Читать книгу Safe from the Sea - Peter Geye - Страница 9

That morning Noah boarded a plane for Duluth. By seven o’clock he was driving a rental car down Mesaba Avenue. Between the intermittent swoosh of the windshield wipers he recognized the city he harbored in his memory. It lay below him smothered in fog, the downtown lights wheezing in mist. Though he could not see the lake in the distance, he knew it rested beyond the pall. Soon he pulled onto Superior Street. The manholes blowing steam might have been freeing ghosts.

It had been his plan to drive up to Misquah, but he’d been delayed during a Minneapolis layover and decided it was too late. Instead he drove onto Lake Avenue, parked, and stepped out into the evening. Now he could see the lake, a dark and undulating line that rolled onto the shore. The concussions were met with a hiss as the water sieved back through the pebbled beach. The fog had a crystalline sharpness, and he could feel on his cheeks the drizzle carried by the wind. It all felt so familiar, and he thought, I resemble this place. And then, My father, he was inhabited by it.

But Duluth had also changed. Where now T-shirt and antique shops kept address, dive bars and pawnshops and shoe-repair shops had once done a dismal business. More than a few of Noah’s boyhood friends had ordered their first steins of beer in the slop shops that were now coffeehouses and art galleries. As a kid Noah had seen grown men stumble from doorways, drawing knives as they fell, ready to fight. Now he saw squalling kids and husbands and wives bickering over where to have dinner. The hotels had once offered hourly rates, now half-a-dozen national chains were staked in Canal Park. There were bookshops, ice-cream parlors, wilderness outfitters, toy stores, even a popcorn and cotton-candy cart, all lining the street like a Vermont ski town.

There did remain two stalwarts: the Tallahassee and the Freighter. The former, though it advertised JAZZ! ON SATURDAYS, was a topless bar with filthy taffeta curtains bunched in the windows. The latter was where Noah had ordered his first beer more than twenty years ago. It had also been his father’s hideaway of choice. They were next door to each other, laggards from a vanished time.

For all its squalor, the Freighter was a landmark, a bare-knuckle place that had not given way to slumming conventioneers or fraternity brothers down from the colleges. Dark, greasy air thick with smoke and blue neon hung like the fog as Noah stepped in for a draft and something to eat. A gauzy linoleum floor curled up from rotten floorboards, and a cobwebbed fishing net hung from the ceiling. Behind the bar, above the bottles of cheap booze, a series of photographs of ore boats in teakwood frames were nailed into the wall. A few tipplers sat at the bar, and behind the pull-tab counter a silver-haired churchgoer did a crossword puzzle. The sign above her head announced a meat raffle on Wednesdays.

Noah took a seat at the bar and swiveled around. Other than the murmuring of the drinkers and tinkling of pint glasses, the only sound came from an ancient television on the end of the bar broadcasting the local news.

“You look familiar,” the barman said, “but you aren’t from around here.” An old man with a ruddy face and drooping eyes, he looked familiar to Noah, too.

“I haven’t been here in years,” Noah said. “But my old man used to call this place home.”

“Who was your old man?”

“Olaf Torr.”

“Oh, Christ,” the man said, wiping his hands on a rag before reaching under the counter for a bottle of Wiser’s. “If you’re Torr’s boy, this is on me.”

Before Noah could decline, two shots of whiskey sat on the bar.

“I can’t drink this,” Noah said.

The barman drained the shot he’d poured for himself and smacked his lips. “You ain’t Torr’s boy if that’s true.” He poured another drink for himself. “Your pop’s dead?”

“Jesus, no,” Noah said. Then added, “Not yet.”

“He still living up around Misquah?”

“Unbelievably, he is.”

The barkeeper had not taken his eyes from Noah. He shook his head thoughtfully. “We used to fall on over to the Tallahassee every odd day of the week, your pops and me. Watch them girls shake tail.”

“You corrupted him, then.”

“Sure, he needed corrupting.” His father’s old crony sipped the second ounce of Wiser’s. “What brings you home?”

“I’m headed up to see him.”

“You tell that son of a bitch Mel says hello.”

“I’ll do that,” Noah said.

“You hungry?” Mel asked.

Noah ordered a burger basket and a pint of beer to help with the whiskey.

. . .

THE LAST TIME he had been in the Freighter was almost six years ago, on the morning after the wedding of a childhood friend. Before heading back to Boston he’d met his father for breakfast. On the mismatched barstools half-a-dozen gray-haired men sat like barnacles. When the door creaked shut behind Noah they turned in unison to sneer at the schoolteacher in pressed khaki trousers standing in the doorway. Olaf stood up, last in line and farthest from the door, looked down at Noah over the top of his glasses, and pulled out the barstool next to his own. “Hello, boy,” he said across the room as he pushed two empty Bloody Mary glasses into the bar gutter and crushed out a cigarette. “Come here. Have a seat. What do you know?”

