Sourland Read online

  Here was a strange thing: the daddy couldn’t know that Tod had crawled beneath the rust-colored boulder yet as if by instinct the daddy was drawn to the boulder—“Tod? Are you under this? Tod for Christ sake—where are you?” The daddy was begging. The daddy was very angry. The daddy made grunting noises sprawling flat on his stomach pressing his length against the boulder, that he might grope beneath it with his right hand. The daddy thrust his arm as far beneath the boulder as he could, spreading his fingers that were scratched now, and bleeding. The daddy’s fingernails were broken and bleeding. The daddy tried to peer beneath the boulder but could see nothing—only just shadowy shapes that appeared to be inanimate. For here was a rock-cemetery, here was the end of all life. The daddy’s breath came quickly and shallowly hurting him like knife-blades in his lungs. If his son was beneath the terrible boulder, if his son was alive yet, and breathing, the daddy could not hear him, in the exigency of his distress. By this time the son had crawled halfway beneath the boulder, that measured approximately nine feet at its widest point. Now the son’s way was blocked, he could crawl no farther. Nor had the son who was only four years old begun to calculate how he would turn his small body to crawl out again.

  In his burrow-space, the son was safe. In the cunning of animal panic the son lay very still. Like a dazed creature that has been injured but knows not to move, scarcely to breathe, to preserve its life. As if far distant on the surface of the earth the daddy lay pressed against the boulder, the daddy’s arm extended beneath the boulder to the shoulder-socket. In tight, constricted circles the daddy’s hand moved clumsily. If there was futility in the daddy’s gesture yet there was determination, zeal. There was the wish not to give up—not ever. For as long as his strength remained the daddy would persevere uttering the son’s name until the name lost all meaning. Like words in a foreign language or nonsense-words the syllables Tod, son, li’l dude became shorn of meaning as rock is shorn of meaning, implacable, unnameable. Beneath the great boulder the child lay very still. The child’s small heart still beat, the child’s lungs still pumped, the child would never return to the daddy again, not ever.

  SOURLAND

  1.

  Hardly aware of them she began to see them. Or maybe she sensed them without exactly seeing them. At first singular, isolated spiders, solitary in their shimmering webs—in a high corner of the bedroom in which she now spent so much time, in the musty space beneath the kitchen sink, in the glassed-in porch at the rear of the house where tiny desiccated husks of insects were scattered underfoot. It was the onset of winter, this had to be the explanation. Though she didn’t recall an infestation of spiders from other winters, this had to be the explanation.

  In a fury of housekeeping she destroyed the webs, killed the spiders and wiped away all evidence. Her hands moved jerkily, there was much emotion in her fingers. Sometimes her fingers clenched like claws, transfixed with rage.

  Surviving spouse, she’d become. The one of whom it’s said by observers How well she’s taking it! She’s stronger than she thinks.

  Or She’s braver than we expected.

  Or Now she knows.

  That first week after he’d died. First days after death, cremation, burial. Frequently she was but part-dressed, part-awake and staggering somewhere—desperate to answer a ringing phone for instance—or a doorbell rung by yet another delivery man bearing floral displays, hefty potted plants, “gift” boxes of fruits, gourmet foods as for a lavish if macabre celebration—unless it was a woman friend concerned not to have been able to reach her on the phone—and of course there was the trash to be hauled to the curb if only she knew the dates for trash pickup and mornings she found herself outdoors—one morning in particular the day following probate court and here was cold pelting rain and wind whipping her hair—where was she, and why?—telling herself she had no choice, this was her duty as the sole survivor of the wreckage at 299 Valley Drive—the task was to retrieve mail from the mailbox—days of accumulated—unwanted—mail and thus dazed and staggering in November rain on the cusp of sleet, a trench coat thrown over her sweated-through flannel nightgown and raw-skinned bare feet thrust into inappropriate shoes she was making her unsteady way up the long driveway careening with manic rivulets of rainwater soaking the soles of these shoes. And thinking I will not slip and fall here, alone. I will not fall to one knee. I will not shatter any bones in a sudden faint. For almost at probate court she’d fainted. And twice in the house alone and the horror of her new, posthumous life washed over her like dirty water in her mouth and almost she’d fainted—maybe in fact she had fainted striking her head against the hard unyielding surface of the dining room table. And now blindly she was reaching into the mailbox—not a box precisely but a tubular aluminum vessel impracticably narrow for the quantity of mail she was now receiving as the surviving spouse of a man who’d had numerous friends, business acquaintances, and associates—into which for the past several days the increasingly impatient mailman had thrust, pushed, stuffed mail so that brute strength was required to remove it—and trying to extract a mangled envelope at the rear she thrust her hand into something strangely feathery—gauzy—a spiders’ nest—a cluster of alert, antic brown-speckled spiders—of which one—not-large, the size of a housefly—scurried swiftly up her groping hand, up her arm, and nearly reached her shoulder with seeming demonic intent before it was flung away with a breathless cry—even as the mail Sophie clutched in the crook of her arm slipped and fell to the wet grasses at her feet.

