Caribou Island

37

This island was not right for Irene. The trees too close, too crowded. Trunks no more than a foot wide, spaced three or four feet apart, every space closed by the lower dead branches, thin curved half-hoops aiming at the ground, brittle and fracturing as she pushed through. Never an open space, never a place to run or look out over ridges and valleys. If she found a moose, she would be close enough to touch its hide with her hand. Her bow would be unnecessary. Tangled constantly in the branches. She kept having to yank it free. She was moving fast, a walk that was just short of running. And this was who she was meant to be, walking fast or running through snow and forest. A more open landscape, perhaps, but the same cold and snow. The uncountable generations before her.

She held the bow close, tried to keep it from snagging. Felt exhilarated. Looking for movement, listening to the forest, listening beyond her own footsteps and scrapings. Her blood running thick and beating outward to echo in the forest, a kind of sonar. Nothing could hide from her.

She stopped dead, planted her feet, brought the bow up and notched an arrow. Pulled back hard against the pulleys, felt them turn and break free into the easier part of the pull, held the arrow tight against her cheek and sighted down the razored tip to a cottonwood trunk fifty feet away. Let the arrow fly, the whip of the release, and the arrow buried deep into the trunk. The flight so fast it was instant memory, not something that could be experienced, only known afterward. Irene ran to the cottonwood, examined the arrow buried into the flesh of the tree, four slits lighter against the bark, almost invisible, radiating out from the post, and if she peered into these slits she could just see the back edges of the blades. No way to retrieve this arrow, so she held the bow close again and ran on.

Exhaustion. That was what she wanted. She wanted to run until she could run no more. But she was fueled by some other source now, something beyond muscle and blood. She never tired. She crossed all the way to the shore on the other side of the island, broke free into tufts of grass and rocky beach and saw Frying Pan Island, its graceful curve, notched an arrow, aimed high, and sent it soaring into another forest. Stepped along the water’s edge and hunted larger stones and shadows of reflection and ice, notched another arrow and ripped into the surface. Vanished then, hidden by ripples, and she thought she’d heard blades hit rock but didn’t know whether she’d only imagined it.

Two arrows left, and she would save those. She needed trees again, hurried back into cover, hunted patches of moss, from one to the next, up hills and down into swales, over ridges. Everything closed in, the trees too tight. She was freed against gravity, lofted over hills, scraped and crashing through. She’d been awake for more hours than could be counted, and somehow this brought a new power, her footsteps light in the snow, the air something that could pull her forward. And it felt as if the entire island were rolling, slowly turning over, capsizing. She had to keep her feet moving fast to stay upright. The island born long ago at lake bottom, rising to the surface on some kind of stalk, and now that stalk had been severed and the island was top-heavy, the hills of rock, the trees, and it would roll over until its slick flat underside was facing upward, wet and dark and known for thousands of years only to the lake, new to the sky. What would happen then? But Irene would no longer be here.

Origins. That was the problem. If we didn’t know where we had started, we couldn’t know where we should end, or how. Lost all along the way. Pulled into Gary’s life, the wrong life.

What Irene knew for certain was that this was not the beginning. She would not be made new again. And she would take Gary with her. That had been her mother’s mistake, taking only herself. It was not right that Irene’s father had lived on in some other life, a life without his wife or daughter, a life severed from its origins, a life that could not connect in any way to Irene. That life should not have happened, should not have been allowed.

Irene had lain awake all night again, and in those first hours she wept, raged against Gary and unfairness, injustice, wanted to punish but really wanted to come closer to him. Wanted to continue with him, as wrong as that was. Tried to find a path back, but finally she had calmed and known there was no path back. He didn’t love her, and he had never loved her, but he had used her life anyway. This was truth. Nothing she could do could make that change. It was beyond her power. She had felt her mind a vacuum, windblown space inside her, lain there empty for hours, waited for daylight, and finally this exhilaration, a gift, a final gift. It felt almost as if the pain might leave, still crowding her, still pressurizing, but promising to leave.

Snapping through branches, running downhill now, everything passing too fast to recognize. She had known this forest, and if she slowed, she might find signs, might recognize monkshood, its purple flower, the weight of that flower bending, but she was moving too fast, running, a full run, no stopping now, and she didn’t bother to shield with her arms. Let the branches scrape at her face.

Footfalls in snow and moss, the burn of skin on her hands and face and neck, the cold overcast sky above, and her body could weave on its own between trees. Irene, anything that could be called Irene, removed, quiet. Coming closer to the cabin, her legs slowed, a walk and then slower still, hunting as she had once hunted with Gary, making no sound, avoiding branches now, pushing at them carefully, bending to the side, not breaking. Emerging between the tents, directly behind the cabin. Standing still, listening for any movement, any sound, hearing nothing but a light breeze and small waves at the shore. Water and air, and blood, beating faster now. He wouldn’t be in the tents. He’d be in the cabin or at the shore. So Irene pulled an arrow free, set it and notched it, black bow, black arrow against white snow, walked silently toward the cabin door.

