Caribou Island

31

Rhoda found Mark at the go-cart track. He and his friends always went on the first day of snow so they could spin circles and crash into each other. Fishing was over, and they had nothing to do now except drugs and stupid shit like this. Rhoda clung to the chain-link fence and yelled to get his attention, but of course there was no way he could hear her. The putting of a dozen engines. Mark wearing a camo jacket and a Russian hat with earflaps. His friend Jason wearing a pink Hello Kitty jacket just to be an ass.

The course was rimmed by stacks of old tires, then fence, then the broken-down motor homes of half a dozen fishermen who lived here year-round, Mark’s buddies. The kind of depressing hell Rhoda wanted no part of anymore. The kind of place where she had spent all of junior high and high school, smoking pot and having sex at the edge of gravel lots. She wanted to forget any of that had ever happened.

She grabbed a piece of gravel and threw it at Mark as he flew around the corner. It bounced off the front of his cart. He skidded to a stop, then saw it was her, grinned, flipped her off, and hit the accelerator. Tok, wearing a Red Baron scarf, slammed from behind, threw Mark’s cart sideways into the barrier. Tollef, Tok’s brother, came around fast and rammed Mark again, Mark whiplashing against his seatbelt. He was yelling and stomping the accelerator, trying to get out of there, made it maybe twenty feet before Hello Kitty whipped by and leaned over to cuff him on the back of the neck. But then Mark made it clear and was chasing them down.

Rhoda walked through a gap in the fence to the small set of bleachers, the only spectator. She’d had sex with Jason once on these bleachers, disgusting to think of now. That had been in the snow, too, though much colder, middle of winter. It hadn’t become her life; that was the important thing.

She waited through another fifteen minutes of crude gestures and obscenities, doughnuts and collisions, the life of the penis. Waited until they’d had their fill and sauntered back to the entrance, shouldering each other and going for wedgies. Then they walked past, without stopping, Jason with a little smile. We’re going to Coolie’s if you want a beer, Mark said over his shoulder.

Hey. I came here to talk to you.

Sorry, he said. I’m otherwise engaged. He said it in his Brit voice and of course got a laugh.

I need to get out to Caribou Island. You can arrange a boat.

Mark stopped, at least, and turned around. His friends kept going. Why do you have to go out there?

Our parents, she said. Remember? The people who made you and raised you? They’ve been out there this entire storm, in a tent, and there’s no way to contact them. I need to know they’re all right.

They’re fine, Mark said and turned away.

Listen, Rhoda said, but her voice had gone weak. She was starting to cry. I know you don’t like me, but I’m really worried about them, and I need your help.

Mark surprised her then. Turned around, walked over and gave her a hug, patted her on the back. Okay, he said. I’m sorry. I’ll get a boat. When do you want to go?

Today?

It’s too late for today. How about tomorrow, ten a.m., I’ll meet you at the lower campground?

Thank you, Mark. You can be good, see?

Can’t make a habit of it, he smiled. See you tomorrow. He jogged ahead to catch up with his friends.

Then she remembered. Hey, she yelled. I’m getting married.

Mark waved his arm in the air to acknowledge, but that was all. Didn’t turn around.

So Rhoda returned to work and asked for the time off. She got through the rest the day and went home to Jim. An enormous complex of exercise equipment in the middle of the living room, painted metallic light blue. Jim wearing spandex shorts and a wife-beater, pulling a bar down behind his neck.

Wow, she said. What the hell is that?

This is the future me, Jim said. I figure I have at least ten more good years.

Okay, she said. She wasn’t sure what this was all about. You’d better have more than ten. I’m only thirty.

No problemo, he said. You’ll be living with a hardbody soon.

She watched him finish his set. He was out of breath and red-faced by the end, splotchy, his arms and shoulders looking old and slack.

You’re not thinking of other women, are you?

What?

This sudden getting in shape thing, right after you ask me to marry you. Kind of seems like a panic response, making yourself attractive again so you’re not limited to one mate.

Rhoda.

I’m serious. You said you have ten more good years. Good for what?

Jim stood up and flopped his workout towel over his shoulder. Rhoda, he said. You’re the only woman I want. Okay?

She tried to find anything in his eyes, any sign of a lie, looked at his mouth, also.

Rhoda, I love you.

Okay. She gave him a hug. I’m just stressed out about my mom still, I think. I’m going to Caribou Island tomorrow. Mark’s taking me.

In this weather? You go out on Skilak at the wrong time and you could die.

The storm’s passed. There’s not supposed to be any wind tomorrow morning. Maybe not even any snow.

You shouldn’t go out there. Just wait for them to come in. They have to come in soon for supplies. They’ve been out almost a week.

Ten days.

Well that’s my point then. They’ll come in.

Rhoda didn’t feel like talking about this. She went to the fridge and started pulling things out for dinner. Chicken she needed to use up, olives, feta, red onion. Maybe some couscous. She could hear Jim huffing away. Hard to believe the new muscles were for her.

