Autumn Imago: A Novel

By Bryan Wiggins

An unexpected reunion at a remote lakeside camp in the Maine woods offers the possibility of reconciliation and healing for a man and his fractured family.

For years, Paul Strand has been estranged from his family. But when his mother’s escalating Alzheimer’s disease creates a crisis that calls him home, he’s pressured into hosting a reunion he’s avoided for decades in the one place he thought his family would never return to: the rural state park in Maine where his little sister drowned years before on a family vacation.

Over the course of ten days of guiding his family over difficult terrain, Paul finds himself torn between his desire for isolation and the need to reconnect with the only people who can make him whole. But after a lifetime of separation, is the painful chasm between them—and within Paul’s own soul—too deep to overcome?

In this poignant spiritual novel that echoes the emotional resonance of The Glass Castle and Running with Scissors, Bryan Wiggins beautifully illuminates the mysterious power of the wilderness and the resiliency of the human spirit to heal in the wake of devastating trauma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9780062565693

Book preview

Prologue

Surfacing

Jordan surfaced. It was the light that pulled her from the depths of her dreams. There was certainly no sound in that place to disturb her. The silence she’d slipped into the night before was still thick in her ears.

She kept her eyes closed, envisioning the world beyond her window before opening them, making a game out of guessing what shade of morning she’d find. It was early, she saw, when she finally looked. She rose and padded quietly past her sleeping brother to make her way to the small cabin’s only other room. Her father snored softly on the bed in the corner, lying on his back, one hairy leg slipped free from the thin sheet that covered the rest of him and the small body of Jordan’s mother tucked tight against the big man.

Jordan tiptoed to the front window and looked out on the pond. It shone like dull silver, lighter on one side of its flat, pewter plane. Lighter to the east, toward Katahdin. Her eyes grew big to take in the mountain. Seven years of summer visits, and the massif still seemed unreal. It was an impossibility to her—a long, distant world that rose so high above the horizon it upset the balance provided everywhere else by that line.

She turned and walked back to pull her fleece vest from a chair, shrugging into it before her feet found her purple flip-flops under the bed. Tommy turned away from her in his sleeping bag, corkscrewing lower as he drew his head to his knees.

Tommy, she whispered, bending over her brother. Come outside, Tommy. Come skip stones with me. He shimmied lower till only a shock of white-blond hair poked from the top of his bag.

Uh-uh.

Jordan sighed and grabbed the handle on the back door, slipping out and closing it slowly until she heard the latch catch. She walked to the wooden wall that screened the outhouses in the woods behind the cabin, craning her head around it to make sure the privy door was open. Tommy always forgot to fasten the door open for the next person. If it was closed, she’d have to stand and listen long enough to make sure no one was inside. But the door was open now.

It was cold this morning. She put her hands under her armpits while she tinkled, then hopped off and pulled her sweatpants up quickly before skipping out the door. She took a second before leaving to fit the end of the hook screwed into the door through the small, round metal eye on the doorframe. It took her a moment, but she got it. Dad said the little things were important, the little things you did for other people. Otherwise you were—what was that word?—inconsiderate. Tommy might be inconsiderate, but not her. She always took time to lock the door open.

She walked down the path toward the back of the next cabin. Merganser, she whispered, watching the word turn to a puff of frosted breath. She used to call it Mergaber, and it had made Dad laugh. But Tommy had teased her, so she learned how to say it right and then taught herself to identify each of the twelve cabins by name. She could do it without even looking at the chiseled white letters the ranger had carved and painted on the wooden signs by every door.

Lone Pine, Jordan whispered, naming the cabins that led up to this one, Loon’s Nest, Woodchuck Hollow, Merganser. Paul and Kim were in Merganser. Dad said that was because they were older, but Jordan didn’t care. He also said Woodchuck Hollow was the best, had the best view of the mountain on the whole damned pond. Mom said Norman! sharply when he said that, but Jordan saw her smile.

She stopped to listen carefully at the back door of Merganser, but no one was stirring inside. She knew Paul would paddle with her if she went in and woke him. Maybe Kim, but definitely Paul. Her oldest brother would do anything she asked. Tommy said it was because she was the baby, but she could do some things Tommy couldn’t, even though he was a year and a quarter older. Like get five skips on a rock when she threw it across the pond. The best he ever got was three.

When she came to the front of the library, she stopped. It looked just like the other cabins from the outside, but it was a lot bigger. On rainy days it was the best place to go to play games or curl up and read Harry Potter while the fire crackled in the woodstove and the pond dimpled with rain. Jordan stepped back and looked up to where she could just see the gray bowl of the swallows’ nest under the eaves. Dad said they were gone this time of year, but it didn’t keep her from hoping that she might see a dark head peek out. She could still picture the trio of small cheeping beaks that had greeted her when her father lifted her to the same spot during an early summer visit years ago, a picture she kept alive by revisiting it often in her mind.

