The Long-Shining Waters

by Sosin, Danielle

  By then she will have crossed to the land of the spirits. She thinks of those she’ll see again. Her parents, who lived long and died in peace, and her husband, captured and murdered in a raid. There are stories equally as awe-filled as brutal. She looks up into the evening sky, where the fisher with the arrow in its tail is rising.

  I see corralled logs. A giant wooden rug. Rolling slowly overhead.

  And the many scattered timbers. They waterlog and sink on the long journey across the great lake.

  Cedar. Red birch. Bird’s eye maple. Hemlock. Red oak. The pine, and the fir.

  Voices stream on the currents. Men at work in the woods. The undercutters. The swampers. The crosscut saw teams. Comes a whinnying horse. The ring of an ax. And a tree rooted for half a millennium falls.

  From east to west. In fifty-odd years.

  The sky opens. The winds sweep in.

  I find logs in jumbles like broken-down cabins. Each marked with the timber stamps of the men who staked claim. They lay at the bottoms of pitch-black valleys. Appear as ridges beneath the silt.

  This one lies on a ledge of bedrock swept clean by an underwater current. A slumbering giant. Femur of a god. A sharp flint lodged in its side.

  And then his dark shape. It slips over the ledge. His pale hand trailing like a falling star.

  2000

  The afternoon keeps changing from grey to sunny, Nora’s mood swinging along with it. She sips on her coffee-to-go, the hole in the plastic lid sharp against her lip. Going around the lake is Nikki’s idea, not hers. And while it holds only a mild appeal, she didn’t want to turn around and go home any more than she wanted to stay in Bayfield.

  “Sorry, lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The man’s condescending tone still irks her.

  That morning, she’d gone back to the pier, the dream clinging like a dryer sock. Gulls cried in the morning sky as she retraced her steps, eyeing the cold water.

  “Excuse me, is there a sunken ship off the pier?” she asked a man bent over his boat engine.

  He looked at her like she was stupid. “Off the pier? It’s shallow. Maybe fifteen feet.”

  “Are you sure? Really? What about farther out?”

  “I guess there are schooner wrecks off the islands that people dive.”

  “No. This was a fancy boat, with dressed-up passengers.”

  “Sorry, lady.” He turned his back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Nora checks her rearview mirror. There aren’t any cars, just the orange sky of Rose’s painting and her old suitcase on the seat. She hasn’t seen the lake for a long time, only sensed it at the end of long red dirt roads. According to the circle map she’d picked up, she is still going the right way. The map is simple, small and glossy, with nothing on it but major roads and an outline of the lake. She would have needed to buy a handful of real maps—Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, Minnesota—just to have all the pieces.

  “In area, the largest lake in the world, holding ten percent of its fresh water,” the map reads. “Maximum depth 1,333 feet.” Nora lights a cigarette, her mind attempting to picture the depth. She recalls being in the lighthouse on the cliff, but that is nowhere near high enough. She pictures a thousand-foot-long freighter, then flips the ship on end in her mind, but a distance in open air is simply not the same as a drop below the water surface. It’s unimaginable in the worst way.

  Michigan has a different feel than the forested land of Wisconsin. There are yellow yield signs for deer and for moose, and occasionally a huddled community. Winter-battered with peeling signs for fresh pastries, they have names like Tula, Topaz, and Matchwood. None of the towns are marked on her map.

  Watch for falling rock, the signs read.

  It’s mining country, with rugged hills and cliffs. Even the sky looks worked hard, as if all the metal below the ground had leeched up and was tarnishing the air. “Watch for blowing and drifting snow.” A fat bug splats against her windshield. She’s watching all right. Just plain watching.

  Nora squeezes the cold metal handle of the gas nozzle, and flips the tab down so she doesn’t have to hold it. She reaches through the window and lifts out the map. The gas station sits at a clearly marked juncture, and she has to choose which way to go. North up the Keweenaw Peninsula, the long arm of land that juts into the lake, or east toward Marquette, passing the whole thing by. She doesn’t remember the shape of the lake appearing so much like an animal’s face. A wolf, maybe, pointy and menacing, with Isle Royale for an eye and the Keweenaw forming the animal’s open mouth.

