Northern Lights

by Tim O'Brien

  “Shut up,” the boy said suddenly. He didn’t appear angry, but he meant it.

  “You see, you see?” said Addie. “Doesn’t he have an Olympian doctor’s presence of mind? He’s so positively certain about everything. It drives me wild. He’s not at all wishy-washy. Now, watch me ask him to get us all a drink and watch him refuse. Daniel?”

  The boy shrugged and sauntered off towards the bar.

  “He is a good lad,” she said, watching him go.

  “You’re a sweetie, Addie.”

  “Thank you,” she grinned. “And where’s your lovely wife Grace?” Then she stopped. “I am sorry. I’m being nasty and I hate myself. I’m in a mood. It isn’t so easy as you think, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know. You think you know. You don’t know at all. You don’t know this—Harvey wants us to get married. There’s something I’ll wager you don’t know. He asked just yesterday, can you believe that? Even with Daniel and everything, he asked even then. Now there’s something Peeping Paul doesn’t know. How’s that? How do you think that feels, smarty-know-everything? Think it over awhile. You don’t know everything, you see?” She looked at him as though he’d hurt her, glaring. “There’s something you don’t know,” she ended softly.

  “You’re such a sweetie,” he said. “Some sweetie to ruin it all.”

  Then she grinned again. “Yes. Yes, that’s one of the world’s great truths. I’m such a sweetie.” She sighed, and her grin relaxed and she just looked at him. “I love you anyway.”

  The boy came back and said the hotel didn’t allow drinks in the lobby. He was polite, winking at Perry as if there were knowledge between them.

  “Well, we must go inside then,” said Addie. The boy stood aside, waiting for her to stand. He was careful again not to touch her. “Aren’t you coming? Daniel will be upset if you don’t celebrate with him.”

  “Please come along,” the boy said.

  “I’ll just sit. Thank you.”

  “Very well, very well,” Addie laughed. “You have only yourself to blame when you die of thirst.”

  “Have a nice celebration.”

  The boy nodded and smiled, and they went off. Addie walked fast ahead of him.

  Perry spent another hour in the lobby then went upstairs. Harvey was not in his room. Grace had finished her postcards and they went down together to post them. They took a walk outside, down towards the lake and back up and around the hotel, then to their room. Harvey was still not in.

  “Poor Harvey,” said Grace.

  “He’ll be all right.” It was just too bad. They ordered sandwiches from room service. Grace wrapped up her new carving knives. Perry finally turned on the color television.

  Such a small place, Perry thought. He had experienced the sensation before—inconsequence and smallness. The hotel restaurant was deserted. Red and blue tableclothes were draped in random readiness and the hotel had collapsed around the emptiness. Already the smell was musty. It overwhelmed him: an enormous lassitude that pressed down like low gravity, anchoring him to each slow-moving unfolding, each conversation like an echo, unspoken currents, each concern a well-traveled maze with each step plodding in the tracks of that previous. He waited a long while before a woman opened the kitchen door and took his order. When she was gone, Grace began talking, a waiter brought coffee, the morning unfolded as if begging for corroboration, and Grace was talking. “And I don’t see why you should go, it doesn’t make sense. It’s another of Harvey’s ideas and it’s worse than most of them, so it must be pretty awful. I just wish you wouldn’t.”

  “I promised I’d go along. You know that.”

  “I know …” she trailed off.

  “It won’t be so bad,” Perry said slowly. “Harvey’s got things arranged, maps and about a billion dollars worth of gear, the best stuff, and he’s … After all this, maybe it’s what he needs, I don’t know. And it’s only for a few days and all. You should stop worrying about it.”

  “I’m not exactly worried,” she repeated. “I just don’t know.”

  “You’re acting like it.”

  “I’m sorry then.”

  “Don’t be sorry. If you’re worried, say so. There’s nothing to worry over. Three days, four days. It’s not like we’re going whoring. That’s how you’re acting.”

  “Paul.”

  “All right.”

  Nothing was settled. She ate her breakfast in a puckered, hurt way which he tried to ignore, knowing that in the end she had no real choice in the matter and would accept it as she accepted everything. Finally, when they finished coffee, she asked if they could take a walk. The invitation was a cripple. Pathetic except for the porous affection. So they walked out of the hotel and down to the lake and watched the ski-mobile races. Grace hugged his arm.

