by Robert Clark
When the hash was heated up, when it had taken on—as things cooked outside inevitably do—the savor of the fire and the air and the trees, Emily and William ate their dinner, each using one half of William’s mess kit as a plate. Then, because they were unimaginably tired and because the sun had indeed gone down, they went to bed. They slept naked in the sleeping bag, so tired when they slid inside it that it did not even occur to them to make love. At first, it seemed so dark and so quiet that they might have drifted off to sleep immediately, but then the night began to open itself, to begin its rustling and twinkling. Their heads were pressed together, supported by William’s rolled-up red-and-black Hudson’s Bay blanket, and they looked up, and where it had seemed a moment before totally dark and blank, there were tens of thousands of stars; and beneath them, coiling up towards them like smoke from the forest, the sawing of insects, the heart-struck plainsong of loons, somewhere out on the water.
They held each other closer, not because they were cold, but to make themselves a little more of everything else; a pair of stars, a brace of waterfowl, two alternating notes. They were totally free, at liberty, and not yet afraid. William tried to give voice to what he knew Emily was also seeing, to the harmony subsisting with the chaos, the order in the infinite, to the transcendent; that word featured so prominently in the books on William’s shelves on Laurel Avenue, the word William had never quite understood even as it had impelled him to come here. Perhaps he was rather wise not to pretend to know what it meant, for surely among the meanings it overleapt was its own.
He put his fingers in Emily’s still damp hair. Then, before he could say anything, Emily said, “Do you want to count them? The stars?”
“I thought you meant the hairs on your head.”
“You can do that too, if you want.”
“There’s too many. Of both,” William said. “So many. More than anyone could count. But even then, they’re all perfectly . . . arranged. Not like controlled. Just being exactly what they’re meant to be. Each one. There’s no system, no rules. It’s perfectly free, and perfectly fine, just the way it is. No police, no army, no government.” William paused, to look again, to collect his thoughts about what he saw. “Maybe there’s no God here.”
“Or maybe,” said Emily, “maybe there’s no one here but God. No one at all. Except us.”
Afterwards, when they had begun to drift off, William thought he heard Emily talking in her sleep, chanting in a breathy, singsong manner. They had never slept together, all night long, in the same bed. When the speaking continued, he became a little worried, and whispered in her ear, “What is it? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying my prayers,” Emily said.
“You don’t need to do that,” William said. “We don’t need any help. Everything’s fine.”
“I know. It’s just what I do. Every night. Just kind of singing myself to sleep. Just kind of thinking.”
“Don’t worry. Everything’s great. Everything’s good.”
“I know. I’m just thinking about it, thanking . . . God for it,” Emily said, and then neither of them said anything more.
2
SOME FAVORABLE HAND WAS UPON EMILY AND William the next day and the next, and for some weeks to come. There was scarcely a cloud in the sky or so much as a gust of wind until October. Their greatest piece of foolishness, that they might live off the land, proved not to be so foolish, for William caught fish and Emily picked blueberries and with the addition of a little rice, their appetites wanted for almost nothing.
They had found their permanent camp the very next day after their arrival on Lac La Cache, a little after noon. It was perhaps one mile north-northeast of their first camp, well inside Canadian waters by William’s reckoning, and well out of sight of any other habitation, excepting an empty summer house on the shore just beyond the spot they had camped their first night. It was an island, big enough to appear on William’s map, but without a name.
The island was perhaps fifty yards long and fifteen across, less land than an outthrusting of stone, albeit with enough soil in places to sustain some large spruce and pine and a bit of groundcover. On the southwest end, there was a little cove, just big enough to stow their canoe out of sight. Most of the surface of the island was a good ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the lake, and from most points other than the cove, you would have to scale some fairly sheer rock faces. They would be safe here.
They would also be comfortable, or at least enjoy the impression of comfort. There were big trees to shelter them. Better still, there was a hollow snag of a pine and a cave as well. It was not a cave in the technical sense (these being rare in northern Minnesota or, as William supposed, southwestern Ontario), but a crotch formed by the abutting of two huge rocks. But it was deep enough and wide enough to allow both Emily and William to sit in it, upright, pretty well sheltered from either wind or rain.
The hollow tree was less capacious—big enough really only for one—but merely the fact of being in possession of such an amenity seemed to place a seal of benediction on their entire enterprise. The island afforded little in the way of soft spots to bed down, so William made them a bower of spruce boughs just to one side of the cave (six feet before whose entrance was a recess almost preternaturally ordained to serve as a fire pit), and this, once William had picked through it and removed the harder and sharper branches, was their bedchamber. For their larder, William’s duffel, now pretty much emptied of everything save perishables, was suspended from a high branch of a jack pine by a rope; for their stove, he removed the middle seat from the canoe, and this, inverted, made a support for the Dutch oven, the aluminum frying pan, and the little teakettle atop the fire.
Emily watched William set up these improvements to their camp, and was more than a little impressed. She had been inclined to believe that William’s aptitude for woodcraft was of a limited kind (he had been to camp but once, whereas she had been twice, and to canoe camp, not far from these waters, at that). She had not been much encouraged by his inability to master the J-stroke of the paddle that was essential to keeping their craft on a straight course.
