Northern Lights

  “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 center, 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 curve of the lake. He was nervous and he lit another cigarette. “Well,” Grace said, “I’ll tell you this. I’m just glad you didn’t have to go. I’m glad about that much anyway. Aren’t you? I’m just glad you were too old for the dumb thing. I mean I don’t know. It’s awful about Harvey and everything. But I’m just glad you didn’t have to go, that’s all.”

  “Priceless.”

  Again she pouted, and the road bumped across the rusted railroad tracks, straightened and descended through a tunnel of white pine that opened into the town. Sometimes he got pleasure out of making her worry. “Priceless,” he muttered just for that purpose. On the right, an enamel sign said: SAWMILL LANDING. It gave the population as 781, which had been about right until 1947 when the last lumber company had left town, taking thirty families with it.

  The road made a sharp turn and became Mainstreet. Perry parked in front of the bank.

  Church bells were ringing as they walked to the drugstore.

  Except for two dogs, one sniffing at the other, the streets were as dry and motionless as a postcard. Sunday morning. Sunday morning, four dozen cars parked about the stone church, Jud Harmor’s pickup in front of the town hall, Sunday morning, paint peeling, pine rotting, the forest growing into vacant lots and abandoned lawns, fallen timbers, Sunday morning and even inside the drugstore everything was quiet.

  Grace found a Sunday paper and they sat at the counter. A Coca-Cola clock showed eight minutes to eleven.

  Perry kept his head down. He rambled through the comics and Sunday morning headlines. Grace read the Living section. A wall of mirrors faced them, running from one end of the long counter to the other, plastered with ads for ice cream and Pepsi and Bromo Seltzer, reflecting the rows of toothpaste and stationery and mouthwash and Kleenex, reflecting like a long mercantile mural, reflecting Grace who was gazing at him placid and soft-eyed, featureless as warm milk. He looked away. He looked away and continued through the newspaper until Herb Wolff swung behind the counter.

  Without asking, Wolff poured coffee and put the cups down and wrote out a bill.

  “Coffee?” he said.

  “Thanks, Herb.”

  “No problem.” He waited to be paid. Then he rang up thirty cents on his cash register, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down beside Grace. “So,” he said slowly, “so … what’s up?”

  “Not much. How’s your pa?”

  Wolff shrugged.

  “That’s good.”

  “Keeps holding in there,” Wolff said. “So. What’s up?” He had a deep voice that never stopped surprising Perry.

  “Nothing, Herb. What about you?”

  They sat without talking. For hours at a time, people sat in Wolff’s drugstore without talking. Stirring coffee and looking at themselves in the long mirrors, listening to Wolff’s cash register, watching Mainstreet, asking folks who came in: “What’s new? What’s up?”

  Wolff rearranged a pair of salt and pepper shakers. “So. Not in church today.”

  “Not today, I guess.”

  “So what’s up then?”

  “Nothing. We’re here to meet the bus.”

  Wolff raised his eyebrows, waiting for more, then he sighed. “Relatives, I guess.”

  “That’s about it, Herb. When the devil do we get some rain?”

  “I reckon next week. That’s what everyone’s saying.” He paused a moment as if trying to frame a difficult question, then very slowly he said, “Relatives, I reckon.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Again he raised his eyebrows. He was dressed in a starched lab coat. It didn’t seem to Perry that he’d changed at all since high school. Wolff was one of the Germans. There were Swedes and Finns and Germans, and Wolff was pure German — impeccable and stiffly manicured, greedy eyes, a bristling crewcut and a voice that rose like deep magic from his sunken little torso. Wolff was proud of the voice. Back in high school, when it finally changed, it saved him from an adolescence of constant scorn, pity, practical jokes and half-serious innuendo about his malehood. He now loaded the voice with authority, successfully straining out most of the German accent, always speaking slowly and only after long and apparently tormenting thought. “A relative,” he said.

  “That’s about it. You got any more of this coffee, Herb?”

  “Right.” He sighed, giving up. Wolff refilled their cups and wrote out a new bill and they sat quietly and listened while the Coca-Cola clock ticked. “I reckon you know Jud Harmor’s got cancer,” he said.

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Did Jud tell you?”

  Wolff shook his head. “Nope, but I heard it. I hear it’s bad, too.”

  “He’s tough.”

  “He’s old.” Wolff was playing again with the salt and pepper shakers. “He ought to step down from being mayor if he’s got cancer like I hear he’s got. I don’t say he has to quit. I say he should quit. It’s for the better.”

  “I guess it is.”

  When the Coca-Cola clock showed two minutes after eleven, Wolff got behind the counter and began making coffee for the church crowd. He still had the disjointed swagger that Perry remembered from high school, a sailor’s roll that joined with his deep voice to defy everything else about him.

