Heat Storm

He blinked but he did not move. The sun cleared the pines.

Crystalline sounds, cracking ice beneath the drifts. A bough snapped and again he blinked. He waited for a great nuclear explosion. It seemed to him he’d been waiting a long time, and the chancre was growing and filled with black bile that puffed to explode. But he was not cold.

He had no real thoughts. The image of the old man and the bomb shelter and Harvey had frozen stiff and mostly clogged his thinking. He would have to do something, he knew, but he was not sure what, and he was too tired and too lazy and too numb to move from the drift.

Crystalline sounds, snapping crusts of snow. Again he blinked.

Then his eyes closed. For a time he seemed to sleep, but it was not quite sleep. He was back in the blizzard again, and the light had no color or warmth but rather a kind of primitive photochemistry, and with all the cracking and snapping and breaking sounds, the sun rose higher, and the snapping sounds gradually sweetened and there was no great nuclear explosion, the world survived in a calm diathermy, and the new-sounds seemed promising. Then he truly slept. He slept as the sun arched northeast to northwest and paused from the white pine at the far edge of the clearing to a stand of birch at the near edge. The deformed forest began its thaw. Clumps of snow dropped like paste from the trees, and the great drifts fashioned by the storm began to sag and buckle, and the crystalline sounds changed into soft sounds: feathers into a pillow, air into lungs, coffee into a cup, silent respiration, and the world would survive.

He emerged from his drift at dusk.

He was single-minded. He moved mechanically. He pulled his sleeping bag from the snow and draped it over the broken chimney. He took each thing at a time.

Bending stiffly and still not thinking properly, he burrowed in the great drift, searching, finally finding the orange rucksack. The image of the squatting gray bomb shelter still clogged his thinking. He kicked at the snow and uncovered his pile of wood. Picking up each log separately, he clapped the wood against the chimney, shaking off chunks of ice and then stacking it in a dark pile. It was hard to think beyond the separate motions. He was not hungry. He was not hungry and it was hard to think, but he imagined a fire, and he opened the rucksack and found the matches and dropped to his knees. Then he dug into the drift. Dusk ended and dark began but he did not notice. He burrowed into the drift, carving out a firehollow at the foot of the chimney.

He cleared the hearth, cleared the flue and the stack.

Rubble of the old homesteader’s house lay around him, stones and frozen timber, but the broken chimney still stood, the fireplace was there, and he whisked it clean.

He placed the logs in the fireplace. He took great care. He piled the wood neatly, forming a box into which he dropped his store of twigs. Without his glasses he was nearly blind, and he squinted as he worked, taking care.

Behind him the snow sobbed. He stopped, listened, tried to remember. He could not think. There was a white winter moon.

He removed his mittens and struck the first match.

Cupping it in his hands, he leaned forward and took heavy drafts of heat and sulphur. He held the flame to his eyes. Then like a woman bending for potatoes, he reached down and touched the flame to a single twig. The flame shriveled. It held its beaded shape but shrank away, dwindling like a Doppler and carrying Perry after it, chasing the flame into the darkness. When the flame was gone, he held the match for its warmth.

He struck the second match. Again he cupped the flame and breathed deep, then touched it to the twig. The moon was white. He watched the flame, his fingers, his fingers dangling like Christmas tinsel. He envisioned raw heat. The elements. It was impulse and he could not remember. The old recollections … his own church, the high apse, reading as his father from the pulpit of Damascus Lutheran. Defrocked by the mockery of child’s play, pretending, practising, play-acting. “Take that robe off,” his father had said. “You’re just pretending and it’s a mockery.” And Perry: “I was practising.” And his father: “Go on outside and play with your brother.” And Perry over supper: “I’m not goin’ to church no more.” And Perry, sitting on his tricycle: “Poooooooooooor me.” Not understanding. Anything. The boastful old thoughts had been stiffened to stone by the blizzard. Storm fury defeated thought fury. He could not remember. He squatted down. He held the match to the twig and hovered close and coaxed the flame. He wanted to speak, and he tried to think of the words. He watched the flame burn down its stem, shrinking away, and when the flame died, he could not think of the words, and he quickly struck a third match and held it to the twig. Behind him the snow sobbed. He listened but he could not remember. He held more matches to the twig, drying it and raising its temperature, and on the ninth try the twig took. It smoldered, then for a moment flowed red like lava, then burned. Again the snow sobbed, somewhere behind him in the drifts of blizzard snow, buried somewhere, and he stopped and listened but he could not remember. He turned to the flame. The twig burned white, turned gray, ash, and Perry guarded it. He wanted to speak. He made clucking sounds instead. The flame shuddered then burned steady. He held the match tight against the twig, afraid to remove it. The match burned red and blue, the twig burned yellow and blue. He breathed slowly. When the match flame died away, the twig continued to burn. It burned from the center out, breaking into separate twin flames.

Perry wanted to speak, but instead he clucked to the fire. He took out a pile of matches and stacked them against the twig, watched the flames creep towards the poised sulphur, and he grinned—grinned when the matches took in three fast explosions, flaring and cracking open, grinning when another twig went afire.

He wanted to speak. Behind him, the snow sobbed again and again with soft respiring sounds.

He had plenty of matches. It was the one thing Harvey had done right, insisting on carrying hundreds of stiff kitchen matches. Harvey, that was it, old Harvey. Behind him, the snow sobbed, the pouring sound, the delicate respiration.

He wanted to speak, but instead he stacked a handful of matches against the promising part of the fire and watched them burst in a tight fist of fire. He arranged the twigs around the ball of flame, placing each twig with exact care, watching as the fist of fire clenched white and hot and began to grow. He let the fire eat at its own pace. He was careful. He wasn’t a woodsman, but he knew a little about fires and he was careful. Fires have to breathe: Harvey’s teaching. Old Harvey, the woodsman.

Gradually he added larger branches. He moved slowly. He watched the fire. He leaned close. His eyes were now hot, but he peered steadily into the flame, greedy, clucking and guarding it and waiting for it to grab hold of the larger logs. Snow melted from the chimney and slowly trickled down the stack, sliding and melting and sputtering like grease, forming a pool of water at his feet.

At last it was done. The fire filled the old homesteader’s hearth, and Perry stood up and watched to be sure, his arms hanging low.

It was done.

He looked up, saw the moon, and tried to remember. He wasn’t hungry. Harvey, he was thinking, trying to form the word on his lips. The Bull. “Sure loved your old man,” old Jud had said. I loved him, too, goddammit. That was it, old Harvey. Could have been a minister, could have done acts of mercy and acts of love. Performing acts of mercy and acts of love. Saving souls, ministerial balm, unction. It could have been, all right. It was Harvey’s fault, old Harvey.

He turned his mittens inside out and laid them on the hearth, then he spread his sleeping bag to dry. He moved woodenly.

His feet hurt. Harvey said aching feet are a good sign, no frostbite. Old Harvey.

Perry bent once and reached for his ankles. He felt brittle. His spine would not give.

Stamping his feet, flexing and bending, he exercised, stopped to add wood to the fire, then marched in a circle around the chimney until his feet were tingling. He fed the fire and waited. His face was raw. The skin was drawn tight around his nose and cheekbones. He was weak but he exercised, marched around the fireplace. The moon was out. He thought he should be hungry. That had been one of the old thoughts. Before the blizzard—food and hunger and self-pity. Angry. Starving and being angry, angry and self-pity, sadness and hunger, anger and hunger and melancholy, fear and hunger. The nightlong images had lumbered. But, now, nothing more to do. The hunger was gone. It had been beyond anything, a cadaverous emptiness that had moved from belly to brain and became its own great giant thought, a great beast that stalked and ravaged and gobbled all the other frantic thoughts, foraging and kicking and thrashing and shrieking, ravenous, attacking. He could not remember much about it. The blizzard iced it and stopped it cold. Another numbness, a bad sign, but he was grateful.

