The Compass

by Tammy Kling

  I rowed for five minutes and then lifted the paddles out of the water and let the canoe glide . . . sliding like an ice dancer across glass. I rowed more until I reached the center of the pond and then sat in stillness and stared above, into the sky, and then below into the water.

  Nothingness. Just still.

  No thoughts, no worries. Just water and sky.

  I pulled off my t-shirt and dove into the pond, without thinking, and resurfaced feeling exhilarated! I didn’t care what was below. I stretched onto my back with my body fully prone, my arms straight out above my head, floating, and I stayed there for the longest time until the canoe drifted out of reach, and then I dove down deep into the pond and swam like a fish toward it, grabbing onto the side. I pulled myself out and lay in the sun in the center of the canoe, eyes closed.

  After an hour or so I looked back to the shore to see how far I’d gone. I saw a speck in the distance, but I had drifted so far that I couldn’t be sure what it was. It looked like the shadow of a man, only it wasn’t moving. Was it a tree?

  Suddenly the tree leaned slightly and moved in the way I’d seen Peter amble along, and I knew it was him. There he was, watching me.

  I started rowing then, and my mind returned to the police report. It was the last discovery after two pages of eyewitness accounts, the one thing that I couldn’t forgive. It was the last thing the police sergeant of twenty-one years had noted on that accident report that would remain fixed in my core forever.

  Forgiveness would be impossible.

  “Phone records from the driver report an outgoing text message from the cell phone of Mrs. Lacy Taylor at the time of impact, 12:01 pm.”

  Forgiveness would be impossible.

  I rowed the canoe around the lake for two more hours and thought of nothing, feeling as hollow as before despite the beauty. In the past months I’d had seconds—not minutes or hours, but seconds—of normalcy. But inevitably I’d remember what was real again, and the despair would settle back in. Nothing would be the same anymore.

  I’d awaken in the morning from a full and rare night of sleep, only to realize upon waking that I was all alone in this new life.

  Sometimes, five seconds can change your life forever.

  I continued to row through thick reeds along the shore on the far side of the pond and then out of them into the very heart of the pond again. I lay back down in the canoe and felt the heat of the October sun on my face. The morning had been chilly, but by midday it was as warm as a summer afternoon.

  Finally, I rowed back in an even gait toward the boathouse on the other side. When I arrived, Peter was waiting for me, shaking his head like my grandfather used to do, decades before.

  “You look like a drowned rat,” he said. “Are you crazy? Jumping into that pond with your boots on? Gonna take days now to dry them out.” He limped over and tied a slipknot in the rope and secured the canoe against the dock alongside some buoys.

  “Need anything?” he asked, still shaking his head in disbelief.

  I smiled. “Nope, I’m doing great Peter, thanks.”

  Just some solitude, I thought. A day without you checking in on me.

  “Not Peter,” he said. “Call me Pete.” He turned to move away, set his good foot in the dirt and pivoted slightly on that leg, moving the other leg with the help of his hand. He started up the hill, back to his old truck. I watched him amble slowly until he reached it and opened the door.

  “Wait!” I shouted, running toward him. “I have a question for you.” By the time I reached the old pickup I was out of breath.

  “What’s the inscription above the door?” I asked. “The cabin door.” It was the only thing I really wanted to know at that moment.

  Pete looked down at the ground. “Oh, you noticed that, did you?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s Dante,” he said. “The great Italian poet.”

  “What does it mean?”

  He stepped back and steadied himself on the truck door for support, and it groaned at the rusty hinges. He drew in a deep breath.

  “It means ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’” he said slowly.

  I just looked at him.

  “Perfect,” I said sarcastically. “Figures.”

  “What?”

  “Well, what the hell kind of message is that for a cabin?”

  “Oh, don’t look so forlorn,” Pete said. “It’s not like you’ve checked into the Bates motel or something like that.”

  “Even so, what kind of inscription is that for a cabin in the woods? Do you have messages of doom above the doors of all of your cabins, just to welcome your guests?”

  Pete chuckled, and rubbed his leg a bit, stretching it out.

  “Oh, you’re a hoot,” he said wryly. “Nope. Just this one.”

  “Why?”

  “You sure have a lot of questions,” he observed.

  “It just seems like a strange inscription to stick above the door of a vacation spot.”

  “Well, I suppose it does,” he admitted. “That’s a famous quote, Jonathan. Dante wrote in a form called terza rima, where three sets of lines are done in an interlocking rhyme format. He was exiled by the Italian government, and it was during that time of isolation that he wrote The Divine Comedy, about a man’s loss of direction in his life. In the book, the traveler encounters the spirit of a poet in the forest. That spirit, named Virgil, guides him to the gates of hell, and that’s where the inscription appears.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Don’t get what?” he asked.