As Noah approached, he took inventory of the old man: A baggy chambray work shirt frayed at the collar and cuffs and a pair of dungarees cinched with a canvas belt brought attention to how thin he had become; his hair and beard were both completely white now and even more unkempt than Noah remembered; his black boots were untied. As Olaf extended his hand, Noah saw evidence of the arthritis his sister had warned him of, but when he took the old man’s hand, the strength of the grip surprised him.

“Hi, Dad.”

Olaf pulled the barstool out further. When Noah sat, his father stepped back, sizing up Noah in his own manner. “Penny loafers, huh?”

Noah shrugged and held his hands up in a gesture of deference.

“What’ll you drink?” Olaf said.

“Orange juice. It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

“Orange juice for the boy, Mel!”

Whereas the other patrons had newspapers or each other for company, Olaf had been sitting alone, with only his drink before him. When he rejoined Noah at the bar, he resumed the posture of a loner, looking straight ahead at the bar back and rolling another cigarette.

Their talk over the next hour could hardly have passed for conversation. Between bites of runny eggs and greasy hash browns, Olaf asked Noah about his job and his girlfriend. Noah asked after the old man’s health and the state of the cabin up on Lake Forsone, where Olaf had recently moved after selling their house on High Street. Olaf drank two more Bloody Marys with Grain Belt snits. Occasionally his voice surged and the other men in the bar set their drinks down to look at him. Everyone knew who he was, of course, and there seemed to be dueling sympathies in their attention. On the one hand, they must have admired his tragedy, and on the other, pitied his churlishness.

In a lull during their breakfast Noah said, “I’m getting married.”

“That’s what your sister tells me.” Olaf shifted his gaze from the bar back to the ceiling and blew a stream of smoke. “Getting hitched,” he continued under his breath.

Noah slid his plate forward and swiveled to face his father. “In October. I hope you’ll be there.”

Instead of answering, Olaf summoned Mel. “The boy’s settling down, partner,” he announced. “Tying the knot.”

“The slipknot?”

“That’s the one,” Olaf said.

“God help him,” Mel replied.

“I’d offer to buy you a drink,” Olaf said, turning his attention back to Noah, “but you’ve already got your juice.” Instead he motioned for another Bloody Mary. Mel set about making it. “A slipknot, it’s like a noose,” Olaf explained. “It’s a joke, boy.”

“A good one, too.”

Noah remembered looking his father in the eye and seeing nothing but a boozy vacancy. The old man’s drunkenness had always struck Noah as cumulative. Olaf had not spent nights in the hoosegow, he’d not crashed the family car into light poles or missed mortgage payments because his paycheck had been squandered here at the Freighter. Despite this, the years had surely added up to something, to some soggy history that diminished the old man. Noah had an impulse to scold him but did not. Instead he rose to leave. “I’ve got a flight,” he explained. “I hope you’ll make the wedding.” He put his hand on his father’s shoulder in a gesture that should have been reversed. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

Olaf looked again over the top of his glasses. “I’ll see you in October.”

“YOU READY FOR another beer?” The bartender’s voice came as if from that morning years ago. He cleared the empty basket, took measure of Noah’s shot glass on the bar.

“No, thanks.”

“I swear, if you weren’t the spitting image of that old cuss, I’d suspect you of lying.” He pointed at the whiskey.

“Sorry,” Noah said. “I appreciate the thought. I’ve just never been able to stomach the stuff.”

“No harm,” he said, then placed the tab on the bar.

“Are there any boats tonight?” Noah asked.

Mel looked at the clock on the wall. “Erindring’s outbound in an hour. Load of coal for the good people of Stockholm.”

Noah laid payment on the tab. “Does he ever come down here anymore? You ever see him?”

“Your old man? Nah. I haven’t seen him in what, five years? Maybe longer.”

“I’ll tell him you said hello. Thanks for everything.”

“Anytime, now. Good-night.”

AT THE BREAKWATER he listened to the canal water lapping against the wall. Herring gulls squawked and rolled and dove on invisible currents above the aerial bridge. Every couple of minutes one would pull up on the breakwater and hop toward Noah with a cocked head. They appeared famished and well fed at the same time. Their iridescent eyes glistened in the lamplight. He had always loved watching the gulls and thought there was something majestic about them up here, something very different from the scavenger gulls back in Boston. Here the gulls fished first and begged only after the smelt had gone out.