He leaned against the chimney and rested. The stones were warm now. The hunger was gone. The passion was gone. Another bad sign. Old Harvey had the passion.

He tried to think. It was a good fire. The moon was white. He knew no fine tricks for escape. Except for the cold and blizzard and fire and elements, he knew little. He could not think.

Behind him the snow sobbed.

He was empty. He was weak and dizzy, his brain was slow, and the stones were warm and he heard the pouring sounds, the snow sobbing, the fire. He tried to speak. It was that clucking sound, a mixture of strange sounds.

He returned to the fire and methodically warmed himself. He removed his parka and hung it to dry.

Behind him, the sobbing sound, the snow buckled. The sobbing sound. Harvey. That was it, old Harvey. That dry sobbing sound. He listened, partly remembering, then remembering. It was Harvey, that sound.

“Harvey,” he said.

He found the drift, and while the moon shifted angles, he began digging. “Harvey,” he said. That was it, Harvey the Bull. He spoke his brother’s name and dug into the night snow. He was thinking and finally remembering. He attacked the tumular drift, digging fast.

“Well, look at this, look at this, look at yourself now.”

He dug into the drift, and the sound flowed out. “Look at yourself now, Harv. Harvey the pirate, Harvey the great bloody pirate.”

He found the bag. The cloth was frozen stiff.

He tugged at the zipper. “Some great pirate. Some great woodsman.” Perry worked the zipper down. The sobbing sound came out, mixed with a thick smell. “Look at this, you bull. Look at this stink bag. Some stink bag.”

“A bloody disaster, you bull.” He felt his brother’s flesh. The bag was very warm. Goose down and snow insulation, body heat, decay and excrement. “This is where it ends, Harv. The old stink bag. Harvey in his stink bag.”

He forced the zipper further down, gutting his bag like animal hide. “A disaster. Right from the start. Some hero.”

Perry pulled at him. “Come on out, Harvey. Come on now, out of your stink bag.”

Harvey wheezed, the sobbing sound. The great wild. The great elements. Perry gripped the bag and pulled it from the drift. The rasping sobbing sound swelled. He dragged the bag to the hearth. “The hero in his stinking stink bag. Think about that.” He rolled his brother out of the bag and on to the hearth. He was dizzy. He put his head down and rested.

Later he sat up. The moon had become yellow. He stoked the fire and added new wood. He felt better.

Working slowly, he propped Harvey’s head on the rucksack, covered him, heaped snow into a pot and hung it over the fire.

He inspected his brother’s face. The breathing was bad. The neck was arched and stiff, and the raspy breathing would not stop.

When the water was hot, he washed Harvey’s face and neck, then held his head and forced hot water into him. He dipped a cloth in the hot water, wrung it out and laid it over his brother’s nose.

Then he rested. He sat with his back against the warm stones. He tried to plan. If the blizzard did not return, then they would leave in the morning, there was nothing else to do. If Harvey could move. If the breathing could be eased. If I die before I wake. His brain was starved. If he could manage. If he could keep the fire going. Then the morning. It was hard to think. In the morning they would leave on skis. They would try the skis. Or maybe rest. He was glad the awful hunger was gone. The hunger had stopped him from thinking. No bloody thinking. That was the problem from the beginning, no thinking. No bloody thinking. That was Harvey’s word, bloody. No bloody thinking and he’d gone along with it, no thinking from start to sorry finish, and now they were lost and in the morning they would have to try the skis. Or they could rest. They could stay at the old homesteader’s fireplace. They could stay at the chimney. The old homesteader had built a solid chimney, and the fire was good. Perry was proud of the fire. He was no woodsman but he’d built the fire and Harvey … Harvey in his stink bag. They would leave on skis. The complications baffled him. Harvey’s magnificent adventures: “It’s a bloody cinch, brother.” Harvey could bubble with it.

Perry sipped hot water. If he could eat.

He thought about numbers. He counted moments and sounds. He counted his store of logs, eight of them. Two logs for each hour, four hours of fire. He would have to go to the pines for more wood. He would go when the moon moved. When the moon moved a foot in the sky, then he would go after the wood, but first he had to rest.

He watched Harvey sleep. The bronchial rasp seemed almost natural, with a rhythm that rose and fell like winter.

The bag did stink. He could not get over it. Even with the burning wood and open air, he could not get the smell out of his head. He watched the moon and counted and waited. For a time he drifted along the borderland of sleep. He could not think and he could not dream. There was no great insight. He wished he had his glasses. They were buried somewhere in the drifts. He should have had better sense.

He tinkered with his fire. He was proud of it. Built it from scratch and without any help or smug advice from Harvey.

He crouched and hugged himself and huddled by the fire.

He watched a million stars. He recognized the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and the North Star, but the others he didn’t know. Harvey would know them. The Latin names or Greek names or whatever, the constellations, the orbits, the Sioux names and the Chippewa names and all the gods and myths and stories.

It was dark. They would be searching. Perhaps the search was over. He imagined a thousand Boy Scouts, a thousand searching flashlights closing in, a ring of Boy Scouts drawing closer.

He wanted sleep. The fire was sleepy. Harvey was sleeping.

The moon slipped across the clearing and disappeared behind the birch trees. He wished he had his glasses. It did not matter, because there was nothing much to see.

Dawn came up in slivers.

Bits of light streamed through the trees, slowly expanding and broadening, and the day got bright and the sky grew blue like summer.

Perry lay with his head and shoulders inside the fireplace, where a tiny flame still burned. He waited for the fire to die. He listened to his own breathing, then to Harvey’s breathing, the mistaken sounds of atrophy.

He blinked. He watched the embers, then the ash. He was comfortable.

The snow was clean. The snow rolled out and out. He kept his sights low, there was no sense looking further.

“Harvey?”

Perry pulled himself up. He balanced in the snow, holding a hand against the chimney.

He wondered if he had slept. He couldn’t be sure. The elusive thoughts or dreams had not stopped. He was tired.

“Harvey?”

The snow was deep. It was a fine high sky.

Harvey’s neck bulged, contracted, and the sobbing sound came out and his Adam’s apple lurched. Perry shook him. “Harvey, have to get up now.” He helped him sit against the chimney. Harvey’s face was drawn.

“Have to move, Harv.”

Harvey lay against the stones. His eyes opened, surprising Perry. The bad eye was like marble.

“We’ll have to leave now, Harv.”

Harvey peered ahead, resting against the stones.

“Just rest then I’ll find the skis and we’ll leave.”

Perry shaded his eyes. The day got bright. Perry rested, then waded through the snow. He wished he had his glasses, but they would be buried deep and there was no sense looking for them. He found the skis and poles and carried them to the chimney. The equipment was brittle and shiny. The skis needed a wax job. He clapped the snow from the toe bindings, leaned them against the chimney and went out after Harvey’s rucksack. He poked through the snow with one of the poles. It was a long search. He stumbled on rubble of the homesteader’s collapsed house, timbers and beams and granite stone, poking with his pole. He found the rucksack, slung it over his shoulder and waded back to the chimney. Harvey was sleeping. Perry shook him again. Harvey nodded, closed his eyes and lay back.

“Leaving soon,” Perry said. It was hard to talk.

Harvey nodded, eyes closed.

“Do you hear me?”

“I’m sick, brother.”

“I know it. Doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”

Harvey rasped, then chuckled. His eyes were still closed.

“Do you hear me?”

“I hear,” Harvey said.