  Afterwards they hiked down the road to the parking lot, and Perry got out the two orange rucksacks and threw them over his shoulder and they returned to the hotel. He went back alone for his skis. The sky was frosted gray.

  Waxing his skis, he held quiet against her sulking. She sat on the bed and read travel brochures. “Maybe Harvey will call it off,” he finally said as a gesture. She didn’t look up. He shrugged and went next door and knocked and went in. Harvey was drinking red wine.

  “You get the rucksacks?”

  “In my room. Where’s Addie?”

  “I’ve put her out of my head.”

  “I see.”

  “Yeah, out of sight out of mind and so on. She’s well out of sight. Having a good-bye with her Olympic champion. What’s his name?”

  “Daniel.”

  “Right, Daniel. The giant slayer. No, is that Daniel? Daniel, David. I don’t know. Lion slayer? Anyway they’re off having their good-byes and we’re here. Did you catch any of the ski-mobile races?”

  “A few minutes. Stinking boring. What you doing there?”

  “Just encasing this map in plastic. It’s always a good thing to do,” said Harvey. Here, take some of this.” He handed Perry the bottle and Perry drank some and gave it back. “I suppose Grace is still putzing and moaning?”

  “She’s accepted it. She’s that way.”

  “A stellar woman. Truly. Has a lot of sense and a good head on her shoulders and all that.”

  Harvey’s face was sliced into two planes, sallow and bright red. The bones seemed to want to push out through the skin. He was in his shorts. His beard was full now and dark against the rest of him. It looked to Perry like a fungus, some sort of fuzzy parasite that had taken Harvey in his sickness and was not yet defeated. “So,” Harvey was saying, “I’ll take a run into town and get the things we’ll need. I’ve got a list ready. I’m glad we’re going. I’m glad. Plenty of chocolate and peanut butter. Did you know how many calories peanut butter has? Guess. Just take a stab.”

  “I don’t know, Harv.”

  “A hundred! A hundred calories for each tablespoon, can you believe that? Each tablespoon! And it has protein, too. Anyhow, I’ll pick up a couple of big jars and some instant coffee and matches and chili and canned stew and that sort of thing. It’s all down on the list.” Perry took the list and scanned it. It looked complete.

  “Okay, Harv.” Perry tried to think. He wasn’t a woodsman. “You called the weather bureau?”

  Harvey stared at him. Then he grinned. “Sure. Hunky-dory. Just don’t forget your sleeping bag.”

  “All right then. I’m going to take Grace down for some lunch. Want to come along?”

  Harvey shook his head. He was intent on rubbing the gold wax into his skis. “Say a beautiful good morning to Addie if you see her.”

  “I will, Harv. Take a nap if you can.”

  “Righto.”

  Perry went downstairs for cigarettes. Addie and her new friend were sitting by the fire. They didn’t notice him and Perry turned his back and went outside and smoked a cigarette, walked once around the hotel for air, and they were no longer in the lobby when he went in.

&n
bsp; He went to his room. Water was running in the bathroom. He kicked the snow off his boots, unlaced them and put them before the radiator. The room was cold. He lay on the bed. A pack of Grace’s menthol cigarettes was on the night stand, and he took one and listlessly smoked it down to the filter. He thought of Harvey for a while, then of Addie, then of Grace, then quickly of Daniel. Then of himself. It was too bad. He smiled. He went to his suitcase and took out the thermal underwear and put it on. He looked at himself in the mirror. The underwear made him look fat. Amazing changes. He got into his jeans and shirt and had another cigarette, and when Grace came out of the bathroom they went to the restaurant for lunch. It was nearly empty. The parties were over. A resonant hollowness followed everywhere. Three young girls were sitting at one table, quietly having their lunch. They were not very pretty. Perry guessed that it had not been a very good weekend for them. In a while Addie came in. She did not have much to say. She looked tired. She ordered a Coke and asprins.

  “Suppose Daniel’s gone,” said Perry.

  “I suppose.”

