Autumn Imago

by Bryan Wiggins

  55

  Family Album

  We found the miracle worker stuck knee-deep in the mud. On our way to meet him, we learned why my brother hadn’t made it back to camp. Tommy had looked up from his sprint down the trail to see a light bobbing in the dark. When he reached it, he found Aaron, his headlamp shining on the inhaler that lay on the palm of the boy’s outstretched hand. “Go!” was the only word Aaron spoke before Tommy took it, turned, and ran.

  Now Tommy led us to where the trail dipped toward the bank. He skirted the muddy middle of the path, hustled over to our nephew and pulled Aaron’s leg free. Before I could stop her, Aida ran to her brother, falling to her knees on the muddy ground to hug him around the waist while burying her face in his chest. She gulped in waves of the cool night air, laughing and crying. Tommy’s headlamp caught the puzzled smile on Aaron’s face as he gently patted the head of his sobbing sister.

  I gave Aida a moment before I held out the inhaler, instructing her to take another series of puffs. I was still wary of the recovery of a girl who’d come so close to death, but as we came to the end of Kidney Pond Trail, I breathed easier too. Finally, we were out of the woods.

  There were more tears and laughter back at camp. We got the whole story there. Aaron had come out of the cabin to find the porch empty and gone down to the pond to see the two windswept canoes racing away across the water. When he told Kim, she pulled the brace off her ankle, grabbed a couple of spare inhalers from Aida’s backpack, and hobbled toward the door.

  In the next instant, Mara jumped up to block Kim’s exit. She knew Aaron was their only chance of getting the medicine to Aida and convinced Kim to let the boy tackle the dark woods alone. When he left, she took Kim’s hands in hers, and together, they started to pray.

  Given everything, I couldn’t say those prayers didn’t matter. Every member of our family played a role in what happened that night, even the one who’d been kicked out of camp. Robert had never given Aida a choice about taking her inhaler with her. The two puffs that kept her alive in the canoe were in her pocket because of him. It was one more act of love in a night filled with them. It took all of them—all of us—to save Aida.

  As much as I wanted to rejoice with my family, I cut the celebration in the cabin short. Aida needed a follow-up at the ER in Millinocket, but when I offered to drive, Tommy just shook his head. He pointed to the mess of rust-colored stains on my shirt and laughed. “You’re patient number two, big brother,” he said, “and for once in your life, you’re gonna take the back seat.”

  Mara wanted to come too, but Kim convinced her that Aida would be fine. She told her the best way to help was to stay and let Aaron get some sleep. I knew better, of course. My mother was the one who needed someone to watch over her. Despite the presence of mind she’d shown in sending Aaron to rescue his sister, Mara was the one at risk of drifting off into the dark. Tonight Aaron had proved he could navigate that territory just fine on his own.

  As I climbed into the back of the Range Rover, I thought about what Kim had just done. It wasn’t whom she worshipped, I realized, but how that made a difference. My sister ministered to my mother, to me, and to everyone around her in the same way: by convincing the people she cared for to do the same for someone else.

  ***

  We got back to Sentinel a couple of hours before dawn.

  Aida had been given a full workup in the emergency room, but the only thing the frazzled old doc gave her was a stern warning not to go anywhere without at least two full inhalers in her purse. I was so tired I had no problem lying still while a young intern worked on me. I was glad for the sting of the stitches she put in. Each one kept me from thinking about how much the small, soft hands grazing my chest reminded me of Cassie’s.

  We were surprised to find my mother still awake in the cabin. She looked up from her seat by the crackling woodstove when we came in, a battered old book spread across her knees.

  “Oh my god,” said Kim, walking over to stand beside her. “I can’t believe you brought that thing with you.”

  “I smuggled it in for her,” said Aida, taking a seat next to her grandmother. Mara turned the book around to show it to Tommy and me. I recognized it immediately as the thick photo album she’d kept throughout my childhood and had faithfully filled with snapshots and slips of family memorabilia.

