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.An open space in the back.They’d be putting a door there.The growth beaten down all around here.A Coleman stove with a pot on it.The two tents, and now Rhoda really was afraid.She didn’t want to unzip a tent, for what she’d find inside.Mom, she said again, quieter this time.Stood in front of the larger tent and could feel her heart racing.Unzipped it quick and saw their sleeping bags, clothing, food.No one inside.No body.Nothing wrong.So she stepped to the other tent quick and unzipped it, and no one there, either.Thank god, she said.And she closed her eyes a moment, let her breathing calm down, let her heart slow.They up there? Mark yelled from the boat, his voice faint.This cabin was tucked back a ways.No, she yelled.No one here.They must have left this morning.Supplies in the second tent.Tools.She couldn’t believe they had lived out here in the storm.And it looked like they were doing it, really building this cabin, intending to stay through the winter.Rhoda kneeled on the path, closed her eyes and just took a moment.She was so afraid.When the lake began to freeze over, there’d be a time when no boat could make it out here and the ice wouldn’t be solid enough to walk across.They’d be isolated, no way to reach them if something was wrong.Irene at home, looking around at everything, didn’t know what to take.The lights were off, neither of them in the habit now of turning on light switches.Portraits of her family on the walls.Old portraits, including family she had never met.Stern faces, living more difficult lives.Photo albums on the lower shelf of the bookcase.Her children’s art from all the years, handprints to color by numbers to Mark’s drums made of elk hide and cottonwood.He’d sawn rings from hollowed-out stumps.Held summer solstice rituals here with his friends in high school, drumming all night around a fire on the beach, dancing with a bear skull on a stick.The last that she had known him, before he went off into his own life.Rhoda had not gone as far away, but every wall held a sign of when she had still lived here, when their lives had been spent together.Even the secretive times, in junior high, when she’d first started having sex, were recorded here, in photos of dances and posters for school plays.All those years together added up to something, right? But what could be taken to an unbuilt cabin, to a tent? This place in its entirety, the walls and windows, the yard and forest, all of it would have to be moved.I can’t do this, she said to Gary.She could hear him bumping around in the bedroom as he packed more clothing into a duffel.What?She raised her voice.There’s nothing I can take that will make that cabin a home.I think you’re making this more complicated, Irene.We’re just grabbing our stuff, then we’re going to town for the sheeting and more two-by-fours and a few other supplies, then trying to load up and get back out there before dark.Today?What?You’re planning to go back out today?Yeah, that was the plan.That wasn’t the plan.You didn’t bother to tell the help.Irene.I’m spending tonight here, in my bed.If you go, you’re going without me.Gary emerged from the bedroom, stood in front of her.The weather could get bad again, he said.This is our window.This is the time.I’m not going today.Gary slammed his hand on the counter.Fine, he said.Then he turned around and went back into the bedroom.Irene sat down on their couch.Ringing in her ears, her blood pumping hard.She tried to calm, and her heartbeat slowed a bit, but then it clenched tight four or five beats, moments when she could feel its exact shape, hanging from its arteries, jerking in her chest.Panic.Panic as if she were about to be killed, and yet she was only sitting on a couch in her own living room.The light soft from outside, no wind, no storm, just another gray, overcast day, her husband in the other room, and they weren’t going back to the tent tonight.She needed to calm down.If we can’t make it a home, why are we doing it? she called out to Gary.No answer.Because his life was the given, beyond question.Hers was the accompaniment; it didn’t really matter.Irene lay out fully on the couch, propped her head with a small pillow, closed her eyes and spun in blood.Beating endlessly, pressurizing, her body a hard case she wanted out of.She wanted peace.Not to be trapped anymore.Trapped in this body and with Gary in this life and its regrets.Her life an accumulation of all that was closing in, fronts gathering all along the edges, coming closer.Even getting through the next five minutes.Gary, she called out.She wanted to warn him.Yes? His voice so ungenerous.How could she say what she needed to say? That they were going too far.That something would be lost.That they wouldn’t recover from this.Never mind, she said.Closed her eyes again and rested, the air around her sifting downward until she heard the popping of gravel outside, someone driving up.She hoped it would be Rhoda, but didn’t go to the door.She didn’t feel like moving.Mom, Rhoda called.Here on the couch.Rhoda at her side then, leaning down to give her a hug.Warm and alive, real love, not the grudging love of Gary.Flesh of her flesh, the only permanent bond.A marriage could turn into nothing, but not this.I’m getting you a satellite phone, Rhoda said.I couldn’t stand not knowing if you were okay [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]