The Woman Lit by Fireflies Read online

  Praise for The Woman Lit by Fireflies:

  “One of our finest novelists. . . . [Jim Harrison] gives his work a genuine mythopoeic quality that is rare, if not unique, among contemporary American writers. . . . marvelous stories.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “An author of great consequence and ever-increasing attainment. Buy the book.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “A compelling sense of movement and character, prose marked by clarity and beautifully eclectic erudition, ribaldry, and humor. . . . [Harrison] is unfailingly entertaining but he is much more—a haunting, gifted writer who can’t be shoved into any category. . . . Harrison is a consummate storyteller—truly one of those writers whose books are hard to put down.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Superbly satisfying . . . vintage Harrison, sure to hold his fans in thrall.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Funny, wild, sexy, and bizarre . . . Along with Richard Ford . . . Harrison has cornered the market in the tough-but-tender style that characterized Hemingway’s early work.”

  —Nick Hornby

  “[Harrison’s] literary sensibilities are remarkable. His style is clean, accessible, and powerful. . . . I realized I was in the presence of a rare bird; a literary writer with a muscular sense of story. . . . The title story is a gem. . . . If you haven’t discovered Jim Harrison yet. . . do so.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Three excellent novellas . . . The title novella features Harrison’s art at its best—subtle, sublime, powerful, and yet highly accessible. . . . Harrison’s work is refreshing in the potent spirituality and life-affirming sensuality it brings to the very real people in the here and now. His prose is passionate and thick.”

  —The Ann Arbor News

  “[The Woman Lit by Fireflies is] a kind of masterpiece. It’s an almost Joycean soliloquy by a lonely, middle-aged woman who has hidden in a cornfield, her first step in a painful journey to escape her boring and insensitive husband. . . . Pure Harrison; and if the discovery is a late one, then the enjoyment of reading more . . . is something to be looked forward to.”

  —The Oregonian

  “The title novella is magnificent, the other two superb. In all three, Harrison’s characters, suffering from dead-ended lives, reinvest the usable past in order to determine how best to live in our time.”

  —Western American Literature

  “Ample evidence that [Harrison’s] literary powers might still be ascending . . . Harrison writes powerfully, at times comically, in a voice that rings of truth and madness, tinged with magical eloquence. . . . stunning, moving.”

  —The Grand Rapids Press

  “A mint of down-home goodness . . . Genuine, full-throttle fun coasting over ever-threatening currents of pathos and heartbreak.”

  —Steve Dykes, Boston Herald on Julip

  “No one has advanced and expanded the American literary ethos in the latter part of the twentieth century more cogently, usefully, and just plain brilliantly than Jim Harrison. . . . This is a matter to which all literate Americans should pay serious attention.”

  —Hayden Carruth

  “Luminous . . . [Harrison’s] books glisten with love of the world, and are as grounded as Thoreau’s in the particulars of American place—its rivers and thickets, its highways and taverns. Bawdily and with unrelenting gusto, Harrison’s forty years of writing explores what constitutes a good life, both aesthetically and morally, on this planet.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  on Returning to Earth

  “Among the very best fiction writers in America.”

  —Playboy

  “An American original. . . . His writing bears earthy whiffs of wild morels and morals and of booze and botany, as well as hints of William Faulkner, Louise Erdrich, Herman Melville, and Norman Maclean. There is a robust reflectiveness and sheer delight to Harrison’s prose. . . . a luminous, heartwarming reminder of what literature can achieve.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  on The Summer He Didn’t Die

  “An epic storyteller who deals in great vistas and vast distances.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A force of nature in American letters . . . Harrison’s trademark prose, lyric and fluid, seamlessly melds perceptions, memories and dreams to capture his characters’ inner lives.”

  —The Seattle Times on Returning to Earth

  “Jim Harrison is a writer with bear in him. Fearless, a top predator, omnivorous, he consumes all manner of literature and history and philosophy. . . . one of the great writers of our age.”

  —Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

  “[A] robust, vibrant author . . . Harrison is one of few American writers equally at home writing about backwoods, mixed-race construction workers and wealthy university intellectuals. . . . [the] saga bears strong traces of Southern classics by William Faulkner and Walker Percy.”

  —The Boston Globe on Returning to Earth

  THE WOMAN LIT BY FIREFLIES

  Also by Jim Harrison

  FICTION

  Wolf

  A Good Day to Die

  Farmer

  Legends of the Fall

  Warlock

  Sundog

  Dalva

  The Woman Lit by Fireflies

  Julip

  The Road Home

  The Beast God Forgot to Invent

  True North

  The Summer He Didn’t Die

  Returning to Earth

  CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

  The Boy Who Ran to the Woods

  POETRY

  Plain Song

  Locations

  Outlyer and Ghazals

  Letters to Yesenin and Returning to Earth

  Selected & New Poems

  The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems

  After Ikkyu and Other Poems

  The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems

  Braided Creek (with Ted Kooser)

  Saving Daylight

  ESSAYS

  Just Before Dark

  The Raw and the Cooked

  MEMOIR

  Off to the Side

  THE WOMAN LIT BY FIREFLIES

  JIM HARRISON

  Copyright © 1990 by Jim Harrison

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  The lines of poetry on page 205-206 are from

  Roots and Branches by Robert Duncan.

