The Long-Shining Waters

by Sosin, Danielle

  She prays until she can’t feel the weight of the skin.

  She prays until the medicine stone grows cold.

  Grey Rabbit uncovers her head to the dazzling morning, the water below her sloshing with light, and the wind blowing through the tops of the pines. Her heart feels open and sore, as she stands humbled before the Great Spirit, Gichi-Manitou. The essence. The mystery surrounding her.

  Her legs and her feet tingle as she stands. She stretches tall, breathes the pine-filled air, bends forward and touches the rough rock with her fingers. The sensation of heat rises with her torso, through her chest and up the back of her neck, boring finally through the crown of her head. When she stands her full height, the world goes mute and a strong silent wind blows against her face. She spreads her arms and lets it blow over her. A white bird is racing over the water. Not a bird, but a mass of small white butterflies. When they pass overhead they take the wind with them and give her back the sounds of the morning—a piping chickadee and the water below. And for that moment she becomes the water’s sparkling energy, the rock, the pines—she’s indistinguishable from the air. Like sunlight. Like the expansive nature of gratitude. Grey Rabbit encompasses everything.

  2000

  The morning is overcast with a low hanging sky that darkens out over the islands. Nora stands on the town dock. Gulls are lined up on the harbor break wall and the Madeline Island Ferry is loading with cars. She has no reason to be in Bayfield. She’d sat at the table half the night at the motel, the window open, smoking, the TV on. When the sky grew light, she settled her bill and drove off. Nora steps carefully to the edge of the pier, where the pilings descend into the water—grey, with dark ripples running over its surface—then backs away to a more comfortable distance. She looks toward her car and the phone booth she’d parked near, intending to call someone and check in, but it’s too early for Rose, and engaging Janelle so soon after an argument can sometimes set her off again.

  The cars disappear, one by one, into the ferry’s open white mouth. She’d heard stories about Madeline Island from Rose, from back in the days when she and Buck lived there. The reservation she’d passed just outside town is the one Buck was connected to—his mother or father, one of them was Indian. He didn’t look like an Indian, though. “Findian. Half Finnish, half Indian,” Rose said.

  The ramp rises and the deckhands wind the rope, as the ferry backs slowly away from the landing, filling the air with the smell of diesel. The ferry turns its bow toward the gap in the break wall. It chugs through and the sound of its engines disperse, the boat shrinking as it moves into the grey, behind it, the flock of begging gulls.

  Nora finds a bench and taps a cigarette from her pack. The boats moored in slips shift in the wind, their ropes growing slack and then taut. When she drops her match she sees little white things, sticks and tiny drums scattered at her feet. She bends to look closer and picks one up, to find it’s a bone, fish or bird, something small. They’re behind her too, now that she sees them, lying on the ground wherever the ledge keeps them from blowing into the water.

  “Nice town you have here,” a man says as he passes, a camera dangling from his wrist. She almost has to laugh. She’s a fish out of water. She couldn’t be more lost.

  Cold drops of rain spot the pier’s pavement and cover the water surface with dark rings. Nora lowers her head and makes for the phone booth.

  “Nanny!”

  “Well, Bun. What are you doing home?”

  “School’s out. I can’t go back till fall.”

  It’s a mystery the way Nikki has taken to school. She certainly didn’t get it from her or Janelle. “Can I talk to your mom?”

  “She’s in the shower. Do you want me to have her call you back?”

  “No.” Nora toes a penny on the floor. “Actually, I’m not at home. I’m in Bayfield.”

  “Cool. How come? Are you going to the islands?”

  “I don’t think so.” Rain patters on the roof of the phone booth, and needled streaks appear on the glass. “I’m just taking a little car trip.”

  “Nooooo. Without me? Where are you going? Are you going all the way around?”

  “Around what?”

  “The lake, Nanny. You can drive all the way around. We did a section on it in school, but we didn’t get to go. Just read stuff and saw pictures.”

  “Well, that’s something to consider.”

