J
ust the day before Noah might reasonably have stood shirtless in the sun, now there were snowflakes as big as cotton balls falling slowly enough that he could pick one out thirty feet in the air, watch it fall to the ground, balance weightlessly on a blade of brown grass, and melt in eight or ten seconds. He’d been watching the snowfall for twenty minutes from behind the screen door, sipping a cup of muddy coffee.Olaf’s heavy-footed clomping had woken him an hour earlier, but he’d stayed in bed - still smarting from a lingering sense of guilt and animosity from the night before - hoping that his father would get out of the house so he could be alone for a while. When he heard the screen door slam and the dog bark excitedly outside, he’d gotten up and fixed the coffee. Now, standing at the door, he wondered where the old man had gone.
It always surprised Noah to trace the illogical path of his thoughts from one topic to another until he’d gone, for example, from the image of his wife’s beautiful, milky breasts pressed warmly against his own bare chest during their lovemaking - which had been the first thing he thought of standing at the door - to the unimaginable nightmare of twenty- seven men on a sinking ship. That both of these things crossed his mind during the same cup of coffee was a source of mild confusion, especially as he tried to reconstruct their degrees of separation. Unable to make sense of the connection, he finally just shrugged, finished the last tepid sip of coffee, and reminded himself that he had to get back into town to call Nat that afternoon. He went back inside, poured himself another cup of coffee, and settled comfortably into the armchair.
Although most of the details of the morning of the wreck were vague at best, a few had remained etched in his memory. He remembered two-year-old Solveig wiggling impatiently on his lap, her toddler’s innocence so distant from his own, which was undergoing an atomic transformation in the dread and worry of their living room. He
remembered that his mother, despite her obvious and incredible anxiety, had commended him for being such a wonderful big brother. He remembered his mother’s teary, swollen eyes - the center of the dread and worry - and the eruption of consciousness that their look provoked in him; the thought that maybe he was the cataclysm. He knew something had happened, or was happening, to inspire his self-consciousness; knew that his papa’s ship was missing, though what ‘missing’ meant he didn’t quite understand. Judging by his mother’s fretfulness though, he knew it wasn’t good, knew that his aunt Lena would never have driven through the middle of the night to be with them otherwise. And he knew - this surest of all - that if the morning ever came to an end, and if his father ever came back from missing, that all of the tears would not be for nothing. How he knew this, both then and now, was nothing short of mystifying. It was, as he had often chided himself, the only intuitive thought he’d ever had. That it came as a seven year old boy, on a morning like that one back in 1967, was his surest proof yet of how little sense life made.
Sitting in his father’s house, all of the ancient childhood memories suddenly seemed urgent. It was as if they were some sort of verification; as if that morning was the reason he was here now; as if without that morning and the events that sprang it, there would be no reason to be here at all, at least not under the same circumstances, with the same ambivalence coursing through his thoughts.
‘Oh, Lena,’ his mother had said. ‘Where is that thing?’ She was talking about the newspaper, which had become the focus of her consternation; waiting for it had been an event in itself. Apparently the thought of hopping into the car and driving down to the gas station on Central Entrance had never entered his mother’s mind. Whether this was because of the snow, which had fallen by the foot over night, or because leaving meant the possibility of missing a phone call or radio news broadcast he had never been able to figure out. But her want and need of the Herald that morning was something he never forgot.
Lena was an adoring aunt and sister who’d spent a lot of time with them when Noah was a kid. She was a miniature version of his mother – a less attractive one – whose
aquiline eyes and dusty blond hair accentuated an otherwise ordinary face. What she lacked in sheer beauty she made-up for with an instinctual grace and confidence, and she could make most people smile just by smiling herself.
‘The paper will come, Tove,’ his aunt said. Her voice had a hint of an accent that she must have picked up from her parents, Noah’s grandma and grandpa Dahlie, who had lived in Norway – like his grandma and grandpa Torr – until they were grown and married. ‘Don’t worry. Remember, it’s snowing like mad, and that slows the delivery boy, too.’ She spoke so gently and with such a sincere sympathy that his mother had finally put down the dust rag and ceramic figurine she’d been polishing for ten minutes and collapsed on the sofa.
When the thud of the paper hitting the oval pane of glass in the storm door finally broke the uneasy silence, his mother was too terrified to move.
‘Noah,’ Lena had said sweetly, ‘will you put your boots on and step out to grab us the paper? It should be right on the top step.’
Noah had sat there paralyzed, dying to do something like put on his boots and step outside, but when she asked he couldn’t move.
‘Honey,’ Lena persisted, ‘grab the paper and bring it to me, okay?’