  Reprinted by permission of

  New Directions Publishing Corporation.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN-10: 0-8021-4375-X

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4375-4

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  08 09 10 11 12 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Anna

  Contents

  Brown Dog

  Sunset Limited

  The Woman Lit by Fireflies

  THE WOMAN LIT BY FIREFLIES

  Br
own Dog

  JUST BEFORE DARK at the bottom of the sea I found the Indian. It was the inland sea called Lake Superior. The Indian, and he was a big one, was sitting there on a ledge of rock in about seventy feet of water. There was a frayed rope attached to his leg and I had to think the current had carried him in from far deeper water. What few people know is that Lake Superior stays so cold near the bottom that drowned bodies never make it to the surface. Bodies don’t rot and bloat like in other fresh water, which means they don’t make the gas to carry them up to the top. This fact upsets working sailors on all sorts of ships. If the craft goes down in a storm their loved ones will never see them again. To me this is a stupid worry. If you’re dead, who cares? The point here is the Indian, not death. I wish to God I had never found him. He could have drowned the day before if it hadn’t been for his eyes, which were missing.

  These aren’t my exact words. A fine young woman named Shelley, who is also acting as my legal guardian and semi-probation officer, is helping me get this all down on paper. I wouldn’t say I’m stupid. I don’t amount to much, and you can’t get more ordinary, but no one ever called me stupid. Shelley and me go back about two years and our love is based on a fib, a lie. The main reason she is helping me write this is so I can stop lying to myself and others, which from my way of thinking will cut the interesting heart right out of my life. Terms are terms. We’ll see. Shelley believes in “oneness” and if we’re going to try to be “one” I’ll try to play by her rules.

  I’m a diver, or was a diver, for Grand Marais Salvage Corporation, which is a fancy name for a scavenging operation. You’d be surprised what people will pay for a porthole, even though they got no use for it. An old binnacle is worth a fortune. We sold one last July for a thousand dollars, though Bob takes three quarters because he owns the equipment. Bob is a young fellow who was a Navy SEAL, the same outfit that lost the hero, Stethem, who was beat to death by the towel-heads. Bob is still damned angry and hopes to get revenge someday.

  “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,” I quoted.

  “Do you believe that, B.D.?” he asked.

  “Nope. Can’t say I’m sure. But if you believed it, it would save you from going way over there and having the Arabs shoot your ass off.”

  Bob is a hothead. A salvage bunch up in Duluth owed him a compressor so we drove over. The three of them were sleeping off a drunk so we took two compressors, and three portholes for interest. Two of the guys woke up punching but Bob put them away again. I’m not saying Bob is a bully, just a bit quick to take offense.

  I’ve been reminded to get the basis of my salvation out of the way, to start at the beginning, as she says. Shelley is twenty-four and I’m forty-two. That means when I’m one hundred she’ll be eighty-two. Age is quite the leveler. She is a fair-size girl by modern standards, but not in the Upper Peninsula where you would call her normal-size, perhaps a tad shy of normal. In a cold climate a larger woman is favored by all except transplants from down below (the southern peninsula of Michigan where all the people are) who bring girlfriends up here who look like they jumped right off the pages of a magazine. Nobody pays them much attention unless the situation is desperate. Why take a little girl if you can get a big one? It’s as simple as that.

  Anyway, on a rainy June evening two years ago Shelley came into the Dunes Saloon with two fellows who wore beards and hundred-dollar tennis shoes. They were all graduate students in anthropology at University of Michigan and were looking for an old Chippewa herbalist I was talking to at the bar. They came over and introduced themselves and Claude announced it was his birthday.

  “How wonderful,” said Shelley. “How old are you? We’ve driven three hundred and fifty miles to talk to you.”

  Claude gazed at the three of them for a full minute, then sped out of the bar.

  When the screen door slammed Shelley looked at me. “What did we do wrong?” she asked.

  “Goddammit, we blew it,” said the redheaded fellow with a big Adam’s apple.

  “You missed your cue. When Claude says it’s his birthday you’re supposed to ask if you can buy him a drink. If someone else is buying he drinks a double martini,” I said.

  “Is there a chance we can make up for this?” said the third, a blond-haired little fellow in a Sierra Club T-shirt. “We were counting on talking to him.”

  Shelley pushed herself closer, unconsciously using her breasts to lead. “Are you related? I mean are you an Indian?”

  “I don’t talk about my people to strangers.” Now I’m no more Indian than a keg of nails. At least I don’t think there’s any back there. I grew up near the reservation over in Escanaba and a lot of Indians aren’t even Indian so far as I can tell. What I was doing was being a little difficult. If you want a girl to take notice it’s better to start out being a little difficult.

