Northern Lights. Tim O’Brien
vestments, practising to be a preacher, to follow the old man into the pulpit of Damascus Lutheran Church. It may have started or it may not have started. It may have been the afternoon when the old man ordered him to swim in Pliney’s Pond. ‘Jump in,’ the old man had said without pity. It may have started then, at the moment when he waded bawling into the fecund pond, or it may have started another time, that day, that day, or innumerable other days that washed together, that day when Harvey boarded a bus for California and the war. Or the day he married Grace, a day he barely remembered. ‘Looks like somebody’s mother,’ the motherless old man had once said. Or other days.
That day.
It was the perfect melancholy hour, and he practised silence.
He sat on the rocks and peered into Pliney’s Pond. Pushing his glasses close, he leaned forward and scooped a handful of algae from the pond and rubbed it between his fingers until they were stained green.
It may have started or it may not have started. It was partly the town. Partly the place. Partly the forest and the old man’s Finnish religion, partly being a preacher’s kid, partly the old man’s northern obsessions, partly a combination of human beings and events, partly a genetic fix, an alchemy of circumstance.
Harvey was coming home and the sun was already coming up.
He was restless and afraid. It was hard to imagine Harvey with a wounded eye. Harvey the Bull, the old man’s pride, the brave balled bullock. Careful not to fall into the stinking pond, Perry sat on the rocks and peered into the waters and listened to dawn respiration. It was Sunday. He sat quietly, practising silence, letting the night restlessness drain, listening as the forest swelled and expelled like a giant lung: oxygenation, respiration, metabolism and decay, photosynthesis and reproduction, simple asexual chemistry, conversion and reconversion.
Finally, when he was ready, he returned to the house. Grace was still sleeping.
The old timbers creaked. He put coffee on the stove, moved into the bathroom, showered, scrubbed the algae from his hands, dusted himself with his wife’s baby powder. It was six o’clock. He drank his coffee, watching the sunlight come in patches through the woods. He was sluggish and lazy and soft-bellied. Sipping his morning coffee and sitting at the table, he considered knocking off some sit-ups. Instead he fixed breakfast. When it was ready, he crept into the bedroom and woke Grace. ‘Breakfast,’ he said.
‘Phew.’ She emerged from the sheets. ‘Phew, I had a dream … I was dreaming somebody was spraying insecticide. Did you have that dream? Phew.’ She was a handsome woman. When she smiled, her teeth shined. From September through May she taught school. Now it was summer. ‘Come here,’ she said.
‘Breakfast’s already on.’
‘I want some nice cuddling. Come here.’
‘Don’t you want some nice breakfast instead?’
‘Hmmmm,’ she said. ‘First some nice cuddling. Poor boy, you had a bad night, didn’t you? Come here and I’ll give you some nice cuddling.’
Perry shook his head. ‘Better hurry,’ he said. ‘Harvey comes home today, you know.’
‘Poor boy,’ she smiled. ‘Poor Paul. What you need is some cuddling.’
He backed the car into the yard, turned past the bomb shelter and drove out towards Route 18. Gravel clanked against the sides of the car. At the end of the lane, he stopped and Grace leaned out to check the mailbox, then he turned on to the tar road and drove fast towards town.
The road swept through state park land. Another dry day. Branches hung over the narrow parts of the road.
After passing Bishop Markham’s house, Grace moved over and put her hand on him. ‘Happy?’ she said.
‘Sure. Wonderful.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I’m happy. Can’t you see how happy I am? Watch out or I’ll drive into the ditch.’
The road ran in a drunken narrow valley of the forest, bumpy from winter frost heaves, old tar with a single white line painted down its centre, unwinding towards Sawmill Landing, where it would pass by the cemetery and the junkyard, disappear for a moment at the railroad tracks, then continue on into town, past the John Deere machinery yard, the silver water tower, into the hub of Sawmill Landing. Perry drove fast. He knew the road by memory: twelve years on a school bus, in his father’s pick-up, in his own first car, shuttling back and forth between the paint-peeling timber town and the old timber house. The road had no shoulders and the ditches were shallow rock and the forest stood like walls on each side, sometimes hanging over the road to form a kind of tunnel or chute through which he drove fast, opening the window to let the July heat in, lighting a first cigarette. It was a hypnotic, relaxing drive. Without recognizing anything in particular, he recognized everything in general – the sweep of the road down to the iron bridge, the sound of the tyres on the pine planks, the slow curve past the cemetery and junkyard.
‘If you’re happy, then, let’s see a nice smile,’ Grace was saying, snuggling closer. ‘There, isn’t that nicer? You have to smile when Harvey gets off the bus. Okay? You have to start practising right now.’
‘All right,’ he said.
‘Then smile.’
‘Okay,’ he smiled, despite himself. She was like a gyroscope. A warm self-righting centre, soothing with those whispers.
‘Isn’t that better now?’
‘Yes.’
‘You see?’
‘Priceless.’
‘Don’t be that way. Be nice.’
‘I am nice. I’m priceless. Don’t you think I’m priceless? Harvey’s a soldier and I’m priceless. That’s the way it always seems to go. Perfectly priceless.’
‘Stop that.’ She pouted, puckering her lower lip. ‘I’m only … just trying to perk you up a little. Here, I want you to start smiling. Shall I turn on the radio? We’ll listen to some church music.’
‘If you want. Sounds priceless to me.’
‘Poor Paul.’ She turned the radio dial to find WCZ in Duluth. The car filled with July heat and the sound of pipe organs and a choir.
Perry concentrated on the road.
He felt her studying him, that vast womanly, wifely, motherly sympathy and understanding that both attracted and repelled him, often at the same time. ‘Like somebody’s goddamn mother,’ his father had said. In college, more than ten years ago, it was her heavy-breasted, sympathy that brought them together. She’d taken him in like an orphan, soothed him through four years at the University of Iowa, calmed him when he dropped out of the divinity school and steadied him when he started at the ag school, decadent Hawkeye sympathy that oozed like ripe mud. After all the years with his father, after pursuing the old man’s winter tracks, ice fishing and hunting and fiery sermons, after all that Grace had come with her whispers and understanding, and marrying her after graduation had been as easy and natural as falling asleep in a warm bath. By then the old man was dead.
She was still studying him, snuggling close. ‘Well,’ she finally said. ‘Well, Harvey sounded all right on the telephone. Don’t you think? I do. I think so. Actually, don’t you think he sounded pretty cheerful?’
‘I guess so. He sounded the same.’
‘You see? You see, he’s still cheerful and he sounded fine and everything will be perfect. You’ll see.’
‘I guess.’
‘So you can smile now. You can be cheerful just like Harvey.’
‘He lost an eye.’
‘Well …’ She trailed off as if recognizing the fact but not its importance. The radio played church music. Perry turned the car along the slow