The Eve of It

The end ribs went into the steam box at seven on Monday morning, and Anders left them there twice as long as the others.

There were four of them, two for the bow and two for the stern, and they were why he had put this job off for a week. A rib amidships bent in an easy curve. At the ends of a canoe the hull pinched in to meet the stem, and the cedar had to go round a turn hardly wider than his two fists. He had soaked these overnight in the lake, and he had a strip of old bandsaw blade ready on the bench to lay along the outside of each bend, where the grain would try to lift.

The door opened while the kettle was still roaring. Kaisa came in with the map tube under her arm and the dog behind her. She looked at the box and took the stool by the door without a word.

They had been home since Sunday night. The still dawn on Burnt Point had given her one slick on the water, and an otter had been at the end of it. They had spent Sunday on the shores of the west bay and found wet rock. On the paddle home she had said she was done chasing beds a week behind the children who slept in them. She wanted one day ashore with a pencil before she chose the next piece of water. The board in the hall said the canoe team was resting the dog.

Since Friday night she had spoken to him civilly and fully, as a tracker to a boatman, and that was all she had said. He had not gone looking for more.

He pulled on his gloves and lifted the lid.

The first rib came out limp and too hot to hold bare-handed. He laid the steel strip along it, set the middle against the form, and bent it slowly with the heels of both hands, pressing the strap into the wood all the way round. The cedar groaned. He kept the pressure even and did not stop to think. It went down, and he clamped it and tacked it and reached for the next.

The third one cracked. He heard it before he felt it, a small dry tick on the outside of the turn. He took the rib off the form, dropped it in the scrap box, and drew the spare out of the steam. He had put in two spares, because he had known he would need one.

When the fourth was clamped he stood back. For the first time the hull on the form was whole from stem to stem.

“That’s all of them,” Kaisa said.

“That’s all of them. The rest is planking, and anybody can plank.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“No, I just like saying it.” He hung up the gloves. “What have you got?”

She got up and shot the bolt on the shop door. Then she unrolled a map on his bench, and he saw that it was the one from her cabin table. The council lodge and the hall had the clean copies. This one had her pencil all over it, and it lived in the tube under her bunk.

“Give me something straight.”

He handed her his four-foot steel rule. She had already marked the three camps, each with a small cross and two dates beside it. Kettle Island had to 22 Sept. Tern Rock had to 30 Sept. Burnt Point had to 5/6 Oct. She laid the rule against the first cross and swung it until it touched the second, and it went through the third as well, as near as a pencil’s width.

“I didn’t expect that,” she said. “I expected them to dodge about.”

“They go where the portages go.”

“The portages go north. This runs northeast.” She drew the line along the steel, through the three crosses and on. It crossed the west bay and went up the long body of Ukonvesi and ran off the top corner of the paper. “Every move takes them away from the lodge, and every one is longer than the last. It was two miles to Kettle from the head of Vaara. Then three to Tern Rock, and nearly as far again to Burnt Point. And each time they’re harder to reach. First it was an island anyone could land on, then a rock nobody could, then a point nobody’s camped on in your lifetime.” She tapped the corner where the line left the sheet. “What’s up there?”

“Six more miles of the lake. Islands. I couldn’t tell you how many without counting. After that it’s Canada.”

“Islands,” she said, and breathed out. “Pia’s been out thirty-seven nights. I’ve got thirteen before the moon, and six on my contract. I can’t work a lake that size one rock at a time. I need something that narrows it.”

“The envelope might.”

“It’s been five days. He said a week or two.” She weighted the corner of the map with his tack hammer. “What about the books?”

He had been waiting for that, and he had nothing good to give her.

“I tried the office last night after the hall emptied. The ledger’s in the bottom drawer of the steel cabinet, with the bank statements, and the drawer’s locked. The key is on Stefan’s ring. I’ve been alpha two years and I’ve never had one.” He rubbed his jaw. “On Thursday evening I told him I wanted the outfitting figures for the bank’s paper, which is true. He brought me a summary by breakfast. It was two pages in his own hand, very clear. He didn’t bring the book.”

“Did you ask for the book?”

“I asked for the figures. If I ask for the book, I have to say why.”

“Has he always kept it locked?”

