Burn, p.17
Burn, page 17
“I’ll turn around,” she called. “Promise I won’t look. You all can get decent and then tell me your names.”
Her name was Frith and she was a professor—of Latin American literature, she said—and she was extremely pretty. They stood dripping on the dock, dressed now, side by side, awaiting the verdict, a little like two captured prisoners of war. They told her their names. She looked them over and laughed again, warmly, and she said, “Don’t worry, you guys are welcome here anytime. Just promise not to disturb the beaver, who is my friend. If he’s in here, just wait him out. Now I’m going up to the cabin and you can finish your swim.”
She did go up and they did jump back in, and they did both hope that they would see her again.
Now—though this dock was not so idyllic, and no one was going swimming—Jess felt a certain comfort in sitting on the planks over dark water and swinging his legs beside Storey. “I guess,” he said, and reached for the radio beside him and thumbed the On switch.
* * *
Again nothing. He rolled the tuner up and down the dial. Again a stuttering in static that may have been music, and again he caught on the shred of a voice and tuned back to 1485. French again, a woman narrating in a newscaster’s lilting monologue, Jess for some reason having no trouble understanding now, not translating even, just listening as she said, “The band will reunite on the twenty-second of October, at the Videotron Centre, and, sad to say, she is already sold out. Merci bien, Marie Blanc, for joining us in the studio, and we wish you luck! Stay tuned for Cuisine Formidable du Québec with host Yvette Leroy, and in half an hour we bring you World News and the latest updates on the conflict to the south. This is Myriam Anders wishing you all a good night…”
Jess clicked off the radio. Storey watched him anxiously. “What did she say?” he said.
“She said the band will reunite for a big concert, but don’t get all excited because it is sold out.”
“What band?”
Jess shrugged.
“That it?”
“Yep. World news in half an hour.”
Storey glanced at his watch. “I guess I can stay up that late. You cold?”
“No. It feels good.”
“Me, too.”
They sat in silence and swung their legs. Storey pried splinters from the boards and dropped them into the cold black water. There was little breeze, but what was there stirred down from the hills behind them and they could smell the smoke from the shack’s stovepipe. They’d banked the firebox with the cordwood stacked against the wall, mostly split lengths of seasoned oak. The scent was as comforting as sitting on the dock.
Jess said, “I was remembering the time we were skinny-dipping at Mean Beaver Pond. That little swimming hole in the old orchard—”
“Dude, I know the pond.”
“Right.”
“You were thinking about the hot professor, Frith Cormier.”
“How did you know?”
“Duh.”
“Yeah. She really was hot. And she caught us—”
“With our little peckers in plein air, I know. Do you know how many times you have retold this story?”
“C’mon. Really?” Jess said.
“You were totally smitten. Like devastated.”
“Weren’t you?”
“Probably.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes,” Storey admitted.
“Okay, then. I wonder what happened to her?”
“A couple of years after, she had a daughter and they moved back. To the cabin by the pond. Most of the time. She still taught at Amherst, but the girl went to the Grammar School. I’ve met her…Hailey. She’s just as cool as her mom and just as pretty. I think she goes to Berkeley, or just got out.”
“Whoa, you know a lot.”
“They’re our neighbors. In a way. Yours, too.”
“In a way.” For a moment Jess was transported to the ridge where Storey’s dad, Daniel, still lived in the old house, next to the old barn, now empty of horses. And up the sinuous dirt road to his own place, where both his parents now cooked together, mostly wordlessly, each humming their own tune, and spent most evenings quietly reading—he saw the two homesteads as a night bird would, flying over the dark roofs and lighted windows, the trace of wood smoke drifting out of each chimney just as it was here, now. A vast unnamable sadness moved over him again. Without thinking he said, “Did you ever find out why your mom left your dad?”
Storey’s hand, which had been stacking the dock splinters like pickup sticks, stopped. “Yes,” he said.
“Was it—?”
“No.”
“What?”
“It was not because she seduced you.”
Jess stopped breathing. The night thickened—hardened and stilled as if crystallized, like maple syrup boiled too long.
Storey said, “You didn’t think I knew?”
Jess could not breathe, much less speak.
“Jess?”
“No,” Jess croaked.
“I knew that night. At dinner. You were acting so weird. Like you’d been hit on the head with a cow. Also kinda like you’d just eaten gelato for the first time.”
“Gelato?”
“Or panna cotta. I don’t know, something out of this world.”
“But—”
“But I didn’t kill you?”
“Yes,” Jess croaked again.
“Mom, Hannah, had that problem. She did it with the guy who hayed the fields—”
“Frazer?”
“Yep. And the guy at the bottom of Tavern Hill, where we’d buy a side of beef.”
“Glen?”
“Right. That guy.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yep. To tell you the truth, I was always dreading when she’d figure you were old enough.”
Jess’s breathing shallowed. He felt hot tears on his cheeks. He could not control them and he wasn’t sure why. Was it that Storey had been a better friend than he’d ever imagined? Or that his first love had maybe bagged him like a deer and notched her belt? Right now there were many reasons to cry, and so…he cried.
