by Mimi Thebo
I see myself slit open my eyes. Something about the night and the storm and the cold has made it easy for me to slip out of my body and watch from above.
It’s not the first time I’ve woken to Dad’s nightmares. “Soldiers have nightmares,” Mum used to say. “Even when they aren’t soldiers anymore.” He sits up and passes a shaking hand across his beard.
He moves quietly, though he is so large. The door of the woodburning stove creaks open, and he places three more logs, carefully, one by one, on the burning coals. After he creaks the door shut and checks the latch, he moves carefully and silently to where I am. He sits and watches me, looks closely at the rise and fall of my breathing, the color in my cheek. My hair is tangled over my forehead, and he can’t see my open eyes.
And then he does something strange. He passes his hands above my body—once, twice, three times. Tenderly, as if he were stroking me and not just the air. Then he sits and watches me some more as the storm batters the curtained window and shakes the log walls.
I come back into my body and hear him. He’s doing something I didn’t think he did. He’s praying.
—
The first day is fun. We all get very silly after our successful log-gathering operation. I guess it’s because we know we have everything we need to ride out the storm and we don’t have any more responsibilities.
We make loads of popcorn on top of the woodstove and play board games on the floor. During a Monopoly game, my dad loses all his hotels and houses and rolls around on the floor, having a fake tantrum. I laugh until my lungs hurt, and when they do, he looks at me sharply, and I remember the night before, the two of us awake in the storm.
I fall asleep playing gin rummy, worn out from laughing so hard.
When I wake up they’ve laid me on the sofa and covered me with a green blanket. Something beany-smelling is cooking in the big iron pot on the kitchen stove. I feel so safe and so looked-after that I can’t get out of my body.
I go back to sleep again and don’t wake up until it’s time to eat.
The second day of the storm, Dad has to go out the special roof window and push the snow off the roof. He and Jem don’t want any help. Jem’s job is to keep the rope taut, and Dad has to walk around and push off the snow with the special red shovel. The snow has been accumulating fast up there because the central heating is off.
I am worried about them up there, a bit, but I have my own job to do.
Tony and I clean the downstairs. It really needs it, with four of us living in one big room and all using the little toilet.
Tony tells me stories about roofs collapsing and people who ran out of food. He tells me stories about people getting lost in storms.
And then he tells me a story about a man who sheltered with a sleeping bear.
I feel my heart catch a beat and rise up to my throat. I don’t trust my voice to ask any more about it, but Tony seems to sense that I’m interested in that one and tells me all he knows. Which isn’t much.
But still.
It’s good to know it’s not just me.
I make a big, hot pasta dish for lunch. Jem and Dad are quiet, and I feel like something happened up there on the roof. But Tony keeps everybody talking.
It’s like he knows something happened, and he knows I am worried. I look at his green eyes, and he is sliding them from one of us to the other, as if he is checking on us all. His white teeth are flashing, and his perfect lips are chattering away, but I can tell he knows what he’s doing and that he’s trying to take care of everyone.
He’s like that.
And I want to get up and stand behind him and hold his head against my stomach and stroke his glossy black hair and tell him not to worry about us, that we’ll be okay.
But of course I can’t do anything like that.
So I try to look really happy, like I’m not worried about what went on upstairs.
Tony’s dad was in charge of reintroducing the wolf population to the park. He got death threats, and had a security detail for a while. Tony tells us a bit about what it was like, and Dad gets really interested and starts talking to us all again.
And pretty soon they are talking about some big meeting and who was on which side. Dad even gets out his notebook and begins writing things down. So Jem and I clear the table.
I bump into Jem’s arm by the sink, and he winces. His arm has a long rope burn. He shows me, and I go and get the arnica from the first-aid box. He winces again when it goes on, too. It must really hurt—Jem’s usually pretty stoic.
I wash the dishes while Jem dries, and I ask, “What happened on the roof?”
If I push Jem to tell me, he won’t. So I just wash dishes, waiting, waiting for Jem to decide to tell me more.
