Line 5
Kate Cohen
Hunting season in the U.P.: rituals to set your watch by. The wives take turns cooking, and the men come home in the wee hours with a primal stink. The woods are dead and brown. Anyone not hunting feels the painful lull between seasons.
I am in my seventh year as a deer widow, rattling around the house with the boys, while Mac stalks the woods dressed in an unnatural shade of orange. I am standing over my third pot of chili this week when ABC10 comes on, and I hear Victoria Dunn trying to hide her Yooper accent as she delivers the news. Normally I let her drone on in the background as I go about my day. The TV keeps me company when the boys are at school and Mac is at the plastics plant or out hunting. But today I hear Victoria’s voice climb an octave as she draws out the words “devastating spill” and “Line 5.” I find the remote and turn it up, dropping my weight into an old corduroy armchair.
“Reports of a tugboat anchor striking Line 5 surfaced today. Enbridge denies experts’ claims that upwards of 800 gallons of oil have leaked into the Straits of Mackinac. Enbridge officials say they’re working quickly to assess the damage and make repairs to the line.”
I grip the remote and stare. They roll some footage of Line 5, some 200 feet under the Straits. Then a dough-faced executive comes on and calmly articulates Enbridge’s position. “We are taking this very seriously, rest assured. But we want to keep concerns realistic. We’re talking about a few dents in the line. There’s simply no way we’re dealing with the volume those guys are suggesting.”
The footage cuts away from the executive. “That’s Enbridge’s Marty Hoover. Now to Don Wilson of the citizen watchdog group, Oil and Water Don’t Mix,” Victoria captions.
I can almost hear Mac telling me to switch the channel. He never watches the news, doesn’t stay up on things. To him, there’s nothing but home, the plant, and the woods. But I try to know what’s going on in the world, even though I’ve only spent one year of my life away from St. Ignace, Michigan.
“Honestly, 800 gallons is an early estimate and that’s probably conservative,” says the watchdog. “We’ve been saying for years that Enbridge couldn’t be trusted. They have a terrible track record when it comes to environmental safety.”
The smell of burnt chili registers in my nostrils, and I go into the kitchen to turn off the stove. I’m too late. The chili is unsalvageable, an angry animal mess. I’ll have to let the whole thing cool and harden before I can handle it. By the time I get back to the TV, Victoria has moved on to coverage of road repairs on I-75. The crawl at the bottom of the screen is still reporting on Line 5, though. My eyes fix on the rapidly moving words until they trail off into a commercial for St. Ignace Brakes & Collision.
I mute the TV and just sit there. I think about the line spewing toxic sludge into all that fresh water. I think about what it all looked like down there, on the lake floor, before the spill. The thing about water that deep, there’s not much life at the bottom. It’s just drifting and peaceful. I close my eyes and imagine our old armchair sunken at the bottom of the Straits. And me in it, just watching the aquatic greens of the lake floor and the few gleaming fish that pass by. Then I snap out of my daydream and try to think about real things, things like three weeks ago when our older son Caleb came home with fresh bruises.
“They said I talk funny,” Caleb said.
“Funny how?”
“Like a girl. They said I walk like a girl, too.”
“Oh, honey,” I said. “You are who you are,” knowing full well that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t the one facing those second grade punks week after week, and it was too easy for me to say, “be yourself.” As a kid, I had always blended in. Nothing about me stood out. I came from a big family, and none of my teachers ever knew if I was one of my sisters, Julie, Jenny, or Jessie. I was actually Jill.
I once tried to talk to Principal Collins about Caleb. It took me two hours sitting in the car to muster the courage, and then I had to “walk and talk” with him as he was on his way to supervise the cafeteria. He had the same greying ring of hair he had when I was in school, but his face had grown more furrowed and he looked out at me from hooded eyes.
“I just wanted to talk to you about Caleb. He’s getting bullied,” I said hurriedly, trying to keep pace with Collins, who still had a fast clip down the hallways, as if he’d rather not be caught there.
“Jen, look. That’s a strong word people are throwing around a lot these days. He’s in second grade. He’s not getting bullied. Try talking to him about standing up for himself.”
My heart sank. “I will, Mr. Collins.” And he kept walking down the corridor, the same antiseptic green it was when I’d been a student.
I knew all too well what passed for boy and what passed for girl around here, and if you didn’t fit squarely in your slot, you were pushed to the fringe. Mac bought our boys camo clothing even though they’ve never gone hunting with him. And I watched him try to teach Caleb to learn to shoot in the backyard, but the recoil kept knocking him to the ground. Mac finally just took the rifle and walked away, thinking he was hiding his disappointment. But I saw how Caleb’s eyes followed him until he disappeared behind the garage.