“We’re leaving.”

“You don’t understand, do you?”

“I understand that we’re leaving.”

Perry rolled up the sleeping bags and stuffed them into his rucksack. He folded the map, studied it blindly, then put it in his pocket. The forest was all the same. He packed the water pot and matches. He got to his knees and reached through the snow, searching for his glasses. When his hands began to numb he gave it up. He warmed himself, exercised, then dumped snow into the fireplace. Smoke jumped from the broken chimney, hovered and finally dissipated.

The forest was bright and white and still. He looked once more about the homesteader’s clearing.

He looked for a sign or a direction. He let his eyes turn across the plot, across the snowed-under foundation of the old house, to the fireplace, and chimney, to the stand of birch and beyond to the old dock and the frozen lake. There were no roads. He turned and faced the brunt of the forest. It was opaque. It was spruce and birch and white pine.

He reached down for Harvey. “Leaving now.”

He pulled him up. Harvey wobbled. He blinked.

Perry helped him into his skis and clamped the toe bindings and tested them.

Awkward, heady with departure, he rolled the nylon tarpaulin into a ball, tied it to his rucksack and slipped the straps over his shoulders. For a moment he was pleased with himself. Harvey stood like a fresh-born colt, head drooping. The forest was straight ahead.

Perry stepped into his skis and flexed his shoulders to shift the rucksack higher, then he pushed off and he felt strong at last.

They skied slowly. The land sloped down from the chimney, into the woods. There were no paths and Perry wound his way ahead, letting the skis take a natural course downwards. He steered southeast. Sooner or later the ski course would bisect North Shore Drive, the highway and the great lake.

It was a gleaming cold day, and the skis bit the snow crust and the forest was still and brittle, and Perry pushed without thinking, and he did not worry. The pines were tall and thick. The forest descended.

At intervals he rested and waited for Harvey.

They did not speak. The skis crunched and bit the snow, and Harvey’s dry breathing followed him both driving and pursuing.

Perry felt lean.

Though blind and groping from tree to tree, he still had a sense of great new clearheadedness. He skied erect, thinking he might be watched, photographed for some epic motion picture spinning on sparse themes of survival and manhood, and he counted moments and pines. A dozen simple tasks, step and glide, push and glide.

Harvey moved slowly, head down, dragging his poles like outriggers. Perry waited and watched. The gallant pirate. He felt some shame, even a pinch of embarrassment. He knew so much about his brother, the memory of his climbing out the school window, perching on the ledge, then plunging to the school yard, hollering Geronimooooo. And other such memories. Nothing false about the bravado, and certainly nothing make-believe.

“One glide one, two glide two, three glide three,” Perry murmured. He felt lean. The old fat was gone. To be a great bull.

“Twelve glide twelve,” he murmured, and the land swept down. He skied erect. He’d lasted it out. He was leading now. He felt good and he felt strong. “Twenty glide twenty,” and the snow squeaked like chalk on a blackboard. Harvey’s breathing followed him, the harsh bronchial sound.

“Fifty-nine glide fifty-nine, sixty glide sixty,” he chanted.

He came to a stand of dense pine. Sidestepping, he jabbed at the trees with his pole, testing it. He felt the branches buckle and pushed through. He stood alone. The woods were very high and thick. Behind him, he heard Harvey’s breathing. He unbuckled his skis and walked back for Harvey.

“Well … the trees are too close. We’ll have to walk awhile. We’re going to walk awhile. You hear?” He knelt in the snow and helped Harvey out of his skis. “Take my shoulder now. We’re going to push through.” Harvey was tall. There was a slight shadow. He cradled the skis and led Harvey into the dense trees. “Stop here.” His voice was stiff. It was all right. There was some authority.

They walked a long mile. The country began to rise and they rested often, then the forest thinned out and fell sharply, and again they skied.

The forest finally fell to a frozen river. Like a hook, it curved away from them. Perry studied it. What he could see of it, the river bent almost directly south. If it continued south, they would get deeper lost. If it straightened out somewhere ahead, a generous twist, it might lead to the southeast and the highway and the yellow end. He took out the map. There were a thousand small rivers. Ten thousand, twenty thousand lakes. It looked simple. Lake Oslo. Whitefish Lake. Caribou Lake. Beaver Lake. There in the corner, a small black dot, was the town, Sawmill Landing, stenciled in black. The Arrowhead engulfed it. And all the rivers; blue lines running into blue patches, surrounded by green, raw forest.

He looked for a river with a big hook. They all had hooks. He did not know much about maps. Ought to have gone out with his father, he might have learned something. But there was no sense asking Harvey now. All the blundering. Perry folded the map and returned it to his pocket. He helped Harvey on to the river.

“No,” Harvey murmured.

“What?”

“Nope. No more.” Harvey shook his head, his eyes down. His bad eye was hard. “I’m sick. This is far enough. This is enough, brother.” He planted his poles and leaned on them. Slowly at first, then fast, his skis slid backward and he fell face forward and lay still.

“Get up,” Perry said.

“This is enough.”

Perry hooked his arms around his brother, lifting him. “Up,” he said.

“You don’t understand. This is …” Harvey coughed and Perry pulled him forward and they moved down the river, rounding the bend, and they skied south.

The pines were high on both banks. Icicles dangled from the branches.

The white river sparkled ahead. “Eighty glide eighty, eighty-one glide eighty-one, eighty-two glide eighty-two, eighty-three glide eighty-three.”

Far ahead, over the forest, a mammoth cloud hovered. It was the backside of the blizzard.

The river flowed south and Perry worried. They would have to leave it if it did not soon bend southeast.

The skiing was flat and easy. He glided along the frozen river, letting inertia carry him. Numbers flopped in his head. He counted aloud, counting for each skating motion, each breath. The mammoth cloud looked natural over the forest. It shifted, regenerated like an ameba. It was familiar. He’d seen it coming. Harvey had laughed. He counted numbers, hard numbers. Ninety glide ninety. He counted faults in the river crust, keeping his head down, a way to keep limbs functioning, methodically step by step, ninety-one glide ninety-one. He counted Harvey’s respiration behind him, turning the disease into dry numbers, counting the days they’d been lost. He concentrated, searching for something unique in each of the lost days. He counted to nineteen, juggling numbers, but finally losing track as the blizzard blended the days into an indistinguishable force, extinguished day and night and time and even number. At last the river turned. It was a slow arcing bend, and they rounded it and came to a bridge. The bridge was old, plank flooring and silver-iron railings, high enough to ski under without stooping. Perry stopped. He leaned on his poles and waited for Harvey. “Bridge,” he said. Harvey sat on the river. “There’s a road up there, Harv.” Perry unbuckled his skis. It was a steep, long climb up the riverbank, a sheer bluff that was iced and deliberately imposing. “I’m going up.” He tackled it without thinking, digging with his fingers and pushing against the bank for adhesion. Roots of old trees bulged from the bank and he used them as a ladder. He did not stop climbing until he’d scaled it. He rolled on to his back and spread his arms and lay still.

He was dizzy. He’d been dreaming. Not dreaming, thinking. And not thinking, a combination of dream and thought.

He could not remember. He may have slept, he did not know.

The sky was darker now. He was cold.

He pushed up, leaning on an elbow. He was very cold. He saw the bridge. “Gawwd,” he moaned, remembered, then quickly scrambled along the bank and got to the bridge. It carried a narrow trail across the river and into the far pines. Probably a logging trail, he thought; Harvey would know. It was a plain dirt road that emerged, crossed the river and submerged again.

He walked on to the bridge. The planks shivered. The frozen bolts creaked. He was very cold. He looked each way, hugging himself. He looked up to where the trail tunneled out of the forest and down to where it disappeared again in a mountain of pine. A crust of night grey was coming down the river. He was cold.

