Northward

by LEATH TONINO

I waited until I was sober to read your letter. Writing back’s something else entirely, and now I’m a bit drunk. I’d like to think that maybe it’ll help. It’s hard though, hard to speak across the thousands of miles, the plains and ranges and canyons and all that. This country swallows words, and if it ever spits them back up they don’t mean the same thing. At least it does most words, which is just me saying ahead of time that I apologize if this letter comes out a dud. 

As far as drinking goes, you might get a chuckle picturing me off scotch, but that’s exactly what’s happened, though beer remains a regular companion. Some days I drink a couple, some days more than a couple. The empties tell no lies, and maybe that’s why we always shot our cans to hell. My shooting days are over now, save for a single eight-pointer I took last month, and that only to supplement what I’ve already smoked and stored. I’ve got no friends in town and hardly go there anyway. People die and people change and sometimes one looks like the other, am I wrong? What I’m saying is there’s nobody judging me except myself, and I’ve given up on that, or at least I’m trying.

I read your letter three times, twice this morning and once again just now. It was long and kind and came as a real surprise, not altogether a welcome one, but of course I mean no offense and only mention it because I know you’re not one for taking any. I’m friendless, that’s all, with just this big blowing wind to talk to, not that I say much. When I do speak it bounces off something hard and comes right back, that or the wind takes it. My dog was hit by a car last year and it was sadder than shit but that’s beside the point. The point is I’m fine with being sad, just like I’m fine with being alone. What makes it tough is the back and forth.

I’ve been moving toward this kind of life for a long time now, mostly as a result of my own choices, I suppose, but in a strange way even those feel less and less like mine to make. I can’t say I looked forward to it, but I saw it coming, saw it growing like a storm over the lake. Now that I’m settled in I wish only for things to stay the same. It’s steady alone, you know? The world’s no bigger than what you see and smell and hear and taste. Past the toe of my boot there’s the water, dead empty this time of year, and behind it the ridge. How your letter found its way over that ridge is beyond me. 

So where to start? It's been a long fall and I’m thinking winter won’t offer much better. Though the lake’s just freezing up, and only in the smaller coves, the canoe’s already begging for her nest up in the barn rafters. So many years I’ve pulled her from the cattails and set her there just beneath the roof to wait out the dark months like some kind of owl. That’s winter I guess, awake but still, not really warm but at least not dying of cold. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse knowing we’re all in it together.

But here’s the thing. I sold the barn six months ago, and now there’s no turning back. The trailer went with it, and the acres. I even sold the truck. It was summer and seemed a fine idea, not that I thought it out, it just sort of happened. I moved my ice fishing shanty to the pine thicket on the south side of the point, set up a canvas tent for sleeping, built a bit of an outdoor kitchen. I figured I’d stay the summer and head south for a new start right about now. It’s looking like I’m tucking in for a long run, though, and that’s fine by me. Like I say, it doesn’t feel much like my decision. You make one choice, way back, and from then on that choice makes all the rest. You see these things growing in front of you, slowly, slowly, and you paddle right at them, thinking there’s always time to turn around. 

That’s the long way of saying this here’s a new winter, unlike any I’ve known, and I’ve known more than most, but of course so have you. It sounds like maybe you’re feeling it as well, at least that’s what I got from your letter. When I opened it this morning I was sitting outside and the sun was coming off the page so bright I went blind for a minute. Then the words came back and I read it and I wondered if maybe our heads weren’t linked up somehow despite all these years, all the plains and ranges and canyons and such. It felt like maybe you knew what was happening over here because it was happening over there as well. You don’t say it outright, but it feels like maybe that’s why you’re writing now rather than last year or the year before or any of those other years. I don’t know.

I’m useless without fishing, I really am. Ice fishing’s something, but it’s not the same. Honest, we tell ourselves it’s all water, it’s all lake even when it’s harder than brick, but I’ve humped brick and I’ve drifted in a boat and there’s no confusing the two. And this year I won’t even have the benefit of a wall to stand behind, or a bottle. I haven’t moved in yet, but I’m thinking the bench in the shanty will serve as a bed once the real cold comes, which might be tonight, though I’m planning to stick it out in the tent as long as I can. Tending those lines will be a bitter business without the shanty, but I swear I’m useless without it, the fishing I mean. I wake early and my thoughts get me and I need something to do.