Finally he did as he was asked. When he handed Lena the paper she took it, kissed the tip of her pinky and offered it to his lips in a gesture so familiar it restored, at least for a moment, a semblance of order. When he turned to look back out the window, he saw a section of the paper slip from his aunt’s hands and fall to the floor. The transistor radio sat on the kitchen counter and the droning, faraway voice of some WEBC newscaster was repeating over and over again that the Ragnarok was missing.
‘Well?’ his mother asked. She had rubbed her hands raw and was working on her elbows.
Lena was already into the paper, scanning each page for a headline. ‘Nothing so far,’ she said.
‘Goddamnit,’ his mother said after another moment, and whatever edifice of normalcy that had remained was crushed.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Lena said, turning the last page of the paper.
‘There it is,’ Noah had said, pointing at a section of newspaper that Lena had let fall to the floor. ‘There’s the Rag.’
Beneath the curlicue of the Duluth Herald masthead, a screaming banner stretching from margin to margin declared: SS RAGNAROK MISSING: WORST IS FEARED. Beneath the
banner there was a file photograph of the Rag steaming under the aerial bridge.
‘At 12:27 AM today, the Superior Steel ship Ragnarok lost radio contact after making a mayday call, according to a spokesman from the Superior Steel offices in Duluth,’ Lena began reading immediately.
‘According to the spokesman, the ship is believed to have lost her rudder somewhere north/northwest of Isle Royale in Lake Superior.
‘A meteorologist from the National Weather Service reported high winds and heavy snow in the area. Other vessels in the vicinity reported waves of ten to thirty feet.
‘”The ship was under the command of Captain Jan Vat,” the Superior Steel spokesman said in a release. “He is believed to have been the officer that made the mayday. An hour earlier First Mate Olaf Torr reported a small fire in the engine room, believed to have started from a faulty fuel line.
‘”We have contacted family members, many of whom live here in Duluth, and will update events as they unfold. For now, we’re praying that search and rescue operations are successful.” Lena paused, looked at her sister, and then began reading again.
‘Both the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards launched search efforts, but were hampered by dangerous seas and weather conditions. “Maybe when day breaks we can get back out there, but for now it’s just too risky,” U.S. Coast Guard Captain Don Nosur said. “We’ve got other commercial vessels in the area on the lookout, though.”’
Noah flinched at the sound of his mother’s desperate voice.
‘Noah, take Solveig upstairs,’ Lena said. ‘Play nicely in your bedroom until I call you down, okay?’
I must have been so scared, he thought now, reclining in the armchair. For once the cabin wasn’t twenty degrees too warm, and it felt good to breathe in the smells of coffee and dying fire without choking. He was hungry, but he didn’t have the gumption to get up and wring breakfast out of the under-stocked kitchen. Instead, he fell asleep.
H
e woke to the creaking of floorboards and his father toddling across the room with a fist-full of pearly fish meat in his hand. He watched his father from the shadowy half of the house through squinting eyes. It looked, Noah thought, like his father had aged ten years overnight. His gait was palsied and pained, and the expression on his wrinkled face suggested a diminishing resolve. The fish meat hanging limply in his hand looked like an extension of the loose flesh that was holding it.Olaf dropped the fish on the counter as he walked past, and paused momentarily to steady himself and catch his breath. After a second he went to the stove, knelt and opened the door. He grabbed a couple pieces of oak from the wood box sitting beside it. He set the wood in the stove, and fanned the embers with a bellows.
‘What’s that on the counter?’ Noah asked, startling his father. ‘I thought you were sleeping.’
‘I was.’
‘It’s fish I caught this morning. Thought I could cook it up for a late breakfast.’ ‘Were you out in the boat?’
‘Nah, I caught it off the dock. It’s walleye.’ ‘I didn’t know there were walleye in this lake.’
‘They started stocking it about five years ago. There’s an underwater island just off the dock. They school there in the fall. They’re easy to catch this time of year.’
‘Is there anything to eat with it? Eggs or toast?’ Noah remembered how good fresh walleye was, and the thought of a plateful cheered him up.
‘There might be some bread in the freezer. If there isn’t, I can mix up some biscuits.’
‘That sounds good,’ Noah said, sitting up and scratching the stubble on his face. ‘You see the snow out there?’ Olaf asked, limping back across the room to the kitchen.
‘Are you okay?’ Noah asked, standing up. ‘Why don’t you let me make breakfast?’
‘That’s all right. I’m fine.’ ‘You don’t look very good.’ ‘Just a pain in my stomach.’
‘Sit down, Dad. Let me cook breakfast.’
Olaf shook his head in agreement, crossed the room, and collapsed into the armchair with a quiet moan.
‘There’s flour in the canister next to the window,’ Olaf offered as Noah started flipping through the cupboards and shelves in the kitchen. ‘And there’s a skillet under the basin.’
