Touch

by Alexi Zentner

  He wrapped his arms around her and offered her a jam-filled biscuit, more of the sweet water, tried singing to her, rubbing her back, but she would not stop crying, and as his coat stained with her tears and snot, he shook his head. “Don’t cry, Virginia. If you stop crying, I’ll show you tonight what I brought with me. No need to wait until Christmas, yes?”

  She took a few heaving breaths and then wiped her nose on her sleeve. She looked at me and then back at my grandfather. “Promise?” He nodded, and then she did, too.

  Virginia started walking in front, covering the same ground we had trod on the way here, and as I began to follow her, my grandfather put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me.

  “Tonight,” he said, “I’ll show you what I’ve brought back. I’ll show you that there are more things than scary stories in these woods, that there are miracles out here.”

  “My grandmother?”

  “I told you,” he said. “I came back to raise the dead.”

  TWELVE

  The End of the Most Beautiful Village in the World

  FATHER EARL AND I TALKED for a short while before he headed off to sleep. Neither one of us could bear to wait; the funeral is to be held in the morning. And now it’s time for me to go to bed, myself. It’s gone past two in the morning, the house long silent.

  I do understand that on this night, the night of my mother’s death, the night before my mother’s funeral, I should be thinking of her, not these stories of my grandfather and grandmother, of my father and sister slipped below the ice, hands nearly touching, of the woods and witches and ghosts. But my mother, more than anyone, would have understood. Though she was not born in Sawgamet, she understood the nature of the cuts, the ghosts that can tie you to a place—as they did for her—or drive you away—as they did for me.

  It’s fair to say that these ghosts are what have kept me away for so long. A funny sort of providence, my stepfather said, but that is not why I have finally returned to Sawgamet after more than two decades away. I would not have returned if Father Earl had not asked me to, if he had not said that Sawgamet needed me—that he needed me—to come back. I am not like my grandfather—I don’t have the faith, or the strength, to raise the dead—but I have come to believe what my mother began to believe soon after my father and Marie went through the ice on the river: memories are another way to raise the dead.

  WE RETURNED FROM the woods with my grandfather, and though we did not collude or set out to deceive my mother, neither Virginia nor I saw fit to talk about the mahaha or the stream filled with sweet water. My grandfather must have said something, however, because that evening, after my mother finished the last of the dishes, my grandfather brought his contraption out of the bag and neither my mother nor my stepfather seemed surprised that we were not waiting until Christmas night, a more traditional time for miracles.

  A crank ran from a metal box that was attached to a polished board. A series of wires connected the box to a glass globe, and when my grandfather first started to turn the crank, the globe sputtered and glowed weakly.

  “That’s it?” I said, trying not to display my disappointment.

  “It’s an electric lantern,” my grandfather said. “Just wait.”

  My stepfather had banked the fire in the stove and screened it off, snuffed the candles and the lanterns, and the darkness in the cottage was encompassing. As my grandfather turned the handle harder and faster, the glass ball began to shine with a startling and flickering brilliance, a tiny sun contained in glass upon the table.

  My mother glanced over at me and then took my hand, and I thought of the way she had so often held my father’s mangled hand.

  And then, for some reason, my grandfather slowed, the sound of the turning crank dimming in concert with the light, and we were all left in the dim whisper from the stove, the memory of light dying in the glass globe.

  “Jeannot?” My mother leaned forward. “Jeannot?”

  My grandfather stared out the window and then turned slowly to me. “I thought—” His voice caught and then he looked down at his hands. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I might need more than one of these lights to chase off the darkness that candles and lanterns couldn’t break. I didn’t think … With all my searching it can’t be as simple as this.”

  He looked at me. “I just thought I would show you the light. Show you what is coming to Sawgamet. Lights like this, trains, moving pictures, what is set to replace the darkness of these woods. But I didn’t think …” He trailed off and then touched the crank with his hand. “I didn’t expect it to be tonight.”

