Winter Loon

by Susan Donovan Bernhard

I was in a standoff with my father. I could jump, he said, but only if I wore one of the bleached life jackets that wintered in a box with spiders and centipedes. I’d refused, thinking if I stood my ground, he’d relent. Instead, he and Charlie sat on the little bluff, drinking beer, watching me watch the other kids.

I could almost see time lagging behind, unable to catch up with the quick work of a thing bound to happen. The ice groaned and gasped, opened its frozen maw in a hibernated yawn.

I could see it in her eyes, a familiar intent, a thing hungry and alive. She knew she was done for. And right then, like so many other nights when she made me sleep with her or crawled into my little bed with me, she was afraid to be alone. I let out a cry that raced across the lake as we struggled, fisherman and catch.

I was bolt upright, blood throbbing in my eardrums. Wherever a soul is—in the heart, tendons, the vital organs beneath bones, behind eyes, between the ears—it broke apart in me, splintered, became a thing that longed but did not have.

“So go, why don’t you? See if I care.” “You don’t mean that,” he said. But I did. I wanted him to leave and to hold onto me. I wanted him to shut the hell up and to tell me I’d done all I could. I wanted his comfort. I got his pain.

He gave me a look that said he could see my cash balance on the sleeve of my shirt. He pulled a bulging wallet from his back pocket and peeled out a ten-dollar bill. He scowled at the plate of half-eaten french fries, the puddle of grease, the smear of ketchup. “No more fries,” he said to Kathryn. “I thought your mother talked to you about that.” Kathryn flushed, pulled the hem of her tight top down to meet her jeans, and snatched the bill from her father’s hand. A how-dare-you, well-you-had-it-coming look passed between them.

I watched for an odd size as she fanned out the envelopes, hoping my father had sent a card for my birthday. “Anything for me?” It was there, that hopefulness in my voice. I wished I hadn’t said anything, hadn’t called attention to myself in that way. If they were going to forget my birthday, I’d rather they did it outright and not have to backpedal and try to make something out of nothing.

Bills. Overdue notices. Flyers. There was nothing for me. Could endless daylight in Alaska make one day blend into the next until a person could be blinded in some way, completely lose track of time, lose track of what was important?

The storm had cooled the air some and Gip stayed home that night. I spent my birthday in the living room watching the television with my grandparents, fans rattling in the windows, moths thick around the streetlights, thoughts of a mysterious girl pushing out the fact that I still had not heard one word from my father.

We’d learned not to look at each other because hope is fertile and multiplies into disappointment.

There was a phone on the nightstand, and I rested my hand on it, thinking I could call the house, explain to my father she was mad at him, tell him he really ought to come get us. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with both of them.

SHE HAD SEEN ME. MORE than that, she’d watched me for days on end, passing her house, sometimes on foot, other times on bicycle, sometimes behind the wheel of Ruby’s clunker. And when she was good and ready—because that’s how Jolene Oliver worked, on her own time—she stepped off the porch and stopped me.

I felt the urge to vow that my intentions were good, that I could not possibly harm this girl, if that’s what her aunt feared might happen. All of me was foreign yet I wanted more than anything to sit down at that table, maybe even lay my head on my arms and rest. “Sure,” I said to Jolene. I turned to Mona. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

I turned back, closed my eyes again, and was surprised to feel the sweep of her hair on my arm, her head soft on my shoulder. Her bent legs collapsed against mine, and she curled toward me, quiet as a cat. I let my hand drift across her knees and pulled her closer, careful not to crush another thing, careful to let her know I wanted her right where she was and that I would not move until she was ready.

To this day, I can’t be at the river bottom and not think of how we became bound by love and loss there. The particular smell—the decay of wet things, fish and moss, that heady pine-and-honey stink of cottonwood resin, the river disappearing and remaking itself in the current—it’s the stuff of memory. I am soaked in it. She summoned me. I was at once powerless and powerful. “C’mon, sleepy! Let’s jump in.”

School would start after the weekend as the carnival left town, migrating south with better weather. September would bring cooler air, sweaters, and frost. After that, green would turn gold, red and brown leaves would give up the tree for ground, then fire, then earth. By November, hats and gloves, snow and ice would return.

We stood by while Nicky dealt with the man. Jolene slipped her arm behind my back and I put mine over her shoulder, pulling her into the crook, where she fit perfectly.

I understood what it was to use a person but not love them, to walk away because something better came along. I didn’t know then about leaving because something worse was coming, about leaving out of kindness.

“What you are doesn’t matter. I’m telling you what I am. I’m talking about me,” she said, her hand on her chest swearing allegiance to herself.

A KIND OF church was conducted in the Hightowers’ crowded kitchen over strong coffee and sticky dough baptized in sizzling grease. Sunday mornings were for eating and talking and storytelling, for leaning up against counters and doorjambs if the chairs were taken, for bringing in the week’s worth of groceries.

It wasn’t that I was stalling. It was more that I wanted to freeze that moment. If I could slow everything down, it wouldn’t end, at least not so soon. And part of me felt like it couldn’t possibly last, especially since it was so good. Nothing ever did.

It was like a bloodletting—it felt good to think the worst, to wallow in the pain instead of always, always holding it away from me.

“You need to think of it this way. Each new day is like a new life. More chances to make good and be honorable. That sun goes down, it can take sorrow with it, leave it on the other side if we let it. But you, you hold onto things.”

“You keep looking for someone else to make you whole, make it better. So much yearning. So much fight.”

“Without winter, how would we know to welcome spring? No death, no rebirth. Accept the cycle of things.

And just like that, the past seeped out of the logs and chinks, wormed its way out of the floorboards, and descended from the rafters. The door creaked and color flowed back in.

When you can have whatever you want, you look for things to want that you can’t have.

She had a scowl cleft that extended from the bridge of her nose to the part in her hair. The cracks around her mouth, smoking fissures, puckered up to her nose. Bags of worry hung beneath her eyes. But right then, I saw her face at rest, cast in mud, as if any expression would crackle it to pieces.

I flung the duffel over my shoulder. Ruby grabbed me as I was about to stoop for the box. She held onto me, squeezed me like a child clings to her mom. She pulled back and her calm face cracked wide open, a breached dam. Tears flowed out of her, down her cheeks, spring melt in a dry creek. She wiped her face with both hands. “Go on, now.”

We stayed until we heard a fireman shouting, “Cap! We got someone,” long after that someone could have survived. “Let’s go on now, kids,” Troy said. “It’s over.” And it was.

She was what I knew when everything else was in shadows. I could hold her in my arms, feel her with every part of me. She was whole when all else was lack.

Being hateful won’t get you anywhere. Wisdom is not gained through vengeance.”

When you know yourself, you can rest. The strong need to rest, too. The strong need to be able to close their eyes, trust sleep.”

“I loved her from the moment I saw her,” I said, not taking my eyes off the house where she lived. “Plant your feet, Wes. Loosen your arms. It’s going to come at you. You need to be ready.” He shoved me again. This time I stepped right.

There would be a phone book but no map, pen but no paper, a Bible but no God. The difference was neither one of my parents would be there. I was truly on my own. Duffel bag over my shoulder, I turned the knob and walked in, alone but unafraid.

“I tried to fix it. Couldn’t figure it out.” “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes it’s easier to build something new than it is to fix something broken.”

I’d seen firsthand how to love a hurt child, not from my wounded parents, not from Gip and Ruby, whose decisions were cast from failure and despair, but from Mona and Troy, who’d taken Jolene in, who gave her love that was a constant, steady drumbeat.

That one cut a hole in me at the same time it filled me up. Jolene. She was always so beautiful to me.