He collapsed onto the bank, half standing and half sitting, and felt his pulse throbbing in his wrists. Breathing heavily and sweating profusely again, he eyed the remaining half-dozen pieces of oak. If not right now, he thought, I’ll never finish. Besides, the wind funneling up the gulch felt fine. He took off a glove, felt the back of his neck, and saw blood on his fingertips. He stanched it with the collar of his shirt. After he caught his breath he hefted the other stumps from the gulch. When he rolled the last one over the lip, he crawled out himself.
The wheelbarrow was parked where they’d left it. In its rusty, dented bottom, shallow pools of water had formed. Noah carted it to the edge of the gully and muscled the two biggest pieces of sawn oak into it. The trail, with its tree roots, potholes, and rocks, made steering the barrow difficult. But he managed eight trips. On the last he stopped midway back and looked up at the ski jump. Several times since he’d been back he’d thought of climbing the rickety old thing, but each time the thought crossed his mind he’d been distracted. Now he set down the empty wheelbarrow and kicked his way through the overgrowth to the lopsided steps that led up to the base of the scaffold. There were four telephone poles supporting the top of it and two more midway up the inrun. On the left side of the ramp thirty steps made of two-by-fours were pounded into the plywood floor under the handrail. He took them two at a time.
When he got to the top he stood for a minute looking down the inrun. The wind — a headwind he fondly recalled — blowing almost violently now, caused the scaffold to sway. Beyond the takeoff, on the left, the coaching deck his father and grandfather used to huddle on had completely sunk in the overgrowth. It was easy to imagine them standing there, their hushed voices carrying up to him as he latched his boots into the cable bindings and lowered his goggles over the rim of his white leather helmet. It was the flattery he overheard on those mornings that gave him his first sense of vanity, though neither could tolerate his lack of concentration.
He had no trouble concentrating now. It looks so damn big, he thought. Though the jump was awfully small in contrast to the Olympic-sized jumps he’d competed on as a teenager, the years of forgetting almost entirely about the sport had skewed his perspective. The landing hill was overgrown with new trees and thistle, and the takeoff was buried in the scrub, but he could easily imagine the whole scene packed with snow. Even though the lake frothed in the wind, he could see ski tracks narrowing in the distance.
The brightness of the sun glinting off the snow, the cold toes and windburned cheeks, none of it was lost after all. His skis squeaking against the hard snow at the top of the jump before he pulled himself onto the inrun, the speed gained as he hurtled down the ramp, the serenity and silence of the flight, the camber of both his skis and his body in flight, the exultation of flight. The perfect instinct to land and the explosion of consciousness in landing. . none of it had been forgotten.
He looked back toward the house. Why had he been so quick to condemn the old man’s project in the shed? Why had he been so quick to deny him this favor? Didn’t the million mornings standing on that coach’s platform in the wicked wind and chill of the Minnesota winter add up to something?
For all his horror at the thought of dropping his old man in the lake, the idea was not altogether unbeautiful. Again he thought about the story his father had told him the night before, this time pausing to reflect on the type of eternity his father had so narrowly avoided. Maybe the will to be buried in the lake was born of the notion that it was his honest fate, not merely some screwball’s version of an interminable penance. None of which meant, Noah thought, that he’d be able to carry out the old man’s wishes.
He wheeled the last load of wood back to the yard, noticed the door of the shed still open. He saw his father working, could see, through the papery curtain and dirty glass, that the old man had somehow managed to lift the barrel of taconite onto his workbench.
The sight of it made his entire morning’s labor seem feigned.
SPANNING SIX OF the barrel staves, the words SUPERIOR STEEL & STEAMSHIP COMPANY were branded black. The barrel must be a hundred years old, Noah thought as he rubbed his thumb through the tarnished grooves of the lettering. He imagined piles of these barrels in the hull of an old turn-of-the-century bark, loaded with iron ore. He remembered this particular barrel hidden behind the furnace in the house on High Street.
One of the pieces of stainless-steel tubing was already attached to the barrel with a dozen finely placed bolts. In a pile on the table another dozen bolts appeared ready for the same purpose, and the second piece of tubing was apparently being shortened by something less than an inch. At least the hacksaw blade halfway through it suggested as much. Noah wrapped his arms around the barrel and lifted it off the workbench. It took all his strength. Though he could not imagine how the contraption might work, he admired the old man’s vision. No doubt he had a plan, and no doubt that plan would work. Had he not been a sailor, Olaf might have made a fine life as a builder. Noah had often wished for his father’s advice while in agony over how to install a new toilet or hang a chandelier from the dining room ceiling. Any of a hundred household tasks at which he inevitably failed. Long weekend afternoons with hammer-bruised thumbs. He smiled now, well removed from them.
The old man was at his afternoon nap. Later today than the day before.
Noah walked outside and crossed the yard. He began stacking the wood around the splitting stump in the yard. He thought of Nat, on her way now. He thought back through the travails of their childlessness. He remembered how the first couple years of trying had been almost magical in their ability to bring the two of them closer together. There had been such solidarity of purpose, such a marveling at prospects. It wasn’t until after the first pregnancy and miscarriage that things had actually started to seem both urgent and unlikely.
He could remember that morning vividly. He had startled himself awake from a deep sleep and found her side of the bed cold and empty. He could hear the sound of the bathroom faucet and in the grainy light could see Nat’s bare legs beneath the sink. Under the stream and splashing of water, he heard her unappeasable, almost silent, sobbing. When he stumbled into the hallway and stood in the bathroom door, she didn’t even look up. “No, no, no, no,” she muttered above her sobbing. He tried to console her, tried to hug away her quivering, but for the first time in their lives together she rejected him.
The other miscarriages had been worse in their ways — one had been twins, miscarried two days apart — but it was the first that had taken the deepest stab at their hope. The late-night talks about rearing the wonder child disappeared, her explanations of the tests and procedures her doctor was performing to isolate the cause of her infertility also ceased. So did talk of next steps. Over the next two years their inability to have a child had come to seem like an illness. It was mired in an unremitting despondency that might pop up at any time. They’d see a duckling in the pond at the park, and Nat would fall miserable for three days. If they saw a pregnant woman in the grocery store Nat would forget what they were there for. It was her sadness that had come to matter most to him, he realized. She’s somewhere near, he thought as he headed for the lake. She’ll be here before dark.