Peter Geye: Safe from the Sea

Noah stood dumb in the wind. He did as he was told.

Solveig never so much as questioned Noah’s undertaking, not then, not ever.

After he’d talked to the sheriff’s office, Noah called Natalie. “My father passed away this morning,” he said, looking over each shoulder in the darkness of the vacant parking lot at the Landing. “I put him in the water.”

Natalie said nothing for a moment. Then, “You did the best thing, Noah.”

Now Noah answered her with silence.

“You did,” she reiterated. “You did, and I love you. And you’re braver than I thought. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

She would be.

It was late when the sheriff’s deputy arrived. One man coming down the road on snowshoes with a flashlight’s beam bouncing before him. His name was Ruutu, or so his badge said. He was a brawny Finn with a blond mustache and feathered gray hair. Noah invited him in, offered coffee. He described the false scene.

After the story, as Ruutu sipped coffee, he looked around inside. He kept licking the tip of his pencil but never marked anything in the notepad he’d taken from his shirt pocket. “Can we have a look down at the lake?” Ruutu asked.

“Of course.” Noah put on his boots and coat. He took the flashlight from its spot on the shelf. They walked down to the dock.

Ruutu panned the lake with his flashlight. He shone the light up the path. In the flicker of the light Noah could see ice on the deputy’s mustache. Ruutu stepped to the end of the dock. Noah joined him. The sky was luminescent with stars.

“That path down from the house is pretty well traveled,” Ruutu said.

“I was up and down it a dozen times. I was frantic,” Noah said, horrified at his own lie.

Ruutu nodded his head as if he understood. “Awfully damn cold to be going fishing. What was he fishing for, anyway?”

“Trout, I suppose.”

“You say you saw the boat empty? That’s when you came to call us?”

“That’s right.” Noah could not meet Ruutu’s stare.

Ruutu put his pencil and notepad in his shirt pocket. “Trout season ended in September.” He gave Noah a knowing look. “We can come back and search in the morning. You want us to do that?” Before Noah could respond Ruutu continued, “Listen, I knew your pop. Just a class-A man. A hell of a life he led.” Now Ruutu fished a cigarette from his coat pocket. He offered one to Noah, who refused, and Ruutu lit his smoke. He exhaled over his shoulder. “We all knew he was sick. Not that he told us, but we knew. One of us would stop by of a Saturday to check on him now and again.” He took another drag on the cigarette. He pinched the glowing end of it. “We’ll call it an accidental drowning if that suits you. Anyone asks, I gave you the third degree. The third and the fourth.” He turned to the lake. “There’s some awfully deep water out there. But you probably knew that. Your pop would have made sure of that.” He took a deep breath, coughed, and looked up at the stars.

“That’s right, anyone asks, you tell them I asked a lot of questions. You tell them I came back tomorrow morning, that I had a look around the lake. That’s how I’ll write it into the report. In the meantime, I’m sorry.”

MIDNIGHT HAD COME and gone by the time Noah stood again in front of the potbellied stove. The ashes radiated the last of their heat. He tried to imagine the list of necessary actions for closing the house for winter. He took the food from the refrigerator and loaded it into a garbage bag. He scrubbed the kitchen basin and counters. He swept the floor and wood box. He tidied the porch. He covered the piano with the sheet he’d been sleeping on those several days. He checked the windows and the back door to see they were locked. He packed his bags. Finally he put what dog food remained into the ice-cream bucket and set it outside for Vikar.

Satisfied, he tried to sleep on the couch. All night he listened to the wind dying. The calm settled in, the house creaked. Sometime in the middle of the night an enormous ray of white light came into the house. He startled, fearing what he could not imagine. A hum and a clattering, the light rising and falling. He sat up. He went to the window. There was Laksonenn and his plow as ordained.

Sometime toward dawn he slept for an hour. When he woke he washed his face with the last cold water. He dressed according to the temperature. It was eight degrees. He walked up to the road and dug out the rental car just as he had his father’s truck the day before. He drove the Suburban down to the house and parked it for the winter.

He walked down to the lake for a last look. Though cold, the morning had risen splendidly. Overnight the skim ice had returned. It covered all of the lake. There, two hundred yards off, the rowboat sat locked in the silence, the platform still spanning the gunwales.

He waited at the Landing for his wife and sister. He was greeted as a regular, and condolences were many. People spoke to him with such solemnity in their voices, such compassion in their expressions. The proprietor bought him his coffee and cinnamon roll. That morning and the looks on those faces were as close as Olaf would ever get to a visitation, to a wake. Two days later Noah and Nat were on their way back to Boston with his mother’s urn in his carry-on.

His father’s obituary had appeared on the front page of the Herald that morning.

NOW THEY ALL stood on the dock. At the Landing that afternoon they’d been told that most of the inland lakes were still frozen, still safe to walk on. This was true of Lake Forsone. Tom stepped first off the dock. He jumped up and down three times to demonstrate its capacity. Noah stepped down next, holding both hands up to his wife and sister. Each took one and followed their husbands onto the ice. Together they walked to the rowboat. The ice had crushed it. It lay splintered, half cast in ice.

“Where is he?” Solveig asked.

Noah pointed toward the cliff, toward the deep water. “Over there,” he said.

“Should we cross? Spread Mom’s ashes with him?”

“I think so.”

And they left the wreck of the rowboat and crossed the rest of the lake. In the shadow of the cliff, Solveig took the bag from Noah’s shoulder. She removed her mother’s ashes and stood facing Noah.

“Well,” Noah said, “I guess we could each say something.”

There was an awkward momentary pause before Tom said, “I never knew your mother, but if my wife is any testament she was a terrific woman.”

“She was,” Noah said.

Solveig nodded.

“And your father was kind to my children.”

Solveig took Tom’s arm. “He was very good to the kids. He had a lonely life, but I’ll remember him every day for the rest of mine.” She closed her eyes. Not to quell tears, Noah thought, but to try to remember something. “They belong together here.”

“You’re right,” Noah said. “They do belong together.” He looked at Natalie. “Do you want to say anything?”

“I love your parents even though I never really knew either of them.” She smiled at Solveig, she held more tightly to Noah. “Because of them I have this family now.”

Solveig stepped over to Natalie. She hugged her, then looked at Noah.

“On the day Dad died he told me to love my children better than he loved me. I said I would. I didn’t realize that any capacity I had to love I owed to him. Him and Mom. That’s really all that matters.” He stared down at the urn. He looked out at the wilderness surrounding the lake. “They’ll rest easy here.”

He uncapped his mother’s urn and handed it to Solveig. She spread the ashes on the ice. They were the same spectral gray.

WHEN THEY GOT back to shore Solveig and Tom walked up to the cabin under the pretense of making dinner. Noah led Natalie along the lake’s edge. At the base of the ski jump’s landing hill they stopped. Noah pointed up at it. He’d told her all about it.