Back in the old recliner in our living room, I think about my one year at the University of Michigan. How I was the first in the family to go to college. How my grandma, the only one who ever paid any attention to me, pressed a fifty-dollar bill into my palm and said, “Don’t come back.” How disappointed she’d been when I returned the summer after freshman year to make some money working at the bait and tackle. How Mac Koskela and I started on the same day. His lopsided grin and the way he blushed when I said his name. His large, plain hands. His solemn proposal, which came at the end of the summer. He’d been so sure I’d say no, but I withdrew from college the week before I was supposed to return.
I realize I’ve drifted off. I can tell by the way the afternoon light moves on the wall. The TV is still on mute, and Ellen is on. I like Ellen, but I’m not in the mood for her just now. She feels somehow inappropriate for the moment. I don’t know what she’d have to say about Line 5. She lives so far away in Hollywood with Portia, and she probably accepted years ago that California will burn down or fall into the ocean at some point, so why not live it up?
But Michigan. The Great Lakes. So pristine. The clarity of the water, the clean, clear blue. I read an article online recently that suggested that the Great Lakes would be a great place to survive global warming, and I thought it was funny how the author seemed to think global warming could be survived at all.
I know I should get up and try to salvage the chili. Mac will head out to the woods again tonight, and he is supposed to bring something filling for the guys so they can wait out the long, cold hours until a buck crosses their paths. But something in me still won’t move. Mac can always stop at the gas station to pick up pasties for the guys.
I sit and watch the light as it moves around the living room, caressing all its contents with the waning gold of afternoon. I check the time and calculate 45 minutes until Henry and Caleb get off the bus. I like to meet them at the end of our driveway. Henry always runs to me, but lately Caleb just keeps walking, swinging his backpack, a challenge for his small spindly frame. In those moments I always want to take his backpack from him, lighten his load, but the one time I tried, he pulled it back with surprising force. “Mom!” he said. I’d looked around to see who he was performing for, but it was just me and Henry and two crows sitting on fence posts, the bus long gone.
I can do a lot with 45 minutes. I can definitely make another batch of chili. I can fold all the laundry and put it away or get out the boy’s ski stuff and judge what they’ve grown out of. I can call my dad and make sure he’s on track to check his blood sugar. I can call my sisters. But none of this appeals. Instead, I hop on the laptop to see if I can find out more about the spill.
I’ve never googled Enbridge before, and countless articles pop up related to other spills, other mismanaged lines, other dough-faced executives. Turns out they’re Canadian. I guess I’d heard that somewhere. I remember that Dad went to a meeting where they were complaining about the Canadians getting rich sending their oil under the Great Lakes, while none of the profits benefited Michiganders. And we were the ones at risk. The Straits were a spectacularly bad location for the line, subject to all sorts of weather, heavy boat traffic, and populated land masses on either side. It was a ticking time bomb.
Yesterday after school, Henry had grabbed a box of peanut butter crackers and changed the TV to Nickelodeon. Caleb went to his room to draw and I set about making his favorite after-school snack: ants on a log. That was all I’d had to comfort my poor boy: celery, peanut butter, and raisins. Later, when Mac came home briefly, we’d had beef stroganoff. Caleb had long ago given up reporting the bullying incidents to Mac, who would just withdraw and look embarrassed, scratching at his wheat-colored beard and adjusting the Red Wings cap he always wore. He didn’t want to think about Caleb being different. And Henry was too young for Caleb to talk to, just five. He was busy pitting his fork against his knife in a sword fight.
So while Caleb sat silently, Mac told us about an 8-point buck he almost got.
“Next time,” I said.
“Yeah, next time,” said Henry.
“Good day everyone?” Mac said, between bites, shoveling his food quickly.
“Yup,” said Caleb, looking at his hands.
“Mmm hmm,” said Henry through a mouthful.
“Mom?” Mac asked, and I cringed the way I do every time he calls me mom.
“Good,” I said.
Later that night I’d tried to talk to Mac for the hundredth time about Caleb. Not that I had any idea what to say or do, but I still thought we should try to talk about what was happening at school.
“Don’t make it more of a problem than it already is, Jill.”
“But he’s getting bullied, Mac. Really bad. We can’t just do nothing. You know whose picking on him a lot? Brady. Ron’s kid. Can’t you talk to him?”
‘I don’t want to have it out with Ron.” Mac was a foreman at the plastics plant, but he answered to Ron Block. And Ron was a bully himself, tossing overtime punch cards into the trash and assigning graveyard shifts to those who crossed him. I hated watching the complicated dance Mac did to stay on Ron’s good side.
“So Ron bullies you and Brady bullies Caleb,” I said. “Perfect.”