  O God help me. This is the rest of my life.

  2. K.

  Approximately three weeks after her husband’s death the first of the odd-shaped envelopes arrived.

  Amid a welter of belated sympathy cards, ordinary mail, and trash-mail an oblong manila envelope postmarked Sourland, MINN—return address K.

  Just that single initial—K.

  This was mysterious, ominous. Sophie knew no one who lived in Sourland, Minnesota. She could not imagine who K. was.

  She knew that her husband had had friends—professional associates—in Minneapolis. For sometimes he’d flown to Minneapolis, for meetings. But never had he mentioned Sourland.

  They’d been married so long—in December, they would have been married twenty-six years—it was reasonable to assume that neither knew anyone of whom the other wasn’t aware, to some degree. If the surviving spouse was unsure of many things she was sure of this.

  The clutch of fear, the surviving spouse feels at such moments. The prospect—the impossibility of the prospect—that the deceased had secrets of which the surviving spouse had not a clue.

  Though stacks of mail had been left unopened on the dining room table—sympathy cards from friends, heartfelt handwritten letters she couldn’t bring herself to read—quickly Sophie opened the envelope from the mysterious K. postmarked Sourland, MINN. There appeared to be no letter inside, just photographs—wilderness scenes—a steep grassless hill strewn with large boulders, mountains covered in dense pine woods, a broad river bordered by tall deciduous trees and splotches of color like a Matisse painting. There was a steeply-plunging mountain stream, there was a ravine strewn with fallen trees, fallen rocks—an obscure shape in the near distance that might have been a crouching animal, or a person—or oddly shaped exposed tree roots. Was Sophie supposed to recognize these scenes? Was something here familiar? There was no identification on the backs of the photos which seemed to her to have been taken without regard to form, composition, “beauty”—as if for a utilitarian purpose—but what was the purpose? She was annoyed, uneasy. Her heart beat rapidly as if she were in the presence of danger. Why have these been sent to me? Why now? Who would do such a thing?

  She saw that the envelope from the mysterious K. had been addressed to Sophie Quinn. Not Mrs. Sophie Quinn, or Mrs. Matthew Quinn. The address was hand-printed, in a black felt-tip pen. She thought He wants to disguise his handwriting. He doesn’t want to be identified.

  Badly she wanted to tear up the photog
raphs. This was some sort of prank, a trick, something cruel, sent to her at a vulnerable time in her life.

  The husband might have advised Give them to me Sophie. Don’t give this another thought.

  The husband might have advised Be very careful now Sophie. You will make mistakes in your posthumous life, I won’t be at hand to correct.

  Sophie laid the photographs on the dining room table. Like dealing out cards this was, in a kind of riddle. It seemed to her—unless her heightened nerves were causing her to imagine this—that some of the wilderness scenes overlapped.

  A steep rock-strewn mountainside, a basin-like terrain covered in immense boulders of the shape and hue of eggs, harsh bright autumn sunlight so dazzling that the colors it touched were bleached out…Most beautiful was a narrow mountain stream falling almost vertically, amid sharp-looking rocks like teeth.

