by Peter Geye
“My father survived the wreck of the Ragnarøk.”
“Your father was on the Rag?” Gordy said. He stopped what he was doing and looked seriously at Noah. “My grandpa used to load the Rag. Can you believe that? Small world.” “It is a small world.”
Gordy set back to work. “So he was one of the three.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement of awe. “I was in high school back then. Remember it like yesterday.” “So do I,” Noah said.
“And he kept sailing after that?”
“For almost twenty years.”
“No way you’d have gotten me back out on that lake.”
“He could hardly be seen on land,” Noah said.
“He’s damn near famous, I guess.”
“Don’t tell him that.”
Gordy rested his arms atop the piano. “So you know the real story, I bet.” Noah smiled. “As a matter of fact I do.”
“I’ll have to tell my son about this. He loves the shippery.” Gordy finished an hour earlier than he’d thought he would. After he reattached the lid he pulled the bench up, cracked his knuckles, and launched into a beautiful rendition of Rondo capriccioso. He played like a virtuoso, the mass of his body ecstatic as he moved from one end of the keyboard to the other, an exultant look on his face. When he finished the air literally vibrated with the last notes. Noah applauded as if he were cheering the soloist from the Boston Pops. “That was my mother’s favorite piece,” Noah said. “She played it all the time.” “My favorite, too. I play it after every piano I tune.”
“I hope my father was awake to listen. Maybe you could play another?” He cracked his knuckles again, let his fingers hover over the keyboard for a moment. “Grieg?” he said and without waiting for a reply began.
Again it was beautiful. Noah listened, transported.
Gordy slid off the bench finishing the last few notes. “That’s the opening to his concerto in A minor. I love it.” “I’m no expert, but I know a pianist when I hear one. That was just terrific.” He was packing his toolbox. “Thank you. It’s what I do.” His modesty was as genuine as his look of concern for Olaf had been when he first arrived. “Not much use for it, but it’s what I enjoy.” “The world would be a better place if more people could play like that.” “The world’s not such a bad place,” Gordy said.
He wrote a receipt for Noah. Noah paid. He walked him to the door. It was cold.
“Tell your father I hope he feels better. I hope the music cheered him up.” “I’m sure it did. I really appreciate your coming. On such short notice, too.” Gordy turned up the collar of his barn coat. “My pleasure.” He looked skyward. “It is on the way. Get your vehicles up this hill.” “I will.”
And with that he left.
BACK INSIDE HE heard moaning coming from his father’s room. Noah opened the door. The light from the living room filtered in and he could see his father stabbing the air with his fingertips. What he’d mistaken for a moan was actually humming that sounded vaguely like music. The smile on his father’s sleeping face belied his voice, which was clotted and out of tune. Noah stood in the doorway and watched for a minute. His father soon set his arms down, quit humming, and settled back into sleep.
Noah moved the truck and his rental car up the hill as Gordy had suggested. Darkness was coming, and the cold was fierce. It even smelled of snow.
For a couple of hours Noah worked on one of his piano-lesson standards. It must have cut quite a contrast to the effortlessness of Gordy’s playing. When, between notes, Noah heard his father coughing, he went in to check on him. Olaf sat up in bed, his eyes sunken in the darkness. Noah opened the bedroom door fully for the light.
“Hey, you okay?”
Olaf looked at him, appeared stunned. “Noah? Is your mother here?” Noah went to his father’s bedside. He sat. “No, Dad, Mom’s not here.” His voice was so soft. “That’s funny. I heard her playing the piano. She was playing my favorite piece.” “That was the piano tuner. He’s gone now.”
“Tell her I’d like to see her,” Olaf said, looking up into Noah’s face. A look both empty and full of something.
“You’ll see her soon,” Noah said, though he had no faith in heaven, nor any in hell.
“I want to talk to her.”
“Tell me, and I’ll tell her for you.”
Olaf began to hum Rondo capriccioso, the sound a whir, barely a sound at all. Midsong, he stopped. “Tell her I’ll be home soon. Tell the kids, too.” “You are home, Dad. I’m here with you. I see you.”