He leaned against the iron railing. He was hypnotized and cold.

Harvey lay on the river below.

Perry stared down. Harvey’s arms were splayed, disjointed, his skis jutted at two obtuse angles. His yellow parka shined. Snow spread out and out to the banks of river, climbing the banks, spreading out and out into the forest.

Perry gazed down.

Harvey’s brown beard had frosted. The gray crust came sliding up the river. The yellow parka shined. Making angels in the snow: Harvey as a kid, making angels in the snow, arms and legs splashing. The forest was closing up, all right. Perry gazed down. Harvey was still, frozen in the river, cemented in the frost. His bad eye was open, wide open, bulging out. “Hey, Harv!” he called. “Hey, Harvey. What you doing down there?”

The forest was closing up fast as the gray nightcrust came sliding in. “Harvey!” he called, a war game or something, just a tattered remnant of childhood, there lay Harvey shot dead, tumbling dead to the river, freezing in fun. “Hey, Harv!” he called. Harvey looked young, even with the frosted beard and red skin and play-dead pose.

He was tired. He sat down. The day was brittle and the shadows were still coming. Had he slept? They needed a fire. He turned, saw that the river bent sharply, twisted once more, then continued south. They could not stay on the river. He got out the map. He unfolded it and spread it against the railing and began searching it for a bridge and a river and a road. He was tired and cold. Squinting and bending over the map, he searched it top to bottom. He stopped once to look down at Harvey. The bad eye was still open, dull. “It’s all right, Harv. Old Harv.”

The map was yellow, encased in plastic. It had belonged to their father. Scribblings and cryptic X’s and dotted lines had been traced on it. In red letters, stencilled across the western width of the map, it said: World’s Greatest and Only Exclusive-Canoe Country. Canoe country. Ski country. Indian country. Camping country, lake country, pine country, old forest, lost country. It confused him. His eyes hurt, he needed his glasses. It was too simple and easy. On the map, everything was unmistakable and clear, nothing dangled and no height or depth. The great forests were reduced to a pale green sheen. From bottom left to top right ran the sharp coastline of Lake Superior, a sheaf of blue that formed the Arrowhead’s cutting edge. At its tip was Grand Portage, stopping place for the voyagers, the Indian reservation. Fucking greasy Indians, the old Swedes said. A sliver of land, the tip of the Arrowhead stabbed into Superior at a place called Pigeon Point. Perry had once been there. With his father and Harvey. It was all rock and pine and still wild, and his father had pointed out at the lake and called it the cleanest lake in the world. He’d taken them along the portage trail, lecturing, explaining that La Vérendrye landed there in August of 1731, that the French used the place as a launching pad for the great Northwest Passage quest, that later it became a bustling English fur outpost, stockaded, growing, doing big business in beaver hides and bear and moose. And they’d walked along the portage trail and his father had lectured and Harvey’s eyes gleamed and dreamed, and they came to the Pigeon River and the pathway west into rainy river country, saw old Fort Charlotte, the site anyway, and it was all history, the Glacial Age, the Stone Age, the French and British and the coming Swedes and Finns and Norwegians and Yankees, opening it up. Perry stared at the map. He was cold. Harvey lay on the river below, his yellow parka still shining. The map was a maze. The country was thick with lakes. He tried to count the blue splotches, forgetting himself, forgetting Harvey frosted below, and he counted until losing his way in a tangle of channels and unnamed lakes and long blue stretches of lakes merging with other lakes. The whole history was there, printed on the map, all the moraines and blazed boulders, the sweep of the giant glaciers. And the names, some Indian, Lake Kawishiur and Lake Gabimichigami. French names, like Caribou and Brule, and English names and Swedish names and half-breed names, and when all the names ran out and still other lakes were discovered, the lakes were called by number, Lake Number Three, Lake Number Four. A pity, Perry thought.

Entranced, he stared down at Lake Number Four, hypnotized. He darted back and forth in memory, and Lake Number Four intrigued him: not at all a small and unimportant lake, rather a very large and interesting chunk of blue on the map, shaped like an upside-down deer with small islands where the heart and kidneys would be. The name, Lake Number Four, thumped mechanically through his head, solid, a solid name, countable. Number Four in the land of ten thousand lakes. An injustice. Deer Lake would be better. Peri Lake. No, deer-shaped, Deer Lake. He looked closer and found a dozen other Deer lakes; then Elk lakes and Moose lakes and Reindeer lakes and Beaver lakes and Bear lakes and White Bear lakes.

He was cold. The map shivered. Harvey was still down there, still on the frozen river.

It was so big. He looked to the cutting edge of the broadhead, the string of towns along the coast—Tofte, Lutsen, Silver Bay, Hovland, Grand Marais. And the starting point, Sawmill Landing, a black dot, inland slightly, a dot representing all those wooden buildings, the tar strip of Mainstreet, Route 18. He touched the dot. He traced his finger north, through the heart of the Arrowhead, up to the northern edge where a chain of lakes and rivers and portages formed the intricate border with Canada. Somewhere in the broadhead, between the cutting edges, somewhere along a river where there was a bridge and an old logging trail. He looked carefully, squinting, bending over the map. The wind began and the gray nightcrust swept down the river, across Harvey and then under the bridge.

“Harvey!” he called.

Hugging him like a doll, Perry pulled his brother up, removed his skis and made him walk.

The river ice snapped and the day was late and crystal sharp and cold. The snow cracked into sheets. They walked in a circle. Perry had no hope. Twice he stopped to massage his brother’s thighs.

Harvey’s arms dangled.

“Come on, Harv, come on,” Perry clucked. “One step one, two step two, three step three, easy, easy.” Morphia, each step.

Harvey began to cough. He held a choking grip on Perry’s throat.

“Harvey?” Perry at last stopped.

“I’m sick.”

Perry waited for the coughing to stop.

“I was sleeping. I’m sick.”

“We have to get off the river. We’re going up to the bridge.”

Harvey coughed. “I don’t … No, I don’t think so.” His voice had an icy, nasal tinkle. It was his old voice hollowed out.

“We have to climb the bank.”

“Shit.”

“I’ll help. Can’t stay on the river. Can you hear me? The river goes the wrong way. There’s a road up there. We’ll go up and make a fire and tomorrow we’ll take the road.”

“I’m hot.”

Perry kneeled and rubbed Harvey’s thighs and ankles. His own hands were getting numb. The winter moon was already up.

“Bloody hot,” Harvey coughed. “I’ll take the coat off.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I’m hot.”

“It’s the fever. You’re keeping the coat on. Later I’ll build us a fire. Take hold now.”

“I’m sick.”

“Yes. You’re climbing the bank. You’re leaving the coat on. Take hold.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Doesn’t matter. Take hold.”

Harvey pulled an arm from his parka. “I’m … let me get this coat off. I was sleeping, you know.”

“You were freezing.”

They stood facing each other. Harvey suddenly smiled. He started to laugh and the cough caught hold, a dry hack. “You … You don’t know what you’re doing.” The bad eye shined. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Take hold then.”

“You … You don’t know a hell of what you’re doing, do you?”

“You’re climbing that bank.”

“All right then. But you don’t know.”

Harvey climbed recklessly. It was Harvey, his old carelessness and certainty, climbing as though daring the bluff to cast him off. He climbed to the top and smiled down at Perry, then, grinning and coughing, he curled in the snow while Perry scaled the bank for the final time, bringing up the skis and poles.

Perry used the last light to gather wood. He shaved splinters from a rotted bridge plank and used it for kindling to build a fire.

