The Onion River. Janelle’s place is coming up after the next guardrail.
She puts her blinker on, thinking about hugging Nikki.
Halfway down the drive she can see there’s no car.
Nora parks anyway, gets out, and rings the bell. The small yellow rambler is quiet. She can hear the lake on the other side of the house, hitting against the low bluff. There was something about the lake in her dream. Dirty dishes lie on the table near the picture window, and her postcards are taped to the window frame. Dancing Indians. A lighthouse. The big locks at the Soo. Coats, an umbrella, and Nikki’s little red knapsack are hanging on the pegs in the hall. She should have called. It’s her own fault. She tries the door and finds it unlocked.
Nora arranges Nikki’s gifts on the table, but then changes her mind and arranges them on her bed—the shipwreck sweatshirt laid out and the hat on the pillow, the sleeve holding the birch-bark canoe. It’ll be a fun surprise for her when she gets home. Out the window the lake is rough, and gulls are sitting in the dark rippled water. Nora walks back to the car.
The long door of the car squeaks open. Nora shoves her suitcase to the side and slides the painting out of the back seat. It’s scratched in the corner from the metal edge of her suitcase. She has grown fond of the painting—the orange sky, the gulls, the little boat off in the distance. Nora rubs her finger across the scratch.
She’ll have to explain things to Rose, try to make her understand.
Nora carries the bulky painting inside, slides Janelle’s chair from the table, and leaves the present propped in her place.
The Temperance River spills over ledges of rock. She’ll need to make a budget for herself, she’s been spending without keeping track. The last thing she needs is to chip away at the insurance money. She passes the sign for Nikki’s agate beach.
The clouds have pulled apart from each other, and cracks of blue sky show through the grey, brightening strips of the hillsides and patches of the lake. The Caribou River is brown and rushing. The Manitou.
Little Marais. An old man stands on the shoulder of the road, a big yellow dog at his feet. The man opens his mailbox. He waves as she passes.
News is on the radio, but Nora’s mind won’t follow. She turns the volume down to have the quiet low sound. Tettegouche. Palisade Head. The taconite plant at Silver Bay. Beaver Bay. She’s low on gas.
Split Rock Lighthouse. Nora sips her coffee-to-go. She’ll bring Nikki there the next time she visits. She remembers Nikki at her agate beach, nestled out on the rock ledge, her little shoulders square to the lake, content to sit and watch the water. “This is my special spot,” she’d said. Nora opens her notebook to the page marked “What Next?” and crosses out California.
At Gooseberry Falls there are people all over—walking out on the flat rocks, standing at the river’s edge, families and kids throwing stones in the water. She can hear the river when she crosses the bridge.
The road is banded in sun and shade. Her car filling with light and then dimming. Castle Danger. Crow Creek. The car brightens and abruptly goes dark as she enters the tunnel through Lafayette Bluff. At the end of the tunnel is an oval of light, and she drives right out into it.
Nora jiggles a cigarette up from her pack. She hasn’t figured anything out; she should be arriving home with a plan, or at least some good ideas. She has no stock to check, no orders to fill. She enters the mouth of the Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel—no runs to the bank, no payroll to get out, no books to keep, nobody to serve. Her car emerges back into daylight. She imagines the spot where her bar used to stand—an old foundation, a lot filled with weeds.
Nora idles at the light in Two Harbors, the flags at the gas station flapping in the wind. There’s a display of chain-saw art, bears and eagles, and a sandwich board advertising wild rice. She blows out a long stream of smoke that sways the glass float hanging from her rearview. It has made the whole trip with her. Somebody like Patrick must have made it. She lifts the float with her fingertips, finding a knob on the bottom that she hadn’t noticed before, where it was attached to the rod. She pictures him blowing as the orange glob expanded, and wonders if the breath of whoever made the float is still rolling around inside.
The treetops along the shoreline of the scenic highway are blowing. And a rock island in the lake looks white for all the gulls on it. She passes small resorts with their tiny square cabins and their signs saying Vacancy, and Yes, Open. A freighter is heading toward the Twin Ports, though she can’t tell if it’s the same one she saw earlier. She wonders who’s out there and how they’re feeling, whether they’re glad or sorry to be reaching port.
Knife River. The water tumbles down. She passes the smoked-fish house with its jumble of stuff. Everything is closing down toward home.
The French River. A man stands fishing.
Water runs to the lake from the fog-hung marshlands, where rotting stalks and sediment brown the water and moose lower their heads to drink, their massive racks like the roots of fallen trees.
And from creeks that meander through the shaded forest floor, with slow glassy water and matted leaves, where small birds flit from bank to bank, their brief shadows darkening the moss.
It joins the lake from rivers that fall over rock, crash in sheets, rise in spray.
And from those that wind through sandy red clay, their shoals grooved with the imprints of hooves, which harden and crack and curl like bark, until rain or rising water smooth the surface again.
Water circles from sea to sky and back. It lifts through tree roots, releases through leaves, and all the animals make their way. To the water, always changing, always wholly receptive.
2000
Nora pulls into a small gravel lot, turns off the engine, and gets out. The hood of her car is warm and ticking, the wind blowing cold off the lake. There were shadows on the wall in the middle of the night, and something important that she meant to remember.
