The Sudden Weight of Snow (35 page)

As we moved toward spring, Gabe was like a silhouette of a person; a shadow against snow. He didn’t talk about his memories or his ideas any more and when he talked about the other people on the farm, it was most often to drop an off-handed cynical comment –
He’s been here so long, he doesn’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world
, or
She thinks that throwing clay can cure cancer
. I continued to go to school and he would still appear, truck idling on the edge of the parking lot, to pick me up but he would rarely disclose what he had done that day. Even when I asked, he answered with a shrug or a non sequitur. I missed even those bewildering rote explanations that he used to give me – his descriptions of taking apart the guitar; how flawless the pieces were when separated from the whole, or about of his research into forms of wood and ways to make trees fall in the forest with minimum impact.

“How’s that eco-forestry thing going?” I asked one afternoon on the ride home. “You think you guys will start it this spring?”

Gabe didn’t answer me at once, then said, “I don’t know if it’ll be that easy.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes, I think we should all be able to just do things, you know. Just decide to do things and then do them. Sometimes it seems like I’ll never be able to just make a simple decision and act on it in my life.”

I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying but I said, “I know what you mean,” nonetheless.

Evenings, I bent over homework, tried to gain understanding of the two subjects that had continued to elude me since
the ninth grade: algebra and French. If I could accept how numbers and symbols could be assigned values, if I could form thoughts in another language and bring them down the canal from mind to mouth, perhaps I would also have the capacity to comprehend what was eating away at Gabe. Perhaps I would be able to escape my own patterns of thought long enough to glimpse his.

Sleep came like dreams of falling, except I didn’t jerk awake before landing. Later in the night I would wake, and even when I opened my eyes, the sensation of the bed tilting or swaying under me didn’t stop. I would reach out for something steady to hold on to and would often find that Gabe was already gone from the bed, the blankets on his side carefully folded back. Sometimes, there was no light, no sound to indicate that he had gone or when he came back, only puddles of melted snow around his boots in the morning. Other times, light from the workshop half of the shed was a slice under the door, sounds I could barely identify strained through the wall. I imagined what they were. That is the sound of diagrams traced in pencil then torn from paper; that is the sound of thin wood snapping.

Gabe and I no longer had a kitchen. We used the microwave in the shed, Susan’s kitchen when we had to. She was civil to me, never warm. A couple of weeks after the fire, she asked me over for coffee.

Susan placed a cup of coffee in front of me and sat down. She had already stirred in soy milk and brown sugar. “Harper,” she
started. “I know you must feel – or, I don’t know but Gabe’s told me – that you feel as though I’m excluding you in a way.”

“Well, not exactly. I just get the sense that you don’t want me here. That you blame me somehow for the fire.”

“I know you had nothing to do with the fire, Harper. Those two probably never would’ve been here if it weren’t for, well – but I know you are in no way responsible.” When I didn’t say anything, Susan continued. “It’s not the fire, it’s Gabe.”

“What about Gabe?”

“He just moved here. He hasn’t even been able to get his bearings yet. I just don’t know if this is the best time for him to be in a relationship.”

“Oh.” I thought for a moment, then said, “Don’t you think Gabe should be the person to decide that?”

“He’s so young. You’re young, Harper. I just think that you and Gabe should take a step back, think about this.”

Anger rose in the back of the throat, but my voice came out quiet and thin, as though strained around the sensation. “And I guess you want me to take a step back right off the farm. Well, I’ll go when Gabe asks me to. Don’t be too surprised if we leave together.”

“Harper. It’s not –” Susan reached out like she was going to touch my hand. I got up from the table and thanked her for the coffee that I hadn’t taken even a sip of and walked out the door. The path to the farmyard was slick with melting snow and new mud. From the small rise on which her A-frame sat, I could see past where the cookshack had been, the fields going on until they met forest or road.

Gabe’s truck was gone from the yard. I went into the shed
to check if he was there, nonetheless. When he wasn’t, I left, walked the dirt driveway to the road, crossed it and jumped the fence into the neighbouring cow pasture. The cattle had etched paths across the fields and I found easier footing on them than the wet ground mounded with hummocks. I followed a cow trail that led up a hill covered in low scrub, my legs weak from a winter of relative inactivity. The cows had eaten a path up to a small outcrop of rocks at the top. I sat there and looked down, watching vehicles corner ninety-degree angles on the roads and climb, telling myself I wasn’t watching for Gabe’s truck. The sky was a high wash of white. Sawmill Creek was surreal under the haze of mill smoke. It began to get dark and still he hadn’t returned. I made my way back to the farm.

When I entered the gates, I walked across the dirt yard past the barn where Thomas’s loft was. I hadn’t gone to see him since the fire and I decided to then. I knew the narrow door on the side that opened to the steps leading to the loft would be open. I didn’t knock but stopped midway up the stairs, called out to him and waited until he said something. From where I stood, I could see a kettle on the stove, a lit burner.

I heard movement, papers shuffling. “Come in,” Thomas said, his voice sounding flat, resigned. When I came the rest of the way up the stairs, he was sitting at the table, papers spread out around him, staring at the space at the top of the stairs where he knew I would appear. He watched me look at him and blinked back without expression.

“Are you busy, Thomas?” I asked. “Am I bothering you?”

“What is it, Harper,” he said, a statement rather than a question.

Though he didn’t sound very welcoming, I walked into the room and sat down across from Thomas at the table. “Um, well,” I started and stopped, then started again, blurting, “I think Susan wants me to leave the farm. She doesn’t think Gabe should be in a relationship now.”

