M&R: Sleep My Baby

Lying squarely on his broad back, staring quizzically into the pitch black Stan asked his wife, “Did I just say, ‘…the un-reined manifestation of my buddy’s subconscious.’”  

Roxanne stopped giggling for a moment and quipped “Sure did.”   Then cuddled up closer to her awakening husband.

“Why did I say that?”

“Because I asked you why your buddy’s dog was whining.”  Stan could hear Gizmo whimper now.  The soft complaints came from the boathouse adjoining the cabin.  “Her mate is gone with John and the boys up the river.  Do you think she’s lonely? Oh, the poor little dear.” Cooed big-hearted Roxanne.  “But we just can’t let her in.”  Their family lovingly described Gizmo’s mate as “a big drooling monster”.  Gizmo herself though only twenty pounds possessed coarse curly fur that made her look twice as big.  Within the grip of her ebony locks lay fallen spruce twigs, dried up sheaths of grass, moss; both from the muskeg and fallen from the alders and the aroma not of the scented woodlands and alpine mountains, but rather of the potent aroma of the muskeg pools she’d swam in several times that day.  Plus this close to the ocean, it still rained regularly and both dogs were constantly drenched.  “I’ll go tell her she is a good dog, but to go lay down.” 

Scan Scamander stayed wake long enough to enjoy the site of his wife donning a shear enticing robe and with hips swaying slip from the room.  The last thing he saw was his wife’s womanly form silhouetted against the light of the oil lamp strategically placed in the hall way for the benefit of all the occupants of their summer place.  Maybe he heard an ancient lullaby, “Sleep my baby, and let the sea sleep, let our trouble sleep: let some change appear.”   The next thing he heard for certain was two hours later; an urgent soft howl.  Stan rose naked from the bed like a puppet yanked up by its strings.

“Maybe she needs to go outside.” Roxanne worried aloud, but in her husky whisper clearly something else worried her. 

Stan’s massive right hand lifted the lamp from its niche in the wall as with heavy step he passed.  “Good girl.  Good girl Gizmo.” he whispered encouragingly as his left hand engulfed the door knob. 

The boat house was empty of course and yes there were a couple of piles of dog stuff  there.  Stan didn’t know that on the rare occasions Gizmo has accidents she was normally embarrassed and sorrowful.  She would keep her head down and eyes averted.  But this night, her entire shaggy body wagged at the arrival of the giant of a man.  They went for a stroll around the grounds in the light of a half moon and sheer over-cast that veiled half the Alaskan sky. Gizmo curled up in her bed after their walk, Stan cleaned up her messes, washed his hands…several times and returned to bed. 

Roxanne burst into tears when she realized that the “poor little dog” had needed to go outside not to be told by her Aunty Roxanne “to go lay down”.  Stan comforted her and absently blamed himself aloud and he returned to sleep as easily as a river flows down its course. 

In the morning, Stan rose from his bed early.  Most days of his life he spent the morning swimming in the Karamenderes River back home.  But, the Stikine would do just fine.  The “poor little dog” walked cockily beside him as Stan headed for the glacial water.  She circled, sniffed and growled at spots in the grass he’d cut yesterday, but it wasn’t until they reached the sandy bank, that he understood her behavior.  There were tracks in the sand, they were too large to be Gizmo’s and too many and too diverse to be old prints left by her huge mate. 

Stan’s family always kept an eye out for brown bear along the banks of the Stikine.  But, they’d never seen wolves before.

M&R: There is Forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be Feared.

The unfurled flowers that once decorated, the chain of rolling "muskegs" alongside the river were gone! Instead, across the swampy shores marched the twilight millions of grass blades; in metallic gray, steel blue, gleaming gold, brash bronze, tin, rust and frosted green. Dueling clumps of contrasting colored blades cluttered the rolling lumpy fields. Here and there a lone yellow stalk stood above the fray like an ashen spear. It was autumn in Southeast Alaska, but here up the glittering Stikine River the warm Canadian wind rushing down river still ruled the landscape. Five mile downstream where the cold jade-green waters of the Gulf of Alaska surged upstream with the tide, the reign of the warm winds was not so secure and three foot chop upon the waters of eastern Sumner Straits indicated the battle line.

