Northern Lights
Monica Nawrocki
I was reading in my room one night when Mom yelled that it was too dark to read by a candle and For the Love of God, Get a lantern, Please! My mom prefaces all standing orders with For the love of God. As though invoking God will miraculously imprint the order into my memory. But who notices the light is fading in the middle of a good book?
I went to fetch a lantern and noticed a kind of throbbing light at the window so I went out on the porch to investigate. At first glance it looked like the lake was on fire. It took a second before I realized that the lake was reflecting the sky – northern lights! Not the kind that look like they might just be jittery clouds, but really good ones. Huge flashes, mostly green and yellow. Some purple and pink, too. They were the best ones I ever saw. Blurry pulses of colour tumbling in every direction, like a ghost circus.
My dad says the northern lights are a sign; that every time they visit, they’re pulsing a message for someone. Maybe the message was for me! I was wearing my pajamas, but I left the porch and ran down the path to the shore for a better view. I saw our neighbour Miss Jensen sitting on the big rock at the bottom of her path, also watching the lights. Also wearing pajamas. She just smiled at me so I waved but didn’t go over. She’s young and pretty, quite small with nice blonde hair, but not overly friendly. More city-friendly, I guess. Some people think that she doesn’t like kids, but that’s not true at all. We sometimes pick berries together since the blackberries grow right across the property line between our driveway and hers. She and mom and I made blackberry jelly together last summer and it was really fun.
She lives with her two brothers on the place next to us which they inherited from their grandfather. My dad calls them the hopeless young folk. He thinks most people in their 20s are hopeless. But the Jensens can’t be that hopeless because they’ve been here two full years already and truly hopeless city folk never make it through their first winter. When I pointed that out to dad he just grunted and went to milk the goat.
When the dance contest between the lake and the sky finally finished, I decided their message wasn’t for me. Slightly disappointed, I turned to go back to the house at the same time that Miss Jensen did. She took a few steps up her path and stopped. Froze, actually. I couldn’t see what she was staring at, but she looked terrified – I thought maybe a cougar or a wolf. I started towards her just as she took off, sprinting up their path towards a different kind of glow – their house was on fire.
I raced after her and nearly caught up by the top of the hill. She dashed straight into the house so I just ran right in after her. The first floor was smoky but there were no flames – the fire was upstairs. She turned and saw me and shoved me out the door.
“Stay out!” she yelled and grabbed the garden hose, dragging it with her. I ran to turn on the water as she hauled the hose up the staircase inside, but I heard her swear; their water was gravity fed, same as ours.
I didn’t know what to do. Run home? Run to the road and hope someone drove by? Fat chance of that. All the men, including my dad, were at the hall for a volunteer fire department meeting. Yes, the whole VFD was at the hall which had NO telephone. The meeting would be done by now and they were probably all out in the parking lot, tinkering with our decrepit old firetruck which dad says is running on “binder twine and spit.”
I swear, sometimes living on this island at the end of the earth has some drawbacks. Like being cousins with every boy in school. Also, wearing hand-me-down unmentionables. It’s 1960, for crying out loud. The rest of the world has electricity, a telephone in every home, and firetrucks that actually save buildings.
A window opened above me and something flew out, arcing gracefully through the sky and landing in the yard. I ran over to find a knitting bag, its base a colourful weaved basket. I remember thinking how long the handles were. Funny, the things your mind notices in a moment like that.
Miss Jensen pounded back down the stairs to the kitchen and things started flying out the door; a frying pan, pots, a wicker chair. It all happened quickly but I can still see those things soaring across the dark sky as if in slow motion. The cool, fresh air of autumn was replaced with smoke that came to my nose in wafts. A wisp of burning cedar like our woodstove in the morning was followed by a sharp smell that left a chemical taste at the back of my throat.
As I stood there watching, I heard a bad sound – a whinny turning into a squeal – and I ran around the corner of the house to find their horse tethered to a tree. I tried to untie her, but she strained so hard, I couldn’t loosen the knot.
Then, a big ember landed right on her back, and she screamed and snapped her head backward, breaking the tether and bolting down the path to the lake.
When I went back to the front of the house, people were running up the lane, including my dad and a half dozen other men from the hall. Both Mr. Jensens had arrived, and the brothers were throwing things out the front door with Miss Jensen, but it got too hot, and they all came out coughing and holding their arms over their faces. The Mr. Jensens ran to the barn and were dragging tools and equipment out – just in case. I didn’t know what I should be doing. My heart thudded and my feet felt glued to the ground.