Below her the lake sways like an empty swing. She can feel it in her stomach every time it drops away. The endless horizon isn’t there anymore; the Wisconsin shoreline is on the other side, and she can see the buildings and the grain elevators of home.
It looks the same, but it feels different. Smaller, all stuck down in a tiny little corner of something she’d discovered to be unbelievably big. Maybe she’ll take Nikki around next summer. She’d do it more slowly, do it right. It’s there at the edge of her mind. It was something about light and animals and water. The wind blows dark streaks across the grey lake, and then the gravel lot floods with sun.
Nora passes the lift bridge, and then the Lake Avenue exit, the aquarium, the pulp mill, and West Twenty-First, before veering off onto the bridge to Wisconsin. She is all eyes and watching from a delicate kept place, both grateful to be there and uncertain all the same. There’s the freight yard lined with boxcars from the DMN&R, and the Goodwill with cars in the parking lot. Then she’s up climbing over the grey water of the bay, where buoys mark the shipping lanes, and barren mountains of coal and lime are mounded at industrial slips.
Wind forces her car and the glass float swings. She looks across the watery horizon. When the bridge lets her down onto Hammond Avenue she will end the circle, she will have driven clear around. But then circles, they don’t have ends.
The air thins as sun hits the grain elevators, spreads over the water in shivering slivers. It fills her car and falls across the dash, catching the agate she’d only just put there. It glows red and orange and banded with white. Nikki will be amazed to see it. It was in the gravel lot when she’d ground out her cigarette. A big, red, translucent rock, lying at the toe of her shoe. All she had to do was pick it up.
Author’s Note
The Ojibwe language is comprised of many dialects. Sounds, spelling, and grammar vary from place to place. I would like to acknowledge that for the purpose of consistency between stories in the text, I chose to use word spellings from more than one dialect.
This work was gratefully funded in
part by two Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowhip Grants (in 2004 and 2007), funded through an appropriation from the McKnight Foundation.
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book involved a great deal of research. I am inspired by and indebted to all the fieldworkers and the authors of fiction and nonfiction whose works helped to inform this book.
My gratitude to the many people—knowledgeable researchers, sailors, patient and amused scientists, program personnel, collection tenders, and librarians—who accepted office visits and phone calls at: The University of Minnesota Duluth’s American Indian Resource Center, Minnesota Sea Grant, The Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The Minnesota Historical Society, The University of Wisconsin Superior’s Archives, The North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum, The Blue Heron Research Vessel, and The Large Lakes Observatory.
I would also like to acknowledge the dedicated and often unsung staff that keep stories alive at historical sites, parks, lighthouses, heritage centers, small museums, information centers, and tourist destinations all around Lake Superior.
My deep appreciation to those who took the time to guide me through their worlds: glassblower Anton James (Jim) Vojacek at Oulu Glass; Blaine Fenstad, son of a son of a fisherman, who kindly allowed me into his home; and to Steve Dahl who fishes the big water off Knife River today, and who took me along as he picked his nets one cold and beautiful morning.
Many places contributed to the writing of this book by providing crucial time and space to work. My gratitude to: The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Study, The Blacklock Nature Sanctuary, The Oberholtzer Foundation, Joan Drury and her little white cabin on the shore, Norcroft, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and in particular, The Ragdale Foundation for its long and unwavering support.
Thank you to The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council for supplying financial support through Career Opportunity and Artist Fellowship Grants.
I’m grateful to Kurt Herke and Jane Levinson, their flexibility, good nature and support made everything run smoother. To the kind people at the Gunflint Tavern who kept me company during many long writing stints; to Claire Kirch, for the schooling; and to Emilie Buchwald, bright light and pathfinder.
I’d like to acknowledge the marvelous staff at Milkweed Editions. My sincere thank-you to each of them for their efforts on the novel’s behalf. And to Daniel Slager, who championed this book from the start, understood its essence, and worked to make it better.
I’d like to thank the many people who read drafts of the book over the years, including Deb Eagle, Sheryl Eagle, and the women who gathered at their table to discuss the manuscript and in particular the Ojibwe storyline; Jeanne Farrar, Duke Klassen, Leslie Johnson, Larry Laverk, Kathy Lewis, Jane Lund, Pat Rhoades, Mary Rockcastle, Blaise Taylor, and Alice Templeton.
This book would not have been written without my family and friends. My grateful heart for your constant support as encouragers, readers, bent ears, and merrymakers—you are the backbone of everything.
To my longtime mentor and friend Pat Francisco, for every step along the way.
To Ken Bloom, air and bedrock.
DANIELLE SOSIN is the author of Garden Primitives, a collection of stories published by Coffee House Press, 2000. Her stories have been chosen for National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story, and for Iowa Public Radio’s Live from Prairie Lights. Her work has also appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review. Sosin is the recipient of a Loft Mentor Series Award, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, and two Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Grants. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota.
More Fiction from Milkweed Editions
The Milkweed National Fiction Prize is awarded annually by the editors at Milkweed Editions. Previous recipients of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize include:
Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles
Kira Henehan
(2010)
Driftless
David Rhodes
(2008)
The Farther Shore
Matthew Eck
(2007)
Visigoth
Gary Amdahl
(2006)
Crossing Bully Creek
Margaret Erhart
(2005)
Ordinary Wolves
Seth Kantner
(2004)
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