Here, upstream the silty waters of the Stikine calmly rambled and meandered across the wide valley beneath the high peaks of the Alaska Coastal Range, freshly dusted with new snow. The 16ft Lund with a drivers console on the port side raced by a tidal sandbar where seals had warmed themselves in the sun the afternoon before.

“Maeve, did your husband ever tell you about the best job in the world? He says the story has saved his life twice.”

The breeze coming across the bow carried bursts of Roxanne’s words to their grandsons sitting behind them. Maeve’s sharp oval eyes, swapped a knowing glance with Roxanne. They’d both heard snatches of the same conversation coming from the boys something about “-flipped the zodiac”. Her husband taught her years ago that she could hear all sorts of things if the kids didn’t think she was listening and she didn’t interrupt.

“I only remember the once that it saved his life.” Roxanne explained rotely, as she turned to face her sister and hence better hear the stories the boys in the back of the skiff swapped. A few strands of her sun-streaked red hair escaped the coarse braids she’d wrapped around her head like a halo. “We left Flagstaff headed west in that burnt orange Chevy of his. Around Quartzite, the road races through some hilly country.” Her ringless hand rises and falls in a wavy motion, which neither woman looks at. “It was a new two lane black top with wide shoulders. Your husband started telling the story. His dad was a big fan of Coors and he decided to put his money where his mouth was and bought shares in the company. Anytime they were anywhere near Golden they took the tour. “

“- the falls…two feet high“

“Now your husband and his brother were little kids being dragged along by the hand, bored to tears with the adult lectures given on the tour. But something caught their eye. There was a guy on the production floor sitting in a chair doing nothing but staring at bottles of beers as they passed a sheet of well lit paper. There were no labels on the bottles yet. Well, they knew exactly what this was about; a mouse had recently been found in a Pepsi bottle. It was all over the news, so apparently Coors was taking no chances. As the boys discussed this they noticed the worker glance at a bottle coming down the line. He’d spotted something! He kept watching the other bottles as they passed but also kept track of where that one bottle was as it approached his station. He leaned forward. He’d spotted something in the bottle! He snatched it from the production line as it tried to pass, popped the cap off and took a swig!”

Maeve laughed her diabolically laugh as she had every time she’d ever heard this story. They both listened quietly to the joking youths in the back talk about emptying their pockets and taking off their boots before they tried it.

“So, your husband is telling me and Stan this tale as he drives us through the hilly country outside Quartzite. At one point he looks up and sees two semis in the opposite lanes headed side by side down the hill. Not wanting to deal with gusts of wind and flying gravel they’d be producing, he signaled moved into the right hand lane and kept talking. Eventually, he returned to our originally lane and finished the story with his usual flourish. Neither Stan nor I laughed. He asks us what was wrong? I exclaimed “We could have died!” He had no clue what I was talking about. He said the semis were in the east bound lanes, what was the big deal? I pointed out that it was a two lane road and that one of them was coming at us down hill head on. He’d signaled, dodged a reflector at 60mph, and moved to the shoulder without ever missing a beat in his story.”

By now the boys were leaning forward to hear.

“If he hadn’t been busy telling the Story of the Best Job in the World, he would have freaked out, hit the brakes and we all would have died!”

“What? What! Grandma, tell that again.” erupted from the back of the little boat, but they’d arrived at their destination.

The tanned boys, dark-haired like their Grandmother Maeve, untied the scuffed red rubber zodiac tied behind the skiff all this time. Promising to be careful, they intended to paddle down the meandering northern anabranch of the Stikine called the Ketili. They would spend the afternoon drifting down the shallow, cottonwood lined stream to the hot tubs fishing for Dolly Vardon and wayward salmon to where the rest of the family would be. Their grandmother turned the skiff around and headed back down to Chief Shakes Hot Springs below the rapids in Chief Shakes Creek running from iceberg-laden deep, cold, Shake’s Lake beneath the edge of the coastal range ice fields.

“So let’s see, when they came back from Shakes Lake two days ago, instead of carrying the zodiac around the falls, they decided to go over them; flipping the zodiac and losing the cooler and two paddles.” Maeve said with a scowl growing across her glacial features. “I can’t believe how they retold that whole story without even noticing we were here.”

