That night they made love for the first time. She told him to stop saying he was sorry, that her desires had nothing to do with anything except the fact that she was her old self again, her original self.
DULUTH
The water had taken on a cold, wintery glint. The light had shifted, making the beach look wider, more ominous. The situation was unsafe, but before the four of them took off, they had taken one last hike together, through second-growth forest to the eastern branch of the Two Hearted River. Hank had wanted them to see it. They marched single-file, Hank leading and stopping them on occasion to sniff and listen.
They were still doing a penance for a loss, and it would be that way for a long time. The river snaked through the brambles and deep green beds of fern, hidden from the world, a river that had to be seen at ground level. From the sky it was obscured by a canopy of leaf.
Singleton, at the rear, experienced a sense of recognition. The buzz in his ear was still gone, leaving behind a feeling of having lived through battles. The fuzzball had resolved into concrete thought — images of a boy on a beach with freckles and a loose smile. From Meg he had gathered a sense of who Billy-T might’ve been, and he saw him through her eyes and she saw him through his eyes and Wendy saw her loss through Meg’s eyes and Meg through her eyes.
Hank led them to a mossy open clearing with limited snags. The only good fishing spot for miles and miles. He explained that the reputation of the stream was much greater than the stream itself.
When they got back to the house that night they found MomMom dead in the yard, her laundry basket next to her.
“Natural causes,” Hank said. “She must’ve dragged herself out of bed.”
His voice was abstracted. He stood for a moment and then walked over to her body, which looked less weighty, the apron loose around her hips, her chin flattened and her eyes still open.
“I don’t believe this,” Meg said, crying.
“I never got to know her in a sane state, because I was insane when she was sane,” Hank said. “Before that I was a kid and she was just my mom. It was clean and simple back then.” He dropped to his knees and kissed her cheek. “I treated her badly before I got the treatment. I was an evil man and I cast her aside, and me and Rake, whatever we did, it had to have been unspeakable.”
“Don’t blame yourself now,” Meg said, holding him.
“I’m blaming the man I was when I came back from Nam. I can’t remember it but I’m sure that when I came back she told me something like, ‘You’re not the boy I knew, not at all,’ something like that.”
“Blame the old Hank, but don’t blame yourself,” Meg said.
“When the president was killed I knew it wouldn’t be long. She started downhill, I mean physically, when that news came out.”
“I’m sorry, Hank,” Singleton said.
“I know you are,” Hank said.
“Nothing prepares you,” Wendy said. “I’ll go get a blanket.”
MomMom’s death was a sign. They all thought, but didn’t say, that the timing would ease the burden of travel. What would Klein say? He’d say that sometimes men died in the field to ease the burdens of other men. If they were beyond the reach of a dust-up crew it might look — and he’d stress only look, because he wasn’t coldhearted — like an act of God.
They buried her under the clothesline, along with her basket and her Bible.
“Love is the great transition of fury into stability, into the serenity of a mutual shared vibration,” Hank said, spreading his arms. “Love is when you see the forest and the trees and have a complete sense of both. Love means saying you’re sorry again and again and again.”
* * *
It was their last night on the beach. Lake Superior. Thirty-two thousand square miles of water producing waves that arrive in a sequence of four or five smaller ones and then a breaker born far out in the fury of a distant storm, where tiny bolts were caught up in the clouds, flickering their underbellies visible and then, a second later, consumed back into darkness. A log shifted and sparks were unleashed into the sky. Smoke from the embers was milky gray against the blackness. They were all aware not only of the fire’s warmth but of the dangerous dark beyond its light.
“You know what I hate,” Hank was saying.
“What do you hate?” Meg said.
“I hate it when people say something is ‘painfully beautiful.’ Pain’s never beautiful, man, never. The forest is beautiful, but I’d hope I never get to the point where I claim it’s painfully beautiful. MomMom used to rub Vicks on my chest when I was sick, and now, when I smell it, I can’t figure out why I feel this intense despair. All I can think is that it must have something to do with Nam, that smell. Is that painfully beautiful?”
“Do people really say that?” Wendy said.
“It does have something to do with Nam,” Singleton said. “I can’t tell you I know this firsthand, but when I got out of treatment and was trying to figure shit out I hung out with a vet for a day or two, and he told me they used to rub that stuff under their noses to mask the smell of death and rotting flesh.”
Hank stood and then Singleton stood, reaching down to pull Wendy up. Then Meg stood and they walked away from the fire to the water and stood looking out at the lake. The air smelled autumnal. A trillion leaves changing color and beginning to decay. The fire behind them looked small and insignificant.
They sat by the fire deep into the night, sharing stories, while the wind picked up, shifted, and forced them to change positions to avoid the smoke.
At one point, later, Singleton walked away from the fire and went into the darkness to listen again for Black Flaggers.
The plan was to go back to the house, finish packing up, pray at MomMom’s grave, and head to Duluth. Hank knew the way. He stood up and raised his hands and said he could, if necessary, walk the footpaths all the way in his sleep, blindfolded, drunk, high. Then he gave a shout and, his voice preachy and declarative, said that going into nature was the ultimate recourse, a way back into his own soul and the only resolution available in conditions that were, when you got right down to it, considering the state of the supposedly civilized industrial world, unbearable. He pounded his chest and spread his arms to the sky, cried out again, and then, pulling her up to her feet, embraced Meg in his huge arms.
All afternoon they had worked, burning things, burying the arms they wouldn’t take, anything they didn’t want to leave to Black Flag, or the Corps agents who would inevitably come on a search mission. Singleton sat for a while and composed a final report on a sheet of legal paper. He kept it short and to the point, outlining their original plan of action, describing the trip up, the initial contact with Hank and Meg, and the last contact with Agent Klein. The actual establishment of trust, he reduced to a single sentence: “We used our guts to establish that the targets were loving.” To use the word loving in an operation report went completely against training. It didn’t matter. He was leaving a lot out.
Hank came into the kitchen and sat down. “I’m sorry we didn’t keep Rake alive so you could come and save the day the way I’m sure you wanted to,” he said. “You were hoping for some kind of gallantry, something symbolic. But symbols are why Rake fell for the trap. He had a hankering for old gestures, so when the duel rumor began floating around he fell for it, because it fulfilled the idea that there was a mission buried in all of his rage. He thought he might land on the moral high ground. He might land on some idea of honor in relation to himself, man, and that’s the thing, man, that’s the thing that can really mess you up. Nothing is more corrupt than the idea of honor, at least right now, in this day and age. I love trees because they don’t bother with honor, because they move slowly through the years — at least from our vantage — and reckon with time in a different way.”