The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [47]
“I don’t know. I’m starting to think I just didn’t feel like the kids were there in the gym,” she said.
“IT’S LIKE ALCATRAZ,” he said to Anna as they walked down the boardwalk toward the school in the grey light of the morning. The cold, damp air hung in his nostrils, reminding him of his grandfather’s root cellar. A musty smell, with a hint of winter and death, he thought.
He had given serious consideration to stealing a boat and fleeing the village, permanently. His students were great, but it was the confinement of the place that was getting to him. Not like the outside world, where he thought the blitzkrieg of media and consumerism might crush him. This was different. Those old worries were gone. Time had stopped. None of the old worries that created his anxiety were important any more. Anna had played a big part in saving him from those old days of a constantly knotted stomach and general unease with life. But now the inability to leave, to just pick up and go somewhere other than the school or their little shack and get away was beginning to haunt him. His days and nights were spent confined within a fifty-yard radius. He needed out.
“I don’t know what to tell you. We’re stuck here. At least until Christmas break,” she said.
“You mean Slaviq? One day at Christmas is hardly a break.”
“Yeah, but airfare will be cheaper in January anyway—no one else will be celebrating Russian Orthodox Christmas. Two weeks is two weeks. We could go to Hawaii or something. Maybe you’re getting cabin fever.”
“No shit.”
“Maybe we should get one of those lights for when winter hits. You know, the kind they use for depression, for seasonal affective disorder,” she said.
“I don’t have depression. I just need to go somewhere other than this. You can’t even go for a walk here, for Christ sakes!”
His boot hit a patch of frost, and his foot slipped out from under him. He pitched off the edge of the boardwalk, his legs landing in the half-frozen muck as his hip slammed against the edge of the planks.
“Damn!”
He sat up and brushed off his pants.
“Ouch, that looked like it hurt,” she said, trying not to laugh.
“Go ahead, it’s funny. Laugh it up. Winter hasn’t even hit and I’m already going nuts here and you’re not taking me seriously. I moved to Alaska to be outside and get into the wilderness. We’re surrounded by water and trapped here. Trapped. So yeah, laugh at this too. Laugh at it all.”
He started to get up and she pushed him back down with a gentle shove. “Lighten up, tough guy,” she said. “I’ll find you a friend who can take you out for a boat ride or something.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your little pants-pissing snotty-nosed students,” he said. “And I don’t need your help finding friends.”
She extended a hand to help him up. When he didn’t take it, she pushed him again, only this time a little harder.
“I didn’t mean it that way, John. Get over yourself! You think I’m not tired of having nowhere other than my classroom to escape to? Listening to you sigh and mope and burp and fart your way around our little house?”
“Are you done insulting me?”
“No. I’m just getting started, mister.”
He scrambled to his feet and marched, more carefully this time, toward the school, leaving her behind, for the first time ever.
NOT LONG AFTER SUNSET, the girl asked what Anna looked like, and he hadn’t been able to tell her. Not because he wouldn’t, but because he couldn’t. All he could see or remember was the sickness that had consumed her beauty.
“Did she have dark hair or light hair?”
He packed the snow for their bed by stomping around on the tarp and then kneeling in the empty sled. He pushed the snow on the edges to form a small wall, in case the wind picked up, and then started to
unload the sleeping bags from the pack.
“Did she have blue eyes?”
“Will you help me here? We need to get camp set up before it’s too dark.”
“It’s always dark for me, John. I’m not trying to make you mad.”
“It’s just that I’m tired. I could use some help,” he said.
She knelt down and felt for the backpack. She pulled the sleeping bag out