Caribou Island

28

The Coleman stove had a back to it, a windbreak, but when Irene tried to put it up, the stove blew over, spilling fuel, the wind too strong. Plenty of propane stoves available now, and they were still using one with wet fuel. She’d be bringing fumes into the tent. The wind was something you could learn to hate. Pressurized and vindictive.

Irene’s hood blew off, her head exposed now to the rain, but she jammed the lighter right against the burner, flicked again, and it caught. A quick flash of warmth on her hand. She adjusted the knob and the flame held, though it was blown so much it was never a full ring, one side or another snuffed.

Irene pulled the hood of her raingear back on, turned away from the wind, and shivered. It should be visible. You should be able to see the wind. It had weight and heft, an intent born purely into the world, unforgiving. It would blow until all the world was smooth and nothing left in its path.

The six-gallon water jug was heavy, so Irene only tipped it, filled a pot, placed the pot on the stove and put a lid on. The water should come to a boil in about two hours. That was her guess. Another impossible part of their stupid plan. Why don’t you make some pasta, Irene? Sure thing, big daddy, coming right up. Wouldn’t want to slow down your pile of sticks.

Irene hunched over as low as she could, her face close to a patch of horsetail, thin spindles, segmented. Only a foot high now, she said to the plants, but you used to be higher, didn’t you. They looked frail now, on their way out, but once they had grown as tall as redwoods, in a time when other plants hadn’t yet figured out how to grow above two inches. First with a vascular system. The lives of plants like humans, full of struggle and domination, loss and dreams that never happened or happened only briefly. And that was the worst, to have something and then not have it, that was certainly the worst by far.

Irene ripped out all the horsetail, tossed it aside. Time to move on, she told the plants. You’ve stayed past your time. Then she stood up, braced against the blast, and tromped over to Gary, to the hovel.

Gary was sawing down through the front wall, a jerky motion, stops and starts.

Can you push out against the wall? Gary yelled. The saw’s jamming up.

So the wall was folding back already, pinching the saw. What would it be like when he removed a section? Irene knew he hadn’t thought that far ahead, though. She leaned into the wall beside him. Smell of sawdust even in all this wind, huff and puff of Gary beside her, sound of saw teeth ripping. He liked this, she knew. And maybe she shouldn’t grudge him. She held on to the top log, rough bark, laid her cheek against it, and could feel the whole wall moving.

A concentration again behind her right eye, a fault line, the bones of her skull like tectonic plates moving, grinding at the edges. Her only goal each day now was to get through the day, her only goal each sleepless night to get through the night. Reduced to existence, to bare survival, and there was something good about that maybe, something honest. But she still felt other things, too, light drifting notes somewhere out there: loneliness, for instance. She missed Rhoda. She hadn’t stopped feeling entirely.

Irene wondered if this was what had made her mother’s end possible, the fading away of feeling. She had always imagined the opposite: her mother in a fit of passion, distraught at losing her husband to another woman, unable to imagine her life without him. But what if she simply hadn’t felt anything anymore, after losing everything? That was a new possibility, something Irene couldn’t have guessed. And it felt dangerous. You could end up there without having noticed the transition at all.

Lean harder, Gary yelled. It’s still jamming up.

Sorry, Irene yelled back, and she pushed harder into the wall, her feet slipping on the ply. She doubted any cabin had ever been built like this, having to push at the walls, walls so frail they bent in the wind. Even the first pioneers, with their rough tools, would have done better.

Pushing harder pressurized her head, brought the pain to a new intensity, the cold and wind and exertion a perfect combination. That was the other possibility: suicide to end the pain. A very simple equation. Not worth living if you only felt pain, so if the pain seemed unending, the logical thing was to end your life. But she would never forgive her mother for that. Her mother should have loved her, and that should have been enough. Irene would never do that to Rhoda.

Irene had to stop pushing for a moment, the pressure in her head too intense, the entire thing a balloon.

Keep pushing, Gary yelled.

I can’t, she told him. My head.

Gary stopped sawing, the saw left jammed in the wood, hanging there. He straightened up and had to grab the wall with one hand to keep from blowing over. Irene hunched against the wind.

You can’t work? Gary’s lips pulled back a bit, angry, impatient. But then maybe he realized how that sounded. Closed his mouth, looked away. Sorry, he said.

Yeah, me too.

Sorry, what? he asked. Couldn’t hear you over the wind. The wind buffeting, pumping in blasts, a rising howl each time it accelerated.

I said, Yeah, me too.

Oh.

She could tell he was afraid to ask what that meant.

Gary looked down at the wall, at where he was sawing, the wall curving back, pinching the gap. I think I have to brace this better first, he yelled. If I get the braces ready, can you push while I nail?

Yeah, she yelled. Why not.

Gary climbed over the back wall, going for the pile of two-by-fours. Irene slumped down inside the cabin, out of the wind for the most part, ducked her head down, her chin inside her jacket, folded her arms, closed her eyes.

