by Joe Derkacht
Episode Ten
Sisu!
I swam, stroking desperately, with Great White sharks and sting rays and octopuses darting in and out, shocking me with glancing blows, determined to make a dinner out of my flesh.
Hold on, something told me. Let the air in your lungs carry you aloft. Aloft? Like a hot air balloon? What good would that do me? Where was the light? I should swim toward the sunlight, shouldn’t I?
But which direction was up? Wherever I was, it was as if I were at a depth too great for sunlight to penetrate here. How could I hold on? My lungs burned like fire. How could anyone hold on, with his heart about to burst? One breath was all it would take—one gulp of icy seawater to end everything—
Sisu!
That voice again. I remembered the word. It was Suomi, a word I’d learned from my mother’s family. It meant to hold on, to hold on against all odds, to stubbornly persist until winning through, to overcome. My grandfather even named his fishing boat Sisu as a reminder of what it took to survive as a commercial fisherman in Astoria.
Uncle Erke told me dozens of times: “Think of a rock wall, and think of your head as flint battering a rock wall, Jackie.” It was the essence of sisu, a quality much admired by Finns, one Uncle Erke knew I would need more than any other in my life. Sooner or later, the flint of my forehead would bore through any obstacle I faced. I remembered it as a word my mother hated; to her it was just another word for bullheadedness, something she despised in both me and my father.
With the word echoing strangely in my ears, I held on, now stroking with both arms and kicking my feet as hard as I could. Great Whites swarmed around me like hornets, their bulging eyes glowing in the darkness like painfully bright streetlamps that lit up my retinas with searing afterimages. Were the sting rays holding back, waiting for the sharks to do the work for them? Did an octopus lurk in the shadows as well?
Thrashing water, I at last broke through the surface and filled my lungs with one gulp after another of air. With heart racing and eyes burning as though someone had rubbed salt into them, it was at least ten seconds before I realized I was in bed.
I hadn’t been underwater at all. I was in my own bedroom. Somehow, I had nearly suffocated under my goose down pillow. Gray morning light filtered in through the Venetian blinds. I willed my heart to slow down. In my mind’s eye, familiar shadows still rushed at me through the dark waters. Just before breaking the surface, I thought I’d seen something entirely different; one second they were the familiar icons of sea life I’d grown up with, the next they were gibbering nightmares assaulting me with weapons resembling swords far more hideous than jaws full of teeth or barbed tails or gruesome suckers.
I was in my bedroom. I could breathe freely and forget what I’d seen. The pillow was on the floor. Wound around my legs was a perspiration-soaked top sheet, which I threw off before stumbling to the bathroom for a quick shower. Thirty minutes later I was on my way to my workshop, a pot of strong coffee and a Styrofoam cup as companions. The coffee would fortify me against the chill of the thick-as-wool morning fog. Except for the walkway made of white aggregate leading from the kitchen door to the workshop, I might have lost my sense of direction and stumbled into the bushes.
The locked door surprised me. Vaguely, I wondered if I would find in one of my remaining journals the exact date I began locking the workshop. I’d seen no mention of it earlier. Locking up made sense, though, seemed more official, with business hours posted on the door.
My house key opened the door. Overhead fluorescent lighting concealed behind translucent panels flickered to life when I flipped the switch. The sight that greeted my eyes stopped me in my tracks. The floor was no longer marine gray and the walls were no longer unadorned drywall. Someone had laid Mexican tile for flooring, and the walls looked suspiciously like Port Orford cedar (the place was certainly redolent of its spicy scent). Actually, the walls were difficult to see, since nearly every square foot was devoted to either shelves or alcoves. Carved wooden Indians filled the alcoves. Most of the shelves held dolls, many of them dressed in buckskin seemingly to reflect the theme of the wood carvings. As if an afterthought, two Grandfather clocks flanked the bathroom door, each on its own freestanding base, one a model in the rustic style, the other reflecting my original nautical-themed models.
Was I selling dolls, now? What about my clock business? What had I done, stepped into a parallel universe? In my astonishment, it was perhaps a full minute or two before I realized my woodworking tools had vanished. What appeared to be a sales counter stood in the very place my radial arm saw had once been bolted to the floor. Rather than fall down, I sat with my back to a wall. That was where Tryg, whose name I would find out later, discovered me. By then the coffee, still untouched, was cold.