  “I don’t get why you decided to put that line above your cabin door. It seems contrary to the whole vibe of this place.”

  “We don’t always need to ‘get’ things, Jonathan. Sometimes there’s mystery in life, and we just have to embrace the not knowing.”

  “But your guests . . . ”

  Pete interrupted.

  “Son, my leg is getting tired. I can only stand on it for a short while. Mind if I sit?” He slid backward through the open door and onto a torn leather seat, then continued. “You see, the guests who come here are at some intersection in their lives. Not sure what it is about this particular cabin, but it’s true. Those who end up here have had a defining moment. They’re in search of something. In that process, during the journey, it’s inevitable that they’ll have to go through hell to come out on the other side. Most of the time they have to transcend painful memories of some sort or event they’ve been through, to be whole again, to put all of the fragments of their soul back together.

  “That’s the reason for the sign. One must abandon hope, if necessary, and let go of everything they once knew. Sometimes it takes a season of brokenness in order to find the joy and beauty that comes after transformation. To go from where you are to where you need to be. The sign signifies that process.

  “People come here to escape or to find themselves,” he finished, “just like you did.”

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  “I just know.”

  “But I didn’t tell you that.” I couldn’t decide whether to be angry, or just creeped out.

  “There’s more in the universe than just words, Jonathan. There are things we can’t see. For ages, philosophers and scientists alike have studied the brain, the soul, body language, and the subconscious energy we emit. Words aren’t everything.

  “In fact, sometimes words aren’t necessary at all.”

  Chapter 5

  PETE’S CABIN

  “Whatever is has already been and what will be has been before . . . ”

  —ECCLESIASTES

  On day three at the cabin I stayed in bed until the sun forced itself in through the windows. The sheets were silky and the down comforter smelled fresh and lay heavy on my chest, enveloping me. There were four pillows, and I used them all. It was hard to leave the bed, but finally I climbed out and slid across the hard wood floor to the kitchen to make coffee, and then I crawled back to the bed again.


  I was instantly asleep. I dreamt of the accident scene then, as real and up close as if I were standing there. But in this version, a man walked up to me on the side of the road. He spoke.

  “Tomorrow is a word on the fool’s calendar, Jonathan.”

  I woke up hours later remembering the dream clearly. The coffee maker was off and the coffee cold. I thought about the words the man had said in the dream and tried to figure out their significance.

  Still mulling it over, I walked outside to the front deck and was startled by the majestic beauty that surrounded me. Everywhere, there were trees of gold. I had heard that the forests of the Adirondacks were more vast than Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite combined. Bears and moose were said to be abundant, and the original settlers who came into this wild frontier built their cabins by hand, using tree trunks, branches, and stones they found in the woods.

  Breathing deeply, I exhaled and stared deep into the trees, and then turned, transfixed by the inscription above the door.

  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

  Six months ago I might have had hope. But looking back, there were a lot of other things I had been lacking. I was forty-two then, with a thriving career but no real purpose. Some days I’d get up and go to work, then return after dark and never even see Lacy and Boo, since they would already be in bed. The people I worked with had become my friends, but only because I didn’t have time for anyone else.

  Working to make money had become my sole motivation in life, but I never questioned it.

  Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’ intrate.

  Someone—and I could guess who—had left a basket of red apples on the welcome mat, and I plucked one out, bit into it, then took the entire basket inside and placed it on the counter. Falling back into bed, I finished the apple and tossed the core across the room into the trash can, sinking it in one throw.

  I drifted off once more, and when I woke up again I wondered if I was edging into serious depression. I laughed, but at nothing in particular.

  How many days would I linger in hopelessness?

  On the fourth day in the Adirondacks, I awoke to a loud banging at the door. Peeking out of the bedroom and through the living room, I could see Pete’s shadow through a window, and he knocked again.

  He bent over slowly, then straightened before turning away and clumping down the path.

  I ambled back to the bed and waited for the sound of his old Chevy to descend the gravel drive and fade into the distance. I envisioned him shaking his head, wondering about this strange guest he had.

  Dragging myself out of bed again, I went to the window and peeked out to find some fire logs and a basket on the front porch. Opening the door, I picked up the basket. In it were some Neosporin ointment and a note from Pete.

  This is for that scar on your face. Use it, and it will heal up better.