It works. Jem says, “It’s not that acute of a slope, and the wind was steady, and he had his crampons.” Jem dries a bit more, and I wait forever for Jem to say what he’s worried about. Finally: “I think Dad is starting to get old.”
“He’s only fifty-one,” I say. “He’s really fit. He’s fitter than anybody I know.” I think about the time he had some friends cycling through Nepal to raise money for some charity. One of them broke his leg skiing just before the trip, so Dad stepped in with five days’ notice. He was one of only three of them to finish the course, and he hadn’t even done any training. I say, “Remember Nepal?”
“That was five years ago,” Jem says. “He would have fallen off the roof, Darcy.”
And landed in the nice, soft snow, I think as the storm steadily blows white against the north windows. Or maybe landed across the woodpile or on his head. With no telephone to call the doctor. With no way to get him to the hospital. The south windows look both white and dark at the same time, like it’s not just snow out there, like there’s something in the shadows.
I thought I’d be less worried if I knew, but now I’m more worried. I’ve never really thought about how much we need Dad. He’s always just been there.
Jem’s eyes are big and round. And suddenly I know this is the first time Jem understands that Dad is an actual human, too. That Dad is mortal. Jem’s older than I am, but sometimes he’s…well, he’s kind of thick.
I think I love Jem more when he’s stupid like this than when he’s being superboy. I give him a cuddle, and he wraps his arms around me and holds me close.
And something about the way he holds me reminds me of the bear.
—
It’s the third day of the storm, and there is nothing to do but live through it.
We’ve got water and wood, and the roof is okay.
We get very tidy. We fight over who gets to clean out the ashes from the stove and have to settle it with rock, scissors, paper. We use dice to draw up a list of who is in charge of what for the duration of the storm.
There’s three or four jobs each. Dad gets cooking. Jem gets stoking fires. Those are the big ones. I get cleaning the toilet, putting dishes away and airing bedding. Tony is in charge of cleaning all surfaces, washing dishes, and fresh air. Every once in a while, he opens a window a tiny crack, and the storm blows into the room.
We had beans yesterday, and we’re all making horrible smells. At first I thought I would die of shame doing a fart in front of Tony Infante, but we’re all doing it. A lot. Tony’s jumping up quite a bit to open and close the window.
It is the fourth day of the storm, and Dad and Jem make me learn how to unload, strip, clean, reassemble, and reload a rifle. I do time trials with Tony, and I win two out of five. I suspect he’s letting me win.
The rest of the day, we read. Dad catches up on all the paperwork he can do without charging his laptop. Tony says that’s how all the paperwork in the park gets done and that his dad has four spare laptop batteries that he charges whenever the weather looks bad. Tony and I do our nails again, and Dad lets me give him a pedicure. I use bright pink.
Mum should have been home today.
The fifth day I wake up shivering in the dark. The fire has gone out. I call
out, “Jem. Jem,” but he doesn’t hear me. I feel so bad, I start to cry.
I start to move out of my body, but I’m scared to do that. I hold on to myself, and it makes me tired.
Then Dad is there, holding me, and Jem is moving fast and saying sorry a lot. Tony takes over making the fire because Jem is so upset he’s doing it wrong. I keep trying to tell him it’s okay, but my teeth are chattering so hard I can’t make him understand.
Dad is kind to Jem, but I can hear Jem crying, and it makes my heart hurt.
The fire blazes up, and Dad lays me right in front of it. He unzips my sleeping bag and crawls in with me, and Tony heaps the other bags on top of us. I am not allowed to go to sleep. They keep making me sing along to Disney songs until I warm up, and Jem has made a big pot of tea.
—
The snow has finally stopped, but it is very, very cold.
Jem brings in more wood, and Dad inspects the house for insulation leaks and lays out the little solar panel to charge the big radio. When he tells Tony he thinks it’s too cold to snowmobile Tony home, Tony says, “No duh.”
For some reason this makes us all laugh.
