear a fly buzz against the window down at Gunnar’s workbench, and the faint whistle of air flowing past the stovepipe. She can hear the loud ring of quiet, but no growl or grunt, no footsteps. The floorboards creak under her weight as she moves gingerly around the nets toward the top of the ladder. She keeps the gun there.
Berit loads a shell and puts a handful in her skirt pocket, then backs carefully down the ladder. The door opens, spilling sunlight, and she wheels around, lifts the gun, and a figure hits the floor.
The man at her feet stares wide eyed, his large open hands in the air. He’s wearing trousers and a shirt, his hat fallen beside him. It’s John Runninghorse. The big palms of his hands. A flash of fear, and then his dark eyes assessing her. Strange to see him lying there.
“I heard,” he says, keeping his eyes steady on hers. Then with a slow hand he pushes the gun barrel to the side.
John stands next to the ladder, watching Gunnar’s wife across the room. She sits looking into the bright day—like a mole unearthed, he thinks, or a pale insect. Her hair is in tangles, her face frail. John looks down at the floor between them, where the light from the open door splits the room. He’s had his own wrestle with grief; he’s no stranger to its grip. And he’s seen what can happen when one can’t find any gain.
When his grandmother passed over, leaving his grandfather behind, most of him followed her, never to return.
“You’re living here?” he says, breaking the silence.
She nods at her hands in her lap.
“Up there?” his gaze moves to the loft.
“Don’t go up there,” she says.
He didn’t expect to find her in this state. He came with condolences, and out of respect. He’d assumed there would be people around to help her. Now he’s not sure what to do. He feels pity for Gunnar’s wife. Pity, but also anger; there’s a small stone of it in his throat. He needs to think about the situation. John turns his hat over in his hand. Everything is always more complicated with white people. He nods to Berit, and walks out the door.
Berit can hear him walking along the rocks on the shore. It’s strange that he’s come. She doesn’t really care. His footsteps recede, and her quiet returns. He’s harmless. Surely he won’t beg on about services. Surely he won’t expect her to eat a cake. The brightly lit grass sways on the slope below the cabin. Already it’s long enough for scything.
He likely won’t stay very long. Gunnar would want her to make him feel welcome, offer a meal and make conversation. She’s not fit for it. The thought is outlandish. What does she even know of John, but that he’s a trapper who hires out his labor. She doesn’t even know where he lives, or if he has a family to feed, or if he’s the loner kind of Indian who treks to the port to drink his money away. Come back, Gunnar, and greet him yourself. If it’s so important, you come and tend to it.
The streaming bright light on the floor feels invasive, so she gets up and crosses the room. John is walking along the beach. When he looks up at her, she closes the door.
He’s still there. She can hear him from her pallet in the loft, rooting around behind the fish house. It sounds like he’s going through the rakes. The lake in the bottom panes has grown slightly darker. The cat has gone. She didn’t see her slip out. When she and Gunnar first were settling, they’d had two. Then at some point there was just the one. She hadn’t fretted much, assuming that it was probably taken by a fox or a raptor. But she’d surely notice now if that were to happen to Katt-Katt.
There’s a scraping sound up at the cabin. Good Lord, could she make it any clearer that she wants to be left in peace?
Standing in the doorway, Berit shades her eyes. The sound is definitely coming from the cabin, but she can’t see what he’s doing up there. She needs nothing from him.
Berit steps out into the bright day, and starts up the waving grass slope. She pauses on the hill, squinting her eyes, needing to let them adjust to the glare. The leaves of the birch trees above the cabin are spring green. A cool wind blows off the water. She feels it fresh against her face and neck, then she’s batting back tears that blur her vision, liquid light blinking in her lashes.
John’s crouched by the back window of the cabin, a bucket and shovel lying at his feet.
Berit crosses her arms in front of her chest. “What in heaven’s name are you doing?”
“I moved some soil from the garden,” John says, wiping his hands.
Berit looks at the twiggy lilac bush, and the disturbed ground where he’d planted it. “But, what ever . . .” she says, gesturing toward the bush. “That was from Gunnar. It was for my birthday.”
“I know,” he stands. “It was dying.”
“You don’t know. How could you know? It came on the boat. I didn’t even know.”
John picks up the shovel and the bucket. “He told me,” he says, and walks past her.
When John comes around the corner of the cabin he finds Gunnar’s wife weeping on the ground. It’s unseemly that there are no women around to help her. He pours lake water at the base of the tree. It’s the same bad soil as the government allotments.
Berit lifts her head from her arm, and looks John over anew. This man with his brown skin and dark eyes, his black hair and strange presence—this man, she understands now, holds a piece of her Gunnar.
“What else did he tell you?” Her voice quivers. “What else do you know?”
John gives her a look she can’t read, but it doesn’t seem particularly pleasant. He pours the rest of the bucket on the new planting, then turns and walks away from her again.
1622
Grey Rabbit adjusts her load before beginning the climb that opens onto the bald rock. The path is thin, well packed, and crossed with gnarled tree roots that offer good footholds. On her back she carries a bundle of hardwood, steadied by a strap across her forehead. Speaking to Bullhead has relieved but also frightened her. She shifts the load of wood that pulls at her neck.
Higher and higher she climbs the path, the wood pressing into her sweating back. Little Cedar is in her mind. His face—half with its smooth brown skin, and half covered with the white poultice—and the path becomes a river of him, the image of his face laying on its surface, the tree roots crisscrossing below.
Her breath comes hard through her nose, and Grey Rabbit is relieved to see the path’s end ahead. She leans into the last short incline as the way opens to the long vision of the shining water. She lowers the wood to the rock and rests, her eyes roaming over the blue, and the morning sky with its thin clouds like fish bones. She lays wood and removes striking stones from her pouch.
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