  “Anything else?” the man asks, stacking two packs of cigarettes next to her coffee.

  “Actually,” Nora sets the map on the counter, “can you tell me about these different ways to go?”

  “Where do you want to end up?”

  “I’m doing the circle drive.”

  “Then you want to go toward Ironwood.” He taps his finger on the map.

  “I just came from there.”

  “You did? That’s unusual. You’re going around backwards. Everyone goes the other way.”

  Big snow country, the sign says. She is out in the boonies, and second guessing her decision. Mass City. Winona. Toivola. She’d picked the north route up the Keweenaw so she could tell Nikki about the peninsula. But there’s nothing to see, just the two-lane road flanked by pines stunted from all the snowfall. “An average of twenty feet,” the man at the gas station told her. “The lake effect is extreme up here. The clouds fill up over the water and then dump their load when they hit the land.” But there is no water in sight, only short trees, and the road that is taking her further from anywhere familiar.

  Nikki is in her thoughts, then Ralph’s lost ship photos. She tries in vain to recall a passenger boat like the one in her dream. It’s weird how dreams sometimes affect her, like strange weather inside her head.

  The road unspools endlessly before her. She’s in the middle of nowhere. What if she had car trouble? Nora pushes the lighter knob and opens her notebook. “Storage Room.” She sets her mind to a task.

  The long curve descending to the towns of Houghton-Hancock appear without hardly a warning. There are fast-food restaurants, a superstore, a car lot lined with pickup trucks—red ones, yellow, and black, all in a row like bright hard candies. Just like that, Nora’s back in civilization. She feels like waving and honking her horn.

  In minutes she’s on a bridge above a river that separates the towns. It feels a little like a miniature Duluth/Superior—old buildings, old neon signs. Right away there are markers for the road out of town, so Nora drives into the lot of a place called Alfredo’s.

  “I’ll have the spaghetti and a side salad with French.” Nora closes the menu, feeling dazed. It was only that morning that she’d left Bayfield, though it feels like a week’s time has passed.

  “Anything to drink?” asks the waiter. He’s small waisted and wiry, with short legs. Nora wonders if he’s Alfredo.

  “I’ll have a glass of the red.” She points to the menu.

  She can feel the road in her body, the constant motion and the blur of green trees. Nora smoothes the bent cover of her notebook. There is a coffee spill on the back now, too. “No one knows if you belong or not,” she reads.

  She peruses the pages she’d added to while driving, making sure that the entries are legible. “Plaster arm.” Someone stuck it up in the nets as a joke, but it never got taken down. “Antique railroad lantern.” Remembering it had brought to mind her first trip to California. Joannie, everyone said she was crazy not to fly, but she grew up in a town crossed with railroad tracks and she always wondered what it would be like to ride out on one. By then, all the traffic was freight. Passenger service to the Twin Ports was defunct. So she rode a train west from St. Paul. Once was enough. She’s flown every time since.

  “You’re not taking notes for the Health Department, I hope.” The man puts a glass of wine on her white paper place mat.

  “No. God no.
I’m writing . . . it’s hard to explain, really. Lists of stuff.”

  “Groceries? Laundry? I usually do mine on the backs of envelopes.” He smiles. A smoker. She can tell by his teeth. “But hey, maybe you save yours or something. Keep them all together in a book for posterity.”

  “How long have you been psychic?” Nora tastes her wine. “Do you want to know what I bought at the drugstore in February?” She flips to a page and starts reciting. “One bottle of citrus fingernail-polish remover. Kleenex, pocket-size.” She keeps a straight face, but the man is chuckling.

  “No, really. What are you writing about?”

  “They’re lists. I told you. You see, I had a fire.”

  “Ah,” he says, holding his hand up for her to stop. “I’m truly sorry to hear that. Are they the insurance lists, or the ones for yourself?”

