Seven Letters

by J. P. Monninger

  I felt the whiskey in my bones. I took a large sip. Elma poured us each a tad more, then corked the bottle and put it on a high shelf above the door to the bedrooms. She listened to the back rooms to make sure the children had settled.

  “They always fall right off,” she said softly when she returned. “It’s later in the night when the memories get them. Bad dreams. Don’t be alarmed if you hear them crying.”

  “Was Ozzie allowed to take the children? I don’t think I quite understand.”

  “No, no, he wasn’t allowed to do a thing. There are no rules in that kind of human theater. But these children … they had no one else. He stepped in and removed them from whatever danger confronted them. He worked with a small squad of men, from what I understand. It was a guerilla action, so to speak, but only to remove the children. He made enemies and the Italian government was not happy with his involvement. We heard a buzz about it, but we ignored it to the extent we could. He didn’t explain his tactics to us and we didn’t ask. It was obvious the children required care.”

  “How did they come to the cabin? Why here? This seems so far away.”

  “There have been reprisals. The children represent a loss of money. The girls might be groomed for sex work. For that matter, the boys, too. It’s a horrible predicament. Once we had the children in our possession, we removed them to safe houses. Ozzie gave us permission to use this cabin. We have established a network here in Canada that is quite extensive. Sometimes new children arrive, sometimes the children here move on. And the quiet … living here they have routine and quiet. It does them great good, believe me.”

  “And the Ferriter? How did the Ferriter go down?”

  She shrugged and sipped her whiskey.

  “A boat on the sea. It happens. Maybe it was sabotaged. We don’t know. Fortunately, he didn’t have children with him at the time. That was his last report, anyway. He had radioed in shortly before he went down. Then he went silent and the worst was feared, as they say.”

  “I still can’t put it all together.”

  “It’s a lot. Let it settle on you. That’s what we tell the children. Don’t resist it, but don’t let it become too comfortable a garment to wear, either. Everything takes time. Time is the proper bandage for most things.”

  At her prompting, I told her about my trip to Sicily and the detention camps. I told her about the taxi full of water bottles and Karam and about the cottage. She listened to everything, nodding when my information matched something she knew. Watching her, drinking now and then the burning dregs of whiskey, I realized she represented the missing parts of Ozzie that I did not know. I saw him through her eyes; I saw him through the children’s eyes.

  “He was a brave man and true,” she said when I finished. “While others talk and fill up the air with their voices, he stepped in and took action. I’m sorry for your loss, Kate, but I’m even sadder for the loss that these children, and others like them, just experienced with his disappearance. I told my fellow sisters that in heaven Ozzie would be the man to help you step from the boat to face St. Peter. He has the sea inside of him. He had a great heart, you know?”

  I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

  She reached over and took my hand.

  “He loved you, Kate. He talked of you often. He regretted his behavior with you. He regretted that he couldn’t be a better husband. He tried. He did. I believe that. What do they say? A woman marries a man thinking he will change to fit her. And a man marries a woman thinking she will never change. Both are foolhardy. There was more to Ozzie than you might have seen, and likely more to you than he saw. You were young. That’s a condition you can’t help. Take some comfort in knowing you loved a good man. These children pray for him. We’ll pray for you, too, now that we know you.”

  A few moments later, she rose and tiptoed to the door leading to the bedroom. She listened to the children’s sleep. I turned and faced the wood stove. Flames tore at the logs and consumed them. It was warm inside and cold outdoors.

  * * *

  Snow and ice. Helmet’s quilted jacket and the sound of the snowmobile. The children waving from where they played king-of-the-hill on the mounded snow dumped around the cabin by the metal roof. Sana hugging me. Elma waving and promising to keep me in her prayers. Then Sawton’s Auto, a brief explanation, It was fine, it was fine, no problem, the people are welcome to stay there as long as they like. Do what you can to assist them, Mr. Sawton, I said. My body shivering at the cold, at the new understanding of where Ozzie had been, what he had accomplished.