Sentinel, Jordan said, as she ran her hand along a rough log in the next cabin’s wall. Doubletop, she continued as she passed the last one before she reached the line of overturned canoes that rested on raised logs by the water. She looked down for flat stones, the kind she could practice with. If she did it enough, maybe she could get six skips, or even seven. Boy, would that make Tommy mad.

She’d found her best stone ever the day before, thin and white and almost perfectly round, so perfect that she had slipped it in her pocket as a present for someone. Mom said those gifts were the best kind—the ones you wanted to keep for yourself but didn’t.

The wind came off the shore, and Jordan pulled up her shoulders and stamped her feet on the gravelly beach as she continued to search. She stooped to pick up another stone before the soft thump, thump, thump she’d been hearing pierced her concentration and made her look up. One of the long green canoes was pulled up on the beach, its stern still in the water. Small waves lapped its side, rocking it against a nearby log. Jordan took a few steps up the shore and turned in a slow circle. Whoever had parked the canoe was gone. That wasn’t right, just leaving it there. It was like neglecting to fasten the outhouse door open. Inconsiderate.

Jordan walked to the canoe’s bow, bent low, and hooked both hands under its gunwales. She pulled backward as hard as she could, trying to move it up onto the beach, rested, then tried again. It wouldn’t budge. She straightened up and looked at where the hull met the water. A lot more of the boat was in the water than out of it. When Jordan spied the paddle lying in the bottom, she smiled.

Hurrying, she maneuvered to the bow again, placing her hands on its outer edge this time to push instead of pull. She extended her arms at the same time as she drove her legs, and the hull gave way with a gravelly scratch. When she did it again, the craft glided smoothly into the water. It almost went too far, and she had to splash in to catch the rope on the bow before it slipped away. A gasp escaped her as the cold water soaked her legs. She stopped and drew the canoe back till the bow touched the beach. From there, she was able to get a leg in, carefully planting her foot in the center of the hull, just like Dad had taught her. The boat wobbled, but she stepped quickly in with her other foot, throwing her arms out for balance as she eased herself low. She held her breath until the craft settled. She’d done it. She was in and drifting slowly from shore.

Staying low, she crabbed her way to the stern of the craft, careful to scoot the paddle along the boat’s bottom as she made her way. Then she turned to face the bow, slowly raised herself until she could sit down on the canoe’s back seat, and put the paddle’s blade in the water. Long, smooth strokes, Dad had told her. Paddle slow and steady and you’ll start moving fast. Jordan watched the blade, carefully keeping the flat surface turned to face her. After three even strokes she started moving, gliding silently across the silver skin of Kidney Pond.

Her mother would be the first one up, of course, creeping out to Woodchuck Hollow’s back porch to fuss with the green camp stove to make coffee for Dad. Room service, she’d sing, rousing Jordan’s father and the rest of the family for another morning of adventure in Baxter State Park. It was a call reserved solely for these ten precious days in the Maine wilderness—the time the whole family lived for the rest of the year.

Jordan saw the scene she was heading for play out in her mind. She’d call softly from the water, maybe with an imitation loon call, to make her mom look up from the porch. Mom’s eyes and mouth would pop open, then she’d laugh and clap her hands, waking the rest of the family to see little Jordan paddle past them on her maiden journey across the pond. Everyone would clap and laugh and call across the water to her. Even Tommy.

The canoe began to veer off course. Jordan raised the paddle to dip it on the other side. Dad had shown her the J stroke. When he made the simple twist of the paddle at the end of the maneuver, the canoe would steer a straight course. But it was tricky. She couldn’t do it yet. As she went back and forth from one side of the canoe to the other, she vowed to learn the stroke before they packed the van at the end of the week and made the long ride home to Pennsylvania.

She looked up from her work and saw that she was heading straight toward Katahdin, its profile a dark purple wedge against a sky turning brighter ever second. She slit her eyes against the glare of the lemon-yellow sun, which had just cleared the trees by the mountain’s eastern flank. A sea of golden clouds floated overhead, creating a mosaic of fluffy shapes that grew small as they approached the horizon, a pattern that was perfectly repeated across the glassy mirror of the pond.

Jordan spun from the dizzying scene to look back toward the shore. Now she could see the pyramid of Doubletop, its crown buried in the blanket of clouds blowing in from the west. When her eyes dropped from the mountain to the shoreline, they widened, surprised at how far she’d traveled in such a short time. She turned and began paddling harder to pivot the canoe toward shore, sucking in a sharp breath as a chill made her small body shudder. She should have put on another layer. Mom would have thought to tell her that.