Again Olaf looked at him. “Good,” he said, then shut his eyes and eased back into his slumber, silent now.
Noah stayed at his bedside for some time. The wind had returned, it assailed the house. When he rose to turn in himself, he looked from his father’s bedroom window. He could see the first of the snow slanting through the darkness, offering its whiteness. He imagined Vikar wincing under the bite of the driving flakes, bounding through the forest to beat the storm home.
TRY AS HE might Noah could not sleep. He lay in the bed and watched the snow radiating such paleness in the dark frame of the window. It fell furiously. He thought only of his wife now. He longed for her in a way he hadn’t in years, with a kind of abandon he attributed to his father’s love story. He’d come to realize, without any effort of thought, that he and Natalie had probably endured their bouts with failure. Those many failed pregnancies had been their trial, and now closer to fifty than to thirty years old, and with the education of the last ten days, he figured they had a pretty good chance. This thought appeased him deeply but also kept him awake when he wanted to sleep. There was a kind of euphoria attached to it.
Outside, he could see the spooky glow of the falling snow. He strained to listen, thought he could actually hear it. After a while he got up. He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. The temperature in the great room must have been twenty degrees warmer than it was in the bedroom. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and stood bare-chested at the window.
The snow, the snow.
At nine o’clock he heard groaning from his father’s room. It stopped. It started again. When he cracked the door to peek in, he could see Olaf struggling to rise from the bed. He turned on the lamp near his father’s bedroom door and stepped into his room.
Olaf’s eyes cringed shut. His big hand went up to shield his face from the light. The moan went baritone, as if the light had changed the severity of his pain. “Chrissakes,” Olaf said, his voice slurring the profanity. “Goddamnit, goddamnit.” Noah hurried to the bedside. “What is it, Dad?” he said, helping his father remove the blankets and quilt from his legs. “Are you too hot?” “Ah, shit.”
“It’s okay. Tell me what to do.”
“Shit,” Olaf repeated. His legs were free of the bed covers. He swore again.
Noah took him first by the elbow, then sat next to him and put his arm around his shoulders. “Tell me what’s wrong.” Olaf’s shoulders crumpled, his chin fell, his eyes fluttered, and his arms went limp. His feet were on the floor now, his lips crusty and shuddering. In a voice barely more than a whisper he spoke into Noah’s chest, “I have to go, Noah. To the outhouse.” Without a word Noah helped his father stand. He helped him into his wool trousers. He helped him walk into the great room. In the light the old man’s pain became evident. He leaned lightly against Noah, would not have been able to stand without him.
Noah hurried him into his coat. He had Olaf hold on to the doorjamb while he put the old man’s boots on. He tied them tightly. He took from the shelf the blaze-orange hunting hat and a pair of leather mittens. He helped his father into these. Then he put on his own coat and boots and took the flashlight. He put his arms around his father again and opened the door.
Already snow had drifted six inches deep. Noah kicked it away as they stepped into the mean wind. The going was slow. Olaf relied entirely on Noah for balance. He felt light in his son’s arms, and after a few more difficult steps Noah simply handed the old
man the flashlight and picked him up. He carried him up the path to the outhouse.
For fifteen minutes, maybe more, Noah held him steady, the two men alone in the utter dark now that Noah had turned off the flashlight. He’d hoped it would lend a hint of privacy to the ordeal. It was so cold.
On the way back Olaf clutched helplessly at Noah, his arms around Noah’s neck, a grip so feeble. Finally Noah lifted his father in his arms and carried him back to the house, snow now creeping over the tops of his boots.
Back inside, Noah undressed Olaf to his union suit. He offered him something to drink. Olaf declined. When Noah began to help him back into his bedroom, Olaf stopped.
“I’ll sleep in here,” he whispered, pointing at the couch. “Warmer.” “Okay. Good,” Noah said, somehow buoyed by the suggestion. “You’ll be more comfortable in here.” Noah helped his father into the chair while he fixed a bed for him on the sofa. He then carried him over to it. The old man’s head disappeared into the pillow. Noah covered him with the quilt and afghan. He tucked both under his feet and turned out the lamp. A dull slant of light from the window shone into the room. He could see only his father’s outline on the couch.
