The Snowfly

by Joseph Heywood

  One of the kids, a boy about twelve with long hair said, “What’s he mean, Ma?”

  “Hush,” she said, gently pushing the boy away. “I have a job,” she said to me. “I work nights as a cashier at the Red Owl and I take phone calls for people.”

  It took some talking, but Janey finally invited me in and tentatively accepted the job as manager of the Light. Her house was neat, orderly, and homey.

  While Karla and her lawyer took care of the sale and closing, I spent the remainder of the season hunting fish, exploring, and working out the details of the Grand Marais Food & Beverage Society. In the end Fred Ciz, Father Buzz, and even Karla Capo bought in, and Karla was elected honcho. The building turned out to be more than a century old and Karla said she thought we could get it and other town buildings off the tax rolls by having the state declare the Grand Marais Bay area a state historical preservation district. Three hundred years before, French voyageurs had pulled their canoes into the bay to camp and escape Superior’s nasty and quixotic moods. All the details of business planning were trivia to me. My money was in and it was up to our little board to make the thing work, which they did.

  In early September we had a board meeting in Staley’s apartment above the bar. I was going to move my stuff out of Fred’s, but I realized that when I moved on the space would be wasted, so I arranged for Janey and her kids to have the place as part of her job. When I came to town I could stay with Fred or Buzz. Anticipating that Janey would be reticent about moving in, I left it to Karla to tell her.

  After the meeting Karla and I had a drink. “Fred says you’ll be leaving soon.”

  The television was on and the Tigers were playing the Indians in the season wind-down.

  “That’s the general plan.”

  “Where to this time?”

  “I don’t exactly know yet.”

  She smiled. “I’d go crazy if I didn’t know.”

  “It goes with the job.”

  She laughed. “I envy you in some ways, but don’t you get nervous going to faraway places?”

  “Not really. If you have no expectations, there’re no letdowns.”

  “Or highs,” she said. “Fred said you were in Vietnam.”

  “Two years.”

  “Bad?”

  “I had it easy. Bad was being a grunt living in the dirt.”

  “You divorced?”

  “Never married.”

  She grinned. “I guess that makes you the local prize.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Booby prize.”

  She looked at me seductively. “I meant bedroom prize.”

  •••

  The last week of September I decided to hike up my river. I figured I’d take three days up, make camp, and finish the season there. I’d hike out when I was done. Fred warned me to be careful of bears.

  I told him they were like dogs.

  He said, “Right. Four-hundred-pound dogs.”

  Buzz said that he’d like to go to keep me company, but I told him I needed time alone. Karla thought I was crazy and told me to let her know as soon as I was back. In the weeks since we had met Karla had been giving off less and less subtle signals of an interest in taking the relationship to a more personal level and I was anything but sanguine. Karla was a handsome woman, filled with life and energy, and I was tempted. One night I had walked over to her place at two in the morning, but I lost my nerve when I got there.

  Buzz, Fred, Karla, and Janey all stood outside Staley’s to see me off. It was early morning. The men shook my hand. The women hugged me.

  Karla whispered, “Goddammit, be careful.”

  Janey shook her head and said, “Going alone isn’t too smart.”

  I had gotten topographical maps from the DNR and plotted a course. The first day I wanted to get as far upriver as possible, so I parked east of the river and followed the ridgelines west and south, looking for an intercept.

  It was a glorious day. There were no insects, the ferns were browning under shortening days, the sumac was flaming orange, and bright yellow birch and popple leaves quaked frenetically in a soft breeze. I figured it would take four to five hours to strike the river, but my ridges quickly dissolved into a gloomy cedar swamp intertwined with tag alder and it was late afternoon before I stumbled onto the river. As anticipated, it was substantial, with racing clear water. There was a lot of timber down and long boulder fields, nice pocket water. I even saw trout rising in a small pool next to the bank.

  I got into the river and worked my way along the shallows, zigzagging to the inside turns across from where the river cut the banks and the water dug out the deep holes. Eventually I found the tip of an extreme oxbow where a cluster of huge white cedars provided shelter. I took off my pack. I had no energy left for fishing. I ate my food cold, hung my food bag fifty yards away in a tree, crawled into my sleeping bag, and passed out.

  Loud splashes awoke me. There was a sliver moon, emitting pale blue light. Two bears the color of ink were moving around in shallow water only yards away. I was too surprised to be afraid, but caution is best around anything wild. I unzipped my bag quietly and slid out onto the wet grass; when I got to my knees and tried to stand I was knocked forward.

  •••

  “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “Shush.”

  “But he’s hangin’ up there. Why’s he doin’ that?”

  I could see light. The voice was a child’s and I wanted to see what she was looking at, but my eyes didn’t seem to work and when I tried to touch my face my arms wouldn’t move. Then the pain switched on.

  “Mommy, he’s screaming!”

  Somewhere in my brain it registered that he was me.

  •••

  I was in a bed. When I tried to move, my chest felt like it would explode. A hand immediately touched my shoulder.

  “Don’t move, Bowie.”

  Some instructions are easier to follow than others. It was Karla’s voice and if she didn’t want me to move I would become a statue.