“You ready to go, boss?”
I looked up at a vaguely familiar face. Except for blond hair tied back in a tight ponytail and an equally blond mustache and short, well-groomed beard, he looked a lot like one of those blond angels you see in religious pictures.
“Who are you?”
His jaw dropped, and then clamped shut. I could almost hear it clang. Evidently quick at making decisions, he spun away from me and ran out. I knew my stuttering frightened some children, but I’d never seen it scare off fully grown adults. Maybe in this parallel world my wretched handicap was a sort of weapon? Poof! Just like that, he had disappeared.
In five minutes he was back with Zell. I knew it was Zell before my eyes reached her face. I recognized the black pumps and the blue and white flower-print dress. The dress was her own creation, at least twenty years old.
She and the young man stared intently at me. I stared in return. What did they want?
“You should go, Tryg,” she said quietly.
“You sure?”
“Yes. We always work it out.”
“Okay.” He deserted us unreluctantly, with one parting shot— “I’ll be praying for you.”
Nice of him. Nice guy. Probably not many like him around.
“My legs aren’t what they used to be, John. I can’t get down on my knees to talk with you,” Zell said. “Please stand up.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, averting my gaze.
“John!”
I needed time to figure out those dolls. Her gaze followed mine, which was stuck on a life-sized papoose.
“All right,” she muttered. She pulled over a handsome wooden chair reminiscent of an Eames, and sat down. A price tag dangled from its backrest. In the welter of dolls and wooden Indians, I had somehow overlooked the lone chair, which I guessed should be added to the list of items I was now producing. Custom-made furniture made sense. But dolls?
“How far did you get through your journals last night?” She asked.
“Journals?” I scratched my head. Oh yeah, the journals. I vaguely recalled waking face down in a notebook, with drool slipping onto the page. The date escaped me, for the moment. Something about a crazy dream niggled at the back of my mind. But what was one crazy dream compared to another? Didn’t I live in them all the time?
“You’re the one who suggested I sell my dolls in your shop,” she said. As if I didn’t understand, she added, “It was your idea.”
“March!” I stammered. “March of ninety-four.”
“We remodeled in April of ninety-four,” she said, taking in my uncomprehending stare. She sighed. “I was just on my way to church,” she continued, speaking slowly, enunciating each word as if she wasn’t sure of my English. “It is Sunday, you know.”
“Sunday?”
“Sunday,” she nodded. “You haven’t had breakfast, have you?”
Maybe as some sort of reflex or to simply mirror what she had done, I think I shook my head.
“Come,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll whip up your favorite waffles.”
She stood and walked to the door.
“Are you coming?”
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br /> I nodded, struggling to my feet, leaving behind coffeepot and Styrofoam cup.
“Who’s Tryg?” I asked.
Seemingly unsurprised at my question, she said, “He works for you. I’ll explain over breakfast.”
Literally speaking, Zell didn’t explain anything over breakfast. Nor did she mention my problems while she worked wonders with a Belgian waffle maker and a fry pan. Though it was her second breakfast of the morning, she ate as heartily as I did and drank just as much coffee, figuring, I supposed, she would skip lunch that day. It certainly wasn’t like her to eat two breakfasts a day. If it were, she would have lost her trim figure years ago.
Maybe the combination of carbohydrates, sugar, caffeine, and crisp bacon fat settled my mind. We both fiddled with our empty coffee mugs and stared out the window at her front yard. If I was having a struggle, it was more about what I saw in the flower beds than anything else. I remembered a profusion of tall, colorful Japanese irises and broad mounds of white candytuft crowding the fence; instead, Gerberas in Kool-Aid colors, snapdragons, and brassy-hued grasses took their place.
Except for Driftwood Bay’s banshee fire siren going off as usual at noon, we might have sat for the rest of the day without saying a word between us. I didn’t know what it reminded her of, but I was thinking of Driftwood Bible Church, where the nearby firehouse’s noon whistle signaled for the pastor to shut up unless he wanted to be witness to a modern reenactment of the Exodus before he could say a closing prayer.
I started laughing, and she laughed with me. Maybe it was just the caffeine. Four cups of coffee from one of her man-sized stoneware mugs was enough to make me giddy.
“Will you be okay?” Zell asked, wiping a stray tear from her eye. This time it was from too much laughter.
