Peter Geye - Safe from the Sea

He took a room at a harborside motel and unpacked his new clothes on the bed. He began to undress. He clicked the television on and watched the weather report. The forecast called for continued cold and snow, possibly heavy, later in the week. The thought of it appealed to Noah.

The hotel soap smelled of almonds, the shampoo like a fourth-rate barbershop. He took a long, scalding shower, washing and rinsing and washing again. He would have liked to shave but he had no razor. He toweled off.

In the nightstand drawer was a Cook County phone book. He looked in the yellow pages for a piano tuner. There were two listings, both in Gunflint. He called the first and made arrangements for him to come the next day at lunchtime and have a look. Noah gave careful directions. Then he turned the TV off. He fished from his pocket the doctor’s business card. He looked at his watch. It was noon.

A one-sided and dispiriting conversation passed between Noah and the doctor, whose authority and competence seemed as unquestionable as the news was bad. She informed Noah that though not all the tests had been completed, she nevertheless had no doubt about the severity of his father’s illness. She spoke brusquely but with compassion of biopsies and polyps, of tumors and blood, and of stages of sickness, particularly of a stage designated Duke’s D. A terminal stage, she assured him. She told him the cancer was spreading rapidly and out of control. She said surely his father was in extraordinary pain. She did not mention treatment. “Under normal circumstances,” she concluded, “I’d suggest your father visit us again immediately. That you make hospice arrangements. Though I understand that’s not likely.”

Noah agreed.

“The truth is, it doesn’t matter much. If he were admitted he wouldn’t leave again. His sickness is that advanced. The drugs we prescribed won’t do for the pain what we would do here, but I suspect your father might not want them regardless. He may as well be at peace where he is.”

She asked Noah whether he was able to stay with Olaf. She reminded Noah to give him the drugs, said he might not be able to watch his father if he didn’t. She warned him of the possibility of hallucinations and of the suddenness with which things could turn. In the end she apologized for bringing such news. Noah might have said ten words during the entire conversation.

His conversation with Solveig required more speech, and he left no detail unsaid. She assured Noah she’d be back soon, as early as Friday if everything went as planned with Tom’s folks and the kids. Maybe even Thursday if Tom could clear a court date. She told Noah to go back and take care of their father. When Noah asked her if she’d had any epiphany about the anchor in the shed, she admitted to none.

WHEN HE’D FINISHED on the phone with Solveig he dressed quickly in his new clothes. He paid the hotel receptionist for the phone calls. He nearly flooded the truck while starting it and drove out of town with white plumes of smoke huffing from the tailpipe.

The truck didn’t handle the sharp curves of Highway 61 very well. It would lurch and slide and grumble when Noah braked hard midcurve, then sputter when he’d step on the accelerator coming out of one. Rounding one of the steep, uphill curves, he came upon an awesome panorama of the lake and skies. A battlement of cinder-colored clouds broke and the sun reflected off the water in a million different directions. The lake was well below him, down a granite cliff, and the distance eclipsed the reflection. He could stare right at the sun’s image off the lake.

He stopped at the Landing before heading back up to Lake Forsone. He bought kitchen matches and lantern mantles. He bought coffee and hot dogs, oatmeal, roasted peanuts, and bread. He asked for ibuprofen, antacid, ChapStick, and Gold Bond from behind the counter. He asked for two Hudson Bay blankets. He stocked up on batteries and candles and toothpaste. When it was all loaded in the back of the truck, he drove back to the cabin.

A pall draped the house. Noah could sense it more than see it. The midday light settled more like dusk. He rushed to park the truck and hurried into the house.

Olaf knelt on one knee before the stove, adding wood to the fire. The only light in the room came through the windows. He looked over his shoulder when Noah walked in. It was as though he had aged five years since Noah had left that morning.

Olaf said, “The fire’s out.”

“The fire is not out, Dad. It’s a hundred degrees in here.”

Olaf tried to raise himself off the floor but stumbled onto his elbow in the effort.

Noah helped his father to his feet, ushered him to the sofa, and helped him to sit. After he spread the afghan over his father’s legs, Noah went back and closed the stove door.

“Look at the ice on the goddamn windows,” Olaf said.

Noah looked at the frost that had formed in the corners of the window panes. “It’s going to snow.”

“Sure it will.”

“I mean it’s in the forecast. We might get socked.”

“Socked,” Olaf said.

“What do we do about the road?”

“Laksonenn,” Olaf said. “Laksonenn plows.” Each word seemed a triumph from the old man.

“Someone named Laksonenn plows the road?”

“He does.”

During the next few minutes Noah watched the old man’s lips puckering and his face twitching, an expression between pain and exhaustion. Olaf fell back to sleep, to what terrible dreams Noah could not guess.

IN WHAT REMAINED of that day Noah trimmed the house. He refilled the ten-gallon buckets at the well. He restocked the wood box. Olaf slept motionless on the chair. Before dusk Noah went to the shed. He stood in the doorway and tried to imagine the spot his mother’s ashes occupied. He may even have hoped that some ghost or ghost’s messenger would present itself, would guide him in the looking. Instead he began where he stood, on the threshold of that welter of junk. He kicked over stacks of magazines, he moved unmarked boxes filled with old tools, truck parts, fishing tackle old enough that the barbs had rusted. He picked a lure from among many, held it to the dying light, and when he flicked the hook with his finger it disintegrated into dust.

He cleared a path to the back wall, and here he went through the contents of an old dresser. Clothes from his childhood. A kitchen mixer. A ledger marked 1972. Here Olaf’s blocked scrawl tallied the year’s receipts coming and going, a column for each. Noah studied the expenditures: groceries, oil to heat the house on High Street, electricity, clothes. There were two columns marked “Allowance,” one for his mother, one for himself. This , Noah thought, is how you end up with two hundred thousand dollars in your freezer.

Noah saw a metal box beneath the dresser. He lifted it from the floor, set it on the dresser, and studied it. The moment felt religious. The box appeared to be waterproof, it was clasped shut tightly, un-rusted. Clearly something made to last. He unlatched the clasp. Within a Ziploc bag her ashes were interred. They appeared almost to sparkle. Why he could not imagine, but he sniffed them. Only the other smells of the shack. He closed the box and brought it with him into the house.

His father still slept. Noah set the ashes on the coffee table. At six o’clock he ate a few crackers and half a jar of pickled herring. He thought of waking Olaf but didn’t. The old man’s sleep was fitful. He’d hiccup and sigh and his face would twist and fold in a hundred unnatural ways, all the while his hands fidgeted in the afghan and his feet kept time to some dream song. Twice during Noah’s light supper Olaf’s eyes plunged open and he stared at Noah, but as quickly they’d close again and whatever afflicted his sleep would begin again.