  A strange dreaminess overcame her, like a sedative. She was seeing these stark beautiful scenes through the photographer’s eyes—it had to be K. who held the camera—it was K. who’d sent her the photographs.

  Is this where I will be taken? Why?

  She realized—her forefinger was stinging. A tiny paper cut near her cuticle leaked blood.

  She saw—her fingers were covered in such tiny cuts. The furnace-heated air in the house was so dry, her skin had become sensitive and susceptible to cuts. Opening mail, unwanted packages, “gift” boxes from the well-intentioned who imagined that a widow craves useless items as compensation perhaps for having lost her husband…

  In the following days as she passed through the dining room she paused to examine the photographs. Very like a visual riddle they were—pieces of a jigsaw puzzle like the puzzles she’d patiently pieced together as a child—of wilderness scenes, or landscape paintings. Shaking herself awake then as out of a narcotic stupor.

  Those days! Grief, very like dirty water splashed into her mouth. Yet she had no choice, she must swallow.

  Not wanting to accuse the husband Why did you abandon me! I’d trusted you with my life.

  It was a posthumous life, you would have to concede. Though no one wishes to acknowledge the fact. Though there is every reason to wish not to acknowledge the fact. Long stretches of time—vast as the Sahara—she was the surviving spouse and thus never fully awake—and yet she was never fully asleep. Never was she deeply, refreshingly asleep. When it became “day”—after the winter solstice, at ever-earlier hours—she could not bear to remain in bed. And once up, she had to keep in motion. She could walk, walk, walk for as many as forty, fifty—sixty—minutes at a time, in a kind of spell of self-laceration. Fierce with energy she cleaned out closets, cleaned the basement, on her hands and knees cleaned the hardwood floors with paper towels and polish. Never did she find herself in the right room—invariably she’d forgotten something, that was in another room. It was becoming impossible—physically impossible—for her to remain in one place for more than a few seconds. Such rooms she’d shared with her husband in their daily lives—dining room, living room, a glassed-in porch at the rear of the house—she could not now occupy for long.

  Ghost-rooms, these were. Except for the bedroom and the kitchen—rooms she couldn’t reasonably avoid—and the room she considered her study, that the husband had not often entered—the rooms of the house were becoming uninhabitable.

  The surviving spouse inhabits a space not much larger than a grave.

  Hard not to think, the husband had abandoned her to this space. Hadn’t he promised when they’d first fallen in love I will protect you forever dear Sophie!—in an extravagance of speech meant to be playful and amusing and yet at the same time serious, sincere. And so—he’d abandoned her.

  This season of grief, when her mind wasn’t right.

  At about the time when she’d become accustomed to—inured to—the photographs on the dining room table—it might have been several weeks, or months—the second envelope from K. arrived.

  How curious the envelope! The paper was thick and grainy, oatmeal-colored, as you’d imagine papyrus. The hand-printed letters in black felt-tip pen were stark and impersonal as before.

  Sophie’s heart leapt. At once she snatched the envelope out of the jammed mailbox.

  No danger of spiders in the mailbox now—she’d destroyed the feathery nest and all its inhabitants. In any case it was winter, and too cold for spiders to survive outdoors.

  In the interval Sophie had looked up Sourland, Minnesota, in a book of maps: it was a small town, probably no more than a village, about one hundred miles north and west of Grand Rapids in what appeared to be a wilderness area of lakes, rivers, and dense forests. In addition to Sourland there was Sourland Falls, and there was Sourland Junction, and there was the vast Sourland Mountain State Preserve which consisted of more than four million acres. All these places were in Sourland County east of romantically named Lake of the Woods County and west of the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Koochiching County.

  And this time too the manila envelope contained no letter, just photographs—a sparsely wooded mountainside, the interior of a pine forest permeated by shafts of sunshine, a lake of dark-glistening water surrounded by trees as the water of a deep well is surrounded by rock. In the background of another photo you could just make out a structure of some kind—a small house, or a cabin. Sophie thought Is this where he lives?

  She knew, this had to be. K. was teasing her, like one dealing out cards in a specific order, to tell the story he wants told.