“Fine, I think.”
“Good.”
Again, maybe it was combination of chemicals released in my brain by food and coffee, yet equilibrium did seem to be returning. After losing seven years from my life and then trying to mainline five or so of them back into my brain via my journals, all within a period of 24 hours, didn’t I have a right to a sense of dislocation? dissociation? depersonalization? Or of panic, or even vertigo?
Finally, Zell began talking in earnest, weaving with care details outside of those I’d read last night, until the tapestry that was my reality began to feel like it made sense. She told me the journals were mostly Reverend Grunwald’s idea; thus, R. G. He was Driftwood Bible Church’s retired minister. R. D. was Reverend Danin, Driftwood’s current minister, who took over upon Grunwald’s retirement.
Like me, Zell grieved over Ferd’s death. Kit was barely a footnote. In vain, I waited for her to mention Judith. Instead, she explained about the dolls. Nearly two years ago, the demand for my Raventhorst Rustics and Raventhorst Nauticals had inexplicably died, which shortly led to my experiments in carving. One day I would return to making Grandfather clocks, but in the meantime I needed to make a living. Working as a gardener/roofer/door installer/all-around handyman was no way to maintain my skills as an artist or artisan, and since I’d always been interested in carving and in local Indian lore, Cigar store Indians seemed a natural.
Cigar store, as Zell called them, really wasn’t even close; the folk art or merely artsy style conjured up by that sort of label was light years removed from the meticulously detailed, high-gloss specimens presently occupying my workshop. Cigar store wooden Indians typically didn’t have polished jade eyes or simulated feather headdresses made from mother-of-pearl, either.
“We were sitting here drinking coffee one day, when you suggested I bring over several of my dolls to see if they would sell.”
She was silent for a long moment, staring at me as if waiting for me to comment or to argue with her. But why should I? The dolls were displayed right among my wooden Indians and the custom made chairs, weren’t they?
“Do they?” I asked.
“Do they what?”
“You know—sell?”
She nodded vigorously. “They all sell. My dolls, your Indians, Tryg’s chairs.”
“Tryg’s?”
“The young man who works with you,” she said.
“They’re his?”
“He designs them and you build them together. He designs tables, too. The furniture sells fairly well in Portland.”
“Ummh.” I was struggling to digest everything she said, to relate it all to my journal entries.
“I watch the shop when you two are in Portland or when you’re working in the shed.”
“Shed?”
“About a year ago you and Tryg were able to buy an old boathouse that used to belong to his grandfather,” she explained patiently. “It’s in Newaulakem. That’s where you make your Indians and the furniture.”
Newaulakem was a small town on the Newaulakem river about four miles inland. It must be where my shop tools and lumber stock were now located. In my mind, I visualized a dusty old boathouse converted into a workshop, open rafters splashed with shadows, and boarded-up, broken windows. I shuddered at the spider webs in the vision. None of it actually explained how Tryg had become a partner in my enterprises.
Still, the question could wait.
“Judith,” I said. “What about her?”
“Oh John,” she said, averting her gaze and staring out the window.
I felt a sudden lump in my throat. “Is she dead?”
“Oh, no, I don’t know, John,” she said, rising up and taking her coffee cup to the sink. “More coffee?”
I shook my head, and she returned to clear away the rest of the dishes. I watched her as she squirted soap in and started the water running. While the sink filled, she sponged off the table. As far as I could see, the table was already clean.
“Do you want me to help?” I asked, wanting instead to know more about Judith.
Lips compressed in thought, she shook her head. She dropped the sponge in the sink, turned off the faucet, and dried her hands on a towel. She sat down opposite me.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No!” she said. “I was just hoping—” The towel was still in her hands. Elbows on the table, she stared out the window again.
“Sometimes I wonder why you—why you—why God—” She sighed with frustration. “Oh never mind.”
I stared out the window with her. I knew what she wanted to ask. I also knew I wasn’t the person to solve the problem of pain and evil in the world. For the moment, she looked sadder than I felt.
“It’s okay,” I said without stuttering.
She shook her head. Her lips quivered with a smile. A diminutive figure was turning in at the front gate.
“Here’s Tyrollia,” she said, pushing her chair back to go to the door. “She always has an answer.”
The remark was facetious without being cutting. She threw the door open and told Tyrollia to come in.