  “Oh wow, I want to come. We could go to the locks and everything. I’ve never even been to Canada. Mom, Nanny’s going around the lake. No really. She’s on the phone right now.”

  “Mom? Where are you? What’s this?”

  Nora can hear Nikki talking excitedly in the background. “I’m taking a vacation.”

  “You’re kidding? And you’re what? Nikki, shush now. You’re driving around the lake?”

  “Well, I’m just trying to decide.” Nora twists the metal phone cord.

  “But all by yourself?”

  “I’m perfectly capable.”

  “Of course, Mom, it’s just . . . I can’t remember you ever taking a vacation.”

  “I was in California last year.”

  “That’s different. You were with Grandma and Aunt Joan. What’s that noise?”

  “It just started raining.”

  Nikki’s voice cuts in from the other phone. “You’ve got to send me postcards from everywhere, Nanny.”

  Nora closes the long door to her car. The flags on the boat masts are flying stiff and the water beyond the break wall is whitecapped. The man with the camera dashes past, and the rain comes down a racket on the roof of her car. Everything out the windshield—the pier, the masts, the long dark break wall—blurs and runs together on the glass. Nora picks up her notebook and pen. “Nobody knows if you belong or not,” she writes. She’s completely exhausted. Her body feels like lead. She needs to find a room and draw the shades. Nora drives a few blocks, wipers flapping. Edgewater Motel. Vacancy. The word blinks in pink neon light.

  She’s walking along the edge of the pier when someone grabs her from behind, trapping her arms and she can’t break free. She struggles and twists, but still they go over, sliding splashless into the water.

  “Don’t worry,” a voice says, “just breathe. Breathe.”

  “Let go. I can’t swim.” Her legs kick wildly.

  “Relax,” the voice says against her ear. “Trust me.” She recognizes the voice as Frank’s.

  “Shhhhh.” He pulls her underwater.

  She elbows and kicks, but she can’t get loose. He has her squeezed in his arms as he drags her down. She kicks at his calves and butts back with her head, until his teeth bite down hard on her neck, shocking her into stillness.

  “See,” he says, and she realizes it is true. She can breathe. She is breathing underwater. The world is thick green, with yellow spokes of light that angle down and dissolve around them. She turns to Frank to speak, but he shakes his head, no, his blue eyes calm behind a snorkeling mask. Deeper and deeper they sink through the water, the silence pressing down as the color drains. He tightens his grip and flips her around. There, hovering overhead, is their undulating image looking back. Her stricken face, and Frank’s calm next to hers, as if reflected in wavy glass. He tugs her back around, and they sink into darkness.

  They are in a narrow slanted hallway, walking, though she has no sensation of her feet. A man in underwear and dark socks is brushing shaving cream over his jaw. He’s watching a woman behind him in the mirror. She’s talking, but Nora can’t hear any sound from her lips. The man nods, stretches his cheek taut, shears a swath of white cream with a straightedge blade. Garter and stockings, her slip is beige. She trails her finger down his spine, smiles at him, and turns away.

  An emerald-green dress is laid out at the foot of a bed, its coverlet strewn with broken glass and books. The woman pulls the dress over her head and the fabric floats down around her pearly legs. She looks straight into Nora’s face, with hazel eyes, slanted, catlike.

&nbs
p; She is swimming, but not swimming, Nora’s just there in the water, her head dry in the dry air. Above her, the hills of town are dotted with spring green, and quiet houses face the lake. All the windows reflect the blue sky, and she knows that each house holds the secret. Of course, she realizes, that is why the people live there.

  Nora’s in bed, her eyelids heavy. She’s hot, her body sweaty under the covers. Her mind slides back and forth, trying to bring all the pieces together. The man shaving. She can picture him clearly, down to his round, flat fingernails. And Frank. What the hell? Frank of all people.

  It’s late in the day, almost 4:00 on the clock, and Nora feels muffled and disoriented. She gets out of bed, slides the drape back, and peers into sunlight too harsh for her eyes. A kid is biking on the sidewalk across the street, and the tops of the trees are swaying in the wind. Nora shoves the window open and lets the drape fall back, blocking out the bright light. She feels the woman with the catlike eyes. Hazel. Slanted. Looking right through her. She feels her as if she were in the room. She turns on the lamp and then the TV, filling the space with laughter and color.