He looked over the breakwater wall, caught his shadowy reflection in the waves, and wondered how many times during the last twenty-four hours he’d tried to remember his father’s aged face. Even as Noah had replayed the memories of that morning years ago in the Freighter, he had not quite been able to summon it.

The last of the gulls flew into the harbor, and he turned to head back. A light rain now mixed with the fog, and the temperature seemed to be falling. Not fifty paces to his left the foyer of the maritime museum was still lit. He approached the entrance and saw that it was open for another half hour. Inside, the split-level entryway was covered with posters and artifacts representing the Great Lakes shipping industry. He took the ramp up, which led into a large room with windows overlooking the canal. But for the person sitting behind the information desk, Noah was alone in the museum.

A crumpled lifeboat hung suspended from the ceiling on the edge of the main room. Next to it one of the anterooms advertised itself as the RAGNARØK EXHIBIT. Noah ventured in. A montage of photographs hung on the wall, and his father’s image glared back from two. The first took Noah’s breath away. It was an eighteen-by-twelve-inch black-and-white of the crew of the Rag. They huddled dockside in front of the black-hulled freighter during a late-winter snow squall. Taken in March 1967, the day of her first cruise that shipping season, it reminded Noah of countless other departures. Most of the thirty faces in the photograph were blurred in the snow or hidden by the wool collars of the crew’s standard-issue peacoats, but the image of his father’s gaze—unblemished by the snow and unhidden by his collar—was clear. The placard beside the photo said: THE CREW OF THE ILL-FATED SUPERIOR STEEL SHIP SS RAGNARØK, MARCH 1967. THE SHIP IS AT BERTH AT THE SUPERIOR STEEL DOCKS IN DULUTH HARBOR. THE RAG WOULD FOUNDER IN A GALE OFF ISLE ROYALE EIGHT MONTHS LATER. TWENTY-SEVEN OF HER THIRTY HANDS WERE LOST. It also listed, in parentheses, each of the men, from left to right, front to back.

Noah recognized the second photograph, taken of the three survivors. Luke Lifthrasir lay on a four-handled gurney being carried up the glazed boulder beach, his gauze-wrapped arm raised triumphantly in a frostbitten fist. Two men in Coast Guard uniforms tended to Bjorn Vifte, who sat huddled under a wool blanket. Noah’s father sat in the edge of the picture, alone, his shoulders slumped over his knees, the small of his back resting against an ancient cedar tree that grew from a cleft in the bedrock. Blood frozen in parallel lines stained his cheek. In the background, a photographer aimed his camera at the same wrecked lifeboat that hung on display from the ceiling in the next room. The second placard read: THE THREE SURVIVORS OF THE WRECK OF THE SS RAGNARØK, ASHORE AT LAST, HAT POINT, WAUSWAUGONING BAY, LAKE SUPERIOR. NOVEMBER 6TH, 1967.

Noah toured the rest of the museum like a somnambulist. A collection of ship models and more photographs chronicling the nautical history of Lake Superior filled one room. Recovered relics from Great Lake shipwrecks—forks, lanterns, life vests, a teakettle, a sextant, a compass, an oil can, a coal shovel, a brass bell—lined the glass cases that circled another exhibit. A row of small rooms replicated the cabins of different ships, a sort of timeline of living conditions aboard Great Lakes freighters. A steam-turbine tugboat engine, circa 1925, twenty feet tall, rose between the split-level entry. And the museum’s centerpiece, a model pilothouse complete with an antique wooden wheel, a chart room, and a brass Chadburn set to full steam, sat in the middle of the main hall.

From behind the wheel Noah looked out onto the lake. Although it was dark, he could see through the bare branches of a maple tree. Beyond the canal breakwaters and the channel lights the lake disappeared into an even deeper darkness. To his left, he knew, the hills stretched above town, shrouded in a chrysalis of late-autumn mizzle. And behind him the aerial bridge loomed like a skeleton.

Back outside, he resumed his spot at the breakwater. He heard the Erindring before he saw it. The ship blasted its horn, giving notice to the bridge-keeper. One long blow, like a cello’s moan, followed by two short blows was responded to in kind. The warning arms dropped on either side of the bridge, and it rose. A couple minutes later and the freighter was in full view, pushing through the pewter lake fog and faint harbor lights. It moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, and Noah marveled—as he had maybe a thousand times before—at the original notion of a million pounds of floating steel.

A faint hum accompanied the steaming ship under the bridge as it eased its way through the channel, past Noah, who had walked out to the end of the breakwater. The muted drone and eerie slapping of water against the hull accentuated a silence that seemed to grow as the ship inched its way nearer the end of the pier. When the first quarter of the bow passed, it was quiet enough that he could hear two men standing on the pilothouse deck, speaking a language he didn’t recognize. One of the men tossed his cigarette into the lake and nodded at Noah. In another few seconds the stern was even with the end of the breakwater and the hum replaced by water gurgling up from the prop. For five minutes Noah watched the ship until it disappeared into the eventide.