“Well, it’s like when we were girls. You were too young to remember.” Roxanne said using the code phrase to denote an event that her adopted sister Maeve wasn’t actually attending. “Our parents use to spell things at the table when they didn’t want us girls to understand what they were talking about. Eventually, I could spell, but I couldn’t figure out the word in time to understand the context. So as they spelled the words, our sister would listen to the story and I’d feed her the words, and then she’d recite the whole thing back to us. Our parents were so busy talking they never noticed what we were saying.” Roxanne nodded her coppery head back to the boys they’d just left at the head of the Ketili. “It worked fine for a long time. Then one night at dinner, they stopped talking just as our sister was reciting the conversation back to us. The looks on their faces. They thought she could spell at 4 years old!” Roxanne exclaimed with a shout to the sunny heavens above and the heavily forested canyon walls.

Both women hooted. Maeve weakly estimated she recalled that. This got them even giddier.

“What were our grandsons thinking?” Maeve asked with a grin still on her face and a “boys-will-be-boys shake of her head

“”Well, dearie” Roxanne began, “They thought the tide was high enough. They’d seen their fathers do it plenty of times. They figured 5 out of 10 times they would have made it. ” she explained.

“Their fathers, apparently know all about this? Do you think their mothers know?”

“Not yet.”

When Maeve and Roxanne arrived at the two red-cedar hot tubs, Roxanne’s step-daughters and granddaughters soaked in the upper screened-in tub safe from mosquitoes and notorious no-seeums. The men and younger boys wrestled around the lower tub out in the open, cropped, grassy field alongside Ketili Slough. The older boys’ mothers found out about them going over the rapids and their father’s discretion soon enough.

That night, after dinner at the family A-frame when the older kids played outside and the younger were in bed, the adults had a few words on the front deck.

“When were you going to tell us about this?” one of Roxanne’s step-daughters asked the men folk.

“We were going to have them tell their grandfather when he and your dad get here. The zodiac is company property.”

“When were you going to tell us?” asked another of the sisters with the emphasis on “us”.

Her husband replied that “It was their idea.” Trying to separate himself from his brother-in-laws.

“Come on girls. We’ve let those boys run skiffs up and down the river for two summers now.”

“Maybe that’s been a bad idea.”

“Who told you about this?”

One of the three sisters started to say “Mother, told us…”

“Aunt Roxanne, I appreciate we are talking about your grandsons, but…”

Maeve stepped between her offending son and Roxanne.

“I meant your mother.” his wife quickly explained as the younger generation feel silent under Maeve’s dark gaze.

The whole time, Roxanne looked at her step-daughters and sons-in-law with a bemused expression on her rosy features. A smiled sipped out of the firmly shut lips. She held herself, keeping her stout body still. Her laughing green eyes jumped from speaker to speaker. She held the satellite phone in her hand. Her only motion was to grab Maeve’s wrist when she’d stepped forward.

“Boys!” Roxanne called to the children. The older boys came running. She turned to her own sons and daughters-in-law. “Your sons are becoming quite the young men. You know, your father arrives tomorrow. Someone has to take the skiff across Sumner Strait to Mitkof Island and pick him and your Uncle Stan up. Your father thinks these young gentlemen are old enough to handle the trip. Don’t you?”

All around her, Roxanne saw jaws go slack, mouths fall open, and tense shoulders fall. She even heard a few sighs of relief exude from her loved ones. She beamed

M&R: Quiet, Distant Things

Maeve appeared out of nowhere. Her delicate long snow-white fingers of her right bejeweled hand held a small plate of lefse and krumkake from the nearby picnic table. Her left hand held a long stem wine glass half full of red. She laid them quietly on the park bench next to Roxanne.

Roxanne held the youngest of their grandchildren in her lap. Norwegian Independence day celebrations even amongst the white blossoms of the Black Cherries of Central Park were a little too rowdy for slumbering tots. She sat upright on the bench, knees together, and eyes intently on the little one. She held the child with her left hand cupped underneath the head pinning the tiny ears in a vise like grip.