  I drove afterward in a trance. I did not turn on the radio. Window down to feel the cold. To feel it burn me. Sleep in a Vermont rest stop, fitful and harsh, my body unable to get warm. Trucks pulling in, pulling out. A brief snow squall at dawn and the snow running like live things under my tires. The Ferriter in the mist of snow somewhere, diving down, down, going into the sea like an arrow. Sana’s eyes. Abdul’s single arm. Then New Hampshire at last, the day perched like a white bird on an old fence, Ozzie reading Yeats, the door open in the yurt, Gottfried shaking his head and the clink of his collar hitting his water bowl. Lovemaking in the sea, in our bed, on our island of covers, the dolphins waiting for me to stand naked in the starlight. Will you come today, or will you come tomorrow?

  Then home again. The cabin and the long driveway up, up, until I carried things inside, bags and a sack of grapes, cheese, light the fire, get the fire going, get the heat up, get the lights on, check my phone. More messages from Nora, from students, from the department assistant. A note about my book, a timeline for its publication. I stayed on one knee next to the wood stove and watched the wood catch, little by little, each flame climbing like an exploding star, like a golden vine, the wind following me home and singing a little in the stove pipe. The cabin shaking a little in the wind that followed me from the north, and I stood and closed the stove and for a long time waited in the middle of the room, unsure of everything, unsure of how the next five minutes could possibly pass.

  40

  In early January, Milly made me go sledding. She called it sliding. She arrived at my house with a pair of Flexible Flyer sleds bungeed to her Jeep and honked like a crazy woman until I clumped out to join her.

  “This is the stupidest idea you ever had,” I said, climbing into the passenger’s seat. “It’s minus six degrees.”

  “You have to be young, Kate, or you’ll get old. You’re dressed like a six-year-old, by the way. Where did you get a snowsuit?”

  “This is not a snowsuit,” I said, bending the visor mirror down to inspect my outfit. “This is winter wear.”

  “Come on. Get into it. This will be great day.”

  And it was. She cranked the Go-Go’s, a vintage band she loved, and pounded on the steering wheel for the short trip to the sledding hill. She knew of a back road where the snowmobiles had packed down the road into a veritable sheet of ice. She parked at the bottom of Lieutenant Bennington Hill, hooted twice, then scrambled out to untie the sleds. She stood on the doorframe, wrestling with the knots, her mittens in her mouth. She looked lovely and wild; she wore a cashmere scarf tied over her head and her hair, windblown and unkempt, flew like a flag signaling joy. She kept trying to talk around the mittens, but her voice came out muffled.

  She handed me one of the sleds.

  “Where in the world did you get these?” I asked.

  “From Denny Han. He’s a cook at the Italian place over in Hanover. These belonged to his kids. He says the kids don’t use them anymore and we can borrow them whenever we like.”

  “I haven’t been sledding in a million years.”

  “When people start saying how long it’s been since they’ve done something, that’s a mark of them getting old. I make a point, don’t I, Kate? I do. And by the way, I have decided to underline every time I make a point. That’s my new thing.”

  She handed me the next sled. Then she slammed the door to the Jeep.

  “We are never getting old, Kate. I’ve jus
t decided. I make a point.”

  “Oh, good grief.”

  You can’t predict the giddiness of doing something like sledding. It was the last thing I felt like doing. It was bitter cold, for one thing, which only made it more delicious. We had to pull our sleds up a long, narrow trail, one carved out of the surrounding snow by snowmobiles, and our boots made squeaking sounds from the temperature, and the cold did not seem so horrible. It was good to move, to force my body to respond, to breathe air that cut through every wayward thought. When we arrived at the top, Milly made me turn 360 degrees to take in the view. It was a spectacular view, all whites and blacks and blues, and the afternoon sun had begun to step quietly behind the mountains.