She sat up straight and stopped, the canoe racing along with her mind as she remembered something else that she’d forgot to slip into—a life jacket! Now a different scene played in her mind as she envisioned gliding past camp: her father’s face clouding when he saw Jordan paddling by without a life jacket. Every time they went to the back porch of the library to get paddles for the canoes, he asked the same questions as he handed Jordan and her brothers and sister their purple and yellow vests.

What are these called, kids?

Life jackets! the four of them would shout out together.

And why?

Because they save your life! they’d answer in full chorus.

Jordan bent over and began to paddle harder, but the canoe still wouldn’t turn. Every time she brought the bow around, the wind behind her would catch it and push it back toward open water. She craned her neck, desperate to catch a glimpse of her mother’s red sweater on the porch of Woodchuck Hollow. But as the shore grew distant, the wind blew stronger, pushing her farther and farther toward the middle of the pond.

She turned again to search the rest of the shoreline, her eyes traveling across the open expanse of the small beach she’d launched from and the field by the ranger’s cabin beyond. When she saw no sign of life anywhere, Jordan began to yell.

Her words were lost in the wind. She stood up, desperate to be seen before she was blown even farther away. Raising her paddle over her head, she began to wave it back and forth as her throat grew raw from her cries.

It happened so fast that there was only before, and after. One instant she was shouting into the wind, tears streaming from the corner of her eyes, and the next, a bang!—followed by a white-cold whoosh that knocked the breath out of her. An instant later, her body stiffened from the shock of the icy water.

Her head popped up, and Jordan gasped for air, kicking her legs and moving her arms as she treaded water to stay above the choppy surface of the pond. Her head hurt. When she reached up to wipe the water from her eyes, her fingertips came away bright red.

Mom, Mom—Mommy!

She sobbed, then stopped, treading the water in a circle as she looked for the canoe. There! Not too far! She began slashing at the water with her arms. One flip-flop had come off; now Jordan reached down and peeled the other from her heel. When she looked up again, the canoe was farther away. She was tempted to cry out, but she put her head into the water and began to swim.

She wasn’t a great swimmer. Tommy could always beat her. But Mommy said it was important that Jordan learn—that Mommy was always sad that she had never learned how, and she didn’t want Jordan to be scared around the water like she was. In the middle of the pond, the voice of Mr. Shay, Jordan’s Saturday morning swim teacher, came back to her.

Smooth and even, Jordan, and don’t forget to breathe.

She spotted the canoe again, put her head in the water, and kicked. One stroke, two strokes, one breath. One stroke, two strokes, one breath, but not breath this time—water. She stopped and gagged, coughing as another wave filled her mouth. She kicked her legs and tipped her head back, waving her arms hard in figure eights to keep her head high. For an instant she rose above it, turned again. She could see the canoe. It was farther away now. Much farther.

She tried to cry out, but another wave filled her mouth. She pumped her arms and her legs, fighting the water, teeth gritted, moaning. She wanted to call for her mother but didn’t dare open her mouth again. She looked up and saw her mother’s face—so sad. I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry . . .

Her arms and legs were slowing. Another wave, another gasp, then another, but then she couldn’t gasp. She was under. Jordan shut her eyes and drew herself tight. She felt the white-hot scream of pain, followed by the deep black pit of fear. She fell and fell and fell and fell. Then finally, she was still.

***

Jordan surfaced. With her head tipped back, she rose, wide-eyed and gazing into the endless blue of the late summer sky. Now she saw her mother, right where she’d pictured her, humming in front of the green camp stove on the porch. It was something familiar, a song she couldn’t recognize but that she knew just the same. A Canadian jay hopped on the cabin’s rough roof, its head cocked as it eyed the ground for some hidden prize. A trill sounded from the thin pine that shaded him. In the top tangle of its wispy branches, a red squirrel peeled a pinecone in the morning light. In his eye shone the tiny, mirrored reflection of the morning sun. Jordan turned toward that rising star and kept turning, turning, turning, rising higher and higher amid the ring of peaks that pointed her way home.

1

Woodwork

I ran the plane over the edge a few more times. The trick is to not take off too much. You want a door that shuts easy but tight. Especially here, where the wind can blow cold any month of the year. I worked the blade between the marks I’d penciled on the door’s face. It took me a while to find that spot, the place that made what should have been an easy entrance, an interruption. There are enough of those everywhere else in the world. I do what I can to minimize them up here.

I ran my thumb over the edge. It felt right, so I hefted it and leaned it up against the frame. The son of a bitch was heavy, but I set it down gently. I’m not that tall—five-nine if I keep my boots on—but I’m strong enough. You have to be, to do this job. But I think most of that is in your mind. Cassie’s sure as hell a lot shorter than me, and a lot leaner too. But I’ve seen her use a single maul stroke to split a log that most guys would need two or three for.

