Touch

by Alexi Zentner

  He looked for the church, and then for the house again, and as he turned, he realized what he had done by turning around. There was no front, no back now, just the biting whiteness, the stinging snow attacking him.

  He would not die. He knew that. In one direction was the church, in another was the house. The other ways were toward the slope down to the river, which he could follow to town, or to the woods. If he ended up in the woods, the force of the snow would be blunted and he would find trails that would either lead him into the cuts and the quick-built shelters or back into town. But it was his wife that he was thinking of. He did not want to lead her purposelessly through the night.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, standing straight and raising his face into the storm. He had read a book once that described a sandstorm somewhere in Arabia, and he thought that it would feel like this, the way the snow scraped against him and slipped down his collar. He did not know which way to go, but it was best to move. Best to do something other than stand out in this stinging snow. He opened his eyes again and started walking, purposefully, forcefully, as if he knew which way would take him to the church, as if he were leading his flock behind him, and he felt as if he had been touched by providence when, after a few dozen steps, he saw the broad face of the church in front of him.

  He was relieved when he stepped inside the church; though it was no warmer inside the church than out, at least he was given shelter from the biting storm. His relief quickly turned to anger, though. She was not there, and he knew that she had decided to go to town despite his instructions, thinking she would stop in the church to light the fire on her way back. She may have been smarter than him, but she was not as cautious as he would have liked her to be; there were still times when she thought that Sawgamet was quaint, when she did not realize that men died out in the woods. He gave himself a moment to fume and then he touched a match to the kindling. He knew Franklin and Rebecca would not let her leave the store in weather like this. She would have to wait out the snow in town, but she would be safe.

  In front of him, the wood quickly began to eat at itself, sending up a welcome light and touch of warmth. He was glad that he had laid the fire out so carefully earlier in the week. He let it take, and then carefully added a few logs. The fire was for him—the wedding would be on another day, a day with better weather, he knew—and he luxuriated before its warmth. Inside the church, the sound of the snow on the roof and the walls was almost peaceful, a lulling comfort, like the river. He could have lain down in front of the fire and gone to sleep. He wanted to. Tiredness had descended on him, had fallen on him, and he thought about it for a few seconds, but then he heard something.

  The sound was high and keening, not quite animal, but not like anything my stepfather had heard before. At first he thought it was just the wind, the snow howling at him, or perhaps a leftover, a ringing in his ears from his time outside, but whatever it was, it was not natural. He could not hear words, and he did not know why he was sure, but he knew that it was a voice, that it was calling him. The voice was not human, and it was not ethereal; nobody would ever mistake that voice for anything angelic, Father Earl thought. It was unnerving, and it cut through him, yet he could not stop himself from going to the window. He could not see anything, of course, but he stood by the window and looked anyway, transfixed. He wanted to see the qallupilluit, to hear what the sea witches were promising if he followed them down to the river, to death and destruction. And then it came clear to him, a single note, like somebody had touched a fork to a crystal goblet: he realized that the voice had to be his wife.

  He closed the door of the church behind him and stood in the entranceway, carefully aligning himself. He knew that he needed to move, to head home to her, but he was transfixed: two white birds perched on the railing by the door. Doves.

  “Lord?” he said, and then he spoke to the doves. “Are you angels?”

  The birds did not move, and after a moment my stepfather reached out and touched one. It was dead, frozen. His finger brushed off the coating of snow and ice—it was as if the bird had been encrusted in salt—and he realized that they were a pair of chickadees. He felt a blush of shame. He should have known that they were not doves, that things were always more simple than they seemed. He had to stop looking for signs from God wherever he went, he thought.

  As he brushed some of the crust off the bird he heard the voice again and snapped back to what had made him leave the church. He forced himself to step out of the shelter of the porch. Snow or not, it was a straight shot to the house and his wife.

  Again, he wanted to run, but he forced himself to stay disciplined, counting his steps. Fourteen, fifteen, and the voice faded, no longer calling him. Thirty, thirty-one, the only sound that of the snow, the only thing he could see the whiteness through the thin squinted slits of his eyes. He squatted down, trying to take some comfort in the shelter of the snow-covered boulder, but even in the lee of the rock, there was little respite. Still, he rested a moment.

  He was exhausted. The snow was deep enough to be a slogging. Foreman Martin had given Father Earl and his wife a pair of snowshoes each. His wife had held them out as if they were something offensive, a poorly skinned fur, but my stepfather had smiled and thanked the foreman. He knew that they would need the snowshoes, that by Christmas the snow would sit waist-deep or higher, and they would flounder without them. He wished he had them now. The snow was already near his knees. The thought gave him a rush of fear—how quickly the snow gathered—and he started to walk again.

  Forty, forty-one, and he was lost, a white blindness, and then he slipped, falling hard onto the ground. For a moment his ankle burned, and he was afraid that he had broken it, but when he stood, the pain flared away.

  Forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, and he stopped, suddenly afraid. He was once again in the lee of the snow-covered boulder, as if he had been turned around, but the boulder was to his left, as it should be if he were headed home. He looked up, as if that would help, and like a little miracle, he saw something, a glimmering, a gleaming in front of him, and he breathed out a small prayer. But as he was about to walk toward the light, he heard the voice again, calling him. This time it came from all around him. He stopped, unsure if he should go toward the light or if he should try to follow the voice. The voice echoed and crackled around him. It had changed. It enticed him, and he knew that if he closed his eyes he would have no choice but to follow it. He was no longer sure if it came from his wife or a witch. He had enough humility to know that he could not tell the difference between an angel and the devil.

  He followed the light.

  Forty-seven, forty-eight, and he could make out the shape of the house, saw that the light came through the window. He had taken the lantern from the desk—stupidly left it at the church in his hurry. It was his wife who set a second lantern in the window to guide him home. She was a smart one, and he would tell her so. He knew that she would take the storm as an opportunity to ask him to lie languorously with her. She had come into their marriage a virgin, but she was eager to be his wife. He had been hesitant since she had started carrying his child, thought there was something unnatural in it, but he would give in to her now. He would lie in bed with her, grateful to be warm and naked under the covers, and keep his hands on her stretched-out stomach, feeling for the kicks of his child, holding her until the snow stopped.

  The door hung open a few inches, and he felt a momentary surge of irritation at the thought of the cold she had let into the house. There was still a blast of heat when he opened the door, however, the smell of the soup boiling. But the house was empty. A glance was all it took—it was not as if there were anywhere for her to hide—and yet he still called to her, still called out her name, hoping she would answer, and as he did so, he realized that he had been right before. She had been the one calling to him, but he had gone toward the light, toward the warmth and shelter of their home, instead of turning back to save her.

  HE SPENT THE NIGHT WALKIN
G. He came to the river and followed the bank until he stumbled into the first house in town. He knocked on every door, but she was not inside any of the houses, had not been to DeBonnier’s store, the saloon, the whorehouse, the Catholic church. He walked through the woods until he came to the feeble shelters at the start of the cuts, and finally, as the snow started to slow, as the first light of day broke through, he stumbled once again upon their house.

  The snow was past his waist and each step burned his legs. He moved slowly, barely able to get himself onto the porch. Even with his new gloves, his hands were cold, frozen, and he struggled with the latch. He remembered the spindrift coming from his sleeve the previous day, saw a glint of ice holding the latch down, and he banged his fist against it a few times until it rattled free.

  The fire had gone out, but the heat still lingered. It was welcome. He did not even bother to remove his jacket, his boots. He just collapsed onto the chair in front of the dormant fire. The chair that his wife sat in while she knit or read. He sat for a few minutes, too tired to sleep. The room suddenly brightened, and he looked over to the window, to the burned-out lantern sitting on his desk. Sunlight marked a rectangle on the floor.

  He looked again at the lantern and realized that he had not been back to the church. He had left his own lantern there. She would have seen his light like he had seen hers. She was there, in front of the church fire, waiting and worrying for him.

  He tried to run off the porch, an awkward sort of shuffling in the deep snow; he was stopped not by his own exhaustion but by the brilliance of the light. The sun bounced against the crystalline snow, and he felt as if he were staring at a million candles in front of a million mirrors. He squinted, tears rolling down his eyes, and he placed his hands in front of his face. Snow was not always this blinding. It was the shape, the grains of snow like sugar, like salt, reflecting the light, beaming it directly at him.

  He could not open his eyes all of the way, but after a few minutes he was able to make out shapes against the dazzling whiteness. Trees bent and laden with coats of snow, whispers of green still evident. The church, so close, holding his wife. And there, between the church and his house, against the flattened landscape, beside where he thought the path was buried under the snow, two shapes protruding from the snow.

  And even before he took another step, he knew there should only be one shape, knew that there was only one boulder encrusted by snow. He knew then, and he would always know, that if he had had the courage to look back into the storm he would have found her, would have been able to carry her home, would not have left her to turn into a pillar of salt.

  MY STEPFATHER STOPPED talking and looked at me, but I felt like I could not catch my breath. He stared and waited, looking almost fearful, but I did not understand what he expected me to say. Was he waiting for me to cast judgment, to blame him for his loss of faith, if that’s even what it was? Did he think I would somehow find him at fault for the loss of his wife?

  Neither of us moved for a while, and I did not know what to do: I did not want to keep looking at him, but neither did I feel like I could look away.

  The sound of crying drifted down to us from the bedrooms. My youngest, waking in the dark of night. Then the sound of my wife’s footsteps in the hallway above.

  “She looks like her,” my stepfather said. “The baby takes after your mother. All of your girls do. I can see her in them.”

  “You’d best not say that if my wife’s parents come to visit us here,” I said, though I thought there was little chance of luring them to Sawgamet from Vancouver. “They are insistent that the girls are carrying the looks of their family through and through.”

  My stepfather looked down at his hands like he hadn’t heard my response, and then he let out a sound that could have been a cough, a grunt, or a sob. “I didn’t know,” he said.

