Caribou Island

13

The logs were not all the same. Some lighter-colored birch, thin bark like paper. Then darker spruce. Every variety of tree from this part of Alaska. And not one of them straight. Knots and bumps and the nubs of sawed-off branches. Gary kept picking up an end and sighting down it, dropping it and moving on to the next.

Raining again, but this time they wore full gear, thick dark green fishermen’s gear, with boots. Irene warm and dry.

Maybe I should have had them planed down, Gary said.

Irene held her tongue. Sat on the edge of the platform and waited. She would do whatever he wanted for this cabin. If he decided to tie the logs together with licorice, or use cake icing to fill the gaps, she’d do it.

Gary selected four of the darker spruce logs finally, measured and sawed the ends so the corners would meet. Forty-five-degree angles, using a handsaw, and he didn’t get them quite right. Yellow sawdust turning orange-red in the rain. The smell of the wood brought out by the sawing. Gary matching corners and wondering at the gaps.

Close enough, he said, but Irene could tell he was getting frustrated already. He had this immaculate idea in his head, and he was seeing the first tarnish now.

She kneeled down and held the logs together while he nailed. Big six-inch nails, galvanized. Her hands wet and cold, the bark rough.

They nailed together four corners and that was the first level of their walls. Two sixteen-foot logs and two twelve-foot logs making a low border. On the uphill side, the log came almost to the floor. The downhill log was more than a foot short.

At the roof, we’ll add partial layers to even it all up? Irene asked.

Yeah, Gary said. We’ll have to do that. Though I guess a roof can be tilted, too. Might look kind of interesting. And he grinned at Irene.

Irene laughed. It would have that rustic feel.

It’s a deal, Gary said. We’re doing a tilted roof.

Irene put her arm around Gary and gave a squeeze. Maybe it would work out. Maybe it would be okay that the cabin would look ridiculous.

Second layer? he asked.

You bet, she said. She was dizzy and had an ice pick in her brain, but she was doing her best to ignore that. Maybe she needed more antibiotics.

They measured again and he sawed the ends. The rain came down harder, blown by more wind, so they faced away from it.

Irene held the corners while he nailed, and she could see enormous gaps between the two layers. In some spots, maybe two or three inches of air between logs.

Damn it, Gary said.

The rain blowing sideways now, as if to show what would happen to these gaps. Irene slipped a Tramadol quickly while Gary was distracted. She was almost out. She needed to ask Rhoda for more.

Damn it, Gary said again. I need a planer, but by hand it’s going to take forever. All those knots and cut-off branches, all the bark. There’s no way I can get through that. I should have had them planed before. I knew that. I knew that and I didn’t do it.

It’s your first time doing this, Irene said.

But I knew it. I just didn’t have enough time. I was starting the project late. So I thought maybe I could make it work. When am I going to learn not to start shit late?

Well, Irene said, I think you’re being hard on yourself.

No I’m not. I’m an ass. I’m an incompetent ass, and that’s what I’ve always been. Every project.

Gary, she said, and she tried to put her arms around him, but he stomped off into the trees. Hard to believe he was fifty-five years old. He could have been twenty, or thirteen, or three. Having a tantrum, just like the children she’d taught for thirty-three years.

And meanwhile, Irene said quietly to herself, this gets to be my life. Because you can choose who you’ll be with, but you can’t choose who they’ll become.

Gary was through the trees at the back of the property quickly, moving fast. The rain coming down heavy, his footsteps just as heavy, snapping deadfall. He felt like he could go forever, hike clear across Alaska into the Yukon and Northwest Territories, hike until his legs burned away and his mind cleared. He found that other cabin again, with the large even logs. He examined the gaps and still couldn’t tell what they used. The prongs of his hammer and the logs themselves curved enough that he couldn’t quite dig in, so he swung hard to bite into one of the gaps, tearing away at the log face. The lighter wood exposed, the surface gone almost black. He was able to free a small piece of the filler. A gray grout or cement or epoxy. It had flexibility but wasn’t rubber or silicone. Slightly grainy in his fingers. He smelled it and couldn’t tell what it was. And he doubted it could fill several inches of gap. Nothing would fill that. He’d have to nail up plywood. Instead of a cabin, the inside would look like a storage unit.

Gary turned and threw his hammer at a tree. It hit with too quiet a sound, nothing satisfying. So he walked over and picked it up and threw it at another tree, closer, and it bounced back at him so he jumped to the side.

He wanted to reach down into the island and tear it apart with his hands, see the lake’s water rise up in the gap. That would be enough. Nothing less than that.

Well, he said. Because it was time to move on.

He hiked back to Irene, who was sitting on the edge of the platform, turned away from the wind and rain, hunched over. He should let her go back home. She shouldn’t have to be a part of this. Just a few more layers of logs and they’d go.

He walked up to her and said sorry. This is just frustrating, he said. There’s another cabin back there, and I don’t know where they got their big logs.

It’s okay. Maybe we can work something out with these.

So they made another layer, sawing and nailing corners, then stood back to look at the gaps. They stood there in the rain and tried to figure out how to make it work.

Maybe you can nail each layer down into the next, Irene said. With longer nails. That might bring them closer together. And she was thinking this was a kind of metaphor, that if they could take all their previous selves and nail them together, get who they were five years ago and twenty-five years ago to fit closer together, maybe they’d have a sense of something solid. For themselves and for their marriage, a marriage not unlike a sense of self, something fleeting and changing, important and also nothing. You could rely on it for years, just assume it was there, but then if you looked for it, needed it, tried to find some substance to it, something to grab on to, your hands closed on air.

That’s a good idea, Gary said. I’ll try that. Thanks, Reney.

They made one more layer, then lifted each layer off and dragged it aside for tomorrow’s work. Tomorrow they’d try to make it all fit together more closely.