NOAH STOOD AT the breakwater thinking of Natalie long after the Erindring had passed into the darkness. After he had hung up with his father the day before, he sat on the edge of the bed in dumb disbelief. He heard his wife come into the bedroom, and when he looked up she was leaning against the door frame in the oversized Dartmouth sweatshirt she wore around the house.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“My father.”

She stepped fully into the bedroom and stood before Noah. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s sick.” Noah looked back down. “I told him I’d come home.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No.” He stood and put the phone back in the bedside cradle. “It’s probably not a very good idea. But why would he call? I have to go, don’t I?”

“Noah, you haven’t seen him since our wedding.” There was a tone of incrimination in her voice.

“He’s old, Nat, and this sounded serious.”

“If you think you should go, then I guess you will.” With those cryptic words she walked down to the basement for her treadmill workout. Noah was too stunned—both by Natalie’s reaction and his conversation with his father—to follow her.

Later, as Noah packed, Natalie lay in bed with her laptop open and files spread around her. She hadn’t said much all night, and the weight of her silence was troubling. “Want to tell me what’s on your mind?” he said.

She clapped her laptop shut and gathered her files. The look she gave him could have cut glass. “You don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“There are other things now, Noah.”

He looked at her, confused.

“Never mind,” she said, leaning over to turn out her lamp. “If your father’s ill, you should go. I hope it’s not serious.”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s nothing. Forget it.”

“Hey,” he persisted, going around to her side of the bed, “why aren’t you talking to me?”

“I said it’s nothing,” she said and pulled the covers over her head.

Noah knew her dismissals to be final, so he let her go to sleep. It was only later, while he lay in bed himself, unable to sleep, that he understood her chagrin: It was time to try to get pregnant again.

Natalie was a woman wholly given to her convictions. Because just about everything in her life had gone according to plan—by virtue of some good luck but more hard work—their inability to have a child had become, for her, less a thing to puzzle over than proof that she had exhausted all her good fortune. Her fatalism drove Noah crazy, and he had recently become apathetic about their travails. Though he resented their childlessness, he simply did not see it as a reason to cease with the rest of his life. Oftentimes, it seemed, she did.

He tossed and turned, weighing his father’s phone call and all that it portended against his wife’s sorrow. He thought of waking her, of telling her that he understood why she was so sad but that he had to brave this homecoming. He thought of taking her in his arms, hoping his embrace would prove his devotion.

But he didn’t wake or embrace her. He lay awake nearly all night, falling asleep only after the first hints of light had filtered into the bedroom. When he woke a couple of hours later she had already left for work.

NOW HE WALKED back to his car and drove up Superior Street to the Olde Hotel, where he checked into a lakeview room. Natalie had never visited Duluth, and he was glad of her absence now. It seemed not only right to be alone but a relief.

He dropped his bag on the settee and walked over to the window and spread the curtains. He knew he should call her. She would expect a call.

He called Ed instead. Three years ago Noah had quit teaching history at a Brookline prep school and bought an antiquarian map business he’d seen advertised in the back of Harper’s. His single employee was a retired marine colonel. Ed was dependable to a fault and was looking after the store while Noah was away. Over the phone he reassured Noah that he needn’t worry, said he’d call if he had questions, and told Noah firmly to go take care of his ailing father.

Outside, the rain had stiffened and was washing away the fog. Noah kept his eyes on the lake while he dialed home.

“Hey,” he said, “it’s me.”

“It’s you,” she said, the sound of her voice taut with disappointment.

“I’m in Duluth. I got here about three hours ago, too late to drive up to Misquah. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I got a hotel room. I’ll drive up there in the morning.”

He noticed a light gathering form out on the lake.

“Okay,” she said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Listen, Nat, I’m sorry about how I left.”

“It’s not how you left, Noah. It’s that you left.” She took a deep breath. “But I think you know that.”

It was his turn to take a deep breath. What could he say to appease her? “I said I was sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize.” He heard the refrigerator crunching out ice, her glass of water before bed.

“I didn’t plan this, Nat.”

“You haven’t seen your father in more than five years, Noah. You’ve hardly talked to him.”

Noah thought of the pictures in the museum. He thought of his father’s distant voice on the phone just yesterday. “He’s sick.”

“I know.” The strain in her voice lessened. “The timing is terrible, that’s all. It’s incredible.”

