Northern Lights

by Tim O'Brien

  “He was always a little … I don’t know, a little sad when you didn’t want to come. I don’t know. You know how he was.”

  “Sure.”

  “Anyhow.” Harvey smiled.

  “Sure. It is fine. I like it.”

  “I knew you would.” Harvey went out to swim again and Perry sat with his beer and watched. Later they ate cold meat and apples and had another beer. It was all right. Harvey seemed happy, tall and very lean and strong, and the air was good. Perry enjoyed it. For once, everything aside, he felt some sibling fusion. It was all right. It was a fine day and a fine lake.

  They sat together with their beers and looked down on the beaver dam. Perry felt a little sleepy.

  “What do you think of that Addie?” Harvey finally said. “She’s some super wench, isn’t she?”

  “You like her.”

  “Yes. She doesn’t have to say a word.” Harvey lazily held up his can and the sun glittered off the wet aluminium.

  “I know.”

  Harvey closed his eyes. For a while he was quiet, toying with the empty can. The sun was very hot. “You didn’t have anything … You and Addie?”

  “No.” Too bad, he thought. Some rotten luck.

  “I was just asking.”

  “No. She’s pretty young.”

  “I know,” Harvey said. “You can never be sure, though. She likes you. She’s always talking about going off to the badlands with you.”

  “Dumb talk is all. Don’t know where she gets that stuff.”

  “She’s something, all right, isn’t she?” Harvey said. He seemed relieved. “So maybe I’ll take her to Africa with me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Is she truly Indian?”

  “I’ve heard that,” Perry said. “She’s always giving a different story. I guess she could be a quarter or half blood. You can’t get a straight answer out of her.”

  “Some fine half-breed,” Harvey said.

  “For sure.”

  Harvey smiled, his eyes still closed. “You’re a good man, brother. Did I ever tell you that? Sometimes I forget we’re brothers, you know? It’s a strange thing.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re a little different, aren’t we?”

  “A little. Not so much as I used to think.”

  “Right,” Harvey said. “Exactly. Anyhow, I just wanted to ask because you can’t ever be sure.” He stretched in the sun. “I wonder if I can get her to go to Africa with me.”

  “Sure, no problem. Flash your funny eye at her.”

  “You’re a good man.” He got up. “Maybe you should come to Africa with us.”

  “Maybe so. We’ll fish for alligators.”

  “Kill Zulus.”

  “Only in good cause. For truth and justice.”

  “Should we swim?”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s swim in the stream.”

  Harvey dived into the deep water behind the beaver dam. Perry waded in, feeling the way with his hands. The water was very cold and hard. The bottom was littered with the slime of the forest. He lay back and floated against the mud dam. Then he turned on to his belly and swam hard upstream, following Harvey, finally rolling on to his back and letting the current carry him back towards the dam. He opened his eyes and had the sensation of great speed, the grotesque pines sweeping overhead, a single blackbird splatting wings high.

  The stream carried him down. He heard Harvey call. The sky was a blur and he was moving fast. Suddenly, as though it had been shot into veins by a needle, he felt fear. He fought the stream, righting himself, trying to stand. There was no bottom. The stream twisted him and he lost sense of proportion and distance, and he pushed towards the mud bed but it wasn’t there, and suddenly in a lush blur he was thinking again, colored images, and he heard Harvey call, and lazily he called back and his lungs were as hot as white fire, filling like a balloon, and he was tumbling and thinking calmly that only a moment before the day had been fine, everything was calm and fine, then he felt arms surrounding him, straightening him, and sunlight flooded and blanched the images, and he was bobbing in the stream. Harvey holding him high, saying, “Drop-off, I called out to you.”

  Perry blinked, staring into Harvey’s dull dead eye.

  “I called out. It’s a drop-off.”

  He felt no terror. Harvey’s arms were strong and buoyed him high and the current raced all around.

  “All right?” Harvey’s marble eye rolled. A shark eye. “You’re all right?”