  It was a slow anesthetic lunch. Perry found himself happy in Addie’s new pensiveness. And Grace was quiet, and the hotel seemed to cry with tinny echoes, and Perry for once felt they were all in it together, the same mood as on a dying January day.

  It seemed to Perry that they rushed too blindly to the forest. Too quickly and without proper preparation and forewarning.

  Harvey was in a hurry.

  They dressed in high wool socks, cotton anoraks and parkas.

  Harvey was all business, taking charge. He packed the new-bought rations into the rucksacks, rolled the sleeping bags and tied them and stashed them inside the packs.

  The momentum of departure was taking hold, an inertia that seemed to have started years before, slowly growing until it was a locomotive that wailed down an incline uncontrolled, and Perry held on, following Harvey’s lead.

  They helped Grace and Addie carry the baggage to the car. No one talked much. Grace seemed far away. As if viewing her through a badly remembered dream, physically out of joint. He gave her a short kiss and she held his arm a moment, then she whispered something he couldn’t hear and got into the car. Without looking at anyone, Addie grinned and waved and got behind the wheel. Perry wanted to say something. Instead he waved at Grace and stepped back. Addie drove the car over the icy parking lot, honked and turned on to the road leading south. “That’s that,” Harvey said. Perry shook his head as though trying to clear it of apprehension. “That’s that,” Harvey said again. He smiled ghoulishly, letting his dead eye float upward. The iris disappeared behind the bone of his forehead.

  In the lobby they gave their skis a last coat of wax. Everything was still. Harvey studied the map again, jotting notes in the margin, then he gave the map to Perry and went into the kitchen to fill his Thermos with coffee. Perry sat with the map. The lobby fireplace was sputtering and all was warm and quiet and still. When Harvey returned, they had a cigarette, threw their butts into the fireplace and helped each other into their packs, breathed in the warm hotel air, then went outside.

  Perry was lost.

  He stepped into his skis, pulled up the woollen leggings.

  Down the road, hanging from evergreens, were batches of half-deflated balloons and scraps of crepe paper. A man in earmuffs was dismantling the loudspeaker platform, using a hammer to knock the wooden struts out of place, and the man’s breath hung in the air.

  “Saddle up,” Harvey said.

  “Which way?”

  “After me, after me.” He stooped and tied his safety straps. “We’ll take it nice and easy. Ready now?”

  Harvey skied down the slope leading to the lake. Without pausing, he swept across the road and on to the lake, the orange rucksack bobbing on his back. Perry hurried to catch up.