  And then he clapped his hands together and stood up with a sudden energy. “It’s time,” he said. “She’s out there. She’s waiting for me.”

  “What are you talking about?” my stepfather said.

  “My grandmother?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you been listening to me?” my grandfather said, his voice soft and gentle, a small smile on his lips. “Yes, of course it’s your grandmother.” He glanced at me and then back to the window. “She asked me to bring her light, and now she’s waiting for me.” He slapped his hand on the table and then stood up. With a quavering voice, he said, “It’s time for me to go. I’ll not be coming back this time.”

  “Do you have to?” I asked.

  Jeannot looked pityingly toward me, at my mother, and then at my stepfather and Virginia in turn. “Have you no idea what love means, how long you can carry it with you? What your grandmother meant to me, what I have done and would do for her? Why do you think I came back here? To where I could never forget her? Where I see her in every rock, every tree, every bird?”

  He stared at me again. “I see your grandmother every time I look at you. Why do you think I fled and left your father behind? Do you understand?”

  He was quiet then, and I nodded, though I was not sure that I did understand.

  “Virginia,” my grandfather said. “You saw what I was doing, yes? Can you turn that crank and keep turning it?”

  She nodded solemnly, and then I rose to my feet. My mother and stepfather rose as well, but my grandfather put out his hand.

  “No. Just Stephen. He’ll come with me. He needs to see his grandmother. You two stay here with Virginia. Make sure she keeps the light burning.”

  My grandfather pulled his coat from the peg by the door. Even in the near dark of the cottage—the fire banked, the candles snuffed, the crank handle still for the moment—I was struck by how shrunken my grandfather finally seemed.

  “Once we’re outside, Virginia,” my grandfather said to my cousin. She nodded grimly and put her hand on the crank.

  The door shut firmly behind us, and I could hear the grinding sound of the handle beginning to turn in circles.

  Outside, my grandfather and I stood in the street. Candles and lanterns flickered fitfully in the houses around us, but the light from my mother and stepfather’s house seemed to flood through the windows, white and burning.

  Suddenly, around us, floating in the air, a dozen lights seemed to spring forth from the cold nothingness of the night.

  “This is what it was like,” my grandfather said. “That day on the river, when we canoed back through the snow, the miners like angels, your grandmother near dead from cold and in my arms, the way the house had been lit from within by your great-aunt, and I felt like there I was, in the midst of salvation.” He touched me on the shoulder, and I thought of all the stories he had told me of my grandmother, of himself, of Sawgamet. I thought of the fires, the snow, the woods. I thought of the river and my father and Marie trapped below, my mother chopping with the ax on the night of the freezing rain, when the ice shone from below.

  The floating lights momentarily dimmed as the light in the house became weaker, but then, as if Virginia had only needed to regrip the handle, the lights began to glow and shine again. They doubled and then redoubled in their radiance, glowing like the air itself was on fire. Each light cast widening circles of luminescence until darkness was ba
nished from the entire street, until the moon seemed to disappear from the sky and even the stars began to suffer from the light. And then, in the midst of this unbearable brightness, I was able to see a form, a movement.

  My grandmother stood like a shadow, and then she dissolved into solidness, standing before us as she should be, as she would have been had she not died nearly thirty years before. She wore a wedding dress and carried nothing but happiness. She stepped in front of me first, raising her hand to my face and whispering her fingers against my cheeks before she turned to my grandfather.

  I watched the two of them move into the brilliance of the light. I had to cover my eyes with my fingers, like I was staring into the sun. They rose into the air together, weightless, floating beside each other, suspended against the burning light. My grandmother extended her arm toward my grandfather, and he turned to her, reaching out with both hands.

  The light pulled at both of them, and I could see my grandfather stretching and fighting, until little more than the width of an ax blade separated my grandfather’s two hands from my grandmother’s one. And then the light thickened and blurred, leaving shadows and dark shapes so that all I could see was their hands, my grandfather’s large and rough, reaching for my grandmother’s small, smooth fingers.

