Northern Lights

by Tim O'Brien

  Harvey grinned. “Glad you came? Not so bad, is it?”

  “It’s all right, Harv.”

  “One more day. We’ll be home for lunch on Thursday.” Harvey spread his palms out, let the snow flutter into his bare hands. “Terrific,” he said. “There’s something very virtuous and terrific about it, isn’t there? I think so, I think so.”

  They packed the tarp and sleeping bags. Harvey dug a hole to bury the empty cans. Then they started up the gully.

  The new powder made the skiing smooth, cushioning the hard jolts of the day before, and the light snowfall continued. Perry enjoyed it. The cold snapped all around, but they kept moving. Harvey’s orange rucksack leading through the gully, and all he had to do was follow. He felt strong. He heard Harvey singing ahead of him. The air was clean and gustatory with delicate pine smells and the hard oxygen. Harvey’s orange rucksack bobbed merrily and his singing drifted back and Perry felt good.

  On both sides of the gully, the evergreens grew high and close together. They skied on. At times the snowfall seemed to stop, hesitating, and the sky would open up and the day would try to brighten, but then the snows would start again and the day would get listless.

  Snaking gradually north then twisting back sharply, the channel carried them ahead and the skiing was easy. Perry’s thighs began to tingle. It was a pleasant healthy ache. It was easy, following the orange rucksack, following the simple channel of the gully. It was easy. There was nothing to think about. Once they stopped to carry their skis over a pile of fallen boulders. Otherwise it was easy. Perry wondered about the gully’s origin. Once a river perhaps, or a rivulet, or a cold creek. Dried up, left in the earth like an unmended wound. He skied and listened to Harvey’s singing, and the gully began slowly to dig deeper and the banks climbed higher. It got dark and the gully continued burrowing deep down. Harvey finally stopped to consult his compass.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “The lake’s coming up. We’ll ski right on to it.”

  They pushed off again. The incline was gradual. Mulberry bushes grew in patches along the gully banks.

  In an hour they stopped again. Harvey took out the compass and map. They were deep in the gully and the sky was only a sliver.

  Harvey kicked out of his skis and climbed the left bank and stood with his hands over his eyes. He held the compass and map at belt level, looking first at the sky, then ahead into the forest, then at the map, then at the compass. He slid down the bank and buckled on his skis.

  “See the lake?”

  “No lake yet. Too many trees.”

  “It’s all right then?”

  “Awhile more. No problem.”

  Perry looked at him. “You aren’t lost, are you?” It sounded almost trivial.

  “Fifteen more minutes. Damn map is just scaled wrong. It’s pretty old.”

  “Okay.”

  “You want a rest?”

  “I’m all right. I just want to get to that damned lake.”

  “You look pale.”

  “I’m fine.”

  In twenty minutes they came to a lake, Harvey smiled but did not say anything. It was just a tiny lake surrounded by birch and evergreens and blue spruce, more a pond than a lake.

  “Okay?” Harvey said.

  Perry looked about.

  “I guess we can rest now,” Harvey said. “How does peanut butter and crackers sound?”

  “Fine. The lake doesn’t seem as big as the one on the map.”

  “Bad scale. You know how it is. Come on, I’m hungry.”

  They sat on their rucksacks. Perry finally saw the sky and it was gray, a single mammoth cloud hanging low. Snow rippled across the lake in drift waves, and the light snow kept falling, and there was more of a wind.

  “Do we head south now?”

  “Eat some of this peanut butter?”

  “Okay. Let’s hurry.”

  “There’s time.”

  “I know. I just want to hurry. Let’s just hurry.”

  Harvey laughed and the cough started.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Perfect. Everything’s perfect. Eat up.”

  He laughed and the cough followed.

  “Let’s just hurry.”

  “We’re on the way, buddy.”

  They skied to the center of the lake. They exercised a sweeping turn and skied into the forest.