“You all set? You comfortable?” he asked.
Olaf reached for Noah’s arm.
Noah touched his father’s hand. He held it there. “I’ll be right in there if you need anything. Just call.” Olaf was already fighting sleep.
THE NEXT MORNING blazed bright, sunny and white and windless. A profound silence had beset the house, beset the wilderness around it. Noah stood at the window inspecting the weight of snow hanging on the pine trees, the whiteness everywhere a testimony to the vagaries of that place. The whiteness was disturbed only by the bark on the south side of the trees, on the limbs of hardwoods too thin to hold snow. He tried to gauge the snow’s depth, but the drifts confused him. Snow sloped gently on the north side of the shed to the eaves but had been blown nearly clear on the south side of the roof.
He turned to look at his father, still asleep on the couch. His rest appeared easy now, the rising and falling of his chest steady if not slowing.
He stepped into his boots. Snow knee-deep had drifted onto the top step. He kicked it away and surveyed the yard. He thought he’d never felt air so cold or seen any so clear. He contemplated the fate of the wolves in the deep snow, contemplated the fate of Vikar, wondering why the dog hadn’t come home for the storm. He lingered there, bracing himself against the cold, a new abundance of faith in the days ahead.
Back inside, Olaf lay awake. Except for his right eye, which was bruised, the old man appeared better, as if the long sleep had done something to whittle away at his dying. Noah asked him how he felt.
In a voice practically inaudible he asked, “You seen the dog?” “I haven’t. I was just wondering about him.”
Olaf coughed. He cleared his throat and sat up to spit in the water glass on the coffee table. “Put a bucket of food out for him. He usually comes around after a snow. Builds a den under the steps.” Noah opened all the curtains. “I’ll put the food out in a minute. Will he be all right, with the snow and cold and everything?” “He usually is. Maybe he finally ran off with the wolves.”
“The call of the wild.”
“Your favorite story when you were a boy.”
“Get out in the woods and stay,” Noah said.
Olaf propped himself up on an elbow. “I need a hat. Something to keep me warm.” “I’ll find one.”
Noah fetched the orange hat from its peg on the porch. He gave it to his father, who struggled for a moment before handing it back to Noah and lifting his head slightly. Noah put his hands inside the cap, stretched it out, and pulled it down over the old man’s ears. Olaf leaned back on his pillow.
Noah went to the kitchen counter. He ground more pills and mixed them with another glass of water. He helped his father drink the potion.
“What day is it?” Olaf said.
“It’s Thursday.”
“In the morning?”
Noah looked at his watch. “It’s ten o’clock, a little after.” Olaf closed his eyes. “How much did it snow?”
“More than a foot, I think. There’s a drift to the eaves on the shed. And it’s cold. Below zero.” “The high after the low,” Olaf said.
Knowledge like that I’ll never possess, Noah thought.
Now Olaf opened his eyes. He looked at Noah. “It hurts. Bad.” He coughed. “It has for a long time.” Noah sat on the coffee table facing his father. “What can I do?” “There’s nothing to do.”
“I wanted to call Solveig, but I’m not leaving.”
“I’m glad she’s not here. I’ve got to be a sight.”
He was. “You look good. Better than last night.”
Olaf looked at the piano. “I dreamt of music.”
“You’re dreaming again? That’s good. You slept pretty peacefully last night.” “I feel better when I sleep.”
“You want to sleep now?”
“Wish I could.” He took a deep, unsteady breath. “I feel hollow.” “Is there anything else you want?” Noah asked.
“Pull the quilt over my feet,” Olaf said. “And just sit here with me.” Noah tucked the quilt around the old man.
Olaf began humming, more tunefully this time than the night before. Midway through the song he looked at Noah. He almost smiled through his baggy lips. Noah smiled back. He put his hand on his father’s.
After a moment Olaf said, “Your child, name him well.”
“Or her,” Noah said.
“Or her,” he echoed. “And love them.”
“Of course.”
