And the Dark Sacred Night

by Julia Glass

  He finds a dry down coat, two canvas slings, and heads out to the woodpile. He lugs in the wood and, stopping just inside to catch his breath, fills the barrel by the fireplace. After foraging through various drawers, he marshals miscellaneous batteries, a package of candles, and four flashlights; lays everything out on the coffee table. There are boxed matches and the Coleman lantern on the mantel. Daphne was always after him to buy a generator, something he’s continued to resist, especially as the outages have dwindled.

  “Ornery, that’s your middle name,” he says out loud as he tests the flashlights. Another accusation of Daphne’s, affectionate in the beginning.

  The lights flicker again. Better check e-mail one last time.

  Loraina and Stu have closed up shop. Nothing else.

  Jasper opens the desk drawer containing Stu’s rudimentary detective work. Facing the computer, he’s also facing the kitchen. Kit is busy at the stove. Kyle’s still upstairs, the shower silent.

  jonathan burns berkly cal

  DO YOU MEAN Jonathan Burns Berkeley, California

  “Yes I do, widgets-for-brains,” he can’t resist muttering.

  From the kitchen, Kit glances over at Jasper, smiles and waves. The storm seems to have brought out the cheer in Kit. A boy after all. Grown-ups see the first flakes and think about all possible disasters. Children, if they’re normal, see nothing but fun.

  There are five Jonathan Burnses linked with Berkeley. One is a professor at the university who teaches gender studies. (Jasper would have finished college if he could’ve majored in that.) Professor Burns has a Web page for his students. At the top is a photograph of a balding, gray-haired, but youthful-looking guy. Helps that he’s tanned, posing against a big rock in magaziney hiking clothes.

  Is he old enough? He could be midforties or midsixties, the way people work at preserving themselves these days. Jasper cannot enter the site without a user name and a password, but he is free to scrutinize the photo.

  The caption beneath it reads Place of origin: Vermont.

  “Jesus.” Jasper is careful to curse in a whisper. “Jesus, Joseph, and Jerry Garcia.”

  “Food’s about ready,” calls Kit. “We can eat now or later.”

  It’s not yet six o’clock. Cocktail hour, thinks Jasper. Except.

  “Serve it up. After, we’ll check out the TV buffet if we still have juice.” He abandons the Internet, calls upstairs to Kyle. He volunteers to set the table.

  Kit passes him, headed for the living room. “How about some music?”

  Digging in a low drawer beside the sink, under pot holders and pizza-parlor menus, Jasper fishes out three rumpled cloth napkins, artifacts of Daphne he missed on the day of his angry purge and never bothered to chuck. Paisley.

  Jonathan Burns (purple socks above his hiking boots) looked like a paisley-temperament sort of guy. Jasper sneaks a glance at Kit; he’ll have to go back to the professor’s site and look for family resemblance. Did Kit get those pale blue eyes, those attractively unremarkable ears, from Burns?

  Bob Dylan whines from the speakers. Lay, lady, lay. Jasper hasn’t heard this song in ages. He likes Dylan, but the guy always sounds like he’s singing through a bad cold. Or recent dental work.

  Memories like the ones busting through Jasper’s dam demand, at the very least, beer. Except. “Crap,” Jasper mutters. No wonder his son is a drunk.

  And here that son is in the flesh: clean, neatly dressed, as put together as he has looked in a while. “Hey, Dad. Wow, Kit, you’re the man.” How hard he’s trying. And how hard Jasper’s resisting, wishing he were immune to disappointment. But this Sally person might be something special, the extra incentive Kyle needs.

  “Looks stupendous,” Jasper agrees.

  “Silver lining of unemployment,” says Kit. “I cook.”

  It’s tasty, Kit’s beat-the-clock dinner, and he’s served it up with glasses of local apple cider. The G-rated kind, fresh, with a nice peppery zing. A boxed pie sits on the counter. (“Tofu?” Jasper inquires. “Low-fat banana cream,” says Kit.)

  Between large bites, Jasper describes the worst storms he’s weathered in this house. Once, in the midseventies—between Vivian and Daphne, he realizes but does not say—the power was out for four days.

  Kyle nods. “A doozy, that one. We baked potatoes in foil, in the fireplace. Robot turds, Rory called them. Remember that, Dad? We snowshoed to town in the dark that last day. The plows hadn’t made it out this far.”

