by Amy Espeseth
Reuben and I are singing, yelling loud with the wind in our ears.
Would you be free from your burden of sin? There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood. Would you o’er evil a victory win? There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.
Reuben digs it out for me: he scrapes his dirty fingernails close down by my scalp and pinches the body tight.
Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow? There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood. Sin stains are lost in its life-giving flow. There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.
One quick pull, and the nasty thing is scrambling all over my brother’s shivering, gloveless hands. Later, we’ll roast the tick on a match. Angel or not, its dark brown body will shrivel up as the flame burns through him. The big grey ticks that hang on the dogs are all bloated with blood, but this one is still flat, hard and little like a seed. He will stay hungry. Lucky we got him off me early.
12
ACROSS THE BLACK SKY, GREEN STREAKS SHRED THE CLOUDS. Scratches of white vein a yellow cone; it is a tornado of light pulsing in and out, worming its way higher and higher. The heavens are slit: ripped, split, gashed. Fire is splashing; it is dancing faster. It hisses and crackles and spits; it hoarsely murmurs, Armageddon. It is more than unusual to see the northern lights in December; they stripe the sky with colour a couple times a year, but usually in autumn and spring.
After the Sunday evening praise service — once everyone had finished treating Naomi like she was new and shiny, holding her hand, blessing her, and blessing God for her healing and for her gift — we all left the church expecting pinpoints of stars shining through the night. But what we got was colour: aurora borealis. Side by side, the congregation huddles together whispering in the parking lot, heads lifted, eyes fixed at the sky. In the dark, the voices don’t belong to anyone in particular.
‘Beautiful. Just beautiful. Our God is an awesome God.’
‘Ain’t the right season, though. Can’t say I’ve seen them without sitting on a tractor, either harvesting or planting, eh?’
‘Right. Makes a guy wonder.’
It is a wonder, so we stand and watch, breathing and shivering together awhile. Families start to drift away, and I can hear their car engines struggling to turn over in the cold. Naomi’s sleeping at our house tonight, and she walks with her hand tucked inside my jacket pocket. I see folks whispering about her to her father — some about miracle recoveries and others telling of other unknown prophecies — but we walk away and pile into the pick-up. Naomi don’t even look behind her as people watch her with their eyes. Daddy’s driving with Mom snuggled in beside him. Reuben and I balance Naomi half on our laps. Usually those two would snuggle together, but tonight he’s treating the girl like she’s spoiled meat. Our coats rub together, smelling moist as they dry in the loud blowing heat of the truck. As we drive, I press my nose on the window frost and ponder the lights.
The prophet Ezekiel speaks of a fearsome, northern windstorm made of light, its middle all glowing metal forming four living creatures. They were men, but men with four faces and four wings and straight legs capped with glinting cloven hooves. Hands hung beneath their wings; their wings flashed and the feather tips touched, but each creature forged directly ahead. There was no turning with them. Each creature possessed four faces: a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Their wings were mighty: for each, two wings spread out touching another creature and two wings covered its own body. They flew straight, following the Spirit, never turning astray. To look at the creatures burnt the eyes of men like coals. The touching wings flashed fire back and forth; they were lightning as they sped across the sky.
At school we studied the aurora borealis, and it is all about cycles and what it says in your own mind to mean. Vikings believed the lights were maidens mirrored on the sky; I like to imagine being in a ship out on the water, gazing up at a girl made all of colour and cloud. The Indian tribes around here seemed to disagree as to what the lights meant. Some thought that the lights spoke of war and disease or that they were rising ghosts, enemies looking for revenge. Some thought giants used torches of fire to shine light enough to spearfish on a dark night, just like they fished from birch bark canoes with torches tied to the ends. To those Indians, the northern lights were just that big fire shining off the water into our eyes, the reflection of a lake of flames. If I’ve got to pick a story to stick to, I pick the lake of flames. Lac du Flambeau ain’t too far from Cranberry Lake, so I know it must be near enough to true.
‘Deer!’