  “Who are they, Gram?” Aida asked, pointing to the faded portrait of a young couple. The man was standing waist deep in a lake; he gave the camera a devilish grin while he held the woman’s body in his arms over the water. Her head was thrown back and caught in an open-mouthed laugh, her feet frozen mid-kick in the air.

  “That’s your grandfather and me, on our honeymoon.”

  “You were so pretty,” Aida said, “I mean, you still are—”

  My mother laughed. “Pretty old,” she said, and sighed as she looked at the page. “You’d be surprised how a day like that can feel so close and at the same time so very far away . . .”

  Aida flipped a few more pages. “I remember that Christmas,” Tommy said, pointing to a shot of a boy holding a tennis racket by the tree. “Ten minutes after I unwrapped that thing I took a backswing into the lamp in the living room. Dad made us stand like statues until he’d picked every sliver of glass from the carpet.”

  We spent the next half hour going back and forth in time, sharing memories of the Halloweens, birthday parties, summer vacations, and other milestones marked in the book. Aida chastised her mom for the C– she found on an old report card. Tommy marveled at a shot of my father and me standing side by side next to the Kidney Pond woodshed. And we all laughed at the shot of the smashed, upside-down birthday cake with the snout of our beagle, Sneakers, poking into the top of the frame to lick icing from the floor.

  “I’m sorry Aaron missed this,” Kim said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.

  “He didn’t,” my mother responded. “We had our own private show. He helped me figure out who some of the people in these pages are, even though most of these pictures were taken long before he was born. Some I knew right away, but there are others I have no idea of . . .”

  “Is that you and Gram, Mom?” Aida asked, pointing to a shot of a woman crouching next to a little girl in the woods. The pair were in profile, the woman raising her cupped hands to the child. A splash of sunlight filtered through the trees, spotlighting the girl’s surprised smile as she peered at whatever prize the woman held.

  “That’s Jordan,” Kim said. My mother’s finger slid across the page’s plastic film to settle on the chest of the girl. She tapped it once and whispered, “Jordan.”

  Aida yawned, and Kim ushered her off to bed. When Kim and Tommy said they were ready to turn in, my mother took the book from her knees and placed it on the floor. Then she rose to give hugs, taking time to cup each face in her hands for a moment before she gave it a kiss. She turned to me. “Are you off too? You must be beat.”

  “I’m tired, but wired too. Maybe I’ll stay by the fire awhile with you.”

  We sat there for a long time, whispering in the dark about the history of our family. I was amazed at how much she remembered, but it seemed that the closer we got to the present, the more she forgot, reversing the normal pattern of memory. She seemed to want to focus on our early days, so we settled there. And almost all of the memories we harvested together were the ones made at Kidney Pond.

  I looked past her out the window, surprised to see the first glimmer of dawn lighting the sliver of water through the trees. When I put a hand on the arm of my chair and started to rise, Mara reached for it. I eased myself back into my seat.

  “I know why you’re here, Paul,” she told me. “I feel closer to her here too.” I squeezed her hand and looked at the floor.

  “But angels aren’t really meant for this world,” she continued. “It was made for flesh and blood—for family—and yours will always be here for you.”

  I looked at her and smiled. We rose together and embraced. I bent my he
ad to her ear and whispered the name I’d denied her for so long. “I know, Mom,” I said. “I know.”

  56

  An Empty Canoe

  I shed so much more than blood that day. It left me feeling lost but lighter. I drifted from Sentinel toward Loon’s Nest, sensing every atom in my body suspended within me. A breeze brushed my cheek, fanning each mote of my being. I felt them shine like stars inside me as the night’s last wind passed through me to carry its secrets from the forest to the pond.

  I stepped into Loon’s Nest and tunneled into my sleeping bag with my clothes on. I shifted and spun for an hour or two. I was dead tired, but the thing underneath that weariness—the thing that had been reborn—surfaced again and again, refusing to surrender to the peaceful depths I sought. By the time the sun’s first rays fell on the cabin’s floor, I knew what it was. It was hope.