Thomas looked at me carefully, then got up and walked to the counter, turned around, and leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest. “And I’m taking it you don’t want to leave.”

“No, that’s not it. I mean, no, I don’t want to go but that’s not the point. The point is, what does she know about Gabe and me? How can she know when he should or shouldn’t be in a relationship?”

Thomas turned so that one hand was on the countertop and dropped his head slightly. He appeared to think for a moment before he said, “Harper, to be honest with you, I don’t know if I’m the right person for you to talk to about this.” When I didn’t say anything, Thomas continued, “Look, you can choose to stay here, at the farm, you know that, but there’s nothing I can do for you. You have to realize that this is probably about more than just you and Gabe. That fire has affected a lot of people. Some people have spent years making this their home and to have such an important part of it gone, just like that, well, it causes us all to reconsider things.”

“I know.” I looked down at the papers spread on the table.

When I touched the edge of one with a finger, Thomas offered “Insurance” by way of explanation.

Withdrawing my hand as though he had reprimanded me, I pushed away from the table and moved toward the stairs. At the top, I paused. “Thomas.” He was turned toward the counter
then, both hands flat on the surface. I took his lack of response as a sign to continue. “Did anything happen the night of the fire? I mean, anything between us that I can’t remember?”

Thomas turned around. Steam rose from the kettle behind him. He looked straight into my eyes for the first time since I’d been there. “No. You were stoned. Gabe was nowhere to be found. I got you out of the cold and put you to bed.”

I felt something flare up in me then – disappointment or resentment. The kettle began to wail. I didn’t know if Thomas was being completely honest with me. “Too bad.” I said. Thomas continued to look straight into my eyes. “I hope you’re all right,” I said and turned, walked down the stairs. I hadn’t said what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure I knew what that was.

Your first complete memory is this: It is fall and Peter and the other fathers on the farm have collected a spring and summer’s worth of fallen trees, leaves, dead wood. Twigs and dry vines that the garden has expelled off the edges of its harvest. They are going to burn it all in a bonfire in the middle of the farmyard and sparks will scale the sky. In the late afternoon, before it is lit, you and the other kids circle the pile and mimic things that make the adults wonder whose children you are, where you have learned these roles. You are Indians pounding the earth with your feet, hands clapping open mouths to mute war cries before letting them burst out again. You are soldiers who believe that the pile holds power, that to bow down before it is to receive strength for battle. And so you do – drop to the ground and gather dirt in your fists, smear it on your faces, then argue whether it is war paint or camouflage, if it can be both.

At some point during this ritual, you realize that this has happened before. Last year, the fathers gathered the things that hadn’t lived through the summer and burned it all before the first snow fell. Then, as now, you united around the unburned pile with other kids and shared a sense of reverence, excitement. You knew then that it would be gone soon, and in such a
spectacular way. Fire climbing so high it would challenge the night, spark new stars. It all makes sense to you now. In a few weeks, the snow will fall. After a few months, the farmyard will turn to mud and things will smell wet and achingly green. This will be spring. Summer will follow, when the yard turns to dust and the sun makes you so delirious that you stumble through the heat until your mother finds you, demands you accept shade and water. And then, it will all happen again.

You arrive at a sudden understanding of seasons, there in front of the scrap pile. You may have had some inkling of them changing before, but never before this moment have you realized how certain they are, how persistent. How they will happen every year without fail and each time one passes, you will be older and already into the next without knowing how you got there. You have no idea of how to explain how happy this new knowledge makes you, how peaceful. You want to tell someone – the other kids, Peter, Susan, anyone – but you can’t find the right words. Years later, you will tell Harper what this meant to you. You tell her when you have returned to the farm, the place where you began, and this early memory comes to you, complete.

You are determined that this memory will always remain whole. Now that you have retrieved it, you will keep it intact. Unfortunately, other recollections have unravelled to such an extent that you don’t seem able to follow the threads of your own thoughts, your own stories. How much have you remembered correctly? How much have you already forgotten?

You are tired of this – tired of trying to sort out where the past ends and the present begins, which memories are accurate,
which you’ve embellished. You are tired of trying to figure out what other people are thinking, what they think of you. It’s dangerous to try to imagine the coordinates of another mind, even more so to lodge yourself in there.

G
abe hadn’t told me where he went the night I saw Thomas but that wasn’t so unusual, and I’d become used to not asking. I knew the answers already – different versions of needing space, a place to think, time alone. I had convinced myself that we were each mature, independent, free. We didn’t need to know where the other was at every moment.

Late that night when he returned, I simply said, “Hi,” and started to get undressed for bed, as though his presence was all I needed for sleep.

“Hi,” Gabe answered and did the same until we were both naked and lying in bed. We watched one another, our gaze moving from mouth to eyes and back, slowly, carefully, as though trying to discern if the other was a threat or a solace. I saw that the cut from eyelid to forehead was almost healed. It would leave a scar, a delicate white ridge to trace with a finger. I wanted to say something, to put words in the space between us, something to which we could respond or react. Because I was too tired to conceive of a way to broach the subject gradually, I
said, “Your mother doesn’t think you should be in a relationship.”

“What?” He sat up quickly.

“I said, your mother –”

He cut me off. “I heard you the first time. How am I supposed to respond to that?”

“What do you mean, how are you supposed to respond? Try honestly. Try telling me what you think. Did you tell her that?”