Daddy slams on the brakes and the pick-up skids on the ice. But Reuben was wrong: it’s a fisher. Almost a wolf but stragglier and closer to the ground, I barely see the thing as it skedaddles away from the road. It is all hunchback fur and yellow-green eyes, with a weasel face and fangs. Animals walk this road at night; roadkill brings them in and roadkill they become. Barn owls swoop for bats while bats swoop for mosquitoes, and they all avoid people the best they can. We’re parked crooked in the road, engine still running, all watching the shadow of the creature sidle through the cornfield. Daddy straightens the wheels toward home.
‘Naomi’s lucky she didn’t go through the glass,’ Reuben says low.
Why the boy needs to open his mouth, I don’t know. True, the maps and caps stored up the front of the dashboard did fly when the tyres slipped, but Reuben and me both held tight to Naomi. There’s no seatbelts in the hunting truck anyway.
‘The Lord probably told her to hold on, though; she knew it was coming.’ Reuben says it loud enough for only Naomi and me to hear.
I can’t see much of her face in the dark, but I know how the hurt would look. Naomi slides off of Reuben’s lap and sits on me alone. Her weight is enough for me to settle back into the vinyl, and her hair is covering most of my face.
‘Daddy don’t believe neither,’ he whispers.
I want to tell Reuben to shut his mouth. I want to tell Naomi that he is just jealous and don’t doubt her being sick nor getting well neither.
But he don’t even believe in Grandma when she talks to Jesus, so it don’t matter he don’t believe Jesus is talking to Naomi. I can’t see Reuben’s face, but I know how even his hard eyes shine when he’s hurting because he’s wounded something good.
I want to make it better and tell Naomi that I believe, but I don’t want to lie.
As we pass Uncle Peter’s land, Mom and Daddy are both looking out the driver’s window at an abandoned house. That house was there when he bought the Magnusson place, and there it still stands. The four-pane glass windows are all broken and the porch has started to sag. Lilac bushes bloom around it in spring, but they’re only thorny branches all winter. My uncle talks about tearing it down every year.
Once we’re home, Naomi takes a bath before bed. We’ve got plenty of pictures showing us as toddlers laughing together in the tub, but now that we’re grown, sharing a bath might feel a bit too close. Even though our growing seems unnoticeable to our family, both Naomi and I are most aware of our changes. Standing bare and goosepimpled before my bath, I glimpse myself in the bathroom mirror and see my mother’s body pushing through my little-girl hips and legs. Naomi’s not so lucky, though, as she don’t have the memory of her blood mother’s thighs to reassure her that she is forming to plan. But Naomi is thicker than me, with my arms and legs like birch sticks; she is soft and round where I am sharp and straight, even with my too-proud hips.
I’ve got to use her bathwater after she’s done because we don’t want to run out of hot. The floor is slick, and the mirror is steamy. She’s left her clothes and wet towel rumpled together in the laundry basket. I hold her clothes close to my face and breathe in her smell: it’s a mingle of me, and my mother, and the doe scent the men wear in the woods. Naomi’s underwear is white. No sad brownish smears, her panties are clean. Even someday, someday when they are stained, I believe she will bleed perfect: red-pink cranberrie
s frozen on the snow.
Naomi and I snuggle together under the quilts and blankets, sharing warmth in one bed rather than split between the bunks. My nose is freezing, but my nose is always freezing; seems like the blood never makes it to the tip. My body doesn’t always know its own way. We’ve finished reading our devotions, trying to memorise the ABCs of an excellent woman. Now with our flashlights off, we speak these things in God’s name. Even though we are probably getting some wrong — and Naomi keeps making me laugh — we will become Proverbs 31 women: attentive, busy, compassionate; dignified, early riser, frugal; good, homemaker, ingenious; just, kind, laughs; meek, not lazy, opens her home; praiseworthy, quiet, righteous; smiling, trustworthy, understanding; virtuous, wise, excellent; yielding and zealous. We will be wives of noble character. Together we say: Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Naomi memorises quick, but she doesn’t always remember long.
