Warpaint (20 page)

“I'm sorry.”

“I'm not! Such a stubborn one! She'll go around with me, to pow-wow, in spring, and on Memorial day for those of us who died in World War I or the War we both remember best, and she might wear a Jingle Dress to make me jealous, or tease me with maple and wild rice and even let me take her to Church, but she always said she'd married, as the Good Lord commanded and that was that. Oh, I don't blame her. I'm a fisherman. Hard business. Mind if I sit?”

“Please.” Quiola was fascinated. Never at any point in her life, did she think she'd meet someone who'd known her grandmother. “Mr. –?”

“Novitsky. But you should call me David.”

“My name's Quiola.”

“I know, I held you, once. You weren't more than this.” He placed his hands a tiny baby size apart. “Rosie left us for the city. But a city's no place for an Otter.”

Quiola felt a tempo of quick anger. “She was a good mother.”

His dark eyes sparked. “Unlike her own? Hmm?”

“My grandmother, I gather, was a difficult woman.”

“Difficult!” He pursed his lips. “Have you come to visit her?”

“Have I come…whatever do you mean?”

He slapped his knee meditatively with a one-hand beat. “She lives up yonder.”

Quiola stared at the old man, as if he'd just dropped down from another solar system. Her mind, and time, stopped and for one, upside down moment, she went hysterically blind – nothing focused. Then the old man was there, and her check, still to be paid. Trying on calm like a new garment, she opened her mouth to speak and found only the sound of silence. She tried again. “I'm sorry, Mr. Novitsky, but there must be some mistake. My grandmother died more than forty years ago.” Hadn't her mother always said,
Sweetheart, you are better off. Believe me. Mother was iron. No give to her, no bend. A switchblade and a heart got cut to shreds if it came near.

“So, then, you'll visit? I can show you the way. My, but Marge'll be surprised, don't you know.”

The name,
her
name – but it had to be a mistake! And so, to make him go away, she said she had to go just then, and she gave him her cell number (she could always have it changed), and told him sure, she would meet his old friend, if he so wished, while she was staying in the area. But as soon as she got back in the rental car, she regretted it. The old man was crazy.

But what if –
Quiola pulled out of the parking lot, thinking
no, it couldn't possibly be true. He's a crazy old coot.

Rollins Road, when she found it, was still no better than it had been five years before: a dirt path, pockmarked by winter erosion. She eased off 61 and down into the muddy ruts and rumbled along slowly, mildly cursing Alamo for giving her a car with no pick-up or shocks. She found the driveway easily, memory kicking in like a movie – she knew these woods, this earth, even having only visited once.

And at the end of the dirt drive: Treetops. It, too, hadn't changed. The dark red-paint, the solid, heavy beams, an architecture of cunning and comfort, Treetops nestled on its eyrie above the lake as if it had been there since forever. Stopping, she pulled the parking brake and sat for a moment, breathing in the bracing cold. She could hear the Lake, and just barely make out its foggy horizon, a melting of one element into another. A gull mourned. She got out of the car. As she did, she could hear the creak and resonant slam of a screen door, and then from the deep shadow of the gabled entrance stepped a woman, dressed in dark green sweats and a gray pullover. She had long, straight brown hair and waited politely for her guest.

“Welcome to my home,” said the young woman. “I'm Sara. It's Quiola? Have I pronounced it right?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Come on in. Mom and I have been waiting for you.”

“Not too long, I hope.”

“Not at all.” Together they walked up the wooden porch planks to the solid front door, and back, as far as Quiola was concerned, into one of the most perfect human spaces she'd ever had the fortune to know. First, the heady perfume of the place, dominated by woodsmoke, with undertones of onion, bacon and coffee, a hint of evergreen, which wasn't surprising given that the cabin was built of knotty white pine. When she stepped into the house, she stepped into the past; she knew these odors, of food and fresh air, of wool blankets and a hint of cedar from closets and chests – Treetops.

Beth Moore stood near the fireplace, still straight as a fishing rod, with the bend and grace of one as well. She put out her hand.