  Two

  Blizzard

  Sobbing sounds: coffee into a cup, leaves into a bushel basket, feathers into a pillow, air into a vacuum. He listened. No certain sounds, vague and muffled and indistinct. No rustles or movements. A sobbing sound, many sobbing sounds. Inanimate and elemental, into him and out of him, some distant time, very distant. Perry snuggled deep in the bag. He was warm enough. Goose down—the best insulation, Harvey said. He was warm enough but he could not sleep. He disliked the slick feel of the bag’s nylon lining. And the bag seemed to anchor him, pinning him down, and he tossed about and fought for some accommodation with it. He poked his nose free. The night air was cold and almost sweet, and he pulled it into his lungs and warmed it and released it as steam into the forest. He listened: the sobbing sounds. He tried to place them. He listened carefully, holding his breath to let the sounds come through pure. There was no wind, no motion. The night was solid and still. The sobbing sounds continued. He peered ahead, looking for the source, but he was blind. Harvey had promised his eyes would adjust to the winter dark, but he was blind. The fire was dead. Not even an ember left. There was no colour or form or motion. Inside the bag it was warm. But it was artificial and tenuous warmth, absolutely dependent on the sustained well-being of his own body. He thought about it. The sobbing sounds: indefinite, gradually compressing air, the sound of frost going deep. He couldn’t tell. It was all too demanding. Too wild and too lonely. Harvey began to snore. The snoring seemed far away, as though overheard in another room, or in a hospital ward where the patients lie separated by curtains, each suffering alone. He couldn’t tell. Eventually the snoring merged with the other sounds. Turning on to his side, he faced the black brunt of the west forest. There was nothing to see. He moved deeper into the bag and lay still and tried not to think and he began thinking. He thought about having to find another job, about Grace, then about Addie and Harvey, then about himself. He thought for a time about his father, nothing specific, letting the colored memories flop like television advertisements, the bomb shelter, the pond, growing up, growing down, getting married, wandering, letting go, thinking forward and backward with futile aimlessness. He decided to pray. He thought about Damascus Lutheran. Desperation mixed with guilt, and he prayed for Grace and for finding a new job and for Harvey and for himself. He prayed the Lord’s Prayer, then he prayed for another vacation soon. He stopped praying and listened to the sobbing sounds, then he remembered Jud Harmor. He prayed that Jud Harmor didn’t have cancer, then he prayed that, if it were cancer, the old man could be saved, then he prayed that, if he couldn’t be saved, the old man would die fast and not feel pain, then he lay wide awake and listened to the forest’s sobbing sounds. He was surprised at how warm the bag was. Harvey knew how to do it right. Goose down. Dig a trench in the snow, lay the bag in, cover it with a foot of snow. Insulation, Harvey explained. A snow nest. A snow den. Like the bears, Harvey explained. He concentrated on the sounds of the forest: like rainfall, all around, high and low, pouring everywhere. He turned on to his back. For a while he was able to lie still, thinking about nothing but the sounds. A good woodsman would identify them. Harvey could name them, give their source and place and exact distance. Harvey was sleeping. The fire was dead. A hard day. Leaving, the anticipation, Grace. All told, they hadn’t gone very far, barely ten miles. But it was nothing easy. When Harvey left the trail, plunging dead west into the woods, they’d gone slow, picking the way, Harvey’s orange rucksack bobbing ahead, weaving and flanking the impenetrable thickets of pine. No more paths, nothing but the lay of the forest the way it had always been. Nothing easy. Harvey’s orange rucksack always moving. Perry turned and thought out the day and listened to the sobbing sounds and tried to sleep. He heard Harvey move. He thought he heard it. He wasn’t sure.

  “You awake, Harv?”

  He listened but it was nothing.

  In the morning a natural alarm punctured his sleep, a slight change of temperature and the sun’s light. Harvey was standing at the fire.

  “Fine day,” he said, without turning. He was wearing a sweater and blue jeans. His parka hung on a birch branch.

  “Damn cold day.”

&nb
sp; “That’s no way to talk. Get out and help me with breakfast. We’ll eat a nice big breakfast, you’ll be surprised. Come on.”

  “Get the fire hotter. I’m staying here till it’s hotter.”

  Harvey laughed and pushed a new log into the fire. Perry watched him boil water and make coffee and put two cans of chili on the fire. It was a sunny morning. Harvey brought him coffee in a tin cup and Perry lay in his bag to drink it. The sun bathed a jungle of green pine. The shadows stretched across the camp clearing and into another, deeper growth of trees.

  “Not so bad, is it?” Harvey said.

  “Cold.”

  “Cold,” Harvey laughed. He looked much better. He smiled and his teeth were white through the beard. He looked recovered. “Get out and move around and you’ll see how cold it is.”

  Perry hooked his glasses with his toes, brought them to the head of the bag and slipped them on. Things looked better. Reluctantly he pulled his clothes on and left the bag. He did not need his parka.

  “Not so bad, is it?” Harvey said.

  They ate the chili and had more coffee, then began packing the rucksacks. By the time the sun cleared the pines, everything seemed fine. Perry kicked snow into the fire.

  “A good skiing day,” said Harvey. “Just look at it. We’ll make twenty miles.”

  And it was a fine day.

  Harvey’s orange rucksack flashed ahead of him and Perry followed, feeling strong and comfortable, stabbing the snow with his poles, rushing on. The motion was swift and unconnected to anything solid. He gained confidence. The morning skiing was easy as the forest descended and the trees grew far enough apart not to worry about quick stops. They crossed two medium-sized lakes, neither of which were on the map, something new and undiscovered, and the land continued its descent in a gentle downward flow. When they crossed the second lake, Harvey found a small frozen creek and they followed it deep in. On both banks evergreens grew tall, their branches intertwined to form a wall. The sky became a narrow slit.