  I squeezed some of the gel out of the tube onto my finger and slid it across my cheek. The cut was still partly open, and it burned.

  I went back to bed.

  Sometime in the night I woke to the pain rumbling through my insides. It was good to feel the pain of hunger, good to feel my muscles tighten, and I thought about all the people who survived in the wilderness without food and all of the people in the world who couldn’t survive a day without a drive-through fast-food meal.

  I thought about the men who’d been out here in the wilderness years before, eating off the land, making branch houses with their hands, dirt under their fingernails, burying their dead in the back.

  And then my thoughts drifted back to Boo and the funeral, and the food that streamed in and out of the house, turning the scent of the air into a mixture of mashed potatoes and meat and desserts so nauseating I hadn’t cared if I ate again for years.

  Before the Last Supper, Jesus had foreseen the events that led to his death. The Last Supper was symbolic of the way we’d remember it all forever.

  A meal, a celebration, death.

  The next day while I sat on the front porch, I heard the familiar sound of an engine and the gravel kicking up, and before I could retreat, a large brown UPS truck pulled into sight. The driver pulled it close to the cabin, jumped out, and tossed me an envelope.

  “Peter J. Spinelli?”

  “Well . . . I . . . ” Before I could protest, he shoved a pen toward me. “Sign here,” he said, and I scrawled my name on the paper on the clipboard. He smiled, hopped back into the truck, and pulled away.

  Moments later Pete pulled up in the Chevy, and I watched him take an eternity to swing his bad leg over the front seat onto the driveway and twist himself out of the truck. He waved cheerfully, moving slowly toward me.

  “We got a delivery?” he asked. “Saw the truck in the distance.”

  I nodded, and handed over the package.

  “Haven’t had one of those in three years,” he said.

  “Really? You haven’t had a delivery in three years?”

  “Don’t have much need for it,” he said, tearing into the envelope. “Go into town for the mail and to pick up everything I need up here.”

  I sat down and watched him from the rocking chair. It creaked back and forth on the deck, its old legs like Pete’s, slow but steady.

  His face went colorless.

  “Well?” I asked impatiently. He jerked, as if he’d forgotten that I was there. Then he looked at me.

  “It says my biological mother has died. It’s a notice from an executor of her estate.”

  “But . . . I . . . You said you grew up an orphan,” I replied. “How did they find you?”

  Pete shook his head, and his eyes welled with tears.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” Then he fell silent, just staring at the piece of paper, and I found it strangely unsettling. Usually I couldn’t get him to stop talking.

  “Where is the package from?” I asked, working to fill the space.

  “Italy. It says that I need to be there in three days. I need to get on a flight and attend a court hearing in Rome.” Then he looked up at me again, and there was a strange expression on his face. “You want to go?”

  “Yeah, that’s funny.” I got up to go into the cabin.

  “No, really—you want to go?”

  I turned and looked at him. Tears spilled out of the corners of his eyes again.

  “I don’t think I can make it alone, what with my bad leg and all. But I should go. I should go to find out who she was.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Aw, Pete, I don’t have the money to go on a trip like that. It’s an impossible request.”

  “Impossible?”

  “Impossible.”

  We sat silently for a long time.

  “Think about what you just said,” Pete replied. “Impossible. Nothing is impossible. Give me a break. I’m loaded. I’ve got tons of money. And you’ve got tons of time. You can go with me, help me make the trip, help me with the bags, and then go on your own way.”

  He stood up, and went inside the cabin. He came back with the bottle of Jack.

  “Maybe this will help convince you?”

  I shook my head and lifted my feet up over the wood balcony railing.

  “It’s not going to happen Pete. I don’t need to go to Italy. I don’t need to go anywhere.”

  He poured me a shot glass of the brown liquid, and we drank one down, then another. It felt good.

  The temperature dropped considerably, and Pete suggested we move inside and build a fire. I grabbed the logs he’d left by the door a day earlier and tossed them into the stone fireplace in the living room.

  “You got a match?” I felt the heat of the Jack spreading through my arms, warming my fingers.

  Pete set his glass down on the wood end table, removed his thick flannel overshirt and ambled toward the hearth unevenly, shaking his head.

  “No, that ain’t right,” he said. “Weren’t you ever a boy scout?”

  “Just give me a match, Pete. It’ll lig
ht.”

  “But that’s not how you build a proper fire,” he insisted.

  I settled down into the leather chair by the fireplace and lifted my boots onto the ottoman.

  “OK, Houdini, show me your magic,” I said, motioning toward the pile of logs. “It’s all wood. Just add a flame and it’ll spark, I would think.”