  I left the cabin for the trail I’d shepherded Aida over only a few hours before. It would be noon before my family woke to start packing for the long drive home. I picked my way along the rocks to Colt’s Point, inventorying the aches and pains left in my body by the events of the day before. The woods were silent, the rising sun piercing the trees to throw shafts of light on the gray and cinnamon trunks I passed between. I usually hurried along that path, stealing an hour from my ranger duties, but I took my time that morning, enjoying the quiet and the light, carrying a fragile new sense of ease that fluttered delicately in my breast. The feelings that had chased me over the same ground the night before now gave way to a dawning sense of peace and possibility.

  I wasn’t surprised to see the green sliver of a canoe through the screen of trees as I got closer to the point. I had my own plans to wet a line before the season ended. But as I scrambled down the trail and took a seat on the bank, I saw that the fisherman was gone. The boat was empty.

  I watched it for a moment. There was only a breath of wind on the water, but it was enough to make the craft disturb the morning mist rising from the surface of the pond, slicing faint columns of fog into airy tendrils that spun in the slow wake of the boat. I was cold, sore, and tired, but I still might have tried to retrieve the canoe if the ER intern hadn’t finished her last stitch with a command: “No bathing, no swimming, for at least a day.”

  I looked past the boat to the line of cabins on the far shore and let my eyes rest on Sentinel. Ten days ago I thought everything I loved was in the woods, waters, and peaks that surrounded that place. Now what mattered most to me was tucked inside.

  The rising sun flashed white against the side of the slowly turning canoe, blinding me for an instant with the ghostly afterimage of its silhouette. When I looked again, I spotted an animal in the water behind the boat, its matted fur emerging from the turning craft’s shadow. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I blocked the glare off the water to focus on it, watching the dark fur grow lighter as the boat continued to spin. When it turned snow white, I knew what it was.

  I don’t remember kicking my boots off or the shock of cold water. I don’t remember the pain that must have burned in my chest as I sliced through it. I only remembered hoping what I knew to be true was wrong.

  When I reached my mother, I spun her on her back, taking a second to brush her hair free of her face. Her mouth fell open, as I trod water to watch her for a second, but she lay cold and still in my arms.

  I turned quickly to position my arms under hers and frog-kicked backward toward shore. Halfway there, my feet found the squishy mud under me. It sucked the socks off both of my feet as I struggled through it, dragging my mother up the slippery bank.

  I pulled her to a flat spot under a pine and cleared the ground under her head. I glanced at my watch and started chest compressions, but I knew it wouldn’t help. After performing CPR and rescue breathing for twenty minutes, I finally stopped.

  This time, I felt the wound in my chest flare as I dove back into the pond and swam for the canoe. I had to take a second swim to retrieve the paddle I spotted drifting farther down the shore.

  When I picked her up from the dry land, she felt as light and fragile as a little girl in my arms. I placed her in the bottom of the boat, folding my fleece jacket gently behind her head. Then I got in and paddled my mother’s body across the pond.

  After a dozen strokes, I looked down at the thin white legs splayed before me. One of her shoes was gone. Her foot looked small and delicate. There was a blush of pink nail polish on the toes, but it looked more like the foot of a child than a grandmother. When I saw the bottom of the canvas sneaker she wore on the other one, my paddle froze in the air. A pattern of small, concentric circles was stamped in its white rubber sole.

  My nose stung, and I bit the inside of my cheek as I started paddling again, amazed. I could see her then, slipping out of the cabin each morning while the rest of us slept. And though she hadn’t been able to drag her craft back onto the rack after those dry runs, there was no questioning the power of this woman who had the will to prepare for her own death.

  “Practice makes perfect, Mom,” I whispered, and paddled on.

  I didn’t hurry. I had no thoughts of sprinting up to Tyler’s cabin and grabbing the radio to call in a medevac chopper. There were those who’d argue that every second of our time on this earth is precious, and that life is only God’s to take, that my mother had good days ahead of her that were a sin to throw away. But I wondered how they’d feel after watching their loved one go slowly from this life, losing more memories each day, the pieces of herself and those she loved from ten, twenty, thirty years ago—the silent histories we hold in our hearts, which make us who we are.

