Peter Geye - Wintering

He got up and walked to the window, bent down to look up at the sky, and turned back to Gus for a long minute before he said, “Freddy and I, we hike it back down the falls and camp our asses down there in the cool mist off the river. He tells me about how his granddad and great-granddad used to come up here and make offerings. They’d throw tobacco into the maw, trying to get things right with the spirits. Freddy, he’s as fallen away from his religion as I’d ever been from any faith at all, and from our spot on the beach there it seemed like a waste of snoose, is all. Better to save it and just accept there were places in this world you could never reach. Spirits, too. Beliefs. Things that just couldn’t be known. Things not meant to be known. Freddy was always going on about the things we couldn’t know. It wasn’t a philosophy. He would never have called it that. Myself, I thought all those talks were more like blacksmithing — hammering out the impossibly hard and nearly unbendable parts of life.

“Of course, given all that day had had to offer, our fires were stoked and we jabbered on for half an hour while waiting for the Aas boys to finish their squabbling. No doubt we got it all figured out, too, what with the home-burnt and the hot sun.”

He went back to the table and sat down across from Gus. “Only one of the Aas boys ever came down those falls.”

Gus stuttered something about the story he’d always heard, that George Aas drowned up there, but he could hardly get a word out, let alone string any questions together.

“Charlie’s sliding on his ass, hollering about something we can’t hear. He’s waving his arms and hurrying toward us. We stand up, Freddy and I, and step into the shallows. What’s going on, we want to know.

“Charlie bends over to catch his breath, then says, ‘George! He jumped into the Devil’s Maw! He goddamn killed himself!’

“ ‘Killed himself?’ Freddy says. Untruer words could not have been spoken. George, who’d lived through Iwo Jima, who’d just spent all night with us yucking it up, laughing more than he had in his whole life, he’d jumped into the Devil’s Maw? No chance of that. No way, nohow.”

Gus’s wide eyes asked the question his voice couldn’t form.

“Charlie killed him dead.”

“Why?”

“How could I know the answer to that?”

“But—”

“There was nothing to be done. No one knew that better than I did. If George was in the Devil’s Maw he was gone forever. But we hiked it back up there, Freddy and I. We got on our bellies and shouted into the maw. Charlie’s standing there without an ounce of concern on his fat, sunburned face. He lit a cigarette and says, ‘What a sad day. What a sad, sad day.’ But he wasn’t sad. There was even a hint of goddamn joy in his voice. ‘Suppose we better get back to town and let folks know George is gone.’

“Freddy and I were floored, of course. Speechless, and frankly a little bit scared. I was, leastways. But what else was there to do? Gone is gone. George was never going to be found.”

“Did anyone ever try?”

“Try how?”

“Get ladders? More rope? More lanterns?”

“Didn’t you hear the story I just told? About how deep that hole was?” He kept right on. “A few weeks later, the Aas family put up a cenotaph for him.”

“What’s a cenotaph?”

Harry looked lost and sad. “Gravestones for the unfound. That’s what cenotaphs are for. He might as well have been left on that battlefield on Iwo Jima, the poor bastard.”

Gus was still rightly bewildered. “So…George didn’t jump?”

“Of course not. He was pushed. By his brother. Charlie.”

“But nothing ever happened to Charlie. He never got in trouble for this?”

“No one knew. Or, anyway, no one could ever prove it.”

Gus sat there staring at his father through the candlelight. For a long time Harry didn’t say anything. Somehow Gus knew enough not to prod him. He knew to wait.

When Harry spoke again his voice had hardened. “Remember last winter, when we hit the deer on the highway down around Misquah? The look in her eyes?”

Gus nodded.

“Those whitetails are about the quickest thing in the woods, but that girl couldn’t move. We plowed right into her. Goddamn flattened her, right? Well, that was me and Freddy. We didn’t know what to do. And we didn’t all these years since, either. I don’t think we ever even talked about it, Freddy and I. Not until this year.”

“Why now?”

Harry looked at him across the table. “Why now? You don’t really have to ask, do you?”

“What does all this mean?”

“Last month, that night in the fish house, when we decided to come up here, you remember that night?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, before I came to the fish house, Freddy and I were in Two Harbors.”

“Why?”

“We were talking to a newspaper reporter from the Tribune. ”

“Why? I don’t understand any of this.”

“There’s a lot to understand.”

“So explain it to me.” He was scared and confused and he didn’t like the look on his father’s face. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Remember when the coffers at Immanuel Lutheran came up empty a few years ago?”

Gus nodded.

“That was Charlie Aas, council president. Now, what did he do with the money? I don’t know. Maybe some debts require the good Lord’s money.”

“What does that have to do with George?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with George. It has to do with Charlie. That’s what I’m telling you.” Harry could see the confusion on Gus’s face. “Listen to me. Just listen. You remember when Bud Nardahl was voted out of the mayor’s office?”

“Yeah.”

“Was Charlie’s work, too. Now he’s fighting to dam up the Burnt Wood. He’s in the pocket of the lumber and mining companies. You name it, he’s up to his double chin in it. That’s what I’m telling you.” Harry was getting heated. “Do I need to remind you about his girl? You and her and that summer fling?”

Gus shook his head.

Harry took a long, deep breath. “And of course there’s the matter of your mother.”

Now Gus felt embarrassed. Like a dolt or a little kid. Innocent and naïve. “You have proof? That’s why you were talking to the reporter?”

“Charlie’s gotten a little big for his britches. He’s been heard, down at the Traveler’s Saloon, after a few too many. Bragging’s the word, I guess. Hinting, maybe. About how he put himself right in line way back when. Made sure the family was his. Word’s been getting around, and Freddy and I, we took it to the reporter. About George, and everything else, too.” Harry rapped his knuckles on the table. “None of this is simple, bud. Of course it isn’t. But the bottom line is, Charlie’s been having his say on every damn thing for too long. Now it’s time for some comeuppance.

“This summer, Freddy and I were fishing the Hex hatch on Long Finger and we got to talking. Freddy’s made it his special project to keep the rivers free. He’s as sick about your mother and Charlie as I am. He’d like to put a bullet in Charlie’s brain, same as me. But we can’t, of course. So out there in our canoe we got to talking about what we can do. Which led us to that Tribune reporter in Two Harbors. After we talked to that old pencilneck, we’ve had some chats with the county attorney and the sheriff, too.” Harry sat back in his chair, took another deep breath, and looked, for a moment, like he was relieved. “Who knows what Freddy’s been dealing with since we left?”

Gus replayed the sequence of their conversation back to the start. “What does any of this have to do with having company?”