  “What do you say, Kate? Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “I forget. Are we supposed to sit on it or ride it on our bellies?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead I picked up the sled, held it to my chest, and ran as hard as I could down the first ten feet of incline. Then I dove, tucking the sled under me as I had done as a ten-year-old, the muscle memory as automatic as it had been a thousand years before. It was like riding a bike. I let out a shout, felt my body hit the sled, and then, like mercury, I began sliding down the hillside.

  I heard Milly squeal and run after me. Then I heard nothing except the runners sizzling against the snow. I bent the steering yoke to go left, then right, then straight. The snow and ice passed under me with blazing speed. I knew I could trail my boot toes in the snow—that was how you braked, I remembered—but I wanted more speed, not less. More snow, more cold, more everything. I lifted my feet up perpendicular to the sled, and I hit the fastest part, the steepest angle, and I found myself laughing, shouting back to Milly, happy to see a downy woodpecker flap away from a tree bole where it had been feeding and dart, like a darning needle, across the gray quiet of the afternoon.

  I had almost reached the bottom of the run when I heard my phone signal a message.

  I pulled my phone out of my side pocket and rolled until I was on my back as I halted. That was something else I remembered: winter afternoons, usually in snow, watching the night approach, the sun pull away as if going off to visit a sick relative. Winter. We were a week or two past the shortest day of the year.

  Milly coasted up next to me.

  “Get off your phone, you jackass!” she said to me. “Phones are poison.”

  But it was too late. The message came from Seamus.

  Ozzie alive, it said. Come quickly.

  * * *

  On Crow’s Point at sundown, I made a fire in the cottage fireplace. It was January and chilly. The wind blew and tossed the grass. Each time the wind struck the cottage, Gottfried lifted his head. I kept him beside me on a blanket in front of the fire. We were promised rain by the weather people. Starting at midnight, the reports said. Days of rain ahead.

  Ozzie was due. Thirteen days, almost fourteen, had passed since I had received the news. They had been unendurable, but necessary. I had not spoken to him. I knew from Nora how Ozzie had progressed. He had been found in an Algerian detention zone that housed African emigrants. He possessed no identification after the loss of the Ferriter, and he had been unconscious a good deal of the time. With so many humans in movement, one more, especially one not able to speak to his own interests, concerned no one. Even now, his circumstances caused difficulties. Police matters. Money exchanged, petty bribery. If it had not been for Nora’s political influence, it would have taken months to effect his release. He was weak; he had been given up for dead when they had pulled him out of the water, but had been nursed to health by a fellow prisoner. He was still weak. For political leverage, Nora, in poor health herself, had traveled to Africa to oversee his release. He was quiet a good deal of the time, Nora reported. He was not broken, she said, but was contained, perhaps hiding, perhaps contemplating what he would do with his life now that it had been given back to him.

  I would have gone to him, but there was no place to go. He was in transit, however slow that transit might be. He said through Nora that he would come to me. He had told Nora he would come to me in our cottage. He would not be too long, he said. He asked me to wait. Nora confided in me that he did not want to present himself in his weakness. He wanted to regain some of his strength.

  Will you come tonight, or will you come tomorrow?

  At the next gust, I bent and kissed Gottfried’s head. It failed to settle him. I wondered if he needed to go out. He didn’t usually react to the weather. I had been reading Robertson Davies, a Canadian writer I loved. I put the novel aside. It was late. I had been lost in reading.

  “What’s going on, boy?” I whispered. “You okay?”

  He couldn’t settle. I placed the screen in front of the fire and put on my rain jacket. Gottfried climbed quickly to his feet. He had already had his last walk for the night, but I didn’t mind getting outdoors. I loved the winter smells the rain brought. When I opened the door, Gottfried sprinted outside. That was unusual. Ahead of me, the moon rolled like a white penny on the sea. I tried to remember the name for the winter moon, but I couldn’t call it to mind. The Hunger Moon was my best guess.

  “Not too far,” I told Gottfried. “Stay close.”

  I heard his tags clinking, but he had already darted away. For the first time, I had a moment of unease. I checked the driveway and saw only my car waiting in the moonlight. I wondered if an animal had come onto the property. Sheep sometimes wandered onto the hillside leading to the sea, and Gottfried liked to chase them. That wasn’t a good trait in an Irish dog, so I hurried my step to make sure he had not found a flock nearby.