Even calling out our ABCs makes me feel like I’m lying, for my chances of being noble are low. I’m not alone in my failings, in what I find when I search my heart. When Grandma prays for me, she prays against rebellion. She’s seen it in me since I was little, my wilful and stubborn spirit: refusing the breast too early, spitting food, and my steady stare. And now with my talking back and such. For Naomi, her thorn is vanity; Grandma saw that in the moment they touched. Grandma held that tiny baby in her arms, kissing Naomi’s shiny black hair, smelling her scalp. And modesty was lacking: pride sat deep in the dark. I believe Grandma is right; she gives us a word of wisdom and she intercedes with the Lord. But even in bed, Naomi is holding her head again in that tilted way, looking out the sides of her eyes to make sure I see her praying before she sleeps. It’s dark in my room, but I see her checking that I watch her walk in her gifts. And in church, I see her believe she’s chosen, and I watch her blush and bloom.
Naomi’s mumbling under her breath, still praying while I’m trying to sleep. Vanity is its name. She needs to shut those dark eyes and quit looking. I’m waiting for her to fall asleep; I won’t be able to rest until I know I’m alone. When the dark and the cold sit heavy on my chest and I worry for my sleep, I tell myself stories of peace. God brings me peace from both my praying and my remembering. When I was little, before bed, my mom would run me a deep bath. She’d slip her hand inside the tub and check that the water wasn’t too hot, and then she’d pull off my shirt. ‘Skin the bunny.’ And my shirt would fold inside out and skim up over my head. ‘Skin the bunny.’ I’d sink into the tub, letting the warm water cover my body, sliding like a cased rabbit into the pot.
13
NOW I THINK IT IS TOO EARLY TO BE OUT ON THE ICE, BEING barely a couple weeks past Thanksgiving. But Reuben and Samuel say that it is December, and December is winter, so they are going ice fishing up at the cabin whether I like it or not. Naomi and I are invited if we have to be. We’ve gotten a pretty good winter so far, I suppose, with plenty of cold nights and not too much snow since deer hunting closed, so the ice ought to be thick enough. It didn’t have no cosy cover of snow to keep it from freezing thick through and through. Strange how we hope for barrels of snow for blood tracking come November hunting, and we pray for God to hold it back a bit for the ice to firm up and get us out on Cranberry Lake fishing in December. I like snow anytime, I guess, but I understand feeling the call to fish, low and deep in my belly, too.
Reuben’s been running tip-ups with shiners and sucker minnows as bait since late November, seeing he knows the ice up north is at least three inches thick. Up at the cabin, the lake freezes much earlier than the lakes around Failing. It might be that the water is left alone way up in the northwoods, left to switch its heart to winter, while the town lake and its ice are distracted providing light entertainment to Failing people. Come the end of football season, the boys from the wrecking yard put a banged-up truck or such way out in the grand centre of the lake. Talking about when the truck will go out on the ice come winter freeze and when the truck will go through the ice come spring thaw keeps a majority of folks in our town occupied for a good four or five months each and every year. I’ve even heard talk that some of the bars in town have a board up where the drinkers can place a bet with money depending on when they figure the ice’ll break. I can’t say that it is true that they’re gambling on nature in the dark corners of Failing’s bars, but I can’t deny it neither.
But the ice up at our cabin’s Cranberry Lake is left alone to her own devices. She’s out there in the midst of the tall, white pine and scrubby jack, freezing hard and meaning to ignore the wild turkeys and straggling deer coming down off of the hill looking for a mouthful of water. Meanwhile, there are schools of fish — bluegill, perch, sunfish, walleye and pike — swimming under the forming crust, their slimy hides slowing down for winter, their dawdling breathing becoming shallow, each gulp bringing in freezing water to chill along their skinny bones and flesh. That ice up at Cranberry ain’t thin and honeycombed like in Failing; no, she’s a clear blue ice — a bit slushy in parts but nice and new, and you can trust her. It ain’t crispy river ice, but you still got to take a good look for soft pockets of water that prove a current is running underneath. Sliding through a fissure will get you good and wet and cold as you’ve ever been. So you got to always keep an eye out, especially when she’s still freezing, like she’s still freezing in December.