  1902

  John sits on the stone beach. He draws on his pipe. The water ripples blue. He’d like to move on and forget he ever came, forget Gunnar’s wife standing over him with a gun, forget how he’d left her crying by the cabin. He sucks on his pipe and sends the smoke out, floating his feelings over the water. Gunnar’s body is somewhere out there, somewhere under all that icy-cold water. There had been something true between them, which he’d thought a lot about since hearing the news of his death. They had a rare comfort with each other, even though Gunnar came from a faraway land. In thinking, he’d decided that was part of it. They were both born in one world, only to find themselves navigating another. John tamps another pinch of tobacco in his pipe and cups a match against the lake breeze.

  “What happened out there?” he asks the horizon.

  The lake rocks lazily.

  He remembers the time he told Gunnar about having lost Alice and his youngest to tuberculosis. The conversation was striking not because Gunnar had so much to say, but because of the way he’d listened.

  John catches movement out the corner of his eye, as an animal dips under the water. He waits for it to surface again. It could have been a loon or a cormorant, he didn’t get a good look before it dove. The round head of an otter pops up. He follows its progress across the cove, a short wake trailing behind its head.

  “Will you eat?”

  Gunnar’s wife stands near the small shed. She has wound her hair back and put on an apron. She gestures to him with fish in her hands. John nods and turns back to the water. She needs to go back to her people, he thinks, trying to recall if Gunnar ever mentioned any. He’ll take her as far as the head of the lake.

  John lets the water fill his eyes, the sliding, shifting, calming blue. He scouts for the otter, but it’s gone again. Up on the hill, the cabin door shuts.

  Berit sets two places at the table, which she can barely stand for the pain it causes. Two cups and saucers, two sets of silver; it’s the ghost of a life. It’s for Gunnar, she tells herself, making a plate of flour and meal for the fish. John knew about the lilac. She tries to picture the two of them talking, Gunnar revealing his surprise for her. Tears seep from her eyes again. She’s like a pail with a weak seam.

  Her hands lay the fish in the meal, turn them, making sure that the coating is even, but it is as if they are not her hands and she’s watching them work from a long distance. It occurs to her that she’s only serving fish. She can offer no bread because she hasn’t baked, and there’s nothing to take from her unplanted garden. The smell is overpowering when she lays the fish in the pan. She rushes to the door and props it open.

  Berit sets a plate in front of John. The sugar bowl is on the table, and a box of dried peaches. Nothing feels or looks right. She pours him coffee and sits down at the table. She can’t bear to be sitting as they are, with she in her place and John in Gunnar’s. Eating her plate of fish is unimaginable.

  John cuts into his food. It’s good, and he’s hungrier than he’d realized. His plate is nearly half empty when he notices that Gunnar’s wife hasn’t touched hers.

  “You should eat,” he says, but she stares out the window.

  The music teacher. That’s who she reminds him of—the straw hair, the line of her jaw. He pushes fish bones to the edge of his plate. The fire in the stove caves and crackles. She is the one who haunted him the longest, with her soft approach and her urging them to sing in the new language. And the singing would feel good to him, but afterward, he always felt bad.

  Berit doesn’t know what to say. Her only words have been to the cat. She nudges her plate to the side.

  “Thank you for planting the lilac,” she says. “I missed the smell of them in the spring. He remembered things like that.” She glances at John, her eyes welling, but he’s intent on eating, not looking at her.

  “Katt-Katt,” she says, glad for her appearance at the door. She rubs her fingers together under the table. The cat trots over and brushes against her leg. Berit sets her plate on the floor, and the cat launches in hungrily. She looks up to find John’s incredulous face. He picks up his coffee cup, and strides out the door.

  “Why are you even here?” says Berit, marching out of the cabin. “I didn’t ask you to come. There’s no one keeping you.” John stands at the woodpile, cup in hand, looking up at the spring-green woods.