“You’re right about that,” he said.

Noah watched the rain strengthen, saw sheet lightning up over Minnesota Point. He knew that the root of her terseness lay in her overwhelming sadness, one that consumed her often. He feared that his coming here was unforgivable as far as she was concerned, but he also knew that when he’d told his father he was coming, he’d had about as much sway over his own words as he now had over the thunderstorm outside.

“Just call me again after you get there. It’s late and I have an early morning,” she finally said.

“I’ll call tomorrow.”

“I have an appointment with Dr. Baker tomorrow, in case you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget, Nat.”

A meaningful silence passed, as though both had more to say but neither could articulate their thoughts. Finally Noah said, “Good-night, then. I love you.”

Natalie said, “Good-night.”

Noah remained at the window. When finally the rain let up the light he’d been watching out on the lake came into focus. A freighter, her deck lights radiant with caution, lay at anchor. It was a fitting view for his faraway feelings.

NOAH THOUGHT OF the map of the north shore he had framed above his desk at home, a lithograph of the Minnesota arrowhead circa 1874. There were no roads then—either on the map or in reality—but the Lake Superior shore was dotted with towns, most of them now gone or renamed. Whenever he found himself sitting back in his desk chair, looking up at the map, he was reminded of passing along this shore as a child.

Highway 61 was as forlorn in those predawn hours as it had remained in his memory. The potholes and seasons-old frost heaves yet pocked the blacktop, the dilapidated wooden storefronts and signs warning of deer crossings and dangerous curves still marked the road-side, the countless rivers and streams rushed under the highway bridges as they had for ages. But the two deadliest curves—curves that had once pinned cars on sheer cliff tops—had been replaced with quarter-mile tunnels burrowed through the bedrock.

He had left Duluth an hour ago, sleep starved and anxious, and now was toying with the radio. A disc jockey from a station in Marquette announced the time, seven twenty-five, and an old country-music song. The first few chords of a steel guitar moaned before fading to static. He turned the radio off and settled into the hum of the tires on the pavement. Occasionally the road curved to the right and the trees dispersed and the brown rocks and the brown water of the lake came into view. The lake was unusually still, especially in contrast to his memories of it tonguing up onto the stone beaches. They were a child’s memory, though, the water all froth and fury.

Just clear of Taconite Harbor and the Two Islands he saw the sun rise over the water, remembering the adage about a red sky in morning. It was red—the sky over the lake—and lowering. It reminded him of the late-season gales that had been the curse of his mother, the curse of all the ore men’s wives. He never knew what to think about the storms but that they were spectacular. There was one stewing in the distance.

He passed the Temperance River and pulled the directions from his shirt pocket. His father had called just two days ago, his voice hoarse and whispery.

“Hello, boy,” he said, the heavy pause between words freighted with circumspection. Without waiting for Noah to respond, Olaf continued, “I may need a bit of help getting the place ready for winter.”

“Help?” Noah said. Help? he thought. He almost said, Who is this?

“The woodpiles, some work around the house.”

“Why?”

His father took a deep and raspy breath. “I’m sick, Noah.”

It wasn’t what his father said as much as it was the fact of hearing him speak at all that alarmed Noah. The silence between them had become unconditional. Noah couldn’t have said whether the estrangement—from his point of view—had evolved into forgetting or forsaking, but when he said to his father, “I’ll come, I can leave tomorrow,” he was alarmed again, this time by his own impulse. “I’ll fly into Duluth. But I’m not sure I remember how to get to the cabin.” Now, approaching Misquah, he began to feel uneasy. He’d traveled this road a thousand times, but not since he was in high school.

The directions Olaf gave were those of a man who knew where he was and where he was going unconsciously: Up in Misquah you’ll see the Landing there—it’s got a red sign. You’ll recognize it. Past the Landing the county road goes into the hills. You’ll see a stand of firs burnt red from this summer—it was a warm summer—look for those trees. Twenty minutes into the hills you’ll come on Lake Forsone Road. There’s clover still flaming in the ditch on the right. When I first saw it, I thought it was a goddamn brushfire. Turn and follow the road around the lake. You’ll remember when you get here. Anyway, it’s simple now that I think about it: Just keep the red on the right, like the harbor buoys—red, right, returning.

Among the red markers his father had mentioned, only the gas station was plain to see. He spotted no stand of red-burnt firs, no flaming clover. The county road was tucked behind a rock outcropping at a bend on the highway. He’d been expecting gravel, but it was paved now. The trees his father had mentioned were barely distinct in the forest of millions. The burnt red his father had described was an almost indiscernible rouge they wore among their green, green boughs. The road ascended quickly and narrowed into the deep timber.