The door frame new and mounted on the outside, white and out of place against the logs. Trash bags and flats of canned goods piled all around. Closer until she was nearly at the threshold, and still she heard nothing. The cabin seemed larger now, the back wall high. Rough bark, gaps, some logs projecting out farther than others. She hadn’t noticed before how uneven the surface, valleys and ridges, a landscape set up on end. She waited at the threshold, let her eyes adjust, darker inside the cabin, but enough light coming from the window and gaps to see the plywood floor. The window itself not yet in view, set off farther to the right, blocked by the door. A dim space and no sign of Gary.

Irene stepped in, bow held close and ready.

Irene? Gary asked. He was sitting five feet from her, on a stool by the window. Lit in relief, the lines on his face. Old. What are you doing, Irene?

She stepped back. More difficult now that she was here and he was talking to her. He stood up, hands opening toward her, fingers in relief in this light. Irene, he said again.

She pulled back the arrow tight against her cheek.

I love you, Irene, he said, and suddenly it was easy again. She let the arrow fly, saw it disappear into his chest. Only the black feathers sticking out past his jacket. He was spun around to the side, looking down at his chest, and fell to the floor, facedown. The arrowhead and shaft sticking up into the air.

Gary crying. Or screaming. Some sound over the blood in Irene’s head. She walked closer and notched her last arrow. His legs and arms moving, pulling himself across the floor toward the wall. And what would he find at the wall? She pulled the arrow back to her cheek, aimed down at his back, and let another arrow fly. Another cry from Gary, the arrow too fast to see. Just suddenly there, sticking up high. But it had nailed him to the floor. He couldn’t crawl forward now. Arms and legs still moving, but not getting anywhere. Still not dead, and she had no more arrows. His screaming lower, a thing that did not sound human. Irene dropped the bow and didn’t know what to do. She stood there waiting for him to die, but he wouldn’t die. An awful, animal sound, the last sound a living thing makes. Her husband. Gary.

Irene walked outside, walked down to the shore. The lake a magnification of sky, white and overcast, cold. Irene felt hot, like she could sear through water and sky and snow, even rock. She was a giantess, powerful, able to crush mountains and scoop out lakes with her hands. Walked down the shoreline and this was her shore. Didn’t feel the wind. Had the need to run, so she ran again, ran faster than she ever had before, the uneven stones and pools and ruffs nothing. She was sure-footed. The world had never been real. There was no gravity, nothing to slow her or hold her down. She ran as her mind willed, the world an extension of her. The waves, the grasses, the snow, all of it created in unison.

But then she had to slow, began to tire somehow. Walked on all the way to the far point, close to Frying Pan Island, looked across at its shore. Felt the urge to swim there, to cross the water, leave this island, but something held her back. She had more to do. She wasn’t finished yet. So she turned around, walked back toward the cabin.

The exhilaration would leave her, she knew. It was a gift, but only a temporary one. She could feel it thinning, dissipating. Ran again, trying to recapture it. Her feet sloppy on the stones, ankles twisting. Making contact now, hard and unyielding, no longer floating above, no longer sure-footed. She slowed to a walk.

The tops of the mountains hidden from view, the summits, the wide bowls. Only the flanks below the cloud line. She wanted to cross to the mountains. The lake should have been frozen, like in her vision. She would cross and climb the mountain. That was how it was supposed to be. What she had done was supposed to happen later, in midwinter. But how could she have waited until then?

Panes of ice all along the edge, broken by waves. Small pools gone opaque. Dark rocks damp from mist or spray. This thin band, margin between water and earth. This time she had now, this brief time when anything might be possible, perhaps, when her life might be anything, but she knew there was only one possibility.

When she reached the boat, she untied the line. Thick cord, strong, thirty feet, more than enough. She walked up toward the cabin, and she went slowly now. Something in her didn’t want to go.

Alder branches brushing against her, last time on what had nearly become a path, the growth beaten down by their passings. A place never meant to be their home, a place intended from the very first to be their end. And she had gone along with that, even though she knew. Had Gary known?

When she stood over him again, he was silent, no longer moving. No more of whatever that sound had been. Something she didn’t want to hear. But now it was peaceful. He was quiet, resting facedown.

Irene set the stool at the other end of the cabin, a few feet from the side wall. Reached up and pushed the rope over a joist. The aluminum sheeting tight, but she could force it through, pulled enough to make a noose. Not sure how to tie the knot. Hadn’t looked at what her mother tied. In movies, it was a big knot with many wrappings, so she wrapped and tied half-hitches, like Gary had shown her for the boat. It didn’t look right, but it would have to do.