  “You know?”

  He nods sympathetically. “My apartment. I lost everything but my guns and the clothes I was wearing. And just when you think you’re settled, something comes at you out of the blue. Once—and this was several months after the fire—I was shaving, not thinking of anything special, when I remembered this photograph of me and my kid sister. Well, I hadn’t looked at it since who knows. It was just sitting in a desk drawer with a lot of papers, but still, you see, it can’t be replaced. I hope you didn’t lose your photographs.”

  Nora feels her heart soften, and pressure well behind her eyes. She’s glad for the dinging counter bell, calling him away from her table.

  He passes her carrying salad plates, then clears and wipes an empty booth. Nora drops her gaze whenever he looks her way. Sit down and tell me everything, she wants to say. She imagines him drawing her a map on the place mat. “It’s easy,” he’d tell her, “just follow these lines.” But when has anyone ever shown her what to do? She’s always made do for herself. When he comes to clear her plate, she doesn’t bring up the fire.

  “Do you mind if I give you a little advice?” asks the waiter, holding a plate with a piece of strawberry pie.

  “Absolutely.” Nora straightens, grateful before he speaks.

  “Forget the lists.”

  “What? Why do you say that?”

  He smiles sadly but doesn’t answer. “On me,” he says, placing the pie in front of her.

  1622

  The sun is high and bright after three days of steady rain had cast a hush over the camp. Grey Rabbit squints against the wood smoke, lifted from her fire by the wind. The fire is warm and also the sun. It seeps into her skin and scalp as it does only when winter has truly fled. She stirs the hot pitch and adds a bit of the powder she’d pounded from burnt cedar chips. She has not dreamt of children, her dreams have been vague. She feels like a hollow log.

  “Look at my deer,” calls Little Cedar. He has his deer sticks under his arms and is walking four-legged in a large circle. He has more energy these days, though he’s still not himself. She hopes he’ll feel well enough to join in the gaming when they move to the long rapids at Bawating. The pitch bubbles. Grey Rabbit checks the bottom of the container.

  “Look,” calls Little Cedar again, pointing his lips to the sky. An arrow of geese is flying over, honking and clamoring, flapping their huge wings. “Look at those two, trying to catch up.”

  She turns around. Her son stands head back, face to the sky, one hand shielding his eye. Grey Rabbit’s stomach drops. She worries for his sight constantly, for the difficulties he could meet if left with one eye.

  “The geese return.”

  Grey Rabbit whirls.

  Bullhead lowers her load of fresh birch-bark rolls. “The stand by the island in the river was ready. The trees shed their bark as quickly as young husbands dropping clothes.” Laughing, she loosens the tie around the rolls.

  Grey Rabbit smiles faintly, then turns to rake a hot rock toward the pitch. Bullhead searches the side of her face, noticing the dark half-moons below her eyes. The loss of laughter is not a good sign. If need be she’ll arrange for a medicine man at Bawating.

  2000

  Nora twirls the postcard rack in the Stop and Shop in Calumet. At least the sun had come out after lunch, the light glowing through her glass float as she drove. She chooses a pink sunset over the lake, and one of a house that’s so piled with snow it looks like three mattresses are stacked on the roof. Nora pays for the postcards and asks the cashier if she has any ideas about where on the Keweenaw she might go.

  “Well, it depends what you’re interested in. Lighthouses. Waterfalls. Ghost towns.” The woman behind the counter looks at Nora over her glasses. “You’re between snow season and summer, so you won’t find much open. The site of the old Cliff Mine and stamp mill aren’t far, and Eagle River is a popular destination. From there, 26 is a nice drive along the water.”

  Nora sits on a bench in the sun between an ice machine and a free air pump, looking at the pamphlets the woman gave her. A sheet with information about the copper booms and busts. A glossy pamphlet from a historical society with pictures—a parlor with a Victrola, crosscut saws, and other logging memorabilia, a cluster of roughly hewn miner’s cabins, the blue water of the lake beyond.

