The Long-Shining Waters

by Sosin, Danielle

  At the log on the slope above their camp, Grey Rabbit loosens her clothing and squats, her sleep-warmed skin meeting the cold air. The smell of wood smoke lifts through the trees. Around her, the pines hold dots of snow in their bark, and everything is purple and newly rounded—the wigwam like an overturned bowl, the spruce boughs splayed like thick dark hands. Below, mist rises from Gichigami, veiled and shifting, growing thicker with the light. Soon the water will be entirely hidden, transformed into a vast land of cloud.

  Grey Rabbit pushes snow over the hole her urine carved, feels the new sharpness of her hip bones and a slight dizziness as she stands.

  Slowly she descends, apart, watching, her sons sitting near the fire, Night Cloud returning from the direction of the river. His path leaves a dark line in the snow.

  Night Cloud looks up to see his wife moving gingerly down the slope. Thinning. And quiet as a winter tree. He must make a sizable kill. He had placed another offering at the river cave. He finds tracks, scat, and bedding places, but the animals will not show themselves.

  He raises a hand in greeting as she nears. Her moods, too, are a growing concern. But then she has good reason to be dissatisfied with him. “New snow.” He musters a hopeful tone as they meet. She nods and only half smiles. “The day feels good,” he says cheerfully.

  “You made another offering?”

  Night Cloud places a reassuring hand on her shoulder and tries to hold her eyes with his own, but her gaze slips away from him. She gestures toward Little Cedar, who sits near the fire, poking sluggishly at the snow with a stick.

  “In the last new snow, he romped like an otter,” she says. “He’s not old enough to fast.”

  “He is often slow to wake.”

  “Yes, but still. . . .”

  “He’s strong,” says Night Cloud, pushing aside her words, as they approach the boys at the fire. “It’s a good depth for tracking.” He nods at them, and sweeps his arm over the snow.

  “How soon will we leave? I brought the pull-sled.” Standing Bird assumes a tall posture, hoping that his father will notice the things he’s already gathered for the hunt, and the skillful way he’s begun to pack.

  “Be patient. We will start soon enough. Come, Little Cedar,” Night Cloud beckons to his youngest. “I’ll fashion a target for you in the woods. You can practice with your bow while I am gone.”

  Standing Bird turns away, hands on his hips, as Little Cedar hops off his stump, poking him in the back with his stick as he passes.

  The early morning veil has lifted, leaving the afternoon sharply defined. The white plains of snow, the clear sky, the big water ruffled like the wing of a dark blue bird.

  Grey Rabbit sits sewing a rabbit-fur hat, though her mind has wandered back to the morning, to the pride she’d felt watching Standing Bird pack the pull-sled. Part man, he is, but still part boy. Part mink the way he changes color to match his father. “Listen well,” she’d warned as they set out. “Stay within hearing distance of your father.” And though disquiet had lodged like a burr in her skin, she’d made an effort to join the joking and the rain of banter as Night Cloud and Standing Bird walked north into the hills. They left behind the long tracks of their snowshoes, now grey vines in the bright white snow.

  Grey Rabbit turns the hat over in her hands and runs her fingers through the soft white fur. It will be warm and cover Standing Bird’s ears well. She glances at Bullhead across the fire, at work on the seam of a birch-bark container. Little Cedar is in the near woods aiming his small bow at the piece of hide his father had fastened to a tree trunk. He misses his mark, puts his hands on his hips, then plods through the snow to retrieve his arrow.

  “Do you think they will find game?” Grey Rabbit breaks the silence. Bullhead doesn’t reply. The unanswerable question is left echoing in her mind as she pets the soft fur and stares up at the ridge.

  Bullhead watches Grey Rabbit worry the hat’s fur, her eyes on the ridge, but her eyes unseeing. The girl has always been one to wander far, but this is not a time to indulge. Bullhead runs a length of a fiber between her fingers and tests its strength before working it through the hole in the birch bark. More than once, she has awakened to find Grey Rabbit gone, or hovering over the boys as they sleep. And then, come morning, the girl won’t wake. Bullhead takes a deep breath, trying to quell her irritation. Something’s not right. She mulls over their circumstances, but there seems little to interpret. The cold has not been unrelenting. The snow has not grown too deep to hunt. Could it be that the spirits are unhappy with her son? If they are, they all have much to fear. For its power, she had given him her nugget of pink copper, tied in a piece of soft skin. She’d slipped it into his hand as he left.