He tied the nylon tarp to an iron railing, unrolled the sleeping bags. Harvey lay by the fire. His eyes were listless and wide open and he did not move.

As the night went on, Harvey’s breathing settled into the forest background, replacing the wind. From time to time Perry fed him hot water, holding the pot while Harvey breathed the steam.

Perry slept well. He woke once, rebuilt the fire, then slept again.

At dawn, he doused the fire and packed their gear. He was nervous. He would look for food during the day. Squirrels maybe. Harvey sat with his back against the bridge railing.

“Get up,” Perry said.

“This is the end.”

“What?”

“You aren’t facing it,” Harvey said.

“Get up.”

Harvey kept grinning. “You don’t even know the end. This is the end, brother. I’m not going on, I’m sick.” Perry stood back. He watched and did not go close.

He watched until Harvey slumped against the railing.

“Get up.”

“You don’t even … don’t understand,” Harvey muttered. “This is, just look into it. For Christ sake, this is the whole purpose of it, don’t you see that? We did all right. This is forest here. This is wild stuff, don’t you see that?”

Perry blinked. “No.”

Harvey shrugged and grinned. “Well, I’m staying behind. I’m through.”

Perry put on his rucksack. “You’re not,” he said. “You’re coming.”

Harvey grinned like a wolf.

“You are coming,” Perry repeated.

“Don’t have to be so afraid.”

“What?”

“You can stop fearing it. You’re always so goddamned afraid.”

“Get up.”

Harvey began his cough and Perry took the chance to get him up and into the skis.

“You’re coming,” he said.

“You’re afraid of everything.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re lazy and you never learned a thing. You’re afraid, you’re afraid of everything,” then he coughed again and Perry strapped him into a rucksack.

“Don’t you like to talk?”

“No.”

“I want to talk,” Harvey said.

“Then you talk. Let’s go.”

“I want to talk about being brave and doing things.”

“We’ve done that before.” Perry started across the bridge.

“Let’s talk about you then,” Harvey grinned. “Let’s talk about brother Paul Milton Perry, how’s that? How’s that?” he crowed. “How’s that?”

Perry waited for Harvey to push off, then he skied off the bridge and on to the road and into the woods, checking to be sure Harvey followed.

“Yeah,” Harvey crowed behind him, then coughed, then crowed: “Let’s talk about you, brother. See? See here, brother. You came with me. Came along free and clear, you hear?”

Perry now led the way.

“Free and clear! You hear? You could have stayed home. Didn’t have to come, nobody forced you. Came free and clear. You hear me? Let’s talk about your shining moments in the great history of things. You hear? You hear me? Let’s talk about you awhile. Let’s talk … Let’s talk about your great shining love for your father. You hear me? You want to talk? Nobody forced you out here. You just came, you hear? Let’s talk about our father awhile. Let’s sit down and talk about how you treated him, your great love for him. Let’s just stop and talk about that … Nobody made you come out here. You think I feel sorry? Wrong! You’re wrong, buddy. You hear?”

Perry skied straight ahead. Harvey was far behind him. The trees were growing everywhere, full pine and spruce, and the land sloped down.

He led the way.

The trees went on and on. He tried counting them.

At midday he stopped and motioned for Harvey to sit down. They rested on their rucksacks. Harvey had thin blue veins marking his forehead. His face was wet.

“I’m taking off this coat,” Harvey said.

“You’re not.” Perry did not look up.

“I’m sick.”

“I know that. You’re keeping the coat on.”

Perry sat and looked up the trail and tried to think it out. He was hungry but he felt all right. He admired the trees. They were green as summer, long and short needled spruce. Further ahead, up the trail, they turned to birch but beyond they turned to pine again. All over, the snow sparkled. It was a fine bright day and he saw everything clearly. The brightness made him close his eyes.

“I’m taking this coat off,” said Harvey.

Perry got up and slung the rucksack behind him.

“Did you hear me? I’m taking this coat off.”

Perry buckled on his skis, leaned on his poles and watched Harvey until he got up.

He waited, then without a nod he pushed off down the trail. He couldn’t get over how bright and clean a day it was, as though the blizzard had scrubbed everything like steel wool. On each side of the trail, the trees grew in neat rows. He was hungry again. It struck in strange places. The hunger had moved from his belly to the back of his brain, in some primitive transferal of sensation. The hunger would strike for a moment, throbbing as if it had been plucked like a guitar string, then it would shimmy and make him dizzy, then slowly give out and he would be clearheaded again and in control. He was leading. Lean at last, and clearheaded and cleareyed.

They skied up the center of the trail. Perry leading. He skied with his eyes closed. He wondered if a man could sleep and still go on, eyes closed, maybe even snoring, while the skis simply carried. Each time he opened his eyes, the snow was brighter.

The road was hypnotic in its stretches of long forest and snow and bright blue sky. All quite beautiful. The trail sometimes was very wide in places where the loggers had stopped to cut, and other times it was impassable, grown over with saplings and coppice. Except for the sound of their skiing and the undertone of cracking in the snow, the forest was still, and the old trail swept through the woods like a river.

For a time they were followed by a hawk that dipped down on them, wings fluttering in a slow graceful breaking motion, then jerking suddenly upwards and disappearing high over the forest, then later returning to screech low over the trail, winding over their heads and jerking up and away again. But except for the lonely hawk and the sound of their skis and the sound of the cracking snow, the day was dumb and empty, a long track of light and snow along the trail. Perry played his counting game: trees, strides, breaths, memories, saplings, spurts of hard hunger, minutes, hours, backward, forward. He ran out of things to count, or they stretched on so far that he grew restless with the prospect of never reaching the end.

The forest kept coming and it was always there. The birch trees gave out to acres of evergreens. He could close his eyes and ski and imagine himself finally stopping and freezing and fossilizing and sprouting needled branches and joining the pines in a perfect communion. One of millions. Each the same. No cold, no hunger, no memories and no fear. An element among elements in the elements. He thought about it and followed the trail, sometimes not thinking at all, other times thinking: the road had no ditches. No rest stops. No fuel stations or scenic overlooks or picnic tables. No refracting road signs, no speed limits, no limits at all. Limitless. The trail was its own perfect logic, for it went from one place to another place, starting and ending, and they were following it so that sooner or later it would empty them either at the starting place or ending place. It was perfect, hypnotic logic. Then he began to think he was an adventurer. He would have some fine story to tell. He could tell it to the son Grace wanted. He could tell it in the drugstore, and people would listen, the whole place would go quiet and Herb Wolff would ring his cash register while people listened and drank coffee, and he would have a great thing to remember and ponder. He could tell about this very moment. The very moment: the trail there before him, the big scary-looking pines walking in from both sides, the sound of Harvey’s cough behind him, the hawk now and again swooping down with its screech and talons, now, the hunger at the back of his brain, he could tell them all that. He could tell them he was, at that moment, just at that particular moment in that adventure, he could tell them he was absolutely and undeniably unafraid, fearless, simply acting, thinking of the things he would tell them. He was thinking. He was not sure about Harvey. Old Harvey, such a bull. He was not sure. The cough was bad. It was genuine sickness, all right. He would tell about Harvey’s sickness, how the cough always started with the fluid sound deep in the lungs and then came out in a flood of mucus and then ended in a whooping wheeze, and how they would stop for Harvey to catch his breath, and how Perry would then turn and begin to ski and how Harvey would finally follow, now following. The trees went on and on, and the trail wound on and on.

When they stopped for rest, Perry consulted the map, looking again for some correspondence between the lay of the land and what was printed under the plastic. A few county roads cut into the Arrowhead, none of them seeming to go anywhere in particular, winding into the forest from the cutting edge of Lake Superior, roaming about, then either ending entirely or twisting in a circle back towards the lake.

