On the first Friday in April, Naaliyah returned once more with empty hands. Winkler thought: I am living the same story over and over.
Although there were still nights of astonishing cold (the trees expanding and flexing, one or two giving up and exploding, the echoes dying quickly in the heavy air) the winter began to wane. The auroras diminished; a wedge of geese appeared in the sky one morning, winging north. Some days the sun rose high enough to melt snow off the roof of the cabin, and icicles formed during the night, pillars between the eaves and the ground. There were even hours now when Winkler could work at his microscope without gloves, could chop wood in only a wool shirt.
The warblers returned, and the juncos. Even a robin—so motionless on the eave Winkler wondered if maybe it had frozen solid and Naaliyah had placed it there as a prank. But when he reached for it, it blinked, and flapped off
Aircraft started appearing in the southern sky, Beechcraft and Cessnas and even a big Twin Otter, circling a bit before lazing down toward the airstrip at Eagle. Naaliyah looked better each day, her cheeks taking on color, her work accumulating momentum. The winter had been a triumph she would carry with her the rest of her life. Her insects—many of them—were still alive. She was still alive. Some afternoons he would walk into the cabin and she’d be laughing on the CB with the ranger. “Really?” she’d say. “He said that?”
He could see health in her arms, in the cords of her neck. When she bent she kept her legs straight, like an athlete, her hamstrings long and tight. She washed herself with buckets of hot water and wrapped her hair and midsection in towels and walked around with her bare calves sticking out of her boots, laces trailing behind. Desire flared in him—when she brought a spoon out from between her lips, when she stood in the meadow, eyes closed, chin tilted up at the sun. He hated himself for it, for being an old and lecherous man, for the times she caught his eyes on her body a half second too long.
He sat beside the stove until after midnight and wrote. The snow pecking at the window was almost rain.
A Wednesday in early April: the sky a pale, fabulous blue. Naaliyah stood in the doorway and announced, “Tonight I’m going to town. I’m going into town and I’m going dancing. Anybody who wants to can come along.” All afternoon Winkler fumbled with the Stratalab. Naaliyah shaved her legs in the dying light; she brushed her hair; she pulled on a dress he did not even know she had, black printed over with bright red macaws, and zipped her snowsuit over it.
“Do you need me to feed the insects?”
“They’ll be fine. I’ll be back tonight. You’re sure you don’t want to come?” He looked around at the meadow; he shook his head. Two minutes later she started the snowmachine and half stood off its bench and throttled off, arcing over the crust frozen on top of the snow.
The daylight slowly left the trees. He could hear the growl of the Skidoo as she guided it down through the trees, and he stood out there a moment longer, watching the light change, snow drifting between branches, and then went in.
She started going often—every few nights, staying in town until past midnight, once not returning until dawn. Sometimes he’d walk out into the spruce, toward her tracks, waiting to see the speck of her headlight as it turned up the long trail toward the camp, shaking snow from the overhanging trees, starting animals from the path. Through gaps in the treetops the frozen Yukon loomed below him, huge and wide, here smooth as a runway, there buckled with heaves.
He’d eat his dinner alone; he’d stare at the CB and consider switching it on. Certainly it was the park service ranger, the one with the wind-blasted face and khakis, but he did not ask her and it was none of his business anyway.
Silence boomed over the meadow, big and pale. He fell asleep in the chair by the stove and when he woke, still in half dreams, he dragged himself to Naaliyah’s cot and continued sleeping there.
He woke later still to the sound of the snowmobile roaring into the meadow. The door opened and closed, and he heard logs thump into the stove. He opened his eyes. The heat lamps were all down and the only light came from embers flaring in the stove and a candle burning on her desk.
She smelled of beer, and hamburgers, and cigarette smoke. Ice melted from her hair and dripped onto the floor. He found his glasses on the shelf beside him. At the far end of the cabin he could just see her, bending over a cage, lifting a wire lid, taking a spider up in her fingers.