  The rain started in that moment. It came all at once, a strong downpour, and clouds moved over the moon. The rain brought up the sweetness from the grasses. I broke off a handful from the meadow and held the green to my nose. I closed my eyes and inhaled.

  Gottfried began to bark. It was difficult in the wind and darkness to detect his location, but it sounded as if it came from below me, down by the beach. I called to him, but he didn’t respond. I hurried down the slope of land and stopped midway when I saw a boat not twenty meters from the sand.

  I couldn’t move. I could think of no explanation for why a boat—and it looked to be a fishing boat, its outline like that of the Ferriter—would hold its position so close to the land. A wind pushed at me, trying to force me back to the cottage. I saw Gottfried down by the water. He ran back and forth, occasionally dipping into the sea, his indecision marked by loud barks he emitted, the sound slashed and pulled apart before it reached me fully.

  I needed a light; I needed to be sensible. I remained for a long time watching. Then, throwing the grass away from me, I ran down the final slope to the beach. I stripped my clothes as I went, past caring, past knowing, past understanding anything real. As soon as I had removed my last bit of clothing, I dove into the sea. It was cold, cold as winter glass, and I felt the impact of the frigid water on my skin and down in my core. When I surfaced, Gottfried was beside me. He swam straight out to sea, his head an arrow in the water, his puffing breath eager and excited. I reached and touched his back and for a moment I let him pull me.

  Then I swam. I swam into the Irish sea, into Dingle Bay, into the waters that I loved. I swam to my husband. The boat could not be far, I told myself. The moon emerged from the clouds again, and I did not permit myself a glance toward the place where the boat waited. I could not risk that. Instead, I put my face into the water and I opened my eyes and let the salt burn me.

  When I looked up, Ozzie stood on the starboard gunwale, his face fixed in a smile. He looked almost the same, but taller and thinner than I remembered. It was not the Ferriter, but a friend’s boat, the Molly Mae, belonging to Eldrich Payson. Ozzie had come by sea, not by land.

  “Are you still my wife?” he asked me.

  His voice was easy to hear over the water. Eldrich had turned off the engine. I treaded water ten feet from the boat. Ozzie kept his eyes on mine.

&nb
sp; “Are you my husband?”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Then I’m your wife and always have been.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it. You’re selkie. A fairy woman. I knew it when I met you.”

  “Come for a swim, then, Ozzie.”

  “In the winter? I do it at my peril. You have no mercy on me.”

  He dropped out of his clothes. He stood for a moment in the penny moonlight, Ozzie, my husband, and then dove into the sea. I dove down to meet him, my hands reaching out until they found his. For a moment, we stared at each other through the sea; the world had become a green apple and the tide pushed us toward the open ocean. Deep in the water, I looked up and saw Gottfried’s small body paddling on the surface, and I begged him once more to keep his boy near, my husband, my love.

  Ozzie pulled me against him, once, twice, and my skin turned into a flame. We kissed. Then slowly we rose together, side by side, each of us swimming through the blue-green water toward the moon.

  SEVENTH LETTER

  Dearest Milly,

  It’s spring in Canada at last. At night, we hear the frogs, and the loons came back last week. The beaver at the end of the lake is trying to dam the river, but he seems to be losing the battle. We wake early and sleep early and live in an easy rhythm of our own making. No internet, no routine outside communication. It’s heaven. This cabin has restored us, Milly. We spend all day in each other’s company. We swim in the water, which is frigid, and eat simple meals. We take a four-wheeler (you would love that) into town and get our supplies. When the agency brings children, as it is scheduled to do again soon, we are supplied by a tiny caravan of side-by-sides. It’s all quite woodsy and lovely. You can eat pancakes here and not feel guilty for the extravagance. We are talking about tapping our own trees next year for maple syrup. We are both becoming expert anglers, and I have even tied my own flies.