Harvey started coughing and Perry had to stand him up. When the coughing got bad, Perry leaned him over and clapped his back, clucking to him gently like a mother at bedside. The coughing eased off and Harvey sat down on his rucksack, his head in his hands, and Perry went back to the map. Surprising himself, he realized he was developing a new and not entirely desirable capacity for treating suffering with clinical dispatch, solving a crisis, moving himself to do what had to be done and nothing more or less, then moving on to the next thing. The next thing was the map, finding a way out. He’d stared at it so often that it somehow seemed an inscrutable but still friendly companion, as if offering something in a language Perry did not understand. The map seemed to stare back at him. Saying: look closer. Look at the elevations. This chain of lakes here, this river connecting them. He peered at the map and the green and brown map peered back at him, and at last he slowly folded it and returned it to his parka pocket.

“Are you ready now?” he asked Harvey. He stated the question.

Harvey coughed again. Perry stood him up and clapped him and helped him into his skis.

“Awhile more,” he said, “just awhile more and we’ll stop and I’ll boil you water.”

He had nothing more to say. Speaking seemed out of place, almost unnatural. Stammered, implied meanings. He realized it and did not like it, but still he could think of nothing to say.

“We’ll go,” he said.

Harvey did not look up. He stood with his skis wide apart.

He could have been standing at a urinal, looking down, his face composed and unstrained and content.

“Harv. We’ll go now.”

With a slow gesture of languor, Harvey nodded and moved forward, and Perry pushed off. Almost as they started, Perry was tired. He could feel it in his thighs and calves and in the bones themselves. He wanted to stop, build a hot fire, bring out the sleeping bags and then sleep and sleep. He came close to stopping. He hesitated with his poles, relaxing his grip and feeling his arms float away from him, his knees start to cave as if cut like giant spruce to begin the long slow creaking fall to repose. He could have stopped and slept. Nothing to stop him. Easy. His body would have crumpled and his brain would have never known, and Harvey would have come beside him and they would have slept. The tiredness came just like the hunger. It simply came. As uncomplicated and elemental as water or lightning. And the trail wound into the forest in the same indifferent way. Perry pushed with his poles and kept skiing.

The day lasted summer bright, lasted and lasted, and the north was filled with white light.

Soon the trail began ascending. They moved slowly. Harvey had a hard time of it, sometimes seeming not to move at all.

At the trail’s summit they rested. Then they skied down. They moved fast, riding the downward-sloping trail, riding their skis and the downward-going forest. Perry did not need to push with his poles. He let the shining poles hang behind him. The speed blended with his tiredness. Sleep-speeding, the evergreens spilled by, then the straggly branches of birch trees, and the colors sped by in greens and silver and white light, and through an ice cocoon, a fast moving downward-going ice capsule, he slept-sped down, branches and snow glittering, and when he closed his eyes he could still see the brightness.

Harvey’s face was wet and red at the fire. Sweat dribbled from his forehead to his cheeks and into his beard, but he did not seem bothered by it. Rather, he lay against his rucksack with the air of wise content, and even when he coughed he did not move a hand to his mouth nor bend forward to ease the coughing. He sat still, letting the coughing shake him like some electrical current, not moving or changing expression. He did not wipe away the sweat, or close his eyes, or try to sleep, or talk. At times he suffered blankly, at times not at all, at times appearing to be deep into thought and at times as hardened as a glacier, neither breathing nor moving. His bad eye seemed to be the active eye. While the rest of his face was tranquil, the dead eye rolled askew, untethered by nerve or muscle to its socket, aggressive and dominant. The eye was attracted to the fire as though by magnetism. And when he coughed, the bad eye remained open while the other closed and while his body tightened in a spasm, the bad eye peering out at the fire perfectly indifferent to the sickness.

Perry melted snow and boiled water and gave it to Harvey to drink. Perry held the tin cup, watching the water wet his brother’s beard, watching his brother’s eyes, holding the cup until he saw Harvey’s throat bob.

And it was snowing. There was still some fire, and the snow was sweeping before the fire. He awoke and saw it was snowing. The sky was black and clear, the northern stars, the dippers, everything shining, and still it was snowing. He held out his hand. It was fine dry snow. Then he saw it was snowing from a pine tree. A pine tree was snowing on him, snowing on the fire. A pine tree pregnant and sagged with snow, buckled almost sideways with the weight, snowing on him.

He was looking for airplanes. Sometime while he was trying to sleep and not sleeping, he had thought that they would have airplanes looking for them. Important to keep the fire going. At night an airplane would see the fire. He got it going high, then lay back and carefully scanned the sky for airplanes. He searched the sky section to section. He searched each of the constellations, and the moon, and the huge sprawling spaces of open black. He scanned each horizon. Then he divided the sky into quadrants and did it again, systematically searching for an airplane.

He heard Harvey move.

“Sleeping?” he said softly.

Harvey moved again. His breathing was wet and deep down.

“Sleeping?”

“I’m sick.”

“Here, let me heat up some water for you.”

“I don’t think …”

“Hot water’ll cut through the crap. Hold still and rest.”

Perry heaped snow into the pot and put it on the fire.

He lay back and continued his search for airplanes. Harvey was mumbling, but Perry gazed upwards, looking for lights.

Harvey’s fluid talking was background music: “I’m sick, I guess … I guess I was right about that, wasn’t I?”

“You’ll be all right.”

“People have always told me that. Harvey, they always say, Harvey, you’ll be all right.”

“Lie still.”

The sky had no airplanes. Perry continued his search, thinking about the form and shadowed wings and red and green lights, looking from horizon to horizon.

“Anyhow,” Harvey said. “Anyhow, here we are. I didn’t force you to come. You can never say I forced you.”

“I didn’t say that. Relax. I’ll give you some water when it’s hot.”

“Anyhow. Here we are. You and me. I don’t mind it. Really, I don’t mind it at all. I’m sick but I feel all right anyway. I don’t mind it … I wish Addie was here. That’s what I wish. That Addie, she’d be teasing me and telling me I’m not sick. Really. She’d be teasing me and saying pirates don’t get sick. She calls me her pirate, did you know that? She does. Her pirate. I’m not really a pirate. She’d say pirates can’t get sick. Who ever saw a sick pirate? she’d say. Do you know … do you know this, that when I asked her to get married, I asked her polite and straightforward, but when I asked her to get married, Addie said, just like that, she said pirates don’t get married. Who ever heard of a married pirate? she said. Can you believe she’d say that? Who ever heard of a married pirate? I can’t believe that … I don’t know. I don’t like those sorts of names. The old man, he liked to call me a bull. I never said anything about it to him, though. Never told him I didn’t like being called a bull. Or anything else. You probably think I always liked being called that. People always think they know what people think and everything, but they don’t. There’s a lot you think you know you don’t know … I’m not criticizing. You know a lot, you know more than me, I guess, and you’re always sensible and there’s nothing wrong with that, so I’m not criticizing … And I’m sorry I was hollering at you back there. I get that way. I don’t know why but I sometimes get that way. You probably think I’m always thinking about going to Africa and remembering the war and doing all those strange things, but that’s not true. People always think they know what people are thinking about. Anyhow. Anyhow, I’m sorry I hollered at you, I just get that way. I been thinking about getting a job, maybe you didn’t know that. I was telling Grace about it, and I told her not to tell. Grace is nice. She is. I’m sorry about that, too. You must think … I don’t know. I remember things, too. Sometimes I got scared going out with the old man. Not later on, I wasn’t scared then, but the first times going out for a long time, when we went way deep and I was just a little kid, I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. Do you remember that? Do you remember?”