  Out beyond the frozen shallows, the light plays on the deep blue water like tossed handfuls of tiny suns. Bullhead works her fiber slowly along the seam, each stitch a question, another worry. Has hunger set upon the others, those camped back in the hills, or at hunting grounds along the shore? And what of her sister, Three Winds? She’d been weak with illness at the end of the fall ricing. She sees her sister’s party as they paddled away, grew small, then rounded the point, out of sight. If their hunts have been fruitless, too. . . . She stops her mind from weaving the thoughts. At Sugarbush she’ll hear all the news. She won’t weave a web for herself from which she will be unable to escape. No. She pictures Three Winds tending a fire, roasting an enormous moose flank, which crackles and drips. Bullhead swallows. Her stomach knots.

  Tonight, over the fire, she’ll tell a Nana’b’oozoo story. One where despite his spirit powers, his human side lands him in a bundle of trouble. A romping tale of summer mischief, which will make everyone laugh out loud. And if the spirits allow, it will come with such vividness they’ll hear the sweet birdsong, smell pine pitch and frogs. But now it is she who stares into the air while Grey Rabbit works steadily on the hat.

  “Look,” shouts Little Cedar.

  Grey Rabbit is on her feet, Bullhead behind her in the snow.

  “What is it?” Grey Rabbit calls, but Little Cedar only jumps and gestures, nodding toward the big water.

  There’s something large and white on the horizon, much larger than the patches of light around it. It’s not blinking, but shining steadily.

  Grey Rabbit’s dream comes flooding back. The child’s wavering face, its awful blue lips. Dead. She’s sure. The child was dead. She grabs hold of Little Cedar’s clothes.

  The strange light lingers on the horizon, and the great horned serpent swims through her thoughts. He could have easily held her underwater, helpless to reach the floating child. She tugs Little Cedar closer. “Did it speak to you? Do you hear anything?”

  Little Cedar shakes his head, and sidles up flush against her leg.

  Grey Rabbit searches the horizon, then the open water near shore. She turns to Bullhead, her eyes dark with fear.

  “A big sheet of ice, shining in the sun,” says Bullhead, nodding as if in agreement with herself. She has seen something similar before. She gives Little Cedar’s hat a playful pat. “Why don’t you come back to the fire with us, Little No Eyes,” she says, using his pet name, given for the way his eyes close when he laughs. “There’s plenty of work you can help with. Come. Don’t forget your bow.”

  Little Cedar puts his hand in the snow, where the arced shape had cut its way down. He pulls out his bow and aims toward Gichigami.

  “It’s gone,” he squeals, and they turn back to the water where the horizon, once again, is an unbroken line.

  “Come, both of you. It’s cold here,” says Bullhead.

  Little Cedar protests, but only in word. He walks between them, a seed to their shell. Grey Rabbit keeps a tight hand on his shoulder and a wary eye turned toward the shining big water.

  1902

  The white-maned waves rise and fall, cascading toward shore in carousel lines. Rumbling spray and muffled thunder. Knuckled legs churning and watery hooves, kicking up whorls of sand. Every edge rough washed. Every sharpne
ss worked smooth. Rock. Wood. Bone. Glass. Frothing necks riding blue water breach and then sink back again, plunging headlong into roundness.

  A cove of smooth grey stones, soft and flat and sun warmed against her cheek. They press into her ribs in hard sickles. Ear to rock, she can hear their hoofbeats, can feel the vibration in her bones. Warmed hair, frigid spray from the lake, cool wind, and the gulls flying stiff winged.

  They cascade toward shore in carousel lines.

  Cool on her arm. Cold. Her arm’s cold. Berit draws it under the quilts and holds it between her legs. No more wild wind, no hoof-driven waves. She rises to her elbow and stretches. The air smells of ash. The fire has dwindled. Out the window is a wide, pale winter morning. With Gunnar at the lumber camp, the fire is solely her duty. Again, she has slept past stoking time. She throws the quilt over her head, warm in her dark cocoon.