  And then, they touched.

  At that moment, my grandparents, joined again as one, seemed to rise in a magnificent burst of light, and I could hear the shattering of glass before the light blinked away into darkness.

  IN THE MORNING, I helped Pearl make a coffin for my grandfather’s body. We placed the electric light—the glass globe broken and melted into something unrecognizable—into the box, and then Pearl, my stepfather, and several other men helped to carry the box to the church.

  At the funeral, my stepfather asked me if I wanted to say anything, but I mutely shook my head.

  Afterward, because of the snow and the frozen ground, the coffin was sealed and stored in the church’s woodshed, to lie undisturbed until the winter broke.

  THERE ISN’T ANYTHING more to tell about my grandfather. When the ground softened we buried him beside my grandmother in the cemetery.

  A few summers later—after Pearl and Mrs. Gasseur died in the fire that burned down the mill and the company house—the railway linked into Sawgamet, wires brought electricity and light to all the houses in the village, and I knew that I would never get a chance to join a float like my father had.

  Near the end of the July that I turned sixteen, I walked down the banks for an hour or two, toward Havershand, to no end in particular, just getting distance from Sawgamet. I had already spent many of the days that summer by myself, down by the river, fishing and picking wild blueberries. The rocks had stopped holding their heat past the setting of the sun, and the following morning I was expected to board the train to start my journey to school. I was going to the seminary in Edmonton, the same seminary where my stepfather had studied.

  Everywhere I looked I thought of a story that my father or grandfather had told me, the implausible details Jeannot had insisted upon, the moments where my father had always paused, and I wondered how it was that the rocks and the river were not crushed under the weight of so many ghosts. How long would I have to ride the train, how far gone would I be toward Edmonton before I stopped seeing my father and grandfather’s words spilled across the land?

  I walked further, for another hour, and then, at midday, I stopped and ate my sandwich while sitting on a small rock, my feet splayed in the cold shallows of the river. I finished, and then leaned down and pulled a flat oval stone from the water, and threw it out into the whitewater. The stone disappeared without a trace, and when I reached down again for another rock to throw, I saw the skate.

  Even with the blade rusted through, the black leather eaten in places, it was clearly a child’s skate. I turned it over in my hands, water dripping onto my legs. There were no markings on the skate, and I held it awhile, looking out into the water.

  I wondered if their hands had met, if the breaking ice, the tumultuous destruction of winter, had pushed Marie and my father together, or if it had torn them apart. I wanted to believe that my father had taken hold of Marie’s hand, that as the water roared down the Sawgamet, my father’s hands, both of them made whole again, held Marie’s hand tightly against the current.

  I put the skate back into the water, in case Marie should need it again, and started home, thinking of my father as a young man, walking back from Havershand after the float, walking to Sawgamet, of my grandfather, coming from Quesnellemouthe accompanied by Flaireur and knowing nothing of his destination. I walked until I saw the chute and stairs that ran from the water up to the ashes where the foreman’s cottage and mill had once stood.

  I scrambled up the steps, pausing for a moment at the top. I had been to the mill and the cottage many times since it burned down, but for the first time I ventured into the ashes, pushing aside charred logs and treading carefully on the uneven ground. I did not know what I was searching for, and after a while I left the ruins behind and washed off as best I could in the creek. The water was stunning with cold, and though it had none of the same sweetness, it reminded me of the day in the woods with my grandfather and Virginia. Nervously, I looked back over my shoulder, but the only thing behind me was the open meadow and the collapsed and hollowed buildings that I had once been so familiar with.

  I thought to walk out to the cuts for a while, but I did not want to face the chips and flying dust, the breaking weight of wood and branches. Instead, I stood and turned to go through the woods to the village. As I walked, I wondered if this was the same path that my grandfather had trod, or if that particular path had been overgrown and lost as so many of my grandfather’s stories had been lost.