“Tell you what. Take all the love I never gave you and heap it on your child. Maybe you’ll remember me a little more kindly that way.” He picked up the tune right where he’d left off.
“You don’t need to worry about me remembering you kindly, Dad.” He hummed the rest of the song. “My watch is on the nightstand. I want you to have it. Get it fixed.” “I will. I’ll treasure it.”
“I wish we could call Solveig. I should have had a phone line put in here years ago.” Noah got up to look at his cell phone. There was still no service. “I can go into town and call her. Do you want that?” “There’s no time for that. Just tell her that I love her, too. And the kids.” “I will.”
“Is it November yet?” Olaf said.
“It is,” Noah said, again checking his own watch. “November seventh.” “It’s always November,” Olaf said. Now he looked out the window. “Sit down for another minute, would you?” Noah did. Olaf reached up to touch his face. He held his son’s look. He pulled the boy to him exactly as he had thirty-five years ago. He kissed his forehead. Noah stayed there, close enough that he could feel his father’s breath. He wanted to tell him that he understood now. That he understood how his love had become cruel. He wanted to tell him he loved him. He couldn’t say anything.
Soon his father said, “Go put the food out for Vikar. I’m going to get some rest. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you came back.” Noah sat up. He’d closed his eyes in his father’s embrace but opened them now. When he did the old man was already sleeping again. He slept through the morning and the afternoon. He slept through the evening. He was still asleep when Noah himself dozed off on the chair sometime late at night.
TWELVE
The next morning Noah dressed warmly and shoveled a path down to the lake. Two hours’ labor that proved he’d underestimated the snowfall by half if not more. Again the sun shone and again the whiteness nearly blinded. He looked upon the lake bisected with skim ice, an arc of placid black water disrupted beyond the ice by thin ripples that flared under the cold, stiffening breeze. He felt a moment’s reprieve before he stepped onto the dock. But the ice cracked under the sway of the posts and he realized it was paper-thin, that the rowboat could easily break through it. As for the boat, it was buried like everything else under the snow. He shoveled it out, shoveled the dock, too.
The
room had been very cold when he’d awoken. He had not stoked the fire during the night. In that lightness and chill he’d seen his father, seen the quilt not rising. He’d watched, hoping to convince himself that what he knew was wrong, that the light was insufficient or that the old man’s breathing had become that short. When he finally stepped to Olaf and touched his cheek, his knowledge became irrefutable. His father’s face was the same temperature as the air. Noah simply pulled the quilt up over the old man and knelt beside the sofa. Anyone passing by would have thought he was praying.
Back up in the yard he cleared a path to the shed. The sun did little to warm him, and his fingers and toes grew numb despite his exertion. He first took the wheelbarrow from the shed. Looking down the hill to the lake, at the snow everywhere, he pushed it aside and retrieved instead the old Radio Flyer ski sled from the rafters. He tied a rope to the back end of it. Now he stood before the anchor, the consequences of its purpose beyond any intelligence he possessed. Solveig was not there. Nor Natalie. He put his arms around the old barrel. With great effort he carried it to the sled sitting in the snow. He set it upon the seat, took one of the pieces of tubing in one hand and the rope in the other, and guided it down the hill. At the lake-shore he set it on the dock. He towed the sled back up the hill and retrieved the platform his father had fashioned to sit on the gunwales. By now the sting of the cold on his face drew his skin tightly to his cheekbones. The lobes of his ears had gone numb. He brought the platform to the dock and set it across the boat with some difficulty. The ice around the boat cracked as it had when he’d first stepped on the dock, its sound full in the otherwise silent day.
Finally he returned to the house. He scratched the frost from the kitchen window and read the temperature on the thermometer. It was below zero. He turned to regard his father. For a long time he looked at the shape beneath the quilt. He counted back the time. It had been only some hundred and sixty hours, a simple week ago, that he and his father and Natalie had eaten so festively the Norwegian feast she’d brought. Only three days before that he’d arrived here at the lake. And just two days before arriving he’d received his father’s call. The measuring of those days and hours confounded him in contrast to what lay ahead for the old man now. To what lay ahead for himself.