  Another week and he should be back. She slaps the quilt down and jumps to the floor, icy on the soles of her feet. The coals are still hot so the new logs flare. She adjusts the flue and is back in bed, pulling the warm covers around her. The crackling wood is a friendly presence, a certain kind of company.

  Her sketchbook lies on the chair where she left it. If she’d propped it up when she fed the stove, she’d be able to see it from the bed. She’s working on a sketch of bears, trying to do it from memory. The new wood whistles and pops. Drawing is the one thing that saves her, it has since she was a girl. She’d have come unhinged without it, eleven years old and bedridden for months.

  She’d been cobbing for rock on the dump heap near the mine, drawn by the hope of finding missed copper. And though a feeling in her stomach had warned her, she ignored it and kept on climbing. The rest still remains a blur—the sliding and twisting, the ripping pain. There were two round clouds in the sky as she lay there, and the sound . . . bam . . . bam . . . bam . . . rhythmic and forever, of the stamp mill on the hill.

  She filled the first sketchbook she was given, front to back, both sides of each page, and the cardboard cover as well. She drew pictures of everything around her: a wilting daisy in a tin cup on the bed stand; her leg, twice broken, propped on a folded quilt; the dark pine woods of the Keweenaw out the window.

  If Gunnar could see her lolling like this. But the salt beef is in the lake and it’s time to haul it out. He would have his say about her cooking it when there’s still a bit of moose hanging in the cool-shed. She recalls the animal’s wary brown eye as she’d stood at the door, the bull in her sights, waiting for it to move from the garden, not wanting to drop it in her potatoes. It was her last, biggest, and easiest kill of the fall. Gunnar will squawk, but she’s saving the last of the moose for his return. In three leaping bounds Berit reaches her clothes, which she’d left to warm by the stove. She dresses quickly, last, her black skirt, which tents the warmth around her legs.

  The snow is dropping straight, no wind, as she walks down the path with her buckets and auger. There are fox tracks on the lake that weren’t there the day before. They skirt the shoreline, cross over her rope, and climb the rocks just short of the point. The snowfall creates a leaden hush, and now and then floating slabs of ice clack together in the water. The skin of ice on the hole shatters with a swift poke. The weighty meat twirls at the end of the rope as she pulls it from the cold water.

  Now the snow’s coming down in big fleecy clumps, and she’s shifting the weight of her load as she walks up the path, thinking about when she wants to start the beef boiling now that it won’t be too salty to eat, and then whether to have it ready for dinner or supper. It doesn’t seem to matter much when Gunner’s away. The ripped net in the fish house still needs mending, but there’s something about horses on the edge of her mind, and she lifts her eyes as if in search of them through the cottony curtain of falling snow where a man is standing, and fear combs up the back of her neck, and her feet slide out, and the buckets fall.

  John Runninghorse stands over her with a startled expression, his head cocked, his black hair catching snow, holding dead snowshoe rabbits that dangle along the length of his leg. “For the love of God,” Berit blurts out. He lays down his stringer and offers her a hand, but she’s already scrambling to her feet, flustered and brushing snow from her coat. “Gunnar’s not here,” she says breathlessly.

  He nods and moves past her on the path, gathering her empty buckets as he goes. What in heaven’s name is he doing at her place, showing up at this time of year? Berit’s heart slows to a dull knock, and she circles her wrist, which is going to be sore.

  The snared rabbits lay stretched at her feet, fat clumps of snow gathering in their white fur. Fresh. She can tell as she lifts them, still pliable and swinging as she continues up the hill.

  Again, she is startled when she sees the large snowshoes leaning against the cabin. It’s rare to see anything that she doesn’t know by heart, or that she didn’t set in place with her own two hands. She leaves the rabbits hanging from a nail by the door. Oh, what a stew she could make of them. Through the window, John’s a boulder crouched on the lake, a lattice of snow falling around him. She feeds the fire to get coffee started, then ties her good apron around her waist—not one of her everydays that she makes from flour sacks. It is hard to imagine why he’s come. It’s obviously not time to help set the anchor rocks. There isn’t even a pudding to serve. Just yesterday’s soup. That’s the best she can do. At least the sugar bowl is full.