A fair representation of her three decades in Alaska, slumping down in raingear, hiding, making herself as small as possible, fending off mosquitoes that somehow managed to fly despite the wind. Feeling chilled and alone. Not the expansive vision you’d be tempted to have, spreading your arms on some sunny day on an open slope of purple lupine, looking at mountains all around. This was her life, and she wanted it to pass. At least right now. Thick rain came down again, and she remembered the pasta water but didn’t want to get up.

Gary sawed away at the lumber pile. The braces would be knees jutting inside the cabin from every wall, impossible to walk around inside without running into them. First house in the world designed like that. Irene the lucky wife.

But she shouldn’t be so small-minded, ungenerous. That wasn’t who she wanted to be. So she stood up, sailed across the platform, climbed over the back wall, and went to tend the water. Lifted the lid, saw no bubbles. Hadn’t expected to see any.

She hiked over to Gary. A patch covered in sawdust now, bright and reddish in the rain. Water’s not boiling, she yelled. Too much wind. How about I make PB&J?

Yeah, Gary said, not looking up, concentrated on sawing.

So Irene turned off the stove burner, left the pot of water sitting there for next time. The storm forecast to last a week, maybe two, so it might be a while. At the tent, she kneeled just inside the opening, careful not to drip on a sleeping bag, and made sandwiches. Made four, to get them through the afternoon. Almond butter and lingonberry jam, not bad.

Soup’s on, she yelled from the tent. Kneeling like she was at some altar, but worshipping what god? An outpost for the faithful who hadn’t yet decided on a name. Still fashioning their god, finding their fears and their corollaries. Most importantly, what would the god do? Irene didn’t want an afterlife. This life was more than enough. And she didn’t need to be forgiven. She just wanted to be given back what had been taken. A lost-and-found god. That would be good enough. No other fancy qualities, nothing mystical. Just give back what had been taken. Can you do that? she asked.

No answer, of course. The tent as wild as any flames for reading signs, but you’d have to want to see. You’d have to be half-dumb or from an earlier time. That was the problem with now. You couldn’t believe, and it was awful not to believe.

Gary fell down beside her, another would-be penitent on his knees. Well, he said. I got a couple frames knocked together.

The House of the Lord shall be built, Irene said. Hallelujah.

What?

Sorry, Irene said. Just a joke. Here on my knees, I feel like I’m in some kind of church.

Huh, Gary said. You’re right. Unbelievers going through the motions, like Anglo-Saxon Christians. We even have the storm blowing outside. They’d give a Christian burial but lop off the head just in case. Then they’d go lop off some living heads.

Sounds good, Irene said. If I stayed out here long enough, I could probably be driven to murder.

It’s not that bad.

I’d rather be unconscious, but other than that, yeah, it’s pretty good.

Irene.

She chewed her sandwich and didn’t say more. She didn’t feel like talking. For a moment, things had seemed bright. And that moment had lasted about half a minute. The tent a void before them, beckoning. She wanted to lie down again.

We need a roof, Gary said. We get to that stage and everything will seem a lot better.

The almond butter was too salty, the sandwich gumming in her mouth. I miss Rhoda, she said. She used to visit every day or two, and now she can’t.

Once we’re done, she can come out and visit us.

You’ve separated me from everyone. And I don’t mean just now. I mean for thirty years. Separated me from my family, from your family, from friends we could have made here, from the people I worked with, who you didn’t want coming over to the house. You’ve made me alone, and now it’s too late.

Whoa, Irene. Slow down there. You’re hitching up a hissy eighteen-wheeler.

You’ve destroyed my life, you fuck.

Fine, he said. I’ve destroyed your life. Gary left his uneaten sandwich, stalked off to hammer at his own ill-shapen temple.

And what was the point? Irene asked. Why did everything have to be taken? Retired from work, her children grown, friends and family fallen away, everything that her marriage had once been, who she had been. All gone. What was left?

She finished her sandwich then stood in the rain and wind that had no power to purify, empty water, and walked to the cabin, climbed over the back wall, stood beside her husband to push so he could fit a clumsy brace, a couple pieces of two-by-four tacked together. She didn’t speak and he didn’t speak. They only worked, first one side of the window and then the next, Gary down on his knees, driving his shoulder into the lower wall, pushing the logs back to the edge of the ply, driving nails.

Irene knew she should feel sorry, but she felt nothing. She left Gary to carve out the window, a void in the wall that would become their only view, something that seemed an obvious symbol of the narrowing of their lives, and returned to the tent to lie down.

The tent so loud above her over every other sound, she finally slept, faded away into the only real shelter.

When she awoke, it was night and Gary was in his sleeping bag beside her. Are you awake? she asked.

Yes.

What are you thinking about?

The Seafarer. Calde gethrungen, he recited to her, waeron mine fet, forste gebunden, caldum clommum, thaer tha ceare seofedun hat ymb heortan.

And what’s that mean? she asked. You want me to ask.

Pinched by cold were my feet, fettered by frost, by cold chains, caldum clommum, there the anxieties sighed hot around my heart.

Yeah, you have it tough, she said.

Who are you to know?