He felt Storey’s hand on the back of his head, palming it like a basketball. It was firm and forgiving, and then it was gone, and Jess cried harder.
“Sorry,” Jess said finally. “I was the one who fucked up.”
“No, you didn’t. I would’ve…” He grunted. “I guess that’s not the way to put it. I…anyway. It’s almost time. Let’s fire up the radio.”
And that was it. End of discussion. Jess wiped his face on his sleeve and reached beside him and took up the radio. He set it in his lap and switched it on.
* * *
Nick of time. The French was rapid, but mostly understandable.
“—return to the headline story of the day, the reports of fierce fighting south of the border in the U.S. state of Maine following the assassination of the American President Schoeffler by the Maine secessionist Lamar Blodgett. And the confirmation that one week ago today, on the twenty-eighth of September, partisan operatives in support of secession exploded the dam on the river Kennebec, unleashing a flood that wiped out two battalions of federal soldiers. The death toll has been estimated by Canadian military intelligence to be more than two thousand men. No word on civilian casualties, but there have been unconfirmed reports that news of the plan somehow spread down the valley and that most of the residents sought high ground just before the explosion. I have here in the studio Lieutenant General François Schwab, Canadian Special Operations Branch, to talk about the action and the response by the U.S. military. Good evening to you, General.”
“Good evening.”
“Can you tell us, first of all, what you know about le barrage Kennebec and the resulting massacre?”
“You mean the destruction of the U.S. assault units? Eight hundred infantry from the Marine expeditionary force and five companies of cavalry, also Marines—but excuse me, this was not a massacre, Ms. Anders, this was the complete and total neutralization of an armed attacking force.”
“You sound impressed.”
“I am stating the facts.”
“Yes, well, can you describe what we know of the federal government response?”
“Well, we don’t know much, due to a very effective information blackout, but the report we are hearing is of a scorched-earth campaign in the counties that support secession. Some would say the response has been…disproportionate…”
They listened. Or, rather, Jess listened and Storey heard, grasping at the few words he understood—like “massacre”—and he watched Jess’s face intently for some import, as if he might read the narrative there. When the interview was done and Myriam Anders thanked the general and turned to economic news and the impact the war was having on the markets—“Parce que, enfin,” she added soberly, “nous devons appeler un chat un chat. C’est une guerre, une guerre civile…”—because, in the end, we must call a spade a spade, this is a civil war—when she turned to collateral news, Jess turned off the receiver and set it on the plank beside him.
He blew out. There had been a lot to digest in the last hour.
“Bad?” Storey said. He could not hide his dread. And Jess knew it was not for himself but for his family, and maybe for Collie, too.
“Bad.”
“You need a minute?”
“No.” Jess zipped his shell jacket to the throat. “You remember I told you this morning—” He interrupted himself. “Was that really this morning? Fuck, these days are long.”
“No shit.”
“Well, I was telling you that the government—the U.S., the feds—sent a couple thousand assault troops into the Kennebec Valley.”
“I remember.”
“The secessionists blew the dam.”
“The dam? Harris Station? Below Indian Pond?”
“Yes.”
“Whoa. That’s a mega frigging dam. And isn’t the ‘pond’ like ten miles long?”
“Yes. I guess it was apocalyptic. It wiped out the two battalions, like two thousand soldiers. I guess no one expected it, for some reason.”
“Whoa.”
“I guess it’s why…why what we’ve been seeing…” Jess trailed off.
“Yeah,” Storey said. He was gazing at the ridge across the little valley, to where it bulked against the stars. Jess heard him whistle without tone, just air, which he did sometimes when he was stressed. The whistling cut. “What about all the people that lived there? The residents downstream? Waterville, Skowhegan? Didn’t it kill a ton of civilians?”
“Water probably spread out by then. And apparently word got out just in time, and almost everyone who needed to got to higher ground.”
“Fuck,” Storey whispered. He said, “These guys are way serious. They all are. No one is playing games. I guess we can see that for ourselves.”
* * *
Nobody was playing games, that was a fact. But tonight the three of them were snug in a well-built sugarhouse with enough firewood to last weeks, and probably food, too, but they would not stay.
They left the door cracked open and Jess lay on his back on his pad on the concrete floor and let the news sift. All of it. He heard Storey snoring softly and heard Collie whimper and huff, and heard the fire ping in the evaporator, and the sheet metal creak and sigh. And after a while he heard the soft call of a great horned owl, hollow and insistent, and it sounded doleful, muffled by distance, and he heard maybe its mate answer with a matching sorrow from a place even deeper in the night.
He was being stripped, little by little, of all he carried that meant anything. That’s what he thought. His wife had gone, had left him standing in the middle of their street not knowing if he should wave. His dog, and now his first love. The memory of Hannah had always warmed him; it was, oddly, a touchstone, and now he was supposed to toss it, too. He refused. She had loved him. She may have screwed the neighbors, but she had loved him, he was sure. Wasn’t he?