  For a time Harvey kept a fairly straight course and the trees filtered out the falling snow and the day was dismal gray. Weaving and picking the way, Harvey led him through a stand of old pine, then through a natural clearing and into dense birch, then into more pine. The country was flat. It was all the same, and Perry followed the orange rucksack. There was no distinguishing it. Harvey was no longer singing. Perry was not thinking. He shuffled after his brother, not thinking, pushing with the poles and hearing only the sound of his skis and his breathing and the gentle constant snowfall. He was afraid. It was not a thought, just a feeling that seemed to well somewhere behind his eyes, and he did not recognize it as fear. It was a deep sting behind his eyes. It was a redness, a kind of growing red welt that made his eyes begin to water. The forest was all the same. It was flat and the snow was falling and there were no birds or sounds and Harvey’s orange rucksack was far ahead, sometimes disappearing in the evergreens. His eyes were watering and he felt the sting expanding in his head.

  Smooth motions, bent at the waist and leaning slightly forward, letting the skis carry him, routine, thoughtless, inertia and gravity, the smooth skating motion, the sound in the snow. His eyes stung. It was a kind of acid behind the eyes, a dizzying and blinding kind of pressure that made them water. The trees were everywhere. He brushed against one and it rustled and sprinkled snow. He tried to think of a song to sing. Each step, one at a time, it was easy. The country was flat and the snow was all fresh powder and the skis were well waxed. He had prepared. He was strong, and the red sting persisted, he couldn’t place it. He blinked and his eyes watered. Harvey was moving fast, getting too far ahead. Perry pushed hard with the poles, brushing through the pines, hearing them ripple behind him, hearing the skis cut the snow. Harvey’s orange rucksack bobbed and dropped down an incline and disappeared. The wind was whipping the snow. He tried to think of a friendly song. A nice cheerful skiing song. He pushed in and skied hard, the sting growing behind his eyes. It was cold. A nice friendly yodelling song. He tried to think and ski and follow Harvey’s orange flaming rucksack. The wind came from behind him and pushed him along, and he felt his skis slipping downwards, down the incline, and Harvey’s orange rucksack darted behind a rill and Perry followed. Old Harvey, he thought. A good wind. They were moving fast. He pushed with his poles and the wind carried him down. Such a bull. The red sting was pressing against his eyes, flooding the membranes, and he blinked away tears, chasing Harvey. It was snowing. Now it was snowing. It was white sleek powdered snow. His eyes burned. The harder he skied, the harder he pushed, the more his eyes burned, the faster Harvey’s orange flaming rucksack receded. He chased and chased and the orange rucksack receded. Now it was snowing. It was thick soft powdered fine snow, and he saw it for the first time, more and more of it, and Harvey’s rucksack glittered orange far ahead through the snow. He started to call out. Then the red sting seemed to rupture. He stumbled and his eyes flooded. In a great painless collapse, the pressure blew off and it gushed out and his eyes flooded, and he called for Harvey and stopped pushing and skiing and held his hands to his face and let the skis carry him to a long slow stop.

  Then he knew he was afraid. It was all over him. It was behind his eyes and flowing out, and he was truly afraid.

  He stood alone in the falling snow, bent over his skis. He rubbed his eyes and tried to think. He was afraid. He knew what it was. He understood it with perfect clarity. He was afraid. It came to him simply, stupidly, with perfect and absolute clarity, flooding out all over his face. His belly was light and fluttering. He leaned forward, breathing hard, leaning on his poles stock still, watchi
ng his skis settle in the snow. A great broken membrane. It was in his belly, too, the ruptured membrane, that punctured sac of black bile. It was simple and he understood, and he leaned forward and breathed.

  When he caught up with Harvey, he felt empty and relieved. He dropped his rucksack and sat on it and removed his skis. Harvey was studying the compass. There was no reason to talk. Resting, closing his eyes, he waited for Harvey. “We’re lost,” he finally said. “Now we’re lost. Aren’t we lost?”

  “It’s under control,” Harvey said. He sounded calm and reasonable and far away.

  “We’re lost.”

  “Compass,” Harvey murmured.

  “What?”

  “The compass. I’ve been watching the goddamn compass. It has to be the stupid compass.”

  “It’s not the compass, Harv.”

  “It’s the goddamn compass. Incredible.”

  “Harvey. The compass is brand new. You told me that.”