  Gunnar would want the best for John. He thinks the man is some sort of prince, though she has never understood why. Not that there’s anything wrong with him, it’s just that she feels uncomfortable in his presence. And it’s not because he’s Indian; she’s known Indians all her life, having grown up near them on the Keweenaw. She’s not like those women, the newly come-over, who are afraid they’ll be murdered in their sleep, their children stolen, and all manner of things.

  “He knows more about this land than I could ever hope to.” That’s the kind of thing Gunnar says when he’s been around John. Once Gunnar told her that John knew a hundred different plants in the woods. “What they’re good for. When to get them. Sure, but he doesn’t think anything of it. In fact, he seems embarrassed about it. He says that in his grandmother’s time, everyone knew twice as many.” It’s hard for Berit to imagine these conversations, since John will barely meet her eye, much less talk, and Gunnar is shy with most anyone but her. The lid of the kettle starts to rattle, and now John’s coming up through the snow. He’s got the auger balanced over his shoulder, and her piece of salt beef cradled in his arm.

  Berit raps on the window and holds up a coffee cup, but John passes without looking in. Before she knows it, he’s in the doorway, standing there in his heavy wool coat, mitts to his elbows, boots to his knees. Filling it. Though he’s not that tall. He’s broad, but that’s not it either. He’s one of those people that just seems bigger.

  “Please come in. Sit down. Do forgive me. I just didn’t see you standing there . . . Of course, I wasn’t expecting anyone . . .” Her voice is babbling like a stream.

  John nods and scrapes a chair from the table. She’s glad he chose the one facing the window, so she can stand behind him near the stove. She pours him coffee and offers sugar and a spoon, feeling the cold coming off of his clothes.

  “What brings you?” She retreats back to heat the soup, a false cheerfulness in her voice. Here she’d been pining for someone to talk to and now she can’t seem to manage.

  John tastes the coffee, nods, adds sugar.

  Lord, the bed is still unmade. “I hope you like pea soup,” she says, moving the pot to the center of the heat. She’ll have to be careful when she ladles it up so as not to scrape the bottom where she burned it yesterday. “It’s not much, but I’ll get that beef boiling.”

  When she turns she finds him looking at her drawing on the chair. His head bobs approvingly, and she feels a puff of pride. People have always been complimentary of her pictures. When they lived in Duluth she drew a series of cards in colored i
nk that some said she could sell if she wanted—deer bedding in the snow, pinecones, tumbling waterfalls. Someday she’ll paint. Have a palette of oils and be able to mix any color. She looks at John, then at her lead-drawn bear. John turns away with a funny expression.

  “They’re black bears,” she says, picturing them painted on canvas.

  He stirs his coffee.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  He lifts his cup and nods.

  “No, tell me, what do you think?”

  “Your bears don’t have tails.”

  “What?”

  “No tails.”

  Berit takes the book from the chair. “Bears don’t have tails. I’ve never seen a bear’s tail.”

  “Maybe you’ve only seen them from the front.”

  “What kind of tail?”

  “Small. Furry.”

  She can feel heat rising on her neck. John sits gazing at the tabletop, as if there was something interesting there, a smile, she thinks, playing at the edge of his mouth. She certainly doesn’t see what’s amusing.

  “Well, it’s a drawing from memory. I’ll have to wait until spring and see for myself. Honestly I can’t recall seeing a bear with a tail.”

  “All the animals in these woods have tails. All the mammals, that is, except you and me.”

  Berit carries her book to the nightstand, not really sure what she’s feeling. Why should she care what he thinks? He probably has never even seen a real painting. She certainly didn’t like the reference to her tail, or his, or that she doesn’t have one.

  The soup is burning. Berit hurries to the stove and lifts the pot off the heat. She can only make the best of it. She ladles the steaming soup into a bowl. “So what brings you this way? You never did say.” There’s the false cheer again.

  “Rabbits.”

  “Rabbits?” She sets the bowl in front of him.

  “That’s why I came. I’m delivering them from Gunnar.”