‘No eggs though,’ Noah said after checking the refrigerator. ‘What should I use to bread the fish?’
‘I think there’s some buttermilk in the door of the fridge, in a green carton. There’s a jar of bacon fat in there, too. You can fry the fish in that.’
‘Bacon fat? How about a little olive oil instead?’
‘Olive oil? No, no olive oil, but there might be some butter in the fridge.’
Noah stopped for a minute. Both of his hands were palm-down on the counter and he was looking across the room at his father. ‘Do you really cook your fish in bacon fat?’
‘Do you have any idea how bad for you that stuff is?’
‘Doesn’t matter anymore,’ Olaf said. He was rubbing his stomach. ‘But it’s mattered until now.’
‘What do you mean?’
Noah wanted to be delicate so he started backpedaling. ‘That stuff is so bad for you, you know? Nobody cooks anything in bacon fat anymore.’
‘Aah,’ Olaf said, waving his hand dismissively. ‘It never hurt me.’
‘Actually, Dad,’ Noah began, but then couldn’t bring himself to lecture him: It
didn’t matter anymore. Olaf was listening.
‘Listen, Dad,’ Noah continued. ‘I’m sorry about freaking out last night, about the flashlight. I was just…’
‘There’s nothing to apologize for,’ Olaf interrupted. ‘I should’ve showed you where the flashlight was.’
‘It’s just that this is all…’
Again Olaf interrupted, ‘Noah, when I called you and told you I was sick, I never expected you to come.’ His voice was raspy and faint. ‘When you said you were coming, and when you got here, I couldn’t much believe it. Now that you’re here, well, just spending some time with you, it’s doing me good.
‘I know you’ve got a life of your own and that being here probably isn’t the first thing on your mind, and,’ he paused, ‘I know you never liked that outhouse anyway.’
Noah wanted to say that in all the years of their falling out, the first thing he always wanted and the last thing he ever expected was to be in a situation like the one he was in now, not just this instant but the last couple of days. He wanted to say that for twenty-five years he’d been waiting for this side of his father to show. Instead he said, ‘You’re right about that. I’ve hated that damn outhouse since I was a kid and old enough to be afraid of it.’
‘So don’t apologize.’
Noah rinsed the fish in a stainless steel cake pan. Then he soaked the fish in a bowl of buttermilk while he mixed flour and seasoning salt with an antique whisk. He spooned a couple generous lumps of bacon fat from the jar and set them to melting in the heavy skillet on the stove. When the bacon fat melted and was bubbling and spattering, he rolled the fish – which he’d cut into four strips – in the flour and dropped them into the grease. With a long, two tined fork, he flipped the fish several times until it hardened and the breading began to crumble. He had pulled the loaf of bread from the freezer and was defrosting a couple slices on the counter.
It wasn’t clams steamed in chardonnay, he thought, but it doesn’t look bad. ‘You want a cup of coffee?’ Noah asked.
‘Sure.’
Noah checked the coffee pot on the stove and poured his father a mug. Then he took two plates from the cupboard, two forks from a drawer, and served a strip of fish and a piece of bread on each plate.
‘Do you want to eat at the table or in the chair there?’ he asked his father. ‘Here’s good.’
Noah brought him a plate and sat down at the table. The fish was still steaming and the smell of bacon fat filled the room.
‘This is good,’ Olaf said, taking a bite.
‘No doubt each bite is taking a year off my life,’ Noah replied, lolling a hot bite of the fish around in his mouth. ‘Natalie won’t let me eat bacon; I can’t imagine what she’d have to say about frying fish in bacon fat. I’m not even allowed to butter my toast at home.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m exaggerating, Dad.’
‘Speaking of Natalie, I have to get back into town to call her this afternoon. Mind if I use your truck?’
‘Course not.’
‘Is it going to snow all day?’
Olaf took his glasses off and looked out the window. ‘I doubt it.’
‘You want another piece of fish?’ Noah asked. He was getting up to get one for himself.
‘No thanks.’
‘The way I figure it,’ Noah said, forking one of the strips of fish from the still-hot frying pan onto his plate while he finished the last bite of his first piece, ‘If I’m going to kill myself I might as well hurry up and do it.’
‘Eat up,’ Olaf responded. ‘You’ll need the energy for getting the rest of that tree in the gulch.’
‘Can it wait until I get back from calling Nat?’ ‘Of course it can.’
Noah took the last bite of fish then stood up to clear their plates from the table. Before he’d started cooking he’d put a kettle of water on the stove so it would be ready for doing the dishes when they were done eating. Now Noah was pouring the kettle water into the basin that passed for a kitchen sink.
‘Why don’t you go on and give your wife a call? I can finish cleaning up the mess.’
‘That’s okay, it’ll only take me a minute.’ ‘Go on, go on already. Let me finish that.’