  He felt no terror but he was angry. He pushed away, and Harvey reluctantly released him, hovering close by. “You’re okay? Take it easy.”

  Fighting back, Perry rolled on to his back. He was sick but he reached back and swam, kicked, thrashed for the bank. He smelled the hard water inside him.

  He waded out, sat down, put on his glasses.

  “You all right?”

  Perry nodded, not looking up.

  “You hear me call out? I did call out.”

  “I heard you. I’m all right. I would have been okay.”

  It was so fast he didn’t remember it. He lay back. Harvey chuckled and shrugged.

  “I can swim,” Perry insisted. “I was all right.”

  “You’re some great fish, all right.”

  They rested awhile. Then without talking they dressed and followed the creek to a footbridge, got on to a path that carried them to Pliney’s Pond and from there to the house.

  Harvey did not talk about the near-drowning, and Perry pretended it hadn’t happened. He convinced himself it hadn’t. That evening Harvey drove into town to see Addie and Perry stayed up late watching the driveway, and he fell asleep thinking colored thoughts: Addie, Grace, the beady-eyed creature and the cold water rushing through him.

  He stuck to his rigors. He exercised. He ate cottage cheese and eggs. He went to bed early, arose early, worked enough to satisfy his conscience, took care to be kind to Grace.

  In September school started and Grace resumed the teacher’s routine: seven a.m. mornings, lipstick and makeup, talk of her new kids, bright talk that showed interest and concern and affection. He drove her in each morning, dropped her off, had coffee, then watched the leaves change through his Mainstreet window. He did not see much of Addie. Most evenings, Harvey would take the car and Perry felt no great desire to ask questions.

  He began paying attention to things. He took short walks into the surrounding woods, sometimes alone and sometimes with Grace or Harvey. He looked for colors and connections. It was hard to tell where it started.

  Unwinding towards the simple past, he was searching in a vague way for the first elements. Complexity to elementals, a backward tracing. It was not easy. He did not have the old man’s extraordinary sense of the past or future. That had been one of the problems. He preferred warmth to cold, and from one of those early memories he recognized a lingering sense of great warmth loss, as if yanked sleeping from a bed, or as if something warm had been pulled from him. He did not know where it started. It may have started with the elements. He knew them from college, ninety-two chemical elements. He saw them around him, or imagined them. The elements of matter, the red tinge in the soil, the ore country periphery. Chlorophyll in the leaves being beaten away by September, revealing other pigments, autumn coming, and he tucked it away as knowledge to spring on Harvey. And the great alchemist’s elements: fire, water, air and earth. And the great anatomical humors, the cardinal humors that flowed like north woods tides: cold blood, phlegm, yellow bile and melancholy sacs of black bile. Black bile struck him as important. He learned of it somewhere. He pricked open capsules of cellulose and inspected the pulp. He opened bulbs of honeysuckle and smelled the grease. Inside himself, he suspected, he would sometimes find a sac of black bile, and he would prick it open and smell it, too, rub his nose in it. He exercised, took the walks, listened to Harvey, kept his eyes open.

  In a moment of openness, he told Grace about the sac of black bile he carried around in his belly.


  “You mean pus?”

  “Black bile. It’s hard to explain. It could be responsible for all this.”

  “You’re sweet,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I won’t tell the relatives.”

  “Thank God.”

  “But I want ice cream. Otherwise I’ll squeal. I’ll tell them all that you’re loony and carry around black bile in your gut. Maybe the black bile causes your pot.”

  “What?” He stiffened. “I’m exercising. I’m looking pretty good. Look here, don’t you think so?”

  “Yes,” she smiled.

  “Really.”

  “Tarzan. You’ll look like Tarzan someday, just keep it up.”

  “Seriously. Don’t I look skinny?”

  “Black bile,” she whispered. “Pus gut.”

  “Okay for you.”

  “I won’t tell the relatives if you take me in and buy me some ice cream. Is it a deal? Pus gut.” She kissed him.