  “We couldn’t stand it anymore, nobody’s company but ours,” says Jasper.

  “We could’ve been the last people left on earth. Rory had me convinced of that. I was terrified.” Kyle pours himself a third glass of cider.

  The phone rings. Jasper answers; it’s Rory, who’s seen the storm on CNN. “We’re thinking of cooking up some robot turds,” says Jasper. “If desperate.”

  Rory is silent for a moment, then laughs. “You remember that?”

  “Your brother’s here. Your other brother, too.”

  Rory asks to speak with Kyle, who tells him right off about Sally. Jasper worries that Sally should confirm the engagement first, but who is he, Miss Manners? Kyle carries the phone to the living room, his voice disappearing under the music. Jasper listens for a minute. It occurs to him that Johnny Cash sounds like an old-fart dad, Dylan his petulant teenage son.

  Soon Kyle waves at Kit, who goes to the phone. Jasper enjoys the brief delusion that maybe he’s forgotten about the paternity stuff, the quest for his “true father.” Maybe Jasper, after all, is father enough. And then he remembers how absent he’s been, how he made excuses not to go to Kit’s college graduation. He couldn’t face Daphne with her new-model husband, a baby girl to boot. Selfish fool. He would’ve survived it.

  Jasper takes his plate to the counter. He peers through the plastic dome at the snowy surface of the pie. Low sugar! Low carb! No saturated fats! brags the label. What the hell is left after sugar, carbs, and fat are sucked from a dessert? Maybe, like the fleece garments they stock at the shop, the pie’s made from recycled soda-pop bottles.

  After Kit hangs up, he says he should try calling home before it’s too late.

  “Rory sounds good,” says Kyle. “Haven’t seen him in a year, I realized.”

  “He’ll be here for Christmas. You should bring Sally. Her kid, too.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Kyle’s having seconds.

  Will there be a real wedding? There ought to be. Should Jasper offer to pay for it, throw a party next summer at the ski lodge? He’s not used to planning anything celebratory with Kyle. Or, come to think of it, with anyone. What’s the last party he helped host, how long ago was that? He and Loraina, intimate as they’ve been in the past, never paired up that way, with other people at a table, not unless you count meeting friends at the Loft for a burger and beer.

  A beer. Christ! Why is it that having to pass the time with his recovering-alcoholic son makes him want a drink more than ever?

  Bob Dylan’s first set comes to an end. Kit is laughing in the living room, still on the phone. “You told the teacher what?” he says, incredulous. “Did you get in trouble for that?” He laughs again. “You are one lucky guy.”

  “I wonder if I could ever be a father,” says Kyle.

  This startles Jasper. “Well, one thing at a time.”

  “I know that,” says Kyle. “In spades.”

  “Got my fingers crossed you’ll get this job.”

  Kyle shrugs. “I think I made a good impression. It’s out of my hands.”

  Without the music, the sound of the wind takes over, assaulting the joints of the house: here comes the second storm, the drama queen. Somewhere nearby, a large limb cracks. Jasper thinks of the big pines sheltering—now possibly threatening—the kennel. The yin-yang of living in a forest.

  “Sally’s still young enough,” says Kyle.

  “Excuse me?” Jasper turns from the sink.

  “To have another kid.”

  “Oh.” T
his is not a subject he wants to discuss. Not for a blessed minute. He leans toward the nearest window, as if he hears something worrisome. “I better go check on the dogs.”

  “I could do that.”

  “No, no. Nice of you, but I think they need my fatherly reassurance.” He winces at his reference to parenthood. Why is it all one mogul after another?

  At the door, he puts on his coat and boots. Kit’s heading back to the kitchen, looking pleased. “Back in two,” Jasper tells him. “Dogs.”

  Wind drives the snow in splinters against his face. He points the flashlight up into the trees. Despite the powerful gusting, snow clings mercilessly to every branch and twig; the creaking strain is audible. He points the light down at the ground. Whatever tracks he and the dogs made earlier are completely erased. The kennel run is empty, sheetlike. Within the enclosure, the beam of the flashlight reveals the dogs, wise creatures, curled against one another in a gray furry mound. Their eyes open in response to the intrusion, but they know it’s Jasper and barely stir. “Scouting trip tomorrow, I promise,” he tells them.