So she was pleased when he proved so adept at making them a home in the woods. Now William had of course read and reread the sections relating to this in the Book of Woodcraft and Indian Lore and the Boy Scout Handbook, and he had rehearsed them countless times in his mind’s eye. He had dreamt them for nights on end over the previous months, and so, when it was time to enact them in actuality, they unfolded without a hitch. For the next three and a half weeks, their days passed as they might have done in paradise, leisure and labor, diversion and routine; even—on September 23, the autumnal equinox—day and night were in perfect equilibrium.
Every day they ate a breakfast of rice cooked the night before, reheated in the frying pan over the banked coals. Then they paddled the quarter mile to the mainland shore and gathered wood and dug worms (although William discovered that the fish were just as happy to be baited with the innards of their previously taken cousins), and on the way back, William fished and Emily read and corrected their course as necessary. In the space of two hours, William would easily catch as many fish—middling perch and trout—and that was sufficient for their lunch, their main meal of the day. In the afternoon they napped and made love (sometimes with William withdrawing himself, sometimes availing themselves of one of the three dozen prophylactics purloined from William’s drugstore), and afterwards they bathed in the lake together. They dried themselves on the southwest-facing rock at the entrance to the cove. Sometimes they returned to their bower and made love again, love without aim or climax, William lapping and kissing Emily’s sex, Emily tonguing and sucking William’s. They learned to do this together at the same time, heads entwined in legs, and sometimes they fell asleep, exactly in this fashion.
That is not to say they gave no thought whatever to the morrow, that they had no concerns or desire to improve their lot. At first, their wishes were frivolous. Emily pined f
or cocoa and licorice, William for chocolate and more bacon (although they now had a stock of bacon grease sufficient to meet their needs almost indefinitely), and they both agreed that if they obtained flour and sugar, they might make some flatbreads in the Dutch oven.
These matters arose at the end of the first week, and with them the question of when or if to make a return journey to Nelson’s store. There were several problems involved in this, not the least of which was Emily and William’s ardent wish to never set eyes on Arnie Nelson again for the rest of their lives. Then there was the issue of a visit raising awkward questions, of its attracting unwanted attention: How would they explain their again being unaccompanied by their parents or siblings or, if they waited much longer, their lingering presence in the district of Lac La Cache long after virtually all other visitors were gone for the season?
It seemed to William that if they explained they had been sent by their parents for a final batch of supplies for use on the way back out the Crane Lake pass, this would raise no suspicions in Arnie Nelson. And it would not, because Arnie had no interest in any aspect of Emily and William but their money. He was indifferent to the mysteries of their minds and hearts as well as to the attractions of their bodies.
On a Thursday afternoon, the children paddled into Arnie’s view, Arnie having decided he ought to take a little more sun before heading south lest he startle the tanned natives with his white-as-a-fish’s-belly north woods pallor. He rose from his chair, and as was the custom of the country from voyageur days, helped pull the bow of their canoe ashore. “So,” he said, a little out of breath after this exertion, “you’re still here. Where are those folks of yours? Get here faster in a boat, I imagine.”
“Oh, they sent us up to get a few things before we all leave,” William said.
“We thought it would be fun to have one last outing in the canoe,” Emily added.
“How’s she holding up?”
“Oh, fine,” said William.
“Actually,” Emily interposed, “it kind of leaks. In the middle, in the bottom.”
“Oh, it’s supposed to. Keeps the joints and seams . . . cured. In trim,” Arnie said. “And a little bailing kind of comes with the country.”
William hoped Emily would not choose this moment to expose, via the expertise she had gained at canoe camp, this baloney for what it was; and she did indeed hold her tongue, much to his relief.
Arnie went on, “So what did you need? Or have in mind? Stocks is kind of low, it being the end of the season.” The three of them walked towards the store. “And of course when supply falls, prices rise. That’s the law of the market,” he added. “But you kids are good customers. Regulars.”
They went inside. It seemed to William and Emily that nothing had been taken or removed from the shelves since their previous visit. They took two or three cans each of the items they had previously purchased and to these they added a few cans of soup, together with a bag of sugar and two of flour.
“You planning to enter the bake-off or something?” Arnie queried.
“No. We just eat a lot of pancakes,” William said.
“And Mom bakes bread,” Emily added.
“Probably want some baking powder and some syrup then.” Arnie reached for these without waiting for a reply.
“Yeah,” William said. “We do. I forgot.”
“We need cocoa too,” said Emily.
“I got this here that you just mix with water,” Arnie said. “Don’t suppose you got any milk.”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
“Maybe a little candy,” William said. “That, and some bacon.”
“Oh, I’m down on bacon,” said Arnie. “On account of which I ought to charge you more. But I won’t. I’ll give you a break. Charge you the same as last time.” It went without saying that Arnie recollected this figure to the last decimal. “So with the bacon, that makes fifteen dollars. How many candy bars did you want?”