I put the door on the toes of my boot and raised it high enough to position the top hinge. You need to get that right too, of course. That was the first thing I tried, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be enough. You get enough rain and snow and sun on wood and eventually it’s gonna swell, I don’t care how carefully you frame the door the first time you put it in. I screwed the top hinge in, then the bottom, tweaked the fit a few more times, and gave the thing a push. Swish. Click. Perfect.

I’ve always been good with my hands. They’re my father’s. I remember watching his, studying them as he’d saw a freestanding board at a perfect ninety-degree angle without using a square. Or the curious way he’d pinch a nail punch just before he sank the head—so delicate, like it was the finest needle poised over some thin piece of silk. Then the hammer would come down so hard I’d jump, and he’d laugh and get ready to set the next brad. In the years before this job, it had been ages since I’d done that. Or held a shovel, or an ax, or lifted anything heavier than my laptop bag. But out here there are things I haul and hold and force myself against that push back at me, things that don’t give way so easily, and I like that.

If you had asked me ten years ago, I would’ve told you that I would never set foot in this place again. None of the others has, and I don’t blame them. But I started drifting—finding my way from my old life to this one. It didn’t happen fast. Not many people like change, least of all those whose lives change in an instant—those who divide the story of their days into before and after. I never made a conscious decision to return. Like I said, it was a drift. San Francisco, Houston, Tampa, Atlanta. I had plenty of offers in the Northeast too—DC, Boston, and of course, the city every suburban street of my childhood led to: Philly. But I wasn’t ready to come home. It wasn’t really there anymore, anyway.

Everywhere I did go was exactly the same. When you spend twelve hours a day writing code, it doesn’t matter what’s outside your door. That screen is your window—the portal you see everything through. And no matter how you string the ones and zeroes, the view’s always the same. I started taking long lunches. I’d look for the closest patch of green I could find. Sometimes it was only a little public plaza by a strip mall with a row of fenced-in trees. But by the time I reached Atlanta, I was looking for more than that. I found it in Jones Bridge Park. I could leave my desk at MattaByte at five and be landing a twelve-inch rainbow in the Chattahoochee an hour later.

Pretty soon lunches weren’t enough. I skipped a Friday or two to spend more time on the river, walking farther and farther to find the lies where the big fish hid. I kept following the Chattahoochee north, and one day while I was looking at the map, I saw the big green swatch of the national forest that bears its name. Nestled just inside its southern border was the landmark Dad had told me about: Springer Mountain. We’d talked so often about the trip we’d take from that starting point that I never thought of doing it without him. But by the time I found the place, I didn’t have any other choice.

I do my best to skirt the space he left. If I get too close to it, I can feel just how big it is. Big enough to swallow me whole.

So I put my attention on the little things—the tasks at hand. Like that door. I planed it, played it, worked it till it closed soft and sure, knowing that everyone who came into that cabin would have a stay that was just a little bit better. Easier. A small thing, maybe, for the two or three days or week they spend here, but when you add it all up—all those little moments of ease—it equals something so much bigger than the hour it took me to do the chore.

I know the programs I wrote helped people. A lot of people. The fat paychecks I pocketed were proof of that. But it’s different when the work you do is for someone you know, even if you’ve only just met. By my third summer, there were some I knew better, the ones who offered me smiles of recognition that I gladly returned.

Those are the people I’m really working for—people like me who have no choice but to return to this place. A place where the wind carries the perfume of balsam and wood smoke. A place where you can still hear the whisper of your own breath. A place where the trees part to reveal the kind of raw and savage beauty that can make a strong man cry, and a weak one find his strength. Every time I see one of those people coming through my door, I stand up to offer my hand and my name.

Paul Strand, I tell them. Welcome back to Kidney Pond.

2

To Preserve and Protect

Hey, buddy, can you tell me the easiest trail to take up Katahdin?

I looked up from my desk and tried not to laugh. The squat, sixtyish guy asking me that question had to be close to 250 pounds. And the woman in the huge Gucci sunglasses, gold earrings, and fire-engine-red lipstick standing next to him may have been heavier. Both wore thin cotton T-shirts, jeans, and spotless white running shoes. Whatever provisions they had must’ve been tucked into the single daypack the guy clutched in one hand. I waited a beat before I replied.

Well, none of them is easy, and you’re too late to start a full climb today.

I told you, Cal, the woman said. Cal didn’t look pleased.

Come on, Tina, it’s not even noon.

I stood up and placed the small, laminated map I keep in my top drawer on the center of the desk. It was only a section of the larger one that covered the park’s entire 209,501 acres, but it was the one most folks were after. Cal was a member of that strange breed that