“No.”

“I was just a kid. You probably don’t remember. The old man got me a new rifle. You remember that?”

“Sort of.”

“He got it for me for Christmas. I remember it. It was behind the tree and I knew it was there all the time, for a week or something, but I never let on because I knew he wanted me to be surprised and happy on the morning when we went down and opened up the presents, so I didn’t let on I knew about it. But I was scared of it. I remember crying upstairs, knowing in the morning I had to go down and open up the gun and look happy, and then knowing I had to go out and shoot it, scared silly. Jesus, that was funny. That was something funny. But I was scared. You don’t know that, I’ll bet. But I was scared and I never let on to him, ’cause I knew he’d think I was ungrateful or didn’t … didn’t love him or something, so I kept quiet. And in the morning, sure enough, it was a rifle. Just a measly rifle, a twenty-two. Don’t you remember that rifle?”

“No.”

“Well, it was a twenty-two. I guess you never got one, but anyhow there it was, and sure enough the old man took me outside with it and we went walking in the snow and out into the woods, Jesus, you can’t believe how scared I was of that fucking gun … This cough … and he showed me how to load it, sticking the bullets into this rod that was under the barrel, the magazine, and he shot it a couple of times to show me how to do it, putting holes in this birch tree. Then it was my turn and he gave it to me, and I just stood there smiling and smiling till I felt like crying, and the old man smiled and seemed to think I was happy, and he told me to shoot it, so I put it up and shot it. I don’t remember hitting anything, but I shot it and pretty soon got used to it so I wasn’t so scared, but all I remember about the whole thing was being scared and shooting it anyhow. Anyhow. So I told Addie about it and she started laughing and told me to buy a sword or something. Sometimes I do think she’s Indian. I can’t ever decide. What do you think? I think … I think we oughta take her into some hospital and have blood tests made, what do you think? I like her. I told her we ought to get married and she told me pirates are never married. I don’t even know if she thought I was serious. I was serious all right. Sometimes I think you never think I’m ever serious, but I am. You can’t ever know for sure what people are thinking. And sometimes, sometimes people are thinking just the opposite of what they pretend they’re thinking. When the old man died I was pretty sad, but I know you were sad, too, because you were always having run-ins with him, but you were sad. Weren’t you? Don’t have to say. You can’t tell. But that Addie … You see anything? What are you looking for there?”

“Airplanes.”

Harvey laughed and coughed again. “You’re some sensible brother, aren’t you? You are. I guess we’re really brothers, aren’t we? Don’t know what that means, except it means that some of the same things we remember. You don’t remember the rifle I got?”

“No.”

“Well … You really don’t remember it? Guess you just never noticed.”

“Do you remember the time that the old man took us to learn to swim?”

“Sure … Well, no. Sort of. No, I guess I don’t.”

“We remember different things.”

“We both remember the bomb shelter, though.”

“Yes.”

“And I guess we’ll remember this, too.”

“Want some of this hot water?”

“I better have some. I feel okay, though. I don’t mind a bit. I don’t care what.”

The trail slowly bent and they pushed around the bend. More road opened in a long snowflow. The land kept descending. The forest thinned out, and they came to a crossroad. Perry pushed the pole through the snow and it clanked sharply against the road.

“Tar,” he said.

He waited for Harvey. Then again he thrust his pole down and listened to the civilized sharp thud. “It’s tar,” he said.

They rested there, sitting on their rucksacks at the center of the crossroads. It was a real road this time, and Perry studied the map. From the sun, he judged the road to be running northwest-southeast. From the map, he guessed the tar road was one of two, both of which emptied eventually on to the shore of Superior. And he was hungry.

“All right?” he said. He put the map away.

“I’m pretty sick. Can we rest?”

“We can rest. You’re going to get sicker, though.”

“Just awhile. Not long. We’re going to die, I guess. You know that?”

“Yes,” Perry said, thinking it would be just as difficult later on. He was lightheaded himself. Cleareyed and lightheaded. The day was bright as damask steel, tough and swordlike and shining, and he rested against his pack until it was a choice between sleeping or moving on, and he got up and helped Harvey into his skis and pushed off.

Even as he started down the new road, he was hungry and very tired. He tried then not to think about it. He thought about the new tar road. He concentrated on it. The new road was not much different from the logging trail, slightly wider and straighter and more even. It seemed to have a destination. Alongside it, the trees were cut in a sharp and beveled way, as though the builders of the road had surveyed the path precisely and without thought of frills or beauty, cutting it out of the forest in the easiest and straightest and simplest fashion. He thought about it, imagining the road being bulldozed in the summer months, imagined the slow progress, the swath of cut timber, the mashing roar of yellow-painted construction machines and the quick dash of frightened deer, the hunger, he was hungry. It was not a stab any more. He was hungry but he did not feel it. He did not ache from the hunger. There was no pain. His belly felt full, even swollen. The dark place at the base of his brain was numb. He was hungry in a lethargic, purely empty way, fatigued, spent, drained, hollow, weak, ballooned, oxygen-light, emptyheaded, lightheaded, sleepy, sleepy. He tried not to think about it. It was impulsive hunger without sensation, as a baby at birth, hungry from the beginning, and he tried not to think of it. Vaguely, he recalled warnings of extreme hunger. Famine, warning from the pulpit. He tried not to think of it, concentrating on his breathing and the steps and motions of skiing. It was a bright good road. Suffocating. It was a kind of suffocation, the hunger, suffocation without pain or even knowledge, sleep-suffocation far beyond knowledge or feeling. He tried the counting game. Counting days again. The days blended with the trees, each identical to the next, and he lost count and could not remember, and he tried counting only numbers, seeing how long and how far he could go on. He was glad the sensation of hunger was gone. A bad sign, he knew, but he was glad not to have to withstand it. The dull emptiness was better for thinking. He had his wits. He could count. He counted on, the numbers flopping in his head as he counted, physical objects. Some of the numbers seemed to stick, looming in huge black numerals, and he counted the stuck numbers over and over until they snapped away to be replaced by the next numbers, and he counted to a thousand and kept going, counting on, perfectly in control, his wits intact, beginning to believe he could reach the very end of the numbers, the last number, 1201, 1202, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1205, 1205, 1206, 1207, 1208, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1212, 1212, 1212, 1213, some of the numbers having a symmetry that made them stick in his brain, and he counted in the growing conviction that one of the numbers would pop before him as the final number, beyond which there would be no further numbers, the red limit, the very edge of the universe beyond which the past started, and he would only have to turn backwards, flowing evenly into the past which was not any longer past, turn to begin counting in the other direction, going backwards until it became a countdown for a great red explosion to send him hurtling head over heels in numbers back towards the edge. He was glad the hunger ache was gone. He had his wits. The trail was now a road, and the road was straight and level, flat and solid as the numbers he counted, flat on the green globular forest.

He came to a minor bend in the road. On the right, a pine bluff was high. On the left, the land sloped sharply down. Partly chiseled into the bluff’s face, the road executed a slow graceful turn, and Perry followed it. Then he realized he was gazing into a black arrow that traced the curve of the road. A black arrow on a yellow sheet of metal. The arrow pointed the way. It seemed a kind of form in his head, along with the numbers, a black arrow on yellow metal that was so compatible with the numbers that he merely nodded at it, as if counting it with all the rest.

Then he stopped.

It was a road sign, a black arrow on yellow metal that showed the curve of the road, a warning posted for those who came that way.

It was hammered to a shiny silver stake.

He heard Harvey brake behind him.

Perry felt a deep spark, and he was happy and wanted to say something. “Well,” he said.

He looked at the wordless bent arrow.

