Journey, page 3
Alexander MacLeod
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Jessica Grant
My Husband’s Jump
My husband was an Olympic ski jumper. (Is an Olympic ski jumper?) But in the last Olympics, he never landed.
It began like any other jump. His speed was exactly what it should be. His height was impressive, as always. Up, up he went, into a perfect sky that held its breath for him. He soared. Past the ninety- and hundred-meter marks, past every mark, past the marks that weren’t really marks at all, just marks for decoration, impossible reference points, marks nobody ever expected to hit. Up. Over the crowd, slicing the sky. Every cheer in every language stopped; every flag in every colour dropped.
It was a wondrous sight.
Then he was gone, and they came after me. Desperate to make sense of it. And what could I tell them? He’d always warned me ski jumping was his life. I’d assumed he meant metaphorically. I didn’t know he meant to spend (suspend) his life mid-jump.
How did I feel? Honestly, and I swear this is true, at first I felt only wonder. It was pure, even as I watched him disappear. I wasn’t worried about him, not then. I didn’t begrudge him, not then. I didn’t feel jealous, suspicious, forsaken.
I was pure as that sky.
But through a crack in the blue, in slithered Iago and Cassius and every troublemaker, doubt-planter, and doomsayer there ever was. In slithered the faithless.
Family, friends, teammates, the bloody IOC—they had “thoughts” they wanted to share with me.
The first, from the IOC, was drugs. What did I think about drugs? Of course he must have been taking something, they said. Something their tests had overlooked? They were charming, disarming.
It was not a proud moment for me, shaking my head in public, saying no, no, no in my heart, and secretly checking every pocket, shoe, ski boot, cabinet, canister, and drawer in the house. I found nothing. Neither did the IOC. They tested and retested his blood, his urine, his hair. (They still had these pieces of him? Could I have them, I wondered, when they were done?)
The drug theory fizzled, for lack of evidence. Besides, the experts said (and why had they not spoken earlier?) such a drug did not, could not, exist. Yet. Though no doubt somebody somewhere was working on it.
* * *
—
A Swiss ski jumper, exhausted and slippery-looking, a rival of my husband’s, took me to dinner.
He told me the story of a French man whose hang-glider had caught a bizarre air current. An insidious Alpine wind, he said, one wind in a billion (what were the chances?) had scooped up his wings and lifted him to a cold, airless altitude that could not support life.
Ah. So my husband’s skis had caught a similarly rare and determined air current? He had been carried off, against his will, into the stratosphere?
The Swiss ski jumper nodded enthusiastically.
You believe, then, that my husband is dead?
He nodded again, but with less gusto. He was not heartless—just nervous and desperate to persuade me of something he didn’t quite believe himself. I watched him fumble helplessly with his fork.
Have you slept recently? I asked. You seem jumpy—excuse the pun.
He frowned. You don’t believe it was the wind?
I shook my head. I’d been doing that a lot lately.
His fist hit the table. Then how? He looked around, as if he expected my husband to step out from behind the coat rack. Ta Da!
I invited him to check under the table.
Was it jealousy? Had my husband achieved what every ski jumper ultimately longs for, but dares not articulate? A dream that lies dormant, the sleeping back of a ski hill, beneath every jump. A silent, monstrous wish.
Yes, it was jealousy—and I pitied the Swiss ski jumper. I pitied them all. For any jump to follow my husband’s, any jump with a landing, was now pointless. A hundred meters, a hundred and ten, twenty, thirty meters. Who cared? I had heard the IOC was planning to scrap ski jumping from the next Olympics. How could they hold a new event when the last one had never officially ended?
They needed closure, they said. Until they had it, they couldn’t move on.
Neither, apparently, could my Swiss friend. He continued to take me to dinner, to lecture me about winds and aerodynamics. He produced weather maps. He insisted, he impressed upon me…couldn’t I see the veracity, the validity of…look here…put your finger here on this line and follow it to its logical end. Don’t you see how it might have happened?