Dad keeps saying “no duh” to himself and chuckling all day.
Finally, in the afternoon, the big two-way radio crackles to life. Tony talks to his dad, who tells him to stay put. He warns that the temperature will drop even lower in the night. He tells us that trees are exploding from the cold.
It’s really dangerous in the forest right now.
And anyway, another storm will hit tomorrow afternoon. We ask the park officials to send Mum a message: we are fine, and we still have lots of food.
Dad has to bother about twenty people to talk to the doctor, who is stuck at home, like everybody else. Everybody talks about me like I’m some kind of freak. “Oh, your sick little girl,” one of the park people says. I want to curl up and die with the shame of it.
Dad tells the doctor about me getting so cold and about being stuck in this room with two woodburners and a bunch of oil lamps. The doctor says it should be warmer in the morning. If I could get out for a while and take some light exercise, it would be good for me, as long as I stay dry and am well wrapped up.
Then the doctor reminds Dad in a very stern voice what he means by light exercise. I decide I do like the doctor, after all. Dad’s idea of light exercise is skiing ten miles.
Right before supper we get another call on the radio. Mum got our message. Since she can’t fly back to us, she got a cheap flight from O’Hare back to England. Somebody’s renting our house, so she’s going to stay with Sue and her mum, Mickey.
My mum has left me in this horrible place that is literally killing me and has gone home without me. How fair is that? When we moved it was evidently totally impossible for me to stay with Sue and Mickey so I could do my exams in England. But now it’s fine for Mum to fly three thousand miles and stay there. What happened to all the “families stick together” stuff? I’ll bet Mickey and Sue would both rather have me.
I take my sleeping bag and then hog the sofa, lying with my face to the couch’s back. I tell everyone to go away and leave me alone, and I fall asleep.
When I wake up again, it’s dark. My body aches from lying on the sofa. I’m stiff and tense from the pain in my chest. I want to cough and I don’t want to cough…if I cough, I know it’s going to hurt.
So I just leave my body.
The windows are iced with frost. The cold pushes through two layers of glass and then under the thick door. It sneaks probing fingers through tiny chinks in the mortar between the logs and up through the felt and floorboards. If you lay your hand on top of the rug, you can feel where the cracks of the floorboards lie beneath the tightly woven wool. The cold is pushing through.
It pushes and pushes, all the time. It never sleeps.
In the room, people sleep. But not Jem, who sits by the woodburning stove. There is a ridiculously high pile of logs in the room; they spill from their brick niche. They climb the wall and sprawl across the floor.
Jem’s shoulders are tense. He looks at the stove and at the logs and at me. Over and over he looks at the stove and then the logs and then at me. Then he notices Dad, who struggles in his sleep. Dad pushes against his sleeping bag, turning and muttering, still fighting in his war. Jem swallows as he watches and then looks at the stove. There is just room for another log.
He is already wearing the fireproof glove. The door creaks open. He wedges the log on top of its burning fellows and creaks the door shut again.
The noise wakes Dad, who sits up, shaking a dream fight from his head. The young man and his father look at each other, across Tony’s body, asleep, and mine, empty, as I watch from the rafters.
Dad jerks his head toward Jem’s sleeping area.
Jem shakes his head, points to me.
Muttering, Dad picks his way over. I try to breathe deeply, like I’m asleep. Dad lays the back of his hand on my forehead and looks again at Jem. I’m okay, he says with his look. No fever.
Dad points sternly to Jem’s bedding.
No. The shake of the head is final. Jem looks back me and the stove, as if Dad weren’t even in the room.
Dad takes two steps and pulls Jem to his feet. Jem’s huge now, but Dad lifts him as easily as if he were still a toddler. Dad pulls the fireproof glove from Jem’s hand and tries to push him toward his bedding.
Jem refuses to move.
Quickly and silently, Dad grabs Jem’s neck and pulls. He takes Jem’s head in his big hands.
