The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  After Wendy shone the light in his face, he began to wail and moan louder, a low and achy sound that reminded me of shifting, groaning ice. And then it hit me what was bothering me. My life could have turned out exactly like these troubled teens. After I left Norway, there were times when I swung from extremes, going from studying, doing everything to march steadily forward with purpose—classes, exams, an internship, and eventually a job—to nearly tossing it all away, to fantasies of self-destructing in some suicidal act. I’d never taken to heavy drinking or gotten into drugs, but in my darkest moments, I’d seriously considered jumping off the Aurora Bridge in Seattle and had driven out to it a number of times to sit in my car and gather the courage, but I could never shut my mind completely down. Always, my mind kept turning. I’m not a religious person. For me, there wasn’t anything better on the other side, unless I considered complete blankness better, and trust me, sometimes I did. But for me, tiny, microscopic pieces of hope always resided in the here and now, and even if I had to find them like pieces of lint on a broad, fraying piece of fabric, that’s what I somehow always came to do.

  “Come on, Wendy,” I said. “He’s not here. Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Okay,” she said, and followed me out.

  When we exited the complex, I shielded my eyes and squinted. It was like coming out of a movie theater in the middle of the afternoon—a horror movie. We got into the hot car and sighed.

  “That sucked,” Wendy said, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her hand.

  “Yeah, it did. I’m glad he wasn’t one of them.”

  “I can’t believe, I just can’t believe it’s come to this. I’m looking for my child in . . .” She choked up and couldn’t finish, just lifted her chin to the door we exited, her eyes tearing up.

  “I know. I know. But, if it’s any consolation, he wasn’t in there.”

  “But where is he then?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “That boy, in Glacier? Could, could Kyle also . . . ?”

  “No,” I said firmly. “That boy is younger. Kyle’s just with some friend somewhere. He’ll turn up. But if you feel this time is different from what he’s done before, then you should report him missing.”

  “No, it’s not really different. He’s been gone this long before.” Wendy continued to search my eyes, though, wanting for me to say something more.

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up,” I said.

  She nodded and started the car. We had to get back to the lab. I saw that I’d already missed several calls, one of them from my boss. Before I called back, I tried to settle my own nerves. I felt shaken too, and the sensation that there existed in me something more than just empathy for Wendy and her situation still clung.

  No, it wasn’t fear—what I felt was more akin to embarrassment or shame. I was shaken with a familiar twisting, acidic sensation in the pit of my stomach and a pinching at the base of my lungs. It made me feel as if I was somehow betraying someone or something. Because, I thought, on some distorted level, I felt guilty for not being them. Whatever those young kids had done might or might not compare to my past. Whatever troubles drove them to drugs and misery and dark places probably weren’t any worse than the darkness I experienced, continue to experience daily; yet I never did—and continue to try not to—succumb to it. My father used to say I was bullheaded and stubborn—that when I wanted something, I couldn’t let go of it. He wasn’t entirely correct. When I wanted death, I couldn’t do it. Even though I woke up daily as Prometheus chained to my own rock of guilt, I still refused to completely let it crush me, to prevent me from carrying on.

  But I wasn’t sure I deserved not to succumb to it, to carry on like I did and do—to live like a regular working professional in America. I couldn’t help but feel on some level that I should have been one of those wrecked people in there. I should have self-destructed long ago. In some way, seeing such misery—such self-obliteration—made me feel like I hadn’t done enough penance myself. I didn’t deserve to end it all, but I didn’t deserve the pockets of resolve I had scraped together to keep going, to make a life as a forensic scientist.

  I looked out the window for a second, at the bright, blinding day, and closed my eyes to shake it all away. Coronas of red worms bloomed and squirmed behind my eyelids. Then I held up my phone and said to Wendy, “Excuse me. I’ve got to call the boss.”

  • • •

  Fifteen years earlier, two days before it happened, Per and I had gone cross-country skiing with our dad. We were out of school for Christmas and Pappa had taken some time off from work at Nordea Bank, where he managed investor relations. Mamma had taken the train to Oslo for the day to visit our aunt, Tanta Britta, and Pappa suggested we gather our gear and ski the bay, since it was so unusual to be able to ski where we lived and was possible only because we were experiencing one of the coldest winters in a long time. A recent snowfall had covered the fjord and all the local lakes in several feet of snow.

  The night before, Pappa had told us that he was going to wake us while it was still dark out, which isn’t hard to do in the south of Norway in December, since the sun doesn’t spread over the land until after nine a.m. Sure enough, it was still dark when he got us up, and we ate breakfast while he examined the map. We drove to the bay, passing the Park Hotel and Knut Steen’s huge lit-up Hvalfangstmonumentet, a statue of a great whale with a Viking ship riding onto it. The whalers row the boat, while the one in front rises tall and proud, holding his spear to demonstrate victory and power. We parked by a huge boatyard and watched as the pearly hue of dawn spread across the bay. It was silent in early morning over the holidays with the formation of ice over the water.