Ten minutes later it veered sharply to the left and in the middle of the curve, on the right, a dirt road tunneled into the trees. At the wooden marker Noah stopped to watch a whitetail deer and her fawn breakfasting on the tall grass. They were so lithe and alert. Noah moved ahead slowly, taking a last look out the passenger-side window. There in the grass he saw a patch of red clover.

Despite his father’s suggestion that it would all look familiar, Noah had no memory of where the house might be. He followed the road left, to the north, past the public access and over a culvert. The road continued to curve away from the lake, so it surprised him when he saw a mailbox, barely attached to a rotted post, with his father’s name faded to the edge of invisibility. He stopped again, opened the mailbox, and found mail postmarked as long as three weeks ago: supermarket flyers, real estate offerings, magazines, and a handful of envelopes from the Superior Steel Company. He took it all with him.

Noah turned onto the trail. Long grass grew between the tire tracks, and overgrown trees brushed the top of his car. For a quarter mile he crept toward the lake under the shade of the trees. Then the road widened and began to go downhill. Rain runoff channels a foot deep grooved the hill, and what little gravel remained on the trail was unpacked. After three sharp turns, the cabin appeared before him.

He parked beside the rusted Suburban that his father had bought the year Noah went to college. Noah’s Grandpa Torr had been a meticulous man and had kept the house shipshape. The woodpiles—like bunkers along two sides of the house and in the middle of the yard—had always been expertly stacked. His grandpa used to boast that they could withstand a tornado. He kept the trees trimmed, too, and the small lawn mowed. His Grandpa Torr’s fastidiousness was redoubled in Noah’s own father, so the disrepair of the house shocked Noah. The rough-sawn cedar siding had taken on a green-gray hue, and the grainy, knotted siding had been weathered smooth. The roof bowed and had bunches of moss and spry grass growing between the shingles. Either his father had become a different man or he’d not been well enough to maintain the place for years.

Not knowing whether to knock or just walk in, Noah hesitated before pushing the screen door open and stepping into the house. “Dad?” he said. “Dad,” he called again, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. No one answered. After looking in each of the two bedrooms he stepped back out and walked to the shed at the edge of the yard. With its fieldstone foundation sinking into the earth, cracked windows, and peeling paint, the shed looked as bad as the house. A padlock secured the door, and curtains covered the windows inside. He turned, stood for a minute watching the privy up the trail, and when his father didn’t appear, he started toward the lake.

As he walked down the footworn path he recalled countless days when as a child he’d followed his father up this same trail. He could picture his father’s broad shoulders, the stringer of lake trout hanging from his thumb, the purposeful stride. Noah could never keep up with him and was always out of breath when he reached the top of the hill. There he’d find his father standing over a tree stump on the edge of the yard, his fillet knife ready. Noah would pause every time, watching from a short distance the man he hoped someday to become. Those memories were coming back to him sadly now, and as he neared the shore he stopped suddenly.

Was that man really his father? He had a rod in the water, fishing in the shallows alongshore. His spine was bowed and knobby. His stark white hair framed his head. He cut a lonely silhouette against the lake, so lonely in fact that the steely resolve Noah expected of himself gave immediately over to sadness. Noah stood there for a moment, then coughed and said, “Hello, Dad.” He took a step in his father’s direction.

Olaf turned and looked up. “Ah, he’s here.”

Olaf reeled in his line and set the rod in the bottom of the boat. The rusted and bent dock poles evidenced the many winters it must have spent in the water. The missing planks were more confirmation of the sad state of the place. The dock swayed with his father’s clumsy steps as he came ashore.

Olaf stood before him for a long moment. He had become so slight that Noah was able to look squarely into his eyes. Finally Olaf said, “How was the trip?”

“Okay. Fine.”

“All right.”

“How are they biting?” Noah pointed at the fishing rod.

Olaf turned to the lake. “There’s fish out there, just none for me. You eat breakfast?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve got some oatmeal.”

“I’d eat oatmeal.”

Olaf looked up the hill, took a deep breath, and combed his beard with his hand.

“How are you feeling?” Noah said.

Olaf looked at him as though he were surprised by the question. “Like a hundred goddamn bucks.”

“That’s good.”

And Olaf started up the hill.

Noah trailed him, watching his father’s slumped shoulders, listening to his heavy breathing. The old man could barely lift his feet. When they stopped midway and Olaf rested against a boulder Noah said, “You sure you’re okay?”

“It’s a long goddamn walk nowadays,” Olaf said and then started up again.

When they reached the top of the hill Olaf leaned on the corner of the house. His flannel shirt hung on him like a drape, his pants sagged. The deep wrinkles around his eyes lent them a hollow aspect and accentuated the look of fatigue on his face.