  “Anac
in and aspirin and all that stuff,” Wolff was saying, talking to Grace like a teacher. “It’s made in these big vats, you know, and all it really amounts to is plain acid. And you know what acids are. Dangerous. You got to be careful.”

  “Why sell it?” asked Grace.

  “Oh. Well, it is a medicine. That’s all I’m saying, honey. Aspirin is medicine and people forget that. I’m just saying you got to be careful because it’s not sugar. Not candy. Aspirin is a very potent medicine. Aspirin isn’t sugar. Sugar is organic, see? Sugar’s got carbons in it, but aspirin’s plain acid and acid is something you got to be careful of, see?”

  Grace nodded. Then Wolff nodded. He straightened his lab coat and checked his watch against the Coca-Cola clock. “So,” he said crisply, “bus gets in at eleven twenty. Who’s this relative anyhow?”

  Grace laughed. “It’s no big secret, Herb. It’s Harvey. We just thought it would be best not to …”

  “Harvey?”

  Grace smiled.

  “Harvey!” Wolff wailed. He held his hands to his mouth like a girl. His voice sailed up an octave. “Harvey? Well this is … Harvey!”

  “It’s no secret,” Grace said. “We thought he’d just want to get off the bus without any fuss.”

  “Geez,” Wolff moaned. “Well, this is something. Harvey? Geeeezzzz. You should’ve told somebody. For Pete’s sakes. Harvey. Well, how is he?” Wolff looked about the store. “For Pete’s sakes! You should’ve told us. He’s coming on the bus? Geez, I got to get some people here.”

  “I don’t think he wants that,” Perry said. He decided to cut Wolff off fast. “Let’s just let it be a nice easy thing.”

  “We got to!” Wolff wailed. “He’s coming home, isn’t he? Geez. I got to make some phone calls.” He yanked his lab coat down, dusting it and hustling for the phone.

  “Herb. Forget it, will you?”

  “The whole town’s in church.” Wolff banged the phone down and went out into the street and came back. “Geez, this is … I can’t believe any of this. Harvey. I just can’t believe it. He’s coming home. I mean, we got to get some people out for him, don’t we? How is he? I mean, how ’s the eye and everything?”

  “He’s fine,” Grace smiled. “We talked to him on the phone and he sounded cheerful and fine.”

  Wolff rubbed his crewcut. “Well, we got to do something. Don’t we? Maybe … Maybe I ought to run over to the church and make an announcement or something.”

  “Forget it,” Perry said.

  “What?”

  “Just forget it, Herb.”

  “But … I mean, shouldn’t we get some people here?”

  “No,” Perry said.

  Wolff frowned. He looked shaken. “At least the mayor?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Geez,” Wolff moaned. “Somebody should be here when he comes. Don’t you think? If I’d known about it, why, I’ll tell you, I’d’ve had the whole council here. I’ll tell you.”

  “Leave him alone, Herb.”

  Perry went outside and sat on the kerb.

  The streets were dusty.

  Jud Harmor’s pickup was gone now, but the two dogs were still there, curled in wait on the steps of Damascus Lutheran. Beyond the peeling buildings there was nothing but forest.

  He cleaned his glasses and leaned back. Then he cleaned his glasses again. In a while Grace came out and sat with him.

  “Wolff still phoning people?”

  “Oh,” she laughed. “I think I settled him down. He’s in there grinding fresh coffee for Harvey.”

  “Some creep, isn’t he?”

  “Paul.”

  “I’m sorry. You didn’t see the time in there?”

  “Few more minutes.” She took his hand. “You all right now?”

  “Sure. I’m okay. I’m priceless. I’ll bet that damn bus is late.”

  “Shhhhh. You just relax and start smiling. Have a bright face.”

  He gazed up Mainstreet to where the bus would turn in and hiss and stop. The street was silent. The heat seemed to absorb sound. Sitting on the curb, he felt like a boy again, waiting to be picked up from school, or waiting in a stifling theatre for the curtain to draw up and the lights to fade and the movie to begin. He felt he’d been waiting a long time. He was restless. The long night had caught up with him and he needed a cigarette. He was restless. He needed a cigarette and the pack was empty. Grace sat silently, twisting her wedding band, toying with his hand until he pulled it away and stood up. Across the street and down a way, he saw the shoddy frame building where he had his own office. The venetian blinds were down, forming a white backdrop for the lettering on the window: PAUL MILTON PERRY, and below his name, painted in orange, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, COUNTY FARM EXTENSION. Sucking the Federal Titty. Harvey always stated the unstated.

  “Awful hot,” Grace finally said.

  “Damn bus is late. I knew it.”

  “Shall I see what time it is?”

  “Yes. And get me some cigarettes. And make sure Wolff isn’t on that telephone again.”