I shook my head—no. But I did. After the fifth dinner, how could I help but see, even if I couldn’t believe?
I caught sleeplessness like an air current. It coiled and uncoiled beneath my blankets, a tiny tornado of worry, fraying the edges of sleep. I would wake, gasping—the enormity of what had happened: My husband had never landed. Where was he, now, at this instant? Was he dead? Pinned to the side of some unskiable mountain? Had he been carried out to sea and dropped like Icarus, with no witnesses, no one to congratulate him, no one to grieve?
I had an undersea image of him: A slow-motion landing through a fish-suspended world—his skis still in perfect V formation.
* * *
—
Meanwhile the media was attributing my husband’s incredible jump to an extramarital affair. They failed to elaborate, or offer proof, or to draw any logical connection between the affair and the feat itself. But this, I understand, is what the media do: They attribute the inexplicable to extramarital affairs. So I tried not to take it personally.
I did, however, tell one reporter that while adultery may break the law of marriage, it has never been known to break the law of gravity. I was quite pleased with my quip, but they never published it.
My husband’s family adopted a more distressing theory. While they didn’t believe he was having an affair, they believed he was trying to escape me. To jump ship, so to speak. Evidently the marriage was bad. Look at the lengths he’d gone to. Literally, the lengths.
In my heart of hearts I knew it wasn’t true. I had only to remember the way he proposed, spontaneously, on a chair lift in New Mexico. Or the way he littered our bed with Hershey’s Kisses every Valentine’s Day. Or the way he taught me to snowplow with my beginner’s skis, making an upside-down V in the snow, the reverse of his in the air.
But their suspicions hurt nonetheless and, I confess, sometimes they were my suspicions too. Sometimes my life was a Country and Western song: Had he really loved me? How could he just fly away? Not a word, no goodbye. Couldn’t he have shared his sky…with me?
But these were surface doubts. They came, they went. Like I said, where it counted, in my heart of hearts, I never faltered. The world was not interested in my theory, however. When I mentioned God, eyes glazed or were quickly averted, the subject politely changed. I tried to explain that my husband’s jump had made a believer out of me. Out of me. That in itself was a miracle.
So where were the religious zealots, now that I’d joined their ranks? I’d spent my life feeling outnumbered by them—how dare they all defect? Now they screamed Stunt, or Affair, or Air current, or Fraud. Only I screamed God. Mine was the lone voice, howling God at the moon, night after night, half expecting to see my husband’s silhouette pass before it like Santa Claus.
God was mine. He belonged to me now. I felt the weight of responsibility. Lost a husband, gained a deity. What did it mean? It was like inheriting a pet, unexpectedly. A very large Saint Bernard. What would I feed him? Where would he sleep? Could he cure me of loneliness, bring me a hot beverage when I was sick?
* * *
—
I went to see Sister Perpetua, my old high school principal. She coughed frequently—and her coughs were bigger than she was. Vast, hungry coughs.
Her room was spare: a bed, a table, a chair. Through a gabled window I could see the overpass linking the convent to the school. Tall black triangles drifted to and fro behind the glass.
You’ve found your faith, Sister Perpetua said.
I couldn’t help it.
And then she said what I most dreaded to hear: that she had lost hers.
I left the window and went to her. The bed groaned beneath my weight. Beside me, Sister Perpetua scarcely dented the blanket.
She had lost her faith the night she saw my husband jump. She and the other sisters had been gathered around the television in the common room. When he failed to land, she said, they felt something yanked from them, something sucked from the room, from the world entire—something irrevocably lost. God?
She shrugged. What we had thought was God.
His failure to land, she continued, but I didn’t hear the rest. His failure to land. His failure to land.
Why not miracle of flight? Why not leap of faith?
I told her I was sure of God’s existence now, as sure as if he were tied up in my backyard. I could smell him on my hands. That’s how close he was. How real, how tangible, how furry.