  “I can’t see.”

  “Your eyes are swollen shut,” Karla said.

  “What happened to me?” I remembered the splashing bears and the moon and getting out of my sleeping bag. I remembered a little girl’s voice. Now Karla. There were some serious gaps between events, assuming any of them were real.

  “Listen to me, son. You’ve taken a real beating.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “This is Doc Miwanteyo, Bowie.” Karla’s voice.

  “You’ve got bruised kidneys, a couple of broken ribs, and your shoulder has been dislocated,” the doctor said.

  “Did I get bit?”

  “No, sir. Looks more like somebody beat the applesauce out of you.”

  “What happened?” Another voice.

  “It’s Amp,” Karla said. The deputy.

  I asked, “Where’re Fred and Buzz?”

  Fred Ciz said, “I’m right here. Buzz’ll be here soon. He had something he had to do. He was real upset when they brought you in. He’ll be here soon,” Fred repeated. It would be some time before I understood the significance of Buzz’s absence.

  “I’m here, too,” Janey said.

  I felt queasy. “I don’t know what happened. Am I dying?”

  “No, but there’s a lot of damage. You’re going to have to give it time.” The doctor’s voice. What kind of name was Miwanteyo? I wished I could see.

  I told them what I knew, which wasn’t much.

  Amp said, “No friggin’ bear did this. How’d you get out to where you were found?”

  “Where was I found?” I got no answer. “Where am I now?”

  “Karla’s house,” Fred said.

  The doctor butted in. “But we may have to move you to the hospital in Marquette.”

  I thought of the USS
Snow. “No hospital.”

  “He’s hardheaded,” Fred Ciz said. I took it as a compliment.

  “Thank God.” This from Karla, who draped a warm cloth across my forehead.

  •••

  It was just over a month later and we already had eight inches of snow and another early-winter storm bearing down on us. I could see again and my ribs were pretty much healed, but my shoulder and back still hurt, and I had recurring headaches. I slept in a ground-floor bedroom at Karla’s place and had to be awakened by her every morning. We ate meals together every day and between calls with clients she stopped in to check on me, hovering around, encouraging me. When Karla couldn’t be there, Janey stopped in. I had no idea why, but Janey’s presence made me nervous.

  The wind roared outside and wet snow pelted the north face of the house. There was a fire in the fireplace. My shoulder ached when I got cold so I wrapped in a blanket and sat in front of the fire with my feet propped on a stool. The wood popped and the smoke perfumed the house.

  Karla came in with cups of hot chocolate. She wore a heavy red robe and thick, heavy white socks. “How do you feel?”

  “Beat.” I still didn’t understand what had happened to me. Deputy Sheriff Amp had hiked in to my campsite, but my gear was gone and it had rained, so there was nothing along the lines of tracks or other evidence. Some asshole, was Amp’s unofficial ruling.

  “Doc Miwanteyo says your body’s healed,” Karla said. “It’s time you got yourself back to normal. Your boss in New York calls Fred every day to find out how you’re doing. You have to get up and out.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Lord, no. I just want you well again.” Her hand rested on my arm.

  We drank our hot chocolate in silence. We both dozed in our chairs and when I awoke, she was adding wood to the fire. When she bent over her robe pulled tight across her hips and I felt a stirring. She glanced back at me and smiled.

  “Nice nap?”

  I nodded. “Weren’t your girls supposed to be back this week?”

  She turned around and crossed her arms. “Yeah, but the ex refuses to let them go. He’s got his legal beagles throwing curveballs. He says they can’t get a proper education up here. His lawyers are involved.”

  Karla’s voice was sad. “My lawyer says we’ll win. I asked her, ‘Who’s we?’ Do the kids win when their parents fight over them like they were a Lincoln? Why does such crap happen to essentially good people? I should write a book about it, but I don’t have the discipline to sit down every day. Do you think my husband’s right?”

  “I doubt that education is the issue.”

  She half smiled. “You don’t want to talk about my troubles.”

  “I think education isn’t a product of big schools.”

  “That’s what I think, too.” She sat down on the footstool and rubbed my foot. “What do you think of me?”

  “I can’t believe how you took me in. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Maybe I had an ulterior motive,” she said. “Men are supposed to fall in love with their nurses, right?”

  I chuckled.

  “You hold everything pretty close, don’t you? Tell me the truth, Bowie. When you look at me, what do you see?”

  We were headed into something, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for it. “Intelligence,” I said. “Thoughtfulness. Energy. Enthusiasm. You like people and they like you. Organized. Courageous. I think it took nerve to move up here and start from scratch.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I see a friend.”

  She ran her hand up my leg, sending a shiver up my spine. “I’m glad you didn’t say sweet. When I was a girl I loved church, Christmas, Easter, the choir, the Latin. My folks thought I might become a nun, but I didn’t really take any of the church stuff to heart. Church was peaceful and uplifting, like fine entertainment, a sophisticated circus, and that’s all. I was expected to be a good girl and I was, even at college, and for a while after. I took a job at J. Walter Thompson in Chicago. But nature is nature and my buildup lasted nearly twenty-four years, so when I finally indulged my libido I took to screwing like Amelia Earhart took to flying. It is one of life’s truths that women are at least as sexually inclined as men, though not many men ever recognize this. Having finally taken the big step, I continued to indulge and offer no apologies.”