“Since before I could read. My father never opened it either. He’d say that’s what a treasurer is for.” Anders heard how that sounded in the quiet shop. “It’s what a careful man does with a pack’s money, Kaisa.”

“It is,” she said. “It’s also what the other kind does. I’m not putting any weight on it. I’m writing it down.”

She wrote it. He watched her pencil and did not like the feeling in his stomach.

“Britta’s count?” he asked.

“Right to the packet every morning since she started. Whoever it was stopped taking them the day I said the word kitchen in the hall. There was no cooked food on Burnt Point. He listens to me very carefully.” She rolled the map. “I’m going to sit with this until I’ve got a better idea than paddling north and hoping. Finish your boat.”

She slid the bolt and went out. The dog lingered a moment in the shavings and then went after her.

He planked all afternoon. It was dull, exact work, and it suited the day. He tapered each strip to its neighbour, clinched the brass tacks against the iron, and closed the bow up to the sheer line. By five the light in the window had gone amber. He was sweeping the floor when the door opened again.

She stood on the sill with her cap off and her hands in her jacket pockets. The dog was not with her.

“Are you done for the day?”

“I’m done.”

“Then I’ve got something to ask you, and I’d like to say all of it before you answer.” She came in two steps. “Tomorrow is the thirteenth of October.”

“I know what it is.”

“It’ll be seven years to the day. I’ve had six of those, and I can tell you how I spent every one. The first I spent on four legs, my one night that month, and that was the easiest. The others I took any callout going, or I scrubbed something. I’d get through the day well enough. It was always the night before I couldn’t stand.” She kept her eyes on his. “I don’t want to spend this one that way. I’d like you to come to Cabin 3 tonight. It’s my cabin and it’s a narrow bunk, and I’m asking you because I want you there.”

He leaned the broom against the bench, slowly.

“On Friday you couldn’t turn over and look at me.”

“On Friday I was angry. I’m still angry about Whitefish. It’s in the book, and it’ll stay there. But I’ve had three days to walk round it, and one thing is the same from every side. You told me yourself, when you didn’t have to, at a fire where I was leaning on your arm.” Her mouth moved. “I told you I count things. I’ve counted. So. Do you want to come?”

“Yes,” he said. “I want to come. Do you want supper first?”

“I’ve got eggs. I’m not asking you for the eggs.”

“I’ll wash.”
***
She had lit the lamp and built up the stove. His red-and-black shirt hung on the peg by her door, where she had kept it for nine days. He saw it and said nothing about it.

The dog was delighted to see him. She leaned on his knees and then went and lay down on the rug between the stove and the bunk, exactly in the middle of the floor, and watched them both with her chin on her paws.

“She can’t stay,” Kaisa said.

“She stayed on Hirvi.”

“On Hirvi you slept under a canoe.” She opened the door. “Tansy. Porch. There’s a blanket out there, and you’ve had your supper. Go on.”

The dog rose with great dignity, walked out as slowly as a dog can walk, and turned round on the top step to look at them. Kaisa shut the door on the look. A long sigh came through the boards.

“She’ll hold that against me till Thursday,” Kaisa said, and then she was laughing, and he had crossed the room.

He stopped in front of her, because of the last time.

“Say it again, so I’ve heard it in here.”

“Yes. I asked you over, and I haven’t changed my mind between the shop and the stove.” She put her palms on his chest. “Now you.”

“Yes.”

“Then stop standing there like a man waiting for a ferry.”

He kissed her. She tasted of tea, and she was smiling against his mouth, which made it a clumsy kiss and a good one. On the third of October there had been rain and steam, and neither of them had said a light word all night. Tonight her hands were quick and sure. She had his shirt unbuttoned before he had found the hem of her sweater.

“Arms,” he said, and she put them up, and the wool came off over her head and took her undershirt with it. Her braid fell down her bare back. He ran his hand the length of it and felt the skin of her spine come up in gooseflesh under his knuckles.

“Your hands are cold.”

“I washed in the lake.”

“There’s a kettle on the stove, you fool.”

“I was in a hurry.”

She laughed again and pulled him down by the back of the neck. He warmed his hands on her, on her ribs and the curve of her waist and the weight of her breasts. He felt her breathing change and her heartbeat quicken under his palm. Her fingers were at his belt. He stepped out of his boots without looking, kicked one of them into the woodbox by accident, and heard the dog’s bell ring on the porch at the noise.