She lifted her hands to her face, inhaled deeply, and coughed. For a good three minutes she coughed, and I crouched beneath the swirling air in the room, afraid.
* * *
—
It was a warm night in July. A plaintive wind sang under my sleep. I woke, went to the window, lifted the screen. In the yard below, the dog was softly whining. It was not the wind after all. When he saw me, he was quiet. He had such great sad eyes—they broke the heart, they really did.
I sank to my knees beside the window.
I was content, I told him, when everyone else believed and I did not. Why is that?
He shook his great floppy head. Spittle flew like stars around him.
And now all I’m left with is a dog—forgive me, but you are a very silent partner.
I knelt there for a long time, watching him, watching the sky. I thought about the word jump. My husband’s word.
I considered it first as a noun, the lesser of its forms. As a noun, it was already over. A completed thing. A jump. A half-circle you could trace with your finger, follow on the screen, measure against lines on the ground. Here is where you took off, here is where you landed.
But my husband’s jump was a verb, not a noun. Forever unfinished. What must it be like, I wondered, to hang your life on a single word? To jump. A verb ridden into the sunset. One verb to end all others.
To jump. Not to doubt, to pity, to worry, to prove or disprove. Not to remember, to howl, to ask, to answer. Not to love. Not even to be.
And not to land. Never, ever to land.
Thomas King
One Good Story, That One
Alright.
You know, I hear this story up north. Maybe Yellowknife, that one, somewhere. I hear it maybe a long time. Old story this one. One hundred years, maybe more. Maybe not so long either, this story.
So.
You know, they come to my place. Summer place, pretty good place, that one. Those ones, they come with Napiao, my friend. Cool. On the river. Indians call him Ka-sin-ta, that river, like if you did nothing but stand in one place all day and maybe longer. Ka-sin-ta also call Na-po. Napiao knows that one, my friend. Whiteman call him Saint Merry, but I don’t know what that mean. Maybe like Ka-sin-ta. Maybe not.
Napiao comes with those three. Whiteman, those.
No Indianman.
No Chinaman.
No Frenchman.
Too bad, those.
Sometimes the wind come along say hello. Pretty fast, that one. Blow some things down on the river, that Ka-sin-ta. Sometimes he comes up too, pretty high. Moves things around, that Ka-sin-ta.
Three men come to my summer place, also my friend Napiao. Pretty loud talkers, those ones. One is big. I tell him maybe looks like Big Joe. Maybe not.
Anyway.
They come and Napiao too. Bring greetings, how are you, many nice things they bring to says. Three.
All white.
Too bad, those.
Ho, my friend says, real nice day. Here is some tobacco.
All those smile. Good teeth.
Your friend Napiao, they says, that one says you tell a good story, you tell us your good story.
They says, those ones.
I tell Napiao, sit down, rest, eat something. Those three like to stand. Stand still. I think of Ka-sin-ta, as I told you. So I says to Napiao, Ka-sin-ta, in our language and he laugh. Those three laugh too. Good teeth. Whiteman, white teeth.
I says to them, those ones stand pretty good. Napiao, my friend, says tell these a good story. Maybe not too long, he says. Those ones pretty young, go to sleep pretty quick. Anthropologist, you know. That one has a camera. Maybe.
Okay, I says, sit down.
These are good men, my friend says, those come a long ways from past Ta-pe-loo-za. Call him Blind Man Coulee, too. Ta-pe-loo-za means like a quiet place where the fish can rest, deep quiet place. Blind man maybe comes there later. To that place. Maybe fish.
Alright.
How about a story, that one says.
Sure, I says. Maybe about Jimmy runs the store near Two Bridges. His brother become dead and give Jimmy his car. But Jimmy never drives.
Napiao hold his hand up pretty soft. My friend says that good story, Jimmy and his car. These ones don’t know Jimmy.
Okay, I says. Tell about Billy Frank and the dead-river pig. Funny story, that one, Billy Frank and the dead-river pig. Pretty big pig. Billy is real small, like Napiao, my friend. Hurt his back. Lost his truck.