Mac sniffed and shifted his weight. He didn’t like it when I reminded of him of how Ron treated him. “Well, you got to stop encouraging him.”
“Encouraging him? To be himself?”
Mac grabbed his keys and headed for the truck. I knew he was probably headed to The Brown Trout for a beer before going back to the woods.
▱
My research on Line 5 has me a bit hot, sort of riled up. It’s a weird feeling for me. I learned early to be steady while others around me got agitated. No sense throwing a fit when your parents forget to sign you up for drivers ed, when your dad says, “I’ve got five other children to drive you around.” When your mother drinks and drinks all day, only to die of melanoma. You think: if there’s any sense to the universe, she would have gone down from the drinking, faced some form of retribution for a lot of bad years with her.
Then you agree to marry the first boy to take you out to dinner since the others won’t spring for anything beyond a Coke at the bowling alley, if you’re lucky. “Mac, Mac, Lumberjack,” my sisters call him. He’s built like one, descended from stoic Finnish miners up in Houghton. You think for a moment after saying yes that you should finish college. That you like your psychology classes and you like Ann Arbor, with its moody cafes and dusty bookstores. Like reading Kierkegaard and listening to your roommate’s Jeff Buckley bootlegs. But you know Mac won’t wait around. He’s a hot commodity. Going, going, gone.
You quit college and get married. You play house for a while. Mac goes to the plastics plant five days a week. You sew curtains. You get involved with the church. You make a lot of casseroles. You start dying your hair at home just to spruce up your look. You go from the family dishwater to a honey blond, but you have to point this out to Mac. Then you’re pregnant. It’s a boy. You know Mac is secretly terrified, though he goes in for those silly blue cigars with his buddies. You realize one morning in your sixth month that you don’t know your husband at all. Not really. Mac’s not a talker. He just goes to work, watches sports in his off time and thinks about hunting. You bring him a lot of beers. You pledge to know your unborn boy inside and out. To never let him feel abandoned in his own family.
Except that’s exactly what’s happening to Caleb.
I rub the back of my neck, now sweaty. I stare back at the computer screen. I scroll down and keep reading about Enbridge’s many hollow promises and disasters. It sickens and terrifies me. I realize I am squeezing the side of the seat with one hand. I release my grip and tighten it again.
Then the front door swings open and the boys charge through, dropping their backpacks and peeling off layers.
“Mom, where were you?” asks Caleb. I smile to myself that he noticed.
“Sorry, guys. I got caught up with something.”
Henry pads over, still wearing his Spiderman balaclava, eyeing the laptop. “Can I watch my show?”
“Oh, I guess. Here you go.” I minimize the dozen or so search tabs I have up on Enbridge and hand Henry the laptop. He flops down on the couch.
I consider Caleb for a moment. His hair is still fine and shiny, like a baby’s. He’s my little gosling, I always say. His skin is so pale. Henry, on the other hand, takes after Mac. Thick-skinned and husky. Henry has no trouble at school, though he’s only in kindergarten. He never comes home saying his lunch was stolen or he got locked in the bathroom, like Caleb does. I’d tried to follow Mr. Collins’ advice. I’d told Caleb to fight back, kick them in the knees, or the nuts. Caleb had just looked at me with a bewildered kind of disgust, like he would never stoop so low. “I know,” I’d said. “That’s stupid.” We made a tacit agreement to just wait it out. To get revenge when Caleb made it big one day. His bullies were the blue-collar types destined to stay put in St. Ignace. You can tell even at their age.
Caleb is definitely getting out of St. Ignace. I feel it in my bones.
We do the afternoon routine—snack, homework, a little TV. Then Mac comes home in search of food and leaves again, a little irked at me over the chili. “Pasties’ll be fine,” he says, not meeting my eyes. I think he thinks cooking for his friends is the one thing I should do since I’m home all day. After Mac is gone, we sit down to a frozen Stouffer’s lasagna.
“So what’s new?” I ask. The boys always talk more when it’s just the three of us.
Caleb looks down at his plate, a little smile playing at the edges of his mouth.
“Caleb has a girlfriend!” says Henry, all sing-songy. With that, Caleb reaches over and pushes Henry, who pretends to fall out of his chair.
“Hey!” I say. “Stop.” But I really want to hear what comes next so I make no move to further correct the situation.
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my friend and she’s a girl.”
“Girl-friend!” insists Henry.
I hold Caleb’s arm to keep him from swatting at Henry again.
“Tell me about this friend, honey.”
He glares at Henry. “Her name is Greta and she’s new at school since two weeks ago. She moved from down state. And she likes the same things I like.”
“Drawing and painting and horses and butterflies and princesses!” Henry trills in a fake female voice.