  He walked to the end of the block and back again. One of the dogs trotted over to be scratched. The town was dead. He could hear the muffled sound of the organ inside the church. The town did not particularly depress him, but at the same time he often wondered why anyone still lived there. Wolff was there to sell coffee and medicine. The barber was there to cut Wolff’s hair into a flat crewcut once a week. The grocer was there to sell food to the barber. The farmers were there, trying to grow corn in the forest to sell to the grocer, and Perry was there to keep the farms going, to tell them when to use fertilizer, to fill out subsidy applications and loan applications, to watch the Swedes try to grow corn on land meant for pine and Indians. He didn’t know. It didn’t make sense. Once he’d asked his father why they didn’t just move on to Duluth, and the old man went crazy, charging into one of his fiery sermons about the virtues of hardship and how Perry’s grandfather had built the house out of the forest’s own timber and how a town was like tempered steel and how a transplanted tree never grows as tall or as fine as one rooted in native soil. The lesson of the sermon, if not the logic, always stuck with Perry. The old man died and Perry stayed on. And Harvey got drafted. Old Harvey. Harvey was different. Ever since the old man died, Harvey talked about leaving the town, and one day with the help of the draft board he did leave. A confused time. Harvey the Bull. He was a bull but he was no soldier. As kids they hadn’t even played war games. Indians were better, better targets for games with their leather jackets, sour faces, bad teeth and greasy hair, Chippewa mostly. They’d stalked the Indians, crawled on bellies in the weeds behind the house, yelped and bellowed. But never war games. Nothing serious. Trapping games and capture-the-flag and forts in the forest, not far from Pliney’s Pond, snow forts in winter and tree forts in summer, great camouflage in the fall, but never war games. And no one in Sawmill Landing knew a damn about the war anyway. It wasn’t talked about in the drugstore. Then gangbusters, bang, old Harvey gets drafted, good old Bishop Markham and Herb Wolff on the draft board—sorry, Harvey’s number was up, something like that, proper optimism and good humour, a little sympathy, proper pride. Perry stayed out of it. Nothing he could do, and the war wasn’t real anyway, and, besides, it seemed somehow natural that a rascal and bull like Harvey was the one to go off to the war. In that sleepwalking, slothful departure there had been no time to counter the nagging thought that the speed of it all, the blinding foggy invisible force behind it, was a sure sign that Harvey would come home maimed. Because no one knew a damn about it. Vietnam was outside the town orbit. “A mess,” was what people would say if forced to comment, but a mess was still not a war, and it did not become a war until Harvey went to fight in it. Two Indian boys went with him. Their picture was on the front page of the town paper, Harvey in the center, grinning and posing, his arms wrapped around the two dull-eyed Indian boys. In September, one of the Indians got killed and the paper carried a short obituary with an American flag sten
cilled in. But even then it wasn’t really a war. It wasn’t a war until Harvey got himself wounded and the paper carried another front-page story, pictures of Harvey in his football uniform, pictures of the old house, pictures of Perry and Grace, a picture of the dead old man in his preacher’s robes, a long history of the family, and for a time the war was really a war, though even then it was all jumbled and formless. No sides, no maps to chart progress on, no tides to imagine surging back and forth, no real battles or victories or defeats. In the tangled density of it all, Perry sometimes wondered if the whole show were a masquerade for Harvey to dress in khaki and display his bigballed outdoorsmanship, proving all over again how well he’d followed the old man into the woods, how much he’d learned, to show forever that he was the Bull.

  The dog trotted back to the church steps.

  Perry sat on the curb again, cleaned his glasses, leaned back. Tips of high pine poked over the store fronts.

  Grace came out with cigarettes and coffee. “Eleven thirty,” she said. “Herb says it’s always a little late.”

  “I just wish that bus would get in.”

  Then he saw it. It was as though it had been there all along, poised in turn around the corner, waiting to be seen. He saw it and heard it simultaneously. It was the giant Greyhound. It might have been the same silver monster that took Harvey to war in the first place.

  It swung off the tar road, changing gears and growling.

  Herb Wolff hurried out. “There she is, there she is!” he wailed. He brushed his coat and stood erect. “There she is, all right.”

  The bus cleared the turn.

  “Sure wish everybody was here for this,” said Wolff. “This is something. Harvey! I can’t believe it.”

  Perry took a step and stood alone. The Greyhound’s brakes hissed and forms moved behind the tinted windows and Perry searched for familiar movements. The door opened with another strange hiss, and the great grey cave was transfixing dust and trembling. Perry peered into the tinted glass.

  Harvey stepped off alone. He carried a black bag with white stitching.

  “Well, hey!” he said.

  Without seeing, Perry gave him a great hug.