  “You’re a sleeper.”

  “That’s another good idea,” she whispered. “Smothered by ol’ pus gut.”

  They drove in and ate ice cream in Wolff’s drugstore. It was Friday night. Wolff was doing a good business. The stores were open along Mainstreet and the August shoppers were out.

  Grace held his hand and they walked up the street, the streetlamps were on, Grace looked in the windows. She liked clothes. She tried on capes and sweaters in the J. C. Penney store. Perry stood with arms folded and watched the high-school girls.

  She showed him a garment. “Do you like it?”

  “I guess. What the hell is it?”

  “A smock.” Her lower lip dropped.

  “I don’t know. Try it on.”

  “If you don’t like it …”

  “I don’t care, try it on. I’ll tell you then.”

  It was tight on her. She was heavy in the chest. She stood before the mirrors, turning. The fabric was filled with printed apples. She put it back on the rack.

  Outside, squat women stood with baskets on their arms.

  Up and down Mainstreet, boys were driving their fathers’ cars, an elbow out the window, radios on, sniffing the Friday night air. The high-school girls roamed the streets in tight frantic bands, heads together. Perry watched them. Their tiny asses and spangled jeans.

  The movie was letting out.

  Harvey and Addie were crossing the street. They looked good. Harvey was talking and they were together and holding hands and Addie’s black hair bounced on her back. They both walked fast, taking long steps, and they crossed the street and Addie waved. Perry watched them come up.

  “We’re going swimming,” Addie said. “It was an awful movie so now we’re going swimming.”

  Grace smiled.

  “What do you think?”

  “You both ought to come,” Harvey said loudly. “I can vouch that Paul is one great swimmer. He can be lifeguard. You both have to come.”

  Addie pried Grace’s hand off Perry’s arm. “We’ll go out to the lake. I know the perfect spot. It’ll be a perfect night.”

  Grace stuck to her smile.

  “We were just in town for ice cream and shopping.”

  “A night swim,” said Addie.

  “That’s all right.”

  “Okay then,” she grinned. “Poop on you. Too bad for you.”

  Perry looked at her sandals.

  “Have a good swim.”

  “Crumb,” Addie smirked.

  On the drive home, Grace sat apart.

  “You didn’t want to go did you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Her lower lip stuck out. “You could have gone if you wanted to. I didn’t know.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, you could have gone.”

  “But not you.”

  “Well.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well. They were together and everything.”

  “True.”

  Grace sat still and he drove the car up the tar road.

  “Addie’s awfully pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Not all that pretty.” He had to watch the road.

  “You could have gone. I just don’t enjoy that kind of thing, that’s all.”

  “What do you enjoy?”

  She was quiet. “Are you mad?”

  “No, just forget it.”

  “Black bile?” she whispered.

  “I guess that’s it.”

  “Old pus gut.”

  “You put the finger on it.” He glanced over at her. “Forget it. I didn’t want to go.”

  “Really?”

  “Nope.”

  He noticed, cleaning a walleye, that the fish’s eyes were attached to the brain by a braided gray cord with hard little knots scattered along its length.

  He noticed that Grace bathed and dried her hair and combed it and went to bed with a book and read until he joined her.

  He continued his inspections, seeking the bottom of things. He noticed that Harvey sometimes drank beer for breakfast and hid the bottles in the trash.

  He noticed that three families had moved away from Sawmill Landing over the past year and that no one had come to replace them.

  The insights had to be separated from apparitions. Often he saw the old half-memories, patches of color, gleamings, and the illusions dissolved on a closer look. Once Grace appeared to resemble his mother, whom he knew only by photographs. But when he examined the pictures and puzzled over the problem, the differences jumped out, the mirrors reflected back and forth over time in a dazzling series of contradictions.

  “The trees will be turning,” he observed.

  “Look closer,” Addie said. “They are changing.”

  “Not much. In a week you’ll see something.”