But the boys won’t pay me no nevermind and have decided that we are all going out — here at Little Failing Lake barely outside town — and we are all going out today. We are crunching through the snow single file like Indians. Each carrying a bit of the gear — an ice auger, the rusty old bait bucket, lures and hooks and jigs, tip-ups and jigging rods, and a shiny new skimmer — we are packed down heavy. Reuben leads the way, tapping the ice with a stick before he guides us over; his ear can tell by the sound that comes back to him what the ice will hold and what it won’t. The shack is already out on the lake near a good spot for walleye, thanks to Reuben begging Daddy for a week solid. We aren’t allowed to keep the gear inside, though, as Daddy and Uncle Ingwald still think she might thaw in the night, and we’ll lose the shack. Reuben begged like a dog, saying last time he was at the cabin, he listened close to Cranberry; he couldn’t sleep for the sound of her making ice: cracking and freezing and cracking and freezing. Daddy said Little Failing ain’t Cranberry, and that nobody’s listening to the ice in town. Finally, Reuben had to promise that he and Samuel would rebuild the fishing shack, stick by stick, if she went through. I guess the men had no choice but to let them fish.
I don’t have trouble sleeping for listening to ice. In my head instead, tangling ropes swim, twisting and pulling tight, hard against me. Sometimes I dream that I am floating around the ceiling, sticking close to the tops of the walls, flying but afraid that I’ll come crashing down hard to the floor. At night at the cabin, if the bed and couch downstairs are full of men and boys, the girls got to go up the ladder into the attic and sleep with the squeaking bats and scratching mice. Sleeping at the cabin under my grandma’s patchwork quilts, I still fall into the shifting and sliding dark dreams, but at least I’ve got Naomi lying there beside me. When dreaming, she tends to suck her thumb, and I tend to call out in a fright, but we keep each other company, close enough.
Right near to the shack, a split in the ice races out from where Reuben is walking and cracks loud and rippling across the lake. Echoing off the wall of pines, the sound grows and gives me a shiver probably worse than it ought. Reuben is pretending he wasn’t ever scared, that he hasn’t already been picturing himself slipping through the ice: sinking down, down, down into the freezing deep, his eyes peering up through the frosted water, trying to find the hole out that was his hole in.
Throwing down his jacket and the jig poles he is carrying, Samuel is scrambling to get on his hockey skates and clear a circle for a bit of practice. I know, though, that those boys can already feel the water filling and freezing their l
ungs and choking out their breath. I know they can because I can, and it wasn’t me that broke the ice.
I guess it is my fault because I am watching Reuben unpacking and Samuel skating and not really keeping an eye on my feet. All of a sudden, the ice beneath me is swirling slush, and I feel my right leg slip deep into the water. Filled up with freezing water and chunks of ice, my boot starts to drag heavy and means to pull the rest of me into the lake and under the ice. Flailing my arms and screeching, I fight the pull downward and grab the edge of the hole to keep my left side, leg and arm and body and head, up above the water. I can’t say that I am praying, but I don’t know who else I am begging to let me live. I guess you don’t need to speak the name of God for Him to know that He is needed, because just as I feel that I will split right in two, Naomi and Reuben and Samuel pull me up and walk me away from the hole quicker than I even remember falling in.
Sopping wet, water dripping from my hip down to my toes, I can feel the rest of my body going numb and tingly. Looking back over my shoulder, I see there wasn’t ever any risk of me slipping through the hole, as it is only about twice the width of my thigh; my arms alone would’ve kept me up above with the living. That slushy hole I stepped into was made by a school of white fish swimming round and round together, whether to get air into the lake or to get revenge on ice fishermen, I don’t know. But at this moment, shivering head to toe and teeth rattling in my head, I am sure those plotting, scaly fish were out for retribution. I have a hard time catching my breath at the thought of sinking into the deep mud at the bottom of Little Failing, and my folks waiting until spring thaw to fish me out and bury me. Although the fear of drowning will soon pass, the risk of freezing out here in the sharp wind is mighty real. Wet from my splashing, the hair inside my nose is freezing hard and crisp, and I can see ice forming on the tips of my eyelashes, so I let my brother and cousins bundle me into the shack.