  “No, it’s the compass. All the iron in the ground. Something, I don’t know. It’s okay, though. We’re under control. Maybe the goddamn map, I don’t know. The goddamn map must be a million years old.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you mean what happened?” Harvey looked at him, partly closing his bad eye.

  “I mean how the hell did we get lost? How long have we been lost?”

  Harvey shrugged. “Doesn’t matter much, does it? Compass, map. I don’t know. We’ve got ourselves a challenge so let’s just sit back and think about it, all right?”

  “A challenge? What’s this challenge stuff? It’s snowing for Christ sake. It wasn’t supposed to snow.”

  Harvey shook his head and grinned.

  “Well?”

  “Relax. It’s winter. Sometimes it snows in winter.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to snow, was it?”

  Harvey grinned at him, then he turned to the map and was silent. His face was obscured. He rocked back and forth on his rucksack and peered at the map. He was flushed and red. In a while he got up and strode off alone. He stood under a pine and gazed off and did not move. The snow was up to his knees. His hands hung by his sides, one holding the map and the other the silver compass. It was snowing and Perry couldn’t see his face. The pine dwarfed him.

  When he came back they built a fire.

  They dragged boughs from the forest and dropped them beside the flames, then Harvey set up the lean-to and rolled out the sleeping bags. They did not talk. Harvey used some of the boughs to form a makeshift windbreak, stacking the branches against the low limb of a spruce tree. The wind seemed to die, but the snow kept falling and they sat and fed the fire and waited while the sun fell. Later they ate sardines and chili and drank coffee.

  “Feel better?” Harvey said.

  “No.”

  “You will.” Harvey pulled out the map again. Together, they went over it section by section, tracing their planned route out of Grand Marais. Harvey guessed that they’d gone wrong on the second day, and Perry nodded. He wasn’t sure, but he nodded anyway.

  “So we’re probably pretty deep into the woods,” Harvey said. “Look here. We didn’t hit any one of these big lakes today. We can’t be far north. We would have been bound to hit at least one of them or at least seen one.” With his mitten he drew a circle in the flat center of the Arrowhead, an inch in diameter. “Somewhere in here. It has to be. See here? All fairly thick forest, all flat, only a couple of small lakes. Almost has to be.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Very easy. Too easy to even worry about. No matter how far we’re off—and I don’t think it’s very much, I think we’re in this circle somewhere—but no matter how far we’re off we can’t be more than twenty, twenty-five miles from Lake Superior and the highway. We go southeast.”

  “All right.”

  “Not even a bloody challenge really.”

  “Forget the challenges, Harvey.”

  “No problem. Trust the old soldier. I figured out what went wrong. I’m sure of it. The bloody ground. Absolutely filled with iron ore. Tons of it. It’s all over, and it probably nudged the compass off just enough to get us lost. If it’s off even a hair for two or three days, a couple of degrees or so, well that’s enough to get you pretty darn lost. I’m sure of it. Tomorrow we’ll just, we’ll just watch the sun and head southeast.”

  “Where’s the sun? What if there’s no sun tomorrow?”

  “What if the goddamn world ends?” Harvey said cheerfully. “What if the world collapses and the fucking Russians shoot off their bombs?”

  “Cut it out, Harvey.”

  “What if the world cracks in half, you know? Consider that. What if the moon blows up?”

  “Be serious.”

  “The old man wasn’t that loony, you know.”

  “All right. I know it, Harv.”

  Harvey began coughing. They drank coffee and kept the fire going.

  “It could be a blizzard,” Perry finally said. “It could be.”

  “Then we’ll hole up. People used to live like this.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to blizzard.”

  Harvey grunted. He stood up and walked away from the fire.

  The wind was gone and the snow fell in silent clouds.

  Harvey returned to the fire. “Being lost isn’t the worst thing in the world, you know. At least you find out what it’s like to be lost. If you’re found, well, then you’re found, or you get out, and you’ve had something interesting happen. I can think of worse things.”

  They sat on opposite sides of the fire.

  It was not a cold night, but the snow fell and did not let up.

  It was steady and monotonous and came to seem a natural element of the air.

  The sound was monophonic, a single repetitive sobbing sound without dimension.