Finally, finally, I heard the pathetic fire truck struggling up the steep incline on the other side of the trees. It rolled backwards down the hill three times but on the fourth attempt, finally wheezed into the yard.
The older Mr. Jensen started yelling at the chief to spray the trees, not the house. I thought he’d lost his mind, but dad explained it later. He said that if they hadn’t soaked the trees, we might have had a forest fire on our hands – not to mention a half-burnt house to clean up. I don’t know how you clean up a half-burnt house; maybe burn it down?
Anyway, it was hot and smoky and horrible; the one brother screaming to let the house burn and people running around and yelling. The sky glowed red all around us and embers shot up angrily and floated off, looking for trouble. Eventually, everyone calmed down because there wasn’t anything left to do.
I sat with some other folks and watched the fire. Miss Jensen sat nearby on a tree stump, stroking her cat and murmuring into its ear.
After a while, she got up and walked around the yard like she was looking for something. When I went over and asked, she said, “I threw my knitting bag down, but I can’t find it.”
“I saw it,” I said. She was close behind me when I got to the right spot, but the bag wasn’t there. I looked around until I found a little pile of ash in a perfect circle with bits of colour in it.
Miss Jensen ran her fingers through it. “Mama’s basket,” she whispered. I didn’t know if I should stay or go, but then the cat squirmed out of her arms and ran away and I saw a tear drip off her chin, so I decided to stay.
Mrs. Gardener came over then and put her arm around Miss Jensen. Mrs. Gardener is kind of the doctor of our island. The real doctor comes on the steamship once a month but the rest of the time, Mrs. Gardener sets bones, and stitches up cases of carelessness with the axe, and hands out the right herbs for Whooping cough. Mom says Mrs. Gardener is also the island headshrinker. “Time for a cup of tea with headshrinker Gardener,” my mom would say to her friend Elsie every time she threatened to kill Buster. Buster is Elsie’s husband.
Mrs. Gardener and Miss Jensen moved across the grass a bit so they could see better and sat down a safe distance from the fire. I joined them and we watched the walls fall in, and the propane tank explode and shoot into the sky like a sad little rocket with nowhere to go.
It took a long time for the red to turn to grey and black, but eventually, the smoldering pile in front of us was no longer recognizable as a home. It seemed impossible that anyone had ever slept or eaten or laughed there.
Mrs. Gardener turned to Miss Jensen and said, “This may sound strange, but I kind of envy you this chance to start over. To be free again.”
I thought it was a pretty insensitive thing to say but what do I know? I could see how Mrs. Gardener might want to be freed from her life – what with her six kids, each one dumber than the next. But why Miss Jensen?
Then again, this wasn’t the only horrible thing to happen to Miss Jensen this year. Her boyfriend disappeared a ways back. The official story is that he took off on her, but I heard a lot of things when it happened. Some people think Miss Jensen’s brothers chased him off, on account of the hateful way he treated her. Chasing people off the island is what we have instead of police. A few people even believe he’s dead and good riddance. It’s pretty amazing how much you can hear from the adults if you pretend you’re not listening.
I watched Mrs. Gardener with her arm around Miss Jensen’s shoulders. I suppose if anyone knew Miss Jensen, it would be Mrs. Gardener. She’d have been the one to put poultices on cuts and bruises and listen as Miss Jensen tried to puzzle out how someone meant to love her, ended up hurting her.
I imagine Mrs. Gardener knows plenty of secrets.
I checked to see if Miss Jensen looked miffed about what Mrs. Gardener said, but she had a funny look on her face as she stared at the charred mess. Then she patted Mrs. Gardener’s knee without turning her head. “Free,” she said softly. “Hmm.”
Dad told me to go home then, so I walked back down their trail to the lake. The further away I got, the less smoky the air became, but I’ll remember the smell of burning horsehair forever.
Before I turned up our trail, I stopped and looked out over the lake again. The sky sat dark and quiet. I thought about Miss Jensen sitting on that rock earlier, watching the light show, and I wondered what she’d read in that magical sky.
I searched one last time, but the northern lights had folded up their message and gone.
Monica Nawrocki
Monica Nawrocki has lived in three provinces, had five concussions, owned a Ford Pinto, and married a woman long before it was cool. Writing was inevitable. She has published four books, and her short fiction and poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies in North America and the UK. www.monicanawrocki.com.