  It took me a moment to realize that he had gone back to the story, that he was thinking of his first wife, alone and frozen under the covering of snow.

  “I thought I knew,” he continued. “I thought I knew what to expect from the winters. I’d taken seminary in Edmonton and thought that meant I understood the cold, that it was my wife who was unprepared for the cold, for the snow, for the darkness. I thought I would be able to watch over her. But I didn’t know.”

  “You couldn’t have—”

  “When your father and sister died …” He cut me off and then let his words trail off. He looked at me and then dropped his head.

  He picked up my teacup and placed it in the sink and then leaned heavily against the sideboard, his shoulders slumped, showing his age.

  “When your father and sister died, that winter, I went down to the ice sometimes, to stand above them, to visit with them. Did you know that?” He let out a small laugh. “Of course you didn’t know that. You were still a boy. What were you, ten, eleven that winter?”

  “Ten,” I said. “I turned eleven the following summer, after you and Mother married, after Jeannot came back to Sawgamet.” I did not add that I knew, that I had seen him walking out on the ice that winter, and that once I had even seen him kneel and place his palm flat against the ice. “Why?” I asked. “What do you mean, you went to visit them?”

  He kept his back to me. “I don’t know, exactly. I used to just stand and look at them, the way they were reaching toward each other. Your sister’s small hand, so clean and pale, reaching out, and I used to marvel at how trusting it seemed, how much faith she had that your father would reach her.”

  I wanted to tell him of how, when the ice had broken that year, when the water started to flow, I liked to think of their hands joining under the water, fingers touching as they were washed down the Sawgamet, but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “But he didn’t. He didn’t reach her.”

  “But he tried. He had—you can’t remember what he used to be like, how he was with two hands, before he injured himself—but he was so close, just the thinness of a hair between them. He went after her. He went after your sister. He didn’t turn back.”

  I rose from my chair and walked over to him, unsure what to do with my hands until finally I stood next to him and put my hand on his arm. “You couldn’t have saved her,” I said. “You couldn’t have saved your wife. You tried, and it’s better that you survived than that you perished in the snow without reaching her.”

  He looked up at me, and I was shocked to see that he looked almost angry, something I had rarely seen on his face.

  He spoke sharply. “This isn’t about my wife, Stephen. Just because I told you about how she …” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then started speaking in a more measured tone. “I was thinking about your mother, Stephen. I was wondering if, when your sister and father died, she felt that if only she had more faith, they would have been returned to her.”

  “God doesn’t—”

  “Dammit, I’m not talking about God,” he shouted, and then pushed off my arm. Heat started to rise in my face. And then I realized that he had begun to cry.

  “I’m not talking about God,” he said. “I’m talking about the woods, about whatever it was that your grandfather thought he could do so many years ago.”

  We were both silent, and then my stepfather wiped his eyes with his sleeves and sat back down. “I’m sorry, Stephen. Your mother …”

  “No. I understand.”

  “I’m being selfish. She’s my wife, but she’s also your mother.”

  “It’s hard,” I said.

  He looked out the window at the clouds that had gathered low in the sky. “It’s going to snow soon. Tonight. Tomorrow night. You can feel the way it’s aching to snow. Winter’s ready to come. Good thing they dug the grave already. Even with the new diesel-powered shovel, digging the grave would have taken some effort. Quicker than the old days, two men with pickaxes, and better still than having to put her body on ice until the thaw.”

  BUT FOR ALL OF OUR talking last night, we both understand that even if ghosts didn’t haunt my mother,
memories did.

  I’ve been up in the study most of the night, but near ten, Father Earl came to tell me that my mother had asked me to sit with her. I held her hand for a while, and then read by her side after she fell asleep. When she slept, her breath came in uneven fits and bursts. Despite the blankets covering her and the way the heat of the furnace soaked through the house, she seemed to shiver, so I stoked the fire until the room closed with warmth and my mother’s breathing flattened into regularity.

  I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke near eleven, thinking I heard Marie calling me. The lamp still angled away from my mother’s bed, light spilling over me, my book open on my lap, and it took me a moment to place myself, to remember that I was sitting vigil over my mother. I reached to pick up my book, but I heard my mother cough and realized she was awake, looking toward the window.

  “Turn off the lamp,” she said, her voice a whisper, and I couldn’t tell if she was conscious of the hour or simply unable to speak louder.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I fell asleep while I was reading. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  She smiled a little and blinked slowly enough that I thought she was going back to sleep, but then she shook her head. “Look out the window,” she said.

  As I reached up to turn off the lamp I realized that my hand was shaking. With the room dark, I could see that a mist hung in the air outside, thin sheets of rain icing the trees.

  “I want to go down to the river,” my mother said.

  “You—”

  She reached out and took my hand, stopping me from protesting. Her skin felt thin in my hand, and I knew that what I had been about to say—that it was raining, that she shouldn’t be outside, that she should rest—didn’t matter.