Winter Loon(65)

Lester came out from the side of the cabin. “Wood’s around here. It’s a little wet, but it should do the trick.”

I nodded but turned my attention back to the lake. Lester came onto the porch.

“So, this is where it happened, huh?” He scratched his head vigorously, checked his nails, rubbed his nose. “Sorry, I mean, of course it is.”

“Weird to be here, is all,” I said. “Lots of memories. Let’s get a fire going before we catch our death of cold,” I said, immediately wishing I could take those old words back. The light across the way went out.



WE PATCHED THE BROKEN WINDOW with a piece of cardboard, lit a fire, warmed up cans of pork and beans and the foil-wrapped meat pies Mona forced on us as we left Loma. Then the two of us got drunk as hell on a bottle of Wild Turkey we’d picked up on the way. I told him about the weeks leading up to my mother drowning, about my father leaving me with Gip and Ruby. Lester told me how he’d lost his virginity when he was thirteen years old to a friend of his mother’s while she was passed out on the couch not five feet away. He showed me places where one of her boyfriends burned him with cigarettes.

“Where is she now?”

“Sioux Falls. I see her every once in a while. Maybe around Christmastime we’ll go. She’s better on her own.”

“My mom hated being alone.” I imagined the strangers retrieving her bloated body from the lake, how embarrassed she’d have been. I could almost hear her saying she didn’t want anyone to see her like that, without makeup, her hair a mess. No amount of talking kept the ghosts away. “I’m ashamed,” I confessed. “I watched her die. I couldn’t help her.”

“But you stayed with her, man. Right out there. The last thing she saw was you alive. You didn’t let her down, man. You lived. That’s all. You lived.”

We hopped around the empty cabin in a kind of a redemption dance, whooping and swigging from the whiskey bottle. When I tried to explain to Lester the difference between each of the loon’s calls, wrapping my drunk mouth around sounds I couldn’t make sober, flapping my arms like they were wings, Lester fell over laughing. I hurled the empty bottle into the fireplace, smashing it against the rock, and collapsed next to him on the floor. He grabbed me around the neck, pulled me over, then flattened me. The exertion tapped him out, and he flopped down next to me. We lay there on our backs, panting, the floor spinning under us. He patted me on the chest without lifting his head. “From now on, man, you and me are brothers. The brotherhood of crazy mothers.”

I woke in the night still drunk, shivering. The fire had died way down. I threw the rest of the logs in, blew the embers until flames ignited, and crawled into my sleeping bag. As I was drifting off, I thought I heard the sound of a loon, but then my father’s voice told me no, too close to winter for loons this far north.



LESTER KICKED ME IN THE side to wake me. The cabin was ice cold but light was streaming in. “Get up. Something you got to see.” He was fully dressed, but his sleeping bag was unzipped and around his shoulders. “Hurry. It’s cold as fuck, but trust me, you are not going to want to miss this.”

I scrambled to my feet, though my stomach and head would have liked a few more hours to sleep. I pulled on my boots and coat and followed Lester out the door and down the familiar trail. He’d already caught up with a figure bundled in a blanket-striped coat, a fur-trimmed hood covering the face completely. Lester looked over his shoulder and grinned, motioning me to hurry.

I hesitated, seeing someone else was there. A trail of footprints cut me off from the right and led right to Lester and this other person. Whoever it was had come out of the woods, west of the abandoned cabin. I lowered my head and steeled myself.

“Check it out.” Lester pointed to the middle of the lake. A figure was hunched over the frozen surface a hundred yards or more offshore.

It was a woman standing next to Lester. “My crazy-assed boyfriend. Darin’s a dummy, I swear. I love him, though.” She pulled down her hood. Strands of black hair like twisted yarn dangled across her flabby face. She pushed them back along the skunk stripe of gray at the roots. “I couldn’t stop him. His heart is so big. I’m Rhonda, by the way.”

“What’s he doing out there?”

Lester chimed in. “Rescuing a bird. He’s walked all the way out there because a bird got stuck.”

“Oh,” the woman cried. “I think he’s got it. I think he’s got it.” Excitement climbed up her voice and she bounced on the balls of her feet. She cupped her hands to her mouth. “Be careful, sugar. Be careful.”

I squinted, trying to get a better look at the man making his way slowly back toward us.

The woman shouted now. “Darin! Are you bleeding? You’re my hero, Darin. Do you need a blanket?”

We could make out his voice but not the words. He was carrying the bird like a football under his right arm. He dropped a fishing net and shovel on the ice. As he drew closer, he started talking. “Babe, I did it. I got it.”

“Oh, honey, oh, sweetie!” she said, choking back tears. “I’m so proud of him.” She put her arm around Lester and squeezed him close to her. Lester looked at me sideways and stifled a laugh.

“You did. You got it. Thank you, Jesus, for keeping him safe.”