Winter Loon(2)

They no longer tried to shield me from their arguing like they did when I was little, not that I hadn’t witnessed their fuck-or-fight love my whole life. They could fight about anything. They fought about money, about jobs, about the men who stared at my mother and the women who sidled up to my father, about what brand of cigarettes to smoke or whether toilet paper was even necessary. As far as they were concerned, I could listen if I wanted. They’d mostly stopped caring what I heard, especially when they were drunk. They had come to use me as judge and witness. “Isn’t that right, Wes?” one would say. Or, “Wes was there, weren’t you?” For a long time they fought about having another baby, but my father said he could barely afford the family he had. That argument she won. She got pregnant when I was in second grade. Seemed the discussion of more babies ended only after she miscarried.

The drinking and fighting had gotten serious at Bright Lake. There was no sobering up for work because there was no work. The money was running out. That meant no turning drunk afternoons at the bar into lingering nights that hung over through the following morning. They drank at the table instead. They drank instead of eating.

They’d gone into town earlier that night to get supplies and see about the rest of our things. They returned dug in for battle. Cupboard doors slammed, canned goods dropped on the table like bombs from a fuselage.

“Don’t be like that, Val,” my father said.

My mother clenched and fumed. “Yeah, put this on me. Like always.”

He rifled through the grocery bag. “Where’d you set the cigarettes?”

She sidearmed a pack that hit his chin like an uppercut. He bent over, snatched it from the floor, his patience spent. “See what I have to put up with?” He aimed this at me but turned back to her. “So help me God, Val . . .”

“What?” Her arms spread sacrificially as she dared him, practically chest-bumping him though he was so much bigger in every way. “Nothing you can do to me that hasn’t been done.” She backed off and I backed away.

“I’m gonna—” I gestured with my thumb to the bedroom.

“See, Moss?” my mother said. “See? Wes doesn’t even want to be in the same room with you. Say goodbye to your father, Wes. He’s leaving again.”

“Not right this minute.”

“Wait,” I said. “What? You promised you’d stay the winter. You said we’d go with you in the spring.”

That made my mother laugh hysterically. She’d already poured herself a glass of whiskey. “Oh please. Tell him, Moss. Tell him what you told me.”

“Tell me what?”

“You go on now,” my father said. “We can talk tomorrow.”

So this would be another ugly leaving. When I was younger, I was a miserable snot, kicking and wailing each time he took off, hurling hate on him and my mother both. I missed him terribly while he was gone. He’d come back and they’d try to rebuild on the shifting rubble of their crumbling marriage. When I got older, his leaving became more of a betrayal. That night I was keen to signal my disappointment before slamming the door. “Yeah. Don’t bother.”

I threw myself onto one of the cots and bent the pillow to muffle my ears against their escalating fight, against words that were all too familiar. The last thing I remember hearing was my father saying he needed air, then the sound of the cabin door slamming shut. I was grateful for the quiet. I wanted to sleep. So when she rousted me later, I protested the way any teenage boy would. I pulled the blanket over my head, trying to shut her out with the cold. She tugged at the bottom of my bedding so hard I sat up, and when I did she lost her balance. Bourbon cascaded from her glass as she landed hind-end on the floor. I was uncovered and she was liquor-soaked and laughing. She righted herself, then kneeled next to me in drunken earnest. “Wes, get up. Come on.” She built her words letter by letter out of tongue and breath and teeth and lips. “The loon. Let’s go look for the loon.”

That was a new thing they’d found to fight about. A hooting sound, a coo at night. My father said it was too late into winter for loons to be so far north, that she was probably hearing a screech owl. “This is an owl,” he said, interlacing his fingers, making double doors with his thumbs. He blew into the shed he’d created and baffled out a hollow three-note hoot. “And this,” he said, wrapping one hand over the other, “is a loon.” The sound floated out more ancient and eerie, a long note that kicked up once, then dropped back down. “See? Owl.”

My mother said he was an idiot, that they sounded the same.

“Not that again,” I said. “Make Dad go with you. Then maybe you two will stop fighting about it.”

The excitement twisted out of her, turned wily, a weasel slinking into a pond. She whipped her head in a side-to-side figure eight. “That. F-f-fuckerrrr’s. Gone.” She pressed to standing, drained the unspilled drops from the bottom of the glass into her mouth, then stumbled out of the dark bedroom. Firelight seeped across the floor from the dying embers. Elizabeth stood in the doorway, extending her legs in a bored stretch, wondering, I suppose, what foolishness we people were up to now. I heard the clink of bottle to glass as my mother hollered to hurry up.

“I’m not dressed.”

“It’s not church. Just grab something. Chop, chop,” she said, adding a feeble handclap. Outside rushed in when she opened the cabin door. I clambered for the blankets at the foot of the bed, wrapped up, and collapsed against the pillow, aching for sleep. But she’d left the front door open and it banged in the same wind that dropped pine cones and sticks on the lichen-covered roof. I never really considered not following her. We were a pair, my mother and me. I slipped my boots on over my wool socks, my coat over my long underwear, and followed her into the night.