  “That was good food you put on the floor.”

  “I don’t need you here judging me.” Berit paces back and forth. “How dare you even. You don’t know.” Tears stream down her cheeks. “You have no idea what this is.” Her hands wave in the air.

  John turns his head slowly, and she sees in his eyes something soft and penetrable. In that moment, she knows that she’s absolutely wrong.

  1622

  “Just a few more,” says Bullhead, holding a bowl in each hand.

  Grey Rabbit maneuvers hot rocks under the stew, sets the antler on a mat, and takes up a spoon. Portioning food into the bowls, she makes sure that each has a piece of the deer that was Standing Bird’s first kill. There are wild potatoes, new sugar for seasoning, young green ferns, and last season’s dried berries. Bullhead breathes in the rich aroma. “Is the stew container going to last?”

  “The bark still has a little moisture left.”

  “Imagine if we had the pot that doesn’t burn.” Bullhead laughs remembering last summer, when she’d finally made it through the crowd and touched the pot with her own hand. “Even without fire, it heated better than a rock in the sun. Walking Through says that more could come over the eastern trade routes. We’ll see when we get to Bawating.” Bullhead sniffs the stew again. “Regardless, you’ve done well with the feast. It’s no easy task to prepare for so many.”

  Grey Rabbit lowers her eyes. A hopeful watchfulness lies between them these days as they see how the medicine takes hold. Bullhead considered the white butterflies a good omen and Grey Rabbit is grateful, yet tentative. She feels as if she’s floating in a placid inlet, with the fast flashing river still near. She checks the stew pot, now beginning to burn, pours what’s left into Bullhead’s fresh container, then looks over the gathering.

  Her husband and sons sit together with the guests, everyone having made it a point to greet Standing Bird and acknowledge his new status among them. Little Cedar sits watching his brother in awe, looking even prouder than Night Cloud, she thinks. Her son glances over and smiles, or half smiles, as the thick poultice stiffens his skin, and the pain keeps one side of his face still. Daily, he greets her without any blame, only love for the care she gives. She sees the way he hides his discomfort, barely flinching as she spreads the mixture on the wound, still seeping and raw red. It splits her like wood every time, though she hides her feelings too, and tries to be only soothing.

  Bullhead approaches, more bowls in hand. “These are for us. Everyone’s well fed.” Grey Rabbit serve
s up a large portion for Bullhead, but takes only a taste for herself.

  They find a place to sit behind the guests as pipes and pouches of tobacco are drawn out, and the story of the hunt is told again. Standing Bird isn’t brash in its telling, but cautious, as if ordering each detail in his memory. He’d prepared his whistle with milkweed root, and she’d answered its call, doe to fawn, stepping out from behind a dense spruce. While she sniffed the air, he took aim, then let loose an arrow that found the base of her neck. The sharp flint sent her leaping, the arrow shaft breaking off against a tree. He shot another, but missed her entirely, and the arrow was lost in the woods.

  He told how she ran in fear, he following her through the dark cedar grove, and beyond the place of brown water through split rocks. At one point he was certain he’d lost her, but then he picked up her blood trail on new green moss. Eventually, she’d slowed to a walk. He could hear her snapping twigs as she moved, still trying to rid herself of him. By now they were near the deep hole in the river. Heads nod around the circle, the guests tracking the tracker in their minds, knowing each landmark he describes. It was there that he realized the doe was circling, so he began to circle as well, a larger circle that slowly enclosed her, until at last he could hear her breathing and see her plainly, bloodied and exhausted.

  The guests joke and tease, stand to speak in earnest. Bullhead scrapes the last stew from her bowl. She’s only half listening to their words, as similar words once spoken echo in her head—the first feast she’d given for each of her sons, the first feast of her brother, when she was just a girl. And though she wasn’t there, her father’s first feast. The same skills learned, the same rites of passage. The same challenges presented by the land, while the people of the people of the people pass through it. And so will be the feast of Standing Bird’s son someday.