  Huge icicles hung from the large rocks on the coastline, and behind us, the town looked cozy draped in fresh snow and Christmas decorations. Narrow rectangular windows glowed yellow from inside lamps, and while a part of me simply wanted to be back in our warm house with the fire on, another part of me thrilled to be included in something my father and brother were doing. Often the two of them went out fishing and said I couldn’t come, that I should stay home and keep Mamma company, that fishing was a “guy thing.”

  We put on our gear outside the car, and Pappa started to explain a few things to us. “You’ll both stay behind me. If I fall through, which I won’t—the chances are slim—you will throw the rope you’ve got in your rucksack.” Pappa was addressing Per, pointing to my brother’s chest, where he wore a daypack with an abundance of straps that doubled as a life jacket in case we went through. I wore one too, but Pappa wanted to make sure Per understood because he was the older, bigger, stronger one and would be able to pull him out. On our packs, we also had two screwdriver-like tools attached to the pack’s shoulder straps.

  “What are these for?” I asked.

  “If you fall in, you just pull yourself out with those, change your clothes and head on home,” he said as if plummeting through the ice and hauling ourselves out with ice picks was no big deal. Just carry on like penguins or seals.

  I must have looked frightened because Pappa smiled and said, “It’s just a precaution. Nothing is going to happen. Just stay behind me. I’ve been reading sea ice for a long time. Sea ice is different from freshwater, like at the ice hall. It’s flexible, so you’ll be able to feel it move. You know, the movement of the sea.”

  “Cool,” Per said.

  “Yes, sea ice is interesting. Denser water sinks beneath the colder water, which has formed the ice, and when that happens, it expels the salt, forming a layer of really salty water below the ice, which then sinks and makes powerful currents. The Arctic thermohaline circulation. You’ve learned about such currents in school, yes?”

  I shook my head while Per said, “Of course.”

  “Good, ’cause these powerful currents help drive ocean currents across the globe. They circulate warm and cold water around all the oc
eans and have a major impact on the earth’s climate and weather patterns. This is why shrinking polar ice caps will cause huge dis­ruptions.”

  “How thick is it?” I asked.

  “About fifteen to twenty centimeters.”

  Again, he read my shocked expression. I had been picturing meters of solid ice beneath where we planned to go.

  “Ah, Gretch, fifteen to twenty is good,” he said. “Enough to drive a car over.”

  Per looked at me like I was only five and shouldn’t even be out with them if I was going to keep asking such stupid questions. I tried to assume a braver, more nonchalant air, lifting my chin to make myself taller.

  “We’ll be okay,” Pappa reminded me, grinning and excited to get going. He patted my shoulder. “We’ll be just fine.”

  • • •

  We were just fine that day skiing with our father, and that evening snug in our house with Mom home from Oslo. We went to bed exhausted but happy. I took a warm bath in the bathroom, then brushed my teeth before the mirror. Per pounded on the door for me to hurry. “What?” I opened the door.

  “I want to brush my teeth and you’re taking forever.”

  “Just come in, but shut the door,” I told him, wanting to keep the tropical feel of the warm, humid air around as long as possible.

  He closed it, grabbed his toothbrush, and looked at me. “Want to go again tomorrow?”

  “Go where?”

  “On the ice?”

  “Dad has to work tomorrow. Det er Mandag.” It’s Monday.

  “Uten han,” Per spoke through the suds and around the toothbrush in his mouth. Without him.

  I stared at him in the mirror, watched him work his teeth, his mouth set in a growl so he could reach his gums, a wave of blond falling across his forehead. If I said no, he’d bug me, and I didn’t want to seem weak. I considered that if he was asking me to go instead of one of his buddies, I must have done well enough to impress him. My tired thighs reminded me of how I took extra-long strides to keep up with them, my poles hitting the hard floor of ice beneath the powder, my breath fast and steady in the cold air.

  “Sure,” I said. “Where would we go?”

  “Same place. It’s just a little longer walk down there.”

  “Walk? Mom could drive us.”

  “No, she can’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’d say no. So would Pappa. There’s no way they’d let us go on the ice alone.”

  “Then why do you want to do it?”

  “Just because . . .” He spit toothpaste into the sink and turned the water on to wash it away, then placed his toothbrush back in the holder, wiped his mouth with a hand towel, and smiled. “Just because it will be fun. And it’s Christmas break. Who wants to sit around here doing nothing? Besides, didn’t you hear Pappa? He said that if you keep going farther, you can sometimes reach the ice edge and sometimes it’s a straight cut and you can go right to the edge. That sounds so cool, and I want to see that, don’t you?”

  I shrugged.

  “What? You afraid?”

  “No,” I said. It was like this with him. I wanted a better, wiser, quicker comeback, but they never came when I needed them. Always after, when it was too late. He was the quick-witted one, not me. “But what do we tell Mamma?”

  “That we’re going skiing around the school fields. She doesn’t need to know it’s in the bay.”

  “Okay then,” I said, not really sure if I had any desire to go or not, but I knew the last thing I wanted was to disappoint my older brother.