  “We’re really getting off on the wrong foot here. I didn’t mean to intrude.” She was nervous and upset.

  “How the hell could we know he wanted a double martini,” whined the redhead. “You don’t push drinks on an old Indian. I’ve been around a lot of them.”

  “What do you know about my people, you shit-sucking dick-head?” I yelled. The three of them jumped back as if hit by a cattle prod.

  I moved down to the end of the bar and pretended to watch the Tigers-Milwaukee ball game. Since we are much farther from Detroit than Milwaukee there are a lot of Brewers fans up here. Frank, the bartender, came over shaking his head.

  “B.D., why’d you yell at those folks when the lady’s got beautiful tits?”

  “Strategy,” I said. “She’ll be down here with a peace offering pretty soon.”

  The three of them were huddled by the window table, no doubt figuring their next move. I began to question my yell. In fact, I’m not known to raise my voice unless you set off a firecracker right behind me. Finally she got up and walked down the bar toward me with a certain determination.

  “I’m Shelley Newkirk. Let’s start all over again. The three of us have a great deal of admiration for Native Americans. We love and respect them. That’s why we study them. We want to offer you an apology.”

  I stared deeply into my glass of Stroh’s while Frank darted into the kitchen. When she spoke I thought he was going to laugh, but he’s too good of a friend to blow my cover.

  “The name’s B.D.,” I said. “It stands for Brown Dog, my Anishinabe name.” At this point I wasn’t bullshitting. Brown Dog, or B.D., has been my nickname since I was in the seventh grade and had a crush on a Chippewa girl down the road. I played ball with her brothers but she didn’t seem to care for me. Their mother called me Brown Dog because I was hanging around their yard all the time. Once when she was slopping their pigs this girl, Rose by name, threw a whole pail of garbage on me. I actually broke into tears on the spot though I was fourteen. Love will do that. Her brothers helped clean me off and said they guessed their sister didn’t like me. I didn’t give up and that’s why the name stuck with me. I was sort of following her around before a school assembly to see where she was going to sit when she hit me on the head with a schoolbook and knocked me to the floor. “Brown Dog, you asshole, stop following me,” she screamed. I got to my feet with everyone in the gymnasium laughing at me. The principal tapped the microphone. “Rose, watch your language. Mr. Brown Dog, I think it’s evident to all assembled here that Rose wishes you would stop following her.”

  So that’s how I got my name and how, much later, I met Shelley. Right now it’s October outside and already snowing though we’re sure to have a bit of Indian summer. I don’t care because I like cold weather. The farthest south I’ve ever been is Chicago and it was too goddamned hot down there for me. It was okay when I got there in March but by June I was uncomfortable as hell with the bad air and heat. That was when I was nineteen and was sent off on scholarship to the Moody Bible Institute, but then I got involved with the student radicals who were rioting and my religion went out the window. It was actually a fire-bre
athing Jewish girl from New York City who led me astray. She wore a beaded headband and flowers in her hair and kept telling me I was “one of the people,” and I had to agree with her. At her urging, when we were camped in the city park, I led a charge against the cops and got the shit kicked out of me and got stuck in jail. She bailed me out and we went off to a commune near Buffalo, New York, where they didn’t eat chicken or any other kind of meat. They supposedly ate fish though I didn’t see much of it around, but that’s another story. At honest Shelley’s insistence I will add here that I was kicked out of the commune because I snuck off to a bar, got drunk and ate about five hamburgers. They didn’t drink either.

  Just four months ago in late June was when I found the Indian. You’ll have to understand how the cold at the bottom of Lake Superior preserves things. It was hard on my partner Bob. On one of our first dives together off Grand Island near Munising he came across a Holstein cow as big as day and looking damn near alive. He said the cow scared him as much as any shark he’d seen in the tropics. Then, as if to cap it off, a week later we found a new wreck off Baraga and the cook was still in the galley of the freighter. The cook didn’t look all that unhappy in death except for his eyes, which like the Holstein’s plain weren’t there. The cook seemed to be smiling but it was the effect of the icy water tightening his lips. After the Holstein and the cook Bob was ready for anything, which didn’t prove true when he saw the Indian.

  Shelley just came in from the cold and sat down next to me. Before I get on to our drowned Native American friend, she wants me to lay down a few more background effects, partly so I won’t appear to be worse than I am when we get to what I did. I keep wanting to get to the Chief, he was dressed in the old-time clothes of a tribal leader, but she says my actions will not be understood without an honest “confrontation” with the past.

  To me the past is not as interesting as finding a three-hundred-pound ancient Indian chief sitting bolt upright on the bottom of Lake Superior. Your average man on the street doesn’t know that the hair continues to grow after death and the Chief’s long black hair wavered in the current. Besides, you can’t walk right up to your past, tap it on the chest and tell it to “fess up.” It has reason to be evasive and not want to talk about the whole thing, which for most of us has been a shitstorm.