“I guess we’ll take them all,” William said, turning to Emily, who nodded her concurrence.
“Suit yourself. I’m all but closed up now. Come the middle of next month, I’m heading south.”
“So who’s here then? In the fall and the winter?”
“Nobody. Nobody at all,” said Arnie. “Maybe Fred Peterson, the guy who drove you in, comes up once a month or so. Checks on the summer people’s cabins. Makes sure the pipes ain’t burst.” Arnie had counted out nine assorted candy bars. “So that makes eighteen dollars.”
William reached into his pocket, removed a ten and a five, and handed them to Arnie. “There you are,” William said.
“You’re three bucks short.”
“No. Not really,” said Emily. “You owed us three from before.”
Arnie shook his head. “So I did. Imagine me forgetting.”
After they had loaded the canoe and pushed it out as Arnie looked on—“I’d help, but I think I put my back out hoisting her earlier”—they paddled back the way they had come. They spent the night at their very first camp, doing without a fire, supping on a tin of Vienna sausages and then splitting a Nut Goodie. They settled into the sleeping bag on the selfsame spot they had slept before and watched the last of the sun set into the lake, into the selfsame spot where Emily had stood naked, washing herself. Already, it seemed long ago, in a time when they were very young.
3
THEY HAD, BY NO FORMAL CONSENSUS OR EVEN discussion, agreed not to mention the winter: what they would do or where they would go, if they went anywhere at all. It seemed to them both that the goodness of each day was contingent on assenting to it from the start without reservation, to presuming that all would be well; and thus far—after more than three weeks—all indeed had been well. If they looked neither forward nor back, it seemed a good bet that time would stop altogether, that the ease and bliss of these days would continue without end.
It was not that nothing changed, or changed only for the better. Emily could not but notice on the long paddle back from Nelson’s store that the canoe was leaking more; and in the ensuing days that, while William fished, she bailed nearly as much as she read. That was not so bad: There was the rhythm of the poems (and these were as prayers, lapping, rocking on waves) and that of the bailing and the paddling. Their whole life consisted of beats and strokes and ticks, the notes struck by a clock that need never be wound.
But sometime after the equinox, there were unmistakable signs: The maples began to pale and yellow, and a wind began to sing in them, coloring them amber and red and shaking the leaves free a handful at a time, and these skittered across the rock face of the island, collecting here and there in little piles they might come upon unexpectedly, like a lost mitten in the street.
It was then that William began to think about building them a house. He had already strung a tarp over their bower to keep the morning damp off them, to baffle the wind that was beginning to gust during the lengthening nights; and he supposed they might soon have to pitch the tent. But he had also begun to collect what might be called building materials, the odd plank or two-by-four he had found along the shore during the various expeditions to the mainland.
It had been William’s intention, when the intention was still a little unformed, more liquid than solid, to build a house of logs. But he had not an ax, but a hatchet, and no stone to hone the blade. The edge was already getting dull and ought to be preserved for cutting and splitting firewood, which even before shelter, he knew, must be a woodsman’s highest priority. So William began to conceive what he might fashion out of the materials at hand, all varying in length and thickness and finish, using no nails, but only a little wire and a little rope. He had no saw, and he took everything that fell into his hand as given, as unalterable in form; and so he tried to build a house, foursquare and in three dimensions, with the jumble of obdurate jigsaw pieces nature had provided. Eventually (owing to the special boon of a largely intact sheet of plywood found on a beach half a mile to the north of them) he as
sembled a lean-to shack between the cave and the hollow tree. The plywood roof was supported on a grid of two-by-fours and slender logs strung between rocks and weighted down on top with yet more rocks. It was walled at the back and the sides with the planks he had found, and the gaps in these were filled with yet more log lengths and, as both insulation and exterior siding, covered over with spruce boughs. The roof was covered over in the same fashion.
All this was finished by the first days of October. There was no obvious moment of completion, no occasion at which William might carry Emily over the threshold and begin settling into their new home. Emily had been watching the whole structure going up—accumulating, really, like the fuel for a bonfire—and had provided assistance where she could, although this was difficult since both the blueprint and the tools to execute it were present only in William’s imagination. While she was pleased, as always, by the ingenuity her lover had once again displayed, the lean-to was not quite what she had in mind.
Emily had also pictured a cabin of logs, one with generous eaves, two square mullioned windows, and a real front door, a Dutch door, in fact. Now she saw that this was an unreasonable expectation, and with the residual happiness of their Indian summer still warming her, she tried to make the best of William’s lean-to, which had no front door—no front wall, for that matter—at all. And when it was fully covered over with boughs and they had laid their bed inside and the golden light of the fire lapped upon it in the early evening, she saw it looked just like a Christmas manger.
That night, a Wednesday in October, the first night they slept in the lean-to, they made love at great length, watching the firelight lap their bodies, casting their shadows on the back wall: William atop Emily, Emily astride William, William’s head rising to kiss Emily’s breasts and then turning over again, Emily’s hands on William’s buttocks, driving him, driving him deeper.