  I stopped in the thick of the trees. The light filtered down to me and I could see motes of dust glimmer like specks of gold, like fairies. I closed my eyes and thought of the weight of the skate in my hand earlier that day, and then I tried to think of the sound of my father’s voice, but it did not come to me. I was not sure if I stood there with my eyes closed for only a few seconds or if it was longer, minutes, an hour, but I opened my eyes again when I heard footsteps.

  The boy that came toward me was the same age as me, loaded down by a heavy pack and carrying an ax and a rifle. A dog came trotting from behind him and then raced past the boy and to me. The dog sniffed at me, circled me once, and then kept moving up the path. It was lean and panting, and looked, I thought, as if it would not go much further.

  The boy did not seem to see me. He was intent on moving forward, and though I did not know what was in the boy’s full pack, I could see the strain and weight. The boy himself was as lean as the dog, but carried himself with such a tight violence that I did not have to think before stepping aside.

  I stared at the boy. Sawgamet was not the sort of village that had strangers come with any frequency, and the boy showed none of the same curiosity that I did. He focused furiously on the ground in front of him and brushed past me without any sort of acknowledgment.

  I wanted to stay quiet, feeling as if I were somehow intruding, as if, for the first time in my life, I did not belong in these woods. It was only when I saw the stray beam of sunlight catch the blade of the ax that my eyes widened and I called out.

  “Jeannot.” I said the name softly, and when the boy continued to walk, I called it louder. “Jeannot.”

  The boy hesitated and then stopped in his tracks. He showed his profile and then turned in a slow circle, as if he had not quite heard something, and then the boy continued walking, following the dog.

  I stood and watched for a moment and then I turned back toward the village and began to run. I ran down the gentle slope and through the start of the village, passing by a few curious children who played with a ball in front of the store. Even as my chest began to hurt I kept running until I reached the front of my stepfather’s house. I burst through the door and called out for my mother, and it was only when she st
epped from the kitchen that I allowed myself to bend over and gulp for breath.

  I was startled for a moment at what I took to be a sudden streak of white in her hair, but then I realized it was flour, and I stepped forward and embraced my mother, kissing her on the cheek.

  “You’ve not even left for seminary yet and you miss me already?” she asked.

  “I just thought … I was … I wanted to see you,” I stumbled. I stepped back and she took my hands in hers.

  “Dinner won’t be for a few hours still,” she said, “but if you want to sit in the kitchen with me, you’d be welcome. Your stepfather is up at the church, and he wouldn’t mind spending time with you, either.”

  “I’ll sit with you,” I said, and followed her into the kitchen. I sat on a stool and took the cookie that my mother handed me.

  “I shouldn’t,” she said, “but I won’t be able to spoil you once you’re in Edmonton.” She turned back to the dough on the counter and sank her hands into it. I watched the rhythm of her kneading, and for a moment I lost myself. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Nothing.” I had a sudden panic and then looked up to the peg by the back door and let out a small breath when I saw the ax still hanging there. I glanced over at my mother and saw her watching me.

  “What did you see?”

  I stuffed the last bite of the cookie into my mouth and stood. “I’ll bring in some more wood for the stove,” I said. I reached out and pulled the ax down from the peg. “And I’ll cut some kindling for you.”

  “You’ve stacked enough to get us through this winter and the next already. Besides, Earl does know how to use an ax.” She paused and then added, “I think.”

  I did not look back over my shoulder to see the smile that I could hear in her voice.

  “Can never have too much cut wood,” I said as I pushed through the door and out into the cooling air.

  The woodshed bulged with split wood in neat stacks, but I had already started another stack, three layers deep, leaning up against the back wall. I took a large piece of wood and balanced it atop the stump that I used for a cutting platform. I swung the ax down hard. The blade smashed cleanly through, splitting the wood into two smaller pieces. I picked one from the ground and then split that again, and then took those smaller pieces and added them to the pile of kindling.