Winter Short Story Series: Entry #2

My father’s compass hung by a red string around his neck, the little needles flitting about as he walked. As kids, we’d beg to play with it. The manic dance of the needles made us laugh and we’d spin in circles urging it on. My father would retrieve it quickly and place it back around his neck, adorning that small instrument with a grand significance in our minds. It was just like my great-grandmother’s Dutch music box, the hand-whittled miniature canoe, and the many things that grown ups declared important by placing on high shelves or in locked cabinets. They were out of our reach, beyond us.

At night, when his work in the woods was done, my father hung the compass on a tiny nail by the porch door. It would swing like a pendulum: north, northeast, north, northeast, until finally it rested and so did he.

That day at Lake Nipigon, watching my father stare out at the water, the compass came back to my mind. The largest of forces resided in that palm-sized instrument. The heat and weight and pull of the earth all exhaled through its tiny needle.  The Lake too, shifting with the mood of the air and the tow of the moon, seemed infinitely larger than its physical limits. It was all so big and beyond us. Some things, I guess, will always remain on that high shelf.

When the darkness began its advance across the Lake, we retreated to the Jeep and turned back toward the highway. Trees hugged the road, brushing the windshield as we passed. I was happy to feel the instant claustrophobia of it, happy to be reacquainted with a smaller nature – where root and tip were visible, measurable and wholly comforting. The headlights spread their warm glow into the trees and slowly the silence between us eased.

“You still have that compass?”

“Which one?”

“The one.”

“You should always have one on you. I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?” My father slowed the Jeep as we crested a hill then let it roll easily onward.

“Yeah. But where’s the one you always had?”

He shrugged. “There might be one in the glove box there.”

I tugged at the handle, gave it a few bangs with the side of my fist, and the compartment swung open. The little light splashed onto a collection of pens, batteries, a mini flashlight, two rolls of pennies that I picked up, considered, then replaced, a scuffed pack of chewing gum, and a grease-stained manual booklet. A bit of red string peeked out from underneath it.

I fished the compass out carefully then pushed the glove box shut with my knee. I held it in my palm for a long moment. The corners were still rubbed with spruce gum from years before, when time after time, my father had grabbed it from around his neck, his gloves still wet from the sweating skin of a newly cut tree, and held it at eye level to cut a line through the woods. I clicked the black cover open to reveal the compass face.

“What do you want that for anyway?” my father asked. “I know where we’re going.”

“I know.”

I lifted the compass in my palm, rocking it side to side. The needle danced and I smiled. North was behind us.

(to be continued…)