  The road winds like a serpent through blink-of-an-eye towns: Kearsarge, Allouez, Ahmeek, Cliff. There’s a boarded-up church, and everything is quiet. Welcome to Copper Country, a sign reads, but there’s nothing around that looks like copper. Nor do there seem to be any people.

  She’s alone in the bubble of her car. Nora pulls onto the shoulder and stops. She picks up the map. She’s not lost. If she had a loaf of bread she’d be dropping crumbs. It’s as if she were journeying backward in time, making her way up the hard spine of some creature long ago turned to stone. She holds the notebook against the steering wheel and writes, “Everything around this lake is about the past.”

  The plaque on the main street in Eagle River reads Founded in 1843. The town’s so tiny she can drive every street in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. Some of the buildings are nondescript and some have historic clapboard storefronts, but the only sign of life that she has seen is laundry hanging in a backyard.

  The lake is down at the end of the street. She can hear its faint hiss like radio static. She drives the couple of blocks and parks on the shoulder, then walks down to the shore. It’s water as far as she can see, and nothing on the horizon but long low clouds. There is no one in either direction, not a single soul along the beach. The waves fan and sink back, hissing in clear sheets over long ridges of sand.

  It’s empty. Eerie. The lake slides up and down. Behind her the silent town. The houses. The Victorian inn. The water hisses and goose bumps rise on her arms. She could be the last person on earth. The water rises, folds, and drains back, and she feels everything soften and slide with it, as if all the solidity were seeping away, leaving everything boneless and mutable.

  Nora turns away from the lake. Her neck is warm and she feels short of breath. Even the tree that she parked beneath, the sunlight on its spring leaves, looks fragile and unreal. Vague, more like a memory of a tree. The only thing that appears to have any weight is her car, and she heads straight for it, starts the engine, and gets out of there.

  1902

  Berit sits on the bench at the end of the point, her skin chilled and the sky paling orange. Her blouse, she sees, is rumpled, her skirt, filthy. She’s in the calm dull space after crying, where nothing exists but unanswerable questions. How can the water be orange-skinned and beautiful even while there is no second chance?

  A gull sits on the water in the orange light, its white wings folded, its beauty undeniable. And she feels her innards stretch, her heart, her lungs pressing against her ribs, as both pain and beauty try to claim the space. Either she’ll stretch large enough to hold both, or she’ll rip in a way that will be beyond mending. Neither feels like a choice.

  The sky is in its last glow, and the surface of the lake is rolling. Berit makes her way in from the point. She’s rubbing the cold out of her arms and watching where she s
teps when something red catches her eye. She climbs down onto the slanting lower ledge, where a small birch-bark dish filled with tiny red strawberries is placed in the rocks near the lapping water. John must have left them the other day. She bends down and fingers a berry. Some kind of Indian offering. To Gunnar, maybe. Or maybe the lake. In light of where he placed them, they’re certainly not meant for her.

  “You don’t know,” she had accused him. But he does. She saw it in his eyes. Most people must. Of course everything dies. Given that, it’s beyond belief that anyone or anything functions at all. Seeds get sown. Lumber cut. Horses shoed. Children washed. She picks a red berry from the dish, turns it in her fingers, and puts in her mouth.

  2000

  Nora drives all the way from Eagle River to Marquette, chainsmoking with the radio on, trying to shake the sensation she felt, and questioning her mental health. She finds a motel just past town, goes straight to her room, and lies down shoes and all. The highway and the lake sound through her closed window, her body buzzing from the road. She lifts the phone onto the bed.

  “Nanny, you’re in Marquette? Let me get the map. Oh, you’re getting close to the Shipwreck Museum. I can’t wait.” Nikki’s excitement hums across the line. “Will you bring me a souvenir? Pleeeease?”

  “You know I will, Bun.” She’d agree to anything as happy as she is to be hearing Nikki’s voice, connecting and grounding her to something real.

  “Guess what? I already got two postcards. I never got mail before.”

  “Well you keep checking, ’cause there’s more on the way. Tell me everything you did today.”