  Exactly as he turns back to the house, the lights go out. Every pane goes black, leaving a mosaic of afterburn on his field of vision. The beam of the flashlight is instantly doubled on the darkened kitchen window, a blinding supernova. Jasper pauses in his tracks for a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust or for the lights to come back on. They don’t.

  “Well, folks, the show begins,” he announces to no one. From inside the house, he hears Kyle and Kit whooping at the blackout like children.

  He wakes in a blaze of antiseptic light, face numb in the frigid air. The fire is down to dry ash; the woodstove must be cold by now as well. It’s still snowing, but at a dignified pace. The wind appears to have passed on through.

  The boys slept in their rooms, but Jasper pulled out a sleeping bag (which, he realizes now, reeks of mildew) and slept on the living room couch, across from the hearth. His legs cramp as he tries to stretch them. The wall clock in the kitchen, smug in its battery-powered immunity, tells him it’s past eight o’clock. “Christ,” he groans. “Christ on crutches.”

  He forces himself out of the sleeping bag, confronting the shock of winter air indoors. Doing a jittery dance to get his thick blood flowing, he lays a fire, lights it, tackles the kitchen woodstove. The three men stayed up late, playing cribbage in front of the hearth, finishing off the gallon of cider—for which Jasper’s bowels punished him severely in the depths of night.

  He takes coffee and eggs from the fridge, then remembers the electric stove is useless. Cursing, he fills the kettle with water and sets it on the woodstove instead. “Bread,” he says out loud. Thank God Kit went shopping.

  After peeing, he pulls corduroy trousers and two sweaters over his long johns. Extra socks. Boots. Hat. Touching his nose is the only way to be sure he still has one.

  He cranks the radio. A quick bulletin, a cup of instant coffee, and then the dogs. He peers out the window over the sink. He sees a few tails, flags over parapets of snow. Using the top of the fence as his measure, he reckons the snow’s at least two feet deep in places.

  Power’s out across most of four counties. Well, some consolation in all that fellow suffering. Or, really, inconvenience. Sensible folks who live in this state are prepared for such emergencies. The not-so-sensible ones deserve what they get.

  Footsteps overhead; the radio has roused the boys. “Rise and get ready to shovel!” Jasper shouts to the upper regions of the house.

  He was smart enough to bring a shovel in last night; and this, the heavy snow, is why God created sliding doors. The flat face of snow exposed when he opens the kitchen slider collapses inward. He takes the shovel and begins to carve a path toward the kennel.

  So much for the soft, feathery stuff of the first, more feminine storm. That’s how Jasper thinks of the snow: the light stuff girlish, desirable, pure seduction; the deadweight of wet snow brutish, unyielding, destructive in excess. Testosterone snow. This is the stuff that fells men his age when they try to move it. How many heart attacks will there be across the state today, how many fatal?

  As if channeling his actuarial speculations, Kit is suddenly behind him. “Let me do that! Please!” Knowing he should save his strength for feats he can’t foresee, Jasper hands Kit the shovel, goes back in. Kyle is slouched at the table, a blanket over his shoulders, hands gripping his tiny furnace of coffee.

  “Glad you stayed?”

  “Not sure it’s much better in town, Dad.” Kyle points at the radio. “State of emergency.”

  “Oh that. Governors love national attention. Moment in the spotlight.”

  Kyle laughs, shakes his head. “I know you want people to think nothing fazes you.”

  Jasper considers scrambled eggs on the woodstove. Easier than toast. Warmer than cereal. Better fuel. Maybe he’ll treat himself to real eggs, yolks and all; skip that glop in the carton.

  Kit’s back, huffing in the doorway. “Dogs look okay.”

  But Jasper still needs to feed them. He walks the waist-high path so efficiently shoveled by Kit. The dogs bark, too excited by the snow to resist.

  “Pipe down, hepsters,” says Jasper. “No snow day for you.”

  He goes to the shed for a spade with which to break the ice on their water trough. As he pushes through the drift against the backside of the fencing, he sees the tracks: two sets, beginning with a scuffled spot where they jumped too easily (how tempting is a fence that’s suddenly shrunk from six to three feet high?), resuming with a full gallop of paw prints pointing toward the hogback.

