Coe Review

study her face for traces of that newness, or for signs of what I should watch
out for in my new wife. I learned from Lloyd that you can never prepare
yourself for what life will throw at you. But you can know the signs.
It was two years before Mr. Voss, Joe, and I went back to Baranof Island.
That was our last trip, mostly because Mr. Voss said Gut Bay was all fished
out, and because it wasn't fun for him anymore. He didn't want to stop at
Lloyd's cabin, and when we did, it was different. Lloyd came to the door
with his paper-thin face, and opened it wide enough to tell us that Dora
was sick, that he couldn't invite us in that day. We were polite—Joe even
offered to send for a doctor—but we could feel it, walking back through the
unstable tundra, that something had changed.
The next year Mr. Voss and Joe went to Kodiak to take a brown bear. I
was invited, but I declined. I don't shoot animals. It's not a philosophy or
anything; I just don't like to get that much blood on my hands.
There isn't much to this story. I talked about beginnings a while ago.
What about the end?
I took my vacation in '94 on Baranof Island. It wasn't some nostalgia
trip. I just wanted a place to clear my mind. Gut Bay is the kind of place
to do that for you, with the wind blowing over the water, still and flat as a
sheet.
This was when my first wife threatened me with a knife and told me it
was over. You have to understand, she is of the dramatic type. She enjoys,
she used to enjoy, talking about death. When we first starting dating, she
asked me routinely if I would die for her.
My new wife is not dramatic, or if she is, she isn't dramatic in the same
way. She cooks spicy foods from Mynamar. She surprises me with expensive
driving gloves. She visits me at work wearing nothing under her trench coat,
and we do it in my office chair. When my old wife threw me out, I went to
Baranof Island for the last time. I brought a tent with me and kept my food
in tins to keep the bears out. I was pretty far out on the tundra, far from
where we used to dock. To tell you the truth, I hadn't thought about Lloyd
and Dora for a long time.
But the wind blew up and cold, and I started to get lonely, so I decided
to move my camp. He was on the porch when I came hiking up, all folded
over like he had been hollowed out.
"Lloyd, remember me?" I called out over the roar of the wind on the
bay.
When he looked up, he seemed to have aged into an old man.
When I say that, you have to understand that age is a different thing for
country people, for island people. He and Dora spent their winters leaning
106 Gut Bay