The bunk had been built for one guide of ordinary size. He sat on the edge of it to pull off his socks, and she stood between his knees and unfastened her own trousers and let them fall. The lamplight lay yellow along her hip and her thigh. He put his mouth to her stomach, just under the ribs, and her hands closed in his hair.

“Lie down,” she said. “No, the other way. Your feet are going to hang off.”

“My feet hang off everything.”

“Move over.”

“There isn’t an over.”

There wasn’t. He lay on his side with his back against the logs, and she fitted herself along the front of him. They made room for each other as they had in the bow and stern of a canoe, a little at a time, without discussing it. Her skin was hot from the stove. She took her time with him. She learned the muscle of his shoulder with her mouth, and the hollow of his throat, and she drew her nails lightly down his chest until he had to shut his eyes. When he tried to turn her under him he cracked his elbow on the wall. He swore, and she laughed so hard that she had to put her face in his neck.

“I build boats,” he said. “I’m supposed to be graceful.”

“You’re graceful in a boat. Stay where you are.”

She rose over him then, with one knee on each side of his hips and her hand flat on his breastbone. Her face went serious for a moment, and tender. She took him into her slowly, watching him. He held her by the hips and let her set the stroke, as he had let her set the first kiss on the granite. It was an easy rhythm at first, slow and deep, and she had her head back and her lower lip caught in her teeth. Then the ease went out of it. Her breath came short. He sat up and got one arm round her back and his mouth on her breast, and she said his name twice, the second time with no voice in it at all. He felt it go through her in long shudders. It took him with her, hard, with his forehead pressed to her collarbone and her arms locked round his head.

The bunk had held. He was a little surprised.

Afterward she lay half on top of him, since there was nowhere else to lie, with her nose under his jaw and one leg across both of his. The blanket was somewhere round their knees. He hooked it up with his foot and got it over her shoulders.

“That was different,” she said drowsily.

“Better or worse?”

“Easier. I laughed. I didn’t know I’d laugh.”

“I hit my elbow so you would.”

“You did not.”

“No.”

Her breath was warm on his throat. Her braid had come half undone, and the loose hair lay over his arm. An inch from his mouth was the turn of her neck where it met her shoulder, smooth in the lamplight, with nothing on it.

He wanted to ask. The words were ready, and they were short. He wanted her mark on him and his on her, and he had wanted that since he was twenty-six. But he remembered what she had said on his floor nine days ago. She had said there was to be no bite, and no promises, and that she had a life somewhere else she hadn’t decided about. She had not unsaid a word of it tonight. If he asked now, with her soft and half asleep in his arms on the eve of that date, he would be choosing the hour for her again. It was hers to raise, when she was ready, or never.

He kissed her hair and kept his teeth together.

“Tomorrow I’ll wake up on the thirteenth in my own bed,” she said, nearly gone. “With you taking up all of it. I wanted to know what that was like.”

“Crowded.”

“Mm.” Her hand opened on his ribs. “Good.”

She slept. He lay awake a while and listened to the stove tick and the dog turn over on the porch boards. The lamp guttered and went out by itself. He thought about a ledger in a locked drawer, and about a line that ran off the corner of a map. Then he stopped thinking, because she was heavy and warm against him and he had not slept properly in three nights.

The noise that woke him was a fist on the door.

It struck the planks three times, hard enough to shake the latch, and the dog went off like an alarm. He was on his feet before he knew where he was. Behind him Kaisa struck a match, and the lamp came up. He got his trousers on and crossed the cold floor and pulled the door open.

It was black outside, with no moon, and white frost lay on the porch rail. His sister stood on the step in her nightgown with Jari’s canvas coat over it. Her feet were bare on the frozen boards. She did not seem to know it. Her hair was down, and her face in the lamplight was one he had never seen on her.

“Britta.”

“I went to yours first. Then I knew where you’d be.” Her voice came flat and fast. “It’s two o’clock. I looked in on him at half past ten and he was in his bed. I woke up just now, and I don’t know why, and I looked again. He’s gone, Anders. Mikko’s gone. His window’s wide open, the one on the lake side.”
***