Peter Geye: Safe from the Sea

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.