Peter Geye - Safe from the Sea

A couple of aisles over several spools lined the shelf. “This what you have in mind?” the old man said. “It’s your standard high-test, shot peened, poly coated. What do you need it for anyway?” He put his nose up in the air and looked at Noah through the lenses of his reading glasses.

“I don’t know exactly. It’s not for me, but it looks like it’ll do.”

“If it doesn’t work, bring it right back and we’ll get you what does.” He hollered toward the back of the store, and a tall teenager with a baggy Gunflint football jersey hanging on him stepped from behind a door. “Cut me twenty feet of the three-quarter-inch poly, all right?”

“Sure thing, boss.” The kid hurried behind the counter for a chain cutter.

“He’s a good worker,” the old man said. “Hard to find up here.”

“Good help’s hard to find anywhere,” Noah said, meaning to sound conspiratorial.

“Of course, you’re a Torr. I’ve been trying to figure it out since you walked in. All you Torr fellas are twelve feet tall. But I must’ve known you when you were knee high to a grasshopper.” He cleared his throat. “Your grandpa bought everything he needed to build that place from my pop, one of our first big customers. He used to play poker with him right back there.” He gestured to an office behind the counter. “How’s your dad doing anyway? Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s okay.”

“Tell the old codger Knut says hello. Tell him to come down and have coffee some morning.”

“I’ll do that.”

The kid brought the chain and set it on the counter. Knut put it in a paper bag and took eight dollars from Noah. “Remember,” he said, “if that doesn’t work for you, bring it back.”

“I appreciate it,” Noah said. “And I’ll tell the old man you say hello.” The bag seemed to weigh a hundred pounds.

At the Landing he filled the gas can and the truck before he went inside. The empty gravel parking lot and old-fashioned gas pumps finally made the place seem as remote as it was, and he imagined everything buried in snow. He pictured himself clamping his feet into a pair of cross-country skis and getting back to the cabin by way of fresh tracks in the spring corn. He imagined the labor, sweat, and reward. He could hear the fresh klister wax singing under the skis.

When the tank was full he went inside to pay and pick up the box of cinnamon rolls his father had requested. A bell chimed as he opened the door and walked into the deserted store. No cashier greeted him, only the smell of baking bread thick in the air. In the bakery case pastries as big as his feet lined the shelves. They looked better than anything he’d ever seen.

OLAF STOOD IN the middle of the yard wearing his ancient pea-coat, mukluks, wool cargo pants with pockets ballooning on either leg, and a pair of worn choppers. He held a thermos in one hand and an unlit cigar in the other. Noah parked the truck, took the bag with the chain from the seat beside him, and met Olaf in the yard.

“What are you going to wear when it starts getting cold?” he asked.

Olaf smiled. “Any luck with the chain?”

Noah held the bag up. “Knut says hello. Nice guy. There’s not much you couldn’t find in that store of his, either. It’s doubling as the local coffeehouse. Told me to tell you to come down some morning and join him for a cup.”

Olaf lifted the thermos. “I make my own coffee. But he runs a good business, been around since the Voyageurs.” He looked in the bag.

“That going to work?”

“This is fine,” Olaf said.

“Where are you headed anyway? Looks like you’re ready for a polar expedition.”

Olaf suddenly seemed bashful. He slapped his hand against his thigh, turned to look toward the shed, made a tentative step in its direction but stopped and faced Noah. “Come here,” he said.

The padlock on the shed wasn’t locked. Olaf took it from the hasp, hung it on a nail pounded into the siding, and tugged the warped door open. He stepped into the shed and pulled aside the curtain, barely illuminating the heaps of junk everywhere. Car parts and oil cans occupied a whole wall of shelves. There were mildew-stained cardboard boxes, splintered canoe paddles, busted lawn chairs, a step-ladder missing every other rung, a mattress and box spring leaning against the back wall, two pairs of Noah’s childhood skis propped in the corner, vintage life preservers hanging from hooks on the wall to his right, and on the left a table that must have been his father’s workshop, as evidenced by the hacksaw, the stainless-steel tubing, and the mayonnaise jar full of nails and screws atop an oak door that spanned two sawhorses. The place stank like ripe, wet wood.

Where, Noah thought, disgusted, could her ashes possibly be in this mess? “This place is a sty,” he said, stepping over a stack of magazines.

Olaf was clearing his toolbox from an old wooden barrel that sat on the floor beside the makeshift table. He shrugged. “You and your sister used to sleep out here. There’s a nice breeze in the summer.” He pointed the hacksaw at the cracked window. “Comes up off the lake.”

“It could use a breeze now. It smells awful in here.” Noah was trying to figure out how to ask about his mother’s ashes.

Olaf poured a cup of coffee from the thermos. “You recognize this?” He pointed at the barrel.

“This? Yeah, I sure do.”

Olaf pried the lid off, exposing thousands of taconite pellets.

“Your mother hated these things. Thought they were messy. She hated a mess.”

Noah picked a handful from the barrel and rolled them around in the palm of his hand. “They were,” he said. “They still are.” He showed his father the black smudges on his fingertips.

“I used to bring a pocketful of these home for you each run. Like they were goddamned lemon drops.”

“I remember that,” Noah said.

“You loved it. You thought it was the neatest damn thing.”

Noah wanted to smile at the memory but couldn’t. “Where are her ashes?” he said.

Olaf had turned his attention to the chain and didn’t look up when he said, “Somewhere. It’s been a long time since I had them out.” He slung the chain over his shoulders. “I used to keep them in the house but got scared I might use them instead of flour to bread the trout.”

“You’re joking.”

Olaf set the chain on the workbench and said nothing, only smiled.

“And now they’re lost.”

Olaf sat down, took a piece of the stainless-steel tubing, and threaded the chain through it. “They aren’t lost. They’re somewhere here. You can spit from one wall to the other, wouldn’t take long to find them.

“Anyway, forget about the ashes for a minute. I need help getting this down to the lake.” He kicked the barrel at Noah’s feet, finally looked him in the eye. “And there’s something else. All this stuff”—he gestured toward the workbench—“it’s for an anchor. The chain, it’s for an anchor.”

“What anchor?”

“For my burial in the lake.”

Noah looked at him for a hard moment. “Have you gone completely nuts? Your burial?” He raked his hair back and shook his head in disbelief.

“Settle down, would you? I know what’s going on here”—he put his hands to his stomach—“I know what’s happening to me. I’m not a fool.”

“You’re wrong about that. You’re exactly a fool.” Noah stepped toward his father. “First of all, we can take you to the doctor. We can get help for whatever’s happening to you. They cure this stuff nowadays. I mean, you don’t even know what’s wrong. And don’t tell me we covered it already,” Noah insisted, anticipating Olaf’s retort. “Let’s be reasonable instead.” Now he took the chain from his father’s shoulders and let it slink to the floor.