  In the final photo, you could see that this structure was a cabin, of coarse-hewn logs. The roof was steep, covered in weathered tar paper; there was a stovepipe chimney; there were strips of unsightly plastic, to keep out the cold. In this photo there was snow on the ground, snow crusted against the cabin as if it had been blown there with tremendous force. Close by the cabin was a small clearing, stacks of firewood, an ax embedded in a tree stump.

  In a rutted and mud-puddled driveway was a steel-colored vehicle with monster-tires, for the most rugged terrain. And beside this vehicle stood a bewhiskered man in a parka and khaki shorts, the hood of the parka drawn over his head; his legs were dark-tanned, ropey with muscle. Though his face was partly obscured by dark-tinted glasses, the parka hood and the bristling beard, you could see that the man’s features were severe, unsmiling though he had lifted his right hand as if in greeting.

  Sophie took the photo to a window, to examine. She couldn’t make out the man’s face, that seemed to melt away in a patch of shadow.

  Nor could she determine if the man was lifting his hand in a gesture of welcome, or of warning.

  Hello. Go away. Come closer. Did I invite you?

  So this was K. Sophie was certain she’d never seen him before.

  Yet he’d addressed the envelope boldly to Sophie Quinn. If he’d known her husband, and through her husband had known of her, it was strange that he didn’t include a letter or a note in reference to Matt. For he must have known that Matt had died.

  Your loss. Sorry for your loss. My condolences Sophie!

  There was little that anyone could say, to assuage the fact of death. Sophie understood that people must speak to her, address her, in the rawness of her grief, who could not quite grasp what she was feeling. For she, too, had many times spoken to others distraught by grief—not able to know what it was they felt. Now, she knew. At any rate, she knew better than she’d known.

  But K. wasn’t offering condolences, or solace. Sophie didn’t think so.

  She remembered how, when she’d first met him, Matthew Quinn had been something of an outdoorsman. Not a hunter—no one in Matt’s family had ever hunted—but a serious hiker and camper, as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, at Madison. He’d never taken Sophie with him—by the time they met Matt was nearly thirty and impatient to finish his Ph.D. in American constitutional law, and leave school. He’d been impatient to begin what he called adult life.

  He’d made up his mind to marry Sophie, he told her afterward, at their
first meeting. Sophie had asked was this love at first sight and Matt said Something better, and more durable.

  In Madison, Sophie had heard tales from Matt and his friends of their wilderness adventures, their camping trips to northern Wisconsin and on Drummond Island and in the Canadian wilds south of Elliot Lake, Ontario. Matt had belonged to the university sailing club, that sailed on Lake Mendota in the most turbulent winds. But these outdoor activities had begun to lose their appeal to Matt, at about the time Sophie entered his life.

  She’d been twenty-two. Matt had been nearly thirty. In all ways he’d been older than Sophie: intellectually, politically, sexually.

  Matt’s friends were older, as well—Ph.D. candidates in such fields as history, politics, Russian studies. Most of them were political activists engaged in protesting the Vietnam War. For this was the late 1960s when the war had finally spread its poison everywhere. To be young was to be aroused, outraged. The university at Madison, Wisconsin, was a center of socialist dissent and political activism; there were highly vocal chapters here of SDS, Weathermen, and other left-wing organizations agitating for the overthrow of the hopelessly corrupt U.S. government. Matt had close friends in these organizations but whether he himself belonged, Sophie wasn’t certain.

  Not that Matt had secrets from her, exactly. But he was taciturn, reserved. To question him too directly was to risk offending him as Sophie had instinctively known, upon meeting him.

  She had not been very political. Of course she’d protested the Vietnam War in large campus marches with hundreds—thousands?—of others. She’d been disgusted by the official American politics of the time, like everyone else she knew. But the radical-left counterculture—was alien to her, temperamentally. She’d come to Madison to study nineteenth-century American literature, from Wells College in upstate New York; her father was a public school administrator, and her background was Protestant/secular. She’d been intimidated by other, older students in the graduate school as she’d been intimidated by the sprawling size and tempo of the university itself.