Maeve chuckled at her “sister”. As many children, grandchildren as they’d raised together, and Roxanne still looked like she feared dropping one of the little darlings. Maeve laid a gentle hand on the padded shoulders of Roxanne’s bunad.

Trying to imitate her husband’s voice, Maeve said, as she’d seen and heard her husband say to Roxanne a thousand times in this situation. “Relax.”

Roxanne’s shoulder’s fell. She tossed an appreciative glance towards Maeve. A smile came to her face. Her cheeks grew rosy; she turned the sleeping toddler in her arms and settled back in her woolen vest against the wooden bench. As Maeve slipped away to tend to the older children still eating tea sandwiches and chowder, Roxanne began thinking about quiet distant things to calm herself and the grandchild.

Across the park the cupola of one of the follies shined with a bronze hue. She chuckled to herself thinking about her first husband. Rex was such a force of nature; straw-colored hair, a wrestler’s body, a perpetual grin and endless energy. She sighed in remembrance of their carefree youthful marriage. He’d suggested late one night that they go camping. She pointed out he had to be a work the next day. He answer was, “We’ll take an alarm clock.” Sleeping bags in tow they drove his little car to the top of a pyramid-shaped “cinder cone” east of town. In the dim headlights she made out the sensuous form of an ancient windswept bristlecone pine where the firebreak stopped. It alone had managed to survive atop this shifting pile of pumice since the end of volcanic activity four hundred years before. Roxanne recalled hesitating at that moment. Now, she smiled at herself for the delicious night’s sleep that followed. While Rex laid out the sleeping bags, Roxanne braided her wild flaming hair and wrapped it in a stocking cap. Roxanne sang the praises of the brilliant stars above, as Roxanne snuggled into her bag. The soft rusty pumice pebbles, conformed to her shape and eased her towards sleep. Not a breathe of air moved the brilliant celestial lights.

She woke to soft crunching noises as her husband moved. He’d brought Danishes and pints of half-n-half for them to breakfast on. He wished his bride “Good morning, sleepy-head” and returned to gazing towards the East. Roxanne remembered rising from the soft cinders to see what her beloved stared at so seriously. She gasped then, and now Roxanne chuckled softly in warm memory of the moment. Before her emerald eyes laid the graceful “dawn” before the dawn in all its panoramic glory. A thousand feet below her, the Colorado Plateau rolled eastern, swallowing up small cinder cones, racing across the arroyos forming Walnut Creek, gobbling up lesser ridgelines, rushing across the Painted Desert and merging on the horizon with the Navajo Reservation. A cloudless sky the dim color of morning fog veiled the line between the world below and world above. Her husband whispered something about “streaks” as though not to spook them and after a moment she would see the bronze hue rising; gloriously streaming to heaven afar. She followed them heavenwards only to be unable to see them; the Milky Way blazed still above them. A gasp started out of her. Returning to the horizon the metallic light was almost too bright. The proverbial rosy fingers of the dawn rose in great shafts across the horizon to signal the stars departure. Distant ground fog formed. The brighten light revealed the hidden inversion layers among the canyon. The desert breeze began to move about slowly as though still stiff from a sound sleep. Radiant beams burst through the horizon onto her face. Roxanne gasped.

At that moment Roxanne took in a deep breathe of the chill morning air and found herself back on a park bench with the baby asleep in her arms. She smiled at the delightful old memory.

Across the way, Maeve and the little girls (in the glacial blue bunards of Alaska’s Little Norway) were putting away the picnic. The little boys waving miniature Norwegian flags in the air insisted their grandfathers take them swimming.

Roxanne laughed at the thought of sleeping bags. She hadn’t slept in a sleeping bag since God only knows when! When she turned 29 for the 11th time, she announced that they would be no more sleeping in the dirt! Except for that time at the cabin. Now,a gentler softer smile graced her rosy face. Their men folk at the deer camp awoke them in the middle of the night. “Leonid Showers!” her brother-in-law whispers over the satellite phone as though he hadn’t wakened all the adults in the house. Her grown stepdaughters were relieved that it wasn’t bad news and excited about seeing the meteorites showers. Maeve volunteered to stay behind with the youngest children who’d stayed asleep through the general alarm anyway. Roxanne and her stepdaughters gathered up all the older girls, sleeping bags and blankets they could.