  There was no need to rescue my mother. In the end, she’d found the strength to do that for herself.

  ***

  There were tears and there was anger. People ran, doors slammed, radios crackled, and finally, the rumble of an ambulance brought my family out to the field. Kim and Aida followed it into town to make arrangements while I helped Tommy and Aaron pack up camp.

  I went into my mother’s room to find her suitcase on a chair by the door. A sealed envelope with my name lay on top. Some tiny thing slid across the paper inside it when I picked it up. I put it in my pocket, then looked up to see a small square pillow propped at the end of my mother’s bed.

  It was covered with the needlepoint landscape I’d watched her stitching since she first arrived. The blue sky was filled in over the broad profile of Katahdin rising over a line of pines above the pond, but the pillow’s center remained unfinished. The horizon split the picture in half, the view mirrored in the water below. I took a step closer and saw the tiny green profile of a canoe reflected, dead center in the scene. There was no loop of dark thread added to suggest a head or body within.

  I inspected the unfinished area around the empty canoe and saw that it was stitched. It had been filled in with snow-white thread. Then I saw the shape for what it was, its sweeping, symmetrical form reflected above and below the boat. It was the outline of an angel rising from the waters of Kidney Pond.

  57

  Presents & Promises

  It wasn’t a suicide note. I waited until the cabin was clean and the bags were packed to read it. Tommy hesitated when I suggested he take Aaron down to the Nesowadnehunk for a last try for trout. “It’ll be hours before Kim and Aida get back,” I told him. “Mom wouldn’t have wanted us to waste our final day here indoors.”

  I sat on Sentinel’s porch and unfolded my mother’s letter carefully, slipping the shiny prize inside into my pocket. There was no salutation at the top, and it took me a line or two to realize I was reading the carefully scripted program for her funeral. All the arrangements were there: the hymns, scriptures, and poems to be played and read at Kim’s church. She even included the flowers (daisies) she wanted on the altar. I turned the page over, surprised that there was no postscript, no final farewell. But as I pocketed the letter, I remembered that the silence my mother practiced wasn’t a new tactic employed to cover her failing memory. She’d always been th
e quietest member of our family, the one strong enough to stay silent while the rest of us hogged the stage. She’d said what she needed to the night before. Her goodbye was the kindled memories of our common past, the stories she shared as we gathered around her family album. Those tales spoke more about her love for us than any string of words on paper could ever tell.

  ***

  Tommy and Aaron came back from the river later that afternoon. They hadn’t gotten a single bite, but the pair seemed far from disappointed as they chattered about the ponds and streams they hoped to target together next year. We scrounged a lunch of crackers and peanut butter on Sentinel’s back porch from the last of our supplies. Tommy ate slowly. I could see what Aida’s rescue had cost him, and when I suggested a nap he simply smiled and headed inside.

  I followed him into the cabin but came out a moment later, taking a seat next to my nephew. “I have something for you, Aaron,” I told him. He put down his lunch and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. I laughed and wiped off the blot of peanut butter he’d left on the lenses, then handed him the leather sheaf with my father’s knife inside.

  “My dad waited a long time to give me this,” I told him. “It was a special gift from his father, your great-grandfather—a kind of reward, made of the antlers of a buck my dad shot that charged him and your great-granddad.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow is right. Anyway, I was older than you, maybe fourteen or fifteen. My dad, Tommy, and I were hiking the Owl, the small peak on the shoulder of Katahdin. The weather turned bad at the top, and though we only had a little ways to go to get below tree line, Uncle Tommy got really scared. He was just a little kid. Every time the thunder rumbled, I told him a joke. It didn’t matter if they were any good or not; he loved them. We weren’t very well prepared, and when the rain came, I gave Tommy my poncho. I was soaking wet by the time we got back to camp. Later that night, your grandfather told me that anyone who watched out for his family like I did deserved a man’s gift, and he gave me that knife. You did a lot more than that yesterday, Aaron. You saved your sister’s life.”