“I can make breakfast,” Noah offered.

Olaf stood up. “Come on inside,” he said.

Olaf put a kettle of water on the potbellied stove, which stood along the wall between the two bedroom doors. He stoked the fire and walked back to the kitchen. The box of steel-cut oats sat on a shelf over the sink. Olaf filled two bowls and placed a spoon in each.

“Can I help?” Noah asked. “You just sit.”

After the water began to boil, Olaf carried it to the kitchen with a grubby mitt, poured it over the oats, and then asked Noah if he wanted coffee.

“Whatever you’re having.”

“You want nuts? Raisins?”

“Sure,” Noah said.

Olaf stored the nuts and raisins in Mason jars. The almonds were sitting on top of a bookcase, and Olaf went into his bedroom for the raisins. He mixed the bowls of oatmeal as if they were filled with cement, carried them one at a time to the table. Finally he brought two mugs of coffee over.

“You want anything else?”

“No. Thanks. This looks great.”

“Well, then, come on while everything’s still warm.”

They ate silently at first, blowing on spoonfuls of steaming oats and sipping their coffee. Neither had much flavor, and the raisins and nuts were hard as stones. Olaf thumbed through the mail Noah had set on the table, taking measured bites, determined to show that whatever ailed him hadn’t gotten too far along yet. Noah couldn’t bring it up, not yet, so instead he said, “You’ve been doing your reading.” Two bookcases in the dark corner of the cabin teemed with paperbacks. “Since when are you such a bookworm?”

“What else have I got to do up here?”

“Looks like you’ve been fishing,” Noah said.

Olaf paused over a spoonful of oats. He looked at Noah. “Fishing? Sit on the dock and catch a perch and call it fishing?” He put the oats in his mouth. “I haven’t fished the steps all year. I thought we could go over there after breakfast.”

“It’s been a while. But fishing the steps sounds good.”

Olaf said, “All right, then. We’ll go fishing.”

NOAH OPENED THE cabinet and saw half-a-dozen rods hung carefully on the inside of the door. Among the collection he recognized his old fly rod—the one he had used as a high school kid almost every summer day—and his favorite Shakespeare spin caster with the cork handle. He had seldom used the spin caster after he’d discovered fly fishing.

“My god,” Noah said as he stepped out of the house. “This is the same rod and reel I had as a kid.”

“That’s a good setup. I just changed the line and oiled the reel. It’s all ready.”

Noah imagined his father’s huge, bumbling hands, arthritic and pained, putting a new line on the reel. He must have spent a full afternoon on it. “So we’re all set, then?” Noah asked.

“And we better get moving. By sunset it’ll be raining like the end of days.”

They descended the hill and climbed into the boat, Olaf straddling the forward thwart, leaving Noah to row. Noah untied the stern line from the dock and pushed out into the shallows. The oarlocks shrieked as he made his first stroke. With each stroke after, they quieted until he turned the boat north and the oarlocks quit complaining altogether.

Lake Forsone was cut from an ancient batholith, the last above-water remnants of which rose in a sharp palisade of iron-streaked granite on the far northern shore. Fifty feet tall and a quarter mile long, the cliff dominated the landscape. On the western edge of the escarpment the Sawtooth Creek emptied into the lake. It was here that the late-season trout would be gathered on what the Torrs had named the first step. The water beneath the palisade descended in four broad steps to a depth of more than a hundred and fifty feet. There were almost a thousand lakes in the county, Forsone was the deepest.

The southern quarter of the lake was much shallower, and the rock outcroppings that dominated the northern shore gave way to a muskeg thick with black spruce and fen. The muskeg drained into Tristhet Creek, a fishless stream that trickled all the way to Lake Superior. Noah watched as a barred owl rose from its hollow tree in the bog land, its wings flapping in slow motion. A breeze rose with the bird.

By the time they reached the shadowy water beneath the palisade, Noah felt well primed. It had taken him nearly half an hour of constant rowing. He reached over the gunwale, cupped his hand, and brought a scoop of water up to splash his face. It was ice cold and clear as glass.

When he turned to his father the old man was already tying a bucktail jig onto Noah’s line. “It’s still enough we won’t drift much,” Olaf said, handing him the rod. “Cast up against the cliff, let it sink, crank her in. The water’s cold enough the lakers are out of the depths. They’re spawning now.”

Noah took the rod, thinking, You could be dying, but still you’re baiting my line? I know how to bait a line, I remember. He stared at his father, who cast his own line up the shore. It hissed in the otherwise silent morning and then splashed as the jig hit the water. The old man rubbed his nose and combed his beard with his fingers again, looking past Noah and out over the still black water.