Tyrollia’s eyes lit up when she saw me.
“I wondered where John was,” she said, speaking as if I weren’t present. Her voice quavered cheerily, just like I remembered it. If she looked any different from the last time I recalled seeing her, I couldn’t tell. The parchment-like skin was as ancient as ever, the eyes as bright as a bird’s. But then Zell looked the same as always to me, too.
“Hardly anyone made it to church today,” Tyrollia announced.
“John has had another of his episodes,” Zell said.
“Oh, Johan.” Her eyes were instantly concerned. “Gut Gott, not again.” She rested her birdlike claw on my shoulder. I wondered if she still played piano for the church. What kind of music could come from those hands?
“How badly this time?” She asked, looking at Zell.
“Ask him,” Zell told her.
“I’m fine,” I heard someone say. I wished the person saying it could manage the simple word I like a normal human being.
Tyrollia ran her claw over my cheek. It sounded like a torn autumn l
eaf scraping across the stubble of my beard.
“What, no coffee, Mrs. Zelig?” She said, abruptly shifting gears. “Not even instant for a guest?”
Zell, six cups of perked already under her belt for the day, went uncomplainingly to the cupboard and pulled out a jar of coffee she kept on hand for emergencies. Considering the amount of caffeine in our systems, she probably could have flown to the cupboard. As for myself, my hands shook with tremors that had nothing to do with the dyskinesia suffered by the victims of electroshock or of lobotomizing drugs.
Tyrollia made herself at home and went to Zell’s cookie jar. A moment later, she disappointedly closed the ceramic Swiss chalet’s rooftop, having withdrawn a crumbly sugar cookie.
“You are out of cookies,” she said in a hurt tone of voice, as she took a seat in the chair between mine and Zell’s.
Zell set the timer on the microwave to boil water, and muttered, “I’ll write myself a note.”
Tyrollia munched contentedly for the few moments such a small cookie afforded. Something seemed vaguely different about her. Her hair, maybe? No, it was the same old thicket standing wildly on end. It was her teeth. They were too white, obviously much younger than anything else about her. Fortunately, she didn’t notice me staring at her dentures. She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.
“All things work together for good to them that love God,” she said.
I didn’t know whether it was the cookie or the Bible verse that made her sigh with satisfaction. The bell on the microwave sounded. Zell stirred coffee crystals into Tyrollia’s mug, handed it over, and took her own seat at the table. Tyrollia took a sip, drinking it black, and smiled again, her dark eyes darting between the two of us. Her inquisitive glances would have been hard to miss, with her eyes swimming like black pools behind those thick glasses.
“You’ll be fine, John,” she said, smiling quickly. “God takes care of people like us.”
“People like us?”
“I wonder if that’s how Job would have expressed it,” Zell said quietly, maybe too quietly for Tyrollia to hear.
The older woman seemed to be concentrating solely on her cup. She might have been reading tea leaves.
“The faithful,” she finally said, sticking to my question. She answered Zell’s in the next breath. “Both Peter and Paul said anyone who wants to live a godly life in this world will suffer persecution and tribulation.”
By her tone of voice you would have thought she knew the two apostles personally. Had they spoken with a German accent? I wondered. Looking at her desiccated features, it was easy to think she really might have known them in her younger years. In fact, she might be older than either one of them.
“He wants to know about little Judith,” Zell said.
Tyrollia’s eyes darted between the two of us. “You’ve heard something new?”
Zell shook her head. “No,” she said, looking adamant. “John, all this worrying you do about Judith has always set you off. You have to stop thinking about her.”
“It makes you sick,” Tyrollia said. “Verry sick.”
I guess I sighed. Zell reached out and laid her hand on my left forearm. Tyrollia grasped my right.
“No one knows anything about her,” Zell said. She squeezed my arm tighter. “We’re not sure she—not sure Judith Huffy—ever really existed.”
“She gives you migraines,” Tyrollia added helpfully.
Migraines? Was that her way of saying one of my seizures? I nodded disappointedly and rose to my feet. As I went out the door, both women were still chattering in my direction, Tyrollia telling me to take it easy for a few days, Zell telling me to finish reading my journals. Back at home I rested by avoiding the journals. I was sick of reading about my life. I just wanted to live it!
Instead, I went to bed and stayed there.