I turn to Henry. It’s the first time I’ve heard him taunting his brother. I feel a spark and white hot words fly out. “Damn it, Henry. Shut your mouth!”
Henry starts to cry immediately, and the heat of the earlier moment melts away. I feel terrible. I reach for him and he whimpers, allowing himself to be pulled onto my lap.
“I’m sorry, bud. We just can’t talk to each other like that.”
“Like what you said to me?” I look at him for a moment and he says, “Like damn it, shut your mouth?”
I kiss the top of his head. “Yeah, like that, too.”
I let the boys skip chores. We get in my bed early. I read five Berenstain Bear books until they’re asleep. This is usually when I carry them back to their room, but tonight I don’t feel like it. I want their warm bodies next to me as I listen to their steady, sweet breath.
Soon enough, a dream: I am swimming with the boys at Kiwanis Beach. The cold water takes our breath away. We are the only ones out there, bobbing along and splashing a little. We gaze out at the big, blue horizon. But then we turn toward the shore, and the hemlocks and maples and ironwoods have gone up in smoke. Fiery tendrils whip and snap at us, smoke obscuring our view. The fire starts consuming the brush and the beach grass. The sand catches fire and turns molten. A great rush of gulls sweep skywards, and we look down to see tiny silversides darting between our toes, making for deeper water. The boys clutch either side of my waist. I turn toward the horizon and start swimming, beckoning for the boys to follow.
We begin. Bois Blanc Island is off in the distance. We go a mile, then three. I look back every hundred yards to make sure they’re still behind me. Sometime after mile four, I turn again. They’re struggling now. They’re so tired. I try to carry them on my back for a while but their weight keeps pulling me down. I realize we’re not going to make it. I tread water for a bit with them holding on to me. “Are we almost there?” asks Henry, resting his head on my shoulder. Caleb’s eyes close for a moment. “We are so close,” I say. “I’m going to take us the rest of the way.” And with that, I gather them to me and let us sink. We go all the way down to the lake floor, where I cradle them until they fall asleep.
Sometime later I wake in the dark. I’m sweaty and my limbs are tangled up with the boys. The backdoor thumps and I hear Mac come in. He drags a chair out from the kitchen table. I hear the hiss of a beer can opening. The TV goes on at full volume. It sounds like WWE wrestling, or something where the commentators sound continually surprised.
I must have fallen back to sleep because later I wake again to hear Mac coming into the bedroom. He shakes me a little. “You fell asleep with the boys in here,” he says. I pretend to be asleep, hoping he’ll leave us, but he persists.
“Come on, Jill. They’re not sleeping in here,” he says as he begins to rouse Caleb.
I sit bolt upright. The light from the clock radio is just enough that I can see his eyes. I look straight at him. I’m so hot I am throwing sparks.
“Get off, Mac,” I say.
He springs back from the bed like he’d touched an electric fence.
“We were sleeping soundly. You’re not moving them,” I say.
Mac pulls back from the bed and shakes his hand as if a small animal had bitten it. He pauses and I can see him staring at me in disbelief. He shakes his head and leaves. I hear his weight drop onto the couch in the living room and I settle back into our nest.
The next morning Mac is gone before we get up, back to the woods to meet the guys. It’s a Friday. The boys finish their Cheerios and start to pull on their jackets. I suddenly realize I want them to stay with me. “You wanna skip school today? Hang out with me?”
They clamor with excitement, and we run outside to the minivan.
“Where are we going?” asks Caleb.
“The lake,” I say.
“But it’s too cold!” says Henry.
“We’ll build a sandcastle,” I say.
At the beach, the boys spend an hour and a half perfecting their construction, fighting the late fall winds. They add a moat and make a little twig bridge over it. For a while they are dazzled by a gull pillaging the remains of a dead sturgeon.
I look out over the water, dark as the night sky. Little whitecaps are forming and retreating. Somewhere down there, below the surface, is Line 5. No one’s working on it today, the horizon an uninterrupted expanse, while the executives argue about gallons and impact and recovery. I stare at the water, looking for swirls of oil. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there.
The lake draws a breath and the water rushes away from the sand. And then I note the smallest pause before it exhales and sends a wave racing back to shore. I feel something in that half second, and it fills me up.
I step forward and let the waves run over my boots.
I make a promise into the wind.
Author’s Note: Jill’s dream is loosely inspired by the Anishinaabe teaching of Miche Mowka, which tells of a mother bear on the Wisconsin coast who tries to save her cubs from a forest fire by attempting to swim to safety toward Michigan. Their demise led to the creation of Sleeping Bear Dunes and the two Manitou islands.
Kate Cohen is an education consultant at work on personal essays, short fiction and a novel since 2018. She lives in the woods of Northern Michigan with Frances the terrier, not far from the Straits of Mackinac.