“We’re poachers now. Trout season ended more than a month ago. And you with no license on top of it all,” Olaf said softly, working the jig with quick jerks of his rod. “I hope the DNR is busy with the bow hunters.”

Noah could not take his eyes off him. For the first time since he had arrived that morning he really looked at the old man. The gaze must have made Olaf uncomfortable because he glanced away, hurried his line in, and cast again.

“Well, it won’t be long,” Olaf said.

“What’s that?”

Olaf shifted his weight, picked something from his teeth, and shrugged. “The fish. We’ve got to be quiet if we want to catch fish.” He looked at Noah. “They aren’t stupid. They can hear us.”

Hear us, Noah thought, suddenly overcome by the significance of being there, by the sickness practically radiating from the old man. He leaned toward his father and whispered, “Who cares about the fish?”

“No fish, no dinner.”

“Dinner is easy enough to come by. I can get in the car and be back in half an hour with dinner.”

“Chrissakes, you want potato chips and bologna sandwiches, why’d you come all the way up here?”

“I came because you’re sick. I came to figure out what we’re going to do. I came to give you a hand.”

“Well, right now the best thing you could do for me would be to shush. I want to catch some of the fish swimming around down there. Maybe spare me your bologna sandwich. What do you say? How about you bring us back in a little closer?”

Okay, Noah thought, we can fish today. He put the oars in the water for two pulls toward the palisade. He cast his jig onto the placid water, ripples widening in perfect circles as he waited for the lure to reach its depth. As he made the first crank on his reel he heard the hiss of his father’s drag. He looked over, saw the old man’s rod arcing from his hand. His face looked serene.

Olaf caught three lake trout—the first was as long as Olaf’s forearm—enough fish for dinner that night and three meals stored in the freezer. Noah didn’t catch a thing.

“That’s just rotten luck,” Olaf said as they rowed back toward the cabin.

Noah pulled harder on the oars and felt the skin on his hands toughen.

AFTER THEIR FOUR o’clock dinner of cracker-crusted trout, instant mashed potatoes, and creamed corn, they sat at the table and talked for an hour about the things Noah could help with around the house. Olaf was most concerned about his woodpile, a concern Noah could not comprehend given the bounty of split boles stacked, seemingly, everywhere. Olaf mentioned that the hearth needed some mortar work, that the eaves trough spanning the roofline on the front of the house required repair, that there were shingles missing on the shed. He also said he wanted to get the dock out of the water this winter. Noah insisted, despite his misgivings and certainty that he would be unable to repair any of it, that anything Olaf needed, he would do.

Noah got up and cleared the table. Standing at the kitchen counter he said, “We’ve got our chores lined up, now what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You said you were sick.”

Plainly, Olaf said, “I’m dying.”

Noah felt the word—dying—like a punch in the gut. He returned to the table and sat down. “What? How do you know? What have the doctors told you?”

“I haven’t been to the doctor.”

A guarded hope entered Noah’s mind: How could his father know he was dying? “How do you know what’s wrong?”

“I’ve done my research.”

Noah looked at him, puzzled. “Research?”

“At the library. Up in Gunflint.”

“The library? Dad, if you’re sick enough to die, you’ve got to go see someone. You’ve got to get help.”

Olaf put his hands palm down on the table and cleared his throat. “I want you to listen to me,” he said patiently. “I know what I’m doing. I know what I want. I’m not going to the doctor and the reasons are simple: I’m sick, I’m going to die. Whether it’s tomorrow or six months from now hardly seems important. What is important is that I don’t prolong my misery, don’t hold on and end up in a nursing home with a bunch of old ladies reeking of Listerine and playing goddamn bingo. This is going to happen on my terms, understand?”

Noah buried his face in his hands. “Who said anything about a nursing home? All I’m saying is you need to see a doctor. You’re in no position to diagnose yourself, even if you’ve read every book in the library. Is there still a hospital up in Gunflint?”

Olaf stood heavily and looked Noah squarely in the eyes. “I will say it one more time—I am not going to the doctor. It’s final. Now, I’d like nothing better than to have you help me get the place ready for winter, but I will not be lectured.”

He lumbered into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Noah’s first impulse was to anger. But as he sat there alone, the seriousness of his father’s health now a certainty, his anger subsided, was replaced instead with an unnatural calm. There was a new light cast on his being there, one that complicated even as it made clearer.

Noah walked to the door and looked out into the yard, now being swallowed by the gloaming. Thinking to call Natalie, he took his cell phone from his pocket. But there was no signal, there hadn’t been since he was twenty minutes north of Duluth.

So now what? he thought as rain began to fall.