Accompanied by the family’s dark-furred, sharp-fanged Jake and Gizmo, she led them all down to the bank of the Stikine River and settled into the dry river-washed sand above the high-tide mark. Roxanne smiled in delight at the memory; the young women and their daughters oohed and aahed at the passing of each ephemeral streak in the Alaska’s star-studded sky. She recalled with a heave of her ample chest how her darling little granddaughters had gathered around her, in her lap and under her blankets to guard against the chill. Each had to outdo the other’s in pointing out the fast-moving stars. “Grandmother look!” “Over her too grandmother”. “Aunt Roxanne, look here.” Now on the park bench she felt warmed by the cool memories. (Maeve always says she is the single most adorned person in their broad extended family.)

Naturally, Maeve’s (secret) favorite granddaughter got them all to notice the starlight dancing atop the overhead glaciers. Agatha convinced everyone to lie in the soft sand and wait. After a few moments of quiet, the stars seemed to grow brighter. When the little girls fingers were no longer tracing the falling stars from the sky, it get their eyes a chance to see the finer bits of light falling by the thousands over their heads of the bevy to dark-haired little girls. All was calm, all was bright.
With warm little children in her arms under the pile of blankets, they were all soon fast asleep.

Little Gizmo, wagging her whole moppish body, licked Roxanne awake shortly after that. With children in their arms, the women returned to their “girls-only slumber party” in the cabin. Still sleepy and fretting over her granddaughters, Roxanne never noticed the absence of Gizmo’s big, drooling mate. It wasn’t until the next morning when they found the paw prints in the dew-drenched sand, did they realize Jake had been keeping the bears at bay.

Roxanne turned her body a little to keep the slumbering tot from the sun and brushed back a black lock of his stray hair. “Holy infant so tender and mild.” She more whispered that sang. Then laughed and admitted to herself that she was no round young virgin!

She thought fondly of Maeve’s love of the Christmas Eve service at the Lutheran Church. They always arrived as early so the whole clan would sit together in the balcony. It was warmest there, what with the heavily bundled crowd below and the heat from the candles decorating the church. Roxanne chuckled again. Heat was an important considerations given that the furnace had failed twice in her memory during that service. (Once was a power failure.) As the little children tottered between sleep and excitement about Santa’s visit, their parent and grandparents watched the pews below become packed with women in bunards worn only for high holidays at church and the week-long festivities during Little Norway Days. The men all wore Norwegian sweaters with the exception of Maeve and Roxanne’s family. All their men wore three piece wool suits.

Two enormous trees flanked the altar, one dressed in ornamental balls of red ribbon, the other done up in white Christmas tree decorations. Twinkling lights peeked out from the foliage of both trees. Fresh cut spruce bows decorated the window sills (cedar was too rare and hemlock shed needles too quickly). Amongst them stood candles in tall glasses lighting the holy silent night outside with love’s pure light. Most years the ushers and “owners of the church” brought folding chairs out of the fellowship hall to seat the overflowing crowd. The congregation seemed more subdued, if not actually louder than normal, but that was probably due to its size. Pastor would be somber and nervous. Here was one of his twice a year chances to convert the heathens (husbands) accompanying their families. The service was all about shepherds quaking at the sight, Christmas carols and peace on earth. As the overhead lights began to dim, the acolytes lit their own candles from the “Jesus Candle” before the festive altar. Pacing with practiced steps down the aisle, they would share the holy flame with worshipers on either side. They in turned passed it on to those beside them. His light and warmth spread through the church. A silence full of awe fell upon the worshippers as they began to sing softy and sweetly of a silent night, holy night, … “Sleep in heavenly peace”, heavenly hosts and “Jesus, Lord at Thy birth " They were in the presence of the Almighty. That blessed assurance stayed with Roxanne and her family as they blew a kiss that darkened their candles as they filed out of the nave. In addition, on a rare occasion, on the holiest night of the year, fresh flakes of snow would be falling as they exited.

Something soft and silky slipped down the back of her neck. A cold chill ran down her body. If it weren’t for the sleeping babe in her arms, Roxanne would have jumped up screaming. She looked up to see the cherry blossoms floating earthward like new falling snow.