I’ve been looking hard at this one tree trunk each morning when everything’s gray. I’ve been looking at the long, sharp feathers of frost growing from the bark, the way two or three or four feathers grow together. Today at the end of the point I saw some broken twigs where moose browsed and are maybe browsing right now, though I doubt any animal would choose, if it had a choice, to be out in this night’s awful wind. What’s the point of all this noticing and looking? I’m not sure. It happens though, whether for something or not. You see one thing and then another and then you stand there staring and it’s hard to turn it off.

A lot of things are hard these days. Bricks are hard. Ice is hard. The moose must be harder than shit. It’s hard to believe all these years have passed and hard to believe the buds will burst again a few months from now, and by a few I mean seven, and that’s me being generous. Still, I read my old journals and I know it happens. Phenology, they call it. Studying the seasons, the comings and goings, the deaths and births and slow sad circle of it all. My journals show it, or they tell it, and though I don’t mean much by it, it seems I’m a journal myself nowadays. I’ve lived these changes and they’ve left their marks on my mind and across my hands. They’ve tracked blood across my goddamn snowy white soul like another deer hit wrong, whatever that means.

I’ve been reading some, not much, but a little, and in another couple weeks when I feel as though I’ve done what I can and the rest is up to fate and weather, I intend to read some more. That’s where I got that phenology, from a book I’ve been sitting with here and there. You always read a bunch and I wonder if you still do. I’m sure you do. I’d like to thank you for all the books. At the time I didn’t know they’d stick with me as they have, but they have. Just now I’m remembering the one that says writing letters is like dropping stones down a well, to which I’m inclined to say damn straight, though yours did make it here and I am responding. I don’t remember the title of that one. I only remember it took place up north and the characters were always shivering.

The reading makes me think of you, but not just the reading. Out in the canoe, waiting there as one must, the mind wanders in ways you can’t predict and wouldn’t want to if you could. Out there listening to the waves, hearing a hundred voices in the slosh of one against the next, I think of you and I don’t know why and I try not to question it. Just watch the memories go by, you know? You ever watch that train pass? I’ve decided it’s safer not to hop it, but sometimes I can’t help the urge.

That one cabin that one winter was good, and if you say otherwise I'll know you’re a liar, but I know you won’t say otherwise because I know you aren’t a liar, and if you were at least you wouldn’t lie about that. I swear the land has never been more cold and locked up and desperate, and I swear we’re lucky to have survived. I promised myself never to go that far north again and I’ve kept that promise. 

I wonder sometimes if it was us, our strength and our will. Back then I might have thought so, in fact I’m sure I did, but now it seems it isn’t ever you, not you alone at least. It’s that bigger something, not luck but something better, and bigger. That hard winter it was the cabin, and the stove, and the wood in the stove, and the lives that lay down at just the right time to give us food. And the food gave us warmth, and the warmth gave us strength, and with that strength we worked to find more food. It was so many things working to keep us warm, not happy but okay, and okay is enough.

I’m starting to feel drunker than I’d like, so I’m going to wrap this up, and I apologize for not having the wherewithal or whatever. I’ve got so much to say and I’ll never even begin to say it. I’ll never say it all and so I won’t even try. 

If you could read the letters I’ve written, though, not letters like this but real letters, letters that say something real, well, if you could read those letters I guess you’d know. But those letters are out in the canoe, out on the lake and the river and at the mouth of the marsh and the tip of the point, out in my head when the light gets sad and golden and blasts all my thoughts to kingdom come. And they’re on the end of the line when it goes tight and you pull like hell, they’re there too if they’re anywhere. Those letters never get written and they never could. I’ve written them, but not on paper.

Tomorrow I’m going to head out early, and when the sun comes around I’ll know that somewhere the buds are greening and somewhere the days are growing longer. I’ll look deep into that same old bark of that same old tree, where the frost seems to grow more elaborate than it should, longer and more fantastic than it should, and I won’t ask why or how or where or when. The sun will hit the pines and the lake will kick spray. I’ll put my hand down to touch the head of a dog that isn’t there. I’ll keep moving, get the gunwales in hand, and push off hard. You know better than most that there’s always one more day on the open water, no matter how the ice gains on us, no matter how lonely, no matter how cold. 

Warmest regards during this cold season, my friend. I’m not sure if it’s the beers or what, but tonight I’m feeling okay about dropping these pebbles down the well, and for once I’m not afraid to say it outright. I miss you. Keep your hood up. Keep your nose up. There’s something out there and it’s got our name on it and won’t take no for an answer. The wind’s blowing from the north, and that’s the way we’re heading. So keep it to the wind my friend, and I’ll do the same, and I’ll pray we both rest well at night no matter what comes, no matter what dreams we do or do not have. 

I’ll do that right now. Pray for you, I mean.