Cooking always helped. Especially in a kitchen like this. A good stove, six burners. The couscous in water on the back row. Then she poured olive oil in a pan, added minced garlic, got the chicken breasts going. Chopped the red onion. She could calm down when she was cooking. Her breathing could slow. She’d been panicking without even knowing it. Panicking all day, probably.

Hey, she called out to Jim.

Yeah?

I need a satellite phone. They’re expensive. But I need to talk with my mom. It’s been freaking me out.

How expensive are they?

Fifteen hundred, or maybe a little less. Plus seven-fifty for minutes.

Ouch.

I need it.

Okay.

The chicken was browned, cooked most the way through, red onions translucent. She poured in the tomato sauce, olives and some of their juice, let it come to a boil then turned down to simmer. Added pepper, couldn’t think of what other spices went with Greek chicken. Poured in some balsamic, then added Madeira. Probably not right for this dish, but what the hell. Drunken chicken. She poured herself a glass of cabernet.

I’ll take some in a minute, Jim said. I’m hitting the showers.

Rhoda drank her wine and stared down at the chicken, the olives dark in the sauce. Something had changed. Somehow the air a little cooler, maybe, thinner, more isolating. Just the two of them here in this house. Maybe because there had been a goal before. The proposal. Rhoda could see how marriage might feel lonely. A new feeling she couldn’t quite describe or even reach. Something at the edges, something she didn’t like. She could imagine long periods of time in which they wouldn’t say much to each other, just moving individually around the house. And she wondered whether this was where kids fit in. Having a child would provide a new focus, a new center of attention, a place for the two of them to meet. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be. You focused on each other until you decided to marry, then you focused together on someone else. And then what happened when your kids grew up and left? Where were you supposed to focus then? There was something terrifying about not having a focus. Your life could never be just what it was. That was frightening. No one wanted that.

In the morning, Rhoda drove to Skilak. Heavy skies, cold, twenty-eight degrees, but very little wind, only occasional light snow, a few flakes and then it would be clear again. The trees white, with black shadows. No green. She knew they were still green, but she couldn’t see it. The winter color palette of white, black, brown, and gray, arrived earlier than usual.

She wanted to call Mark to confirm, but he would consider that nagging. She turned off the loop road toward the lower campground and coming over a rise could see water, gray and very small waves. Pulled into an empty lot, no one around, looked at her watch, a few minutes before ten.

Rhoda bundled in her snow jacket and hat, winter gloves. Wearing long underwear, also, and boots. It would be cold out on the lake in the boat. If the boat and Mark ever arrived, of course. She walked down to the ramp, to the water’s edge. A fine layer of snow, undisturbed. No one had used this ramp today. Her parents most likely the only people out there.

The lake already freezing at its edges. Clear thin panes of ice among the rocks. Delicate and translucent, most of it broken already into small triangular shards. Rhoda tapped at them with the toe of her boot.

Okay, Mark, she said, and pulled out her cell phone. Let’s hear the story. But when she called, he said he was only a few minutes away, so she decided to be nice. Thank you, she said. See you soon.

Rhoda had grown up on this lake. This was supposed to be home, this shoreline. These trees. The mountains, the way the heavy clouds moved in and made the summits an act of memory. But it didn’t feel like home. It felt as cold and impersonal as a place she had never been. She didn’t understand why her parents had settled here, and she wondered why she hadn’t moved away, like her friends, to a better place.

Mark came down the gravel road in his old truck, pulling a trailer. He gave her the shaka sign and a grin, pulled a wide half-circle in front of her, then backed the boat to the water. An open aluminum boat, something less than twenty feet, with an outboard. Exposed to the cold, but big enough to be safe.

Mark hopped out and Rhoda gave him a hug. Thanks, Mark.

Whoa, Mark said. It’s just a boat.

I know, but I’m worried about them. And I’m thinking, also, that they’d use the upper campground if they came in today. We may miss them if we launch here.

Well we’re here now, Mark said. We’ll just zip over to the upper campground if we don’t find them.

Okay, Rhoda said. She didn’t want to argue, but she wished they could drive around to the other ramp. It wouldn’t be that hard to do.

Mark was already unbuckling straps. Then he grabbed a small cooler out of the back of his truck, and fishing poles.

What’s that for? Rhoda asked.

A few brewskis. And a fishing pole in case I’m waiting. Never know when Nessie might be hungry. Six hundred feet deep. We have to have some sort of Sasquatch motherfucker down there.

Rhoda wanted to laugh or smile or something, but she felt tense. This trip a kind of opportunity, perhaps, but she just didn’t have it in her. She needed to see her parents safe first, and then she could do the chitchat.

Right, then, Mark said, and he grabbed life jackets. Here’s yours. Not that it’ll do much. We’d freeze before anyone got to us.

Thanks, she said. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate this.

He backed the boat into the water, left her with the bow line while he parked. Then they climbed aboard and were off, Rhoda in the bow, the wind sharp. Waves very small, no more than a foot, but the boat felt loose and wobbly at speed. Occasional spray over the side.