And what did any of it mean if a helicopter or a sniper’s rifle cut him down tomorrow? And could an owl’s call carry the grief, echo it down the freezing valley and soothe the spirit? And why could he not love his parents with the same warmth with which he loved even the horses in Storey’s barn, who had also been taken? Andandand. Again he floated. His sleeping pad was a raft and it drifted, spinning slowly, and at some point he realized that the owl’s call had ceased and he heard now only the brook that fed the pond and he slept.
* * *
Gray dawn. Sometime in the night the clouds had moved in and lidded the valley and they woke to the smell of fog and rain drumming the metal roof. The men did; Collie slept. Jess stepped outside and could see even in half-light the mist clinging to the ridges and the paler streaks of sleet mixing with the downpour.
Respite and relief. For now they had no decision to make except whether to add cinnamon to the oatmeal (yes), and guess what else? They found on a shelf one unsold and unopened quart of maple syrup. The dry evaporator pan was like one giant stovetop, and while Storey stirred the oatmeal, Jess made coffee. They’d add syrup to that, too. Not the precious cans of evaporated milk, though; those they’d save for Collie’s oatmeal.
Rain day. They wouldn’t move, at least not this morning.
They woke her and Storey got her into her raincoat over the lion suit and they went out into the rain to the outhouse. When they returned they shook off their rain gear side by side—“Whew! Shake-shake!” Storey said. “Whew! Shake-shake!” Collie repeated—and they scraped their boots ceremonially on the toothed iron scraper.
Jess had three full bowls and three full hot cups waiting by each bucket and he said, “It’s like Goldilocks and the three bears, right?”
“Right,” Collie said. For a second Jess panicked, thinking, Wrong thing to say, but she didn’t, thank God, ask where was the mama bear.
The oatmeal with syrup was delicious, and hers with milk even more so, and they ate hungrily and in silence, and she asked for more. When they were done he gathered up the bowls and the pot and Collie said she wanted to come help do the dishes, she liked it, and Jess said it was raining, and she said she liked that, too, and so the two of them went back out into what was becoming a deluge and they walked to the upper end of the pond, where the brook flowed, and they squatted in the sleet and scoured the dishes with the half sponge. Jess did, and Collie rinsed. She held up one bowl and squinted as the rain pattered on her eyelids and said, “You missed a spot,” and handed it back. Jess was pretty sure she couldn’t see anything in the spray, but he held it up and turned his face blindly into the downpour and said, “Did not,” and she grabbed it back and held it up and pointed at a spot neither of them could really see and said, “Did so. See?”
So Jess sighed in defeat and said, “Are you Mrs. Clean or what?” and she nodded, emphatic.
He took the bowl back and rewashed it and when he handed it back to her he saw something like glee in her triumph. He thought then that this five-year-old had more resilience than he and Storey by an order of magnitude. He did not think that she was willfully ignoring her recent losses, or had somehow skillfully forgotten, it was just that she was little in a mean world and she needed her agility and she would protect it. She would stay rooted in the present whenever she could. He felt admiration.
In the shack Storey untwisted the plastic band from the tattered deck of cards and he taught her how to play Go Fish and three of them played it for hours. She loved saying, “Go fish! Go fish!” which she accompanied sometimes by clapping her hands and spilling her cards. When she dropped her cards she said, “Whoops,” and made them not look while she gathered them. Storey somehow found a faint classic-rock station on the AM dial and they listened to “Wild Horses” and “Cinnamon Girl,” the songs coming through in swells, as if pushed by a capricious wind, and Collie said, “I love horses. And fish.” And Jess saw the logic in it and said, “Me, too,” and added, “and sometimes beavers.” And she said that there was a beaver in the lake that had something wrong with him and he swam in circles, but she loved him sometimes anyway.
They kept the stove stoked and the door cracked for fresh air, and the rain abated to a steady whisper on the roof, the kind that might last all day and into the night, and Jess didn’t care. A part of him unclenched, and when she shouted, “Go fish!” and clapped her hands and scattered her cards for the third time, he found himself laughing. It surprised him. And then he couldn’t contain it, and the more they stared at him the more he uncorked.
Collie was staring and moving her lips around, and when he finally sputtered out and blotted the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand she said, “You got the fits, mister.” And then: “I’m famished!”
Now Jess stared. “Famished? Where’d you learn that?”
“Means starving, dummy.”
“Well, okay. I’m gonna go outside and see a man about a horse. Then I’ll whip us up some lunch.”
“A horse?” she said. She started to stand. “I wanna come.”
Jess said, “It means I gotta pee. It’s a polite way of saying it.”
“Oh.” She sat back down.
“Just a sec,” he said.
His Gore-Tex slicker hung on a peg by the door. He grabbed it, shrugged into it, and went out the door. He walked down to the dock. Not for any reason except that he liked it. It comforted him. The rain was gentle but steady and it drummed the dock and hissed on the water. He could so easily imagine the storm tapering off, the clouds breaking to a hot autumn sun, the afternoon warming; then: stripping to boxers and running off the end of that dock. No beaver to scare off. The water would be freezing and delicious. It occurred to him that they’d spent days walking the edge of a lake and hadn’t been swimming once. Well. Neither had been in the mood.