“I'm so glad you could come. Aunt Elizabeth spoke of you, and of the Davis family, quite often.”

“All good, I hope,” said Quiola, falling back on one of her mother's phrases.

“Oh, hardly that. My aunt wasn't made of sugar and light, now, was she? No. She spent her last hours here, thank god. Not someone you want to try to force into hospital, or a nursing home. It would be to your everlasting regret.”

“Mom –”

“What? We both know she was a witch.”

Quiola started, but Beth merely warmed her back at the fire as Lake Superior's muted thunder filled the silence for a moment or two, until Sara shrugged and said to her guest, “Let's get you settled. We can rake Gran over the coals later.”

Treetops had a guestroom perched in the eaves over the kitchen; it could only be reached by going back outdoors, and up a heavy-beamed, switchback staircase where once a handyman had lived, to help maintain the place.

“It's a bit inconvenient,” said Sara as she helped Quiola lug her things up the staircase and inside. The room was, like the rest of the house, redolent of wood-smoke and paneled with pine. “But the other guestroom, inside, is all torn up. We had a leak, and the room is a mess. I'm sorry about this – you'll have to come inside to use the bathroom. Or if you don't mind,” she added, sliding open a closet door, “there's a chamber-pot.”

Quiola stared in mild disbelief at the heavy ceramic pot with its discreet cover.

“Will you mind?”

She did, but she said, “No.”

“Well, then, I'll leave and let you get unpacked. Mother's a bit old-fashioned and we will serve a tea in about an hour. Please join us.” And with a shy smile she left.

Alone, a buzzing thing started to zip around inside Quiola. She hung her spares in the closet, laid out her flannel on the single bed, and so on, coming last to her watercolors and traveling sketch-book and all the while the buzzing thing kept at her until she realized it was exultation, a confused high, like fizz off the top of a champagne bottle: she was being uncorked. She sat down on the bed with a thump, landing like a hot air balloon with a whoosh, and surveyed her nest – the place was cozy, the wall to wall indoor outdoor, oatmeal in color and both soft and durable, made her want to take her shoes off. And the child-like writing desk beside one of the two windows seemed to beckon, sit here, post a letter, sketch a little, stay with me.

Beth Moore's afternoon tea was not an elaborate affair – Earl Grey with a plate of flat, ginger cookies. Dinner was equally sensible: broiled walleye, which Sara had caught. Conversation was direct and simple: Quiola's trip, the weather, and the house, and some politics – feeling out new territory. But once the two younger women finished clearing the table, and Beth had laid another fire, Quiola sat down in a chair and asked,

“Do you have any idea why Liz wanted me to visit Treetops? I mean, I would've liked to attend the funeral –”

“I know,” said Beth. “But that's not what she wanted. Hated funerals. I did my best
not
to have one. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all,” but she didn't expect a pipe.

After sucking at its thin, graceful stem, getting the shag to catch, Beth said, “My aunt was very particular. I didn't argue with her. She left instructions. Detailed, exacting and a bit mystifying. But she'd lived a long time and kept her secrets, secret.”

“Not all of them,” said Sara.

“Really?” her mother countered, smiling. “Such as?”

“She liked to tell me stories about her childhood. You know she did. So I don't think she kept every secret she ever knew.”

“All right, then. But she didn't always confide in me.”

“No because you thought her a bit odd.”

“Well? Wasn't she?”

Sara turned to Quiola. “Gran wanted you and I to get to know each other. I'm not sure why, but she said we should meet, after she'd passed.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “Games.”

“Just Gran's way. She told me to invite you up here, and that I should tell you –” She stopped herself.

“Go on,” said Beth. “Tell her what?”

“Mom, please. I just remembered I'm supposed to tell the story out by the Cauldron, near the farm where they found him. Where they found Gus.”

Beth Moore took another pull on her pipe. “You're supposed to tell her about Gus? I see. As I said, she was always an oddball. My father loved his kid sister, but she did get wearisome. Quiola, you seem to be in for a hiking expedition.”

“I'm just supposed to tell the story out in the open, on the river.”