  • • •

  The dirt road to Alfred Minsky’s yurt site ended at the edge of a creek where the bedrock shone in pastel and terra-cotta colors, and the shallow stream caught splinters of sunlight dappling through the spindly lodgepole pines. On the other side stretched a game trail—mostly elk, which I could tell by the scallop-shaped scat and the size of the hoofprints—­that led to a clearing where the yurt had stood. Monty led Ray and me there; otherwise, it would have been difficult to find.

  When I had called Ridgeway back after leaving the derelict hotel with Wendy, he asked me to head to the North Fork immediately for another possible lead on the missing boy. As soon as Wendy and I returned, Ray and I packed up and drove north. When we arrived at the spot, I saw that Monty had hung some tape around the perimeter when he’d been working with Agent Paige earlier.

  “If you can, let’s make this quick.” Monty said.

  I sensed he was cranky. He paced around the edge of the site and looked at his watch repeatedly as if he’d had too much coffee. He had mentioned that he and the agent drove back to headquarters; then she had insisted he drive back out to Polebridge to meet us at the only store in the area, Polebridge Mercantile, to lead us to the spot. She stayed back with her partner to keep working on the case. Monty was clearly irritated at having to drive up again and babysit us in an area with limited cell service while time slipped away.

  It was quiet out in the woods, the silence a stark contrast to the dig we had worked the day before, with the fire raging in the distance and the backhoe clearing trees. The fires still burned on the other side of the park, but the wind blew the dense smoke eastward, away from where we were in the North Fork area. Ray and I got right to work, measuring tracks, getting fiber samples, and lifting shoe prints from the soil. Monty supervised us for about ten minutes, then announced he was heading out, back to headquarters where he could be of more use. “Let me know what you find,” he said to me. “You know your way back to the van?”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Okay then,” Monty turned and started to hike back to his car. I thought for a second. I didn’t want to keep bringing up the grave when a child was the number one priority, but our jobs remained our jobs. “Monty,” I called. “Just a second.”

  Monty stopped, turned, and waited for me.

  “I know you’re in a hurry to get back, but I just wanted to ask if you’ve spoken to Lucy yet?”

  Monty shook his head. “Not yet. That’s one of the reasons I want to get back. No cell service out here is making it hard to work. The radios aren’t good for calls to Bozeman.”

  “I spoke to her this afternoon.”

  “And?”

  “I was right. The skeleton belongs to a sub-adult. Probably from ten to fifteen years old. White male.”

  Monty glanced into the trees to our side. They created a collage of shadows. A breeze was beginning to collect, and the tops of the trees rustled like soft ocean waves. Then he looked back at me, rubbing the back of his neck like a farmer, and I wondered if that’s what he did when he got anxious. “What else did she say?”

  “That there was blunt-force trauma to the head. The left temporal lobe has a large cleave in it.”

  “Does she have any idea from what?”

  “Don’t know that yet, but something sharp and hefty, like an axe or a hatchet. She’s going to send the bones to Texas. To the center there.”

  I could see the disappointment in Monty’s face as he realized that it was going to take some time to get an ID, if we could get it at all.

  “As you probably know, the center puts together a DNA-collection kit with swabs and appropriate storage packaging for family members of the missing, which it sends out free of charge to the police and sheriff’s departments across the country. Of the missing around here, it would be good to see who’s submitted. That way, if a match doesn’t come up, we can perhaps see if some of the families that haven’t yet submitted would be willing to.”

  “I agree. I’ll call Lucy as soon as I get within range.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Monty considered what I’d told him. He stood in the dappled shade of some pine trees beaten by mountain pine beetle infestations worsened by drought and mild winters. The tall pines stood like a large congregation of skinny spi
res worshipping the sky. Shadows from the trees darkened half his body, and broken spears of sunlight illuminated the other side, giving the impression that he was comprised of separate people. Monty had always been the calm one, always in control. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t now; it was just that he seemed slightly off his game, like a dark brew was being stirred in him along with the gentle sway of the trees.

  I knew that he had a reason to care more than most about the bones of a sub-adult found in the ground from years before, and also reason to worry more than most about a missing teen in the park. He’d never told me about his childhood friend, but I’d heard it through the law enforcement grapevine. Those sorts of things got around, which is why I’d never breathed a word to anyone about my hideous past. I don’t see why I should; it would lead only to endless gossip, fearmongering and finger-pointing. I would become marginalized once again and might even lose my position. I’d become trapped once again by what I’d done. I’d worked too hard to break free from those chains, and had no intention of putting them back on.

  “I’m going to have more time to work the case now that the FBI are on board for the boy,” he said, looking less than relieved, then checked his watch again. “I better fly.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Me too.”

  • • •

  Afterward, in the great shifting of the ice—in the exquisite sorrowful moan of it—I came to believe that I was being warned. That if I’d just listened more closely, it would have held secrets, instructions for me for that night to somehow avoid what was to come, and Per would have been saved. My family would have been saved.

  The next morning, by the time we reached the edge of the bay near the silent boatyard, my mouth was already dry. Per began to put on his boots and skis while I drank from my water bottle.

  “Save some of that. We’re going to ski farther than we did with Pappa.”