The autumn moon looks too far away, an amber porch bulb draped in a tattered shroud of moths, all but a handful of stars faded into the weave. Buoyed up on the breath of the lake, frail whispers of wood smoke foretell the winter. Out on Superior the lights of a freighter ride the horizon.
It’s disquieting the way those distant lights sometimes just wink out. One moment you’re tracking them, the next they’re gone—extinguished by a wave, by the arc of the earth, a trick of the eye. Cabin light thins out over the landscape. Ship lights simply disappear. “Damn it, Marlee, slow down,” Pete shouts, smacking his club of rolled-up newspaper hard into his palm.
It’s obnoxious, actually, the way she plunges ahead like a twelve-year-old on a school picnic, bounding over ankle-breaking rocks in the dark as if this were a warm and sandy beach, disregarding the headlong cliff and the bone cold water below.
“Hurry up,” she shouts back, skimming across the stones, a growing bundle of dried sticks cradled in her arms.
Out beyond the sheltering curve of light from the cabin window, he’s feeling his way, each foot holding out for an oath of stability before committing to every new step.
“Marlee, wait for me,” he shouts after he’s lost sight of her. “I don’t know this place well enough.”
“I’m right down here, Pete,” she laughs, suddenly there, below. Her voice lingers above the tiny sparking of her lighter.
“Hurry up, let’s get this fire going. I’m chilly.”
Hand on foot, she guides him down a mossy rift in the rock face.
Down here Superior thrums hard against her granite cup. Down here the bedrock flows in solid continuation of the waves. Down here the stone is smoother, forever giving itself to the water.
In the week following the funeral, in the days of sheltering love, the shore stayed warm long after the sinking of the bloated August sun. It cradled their bodies while she wept, while he held her and tasted her tears, while embers burned to cinders and the lake eased away the hard edges of her sorrow.
“You’d better treat my daughter right, Peter,” Marlee’s father said one translucent morning last spring when he still knew who Pete was, when he still recognized his own daughter.
“Or I’ll climb out of this bed and kick your ass.”
The two men shared a laugh. Pete knelt beside Carl, held his hand, and gave his promise.
“Give me the newspaper,” she says, crouching over her little teepee of sticks, sparking the lighter beneath the cup of her hand.
“I still remember the first time we came here,” he says, grinning, crouching down beside her, caressing her leg.
“Give me the newspaper,” she says. “I’m cold.”
“Have a sip of whiskey. It’ll warm you.” He presses his flask into her hand.
Orange tendrils flicker around brittle black paper—a tiny storm rising under a canopy of twigs— then smolder and die.
“More paper.” She drops her lighter at his feet. “Get it blazing.”
“Take a drink. It’ll warm you up.”
“That’s a dangerous myth,” she says, drinking, wiping her lips.
Another miniature thunderstorm expires on the stone, despite high hopes and heroic blowing. Smoke disappears into the lake’s misty breath.
“What really happens is your blood vessels dilate, and your heat escapes more quickly. You feel warmer only because all your body heat is right up at the surface.”
Superior is awfully deep. The bottom is tiled with a thousand broken vessels. Some are still sinking into the shifting sand. One night they broke up on the rocks, or burned, or welcomed in the water. Then they went under like coffee cups in the sink. Some just disappeared. A few have never been found.
The toothless mouth of night draws tight around the shore. Behind another tip of the flask, Pete peers up toward the cabin with its golden glowing window, bathtub, fireplace, big soft bed. The newspaper all burned up, the night growing damp and chill, Pete sparks the lighter against blackened bark again, again, then lays it to rest.
“Let’s go back, Mar,” he says. “I don’t think this is turning out so well. I’m getting cold. We can make some coffee.”
“We’ll warm each other up,” she whispers, turning a girl’s face to his and kissing his jaw. “I’m not ready to go back,” she says.
Shirt and shoes in a damp little heap, Marlee lies stripped on the cold stone. Pete kneels beside her, laying his hands on her trembling body. Over the dark edge beside them, Superior pounds at the shore.
“Treat my daughter right,” her dad had warned. Under different circumstances Pete would be pleased to oblige, but right now the rocks are cold and hard on the knees, and it’s beginning to drizzle.
“I really don’t think this is going to work out, Mar.” His eyes are dry, beginning to burn. “Let’s go in.”
“I just want a fire, baby.” She shivers, alone.
“Let’s go back to the cabin.” He rises to his feet and offers his hand.
“We’ll get a fire going in the fireplace. The bed is nice and soft. Come on, I’ll warm you up enough to last a lifetime.”
She sits up, elbows on bare rock, grief darkening her face. “I’m not going back.” She’s crying now.
“I need to be out here. Why can’t you give me that, Pete? Stay out here with me.”
Marlee drops her head back over the edge and offers salt tears to the lake. The porch light moon is gone. Pete can’t see her face, but he can feel her body shudder.
“I’m not sure this is going to work out, Mar,” he says beneath the hush, hush, hush of the lake.
Sometimes there is no squall, no crashing waves. It just works its way silently in, and the cargo soaks it up. Nothing to notice except you’re riding a little bit lower. Nobody recognizes how serious it really is. Then something shifts, and Superior claims you, and you’re just another coffee cup at the bottom of the dishpan.
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