“How much fun! A hike up the Temperance for an old, sad story!” Beth set her pipe down on the mantle. “Aunt Liz also wanted me to give you this –” she took a small white carving off the mantle, along with a notebook. “Honest to Pete, why you had to truck all the way up here for these things I don't know when UPS would've been more efficient.”

The carving was about two inches tall, an inquisitive otter upright on his tail, as if about to give an address. Quiola smiled. “It's lovely.”

“It's made of ivory walrus tusk,” said Sara, “by a native artist, from Alaska. Gran found it in a local gallery. If you look inside the notebook you'll find some information about the artist and his work.”

Quiola opened the large yellowing notebook, or rather a sketchbook of Liz's, one from the early 1960s, to find the card about the otter. “But this is too generous,” she said. “One of Liz's notebooks must be worth a pretty penny.”

“It's what she wanted. I have to say, Sara always understood Aunt Liz better than anyone, and I must confess I'm not one for art. I simply don't understand it. Well, except as a picture to warm up a wall – I like that one, over there, for example, her last. But most of Liz's work doesn't warm up anything.”

“No, that's not how I'd describe it. Most of it.” Quiola walked over to the small canvas of a girl turning wild or a wild thing, turning girl.

“Oh, Mom. You just don't give it a chance.”

“Waste of my time. I just don't get it. That one at least tells a story I know, or at least it seems to.”

“
Series B
,” said Quiola, “told stories.”

“
Series B
?” said Beth. “Something she did, I gather – like I said, I wouldn't know. But it's getting late, and I should be off. I'll see you both tomorrow, for breakfast?”

“Sure, Mom, that's fine. Quiola, would you like to go upstairs now? Pardon me for being so forward, but you look tired. I know traveling always takes me down a peg.”

Quiola smiled gratefully. “I am tired. Very.”

But she woke in the dead middle of the night, out of a dream where she seemed to be searching for a lost animal, not Amelia but something dearly beloved and despairingly lost; and woke into a thunderstorm that shook the eaves of her nest. Lightning illumined the blinds in the window as if someone had turned on an arc. Percussion rumbled up the mountains and back down. She watched the play of light and sound, dozing, now dreaming of a bear which looked more like a wolf or a dogbear, and it followed her quiet and dangerous; when next she woke, the thin light of morning paled her room. At five, she sat up, got out of bed. She could still hear a terrific wind as she pulled on a robe and ruffled her hair into something better than it was. She had to pee, and she didn't want to use the chamber-pot, so, quiet as she could manage, she cracked open the door to her room, to go downstairs. Not even a breath of a breeze blew. Yet the sound, terrific, boomed on.

It was the Lake.

The Lake was throwing herself about like a despairing lover in a tawdry romance, anguished, wave after pounding wave; Quiola could feel the power of water shake the earth as she padded across the wooden plank porch, and quietly opened the kitchen door, thinking that way in less intrusive than the front door. Inside the pantry and laundry room, darkness and silence, the concrete floor cold, and the air earthy, mingled with fabric softener and fruit. She moved quickly past cabinets, stove, and hearth to the bathroom and back, hoping she had not disturbed her host.

Once again in her bed, she let herself think for a moment that her grandmother might still be alive, and that David Novitsky had not been a crank. It seemed as fantastically improbable as Sacagawea's reunion with her brother in the company of Lewis and Clark, a story she carried around with her, like the creased old post-card she kept in her wallet of
Indian Symbols And Their Meanings
. The Snake Woman, or Boat Pusher, or whatever name she knew herself by, burdened with a mixed blood boy, ignored until useful, had fortitude. The idea she might also have had kinship ties never seemed to have occurred to either Lewis or Clark until she stood before her brother, a man now and responsible for his people – or so it seemed to Quiola, who'd once read the journals as if she were a detective, looking for clues to this long dead Indian woman.

Soon, she could hear someone moving about in the kitchen below, and the sound allowed her to rise, stretch, pull on the robe again and go back downstairs. The aroma of coffee embraced her as soon as she opened the kitchen door.

“Good morning,” said Sara. “Did you sleep through the storm?”

“I slept fine. Coffee smells great.”