Rhoda searched off the port bow for any sign of a boat crossing to the upper campground, but she didn’t see a thing. No one else out here. The lake always larger than she expected. Rimmed by low shoreline and trees all along this end, impossible to tell distance. If you stood on one shore, you could think the other shore wasn’t far. It was only when you came out to the middle that you could judge size, but even then the perspective kept changing. Caribou and the other islands hardly visible at first, and then slowly they grew. Frying Pan Island first, with its long handle, Caribou behind it. Past them, a shoreline rockier, she knew, with boulders and cliffs, much prettier. Each of the bays over there was large enough to feel like its own lake, and yet from here they looked like nothing. Then the headwaters up to the glacier and the river that linked to other lakes beyond. It had been years since she’d been up there.

When they were kids, their parents took them camping on the far shores. Steep pebble beaches backed by forest and mountain. She and Mark hiked a rocky headland, with views of bays on both sides, and looked for wolverines. A nearly mythical creature. She didn’t know a single person who had seen one, and so as children, they were constantly hunting the wolverine, and they scared each other with tales of what would happen when they’d find it. The wolverine would sometimes play dead, or offer up its neck, but if a bear went for that, the wolverine would attach to the bear’s underside, bite its neck and rip its razor claws all along the bear’s belly. This was what she imagined as a kid, reaching down for a dead wolverine and having it rise up and rip out her stomach. She wasn’t scared of bears, because she had seen those, and she loved animals, but she had never seen a wolverine.

Remember the wolverine stories? she yelled to Mark over the engine.

What?

She repeated.

Oh yeah, Mark smiled. You used to scare the crap out of me with those.

Rhoda smiled too, then looked ahead again at the islands approaching. White now with snow, and she couldn’t remember how many years it had been since she’d last visited.

Calmer on the back side of the islands as they curved around Frying Pan. Flat water, no spray. Small waves again around the other side, and several cabins tucked into the trees. She had expected to see her parents’ boat by now.

The chop a little rougher, and Mark slowed. The island steeper, rising to a hill. No boat along the shore. Rhoda couldn’t find her parents.

Slow down, she yelled to Mark. They have to be somewhere in here. She was searching the trees, starting to panic. There was no boat. So they could have left for the upper campground already. But they also could have gone down in the storm, drowned, or their boat washed away and they were stranded and maybe something had happened. It was nothing out here. No other people, no help.

In there, Mark yelled and slowed.

Where? Rhoda asked. What is it?

I see the cabin, he said, and then Rhoda saw it too. Like ruins, some cabin from a hundred years ago, burned out, its roof missing. A big hole for the front window. Rough logs covered in snow. Thin logs, like sticks. It didn’t look at all like she had imagined. So small. But that had to be it. A blue tent and another tent, brown, hidden mostly by the low brush.

They must have gone in today, Mark said.

Yeah, we should have gone to the upper campground.

It’s not the end of the world. We’ll go there next. But we should take a look around. I’m curious.

Their boat could have been taken away in the storm, Rhoda said. They may be here. I hate this. I hate not knowing what the fuck is happening to them. They could be dead for all we know.

No need to shit yourself. I’m sure they’re fine. Mark raised the engine partway out of the water, turned it off. They drifted in slowly, and then he was using a paddle.

We have to be quick, Mark said. This sucks for parking. And I’d better stay with the boat, actually.

Rhoda looking down at the water, trying to guess how deep. She didn’t have waders. But she had to check whether her mom was here. So she stepped in, sank past her knees, the water a shock how cold it was. The stones were slippery, but she worked her way ashore carefully, over rocky beach and up through grass and snow.

Mom, she yelled. Dad. Past undergrowth and alders, she came to a woodpile with fresh sawdust, so they’d been working after it stopped snowing. Their boot prints visible. Mom, she yelled again. Are you here?

The cabin lopsided and rough, small, unbelievable they could want to live in that. It looked abandoned from a much older time, open now to the sky, but had fresh plywood for its floor. An open space in the back. They’d be putting a door there. The growth beaten down all around here. A Coleman stove with a pot on it. The two tents, and now Rhoda really was afraid. She didn’t want to unzip a tent, for what she’d find inside.

Mom, she said again, quieter this time. Stood in front of the larger tent and could feel her heart racing. Unzipped it quick and saw their sleeping bags, clothing, food. No one inside. No body. Nothing wrong. So she stepped to the other tent quick and unzipped it, and no one there, either. Thank god, she said. And she closed her eyes a moment, let her breathing calm down, let her heart slow.

They up there? Mark yelled from the boat, his voice faint. This cabin was tucked back a ways.

No, she yelled. No one here. They must have left this morning.

Supplies in the second tent. Tools. She couldn’t believe they had lived out here in the storm. And it looked like they were doing it, really building this cabin, intending to stay through the winter. Rhoda kneeled on the path, closed her eyes and just took a moment. She was so afraid. When the lake began to freeze over, there’d be a time when no boat could make it out here and the ice wouldn’t be solid enough to walk across. They’d be isolated, no way to reach them if something was wrong.