  “Crap. Crap in a bucket of fish.” Jasper surveys the gleeful trajectory of their escape. He knows, without checking, who the culprits are. Mitchum and Zev. Hounds at heart, those two, they’ll choose freedom over food any day. Call of the friggin’ wild. They’ll come back on their own, but the storm isn’t over, and the conditions, wet snow laid down over dry, worry Jasper. (Never mind irate landowners with the inability to tell a dog from a coyote and one of the various firearms Vermont so blithely lets everyone carry about like tote bags.) Three years ago there was a small avalanche in the valley on the opposite side of the mountain, the snowpack sledding down a forty-five-degree ledge. No one caught in its path, but a rescue chopper called it in. Avalanches are rare so early in the season, but he will not rest till he gets those dogs back home.

  He breaks the ice, pours out food, shovels a swath inside the fence. Takes attendance as the dogs eat in their relentlessly frantic way. He guessed right.

  Kyle and Kit have already cooked up the eggs. They left a good portion in the skillet for Jasper. “Dogs okay?” says Kyle through a mouthful of food.

  “Two are thinking they’re especially okay right about now. The two heading off on a toot.”

  Kyle, overplaying the sympathy, groans.

  “They’ll come back, won’t they?” asks Kit.

  “In their own sweet time. But that’s not what I have in mind.” Jasper looks out the window; the snowfall’s weakening. Iron Man may get his wish: a Saturday afternoon of human gridlock on the slopes. If the humans can get to the slopes.

  One of the two boys should go with him, but he can’t take both—and one should stay at the house. He knows that if he asks for a volunteer, they’ll both speak up, and he’ll have to choose. He’d rather leave Kit alone in the house, but he’d rather have him as company, too.

  “Kit,” he says, before he can think too much, “I’ll need you to head up with me on the sled.”

  “Not taking the snowmobile, Dad?” says Kyle.

  “Last one gave out. Haven’t replaced it.” In fact, Jasper sold it. Part of that decision was Kyle’s joyride, with a bar buddy, two years ago. Jasper spent three long hours in a panic-stricken rage.

  “Pack us coffee, water bottles, crackers, trail mix, dried fruit if I’ve got any left. I’ll get the gear together,” Jasper tells Kit. “Kyle, deal with the cars. Power comes back on, call the shop. Get Jim over here with his plow
.”

  Kyle salutes his father. “Aye-aye.” More overkill.

  “Take extra clothes from my room,” Jasper tells Kit. “Clean thermals in the bottom drawer. I hope clean.”

  He glances at the comatose computer and feels its dispiriting pull: the sense that if he can’t hook up to some satellite—scan the weather from above, know who wants to reach him, see the day’s headlines beyond this mother of a storm—the day cannot properly begin.

  He thinks of Jonathan Burns’s Web page. He has, for the first time, a name. Which means that he has something concrete to withhold; no more claiming he can’t remember or doesn’t really know. Perhaps he should have asked Kyle, not Kit, to be his companion.

  The dogs whine as soon as they hear the door to the bay in the shed where the sleds are stored; they bark when Jasper comes into view with the harnesses looped over his arm. These new, candy-colored harnesses, which Loraina spotted in a catalog last year, even glow in the dark. “Kids, we have a mission!” he says. Carefully, apologizing to those who’ll stay behind, he releases only the eight dogs he’ll use on this trip.

  “Hi hi hi!” he shrills, calling them to the sled, to the task they love so much—or do in order to make him happy. In the very best dogs, true motivation is never entirely clear. Perhaps it’s all one, pleasing master and self. (Does such a dog even have a self? Do dogs have selves of any semblance? Here’s the sort of philosophizing Jasper misses in losing Rayburn to the fog of dementia.)

  Without the poor departed Pluto or the delinquent Mitchum, he’ll put Yoda and Mojo at the head of the tugline.

  Jasper helps Kit match the names on the harnesses to the dogs they fit.

  Kit looks bright with anticipation. One thing about a storm and its aftermath: your mind takes a wide detour from the most abstract of all your concerns. For today, Kit is a man with a job, possibly several. Kyle, too. Jasper is grateful to the elements for putting off questions he’d rather not have to answer; even for keeping him away from the shop.

  The snow hisses under the runners. Sharp snow, Jasper calls it when it’s this wet, this unyielding. The tracks they leave will ice over almost instantly. The return trip may be rough on the team’s paws.