I don’t know what he’s going to do—hit him? Bite him? Dad’s face is grim. Jem struggles, trying to pull away. Neither of them wants to wake me.
It is a desperate, silent battle. It looks very much like the dream fight Dad has every night—it is that tense and fearful.
Closer and closer, Dad drags Jem’s head to his own, as if he will head butt him or crack his son’s skull in his powerful hands. Jem can’t get away.
It’s a kiss.
That was what Dad struggled to do—kiss his son on his forehead. A father’s blessing—a benediction. Forgiveness for letting the fire go out. Understanding that Jem is trying to make it up to us. Dismissal back to his bed, to become a child again, not to keep trying to be a man before his time.
All of it, all of it. They understand each other better than anyone else could ever understand them. They can say everything with their eyes…or with a kiss.
It’s strange seeing them like this, seeing them just with them.
Jem sinks to his knees. He holds the pads of his palms to his eyes and silently weeps in shame. Dad, his hand still on the nape of Jem’s neck, looks away. He’s giving him privacy, but being there, too.
I can’t make Jem feel better. I can’t do anything.
Chapter Five
It is easy to kill a sleeping bear. It is not so easy to find one.
A grizzly bear will wait to enter her sleeping den until a blizzard. Some scientists think the bear waits until she is desperate to escape the weather. Some scientists think the bear has learned to hide.
Many parts of a bear are valuable, but the main prize is the gall bladder. Bears’ gall bladders are dried and ground to make bear bile, and bear bile is valuable medicine in the Far East. Wild bear bile is as valuable as gold.
—
On the sixth day I try not to wake up.
Everyone else is awake. I feel dirty and sad. I try, try to go back to sleep, but my bladder feels like it’s going to explode. I go to use the nasty toilet that everyone can hear. I’ll have to clean it again today. The big water bottle takes up a ton of room, and I feel clumsy pouring water in the tank so that I can flush.
I want a bath. I want my mum. And most of all, I just want to go home.
I can’t help it. I start to cry a little. But I soon shut myself up. I blow my nose and pour a sink of cold water so that I can wash. My face still feels greasy afterward. I can’t really see the mirror—it’s too dark in here. The window is a br
ight white square, but the light that comes in is gray. I can’t really tell if I’m getting spots.
I brush my dirty hair and braid it. I use a washcloth and do what bits I can reach—the smelliest parts of my body. I spray body mist until I start to cough and have to leave the little room.
They’re waiting for me at the table.
“Wow,” Tony says. “How do you manage to look so nice?” He pulls out my chair. “She even smells nice,” he says. “How does she do it?”
“She sprays a bunch of chemicals all over herself,” Dad says. And then he says to Jem, “Hey! You kicked me!”
Jem looks at me sheepishly. Dad has made pancakes and bacon with maple syrup, and he’s remembered to put the low-fat butter substitute and the light syrup next to my plate. Even though I’m supposed to be gaining weight, I don’t like the taste of the real stuff anymore.
All three of them are looking at me as if I have to decide whether or not this is good enough. Whether or not we can keep on going.
When I smile, because I can’t help it, they all relax. Boys are so simple—it makes them restful to be around. But it’s kind of lonely to be with just boys.
I take a pancake and some bacon, and I listen to them debating what exercise I could take. And I suddenly get it; since they are stuck here without anything to do, I have become their project.
Apparently, I’m going to learn to shoot a rifle. We’re going to shoe into the national forest, which is less than a half a mile away. Dad is going to radio the rangers, just in case they hear any shots. It’s illegal to discharge a firearm in the park, but not in the national forest.
Nobody asks me. They look at me every once in a while, and nod a lot. But they don’t actually speak to me.
I chew and swallow and chew and swallow. It seems like forever. And then I brush my teeth at the sink and sit on the sofa while they all scurry around, solving the problem of me.
Since I’ve been sick, nobody has come out walking with me. Mum was so busy catching up, and Dad and Jem have been at work and school. I can tell they’re all shocked by how slowly I shoe.