“It’s a road, all right.”

The sun hovered just over the western trees. As he turned, it settled into the clutches of the topmost branches.

“What do you think?”

“Poachers,” Harvey said.

“What.”

Harvey motioned towards the snow, a few yards beyond the shiny stake. He began coughing and leaned on his poles. “There. Poachers.” It was the carcass of some dead animal. Most of it lay buried. “A deer,” Harvey said. Perry skied to it and brushed the snow off. The hindquarters were completely gone. The carcass was frozen and there was no odor or blood. Without the hindquarters the animal looked tiny, not much bigger than a house dog. The eyes of the deer were like rock.

“Poachers,” Harvey said again, repeating himself in a glazed way. He sounded like an old man. “They got the antlers, too, if there were any. Leave it be.”

Perry kicked at the carcass. He was hungry, but the animal, what was left of it, did not tempt him. He thought of the deer he’d greeted, then thought of his hunger again. “Can’t eat it, I guess.”

“If you want.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You don’t think you are. You are.”

Perry covered the carcass with fresh snow.

“Poachers,” muttered Harvey. His voice was eaten out.

“Yeah. You all right?”

“I’m sick. Poachers. They take the hindquarters for venison. And the antlers. Use a knife with a dropped point so as not to cut the gutsack while they butcher. Poachers. Then dump kerosene over everything. Keeps the wolves away, kills the scent. I’m sick. I want to take off my coat. I think I’d better take it off, brother.”

“You know better.”

“I’ve got to. This time I’ve got to. Poachers, Jesus.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Jesus.”

“I think we’d better eat some of it.”

“I’m sick.”

“We better eat some of it.”

“Jesus. Fucking wolves.”

“Can you go on awhile?”

“Poachers and wolves. Can you beat that? I’m sick, I am.”

Fine, thin winter light came through in patches. It was high cold light. Perry looked at the buried carcass and the black bent arrow.

“All right then. We’ll go on. All right? I think that’s the right thing. Either that or eat some of this deer. We can find something on it to eat. It’s been frozen. What do you think? It’s not spoiled. Either eat some of the deer or go on.”

“Wolves.”

“Harvey! Leave that coat on.”

“I’m sick. I’m hot.”

“You’re cold. You don’t know it.”

“Don’t know anything. You know everything.”

“Just leave the coat on.”

Harvey’s skis slipped from under him. He fell backwards, sitting with his knees bent. Perry got him up again. A patch of filtered light caught the yellow metal sign. “All right then,” Perry said. “We’re going to go on now. This is a real road, it goes somewhere. We’re all right now.”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“I know we’re going on.”

Harvey started to grin, then say something, then he coughed. Then they followed the road and the black printed arrow. Perry had something to think about, something new in the carcass of the dead deer, and he skied and thought about how he would have used his knife to cut the carcass, how he would have tied the tarp to their skis, made a lean-to, gone out for wood, built a fire, thawed out the frozen hunk of carcass, roasted it, sat at the fire and eaten full, rested, started fresh. He skied and thought about it, slowly realizing he’d made a great mistake, that he wasn’t thinking at all, that he was moving and losing strength and getting stupid, thinking about the carcass and the deer he’d greeted, thinking how stupid he was, moving along the road, thinking they should turn back and then thinking turning back was worse than not eating. He marveled at how much he could see. Even in the pale winter lighting, even with the light coming through the trees as through a billion smoky prisms. Even without glasses. They should have stopped and eaten the remains of the deer. He skied on, wanting to go back. It was the numbness, the stupidity. The hunger had been numbed, the sensation of hunger, and it had made him stupid. He skied on and still marveled. How stupid, how clearly he could see. There were squares and triangles in the forest, the angles of branches that he could trace with his hands and follow round and round, corner to corner. He could see clearly, how stupid, he could see with his eyes, the bright pale light behind the branches, he could see with his nose and ears, and he could hear the very sound of distance—muffled and quiet, a hiss originating with the very birth of himself, part pure length and part separation by time.

Behind him, he heard Harvey still talking, mumbling in the voice of an old man.

The road kept going.

At sunset they stopped for a short rest. Perry took the chance to dig through the snow. The road was tar, black and hard.

The moon came up and he decided to keep moving. The road was snow-covered and clear, running in a white streak through the woods.

The moon rose fast. It was white. Clear as a light bulb.

They moved down the road. He was lightheaded. Everything was beautiful and still. The road, the night. He could see clearly. He wasn’t hungry. He felt fine. Everything alternated. He was hungry, then he was fine. He followed the road like a white sleep, a long twisting beautiful white sleep. The moon went higher. It was winter. The stars did not twinkle. The stars glowed steady through the thin atmosphere, the sky was black.

Everything was beautiful. The old man was right. Harvey was right. And it was easy. He felt fine. He skied along on the white strip of sleep through the woods.

The road went on in gentle turns. It was beautiful and fine and easy.

His skis whooshed on the powdered snow.

The moon crept even higher. It was three-quarters full. He was lightheaded and seeing clearly. Even without his glasses, he saw the white winter light of the moon.

Later, as the night went on, his skis made biting sounds on the snow. The powder became brittle. A yellow light sparkled ahead, and when he came to it he saw it was another twisting arrow and he went faster. He was cleareyed and clearheaded and he could see to the end of the road, and he pushed with his poles and skated, feeling the wind, feeling raw and clearheaded and light as helium. He skied fast. He leaned forward, crouched low, banked along the arrow-pointed curve, went down, pushed with the poles.

Another shining road sign went by, another arrow and another downwards curve of the road, and he crouched low and spiraled down. All the fat was gone. He could fly, and he gained speed and curved along the white sleepribbon. He coasted down. When the road flattened and turned up again, he could no longer ski. He slowed and slowed, the fine lightness leaving him, turning to gravity, and he slowed and slowed to a stop, standing still with his head down.

Finally, he removed his skis and speared them into a drift beside the road.

He removed his rucksack and dropped it under the skis.

He sat on the rucksack, looked up the road and waited for Harvey. It was a long black wait. He was in a grove of some sort. The trees hung over the road, darkening the road and snow. The forest grew up to the edge of the road.

Still waiting for Harvey, he got up and began gathering scrap wood. He was alone.

He piled the wood in the center of the road.

Using the last of the paper in his rucksack, he took care, piling the wood into a pyramid, finally striking the fire. As the fire caught, everything else stopped. He stopped thinking and he stopped being tired. He watched the fire and forgot everything else.

Harvey skied up without making noise.

He stopped and stood over the fire in his skis. Then still without removing the skis, he sat down. The tips of the skis were in the fire. He sat with his face red and wet, watching the fire lick at the skis. They both sat and watched. The tips of the skis glowed. At last Perry got up and unbuckled them from Harvey’s boots, lifted them and speared the glowing tips into the snow.

He zipped their bags together. He helped Harvey in, then he added wood to the fire, then he climbed into the bag. He lay back and stared straight up at the white moon and the rest of the sky.

He lay still a long time. At last he said, “We’ll eat tomorrow.”

Harvey was asleep.

“We’ll eat tomorrow,” Perry said.

Then he lay still and looked at the sky and felt the warmth in the bag and listened to Harvey breathing. The bag was hot. He could not see his brother. He could feel him and sense the warmth and smell his body.

Later he heard Harvey moaning or sobbing, something in between.

Later still he heard the sound of air flowing through an open window, a July afternoon, Grace in the garden, young girls playing games in the yard.

He slept then and heard himself breathing.

Later he awoke. He thought about the carcass of the deer. He wished they had eaten it.

He listened to Harvey’s breathing, listened to his own breathing, and soon he was warm and sleeping again and not listening or thinking.