  “I already see it. Look close.”

  “Where the devil is Harvey?”

  “He’ll be along. Don’t be silly, stop worrying about it.”

  “I just asked where he was.”

  “He’ll be along soon. Do you see what I was saying about the leaves?”

  “Yes, I see. I saw it before.”

  She was tall. He was glad they were lying on the beach. Long brown muscles ran up her thighs. The calves were long and all bone.

  The trees above them were elm and sweet maple. Across the lake it was all pine.

  “Are you taking Grace on a vacation this winter?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know. She’s been talking about Iowa. I guess she wants to go down.”

  “Good God.”

  “Yeah. Not so good. She has her family there.”

  “Iowa, good God.”

  “She likes it,” he said.

  “Well, when do I get my vacation? You promised to take me on a vacation.”

  “What?”

  Addie laughed. “South Dakota, the badlands. The badlands are actually quite spectacular. God’s gift.”

  “It sounds terrible.”

  “You have to go there, just like Harvey says. We can find a nice motel and play stud poker. We can have a big shoot-out at high noon.”

  “You’re always teasing, aren’t you?”

  “It requires a lot of imagination.” She stretched out. “This is the last of the sun, I’ll bet. Another week. I like it when the air is cool like this and the sun is still there. It’s the best of everything.”

  “The fall is nice.”

  “Now Harvey. Harvey hasn’t got imagination. He’s a pirate and pirates don’t have the imagination the rest of us have. Harvey never teases. He’s silly, he’s so blasted serious. He’s always talking about Africa and wherever, and the bomb shelter—it’s his favorite spot. It’s all serious.”

  “I wonder where he is.”

  “He’ll be coming.” She got up and stood over him. “Now let’s you and I swim.”

  “Not me.”

  “We’ll race. But you can’t touch my legs.”

  “Now you’re teasing, Addie.”


  “Okay for you, crumb.”

  She stayed in a long while. When she came out, he pretended not to watch. She shook her hair and dried herself and draped her towel beside him.

  “Wasn’t that a swim!” she said. “Are you sleeping, Peeper? Wake up, I’m back, you can wake up, silly.”

  She knelt down. Her thighs flattened and spread out. Beads of lake water twinkled. She took his glasses from the sand and put them on his nose. “Peeping Paul.”

  “Stop that.”

  “Don’t you like your pretty glasses?”

  He pulled them off.

  She was breathing up and down as if still swimming. Her skin was dark. She lay down. She was athletic and a great risk.

  “You’re pretty,” he said.

  “What we need is some food. I hope dumb Harvey doesn’t forget the food. Did you say I was pretty? That’s a compliment. That’s nice. You’re nice, aren’t you?”

  He deliberately closed his eyes.

  “Did you say I was pretty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, in that case you have to look at me. You used to look at me all the time.”

  “That’s over, Addie. Be nice now.”

  “Peeping Paul. You have to stop looking at people. People will think you’re obscene, you know. Smile now. You never smile, just pull the corners. See, like this. Everybody can learn. You aren’t a silly mutant, are you?”

  “You sound like Grace.”

  “Fine, Grace’s on the beam.” Her back arched and she stretched a mighty cat stretch. Perry imagined raw meat. “Ah,” she groaned, then collapsed, her arms spread out on the sand. She was athletic looking. “You’re getting wrinkle marks on your tummy,” she said. “Now that’s a sign of aging. It means you were fatter and now you’re not so fat.”

  “I’m in good shape, don’t you think?”

  “You have wrinkle marks on your tummy, right here. What’s the big word for tummy?”

  “Stomach.”

  “No, the bigger word.”

  “Abdomen.”

  “Abdomen. That’s it. You have wrinkle marks on your abdomen. That’s a hard word to pronounce. I can’t say it without hearing someone else say it first. Do you ever have that problem?”

  “Only when I try to talk French.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “Once, not for long. We were in Paris.” He stumbled on the collective we, tried to slur over it.