Those ones like old stories, says my friend, maybe how the world was put together. Good Indian story like that, Napiao says. Those ones have tape recorders, he says.
Okay, I says.
Have some tea.
Stay awake.
Once upon a time.
Those stories start like that, pretty much, those ones, start on time. Anyway. There was nothing. Pretty hard to believe that, maybe.
You fellows keep listening, I says. Watch the floor. Be careful.
No water, no land, no stars, no moon. None of those things. Must have a sun someplace. Maybe not. Can’t say. No Indians are there once upon a time. Lots of air. Only one person walk around. Call him god.
So.
They look around and there is nothing. No grass. No fish. No trees. No mountains. No Indians, like I says. No whiteman either. Those come later, maybe one hundred years. Maybe not. That one god walk around, but pretty soon they get tired. Maybe that one says, we will get some stars. So he does. And then he says, maybe we should get a moon. So, they get one of them too.
Someone write all this down, I don’t know. Lots of things left to get.
Me-a-loo, call her deer.
Pa-pe-po, call her elk.
Tsling-ta, call her Blue-flower-berry.
Ga-ling, call her moon.
So-see-ka, call her flint.
A-ma-po, call her dog.
Ba-ko-zao, call her grocery store.
Pe-to-pa-zasling, call her television.
Pretty long list of things to get, that. Too many, maybe those ones say, how many more that one needs for world. So. Pretty soon that one can fix up real nice place. Not too hot. Not too cold. Like here, we sit here. My summer place is like that one.
I call my summer place O-say-ta-he-to-peo-teh. Means cool sleeping place. Other place, they call her Evening’s garden. Good time to fish, that. Evening. Cool, not so hot. That Evening’s garden like here.
Two human beings that one puts there. Call the man Ah-damn. Call the woman, Evening. Same as garden.
Okay.
She looks around her garden. Pretty nice place, that one. Good tree. Good deer. Good rock. Good water. Good sky. Good wind. No grocery store, no television.
Ah-damn and Evening real happy, those ones. No clothes, those, you know. Ha, ha, ha, ha. But they pretty dumb, then. New, you know.
Have some tea.
Stay awake.
Good part is soon here.
That woman, Evening, she is curious, nosy, that one. She walk around the garden and she look everywhere. Look under rock. Look in grass. Look in sky. Look in water. Look in tree.
So.
She find that tree, big one. Not like now, that tree. This one have lots of good things to eat. Have potato. Have pumpkin. Have corn. Have berries, all kind. Too many to say now.
This good tree also have some mee-so. Whiteman call them apples. This first woman look at the tree with the good things and she gets hungry. Make a meal in her head.
Leave that mee-so alone. Someone says that. Leave that mee-so alone. Leave that tree alone. The voice says that. Go away someplace else to eat!
That one, god. Hello, he’s back.
Hey, says Evening, this is my garden.
You watch out, says that one, pretty loud voice. Sort of shout. Bad temper, that one. Maybe like Harley James. Bad temper, that one. Always shouting. Always with pulled-down mean look. Sometimes Harley come to town, drives his truck to town. Gets drunk. Drives back to that house. That one goes to town, get drunk, come home, that one, beat his wife. His wife leave. Goes back up north. Pretty mean one, that one. You boys know Harley James? Nobody there to beat up, now. Likes to shout, that one. Maybe you want to hear about Billy Frank and the dead-river pig?
Boy, my friend says, I can taste those mee-so. These boys pretty excited about those mee-so, I think.
Okay, I says.
Keep your eyes open, look around.
Evening, that one says, look pretty good, these. So she eat one, that mee-so. Boy, not bad, real juicy, that one. She is generous, Evening, good woman, that one. Brings mee-so to Ah-damn. I think he is busy then, writing things down. All the animals’ names he writes somewhere, I don’t know. Pretty boring that.
Deer come by, says Me-a-loo.