  Late in the night, Perry woke up. Harvey’s bag was covered with snow. The whole forest was covered with snow, and it was still snowing. He was afraid again. The fire was dead. As he lay awake, he remembered the bursting feeling of being afraid and he was afraid all over again. His feet were cold. Then he was cold all over. There was no excitement or exuberance.

  He hadn’t been dreaming but he had been thinking. He’d been thinking in his sleep. Like a cat, the thought had crept out and smelled the first dark of sleep, sniffed around to be sure. He could not remember it. He’d awakened too slowly. The cat thought jumped away, disappeared, and he was awake and cold and afraid again. He began thinking and decided to buy Grace flowers for Valentine’s Day. He hadn’t done that. He began to think about everything he would do. He would take his time about finding a job. Find something right and decent and concentrate on it and do it well. He thought about his father in the pulpit at Damascus Lutheran and suddenly felt some sympathy for the old man, and he started to pray and strung vows together as they came to him, praying fearfully hallowed be thy name … kingdom come, will be done … I will … practise Lutheranism like Luther, I will treat Addie as a friend … on earth as it is in heaven … I will accumulate money to retire on and draw up a decent will … I will … on earth as in heaven … He beaded vows on to the prayer, a whole string of promises and remedies, to take Grace to the movies, to treat Harvey well, to be happy, to be smiling and extra happy and not complain and be virtuous, to continue his exercises, to never smoke or drink in excess, to be happy, to follow Grace into the church where his old man preached and not complain and not have self-pity and listen carefully and obey. To love the old man.

  He fell asleep and woke up again. His muscles were stiff. His back hurt and it was still snowing. Inside the bag, the smells were bad. His tooth hurt, the pain stretching across his jaw to his right ear. Slowly, he moved a finger to the ear and pressed against it, creating a quick vacuum to relieve the pressure. The bag stunk. He put his head outside. Still snowing and dark, and Harvey’s bag was a gently rolling lump under the snow.

  He scratched his head. His hair was straggled and tied in fine knots. He to
uched his jaw. The beard was raw, and the skin was tight and drawn. His elbows, the cartilage and tendons and bone sockets, everything was rusted shut and creaking like frozen weaponry.

  “Harvey? You awake over there?”

  “Affirmative. Now I’m awake.”

  “It’s cold out there.”

  “It’s a bitch. Go to sleep.”

  All night, Perry had been cold. Now, unzipping his bag and stepping out, he was seized by great warmth.

  He helped Harvey rekindle the fire.

  They moved slowly, each motion separate and distinct and labored over, and it took a long time. They ate the last two cans of chili.

  Whining, the snowfall was nearly over. But the clouds remained full and gusted in desultory snaps. They did not talk while packing up the tarp and sleeping bags. Perry felt lazy. He did not want to move. Sitting still, he was amazed at Harvey’s calm way of waxing his skis, deliberately spreading the paste on and rubbing it into each blade, taking care and time. He sat still while Harvey studied the map and the sky and the compass. He was warm and lazy. The forest was all the same. Without thinking, he got up and slipped into his skis and followed Harvey’s tracks into the woods.

  It was a sense of interlude, a secret waiting. He was not much afraid. Lazily, he gazed into Harvey’s orange rucksack and followed. He considered it a kind of riding, a train trip through the forest, warmth within the coach. The trees and snow passed by through a secret window. It was simple movement, and he skated and pushed only when necessary. He felt strong, gaining confidence by not thinking. He kept his head slightly forward, and when his glasses fogged he did not bother to wipe them. No exercise of will and no deliberations.

  The morning was monotonous and flat, flat through the planed country, and gradually he fell into a rhythm that synchronized motion and thought in an even, unruffled pattern of crystal images. He might have been dreaming: the bomb shelter, the sound of the old man’s spoon clanging in the spit bucket, the television telling of A-bombs in the Caribbean. It was a memory he could trace over and over, wondering what he might have done differently, what he might have said to ease the old man’s death or what he might have done to help with the digging, the pouring of cement. Then the image would slide away, join another image as the snow country went on in its monotonous eliding flow.