Irene hammered a nail on either side of the joist, forward of the rope, so it wouldn’t slide, stacked cutoffs of two-by-eights on top of the stool so she could stand higher and have farther to drop. She stood on that pile, very precarious, and put the noose around her neck and cinched it tight, then realized the rope had to be loose for the snap. So she stepped down carefully, measured while she stood on the lowest step, and pulled the rope tight. Rough on her neck, damp. She needed to tie the free end somewhere secure.

Irene looked all around and couldn’t find anything. No anchor point or post strong enough. But then she looked at Gary and thought of something beautiful. She tied the end around his upper body. Had to lift his head and one shoulder and then the other. She could smell him, his bowels voided when he died. Smell of blood, too. All of this increasing the pressure in her head somehow. That had promised to leave but hadn’t. A splitting pain, and it made her work more urgent. She cinched the rope tight around him, tied it off. The arrows would keep it from slipping.

And then she had to step outside again. The smells too much, the pain in her head. She didn’t know if she could go through with this. It was too much, really. Leading herself to slaughter like an animal. She didn’t know how her mother had done it. And so much less trapped. Hadn’t committed murder. For Irene, there was no choice, but for her mother, there had still been a choice. How had she done that?

Irene walked into the trees. Close cover a comfort now, hidden. Walked aimlessly among the trunks, followed patches of moss poking out through snow, the snow thin and light, in some places no more than a dusting, blocked by branches above. She lay down in a large patch of moss, curled on her side. Up close, like a tiny forest, each finger of moss as large and grand as any spruce and more perfectly formed. Not bent or misshapen, but symmetrical, with layers of branches exactly like a tree, and a defiance of gravity at this smaller scale, the ends of the branches unbowed. Hundreds of miniature trees reaching upward. She reached out and touched one of them, pushed it to the side and it sprang back. She snapped it off at its base, snapped off its neighbors, felled a forest.

Rose again and walked farther into the trees but didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing. Circled back toward the cabin, and when she broke from the trees, stopped and looked at the tents and the cabin, the stove set up between. Their camp. Her husband dead. A murderer. That’s how she would be known forever. Daughter, preschool teacher, wife, mother, murderer, suicide. The earlier ones would be forgotten. Only the last two remembered. She walked to the cabin door, stepped inside, and held her breath. Walked over to the stool and noose, placed her neck in the noose and pulled down with her chin, pointed a toe at the floor, checking to see whether she’d hit. There had to be air underneath still. It was no good if she hit.

She reached up with both hands to hold the rope, hung down on it and pointed her toes and still didn’t touch. Swung in the open air and had trouble getting back on the stool, panicked for a moment she would be stuck like this, not properly hanged. But she caught the stool, freed her neck, then placed the pieces of two-by-eight on the top step, three layers, enough to create a good fall.

Holding the noose, she stepped carefully onto the two-by-eights. Stood there balancing, placed the noose around her neck. Afraid she’d use her hands, though. How do you not grab the rope with your hands, even during the fall? Impossible to stop that instinct.

So Irene removed the noose again, stepped carefully down, and walked outside to Gary’s tent with the tools, found a folding knife. Returned to the cabin and stood over Gary, found the loose end after the tie around his chest, cut off a few feet, dropped the knife and tied one end around her wrist.

It shouldn’t be this difficult. No dignity in life, ever. Even one’s own death interrupted by crass things, small concerns. It wasn’t right. And the pain had not left. It had promised to go but had not. You’d think enough had happened to clear it away. Irene was angry now as she stepped onto the stool, put the noose around her neck again, climbed onto the loose blocks of wood, precarious and about to fall, and she very carefully led the line from her wrist between her legs and tied it to the other wrist. Hard to make much of a knot, but she tried to make it tight.

No way out now. Hands tied, balancing on the blocks, noose around her neck. Breathing fast and hard, panicked, her heart clenching. Blood and fear. Not the calm she had imagined. No sense of peace. She didn’t want to do this. Every part of her said this was wrong. But she kicked out then, launched herself into air, yelled from deep in her lungs, a yell of defiance, and then the noose caught and at first it didn’t feel so hard but then it caught with a terrible weight, all her muscles pulled, a sharp pain, her breath gone, her throat crushed, and she swung in that cold, empty place. Her hands struggling upward, held back, and she would never forgive herself.

Rhoda would be the one to walk in the door and find this. Irene knew that now. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen this before. She felt tricked. She was doing to Rhoda exactly what had been done to her. A cold day, overcast, just like this, her mother hanging from a rafter, wearing her Sunday best, beige and cream with lace, a dress come all the way from Vancouver, Irene remembered it now, white stockings, brown shoes. But her mother’s face, the lines in her face, the sadness, her neck grotesquely stretched. All that could never be said. Irene knew now that it would not have been quick, that her mother would have known what she had done. Enough time to know what she had done to her daughter.