  Her hand was higher now, feathering me, and I was in full response. She pulled the blanket away and looked down at me. “My goodness,” she said. “I think you’re cured.”

  “That wasn’t my problem.”

  She looked me in the eyes. “Couldn’t tell that by me.”

  I closed my eyes.

  Later, in bed, she told me more about herself.

  “I moved from Chicago to New York and then to Detroit,” she said. “One of my college girlfriends had inherited some money. She was in Traverse City and bought a small ad agency up there, so I quit the big time and moved. Katherine, my friend, was a lot like me. We were nearly thirty, our business got going, and we both exercised our rights as adults. We had taken on an account with a new Ford dealership. The owner said he believed trucks would be hot, so we developed a series of ads to attract accountants and doctors and lawyers to trucks. ‘You don’t need a blue collar to live a man’s life.’ Sounds infantile now, but it worked back then. The owner’s name was Roman and he and I got involved. He had a wife but no kids. His wife, Laurie, was mixed up with a prosecutor named Carvelly. That’s how T.C. was in those days. And still is,” she added.

  She had her arm over me and her head next to mine on my pillow.

  “Well,” she said, “the truth is, I pursued Roman. I threw the full-court press on him, and you know how it is, when you’re young and lusting, you come in a snap. Fourteen years later he was still Mr. Sudden and I’m talking Wyatt Earp fast. I took to watching the clock: ninety seconds max. I told him we had a problem. He told me his other women had never complained. I was badly frustrated. I stopped getting off less than two months after we started dating and faked it from then on. Well, hell,” she said. “I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn’t talk to him about it, so I just accepted it. After thirteen years I let myself get involved with another guy. It lasted a few weeks, but I knew I couldn’t go back to Roman, so I got a lawyer and the rest is history. Then it got ugly. I told a friend about his problem and it got back to him and he went berserk. His play for the kids is a way of striking back at me. I’m sorry it’s a mess,” she whispered, “but I’m not sorry I left him.”

  I was always surprised by the intimate details of the lives of others and that they shared them so freely both to reporters and in bed. When I awoke in the morning Karla’s side of the bed was cold, but I could smell food so I got up and showered and shaved and dressed for the first time in weeks and went into the kitchen.

  After breakfast, I walked over to Staley’s and checked in with Janey, who gave me a warm smile before I went into the back office to telephone Yetter. I felt weak and a little lightheaded, but I also knew I needed to get some semblance of order back into my life.

  Yetter was in but had to be tracked down, and I was sitting there waiting for him to return my call when Janey came through the door with a fresh cinnamon roll and coffee and sat down across from me. She wore a tight purple sweater and black ski pants. Her blue eyes were dark and searching. I couldn’t read the emotion.

  “Are you and Karla getting serious?”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Pardon me?”

  “She’s my friend and I don’t want her hurt,” Janey said.

  “She’s my friend, too.”

  “Look, you gave me a job and I’m thankful for that, but I won’t have my friends hurt. Men always move on.” Her nostrils flared. She had real fight in her and I was impressed.

  “I offered you th
e job because I thought you’d do a good job. That’s all there was. What’s between Karla and me is between us.”

  “Men always want something,” she said, growling. “What’re you up to?”

  “Nothing,” I said, which was true.

  “Don’t break Karla’s heart,” she said as she got up from the table.

  When she was gone, I felt like I’d just run a hundred miles. I called Yetter again and got put on hold.

  “Is this Lazarus?” he asked when he finally answered.

  “Good as new, my doc says.”

  “What is he, a vet?”

  “I’m ready to go back to work.”

  “Well, that might not be so easy. We’ve got financial trouble, kid.”

  My gut tightened. “I’m still on the payroll, right?”

  “For now, but we’re going to cut back. Hell, I may not survive.”

  I felt panic building. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just sit tight and keep your pants on until I see how this thing shakes out. And don’t worry, if UPI goes in the toilet, there’s plenty more fish to fry. I’m not hanging you out to dry, kid. Sometimes the best thing you can do is hunker down and wait.”

  It was disconcerting. Karla had asked me if I got excited about new assignments and until now I hadn’t, but now I began to understand that maybe the work was more important than I had realized. If I got cut loose, what would happen to the Light? To me?

  Karla was already at the house when I got there. “You went out?”

  “To Staley’s.”

  She rubbed her hands together. “Feel good to get out?”

  We took a nap together. She had an evening meeting in Newberry. “I’ll be back late,” she said, “the weather and all.” We kissed like old marrieds when she left and I tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. I finally walked over to the Light and had dinner. Janey smiled and waved when I walked in but stayed away, which suited me. She still had on the purple sweater.

  Buzz came in as I was finishing my fish dinner and had a tuna sandwich and a shot of peppermint schnapps, issuing several loud belches. “Janey looks great,” he said. “Healthy. I think she looks younger every time I see her.”